AI Is Not a Strategy: How to Lead Real Transformation with Julie Averill

John Barrows: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guess who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Today, I sat down with Julie Averill. Julie was the global CIO at ah, Lululemon, where she helped scale the company from 2 billion to over 10 billion in revenue. Before that, she was the first ever CIO at REI and spent a decade at Nordstrom's running the Omnichannel transformation. That accident drove a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue in three months. She's now the founder and CEO of Gold Thread and has a new book coming out on June 16 called Chief Impact Officer. Real Transformation Comes from Humans, not just Artificial Intelligence. Now, I gotta be honest. I was expecting a polished CIO playbook conversation. This was way more than that. We started with her mom, who was put in an orphanage as a kid and protested by refusing to speak for an entire year, which is awesome. And her dad, a major league catcher who taught her systems thinking from behind home plate. Then we got into Lululemon. Story everybody's heard in headlines, but nobody's heard the way she tells it. She was talking about how she was sitting on her couch two days before her first day and clicked on a product page and saw a yoga pose error message and realized the entire site was down. Uh, turns out the data center had been sold and nobody knew it and nobody owned it. And that was the problem with the culture there. From an IT perspective. Uh, 20 hours of outage. Her first email to her new team came from her Gmail account, which is brutal for a new CIO to come in that way, but a lot to f. And she did. Then we got into some stuff that I've been truly obsessing over recently. Stuff like why legacy SaaS should be genuinely scared right now, why AI is a magnifying glass, not a solvable why if you try to automate a broken process that takes 30 people in a room to make a decision, AI is going to expose that dysfunction faster than fix it. And we talked about how radical honesty and trust are the only way to unlock real innovation in a team. Because without trust, people will hide how brittle the systems really are. Which is an absolute fact if you're in tech, retail SaaS, or you're a lead trying to figure out where AI actually fits inside your business instead of bolting it on as a shiny dashboard. This one's for you. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Julie Averill, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast. How are you doing today?

Julie Averill: I'm great, thanks John. I'm happy to be here.

John Barrows: Yeah, I'm excited. I mean we, you got a very interesting career and a lot going on these days and we're going to get to all of that specifically um, you know, Transformation Technology, CIO and all the advisory work that you're doing with the world of AI right now, which is just bananas. Uh, I've personally never seen things move as fast as I've seen right now. So I think a lot of your advice is going to be pretty timely uh, for a lot of people. But before we did it get into that, I always love to get a little bit of background on you like where, you know, the stuff that we can't find on LinkedIn, you know, where'd you come from, how'd you become you. You know, parents upbringing, those type of fun things. And uh, love to hear I skimming through your book. I saw some stuff about your book dad and how he taught you a few things. Your mom too pushed you a little bit. So give us some little perspective there and then we'll get into the rest of it. Sure.

Julie Averill: I'll ah, start with my mom. So my mom came from a pretty tough background where she was um, your parents were divorced when a time when parents didn't get divorced and she was put in ah, an orphanage because her stepfather didn't want kids anymore. So she and her brother man were put in a, an orphanage. But my mom being my mom, her form of protest was she didn't speak for an entire year. They thought that she was mute. She wasn't. She was just extremely stubborn and being rebellious. So that's the thing you need to know about my mom is that she came across as really quiet and but there was a steel underneath her and so she married my dad. Her parents pushed her into marrying him and you know she was 16 years old he his, she got married at 18 but she met him at 16. His father was in um, was a baseball player. So famous man around town. Her parents saw him coming a mile away and was like this is the guy. Like this is your ticket out. And luckily, luckily for her it was a match made in heaven. They were just so in love. Married for 60 years. And uh, it was, you know, it was a beautiful story. My dad, everyone thought that my dad was the tough guy. He played baseball, uh, in the majors for seven or eight years. Um, but the two of them together were quite A combo. And so I grew up from my dad, who was a catcher in the majors. And catchers have a unique position, right. They're the one person that is looking out at the entire field while everyone else is looking at the batter and what they're going to do. But my dad was keenly observant and he could tell you back on his career who he hit against, who threw what, who, you know, he just knew the ins and outs of baseball. And so his, like I describe what, the way he looked at the world in terms of a systems thinker. Yeah, yeah. He saw what was coming ahead of time. You go to a Mariners game with him and he would say, okay, look, they're going to pitch this guy in side and watch what's going to happen. He's going to pop it up or he's going to hit it. He's going to hit it. Uh, you know, home run down the left field line. And it just amazed me how often he was right. Because he knew the people, right. He knew their behaviors. He understood the psychology. Right. Of the individuals. And so, uh, really interesting.

John Barrows: Quick, quick question for you on that one. When did you realize in your career that that's what it was? Right. I mean, as a kid, right? We all like, oh, yeah, wow, dad, you're crazy. Like, how do you know that? Right? Whatever. But you don't see that, how that really influences your decisions and your stuff as a professional as you grow. So was there a moment in your kind of CIO career where you were like, wait a minute. Uh, like I'm, I'm thinking like that I'm treating the boardroom almost like a, you know, like a bullpen here and ah, I'm starting to see the pitches before they come. Was that, was there an aha moment where you're like, oh, my go. You know, this is where it came from?

Julie Averill: Yeah, I actually think it happened when I was writing the book.

John Barrows: Okay.

Julie Averill: Um, that I actually realized what that was. Something about putting it down on paper makes you put up, connect all the dots. And now as I look at it, that's absolutely what he taught me. Because I'm observing people, right. I try to understand what motivates them. I try to understand what happens next. And I think that that is, that's something that just is ingrained in me. My mom, on the other hand, you know, that silent stubbornness. I tell a story in the book about how, uh, she went to work at an upholstery shop. She was a seamstress. Uh, and so when they Decided that I wasn't thriving in a public school, and I had asked to go to a private school. She needed to go to work. So she went to work for an upholstery shop in Tacoma, Washington. And she was doing everything. She did all the sewing, managed all the customers, answered all the phones, did all the ordering, managed all the books. And yet she was paid less than every single man that walked in the door. Even. Even those who were still drunk from the night before coming in for some day, day labor work. And she knew because she, you know, she did the payroll and she took it until one day she asked him, um, for a raise. He gave her a 25 cent an hour raise, which still didn't make her paid what anyone walking off the street was paid. And she asked him, she said, you know, why is this? And he said, pat, uh, that's just the way the world works. And it probably would have been okay, except he followed it with. And Julie better get used to it too. Oh, m. And so that was the day that she quit because she just, she was like, you can't bring my daughter into this. She left, she went, she started her own business. Ended up hiring my dad into it. Got, uh, all the designers that work for him. It's high end clients. They wanted to follow her.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: So she built a successful business.

John Barrows: She sounds like a total badass. I love her already.

Julie Averill: Yeah. Yeah.

John Barrows: Um, so, okay, so I totally see where you get your grit and your perspective on things. Um, college, you. Was it computer science that you went?

Julie Averill: Yeah, yeah.

John Barrows: What. What was that like? What was that itch? Why. Why'd you scratch that one?

Julie Averill: So I always had a, um. In the fifth grade, my dad put me in a computer training class. He was working at Radio Shack.

John Barrows: Nice.

Julie Averill: And this was when, you know, what are computers? What are these things? And now they can actually sit on a desk, not take up a whole room. But I, like, I felt like I found. I found something that really I connected with. It was logical. Uh, what I coded, either worked or didn't. I could solve. I loved puzzles. I could solve hard things. So that ignited something in me. And, you know, I kept with computers all through high school. Got a job, kind of talked my way into a job as a trainer of desktop, um, technologies in. When I was, I don't know, 17, maybe 16. And when I wanted to go to college, the first thing I thought was business, of course, because I didn't know any careers that, you know, that sounded good to me. The idea of computer scientists was someone, you know With a microphone like we have right now. Not a microphone, but with like, uh, you know, an individual setup. Yeah. That you're just working, you know, maybe a dimly lit light bulb hanging over your desk and, and uh, doing things all by yourself. And that didn't sound like me, but when I started down the, you know, the business path, I just didn't have the passion. It wasn't enough. So I finally made a deal with myself because my heart said I wanted to study computer science. I said, okay, I'll study computer science, but I'm going to get an MBA right afterwards. So to me that was the balance and, uh, deal with myself, that let me feel good about studying computer science. I had no idea where that was going to take me.

John Barrows: Well, it's obviously, you know, the thread there is pretty real with where you took your career. But you said like you got into retail early out of college. Right. And one of the things I saw, you said you didn't pick retail, you kind of lucked into it through early E commerce consulting, but you spent your whole career in retail now. So what was it about retail that. That, uh, got you interested and kept you interested? Because it's a, I mean, talk about a volatile. I mean, I've, I've spent a vast majority of my career in tech and SaaS, which is obviously volatile and all over the place. But retail, uh, same thing. I mean, it's seasonal. It's, you know, you're, you're great one minute, you're, you're terrible the next. You know, these days, if you get one bad press release, you could all of a sudden, you know, potentially go out of business. So what was it about retail that really got you fired up?

Julie Averill: What I love about retail is that you can see the entire system, from a product being designed to it, to it being manufactured. The supply chain that it takes to get that into the right places, the planning that it takes, uh, to the point of selling to the customer. Right. The choices that you make online or in store affect whether a customer wants to buy that or not. And then all the way through, uh, fulfillment, the whole life cycle is something that I, uh, can just wrap my head around. And particularly when we think about technology. Technology is involved in every stage of that. And so the seat that someone has in technology in retail in particular, gives you a bird's eye view to the entire organization.

John Barrows: Yeah, I think that's so from. I forget what was your, uh. I didn't see it at Nordstrom because you spent about a decade there. What were your Roles there. I want to get to REI when you were the first ever cio, which I find really interesting, but what were the roles that you played, um, at Nordstrom? Because I forgot to write those notes down.

Julie Averill: Yeah, I came in, um, to Nordstrom after, after spending time in the early.com boom. And I came into Nordstrom and I was hired to help integrate this hundred year old brick and mortar retailer with a shiny Nordstrom.com that they had just purchased back from investors.

John Barrows: Okay.

Julie Averill: And so they, they purchased it, they, they merged it with their catalog business. Okay. And so my job was to help bring, you know, technically bring those two together. And so one of the things you obviously want to bring together was inventory systems. What we didn't realize was really the power of a combined inventory until we went live with store Fulfill in the end of 2013. And what that did was it turned every Nordstrom store into a fulfillment center. So all the merchandise that was available in the store all of a sudden became available online. And that in that year, the last three months of the year, we accidentally drove a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue.

John Barrows: Accidentally.

Julie Averill: We accidentally did through, you know, through the shared inventory and turning the stores into fulfillment centers. So, um, I ended up leading what we now know, the Omnichannel initiatives, in particular the store fulfillment, then store technologies. We did a lot of innovative things like mobile pos, things that were really exploratory in that time. How does RFID fit into this picture? Just innovations, both online in stores, marketing, everything about the customer. So it was a really fun time because we were, you know, we were figuring it out. Now it's like, uh, you did Omnichannel, okay? Everybody does Omnichannel.

John Barrows: Well, and that's actually so a lot. There's a lot of similarities with what's going on right now with the AI boom. Right. So the dot com boom. None of us knew what was going on. It was, we were all figuring it out. And you know, and people were slow to change, quite frankly, because I remember even back then people thought it was a fad. The Internet was not a thing. It's going to go away. And so what were, I guess looking back, what were some of the takeaways that you think are still applicable today in that transformation in such a flux environment that we're all in. What were some of the specifics that you took away from the Nordstrom experience that you think either you or others in your position could apply in, in this fast paced, like 10x times, you know, it feels like that we're moving a thousand times faster than we did back then. Even though back then it felt like we were moving a thousand miles an hour.

Julie Averill: Yeah, yeah. Well, if you remember back to that time, you could slap dot com on the end of a company name and instantly be worth millions, at least on paper.

John Barrows: Sure.

Julie Averill: And that was because there's a. You know, everybody knew that it was something big, but they didn't necessarily know what it meant to their business. And so through that, right through the dot com best, the market sorted itself out and said, okay, it's really not about having, uh, just having a website or E commerce, but how does your business transform through this new technology? Right. So, you know, Amazon emerged, for example. Right. So the, the market changed once people understood how this new technology actually fit into their business. And I think we're seeing the same thing right now. Like how many companies do you know that end in dot? AI.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: Right. It's not about the technology, so it's about, and I see this a ton right now of companies trying to just do AI. What's your, what's your AI strategy? How many pilots are you doing? What, you know, um, and they're focusing on the technology. And I think the focus really needs to be on the business, uh, understanding where do you want your business to go and how can AI help you get there faster or in a different way. So I think that's a big lesson that I just. Yeah. Feels like we're deja vuing all over again in that there's a lot of, um. I mean, don't get me wrong, AI is amazing. It's transformational to our lives, our industry, et cetera. But when you look at it in a company, what is it still that that company does that makes them unique and how does technology help them accelerate their, their goals there?

John Barrows: Yeah, and I think that's one of the things I'm struggling with right now. You know, just even from a sales perspective. Right. Because I think in tech sales at least, uh, you know, the SaaS boom, if you will, you know, 2010 to 2020, give or take, or turning 2022, we got away from a lot of the fundamentals because it was just quite fr. Pretty easy.

Julie Averill: Right.

John Barrows: We could send out sequences and, you know, whatever. Anybody with a pulse was taking a demo call and all that other stuff. So what I'm looking at here is, okay, how do we get back to fundamentals so that we can have that foundation to build from? But my question that I'm struggling with is what are the fundamentals? Anymore. So as that relates to business, what are the same fundamentals back then that you think are still relevant today in business and which ones do you think have changed?

Julie Averill: The fundamentals are different, right, for every company. But, um, what's your company's strategy and what are the capabilities that you need to be able to execute on that strategy? So I'll use Lululemon for, as an example. Right. So when I started the company was 2 billion. When I left it was 10 billion. Uh, so 5x in 8 years. What got us there was great product, uh, great relationships with the customers, with the guests, um, solid supply chain functioning organizations that were all working together and doing their part. Now technology enabled all of that, so it couldn't happen without technology. But technology was not the point. My job was to serve the strategy of the company. And so I think when companies today are thinking about how does AI change them, you got to look at what are your fundamentals, uh, and how does the technology help you get to where you want to get to, to your strategy in a different way?

John Barrows: What's changed? So like if some of the core front of customer success, having a good product, supply chain, uh, alignment and all that stuff, has there anything, have you, have you seen anything fundamentally change about how businesses need to look at things different now than they ever did?

Julie Averill: I think I'll start with retail. Okay, um, so top of the funnel, right? So it used to be predictable. And I'll go back in time, right before E commerce predictable, customers would walk into the stores, they would look at what you had, they made a decision to buy or not. They paid, they walked out, E commerce comes in. Now they have a choice to research online, then go into the store, buy all online or still going to a store. Right? But you controlled that top of the funnel. You controlled as a retailer how you presented your products to the customers, whichever avenue they came in. And now what's changed is with AI, there's channels that people are coming from, like conversational AI, for example, where you can't control, right. You don't know how Cloud or ChatGPT is going to present your products and in what order. And so we just don't know that yet. Right? And so the, the companies I think that are going to survive this are the ones that really understand how they are truly different. So what is it that makes your company special? If you're just selling a widget that 10 other people are selling, then you better have the best price, you better have the best widget, and you better have it at the Best price. But if you're a brand that, uh, has loyalty to your brand, that people are in community with your brand, um, how do you hold on to those things? So when people are conversing with their favorite AI engine, they're asking specifically for your brand, and then you're able to take it from there.

John Barrows: So from that perspective is brand community and kind of your. The marketing side of the house, as if not more important. Because I've always said, like, from a sales standpoint, right. Um, you have the best product in the world, but if you can't sell, it doesn't matter. And so I, I've always, you know, your product has to do what it's expected to do. Okay. Like, you can't these days. You can't show up to the table without it doing functionally what it's supposed to do. Um, but is, do you have to be the best product right now and have the best brand, or. Or if you create that loyalty, that brand, that thing that, that you're, you know, your audience will accept something that isn't the best?

Julie Averill: I think it depends where you put yourself on the commodity scale. Okay, Right. So if you, if you are, uh, hot in a high commodity competitive environment. Right. Then it's. It's quality and price.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: Right. But if you're differentiated, if you have, you know, you're one of a kind of. Right. Then know really well what makes you unique and hold on to that.

John Barrows: See, I feel like that's going to be so much harder moving forward here, because it's always been hard, but now I can replicate it in a second. You know what I mean? Like, now I can say, oh, I love Lululemon's, uh, website. So replicate the website and just put a little bit of different vibe. Oh, go find their, you know, uh, their manufacturer and wherever it is. And I want to get the same clothes and put a different logo on it. And so it's like, you know, now Lululemon has built a brand and they have the reputation, but it's like the copycats right now are rampant. And so how do you. How have you helped? Let's, let's talk about, um, let's talk about. I'm going to skip over Aria and come back to it for a minute, but let's talk about Lululemon, because you came in and, like, I think it was like a couple of days before you're starting, the website crashed. And you said, first of all, that that told you everything you needed to know about what you were walking yourself into. Um, so walk me through that. Like, what did it tell you? A and B, you know, what was unique about Lululemon and what can other brands pull from that to say, like, how did you go through your process of what makes us unique? We're selling yoga pants. I mean, obviously from a generic consumer standpoint, you know, it's like, whatever. These things are stretchy pants and they're nice clothes and there's a million of them. I can go to Nordstrom's. I can go all these. All these places. So what was, how did you identify what was unique about Lululemon? Uh, so that you could lean in on that?

Julie Averill: Um, and, you know, I was a tech person, so I don't get full credit for this. But I'll tell you, I'll tell you my story about before I started there. So two days before I started, I'm sitting on my couch at home, I'm, you know, shopping. Pull up lululemon.com, click on a product page and get a, an error message of a yoga figure, like in Savasana, saying, temporary Savasana. We're usually awesome at this. And, um, so I thought, well, that doesn't, that doesn't sound good. I clicked on another one. Same thing. Turns out the entire website was down. I was the one that discovered it. My team's very first email to me was from my Gmail account reporting the website outage.

John Barrows: Whoa.

Julie Averill: Turns out that the, uh, site had been fully hosted, fully outsourced to another company. That company had sold it to another company, sold the data center. So there was a data center, entire data center that had gone down, and nobody who owned it knew that was hosting the Lululemon website. So the site was down for 20 hours.

John Barrows: What, uh, just for context here, um, how. How many years in business was Lululemon and what were their revenues at this point? Just to get a gut revenue?

Julie Averill: Revenue was a little bit under, um, a little bit under 2 billion. Okay. And, um, uh, 20 years.

John Barrows: So this isn't like, oh, we just started in it. We had a glitch here. This is like established.

Julie Averill: There were multiple countries.

John Barrows: Two billion. Okay.

Julie Averill: Um, yeah, but why I say that it was super revealing. I knew everything that I needed to know, um, was because there was no culture of ownership. Right. The team had no ability to monitor. They had no escalation path. They didn't know who to call. Um, and what that revealed was the lack of ownership was that there was a fear based culture. So nobody really wanted to talk about how brittle the systems were. For fear of being blamed for it. And so when you ask what was special about Lululemon, um, the technology team was in a state of needing a lot of repair. But the thing that drew me to Lululemon was the culture of we can do anything. I had never seen a company that just had this, um, this desire to keep going collectively. Everybody I talked to had this curiosity and this, um, it's almost no fear. Right. Well, of course we can do that. We're Lululemon. Uh, now, the technology team had paid the price for a lot of that because they were trying to put everything together, and we could talk all about what that transformation looked like. But really, I think what made it special was this DNA of innovation and curiosity that was super magnetic. That's why I joined, because I could tell that it was a special company to be a part of.

John Barrows: So was it different? So because that culture of innovation and we can do anything conflicts a little bit with the. The no ownership. Right.

Julie Averill: Yeah.

John Barrows: I'm scared. So was. Was it. Was the. Was the culture of it different than the culture of Lululemon? Because you said they kind of. They were the ones who, you know, had to deal with all this stuff.

Julie Averill: Yeah.

John Barrows: Were they somewhat insulated when you came on board?

Julie Averill: Like. Yeah.

John Barrows: Why was there that. That difference?

Julie Averill: Yeah. And I think this happens in a lot of retail companies. Um, I remember one time I asked, um, one of the executives at Nordstrom for career advice. I said, look, I, uh, really love this company, and I want to know what my opportunities are. And, uh, he said, julie, we think of it like. We think of, um, like the broom closet. So when something's broken, we go in there, we rattle things around until it starts working again. Then we turn the lights off, and, uh, and we. We go back to work. So if you want. If you want a career in a retail company, you've got to get into either merchandising or stores. So that was my pep talk. And I thought, uh, this is where I'm going to make my career.

John Barrows: There you go. Let's go.

Julie Averill: But, uh, you know, a lot of this is how it was in retail, right? That before we understood or before we were able to really articulate how important technology is to unlocking the strategy. And at Nordstrom, what happened? Obviously, I told you about already, but when we went live with Store Fulfill, all of a sudden the executive teams were highly interested in this technology thing. The vocabulary changed. They started asking about, what are our fail rates? What are our cancel rates? How do we. You like, it changed from being a back office function to a strategic enabler. And so at Lululemon it hadn't gone through that, that yet. It was still seen as really, you know, that broom closet of here. We need some stuff, we tell them what we need, we're going to get some stuff out and then we're going to go do the real work of the company.

John Barrows: Yeah, that's. So I spent about a large portion of my early career in IT services. So I was one sales guy within 50 engineers. And so I know the, I uh, know the how clients looked at it and it was almost, it was, it was so. It was so tough because you never got praise. I mean, yeah, the, the expectation was the system worked right. Like the expectation was I got my emails, when I got my emails that I could access the folders when I could access the folders. So the only time at uh, their name, our name ever came up was when something went, went wrong. And you know, that was a thing that ah, the engineers I think obviously knew getting into the profession. But it was always something from my standpoint, from a sales standpoint being like, wait a minute, like after a while I'm like, you got to throw an attaboy every once in a while. Adam, for, for the fact that we've had no outages here in uh, a couple of months with your system. Like, can't you. Right. Or like find some way of reminding the client that the reason that there are no issues is because we're doing our job job. So that that's always. I think I could see that being a tough mentality, uh, to have quite frank or. Yeah. Just being in that environment, not getting the kudos and always getting the blame.

Julie Averill: Yeah. Especially if you are, you know, like what we call behind the drywall.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: Right. So I think it's changed since you know, like if you look at the technology that we put in place in those eight years that I was there, it was remarkable team in China to you know, like all the unique technology and needs of the customer in China, um, all of the global infrastructure, the websites, the merchandising systems, the retail systems, the personalization and the websites, all of that enabled the growth. And so um, you know, we were lucky to have really good business partners who understood how important the technology was to um, you know, to, to for them to reach their goals. And so it was a partnership. And I think the, you know, the kudos came particularly to the teams that were building new functionality. But yeah, the network team, um, you know they're still, yeah, the Phone slides up when something doesn't. Doesn't work well.

John Barrows: So, you know, staying with Lululemon, you talked about this culture of love, radical honesty, right? Where. So, you know, and I actually did a little bit of a stint with Jack Welch, uh, back in the day when, when he started his online MBA program. So I worked with him and Susie for a little bit just to get that off the ground. And he's got, you know, in his book, radical candor. Right. And I. And that's actually what drew me to Jack. Now we can all talk about Jack and capitalism and, you know, people hate him these days. But, you know, back then, his whole mentality of radical candor was, Was music to my ears because me as, uh, somebody who just couldn't fit in corporate because I have zero. Zero filter, right? And, and, and I, and I don't want a filter. And I actually don't want people around me to have a filter because I don't think with a filter, I don't think you can get anything done. But everybody's got, you know, sensitivity and all that other stuff. So how did you shift, specifically the IT culture that was scared to talk limited ownership in an, uh, organization that was running like, yeah, we can do anything. And sorry, it. You're gonna have to figure this out. Was it, Was it deliberate on your end to. To. To address that issue coming in? Um, and how did you make that shift of, um, I'm scared to own anything to radical honesty? Let's go.

Julie Averill: Trust.

John Barrows: Trust. Okay.

Julie Averill: Right. Yeah. So the most important thing I did was hire leaders who, um, who believe the same thing. Right. And wanted to build teams that could trust each other. Because I've seen it. Innovation happens when you get teams of people that trust each other enough to take risks, to admit when they fail to try again to speak up.

John Barrows: Right.

Julie Averill: So that every person can speak up and say their ideas, what's on their mind, what's not working. Um, that's where I believe innovation really happens, is when you can build teams that are so highly performant that the, you know that there's no politics, right? We're just here to climb that mountain in front of us together.

John Barrows: Was there a moment or an example where you saw that shift of. And so there's the hiring of new people that fit the profile so great. Right? So this is new people that you're hiring, builds the trust up front, but then there's the existing staff that you're taking over here that is still probably shell shocked. And was there a moment in a meeting or in a uh, you know, that you noticed where that staff loosened up a little bit and was candid, was direct, where they weren't before and how it was received or how it was presented or how it even was, was, was approached.

Julie Averill: Yeah, very, I'll give you a very, very early on example. That is the one that comes out in my mind. So I had asked my head of infrastructure, what's your cloud strategy? Because we were 100% on prem at that time and didn't hear from him. And I kept saying I need to see your cloud strategy. Like I'm trying to figure out is this the person that's going to take us into the future, does he understand it? And whenever I would ask that the room would just go quiet. And uh, you know, and I'm new and I've just taken one company into the cloud like okay, let's get going, right? All the reasons why. And he finally said to me, Julie, your predecessor was a bare metals person. And ah, when he said that it, everything just made sense to me. Like okay, now I understand the starting point, right.

John Barrows: And explain for those people who are listening might not really understand the bare metals person.

Julie Averill: Yeah.

John Barrows: Could you clarify that?

Julie Averill: Yeah, everything. Yeah, I realize I'm, I'm going a little deep here to the technique.

John Barrows: No, that's all.

Julie Averill: Everything needed to be on prem, where he could, he could build from the servers. Uh, whereas in the cloud, right, you give up a layer of control but you get uh, you get a lot of other things. Resilience, redundancy, scalability, etc.

John Barrows: Cool. So that was the whole philosophy was he was kind of old school, wanted everything on prem, control it all. I'm guessing his wrist profile was not high, uh, because the cloud was scary back in the day, you know what I mean? Like I'm going to put my information up there like what is the cloud? Right. Um, but to your point, like infrastructure, I remember going from IT services to you know, when I left that uh, and sold it to Staples. I then went to the world of Salesforce, right. And Salesforce was my biggest customer. And I saw all this cloud and I'm like looking at my old companies being like why in the world would any small business under 10, under 50 employees have infrastructure? Like it doesn't make any sense to me. It's all up there. I can access it anywhere. And so like the. But you look back on it and people are risk adverse, people are like security factors. So was that mentality from a top down standpoint, hard to, hard to break with that person gone.

Julie Averill: But no, because they were curious, right? They were curious. And, uh, that's the part of the Lululemon culture that extended into technology. It wasn't that they didn't want to. It's that there was, there was no trust, there was fear. So they had to know that it was safe. Um, and, yeah, I mean, I think about a similar thing happening right now in AI. Right. Like as you describe the cloud, that's what's happening right now. Like, I know I need to do it. Um, and what's it going to do for me or to me and the companies that are building from scratch, These are AI companies, but then you've got companies that have been around and they're trying to figure out how do I transform form from what I am right now to this world that maybe I don't quite yet understand.

John Barrows: Yeah. And I think that's the scary part right now, at least for me, with where I sit in, in SaaS. Right. So there's retail, uh, uh, you know, the world of SaaS. I've lived, you know, I've trained this, the vast majority of the fastest, you know, Salesforce, LinkedIn, all these, all these companies. And, you know, again, from 2010 to 2023, it was, it was a great ride. It was a rocket ship. Um, but now I'm looking at the entire SaaS industry and saying, oh, no, because now I can spin up whatever I want now. There's obviously legacy and there's people and integrated systems, and it's not nearly as easy as anybody ever says it is. Oh, I could just build an app that does that. It's like, no, you can't, you know, and transitioning. I get that, but I'm genuinely worried. So. So as you go out there and advise, uh, companies, um, have you gotten kind of to advise or, or talk through some of the SaaS companies and what their transition looks like? Because a lot of them are, quite frankly, putting lipstick on a pig. You know what I mean? They're, they're, they're doing a dashboard that says they do AI, but it's really not AI. Yeah, it's not truly integrated in their systems. It's just. And I'm, I'm looking at it and I'm going, it. How fast are you going to be able to pivot here? Or what do. What can you do, do to stay relevant in this world where seats are going to go down, layoffs are going to happen in. You know what I mean? All these different things. So what's your Advice to these legacy. And I say legacy of SaaS, which is a weird thing to say.

Julie Averill: Three years old. Yeah, right, exactly.

John Barrows: These legacy SaaS companies and, and quite frankly who are listening to this, the sales reps who are working at them. Because if I'm a sales rep working at a SaaS company right now, I'm looking at it going, I need some indicators that this company is still going to be relevant because my client is throwing all sorts of questions at me of like, why would I pay for this? Why can't I just do it myself? And obviously there's sales skills there, but what are the successful companies going to do coming out of this right now as opposed to just get run over by this AI wave for the AI, uh, native companies coming up?

Julie Averill: Yeah, I think it's a great question and I know that that's what, uh, every SaaS provider is asking themselves right now. If I was advising, I would say be real. Right. Understand, do you offer something that is competitive advantage? Understand exactly what that is, understand why your customers need it and focus on that, but also understand what your competition is, which is, you know, ah, an AI engineer with a bunch of tokens. So, um, you know, you have to understand that and then price accordingly. Because if you have a pricing model that, you know, that gets you a piece of the revenue of, you know, of every transactions and you know, you can hire 10 engineers to build it yourself. Right. It's, it's a pretty easy decision to make. Yeah. So I really, I think that the whole model needs to be looked at through the lens of the customer. Right. Like what is the, uh, the person buying it? You know, if you're trying to sell to, you know, to me, for example, I'm looking to say, do you really understand what you have that I need and are you really solving and you know, the specific pain point that I have? Um, and do you understand that the world has changed so you can't price, price me like you're holding me hostage like you used to be able to do.

John Barrows: So how do you make decision with, with things that are moving, uh, so rapidly right now? Yeah, how do you. There, there's. I talk a lot about this book called Jolt Effect, right. Which is the Challenger Sale. Challenger Customer. And then the third one is Jolt Effect. And it talks about the, the problem, problem that we're all faced with right now, which is, you know, every sales rep says, oh, you know, no decision is our biggest, you know, competitor. Right. People not making a decision. But what Jolt Effect highlights is it's not no decision. It's indecision. And the reason is, is that things are moving so fast right now and there, there's just so many other options that people are scared to make decisions. They're. Very few people get fired for making bad decisions. I'm sorry, Very few, few people get fired for not making decisions. They get fired for making bad decisions. Decision. So people are just kind of like, ah, that's why sales cycles are taking too long. And, and so how do you like from an innovation, still steering it back to innovation. How do you know what to invest in if you're a CEO right now? If you're a CIO right now, knowing that, I mean just in my little world, I'm like, oh, cool, I'm gonna do this. And then literally three weeks later, anthropic releases some new thing. Chat. GPT creates whatever it is. And whatever I was just about to create or do is now irrelevant because I can do it in GPT or in AI. So how are, um, how is decision making changing right now and what is the lens you have to look at right now to greenlight anything at this point?

Julie Averill: Yeah, I'll give an example. I have a real life example of a company that I'm advising right now, right? So they have a really old legacy stack and uh, their choice is go to a SaaS provider or you know, build it through AI, like, you know, put some AI on top of the legacy stack, decipher the business rules. Right? Um, the, the things that you have to weigh in that is like, can you really like, is it as easy as you think it is? Because there is advantage to going to a SaaS provider that has it all figured out. They've got the maintenance figured out, they've got the upgrades figured out. And you know, if you're a, uh, company that is, you know, let's say under a billion dollars, you can't get the talent that you need to be able to create your own custom stack of everything that you need to as the business grows. So there is still a need for these really flexible, um, SaaS solutions that allow companies to go fast and then have their team focus on, you know, instead of the core functionalities like commerce, take payments, etc. Like that's all figured out. And now all they need to do is figure out like, what are those things that are unique to my company? And then I have my, my tech team do those really, really well. So I think, you know, the, the, the decisions are still the same. It's just that there's another option, this option of doing it yourself. Um, it's not. Yeah, it's not, it's not a magic pill.

John Barrows: No, I mean, that's, it's funny, when I was again going back to thrive in my these IT services, we did infrastructure and we would always bump into engineers, you know, software engineers who were really smart and they could absolutely manage the infrastructure, but that's not what they got paid for. That's not what they, what their specialty was. Their specialty was creating the software that the company could make money on. Right. And the infrastructure got in their way. So it was always an interesting dynamic of talk of having that conversation to be like, yeah, I know you could, but is this the best use of your time?

Julie Averill: Right.

John Barrows: The build versus buy has always been around and I think now it's just more challenging because the perception is, is it's so much easier to build. So it's not just the, uh, the IT nerds, if you will, that are like, oh, I could do that. And you know, as a sales guy here, I'm like, yeah, uh, you could do that. I don't know. I don't know if you can or can't, like, because I don't know what the skills are. But now some idiot like me can be like, wait a minute. I just built a crazy app that does this and it took me two minutes of, you know, half an hour of vibe coding here, and it came out pretty damn good. It does everything that I wanted to. So can I just do this? Obviously not knowing the details of the integrations and all the stuff that it should do and the security and all that fun stuff, but I think right now it's, it's, it's the same question, build versus buy. It's just now it's a little bit more clouded because you have non technical people seeing what the possibilities are and, and playing with it at home in a lot of ways. Like me.

Julie Averill: Yeah. So it got, it, it got more tangible.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: Uh, right. Whereas engineering has been a little bit of a mystery. I remember when I, when I first told, um, someone that I wanted to be a cio. Um, this was the former CIO of Nordstrom. He, he took me out to lunch and he said, I want you to really understand, I want to understand why you want to do this, and I want you to understand some things. And one of the things he said is, this is a lonely job. Nobody understands what you do, and everybody needs you and if anything breaks, they're mad at you. So, you know, I think with AI people They get to see into that box a little bit like, oh, I can see. Look, I just, you know, look what I just made. And I made my own website and uh, you know, in very little time. But it doesn't take away the complexity under the, under the hood, if you will. Right. You still need senior engineers who know what they're doing and are building for the future, not just, you know, putting out some code. Building on top of it. Building on top of it. And then you have something that's unsustainable.

John Barrows: Yeah. I think you had said something that AI is a magnifying glass, not a Solvall. And that true. Like I, I thought AI was going to cure the garbage in, garbage out problem like ah, uh, whatever, just throw it in there, make it, clean it all up. Right. And I couldn't have been further, that couldn't be further from the truth. If you have garbage in, it's going to build on garbage and it's just going to make it exponentially worse as a matter of fact. So I see that with messaging and uh, everything else and I can't imagine what it looks like from an actual infrastructure and development standpoint.

Julie Averill: Well, the other part of that is that what AI reveals is the dysfunction in the company. So if you're, you know, you're trying to automate a process and yet it takes 30 people in a room to make a decision decision, those are it, you can't automate that. Uh, um, you know, the hoarding of data, right, where data is power, I'm hold on to it. You lose that power as soon as, you know, you make that available data available to everyone else. So that, that's part of the reason why I say AI reveals your company because it doesn't, it doesn't just come in and spread some magic pixel dust around it and everything's all of a sudden perfect. In fact, exposes the, the things about your company faster.

John Barrows: Yeah. And I, it's the same parallel in the sales process. It just exposes the process, the bad parts of it. It also exposes the bad parts of sales reps because it, it gets it all. You know, so many reps are, are jumping towards the answer and not like you know, they're putting. I say all the time we've gone from a search engine to an answer engine and that's a dangerous thing because the search engine at least gave us a perception of choice and we had to have some critical thinking to read through a few articles and maybe pick something that was our source of truth. Now it Just gives us the answer. And if you're curious, which you mentioned a couple of times, which I think is the superpower of the future here. It is a superpower. Hey, tell me more about that. Where'd you learn that? Uh, I don't know. Give me a different perspective here. So source. Check that, please. Whatever. But unfortunately, the vast majority of people are just lazy and they're going to take that answer, copy paste it and go. And I, I thank, like all that grind that I did over the years and everything else, that perspective, that context is so critical because now that I'm playing with it, I call BS on it all the time. I'm like, uh, I don't think that's right. Or oh, sorry, John, you're right. It's like, wait a minute. Like, you know, somebody without the experience would just accept that. Sounds good.

Julie Averill: Yeah.

John Barrows: That's the danger I think we're in here with, with this. Wow. It made it. It sounds really smart. It looks like it did the research. But if I don't have the critical thinking, if I don't have the curiosity, if I don't have the context, it

Julie Averill: gets off all the time. I mean, I love to say, um, cite your sources.

John Barrows: Yes.

Julie Averill: Then like, oh, uh, hold on a second.

John Barrows: Chat GPT.

Julie Averill: Yeah, yeah. But no even telling. Even telling, um, the LLM.

John Barrows: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like when you ask a human, they'll say, cite your sources. It'll be like, oh, chat GPT. Well, you know, as Chat GPT to source it. And a lot. Even when it does, by the way, I'll click on a link, it'll 404 will show up. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Did you just take the title of this? So it's.

Julie Averill: I wanted to make you feel like you got good information.

John Barrows: I mean, it does, it does have this weird, uh. You know, some, some. Whoever wrote the first code in there is. There's some weird, like, makes you feel good button in there that tries to make us humans feel like we're smart. And I don't know if it's doing it on purpose or if it's just embedded in the code somewhere. But, um, so let's, let's finish up on the book. It comes out June 16th. Right. And it's called Chief Impact Officer.

Julie Averill: Right, right, right.

John Barrows: A. Why'd you write it? Because books are, are, uh, an interesting process to go through. Right. Nobody ever, you know, got. Well, few people got rich on making books. Writing books and their labor of love in a Lot of ways. And then if there was one concept of the book, because I read through a few chapters and I think hiding. There was something one in there about hiding that I thought was really cool. Um, and how it doesn't help you, but if there was one concept that you, that you could pull out today to give the advice of, you know, CEOs or CIOs making, making decisions in this world, you know, what, what would that be? So why'd you write it first, though?

Julie Averill: Yeah, I, I wrote the book, um, because people I trusted told me that I needed to write a book and it planted the seed. And I first I thought, you know, what am I going to write a book about? I've got, you know, I got stuff to do. I don't have time to write a book. But I just started writing probably five years ago, I started writing down stories and then I, um, you know, I stood back and I'm like, what do these say? It was really the interesting process to go through. Like, what do all my stories say? What is that through line that, um, you know, that communicates the things that I believe. So the, the byline of the book is real transformation requires human, not just artificial intelligence, intelligence. And so it's, it's my view on transformation on a, on a human level, on a global level, on a company level, and really what it takes to influence and to lead. So um, if I was something I would say, for the one liner that I would say to CIOs right now is that transformations require like technology is the easy part. It's the humans, uh, that you need to lead through it and help in that change. So it's, um, I'm really excited for it to come out.

John Barrows: Yeah.

Julie Averill: Um, and I called it Chief Impact Officer because that's what I desire in the world. Right. I want to have impact. That's what. And that's what the book is about.

John Barrows: Love it. Uh, what's your optimal last question? For me, I always try to end on an optimistic note, especially in this crazy world of AI. What is kind of, what are you most optimistic about, specifically related to AI? Because there's a lot of Doomsday Terminator conversations about this thing's going to wake up and take over everything, jobs are going to be gone. And we can leave that to other conversations. But what are you most optimistic about, um, with AI and how it's impacting us as a society, as business and everything else?

Julie Averill: Yeah, I'm teaching a class right now at the University of Washington Master's seminar And it's just so much fun to be in with the students and to have dialogue and conversation. And it's a scary time for them, for sure. Yes, it is. But the human skills, like, we are still humans that are still controlling the planet, and the skills that make us unique, right? The strategic thinking, the relationship building, the communities, those are the things that are still going to exist. And actually we get to spend time leading, leading where we're going and not be victim to it. I think there's so much uncertainty right now, and so many headlines are around the layoffs that are from AI. I question how many are really from AI or are they pressures from these companies to cut expenses? Um, if you look at how much efficiency really is gained by AI right now, it's, it's, it's not a huge number now, is it transforming everything? Absolutely, yes. So how do we transform our, you know, ourselves and stay, you know, stay relevant? I think it is the human things. It's leadership and, um, you know, it's understanding what makes our companies really special and, and leaning into that.

John Barrows: Yeah, yeah. I think it's, uh, if used right. You know, this is, this. That's why I say for creators right now, for people who have ideas, this is almost the golden age of, of creativity at this point, because you can build and create and do anything. My. That's my optimism, my. My pessimism is for the. Not like the kind of. The, Like, I don't want to cause any waves. Like, I'm just doing my job. You know what I mean? Like, the people who aren't willing to change and for no fault of their own, right? Just either that's their situation in life or they just need that job because they need to pay bills for whatever reason. Like, not every. That's why I kind of roll my eyes in the Silicon Valley and sass. Oh. Like, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be euphoric. All these people. Everybody's gonna. It's like, no, most people don't. They just want to do their job. And, and so I'm hoping that those creators keep that in mind that we're all not creators and we have to create for the rest of people so that everybody can have purpose. Everybody. Everybody can make a difference. Everybody can have that impact. Because when that happens, then some special things can happen for, for a lot of different, uh, verticals and reasons across the board. So.

Julie Averill: Yeah. Yeah.

John Barrows: Awesome. Well, Julie, it's been a pleasure talking to you. This is a fun conversation. I really appreciate it.

Julie Averill: Where um, John, it was fun for me, too.

John Barrows: Yeah. Ah, where can people find out more about you but what you're working on? And obviously, again, the book is going to come out on again. What is it? June 2nd 16th, June 1616.

Julie Averill: I'm easy to find on LinkedIn, JulieAverl and my website, Goldthread LLC.com both of those quick way to find me. Thank you so much.

John Barrows: Fantastic. We'll put that on the show. Notes and all the details and links for everybody to check out. So, again, Julie, thank you so much for coming. I appreciate it. Thank you, John and everybody. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. Like I always say at the end all the podcast, go out there and make somebody smile today, because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know you had a good day. And the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much and I will see you on the other side.