So first of all, welcome Jamie.

Thank you, how are you?

So lovely to have you.

Thank you so much for joining us.

I welcome and thank you to all of you, our listeners, for also joining us today.

So today's Shoponomics event is Feminism for Cinecommerce, on unveiling strategies and innovations for digital success.

So first of all, I want to do a quick introduction with Jamie.

Would you like to say a few words about yourself, who you are and a little bit of your experience in the industry?

I do.

Yeah, so I'm Jamie Hill.

I've recently just left a contract role at Monsoon, but I've previously been at and brand names like Shell, barclays Avis and Milk and More in digital marketing and e-commerce roles over the years.

Yeah, I've got more years of experience than I kind of want to actually mention, but let's just say it's 20 plus, yeah, and yeah, just kind of everything from offline digital e-commerce retention yeah, I've kind of been there, done that really.

Lots of different roles, and which kind of roles.

Tell me about the roles that you're kind of working in now, the some of the different kind of job roles you've had, the some of the work you've been doing.

Yeah, so most recently in the last few years, it's been very much the e-commerce focus, so kind of providing that really slick customer experience online, making sure that customers have got the right information in order to make a proper judgment on whether they want or need that product, and ensuring that checkouts as easy as possible so that people can actually buy them, and, yeah, just any kind of features and functionality to help make that purchase decision easier.

So things like augmented reality, size guides, that kind of thing, so, and also, you know, cro programs as well, you know kind of optimizing that, that experience.

So, yeah, I've been quite busy in recent years.

Very busy.

There's lots of different things to do, sounds like you've been dipping into lots of different parts of the e-commerce journey there, and so obviously, we would love to talk to you about the millions of many things that you do, and the one topic we've really wanted to focus on today, though, is about women in e-commerce.

I don't know if you've been talking passionately about this.

We had a great conversation a few weeks ago when we started to talk about this as well, and so I'm really, really excited to get started with this topic, so I guess one of the first questions we'd like to ask you about is the rise of women in e-commerce, so what is the evolving role of women in the e-commerce industry?

Yeah, I think women and rightly so are becoming more prevalent in e-commerce.

You know, there's been some studies that actually say that women are better leaders due to their kind of empathy and collaboration skills.

And, you know, women bring a lot of skills that a lot of men not everybody that don't have, due to their kind of multiple roles in life, you know, being a mother and employee, a carer of sorts, so that they can, you know, kind of juggle, multiple responsibilities, you know, and also sometimes the flexibility around e-commerce is actually allowing more women now to start their own businesses in e-commerce, you know, and being able to expand globally as well due to that flexibility.

So, yeah, I mean, I've, you know, I've been very fortunate to have a couple of really good bodies that were female and proper forces to be reckoned with, and I think we need more people like that in the industry.

And I don't know if the sort of STEM programme in the UK is helping to get more, you know, girls into kind of tech, but I would love to see more people in it.

I mean, you know there's a lot of things that are coming up, you know, with AI and you know all the kind of tech around that, and there are some, you know, women leading the way with that, so it'd just be great for that to become even more prevalent, really, to be honest, Absolutely, and I think what you were saying earlier there about the different sort of skills that women have and bring into the roles that has traditionally maybe a bit different, adding slightly different kind of perspectives onto the job role as well.

I think that sounds really important.

Yeah absolutely.

I mean, you know, I mean I don't have kids myself, but I am completely in awe of some of my colleagues who, you know, work full time.

They're bringing up children, you know.

Some of them potentially are, you know, caring for elderly parents and things as well.

And how they can do that and still do an amazing job at work is just it's insane.

So, yeah, all kudos to them absolutely.

And so you kind of sort of started touching on it there in terms of some of the challenges faced by women in commerce.

You know, having lots of different things potentially outside traditionally associated with women I mean, we can talk forever about what that looks like.

But in terms of e-commerce in particular, can you talk about maybe any of the sort of gender related challenges and stereotypes that you think are sort of happening in the industry, and maybe you even have some personal experiences on kind of that particular challenge and maybe some ways you might have overcome that in the past.

Yeah, sure, I mean, obviously, you know, childcare and flexible working is a perennial challenge and it's not exclusive to e-commerce.

And there's a lady actually that I follow on LinkedIn from Nike, sammy and Rao.

She posts about it like all the time, as is mainly a US focus, but it very much applies to the UK too.

It's like, you know, if you've got two parents working full time, there's childcare costs which are very often extortionate and actually, you know, they're often more than one person's wages.

So it's like what's the point in going back to work a lot of the time?

And so, you know, flexible working it really helps, and I think COVID has helped with that.

You know, on the flip side, we are seeing some companies, you know, kind of forcing people back to the office, which I don't think is going to be in favour, with some employees.

I mean, you know there's still a lack of representation at senior level of women.

I mean, I did find some stats actually.

So in the UK, the percentage of women in C-suite roles was around 30% in 2021.

Now in 2015, that was only 19%.

So we've made good progress, but there's still, you know, a way to go, and it was even worse in the US, in fact they're further behind than we are.

They've gone from 17% to 21.

And globally it's stayed around the same, about 24%.

Well, you know, considering women do make up a big chunk of the workforce, that's for me that's not good enough and, like I say, it is changing, but I'd like to see it change much faster.

And so I think that lack of representation, you know, can be a bit of a hindrance to some people.

You know, some industries there's a lack of female role models and also sometimes there can be that tech skills gap because there's barriers due to lack of access or even encouragement, you know, finding someone that will back you.

If you say I want to learn programming and you're not in a technical role, you know, sometimes you just won't get the encouragement to do that and just, yeah, it's kind of some of the networking opportunities can be restricted and obviously we still got that kind of wage gap issue as well, which, again, I think is starting to be addressed and it's been taken seriously, but it's still slow progress.

So, yeah, I mean there's a lot of these challenges are not exclusive to e-commerce, but yeah, they need to change.

They need to change yeah absolutely.

I think we can agree there and I think just looking at those statistics, listening to those statistics, it feels to me I think, maybe because you know I'm in a as a woman I feel like there is work going on and I feel that there is progress.

But then I'm looking at these statistics and thinking, wow, is it as slow as that in some places?

So it's really important that we're still driving this message home I think it's, and that you know you've got leadership ensuring that they're pushing for more gender equality and making sure that wage gap minimizes and also making those additional sort of allowances, I guess, so that people are able women are able to work effectively whilst also balancing home life.

But you've been able to tell me I don't know if you have any specific experiences or ways that that might have happened.

You don't have to obviously talk about any specific names or anything, but any times that maybe you've been able to overcome that within your work history.

I mean I can give you an example of a good environment that I've been in.

So back in 2013, I think it was well, maybe actually 2012, I worked at Shell for a while in their recruitment marketing team and they basically gave you every piece of tech you needed to work, essentially wherever you were, and To an extent they kind of didn't care where you were, as long as you got your job done.

So I worked on a virtual recruitment fair for them with one of their partners, rigzone, and I basically spent six weeks working from home Just trying to get everything prepared, because it was a global event.

So you know, I was kind of doing a follow the sun approach, starting with Singapore, australia and kind of going right through, you know, europe, etc.

Right to the US.

So because I was talking to colleagues from all those different locations, I was working strange hours, so they were happy for me to be at home to do that because you know, I mean I live on the South Coast of the UK and the office was in London, you know, and my colleagues were just checking on me.

Occasionally they ping me on chat and say I haven't seen you for a while, how you doing?

I know you're working on this project.

How's it going?

You know when, when you, back in the office, would love to, you know, catch up and have lunch, and you know I mean, obviously they can see that you're doing work, so you know there's no issues.

I mean, my, my manager, she was based out in Bangalore as well, anyway, so you know she was in the completely different time one as well, so you know they, they enabled you to work flexibly and, as long as you know, you pretty much did your hours and your work was done.

There was no questions asked, whereas you know, I've worked to other companies where you had to be in the office five days a week and even if you wanted to work from home for a half a day or a day to, you know, accommodate a doctor's appointment or something, you had to ask for permission and it was kind of frowned upon, which you know these days is just, I don't get it.

I mean, I've always managed my team to the way I like to be managed it, which is as long as your work gets done and I know where you are, so that if anyone's asking for you, I can, you know, say or you'll be back at whatever time I, you know I don't, I don't kind of care when you do your work.

I mean I appreciate people have got families and you know, if kids are at home over half-term you might have to duck off for an hour to make them lunch and spend some time with them.

But as long as you let me know, it's fine.

You know there's no problem.

So yeah, I mean I've I've never really had too much of an issue, not not in recent times.

I mean, obviously, since COVID everything's changed anyways.

I think I've probably been quite fortunate.

But I do know friends and and relatives who have been I Don't know what the word is inconvenienced, held back or whatever by that lack of flexibility.

So yeah, I mean I don't think people appreciate how much work it is raising a family and working in a full-time job.

I mean I've got no idea.

I don't have children, but you know I can appreciate sort of what my parents went through bringing, you know, me and my sisters up and and you know the amount of time they had to kind of flex around work.

I mean my mum worked part-time for for a while when we were first at school, so that she was around, if you know, if needed to come and get us if we're a six sort of thing.

But yeah, it's, it is a tough job.

Absolutely.

Do you think these things may hold people, we may hold women back from going for big roles?

If they're if they, I mean you talked about, you got some great Management there where you were able to take those flexible times off but do you feel that women will sort of Decide maybe I actually won't go for a job if they're not able to balance and so maybe they won't go for a high level job or a high-paid job or whatever it is.

Do you think that's a problem?

Yeah, I think.

I think.

Traditionally it probably has done.

I mean now obviously things can be an arm or flexible.

I think it's probably less of a hinge rinse, but it is a barrier still there.

I mean I was talking to a former boss of mine and she said, you know, women typically Won't apply for a job if they don't have at least kind of 60% of the, the skills and the responsibilities met, whereas men, you know, if they, you know if they meet kind of like no, it's the other way around, actually, women, if they don't, 90% of the, the kind of Wow.

They won't apply for the job, whereas men will be like 50, 60%, they're like, oh, I'll just apply for it anyway, you know and and I don't think I don't think a lot of women will appreciate the fact that they do have transferable skills.

You know, from either job or you know personal life, whatever.

I mean, you know a lot of parents help out with yeah, I don't know things like pta events or scouts or whatever and you know that's, that's, that's a job.

You've got skills that you can transfer into a role, so Back yourself, why not?

I mean, what are you going to lose by applying?

You might get a no, but if you didn't apply, you're going to get nothing, are you?

You get nothing at all.

So you're even by applying, you're just giving yourself that chance.

Absolutely, absolutely.

That's such a mad start.

I've never heard that one before that men apply if they've got 60%, and women applied they've got 90% of the.

I'm not sure how accurate those numbers are, but it was that kind of Bigger difference in terms of what people will you know check for before they apply for something, which is which is scary.

It's scary, yeah.

It is definitely because there's a lot of talent there.

It's really important, especially especially, you know, the e-commerce market.

E-commerce is for, is for both men and women, you know.

So we need to have the representation in both from from both sides, for a, for their brands to, I guess, run, run successfully.

You want to make sure that you've got kind of those perspectives.

I think that's really important.

Um, so, in terms of that actually I'm just moving forward from that Do you have any other sort of strategies for success, like sort of tips and advice for aspiring female entrepreneurs that Maybe you know are being held back by some of these things, any advice that you can give?

I know you gave one or two tips there about, you know, using those transferable skills from Volunteer jobs they might have done or things outside of work.

What else would you suggest from your experience that could be?

Um, great for the ex Female's?

No e-commerce.

Sorry, I'm still being bothered.

I've got tons.

I mean, I've been, let's say I've been fortunate.

I have to have a couple of very, very good Female bosses and, you know, and some male ones as well, but actually one of those Gave me the opportunity to train as a business coach.

So not only did she, you know, facilitate me having a business coach to kind of improve my skills and, you know, communication, how I approach things, like she actually enabled me to train as a business coach as well, which you know has been really, really valuable.

So that's, that's one of the things.

You know, consider getting a mentor or a coach.

It does it.

I mean, it could be someone within your business, it could be someone in your network.

Um, you know, just reach out and say look, you know, you have some great experience.

Would you be considered, you know, consider spending a couple of hours with me or, you know, an hour every few weeks, just so I can learn from you and kind of get some tips, because there's a lot of people with some great experience out there.

Um, so, you know, tap into it.

Um, the, the behaviors that other people you know senior to you, or even your, your peers, that are the right behaviors.

Try to start modeling those Um.

That will.

That will go a long way to getting you noticed.

Um, you know, constantly be learning.

You know, go to webinars, exhibitions, courses, um, even free ones, you know.

Um, maybe try and get some additional qualifications.

If your company will support you in that, and many will Um, bring it up in your annual.

You know, review your pdp, get it documented.

Um, you may have to, you know, sign some documentation to say that you'll stay with that business for an extra year or so, um, but if you're happy there and you know they're willing to support you on your education, you know, take that opportunity.

Um, ask for feedback.

I mean, so many people just don't do this.

So you know you'll stand out straight away for doing that Um, and it's it's an opportunity for you to make changes and improvements.

Because if you don't get that feedback, how do you know what you're not doing quite right or could be improving on?

So, um, obviously, a lot of companies that are more senior level they'll kind of send around 360 emails about you know they're their peers and things, but they don't necessarily do it at a junior level.

So that's a way you can, um, you know, really kind of put yourself forward straight away.

Um, and we talked about job applications earlier.

You know, highlight your transferable skills.

Don't undersell yourself, um, you know, even if you have to get you know a friend or a colleague who knows you well, to Kind of preview it before you send it, because a lot of them will pimp you up.

You will have a network of people who really value you and will, you know, help you to to become better.

So, absolutely, you know, ask for help there and and and don't undersell yourself.

Apply for these jobs anyway, um, because you never know, by applying you give yourself a chance.

You know we talk about the lottery if you don't play, you've got no chance of winning.

It's the same with a job.

Um.

You know, volunteer to join projects.

If there's something you're really keen to get in on, um, or you want to learn about, ask if you can join.

I mean, obviously you'll have to balance that with your day job and make sure that you can still do that effectively.

Um, but it's a.

You know, it's an opportunity to learn new skills.

Work with different team members, um, you know all that kind of stuff.

I mean, yeah, I have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and a lot of people won't do that, um, particularly women, unfortunately.

You have to get out of your comfort one in order to kind of learn new skills and experiences and often to gain those opportunities.

I mean, I'm doing it today.

I mean I very much like to fly under the radar and let my work speak for itself.

But you know, I'm kind of at the position now where I sort of have to start kind of putting myself out there a little bit more.

I mean, this is one of those things Just kind of yeah, I mean I could go on and on.

I mean building your resilience.

You know you're going to get knocked back, but how you deal with it is the important thing.

You know you learn your lessons, you move on, you embrace change and you seize those opportunities and what you're doing is going to be a success.

So it's the same with kind of CRO testing.

A lot of the tests that you do will fail, but you've still learned something, you know.

You've learned that actually your customers don't like that.

So you know, if you fail on a particular piece of work or whatever, you learn those lessons, you know, and chances are you probably won't make those mistakes again.

Yeah, don't be afraid to fail is probably one of the things I would say.

You know, building your communication skills again is huge.

Active listening, you know.

Don't be afraid to ask those what you consider to be stupid questions, because you'll often find that others in the room wanted to ask them but they didn't because they didn't want to seem stupid.

So so ask them, ask them you know.

Otherwise, you know you're kind of putting yourself a step back by not clarifying something straight away.

You know being able to, you know, delay back something, in your own words, to clarify your understanding, that's huge, you know.

Get get used to doing that and make sure you know you confirm deadlines.

If they start shifting, then that's a whole separate conversation.

But yeah, I mean problem solving skills again is huge and I like to kind of flip it.

Everyone says think outside the box.

I like to think inside the box because often those constraints they force you to be more creative.

And you know what?

If?

How can we?

You know all those kinds of different, different conversations really you might want to look at.

There's a really good Ted talk by a lady called Amy Cuddy.

She's she's quite famous.

There's a phrase she has is fake it till you become it, so not fake it till you make it.

She changes it and it's.

It's a really really good, eyeopening talk.

I think it's about six or seven minutes and I think it's about very much about, you know, the body language and power poses and you know, if you're kind of sat down slouched, as opposed to standing up with your hands on your hips, is a whole different dynamic of energy and so kind of just really simple little things that you don't necessarily think about.

I know people always talk about emotions, but they again, they can be hugely powerful.

You just need to control them and use them properly and it can be a very valuable tool, particularly if you can connect with colleagues on that human level.

Then you'll build much stronger relationships and what else I mean I've got I could go on for forever.

I mean phrase I actually came across recently which is, which is really cool, it's called swallow the frog and it's absolutely nothing to do with what it talks about, but it's about identifying those tasks and work that your boss hates and then you pick it up and offer to do it for them.

So not only are you, you know, learning new skills, you're also freeing up your boss to be doing the kind of more strategic things potentially, and you know you'll become known as someone who is helpful, you know, and if you do it well, then you're reliable, hardworking, that kind of stuff.

So it's kind of simple things to start building your reputation within the team and the business that you're working.

And so you know, it's kind of underpin it all really.

I guess is be really clear on what you want to achieve and then work out how you can get there.

So you know if you want to become the CEO of a business, how, like?

How do you think you could get there?

Because there's multiple ways to do it.

I mean you could start your own business and become a CEO and become hugely successful, but you could then work your way up through a business to become the CEO.

You know that or even work in multiple businesses.

You know, and climb the ladder, you know, in different ways you could be learning different skills, because essentially a CEO has to kind of know how the whole company works at a basic level.

So you know, building your kind of skills and experience in different departments, if you're able to, could be really really useful.

And I guess the final one I suppose is which has really really helped me, is kind of reframing your mindset.

Instead of I can't or it can't be done, it's what if I could?

Or how could we, you know, and really start to be a bit more open minded, have that growth mindset?

And I know some of them sound like really simple, but actually putting them into practice it can be really really powerful.

It's kind of that incremental gains.

They talk very much about in terms of you know business and you know if we do these three or four things, really well, what can we get incrementally.

So it's almost taking that sort of how do you run a business to how do you run yourself.

Absolutely the one percent rule.

I really like that one.

I think that's brilliant and I think it links into a lot of the things that you said.

You know each one of these adding together creates a big kind of change, which is brilliant.

I'm like you've got so many so many tips.

That was really insightful.

I'm definitely going to take a couple of this myself, including the power poses and the fake.

It till you.

Yeah, that's a really good Ted talk.

Actually, I go back to it fairly often just because, just because I really enjoy listening to her.

She's, she's really good.

There's got to be more other ones that she's done, and she's actually written a book as well, which I forget what it's called, but I've got a copy in it.

Yeah, she's, she's so good, so good.

I think actually you can follow on LinkedIn as well, so she posts up regularly on there, of you know, interesting info and stuff.

So, yeah, definitely worth a follow.

Whilst you were talking.

Actually, we did actually have a question from Astrid and just for everybody else that's listening as well, please do feel free to ask questions.

We do normally have a little bit of an open time questions at the very end but if you've got them as we're going along, why not?

We may as well answer them while you're here.

So I'm asked to say and applying for roles is getting more difficult due to AI screening, so you need to hit all the right keywords, and resumes don't even get seen by the right people.

You have any advice?

Yeah, I've been coming up against this myself.

I mean, speak to speak to some of your kind of valued recruiters and see what tips they've got, because obviously they're on the inside so they'll be able to help you.

The a lot of the tips that I've been given is if you can see who is actually hiring for the job.

I mean which is difficult because sometimes they just have a company name or whatever and then then reach out to the recruiter directly.

Or if you can track down who the hiring manager is again, send them a note and just you know kind of iterate your interest in the role and you might be able to get around that way.

It is tricky, I mean.

I know I'm not necessarily sure I'd recommend this sort of like writing your job in chat, gpt and rewriting it.

I mean you could use that as a draft and customize it to fit your personality.

But yeah, actually, what Kathy's mentioned about you know, get rid of some of the white text on your CV.

That could help.

But it is tricky, I mean, unless you can do what they used to do an SEO and the old days and kind of keyword stuff your CV, which again I don't recommend because it doesn't read.

Well, yeah, I mean, I'm still trying to work that out myself.

It is tricky and kind of annoying, especially if you apply for a job which you know you can do, kind of blindfolded, and you don't even get, you know, a chat or an interview.

It's, it's crazy, it's crazy.

The only thing I could suggest is reaching out to either the recruiter directly, if there's a name, or try and track down the hiring manager.

Back to old-fashioned relationship building itself A bit of investigation and relationship building.

Yeah, absolutely yeah, I mean it.

You know it can't hurt, but yeah, it is, it is.

It is tricky, yeah, just the market's tricky, full stop right now.

Anyway, it's not not really a good market to be looking for a job in, unfortunately.

I guess I guess as well you know, we've got a lot of new innovations, I suppose, in technology all over the place.

You know, when things like AI, you know the personal, all the different things that are coming in augmented reality, all the different ways that people are changing, jobs are changing a little bit as well, as you know, the actual job, the contents of the job, the role of the job is changing slightly because there's so much going on in technology at the moment.

So, yeah, I guess it's just going back to some of the things that you are saying there about kind of building those relationships and making sure that you kind of know who those people are beforehand.

Great, thank you so much.

That was really really helpful stuff, and thank you for answering Astros question there as well.

And we're going to move on slightly to some innovations in e-commerce and interestingly, you were talking about AI.

This is something that is obviously a big thing in e-commerce at the moment.

And but can we talk about some of the latest trends and innovations in the e-commerce industry and how females women are feeding into this?

Yeah, it's funny.

It's funny, I mean, ai is, you know, huge.

It's the big subject at the moment and it is worrying a lot of people.

Obviously you probably have seen the you know statements from like Bill Gates and Elon Musk about having some kind of control over it, and I do get that.

I think there's a long way to go in terms of the governance because it is such a complex area, but I think we do need it a bit.

Like we had GDPR, I think we do need something similar because it could it could be used irresponsibly, but you'll probably find that a lot of the tools, then things that you use already in your day job, already have some kind of AI built in.

I mean, there's a number of the CRO tools that are out there that already use it.

A lot of the search and merchandising again already have some kind of AI or machine learning built in.

So probably a lot of people are already using it without even knowing it, and it's probably more the generative AI that people are talking about, the kind of more clever stuff, and that they that is not being used as yet.

I mean, I've been to a few events recently one with Google which was based around the cloud and kind of how you can interrogate your own data.

I mean it's there's some kind of really basic but clever stuff so you could use your own kind of chat GPT layer to sort of write your reports for you or, do you know, run queries super quick to say you know, like, what was the trend of X over this period, and you know, chat GPT will just tell you all that information in about you know, in seconds.

Obviously, the thing is you have to have the quality of data, because it's that kind of age old saying crap in, crap out.

So you know if your data is not clean and usable then what you get out could actually be detrimental to your business.

But yeah, I mean that there was an agency they've built.

It's a huge database.

I think there's about I feel like there's about at least five years worth of every single TV advert that's been on British TV.

And what they've done is they've run through certain criteria like how long is the advert, when does the music kick in, how, how many people are in there, when do you see the people's faces like, when does the brand logo show up?

And they run on all these criteria.

They've also somehow managed to get things like how many times it's been on TV, what times it was shown, how much was spent on it.

I believe they must also somehow have got some sales data from it as well and it literally will pop up for, say, you know what's the best format for a car advert?

So as a you know car manufacturer, you can then take all those kind of top tips, best practices and then essentially create a better TV ad and that's all done with AI.

It's just it that the possibilities are kind of endless with it.

It it's exciting but kind of scary at the same time.

But yeah, I mean women are contributing to this all the time.

You know there's, there's a lot of women now in kind of data and analytics.

Yeah, also, you know, moving into AI and user experience and, yeah, really helping to kind of drive, drive the innovation.

So, yeah, I mean it is huge.

It's huge.

I mean they've they've often got a very unique perspective on consumer behavior as well.

So those insights are really valuable to shape kind of e-commerce strategies and and really helping, you know, companies better understand and cater to the needs of a diverse customer base.

So, yeah, you need, you need women in your team.

Basically yeah just yeah, I mean it is, particularly if you're you know I'm marketing to a customer base, then you need someone female that has those kind of insights and can relate to the problems of the, the base that you're marketing to.

So and obviously it's easier if you can relate personally to to those troubles rather than you know a man trying to work out how to sell a tenner lady or something I don't know but, I, couldn't think of anything else that was specific to women at that point, or a breast pump.

You know the kind of stuff that I really women use, you know, yeah, I mean it just.

Yeah, there's just so many things that people can get involved in and, you know, kind of really bring themselves to the fore by getting involved in things like, you know, augmented reality, virtual reality, ai, mobile commerce, it's, I mean, everybody's on their phone all the time now.

So if you feel customers can buy stuff quickly and easily on the go, then you're a step ahead.

So, yeah, just just find ways to kind of push yourself forward and get involved, because some of this stuff is and you don't necessarily need to be hugely technical for a lot of this.

And you know, like with chat, gpt, for example, as long as you can write decent prompt, then the information you get out the other end is is pretty much what you need.

So and it's the same, you know AI and things as long as you can write the right prompts, you'll get what you need.

So, yeah, you don't necessarily have to be hugely technical for it.

Absolutely not, and I think there's a lot of those.

It's not just chat, gpt, I think that's just one of the many that people are using.

I'm certainly utilizing it far more with my work, I think.

When I first started using it, I was like gosh, I'm cheating.

I feel like I'm cheating a little bit here, you know should I really be using this?

but actually I think the more kind of we get involved, the more kind of space we have to be able to innovate in other things as well.

I think it's very cool and obviously there's a lot of people that are using these sort of time saving integrations to support a better work like balance I mean.

I mean a former colleague of mine.

She uses chat, GPT to check her like queries for running data reports.

She doesn't just use it for you know, writing a LinkedIn article, she actually uses it to double check or fix her queries.

So you know, it's not, it's not cheating at all, it's kind of.

It's like you say it's time saving.

you know, if you can use it to draft your article or post or whatever, and then you customize it to fit your tone of voice or your brand.

I mean, I have seen examples where actually you can feed it your brand guidelines, so actually what comes out is much more ready to go.

But you know, why spend hours writing something when there's a tool that can help you do it, when you could be focusing on, you know, actually the right targeting or, you know, building something that's really going to help your customers?

You know it is it's time saving if you use it in the right way.

But yeah, I'm not saying you should, like you know, rewrite it to take over the world, because that's just insane, but yeah, so do you.

You've also been in lots of different companies in your time, in your, in your career.

I'd love to hear if you've got any success stories of other women in the industry.

And, just as before, before you answer that question, just a quick reminder to the audience as well.

We'll be taking questions in a few minutes, so definitely get those written down into the chat and we will be able to answer those for you in a minute.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of an opportunity for me to shout out my couple of my former bosses actually, who I have huge respect for.

And so this son dream, son dream Lloyd and I worked with her at Avis and she then moved on to Samsung and she's now at Metta.

So yeah, I mean she was like senior vice president of digital for Europe or something, I think, at Samsung and hugely successful.

And you know, she, she's, she's a, she's a really great leader and physically she's glamorous as hell.

I mean, she's French, so you would kind of expect that, but she's, you know, she's a strong character, she's very knowledgeable.

So you know she would know pretty much everything, that's you know, going on in the team.

She's very empathetic, you know, and and is happy to give you time and listen to you and see how she can help.

She was a very supportive leader.

And the same goes for storm Tassie heavily, who I worked for her to gluten.

Again, I mean she's hugely knowledgeable.

I mean I think she's just finished a PhD or something and is having it published.

I mean, I mean if you follow her on LinkedIn, she is constantly pumping out, you know, stats and really valuable information from from the industry and again, you know she's she's very open, she will be very honest with you and and she gives regular feedback to people as individuals and the team as well.

I mean we had, you know, regular kind of weekly, fortnightly meetings and she would always say thank you to the team.

I appreciate you, you know, and many people don't do that, and it's nice, no, and it's nice, you know, especially if you know, in the, in the occasions then as a team, we've been having a tough week to get that from someone senior.

I mean, she's the senior vice president of marketing, so you know she's high up in the business.

But to get that personal touch, that appreciation, genuine appreciation, it goes a long way.

It goes a long, long way.

And yeah, I mean I've learned a lot from from both, both those women I mean.

In fact, actually, sondreen was the manager that gave me my opportunity to get into business coaching, so yeah, I've got a lot to thank them both for absolutely.

Yeah, definitely it's a women's supporting women.

That's cool, it's really cool.

Yeah, leadership roles that need to be taken, and I think I mean even even now when I think about it.

There's certain stereotypes that I allow myself to fall into and it's really good to have people like that to to really break those and to sort of say you know, we can, we can kind of deal with the things that you have.

You can break those stereotypes and things can.

You know you can improve and you can get into lots of different areas that you maybe did think of before.

I'm sure you didn't, or maybe you did.

But what?

Maybe didn't envision yourself ever getting into business coaching long time, long term.

Lots of opportunities and doors open now, which is fantastic, yeah, I mean.

I mean I'm very appreciative to my parents.

They bought me and my sisters up to be very strong, independent individuals.

So you know, if someone tells me no, then I kind of just chuck it to the side and I go away.

Well, you've told me no, but how can I still do this?

So I've been very lucky to have been brought up with that kind of stubborn, determined nature.

But I know other people haven't.

So you know, that's often why some people do come up against those difficulties, because they're not used to pushing back.

And I think when you do, that's when the opportunities open up for you, because people start to see you differently.

Absolutely, and so I guess the last thing we really want to talk about is what's the vision for the industry and do you have any personal upcoming projects in terms of in e-commerce generally or women in e-commerce anything that is coming up, and then we'll take it over to the audience.

Yeah, well, I mean, I am on the job market myself, so if anyone wants to offer me an interesting challenge, please feel free to reach out.

Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of taking the time to.

You know, learn more about things like AI and see, you know, catch up on what's going on in terms of latest developments.

I think personalization I know it's been chucked around as a phrase for a long time I think the way the market is now, I think that's going to be really, really important to get the experience right for your customers, because it's very easy now for a customer to jump ship and go to another brand, particularly if you know they're offering a better experience.

People will still pay a little bit more for an excellent experience or customer service.

So, I mean, ASOS used to be very good at this.

I don't think they are so much anymore, because the emails they're sending me they're clearly not even looking at my wishlist, because they're sending me dresses that probably are designed for, you know, older teenage girls, girls in their twenties, and even then I probably wouldn't have worn them.

So you know, I yeah, I mean I don't buy from ASOS so much anymore, or I just buy stuff that I've put on my wishlist.

I kind of don't after time.

I don't even read their emails now, unless it's got something about a discount for example.

But I mean there are some brands that are doing it really well, for example me and M in fashion.

They do one drop a month.

I believe it is of their new clothing.

They are very strict in their kind of brand.

They don't I mean they.

I went to an event recently where they talked about their kind of CRO program and how they stick to their plan for the year.

They don't panic, so they kind of go with the peaks and troughs of trade and they've run tests that actually did show a slight improvement in the customer experience.

But they didn't implement those changes because it was detrimental to the brand identity.

So they are very, they're very strict.

I mean they're using features and functionality.

Like there's a service called Harper Unfortunately it's only available in the London area where you could essentially you can order a whole ton of stuff in multiple sizes.

It's delivered by concierge to your location.

That could be home business.

Whatever.

They wait while you try it all on.

They take away what you don't want and you only get charged for what you keep.

I mean it takes away the whole.

I don't really know what size I am, but there's one and.

I've ordered six and then I have to return it, because that's another thing that companies are doing.

They're charging people for returns.

Now they have to soak up not only the fact that they probably didn't send it out to you at cost it cost them money to send it.

It will cost them money to get it as a return.

It will cost them money to process it, maybe have to clean it.

They might not even be able to resell that item.

So, yeah, they're obviously having to recoup some of that money somehow.

So, yeah, I think you're going to have to adapt with what your customers need to, and that means talking to them, because many, many companies that don't talk to their customers.

Yeah, I mean especially now more than ever, when everything's changing all the time.

I mean I kind of talk about it in sections where we had the pre-COVID years, which was very normal, and then COVID years, which are very different, and then the two years after COVID has been another different period, and then we're kind of emerging out of this like pseudo post-COVID situation at the moment.

Things are changing all the time.

We're seeing in the industry constantly.

I mean we had somebody else on Josh Whitton a couple of weeks ago who was talking about the amount of changes that have happened in such a short space of time and how businesses really can't rely on data and information and analytics and conversations they had, you know, even two, three years ago, because things have changed so much.

So I think it's a really good point you have to not only use your current data.

I mean, by all means, look at previous data for trends, but don't rely on it.

Look at your current data and talk to your customers.

I mean, if that's through usability testing it might be your NPS, it might be feedback emails, it might be whatever's coming through your customer services team use that and close that loop.

So take that feedback, make those changes.

I mean that's something we used to do at Oak Furniture Land.

We would look at what the top you know, say four or five problems were that month.

Make those changes if they would kind of just do it or we'd feed it into our CRO program to find out what the best solution to that problem is, and then the next month you would very often see those problems really dropping down the rankings and other problems coming up.

So the information that your customers are giving you is hugely powerful.

So you need to listen to it, otherwise you will get caught out.

And you know people are being very, very careful with the money that they do have.

So if you can capture that money by giving a better experience and listening to your customers, then why not do it?

Because there's a lot of companies out there, challenging for your business, for a customer's business.

Definitely, definitely.

We have two minutes left, so in that time Christine has asked a question.

So if we can get a really your quick answer to this and then we'll wrap up.

So Christine says are there any specific financing or investment challenges that women face in e-commerce?

Yeah, I did find a little bit of data about this when I was doing a couple of bits last night.

So women entrepreneurs do struggle to secure funding and very often receive less venture capital compared to the male counterparts, but on the flip side, more women are starting their own businesses.

So it is difficult.

I mean some of it is still changing attitudes.

But if you've got, you know, a business case that is strong, you know, sensible, almost I mean work with all the support that you can get, you know your bank manager will help you.

Or there are kind of like business support organisations out there that probably will be local to your area.

But tap into them.

You know it's, it's the.

You know the help and information out there is free, so use it, you know.

But yeah, I mean, if you can't get the venture capital or whatever, then don't let that stop you.

You know, find other ways to do it.

I mean there's a lot of people that and obviously it depends on what you are creating and selling.

But you know there's there's marketplaces like Etsy, ebay etc.

That you can, you know, start a small shop, sell your goods and then invest that money back into the business.

It obviously will be slower, but you'll have done the hard work yourself.

So, yeah, I mean there's, there's, there's, there's lots of ways to get financial support and you just kind of have to seek them out.

I mean, unfortunately I don't know a lot of them because I've never had to do it myself, but it's just things that I've come across in, you know, reading and articles, articles and things on the news that there are different funding opportunities and some of them will be local to you rather than you know, government grants, for example.

But yeah, there's stuff out there.

There's lots available, by the sounds of things.

Thank you very much for answering that one, and so we're right on time, which is great.

I'll just go over a minute, but we're just about on time, which is great.

So thank you so so much for everything today.

You've been really interesting.

You've given me loads and loads of tips myself as well, which is always plus to come away from these things.

And thank you very much as well to the audience for bearing with us with our little tech problems at the beginning and also for sticking out for the end as well.

So, just as a quick reminder, there is going to be a series of shoponomics events, so there'll be another one in two weeks time with James God, who will be talking with us then, so be sure you tune into that, and then the transcript and audio for this particular event will be available on shopnomicscouk in the coming week.

So just one more time.

Thank you very, very much, Jamie, for spending an hour chatting to us and giving us so many insightful tips.

Thank you very much, and we'll hope to see you all again at the next event.

Thank you very much, thank you.