Name: Stress test your peak plan: Operational readiness for the holiday surge
Uploaded: 2025-10-01T18:15:41.033Z
Duration: 54 min 24 s
Description: Stress test your peak plan: Operational readiness for the holiday surge

Transcript for "Stress test your peak plan: Operational readiness for the holiday surge": For virtual conference. I'm Tyler Scriven. I am the founder and now co CEO of Saltbox and, really delighted to be here today, with two very special guests, Brandon Penn, who's the chief marketing officer at Parabola, and, Faith McCoy Scriven, who is the founder of Cocoash, as well as, True Glory Hare and, who also happens to have the same last name as me. So, just a coincidence, but, today, she is, at at a a, ecommerce whiz, and she's gonna share a bunch of great knowledge with us. So, and, you know, we're we're gonna talk today about, about operations as it relates to, to the to the holiday sales season. This is a really, important and I think exciting topic. I'm an operator. You know, we think so much about the go to market and, you know, how we're gonna make all this money, during, during the busy holiday season. But, often, founders think a lot less about how they're gonna make sure everything works. And so that's what today's about. It's how we make it work. We're gonna start with Brandon. And, Brandon, before you jump in, I'd love for you just to tell us a bit about, the Prabhla and what you guys do. Yeah. Awesome, Tyler. Really pumped to be here. Excited to to speak to this. Really great audience. So a little bit about Brava. Brava is a data automation platform that essentially supports brands with automating the important, but tedious and mundane manual work that no one really wants to do. And so think about things like inventory reconciliation through APO matching. This work, a lot of the time, takes up, like, 80% of the time just trying to get the data cleaned up and consistent, where 20% of the time is only left to actually analyze that data and make decisions off of it. And our mission is to really flip that, to ensure that operators and operations teams really have that 80% back, to not only analyze that data, but focus on that higher, level strategic work. That makes a lot of sense. And and so, you know, before we got started, we talked a bit about or you talked a bit about how, important, you know, testing, is, you know, heading into this time of year, when it's really mission critical, everything works. So tell us about that. I mean, you know, what, what should we be testing? What are the first things that typically, break when when the business gets busy? Yeah. So having gone through, peak season and working with, a lot of the awesome brands that I've had the the great, fortune of being able to work with, I've often noticed that the first cracks almost always show up within this, like, data flow between system or processes. And so when order volume spikes, any weak link in that data chain, such as, formats, that are different, like, different file formats or carrier delays that aren't necessarily flagged can really have a a big snowball effect. And so smaller teams, even without a three p l, the same risk lives in the hands of, you know, being able to get data between various systems. And so you have Shopify or whatever ecommerce system you're using, your shipping software, your packing station. And so if you miss an update or miss key a SKU, which happens all the time, this can trigger wrong labels, late shipments, and ultimately on unhappy customers. And so for teams that are very much relying on these manual processes or spreadsheet uploads, being able to really ensure that you have the right infrastructure in place is is crucial. And so the smartest operators that I've seen and I've worked with very much stress test and hand off, you know, a lot of this work to their teams to figure out, like, how do you brainstorm and really drive efficiency within these processes, whether it be returns, processing, order routing. So they ultimately can that know that their system can handle three to five to even 10 times, what they would typically see from a volume standpoint. I'm not a runner by any means, but, I a lot of my colleagues are training for the upcoming marathon in New York. And, you know, it's a lot like that where runners, when they train for marathon, they don't just, run, like, 26 miles once and call it good. They very much work on building that endurance and, training so that, when the race does come, that big day feels much more manageable. And so It's a very much detail. Yeah. Yeah. So how how you do test is, a lot of operators, you know, they're building what we call, like, standard operating procedures. And depending on the size of your company, sometimes they're documented. Other times, it's just like the same person's doing it and they're doing it by memory. But being able to document what's actually going on, for example, in in in inventory reconciliation process, and knowing that, like, if this carrier, for whatever reason messes up, this is like a fallback. Just having that in place can help ensure that when peak season comes around, you are gonna be much more prepared to know that, like, these are the alternate solutions, so that you're ready to go. And at the same time, you know, you can use AI and and Parabola is is one of these, products that can ultimately help you have a lot of that live data so that you aren't looking at, like, last week's report. You're making the decisions based off of the data that you have in front of you. Got it. That's super helpful. Thank you. So, Faith, great to be here with you. And, so before you jump in, just tell us a bit about, about CocoLash and and also about True Glory. Yeah. So, I'll start with True Glory. So I am a co owner and operator of TruGlory Hair. We sell, premium, beauty and hair products for African American women, most notably, our bundles, our hair extensions, clip ins, wigs, things like that. And then CocoLash, we offer premium longwear hair extensions. I mean, not hair extensions. Repeat. We are premium longwear eyelash extensions. Eyelashes. There we go. So, and and so, you know, I know a little bit about this, and you've you've, run Trigori for many years. And this is a a business that serves, you know, hundreds of thousands of of customers across the country. And and you now have, Cocoash, which, you know, is serving hundreds of comp customers, let's say. And so, you know, these are very two different very differently scaled businesses. Would love just to hear you talk about how you, you know, approach the preparation, of, you know, of of of stress testing your systems and processes, if you will, differently. And also maybe just, you know, if you kinda put on your your real founder hat, what does it feel like to be, you know, concerned about, you know, this this big company and this small company and and just tell us about, you know, what that experience is like. Yeah. Very, very good question. So when I think about stress testing, I think of kind of worst case scenario. And, you know, I guess I think about that into your two different ways. But, you know, most importantly, it's, you know, if something does happen, whether it's inventory, technology, etcetera, how quickly can I pivot? So, you know, a lot of things I'm thinking about as far as BFCM, you know, the nice thing I do have is that with True Glory, I do have a long history of BFCMs, but it's one of those things I'm constantly trying to improve, and you still always never know. So everything come from forecasting inventory, to, you know, retail hours to, messaging, cadence of messaging, all those kind of things. So it's great to have that blueprint, but it's I'm always trying to learn. So I'm constantly reading, you know, now, even, you know, the last few months kind of, best practices for 2025, for BFCM. As as you approach, like, sorry to cut you off, but I you know, I'm mindful of this time here. As you as you kind of get, you know, you know, the days just before BFCM, you know, what are you focused on making sure it works? What what are the most critical systems, processes that you're concerned with that in those moments? Yeah. Most critical is, inventory, making sure we're in a good place, and if we're not, what we're going to do, and also messaging, discount codes, all those kind of things, you know, triple double checking, triple checking, make sure all of these things work. So one less thing, one less piece of friction for our customer to deal with. Awesome. So, Brandon, let me go back to you for a moment. So, you know, I know that, you know, data is something that you think a lot about, you know, in in the context of, ensuring, you know, that that that that the business is prepared. And would love for you just to hear you speak on, you know, what is good excuse me. What, you know, what what does good management of your data, you know, mean, to you and the team at Parabola? Yeah. That's that's a great question. So, the way I think about data is very much treating it as a core infrastructure, of your branded business, versus being an afterthought. And so in practice, this means that every single system, Shopify, your ERP, your shipping tools, that they all are feeding accurate data and real time information into one clear, data lake or or flow. And so, a lot of the brands that we work with, set up these automated workflows that very much pull data from these systems and ensure that, they're transformed into the same consistent format. And so they always have a single source of truth for everything from orders to inventory, and service levels. And so when those volumes spike for BFCM, they're, again, not, like, digging through multiple files and spreadsheets, especially as the volume starts to get high. Things get just, you know, a lot more, messy and and fragile. They're making decisions based off of the numbers that they can trust. And so I'd say, like, being able to have data that you can act on ultimately all starts with the hygiene of that data. Yeah. Yeah. Understood. And, you know, the, to to your point about being able to interpret and act in the data, you know, you gotta have the foundation or you gotta have the data there. But then, Faith, when I go to you, you know, how do you, take in this data? How do you take information? What are you you know, what are the tools, the signals that you're really monitoring, when, you know, the business is is is busy, and you need to understand what's going on. You need to understand where there's where there's risk or where there's opportunity. Yeah. So I I need visibility of a lot of things. I say How do you like that visibility? So I'd say, actually, what is most important to me to have visibility on is, we use a platform called Gorgias for, managing our customers and customer success. And so that's something I'm always looking at. What are my customers asking? What are they looking for? What are they possibly complaining about? Because that gives me a kind of real time pulse on anything that may need to happen quickly, like I said, whether it's turning turning on preorder or, a specific product that might be I'm seeing issues around from our customers. So that'd be the first thing I'm always looking at. And then, also inventory, because there's just it's always a very careful juggle, with True Glory, just, inventory in general because we have so many SKUs. And then with Cocoash, I have, the challenge where it takes I have a lot much longer lead time for inventory. So kind of thinking about, you know, in this case, I'm not necessarily thinking about BFCM, but I'm thinking about post in q one. Hey. I need to start thinking about that PO now, so I'm ready to go. And I I'm not in a place in December where I have no inventory. Okay. So I wanna talk for a few minutes about, AI. I think that, you know, all of us, you know, both in our, work in our life, frankly, are thinking about how to leverage, AI and get the most out of it. And especially, as as a, you know, as a as an entrepreneur, you know, naturally under resourced heading into the busiest time of the year, this is a huge, huge topic. And so, you know, Brandon, this is something that I know is, you know, is is, AI plays an important, you know, role in your product and product ecosystem. You know, would love to hear, from you about, you know, the the ways in which, excuse me, the ways in which, you know, you guys are, you you believe that that that that SMBs can leverage AI today, in their in their work. Yeah. Definitely one of my my favorite topics. And I'd say a a great starting point is, simple but but powerful, but you can use, any l m really to, extract or parse data from PDFs. I think that's, like, a really awesome use case. And as I mentioned, you can use Gemini, OpenAI. You could or you can use something like Parabola that if you want to ensure, like, the same output every single time and port it into, a dataset or a table, we can help with that. I think this is, like, a really easy low lift way to turn messy documents into structured data that you can use. Personally, I actually use this a lot for, like, receipts and stuff. When I'm out there with friends, I'm like, okay. Taking picture of the receipt, and then we can, like, settle the bill afterwards. And then within that in the world of operations, I mean, you can get more and more ambitious. I've seen customers build, you know, fully blown AI workflows for things like tariffs and error modeling, which, as we all know over the last, like, six months has been just a very fast moving, kind of market. And the real value with with AI, to your point, Tyler, is really just being able to drive efficiency. I don't know if you saw this, but there was that one MIT Media Lab report that came out, I think about two weeks ago now, that said that, like, 95 of AI pilot projects actually fail. Oh, that that was a garbage. Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, it's not because the technology doesn't work. It's actually the report we're sharing that. It's because, like, the leaders don't actually embed AI where they create real value. And so I think so often, companies and, you know, to your point right SMBs, they look at, like, what these world class, like, enterprises or or large companies are doing, but they don't actually kind of, like, find, like, what are the manual operational kind of headaches that that I'm dealing with on a day to day basis, and how can I experiment with AI to figure out how to find that that real value? Yeah. Understood. Understood. So so, Faith, you know, I I happen to know that you you get a lot of leverage out of AI. I don't I I guess I would first wanna ask you, and we may first wanna ask you, you know, where you're finding this leverage. Do you find you're you're getting, more operationally or creatively or or both? Just kinda start there and then we'll we'll drill down. Yeah. I would say both, in in a major way. Everything from designing creative assets, static and video images to dashboards, so I can quickly review various bits of data, to analyzing, you know, spreadsheets and forecasts and things like that. So many use cases. Yeah. So would love for you, you know, to to just, dig into one of those a bit more, which whichever you you think that you're getting the most leverage out of. But again, I, you know, I I think that, you know, the time is is never more important than, you know, in in this this quarter for a a lot of the folks that are watching. And, you know, when you think about just return on investment, you know, in their time, this this is, you know, top of the list. And so just give us a give us, you know, a specific workflow or activity that, you know, you're leveraging AI day and and kinda try to convey it at a level that someone could actually go and attempt to replicate that. Yeah. There's there's so many. I know. So, I spent and, Tyler, feel free to if I'm missing something or of importance you want me to add. You know, this summer, I spent, a, you know, True Glory and both Coco Lache have very lean teams, and my family and I were traveling. And I went to a bit of a panic because I'm like, I don't wanna be on my computer all day every day. And, you know, how do I make my life easier and still enjoy my time with my family? And, that came down to, you know, the creation of a number of automations. And I'd say the most valuable one for me has been KPI reports. So, you know, a Monday morning for me used to look like opening up Shopify, opening up Yappo, opening up Gorgias, and, you know, trying to review all this various data from, you know, obviously, sales and number of orders to, open rates and, discount codes and just so many things. And now I have to do this for two brands. And so, having an automation created that puts that all together for me in one email. And, one, I can do a quick glance and see, okay, this is where orders are. You know, it was higher or lower than last week. I can see, you know, a written reviews, customer complaints from this past week. I can see ad spend. I can see ROAS, all these things in one place. And then I can quickly start thinking through and, you know, and then using AI even more for asking my asking questions around, well, you know, why, you know, why did x, y, and z happen? Or maybe I can change this differently so that, you know, I have a better outcome with whatever it is. So for me, it was consolidating information from so many different platforms in one place that it was a real game changer for me. That's awesome. It sounds like maybe another session, that's, we'll have to do. Cool. So, you know, I I think the next thing I'd love to to talk with you guys about is, you know, preparing for things to go wrong. You know, we we we put so much work into getting ready for, you know, these these these handful of days, of selling, and, inevitably, you know, things happen. And so, let let's kinda break this question down into two parts actually. I think, the first, you know, I wanna come to you, Brandon, is, you know, what are the, what are the things that that tend to to break and and and, you know, what are your recommendations in the way of contingency plans? How can, you know, how can folks listening to this call, you know, be ready for, you know, for trouble, if you will? Yeah. I mean, I I think to your point, like, you can't predict every twist, that's gonna happen on peak season, but you can design your operations in a way that enables you to pivot pass pivot fast. Sorry. And so I'd say the the best thing to do is ultimately, build with flexibility in mind. And so, curveballs that peaches you can throw your way are things from carrier delays or a a SKU or product that sells out or a promo that blows up bigger than you had initially planned. And, hopefully, that happens to to everyone, listening here. And so a very simple example is, kind of actually what what Faith mentioned is really just, like, having this one single source of truth for data, your order inventory that you can trust. And this could just be, like, a well structured Google Sheet. You know, a lot of the times that that works and that's enough. But then being able to figure out also how to set set up these clear backup rules, for when these things pop up. And so, you know, you could have a list of backup carriers, adjustable cutoff times, really figuring out within your SOP, if x happens, do y. So that when something ultimately does happen and, you know, hopefully, things don't, you aren't just scrambling and trying to figure out, like, what to do next. And so the goal really is to going back to flexibility is really setting up a system that allows you to spot issues early and pivot quickly. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And, you know, you mentioned SOP just a moment ago and I think previously as well as a standard operating procedure, you know, a document that is really useful. And I think my experience, the moments when SOPs are most useful are when things go wrong and you are, you know, you're you're in a, you know, in a stressful situation, you have to react quickly, and you need a plan. You know? And so, I would I'm I'm just kind of seconding your suggestion here to produce those SOPs, you know, prior to that moment. And the other thing I would say is just to plug back to the to the AI discussion is this is a sort of thing that, you know, historically would be quite painful to have to sit down and create and just not something, you know, you're often gonna get to. But now, of course, you know, you often don't know. You can have it you do a really effective fifteen minute session with your favorite, you know, LLM and and come up with some really great, you know, SOPs. Right? And and and and again, you know, when, you know, when when Shopify goes down or whatever, you you've got a plan to respond to that. And so, I think that's great great advice, Brandon. Faith, wanna bring this back to you and, one, you know, ask you what sort of things you do, in the way of contingency planning. But then two, also just, circle back to, you know, the kind of the the the reality of you as a founder and what that feels like. And what does it feel like, you know, when you're heading into, you know, BFCM? How do you keep your your nerves down and stay calm, and, you know, especially when you know that the stakes are so high? Yeah. Great question. I'm, you know, I'm not sure if it ever really actually happens, but, you know, as far as keeping nerves down for Yeah. Keep yeah. Keep the nerves down for it. Yes. There's just always a lot to think about. You know, as far as contingency goes, you know, a lot of this has been, you know, the sooner I can have my plan in place, the better. Because then I can always go back and and fine tune and make adjustments. And in this case, I'm thinking about messaging. Right? My messaging cadence, SMS, email, things like that. Inventory is a big piece for us. You know, obviously, we have best sellers, but, you know, once again, a, you kind of never know what's going to, get the customer super excited. So just thinking about that, is it something where, hey. Am I, you know, putting this on preorder, and how do I message that appropriately versus, alright. You know what? I'm gonna actually, you know, pivot my messaging and focus on my, lower selling SKUs and try to to get those to move. So at least our customer has, you know, some product rather than nothing. Right? So, yeah, there's a lot of that and just being you just have to be very flexible. As Brandon said, you just you really don't know what's gonna break. And, you know, having access to the data is super important. So, you know, in this case, I think when it comes to November, I will instead of looking at these this dashboard, you know, you know, one big dashboard once a week, I may be looking at it, you know, sir I may be pulling this report several times a week just to make sure I have a careful eye on what's happening, where I am in various places, everything from ad spend to inventory to, you know, shipping. I'm curious as an aside. When do you begin your BFCM planning? And when would you say, Faith, that the the majority of that, the heavy lifting is is done and and, you know, ready to go? I would say I started working, you know, in kind of different places. So in True Glory, I probably started working late summer, so maybe early August. And a lot of the the time spent, you know, in those early months is really going back and looking at the history of what Frugalory has done in the past and, using that as my blueprint for what I want this BFCM to look like. And then going from there, and once again, like I said, taking in these best practices that I'm reading about and incorporating that into, you know, what you know, our messaging and ad spend and all those kinds of things. And then, you know, from there, I started, you know, started working on CocoLash. And in my ideal world, I would have everything in you know, ready to go by mid October. Obviously, there's things that change. I may have a supplier that comes to me and says, hey. You know, I can't get this to you until etcetera or whatever it is. And so I have to be able to jump in. But at least I have that blueprint for both businesses that has already been established, and I can quickly go in and make changes and fine tune it. You bring some good points here, and it actually makes me, kinda wanna circle back to the the topic of AI for a few minutes, just given given, how much attention is there. Brandon, I wanna come back to you and, you know, I'm I'm curious first off just what Pravla's, kind of, you know, vision or view is of the sort of impact that, artificial intelligence will have on ecommerce operations over the next year or two. Where do you where do you think we're heading in that respect? So I'd say over the last twelve months, we've seen massive AI adoption among engineering and even marketing teams. But where I think the the trend of AI really is going, especially as I've talked to, you know, dozens and dozens of operators over the last few months as they're starting to prepare for peak season is that, over the next twelve months, I think this is now the time for AI adoption among operations teams. Again, these are the people who are doing so much manual tedious work. The the tool that they often reach for first for everything is is Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, and that's starting to change. That's starting to change as these LMs, are getting better and better over time. And so I think there's just so much opportunity to figure out. Again, it's, you know, every single business is is different, but depending on what you're trying to do, the makeup of your team, and your business goals, figuring out, like, where to deploy AI even just, like, on the smallest use cases. Again, it's it's amazing to see what what you can do now. And I'm personally just learning so much that that you that you can do, not just experimenting with, like, one LM or one product, but multiple. I personally, as a marketer, will use, JACOBT or or GROC for a lot of deep research, when I'm, like, kind of researching competition or trying to, you know, think through messaging and market trends and stuff. But when it comes to things like copywriting, I'll actually often turn to Claude. And I've only recently done that in the last few months. And so, again, every single LLM has its, like, unique pros and cons depending on what you're trying to do. And so I think just being able to, try different ones and experiments are are just going to be a huge game changer and helping, operators really uplevel their AI aptitude. If you if you're if you, you know, are are talking to a an operator of a of a small ecommerce brain today and they're, you know, asking themselves a question, where can I, you know, get the highest ROI in in the operational world from artificial intelligence today? What what advice would you give them? Which which set of problems or functions would you point them to, you know, to go hunting for opportunities to deploy AI? Yeah. So the the first question I often ask is, like, what is something that you're doing today that is taking up, like, the most, of of your time that you wish just with the magic wand could be automated. And oftentimes, the responses that we hear I mean, more often than not, Parabola or just some other, like, AI product we we know can help with them. We also have a suite of different, partners, consultants that our customers can leverage and work with. But that's typically the first question I start with is, like, if we can just choose, and start small, like, what is the crawl you crawl use case, and then walk and then run? Starting with that first thing. And it could be, again, like, pulling data from multiple systems, trying to clean it up. This is one that I've been hearing a lot about lately. We often help companies just build out that workflow within Parabola using our AI capabilities to actually ensure that regardless of where that data is being pulled from, it's in the consistent format. Or even if there are blanks to fill in those missing blanks, these could be things like different, time stamps, different ZIP codes. And so the, what we've done is over the course of, I'd say, the last twelve to eighteen months, our team has built out, these templates that regardless of what stage you are as a company, you can leverage these templates to even get moving faster. And we, as a whole, just wanna figure out how to make it easier than ever, for more operations teams and more brands to figure out how to leverage AI. That's awesome. Vic, you mentioned earlier, you know, that you're finding a lot of, value in in creative, production, in the business as well as, some, you know, some reporting and such. Have you explored any other, operational uses of AI? And if not, you know, what what's on your wish list? Where the where the what are the the the problems you you'd like to, like to tackle or you where you see opportunity? Yeah. Great question. So, this summer, I actually went through a really great exercise at the suggestion of Tyler. I think when thinking about both businesses, one, you know, what are things that are you know, take up a lot of my time that I, you know, don't wanna spend time on? And then, you know, two, what sort of things are costing me a lot of money? And one of them so, you know, these are both beauty brands. You know, one of them is just creative. You know, I need a lot of creative and constantly. And in the past, you know, True Glory is a great example of this. I mean, we'd have several, very expensive photo shoots. A lot's involved. I mean, everything from, you know, staffing within True Glory to photographers, to models, to wardrobe. There's just, you know, any and everything. And being a small, you know, being a lean team with True Glory and being a small business like Coco Lash, I can't, you know, I can't afford to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on these photo shoots. And so AI has really helped me with, you know, designing my creative assets and even, you know, making sure that they are relevant to the time, to my type of customer I'm looking for. So everything from researching and creating prompts that, you know, will generate the kind of creative that I need, to, you know, making suggestions on the creative that I do have, and how to fine tune that and reuse it, has been super helpful, for me and definitely saved, me a lot of money with both, you know, my that my creative budget for both businesses. So things like that, shipping, even simple things like, you know, fraud filters, really fine tuning my fraud filter. Obviously, Shopify has, you know, improved greatly over the years, but, really fine tuning it to, you know, certain levels for, you know, certain customers or things like that, has really helped us, as well. So, I mean, just, you know, I think every point point of, the business, I've been able to make use of AI, and in ways, like I said, that one, has not only saved me time, but also a lot of money. Yeah. I love that. And it seems like the only limiting factor is is your your creativity and, you know, ability to think about what it is you're trying to get done. So as as we, you know, move towards, q and a here, I just wanna ask you guys one more question. I think one of one of my observations of, of of the most successful, operators is that, you know, they use this time of year, VFCM, is really kind of as a as a as, you know, the measure of the of the calendar, if you will, and as an opportunity, Faith, you alluded to this earlier, to really reflect back on, you know, what they've, learned, over the past year and and to incorporate those learnings into that preparation. And then, you know, inevitably to to to take some new learnings out, of, you know, of of of that experience. And so, you know, we'd love just for both of you to, reflect on this question. You know, where do you think I wanna bring and I'll start with you. You know, what what does this resonate? And and if so, you know, what do you think one should be looking for, opportunity to learn, and, you know, over to that end, you know, what are some of the, you know, what are some of the, you know, learnings that you've seen companies, make, through this period of time? Yeah. I mean, what they've brought around, like, how early she's thinking about planning, you know, late summer and, hopefully, everyone is doing this now, but really use this time to, like, stress test your your operations and experiment again with with AI, because the sooner you can do that, the more confident you'll be heading into peak season. And as you go through peak season, very much, again, treat it, like, have a really good retrospective and and look back to ensure that, whatever happened, the good and the bad, you're documenting that so you can look back and figure out how you can continue to refine and upload your strategy as your brand continues to to grow over time. And so that that's kinda, like, the biggest, I'd say, lessons, or advice that I'd have for for operators going forward. Yeah. Great. And and, Faith, we'll we'll close on you here, at least, leading into the q and a. You know, if you just step back and you and you think about, this this this effort of preparing for, you know, this one week a year and all that entails, what, what is the most salient advice that you would give to folks listening about, you know, the keys to, a successful preparation? Not necessarily to a successful, Black Friday service, but but to a successful preparation. How do you know what do you what it feel like to be ready? Great question. I think being ready obviously involves, you know, you know, being as proactive and prepared as you can. But I also just think a lot of it is being able to, pivot quickly. And not one knowing what you can do to pivot quickly, but also your teammates. You know, what's my strength here with my warehouse manager, or what's my strength with the person who does my email and SMS, and, you know, making sure they understand how important their role, is in making sure this is a successful, you know, holiday season. And also just being able to make sure they understand, you know, how crucial their role is in, you know, being able to quickly quickly change things from, you know, a technical issue on the back end of Shopify to, something that's going on with labels or, like I said, you know, setting up preorder or slightly changing SMS messaging, things like that, and just making sure they understand the importance of that as well. There you go. So I think the message is teamwork plus SOPs plus AI makes the dream work. Is that is that right? Alright. Awesome, guys. Okay. Great. Well, let's take some questions from the audience.