"Building in Public" – How Building a Podcast Led to Personal Growth

Mar 26, 2021

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Thank you for being with us for 200 episodes of the Future Commerce podcast. In this episode, we look back on how we grew up from a podcast into a retail media research startup, and how building a show in 2016 led to personal and professional growth. Listen now!

2016 to Present

We launched in 2016. Our first guest was Scott Emmons and we talked about the online to offline blur in retail businesses.
Every episode has been transcribed at FutureCommerce.fm. Everything we have said is searchable.
“Technology adoption is always slower than you want it to be. You see potentials, you see opportunity, but it’s not really about the technology. It’s about people adopting the technology and how people use [it].” - Brian Lange
In 2018, we picked up on the coming boom in secondhand retail or “secondhand commerce.”
Through 2016-2018, we had a trajectory of doing live events - eTail West, NRF, Shoptalk.
On Ingrid Milman Cordy’s impact on Future Commerce: “Prior to 2019, we didn’t have consistent other voices, specifically women’s voices or younger perspectives to help us understand what other people’s points of view are and what their challenges [were].”
This fed into our listener study in which we realized the future we wanted to create, a future with more equal representation: “How do we tell different stories through other people’s perspectives?”
On Earth Day in 2019, we joined the Climate Neutral program and we’ve maintained the commitment for the past three years.
“Most of the future of commerce is just getting data right, understanding how to interpret it, understanding when and where to surface it, understanding if it’s clean or it’s not, understanding how to get it to the point where it’s usable and actionable and has a reason to exist that is meaningful.” - Brian Lange
Our most listened to episode ever (Episode 124 with Nick and Emmett from Pattern Brands) was in a pivotal moment - realizing that it’s “not just about creating things in the world, but about being able to create the world that you want to live in.” - Phillip Jackson
It was this pivot that it clicked for us that commerce has the power to change the world because it touches just about everything.
In 2019, we partnered with Shopify to create a new series, Step by Step, in walking through what’s needed to know to launch and grow successful retail businesses.
In 2020, we put out four reports, forty eight essays, started Stairway to CEO, and launched two newsletters.
“If you had asked me in 2016 what Future Commerce was, I would have said a podcast. If you ask me in 2021 what Future commerce is, I would say we’re a media business that covers retail. We believe that we have the power with our voice to exert influence on the way that commerce is done in the world and that commerce can change the world.” - Phillip Jackson

Past Episodes

(7:44) Episode 53: “If god is consumerism, malls were certainly our temples. Our religion is now changing where our temple is now the internet.”
(9:56) Episode 49 with Danny Sepulveda: “There is no differentiator between what we used to call the Internet economy and the regular economy. It’s just the digital economy.”
(16:04) Episode 63: Deep Fakes
(18:48) Episode 70: “These products take on a sort of life of their own and amplify the brand in secondary markets more than the brand could do on its own in direct to consumer.”
(21:52) Episode 95 with Ingrid Milman Cordy: “Don’t buy a Lamborghini if you haven’t built the road yet.”
(28:28) Episode 103 with Rachel Swanson: “You want people to feel obviously the content is relevant, but four out of five actually said that Future Commerce introduces them to new concepts and platforms that [they] wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.”
(37:17) Episode 124 with Nick & Emmett from Pattern Brands: “I don’t think we’re selling a product. I think we’re selling a way to use your time.” - Nicholas Ling
(41:50) Episode 132 with Matt Taylor
(45:12) Season 1 of Step by Step
(47:08) Episode 138 with Audrey McLoghlin: “I wanted to be able to launch a brand that speaks to what’s going on today and speaks to the customer that we would want to speak to.”
(49:24) Stairway to CEO with Lee Greene

If you have any comments or questions about this episode, you can reach out to us at hello@futurecommerce.fm or any of our social channels. We love hearing from our listeners!