Artificial Intelligence and the Retail Industry

The illusion is that tech is going to conquer the world and make all the decisions for us. Artificial intelligence is so smart. It is smart. But after being in tech and being a nerd for 25 years, I realized that artificial intelligence, tech, just exposes the true us. That's it. If we all have the same tech, if we all have the same solution, Then what's the differentiator? You. It's always been you. We always thought, "Oh, I can hide behind the tech and all that stuff." Everybody's got a spreadsheet. Everybody's gonna have the same algorithms. The differentiator still comes back to human factor. So in a company like Claes Ohlsson, where you're interacting with people every moment, every day, what an opportunity you have to be the ultimate version of you. To make a difference in everybody's life, and then also to make yourself so happy all the time. I mean, it doesn't sound nerdy, but after doing this my whole life, it's so simple. Trust your employees. In my experience, when I worked at the store, the boss would follow us during the day, always looking over, always monitoring us and stuff like that. It doesn't work, right? Because what does everybody want? Everybody wants to know that the boss trusts them and allows them to do what they need to do. This whole world that we're in, the world of control, is dying, and it's dying because nobody wants to be so freaking controlled anymore. Everybody's saying, "See me, I want more love, why doesn't anybody notice me?" To break from that, you just want to be you, and want other people to say, "Yeah, go ahead, man, go do it, just do what you gotta do." your store would take off. As a boutique chef, you better learn to go, "Mmm, mmm, mmm," and shut the hell up and let your people be your people. If you have somebody on your staff who has a lot of tattoos and tats, let them show their tattoos and tats. If they're into car racing, let them talk about car racing to every single customer. If they're into, I don't care, it doesn't matter. The dynamics of your store, the dynamics of your people makes your store unique. People will come back because of the uniqueness. Embrace it. Versus saying, "Nai, we all class awesome, we more peace summit." Boom, it doesn't work. Life is dynamic, let your people be dynamic, let them be themselves, and then they'll come to work early, they'll leave late, they'll come on their day off, that's the way it works. I had my best month ever when I just said, "You know what, I'm just gonna be me." And I started getting job offers while I was there on the floor selling PCs and mobile phones and stuff like that, and I found out, wow, that was so damn simple. So hard I was trying to be somebody else and trying to please the boss, and actually the answer was, Just be me. Just be you. That's it. It works. I'll tell you exactly how it worked. So he came into the store with his wife, and he said, "I want to buy the best PC you have in the store." And I said, "What the hell does that mean?" I go, "Are you into music? Are you into— what are you going to use it for? What's the best? I mean, what kind of— who are you?" And he looked at me and he goes, you're not a typical salesperson. A typical salesperson would have drove me to the most expensive thing. I don't care. And we got into this 1.5-hour-long conversation. He ended up buying everything, buying insurance, da da da da da da da da da. The answer, the way you have that conversation, is the connection in the eyes. The connection in the eyes is when the salesperson realizes that I see you, the customer. I actually see you. And we had a conversation about all of you. We had a conversation about his wife, his husband, it doesn't matter. I see you. Everybody wants to be seen. That was it. That's it. I have all the knowledge, I have the tech, but I see you. So simple. The way you experiment is you experiment quickly. Now the trick is what is quick, right? So some tests may be, you know, for the next 2 hours, let's try this approach with customers. Or how about for the next 2 hours, you 3 in that section try this approach, you try this. Test is experimentation, a very short thing. You use this, you use that. You use this technology, you don't use the iPad. You don't use this new thing, you choose this. Experiment, experiment, and then after you experiment, get together, and this doesn't have to be with the boss, we don't have to get together with the boss, the boss is doing something else. Get together, what didn't work, like a team huddle, right, timeout, coach, you know, right, you get together, okay, what's worked, what didn't work, good, next 2 hours we try this. By the end of the day it would have been the equivalent of 2 years of testing in the old stupid world of plan, now I have to present to my boss, my boss says, ah, crap, doesn't work. In 1 day you could change class also. And the most important thing, you'll change the mindset of every Glass Olson customer that came in the store that day, in one day. That's how I do it. I motivate people around me by, in English it's called walking the talk. I have no idea how that translates, but I think people get it, right? If you're truly motivated, in my presentation I said the jump, right? So I made the jump, and the jump was an internal jump. The first jump is your own jump. You do the jump alone, and that jump is, I am going to be me no matter what. I don't care if people don't like me. I, mm-mm, this is me, right? And this version of me, this version of me here is, I am so excited that I have the opportunity to help people. Holy crap. I mean, of course you get energized on something like that, right? So that's what drives me, the fact that I see so many people that say, you know, help me out, or I'm afraid even to ask for help. I hope to be that energizer and say it works. Because I am spending more and more of my time helping more and more people, and now all of Europe as well. This stuff works. And I get emails from people. I got an email from a guy from Abu Dhabi. And he goes, "You've changed my life. I saw your TED Talk." And your TED Talk, my 17-minute talk, changed his life. How do you do that? Who are you on the inside? Who you really are? Let the world see that, and I'm telling you, everybody falls in love with you. Of course some people won't like you because they're envious that you actually are proud to be you. But you will change the world. That's how you do it, and that's why I'm pumped. The answer is you have to take all faults, all problems in your life, you have to say is my fault. People are scared and we make excuses. Something happens, oh my boss doesn't like me, oh that person, why did they do this? All this external stuff, it's always somebody else's fault. You break when the next plateau to get to happiness is you have to go, you know what, everything that bad that's happened, every bad conversation, everything that bad happens to me, it is my fault. When you get there, it is heavy, everything's your fault, oh my God, but then you own your life and then literally, it's just happened to me, I was walking home with Remy bags from the store, store, and it hit me. I dropped my bags, I started crying. I hit me. I said, all is it— all my problems were because I blamed everybody else. It was my fault. From that moment on, my career went like this. My family life, we started fighting— stopped fighting so much with my wife. She likes me now, right? Everything took off because I owned my life. Everything that happens is your fault. When you get there, the next— I swear to you, the next moment is like, ah, You feel so empowered. So stop being fear-based. Own everything that's negative is your fault. I know it's a very heavy thing, but I swear to you, the second you do that, the next second is bliss.