A Master Class on Modern Leadership With Brieane Olson

Brieane Olson:
[0:00] It's a decision that a brand has to make, and a lot of brands don't make it because of reputational risk, because they can't imagine relinquishing control to their community, to bringing the consumer in and building alongside them.

Jon Clifton:
[0:13] In the high-stakes theater of American retail, relevance is the most expensive currency and the hardest to keep. To bring a brand back from the precipice of failure requires more than just a shift in inventory. It requires dedicated leadership and a clinical obsession with data. Today's guest has done exactly that. By decoding the emerging behaviors of Gen Alpha and marrying consumer-first logic with a radical commitment to purpose-driven culture, she has turned a comeback story into a master class in modern leadership. She is the CEO of Pacsun and the author of a vital new book on the future of the industry. This is my conversation with Brie Olson, and this is Leading With Strengths. Brie Olson, welcome to Gallup.

Brieane Olson:
[0:59] Thank you so much. Good morning.

Jon Clifton:
[1:00] It is so awesome to have you. You're out with your new book. And I think one of the things that people are so interested in you about is that you helped bring a company back from the brink. Can you just talk about what it is that you did and what can others learn if they too are struggling or a company might be kind of facing something as frightening as bankruptcy? How do you do that? How do you lead a company back from that?

Brieane Olson:
[1:28] First, I would say it's a team effort, and the fingerprints of so many key leaders and so many key players are in both the book, but also the story of transformation of Pacsun. So I would say recognizing you can't do it alone, and it does require vision. And I think for me, the vision is deeply rooted in establishing a clear purpose for our brand, our organization and for myself. So one of the things that was most inspiring in my lifetime was reading The True North from Bill George and, you know, really understanding that purpose is intrinsic in your success, your results and your longevity as a brand.

And so transforming Pacsun from a legacy retailer that was really struggling and faced with a lot of challenges to today, one of the leading youth brands is, you know, it's the work of many, but it's also rooted in our purpose, which is to inspire the next generation of youth and build community at the intersection of sport, fashion, art and music.

And so I think those four pillars really give clarity to what we're trying to do. And some people could argue that's a very lofty purpose, to try to inspire the next generation to create a better world. But in my opinion, if businesses and organizations don't take on greater social responsibility, then we're really not doing our due diligence for the future. And that's what's so inspiring and so motivating and what's kept me at the company for almost two decades now.

Jon Clifton:
[3:06] As I'm reading your book, I mean, one of the central themes is purpose. And so I guess my question is, and I think this is more authentic because it's to a person who has Belief as their number one, but how is it that you actually drive a purpose in a company where it's authentic? How do you do that?

Brieane Olson:
[3:27] I think it's a great question, and you're right. So many brands, organizations and leaders have a mission statement that might be on their office wall to welcome you, but it doesn't come to life beyond that. And I think when you decide or choose very intentionally to lead with purpose and to have that be the primary driver of what your brand is about, it requires infrastructure change. And so what I write about in the book is that you first have to transform the inside of the organization, and you have to transform the culture. You have to break down silos. You have to empower people, and you have to change the concept of stakeholder centricity. And that is something that you and I have in common in terms of our connection to conscious capitalism and just capital. But reshaping how you think about suppliers, shareholders, your own employees, the brand ambassadors, field associates in your store, and giving them a true voice at the table where they are transforming and building alongside you is the premise of what we've done. And I think building the company from the outside in and really putting the community at the center of what we stand for has been the transformational piece that has really made this all possible.

Jon Clifton:
[4:55] I think you told me not to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway. And when you said transformational, one of the things that you wrote about, and I found it so fascinating because you said something very clearly in your book that sort of pits two business principles against themselves, which is, while we have great respect and admiration for surf and skate and its influence on Pacsun's founding culture, our strategy prioritizes customer relevance above legacy brand associations. Can you talk more about that? Because I think there are a lot of people in organizations, Gallup's 91 years old. How is it that you usher an organization into the future while respecting the legacy, but also saying we need to make change?

Brieane Olson:
[5:41] I think that's a great point. And if you really think about it, you have to put your consumer at the center of all decision-making. And I think people talk a lot about consumer centricity, but they hold on to the legacy and it becomes this tension. It's very difficult to change because you're proud or nostalgic of where you came from. And I think acknowledging that you can be proud of your roots, but that ultimately, if the landscape shifts, if your community shifts, you have to keep the pace of culture. You have to stay in lockstep with your consumer.

And so Pacsun has some foundational elements that still respect our legacy. We're still a youth-oriented brand. Our core demographic of 16 to 24 has not shifted. But now we welcome an equal amount of women and men, boys and girls, into our stores. Whereas before, it used to be a primarily male-dominated place to shop. From an industry perspective, we did lean very heavily on surf and skate for, you know, the first 30 years of the brand. But over the last 10 years, as those have shifted and evolved, we have to evolve with them. Otherwise, we risk extinction, which is what we saw happen with a lot of brands that didn't move on from that space. And so I think it's quiet acknowledgement and then a very clear vision of what you stand for and how you have to keep yourself evolving.

Jon Clifton:
[7:15] You know, I've often wondered, and maybe this is not politically acceptable for me to say, but, you know, that do companies have like a deep state that sort of tethers them to their past, making it very difficult? Did you ever feel like something like that existed, either because it was things that were kind of just put into corporate documents or whatever? Because to your point about making the change to becoming a company that was primarily for boys and young men and then evolving it to one where now actually a lot of the creators are girls, young women that you're engaging with. Was there that kind of resistance? And if so, how do you target them in your messaging? Or how do you just sit down with them and say, we got to do this and it's existential? Because I would assume in their mind they would think, no, it's not existential. There are other challenges that we're facing. How do you make that case?

Brieane Olson:
[8:06] I think, in arriving in the ultimate position of CEO, it made that decision much easier. In, you know, growing with the company for 18 years and building on increasing positions of leadership, I think there was a way of thinking, and I talk about in the book, a quiet knowing, that we needed to do things differently, but a respect for the leadership at the top who might be holding on to that legacy. And I think that makes it really difficult. And it puts your internal culture at odds. And when voices are not being heard throughout the organization, there's real risk to making missteps because you're not amplifying enough of the voices to really be able to make the right decision for a company moving forward. And I think we also had some things tying us down in terms of contractual agreements to buy a certain amount from certain types of brands that were also, in my opinion, things that were weighing us down in ways that we would never create those contracts or relationships today. And so we build very meaningful brand relationships, but they're all based off of staying in lockstep with the pace of culture and staying relevant with what the consumer is, you know, really aspiring for.

Jon Clifton:
[9:24] Can you talk about how you are rethinking B2C entirely. I mean, instead of in your book, you talk about we're no longer just talking at consumers. We're doing something very different. So can you just define what is this concept that you're now sort of shaping within the company and also encouraging others to think about, and also talk about what inspired it in the first place?

Brieane Olson:
[9:50] Yeah, I'll start with what inspired it, because 15 years back, we recognized that we didn't have an equal reach in terms of gender inclusivity. And so we had to do some unique moves in the marketplace, such as signing a 10-year contract with Kendall and Kylie Jenner and bringing more women and girls into the fold in terms of reach and opportunity. And I would classify those as more traditional terms of engagement from a collaboration standpoint. What we learned through collaborations was the power of authentic engagement. And we learned also who we should be selecting for collaborations, which brand should we be partnering with, which artists, which athletes, which celebrities, which musicians.

And so I would say there was like a 10-year learning curve in terms of how to engage your community in the most effective way possible, which led to the question of, you know, we should probably do more research. We need to more deeply understand the behavioral shifts so we can then understand the consumer shifts and the shopping and behavioral shifts that are happening. But you can't do that. That's the what. You can't do that without asking the why. And so we started actually doing our own research. And what we found is Gen Alpha, which are our youngest consumers, actually find themselves to be the most influential people in their lives. But what it tells you is that they are the storytellers of their generation. And so, co-creating with our consumers, with our community itself, has equal if not greater power to these collaborations we had been doing prior because of the way that the mindset has shifted with young people. And I think that's why it's really important to ground yourself in where are you from a pure empirical data standpoint. Ask the questions. Don't be afraid to ask the questions. And then building on the future of Pacsun and the vision, I found it very inspiring to be able to create actual infrastructure to embed the consumer across every single part of the journey.

Jon Clifton:
[12:13] When you say that they find themselves to be the biggest inspiration in their lives, do you mean others in their generation or them personally?

Brieane Olson:
[12:22] In Gen Alpha, it's them personally.

Jon Clifton:
[12:25] What does that mean?

Brieane Olson:
[12:25] So not peers and families. They are the storyteller of the generation. And I think you see this in an example that I share in the book in Chapter 1 with Lyla Biggs on TikTok. She was not a contracted creator that Pacsun reached out to. She was a customer. She was a fan. She reached 5,000 followers on TikTok. It made her eligible for a standalone program called the Open Creator Program on TikTok Shop. She went and purchased a pair of jeans in the local Pacsun store in Nashville, Tennessee. She took them back to her home, created a video in her bedroom, a very authentic video. It went viral, and within the first 48 hours, we had sold over 10,000 pairs of jeans through Lyla with 5,000 followers. So it shows the power of authentic engagement, the power of leaning into your community, but it also shows an incredible power in terms of what does co-creation actually look like.

Is she, and how was she so incredibly influential? And this is actually a repeatable model. I think it also shows her storytelling capabilities. That video and that jean went on to sell over 200,000 pairs of jeans. And then we've sold a million jeans on the platform to date. So I think these are all through creators that were not contracting, that just happened to be fans of the brand. And so I think there's a very powerful shift happening. And I think more industries and more brands and companies need to at least consider how are they bringing their consumer into the conversation when you think about agentic commerce.

Jon Clifton:
[14:13] Can you talk more of those structurally? How does it work with Lyla? I mean, you know, it's hard enough to find individuals who are really well-known and to engage with them and to make sure that their own personal brands last enough because, you know, that could have other implications in the future. But when you're doing it with these more micro influencers, how does that transaction work?

Brieane Olson:
[14:38] It's an affiliate commission, and the brand Pacsun itself doesn't have any direct engagement with the creators. It's all through the back end of the social commerce platform.

Jon Clifton:
[14:50] And anyone can do it.

Brieane Olson:
[14:52] You know, it's a decision that a brand has to make, and a lot of brands don't make it because of reputational risk, because they can't imagine relinquishing control to their community. At Pacsun, if you go back to our purpose and what we stand for, we're here to inspire the next generation of youth. We're not here to select who is a part of that cohort. We're not trying to create criteria where we're saying this person is eligible, this person is not. It's truly a mentality and a vision. And this is why you have to start internally to ensure the entire organization through all cross-functional areas is ready to embrace this type of mindset because it is a significant shift. You're moving from a control and command relationship with the consumer to bringing the consumer in and building alongside them.

So, of course, you have to have infrastructures in place to ensure that there's protections in terms of it making sense. And if something happens to go live that isn't brand appropriate, you have, you know, a way to circle back and have certain types of systems or contracts in place with the platform to ensure safety of all community and consumer. But it's a mindset to say, if you love Pacsun and you're a fan of our brand, then you're welcome. You're welcome to create your own story about our product, about our brand. And we welcome that into the mix. And I think it's a very different mindset than where we were 10 or 15 years ago, even five years ago. And I do think it is the future state. If you believe that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are the greatest storytellers of our time, you have to empower them to tell their story.

Jon Clifton:
[16:34] You've sort of crowdsourced the brand or how the brand evolves. Were there detractors internally that were saying, no, we need to be the ones that control this the entire time?

Brieane Olson:
[16:47] I think establishing our new purpose was not something that was handed top down to the team. It was something that we built together. And so the purpose of the brand was co-created amongst the leadership team with input from a lot of leaders within the organization, which is important. The pillars of sport, fashion, music and art create clarity for the teams. So there can be things that are trending like in gaming or fast fashion. Those don't fall into our jurisdiction. And so I think you still have to have some clear guardrails. You have to have vision and clarity of your purpose. And then you have to have a clear understanding of what are your values. And when you know what your values are, and those can be easily articulated, and people know what you stand for, and you know what your values are from the inside but also for the outside, then it makes building trust with your community a lot easier. And we have seen so many truly phenomenal success stories come out of this, and we've built such meaningful relationships with our creators, with our community, with our partners, that it's really reinvigorated our own view of the system and the power of co-creation and given the teams a lot of confidence and trust in this as they move forward.

Jon Clifton:
[18:09] But you know, in your book, you also talk about this multi-dimensional listening that you encourage others to do as well, and also how it's a two-way conversation. How do you build structures to actually make that happen? Because you say it's more than just research. How are you doing that structurally? Because I think there's a lot that want to do that sort of, as the industry may call it, ongoing listening, but they'd love to have that back and forth with their customers at scale. How do you pull that off?

Brieane Olson:
[18:37] So I think research and data are one point. I think, to your point, social listening is another. And social listening is something everyone can access at any time. It doesn't matter what title you have, what part of the organization you're in. If you're curious, you can go on to social platforms. You can check the hashtag Pacsun and see what people are saying about your brand. You can go on to Discord. You can go on to Reddit. You can go on to X. The interesting thing about how the world is evolving is audiences and communities want to give you lifetime information all the time. But you also need to be able to structure it in a way in which you can build actual infrastructures and systems so that you can make your best possible decisions. So the future of retail is participation at a much higher rate. It's not transactional. It's about bringing the community along to build the future alongside you. And that's really the premise of the book and what I talk about in terms of the evolution of the brand and the future of the brand.

Jon Clifton:
[19:39] In addition to the listening, how do you get that authenticity with your customers or even with your colleagues to say, you guys, this stuff matters. We need to make sure that our customers actually love the things that we do. How do you actually turn that corner and make it real, as opposed to what you said earlier, which is just a value that sort of sits on the walls or sits on training documents when somebody first starts at work.

Brieane Olson:
[20:04] If Pacsun were to disappear tomorrow, where would our customers go and how would they feel? And when we do customer intercepts, something comes across that's so visceral in the way they describe the brand. It's an emotional connection. You hear customers saying Pacsun is a safe place for me. I feel my most seen when I'm in your clothes. And so when you share that type of data, those types of moments or engagements with the consumer, it inspires internally for people to be in service to them because you can feel an emotional connection that you're building. So you've moved from being an apparel brand to being a brand that has created trust with the consumer. How do you do it? You have to put them embedded in every part of the process. And you have to trust that that is what makes Pacsun unique.

So Pacsun is unique because, you know, our brand portfolio is unique. We are the only ones that have a collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art or what we do with Formula One. But it has to go beyond that, right? Because those things are going to continue to evolve and be fluid. At the very core, what's most foundational and stable of all is leaning in and putting your community first. And if you do that with consistency, even as your, you know, customer base continue to evolve, which it does at Pacsun all of the time because people can age out of the brand, and we're welcoming new cohorts of people into the brand, you have the consistency of the value of putting the community first.

Jon Clifton:
[21:40] If you could go back and talk to yourself on day one, as CEO, what advice would you have for yourself?

Brieane Olson:
[21:47] I think the power of vulnerability and leading with vulnerability was something I've been very uncomfortable with in a leadership role.

Jon Clifton:
[21:57] Why?

Brieane Olson:
[21:57] It felt like all of the examples of leadership that I had seen before, it was assertive. It was competitive. It was a very different face. And so I hadn't experienced a vulnerable kind leader. And so as you move through your leadership journey, I found myself emulating or trying to emulate other people's leadership, and it didn't feel authentic to me. And so then these particular positions didn't feel aspirational. And so when I was first named CEO, I was working with a leadership coach. And she said the most powerful tool you have is to lean into your own story and be your true authentic self. And I think you can be an amazing leader and you can be soft-spoken and you can be vulnerable and you can be kind. And you don't have to have different versions of yourself for at home and at the office. It's about you showing up as your true authentic self. And so that's something that I encourage my team to do. That's something that has been incredibly powerful. And I wish I had learned that lesson 10, 15, 20 years prior because it would have saved me a lot of heartache.

Jon Clifton:
[23:11] And it sounds, too, like you are articulating a feeling that they are experiencing so that they feel seen.

Brieane Olson:
[23:18] And they can feel reassured that what they're feeling, you know, is legitimate.

Jon Clifton:
[23:24] How do you do that at scale? I mean, one of the data points I think we've exchanged on is a question where Gallup asks whether or not employees actually feel genuinely cared about. And, you know, we've talked about here that during the pandemic, that number in a positive way spiked like we'd never seen before. And despite the word transitory here in Washington, D.C., being applied to economics, if anything was transitory, it was that employees felt deeply cared about and it collapsed immediately afterward. You can tell by what you just said is that you can make people sincerely feel cared about by especially, you know, reflecting what it is that they're feeling. How do you do that at scale, though? So it's not just your executive team, but how do you do it with hundreds or thousands of colleagues?

Brieane Olson:
[24:12] Yeah, so we have up to 10,000 field associates, and we just pulled our retention rates. And we're at an all-time high over the last three years, both at headquarters and in our stores. And you know, we've had to make some difficult decisions over the last few years. People had gotten really comfortable with the conveniences of working from home, and we brought people back to the office. So the assumption would have been that we would have seen higher attrition rates. And I think one of the things that the leadership team did that has trickled down is we kind of tore apart what the original value system was and said, how are people most successful here? And how can we create the most successful stories for our employees? And we have a very high promote from within rate. Almost 90% of the leadership team has been promoted from within, and the average tenure is 13 years.

And so as we started to kind of look through this, it was like, lead with empathy. That's an actual value. Be scrappy. That's also an actual value. You know, lead with community, and put philanthropy at the core. How does something like that trickle down to the field associate? Those are the types of examples and moments where we are making an intentional effort to ensure that our values, that the core of who we are and how we want to lead is trickling all the way through. Now, do you do it perfectly? And is this, no, but it's an effort and it's an intention. And I think it has to start with that. You have to recognize what the intention is. And then you have to have some real infrastructures in place to say, this is how we're going to bring that intention to life. And this is how we're going to expect people to show up in stores. And this is what we want the engagement with the consumer to look like in a store environment. Because ultimately, our field associates have the most important responsibility of being on that final line, that journey with the consumer of having that engagement in store. And so I think when we think about our overall infrastructure, we think about the field first. And that's also something that you can do with intention where everyone is thinking in that way. And there's things that we talk about in the book about breaking down those silos and ensuring that people feel empowered to make those decisions in a store environment. And I think that's very important as well.

Jon Clifton:
[26:39] Well, and it's funny too, because, you know, in traditional, I think, or strengths philosophy, but there are a lot of people when they see their strengths and they might see that something's missing. And interestingly enough, Influencing themes are remarkably low for you.

Brieane Olson:
[26:53] Yeah, they're absent.

Jon Clifton:
[26:54] Exactly. And so, you know, the Commands or the Competitions to your point, someone might say, well, you know, how am I going to operate? But remarkably, you are very influential because, you know, for those that I know, they'll kind of say, whatever Brie tells me to do, I'll just do it. So how is it that you made that turn and how did you kind of go, this is how I'm going to be influential through my strengths as opposed to what I thought sort of the ideal person for that particular role would be.

Brieane Olson:
[27:23] I think the constant learning aspect has really helped me. I'm an avid reader, and I really enjoy working with a coach. And I think having an open mind of really listening to feedback about your leadership style, it's hard, right? People are telling you that you're doing things in a particular way, and maybe that's not your intention. But being able to truly listen and really be introspective about how you're showing up is the best way to show up differently. And then leaning into your strengths and accepting that this is who you are as a human being. And if you lean into them and you can bring those out, then you can bring out the best in other people. And I think when you look at a leadership team, for example, if I look at my leadership team, and we've all done the CliftonStrengths exercise, you can see that you don't have to have kind of equal parts of all of the pieces. You have people on your team you can lean into, and they can naturally bring those pieces out. So I might not have Influencing or Command or Competition in my top 10, but I certainly have people who work with me alongside me that have that. And so I think that that acceptance as well is really important in terms of your leadership journey and your evolution as a leader.

Jon Clifton:
[28:43] You know, in talking about caring for colleagues, there are so many different companies where there's kind of a range. Some will say that we're a family, some will lead with love, whatever the case is. But then of course, there are also the realities of things where there might be layoffs. Somebody might get fired. And then somebody goes, well, wait a minute, I thought we were family, or I thought this was, you know, something more. How do you thread that needle?

Brieane Olson:
[29:10] So you'll never hear me talk about Pacsun as family. It's a community first. And I think even in those more challenging times and ultimately as the CEO, my biggest responsibility is to ensure that people have stability, right? And so I take that very seriously. But things can happen in the world and in the globe. And I think if you can honor honesty, if you can still honor vulnerability and how you're delivering it, understanding impact, I think that you can at least have the conversation in the kindest way possible. And you can approach these challenges with a community mindset. But I do think what you bring up is a good point, because putting the community first doesn't mean that Pacsun is a family, right? And there's a clear distinction in co-creating a model. In the end, we're still a business, and a business that is performing quite well. We've had, you know, We're going on 12 quarters of positive comps since we decided to lead with purpose. So you can see that purpose-led brands can perform better. And I think that that's another really important piece in this whole story is that you can drive tremendous financial results and performance results by doing what's right and being a company that leads with that.

Jon Clifton:
[30:27] Right now, we see one of the largest declines in terms of employee engagement among young people in the U.S. And you have a unique relationship with young people because they're your customers, and oftentimes they're also your employees. What have you learned because you've studied that group, had so many conversations with them that other executives could learn from to say, this is what you could do to better engage them within your organizations?

Brieane Olson:
[30:55] So I think when we think about bringing young people into the workforce, of course we have a responsibility to teach and to mentor. But the responsibility that's the most important and the most needed right now, I think, to make them feel seen and heard is to actually listen. To engage them in meaningful ways, and to understand that as leaders and executives and as brands and corporations, we have to adjust and change to evolve ourselves, to embrace this new generation so that we can work together in the most productive way. They have so much to offer, but they are the storytellers of their generation. They want to be a part of the story. They want to be a part of the future. They want to be building the vision. And I think for a lot of leaders and a lot of brands, the traditional mindset is that's already set and you're here to contribute.

And so I think there's kind of an unraveling that has to happen. And there's a real intention that has to change in terms of training, opportunities. What do they get exposure to? You know, why are you asking them to come into the office when they think they can do their work at home? Because you have to give them opportunities they can't get from working from home. They have to be able to participate in a way that's meaningful to them. And so then I think creating real meaning for them and rethinking, but also grounding it in research and data. What is it that looks like a meaningful and something that resonates with them emotionally in the workplace? I think without asking the question, you could be drawing assumptions and what you might be offering them might not carry any value at all. So I would always go back to grounding it in the data and the research.

Jon Clifton:
[32:38] You have Responsibility in your top five. People with Responsibility will literally put the weight of the world on their shoulders. Sometimes it can be too much. Who do you feel most responsible to as CEO?

Brieane Olson:
[32:51] I think I'm most responsible to our consumer because without our consumers' buy-in, without our consumer being well tied in, I can't drive the results that then protect the job and infrastructure for everyone else. And that protects also our shareholder and that protects our suppliers. And so really rethinking stakeholder centricity, I think my ultimate responsibility is to the customer.

Jon Clifton:
[33:20] And with your Strategic, you're, you know, kind of seeing multiple pathways for the organization, but you must also have something top of mind when you think of the most important strategic hill for Pacsun over the next three years. If there is such a strategic hell, what is it?

Brieane Olson:
[33:38] I think what we've built with the Pacsun community app is so exciting. But, you know, in the end, we're not a huge organization with unlimited resources and marketing dollars. And so I think for us to be able to get behind this, to engage our consumer on what our scrappier marketing budgets is going to be challenging but will be the most rewarding if we can get it to work. Because creating a true energy source that has creativity, community, commerce all together has tremendous possibility. But without having the infrastructure and resources, we, you know, could easily fail. And so when I look at that path, you have to kind of road map different ways for engagement. But I do think the future for Pacsun and other brands will be continuing to own the relationship with your consumer because agentic commerce could easily eliminate that. And how do you do that in a meaningful way and how can it scale?

Jon Clifton:
[34:47] I think one of the most difficult challenges you have with your brand is to try to stay cool with young people. And I can't imagine how difficult that must be going from generation to generation and remaining a brand seen in the eyes of young people where they go, I can continue to associate with that. And I even remember there used to be a ... One of those shows on MTV and it was actually Rev Run, and they, you know, followed his family around with a camera and I couldn't believe this moment because you know, Rev Run, his brand in the 80s and 90s, I mean he was the architect or one of the architects of cool. And it was amazing because, I think it was his daughter and she looked at him and she goes, dad you're so not cool. What a moment, you know, that somebody young would look at a guy that actually defined that. Now his response was remarkable because he said back to her no I'm not, but I inspire cool. And so that's for a person, someone that many of course say is a legend, but how do you do that as a brand?

Brieane Olson:
[35:58] I think it starts with the brand purpose. Our purpose is to inspire the next generation of youth and for them to create community at the intersection of sport, music, fashion and art. And so we are empowering a generation. We are creating community for them. And as they continue to evolve, the brand will evolve in lockstep. I think, you know, when you talk about, you know, we're not chasing trends, we're not chasing cool, but we are empowering our community to be advocates, to be brand ambassadors, to bring the story to life. And so the shift from the control being on the brand side to the empowerment being with the consumer, I think, is the magic of relevancy because you're moving at their pace and you're moving at the pace of culture. So as culture evolves, just like the music industry is evolving or the art industry is evolving, you are evolving in lockstep with the community at the same time. And so it's the context of the brands. It's a context of your community, your consumers and the evolution of the whole. And so the job is to stay at the pace of culture. And so that's what our teams are built to do.

Jon Clifton:
[37:16] And so when you look at your top strengths, is there one of them that you feel like brings you the most joy?

Brieane Olson:
[37:23] Responsibility.

Jon Clifton:
[37:24] Why?

Brieane Olson:
[37:26] I love being in service to other people, and I like helping and guiding others. And so it brings me great joy to see others in my life succeed and flourish and be their best selves.

Jon Clifton:
[37:38] When you look at your top five, and as you mentioned, you and your team have gone through this as well, is there one of your strengths that you look at and you go, yeah, I think that's the one that frustrates others the most?

Brieane Olson:
[37:51] Probably Strategic.

Jon Clifton:
[37:52] Why?

Brieane Olson:
[37:53] Because I always want, whether it's financial or, you know, brand, I want a plan, a backup plan, a backup plan to the backup plan, another plan in case that doesn't go well. And I want a road map out to the results we need, every possible outcome. And although that has heated us quite well because we've delivered phenomenal results and never in a linear way, it can also become overwhelming of like, OK, now we got to have 14 different financial scenarios and we have all of these different versions and people are always operating. But, you know, it gives everyone at the end, once kind of the chaos of the process is done, a feeling of calm because we know if A, B and C don't work out, we still have all of these options. And so building optionality into strategy is really important because I think being agile and being fluid in this environment is so important. And then we're not caught off guard.

Jon Clifton:
[38:51] When you look at the entire list of 34 themes, and you heard the one that I said that I envy the most, or one of them that I envy the most, is there one that you feel like you envy the most in others?

Brieane Olson:
[39:04] Probably number 33 for me, which is Harmony.

Jon Clifton:
[39:07] Why?

Brieane Olson:
[39:07] It sounds like such a peaceful strength of being able to bring people together in like a quiet, harmonious union. And I don't think it's a strength that I particularly envy in my role, but it's a strength that I envy in life. Being able to build harmony, I think, is a really beautiful thing and something that we need more of, quite frankly, in the world today.

Jon Clifton:
[39:30] Brie, it's amazing to have you here. Please come see us more often. And thank you so much for letting us talk to you a little bit about your strength story. So thank you.

Brieane Olson:
[39:40] Thank you.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.