Latest / Retail Media Breakfast Club / I'm back and I owe you an explanation
Transcript
- welcome back to season 2 === [00:00:00] Quick life update before we get back to retail media analysis. Sometimes the universe has other plans, In April last year, I find out that I had won the US Green Card lottery, and although me and my family had been living in the States for. Quite a long time already, for rather dull bureaucratic reasons, we had to actually leave the country while all of the paperwork was finalized, which was a process that we knew would take the better part of a year. So just over a year ago, we bundled up all our worldly possessions, moved them into a storage unit and took off. For a year of the digital nomad life, and I've had a lot of questions from other parents asking what [00:01:00] to do with children if you want to do want to do something like this. And I actually put together a spreadsheet with all the research that I did around. S uh, summer camps, world schools, things like that. Um, experiences that you can have as a family where you can be working remotely from Europe or Asia. So if that's interesting to you, I'll pop that in the show notes for you to check out. Eventually after more dull but also stressful bureaucracy, all the green card stuff got finalized and we flew back to Atlanta, but on our flight home, this was two weeks ago. We learned that the moving company that we had engaged to do our move for us, we were hoping to do it all remotely and come back to a fully moved in new house. The moving company had arrived at the storage facility to find the whole [00:02:00] thing infested with rats and. Apparently it was so bad that they refused to touch anything and do , no move charges for the full move move, of course. Um, so we learned about all of this while still in the air coming from Italy over to Atlanta. And so I had to abandon my in-flight movie and start Instacart. Camping mattresses and pillows and coffee mugs, just so we could sleep at least on the floor of our new rental while we figured all this stuff out. So that was our warm welcome home to Atlanta. Another lesson that I took away from this year long sojo that we have is that the grass is always greener. Toward the end of that year, we were all quite ready to get [00:03:00] back to a routine and having a home base again. And you might have had had this experience as well. When you're grinding away at work or when I'm grinding away at work, a holiday seems like it could solve everything. If only I was sitting on a beach drinking a Mai tie. But when I'm actually on an extended holiday, sort of craving my routine. So by the end of this long trip, living outta suitcases, having a great time still towards the end, really consciously trying to be present and enjoy these beautiful new places and experiences. But our conversations as a family increasingly drifted towards. Imagining the first day of school or adding things to my new home office wishlist or finding new dinner recipes to try out [00:04:00] in the air fryer. All these, you know, banal things that sort I end up craving when I'm on an extended holiday. All that excitement to get back to quote unquote real life obviously just disappeared like a pin popping a balloon. When we got back and had to deal with this situation, in the end, we had to throw away pretty much all of our furniture and. There's literally a couple of hundred dollars that we can claim on insurance because it was such terrible insurance through the storage company. Um, so, you know, fi Fi Financial. Loss of, of all of those items, of course, but Al also, just the task alone and the time it takes to replace everything is very draining. The morning after this not [00:05:00] so warm, welcome home. My husband and I debated if we should just. Leave all the junk in the storage unit, break our leaves, turn around and just leave the country again. Um, yes, that was, uh, that was a real, that was a real debate, um, that we had add all that abstract longing for routine. Disappeared. When we had to debate whether to abandon everything and leave again, suddenly the grass wasn't greener anywhere. We just needed to plant new grass entirely. Now I wanna share a few things that are coming up for retail media, breakfast club, and this year of upheaval reminded me. Really why community matters, especially when everything else falls apart. Here are a few things I wanna share with you about what's coming up. Number one, I'm bringing on my first sponsor. I've been [00:06:00] so grateful to receive a lot of interest from solution providers in sponsoring the newsletter and podcast or collaborate collaborating on events or producing custom research. And I've spent. Months vetting potential sponsors through my network of brands and retailers because if you are gonna trust my recommendations, I need to trust. There's first, so I'm going to announce that partnership next week. Number two is Atlanta meetups are returning. I forgot how much I missed the energy of in-person conversations until I couldn't have them anymore. If you're in the Atlanta area or you visit regularly, I have a form to fill out to let me know. Your preferences of time and place, fill that out and I will add you to the distribution list. And finally, number three, I'm looking for more brand side panelists. One of the most [00:07:00] loved formats of the podcast and newsletter is these panel discussions where I get brand side practitioners to share their real experiences and POVs on a singular thematic topic. I'm planning topics like measurement, standardization, retailer, relationship management, and budget. Allocation. So if you're a brand side retail media leader interested in participating or you wanna nominate someone, please send me a message. With all that off my chest, tomorrow I'll be back to my regularly scheduled programming retail media and retail media. Thanks for reading. I hope you're having an epic summer.