Ned Hayes [00:00:01] Welcome to Spark Plug, where we talk to smart people working at the intersection of business and technology brought to you by Snowshoe. Your smarter loyalty leader.

Ashley Coates [00:00:12] Sparkplug is excited to welcome Carrie Yang to the podcast. Carrie is a true expert when it comes to using YouTube as an effective retail marketing tool, and she’s here to share some of her top tips and insights with our audience. She founded grouphugs, a strategic agency specializing in growing and optimizing organic YouTube channels and YouTube ads for businesses and brands. Throughout her career, Carrie has held top marketing director positions at several brands, and we’re thrilled to share her expertize and knowledge with our audience today. Welcome, Carrie. 

Carrie Yang [00:00:44] Hi, everyone. So excited to be here. 

Ashley Coates [00:00:47] We’re so delighted to have you. So let’s start off, Carrie, with talking about your background and you have a strong mix of sciences, research and marketing. Can you tell us more about your educational and career path up until now? 

Carrie Yang [00:01:00] Yes. One thing I’ll start off with is you never know where life is going to take you, because I think my story is one that represents a bunch of different pivots and career changes. And at each step I knew I was closer to doing what I wanted to do and what I was meant to do. So I started out in the sciences and being training is not to call out the stereotype, but it is pretty true for most people. I think my parents wanted me to go into the math and science and my dad was a physician. So of course throughout school I was funneled into the math and sciences. And in fact, my last two years of high school, I actually went to a math and science boarding school, which further funded me even more so when I went to college, I did major in biochemistry, molecular bio thinking that I was going to become a doctor. And every single summer I did biomedical research papers and dissected mice, if that’s some people. But that’s hard to research. So I did a bunch of different things in the science field, and when it came to senior year, I got into medical school and there was something that wasn’t really sitting right with me when I got my accept it and it was really final and it felt like if I went into medical school, I would have the next ten years of my life written out for me. This is what I would do. I would go to residency, blah, blah, blah, and that was my life. And I realized in senior year I took this corporate finance class that opened my eyes to view of the careers in the finance world. And because I really felt that genuine curiosity to it, I decided to defer medical school. I applied for this job at an investment bank and I ended up getting it. And after I went into finance for a year, I realized that I really loved talking to all different types of companies. I was actually an institutional equities broker. So what that means is I was a stockbroker for hedge funds and mutual funds, and I talked about all these brilliant companies all day long. And I thought to myself, Why am I talking about them? I want to know how to build one. And so that was a very short lived career path in finance. And I left that and I entered startup marketing and I really never looked back since then, starting from the sciences, went into finance and then really ended up in marketing. And what’s really interesting about that career shift was I didn’t take a single class in marketing. I knew nothing about marketing at all. But what I did learn throughout the rest of my career was an analytical mindset from the sciences. And what I did learn from finance was how to think about businesses, how to understand different types of business models, and what really made a business successful at a very high level, of course, profitability, etc.. And when I went into marketing, I learned everything that I learned from the Internet, including YouTube, of course. So which brings it all back full circle here. But something that I learned from every single marketing position that I went through was if you trust yourself and if you know that you can learn anything and that you can figure anything out, then you can do anything. And that was really true of even in finance, you learn all that stuff on the job. I didn’t have a finance background after going into marketing. I didn’t have a marketing background, but I did know how to understand people and I did understand what motivated people and what incentivized myself to do things because I was an avid consumer and that snowballed into my first startup that was acquired after a year. And then I moved to New York to join this other health and wellness birthday startup. I’m sure we’ll talk about that one later. And then I co-founded another telemedicine at that moved me to Texas, which then ultimately led me to leave the startup world and to create my own agency. And the thing I would say about why I created grouphugs is in every marketing position that I held, paid ads was a number one way to get customers. And after leaving and having time to think, I thought like, why are we so focused on only paid efforts? There has to be organic methods of growth that don’t have this dependency on ads. And that’s where I discovered YouTube. So that brings me to here. 

Ned Hayes [00:04:38] Wow, what a journey. So YouTube was founded back in 2005 and you are only 17 years old. So at what point did you actually encounter YouTube for the first time and when did you really realize the potential of that? 

Carrie Yang [00:04:53] Yeah, I first started using YouTube in 2006, so in school, still not even in college. And I remember. Were us utilizing YouTube in school for my Spanish class we had to make. I’m sure it’s actually still probably up there on YouTube somewhere owned by some classmate. 

Ashley Coates [00:05:07] Had in the show notes. 

Carrie Yang [00:05:09] Yeah, let me go do some digging. But we did make these school video projects and the assignment was to upload them onto YouTube after it was done as the final step and to show it in class. So I remember using it in school and ever since then it became a place where I consumed all my music videos because that was also one of the first uses of music videos were huge. Watch all these music videos and remember literally about my finger in the first few videos and the juice video. Oh my God. Shoes. Remember those? Okay, so that was the beginning of YouTube, but it really wasn’t until before finding grouphugs that I really saw the use for businesses and it’s crazy that it actually took that long. Everyone I know uses YouTube maybe not to look at businesses, but at minimum they used it to look up how to fix a leak under their sink. They use it to figure out why their dog has diarrhea. They use it to teach their cat tricks. Like my sister, she learned how to teach her cat how to poop in a toilet. From YouTube. So you can learn everything on there. What I realize is YouTube is actually so ingrained in our everyday life that sometimes we forget that it’s a powerful social platform and the second largest search engine in the world. And I think that’s why I think during this long period of time, I didn’t even realize it. And it was only after leaving the startup world that I take a step back, look at all the different channels, and see why are so few businesses using YouTube. And now it grew after talking to hundreds of businesses here. Of the two main reasons why people haven’t gone on YouTube. One, making videos is a lot harder and more complex and a lot more steps than making other types of content. And then to the YouTube algorithm is much less understood than other algorithms, and simply because it’s this hybrid search engine and a social platform. So there’s really two levels and two parts of the algorithm that are at play. Yeah. 

Ashley Coates [00:06:59] Absolutely. Thank you so much for that overview. Carrie, can you share some client success stories from your bags? 

Carrie Yang [00:07:06] Yes. You know, I mentioned that it’s also a search engine. So something really unique about YouTube is YouTube itself is a search engine. So whenever you create videos, you will show up when people are searching into YouTube. But a really unique benefit of YouTube is that your videos can also show up on other search engines. So something that we are very, very proud of at grouphugs, we’ve been able to get our clients YouTube videos, not only on the top search terms on YouTube, but also on Google and other search engines. The one search engine that I’ll actually bring up right now is DuckDuckGo. So DuckDuckGo is a search engine that does not allow ads. People actually go to that platform when they want ad free search platform. And so the only way you can really show up on DuckDuckGo is with organic. We’ve been able to get client videos also on that platform as well as other search engines. So that’s one thing we’re really proud of. And then I’ll call out a few specific clients right now. So because you’re one of our longest standing clients, we’ve made over 80 videos with them over the last almost three years. And every single month we’re able to gain at a minimum over 2 million organic impressions. So that’s our videos and the brand really getting in front of over 2 million people each month because we have so many topics, so many videos that cover so many different topics that people are actually searching and curious about on YouTube. Something else that’s been really exciting is one of our newer clients actually started with us this year. They’re called Upward, and then the first three months we were able to get videos on the front page of Google. And right now with another food client, Haven’s Kitchen, over the last few months, we actually uploaded 150 YouTube videos for their channel for them. So when it comes to client wins, we’re really proud that if you stick with us for at least a year, your channel will be an industry leading channel in the space on YouTube, and that’s simply due to consistency and posting. And they’re making videos on topics that people are actually searching for. 

Ned Hayes [00:08:59] So you’ve described your company as turnkey YouTube video and growth agency. By turnkey, I imagine that means you can just plug into grouphugs hugs and grouphugs can make it happen for you. But how did you set up your own business to simplify channel creation? That sounds like a daunting task. 

Carrie Yang [00:09:17] Yes. Well, you learn a lot from experience and trying different things. Something that people may not know about grouphugs is when we first started our agency, we actually had another service. In addition to YouTube, we were offering Facebook groups. Again, this is another really unique type of organic service, right? Because that’s what grouphugs is all about, finding the underserved areas and organic marketing. And so when we first started, we had YouTube, Facebook groups and as we were testing both, we actually learned that YouTube had a lot more potential. It was less reliant on Facebook’s ever changing algorithm, and YouTube’s algorithm was a lot more stable and it allowed for a lot greater reach. So we actually quickly pivoted. So after we pivoted, it was so nice to actually only have. One business and one set of processes to manage. So we broke up every single step of the video production process, and that was step one, because there are so many steps and you’ll quickly name them. At the very beginning, you need to plan your videos. You need to do your CEO research and title research and really see where what your customers are searching for the next step. And this one you cannot get. You need to script. So scripting ensures that you’re not going to ramble on or forget points that you want to mention. And so there was a scripting process. And then after scripting you have the filming process and all of the equipment that goes into it. And then after filming you have your editing which making graphics, you have B-roll that you want to put on screen or any type of screen share demo, right? You need to get all those assets ready and then you can edit your video together, add music at sound effects, all that jazz, and then at the end, there’s still more. You need to upload that video, create that thumbnail, and then at the very end, after you publish, you also need to promote the video. So we took a look at our business, put everything out into separate steps and then optimized for each step and were able to create a system that was able to churn out videos like a machine. And I can’t remember where I heard this business advice, but someone gave me some really good business advise at some point, and it was to turn your business into a machine and really optimizing each step of the machine so that you as the founder, you are the holder that every single step and that the business can function without you. So that’s what we really tried to do. So we have a team, a script writers, editors that really work on the content creation, as well as graphic designers that work on the assets. And at our business, we have account managers that really make sure that every step is on time and really massaging it through the entire process through to upload and then promoting. 

Ned Hayes [00:11:40] Well, you’re a person with amazing energy. This is just coming through right now. Do you think most retailers have that kind of energy to be able to do all these steps? Or do you think it’s really best to work with somebody who understands it all? 

Carrie Yang [00:11:52] Here’s what I would say to that. You don’t need anyone else to help make videos. And this is why I say that when I first started grouphugs, I was editing all these videos on iMovie and I was the star of our first clients videos. And to start out, I found all of these music sources that were all copyright free. And so I think if you know the steps in which I’ve just listed out and we’ll get into more of the steps later in this podcast, if you know what you’re doing, you can create your own videos. And today we’ll break down what you minimally need in order to do that. And another thing with YouTube is the more of YouTube video looks like a commercial, the less well it actually performs organically because YouTube is a creator’s platform at the very heart. It’s a platform where everyone can share what they want to share with the world. And you’ll see on YouTube at the more commercial, like a more highly produced a video is, the less it performs. People want to see authentic and genuine ness coming from the people they’re watching on YouTube. It’s called YouTube for a reason, and it’s not company dude or corporate dude. It’s YouTube. It’s the human element that is the core of making a YouTube channel successful. And if you are passionate about what you’re sharing, which I think that’s maybe the requirement, if you’re passionate about something, that energy will come through. And I feel like it’s really that simple. And today we will be breaking down what you need for each step so that everyone listening today, you can start making some of your own videos. 

Ashley Coates [00:13:20] Well, thank you. We’re so happy to have you on spark plugs, but you can share all of your knowledge with our retail listeners. So totally didn’t that you just mentioned all the reasons that YouTube is so effective as a marketing platform. What about retail brands specifically? How does this platform really allow retailers to show off their products, show off what they have to offer potential new customers? 

Carrie Yang [00:13:44] Before I answer exactly for retailers, I want to quickly cover one concept that is really vital for YouTube. So people use YouTube in two different ways social platform, search engine. So whenever you’re creating content, you do need to think about those two factors and different types of videos can play into each a little bit differently. So knowing that there’s a few types of videos that we always think about, like grouphugs, we always recommend creating, and they all fall under the evergreen video bucket. So evergreen videos like the name states, it’s a video that you’re going to make that will continue to gain views and it will still be relevant in a year, in two years. So I’m going to take an example now from a toy store. So if you are a toy store and you sell kids toys, first thing you think about, okay, what types of questions could parents be starting? Right, because in the end, if you’re making toys, the buyer is usually the parents or someone with the cash flow to purchase. So you first need to think about, okay, who am I actually capturing? Am I making a video for kids to ask their parents or I’m making a video for the parents? And usually even that example is the parents. So when it comes to children’s toys, why would a parent buy their kid a specific toy? Is it to exercise a specific skill or do they have ADHD, potentially a new sensory? Stimulating toys. So when you’re thinking about what your store and what your retail offers, think about the audience who would be searching for this and what real questions would they have. So let’s continue with the toys, for example, and let’s say at this point where we have a few toys. I’m ADHD, so this is why I know about sensory stimulating toys and seating and all that for kids with ADHD. So maybe it’s a question that a parent would have is what are the best toys for ADHD kids? So if you create a video that genuinely answers that question, you can highlight five of the toys that you have in your toy store that answer this question. And maybe as you’re going through and you’re introducing the five toys you can briefly mention, we have a physical location at X, Y, Z, and we ship to 50 states. If that’s something that you do, if your retailer does not ship to all 50 states and you’re located, let’s say, in Washington, what you can do is you can actually add five best toys for ADHD children. And then in your tags, you could also tag Washington or Olympia, Washington or Seattle, Washington or wherever you are. And then what you can test in your title and your description in your video is adding your location in the video. So that way, when people are searching for your ADHD toys in Washington, your video also pops up, really capturing that localized market. And you’re also getting the word out there about what you offer as well. And potentially, if you start getting requests from people to ship your products across 50 states, maybe this is a whole new segment of your business that you can take advantage of because you have such a great YouTube channel. That was one example. 

Ned Hayes [00:16:26] So that’s the outcome of a great YouTube channel. Can you drill into nuts and bolts on what it actually takes for somebody to create it? Yeah, yeah. Down to all those details. 

Carrie Yang [00:16:35] So what we just covered was first trying to figure out which videos you’re going to make, right? So once you know which videos you’re going to make, what audience you’re targeting, questions they’re going to be searching. The next thing is scripting. So whenever you script, this is what I always recommend, depending on your personal style. If you know your content really well, you can totally work off of an outline. But I always recommend at least putting together an outline, if not scripting everything out, because that way you make sure you cover every single value prop that you intended to cover and you’re not rambling, you’re not forgetting lines too. After you script it out, I’ll share this with everyone. I’ll share the teleprompter app that I use so that everyone out there you will have a teleprompter app that you can use right on your computer and you never have to memorize any lines. So filming all you really need is an iPhone to film or any smartphone that has 4K and most YouTube channels. Most of the videos are actually ten deep, which is just normal. HD But ever since, I think in 2017, the iPhone and I think that’s when the iPhone X came out, the iPhone X was the first iPhone that had 4K in the last five years. Every single phone that’s really come out, even Samsung, Android, whatever has 4K. So all you need is a phone for your filming and lighting. You can order a ring, lay off of Amazon on the interwebs and a strong ring light is all you really need to get good lighting. And then the last factor for a great video is sound. So if you are recording on your phone, I would definitely recommend getting a lav. Mike And definitely with the reviews on Amazon because there are so many live mikes out there. So dig through the reviews, find one that has the best reviews and you can plug that baby right up to your phone and have really professional sound. So to recap for the actual video itself, lighting, sound and resolution are three of the most important factors. Now, when you’re editing, I learn how to edit videos just a few years ago on YouTube using iMovie. So if you have a mac, iMovie comes with Mac. And I know that the Adobe Suite and there’s a few more video editing, quick and easy tools that aren’t even Adobe that are out now. I’m not sure how many of you use Canva, but we use Cam for a bunch of other things that grouphugs. But Canva has improved their video making. I don’t know. I’ve never edited a whole video in Canva before, but I know that they’ve been improving their video resources and other video tool a lot. And in fact, I’ve actually made a few intro elements and everything just on Canva itself that have animation and video. There’s lots of tools that you can use now in Canva. If you aren’t on canvas, get on Canva the best. I’m sure you are. That was video editing. So video editing. I’d just give you three quick tips on video editing. Really what you need to have video editing. If there is something that you’re saying, wow, that can be better represented with video, let’s take that toy store, for example. Right. So we’ve got these ADHD toys for ADHD kids, right? So whenever you’re talking about these toys, one, if you have the actual toy, definitely show it and bring it up in the video and actually show you the real thing. But if you don’t definitely bring in an image or a video of it in action, that way you can show people what you’re doing. Because the beauty of video is it is a very sensory, rich medium. So you want to show more than you’re telling, if at all possible, for anything that you need that can be associated with graphics, text on screen, do it. And all of this can be easily done in iMovie and a lot of these other platforms they’re. Pretty affordable if you don’t have a mac. 

Ned Hayes [00:19:59] Okay. Any other tools that people should know about? So there’s scripting, there’s video editing, there’s the lighting you talked about sound, anything else? Should we have full director and producer and all of that stuff? You need all of that for you, too. 

Carrie Yang [00:20:12] Great question. When it comes to the production and the actual filming, you can set up a good YouTube set in a lot of different places. If you have a toy store, if you have a retailer location, it’s always best to film in the retail location. That way you can show all of the products and everything that you’re selling, and it could also create a video where you’re doing a walkthrough and highlighting some of your products in your store. So it the set for your retail location should be your retail location, if at all possible. And when it comes to the production value in the filming, what I would say is whoever is in the video that is your star and this is your main subject, and so lighting that person or if there’s a prop, lighting those items well is the most important thing, especially if you’re using a ring light. That light is unlikely going to permeate everywhere and into to the entire room. But what’s really important is really showcasing what you’re trying to offer. And then another tool that I actually have that can help with not only the siting of the content, so backing it up to one, but also for publishing as there are two really great YouTube analytics tools and they both have three versions that you can start with and learn. So one of them is called Video IQ, and then the second one is called to Buddy. And at grouphugs, we actually prefer that IQ for a few reasons. We have their enterprise package and everything, but what we love about that IQ is it really takes into account what people are searching currently. And one of the most important things, whenever you’re deciding what videos to make is to check search volume and to see that people are actually searching for it. So these are really powerful tools to really take a temperature check of how much people are searching for your items, how many people are searching for toy stores in Washington, in Seattle, Washington, in Olympia, Washington, whatever people are searching, localize and really generic topics and a YouTube. So you really get an idea of what videos do you want to make first? And another benefit of it IQ is whenever you’re uploading your videos. Okay, actually, let me go into this little in order for your videos to be found on YouTube, you need to optimize your title, your description and your tags. And in your description you have five characters to put all these other keywords that people could be searching in order to find your video. And this is a really great space to utilize a tool like IQ because sometimes you’ll be filling in what you think people are searching, and then that IQ will actually then suggest a few other stronger tags that could bring you more traffic. And so these tools are really helpful when it comes to deciding which video and then also helping your videos be found. There’s free versions of both, so definitely check them out and your YouTube channel. 

Ned Hayes [00:22:41] Sounds like a retailer could actually by buying a ring light and doing some of these things themselves, they can actually showcase their store without the need to hire a director. They might want to hire a great agency like you all in order to optimize for the algorithm, but they can actually film themselves. Is that true? 

Carrie Yang [00:22:58] Yes. I don’t know if you’ve seen this on social media, like a lot of different types of retailers will do come shop with me or they will actually do sell film vertical walkthroughs of the store. So there’s been a wave in a trend of more UGC. So user generated style content doing really well when it comes to self producing. You can set up a tripod and film yourself or you could actually, depending on what you’re doing. If you’re doing like a Hey, let’s come shopping with me, you could even take your phone and just sell film, selfie style, vertical video, or that way you are actually taking them into your experience for your store. And we’ve seen that performed really well on YouTube shorts. I don’t think I’ve actually talked about YouTube shorts just yet, but YouTube shorts is YouTube’s version of Tiktoks and similar to Instagram’s reels where they’re more short form and it covers a short topic. And with those types of videos that you can upload to YouTube, they’ve been a really great way to gain traction and to do self filmed, very UGC style content and these are very low budget. And the thing with YouTube is it doesn’t have to be absolutely perfect. People want to see that humanness. So if you’re self filming, doing a selfie style video, it’ll be really real and it’s great about it. It doesn’t even have to be perfect. You can be yourself and that’s really why it incentivizes things to go viral, because if it’s too fake, people won’t even share it or watch it that much. 

Ashley Coates [00:24:18] Absolutely. Thank you, Carrie, for all of those tips. Those are so useful and helpful. I know for many small businesses it can feel very overwhelming how many platforms there are to possibly be on all the social platforms. And it can feel overwhelming to feel like you need to be on all of them. If a retailer is listening and they’re considering YouTube as a platform, but they may feel a little stuck, what would you say to them? What advice can you share? 

Carrie Yang [00:24:45] My advice would be if you’re stuck on YouTube, think about this. What are the most common questions that you get from your customers? And that is a great starting point because if you’re getting these questions over and over again, might as well go make a video on it and then. You don’t ever have to answer that question again, and people can share that one video with a lot of others. And so that’s always a great place to start. What are you hearing from your audience and your customers? Are people confused about the installation of a toy? Let’s say you are a fast, casual restaurant. Let’s say you have a poké restaurant. And are people confused about the different ingredients and where there’s sauce? What questions could people have that could set you apart and what questions you get in store? For example, if you have a health store where you offer all kinds of Asahi bowls and protein shakes, what do people have questions about? Are there zero sugar options? The different types of protein start there and create videos that you already know that people want to hear. And that is always a great starting point. And if you do have a website and you’re a retailer, this video will be perfect to embed on your website and your fake news section. That way, people who come to your website and interact with your brand, they feel supported from the initial interaction. 

Ned Hayes [00:25:55] Got it. It’s super great to have all of your expertize here. It’s really interesting. But will your expertize still be applicable in 5 to 10 years? Where do you keep going? 

Carrie Yang [00:26:04] Great question. So as we all know, YouTube’s been around for a really long time. But if you also think about it over this entire course of what they were started in 2005, 2006, they are still the number one video platform. And what I know about YouTube is that they’ve not only integrated into search and marketing, but they’ve also integrated into people’s actual lives. And so in 5 to 10 years, I truly believe and I’ll bet money on this, that YouTube will be around. In what form? I’m not sure. Maybe they’ll be selling videos as NFT is, who knows in ten years. But the reason I know that YouTube is still going to be around is it focuses on video and video is the king of content. It is the most shareable form of content. It is the most powerful form of content. It is the most engaging form of content. And if you look at every other platform, what are we moving to? Video, video, video. Even on Instagram, if you post a static image, that post is not going to get much reach. You have to pretty much post to real nowadays in order to get reach. And that is where the entire industry is going. And because YouTube owns long form video and I really want emphasize the long form part, it will always be a top player in at least the video space, but also in the search and social space. Because even with TikTok, even with Instagram, people still go to YouTube to look up long form content. In the end, you can’t go to Tik Tok to search how to change my light bulb. What you can do is go to YouTube to search that and it will always be there. And it’s essentially the Library of Alexandria, but for video content and in my opinion that’s why it’s going to remain valuable because it is the hub and the home of our entire Worlds videos. 

Ned Hayes [00:27:42] That’s a fascinating phrase, the Library of Alexandria for video content. So if you think of putting all of your information up there in a vast library forever makes it much more compelling. 

Carrie Yang [00:27:54] Yeah, I do know that YouTube will change because what I’m seeing right now is they added shorts. So that’s something that is coming in, but it’s not really affecting the long form. So what I do expect is that YouTube will continue to add more features, whether it’s shoppable ads, some that are coming this year, as well as probably more features we’ll see on YouTube shorts. But the thing is, no matter what, there’s no platform that is anywhere near the library of videos that YouTube has a mass in long form content. And there will always be a place for a long form content because yeah, you can only consume so many things in 30 seconds. Let’s be real. Most things require more than that. And that’s the beauty of YouTube is if someone’s searching for a long form video they already bought in, they are here to consume that content. And there’s a higher intentionality of actually giving their attention to your video. It’s not like a scroll, kind of your TikTok or Instagram reels where it’s just like next. That is a scroll type of social platform with YouTube. People search for it, they opt in to every piece of content that they watch, and that’s very different than anything else. And that’s why I believe it’s going to be here, have a bunch more videos and probably other VR 3D content actually already have 3D content on YouTube features now, but who knows, maybe we’ll have more virtual reality or blockchain type integrations with YouTube in the future. So I expect. 

Ned Hayes [00:29:10] Well, thanks for that great future vision. 

Ashley Coates [00:29:12] Carrie. Thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure having you today. Before you go, we do have one last question, which is what do you want your legacy to be? What would you like to be remembered for? 

Carrie Yang [00:29:23] I want to be remembered as the connector, and I want that to be my legacy because that’s always been one of my strengths connecting with other people, understanding businesses and understanding the experience of the customer. And if I can leave this Earth and have helped hundreds of brands connect with millions of their customers, I would die happy and feel really proud of myself that I’ve helped so many customers find belonging in connection with brands that they feel passionate about and love, and also helping so many brands succeed and blossom in the world and really helping the world become the. Nice place. Possible. 

Ashley Coates [00:29:58] That’s awesome. Right. Carrying the connector. 

Carrie Yang [00:30:01] The connector. In the end, each brand needs to connect with their customers. And this is one step further. But maybe this is the future vision for grouphugs it right now if we can help brands connect with their customers a plus plus. But in the future I would love to find a way to help customers of brands also connect deeper with each other. Because I also think if you help a customer make another friend that they can connect with, that was through a brand. And you’ve literally change someone’s life if you help them make a real life connection. And in this human experience, we all need each other like humans. We’re social people. This connection is the lifeblood of health and happiness. So if we can help more people connect and find belonging, this will be a happier place. And we do need a lot more of that nowadays. 

Ned Hayes [00:30:43] That’s really inspirational. Thank you, Carrie. 

Carrie Yang [00:30:45] Oh, my gosh. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on today and sharing my story. 

Ned Hayes [00:30:51] Spark Plug is a wholly owned property of Snowshoe all content and copyright 2021 Spark Plug Media.