I believe in accessibility. I believe in honesty and a culture that supports that. And you can't have that if you're not open to receiving feedback.
I firmly believe in the old adage 'Actions speak louder than words.' This means proactively seeking women for roles within boards, identifying opportunities for diversity within teams, and finding ways to use your platform to mentor women - and then encourage them to do the same.
If you think about a business where uncertainty is an anathema, it's around consumer spending, and it's around retail.
I think that the CEO is responsible for setting the vision, for articulating the mission, and for building a team of powerful evangelists that share that mission and that passion, because no one person can do anything by themselves.
Our assimilation efforts are based on building long-term relationships and value with our customers, and the success of these efforts is measured partly by our ability to stimulate customers to make a second purchase within 90 days.
Women must do a better job of supporting each other. However, real change will happen when both men and women unite to demand diversity.
Everybody is talking about cord cutting. It's not about the cord. It's the content.
Consumers are looking for experiences, whether that's travel, whether that's entertainment. They're looking for differentiated products, things that are going to have meaning.
Our ability to create that one-on-one engagement with a customer is a point of differentiation and a strategic advantage for us.
At HSN, the experience we create are a significant point of differentiation.
I believe that if you don't disrupt yourself, you will be disrupted by someone else.
I think technology, on one side, you can look at it; it's disrupted a lot of industries and businesses. On the other side, it's enabled us to do things that we never thought possible in being able to engage customers.
It seemed like I woke up one morning and had an epiphany. I thought, 'I cannot do this. I do not want to get married. And I'm not going to law school - it just doesn't excite me. I'm not wasting anybody's money. I'm going to move to New York.'
I've honed in on three questions that I ask myself when I'm evaluating where to spend my time. Is this something that I'm passionate about, is it purposeful, and will I have impact? And if I can't answer 'yes' to all three questions, then I have to sit back and ask, 'Is it really that important?'
Value can mean a price. Value can mean exclusivity. Value can mean, 'I can't get it anywhere else, and this is really something I want.'
Our destination programming allows us to put a stake in the ground and create a showy tweak that is story driven, with products that are inspiring to our customers, and the content doesn't expire at the end of the show but continues to live on in various formats on multiple distribution platforms.
It's OK to not have all the answers, and in fact, the more extraordinary people you are able to surround yourself with, the better you will become.
I love hidden things. When you buy something with quality, you like the inside to be as beautiful as the outside. Nobody's going to see it, but you know it's there.
The model of getting the consumer to come to you is old, and the new model is how can you get to the consumer on their terms, in ways they want to engage in. How people are choosing to interface with content is very different. You've got to marry different platforms.
I started at HSN in May of 2006, and by October, we had rolled out a new brand image, a new tagline, a new vision statement, a new customer manifesto, and new advertising.
