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In this introductory episode, Mike and Jeff talk about why they started the podcast and what they hope listeners will get out of it.
Mike Magnuson is the founder of GoodBed.com and Jeff Cassidy is the Vice President of Business development. They are longtime friends turned bedding business colleagues who enjoy delivering the data-driven nerd-fest now known as the Mike It Up podcast.
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Full Transcription:
Mike Magnuson: Oh we never did the clap, we should do a clap just while we’re in… Ready? one, two, three!
[Clap]
Mike Magnuson: That was terrible, that wasn’t even close to ‘at the same time’. When I say one… It’s like one, two, three, clap! Okay?
Jeff Cassidy: That’s what I did. There might be a delay.
Mike Magnuson: There’s a huge delay! One, two-
Jeff Cassidy: Wait wait, it’s a second after the three?
Mike Magnuson: It’s like instead of saying four, it’s going to be a clap.
Jeff Cassidy: Right, so it’s actually four.
Mike Magnuson: It’s on four okay, ready? One, two, three-
[Clap]
Jeff Cassidy: That was bad.
Mike Magnuson: Okay that felt pretty delayed for me, but I don’t know… Yeah, but nonetheless we’re podcasting, that much we know. The other personal note for me, for having a podcast, is kind of interesting. My history with podcasting goes back a long time, I’ve never had a podcast, but I’ve actually… My history with the podcasting industry goes back to about 2006. Which is probably about 10 years or more before the average person had ever even heard of podcasts.
Jeff Cassidy: When did podcasting start? Do you know that?
Mike Magnuson: Around 2006.
Jeff Cassidy: It started as you started researching. It’s like… Good idea Mike, you invented podcasting!
Mike Magnuson: I did not invent podcasting, but I did anticipate podcasting. And was out looking for what ultimately would become podcasting, before podcasting had become even a term people were using.
Jeff Cassidy: That’s interesting, by the way I think that topic is good. I think it would be interesting for people to hear your background. I mean people might see in your bio when you do a talk, they see that you work at an investment company, but they don’t know the full details. I think it would be interesting for them to hear, like your history with digital media.
Mike Magnuson: I’ll sort of share that story as we go a little bit, just because I don’t want to sidebar completely into it, but suffice to say I’ve got a long history with podcasting so it’s kind of exciting for me on that level to actually be doing a podcast of my own now. Of course, at this point in time, it feels like everybody and their dog has a podcast, so it’s not exactly that… I was early to this.
Jeff Cassidy: I should point the microphone down, at my feet is a dog, so I think you’re actually pretty right.
Mike Magnuson: Is your dog recording its own podcast as we do ours?
Jeff Cassidy: If she were my actual dog, obviously she would be, but she’s somebody else’s dog, I’m just taking care of her.
Mike Magnuson: Got it, well anyways welcome to the podcast. I want to start by saying I’m Mike Magnuson, founder of Goodbed.com with me here today, and hopefully as always in this podcasting journey of ours, is my good friend and colleague Jeff Cassidy who also works with me here at Goodbed.
Jeff Cassidy: Hello everybody, excited to be here.
Mike Magnuson: On the podcasting tip, so we are starting this podcast. We should just tell everybody why we’re starting this podcast? Just to provide some insights to folks, primarily in the industry, in the mattress and home furnishings industry, on the consumer journey. We’ve got a whole lot of data that we collect, actual hard data, but also a lot of soft data that we get through all the many interactions we have with consumers at all the different points in their consumer shopping journey. Who are shopping in many many different ways, you know people who are intending to buy online, people who are looking to research online than buying at a store, people who maybe have already been to a store, people who are looking to shop across online and offline to compare them, different brands and different retailers. We’ve got everybody coming through Goodbed and they’re asking us questions in any number of different ways, we’re getting really great insights into kind of what their concerns are, what they’re confused about, how they see this industry, how that’s changing over time, and it’s too much frankly for us to be able to share it at these kinds of whatever, these annual bedding conferences, or just the periodic webinars and stuff like that. So we thought let’s start a podcast, that kind of gives us an outlet to really share these insights, not only in more real-time, but also just share more of these insights. Because I do think they’re super pertinent for the industry.
Jeff Cassidy: Yeah I’m very excited about that, because when each time you get asked, I mean you basically get asked to do a talk at the betting conference every year, and prior to that conference, obviously way in advance not the night before, you and I sit down and talk about what to cover and you always have so many things. It’s a process of having to call out a lot. There’s a lot of great things that end up on the editing room floor so to speak, from that brainstorm, that I’m excited to help coax you to get what’s in your brain on all those things out for people to hear. Because there’s so many good ideas in that bald dome of yours.
Mike Magnuson: It sounded like you said bald, but I think you meant to say shaved by choice.
Jeff Cassidy: It is a good choice.
Mike Magnuson: But yeah, insights and then occasionally I’ll pepper my own distillation of those insights, as to how I process them, and what recommendations I take away from those. Forgive me in advance for anything I share on that front in the form of recommendations and so forth, but that is part of what I hope we can offer here as well. Just to give people an idea, We’re going to try to keep these episodes pretty short, just keep them kind of snack-sized, maybe 10 to 15 minutes is kind of our idea, that way we can keep each episode focused on something discreet, just something like a snack-sized piece of information that you can take away as to how the consumers are operating in this category, or maybe how you should be operating, and what you can do to better reach those consumers.
Jeff Cassidy: Snack-size I like that, that’s a good term.
Mike Magnuson: Yeah, a little scooby snacks.
Jeff Cassidy: Why don’t you give an example, do you have any topics already planned out? any in mind? and if so maybe just give a flavor of what an example theme for an episode might be.
Mike Magnuson: In this first handful of episodes, we’re going to try to give people a little sense of how COVID for example has impacted the consumer journey for mattress shoppers. We’re going to talk about something we hear debated occasionally, whether in the press or within the industry, which is the question: is brick-and-mortar retail kind of a walking dead? So that’s something we’re going to dive into. What about also the big key threats facing the mattress industry, that’s another topic we feel like we can cover in more depth than we’ve been able to cover previously. And for a lot of people, it’s going to be insights you’ve never heard us share because you weren’t able to attend events where we’ve spoken in the past. I also would love to tackle the topic of mattress returns, I think there’s kind of an impending blowback that’s going to happen at some point here with mattress returns. It’s kind of gone, it’s probably on the back burner at the moment with COVID, just kind of being everyone’s full attention and rightfully so it had a radical impact on the shopping journey, but that ultimately is going to subside and I think at that point we’re going to take a look at where we are. if it’s anything like where we’ve been, and I think it’ll be even more so after COVID, there’s going to be a lot of returns happening. And it’s kind of a function, in large part, of the growing share of the online channel. I think there’s just a question to be asked of like what’s the sustainable level of returns? and if we’re operating in excess of that sustainable level well, what does that mean? and what do we have to do to change that as an industry? so I think that’s a topic that we can get into and maybe provide some thought leadership on what we think can be done on that.
Jeff Cassidy: That leads also naturally, or unnaturally, into the environmental question that we talk about a lot internally. About what happens with those mattresses? What’s happening with lots of returns of foam mattresses? Where are they going? What’s the status of recycling? Diving in a little bit deeper into the environmental impact.
Mike Magnuson: We can hopefully provide some insights, and maybe tools, or talking points that people in the industry can use on that front. I think that would not only benefit them but their consumers and ultimately the environment as well.
Jeff Cassidy: Yep, no doubt.
Mike Magnuson: Great well, that’s kind of what we wanted to share today. We’re just going to kind of introduce ourselves and introduce this podcast. Hopefully we will… All I was thinking about right there, that my wife just walked in and how much she hates this microphone.
Jeff Cassidy: How this whole podcast experience might not make it past this first chat.
Mike Magnuson: What you should do is direct all your fan mail to my wife, and let her know how important this podcast is to you and how much you enjoy it, so that maybe just maybe this microphone can find a permanent space, if not in my office, at least in my garage.
Jeff Cassidy: I think all the husbands in the world can appreciate the dog house that you’re going to be in.
Mike Magnuson: I think the husbands can appreciate it too that this looks cool, like a recording studio. But I guess maybe it’s not as aesthetically pleasing as other more carefully chosen pieces of furniture. So anyways, well it’s great to kick this off and we’re looking forward to again having this dialogue with many more folks, and also to being connected with the Dos Marcos guys, obviously those are good friends of ours. Mark and Mark, they suck at podcasting, so we’re excited to finally be able to kind of bring some quality entertainment and information to this industry. So that’s another thing we’re looking forward to. All right, so let’s wrap it up with that said.
