So why do you argue that making customers feel capable now matters more than making things easy?

Well, the Betty Crocker example is a famous marketing case study where Betty Crocker, I think it was in the 50s or maybe early 60s, they introduced a new cake mix where all you had to do was add water.

And it was a complete bomb.

Betty Crocker couldn't understand it.

So they hired marketing help and they determined that the homemakers didn't feel like they were actually making anything.

They had lost their human agency.

They were being devalued.

What do you mean when you say we're all in the diaper business?

How are we marketing? How are we talking to people? What are we doing in our stores? And my question, I guess, is, do you have any thoughts or can you share with us what you see as the next, you know, how is AI affecting, I guess, our customers and how is AI changing things for the brick and mortar retailer from your point of view?

I think it's a big question.

It's an important question.

You know, I think there are a lot of advantages to AI.

I mean, I'm not against AI.

I think AI for me and my business, I have this image of myself as, as Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movie, where she wears that exoskeleton at the end, right? And she's bigger, she's badder, she's bolder, she can conquer more.

And AI is sort of like my exoskeleton.

you telling? Like you just said, maybe behind the scenes, where do you see that fitting in as far as building community and relationship trust is what we're talking about here, right? Yeah.

Some blockbuster corporate earnings

have us maybe a little bit excited.

And that's for sure.

The foundation of the current market rally has been basically on the back of a strong earnings season.

According to James Investment Research, data from FactSet has revealed that the S&P 500 Q1 profits grew by an astonishing 5%.

28.6% year-over-year, vastly outpacing the 13% that was what Wall Street originally expected going into that earnings season.

This marks the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit earnings growth, giving some fundamental... backing to the otherwise lofty market valuation that we're seeing and some statistics that i'd like to share according to that james investment research is that 85 percent of companies beat earnings which is above the five-year average of 78 percent and 81 of companies beat on their revenue estimates as well perhaps most importantly is the blended net profit margin for the businesses that have reported so far came in for the quarter at 14.8 percent That's a record, and it shows that corporate America is turning revenue into profit the most efficiently it ever has.

Bond markets, a big warning for

No.

This is where you have an exchange with your friends.

And here's what most people overlook.

Everybody's on social media.

Everybody's creating content.

And what you're trying to do with all your branding activities is create meaning between what you do and your customers.

And the most powerful way to do it, by far, is a community, and most companies are not even thinking about that, and it's uniquely human.

Mm-hmm.

talking to them about their condition and about what their need is for a prescription medication?

So it's really awesome for us to talk about this because I think the first thing is identifying, right? And like, we always talk about the treatment and we kind of get ahead of ourselves and wait until we're like, okay, you've seen it, but what does seeing it look like? And I think that helps connect the dots for our patients.

My biggest diagnosing technology is the phoropter.

And I think for practitioners, it needs to be because dry eye is a vision disease until proven otherwise.

If a patient is in the phoropter and you have to ask them which is better, one or two, and they have to blink between the different options in order for them to tell you that it's clear, we know that they have a dry eye problem right then and there.

Everything else is now just diagnosing that and proving what's the right therapy for us to move forward with.

We graduated in 2011.

and

Wow.

And we're, we're starting to see this now because people aren't able to think for themselves.

So this was a big one.

Now, related to that is human agency.

When AI can do everything for you, and it can do everything better than you, and we're...

I mean, we're...

This is starting to bubble up in the public conversations now, right? If AI could do everything better than me, like, then what's left for me? W- you know, uh, uh, am, am I really in control anymore? What's my meaning? What's my purpose? How do...

Okay.