Jess Gaedeke (00:00)
Welcome to the Dig In podcast. I am thrilled by my guest today. It truly feels like I'm going to try to interview Oprah, which you'll get what I mean here in just a second.

But I am joined today by Jo Lapore. She's EVP of global market expansion and foresight here at Dig Insights. And I am so excited to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for joining me.

Jo Lepore (00:21)
Jess, you're breaking the rules by having me on the show. I appreciate that. Looking forward to this.

Jess Gaedeke (00:24)
No, yeah, I am breaking the rule. We don't do

talking to dig, but this was this was too important to pass up. So thank you for joining.

Jo Lepore (00:31)
No, of course. And nothing like Oprah, just to the expectation for the list.

Jess Gaedeke (00:37)
we'll probably get into at some point, you know, you host a podcast. You've been such a influential speaker and presenter in our industry. So I'm going to do my best to keep up. And by kicking us off, I'm going to start with an impromptu question. I'm going to try and get you.

the last thing truly, honestly, you use chat GPT for?

Jo Lepore (00:54)
So I don't know if this is like a good answer to this or not for work, actually. So as part of the global market expansion for dig, one of the things that I'm doing is collecting a ton of data about the different markets, really focusing on the 12 that are priority for us right now.

And so I'm just using it to synthesize a whole bunch of information like consumer confidence and business operations and investment in research. And it's just helping me to collect all of that. And it's been actually a really helpful starting point for the research.

Jess Gaedeke (01:28)
Yeah, sounds like it. What would be the last frivolous use of chat with GPT used?

Jo Lepore (01:32)
Yeah, so my husband and I were having a competition the other night while we were watching Star Trek, because we're nerds that way. And we were like, okay, how do we like,

chat GPT out on a question? So we were like asking questions like, okay, an alien race has just landed on Earth. What should we do? We were trying to like compete on who,

can,

catch out ChatGPT in a better way. And it turns out, you know, like he was using ChatGPT, I was using Microsoft Copilot and the Copilot was performing a lot better in an alien invasion for anyone that's, you know, wondering who to go to for that kind of situation.

Jess Gaedeke (02:08)
There go.

You heard it here first. I like it. Well, thank you as always for teaching us new things, Jo So let's go back to the beginning. Walk us through your background and then tell us about your role today here at DIG.

Jo Lepore (02:20)
Yeah, so my background has been predominantly client sides are working for big brands leading anything to do with strategy, innovation and transformation. So McDonald's was my last organization before that it was Mars before that it was General Mills. So always sitting in a fairly traditional role inside of those businesses, like marketing or insights.

but always doing something a little bit different in those teams. always kind of like put my hand up or tasked with being that person that helps us to look at new opportunities or we want to stretch into a new category or a new market. And so what I have said to describe myself is that the running thread of my career is strategy and transformation because equally I'm trying to help.

a business or a brand to expand and grow in new areas. But I'm also at the same time doing change management. So helping them to think differently and be open to change. So that's been the running thread. And then in the last five years, you know, doing exclusively foresight and I basically kind of stumbled into the foresight world, fell in love with it. It's an amazing community that I'm still trying to, you know, get my feet in every possible foresight pond that there is. So I do a lot of things on the side with the foresight community.

And obviously in the last month, actually it's a month tomorrow. So happy, happy one month to me anniversary. I've been working with Dig Insights. And so

role at Dig is helping us to expand globally. So global market expansion essentially will mean if we're trying to be a truly global organization, because we're very prominent inside of North America.

How do we do that? Where do we start? How do we do it really intentionally? And what kind of a service offer do we really need? Do we need an office? Do we need people to best serve our multinational clients across the world? And then I'm using Foresight as part of that. So Foresight is all about looking just a little bit around the corner and ahead of the curve on what you might not be thinking about. So I'm applying the Foresight tools and methods to be able to help us to expand to say,

look at things like market volatility or emerging competitors that we might be up against or some of the challenges from a market operations perspective that our clients are dealing with. So using a little bit of that and then just starting to feed foresight into what we do at DIG by partnering with our trends and innovation team.

Jess Gaedeke (04:39)
Yeah, well, I know all of us are so excited to have you here for what it means for us as a company, but also just to work with a really kickass colleague. So thanks for being here as part of our company. And now we're going to dig into some of that background, Jo because, you know, as we were talking about this conversation, I was mentioning that really our listeners want to be inspired. They want to hear something that's going to help them think about their jobs in a different way. And I think one of the best ways to do that is to tell a story and to

Jo Lepore (04:48)
Thank

Jess Gaedeke (05:05)
to hear you talk about some of the experiences you've had. And as part of your background, you've been part of multiple launches into a new market, right? A new foray for a brand into a new space. And so really I'd love for you to tap into all those experiences and talk to us about the endeavor of expanding into new markets. Like where in the heck do you start? Like go to the beginning and talk to us about some of the things that you look at to even kick off that type of initiative.

Jo Lepore (05:31)
Yeah, so what's really interesting is I was listening to a prior episode that you did with

spoke about transformation and so much of what he was talking about really resonated with me and my journey in global expansion or entering new categories and new spaces. And the story that he told about transformation really resonated with me. So I don't want

copy his homework, but a lot of it is similar in the sense that, you know,

my story around helping organizations to expand into new areas really starts by understanding where the company is at today. What is the right role to play? What is the right fit for the organization in how it can grow? But then in partnership with people. And I think that's the bit that Nick really hit on that's so critical is that you really need to do the entire process end to end with people. So I say that to say, you know, as I kind of take you through the story,

you know, sometimes when you tell a story, sounds like it's all about you, like you came in and you saved the day, but it's always such a hugely collaborative effort, particularly if you're successful, if you're able to actually generate some change, then you couldn't have done it alone. So

guess like a good example of where I've done that is at an Australian company that I worked for a few years ago, I was doing ⁓ essentially innovation expansion for them. So we created a whole new

sub-segment of a category created new products. ⁓ And this was a dairy company at the time, Australia's biggest dairy company. We were operating mainly in categories like cheese and milk and yogurt and very, very prominent in those spaces and very much known for that kind of those core dairy types of products. So a new team was created that I stepped into.

where they said, we want to launch into new categories. We want to be seen as a brand that is highly innovative, that is doing different things. And so my task was to go after ready to go beverages. So I created, obviously with my marketing team and shout out to Adam Hamilton for that, is a whole portfolio of ready to go drinks in coffee, iced coffee and milkshakes.

So with that came a huge capital investment that we had to kind of get the business on board with to invest in new machinery, new packaging. And this packaging was really truly exceptional to the point where we won, I think in the end, 12 Innovation Awards, gained tremendous amount of share once we actually launched them into the Australia market. I think in our first six months, we were at 20 % share in a highly dominated category. So it was a really big win for Australia. But then the task was, OK, go and

sell that to Asia,

and

that into China. And this is an Australian company that has had no prior foray into this space other than through food service and commodities. So my task was really getting my head around that firstly. So how are those markets different to the way that we operate in Australia? Who are going to be my key partners? What are the distribution models like? What do consumers actually want?

and really mapping the landscape, understanding the dynamics of that operational environment and understanding consumers in that space. So what do they actually need? And so what's really interesting is that very quickly what I realized was, well, it's very different, particularly because we were starting with China and China was just such a fast growing but complex, highly competitive

And the challenge was grand, but also the product.

composition had to completely change when you were adjusting it to those markets. know, and I'm talking about a CPG product, but if you think about it, even as dig, when we're thinking about launching into another market, our service model, offer, our package, our pricing, everything needs to adjust to that market. So that was a big eye opening experience for me. And maybe, you know, one of the first major pieces of work that I did in helping us to expand internationally was

There are some things that you're going to have to tweak to make sure that you're relevant. But then there are other things that you just can't give up because they're a part of the core proposition of who you are and how you operate and the product that is a differentiator for you. So in the end, what we ended up doing was actually deciding not to launch it into

But I think it was the right decision because it just...

the amount of tweaking and tailoring that we would have had to have done would have just completely changed. And so we ended up launching a different product instead of drinks, we launched yogurts, we created a proposition that really ⁓ resonated with that market and allowed us to ⁓ pilot something. So I guess this is the other learning that I've had in anything where you're entering a new category or a new space geographically.

is that you kind of have to go in with your eyes wide open that this is going to be an experiment, that there are some things that you were just going to get really, really wrong. And that's okay because you're going to learn through that and then optimize it for the second iteration or the third iteration. So it's a really exciting challenge. And I think, you know, when I've been telling people, particularly with dig insights that I'm going to be leading global market expansion, and we're going to be looking at APAC to start, a lot of people have said,

I wouldn't know where to start with that. How do you do that? What do you do? And so I think going back to the very start of that story, it's just laying the land, figuring out what ground you're standing on and figuring out how do I better understand the potential white space opportunity that I'm going after here by just getting really close to it. So getting a lot of data, but also having a lot of conversations with people and trying to work out what is right.

for you to do in that expansion plan versus what is maybe something that isn't going to be a good fit so that you can pivot and find the right opportunity. So I've been lucky enough to obviously do that through a few different opportunities predominantly with innovation from an innovation mindset. And yeah, it's a really exciting, exciting journey.

Jess Gaedeke (11:11)
Yeah. Well, that example that you just described too, that must have been painful at some point to actually make the recommendation like, let's not do this. There were a lot of investment to explore and to validate and to make that recommendation. But it sounds like you really course-cracked it in a way that probably saved the organization a lot of time and money, not to mention some of the political and emotional things that go with the major launch that could go wrong.

Jo Lepore (11:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, and it's interesting too, because you know, you're sometimes in that situation, you're kind of stating the obvious and other people can see it, your stakeholders can see it, like there's a lot of pressure top down from leadership to go and launch this thing going like it's doing tremendously well in this market, or this category, go and scale it. But they can see it, they can see that this is like over engineered or overpriced, or it's going to take like take us way too much money to distribute in another market. So

Sometimes in that situation, you're really just the person that's calling out what everybody else is already thinking. And I'm always happy to play that role.

Jess Gaedeke (12:12)
So what are some other common pitfalls that you've seen organizations face when they're trying to enter a new market? What are some of the decisions that they make that might be not quite right?

Jo Lepore (12:21)
It's interesting because some of the more obvious ones are that you really need to spend the time in gathering the insights, if you will, in culturally understanding that market and how it's different. But a lot of the times, I think we maybe overestimate or over-engineer how big the differences are. And there are more similarities than differences, particularly if you're a multinational or a global organization. So that's maybe one thing is a little bit of overthinking. The other is this temptation to lift and shift.

So, a little bit related to what I just touched on before, but you know, you really need to examine the product that you're launching because the proposition might be the same and the unique selling point might be the same, but the way that you execute it might be different. So, ⁓ a great idea is not necessarily a scalable idea and that's okay, but it can be a tailored idea. And then the third thing I would say is probably.

think a lot of the times, and this is kind of going back to foresight and my passion for foresight is that we don't look at further down the line, the implications of when something could go wrong and just plan for that. And it's not necessarily expecting things to go wrong, but it's contingency planning. It's the best type of planning. That's how industries improve and evolve is they're constantly thinking about, you know, if this, then that, and in foresight, we have this great method around.

implications assessment called the futures wheel, which essentially helps us to take something and say, okay, well, if this happens, then the second implication is this. And then the third order implication is this. And you can keep going, which is really, really helpful when you're trying to foresee the potential problems that might arise and knowing that you're not going to potentially solve all of those problems. But you have it already in your head of how you might react to them or how you might be able to mitigate them.

Jess Gaedeke (14:03)
So what I love about that is it sounds like you're almost awarded by having healthy paranoia, which is something I'm a big fan of, honestly. I mean, to sort of scenario play, well, what if this happens? And it's a healthy thing, I think. So that's pretty cool. How do you measure success for these types of expansion strategies? Are there some sort of key milestones that you look at to say, yes, this was a job well done?

Jo Lepore (14:09)
⁓ Yeah.

mean, in

or in the more of a traditional environment where you're actually launching a physical product, it's a lot easier because you've got stage gate deliverables and you're, you generally, for example, another product that I was involved in launching across Asia was a skincare wipes when I was in a personal hygiene category. And so we were partnering with three other markets, including Japan, South Korea and Singapore to basically expand this product.

out. And so your KPIs are fairly set, which is really nice. It's nice to have those very clear targets around unit sales or distribution points that you're going to reach or even customers that you're to be able to approach with this product. So that's a little bit neater. I guess it's a little bit more challenging than when you're trying to gauge the success of more of a service offer that you're trying to expand into. And I mean, even if you think about, you know,

even in a retail environment where you're launching from one market to another and you're potentially opening new stores or you're offering a different type of product within an existing physical environment. It's a similar challenge in that you're trying to really understand how you're delivering to customer needs. So perhaps that is the most critical point of success that we should all be gauging ourselves on, no matter whether you're offering a physical product or a service, is you're trying to build a relationship, whether it's a B2B relationship or directly with that consumer.

So making sure that you have an ability to get feedback. And I mean, I think this is just a broader point of feedback that I have around being in business and being in service of a stakeholder is I don't think we take enough time to just get feedback from stakeholders, particularly big organizations that I've worked for. We struggle to even get feedback from our peers where I've heard this so much, you know, that

particularly younger people who are starting out in business, they are afraid to ask for feedback because they don't want to disappoint, whereas the feedback is helpful to you, right? Feedback is a gift. So I think it works the same way when you're looking at expansion plans, when you're looking at product launches, is you can't be afraid to get that feedback about what's working and what's not working, as long as you're in an environment where you are giving yourself enough room to iterate and fix the problem.

And obviously in a business environment where you have the trust with your peers and your stakeholders to be able to address the things that aren't working. I just think it's such a pivotal part in everything that we do, not even just expansion.

Jess Gaedeke (16:48)
so that's a really important lesson takeaway. Is there something else if you kind of reflect on all of your experiences and entering new markets and taking a brand into a new space? Like, what's your best word of advice or your takeaway that you think really stays at the top of what you keep in mind?

Jo Lepore (17:03)
maybe that's a good piece of advice just in general is use foresight. So what foresight allows you to do when you're approaching problems. And, know, by the way, I'm a huge advocate of applying foresight to other fields and other types of work. I think foresight can be applied by anyone in most projects, but what foresight allows you to do is first of all, yes, look longer term. Look at

Jess Gaedeke (17:07)
Yes.

Jo Lepore (17:27)
possible things that could go wrong, be the paranoid person in the room, but also be the optimist in the room. Because what foresight allows you to do is to set an end goal or a vision of what you want to achieve at the very end of this very long journey that sometimes is an expansion journey. It's very long, tedious, probably meanders through different paths that you didn't expect. so setting a vision of what, you know, what good looks like, what you're hoping to achieve with a sense of optimism and hope.

is really important, particularly when you're doing something that's very new and you're also maybe going back to the point that you made. You're trying to get a lot of people on board that might be unfamiliar or skeptical or just unwilling. When you're dealing with lot of personalities and particularly in a market expansion type of role, you're dealing with lots of diverse maturity levels, readiness levels, is having a sense of optimism and hope that you're

you can meet this goal and you can bring people along is a really important mindset to bring with you.

Jess Gaedeke (18:25)
Yeah, gosh, you have to use every single part of your brain and a lot of different personalities to probably tackle foresight in the most powerful way.

you know, as I was thinking about this conversation, Jo, I was like, what are some of the most naive questions I could give you on foresight? And I've got a couple if we're ready for them. ⁓ What's one of the wackiest things that you've looked at in terms of like, let's say you worked at the time for McDonald's and you're looking at this industry or you're looking at this cultural shift that was just like, how in the heck does have anything to do?

Jo Lepore (18:40)
Yeah.

Jess Gaedeke (18:58)
with the future of my business, but it absolutely had a connection. Like to share one those wacky things, because I just eat this up. I think it's just fascinating.

Jo Lepore (19:06)
Well, I'll give you two very different types of wacky, let's just say surprising tasks that I would have gotten. One would be, and this is something that insights people get a lot as well, you know, when people come up to you and they say, do you have any insights on X? Which is a very small question for a very big ask.

But I would often get like, can you give us the future of chicken or can you like, can you tell us what's happening in beverages? And you're like, okay, really small question for a very big ask. And that's actually not dissimilar to the second example, which is a very, very macro question. So what is the future of trade routes for our supply chain?

might be like a really, really hairy and interesting question. And so I think in both cases, what I would do is spend a little bit of time with the stakeholder to understand what question are they really trying to answer? What is their question versus the question that they're posing to me? And that has always allowed me to glean a little bit more insight into the real tension point that they're sensing. And generally what we find is that

If you think about the example that I gave around beverages or supply chains changing. In both cases, what these stakeholders have identified is a paradigm shift. A shift from one cultural norm where there's a certain expectation that's predictable and mainstream to something that's disrupting the space and that's causing instability and unpredictability in the space. What they're unsure about is they're stuck in the middle of that and they're not sure how far into the disruption are we.

What are the triggers of that? When should we act on that? How do I better get ready for this paradigm shift? And so it's been really helpful for me in every instance, in every type of question like that, that I get is just to spend a little bit of time with the people to say, you know, if we unpack one element of this massive paradigm shift that you're noticing, what is that bit that we could really help you to better understand? But yeah, that's, I guess that's a

business relevant question. I'll give you a funny one. I did meet with some farmers through McDonald's. was ⁓ lucky enough to sit with, I think it was about 15 farmers that they flew in from around the world and they brought me in. We had an open conversation with them, which was one of the absolute career highlights that I've ever had. But one of the farmers in the US asked

what do you think is going to happen?

with the local government in Texas taking land away from farmers to build houses. Like, is that going to continue? Like, I am not an expert on this topic. But even then, I think, you know, it just draws on the power of maybe two things, draws on the power of a great question, because I think, you know, he's not only thinking about himself, he's thinking about what's happening.

from a government perspective and some of these challenges around housing, population growth, et cetera. It also calls on the power of foresight to be able to go very, very broad because I could still answer that question. I just didn't give him an A or a B prediction, but I could speak to population growth and the dynamics between local governments and national governments. So that's the other really powerful thing about foresight is that it kind of arms you with lots of...

intelligence that can help you to answer other types of questions because it's reapplied knowledge.

Jess Gaedeke (22:36)
so interesting.

so I mean, what's your hot take on the future of the call it insights, call it foresight, call it trends and innovation like our industry that we operate in. I mean, if you were to boil it down, what's your hot take?

Jo Lepore (22:53)
Well, it's no doubt that there is ⁓ an obsession with efficiency right now, particularly as we see business operating environments become challenged in the next five to 10 years, I would say probably more five years. And on top of that, like a layer, we're facing ⁓ innovation and technology that feels urgent.

Maybe it's not urgent, it certainly feels urgent. Like we need to be applying this. So when you have cost pressure and you have a promise of greater efficiency, of course, business leaders are leaning into that. So it's understandable things like AI and technology adoption to help us to improve our processes and to be faster and better at making decisions. Of course, like who wouldn't want that? But I think that what it's now.

telling us is that there is a greater onus on business leaders to apply critical thinking to their work. Not only because there are issues with potential inaccuracy, poor decisions being made, perhaps some ethical consequences that we're starting to see. And this is kind of one of the things about looking at the future is that with every paradigm shift, there is a paradox where a new solution creates new problems.

So we're kind of finding that out right now. And I think with this obsession with efficiency, we're seeing the consequence of a loss of critical thinking and of creative thinking. The World Economic Forum released a future of jobs report at the start of the year. And this is one of the things that they highlighted is greater efficiency with technology integration into gathering insights and, you know, the helping us with so much data. We don't need to research things to death. We need to go and find out the things that are meaningfully impactful.

and then spend a little bit of time, you know, with our, ⁓ with other great minds to really interpret them for our business and to go and make decisions. Ultimately, that's another thing that we need to go and do more of is less thinking time, doing time, but the thinking, ⁓ you know, if we're not using that muscle, we're going to lose that muscle, right? That's just a fact. We know this about our

brain functions, about neurology, that we need to be practicing curiosity, critical thinking, the skills around resiliency, contingency planning, all of the stuff that we've been talking about. If you're not practicing that, then you're not gonna know how to do that in the most critical time when you need to know how to do that. So I think that there's a greater awareness of that, particularly if you think about for me,

When I came into insights and I kind of spent a little bit, a very tiny bit of time in a traditional insights role at Mars. And what I loved about it when I came into it and I felt like a massive imposter by the way, like people were coming up to me for research methodologies. And I'm like, like when my boss, another shout out to Roma.

Jess Gaedeke (25:27)
Thank

Jo Lepore (25:33)
When he said to me, you know, I want you to go and run a Merry Meco. And I'm like, what the hell is a Merry Meco? And he had to actually explain it to me. So massive imposter syndrome. But what I loved about that team and about insights in general is that we're problem solvers, right? Like the whole point of our existence is you have a problem. We're going to go and figure out why it's a problem and give you a pathway towards solving it. So if you think about that, can that be outsourced completely to our technology?

you know, no. So I think that there'll be more of an onus on that. And then I guess just a tiny, tiny second one would be a greater focus on long term thinking because the short term can be very attractive, particularly when you're in a financial crunch, or when you have a lot of pressure on you. Just solving a problem or putting out a fire can be very tempting. But as we know, with you know, one

One solution comes more problems. So thinking ahead, further down the line around what's coming and really thinking about what the legacy of your work and everyone has a legacy of their own work that they're leaving behind. What is that? What are you passing on to other people? And how are you foreseeing potentially the next fire so that you don't have to put it out? You can prevent it.

Jess Gaedeke (26:46)
So we're gonna move to the final dig. This is all about you as a consumer out there in the wild, so feel free to take off your professional hat for just a moment. ⁓ So what's the last product or service you bought on Impulse?

Jo Lepore (26:57)
A mug? I have no specific brand. I am just obsessed with mugs. ⁓ I buy way too many mugs. We went down to a cafe that nobody will ever know. It's a little tiny cafe in the middle of nowhere where there's like kangaroos and stuff around the corner from my house. And they had these handmade, beautiful, like detailed mugs. And I just had to buy it. My husband was laughing at me. Like you definitely do not need another mug, but.

Jess Gaedeke (26:58)
That's right.

Thank

Jo Lepore (27:24)
That's always my impulse purchase.

Jess Gaedeke (27:26)
Yeah, I'm sure moving those mugs on this last trek was not the fun part, but worth it. Yeah. What's a category or a brand that you could rationalize any price point for? You just have to have it in your life.

Jo Lepore (27:39)
Anything to do with my dog. So again, like alongside my collection of mugs, I have a collection of dog

like

Jess Gaedeke (27:46)
⁓

Jo Lepore (27:47)
dog is allowed on any piece of furniture as well, but she also gets her dedicated dog beds. At one point she had a better bed than we did because she had this orthopedic ⁓ sofa that actually looked like a proper sofa that was good for her back and hypoallergenic and all of these things. yeah, I don't,

Jess Gaedeke (28:02)
Oh my gosh.

Jo Lepore (28:07)
This is embarrassing, but I don't even look at the price tag. I'm like, she needs it. She needs to have that dog thing. She's very spoiled.

Jess Gaedeke (28:13)
Well, she doesn't know that. So it's good. She's got one up on us. We know that brands have distinct personalities. What's a brand that you would date and a brand that you

Jo Lepore (28:23)
A brand that I would date, would say Snickers because obviously I like because I worked for Mars, Snickers was always my favorite chocolate bar and it was always like fun but a little bit cheeky. So I feel like hanging out with the Snickers brand would be would be a lot of fun.

Jess Gaedeke (28:27)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, and the brand that you would marry?

Jo Lepore (28:45)
and yes, Mary. Yes.

so with that one, I'm going to go with something that's got longevity, that's got stability, quality, you know, a lot of care goes into it. It's an Australian, luxury brand called Auraton. So they make things like handbags and it's the reason I thought of them was because obviously coming back to Australia, ⁓ I have an Auraton bag that I invested in and

when I bought it, was a really big deal for me. It was like one of those points when you're in your career where you're like, I can actually afford to buy this. It's amazing and it's a treat and it's special. ⁓ But what I love most about it is the things that the brand stands for like sustainability, like quality, yeah, care and consideration and thinking about the, you know, the next generations that are going to inherit this Australian brand. So that's kind of, guess, like a little bit like a marriage where

you're marrying someone because you're in it for the long haul and the foundations of that have to be really strong.

Jess Gaedeke (29:50)
Yeah, it's about character in that case.

finally, Jo, what keeps you inspired at work? Like I said, we're so, so stoked that you're here at DIG. And so what keeps you going every day?

Jo Lepore (29:59)
Well, I'm actually, I'm super stoked to be at DIG as well. And I was actually going to say the same thing that I've loved so much meeting all of the smart people, including Jess, if anyone hasn't spent some time with Jess at DIG, I've got a ton of energy out of that. That keeps me really inspired. Every time I meet somebody new, I'm like, wow, they're really smart, which is awesome. And I guess more broadly, I love an unmapped adventure. So.

Jess Gaedeke (30:17)
No.

Jo Lepore (30:23)
I guess global market expansion is a really good role for me and foresight because I love getting a blank piece of paper ⁓ that other people might be like overwhelmed with and not know what to do with. That's my sweet spot. I love getting like getting into it and mapping that unmapped future. So yeah, I get a lot of energy back from that.

Jess Gaedeke (30:42)
That's awesome. I look forward to seeing that map very soon, Jo. So thank you for your partnership on all these things. And thanks for sharing all your wisdom and your inspiration here on Dig In today.

Jo Lepore (30:46)
you ⁓

Thank you so much Jess, love the conversation.