Amber Bradley: Listening to Serve

Amber Bradley has had a long career in the loss prevention and asset protection industry, but at heart she is still a marketer and “communication geek”. As Cathy Langley puts it, “she’s a marketing executive who has a passion for asset protection.”

Cathy Langley:

Welcome to Solink in the Cloud, where we are talking to industry leaders about topics that matter. I’m Cathy Langley, senior leader of asset Protection with Solink. Solink’s mission is to protect people, places, and profits, which is why we’re bringing together thought leaders within the loss prevention, asset protection and retail security industries to share their expertise and passion. So joining me today is Amber Bradley and Amber, for the audience of those folks who may not know who you are, which is probably rare, but please go ahead and introduce yourself.

Amber Bradley:

I don’t know about that. Amber Bradley host TalkLP, also owner of Calibration Group, which we’ll get into in a second. And executive director of the Restaurant Loss Prevention Security Association, who I love dearly.

Cathy Langley:

Thank you. Really appreciate your time today. So one thing I always find it so interesting, obviously we’ve known each other for a while now, but you have this different perspective than those of us either as a, not that you’re not a solution provider, but as somebody who is working to build the solutions and also the person in the chair running the show, you have this journalistic view of what’s going on in the industry. So let’s start with the question for the audience of what do you hear executives talking about now? What’s going on?

Amber Bradley:

Yeah, thank you for that because it is true that I’ve been in the industry over 20 years now, which is keeps making me so much older than I think I am. But it’s been awesome because like everybody else which a lot of the executives that I interview when you say, “How did you get started?” Of all the varying answers that they give, one remains the same, which is, “I fell into this career.” No one says “This was my laser beam.”, which is the same story for me as an observer, right? Wanted to always be a journalist. So it’s wonderful in the seat that I’m in and really being able to take a holistic view and hear insights from all different companies, all different executive perspectives. And it’s enlightening because when you think about, okay, what questions do you want to ask?

Some of the executives in this industry that are leading the way, most of the questions are pretty familiar. What’s cool is all of the answers are completely different. So when you think about priorities, what are people prior prioritizing in their strategies these days? It wouldn’t come to any surprise to you or your listeners that it’s safety number one, the increase in crime, especially post pandemic, the policing relationships, all of that as of late, safety of the employees and customers that they serve has been number one. Now what’s cool is that they talk about ways that they’re going about it in all different methods, whether it’s a focus on technology, a focus on awareness and training, or a focus on locking everything down, that it’s these keepers and all kinds of stuff. So it’s a really interesting mix of what they’re doing on the safety side.

The other thing that we spent a lot of time talking about, if your listeners haven’t checked out the podcast, we talk about how they get in their seat. I do interview people from all over the ladder, but on the VP side, I think what is so cool, there’s a couple themes. One is humility, and they’re not all squishy. They’re not all the squishy answers. But being humble, being able to surround themself with good people, which a lot of times is tough because that makes you take your ego out of something, which I think we both know about. It’s like taking your ego out to know, hey, if I surround myself with good people, that’s going to make me be even better. And then the other thing that I often find super interesting is the mixed experience that the executives have at that level, whether it’s they took a jaunt into operations or supply chain and then came back. Most of the folks’ careers that we talk about aren’t linear, which I think is cool, even within the same organization. So that’s super long. Should I take a breath so you get the chance to-

Cathy Langley:

No. You’re doing good. You’re on a roll. You’re on roll. But-

Amber Bradley:

I’m clearly very passionate about this industry. One WZ class, and I was hooked. That’s it.

Cathy Langley:

Well, it’s so, it’s so funny that you say that because I would’ve historically described you as, oh, she’s a marketing executive who has a passion for asset protection.

Amber Bradley:

I like that.

Cathy Langley:

That’s when somebody’s, “Oh, well, who’s Amber?” That’s the way I describe you. And I just know sometimes if I want a quick answer of, “Hey, what are you hearing on the street?” You’re my go-to, right?

Amber Bradley:

Oh, that’s cool.

Cathy Langley:

And I just think that you bring a really interesting perspective and you are not limiting your knowledge to any particular vertical, right?

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. I’m so grateful really to be, I’ve started this company over 10 years ago at this point. And then to really be able to interact with all of these executives, what’s crazy is, and I think about this, every interview I do is I’m so lucky to be the observer and not have to sit in the seat. I mean, the pressures and the responsibility on asset protection executives is immense. It’s just unbelievable getting more and more. So it’s one of those things where I’m like, “Okay, I’m a communication geek.” Marketing executive sounds so much better. But a communication geek that when I fell in love with this industry so many years ago, I said, “Okay, what can I do to serve this industry?” And for me, you and I talk about purpose a lot, and it’s one of those things where you think, “Okay, how do I take my skills and this company and serve?”

And for me, I am grateful to be able to do that in each of these facets, whether it’s serving as the executive director of RLPSA and being able to create content in a community and valuable information for those restaurants, battling it out every day with what they’ve got going on, or whether it’s the TalkLP news app where we’re creating consistently updating breaking news that LP people need to know about in the palm of their hand, which it is the first updating, continuous updating from thousands of sources and conveniently holds the podcast, might I mention?

But it’s that, or it’s on the calibration side doing awareness for retailers. That’s a huge passion of mine. I t’s one of those things where people go, “I didn’t know you did that.” What’s ironic though, Cathy, is that I don’t market it at all. So most people are like, “What?” And we are a leading provider of awareness and training. And for us, why that is such a passion is a perfect fold in to what’s going on these days. It’s safety. It’s safety. Most executives, and you well know sitting in the chair yourself, you don’t have a voice line of communication to your front end employee. They’re ones dealing all of this.

Cathy Langley:

Right. That’s one thing I was going to bring up is that it was always a constant challenge, right? Constant challenge of how do you get the message to the person, to the boots on the ground, not just in the AP team, in the store, the cashier, the store manager. And that has always been an, I think still for, again, a constant problem. And when you talk about being a communication, I was going to say-

Amber Bradley:

Geek. You can say it, it’s okay. I wear my geek-

Cathy Langley:

You say geek, I’m going to say guru.

Amber Bradley:

Oh I like guru, I didn’t even think of that.

Cathy Langley:

You’re like I own it, I own it.

Amber Bradley:

I didn’t even think of that.

Cathy Langley:

So when you talk about getting the message out, what have you found are some of the most successful methods? And I say that because as we all know, short chunks are better. People don’t do memos anymore, et cetera. The whole world, we’re communicating different. What have you found works better? And then how do you measure that? How do you know you’re winning?

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting because, and some of your listeners are going to roll their eyes and be like, “What a leading question, Cathy. She does awareness.”, which is true. But what’s interesting is I spent the first, I don’t know, nine and a half years of my company not really marketing the fact that we do awareness, but for us, it’s such a passion to get it out there now because we truly believe the purpose is saving lives. That’s where we’re at. And when you say, “What have we seen?” And in our process, that’s all custom awareness programs to where we go in and do focus groups. So, and in my former life, specializing in communication programs and training too, that I’ve done a lot of focus groups over a lot of different store environments, all different types of footprints, all different types of employees, which are motivated differently across generation.

But one thing remains consistent. If you’re still counting on an email that’s going to the store manager that then they need to distribute the message to your frontline employees, or it’s some kind of read and sign, you’re failing. It’s not working. People need to move beyond the pencil whip, unfortunately, because the store employees are saying that. You have to get, especially from a generational perspective, everybody’s different ways that they’re motivated and then package it in a perfect little solution that’s easily to digest, completely actionable and entertaining, because who wants to sit there and read something and then sign it, and they’re not even getting the information anyway. So you’re exactly right. Got to be short. It’s got to be impactful, completely actionable. Too many executives, you think about a mistake that executives in the chair sit. They want to stuff 17 million messages and one monthly communication when if you say, look, if your store employees were going to do just three things, and they really did them, wouldn’t that make a huge impact, you got 11 other months.

You know what I mean? So that’s huge that people need to change with the times and use the technology piece. I mean, our company has developed some proprietary technology to where people don’t have to get their IT department involved at all, and they can use a print vehicle to get a video into the hands of all of their folks and a quiz even. So it’s interesting that I think a lot of people lose the entertainment value, and they get into these policy wonks, it has to be 10 minutes long, and I have to tell them every single thing I could ever say to them. And it’s like, okay, that’s not important.

Cathy Langley:

It’s almost like the fear of the fear missing something. Yeah. You start with top three things, but then you’re like, “Well, yeah but”, “Well what if”, and then you end up back with 17 things.

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. And what’s cool, I look at it like our role, if you hire us in this capacity is to really be the frontline employees advocate. So there’s been meetings where I’ve been like, “You can’t say that. You got too much stuff in there.” Because we want our stuff to work. And you asked about measurement, and that’s super important. And of course, no executive is going to pull out every piece of technology or method of shrink reduction they use to measure how effective awareness is, right? And it’s kind of like an advertising campaign. Why does Coca-Cola put a billboard up? Everybody drinks coke mostly. I don’t know up north, maybe not, but it’s one of the best selling soft drinks in the world. Why are they advertising? Well, because it’s motoring in the back of your head when you get to the airport and you’ve seen 50 billboards on the way there that you’re thirsty and you grab a Coke.

It’s all part of the same mentality. And that’s where the communication geek kind of comes in, is that if you are measuring, oh, I have to know whether this works. How do you measure something that you prevented? Number one. So that’s kind of the question mark, but there are ways to do it. So we sit down with people and say, what’s killing you first? GL claims, worker comp claims, you need more hotline calls. You need the right hotline calls, or it’s downloads, participation, retention. There’s a million ways to do it. But if you’re only focusing on one metric and it’s not what you like to see, you still have to think out the world of measuring the things that you prevented. I don’t know, you prevented your employee from trying to stop a shoplifter. That shoplifter could have killed them. We’ve seen some tragic news as of late of that happening. So you’re preventing someone from causing a very bad situation, both from a safety perspective and a brand perspective. So that’s a total non-answer, are you going to ding me for that? Don’t ding me for that.

Cathy Langley:

No, I’m not going to ding you for that, but no. So everybody’s trying to do, we used to always say, “Oh, you have to do more with less.” But sometimes it’s more with the same. Budgets aren’t being expanded. I’m maybe not able to add or hire new people. Maybe I don’t even have the resources to use an expert like you. What are some of maybe your suggestions for the listeners to say, “Even if you have hardly any money, and how do I get an important safety message or an important shrink message or something out to my team, what can I do?”

Amber Bradley:

Yeah, it’s a great question. And at Apex last year, our asset protection executive exchange conference that we run brought to you by TalkLP, you know I had to do that.This is so near and dear to our heart. This safety message that we offered folks in that room, and I’ll put the same offer here on the podcast, is we will design your own custom safety poster. See something, say something type of thing that truly goes into behaviors of concern. Here’s the thing, Cathy, have you ever been in a Atlanta airport? And they say, “If you see signs of human trafficking, see something, say something.” I don’t know what human trafficking looks like. That’s the problem.

Cathy Langley:

Yeah, what am I looking for?

Amber Bradley:

So if you’re an LP executive and you’re like, “Okay, see something, say something.” What the hell does that mean? So it’s so important. And we’re talking about violence, active shooter, disruptive behavior, things that are happening more and more and that we have to help retailers get a hold of that. We offer to create a poster for them that we’ll send to them and then they can print, Kinko’s, but I don’t care, that’s like their own information because it goes into what people are supposed to report, behaviors of concern. “Okay, Freddy just said that he hates his manager and thinks he should die. I don’t know, every day for the last two weeks.” That’s a concern. And the problem is, most employees, like we would do, this is a human thing to give people the benefit of the doubt. Just having a bad day. Who know? They just woke up on the wrong side.

Oh, he’s always like that. He doesn’t really mean he’s going to shoot up the place. Problem is we don’t know, right? So for us, it’s super, just start small. You don’t need augmented reality crap. All you need is a poster in your break room that hits an emotional appeal and says, “Please look for these behaviors and let us know. It’s anonymous.” start small. It’s a poster in a break room. We’ll design it for you if we don’t have your communications people do it. Right? That’s important. And then constantly reiterating that with high level folks, which is you’re going to win if your top person that your stores are energized from says this is important. So of course, that’s a big deal. On the internal side, you have to have support. But even if you don’t, get the damn poster in the break room, please, where they know that you care and someone’s going to understand why to call. So clearly I’m passionate about it.

Cathy Langley:

Well, and I was just going to say, because you made a point to say to show that you care, and a piece of that is it’s leadership. you can’t pretend to care. You have to genuinely-

Amber Bradley:

They’ll see right through you/

Cathy Langley:

They will totally see right through you, and you’ve just minimized not just that lesson, any previous lesson, you have to actually care, safety, shrink all that it, genuinely care. And then I’m going to say be transparent. Transparency, yeah. And keeping it real.

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. That’s huge. I think that’s partly why people have absorbed our podcast so much is because it is the unscripted side of LP. If you know me at all, I don’t edit these things. What’d you say? You’re like, “Oh, you’re confident.” I was like, “Well, it’s kind of reckless abandon.” It actually works out though, because I like the real stuff. The scripted stuff to me is a little less valuable. Valuable, but a little less in my opinion. And this is my bag. Being able to just be real. I think it’s important. And it translates the same concept to your employees. You put up the poster that says, “Snitches get stitches.”, or “You’re going to jail, we’re going to drag you out of here.” Not building a lot of trust there. If there are people in handcuffs, in visuals in your break room, might need a little updating. In case you haven’t seen, you need to maybe go listen to Brene Brown’s TED Talk and get a little vulnerable, because that’s where everybody is these days. You know.

Cathy Langley:

Absolutely. So I’m going to wrap things up here a little bit and I want to ask you, so we step back, your professional life, my professional life, we’re constantly assessing what can we do better? Gee, how did I do, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes reckless abandonment, true. But I’m a huge fan of stop, start and continue. So when am I going to start? When am I going to stop? When am I going to continue?

Amber Bradley:

I love this.

Cathy Langley:

So from a personal perspective, so we just talked about the industry that we love, from a personal perspective, can you share with us a stop, start and continue?

Amber Bradley:

Okay, I will. And then you’ll have to call me out-

Cathy Langley:

In Amber’s world.

Amber Bradley:

…if you don’t think they’re personal enough. And what’s funny is, as extroverted as I am business wise, I’m relatively private, personal wise. You get kicked into the teeth enough to know that you got to protect that side of yourself. But I will tell you, so my stop is giving into unreasonable requests.

Cathy Langley:

That applies personal and professional, right?

Amber Bradley:

You’re damn right. There it is, yeah. You might have to believe that. I don’t know. But yes-

Cathy Langley:

I need to interrupt here real quick. Unreasonable request that almost falls into the your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency concept.

Amber Bradley:

Yes. And I will also say that, see, you can tell when I stop talking, I’m really working hard to put something in the political way it should be. But a lot of times, I think especially women in the industry, and don’t roll your eyes, dudes, don’t freak out. This isn’t going too far over the cliff. But I think sometimes you have to step into your own and own it, even though people are still maybe treating you a little less than the respect that you deserve.

So you got to step into it and actually say, “No, no, I’m not going to do that.”, because you, not you, the collective you, should meet me where I am. Which is I’ve been around and I feel like a student of the industry. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, I’m going to stop giving into unreasonable requests. That’s me.

Cathy Langley:

Okay. That’s good. That’s good.

Amber Bradley:

So, the start. I’m going to start telling people what I do, which is part of this podcast. And I think for me, I’m going to start taking more time to thoughtfully prepare and read for my day. I typically, I’m getting up and I like to sleep as anyone that knows they’re getting emails from me at 2:00 in the morning because I’m a night owl. I like the night owl scene. So I’m going to start trying to be a morning more morning person to kind of set up my day. So that’s personal, isn’t it?

Cathy Langley:

Yeah, that’s personal. And you can call me anytime in the morning, Amber. Anytime.

Amber Bradley:

Oh god. So you’re a morning person then.

Cathy Langley:

I am a morning person.

Amber Bradley:

You’re up with the sun.

Cathy Langley:

And I like it.

Amber Bradley:

Oh god.

Cathy Langley:

I’m up before the sun, by the way. But yes.

Amber Bradley:

Before. I’m trying Cathy, and as the older I get, I can’t sleep as long. I don’t know why that is. I saw this meme that was hilarious. It was like, the only reason I’m getting up is that my bladder is making me, is that crude? Anyway, okay. Continue.

I will say this is personal and professional. Grinding. I’m in a time of life that is like, it’s a grind to keep everything going and moving. You get personal stuff going on that you’re trying to get settled and building things. It’s like, okay, that’s a bit of a grind to make sure everything stays together, it’s a beautiful, happy grind that I love. But it’s same with work. I feel so grateful and humbled to be able to do what I do. But it is several things, spinning at the same time, which I love deeply, TalkLP, RLPSA, Apex, that’s a budding. The TalkLP is taking off wildfire from an app perspective. And for me the grind is being better. How do we continue to be better and constantly providing and serving this industry with stuff they need to know. So I don’t know. That’s more personal than I wanted to get, but good for you.

Cathy Langley:

Nice. I feel like I won. I’m just kidding.

Amber Bradley:

Winning. Hashtag winning.

Cathy Langley:

Winning. No, but it’s interesting because we’re new in this podcast scene here with Solink, but at the same time, just the people that I’ve chatted with that will be future guests and when I bridge the idea of a stop start and continue, although they do touch personal, it always comes back to the professional aspect. It’s hard, it’s hard to go to assess when you are in, first of all, an industry that you absolutely love. You love, I love. That’s the one thing about AP. Nobody planned to be here, but once we got a taste of it, you said one WZ class and I’m in. Once you get a taste of it, you just, you’re in it because you do love it, you enjoy it.

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. thanks Wayne Hoover, you pulled me in with your little mind melding. But look, I don’t think anyone in LP, AP has a hobby. I don’t have any hobbies.I like to work. What am I going to do? Go play pickleball? I don’t know. I’d rather be working.

Cathy Langley:

Yeah. It’s funny. Most people who know me know that I worked with Bobo for a decade or so, and we used to laugh because we had an AP operations manager, Stacy, who used to say, “Hey, we need to stop and have fun. We need to pause and have everybody get together for fun.” And Bob and I are both like, “We are having fun.”

Amber Bradley:

This is it.

Cathy Langley:

He’s like, “But yeah, not everybody’s not crazy. Let’s just pause and get everybody together for a social event.” We’re like, “Oh, that’s good too. Yeah, you plan it. We’ll be there.”

Amber Bradley:

Yeah. I’m like, TalkLP ladies night in, that’s my socialness.

Cathy Langley:

That’s right. That is social right there.

Amber Bradley:

Yeah.

Cathy Langley:

So yeah.

Amber Bradley:

My daughter’s like, ‘Mom, you don’t have any friends.’ I’m like, ‘I do. They just don’t live here. They’re all over the country. And we get on Zoom.’

Cathy Langley:

You have to bring her into ladies night in.

Amber Bradley:

I am like these re them.

Cathy Langley:

“Here are my friends.” Yeah. That’s right.

Amber Bradley:

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Cathy Langley:

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Amber Bradley:

I’ll come back anytime and talk about myself.

Cathy Langley:

Wonderful. I love that. Thank you Amber. Always appreciate it.

Amber Bradley:

Thanks Cathy.