 Early in my career, I used to think that I got the jobs that no one else wanted and then I figured out I got the jobs No one else could do. We are in one of the coolest places I think I've ever done an interview CEO of children's place Jane Elfer's here with us You are blowing it away here. You've been here since 2010. Mm-hmm How are you competing in this environment these days with Amazon with social media and yet you get people coming into these stores? You know what? I think it goes back to the strategy when I first came here in 2010 We put together a strategy and most of the strategy relies on self-help initiatives So there's four major pillars to the strategy. The first one is product first and foremost will always be our number one priority Number two business transformation through technology. So a lot of money and a lot of time invested in systems Number three was alternate channels of distribution when I first came here We were really just a kind of sleepy North American brick-and-mortar only retailer and we really we had no international business We had no franchise business We had no wholesale business and we had a very small penetration of our digital businesses And then the fourth pillar is fleet optimization and really looking at the fleet and understanding What is the appropriate amount of stores? We should have particularly with what's going on with digital and then those are as I said those are the four pillars And then what overlays those four pillars is talent and what underlays it is operational excellence So as I said a lot of that relies on self-help initiatives Not really what's going on in the macro world So we've been able to do a lot at children's place by helping ourselves Sears is going away So many of these stores couldn't do it You have to be benefiting from that. I gotta believe Well, there's certainly a lot of people, you know Sears isn't necessarily a major competitor of ours But when you look at some of the kids players that have gone out of business in the last five or six years A lot of people have tried to go into the kids business But they haven't been able to do it because they don't have a good understanding of the scale It takes to compete at these price points because it's a very promotional business I think our strategy of self-help coupled with such strong design and merchandising has kind of propelled us now to the Preeminent position in kids specialty retail. You have held multitude of leadership positions over the years I mean if you had to look back, what's the what was the hardest part of it all? Honestly, I think the hardest part of it was the CEO assignments I was given on broken businesses to turn around my first CEO job was Lord and Taylor Right I was 38 years old when I was made the CEO of Lord and Taylor and it was really broken and I had to make a lot of Bold decisions quickly probably a year and a half into that job I made the decision that we needed to close 40% of our stores. This is not going to work long term We're going to put this brand in jeopardy They had over expanded and we really needed to pull back the stores were not productive They weren't profitable and I still remember getting so many questions from people who just didn't understand Why would we ever be doing that? We have to close stores because you could see the future and you could see that this was going to Drag the rest of the chain down over time Like no one thought with all these regional department stores going out that Lord and Taylor would still be here And then at children's place it was the same thing when I came in 2010 so to be able to come in I don't think like I said, I don't think there's probably too many people back in 2010 Which would have thought that you know six or seven years later We would have quadrupled the stock and be at the top of our peer group So, you know stick to it stick to it persistence tenacity and a great team You know be aggressive be curious But find that passion and then if that's what you want to do and be in the business world That'll make your life much easier. What scares you or does anything scare you about when your daughter gets out? When our daughters get out there, are you worried that it's not going to change fast enough that they're going to be disappointed? I really don't think so because they are so encouraging. They are so confident and they are so Sure of themselves and so eager to get out there and like I said, I do you know I see it with my own daughter and I see how she interacts It just is a much more level playing field than it was when I was coming into business So I think they're starting out with that advantage of having that and I just don't think they're gonna let it happen I just think they're too curious and too confident and and They know what they want. Yeah, so I you know, they think they can change the world. I think they will