Ep 4. Nate Collier on Zen and the art of QVC

One of my favorite metaphors I refer back to often (origin unknown, but one must assume I picked it up on a social media channel/podcast/newsletter along on my path) goes like this:

Picture a toddler riding in a grocery store buggy, one of those gift-to-weary-parents unicorns that are made to look like a race car and have the steering wheels facing forward. Now visualize the parent who is actually driving the cart, smiling behind the toddler who is so intent on zooming through the store, fully convinced that their actions and sharp steering skills are the ones pushing the cart forward. Imagine that we are the toddler and the parent behind that cart is God - amused at our assuredness that we are forging our way and forcing life in the direction it "should" go when in reality there is such a wiser, more experienced driver guiding our path.

As someone who equally likes to live a nonlinear path but also is a frequent future projector, I have always found that metaphor to be very centering. My husband and I love to look back on our trail of life we have been on so far and marvel at the twists and turns - some big, some tiny - that have gotten us to where we are today. The pieces that you would never think would fit together but in retrospect make such perfect sense. Seeing the path has so strongly strengthened my faith in the feeling that I am not here to make the map, but to follow the little directions and roads less traveled to piece together the bigger picture. Living in awe and wonder for the past and excitement for what's around the next corner has been such a huge 180 for me. I shared about my lifelong attachment to anxiety here and plan to share more about it soon.

One of my favorite ways to deepen those feelings is listening to others who share a life route that seemingly forged itself. Today's conversation with Nate Collier is one of those gems. When I asked Nate for the interview, I was chasing the fascination with the cultural icon that is QVC. So many of us have found ourselves buying and selling in such new & foreign ways in the commerce world over the past decade, largely without a map, and when a map does appear, it tends to become obsolete before we get fully comfortable with implementing it. So what better place to draw past wisdom from than a network that blazed the trail for a whole new form of commerce? Whenever I found out my dear friend Cooper's husband was not only a QVC host but one for the unparalleled French cookware line, Le Creuset, the company where he also holds the title of Director of Marketing Communications & Culinary, I knew I had to learn so much more.

Nate gives us all of the behind-the-scenes scoop on what is going on behind the camera on live TV selling. I loved learning about how large the audience is still at QVC (16 million!!!!!), how many items they sell in a day (they recently sold $6 million on the network in a day in JANUARY - the armpit of retail months!!!!), how they are essentially flying blind and the more unscripted the better. But my favorite takeaway of all? Nate followed a nonlinear path of post-college confusion → working in restaurants while he "figured it out" → culinary school after love of said restaurant experience → back of the house/consulting after not wanting to live the entirety of his life in a kitchen → working his way up the marketing ladder at Le Creuset → being the QVC host for the brand for a decade. When he got the call to go on as a backup host, he thought, "Why not? What's the worst that could happen?" (Turns out a lot when there is fire and live TV involved, but luckily he hasn't bumped up against those odds yet.) He felt the nudge and had to give it a go. Turns out it was the perfect melting pot for his myriad of skills and life experiences. Where most people would rather get elective surgery than go in front of 16 million people (16 million!!!!!!) let alone cook live in front of those people, Nate found flow.

These are the stories that constantly inspire me and give me the fuel to keep pulling the proverbial thread. Would Nate have predicted he would be entering a decade of QVC hosting 11 years ago? Absolutely not. But here he is, with the road to how he got there only visible via hindsight. This was actually my most edited podcast - I am really a stickler about these conversations being in the 30-minute range, but there were so many tangents we went on with this interview. I am a marketer and non-traditional salesperson by day and a future analyst, amateur chef, and many fires in the coals stoker by night, so there were no shortage of topics we could nerd out over. And of course, I found parallels between QVC and AI in there too, as one does.

My goal is always for the takeaway to be "I've never thought about it that way," and that is just what this interview did for me. I have since watched way too many QVC airings on YouTube with such a fresh take and perspective. Thank you to Nate for taking the time in his busy day to share his story, and to you for taking the time in yours to read this newsletter and listen to this podcast.

Links!

What type of arm chair Oprah would I be if I didn’t go into Chef Nate/ Le Cresuet rabbit holes to prep for this interview. Here are some of my favorites:

• this clip from Nate on QVC (all the way back in 2016!) showing that you can fry in cast iron and my mind is blown!
• Saved this baked onion dip for my next event.
• These mini baking dishes are on my list as they are as adorable as they are impractical for my needs- a common theme for my unnecessary purchases. Also I’m a sucker for anything apple dessert related.

Find Nate on instagram and on his next airing on QVC, March 24!

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