Here's my new podcast: How Sears Used Catalogs to Reshape America

I'm excited to announce the launch of Stratagems and the first episode.

Hello everyone 👋

I’m taking a break from our regular weekly emails to announce the launch of my new podcast, Stratagems. 

I have really enjoyed the research and creation of the first episode and my plan is to release seven more episodes for the first season. The first episode runs to two hours and half and it goes deep into the world around Sears in the late 19th century.

Each episode will deconstruct the strategy used by an organization to grow rapidly, dominate their industry or change the world around them. 

The first episode expands on one of the most popular articles of this newsletter: What the demise of Sears teaches us about strategy

Here’s more information about the first episode:

How Sears Used Catalogs to Reshape America

In the first ever Stratagems episode, we will deconstruct one of the most iconic American retailers of the past 150 years. However, this is not the big box Sears you may know. This is the mail order catalog Sears, before it ever opened a single retail store. This is the Sears that reshaped America during the early 19th century and was led by its iconic namesake founder: Richard Sears.

This episode will tell the story of how Richard founded Sears and how the organization grew to hundreds of million of dollars in revenue (billions today) by relying primarily on a single advertising channel: the Sears catalog.

However, a great strategy doesn’t last forever and we’ll be reminded of this lesson by the time we get to the end of the episode.

You can find the first episode of Stratagems anywhere you listen to podcasts and here’s a few links to the most popular apps.

Listen on your browser

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

Listen on Youtube

I included timestamps to make it easier to jump around to different sections or to jump back if you take a break along the way. You can also find a transcript in the web version of the podcast.

I would love to hear what you think, feel free to post a comment or send me an email.

Cheers,

Ruben