Ingrid: [00:00:19] Hello and welcome to Infinite Shelf, the human-centric retail podcast. I'm your host, Ingrid Milman Cordy, and I'm here with the lovely, brilliant co-host for Season 3, Orchid Bertelsen. How are you doing? I'm excited for today's topic. I feel like we've been teasing.

Orchid: [00:00:36] I'm so excited. Like this is the thing. I mean, what are some famous duos in history? Let's say there's Muhammad Ali and like literally anybody... Why am I trying to find a sports one?

Ingrid: [00:00:52] Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.

Orchid: [00:00:55] Okay. Yeah, that's a good one. That also really dates us because I think there's a certain time in my life where I paid attention to, let's say, basketball, and it was definitely the 90s when the Chicago Bulls did their three-peat repeat.

Ingrid: [00:01:09] Oh, forget it. I'm like that... Growing up in that time period, you just it's basketball or nothing. So yeah, I mean, I definitely was not around during Magic Johnson, but I have been really into all those shows. So like Winning Time on HBO, have you?

Orchid: [00:01:27] Oh, so I love a good sports documentary. No, I have not.

Ingrid: [00:01:32] This is like, it's not quite a documentary. It's definitely based on the events. But it's a drama and it's just absolutely incredible and hilarious and fascinating. And it's all set in the, I don't know, late 70s, early 80s. This is how not connected to this I am. But anyway, the whole way that they produced it is like the film is grainy and this is not a television podcast, but in general, if you haven't watched Winning Time, including you Orchid, it is so good. It's such fun.

Orchid: [00:02:06] Okay okay okay I'm gonna hold you to it. I'm gonna put it on my list.

Ingrid: [00:02:10] And then we just finished the Air documentary. Like the Air Jordan documentary.

Orchid: [00:02:15] Oh, okay. All right.

Ingrid: [00:02:17] Also, the dramatic retelling of it, which is so good with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and Chris Tucker. And it's so good.

Orchid: [00:02:27] I feel like I'm learning so much about you right now.

Ingrid: [00:02:32] {laughter} Sports documentaries or sports entertainment...

Orchid: [00:02:36] Docu dramas. I think it's a genre.

Ingrid: [00:02:40] Anyway, so we've been teasing this long enough, even in this episode. But today, ba ba ba baaa {drumroll} is the day that we talk about, possibly argue about, we'll see, the symbiotic relationship between profitability and growth. And this is a tale as old as time. This has very little to do with DTC specifically. But DTC is, I would say, very much in the crosshairs of the two right now in terms of where it's at in its development and its impact on our businesses. And so I wanted to just spitball with you, Orhcid, on what your thoughts are. Can both exist at the same time? Does one need to be sacrificed for the other? What are your thoughts and experiences?

Orchid: [00:03:37] Oh, okay. We're going to do this. Yeah, I think we're going to debate this. I don't know. I feel like when we first started talking about it, I was like, yes, profitable growth is a thing. You can absolutely have both at the exact same time. And now that we've kind of had multiple conversations about it, I think I might be in the camp of you can have both, but not at the same time. So it's kind of like that saying where people say, "Yes, you can have everything in your life, just not at the same time." You have to make sacrifices in their trade-offs. And the reason I started with, hey, profitable growth is a thing is because years ago, I had a CEO who was like, "Hey, the marching order for the year is growth. And so we saw a lot of top line growth, but we also just invested a lot in the business. And so we had to come back a year later and say, "Okay, cool, cool, cool. This year it's about profitable growth," because he's like, "Y'all didn't manage the bottom line." And I was like, "Oh, that is a fair point." And so I always thought that that was achievable. But now that I'm in the situation where I get to work with and for a lot of different companies at different stages of their life cycle, at different sizes and different industries, I feel like the hardest part is that you have to make trade-offs. And so sometimes, yes, it's all about profitability and maximizing profitability. And then sometimes you do have to, if growth is the primary objective, you absolutely have to invest at the sacrifice of profitability. It doesn't mean that you're not you're going to go from profitable to not profitable, but it might mean that you're operating at like a 20% margin. And then all of a sudden, for like the next quarter, you have to go down to 10% because you're actually going to reinvest in the business. So I do believe that profitability and growth,  [00:05:36]profitability is like a pant leg and then growth is like the other pant leg of a pair of tight pants. This is a Friends reference. And so in order to have one, you kind of have to pull one leg up and kind of scrunch it and like pull it a little bit. And that's like profitability. And it's like, okay, well now we're going to do growth. So now I'm going to switch the other leg and I'm kind of pull it up a little bit. So I don't think you can put both legs in and jump up and pull up the pants at the same time. [00:06:04]

Ingrid: [00:06:05] I think so. You know, the conversation's over because I totally agree, actually. But no, I don't actually think it is. But I think we're probably closer than we maybe were originally. So like my view is quite similar to that. I would say that you definitely cannot maximize both at the same time. One has to sort of take the backseat to the other just by definition, unfortunately, unless there's like a really unique and special sort of existential situation that truly actually was the case for, I would say, from like 2012 to 2017 or 18, where the cost of acquisition was stupidly low, and so there were companies that were genuinely growing profitably because it was so efficient and inexpensive and under-tapped in how you can acquire people through primarily digital channels. So the cost of acquisition on Facebook and the cost of acquisition on even just other collective digital media, Google included, were much, much, much less expensive, and then obviously the market did what the market does, which is the cost rose to the demand. And so now you can't acquire and grow as fast and as profitably as you once did. And I think that's when certain people who have always kind of had it out for the DTC businesses or the DTC business style of the world sat back in their chairs and went, "Ha ha, I knew it. The DTC thing was just a flash in the pan." And I think that's fair. And there were a lot of tailwinds that made DTC explode faster and more profitably than anyone else had seen before, probably in a very long time. But it sort of caught up with us and it went from being really, really kind of like stupid, easy. You had like this template that brands had created with this sans serif font and the like colors and we can all...

Orchid: [00:08:33] Pastels. Always pastels.

Ingrid: [00:08:35] Millennial pink and pastels. And [00:08:36] it was just this very rinse and repeat playbook mixed with a really low acquisition rate that really did set a lot of these companies up for success that maybe in a different environment with different circumstances wouldn't have been accomplishable, but that doesn't now mean that now that things aren't wildly easy, that the business model itself doesn't make sense if it can't be sustained in the wildly easy world. [00:09:08] I just think that we now have to really have these sober conversations around how we look at growth, when we look at growth and hit that button or pull that pant leg up versus the profitability side. And when we switch into that and knowing that that is just by definition going to slow growth. And I think that's the piece that a lot of companies and executives that I talk to and am exposed to are dealing with right now. They don't know what that balance is and they're a little bit still, some of them not all of them, a little bit still expecting the high growth, high profit times that existed five, ten years ago.

Orchid: [00:09:55] Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think, too, I think that's a really good point. Whereas, hey, there's a time and a place for profitable growth at the percentage and the rate that we were seeing it at. And those times don't exist right now. Right now it is all about the season of making difficult decisions. And so I would say that yes, part of it was absolutely the DTC space where it was like growth no matter the cost, like all those things. I think Amazon continues to be bandied about as an example of well, why Amazon didn't make a profit for a long time because they grew. And that is the worst example to use. So y'all please for the love of God, don't use the Amazon, don't use the Amazon as the example. Don't use Nike as an example. They're just they're just anomalies. They're outliers, right? They're not the norm. And I think that's why they're so amazing in a lot of ways. But I do think this idea of like, hey, profitability or growth, I mean, you kind of saw that a lot last year where we had some clients that had venture dollars or were venture-backed, and for the first quarter of the year, our mandate was just to grow the top line as much as we could as quickly as we could, and then come I want to say like probably about July, then all of a sudden they're like, "Hey, we actually need to focus on profitability." And that's not a switch that you flip overnight, especially when I think what you're saying too, is that quote that we referenced, right? You don't know who's swimming naked until the tide goes out. And so in a high-growth environment, you're maybe not looking at your business fundamentals. You're not looking through your PNL and being very diligent and conservative about the cost that you can control. Because you know what? Tomorrow's another day and you know you're going to have to make some sacrifices, and so [00:11:53] when you make that pivot from a growth to a profitability play, now you're kind of doing a wild swing of the pendulum. How you operate in that environment is also extremely, extremely different. [00:12:07]

Ingrid: [00:12:52] Everyone in the organization needs to be aware of when that swing is happening and what happens as a result. Because who's going to be the most frustrated by this is the marketing team because they're going to go, "Holy crap, we just made all of this momentum and you're going to stop this momentum because you're thinking about profitability now?" But if you truly map it out with your marketing leaders and your marketing organization and go, "Look, we're going to put the pedal to the metal on growth right now, we're going to overinvest, the KPI is just like growth, growth, growth, growth, growth, but then be prepared that in 18 months or whatever it is, six months, 12 months, 18 months, that's going to change drastically." And so having everyone at least have that seed planted and it's not just like, oh, one day the CEO comes in after a board meeting or like some business Harvard Review document that he read or something like that or she read... Just like, "Oh, I need to start thinking about profitability all of a sudden. Now you guys need to change your strategy." I think that not only is it better people management and expectation management, but it's also better business management. So going into your growth period, knowing when you want to maybe slow that down or what triggers you want to see or what milestones you want to get to, to then go back toward the profitability piece to actually drive it, you're operating an airplane. And you're the pilot, and so [00:14:33] when you're in great weather, you're going to speed it up. When you're getting to a stormy place and some macro things happen or you need to buckle up for something, you make those adjustments while you're in flight and that is real leadership. And that's the piece that I think we don't always look at with such a holistic lens. I think we at every level tend to be really, really time-bound. [00:15:01]

Orchid: [00:15:02] Yeah, I agree. And I think too because we experienced this on the agency side. Now running a people services business has its own dynamics that are different from DTC, of course. But when you make that switch from top-line revenue growth to profitability, it means that your set of levers is going to change. And I also agree that the entire company needs to understand that the environment is different and that they're going to be asked to behave differently because in a profitability environment, it's really about, hey, what's a nice to have versus what's a must have? Because just as in marketing, when you are running a business, you just need to know hey, let's say I have $5, if I invest it in here, what's my return going to be versus if I invested over there? And so in a profitability environment, there are certain indicators you start to see, which is like GNA starts to get have to go through a business proposal, a business case. You have to start rationalizing hey, if I want to spend this money, what is the return that we're going to have on this on this money? How much? And you have to do your due diligence a bit more than in, let's say, high tide times and high growth times. It's more of a waving of the hand because it's the cost of doing business and the cost of growth. And so if you're switching from a high growth to profitability environment, those KPIs have to follow. Your team needs to understand that, hey, you're actually going to move from, if we use the airplane analogy... We're going to use from like this set of instruments to now you're going to shift your seat over and you're going to use a different set of instruments. And if anybody is out of line with that mandate or that understanding, there's going to be frustration internally and it's actually going to slow down your progress from really focusing and like maximizing profitability as much as you can.

Ingrid: [00:17:09] Totally. Totally. So I think we're kind of we're pretty aligned here, to be honest.

Orchid: [00:17:14] Well, you're very convincing because I was not there. I was like, "Yeah, of course, you can have both at the same time. Everything is great." And then 2022 happened, and then you made me reflect on it, which I appreciate. And I was like, "I think Ingrid's right on this one."

Ingrid: [00:17:30] I'll take the W on this one. I'm sure there's plenty of, I feel like there's already been stuff where you're like, actually, Orchid did make a really good point about that. But yeah, I feel mega strongly about the difference and just being aware of which phase you're in, or at least the first thing is, yes, having the honest conversation of both are not possible or they actually are possible in a short term plan. So like if you really, really want to hit the growth and profitability, you can probably do that for 12 months. What that will do to the people in your organization...

Orchid: [00:18:13] I was going to say there's a cost to that.

Ingrid: [00:18:16] That's what I mean, the undocumented costs of that that will eventually catch up with you from every angle is not ideal, so if you really are in a situation where you're pressed and you need to do both, I'm not saying it's impossible, I just think it's a really bad idea.

Orchid: [00:18:35] Well, I would love to talk through the implications of that. Because I think in business and in CPG and DTC, you kind of think about the product, but you really don't think about the people behind the product, candidly. And so when you're in a profitable growth environment or let's look at 2022. There's this saying, right, it's like do more with less that. I think a lot of us who have been in the corporate world for a long time, you kind of shudder at that a little bit. But we were in an environment last year where that was absolutely true. We had to deliver better and more focused results while having less of that padded cushion, nice to have things that kind of got, you know, or the cost that got kind of approved because it was fine to now everything is under a microscope. So like in your experience, what are the hidden costs of doing more with less?

Ingrid: [00:19:39] When I'm talking about... And I think you're not saying this, but I just want to clear the air here because it kind of touched on a point that I sometimes think gets conflated with this. I am not talking about wildly overpaid, cushy leaders and people who just are building empires to build empires and hiring people that you don't fully have a plan to utilize, and then you just end up becoming fat and happy. And so that's where it becomes really easy to do growth and profitability at the same time because you've just accumulated so many extra fat and calories in your... And this has become a fat shaming podcast. Sorry, I don't mean that. I just mean that it's the overabundance of people and processes and bureaucracy and decision-making. That I have very little patience for. So whatever you're doing toward profitability to get the best team on it, get the right people in the right positions, reduce redundancy in process and potentially in people, all of that stuff I really always think is going to benefit organizations. When I'm talking about the impossibility between growth and profitability being a long-term strategy, I'm more talking about the fact that you are either spending a lot of money on marketing, and let's face it, no one actually still knows, even with all the sophistication and data and attribution and all that, what part of your marketing puzzle is doing the most until you actually do it. You have to fire on all of the cylinders and then you start to get a better year-after-year understanding of what is working, what's not working, and what can be invested in less, and then that's when you start cutting a little bit into the profitability. But assuming that you go into that growth period with a path toward profitability, knowing, okay, we're going to flip the switch, here are all the things that need to be true, or here are all the things that need to change when that happens. And so you have a clear sense of like what you were saying, which toolset you're using and which KPIs you're using and which milestones are going to be shifted versus like making it up as you go along of like, oh, okay, we've spent way too much last year and now we need to scale it back for the books or whatever, which is nothing. There's nothing less strategic than that.

Orchid: [00:22:31] {laughteer} I mean, I was like, I don't know, I've seen some very non-strategic things, but no, no. True.

Ingrid: [00:22:39] You're just literally being like, "We spend too much money. Oh shit."

Orchid: [00:22:42] Yeah. No, no, I think that's totally fair. And so I think like what's interesting too, I want to go back to your earlier point about acquisition costs just really skyrocketing. And that environment where cheap growth or cheap user acquisition through social media, those days are either done or they'll come back in some limited fashion, but not really. And so I think one of those indicators that was happening and this felt like it was really in vogue I want to say three, four years ago, maybe three years ago, was the idea of growth hacking. Remember when that term was being bandied about relentlessly?

Ingrid: [00:23:24] It was people who were getting titles like Chief Growth Hacker.

Orchid: [00:23:29] Yeah, like what? And they're like, "Well, I went on Reddit and I added this link," and you're like, "What are you talking about?" But I do think it's an interesting thought, though, because I think this idea of finding growth in unexpected places, I think that still is true. My question is where are those opportunities as you see them now? Do you think they still exist? Where do you think they exist if you think they exist at all?

Ingrid: [00:23:56] I mean, it's the most boring answer ever. And I'm sorry, but it's TikTok, obviously. It just is right now. But media itself is in a very weird place. We had a whole conversation about that in our previous episode. If you haven't listened, you should, the audience, you guys should listen back. We had a whole conversation about just media changing and remember media and marketing are really, really, you know, they're two sides of the same coin, we need each other. And so [00:24:31] when there's a huge change in media and where people are spending their time and all of that, that's going to, of course, change marketing and how we connect to the people and get the eyeballs and the attention and the specific audiences that we want. And so the two places today that I feel are "the safest place" still are actual, really, really, really good creator and influencer marketing. And the channel in which that is the least expensive today is TikTok and potentially even still YouTube. [00:25:11] And then yeah, there's Reddit, like the scale on Reddit I don't think is as where you need it.

Orchid: [00:25:16] No, no, no. I was just making an example of that for sure.

Ingrid: [00:25:21] But I love that you said Reddit because it is actually so under-tapped. Reddit is a treasure trove of highly, highly influential and highly marketable people because they're actually there for conversation and solutions. If having a search term, a generic search term is important to you, having an entire forum around that search term, wouldn't that be even more interesting? But again, there are scalability issues. But that's sort of in my mind today. And I don't think that's going to be longer term because media does what media does and it kind of grows back up and comes back down. But that is the safest bet today, at least in my view, for an acquisition strategy. So what's coming to mind when we start talking about acquisition channels and CPA and CPC and all of these things that are frankly just very, very technical in terms of probably more performance marketing than anything is, we have to be able to look at all of our practices, whether it is marketing or product development or innovation or whatever, through a very clear lens of whether something is driving profitability or driving growth or driving profitable growth. They are actually three things. They're not all mutually exclusive. The two are. And then there's the middle of the spectrum, and that's where you start to hopefully like that middle gets bigger. But it's tough to make that middle expand. Usually, you're somewhere on the left or the right side of the spectrum. But so an example of this sorry, I'm getting really heady is like taking a search term, let's say a generic search term that is not branded and is going to be more expensive.

Orchid: [00:27:16] I was going to say that sounds expensive. {laughter}

Ingrid: [00:27:17] That sounds expensive. Exactly. Right. And you're right to think that because usually it is, especially when you're in health and wellness and don't even talk about how much it costs to bid on "protein," "clean protein," whatever. Anyway, don't do that, you guys. It's really expensive. And so basically what I'm trying to say is that if you look at investing in that generic search term from all the way on the profitability end of the spectrum you're never going to bid on that search term. It's never the math is just never going to work out. And so you have to understandably and sort of soberly know that when you're investing in a search term like that, this is a very technical example, but when you're investing in a search term like that, that's a growth thing. You're trying to get on people's radar of which you're not already on their radar. And [00:28:17] if you are not ever in growth mode and you're always in profitability mode, that is limiting. You're never going to be able to expand outside because you're always going to be looking at things that give you a 4X ROAS or a 7X ROAS or even a 2.5X ROAS because you're playing in a really safe, shallow pool and that's okay but know what the consequences of that are. [00:28:51]

Orchid: [00:28:52] I have so many thoughts. I have so many thoughts about the example that you gave regarding search. Because when you go after a broad category and I think even not even category specific, but let's say a search term like "back to school," which I hate how much money it takes to really win that, especially during back to school season. But I think part of it is how people and how brands talk about using search as a strategic channel. So you could use it for awareness, way less efficient because what you're trying to do is get on people's radars when they are generally searching for something. so we can even use furniture as an example. If I'm searching for a sectional, a velvet sectional, sure, it's going to be more expensive because there are...

Ingrid: [00:29:40] You know it's going to be mohair.

Orchid: [00:29:42] Of course, obviously. But yeah, I mean, I don't know what the consideration set is because I know the brands that I know like Interior Define, IRK decor, or Jonathan Adler but I might not know Six Penny is a new brand. And so you could if you're Six Penny, you could go after that search term knowing it's going to be more expensive. But what you're trying to do is get on someone's radar. Now, when can you actually attribute a final purchase to that initial click? Hard to say. But then on the other far end of the spectrum, you could go with branded terms. People already know your brand. They already, you know, are going there. But branded terms are more of a defense. And I think a lot of clients will also say, "Why do I have to pay for that? Someone's already searching for my brand." And that just comes into play if you're trying to position your DTC channel versus your retailer channels and trying to compete there, whatever that looks like.

Ingrid: [00:30:40] You have to think about what does effective in this context mean?

Orchid: [00:30:45] Yes {laughter}

Ingrid: [00:30:45] Does effective mean you are driving a purchase with that effective goal or are you driving consideration on are you getting people to come to your site? The long tail type of product decision making, like buying cars, buying sofas, sectionals, like those types of things, you're not always going to measure every... I would hope. I would advise that you're not always going to measure everything off of the actual purchase. You're going to measure things off of are people watching this video for longer than they're required to? Are people clicking into the website? You know, that infamous engagement KPI that I think a lot of maybe more senior leaders or like venture capitalists hate because it did get overused and overplayed. But [00:31:33] there's a reason why marketers have cared about engagement because it signifies that you're doing something right and you just need to do more of it to that same group in different ways. [00:31:46]

Orchid: [00:31:46] Yeah, totally agree. But I feel like where my head is at is that that's an entire other episode on attribution.

Ingrid: [00:31:54] We witnessed some interesting news today. Do you want to share? Or not today, but this week. Do you want to share what you saw on the Internet about your boy, Zuck?

Orchid: [00:32:06] Ugh. I would not describe him as my boy. It is funny, though, because I think we're relatively the same age if within a year or two of each other. So I did used to think that I was competing against him and then my husband was like, "Well, that's dumb." I was like, "Yeah, you're right. That's probably kind of dumb. I think that ship has sailed." But no, I mean, I think one funny thing that came out that is pertinent to this situation is that Zuck started talking about profitable growth as their focus for meta over the course of the next year. And I think, we gave previous examples about Amazon growing without turning a profit and just overall tech, the drumbeat was growth no matter the cost. And it's just really interesting that especially in this economic environment, which I don't know if anyone knows how to describe it, profitable growth is now everybody's mantra. So I thought that was funny. And then the other funny thing that is not pertinent to this conversation, and I actually don't know how it's related, but that Zuck and Elon Musk are apparently going to fight each other?

Ingrid: [00:33:14] That's the news we want, Orchid. Stop burying the lead with this whole like, profitable growth thing. Can we just fast forward and skip, like, directly to the cage match because give the people what they want?

Orchid: [00:33:31] {laughter} Is it a cage match? I thought Zuck was doing jiu-jitsu or something. So I saw a meme on Twitter or somewhere.

Ingrid: [00:33:40] Which is obviously where all news is the most accurate.

Orchid: [00:33:45] Of course. Of course. What my husband knows whenever I say, "Oh, I saw something in the news." He's like, "By the news you mean TikTok?" And was like, "Yes, most of the time." Or I'll say something. He'd be like, "Was that the tweet or did you read the article?" I was like, "I didn't read the article. It's the tweet." That's what happens when you've been married for ten years. You know each other really well. But I thought that Zuck, there was a whole thing... I'll have to look this up later where Zuck was doing jiu-jitsu, and he got choked out by an engineer at WhatsApp or something like one of the other apps. And then he came out and he was like, "No, that didn't happen." And then it got followed up somehow in the timeline. We are the worst timeline, by the way.

Ingrid: [00:34:27] These tech people, like really, really high up tech people that just seem completely out of the human race at this point. Just them getting body slammed and in cage matches with each other and like blood being present is my new fetish. I'm so into this on an unhealthy level.

Orchid: [00:34:50] This happened early... I mean there's is there a healthy level? I don't know that there's a healthy level. If you Google it so in early June, so like around June 5th, a bunch of articles came out that said, Mark Zuckerberg really doesn't want you to know that he was choked out by an Uber engineer during a Brazilian jiu-jitsu session. And that's a combination of words that I never thought that I would utter. And then for some reason now I have to figure out how the whole Elon/Zuck match

Ingrid: [00:35:23] I saw "cage match."

Orchid: [00:35:23] There is a cage match.

Ingrid: [00:35:23] Yeah, dude, you got it here last, but it's a cage match. {laughter}

Orchid: [00:35:30] {laughter} Okay, so that happened late June. So, like June 21st. Yeah, it is a cage match. So are they... And then wait... Who's? So I guess Elon tweeted, "I'm up for a cage match if he is lol." And then Zuck said something. I don't know where he posted this. Oh, I guess it was in his Instagram stories or Facebook stories. Who knows? But it says "Send me location."

Ingrid: [00:35:56] Oh my God. I mean, I need to know. I need to document. I need to buy front row tickets, like all the things. So in this scenario, within the context of this episode, is Elon growth and now Zuck is profitability? And they're going to hash it out.

Orchid: [00:36:18] Okay. So that needs to be a meme on our Instagram, stat. I would argue that Musk has never been worried about turning a profit.

Ingrid: [00:36:26] Yeah, no, I know. And that's kind of like his whole thing. He's just like, "Whatever, to the moon. Fuck all of it." Literally. Or "to Mars," I guess, more accurately.

Orchid: [00:36:36] I'm just laughing because I know we have kids of similar age and at some point when they're in school, they're going to come back and be like, "Mommy, can you tell me about the Zuckerberg/Musk cage match of 2023, and how that happened?" They're going to study it in school.

Ingrid: [00:36:54] It's like our version of the moon landing, where people would, like document themselves watching the moon landing. But we have officially entered our Idiocracy stage of the United States experiment. We are watching our titans of industry cage match each other and we've entered Idiocracy. And that's a wrap. {laughter}

Orchid: [00:37:20] {laughter}