Richard Carr | Wear the Weird Tie

Rich Carr is a pricing and commercial analytics professional in Greater Philadelphia, looking for a role in pricing, finance, revenue growth management, or commercial operations in CPG. Guest page: https://tellmeaboutatime.io/guests/richard... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhcarr/ Rich Carr calls himself the "guy in the chair." He is the person back at the office who finds the answer while the sales rep waits in a customer's parking lot. In this episode, we talk about chocolate prices, light bulbs, and why you should wear the weird tie. Rich started in customer service and worked his way into pricing, contracts, and analytics. At Ferrara, chocolate prices kept going up and nobody could say why. Rich kept asking. He found the cocoa shortage, and then a smaller sugar cost hiding underneath it. He also shares how he got Amazon to pay McGraw Hill back almost $6 million. And how one comment in a meeting ("these are light bulbs") turned $500,000 in scrap into $3 million in sales in 60 days. (He thought he was getting fired on the spot.) Then we turn to the job search. Rich talks about competing with big layoffs, job posts that want an exact match, and why AI-polished resumes all start to sound the same. His advice is to keep the you in your resume. What's your weird tie? 0:00 Intro 0:30 Interview updates 2:16 How he fell into analytics 3:12 Being the guy in the chair 4:31 How he finds answers 7:28 The job search so far 8:46 Taking a career break 11:21 Loyalty and an old-school work ethic 14:56 Telling the story, not just delivering the data 17:14 Finding the hidden cost behind chocolate prices 22:16 Getting almost $6 million back from Amazon 24:53 Turning $500K in scrap light bulbs into $3M in sales 28:15 When asking questions goes south 29:05 The role he wants next 29:47 Advice: don't let AI take the you out of your resume 32:32 Wear the weird tie