Founders Keepers: Part I
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Streaming here
How does being a founder affect your leadership? This week on Commerce Chefs, Kyle and Tom talk about the ups, downs, failures, and triumphs of leading a company as both a founder and CEO. They chat with the extraordinary Roberta Mantenuto—Co-Founder and CEO of Aria Vent—about her changing role as Aria has grown across the continent. Adding in Courtney Buhler—Founder and CEO of Sugarlash Pro—on how she scaled the brand globally while keeping a unique customer lens. Plus, pb+j alumna, Amy Hall—Founder and CEO of Goldilocks Wraps—discusses her unique approach to heart-centered leadership and setting boundaries. TL;DR: this episode might just change your perspective on what it means to scale a company as a founder and a leader, all with too many Green Lantern references.
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EP. 5 TRANSCRIPT
Kyle Now we observe a founder in their natural habitat, graceful, stoic, smart and resolved. Their vision is clear.
Tom My vision is clear.
Kyle Their time is theirs.
Tom My time is my time. I'll just put that on do not disturb.
Kyle The world is theirs for the taking.
Tom Nothing is in my way. I'll call them back.
Kyle They are a superhero with no weaknesses.
Tom In hindsight, Green Lantern is not a cure for insomnia. Such a bad movie.
Kyle They have all the answers.
Tom I mean, I do read a lot of books.
Kyle Their business is their baby. Their business baby.
Tom Oh, I can't forget to pick up the kids from school today.
Kyle The founder has seemed to lost their way only forty seconds into the day.
Tom OK, ok, focus. Focus.
Kyle You are enough.
Tom Yes, yes I am. Uh, although I don't feel like it today.
Kyle They are crushing it and making a ton of money.
Employee Tom, the big deal you've worked on for months and months and hung your hopes and dreams on just fell through. Oh, and the team voted and they want to watch Green Lantern for the next movie night.
Tom Son of a sheep shearer.
Kyle Did you want me to keep going?
Tom Not right now, Kyle.
Kyle The founder has lost their sheep.
Tom Come on, man.
Tom Welcome to Commerce Chefs. A quirky and thought-provoking show for future focused commerce leaders. We're going to pit the world's most brilliant, inspiring and driven D2C visionaries, the commerce chefs with riveting questions to uncover their secret ingredients at the intersection of passion, performance and leadership and practice.
Kyle For the past decade, we've led teams of designers, strategists and digital wizards at one of the leading eCom agencies in the country to help brave brands become enduring classics.
Tom And we're here to indefinitely borrow the strategies and pro tips that will make us all better leaders and make the brands we lead better too.
Kyle Did you say the brands we leave?
Tom Why would I say leave? They're our companies.
Kyle No. Yeah, I just thought there was a tree metaphor or something in there. So Tom, today we're talking about founders, the crazies, the dreamers, the birthers of new brands.
Tom Well, that sounds kind of gross.
Kyle Well, let's figure out why do they do what they do? What power do they hold? And does being a founder, mean holding an entirely different perspective on leadership, business and the world?
Tom Exactly. Founders can often be discounted as being misfits, renegades, maybe even a little ill-equipped, but it takes a certain type of grit and problem-solving to create something out of nothing and grow it.
Kyle Having worked with a lot of founders, including myself and yourself. I like to think of founders like nuclear power. Harnessed properly, can power a city, but when not, it can cause incredible damage.
Tom Boom. Or we could liken founders to superheroes, superstrength, supervision, but with deadly kryptonite always lurking nearby.
Kyle Please stop with Green Lantern.
Tom Do you know anything about superheroes? I was clearly referring to Superman.
Kyle Well, whatever your cup of metaphor is, we can all agree. Founders see their companies kind of like their kids.
Tom They truly bring a novel essence to their companies that can't be imitated, learned or faked. It is 100 percent owned and breathed into life by the founder each and every day.
Kyle We spoke to Roberta Mantenuto to get her thoughts on this as the CEO and co-founder of Aria Vent. She's been on the ground since day one and helped grow the startup across the continent spanning B2B, B2C and D2C. She had some great insights.
Roberta I think seeing a company at its infancy stages and growing through like maturity gives you a really nice bird's eye view and perspective of where the company has been and where it could go. And I find that a lot of times with my team, when I bring on new people, I have to really explain to them, like, this is a miracle that we're here every single day. I was literally like a year and a half ago here by myself doing everything. And I was just banging my head against a wall. And like the fact that we get to come in today and people actually come to our website, it's a miracle. Instilling that like humble reality to people and making them realize that? Founders will carry that with them inherently throughout the entire business. And it gives you just a different level of perspective.
Kyle I think one of the most interesting things that Roberta mentioned is about the miracle of bringing something to life.
Tom Yeah, as we mentioned, one of the biggest similarities that we tend to see is that founders really do see their businesses as children. It's their baby.
Kyle There's a 2017 study at the University of Helsinki, actually, that did MRIs on a group of entrepreneurs, and they ask them questions about their children and then about their businesses. And they found really similar brain activity. Now, I'm no scientist, Tom, and I know studies get thrown around a lot on the interweb, but for me, that's enough. It very much correlates to my experience.
Tom I don't know about you, Kyle, but I certainly have always felt like our agency, PB&J was a bit of our child. And I always think that you're a bit of a child. Anyway, as you so eloquently put it before. We birthed it, we grew it, nurtured it, taught it, supported and protected it, and we gave it daily attention and care.
Kyle Speaking of our business love child Tom, we caught up with our former Jammer, employee number one, in fact, who's gone on to start her own brand. And it's actually literally saving the world.
Tom Amy Hall, the founder of Goldilocks Wraps, talks about the emotional connection that a founder has with their business. Amy was a top ten finalists for Telesis Innovative New Startup Award, and her sustainable products can be found across the country in Indigo stores. She's been featured in Chatelaine magazine and has been prominently showcased by TV personality Jillian Harris.
Kyle So proud, Tom.
Amy When you're the one that's running the company and you're the one that started the company as well, it really does become like your baby. You really want to nurture it. You want to grow it. You really want to see your full vision down the line. So I think there's a lot more kind of emotional or personal connection. Some people might see that as a positive thing. Some people might see it as a negative thing. I think personally, I think that that's a positive thing. I think that business is also moving towards a more heart centered form of leadership and how you interact with your customers. Not to say that if there's not founder led companies out there that are capable of doing that, I think there's just such a more connected way of interacting with whether it's your staff or your customers when it is the founder that's kind of leading the way from that place.
Tom The emotional connection to your own company is far greater than what it would be if it weren't your company. Now, that's pretty powerful and worth noting.
Kyle A lot of the time founders decide to start their own businesses out of a personal pain point they've experienced and a desire to create a better world. Tom, does this care and emotional connection start and stop with the company?
Tom It's a really good question. I think at the core of this, the leadership approach and the view of a founder is is very heart centered. But I don't think that it starts and stops with the company. No, I think that founders tend to take the business and everything around it a little more personally. I mean, even just look at things like a bad review if we were to get negative feedback about an experience with our company. I mean, there's never been any negative feedback. But if we were, for instance, I could see me taking that pretty personally as a reflection on me. But I think the connection expands outside of the company and it really translates to a connection and the protection of the customers as well. So that interaction that we have with the customer and the feelings that we have for the people that are really connecting with our brand in the deepest way.
Kyle We chatted with Courtney Buhler, the founder and CEO of Sugarlash Pro, about how being a founder focuses her leadership, especially in times of crisis, like a global pandemic. In only four years, Sugarlash has exploded from a small home business into the third largest lash beauty brand on the planet. They've been featured in Cosmopolitan, Bustle In Style, and they're sold in over 90 countries.
Courtney I think when when push came to shove and stuff was getting really hard, I feel like for the most part I'm very internally focused on our team. Right. Like I am always making sure that the company is healthy. But at that point it was really, really like I was thinking about the mom that is the single mom, and she lashes and now she doesn't have an income and can't get food on the table. And so always having that vantage point to be like I was a single mom, how would I have felt if that was me? It was a very, very happy time to be in that role. But I do think that it impacted it because I had been on so many sides of it that it was just like I almost at that point, if I'm being totally transparent, like just checked out with the internal stuff and gave that to Kim, who's the president. And I was like, K, you run the internal and I need to think about the external. I need to just think about the customer, because that's if we're if we're not thinking about them, then we're not going to do a good job through this whole thing.
Tom So, Kyle, clearly there are a ton of strengths that come from creating a business from the ground up, you can see the big picture, you have an emotional connection. You constantly work with your customers in mind.
Kyle Yeah, but being a founder definitely comes with its struggles as well. There are things that you face as a founder that your team members never need to worry about and they might not ever understand.
Tom Exactly. As a founder, you care so much and have so much on the line that sometimes that can lead to caring almost too much. Amy mentioned some personal challenges with setting boundaries that really relate to this.
Amy I think it's that sort of. Innate. Like, if you're a bit of an A, not even a personality, but a bit of an overachiever, I've been called a perfectionist in the past. Those kinds of things, so often have that feeling like you're not doing enough or you could always be doing more. I think especially as a founder, your to do list is just never done. Like, that's one thing that I've just had to accept. It's incredibly frustrating where you're like it would be so nice to just work on a one project in a day, finish that project and go home and then do that again the next day. That never really happens. It's just this never ending to do list. Yeah, I think for me there's a little bit of guilt where I'm like, I want to do more, I want to do as much as I can and then recognizing that that's like my own, that's my own problem, that's nobody else's problem. No one else is telling me that I need to be doing more. It's like a societal thing, you know, it's this weird kind of existential like society with a capital S. So I'd say that's like the underlying cause. But I think like the main overarching and I think this would apply for a lot of people as well. Is that not wanting to relinquish that control or give that up? I've been able to do it, but I've had to go through sort of unconscious processes, I think, to be able to get to a stage where I'm where I feel comfortable doing that, it's usually it starts with recognizing that it needs to happen and then kind of coming up with a plan and then, like, sitting with it and then kind of just finally putting some of those actions in place and finding the right people. I think sometimes when you find the right person, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm not scared of making this leap anymore. I feel I, I don't know, maybe I don't know you that well yet, but I trust you and I trust your skills. It's funny because I don't like relinquishing control and giving up certain things or it's like sometimes a little bit difficult. But once I do, I'm like, it's all yours, OK? I don't like to micromanage. I feel like we often within our company too, we tell our managers this like it's very much a like we'll throw problems at you and we expect you to kind of like take it and roll with it and figure it out. Like, I'm not going to micromanage how you decide to do that. It's like once I've made that decision, it's like I do a total 180 in some way. It's like, OK. We got here, this is yours.
Tom I think what was really interesting about what Amy's mentioning here are these two opposing ideas of needing to set boundaries for yourself as a founder, but also making sure that you're not creating too many. So you're still challenging yourself and stepping outside of your comfort zone. Kyle, how do you set boundaries as a founder?
Kyle Oh, Tom, I don't know if I have a good answer for this, I'm definitely learning constantly about this. I think boundaries are such an important piece of the puzzle. If I had to kind of look at them and into two areas would be like emotional boundaries and practical boundaries and maybe the practical boundaries actually just lead up to the emotional boundaries. I'm really just an emotional ball of mess most of days, but the emotional boundaries of liking helping understand like what is the weight that I should be carrying or need to carry and what are what are some of the weight that other people in the team need to and trying to understand as we're growing and as I'm growing like the like we're talking about like that analogy to kids is you can't carry everything even though you want to. You have to let the company grow up. You have to let the team do their part and carry some of that weight with you. So there's like this trying to just like constantly work on mindset and an emotional boundary side. And then practically as it connects to personal life and having some sort of thing outside of the company, outside of our team. So, like, actually making practical commitments to myself. Like hey, I'm actually going to stop at five thirty and go upstairs and help make dinner and have dinner with my family.
Tom Absolutely. And look like this is not easy. The business side, there is always this feeling of guilt that, you know, not doing enough. Am I doing enough? Do I need to be doing more? What else could I be doing? You know what aren't I doing that I should be. So every day you're working and living with this guilt. It's a weird thing to balance. But why do you think that it's so easy to get in your own head to have this this constant voice and chatter and pressure as a founder?
Kyle Can I can I flip this on you, you are like my my mindset guru most days. Can I ask you why do you think it's so easy to get in your own head as a founder?
Tom I think it's so easy because sometimes it's all we have. And I'm certainly fortunate to have you as a co-founder, somebody I can share this role with that really understands what I'm going through, what I'm trying to balance on a daily basis, what considerations I have. But not everybody has that benefit. Getting in your own head is something that we do very well as founders and as people. We're often the thing that's getting in our own way most of the time. So I think working through that, understanding that first and then starting to just build out little habits that start to understand and recognize when that's happening and how to talk yourself out of it and through it.
Kyle Roberta talked about this idea of how is founders, we actually need to seek outside perspectives to keep switching things up and growing. For her, she found this within her team.
Roberta We recently had a new hire who came on in his first week. I said, you come from different companies. You come from way bigger companies. I've never worked at a big company before. This is pretty much my first job outside of university. Right? So I only know what I know. Tell me what you think. Things, little things that you can think that we can change how we operate our office, how you like, give me a different perspective. And that's valuable as well. Right? Sometimes when you're looking too hard at something for too long, you forget the most obvious things. I think that you can really get stuck if you hang on to that idea for too long. I think a better way or the way that I see it is we're constantly evolving. We're just like people. If I get hung up on this one idea, it could hurt us in the long run. And that's one of the biggest difficulties of being of running a business is right. When do I switch it up? When do I reformat and when do I just keep pushing and going along? And of course, the reason why that's so difficult is because you're dilutions going to say, keep pushing, go along. And that could go very well. But you switching it up goes against that delusion. Sometimes you really are just delusional and you need to listen to other people and switch it up.
Tom Kyle, I got to say something here, there's a lot of hype and misconceptions floating around about what it's like to be a founder.
Kyle Yeah, like Harry Potter becoming the youngest founder in the last hundred years.
Tom Like in Quidditch? He he was the seeker buddy.
Kyle Yeah, exactly. It's a synonym. Founder is the past tense of Seeker. If if you're the winner.
Tom Sure...
Kyle Time for a little group therapy to talk through all our troubles with perception versus reality. Founders' Edition, ooo. Perception: illustrious founder CEO spending their week envisioning the future with mountains in the background.
Tom That sounds nice, but reality half the week is spent in the back office admin, meetings and still figuring out how to delegate office supply orders to literally anyone else.
Kyle Never been me.
Tom Nope. Perception. Read a book a week and become a wise sage worthy of a TED talk.
Kyle Reality, read one book and spend the rest of the year trying to implement what I've learned. I do have about 16 unfinished books in my Audible though, so I think that counts for something, right?
Tom Yeah, that counts for something.
Kyle Perception all the vacation I can handle.
Tom Mmm, beautiful. Reality: crippling fear of leaving for even a day. Plus, who's really taking vacation now anyway? All right. Preception: five a.m. wake ups and Navy SEAL level discipline.
Kyle Reality: I hit snooze at least once, but I do watch a YouTube video of Mark Wahlberg's 5am morning routine. So.
Tom Man, Marky Mark making you feel bad on the daily.
Kyle Perception: emotional stability of a monk.
Tom Reality is it's up and down on any given day like a yo yo on a pogo stick.
Kyle Mm. I love Pogos.
Tom Perception: our family and friends don't know what we do all day.
Kyle Reality: our family and friends don't know what we do all day.
Tom Yeah nobody does.
Kyle Yeah, I don't know what I do some days.
Tom I don't know what you do most days. All right. Lastly. Perception. Your co-hosts, Kyle and Tom have it all together all the time and know exactly what they're doing.
Kyle Reality:.
Tom Um, is this on? Can you hear me?
Kyle Can you fix that in post? We can fix it. We can fix.
Tom Did we already start recording?
Kyle Ahhh!
Kyle So we've talked about the advantages and disadvantages of leading a company as its founder, but how can founders tap into their unique super powers as leaders and how do we be mindful of our kryptonite?
Tom Hey, there you go, buddy.
Kyle Yeah, see, I know superheroes. Kryptonite is the new Bitcoin, right?
Tom That's that's pretty meta. Anyway, Roberta actually touched on this when she talked about getting outside perspectives. She makes her employees feel like they're more than employees. Here's what she continued to say on that.
Roberta I think it's very possible to make your employees feel like owners. A lot of my employees do feel that way. They feel like they have a part in it. They feel like they have a stake in it because we're still such a small team. So you can still feel the winds as if you were an owner or a founder, even though you aren't and even though you came onto the team afterwards. And I think that's a that is the job of a leader is to make all the employees feel that because founders and make really works in some cases make good employees, especially if they feel an ownership to that.
Kyle OK, so step one, surround yourself with really good people and empower them to care and feel ownership over what they're doing.
Tom Exactly. And so much of that actually comes from self reflection as a leader. Just be honest with yourself.
Kyle Courtney talked a lot about this.
Courtney All the founders or people that want to be founders and they don't know, here's the thing, I feel like at the end of the day, if you're honest with your capabilities and you are committed to doing the best that you can, every day, growth will just happen. Like is just a byproduct of the work. Right. And that's why Sugarlash has gotten so big. It's not because I wanted to own a company this big. Actually, there's like tons of times that I resent how big it's gotten because everything is slower, right? All these decisions are drawn out. I'm very, very much like a startup brain. But with that said, owning, I think who you are owning, your limitations and your shortcomings, if you can do that and you don't get stuck in that minutia of doing the stuff that you're not good at, you're so much better for it. And I will leave you with one. My one secret is that no where you work best and know when you work best. And my little secret to almost every brilliant idea that I've ever come up with has been in between 10 p.m. and one a.m. in a bathtub.
Kyle Ironically, that's where I know you also do your best thinking Tom.
Tom I think all of our listeners know that now, thanks to you walking in on me in the shower in the hopes of recording episode two.
Kyle Yeah. Sorry, not sorry.
Tom So step two is understanding yourself as a founder, know your strengths and your weaknesses so you can ensure that you sit in your own superpowers and feel confident, empowering others to do the same.
Kyle Plus, like Courtney said, understanding your shortcomings, i.e. your kryptonite, you'll only continue to grow and by extension, so will your company.
Tom Amy mentioned this in the frame of having an innovative mindset where you're basically training your brain to keep iterating even when things are going smoothly.
Amy Even in the more flow times or the easy like quote unquote, easy times where things are going really well. Maybe all of those processes are in place. Problems aren't coming up. I still think it's a great question to kind of ask yourself is like, you know, how are we continuing to innovate? How are we continuing to stay relevant? How are we able to move forward? It's like an exercise. It's less shocking when a major issue does come up. And you have to also adopt that mindset. You know, if you're only adopting that kind of a mindset, maybe like once a year when it does happen, it can be very shocking and jarring and very stressful. Whereas I feel like if you're always kind of in the back of your mind, maybe asking yourself these questions or, you know, how can we adapt, how can we, like, continue to improve? Really, at the end of the day, I think that that's kind of everybody's goal. Then when those things do arise, you have like that muscle memory to kind of kick in as well. What's the reward of stepping outside of that comfort zone or that like safety and security? There has to be a goal. You know, whether it's for some people, it might be personal growth. For other people, it might be wanting to do the greater good and wanting to, you know, create a better world or leave a better world. Maybe it's for their children. I mean, we obviously work in the environmental and like sustainable living world. So that's a big common theme.
Kyle What Amy mentioned here really boils down to the last piece of the puzzle, which is how to stay innovative as a founder.
Tom And by cultivating a mindset that's consistently focused on innovation, she's been able to work through pretty major challenges that have faced her company without coming from a place of fear, rather looking at it from a vision or impact standpoint.
Kyle So three key ways to untapped your leadership potential as a founder. Number one, surround yourself with great people and learn to let go. Number two, stay accountable to your strengths and set boundaries for your weaknesses. And number three, lean into that growth mindset that got you here in the first place.
Tom Now, that is a recipe I can get on board with. So if we see our brands as our kids and we do, then let's lean into that more but not like it in an obsessive helicopter parent kind of way, but more of a long term growth minded parenting focused on the independence and well-being of our business baby.
Kyle What lasts are the values that we instill, the ideals and the dreams and when they head off to university and go at it alone, are they really alone? No, we're right there with them. You're always there for your kids, but in different ways as they grow.
Tom And more is said about our role and impact in their lives when we're not there than when we are. So within our companies, we need to get comfortable with not being there all the time and we need to get comfortable with our business baby growing up.
Kyle Sorry friends, your business baby loves you but does not want you to go to prom with them.
Tom Your role as a founder will change. It should change. Wearing all the hats at the start is fine. It helps you learn the ropes and cut your teeth. But keeping all of the hat? that starves the business of your real strengths and superpowers. So build a team around you. Even the most powerful superheroes need an alliance.
Kyle Just like the Green Lantern really needs the Justice League.
Tom I'm really impressed you knew that.
Kyle What are the things that you're keeping from your brand that you shouldn't be? And equally, what are the things that it is inheriting from you?
Tom Brands inherit the traits of their parents, you, the founder. So make sure your best traits get passed on. And for those less desirable traits, at least give them the tools and support to deal with it.
Kyle Navigate, let's say navigate.
Kyle And there you have it, that's episode five of Commerce Chefs. Thanks so much for listening.
Tom We hope you learned some useful tips on how to unlock your true potential as a founder led business. We will be coming back to this topic in a few weeks with Founders, Keepers, part two Founders Deepers.
Kyle That's such a great title. If you're looking for more of that kind of gold. Make sure to join the Commerce Chefs community by following us on social: @commercechefs. Ask us questions, send in requests, want to hear from you.
Tom We're currently cooking up the next episode of Commerce Chefs, so tune in on March 18th.
Kyle Lastly, if you like this episode and want to support us, make sure to hit the subscribe button and leave us a five star rating and review. Until next time. This has been a pinch of Kyle.
Tom And a dash of Tom. We'll be cooking with you in two weeks.
Tom Rather, looking at it from a vision, an impoint- eventapicois...mmhmmm should we take that from the top, Kyle...