Latest / Stacked with Jennifer Laforge / Robin Kovitz - President & CEO of Baskits Inc. | Building a Business on Trust, Loyalty, and Purpose

Transcript

Robin Kovitz - President & CEO of Baskits Inc. | Building a Business on Trust, Loyalty, and Purpose · Stacked with Jennifer Laforge

• 0:00
  Jen LaForge: I have to admit, I'm a little bit nervous today because it is an honor to be with our guest, Robin Kovitz.
• 0:06
  Jen LaForge: You are an incredible woman.
• 0:09
  Jen LaForge: I actually have to have my notes here because I don't want to miss a beat, but let me tell you who I have on today.
• 0:14
  Jen LaForge: The uh Baskets First of all, North America's premier gifting service and one of the top growing companies in Canada in now being led by this remarkable woman who in 2017 and 2021 was recognized as Canada's most powerful women, top 100.
• 0:32
  Jen LaForge: And then in 22, the Baskets team was also recognized as one of Canada's top-growing companies by the Globe and Mail's report on business for the third time in a row.
• 0:42
  Jen LaForge: The wins keep winning.
• 0:44
  Jen LaForge: Um, we're so excited to have you.
• 0:46
  Jen LaForge: You have an incredibly impressive background.
• 0:48
  Jen LaForge: So to start, let's shine on you a little bit.
• 0:52
  Jen LaForge: Talk to me about your journey, um, and then let's go into how you you came to baskets.
• 0:58
  Jen LaForge: But who are you?
• 1:01
  Robin Kovitz: Wow.
• 1:01
  Robin Kovitz: First of all, thanks so much for having me, Jennifer.
• 1:04
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, I I also fangirls you and was absolutely blown away by your background and what you've built at rocketing.ca.
• 1:11
  Robin Kovitz: Um, it's really truly an honor to be here.
• 1:13
  Robin Kovitz: You're guest number 18, right?
• 1:14
  Robin Kovitz: You said 18, I think.
• 1:16
  Robin Kovitz: Eight, 18.
• 1:17
  Robin Kovitz: I think, yeah.
• 1:17
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah.
• 1:18
  Robin Kovitz: Well, thanks so much for having me.
• 1:19
  Robin Kovitz: So I'm Robin, born and raised in Calgary.
• 1:21
  Robin Kovitz: Um, I went to Queens, have an MBA from Harvard, and had the great privilege of buying baskets 12 years ago.
• 1:28
  Robin Kovitz: Baskets have been around for 40 years.
• 1:30
  Robin Kovitz: They were the pioneers of the gift basket space.
• 1:32
  Robin Kovitz: Um, we are actually on your platform recognition.
• 1:35
  Robin Kovitz: That's my story.
• 1:37
  Robin Kovitz: So we make gift baskets.
• 1:38
  Robin Kovitz: So we help people connect.
• 1:38
  Robin Kovitz: So whether you're looking on the corporate side to recognize your clients to find new clients.
• 1:44
  Robin Kovitz: A lot of people use us for prospecting.
• 1:45
  Robin Kovitz: You know, when you try to reach someone and they don't respond, you just send them a gift basket and magic, they call you back.
• 1:50
  Robin Kovitz: The guilt.
• 1:51
  Robin Kovitz: The guilt, yeah, the reciprocity factor.
• 1:54
  Robin Kovitz: Um, or you know, for employees, we we have great service, or for individuals, we have uh a baby gift line that I'm very proud of personally.
• 2:01
  Jen LaForge: Okay.
• 2:01
  Jen LaForge: That's not all your story though, because you were in private equity, and moving from private equity to then now owning and operating baskets is quite a jump.
• 2:10
  Jen LaForge: Uh, what was the mindset shift that I think instigated that that pivot?
• 2:17
  Robin Kovitz: So when you work in private equity, you know, you raise money uh from investors and you have a fund, uh, and then you use that fund to invest in multiple businesses, which we did, learned a lot, loved my journey there.
• 2:28
  Robin Kovitz: Um, when you break off like I did to do it on your own, you know, and I was just a new mom in era before there was work from home, a new mom who wanted to work from home before it was a thing.
• 2:39
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and you're you're spending your life savings, you're bootstrapping your life savings.
• 2:43
  Robin Kovitz: Um, it becomes the mindset shift is that it becomes much more personal.
• 2:47
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and the stakes are higher, not only because it feels personal, but because um you got one.
• 2:52
  Robin Kovitz: You have one shot.
• 2:53
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah.
• 2:54
  Robin Kovitz: Whereas in a portfolio of investments, they don't all need to win, right?
• 2:57
  Robin Kovitz: Just the overall average of them all needs to succeed.
• 3:00
  Robin Kovitz: Uh, when you're off investing your life savings, it has to work with the new baby.
• 3:05
  Robin Kovitz: With the new baby in tow.
• 3:07
  Robin Kovitz: Yes, my baby came to every single meeting and she is now 16.
• 3:10
  Robin Kovitz: Oh, my side there.
• 3:12
  Robin Kovitz: So um yeah, she's actually for those of you who check out our website, she is the model holding every gift basket on our site now because she is free labor.
• 3:22
  Jen LaForge: That is a beautiful, beautiful story.
• 3:25
  Jen LaForge: And I'm sure my mom would have would have made me do all that hard work too.
• 3:29
  Jen LaForge: So fantastic.
• 3:30
  Jen LaForge: She's gonna grow up just like you, I hope.
• 3:32
  Jen LaForge: Um I mean, that mind shift, once you're in it, there's so much risk too.
• 3:37
  Jen LaForge: And you're a new mom, so you're a new person discovering who you are, and now you're a business leader.
• 3:43
  Jen LaForge: What would you say um was the belief though, right?
• 3:48
  Jen LaForge: Because you want to do your own thing, but you had to have had belief, in particular that baskets was the right way to go.
• 3:55
  Jen LaForge: How what was that belief?
• 3:56
  Jen LaForge: Yeah, I mean, some days you have belief, some days you have doubt.
• 4:01
  Robin Kovitz: And you just have to keep going.
• 4:03
  Robin Kovitz: Um, no, I think I spent four years interviewing business owners, kind of like what you're doing on your podcast, traveling all over the city with my new baby in tow, um, trying to figure out what a good business was and what it wasn't.
• 4:15
  Robin Kovitz: And um, and I saw a lot of potential in baskets.
• 4:19
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, it's a very large industry.
• 4:20
  Robin Kovitz: Uh, it's an underestimated industry.
• 4:22
  Robin Kovitz: I I can't tell you the number of times I'm traveling and I meet someone on a plane and they say, Oh, you you do gift box because my wife also does that in the basement.
• 4:30
  Robin Kovitz: And I say, you know, well, we have 55,000 square feet and 100 employees, and it, you know, like it's a real business.
• 4:35
  Robin Kovitz: I'm very kind of like shocked, right?
• 4:37
  Robin Kovitz: So I think, I think in a nutshell, it's it's a very large industry uh that has doesn't have a lot of, there's no big behemoth professional competitor in the space.
• 4:45
  Robin Kovitz: So it's wide open, very fragmented.
• 4:48
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and I think the biggest thing for me is that it's very fun.
• 4:52
  Robin Kovitz: So all day, every day, we're spreading joy and building connection.
• 4:56
  Robin Kovitz: And it's really an honor to be a part of people's special moments.
• 5:00
  Jen LaForge: I love that.
• 5:00
  Jen LaForge: That might be my favorite uh part of your story at this point.
• 5:05
  Jen LaForge: You're not just driving transactions in your business.
• 5:08
  Jen LaForge: You've touched on it.
• 5:10
  Jen LaForge: This is a really emotional business because you're gifting and you're celebrating moments and new babies and um even sad moments.
• 5:19
  Jen LaForge: You know, there's the the get well and feel better, and I'm thinking of you.
• 5:22
  Jen LaForge: And condolences.
• 5:23
  Jen LaForge: And huge.
• 5:23
  Jen LaForge: Huge.
• 5:24
  Jen LaForge: Yeah.
• 5:24
  Jen LaForge: And so that is far more emotional.
• 5:27
  Jen LaForge: And the way that you market and the way that you're approaching a business is different than if you're in a just highly transactional space.
• 5:34
  Jen LaForge: And so was there was there any pull there in your decision, or did that some become something that really surprised you when you were in it?
• 5:44
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah, such an astute observation, Jen.
• 5:46
  Robin Kovitz: I think um, yeah, so from the start, it was very personal, right?
• 5:50
  Robin Kovitz: Bootstrap, life savings, a very personal decision for me.
• 5:53
  Robin Kovitz: I was looking for my life's work, not just a job, not just um, and so it was very personal.
• 5:58
  Robin Kovitz: And then I ended up buying this business that's very personal.
• 6:01
  Robin Kovitz: Right.
• 6:01
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and then I accidentally sort of ended up in this industry where my competitors view it as a very transactional relationship.
• 6:08
  Robin Kovitz: So in the gift basket space, you can imagine that there are two customers in every transaction.
• 6:13
  Robin Kovitz: There's typically the person who pays for the gift, who usually never sees the gift, and then there's the person who receives the gift.
• 6:19
  Robin Kovitz: And I think there are a lot of bad actors in our space who take advantage of those dynamics to take your money and send something subpar to the person who receives it.
• 6:27
  Robin Kovitz: And 20 years ago, they might have gotten away with that in the world without, you know, the internet and e-commerce.
• 6:32
  Robin Kovitz: We've always taken the white hat approach that, you know, the picture you see is exactly what we're gonna send.
• 6:37
  Robin Kovitz: And we do the right thing.
• 6:39
  Robin Kovitz: Um and so yeah, it's it's deeply personal for us to share in people's moments.
• 6:44
  Robin Kovitz: And I think the the happy sort of end result of that is in this marketing world of LTV, lifetime value, that doing the right thing and being honest and transparent with your customers has resulted in us having trust with our customers and having higher LTV.
• 6:58
  Robin Kovitz: Our customers stay with us for a very long time.
• 7:01
  Robin Kovitz: And they think of us for not just one moment, every moment.
• 7:04
  Robin Kovitz: And so the nice, nice result of doing the right thing has been that our customers are not transactional, their relationship in long term.
• 7:12
  Jen LaForge: Fantastic.
• 7:12
  Jen LaForge: I feel that there's an answer in there, but I'm gonna still kind of pose this question.
• 7:18
  Jen LaForge: You mentioned earlier that it's a very fractional and there's not a big competitor in the space with you.
• 7:24
  Jen LaForge: There's individuals working out in the basement.
• 7:26
  Jen LaForge: Would you say that it's that delivery on the promise that has made baskets such a success and to grow to what it is today?
• 7:35
  Robin Kovitz: Thanks.
• 7:35
  Robin Kovitz: Um, maybe, yeah.
• 7:37
  Robin Kovitz: I think the other piece is that it's very hard to do this well at scale.
• 7:41
  Robin Kovitz: And so you can imagine a gift basket.
• 7:43
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, there are a lot of people who think, oh, gift basket's fun.
• 7:46
  Robin Kovitz: I want to design one, and it is a lot of fun.
• 7:48
  Robin Kovitz: And there are a lot of people, particularly women who do that in their basement.
• 7:51
  Robin Kovitz: But when you start to get major orders, to do that at scale is very difficult.
• 7:55
  Robin Kovitz: You can imagine you have, I could have in a gift basket 20 different vendors from all around the world with different lead times, perhaps with perishability in the product.
• 8:03
  Robin Kovitz: So making sure all of that is coordinated is complex.
• 8:06
  Robin Kovitz: And then on the sales side, making sure that it's, you know, you could send me an order for 100 for your top customers.
• 8:12
  Robin Kovitz: That sales order then needs to go to a hundred different addresses.
• 8:15
  Robin Kovitz: That's very complex.
• 8:16
  Robin Kovitz: So the business is actually to execute flawlessly is extremely complex.
• 8:21
  Robin Kovitz: And to do that at scale requires um real sophistication and investment in technology that not a lot of players in the industry have.
• 8:29
  Robin Kovitz: And so one of our competitive advantages has been that we've invested millions of dollars in a decade in built to building the infrastructure to be able to execute at scale flawlessly.
• 8:38
  Jen LaForge: Yeah, I have to admit, I I never would have thought about the technology or the infrastructure behind a business like Basket.
• 8:44
  Jen LaForge: So can you talk a little bit more about that?
• 8:45
  Jen LaForge: I mean, what's the technology piece?
• 8:47
  Jen LaForge: And can you paint a picture of the infrastructure and what this 55,000 square foot facility looks like?
• 8:53
  Robin Kovitz: Yes, I'd love to host you anytime to King Lawrence.
• 8:56
  Robin Kovitz: Come by.
• 8:56
  Robin Kovitz: Oh, I'm there all the time.
• 8:57
  Robin Kovitz: Uh genes and runners.
• 8:59
  Robin Kovitz: And um yeah, it's extraordinarily complex.
• 9:02
  Robin Kovitz: It's, you know, on the outside, we seem very glamorous to our customers, and that's great.
• 9:05
  Robin Kovitz: We want them to only see the beautiful thing delivered on time.
• 9:08
  Robin Kovitz: Behind the scenes, you know, we're like this fish underwater, duck underwater, pedaling, pedaling, peddling to make sure that you don't see any of the hard things that have to happen to get it there.
• 9:15
  Robin Kovitz: So um on the design side, you know, like any manufacturing business, we would have a bill of materials.
• 9:20
  Robin Kovitz: At a higher level, we have an ERP system, an enterprise resource planning system that enables us to have a bill of materials and properly cost each design.
• 9:28
  Robin Kovitz: And that enables us to forecast, plan, and order components in a way that makes sense so that they arrive on time.
• 9:34
  Robin Kovitz: Then we have a very sophisticated manufacturing process that makes sure that the gifts are manufactured just in time with enough time to make sure we meet the ship dates.
• 9:42
  Robin Kovitz: Then we have a very sophisticated sort of ordering process where, because you might also want your brand name on the card messages or on the ribbon, and there's lead time and process that has to happen for that as well.
• 9:53
  Robin Kovitz: And you might have a specific date, like for this conference, or you know, maybe more on the other side of this or company, uh, that it needs to be delivered.
• 10:00
  Robin Kovitz: It has to be delivered on that date.
• 10:02
  Robin Kovitz: And so there's a lot of technology that goes into that and making sure that the order date with time and transit is worked back to the ship date.
• 10:08
  Robin Kovitz: It's enormously complex.
• 10:10
  Robin Kovitz: And then there's the whole, you know, we're a manufacturer, we're also a retailer, and we're also a service provider.
• 10:15
  Robin Kovitz: So we have a whole call center that takes orders that answers queries.
• 10:18
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and then we have a corporate sales team, right?
• 10:20
  Robin Kovitz: So we have large corporate customers who are looking to do things on the corporate side.
• 10:24
  Robin Kovitz: So it's it's just a really fun business that has complexity on the product sales marketing side, um, where there's technology in each of those places.
• 10:33
  Robin Kovitz: So we have a CRM system uh uh where we can keep all of our customer information.
• 10:38
  Jen LaForge: So so what did you said I think baskets is 40 years old?
• 10:41
  Jen LaForge: 40 years old.
• 10:42
  Jen LaForge: And so you you took it over, you bought this and made it a deeply personal um ambition for you 12 years, 14 years ago.
• 10:50
  Jen LaForge: Yeah, 2014.
• 10:51
  Jen LaForge: What did it look like 12 years ago?
• 10:54
  Robin Kovitz: I think the two women who started Baskets out of their garage did a great job.
• 10:57
  Robin Kovitz: It was in 1985 and they were visionaries, right?
• 11:00
  Robin Kovitz: Like, can you imagine 1985 women couldn't even get bank loans, right?
• 11:03
  Robin Kovitz: Like it was a different world.
• 11:05
  Robin Kovitz: And I just had my hat goes off to them.
• 11:06
  Robin Kovitz: I think they did such a great job.
• 11:08
  Robin Kovitz: And they took the business, they were the leaders, you know, the typical J.
• 11:10
  Robin Kovitz: Kerbin business.
• 11:11
  Robin Kovitz: And so they had this, you know, shot out of the gates and very profitable, very growth was easy.
• 11:15
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and then what like in any business, what happens is then you have people that say, Hey, that sounds fun.
• 11:20
  Robin Kovitz: You have new entrants, right?
• 11:21
  Robin Kovitz: And profitability and sales growth slow down, and I think things get tougher.
• 11:24
  Robin Kovitz: And I think I think they did an incredible job taking the business where they could.
• 11:28
  Robin Kovitz: And then I think things started to get much different.
• 11:31
  Robin Kovitz: And I think, you know, they were older and and looking to move away from the business.
• 11:35
  Robin Kovitz: Um, so the business looked very different.
• 11:37
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, I think we were still the leaders, we still had the values that we have today, right?
• 11:41
  Robin Kovitz: Trust, transparency, honesty doing the right thing, product quality first.
• 11:46
  Robin Kovitz: Um, but we didn't have the systems, infrastructure, and data that we have today.
• 11:49
  Jen LaForge: Yeah.
• 11:49
  Robin Kovitz: Uh, that was sort of the sophistication that I brought to the business and not just me, my team.
• 11:54
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and so I think we're like Baskets 2.0 today, like the modern digital e-commerce version of Baskets.
• 12:00
  Robin Kovitz: We were a catalog company to start.
• 12:02
  Jen LaForge: Well, so I was going to say 12 years ago it was really a strong inflection point as well, because e-commerce was um, it's crazy to think that it was still very early on, um, just a short period of time ago where most Canadians were still uncomfortable with it, but it was definitely picking up speed.
• 12:19
  Jen LaForge: So, what a great inflection point to kind of come in and take it to that next level.
• 12:24
  Jen LaForge: Um, and what what a great story.
• 12:25
  Jen LaForge: I'm gonna want to talk to you just on the side personally around scaling businesses, because I think you've done something remarkable.
• 12:30
  Jen LaForge: Um, Jen, you're taking packaging.ca to huge heights.
• 12:34
  Jen LaForge: Well, thank you so much.
• 12:36
  Jen LaForge: So we're gonna have a lot to talk about.
• 12:37
  Jen LaForge: I would love that.
• 12:38
  Jen LaForge: Or a lot, a lot to talk and learn.
• 12:40
  Jen LaForge: Um, and and our ability to to do these incredible things comes from connections like this and being able to talk to individuals who've been there, who have been, yeah, who have the blood, the sweat, the tears that goes into it.
• 12:52
  Jen LaForge: Um, and so yeah, I we're we're gonna this uh this is the beginning of something beautiful.
• 12:57
  Jen LaForge: Um speaking of that, we talked, I this has been rolling around in my head, so I want to go back to it.
• 13:02
  Jen LaForge: You talk we talked about that promise and that drives that LTV.
• 13:06
  Jen LaForge: Things go wrong.
• 13:07
  Jen LaForge: And I'm sure that you've had those days where the products didn't come in, you can't put together half your baskets, you've run out of inventory, people are coming to the site and there's one basket left, um, or it wasn't delivered on time, or you know, was there ever a case where the wrong sentiment was sent with the basket, which sounds awful.
• 13:26
  Jen LaForge: Um, how do you recover from that?
• 13:29
  Jen LaForge: And what actually happens?
• 13:30
  Jen LaForge: Do you lose that member, or is do you know how to get them back when you when something like that happens?
• 13:35
  Robin Kovitz: What a great question.
• 13:36
  Robin Kovitz: I think um in business, the only thing you can count on is things going wrong.
• 13:41
  Robin Kovitz: Right?
• 13:42
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, like any business leader who tells you the opposite is lying.
• 13:45
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, every day I wake up and I say, I wonder what's gonna happen today on my drive-in.
• 13:48
  Robin Kovitz: Um, every day we're we're faced in and right now, especially, I think there's so many crazy things happening at once and the pace is accelerating.
• 13:55
  Robin Kovitz: Are you finding that in your business?
• 13:56
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah.
• 13:56
  Robin Kovitz: It's just wild.
• 13:57
  Robin Kovitz: Um, and so um, what I really try to do with my team is to foster a culture of um, like, let's not hide from these mistakes.
• 14:07
  Robin Kovitz: I don't even like that word.
• 14:08
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah.
• 14:08
  Robin Kovitz: I have team members who are so scared to make a mistake, and I'm like, it's not a mistake, and I don't even want to look, you know, they try and explain why something happened.
• 14:15
  Robin Kovitz: I I don't care at all.
• 14:16
  Robin Kovitz: We are where we are.
• 14:17
  Robin Kovitz: How are we gonna, and the expression that we all use, and when I hear my team using it, it makes me so proud.
• 14:22
  Robin Kovitz: How are we gonna recover brilliantly?
• 14:24
  Robin Kovitz: That's all I care about.
• 14:26
  Robin Kovitz: And so every we we say, we are where we are.
• 14:28
  Robin Kovitz: It doesn't matter whose fault it was or what happened.
• 14:30
  Robin Kovitz: I don't even care about that word fault.
• 14:32
  Robin Kovitz: It's how are we gonna recover brilliantly as a team?
• 14:34
  Robin Kovitz: And I I'm here to help you recover brilliantly.
• 14:36
  Robin Kovitz: What are we gonna do?
• 14:37
  Robin Kovitz: So for sure, things happen all the time.
• 14:39
  Robin Kovitz: Um, a lot of our competitors have this sort of like substitution policy, which they use as a blank, like, hey, we might have to switch something out in the basket.
• 14:47
  Robin Kovitz: And they use that as a blank because they don't haven't invested in the operations to at least try to get the right thing out.
• 14:52
  Robin Kovitz: We have it at for an absolute insurance policy in those really rare situations.
• 14:57
  Robin Kovitz: But what we do is we have an upgrade policy.
• 15:00
  Robin Kovitz: So if truly, if if there is a catastrophic, it would be a catastrophic thing, like a typhoon hitting a container or something, uh, because we're very, very disciplined about our planning, uh, where we're not able to send what we promised to.
• 15:12
  Robin Kovitz: And if that does happen, we'll let you know.
• 15:14
  Robin Kovitz: Uh, honesty, transparency, communication, and we'll upgrade you on us.
• 15:18
  Robin Kovitz: Um, so we just have this thing of always making it right.
• 15:21
  Robin Kovitz: Um, the odd time there is human error, right?
• 15:23
  Robin Kovitz: Someone picks the wrong gift or sends the wrong thing and it can be catastrophic, right?
• 15:27
  Robin Kovitz: Like a happy birthday for a funeral.
• 15:29
  Robin Kovitz: I think that's happened once in my 12 years.
• 15:31
  Robin Kovitz: And and you take you just gulp and sure you've made those calls too, right?
• 15:35
  Robin Kovitz: Where are you?
• 15:36
  Robin Kovitz: And for us, our our brand values are just honesty, right?
• 15:38
  Robin Kovitz: This is what happened.
• 15:39
  Robin Kovitz: It's our fault.
• 15:40
  Robin Kovitz: This is what we're gonna do about it.
• 15:42
  Robin Kovitz: How do we make this right?
• 15:42
  Robin Kovitz: And I think you'll see reading the reviews on our site, I think that radical honesty and transparency and um ability to recover brilliantly, desire to recover brilliantly, has led to our customers sticking with us.
• 15:55
  Jen LaForge: I love that.
• 15:56
  Jen LaForge: Um, you've given me, I think, notes of your leadership style, uh, which I think you and I will likely have a lot in common there as well.
• 16:05
  Jen LaForge: And by want to lean in there a little bit more, going from private equity, and then now you're owning and operating this.
• 16:12
  Jen LaForge: Those are very different leadership muscles.
• 16:14
  Jen LaForge: Well, what would you say you've learned the most throughout the 12-year journey?
• 16:19
  Robin Kovitz: Oh my gosh, what a great question.
• 16:20
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah, like I grew up in investment banking, which is like even more to that side of the spectrum of like tough, rough.
• 16:26
  Robin Kovitz: Like I it was not unusual to have someone like throw something at me or scream at me or personally insult me.
• 16:31
  Robin Kovitz: Like that, that's the culture that it is.
• 16:33
  Robin Kovitz: And that was the culture that I grew up in as an analyst and cut my teeth in.
• 16:36
  Robin Kovitz: And so to some extent, I think that I had a um a skewed, like almost PTSD view of what a well-run business should be, that that hard-driving culture.
• 16:46
  Robin Kovitz: And so I think it was really hard for me when I first became a CEO because I realized especially that you know, not everyone wants even views their cur their job as a career.
• 16:55
  Robin Kovitz: It's, you know, that it's nine to five.
• 16:57
  Robin Kovitz: And that was all that was all new to me.
• 16:58
  Robin Kovitz: I think what I'm trying to say is I had to learn and evolve as a CEO that um you have to treat people carefully.
• 17:06
  Robin Kovitz: Almost that maternalistic sort of leadership.
• 17:08
  Robin Kovitz: You have you cannot, not everyone, we're obviously a types, you and me.
• 17:12
  Robin Kovitz: You don't get where we are without being like that.
• 17:14
  Robin Kovitz: But most people are not.
• 17:16
  Robin Kovitz: And uh just really understanding your audience and adapting your style.
• 17:20
  Robin Kovitz: Um, I'm doing a terrible job answering this question.
• 17:23
  Jen LaForge: You are not, you're not, but I'm having a hard time imagining you as that cutthroat business leader coming from private equity and then barking orders at you know, these people building beautiful baskets.
• 17:37
  Jen LaForge: Um, I wish I could go back in time and meet that person to compare against the person today.
• 17:43
  Jen LaForge: But I think what I heard you say was that your people are your greatest asset.
• 17:46
  Jen LaForge: And to be a good leader, you have to treat them like people.
• 17:50
  Jen LaForge: Um, especially when you're in this world that you're in with baskets, and again, a very emotional business.
• 17:57
  Jen LaForge: Um so I'm a bit amazed that you've even described that because I can't see it.
• 18:03
  Jen LaForge: I can't see it at all.
• 18:04
  Robin Kovitz: It's interesting though, because I I think of everything in terms of a spectrum.
• 18:07
  Robin Kovitz: And so if you think of that barking orders on the left and now, you know, being super uber nice on the right, I think, and I don't know that I found equilibrium yet.
• 18:14
  Robin Kovitz: I think maybe I've gone too far to the right because sometimes I look around and I say, wow, we're not getting the performance that we need.
• 18:19
  Robin Kovitz: Maybe if I was a bit tougher driver of a leader, maybe performance would be higher, but maybe I'd have more turnover.
• 18:25
  Robin Kovitz: I mean, Jen, I'd love to hear how you think about that as a leader.
• 18:28
  Jen LaForge: So you just made me think of uh this was from my mentor, Ron Baugh.
• 18:32
  Jen LaForge: He uh he said this to me.
• 18:33
  Jen LaForge: He likely got it from elsewhere.
• 18:35
  Jen LaForge: I can't can't recall.
• 18:37
  Jen LaForge: Um, but I was working with him on this particular challenge as well.
• 18:41
  Jen LaForge: And he said to me, there is no conflict between empathy and accountability.
• 18:46
  Jen LaForge: And that has stuck with me to this day because as a woman, we sometimes, again, that pendulum over into the empathy side um makes us feel, you know, they our team comes to us and something has gone wrong or they're dealing with something personally.
• 19:03
  Jen LaForge: And we can still address that.
• 19:05
  Jen LaForge: But sometimes it's very difficult for us to know how to address that, but then still say, well, but business performance is here.
• 19:11
  Jen LaForge: And so that idea to wrap around empathy and accountability really helps me in the conversation piece to say, I'm really sorry that that's happened and I'm here to support you in this in any way that we can.
• 19:24
  Jen LaForge: We still have to deliver here.
• 19:26
  Jen LaForge: So, what can we do together to make sure that happens and still be able to take care of this issue for you?
• 19:31
  Jen LaForge: And that makes people, in a way, still feel seen and heard and supported, but in a way gives them, I think, more trust and autonomy to be able to go through that and take care of the business for you as well.
• 19:45
  Jen LaForge: And so that I I take no credit for that.
• 19:48
  Jen LaForge: It was obviously a learning lesson for me as well.
• 19:50
  Jen LaForge: But um, it's definitely a challenge that that women in particular do have in the industry.
• 19:55
  Jen LaForge: Um, and and again, we're also fighting the if we do go too far on the other side and we're putting down the hammer, um, you know, we're very easily construed as too aggressive.
• 20:07
  Jen LaForge: And so finding that balance is is it's very difficult.
• 20:10
  Jen LaForge: And I think that's why I'm so in awe of that that transformation over 12 years.
• 20:16
  Jen LaForge: So thank you for sharing that with me.
• 20:17
  Jen LaForge: That that's one of those ones I'm gonna remember always.
• 20:20
  Robin Kovitz: Can you say it again?
• 20:21
  Robin Kovitz: There's no there's no conflict between empathy and accountability and accountability.
• 20:25
  Robin Kovitz: Conflict.
• 20:26
  Robin Kovitz: I love that.
• 20:26
  Robin Kovitz: There's no conflict between empathy.
• 20:28
  Robin Kovitz: I will use that always.
• 20:29
  Robin Kovitz: Thank you.
• 20:30
  Jen LaForge: Yeah, no, of course.
• 20:30
  Jen LaForge: Thank you, Ron.
• 20:32
  unknown: Thank you, Ron.
• 20:34
  Jen LaForge: He's gonna call me after this and say, I didn't say that.
• 20:37
  Jen LaForge: No, he he did, but I don't know where the quote comes from.
• 20:39
  Jen LaForge: So maybe we'll we'll follow up with uh with an actual link to that.
• 20:42
  Jen LaForge: That's gonna be one of my ramenisms.
• 20:44
  Jen LaForge: So Ron and take, I'm stealing it, Ron and Jen.
• 20:46
  Jen LaForge: Thank you.
• 20:47
  Jen LaForge: I love it.
• 20:48
  Jen LaForge: Um, so Robin, what's what's next?
• 20:51
  Jen LaForge: I mean, you said you wanted to build a life.
• 20:53
  Jen LaForge: This is not your job, this is your career.
• 20:55
  Jen LaForge: You are baskets at heart.
• 20:57
  Jen LaForge: Where do you see baskets going?
• 20:59
  Jen LaForge: Where do you want to take this?
• 21:01
  Robin Kovitz: Wow, another great question, Jen.
• 21:03
  Robin Kovitz: We're like such a deep thinker.
• 21:04
  Robin Kovitz: I'm uh I'm in awe of you.
• 21:06
  Robin Kovitz: Thank you.
• 21:07
  Robin Kovitz: Um yeah, so I bought baskets when I started, became a mother, and now my children are nearly at the stage where they're leaving.
• 21:13
  Robin Kovitz: And you know, my husband and I are starting to think about this next chapter and what that looks like for us.
• 21:17
  Robin Kovitz: Um, it has been a deeply personal mission.
• 21:19
  Robin Kovitz: I get a call a week of people trying to buy my business, which I will never ever sell.
• 21:23
  Robin Kovitz: Okay.
• 21:24
  Robin Kovitz: Um, it's my third child.
• 21:26
  Robin Kovitz: For what's next for me is impact.
• 21:28
  Robin Kovitz: And I think baskets recently received its B Corp certification.
• 21:32
  Robin Kovitz: Okay.
• 21:32
  Robin Kovitz: Many people don't know what that is.
• 21:34
  Robin Kovitz: And I I I frank as a marketer, I frankly, you're the marketer, not me.
• 21:37
  Robin Kovitz: I frankly think they need to rebrand because whenever I say it, they're like B, like not the A team, like the B team.
• 21:42
  Robin Kovitz: And I'm like, no, no, no.
• 21:43
  Robin Kovitz: What it means, what it means is that you so if you're a B Corp certified company, you have to pass this very rigorous standard in which you pass showing that yes, you're a for profit organization, but you you pass the highest standards of environmental.
• 21:59
  Robin Kovitz: uh an ethical guardianship, I guess.
• 22:02
  Robin Kovitz: And so it means that we take care of our people and the environment.
• 22:05
  Robin Kovitz: And for me, the next thing on my personal journey is to help hopefully, you know, we want to get to 100 million in sales.
• 22:12
  Robin Kovitz: That's our goal.
• 22:13
  Robin Kovitz: And then we, you know, that will give us some financial freedom and flexibility for me to focus on my passion project, which is trying to help other business leaders see that you can, you can do business differently.
• 22:24
  Robin Kovitz: Yes.
• 22:25
  Robin Kovitz: I think, you know, I had the great privilege of attending the Harvard Business School, learning about different business models from all around the world.
• 22:31
  Robin Kovitz: And I think there I really learned about um and you know in the US right now I think there's such fragmentation about what is the purpose of the organization.
• 22:40
  Robin Kovitz: And if we have time, I'll share one quick story.
• 22:42
  Robin Kovitz: Oh, great.
• 22:43
  Robin Kovitz: So I grew up with a family business and I grew up watching my dad run a business and um and that drove me to think that entrepreneurship was terrible.
• 22:51
  Robin Kovitz: Oh, okay.
• 22:52
  Robin Kovitz: Because entrepreneurship is very hard and there are many times when, you know, he almost lost the business, right?
• 22:56
  Robin Kovitz: And it ended up being a very happy story where he sold the business and and you know made a lot of his employees fabulously wealthy and shared that with his team.
• 23:05
  Robin Kovitz: And long story short, uh he had this one warehouse worker who was fabulous who'd been with him for 15 years.
• 23:11
  Robin Kovitz: And it was at a time when the business was not doing well, losing money my dad was very stressed.
• 23:17
  Robin Kovitz: And the warehouse worker was a single dad and his kid got hit by a car.
• 23:22
  Robin Kovitz: Just like horrific story.
• 23:24
  Robin Kovitz: And my I you know I'm little and I'm overhearing my dad and my dad's saying you know what num, don't worry about it.
• 23:32
  Robin Kovitz: Just spend the next six months in the hospital with your kid.
• 23:34
  Robin Kovitz: I'm going to pay you.
• 23:35
  Robin Kovitz: I'm going to pay you for the next six months.
• 23:37
  Robin Kovitz: And he was struggling at this struggling like I and I remember being young saying to my dad like where how are you going to pay him if you're, you know, you're on every other colleague here you're freaking about money.
• 23:45
  Robin Kovitz: How's how and he said Robin like it'll come out of my salary.
• 23:48
  Robin Kovitz: This is just what a leader does.
• 23:49
  Robin Kovitz: It's the right thing to do.
• 23:50
  Robin Kovitz: He doesn't have any support.
• 23:51
  Robin Kovitz: He has a chance of getting his kid better.
• 23:52
  Robin Kovitz: Like this is you know thankfully the the company will figure it out.
• 23:56
  Robin Kovitz: And so I grew up thinking that the purpose of a company is to help with those kinds of things.
• 24:00
  Robin Kovitz: The purpose of a company is just not not just to make the shareholders fabulously wealthy.
• 24:03
  Robin Kovitz: And that was my world and then I went to Harvard where I learned all kinds of different models.
• 24:07
  Robin Kovitz: But my my point is to say that I think I don't you know different countries feel differently about what the role of government should be in that in healthcare education.
• 24:16
  Robin Kovitz: I think companies who are successful have an obligation to help people.
• 24:19
  Robin Kovitz: I really do.
• 24:20
  Robin Kovitz: And it might be Pollyanna and so I would love to um next for me would be helping other business leaders see that.
• 24:28
  Jen LaForge: I love that.
• 24:28
  Robin Kovitz: You know you see these cajillionaires who you know they're they're cutthroat negotiating with their vendors.
• 24:34
  Robin Kovitz: Their vendors are going bankrupt but they're making billions of dollars and then at the end of the day they have a foundation.
• 24:38
  Robin Kovitz: It's like why don't you just pay your workers more and let your vendors make money and then make a billion less and not have a foundation.
• 24:45
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah.
• 24:45
  Robin Kovitz: So I I think there's this whole other sorry now I'm on my soapbox.
• 24:49
  Robin Kovitz: I think there's a whole other way of doing business as people that we need to think about.
• 24:53
  Jen LaForge: Yeah.
• 24:54
  Jen LaForge: If you're going to say sorry, say sorry because you just caught me falling in love on camera because everything you've just said uh just just resonates with my own core values.
• 25:04
  Jen LaForge: And I love that you're doing that.
• 25:06
  Jen LaForge: And I want to make sure that we can help baskets get to that hundred million so you have that breathing room to do that.
• 25:11
  Jen LaForge: Oh my God.
• 25:12
  Jen LaForge: Thank you.
• 25:12
  Jen LaForge: So they're on rackton.ca you can get cash back.
• 25:15
  Jen LaForge: We're going into the busiest time of the year holidays there's a lot of gifting if you haven't thought of a gift basket go to baskets.com check it out um we I had said use baskets all the time both business and personally myself and the quality is there the emotion is there it and it takes the thinking out of it.
• 25:36
  Jen LaForge: So please support Robin support baskets support the environment support families I mean you're really uh a gem and a diamond in the rough I'm so happy to have you here today.
• 25:48
  Jen LaForge: Is there anything wow I'm going to cry well don't no we're not going to cry we're not going to cry.
• 25:52
  Jen LaForge: We're in love.
• 25:53
  Jen LaForge: These are tears of joy.
• 25:54
  Jen LaForge: Anything else that we didn't cover that you think um really the audience should know about either baskets your brand or these deep values you have as a business leader?
• 26:08
  Robin Kovitz: No, I mean I'm I'm I'm so touched that this has been a spotlight on baskets and I think that's a testament to you Jen as a leader and what you're trying to do with this reach that you have and I so appreciate that.
• 26:18
  Robin Kovitz: I feel remiss that we didn't talk about rackutin.ca because you guys have been a fabulous partner for us for many years, I think almost five years now and and this whole world of affiliate I mean I just think um it's such an interesting time for maybe for those listeners who haven't really thought about affiliate as a channel.
• 26:36
  Robin Kovitz: From my I'm not a marketer but from my perspective as a CEO for many years SEM and SEO was the playbook.
• 26:43
  Robin Kovitz: So paid marketing and organic search and that driving conversion.
• 26:47
  Robin Kovitz: I think that playbook is broken in this new world of AI.
• 26:51
  Robin Kovitz: Every month I look at I'm just paying Google to to break even and that's that's no model for business success.
• 26:58
  Robin Kovitz: I would encourage other CEOs to really think about affiliate is that it can be this commission based sales channel that you don't have to pay for it.
• 27:06
  Robin Kovitz: You know you're only paying a percentage of sales which is like who doesn't want more sales?
• 27:10
  Jen LaForge: Pure paper performance.
• 27:11
  Robin Kovitz: Yeah and so on a personal level I'm really looking at my overall marketing budget.
• 27:15
  Robin Kovitz: I'm looking at the pressure on MER, the managed marketing expensive show that that many business owners are looking at and I'm looking at trying to learn more about your world.
• 27:24
  Robin Kovitz: I'd love to hear your thoughts on like how can we use affiliate more to drive sales?
• 27:28
  Jen LaForge: Well we're going to have many meetings.
• 27:30
  Jen LaForge: I'm going to come to your warehouse we're going to be best friends and we're going to gift each other beautiful baskets for the holidays.
• 27:36
  Jen LaForge: So we'll definitely talk there but I think what you just nailed is something that we've been trying to to really bring a voice to and just how critical affiliates are now.
• 27:45
  Jen LaForge: They are growing at I think the the fastest speed of any other marketing channel out there right now.
• 27:51
  Jen LaForge: And we're touching everything across the the creator, the influencer, the social, the um you know sites and rewarding loyalty programs like rackton.ca and and you're absolutely right the game is changing the playbooks are broken and this is one that works and you have data that will inform you as well as again a true paper performance model that you can make a CEO very comfortable with.
• 28:16
  Jen LaForge: So any CEO out there listen to Robin she knows what she's talking about.
• 28:20
  Jen LaForge: Consider affiliate consider affiliate talk to talk to us over at rackin.ca um Robin thank you this is uh this was a real pleasure for me personally um but I hope our guests really enjoyed it and um we're gonna need to go for lunch because I would love that lots more to talk about.
• 28:38
  Jen LaForge: Thank you so much for having me Jen of course thank you.
• 28:41
  Robin Kovitz: And that's it this episode of stacked if you found this useful follow along as we interview leaders shaping the future of retail and learn how value really works behind the scenes.
• 28:50
  Robin Kovitz: And if there's a topic you want us to unpack, I'd love to hear from you.
• 28:54
  Robin Kovitz: See you next time