So before we dive in Robin, maybe you can share with us a brief summary of what your company does and how long you've been running it for.
Sure. So I'm Robin Kovitz, the president and CEO of Baskets Inc, we're the premier gift delivery service in North America. Our mission is to make it quick and easy to send super impressive gifts to anyone in Canada or the US. There are really two sides to our business. So the first is our B2C or business to consumer side, which hopefully, you've seen or used or experienced Steve. And for example, if you want to send a baby gift to a friend across the country. The other part of our businesses are B2B or like business to business, which is more larger scale corporate gifting capabilities. So for example, a law firm who wants to send gifts to its 300 employees, or a loyalty program that sends hundreds of 1000s of gifts to its members. We're an expert in that logistics of large scale mailing and corporate gifting. I purchased the business in 2014. And so I've been operating it for the last eight years. And we were recently recognized by the Globe and Mail [inaudible] on business magazine, as one of the top run companies in Canada for our third year in a row, I think you had four. Right, Steve, so we're just trying to catch up to you.
Your checks in the mail. Thank you, Robin. That's amazing. It's such an amazing story. And I've sent baskets as well as received baskets many times, and particularly as we're approaching the holiday season. I'm looking forward to receiving more. So, Robin, you've been on the job for eight years now, presumably, you've had lots of successes and plenty of failures, as we all do. I'm curious, as you reflect back on your eight years leading this business after having purchased it from its original founder, can you share with us some of the seemingly small changes that you've made that ended up having an outsized impact? Whether it be financial, operational or even personal?
Sure, yeah. So I mean, I remember when I first bought the business, every day, you worked so hard to close the deal and then your first day operating, I would ask questions, and people would just kind of look at me blankly. For example, how many baskets did we make today? They weren't sure, because they weren't tracking that. And so Well, ultimately, in my first year, I implemented an ERP system, which is obviously a huge change, you can start with just measuring one thing. So for example, in my first week, I had the company start measuring just our daily production. And by getting the team focused on measurement, you can then have data which would lead leads to better decision making and ultimately better margins.
How did you decide what to measure first, because when you go into an environment where nothing is measured, the temptation is to try to measure everything all at once. So how did you decide where to start in your pursuit of just kind of measuring something?
So like most things in entrepreneurship, I tried something and it failed miserably. And so then I tried something else. So I mean, I did the typical investment banking analyst thing where I tried to measure everything, build a huge model, and then present it to the team. And I realized after a while, that they really had no idea what I was talking about. And nobody, people didn't want to tell me that they didn't understand sort of the model and the plan. And so I realized then that I had to make it very, very simple. And so I wanted to start with something in our business, you know, we do produce goods, so something that was very tangible that everyone could see. And also something where I thought that we could have some quick wins by increasing production, and sort of build that momentum as a team. So I started with, like, what I perceived to be the most tangible and visible thing in the organization.
Did you see any change in behavior as a result of measuring what you decided to measure?
Yes, yes, dramatically, especially when you start measuring, when, like you said, when you go from an organization that doesn't measure anything, and you start with focusing on just one metric, I noticed a huge, huge change in behavior. So firstly, I noticed people sort of paying more attention to it and talking about it, and then focusing on it. So I think before, you know, a day could pass and if you're not really aware of the target or production target or what your actual output is, you know, you end up invariably producing less than what if you're focused on it and talking about how you can improve it.
What gets measured gets done, as they say, very interesting. Anything else that comes to mind in terms of small changes that had outsized impacts?
Yeah, I think another challenge that I faced as a young first time and female CEO was hiring, recruiting, training, retention, the whole HR side, right, that mess, that we don't really learn in school. Baskets has the added challenge that it's a seasonal business. So we have a big peak in Q4 at the end of the year for the Christmas rush. And because of that peak, we have sort of a bulge in terms of our staffing. And so we need to be able to autumn onboard and train, hire, train and onboard people very, very quickly. And this was a big challenge that I saw when I first joined the company where it was taking three or four weeks to hire, and then three or four weeks to train and that the cycle was just too long given the the season. And so something that we worked on was really automating our training and onboarding process, where it's videos where it's disseminated across many team members.
And so we can basically get people up to speed within three days of joining the company. And that way, we're really able to see whether they're going to work or not, and sort of fire early if we've made a poor hiring choice. It also has given us a lot of confidence because we know that we're good at the hiring, training and retaining, like onboarding function. We have the confidence to move someone out of a role if they're not really thriving, because we know that we can bring someone else in quickly and try and find a different spot for that person. So I think, overall, by just focusing on training and onboarding and shortening that cycle and making it more automatic, we've really improved our HR function.
That's really interesting. Specifically, I want to ask a quick follow up question as it relates to onboarding because in my experience, you know, entrepreneurs in the world over understandably put a lot of emphasis on hiring but where we tend to drop the ball as a group is with respect to onboarding, and we had the same problem when I first purchased my business. I'm curious, how did you either find or make time to ensure that onboarding was a priority? The reason why I asked this is because our training videos were old and were outdated. And everybody across the company almost universally understood that they needed to be updated. But frankly, it always lost the battle for people's time and attention. Because kind of the fire drill of the day always took precedent, how did you overcome that challenge to the extent that you faced it at all?
Yeah, great question. I think that there are pros and cons to operating a seasonal business. And whenever I have the lucky benefit of being back on campus at HBS, Professor Rubec always says, you know, the benefit of having a seasonal business is that you have eight months of the year where you can really focus on change. And so what we did was we use our quiet season to work on these improve, we always do a post mortem, where we get feedback from the entire company on what went well in the season, and what didn't. And then we spent our slow months really working on improving. And, you know, we'll pick three tangible projects. And we'll tie people's like offseason compensation to the completion of those projects.
Very good, very interesting. So we have investing in measurement, under the spirit of what gets measured gets done, you focused on streamlining and automating the onboarding process so that new employees can be ramped up more quickly. Before we hit record, you provided with two other things that you wanted to talk about today. So let's dive into one of those.
Sure. I think taking feedback from the shop floor has been really transformational for us. So I think when you first buy a company, especially as a young or first time CEO, the instinct is to kind of touch everything and do everything yourself. But when we all put on our employee hats, there's nothing less motivating than that. And so with time, I learned that while you can go really really quickly on your own to go far, you really need to inspire a vision and convince a team to go with you. And there's no better way to do that than by engaging people and motivating them by asking them and listening to their ideas. And sometimes those ideas that are coming from the shop floor are much better than what you could have come up with on your own sort of top down because the people who are coming up with them do those tasks every day. So for example, instead of back to the first measurement thing, instead of saying, we need to produce x more units a day. I challenged them to come up with ideas for how they wanted to increase production. And I think when those ideas come from the shop floor, people in my experience get much more excited about it, they they last longer. And sometimes they even do better than than the target because it's their their ideas. There's this pride of ownership.
Yeah, people tend to be more engaged in decisions where they feel like they played a role in making that decision. I'm curious how you go about doing this? I mean, do you formalize it and have one on one meetings with employees where you ask them, do you do it more informally, where you make a point to kind of walk around the office and walk around the shop floor on a regular basis? Very tactically, how do you go about kind of soliciting this feedback?
Both ways, for sure. Informally, I think managing by walking around is really important. And I think that's also something that we don't learn sort of on Bay Street or Wall Street, because we're often sort of in this ivory tower. For me, I literally put blocks on my calendar every single day, little blocks to walk around, we have a 55,000 square foot facility and look and see people and be seen and observe things as they come up. So informally, for sure, as you see things went even today, this morning, I saw someone moving [inaudible] and I was asking why they were doing that. And we were able to just kind of chat about it, and figure out that maybe there was a better, there was an unnecessary step. But also, formally, I think we offer rewards for people. And we make a big fuss over people when they come up with great ideas. And we really encourage that. And there's no penalty for coming up with a bad idea. There are no bad ideas, right? So we create this like really safe environment where people can throw out their ideas, and with huge rewards if they're implemented.
Can you think of an example of a change that you have implemented as a result of, you know, one of your team members presenting you with an idea?
Yes, I have a very tangible example. There was this woman, of course, it came from a woman right, Steve? Driver, no, I'm just using, but we had a female delivery driver who was very frustrated. And she said, she's she actually she was great. She came back with two pieces of advice. The first one was, she said, it's so frustrating for me when I go to someone's house, and they're not there. And then I just leave, it's like, they don't even know I'm there. What if I left like a door knocker card saying I was here, call us. And it was so simple and so smart. And I would have never come up with that, because I'm not delivering gift baskets myself. But it was brilliant when we implemented it. Because you know, certain high value things or things with alcohol, we wouldn't leave on someone's front porch. But at least they know that we were there. And we tried.
Yeah, very cool. Very cool. And finally, one of the ideas that we discussed before we hit record, is a very personal one. So I'd love to dive into that one.
Thanks. So I think, Steve, you've done such a great job pioneering this whole discussion about mental health in leadership and the toll that it takes to be a CEO. And, frankly, just many people aren't like that they haven't been talking about it. And I think I think you've been a pioneer in sort of opening that dialogue. As a woman, I find I'm sort of more open and transparent just by nature, I don't know if that's a gender stereotype or not. But for me, I think I didn't realize how intimidating we can be as CEOs to our employees. And so by being really open about my gaps, about the mistakes that I make, and being able to laugh at myself, I think I've created the culture where people feel comfortable taking risks, and also being open and active about their own self improvement. So Baskets is an environment where we try things, they fail, we try something else, there's no no shame in that. And we're all open about sort of the the improvement plans that we're working all the things that we're working on. And I've sort of taken this philosophy with my kids as well. And I think it's really important to not only work on your strengths, but also work on your gaps and be able to have a sense of humor about them and be a human, you know, not a robot, as a CEO.
Yeah, it's really interesting. It's something that I've spoken about in the past is this idea of the extent to which you should be vulnerable as a leader. So I'd be curious to hear your experience with this Robin, because as a new inexperienced CEO, I perhaps not at a conscious level, but I found myself overcompensating, which is to say that I knew I was young, I knew I was inexperienced. And as a result, I was very, very hesitant to be vulnerable, because I felt like a bit of an imposter to begin with. As I got more tenure and more experience, I became more comfortable with being vulnerable, because I felt a little bit less insecure, because I had more experience under my belt. Did you in your early days, as a CEO and you yourself, were inexperienced and young? Did you find yourself overcompensating by not being as vulnerable as perhaps you are now?
No, I'm intrigued about your story. For me, I sort of put myself out there always. And sometimes I get hurt. But it's just my personality type. I don't take myself very seriously. I think I can learn from anybody and everybody. And I throw myself out there with authenticity always. And so I think for me, from day one, I just sort of like this is what you see what you get. But I would sort of agree with your journey of developing that confidence. I think as a first time CEO, I think I really wasn't confident in what I was doing. I mean, it was quite open about that. But I think with time and with improvements in the business, I think you generate that judgment and that confidence in what you're doing.
So there are some presumably newer CEOs listening to this, who might be saying to themselves, I can't imagine exhibiting that level of vulnerability myself. So maybe to get a bit more tangible, can you provide us with an example or two of you know, what you were vulnerable? Or what you have been vulnerable about? And also, what have you learned by being vulnerable? Like what has being vulnerable from day one taught you about the extent to which leaders ought to be vulnerable in front of their employees?
Great questions, I think, I'm so excited about the way society is evolving, because now there's this big conversation about neurodiversity, and, you know, just being more understanding about all different types of people. And for me, I think I find it really difficult, I find some of the social stuff very difficult. I like I much prefer talking about work and, and I also find it very difficult to lie. I just say what it is. And so for me, I can definitely understand what you're saying. But for me, I've just always sort of put myself out there with the full truth, and dealt with the consequences. For someone who is more shy or scared to do that, I think you could start with something very small. For example, one of my gaps is that I'm always late. And it's just like, almost become a joke at our company. Obviously, it's not professional to be late. But I'm just not good with time.
And we have other people in our company who are excellent with time, right? They it's just their thing. And so I'm we joke about that quite openly. So it's a small simple thing. But I think it gives people a lot of confidence, knowing that they could have a skill that even the CEO doesn't have, right. And it helps create a bit more of an even playing field where there's this this safer space for them to contribute and share and be engaged. So I think it can be a little bit disarming and encouraging. So for a first time CEO who's you know, shy to kind of open the kimono, I would encourage them to start with something very small and something that's really, seemingly to them inconsequential. And I think you'd be shocked by how much it influences the employees who are more intimidated of you than you might realize.
Yeah, the idea of kind of humanizing yourself as a leader is a really important concept and one that frankly, it took me too long to enact myself. One of the things that, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this that I noticed once I actually did to decide to become more vulnerable, was I found that vulnerability created vulnerability in others. Which is to say that if I wanted my employees to be open and honest and genuine and forthright with me, I first had to demonstrate that behavior myself. Otherwise, it would be the equivalent of say, you know, me encouraging everybody to take four weeks of vacation a year, but never taking any vacation myself. If I were to do that, employees would think that the behavior in question is implicitly frowned upon, regardless of what I say. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. Have you found that your vulnerability has created vulnerability within the others who work Baskets?
Yeah, 100%. I think you see, like the law of reciprocity working, when you're vulnerable people share things with with you in return, and it does create these deeper bonds. I think for me, though, I just wanted to underline that I don't think it's just vulnerability. I think it's a combination of vulnerability and authenticity. I think it's that combination is very important, because I think you can be vulnerable. But if if people see through it, it seems hollow. But I think it's that vulnerability of authentically showing something that that is truly, truly vulnerable. If you know what I mean, I think that's where you have the most impact and yeah, I think like attracts like when you're vulnerable. Other people feel that they can be vulnerable with you.
Robin, it's a great place to end. Thank you for your time today. Congratulations on all of the success that you've had with Baskets and I look forward to continuing to watch your success from afar going forward.
