Ep 82- From Corporate to Curls with Renee Morris

Transcript

Transcripts are generated by machine learning, so typos may be present.

BTB (00:00):

Welcome to the Building Texas Business Podcast, interviews with thought leaders and organizational visionaries from across industry. Join us as we talk about the latest trends, challenges, and growth opportunities to take your business to the next level. The Building Texas Business Podcast is brought to you by BoyarMiller, providing counsel beyond expectations. Find out how we can make a meaningful difference to your business at boyarmiller.com and by your podcast team where having your own podcast is as easy as being a guest on ours. Discover more at yourpodcast.team. Now. Here’s your host, Chris Hanslik.

Chris (00:42):

In this episode, you will meet Renee Morris, chief Curl Officer at Uncle Fun’s. Daughter Renee shares her passion for helping curly girls solve their hair problems with unique and innovative natural hair products. Renee, I want to thank you for coming on building Texas business. It’s so happy to have you as a guest.

Renee (01:02):

Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Chris (01:04):

Okay, so you win the award so far for having the coolest, I would say funky, but that would be

Renee (01:11):

Play on words,

Chris (01:11):

Right? But as far as a name for a company, uncle Fun’s daughter,

Renee (01:15):

Yes.

Chris (01:15):

Okay. Tell us, what is your company known for and what do you do?

Renee (01:19):

So Uncle Fun’s daughter is a hair products company. We’re based here in Houston, Texas. I bought the company, so the parent company is Rot more as consumer group, but I bought the brand Uncle Fun’s daughter 10 years ago from a husband and wife team. So Uncle Fun’s, daughter curates natural hair products for women, men and children who choose to wear their hair naturally. And so that shampoos, conditioners, curl definers, moisturizers, stylers finishers, you name it, we make it. We also have a thermal protection line for women who want to blow dry and style their hair with heat. And we’re distributed nationally targeted Walmart, sorry, target, Walgreens, Kroger, C-V-S-H-E-B, locally. So you name it, other than Walmart, we’re there.

Chris (02:03):

Okay.

Renee (02:03):

Sally Beauty, easy to find, easy to find.

Chris (02:06):

Well, I have to ask this. I have daughters, I mean Sephora or Ulta?

Renee (02:09):

No, Sephora, Ulta yet. We’ve been working that line. We can talk about that as part of this deep dive, but we’ve been working that line. But no land in Sephora or Ulta just yet.

Chris (02:20):

Okay, very good. So how did you find your way into the haircare product world? Because you didn’t start there.

Renee (02:27):

No. I am a former management consultant, 20 years management consulting, advising clients, multi-billion dollar companies on how to drive revenue growth and through sales and marketing. And I was a mother of three kids at the time. My son was probably three or four, my daughters were two and I was flying back and forth between Houston and New York for a client and I had this realization that I didn’t want to do that as a mom. I needed to be home, but I still wanted to be a career person. So I knew I am not built to be a stay-at-home mother. That is not who I am. And Covid taught me that with isolation. And so what I started deciding was I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next and I realized I had some options. It’s that fork in the road that you go through.

(03:16):

You start to look inwardly every time you have that fork in road. And I did that and I said, okay, your option A is to go find a company based in Houston and B, a VP or senior VP of some operation. Option B is you find a small company and you’re a big fish in a small pond kind of thing. Option C is you just go do your own thing. And after I kind of went through it, I realized I worked for the Coca-Colas in GE Capitals of the world in my past, I didn’t want to go work for a big company. I didn’t think I wanted to work for a small company because of my personality style. And so I decided I wanted to go buy something or have my own company. Then the question becomes, do you build or do you buy? I’m a management consultant by heart, so it’s always go buy something. Why? Because I can take it, I can fix it and I can grow it. Then it became, alright, well what are you going to go buy? And so most people out there that are thinking about buying a company, I started reaching out to brokers. I started going doing some networking, calling attorneys, people that work on deals, that kind of stuff, just putting my name out there and I got all the things that you normally get when you’re looking to buy a company, the gym, the dry cleaner, the storage facility, the gas station, all the things that I didn’t want to buy. I didn’t have a passion for them.

(04:41):

And so also for background, my consulting experience in sales and marketing strategy has been predominantly in consumer products. So I know consumer products, I know revenue growth, I know marketing strategy. So I was like, okay. So kept looking. And I used this hair product called Uncle Fun’s. Daughter. I’d found it when I first moved here in 2000. Like all curly girls out there back then, that was almost 20 years ago, my goodness. But 15 years ago, back then there weren’t a lot of natural hair products out there for women of color and women of curly hair with curly hair specifically. And so I googled when I first moved here, natural hair products, curly hair, Houston and uncle, funky daughter came up. I had never heard of this company. So I go to Rice Village, I buy this product and I start using it, extra butter, start using it. And for those out there that are African American descent or thick, curly hair, we do this thing called two Strand twists.

Chris (05:39):

Two what?

Renee (05:40):

I love it. Two strand twists. You take your hair and you twist it. Instead of braiding it, you put it in twists. And there are single twists all over my head.

(05:51):

So that’s how I would style my hair, wear it, rock a two-strand, twist those out there, will understand that, look it up and then Google it. And so that worked on my hair really well. And so again, for those with tight curly hair, finding the right hair product that works for your hair is tough. It is not easy. As one of your team members, Courtney was talking about, she’s gone through all the products because you go through this product journey trying to find something that works for you. So found Extra butter worked, loved it, and then I would stop using it while I’m traveling. I would forget it at home.

(06:26):

I would go back to some other competitive brand and it didn’t work for my hair. So I’m like, okay, uncle Fun’s daughter is the only thing that works for my hair. So I go in to get my uncle Fun’s daughter one day after I had braids and washed them out and yada, yada yada. I’m going in, I’m getting my extra butter. And this guy behind the counter who I’ve bought hair products from for the past at this 0.5 years, says, yeah, my wife and I are going through a divorce. I’m like, oh, so I do have an MBA,

(06:55):

I’m not trying to sound like a shark, but my MBA said distressed asset might be willing to sell. Literally that is the voice that went in my head. And so I was like, oh, really? So I stood there in that store and I just chatted with him for hours and about the company personally, what he was going through because divorce, for those that may have gone through, it can be an emotional troubling time. So I was a listening ear, but as I’m listening, I’m also thinking about, okay, what’s the story behind the brand? Is this going to resonate? And I’m also watching people come in and out. And so I said, well, are you guys thinking about selling it? And he gives me a story about what’s happening with the cell. And I said, well, if you’re ever thinking about selling it, let me know. So I walk out, I Google because this is horrible to say, but divorces are public

Chris (07:52):

Record, right? It filed in state court. It’s public record. Yes.

Renee (07:56):

So I’m figuring out what’s happening with the divorce and I find out that the company is in receivership. And for those who don’t know, I did not know at the time what a receivership was. A receivership happens when a divorce is happening and the husband and wife aren’t operating behaving appropriately.

Chris (08:14):

Well, they can’t agree on the direction of the company and it can be not in a divorce, but basically owners cannot agree. And a court may appoint a receiver

Renee (08:21):

Exactly.

Chris (08:22):

To run the company.

Renee (08:23):

Exactly. Thank you. That’s why you’re the attorney. So the judge have

Chris (08:26):

All experience with that.

Renee (08:27):

Yes. So the judge had appointed this guy, either the receiver, I reached out to the gentleman and I said, I’m interested in the cell of uncle, fun’s daughter if that so happens to be the case. And so the one thing I did learn, and you can probably expound on this, is oftentimes in a divorce when the receiver comes in at that point that receiver is really thinking about how to get rid of this asset. And so those are all the things that I learned during this process. And I was like, okay, so he wants to sell because he wants to get paid and he knows nothing about this business. He was no offense,

Chris (09:03):

No emotional tie to it for

Renee (09:04):

Sure, no emotional tie. He’s an older white gentleman who knows nothing about black hair products. And so I was like, okay, so he doesn’t know. He doesn’t have an appreciation for the value of the company. And so I reached out and I said, okay, here’s a number. You wouldn’t believe the number I gave him. And he countered with some minor adjustment, and we bought this company for less than a hundred thousand dollars and they had a revenue at the time when I saw their tax returns, I think it was maybe a million or so that they’ve claimed in revenue at some point they said, but at least for sure, I think our first year of revenue was probably around, and it was a partial year, probably a quarter million dollars is what revenue they generated. And so really, if you talk about a multiple of sales, we brought it on an tremendous

Chris (09:53):

Discount. It was a heck of a deal,

Renee (09:54):

Heck of a deal. I can’t find those deals these

Chris (09:57):

Days.

Renee (09:57):

If anybody has one of those deals, you come let me know. So that’s how we ended up buying this company 10 years ago. And shortly thereafter, target comes knocking at the door and says, Hey, we were having this discussion with the owners about potentially launching, would you be interested? And I’m like, absolutely. And it was because they were going through this divorce that they couldn’t get over the finish line.

(10:23):

And so shortly after we buy, we’re launching in Target. But before I did that, one of the first things I did was, because it’s probably so old you can’t find it, but the label, when I first bought the company when I was buying it, it was this woman’s face with a big afro on the front and it had a cute little seventies vibe on it, and it was in this white HDPE bottle, which by the way, those aren’t recyclable. So I said, first we need to change this. We got to change the packaging, we got to upgrade the label. We need to make it universally appealing to all curly girls. Because if I look at a woman with a big Afro, I think tight, curly hair like mine, and our products work across the spectrum from wavy like Courtney to really tight like Renee. And that wasn’t representative on the label. So we redesigned the label, changed the bottle from an HGPE bottle to a PET bottle, which is recyclable, and then just upgraded this packaging to what I consider a sleeker new look.

Chris (11:26):

Very good. Great story.

Renee (11:27):

Thank you.

Chris (11:28):

So back up a little bit, share a little bit. So you go from big corporate consulting job, some comfort in there probably. You mentioned travel and you did mention the mom aspect playing a role. But let’s talk a little bit about actually getting the courage to take that leap out of the big corporate role into I’m going to buy something that’s all on me now to either make it or break it. That had to be scary.

Renee (11:56):

It was, and I am fortunate in that you’re right, I had comfort, we had financial security. I had a husband who still is, who’s a senior executive in medical devices, has nothing to do with anything about consumer products. But we had the luxury for him to say, I can carry this financial load. And I think that’s the big mix. I tell people all the time, if you’re going to take that leap, you got to make sure you’ve got cashflow. Because not only for the company, but for you personally. Because there were several years where my husband called my business a hobby because I was contributing nothing to the financial plan.

Chris (12:36):

In fact, you were probably taken away.

Renee (12:37):

Yeah, I was taken away every year. I wasn’t drawing a salary. I didn’t draw a salary for a couple of years after I didn’t draw a salary into our tax accountant said, you have to draw a salary changing you from whatever tax to an S corp. And I was like, oh wow, really? Okay, so what do I’m going to pay myself? And then he goes, well, and it has to be reasonable. So for probably three or four years after I bought the company, I didn’t draw a salary. I was paying my employees, but I wasn’t paying myself. And I say all that to say yes, it takes a leap, but it also takes the ability and the willingness to take that financial hit. So were there things that we probably wanted to do as a family that we didn’t do? Probably so because I’m growing this brand and was there times I went to my husband, I need another $30,000 probably So. And because one of the things I specifically had chosen is I did not want, and I currently still don’t want to pull in private equity vc, any type of third party investor funding. That is a personal decision I’ve made. And it’s because I am a former accountant and I’m extremely financially conservative and I also don’t want different incentives to help influence how I run my business.

(13:58):

And what I mean by that is I personally just didn’t want to have a PE company saying, you need to do these three things because your EBITDA needs to look like this and your revenue growth needs to look like that.

(14:09):

So we could have easily grown really fast, a lot of brands do and grown themselves out of business, but I chose the path to grow really conservatively now. And so I think I say all that to say, I think yes, financially speaking, having the bandwidth to be able to float yourself and your company for a while is critical. And so don’t take the leap If you’re at your job today living paycheck to paycheck, you have to have a cushion. So what that means is maybe if you’re trying to start the company, then you’re running your business while you’re living paycheck to paycheck. And oh, by the way, you got to stop living paycheck to, because you got to start to build that cushion. So some of you got to make sacrifices, and I think that’s the hard thing. Not everyone’s willing to make the financial sacrifice that it takes to really run and grow a business without third party support. Now in today’s world, you can go get VC capital funding and money is flowing, or at least it was a few

Chris (15:11):

Years ago, but there’s sacrifices

Renee (15:12):

With that, but there’s sacrifices with that.

Chris (15:14):

So yeah, that’s great advice. The other thing that you mentioned as you were evaluating companies is one of my favorite words when it comes to business is passion. You passed on a ton of things. You weren’t passionate about

Renee (15:28):

It.

Chris (15:29):

You found something you were passionate about. And I think that’s a lesson for people too, right? Is it’s not easy to do. As you mentioned, sacrifices have to be made. So if you’re not really passionate about that decision to go be an entrepreneur, start your own business, it’s going to be tough.

Renee (15:44):

Yeah, it’s going to be tough because I have to wake up every day. My passion is really helping people solve problems. And I do that through hair because hair is a problem in the curly hair community. How do I maintain frizz? How do I keep it under control? How do I keep it healthy so it doesn’t break? How do I keep it healthy so it can grow? How do I stop the scalp irritation? There are so many problems that happen in hair. And so what I think about, literally yesterday I was with my marketing team and we’re talking about a campaign for the next month for products, et cetera, or really November. And I said, okay, what problem are we helping her solve? And that’s literally the way I think about stuff. What problem are we helping her solve? Because if we’re not helping her solve a problem, then I don’t have anything to talk about, right?

Chris (16:35):

Yeah, it’s not going to move off the shelf.

Renee (16:36):

It’s not going to move off the shelf.

Chris (16:37):

So another thing that you kind of alluded to, you went through somewhat, it sounds like kind of transforming the business that you took over. You mentioned the product label and packaging. Let’s talk. What else did you, in taking that business over, did you find yourself having to change? And how did you go about making those decisions or either prioritizing them and we can’t do it all at once. So walk us through maybe some of the learning that you went through that.

Renee (17:06):

Well, what’s interesting is, so it wasn’t less of a transformation, but it was, if you think about learning from a marketing standpoint, if you’re going to buy a business, especially a consumer product company, and you buy it in today’s world where we’re so used to knowing who the owner is, the first people don’t like change. So one of the first things I had to do was convince our current customers that nothing had changed other than the label. The minute your package changes and it looks different, they’re like, the formulas have changed. It’s

Chris (17:37):

Not going to be the same,

Renee (17:37):

It’s not the same product. So the first thing I had to do was convince them that this is the same product. In fact, I brought back discontinued SKUs that the receiver had stopped selling because they were slow moving.

Chris (17:48):

How’d you go about doing that? How’d you go about convincing the existing customer base? Nothing changed.

Renee (17:55):

So news articles, Facebook, social ads, having live conversations, going live on social media, all of those were things that I had to go in and dispute or Dubuque, I was the person, there was no team. It was me and one other person. The first person I hired was a social media person,

(18:15):

Wasn’t a warehouse person, it was a social media person. I knew being in the face of the customer was so important. So being live and answering questions online, answering the phone, and people would call, they would go, I heard that this wasn’t the same formula. No ma’am, the same formula. And actually having those, it was me having those live one-on-one conversations. And so I think really touching the customer and being personal with her was the key to our success and gaining that confidence. And we also, this was early in the days of influencers, we also had to partner with people to be able to talk about, it’s the same stuff. Guys, this is the bottle. This is the old bottle. This is the new bottle. This is both sides of my hair. No change. Okay.

Chris (19:00):

Okay. Very smart. Especially like you said. I mean so many people now, the social media influencers have such impact

(19:10):

On what products get picked up in the mainstream. Hello, friends, this is Chris Hansley, your building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations, and business leaders. Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm@boermiller.com and thanks for listening to the show. So let’s move forward a little bit. Part of changing things, new products, there’s a level, you mentioned your marketing meeting yesterday. What do you do within the company to help kind of foster innovation and inspire your people to be innovative about the products?

Renee (20:02):

That’s a tough one because it’s hard. Here’s the challenge that we have as a small company. As a small company, it’s hard for me to afford to pay me the equivalent of a me,

Speaker 4 (20:14):

Right?

Renee (20:15):

The woman or a man with the MBA in marketing who’s got 10 years at Coca-Cola. I am oftentimes recruiting talent that’s learning and I’m teaching as they grow up in our company. And so innovation is really, I’m usually in that meeting asking the provocative question, do these assets, does this story come together cohesively? What problems are we helping them solve? I am there helping them think through and push their thinking a little bit forward. We’ll sit, we just do brainstorming with little toys in the room and stuff to play with, but it’s really just helping them kind of, all right, just toss some ideas out there. Let’s just throw, what is this? What does this mean? What’s her brand voice? What does she sound like? What does she look like? Asking those questions to help them just kind of think outside of the box. Now if she looks like this, so what kind of tone is she going to have? So what would she say then, okay, so let’s talk about how then that manifests itself and how it shows up creatively.

Speaker 4 (21:17):

And

Renee (21:17):

So just helping them drill down to the, so what is really kind of the role I like to play? It’s role I’m playing right now because looking for a marketing director,

Chris (21:27):

Anybody listening out there,

Renee (21:28):

Anybody listening out there? Submit resumes, director.

Chris (21:31):

So you talked about some major players as partners that you have, right? Target and Walgreens and CVS, et cetera. So let’s talk a little bit about that. How did you go about, you told a little bit about Target, but what have you done and what have you found to be successful and maybe strategies that weren’t successful in forming those relationships, but maybe even more importantly, fostering and maintaining those relationships.

Renee (21:56):

So forming on the forming side retailers, for those who may or may not know the space, they want to come to you in one of two ways, either direct or indirect through a distributor. For a small brand like mine, it’s usually, Hey, I don’t want to service direct. I want you to go through a distributor. And usually it’s because when you first launch, you’re going to be in a handful of other stores, not full distribution is what they call it. So not in all 1700 target stores, but I think we started out in a hundred. And so we had to go through a third party distributor. And so that distributor then opened the door to other national retailers for us.

Speaker 4 (22:35):

So

Renee (22:35):

If you’re thinking about launching into a national retail partner, and you’re a small company like mine, your best route to market is finding a distributor that represents your category in a national retailer. So whether that’s peanut butter, hair products, lotions, flat tires, whatever. So you have to go and find that distributor. So that was step one. Once we got that relationship, our job is to grow it by driving traffic through the stores and getting that sell through. If it’s not generating units per store per week, it gets pulled. So one person wisely said, a retail shelf space is real estate. Once you buy your home, you don’t want to lose it to foreclosure. So once you’ve got that slot, my job is to defend those two slots. And when I say we’re national retailers, we’re not like a p and g where p and g dominates the shelf. We’ve got sometimes two slots, sometimes four, but we’re not, don’t have 10.

Speaker 4 (23:35):

So

Renee (23:35):

Our slots are really important for us at a retailer. And so for me, maintaining the relationship comes back to driving the traffic to the store, but more importantly, supply chain. So when I talked about growing too fast for some brands and having measured growth, it was very important for me. I understood. I came from a consulting company, although I did sales and marketing, most of what we did as an organization was supply chain. I wasn’t the supply chain person, but I like to say I knew enough to be dangerous when I bought Uncle Fun’s daughter. So because I understood supply chain, I knew that we could not risk. We needed to have safety stock, we need to have inventory levels that look like X. And so that’s why I did what I call measured growth. And so the distributor may come to me and go, I can get you into Kroger, Walmart, and I, Nope. We’re going to do one retailer a year, one big guy a year, because I need to make sure I can scale. I need to make sure my contract manufacturers can scale. I need to make sure my team knows what to do and they know how to execute and fulfill the requirements of that specific retailer and so that we are successful. So that was the way that we grew and that’s kind of the way we’ve continued to grow.

Chris (24:46):

That’s so smart, that discipline. It’s easier said than done

Renee (24:51):

Because

Chris (24:52):

You just start a company and you go a couple of years not making any money or what you do make you put back in the company and then you got all these great opportunities come at you at once. It’s easy to say yes,

Renee (25:02):

Yes, yes, and yes,

Chris (25:03):

But you can’t fulfill those promises. No one will come back.

Renee (25:09):

And there are horror stories where brands have been like, yes, I’ll go into Target, Walmart, Kroger, H-E-B-C-V-S, and Walgreens all at the same time, and they can’t meet the demand or they launch and they don’t have enough awareness in the consumer market to be able to support and drive the traffic in all of those stores. So you really have to focus on how you’re going to grow, where you’re going to grow and how you’re going to drive traffic into these markets and into those stores

Chris (25:38):

There. I mean, any details you can put behind that just to as some examples to make you a little more tangible of things that you did, things that you thought about, okay, we have to get this right to kind of prove that we can go to the next level.

Renee (25:53):

So for Target, we did a lot of in-store events. So we took Target, so imagine if I was replicating this across five different retailers, but for Target back in the day for social media, was much more organic and less pay for play than it is now. So we would do, it’s a 10 day countdown to Target. We’re launching in 10, 9, 8 on social media. It was like running ads. Then we did a find us in the Target. So we would do these fun games on social media and our followers would have to find us in their local target, and if they found us and they won a gift card, so we were doing anything we can would do in-store events where we would just have a table popped up where you can try products, giveaway products, get coupons, you name it, we were doing it.

Chris (26:41):

We

Renee (26:41):

Were doing events outside the store, the store, I was rogue. I didn’t have permission from Target to do this.

(26:48):

I mean because that would’ve cost me tens of thousand dollars, right? Target, I hope you’re not listening. And so we would literally just grab a camera and kind of come in and we would kind of sneak our little basket through the store down the hall, and we would sit there and the manager would come like, oh, we’re just doing some footage. And I would say, I just launched and I’m really trying to help my business. And they would get it local store manager. And so they would allow us to do a little bit of an a

Chris (27:11):

Popup shop kind of thing,

Renee (27:12):

And they would allow it. Now today, they probably wouldn’t allow it because we’re probably a lot more discipline, but 15 years ago, 10 years ago, they would allow it. So those are the things that we had to do. So imagine if I was doing that for Sally, for Walmart, for Kroger, all in the same year, and I’m still trying to drive the traffic, right? Because we were still a small brand.

Chris (27:32):

Sure.

Renee (27:33):

I still call us a small brand because if I go to you and I say, have you heard of Uncle Fun’s daughter? And your answer is no. Then I’m a small brand because everybody’s heard Clorox, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, all the things, right? Lacrosse, you name it, they’ve heard of it, they haven’t heard of Uncle Fun’s daughter. And so we’re still in constant mode of brand awareness. And so trying to build that brand awareness and drive demand in every retail shelf at the same time would’ve been a daunting task for a brand like ours.

Chris (28:06):

Sure. Do you still have the River Rice Village?

Renee (28:08):

No.

Chris (28:09):

Okay, shut that down.

Renee (28:09):

We shut it down. I shut it down. When I bought the company, that was the condition of the acquisition because the day that I went and discovered who the owner was of the brand, and I was sitting there chatting up the guy in about a four hour period that I was there, maybe three people walked into that door. So my brain said, alright, that’s a revenue killer. You’re not driving revenue. You need to focus on driving traffic on the retail shelf. And so we have no physical retail store now, will we once again one day maybe in a different format because now my friends other people have said, you guys should open up a salon. And I’m like,

Speaker 4 (28:52):

Okay,

Renee (28:53):

So maybe we’ll open up a salon where the products are available and featured, but a retail store exclusively focused on our products will not be in the timeline.

Chris (29:01):

Okay. So there’s an example, right, of an idea from friends, maybe you’ve thought about it, of branching out from what’s core to your business so far. You’ve said no because you haven’t done it, maybe it’s still out there. Why have you not done that? And I guess what, could you counsel some listeners if they’re faced with that or maybe they’ve done it and trying to make it work again, that’s another danger point, right before you kind of branch into something

Renee (29:27):

Different. There are two things. When I think about, again, I always go from management consultant first. So when I think about my business, I don’t think about it personally. I think about it objectively. So I can go deep in my vertical or I can go wide horizontally and I can do both. And so right now where we are as a brand honestly, is we need to go deeper in r and d and innovation. So we have not had an opportunity to launch a new product since Covid. And so we are in the process of developing a new product. So that’s my primary focus or new product line. So we’re developing a new product line. So that’s my front focus. Then as I start to think about adjacencies, about how do we take our core and expand and pivot beyond, do you go to Skin Next and stay in consumer products and go into skin?

(30:19):

Do you go? And the two places that I’m more actively looking at skin is out there as a product extension, but that’s still core to Uncle Fun’s daughter. Do you go and do you buy another small company within Rot Moore’s Consumer group and now you build a portfolio of brands? Really what I wanted to do when I started Roe Morris Consumer Group, my vision is to have a portfolio of consumer goods brands that meet the needs of the community of color, whether it’s for beauty, so that could be hair, that could be skin, it could be makeup, it could be a variety of different things that help her solve her problems every day. So that’s really the vision. And then I bought this building a couple years ago and we have this wonderful, amazing space. And so I open up this space, I’m looking around and I’m going, well, what are we going to do with the rest of this space? We have this whole first floor, we have a whole second floor that’s an occupied. And even before I bought building this idea of building talent in a pipeline of funky junkies is what we call our followers

Chris (31:23):

Funky junkies.

Renee (31:24):

That’s what we call our followers, our customers. But how do you start to build not only a pipeline of loyal customers, but a pipeline of loyal users? And so I started thinking about, what if you actually had a trade school? What if you actually started, what if you were the next Paul Mitchell for African-American hair products where there’s a Paul Mitchell school and you’re teaching natural hair instead of other treatments that they do. And those exist outside of Texas. There’s one that exists in Houston, but not focused on natural hair, but focused on beauty school. And so for those people out there who choose to have a different path than life and not go to college, but they’re looking for a vocation or trade school and they want to be a hair stylist or barber, do you create a space for them to be able to do that? So that’s the second adjacency. And then the third adjacency is then do you go the other end? So I know how to do hair, I’m learning how to do hair. I’ve got hair products, I’m doing hair on the other side. And that’s where the salon comes in.

(32:30):

So in all both ends of the spectrum, I am a deep analytical person. So it’s understanding what’s happening, the market. So on the salon side, you look and you have to figure out, and this is for anyone, you never take a leap in adjacencies just because you think you have the money, the capability, the resources, whatever. You have to understand what’s happening in the market because youre not smarter than the whole market. You might be smarter than a couple people in the market, but not the whole market. And so when I look at the hair salon space, I knew of several people in the Houston market that had launched salons and they had failed. They had failed within a three year cycle, and they had failed because the type of offering, service offering that they wanted to provide was challenging. And that’s the same service offering that we would need to provide as a brand and resources and talent. Going back to this other end of the pipeline I was talking about in the supply chain, those can be sometimes challenging resources to recruit and retain

(33:36):

In a salon side. And so when I do the analysis, it’s looking at the risk versus reward. How am I smarter than the next person? How do I learn from those failures and ensure that I can recruit talent where I don’t have a high degree of turnover. I can create brand consistency. I can create service levels that meet the needs of not only what I want to offer, but what our customers expect. I need to exceed it. And so because I haven’t gotten that magic formula yet, we’re leaving the salon right here in the marketplace.

Chris (34:07):

It’s still on the drawing board.

Renee (34:08):

Still on the drawing board.

Chris (34:09):

I like it. Well, as it should be until you figure it out, right?

Renee (34:12):

Yeah.

Chris (34:12):

Well, so let’s turn a little bit and talk a little more about you and leadership. How would you describe your leadership style? How do you think that’s changed or evolved in the last 10 years?

Renee (34:23):

So I am a type a hardcore type A. I am a driver and I know that about myself, but I also know that one of my weaknesses as a leader is I don’t micromanage. What I have learned to evolve because of my consulting background in a consulting world, 20 plus years is how I was trained. I’m a former salesperson, you just go get it done. So that’s kind of like my bread and butter. And you have a team of type a’s that are pretty much driven just like you are. So when you guys have a clear plan and you’ve got the end goal, all you’re doing is managing the type a’s to make sure that they get to the goal, right? At a very high level, no one needs to. You set meeting rooms to review the spreadsheet and the spreadsheet’s done. Fast forward to Uncle Fun’s daughter, you set meetings to review the spreadsheet and it’s like, oh, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, what you wanted me to do. So it requires much more, what I’m learning is it requires me to evolve my leadership style from one that’s hands off, that’s a little bit more hands on

(35:30):

To make sure that my team understands where the bar of excellence is, what our customers want from us, what the implications are when we miss deadlines, what the implications are if we ship the wrong product to the wrong customer. And so showing them and teaching them is where I’ve kind of learned that’s where my role is as a leader, really helping them really understand the implications of behaviors. And so I’ve evolved to, from a leader, I still tell my team, Hey, I don’t micromanage. If I know it before you do, that’s probably a problem.

(36:10):

And so they understand that. And so I think I’m still evolving my leadership style to adapt to a smaller company with a different team that thinks differently from the Type A consultants with the MBAs that I’m used to working with, to the ones who maybe they don’t have the MBA or maybe they’re going to get it, or maybe they have a desire to get there. And so it really has required, it’s a growth opportunity for me that I’m still learning to grow in, to be able to shift my mental mindset away from I got a team of driven people. I got a team that need to be inspired.

Chris (36:46):

Yeah, that’s great. So what have you done to try to help you in the hiring process, make sure you’re making the best decision you can make about who you’re bringing on your team?

Renee (37:00):

It’s the hire slow fire quick.

Chris (37:02):

Yes. Another easier said than done.

Renee (37:05):

Easier said than done. And that’s where I am right now. Even in this open marketing director job that I’m looking for, it’s really making sure I go through so many, I go through all the resumes. My assistant will filter out the trash, but once she’s filtered out the trash, I’m looking at those resumes going, okay, is this someone who’s going to, because I’ll openly say the reason I’m looking for a marketing director, I’ll tell you this story. So I hire this person and she’s from Adidas. She comes from Adidas background in marketing, and she’s under Armour in marketing, and she was in Latin America, director of Latin America markets, and she’s just moved from Houston. So I’m thinking, I’ve got a Latina part of my demographic. That’s awesome. She’s got this global brand experience that’s awesome. All in athleisure, but transferable skills, it’s marketing. She quits three months later, found another job in athleisure. So I had interviewed found this woman, and this woman sold me on, I mean, we had multiple conversations. I was like, Hey, I’m really concerned about whether or not you can migrate from big company to this small company. It is a

Chris (38:16):

Very valid concern.

Renee (38:17):

It’s a big change, right?

Chris (38:18):

Sure.

Renee (38:18):

You don’t have a team. Your team is a team of three, not a team of 20, right? And so your role really changes. And so she convinced me, da, but the lesson learned was that my spidey senses, I didn’t listen to them. My spidey sense said she may not stay. There were little things that happened along the way,

Chris (38:42):

But you get enamored with all the other stuff.

Renee (38:44):

But I was so hungry to have a big company, someone to come in to show my team other than me, for them to hear it from someone other than me, that this is what marketing looks like. This is the marketing discipline that we need to have. And so she brought some marketing discipline, she brought some value in the three months, but it is been really a painful learning process, right? Because now I’m short a marketing director, I’m stepping in.

Chris (39:12):

So well, what you alluded to there is just the cost, hard cost and soft cost when you make a bad hiring

Renee (39:20):

Decision

Chris (39:21):

Because you’re having to fill the role or someone else. So that distracts you, and it distracts you from doing your full-time job. You’re now spending time going through resumes and going to be interviewing, and you wasted, if you will, all the time on the one that only lasts you three months. So there’s a lot of costs

Renee (39:41):

There. There’s a lot of costs there. And then you’re sitting there and you’re going, I’ve got to restart this whole process. I’ve got to try to maintain the momentum within my team. This is the second marketing person they’ve had in the past year. And so how do you start to just manage through that when you get burned that one time, as I’m looking at resumes, I’m looking at people with deep experience in a particular industry, and I’m going, oh, nope. Learned that lesson

Chris (40:09):

Well, is that there’s that bias creep. You have to not let yourself penalize these people you’ve never met just because they might look the same on

Renee (40:17):

Paper as the one bad actor in the group. And you’re right. And so I’m going, well, and I’m having these conversations, and then it just, I think that’s one, hiring, firing, hiring, slow, firing quick. Sometimes even when you hire slow, you still get,

Chris (40:35):

I tell people it is part science, it’s part art. And the more process I think you can put in place and follow the better. You’re never going to be a hundred percent. And I think figuring out the characteristics that work in your organization is something that you can incorporate into your hiring process. And no, this is the kind of background traits, characteristics that work

Renee (41:01):

That thrive here. And I would also say listening to those spidey senses that are coming, when those thoughts creep in and they were coming, there were things, there were triggers that happened through the hiring process. Then I was like, I’m not sure she’s going to be a good fit. For example, she called and said, Hey, can I work from home? I was like, no, you cannot work from home. So that was

Chris (41:26):

Over. Renee, we’re going to do a whole episode on work from home.

Renee (41:29):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And so those were the triggers of like, okay, she might not be the good fit. And when that happens to you, you got to listen to it and be okay with backing out. But I didn’t listen to the trigger because we were so far down in the negotiation, and I should have just said, I don’t think this is going to work out and rescinded the offer. But I had already extended the offer and I didn’t want to have egg on my face. So what I should have done is just let my ego go, rescinded the offer and continue to look.

Chris (42:00):

Yeah. Or at least be upfront about this is starting to give me concerns. Here’s why.

Renee (42:05):

Yeah, but

Chris (42:06):

It’s,

Renee (42:07):

Which I did that. I did that part.

Chris (42:10):

But she covered it up.

Renee (42:11):

She covered that up. She told me exactly what I wanted to hear, but still those doubts were in my head and I should have listened to my gut. And that gut is a powerful thing that Maxwell Gladwell, it’s a powerful thing. And if when you listen to it, you’re usually

Chris (42:27):

Right. A hundred percent.

Renee (42:29):

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Chris (42:30):

Renee, this has been a fascinating conversation. Just to wrap it up, I have a few just personal things I always like to ask.

Renee (42:36):

So

Chris (42:37):

What was your first job as a kid?

Renee (42:39):

Newspaper. I was a newspaper girl. You had a newspaper route? Yes, absolutely I did.

Chris (42:44):

I’ll be darn.

Renee (42:45):

My sister got up in the morning and helped me through my newspapers.

Chris (42:48):

You’re not the first guest. That was their first job. It is fairly

Renee (42:51):

Common. You have to make me dig deep for that one.

Chris (42:53):

Okay. You have to dig deeper on this one. Sometimes people say, this is the hardest question,

Renee (42:58):

Do

Chris (42:58):

You prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue?

Renee (43:00):

Barbecue, no sauce. Seasoned. Very well seasoned.

Chris (43:04):

No hesitation. And the woman knows what she wants.

Renee (43:06):

Yes,

Chris (43:07):

Right.

Renee (43:07):

Don’t bring me brisket with sauce on it. No,

Chris (43:09):

No sauce. Extra seasoned.

Renee (43:12):

I want seasoned brisket, the moist kind. And by the way, I’m not a Texan, but I moved to Texas and now we’ve been here 15 years and now it’s like brisket, barbecue. It’s the only thing that I eat. It’s

Chris (43:25):

The

Renee (43:25):

Only thing I want to eat. I might die of a heart attack, but it’s

Chris (43:28):

Only, anyway. I love it. Alright, so because you have four kids, and I know your life’s running crazy, this’ll be more of a fantasy. But if you could take a 30 day sabbatical, where would you go? What would you do?

Renee (43:40):

Ooh. I would be somewhere probably in South Africa, in the, probably on Safari. I would tour safaris. I would go South Africa, Kenya. I want to see the migration of animals. I would do that.

Chris (43:53):

I love it.

Renee (43:54):

That’s where I would be.

Chris (43:55):

Renee, thank you so much for being on. This has been just a pleasure getting to know you and hear your story.

Renee (44:00):

Thank you. This is awesome. I listened to NPR how I built this, so this is my, I feel like I’m excited. I’ve kind of done the NPR check. I like how I built this check. Do you listen to that?

Chris (44:09):

I do, I do. I

Renee (44:09):

Love it.

Chris (44:10):

I love that analogy.

Renee (44:11):

Yeah, it’s great.

Chris (44:12):

Thanks again.

Renee (44:13):

Thanks for doing this.

Chris (44:16):

And there we have it. Another great episode. Don’t forget to check out the show notes at boyarmiller.com/podcast and you can find out more about all the ways our firm can help you at boyarmiller.com. That’s it for this episode. Have a great week and we’ll talk to you next time.