Lou Kendall: You need to work on the behaviors of your business. What's a healthy business? Well, it's, it's fairness, it's clarity, job satisfaction. The feedback was horrendous and we had to wrap around and like lick our wounds and, you know, grovel. If you just went away for 24 hours and really thought about it, you might be wrong.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to add to cart, Australia's leading e commerce podcast that express delivers all you need to know in the fast moving world of online retail. Every week, Nathan Bush from E Suite and an e commerce industry expert will share the news, research and insights that you need to know to keep you at the top of your game. And of course, keep your customers adding to Cart.
Nathan Bush: All right, who's been watching Drive to Survive on Netflix? It's the F1 series. I think we're in about series three or four now. You might think that this show is purely for rev heads but my wife is totally hooked. She got me totally hooked. And my guest today is totally hooked and somehow it came up in a conversation about handbags. But our guest today finds parallels in the show with the fast lane life of a brand building business founder. She's no verstappen though her team actually like her. Lou Kendall is the co founder and the co owner of Lewin Hyde. Stephen started 16 years ago as a party plan business. Leeuwenhyde grew from the unmistakable popularity of brightly colored handbags that Lou and her friend Heidi noticed where there was a gap in the market. Now doubling down on bold bags was the right decision. And now the brand is a favorite of many. Sold in over a thousand retailers worldwide, both in store and online. Today's conversation ranges far and wide. But the one thing that we keep coming back to and and it really interests me is people and team. Lou shares her unique hiring strategy that gets results. She also talks about how she loves to work in a project based way to improve her business and the 24 hour rule that she can't live without. Now remember, it's only one more week until Retail Fest on the Gold Coast. As you heard in the Martin Newman episode, I made a major calendar markup and booked a trip to Fiji at the same time that Retail Fest is on. What an idiot. So I won't be there but the E Suite team will and they, they have a massage booth. Yep, a massage booth. That is not related to why I'm not allowed to not. I can't attend. I'm allowed but I won't be there. But the massage booth will. So make sure you go say hello to the E Suite team on the expo floor and get a bit of R and R as you go around. All right, let's get into today's episode. So, thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Paclio, here's our conversation with Lou Kendall, director and co owner of Lewin Hyde.
Nathan Bush: Lou, welcome to ADD to cart.
Lou Kendall: Hi, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: Great to have a Brisbaneite on with me. Let's dive straight in. Lewin Hyde started. In my research, I saw that you started as a party plan business called Cargo Party. That's a wild name.
Lou Kendall: I know. We're so old now. We're 16 years old. It's like you look back and it's like looking back on your wedding photos, you sort of cringe, I don't know. And you go back, yeah, Cargo Party. What a name. Didn't last very long. Yeah, we started there and Heidi and myself, bit bored mothers and let's do something. We started selling to our friends certain items. It was a lot of hard work realising all the profits were in the sale items, but. But what came from there was that colored handbags were selling really well. And back then, not today so much, but back then, colored handbags were not a thing. No one was walking around in bright blue and pink bags and people were asking for those colors and we sort of clued onto that and thought, hmm, maybe colored handbags is a bit of a go. And long story short, that's how it started.
Nathan Bush: So colored handbags were part of a
Nathan Bush: wider range of products.
Lou Kendall: It was. Well, when we bought all these little products together to try to sell to people and create a party plan type thing, we would, you know, get a couple of green ones and a couple of blue ones and I'm looking at them going, they're sort of nice. I mean, no one's really wearing them, but let's just buy them anyway. And the people would buy them, wear them and then people would ring us saying, sorry, do you have another green bag or another hot pink bag? Just like that. And I was like, ah, Heidi, we're getting a lot of phone calls here for these. What is this about the colored bags? So, long story. Suppliers, China, Hong Kong, we got into it and 18 months later, we were doing our very first trade show for Lewin hyde.
Nathan Bush: And then 16 years later, here we
Lou Kendall: are, Here we are on a podcast.
Nathan Bush: Nathan, and did you have a design background when you first got in creating these?
Lou Kendall: Absolutely nothing. None. I would always say I was a very, I'm going to say creative in my mind, very disappointing. My Mother is really creative. She can draw, take photos, design, style, and I've got none of it. I can style. I can put things together. I can't do anything from scratch. I know what I like. I'm not, you know, I don't really look at brands and, oh, it's that brand. I need to buy it. It's like, if I like it, I get it. I'm very clear about that. Heidi would be the same. I would think she can put things together well. It's probably the whole basis of Lewin Hyde. We put it all together really well. So, no, not a creative bone, really, in my body.
Nathan Bush: I was not expecting that because Lewin Hyde is. Is now this instantly recognizable product. Like, such a strong design identity going through it. And for you.
Lou Kendall: No, it does. And I think I can hear my husband right now, my sister, and a lot of my friends going, oh, Lou, that is just not true. You are creative, and you do have a design flair. But I just mean more that I can't just paint a picture. I mean, you know that great one when you go draw a cow or draw a dog? It's hilarious. I mean, mine just looks like, I don't know, a round circle with four sticks coming out of it. I can't do that, but I can put things together. And I would say the same for Heidi. We just are able to look at things and go, that's out, that's in, that's here. And we built on that over the years. It was never right there from a start, but the colored bit has definitely become a core value of our brands. Like, people aren't wearing those colors much anymore, but we make sure that every time we do our major drops for our two seasons, there is our core value of colored bags in there.
Nathan Bush: And what do you say as your differentiator these days? Is it still the color? Is the differentiator, the design, the product?
Lou Kendall: I think really, it's not that so much. I mean, it definitely is. We've worked really hard on getting more of a design team. Up until about two years ago, it was just Heidi and I. The last two years, it's just been Heidi. And now in that design room, there's now three people that are there in the last sort of, I'm going to say, eight months. And it's been a game changer, and we really, really needed that. So I think it's been the business that's, you know, the differentiator. It's like, how do we roll out our seasons? It's not so much the product and how we design it. I mean of course it is totally what we do there. But there's more of a plan about what we do. How, how do we relate that bag to this edit, to there, the seasons and you know, it's not so much in the bag, I would say it's how we're rolling it out. It's very different, it's very fast, it's very thought through. Our marketing is exceptional. Next to none, I would say. And we go, go, go. And our differentiation is, I would say we come to the market very quickly and with high impact.
Nathan Bush: Okay, what does high impact look like?
Lou Kendall: Oh man, you should see what we do. High impact social media. Oh my God. Just boom, boom, boom. You know, it's just like there's a reel, there's a feed, there's a post, there's a story, there's an ad. The timing of that, you know, it takes forever to warm up these goddamn ads that you do. E comm, online, things like that. So you have to sort of be putting it out there six weeks before you actually have it in stocks. Well, that's a bit of a problem, you know, because we actually don't have the stock. But it's being warmed up. It's not fully warmed for six weeks. We have to take that photograph six months before we actually get the product in. So it's all of that. It's very difficult to do and we do it well. It's high impact.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, it sounds non stop too.
Lou Kendall: It is non stop.
Nathan Bush: So you're now sold by over 600
Nathan Bush: retailers in Australia and over 500 retailers globally.
Nathan Bush: That's absolutely massive.
Lou Kendall: Yeah, I just love those numbers get pulled out. I don't know. I have no idea. There's many, there's thousands. I really am out of touch with that. I should probably know. But I know that we just. Right now we're looking for more with our stockers, especially in Australia, 16 years old. It's more about the current stockists that we have now that, you know, they're buying a lot more from us. They're getting, I think they're getting, you know, our brand. They have high expectations and we're producing that for them. So we're finding that our, you know, the, our stockists actually really do come on board with our, you know, brand, our values and are buying more. And I think that's more of our focus now. You know, you can pull out all these great numbers. What does that really mean? You know, you have really high, you know, a lot of stores, one brand, 10 stores. And then you have the little, you know, Mar and Pa people, you know, in the back of nowhere. And they are all very much valued by us. But, yeah, I think it's quite big. It's enough to handle, I can tell you that.
Nathan Bush: When you say high expectations of your retailers, is that a new thing or have there always been high expectations?
Lou Kendall: Look, when you first start, you're going to make so many mistakes. You don't have the power. You don't have the power in China and manufacturing to say, hey, that was wrong. Do it again. You know, it just falls on deaf ears. But when you've been buying from petite people and factories in overseas for 16 years, they know who you are. Like, they are intrinsically know who are all the handbag people in Australia and who do we want to be a part of? So when, if you go to a fair or anything like that, which of course we have in the last three years, they will spot us and go and jump out, jump out, jump out. They want our business. And so when you've got a little bit more power to play with with those factories, and the expectation is, and it's rightly so, they are buying from us. They want it to be in stock, delivered fast, of high quality, in a very good price range for them, and they want to make money. They not only want that, they want to reorder it. Oh, that sold well. Give me two more. We have to be able to produce that. The bar of. I mean, it's high, but I always watch people in business and it happens in sport. I've been watching this F1 formula, you know, and they crash.
Nathan Bush: How good is it?
Lou Kendall: I know. Can you believe it? My design, our design lady put me onto it. I mean, she looks like Little Miss Chanel. And I'm like, you're into F1. Wow.
Nathan Bush: My wife has converted into an F1 fanatic now because of that show.
Lou Kendall: I know we were watching it last night anyway. I watched Ferrari and McLaren, you know, hit each other. And it was amazing how, like, Ferrari thought it was McLaren's fault. McLaren thought it was Ferrari's fault. And I'm like, oh, isn't that funny? That's just like us. Like, people get very defensive, but really, if you just went away for 24 hours and really thought about it, you might be wrong. And I think that all comes back to customer feedback. It's like, oh, that hurts me. That's really, like a stake in my heart. My stock is saying to us, you know, we've got something Wrong here. If you don't listen to that, you're just going to fail and you need to move on. And really you've got to have no ego whatsoever. And so you have to set the bar high and go this is what they expect and we need to produce it. And let's not get defensive about it. Let's look at the problem and say where did that go wrong? Let's break that down. A lot of things are out of our control but one thing we can control if there is a problem and we're getting feedback, if it gets pulled from the line straight away it's like it's out. We're not selling it anymore.
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Nathan Bush: do you remember any particular piece of feedback throughout the 16 years that you did have to take a step away for from 24 hours but actually turned out to be feedback that you could use and make a great change from.
Lou Kendall: I think one of the biggest things that happened to us and I'm not too sure whether this is quite answering your question but I'll never ever forget and I mean I wish some Heidi was here. She'd be able to tell this story really well. We went to a trade show and we're selling to stockist and we had to announce to them that we were going online. I mean this is years ago when no one was. We were really one of the first people in our industry to sell wholesale but go online at the same. Everybody does it now but 10 to 12 years ago no one was doing killed us. It was like an egotistical thing that we've gone in. Okay, we're going to tell every customer that we're selling online now. And yes, we're very loyal to you still. However, the stockist, the wholesale stockist, the Store, they just felt so invaded and that we were taking the customer away from them because, you know, they're out in the back of nowhere, you know, Dubbo, Warren, wherever they are, they're like, but what do you mean? That means my customer can just go online and buy it from you. But you're selling to us. Like, where's your loyalty to us? You know, you need us to sell the bulk. Which is very true. And it took about. We lost so many customers because of that. And we had the wrong tact there. It wasn't necessarily that we were going online. I mean, you know, we had the foresight and the energy and I'm going to side the balls to do it, but we really had to. We should have done it very differently. And the feedback was horrendous and we had to wrap around and, like, lick our wounds and, you know, grovel and go, I'm so sorry. Okay. We did that really poorly. And we learned very fast that when you're going to do something major like that, you really have to look at the impact of the business everywhere and not just on yourselves. And, you know, don't think just sales, think brand, think values, don't think money. And that was a huge learning curve for us.
Nathan Bush: It's a funny one, isn't it? Because strategically, even back then you go, yeah, this is the right move, strategically, but it's how you do it, not what you do.
Lou Kendall: Absolutely. I mean, I say it, you know, I've been training a lot lately within our own business. I'm the trainer of how do you manage? Because not everybody's good at managing people. They're not. But when you're sort of a small business, people have to manage small groups. And I'm actually coaching them right now and I'm like, you can't manage like that. You have to. When we talk like this, talking is okay. But if you put that in an email, choose your words very carefully, because interpretation, as we know, we've all had texts and emails where we've read it very poorly. Choose your words very wisely and really think about it. And if you're worked up, and I have a real mantra right now about things that if I see an email and it worked, if I have, my heart rate just raises a little bit. Oh, I leave it, I leave it. And I will literally come back 24 hours later. The effects that 24 hours has had on me, I literally agree with the person. It's just I've read it a little bit poorly. The hairs have gone up. On my back. And initially for 10 years I would have just been, that's wrong, you shouldn't do it like that. And I've learned over the years, whoa, whoa, Bessie. Like, come on, think about that a little bit more before you answer. So yeah, I just think delivery is so important.
Nathan Bush: I love that 24 hour rule. It's fantastic.
Lou Kendall: Oh yeah. My husband did it to me the other day and I said to him I was wild about something, an email, and I was right there. And he's there going, don't do it, don't do it. We talk about it. But you know, it's like when you say to your wife or your husband like they're on a diet and it's like, don't let me eat that chocolate tonight. Okay? And they go, no. But then the demons come in, you're like, I'm gonna eat that chocolate. And the husband just backs off. And he didn't back off. And then eventually he did. And I was about to hit send and I went, no. And I came out. I had to apologize. I said, well done for trying to hang in there. I can see the wiser. I'm just going to let that go for 24 hours. And literally 24 hours later, I agreed with this person on the email wholeheartedly, 100%. And I thought, wow, that's such a learning curve. Again, 16 years later, learning, I leave it, leave that email, it can be done later.
Nathan Bush: Amazing.
Nathan Bush: And tell me about your day to day.
Nathan Bush: Are you still hands on day to day at Lewin Hyde? What's it look like?
Lou Kendall: Oh, you know, you sort of pull yourself away and realize that, you know, being in it's a great thing. I mean, I just adore our staff. I love being with them. They're not just staff, they're family, they're friends. And am I in it? I am so in it. Am I responsible for things? No. But am I in it? Yes. So I these days take on sort of like more project based pain points. I'm going to call them. Where's the pain point in the business? Oh, it's here. Okay. But they can be really long. So right now I've just gone through a three month customer service returns and job role project and it has taken me three months. What does that mean? I actually had to work in customer service for three months. I had to be on the picking packing table for three months. I started up a Sunday dispatch program with my kids just so I could learn. How does this all work? Where's it going wrong? Why is that not gelling. Why are we having problems? Why are people not happy? And it is constant ebb and flow of that too. It's never perfect and you've got to tune up all the time, dial it up. And I worked out where all the problems were and I would like to say fix that them. It's all perfect, everybody's happier. And I'm very project based. So when I'm in these projects, we've just done a very long lengthy and I still haven't quite finished job role descriptions for all of our staff. And it took time and it needed to take time and everybody deserved to have my time and the director's time, but I needed to know what everybody was doing before I could write one person. So it took a very long time, but I think we've really got it. And I restructured the role description so it was easier for everybody to read and it wasn't so clinical and boring and it's had a huge impact. But when you're on the pick pack table and you're asking everybody to write that individual card. Dear Nathan, so lovely that you bought your men's backpack. We hope you love it. Well, God, didn't that go out of the window once? I was on the pick pack table doing 300 orders that we had to complete in six hours. I was like, hell yeah, I get why you're doing that. Customer service people. Lovely dispatch people. I'm like, well, where I'm going to rethink that one and not put so much pressure on them, you know, so working in the business has so much value. I absolutely adore it. But I'm. What I'm loving right now is the project I'm on. I solve it, I work with it, I make people happy, I move on. Yes, I'm going to have to come back and tweak it, but I move on and I have more projects coming right now. So I like that.
Nathan Bush: Is there a bit of trepidation by the team when they rock up one morning and they go, oh shit, lose on pick and pack. I'm in the spotlight now.
Lou Kendall: I do feel it. I walk in and I just go, I'm your worst nightmare. Here I am. What are we not doing right? I'm a real lanes person. Really, like, oh, no, no, that's not you. You're here, you're there. If you go out of your lane, someone will come in here. And then we have trouble, you know, I don't mind people breaking the lines, but we need to communicate. Communication is my number One mantra with everybody. And I actually have to coach and teach the team to communicate. And it's surprising how bad people are at it. Not just, you know, in our business, but just life generally. I'm like, wow, I'm thankful that I find it quite easy. So I'm like, oh, don't you think you should. You're telling the wrong person there. You're asking for help for that person, but you're actually not going to their manager. The manager needs to ask the help for that. You know, we've got a little bit of a system here. Where is it? So, yes, no, I think they all do hold their breath a little bit. However, I do get very good feedback that they're very amazing. How much your team wants to learn. Amazing. They want to know, but they want to be shown and they want to be trained. You can't just say, do that better. It's like, how do I do that better? Do I need to see this? So, yeah, that's been a huge three months. What I've learned, they want to be trained and we need to train them physically, not just on an email.
Nathan Bush: You know, I love what you're saying there about communication.
Nathan Bush: You gave a great example for your team.
Nathan Bush: What are the things that you teach them about communication?
Nathan Bush: They go, look, if you get this right, you're going to be 99% better communicator.
Lou Kendall: Look, I have to say, what happens in a business, like, when you've got like 20 people that everybody has to communicate with in a team environment, you know, you have your little pockets, you know, you have marketing, you have design, you have dispatch, warehouse, wholesale, e sales, blah, blah. But when you're trying to fix something downstairs. So I hope my beautiful, gorgeous warehouse manager doesn't mind me, you know, speaking possibly about her. But again, I'm coaching her through this. Is that emails for me are. Does everyone like getting an email? Well, no, I don't want 100 a day, but I'm going to read the ones that I want. And I say to her, you have to say it to the right people, announce it to the team that you've got a problem downstairs and we need to fix it. You can't just verbally say to someone, hey, those compostable bags are actually just ripping way too easily off the bags. That's not fixing anything. They look at you, they're a director, they're busy. They go, all right, okay, you know, we need to do something about that. Nothing's going to get done. You need to communicate better. You need to put the all directors in who are responsible for the compostable bags. This is the problem. Show a photo. And we did this yesterday as an exercise to her. I said, okay, so you flagged that you say about four times in a year. I've heard it. But have the. I'm not the person you should be telling. Those people are the ones that you should be telling. So let's write that email. So I wrote the email, copied her in, copied the right people in within one hour we had seven replies on those emails, including the factories, and it was fixed. And I just look at her and go, so tell me, did we learn a lesson today? She said, yes, absolutely we did. I understand it. Okay, do we write an email to one person? No, I don't. Why don't we do that? Because I need to tell the right people and everybody knows that I've done something about it. Correct, correct. And it's a little bit like I'm holding the hand, but she has learned now the value. Like, I think we had a bit of a Chubba Chub situation the other day. Like we have massive like 20 liter tin of Chuba Chubs that go out with our parcels. And we didn't have the Chubba Chub Tim for about two months. And I kept saying to the warehouse him as I'm on my way up to the office, we have not have any more Chuba Chubs. Oh no. I've told the person that we're running, you know, that we. I've told them, I've told them, okay, well they must be out of Chubba Chubs. I go, oh, this is ridiculous. How could there be a shortage in the world of Chuba Chubs? So I go to the warehouse team, I said, so where are the Chubba Chubs? Oh, I told him that we were running low. I went, okay, they're not the words, not the words you need to say. Please reorder the Chubba Chubbs. People who are in accounts, they're very accountable for the fact that they're spending the company's money. You have to give them a go ahead to spend. Saying we're running low is not reordering. And it's just those really simple communicative skills that I'm, I'm like, oh, come on guys, you really got to think about what you're saying there. Have you actually really asked? But I find the email personally very powerful myself. Very powerful. We also have a WhatsApp group at our business. It's just for our team members, very powerful in the morning I'm working from home. Everybody needs to know if you're working from home today. I'm working from home today. I've said I'm working at home from 12. I'm uncontactable between 10 and 1. Do not call me. It's so good. A lot of fun stuff goes on there too, but it's so good for in the moment. And yeah, I would say WhatsApp and emailing. People probably dread getting my emails, but you know, it's about accountability and responsibility. It's like that's your job.
Nathan Bush: Well, that's where I was going to go because it was funny that you
Nathan Bush: brought up responsibility when we talked about the day to day and you saying that you've removed yourself from the responsibility. But it seems like you are know with the communication piece, putting responsibility squarely on the shoulders of your team because it is communication. But it's also, hey, this is my problem to solve. Until it gets solved, I can't flick an email or have it drop a comment and then have that problem fall elsewhere in the organization. Is that a key, key part?
Lou Kendall: It's a key part. It's something I've only just realized in like in the last six months. I'm like, I have, we have the most beautiful, dedicated, loyal team. They want to do nothing but the best for our brand. But they have roles and responsibilities. They do not have the time. I have the time. I make sure I have the time to fix it for them or go deeper for them because. But if I had day to day responsibilities. So like for instance, customer service, when I had to learn it, I was on, I was doing nowhere to rely. Nathan, when we came back over Christmas, I punched out. I'm not joking. 180 replies to emails. It was me that did it. And I learned straight up how hard this was. What are all the angles? I started making templates. These are the answers for this. This is the answer for that. My beautiful customer service team, they don't have time to do that because they actually have another role. It will. Or a deeper role like my KPI today is to get those 300 orders out. I don't have time to fix that. I can only answer that. I can only give 30 seconds to that. I can't give three hours, but I can as long as I'm free. So now I've done that. Customer service, I'm now out. I'm like, okay, I'm not answering these anymore. I've coached you. I've prepared the templates. We now have three amounts, not one. We separate the work. We're going to do a returns online now. I remove myself, I go, I'm over now I'm tapping out, I'll be watching but I need to move on to the next project. So yeah, I think really I have the time, I've made the time. I'm an unbelievable delegator. I have to admit that I'm good at that. I don't everyone says, what do you do? I'm not too sure actually. I sort of just move the work around, you know. But not having that day to day responsibility like all the staff do allows me to fix these very small, tedious but so number one important to our business. Let's get it right.
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Nathan Bush: It's a unique approach for a founder and I know you probably come across other founders who have a similar approach around removing from that day to day or at least that specialization in a certain area or a split between a couple of founders like you look after this half, I look after this stuff. Actually removing yourself and going, no, I'm going to go project based, project based, project based. Where did you get the idea of that from?
Lou Kendall: You know, I think I've had a real turning point probably about six months ago when the team, the directors really felt like I should be more in hr. And when I say hr, it makes my. Sorry for all those beautiful HR people out there. I know so many of you, it just makes my skin crawl. I'm like, what? I don't hr, I don't want to do that. But really I probably think that HR is more like. When I say hr, I just think of problems and legalities and contracts but really I think it's more about staff care and making sure they're happy and this is what we need to do. And I think it always got under my skin because. But they're not doing that right. Why aren't they doing that right? Well, they haven't been told to do that. Nobody's guided them. And so I would sort of launch in, but then I would come back and I started to realize I've been a hockey coach for years on end, a hockey player and a hockey coach, and my coaching skills. I worked this out six months ago. I got some good results on the paper. I'm not bad at hockey coaching. And I started to realize that my hockey skills for coaching and mentoring girls, especially through not just hockey, but life, because you're spending so much time with them, I actually was quite good at it. I. And I realized that there was a parallel to my work and staff, and I was like, gosh, isn't that funny? To my husband Jamie. That's exactly how I coach. I'm like, this is your lane. Don't get out of your position. If you go over there and do her job, we are out of position. The ball comes back, they score the goal. So do your job. Keep in your lane. This is your job. Don't do anyone else's. And I'd be quite harsh. And I said to my husband the other day, do you think I'm a control freak? And he said, absolutely not. And I'm not a micromanager. I'm not. I allow people to do their job. But I really feel like people need boundaries just all the time. But not just boundaries. It needs to be tuned up all the time. Just remember, this is your lane. That's their lane. Yes, we can cross over and help, but it's all about the communication. So I think it developed over the last six months that this is what I'm good at. This is what. You know, I remember listening to a very short. Just only about literally five weeks ago, I hope I'd say a name like Janine Ellis, the boost lady. I mean, you know, when you get targeted on these ads, smash, smash, smash. It was all entrepreneurial stuff. There's this very short clip that she talks about how don't ever let go of working in the business somehow. And she's the first person that said that to me. And I'm like, I love it when you listen to these podcasts and things, and you're like, you want to grab them and go, oh, my God. That's exactly how I feel. But I've never really wanted to say that. And she just says, never let go of that. I don't. She's not, you know, that whole, you know, work on your business, not in your business. I'm not 100% about that.
Nathan Bush: So you in it forever?
Lou Kendall: Well, you know, it's just really, really funny. We had a director's meeting just yesterday. We have one a month. And probably for the last three years when it's got really quite serious, and especially our last year, and especially our last four months, we have exploded. And no word of a lie. The four directors, our attitude changes all the time, and it's the best thing that we allow it to change, too. And it's just everybody thinks that you're going to want to do this and want to do that and, you know, experience and having so much business knowledge under our belt, everything. I mean, you just can't purchase that knowledge, can you? I mean, I know that's a little book business thing, but it's so true. Right now in our lives, right now, today, as of yesterday, it might change. You know, we're very like that. It might change. We have families, we've had success, we're profitable, we are happy. We don't want to upset that apple cart. We love our staff. We have pain points because we're growing. Let's address those pain points here in Australia in our own warehousing, in our own dispatching, in our own staff volume, you know, getting too much stuff. Should we have third parties come in more? Do we need better advice? And, you know, a year ago, we could have been way like, oh, we're out three years. Let's work towards that. We're going to sell it. Let's bring that. And now, right now, I don't know. We're so happy. I'm happy. I don't want it all. I've had success, I've had money, you know what I mean? Like, not huge amounts, but I'm happy.
Nathan Bush: Oh, no.
Nathan Bush: It's a nice mansion you're living in there on your backdrop.
Lou Kendall: It's just very, like. It's very like, I'm like, I don't want anymore. What do I want in my life? I've been there. It's not blowing my hair back anymore. I don't want accolades. What I want to be is happy. And I want my happy. Moments these days are very small. Like, it's like trust and things. It happens in very small moments. And you need to stop, smell the roses and say, I'm happy. And now I'm sort of just a little bit like, I don't want to upset the apple cart. I mean, we could. We could go and take on the world if we wanted. And I mean, how many times have we seen that fail with so many successful Australian brands? And a year ago we might have wanted to do that, but. But right now it's like, you know what? Love our staff, love what we're doing, everything's looking good, we're not high risk anymore. Happy.
Nathan Bush: We might have a similar targeting profile on YouTube or wherever you get your videos from. Because I saw something yesterday which really resonated with me and it was about, about where you get your endorphins from. It's like we often hit these big goals, you know, like you said, hey, let's have this focus of selling in three years time. When we do that, we know we've achieved and that's when we'll get our big hit of endorphins. Endorphins, actually, no, you've got to find those small moments in the day to day to have those little micro moments of release and recognition. Even though it's hard, and it will be really bloody hard if you get those little moments along the way rather than waiting for one big moment at the end, you'll make, you'll make it worthwhile.
Lou Kendall: I think you really need to just watch, listen and learn all the time. You know, I sent this text to my son yesterday. It drives me crazy. He's a unique head, he's great, he's gregarious, whatever, whatever. But my God, he's just like, oh God, he's going to kill me when he listens to this. And I just said to him, you have so much potential right now. You just need to look, listen and learn wherever you are. Whether it's at work, at uni, doing whatever, look, listen and learn from what's happening around you. I don't expect him to do it at 19 years of age, but just really look at what's happening and it's like running a marathon and a half marathon for me, you know, the things I do, I like running a lot. When you complete that marathon, half marathon, you suddenly realize that's not the joy I'm gonna, you know, it's the old cliche, it's the journey. It was the people I was running with every four times a week, the people that motivated me, that were ups and downs, they pulled me through my hamstring tear. You realize it's not that, it's this. And I think I'm realizing that about the business, I'm like, no, no, no, we can't do that. Because I feel so loyal and to my staff, they're not my staff, they're My friends, they're my family. I want them to achieve. And if we suddenly do that, what's going to happen to them? I worry about those things now. And, you know, I feel it's really bonded our team and our business together to be on the. You know, we're very lucky that our four directors, we're pretty much on the same page all the time. And I'm very, very thankful for that.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. And it feels to me, and you've said it, that you're deeply connected with, with your team and even outside of that, what you're doing, you know, with hockey coaching and the young, young people you're mentoring, what do you look for in an attribute of a Lee and Hyde team member? When you're sitting opposite an interview table, what do you look for? And go, yes, you're a Lewen Hyde kind of person.
Lou Kendall: Oh, man. You know, we've done so many interviews, and over the years, so many people come and go, come and go. You know, right now we have solid retention rates over the last eight years or something like that. It's like 98% or something. One lady's been there for 16 years, you know, and it's their attributes. Everybody has attributes. And we also have bad things. And that's okay because I find that a pro and a con for a person can be a good and a bad thing in certain situations. You know, we just need someone like me to go. I don't think we need to do that. But when we go to interview, it's just really funny. It's funny what you look for. I was. We were mentored well about how to interview, and I really liked this. You would have a panel of three or four, and each person had a responsibility for a question, and you had to watch the reactions, which really did save you when you're interviewing from really being quite scattery about everything. And like, what did they say? What did they say? So my mind, for me, when I go into an interview, I am very about, like, gut instincts. I'm like words. How do they say that? How would they deal with that? We very much look for. And it's not really too much about experience. It's more. More like trying to gauge that person's personality. The culture fit is everything. If they can learn, I don't care about their skills, but I get the gut feeling that you can learn, but you got to want it. That's my thing. And I love to sit on an interview because in that interview I will say certain things. And then a year down the track when it's not quite holding true, I can say to that person, you told me in the interview you wanted this. You told me that you wanted this and you're not quite there. Like, I think. And they, they get embarrassed and go, I did. I said, yeah, you really gotta work out whether you wanna go out all weekend and turn up rock tired on Monday. You know, it does happen a lot. I'm like, you know, you're 22 and you're partying hard and I get it, have fun. But you need to perform on Monday. It's our biggest performing day is Monday. Dispatch and sales, you know, you gotta really think about that. So I gauge in these interviews certain personality traits. Really all of us are a gauging personality. Well, before skills, I would say. And we've got around that in a few different ways. Like, you know, we've had internships. Seeing how people work and a culture fit is number one. Number one, they have to fit in. If not, we just can't have it. But I've literally. I ordered a frame the other day for my office in at work and it says, get shit done. And we are such tick the box people. It's like, move, need to do it and we need to do it now. And we run hard and we run fast. We know when to stop, we know when to have fun. But when it's on, it's on. And it's like, if you're not performing in that situation, it's like, what are you doing? You know, get off your phone or whatever. Not that anyone's really on their phones because they don't have time. But, you know, I would say efficiencies. We need efficient people. We need people who have initiative. We are not micromanagers. None of the four directors are. None of the managers within are. It's like, you need to do your job and you need to do it well. Please say something. If something's wrong, just tell me. People hide behind screens and emails and texts. I'm like, why aren't you just telling me that? Just come to me. So we have a lot of young girls, so many who want to come and model for us because we don't have professional models. And it's got out there and we have these unbelievable, everyday gorgeous girls who come and model for us. They get paid handsomely, I must admit, but they're good at it and they have certain attributes that we look for. So we get these, like, I want to do this. I'll do anything for Lewin Hyde. I'm like, okay, send your resume to this email. We have not received one. And I'm like, and there you go. You know, it doesn't take much to impress me. All you needed to do was write an email to my social media girl lady. I should say to our social media manager. All I said was prep us something, send it here. Not one. And I'm like, no. If one person did that, I would look at it and I would take them seriously. Because I'm all about opportunity, giving people opportunity. But what I'm about is you said you wanted it, so you got to go for it. Now don't give me any half ass stuff like, yeah, so I didn't know if I answered that question very well, but absolutely did.
Nathan Bush: Oh, I've forgotten the question. Anyway, so tangents. It's a great tangent because the thing that's going through my mind is that there's a lot of businesses out there that say that they don't hire for skills. They hire for ability to learn and the passion and all that sort of stuff. But when actually it comes to putting it all on the line and going, yeah, this person doesn't have the skills, but they are freaking amazing and they've got huge potential. A lot of businesses bail out at that point because. Because they want a certain amount of skills coming in. And at the same time, I think there is this misconception that younger generations coming through, and I don't like labeling the generations are potentially a bit flaky. So if you are hiring a lot of people with potential coming through your organization, how do you make sure that they can see through the potential that you see in them from the start?
Lou Kendall: Seeing their potential is difficult. I can give a great story about a couple of girls that we hired recently that were younger and we were given opportunities. But the flakiness thing, you know, I. I've never. I think it's so rich from one generation to the next. I really do. I just think it's so rich to hack and criticize the generation below you. I'm like, why would you do that? It's like when your father and mother say to you all back in our day, and I'm like, yeah, we understand that you learned those skills. You're living in a different world. They're living in a different world. They do not understand where we're coming from. But you know what, we're a business and we need to move forward. I need their input. Because you know what, number one, I don't know what the hell they're Talking about social media, TikTok. I don't know what they're talking about. Number two, I don't want to know about what you're talking about. I don't want to be a part of it. It's your generation. We need these younger people in the business, just like we need the older people with huge experience who know how to have a great conversation, who know how to handle poor situations and stay calm. So in no way, shape or form am I saying older people, you know, aren't worthy. Oh my God, I need them badly, especially to manage. But the younger ones, I might grab them like they have so much potential. They want things. Yes, they want to do it all shorter, faster, quicker, for a lot of money. But you know, there's so many people out there. I mean, I've last. During COVID we hired two young people. So this is a, you know, the COVID thing, the E Comm situation with web developers and agencies went through the roof. I mean, no one could hire a digital strategist in that time. Six months before COVID hit, they're twiddling their thumbs at home going, I need some business. No one was hiring them. All of a sudden Covid came. You couldn't get anyone. We were so fortunate that we had hired a digital strategist. No word of a lie. For two years leading into Covid. We actually paid someone a lot of money to come and help us strategize our digital way and our e com, etc. So when it hit, we were sort of ready to go and our wheels were moving. But during that time we needed support in E commerce and we needed support in our content creation and we literally, I'll give the E Comm version. We couldn't get anyone to apply for the job. Why? Because the money that was being thrown at these high level people was insane. And I was like, well, that is just pathetic. If we, if we have to, if that is a $120,000 a year and they're, they're in there playing us off, going, well, I'm getting offered 300,000 over there. I'm like, number one, your values are wrong. If you're chasing money, you're going to end up so unhappy. Number two, I can't afford it. I'm like, we just have to rework this. So we decided to go for interviewing. Not the people that looked like they were highly qualified because they were just going to chase the money. At that time we went for the kid, no word of a lie, who was still on the Sort of pick pack table. I'm good at this. I can't get out of this. I'm not given an opportunity. I'm really good. I can talk the talk, I just need a chance type thing. I'm like, let's interview this one. And she came on at a salary that was, yeah, maybe more than what she was being paid there. Huge role, straight up. But we, we coached her through a three month training and you know, she's now out. You know, I hope she doesn't mind me saying, probably because she's been giving a rap, I'm not too sure. But she's now our ecom manager and it was just such a great way to solve a problem and. But we've got buy in from this young girl. We gave her the opportunity, we gave her ownership over her work, we trained her, we're open to listen to what's going wrong. She has huge weight on her shoulders now, but she loves it, she's thriving on it. And I'm like, just start down there, let's build up, let's not have people come in over the top. And it was the same as our content creator. This content creator is amazing, truly. I do not know anyone else in Australia that does what she's doing. No one. Poacher, I'll kill you all. But she was given an opportunity because she purely put on Instagram and tags us the most amazing photo of one of our items. And it just started up from there. And my social media manager said to me, this girl's posted a great photo, maybe we should approach her. I said, well done, Beck, let's do that. I approach her, she starts doing a few imagery, a bit of, do you want some products? Do you want to just take a few pretty photos? Yeah, I'll take a few pretty photos. And it grew and it grew. And even though I wanted to hire her full time, I couldn't quite bring it to the directors because it was a bit, you know, like, oh, just look pretty. But she was doing amazing things for our social media world. It was growing our brand because we just look great. And eventually it was like, you know, it was a bit embarrassing because we were both like, do you want me
Nathan Bush: to work for you, Lou?
Lou Kendall: I was like, yeah, I do. Can you just give me, can we make this official?
Nathan Bush: Do this?
Lou Kendall: And I'm like, yeah. And so I then took it to the directors and, you know, funny thing, no one batted an eyelid anyway, people come on board and they come on board for less money too. And I say, I Can't afford you. And I am going to grab that person that says to me, you know what, it's not about money, it's about the workplace environment. I watch you on social media. I want to be part of the girl gang. I want to be there. And I'm like, oh, my God, come to us.
Nathan Bush: Amazing. But you know what I love about what you're saying is that we. I have a lot of chats with people who say, I'm really struggling with my team who are maybe a bit younger, less experienced. I don't think they want it as much as, you know, as they should. They're not as committed as they should be. And the first thing is one, I doubt anyone is ever going to be committed to your business as much as you are as a founder. So stop expecting that. And the second thing is, what are you doing as a leader to help nurture them? Because if you flip it around and go, actually, it's not their problem, it's my problem. How do I help them reach?
Lou Kendall: I always say to everybody, you have to look at yourself first. I'm getting very hands on. You have to look at yourself first. Don't think it's their problem. Look at yourself and go, why am I not getting the best out of that person? What's in the way? You know, like there's those sort of sayings that, like, what stands in the way becomes the way. And it's just, just so true. And you can turn it on its head extremely quickly if you dedicate the time. And, you know, profit's a symptom of healthy behaviors. You know, when people are looking at the bottom line and business and things like that, if you're focusing on the money, at the end of the day, you're not really going to make it. I'm like, profit's just a symptom. Like, you need to work on the behaviors of your business. What's a healthy business? Well, it's fairness, it's clarity, job satisfaction, being valued, celebration, you know, roles, a common goal. Let's do it together. You know, for me, the staff, it's not just their career development, it's their personal development. Like, I get really antsy about our team when I watch other businesses or people talk to me about their own business. I say, do you ever talk about their personal life? Are you in? Do you have buy in with them? Really? Like, do you know what their partner's name is? Do you know what the dog's name is? Do you know where they went last weekend? Do you Know what they're doing for Christmas. Like, it's all that. It's like that person's not performing because they're just. They're not very happy. Ask yourself, why are you invested in them really? You know, like, get real. Are you really invested? That's what I would say.
Nathan Bush: I love it. This conversation has been so good.
Lou Kendall: And probably a little bit not about ecom, is it?
Nathan Bush: Well, I think when you said at the start about hearing conversations, Janine's conversation, where people are going, oh, that's me right now. I'm actually in that. I think we'll have a lot of founders especially who are hearing this from you, going, yes, this is what I need to hear right now. So it has been brilliant. Thank you so much. But to take a slightly off track from that conversation we've been having about team and people, it'd be remiss of me, as an E commerce podcast, not to ask. You've just gone live with a new Shopify site. Believe you delivered it in just four months.
Lou Kendall: Four months Record. I'm sure it's a record for anyone.
Nathan Bush: From a project perspective, how did it go for you? What were the lessons?
Lou Kendall: Oh, look, our website was sort of mid. Last year was just. It was about to break it. Seriously, it was toothpicked. It was hell. Our ads were kicking in our val, social media, you know, and we were selling well. And I was like, oh my God, it's going to break. We're about to break. And we really needed to turn it around very fast. And Shopify has always sort of been there. We've probably always been given the wrong advice. Who's the advice come from? It's come from the people pitching the program or the platform. It's not from outside people. It's not people who have it. And you really need to do your research. I mean, I know that's just such a throwaway comment. Do your research. But I'm like, oh, no, no, go deeper. Like, deeper and deeper. Like, don't just ask the person who's selling it. Ask the person who's practicing it right now. Really ask around the industry. I found it fascinating in E commerce, when you're talking about web developers, agencies, no one can recommend anyone. I'm like, okay, we got a problem, Houston. Like, why can't these people recommend great this great that? It's probably because it's customized to a business and what do you need? And it was just breaking and at the daunting outlook of making a new website within a sort of a very Quick period was it was like drop everything. And we went more in house than we did go out house. So when Heidi shopped around for someone to actually build the site, she was given for three prices. And those prices ranged from get ready to build the web to build a site for the Shopify. 35,000 was 1:50, 1,000 was the next 160 was the next one. It's just like, okay, for 16 years now, we've bought four websites. This is what happens every time. It's like, are you serious? We've gone from 35 to 160. There is a problem there. It's the blind leading the blind too. Okay. You know, Heidi's quite tech savvy, but no, she doesn't want to be in it. She's had to learn to do that because there's no one else. She's a founder of the business. Someone needs to have some type of play in there. We should have probably gone with Shopify the whole time, a lot. It was always there and we never went for it. And we should have, and we now realize that. And you know, they're not failures, they're learnings. But it could have saved us a lot of pain. But that four month project happened because we needed to turn around very fast. And we actually hired an external person, a third party, someone we'd worked with before in other agencies who was now independent. That was the game changer. She was our project manager. And this is what I love about our team. We sit down, you think about it. It has to be strategy about what you're doing and the strategy, you know, you know, you have your objective, you have your strategy and then you have your tactics. That was a three week, 247 scoping. Let's think about it, let's get our ducks in a row. Who's involved? What do we want? So over that three week period, there were four people involved. You know, there was the build, there was Caitlin, the project manager, that was Abby who we went in house and we got Kirsty and Abby. So Kirsty's very visual of the website. We would need it to function like, you know, we need it to look like this. We need to have our. We have Abby who was on the tech side. Those two positions could have been done, outhouse could have been done. But we needed to customize it for us. We had smart people within the team. Not only that, the process, that over the four month period, it meant that we had two people in house who knew exactly how this was built, exactly how and why? So it wasn't like we were suddenly presented this new platform and we had to learn. The learnings that they had were unbelievable. So Caitlin, they would have said that it just went from like, we need to have a like for like, we need to get it on the platform very quickly. Like, for like a very fast transition. How three weeks of scoping. How are we going to do this? Long conversations. They needed to analyze everything and then we needed to set goals. Then the project manager, Caitlin, she did an absolute tick by, tick the box and let's go. The migration then just happened within like over a three month period. And then all they had to do was tick the box. They didn't have to have these lengthy conversations anymore. They'd done the prep before they started and then it was just tick, tick, tick and it was a like for like, can we leave that for later? Yes, we can do that later. Yes, we can do that later. For now we just need this. And that's basically how it rolled out.
Nathan Bush: Sounds like, get shit done.
Lou Kendall: Get it done fast.
Nathan Bush: Lou, this has been fantastic. What's next for yourself and the team at Leeuwenhyde?
Lou Kendall: Wow. The team at Lew next. Well, we've decided, you know, just we're going to bunker down, keep it here, keep it in Australia. You know, we are international and it goes very well. It has its own little legs. We could go harder there if we wanted to, but we've decided to really, you know, right now it's just, it's all about our brand, it's all about our community. It's about the build, it's about the trust, it's about high expectations, it's tweaking. We are constantly tweaking. How can we do this better? Where are our efficiencies? We're pretty efficient. Like if anyone came into our business and saw everything, they'd be like, wow, you've got it humming. And I'd be like, yeah, look like, yeah, this needs to be tweaked. Oh, we could do better there. So, you know, our next major project is we're actually building a new ERP system and we're hoping to turn that around in six weeks. Once again, we have three. The same people are on it. So we have a project manager, we have three in house people doing it. It is massive. So because of Shopify, Shopify related, we had to go there because all of our systems aren't working with like ship it and dispatch and it's just, it's not working. So we've moved to a new system and we're currently. That is the biggest project we have right now. And once again these in house people, we have to allow them time. They have big jobs anyway. But we as the business, as the group, this is their focus for the next six weeks. Back off everyone. This trumps everything right now. So really it's our brand. Who are we? What are we continuing to build upon? Trust and relationships and wanting a community that starts within and within our brand and within our staff members. So we're happy. We're after happy and fun and reaching goals. That's it.
Nathan Bush: Amazing.
Lou Kendall: What more do you want in life?
Nathan Bush: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: Lou, if anyone's heard this and they
Nathan Bush: want to know more about Lew and
Nathan Bush: Hyde or get in touch with you,
Nathan Bush: what's the best way to do so
Lou Kendall: man, Email me
Nathan Bush: but be very direct with what you want.
Lou Kendall: Correct. If you want me to answer, go for it. I'm all for it.
Nathan Bush: If they don't hear from you for 24 hours, they know they've really stuffed up.
Lou Kendall: Yeah, that's right. I always answer my emails. Always. But look, this is another little pet hate peeve of mine. We are actually probably the only website there is that has a phone number on there. I cannot stand it. Country road seed, all the big ones. I'm like oh my God, you cannot ring anyone. It's all via text and it's all via email. We actually have our phone number on the website. Just give us a call. You want some help? We've got lots of emails on there but I'm louandhide.com just email me, I'll put you in the right. I'm good delegator. I can put you in the right direction.
Nathan Bush: Lou, that is amazing. Thank you so much for joining us on add to card.
Lou Kendall: Thanks Nathan.
Nathan Bush: Now to be honest, I was going into that chat thinking it'll all be about handbags, retail expansion and replatforming. But I found Lou's people perspective fascinating and full of gold. Especially for a well established business who is moving through to a different stage. Here are the three takeaways for me. Number one, 24 hours of silence. I don't know about you but I am a sucker to treating email and chat like a conversation. I go back immediately and in rapid fire and it sometimes got me in trouble because it's not a conversation, it's actually a missile and those missiles can easily get misrepresented. I love Lou's idea of leaving a response for 24 hours. If you are doing it in a heightened emotional state, you will no doubt frame it differently after 24 hours and most likely more productively for the outcome that you want. I'm not sure if I'd get away with the same rule in my personal life though. Number two Play to your position. We heard Lou talk a lot about responsibilities and how that aligns with what she teaches in hockey. Stick to your position, your responsibilities and make your team's positions well known. While that might seem like Business Management 101, it's not always easy to do, but because people avoid giving feedback, especially when the feedback is harsh, we recently had someone in our team say that we all needed to stay in our lane and while it shocked some people, I loved it. As a footy analogy, Everyone has a position to play and to do their best in it. We don't want fullbacks in the front row. So yes, stick to your responsibilities, but don't be scared to call out others who aren't in position. Number three Project Based Leadership A common issue that I see and talk with founders in ecommerce businesses is working out where they fit. Once their business is up and away. Oftentimes they're no longer the CEO or the Managing director. So where do they add value? I really like Lou's role as an option. The ability to pinpoint Prof. Projects that matter to the business and go in as a fixer is a cool one. It really allows her to be strategic
Nathan Bush: in thinking about what the big blockers
Nathan Bush: are that she can fix. It doesn't burden the team who are still busy in operations, and allows her to stay hands on and in the detail of the business. I reckon many founders would love that role. To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com au where you can download the free E Commerce Salary Guide and sign up to our weekly e Commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to car.
