Kelly Taggart: I don't think I've ever met anyone who has not enjoyed receiving flowers. I would always go with the phone because you can solve so many issues 10 times as quick with your voice. As soon as I turn him down, I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd made a huge mistake.
[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: Hello and welcome to Add to Cart. My name is Nathan Bush, host of Add to Cart and director at E Commerce talent agency E Suite. Today's episode took me on a bit of a time warp. They were actually one of my first clients as a young and enthusiastic advertising strategist almost 20 years ago. Gee whiz. So I was really excited to sit down and have a chat with Kelly Taggart, CEO at Roses Only. Kelly's had an incredible journey as well, starting as an accountant in the business before moving into the COO position by the age of 30 and is now the CEO of Roses Only Group. The Roses Only Group consists of Roses Only, obviously, but also Fruit Only, Hampers Only, Wine Only, and my original client, 1300 Flowers. They now have over 300 staff and 10 floral studios nationally. In this episode, Kelly shares the ups and the downs at Roses Only, including one story of how they recovered from having 30k in the bank with an upcoming 60k wage bill. No doubt that will resonate and give hope to anyone who is bootstrapping their own e commerce business. She also shares how the national team pull together to keep consistency and to keep the same day delivery promise for their customer. And Kelly also gives her advice to others who are looking to gain senior positions at such a young age. So, thanks to our partners, Shopify plus and Signet, here's our conversation with Kelly Taggart, the CEO of Roses Only. Kelly, welcome to ADD to cart.
Kelly Taggart: Thanks, Nathan. It's good to be here.
Nathan Bush: Good to have you. I understand that you're sitting down with your customer service team at the moment.
Kelly Taggart: I am. I've got a few people on the other side of this room that I can see and sometimes hear, so hopefully it doesn't affect the sound too poorly.
Nathan Bush: It's all good. It's all good. I can imagine that would be a hive of activity on busy days.
Kelly Taggart: Oh yeah. Absolutely. And it's such an important part of the business as well. So, you know, we really like to get involved with our customer and help them out. Change a card message, change a delivery address, those sorts of things. They become pretty important at the last minute.
Nathan Bush: Any odd requests that you get through?
Kelly Taggart: I don't think we have time to go through. Oh, you wouldn't believe some of the requests that we've had. Really odd things to add to orders, obviously personal. So, yeah, there's a long list of those.
Nathan Bush: Oh, wow. All right. So we're here to talk about Roses Only. And in the research we met a few weeks ago, but in the research of Roses Only, I discovered that you're previously 1300 flowers. And in my ad agency days, I worked with the guys at 1, 300 flowers, and then we realized that our paths had crossed. And you've been at roses only since 2008.
Kelly Taggart: That's right. So 1300 flowers still exists. It is a company in our mix. And so we still run one 300 flowers and then roses only. We acquired that business in 2014. So, yeah, I have been part of this group since 2008. It's been a long time now. As a young spring chicken at that stage. Brisbane is definitely a small world. So it's nice to speak to you again, I guess.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Well, we'll see after this conversation whether you still feel that way. 1, 300 flowers. I remember Anthony at the time explaining how important that numeric number was and securing 1300 flowers like there was, you know, those. Those numbers didn't come cheap at the time. Is it still the case that those memorable phone numbers are important?
Kelly Taggart: I think they are important to our customers, but I think also the Internet and online retailers has definitely exploded since those days. We didn't have the big bang of phone names in Australia that they had, for example, in the States. And so I think that that time for phone names has been fairly short lived. But I think that's still important in the minds of customers. Once they use 1300 flowers, it tends to stick with them. So it's still valuable to that brand for sure.
Nathan Bush: And you've got a whole bunch of brands. You mentioned the group there before. There's also fruit only, wine hampers only. Why have you set them up as individual brands within the group rather than one big offering?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, sure. So Roses Only was originally set up by its previous owners and they set up those brands separately. I think it's nice for some of those customers to see the differentiation. But in reality when you go to the website, those brands are fairly side by side, so it's much like choosing a different category, but it just makes it really clear to that customer that they're. They're buying a different type of product, whether it's flowers or fruit or hampers. It makes it easy for them to
Nathan Bush: choose what's harder, fruit or flowers to deliver.
Kelly Taggart: Oh, it's all the same. I think it's all a beautiful product, sending a. You know, sending love, as we like to say in a message. But in terms of the delivery side of things, they're both perishable products. So we take as much care with. With both of those lines. And, yeah, making sure that it gets out on time is pretty important.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. So can you talk us through the size of Roses Only? Because some of the numbers that you were telling me before and the areas that you cover is phenomenal. Can you talk us through how big roses only is and how the model works?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, sure. So I think. And even in some of your research, I noticed you thought that we didn't carry inventory and we certainly do. We have 10 floral studios nationally and so we cover all the main cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, and then we have sites in Newcastle, Central, Coast, Sunny Coast, Gold coast and Canberra. So we have a fairly large team. We have over 300 staff nationally. So it's a nice big team to manage. And, yeah, it's been a long time coming. I think being able to manage all of those teams and being able to have that consistent quality going out to every single customer nationally and knowing that regardless of whether you send flowers in Sydney versus Brisbane versus Perth, it's all going to look exactly the same and you can trust us to deliver that beautiful product wherever you are.
Nathan Bush: So do you carry the inventory for all deliveries?
Kelly Taggart: Yes, we do. So we have a buying team and they organise our very many suppliers around Australia and internationally to make sure that all of those floral studios have exactly what they need at the right time for those customers.
Nathan Bush: And is it fairly predictable like you can? Because I'm dealing with perishables, I suppose you have to be pretty right with your inventory, right?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, we actually have a really low wastage rate and we do a pretty good job with that, with the. With the amount of data that we look at every day. So, yeah, it can be predictable with the sort of volumes that we're looking at. And then we need to be agile enough to follow the trends week to week or month to month. And then there's obvious changes throughout the year. So at Valentine's Day. We spent months and months planning for that with the amount of roses that we send out. And then in events like Mother's Day, for instance, you'd be looking at a different product mix. Again, that might be more, way more pink than we would ever see. Normally,
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Nathan Bush: Has Covid changed the gift giving behavior?
Kelly Taggart: Yes, I would say that I don't think in terms of gift giving, people still want to give gifts in the same way that they have before. I think the differences are that they're finding opportunities to gift where they probably wouldn't have before. So way more than ever, people are sending flowers just because or to celebrate little moments like, yay, you're out of lockdown. Which, I mean, for some states is actually a big moment in itself. Or it could just be, you know, yay, it's Friday, thanks for the week. We really appreciate you working from home for the seventh week in a row or something like that. So, yeah, I think people are really starting to care about, actually show their love more than they ever have before. And the card messages that we see are pretty heartwarming, actually.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I could imagine. I mean, it's a really nice way that you put that around sending love. Because I even remember that in Brisbane we were in lockdown for a week and sorry, Sydney and Melbourne, that's going to sound really pathetic, but we're in lockdown for a week and I would have had a phone call with my mum and dad the night before or something and they must have just looked at me and gone, you're a shell of a human, you've got nothing left. And the next day they sent Uber Eats for lunch for the family and for us. That was like, oh, amazing. Like you could break the cycle. So it's like those Little tokens of love, right?
Kelly Taggart: Oh, absolutely. And we've seen that a lot, especially in this latest lockdown with businesses recognizing that a lot more. So we've seen a lot more businesses send, for example, our fruit products out because it's a nice, healthy option. You might add a bit of champagne and chocolates in there.
Nathan Bush: Champagne's still fruit.
Kelly Taggart: The fruit, yeah. But yeah, we've seen that go out en masse and it's really nice to see that businesses are really looking after their teams. You know, it'd be so hard working from your bedroom for that long. So I think it's definitely appreciated and we see that in some of the customer feedback that we get and some of the recipients that post about how much they love receiving that sort of stuff when they're in lockdown too.
Nathan Bush: As someone who manages a team of 300 all over Australia during COVID how did you keep your team engaged and happy?
Kelly Taggart: It's definitely been challenging. Communication is absolutely key. At the very beginning, when Covid was starting to be talked about and there was all sorts of hype and unknowns, there was a lot of communication and we were very quick to roll out a health policy to make sure that we kept everyone safe and we did a lot of things to ensure that. So we said, you know, like if you can't work from home, which is the majority of our teams, florists can't work from home and we have our contact centre as well. Can't work from home. And so we made sure that they were taken through that policy really clearly, often individually, so that they had the chance to ask a lot of questions. And once we did that, they were all very comfortable with what we were doing. We actually provided for our casual staff where they had to stay home sick for whatever reason, we would still pay them some money to keep them going. So if they had to go into isolation for whatever reason, that we still supported them there. And that was to make sure that the rest of the team felt comfortable that people weren't coming into work, even if they felt safe, just because of financial reasons. So that that worked really well as well. And we've actually had a really good run with, with our teams in general. Our teams have kept themselves really safe. We had a rule about if there was multiple sites in a city, for example, Melbourne has two sites and in Brisbane we actually have three. So whatever your home based site was, you can't leave that site. So that was really important so that we didn't get a risk of cross contamination, which we haven't had come up anyway, which has been really good. But we wanted to set that all in place so that we made sure that everyone knew that we were taking it really seriously. And then of course for our customers as well, setting up contactless delivery was happening in parallel, so we made sure that they were kept safe.
Nathan Bush: Also makes sense. We've just seen Australia Post put a three day pause on parcel pickups because a big chunk of their team were impacted by Covid and they've had huge demand. Anything similar come your way for roses only?
Kelly Taggart: We've been very lucky not to experience that. Sure, we've had some people go into quarantine at times, but luckily no positive cases. But yeah, not the sort of impacts that Australia Post has had. They would just like I really feel for them in that instance would be very challenging.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And it just shows how important it is to have backup options.
Kelly Taggart: Oh, absolutely. I mean it's hard though, like with people, you know, what is your backup option there? There's only so many people that you can call on. I think having those backup plans though, is, is really important. And what we always do is think first about how our customer is going to be impacted and then think about, okay, what are the backup plans? Then how do we communicate with our customers so that they're not impacted at all or at least communicated to in the right way.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, makes sense. When we're talking about customer. Have I got the right assumption in that you would have a lot of new customers and low frequency customers or do you have a high return, high frequency customer?
Kelly Taggart: We have a little bit of both. And so we do have a lot of new customers, especially due to Covid. Like I said before, there's so many more people ordering for reasons that maybe they haven't ordered before and then they're having a really good experience and coming back to us. So yes, we have our repeat customers and they will order for all the different occasions in life like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, your anniversaries, birthdays, you know, you could go on. And then there's the people that only order in those big events as well. Lots of long standing customers. But it's really nice to welcome a lot of new customers, especially in the last 18 months.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And for those new customers, because it feels to me that flowers is such a competitive category online and they, I would imagine they'd be hard to retail because you can't smell them, you can't feel them. It's hard to turn that into a 2D product. How do you convince new customers to go with roses only over one of the other competitors?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, you've hit on a few points there. Yeah, you can't smell flowers through a website and it's also really difficult to photograph. So flowers and have them have that big impact. I think for us it's about, well, one, you can speak to us and so we've got a really passionate team here that's answering the phone every minute of the day. So if you have any questions or concerns, we're right here and they'll help you place your order. And then secondly, I think it's trust. So we offer a same day delivery service if you order by 2pm we also offer expensive delivery so you can actually get your order in as soon as two to three hours on that day if you really, really need it. And there's definitely some stories behind why people would really, really need flowers urgently. And I think there's, there is a lot of brand value in roses only and people just know and trust that we're here and our promise as we talk about within the business to deliver that love.
Nathan Bush: From a customer service perspective, whether it's live chat, phone, email, what are the channels that you feel give the most value to customers?
Kelly Taggart: Absolutely. The phone, when you can speak to someone, they can hear the tone of your voice, they can hear your personality. But yeah, absolutely. The phone, 100% email and SMS has a place. I think SMS is convenient for a lot of people. You know, if you're in a meeting and you get a text, you can very quickly answer that while you're still in that meeting. Not that I'm condoning that by any means, but it can be convenient for a lot of people that. Yeah, like I would always go with the phone because, you know, you can solve so many issues 10 times as quick with your voice.
Nathan Bush: And if you've got that phone available and you've got the team locally here ready to have that conversation, do you promote that phone number in like the header and really make it really obvious or do you try and keep it a little bit low key so that the phone doesn't ring off the hook?
Kelly Taggart: We absolutely promote that number. That's what we're here for, is to support our customers when they need us. So why would we try and hide that phone number? We want them to call us. That's part of our personality and who we are.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, great. And can you take orders over the phone directly then?
Kelly Taggart: Yes, yes, we can. Yeah. And in fact, when someone starts in the business, they will get Thorough onboarding, including how to take an order over the phone and what customer service looks like. So all of the executive leadership team has spent time on the phone in the past and we can track their stats and see how good they were with the customers in answering their questions. So, yeah, it's inherent as part of our business.
Nathan Bush: Have you had to get rid of any executives that can't take a phone order?
Kelly Taggart: So give them some coaching for sure.
Nathan Bush: No, but it's a great point that you've got there because then all of a sudden the phone doesn't just become a customer service cost, it becomes a sales channel as well. Right?
Kelly Taggart: Absolutely. Yes. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: From an acquisition point of view, and all I'm going on is seeing search results. What are the channels that you find really work for you for acquiring new customers at the moment?
Kelly Taggart: For customer acquisition? I would say, you know, there's a number of platforms there that are key. Like you said, search, you know, Google search, they're such a big player in the Australian market. So that has to be be part of your marketing mix. I think in other terms of customer acquisition, you're looking at other platforms like Instagram and Facebook and there's definitely other platforms that we haven't even explored properly yet that, you know, some of them that I'm hearing that I'd be really interested in exploring further would be things like TikTok and Pinterest and seeing how that fits into our matrix.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, I saw a lovely TikTok channel the other day. And I sound like such an old person saying this, but it was someone who basically just set up outside of in shopping malls. And it was Australian one because you could see Michael Hill in the background. And their whole thing was they had a hundred bucks in their pocket and they went up to people and they just went, how can I make your day? And that was the thing. They wanted to do a thousand good acts and that was their TikTok channel. So every good act created a video. And these videos were seen thousands of times.
Kelly Taggart: And I'm like, wow, what? They just gave them a hundred dollars?
Nathan Bush: Well, they kind of went, what happened?
Nathan Bush: So the one I saw was this guy goes up to this man and his whole thing is that he gets brushed by so many people as you do when you go up to random people in shopping centers, who's going to stop and talk to a weirdo, but goes up and goes, how can I make a dad? This guy actually stops and he goes, oh, you know, I'm having a pretty good day. He was retired because Anything. He's like, I'm a bit tired. Yes. What if I bought you new pillows and he went with him and just bought a new pillow?
Kelly Taggart: Champion.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Nathan Bush: But the reach it was getting and
Nathan Bush: the engagement it was getting is like, was out of this world. So I'm like, if a brand could take that over huge opportunities like you said on TikTok.
Kelly Taggart: Absolutely. If you hit the right note. Yeah. You just go viral, right?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk about fulfillment. You mentioned before delivery by on the same day. If you order by 2pm, I'd love to learn to speak soon.
Nathan Bush: How do you make that work?
Kelly Taggart: We're certainly a well oiled machine, that's for sure. There's a lot of components that go into that and a lot of preparation. So working with really good career drivers, we have quite a few career drivers that we work with as well as other career companies as well. And they're all integrated into our system so that we can make sure that, you know, everything's going as smoothly as possible. But it's also about, like I said, the preparation. So making sure that we have the stems in the studio that we need, we have the people to put those bouquets together and monitoring all of those things to make sure that we can actually service those customers on that day and that we're over delivering and under promising rather than the other way around. And so yeah, there's a lot more components than just having a good courier driver. And you know, even the best courier driver is not going to deliver 20 things by 5pm if you give them to them at 4. So you have to have those people on the road at 2pm at the latest. So yeah, we operate right up to the wire of that 2pm cut off every day.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. And do you have a mechanism for getting that feedback from customers on whether it's product quality, whether it's delivery experience, whether it's otherwise?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, we absolutely do. So every customer that orders from us will receive an NPS survey and they'll generally receive that a few days after so that they've experienced the gift and they've had a chance to talk to the person that received the flowers and so on and we ask them what they thought and then we respond to all of those people as well. So it's very important to us that, you know, whatever feedback they're giving to us, we're closing that loop also. And then we use that sort of data. If, for example, there's a product that people aren't loving, then we need to change it or if there's a product that they are absolutely going nuts over, then we need to do more of that. So, yeah, it's not just about sending out the survey and tick the box. We actually use that information to make the experience better for the next customer.
Nathan Bush: And do you go back to people who give you positive feedback as well as negative?
Kelly Taggart: We have a lot of positive feedback, so I think most of the time they get a thank you. I don't think that we've had to go down the path of paying for surveys just yet in terms of promising extras and things like that. Our customers seem to be pretty happy with providing us with that feedback regardless. But I know that there's a little bit of a program going on there where our marketing team likes to send out a surprise and delight every now and then for customers that give us really good feedback. So just a note to anyone who's listening, if you want to give a really, really awesome review, you might get something back as a surprise. So. So yeah, we do like to do that occasionally.
Nathan Bush: It's a really good point. And I've had this conversation with another client, especially around gifting and loyalty, where the sender typically gets nothing because they're the ones sending out, but they're the ones choosing who they're going to shop with. How do you reward the sender? So that surprise and delight to the sender is actually a really nice touch.
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, absolutely. It's been actually a topic of conversation even today about how we make that better. We were talking about how often the people that are sending lots of flowers are the ones that aren't receiving them. So they're the. You know, there's that person in your friend group that's just there, like, cheering everyone along, but they're never really sort of giving anything for themselves. So, yeah, that's what we'd like to try and reward is those people that are out there, you know, spreading the love everywhere. We'd like to give them a little bit of joy back.
Nathan Bush: So.
Kelly Taggart: So it's a topic that we're looking
Nathan Bush: at closely at the moment, and I can imagine that you've got a hell of a lot of data going on there of both senders and receivers. Can you actually use the receiver data in any way?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, the receiver data is given to us by the customer, so we're not using the receiver data for marketing and things like that. Our receivers do get something that says, please give us feedback or, you know, there's an opportunity to enter a competition sometimes and things like that. We don't like to intrude too much on that gift at all, really. But from the customer's perspective, things that are important to us would be things like the occasion, like why are they sending that gift? Because that helps us to add value to that customer for the next time. You know, if they sent anniversary flowers, for instance, we encourage them to set up a reminder system so that they don't forget next year.
Nathan Bush: I love that service. That's brilliant. Yeah.
Kelly Taggart: Did a bloody good job this year. Don't forget it next year. And then also, you know, like any other occasions that they've got coming up, you know, how do you want us to help you to make your life easier and give more? So, yeah, we do the occasion data for sure. And that's why I said before, usually things like birthdays obviously are a key occasion. Right. But we've seen a lot more of that just because occasion, which is just great to see. I'd love to see that continue after lockdowns and after Covid because people just. I don't think I've ever met anyone who has not enjoyed receiving flowers. And we've had a couple of instances where, for example, we had a friend of mine, actually I had been sending his partner flowers from him as a product test. So she was my mystery shop recipient. And so every other month she'd get flowers from him and I'd organize a lovely card message from him and so on. And then I didn't need to do that testing program anymore. I finished it up and he called me a couple of months later. He's like, you cannot do this to me. You have to to keep going with this program. She just absolutely loves it. And now I'm gonna have to buy every month from you just to keep it going.
Nathan Bush: You've ruined his life.
Kelly Taggart: So he is a very loyal customer now.
Nathan Bush: You should do more loyalty programs like that, like enforced loyalty. Six months free and then boom, you can't. Now you're hooked.
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, you're hooked. You can never leave.
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Nathan Bush: It's funny, though, this week because we share an office here with a social NPR agency and it's full of young women. And this week there was a flower delivery. So I've sent flowers and I've been around other guys who've sent flowers before, but never actually been in an office, a small office where a flower delivery arrives. And so this flower delivery arrives. And I honestly thought, like, there was a party going on. The cheers and the whoops and the craziness that comes from flowers showing up, it's just phenomenal.
Kelly Taggart: I love that. I love hearing those sorts of stories. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen it. It still happens even in our office. You know, someone turns up and they're like, oh, this isn't a product test, it's for someone in here. And everyone's like, oh, like, who's it for? What does it say? And yeah, it's. It's just great. I love that. I don't think there's a better feeling than feeling like you're really special to someone.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. There's not many products that can do that, right?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, absolutely.
Nathan Bush: Can we talk a little bit about your journey? Because you've had a fascinating journey starting off in accounting.
Kelly Taggart: Yes.
Nathan Bush: How did you end up as CEO of Roses only after starting in accounting?
Kelly Taggart: Well, I think, yeah, I started out in accounting. It's the way that my brain works. I'm actually really creative, but I was also really good with business with numbers. And so I guess when I left school, I thought being an accountant would probably set me up financially a bit better than following a creative side. And like I said, I love business, so I just thought that was a good pathway in. I always wanted to be one of the decision makers. I wanted to be part of something new, something growing. And yeah, I found myself working as an accountant and with Anthony actually at a previous business. And he started. He was one of the founders of Flowers and of this business that we're working for. And. And he came across me and said, hey, I need an accountant. I've started this business. Come chat to me. And so he gave me the pitch and I actually turned him down. I was looking for a job at the time and I was really looking for management experience, even though I was pretty young. And as soon as I turned him down, I had this awful feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd made a huge mistake and I was stressing going, you know, how am I going to turn this around without Coming back to him looking desperate.
Nathan Bush: What made you turn him down initially? Like, what was the gut instinct that said no?
Kelly Taggart: Well, I was stuck on. I wanted to get management experience and this was a startup company and I was going to be an accountant doing all parts of the function. It didn't look like a step up by any means. And yeah, he sent me a text within the next couple of hours saying is it the money? And I was like, I'll say yes because that's my inn. So anyway, I started out and in my first week we had 30 grand in the bank and a 60 grand payroll bill the next week. And I was like, okay, this is going to be short lived. So obviously we survived. But I was doing everything from the payroll function to cash flow strategy and we were in the midst of raising money. So we managed to raise enough money to get us through that and here we are now.
Nathan Bush: Amazing.
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, it's been a ride. And I guess from managing that accounting function it was a fairly natural step towards CEO position, I guess. So I managed a couple of teams and then became the chief operating officer I think when I turned 30 and then was in that position for roughly six years until Alvin and I started workshopping how I would step into the CEO position. So Alvin was out the previous CEO and he's still on the board of directors so we still speak regularly. So yeah, it's been, it's been a journey and that's obviously a simplified version of that. But yeah, it's one that I've definitely had a lot of support to get here and it's been a really great team to work with and one that we still have a lot of people here with us today that we had when we started, which is really lovely to sort of continue to work with those people on a day to day basis.
Nathan Bush: That's awesome. To be COO by the time you're 30 is a big deal, right? What kind of advice would you give to people say in their 20s who are looking to go up the ranks to have access to the management and decision making? What do you think that you did right to be trusted by the executive team and given, you know, and be rewarded for that and recognized.
Kelly Taggart: That's a big question. Manage your stress would be one. I mean, I say that in jest, sort of, but I think, yeah, like as you build your experience iteratively, so try not to do too big a jump up without the support around you because the weight of responsibility will be very heavy. And that's a challenge, I think. So try to do it iteratively. Build on your knowledge, build your management experience, reach out to people, talk to as many people as you possibly can, share your experiences and listen to other people's advice. There's so much experience rattling around, even with people you probably don't even realise. So just keep talking. I think other than that, I would say you've got to back yourself to some degree as well and be prepared to just jump in and make mistakes, calculated mistakes. So maybe assess those risks before you take those leaps and know that, you know, like, okay, if I do this and that fails, that's okay because then I have this plan B or this plan C and so on. But yeah, I think being able to talk to people and listen as much as possible and ask lots of questions, ask the why all the time, be curious. I think as long as you're learning and you've got that goal in mind and people know what that goal is, they'll be willing to help you out.
Nathan Bush: Some great advice in there. I really like what you're saying there around being consultative and listen and take on feedback. But one of the things that we often see is that we find people in that management role on their way to head of or C level is that they're too consultative in that people think that they're just trying to gather all opinions and then take the safe road. And so I like what you also said about backing yourselves and taking the risk. So you do have to do that big share of listening but you've also got to tread your own path and show that you've got the leadership.
Kelly Taggart: Absolutely, yeah. Like you've got to have your own opinions as well. Yes, absolutely. Listen to the advice. Listen is the key word there. You don't have to take all of that advice. You know, you would get lost in the amount of advice that people give. You've got to listen to it, consider what that person's experiences and so on and make your own assumptions and test them. I do agree. Like the advice part, you can get lost in that for sure.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And you mentioned Alvin being the CEO that was before you. What was that transition period like? Was it a long transition? Was it a formal kind of transition?
Kelly Taggart: Yeah, look, Alvin and I have been working together since the beginning, so we've been working together for 13 years. He was one of the founding partners with Anthony. So we've got a really good working relationship. We sort of set on a path of about an 18 month program where we sort of set it up. Like I would shadow out Alvin for A period. And then he would shadow me and then he'd sort of step back into the background and be, you know, a sounding board for me. So he's now the strategy director role. I think one of the biggest things I learned in that process was no amount of preparation can get you ready for actually doing the role. You know, when you actually step into that role and there's a noticeable weight of responsibility that I was a little bit surprised by because I'd been working towards this position for while. But you do take that on. So, you know, now all of our customers, ultimately the buck stops with me and same with our team. You know, like we've got 300 people here. They're my responsibility and there's not like someone, there's not a manager that is there above me to say, hey, can you help me out with this? Of course I've got support and I've got of the board, but the board's also asking questions too. So, you know, you're in the middle of that sandwich and yeah, there's no amount of preparation that will prepare you completely for just doing the role. Actually that's probably like to your previous questions, probably a bit of advice too is just, you know, until you're actually doing it, you're not really experiencing it. So just get in there.
Nathan Bush: Was there any part of. Because coming from a COO background, you would have had a good view over the organization. What changed to be overwhelming when it was CEO, Was there any part of the business?
Kelly Taggart: I think there's just for me more of an idea on balancing strategy between now and the future. So I think CEO is a lot more short term thinking, you know, a lot more problem solving, but very short term. Whereas in a CEO role you're looking at more like, yes, the now is important, of course, but you're looking more about what's happening in the next 12 months, the next three years, the next five years and how do we need to prepare for that?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that makes total sense. Yeah. So no amount of transitions. The 18 month transition is a big, brilliant thing to have from both personal development, but also business continuity. Right. And I think most organizations would dream of having that kind of transition.
Kelly Taggart: Oh, absolutely. It was really good. And the other thing was for us, the way that we'd structured the business was Alvin's always been Sydney based and our headquarters is in Brisbane. So as a CEO, I already managed all of the teams and reported into Alvin. And then when I stepped into the CEO position, we decided not to replace the CEO position and instead Build up all of our senior leadership team so that they could, you know, have the opportunity to grow as well, and then that cascades down throughout their teams. So it was also about that transition, preparing them for me, stepping up and not having me or a COO role to report into. So. And look, the team's done exceptionally well. Really proud of them.
Nathan Bush: So good. Brilliant. So what is exciting you about, say, the next 12 months at Roses Only?
Kelly Taggart: What's on your radar the next 12 months? Okay. I think there's a lot that we. That we are doing with new products and product development there. We've just released a new range in the last couple of months called our Love range, which I love, no pun intended. And also in terms of other types of products, we have launched, sort of done a soft launch into our wedding range and done some wedding bouquets and bridesmaids and that sort of thing. Really trying to, you know, provide a really simple solution that's still absolutely stunning for brides and their weddings that they can very easily call us about and organise and know that they can trust us with that. I think there's still, like I was saying before, some of the other advertising platforms that we haven't got into yet. That's really exciting for me and I think I mentioned to you before, the reason we're talking a couple weeks ago was, you know, we're looking for a new head of marketing role and that's super exciting for me because, you know, it's such a big part of our business and I'm looking forward to working with that person and seeing what new things we can do.
Nathan Bush: So.
Kelly Taggart: So, yeah, there's a lot on the horizon and I'm sure there's more. There always is.
Nathan Bush: There's only so much you can say, right?
Kelly Taggart: We have a. Yeah, yeah, we do talk about, you know, we don't want to let anyone get bored in the business and I can tell you, I've been here long enough to know that that does not happen. So, yeah, I think it's an exciting next 12 months and, you know, who knows what's happening in the world, right? There's so much going on, so many changes, and I think we can be agile and move with those changes and keep growing the business. Brilliant.
Nathan Bush: Now, Kelly, if anyone's heard this and they've gone, I love Kelly's energy and what you're building there at Roses Only, what's the best way for them to get in touch with yourself or the team?
Kelly Taggart: They can contact us in many ways. All of our socials so if you do roses onlygroup they can contact us there. I am on LinkedIn. Please contact me if you want to reach out. I'm pretty good at answering my messages and yeah, that's probably the two best channels for us I would say.
Nathan Bush: Awesome.
Nathan Bush: Kelly, thank you so much sharing the
Nathan Bush: Roses Only story, but also your story was really great to hear.
Kelly Taggart: Thanks Nathan. I really enjoyed it.
Nathan Bush: What a story. And what a job turning up to deliver love every day. And while I'm sure it's not all roses, boom. But it is lovely to have a why such as that to turn up to work every day. Here are my three most actionable takeaways from our chat with Kelly. Number one, you can't smell flowers online. Sounds obvious, right? But what do you do when that happens? There's no technology coming out to help you with that. That's why Roses Only have invested so much into customer service, especially phones. As Kelly said, you can solve so many issues with voice, especially when you make the number readily available to your customers and you empower your customer service team to order on your customer's behalf. It's not just a customer service channel. When you look at it like that, it's actually a sales channel. Number two, if you are a gifting business, how do you reward your gifters? I mean people who send gifts all the time, they're not getting much back, are they? They're the ones who decide to spend money with you, often with no outcome or reward for themselves. I love Kelly's idea of surprising and delighting their most loyal gifters. Number three, not every business will have this luxury, but the 18 month transition between CEOs at Roses only meant that that transition was smooth for their leadership team, their team and their partners as well as their customers. If you have the ability make transitions as open, transparent and collaborative as you can over a long time period to avoid any on operational impacts in that very, very crucial handover. To finish up, I have three resources for you. Firstly, if you're a first time listener of ADD to CART and you want to stay up to date with new episodes, head over to add to cart.com and you can sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll let you know every time a new episode drops, as well as giving you my three takeaways from each episode and send a link to the transcripts so you can know that this is an episode that you want to dive straight into. Secondly, if you want a weekly roundup of the best e commerce case studies, tools and research, sign up to the High Five Friday newsletter which is delivered to inboxes at 8am every Friday morning. I read all the e commerce news and send you the bits that I think you can take action from. Sign up at 12 high 12h I g h.com au high 5 and the last thing if you are looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, head over to esweettalent.com we are a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands. Check it out. Sign up to the email and get in touch with me if you want to discuss your next move. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep those customers adding to cartoon.
