EP 50| Meghan Fabulous, Jet Fuel, and a Yin-Yang Business Partnership with Steve Dunlap

For this, in the 50th episode of the Create Purpose Podcast, Zach talks to Steve Dunlap CEO and Integrator for Meghan Fabulous, a fast-growing fashion design, and women's apparel manufacturing company.  Steve talks about leveraging his experience as a successful SaaS Fintech Executive to implement multi-channel selling techniques and supply chain automation to drive rapid growth and scale. They talk about the importance of knowing your own limitations as a boss and helping your employees grow authentically within your company.

Learn more about Steve Dunlap & Meghan Fabulous:  

• Meghan Fabulous Website: https://www.meghanfabulous.com/
• Meghan Fabulous Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meghan_fabulous/

Find out more about The Fully Expressed Leader Workshop. Visit https://www.zacharend.com/workshop to find out more and unlock your potential as a leader!

Episode resources:

• Create Purpose Website 

• Join Zach’s Workshop

• Book: Who Not How by Dr Benjamin Hardy

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• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
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• Connect with me on Instagram and Facebook!

TRANSCRIPTION:

One of our sort of core philosophies is, more knowledge is always better. I always want to hear more. I always want to understand more about whatever idea that we might be considering that day. And then I might dismiss it and decide that it's bad. But you also have to go through ten of fifteen bad ideas to find the one good idea. 

Yeah. And you gotta go dabble in all those different ideas to figure out which one is good and you're still not gonna always be right. 

Alright. Welcome back or welcome to the Create Purpose Podcast. Today, it's been a little while since I've had a guest on the show. I'm gonna be interviewing Steve Dunlap.

He's the CEO integrator of Meghan Fabulous, which is a fast growing fashion design, women's apparel manufacturing company. And what I'm so excited about talking to Steve about is just how he's been able to leverage his experience coming from a completely different industry, SaaS, Fintech executive to now in fashion, but he's been able to really help the business grow through the multi-channel selling techniques and some supply chain automization and just optimization and how products are getting to the customer.

And what I'm really excited to talk about is how he and Meghan work together. As that visionary integrator to really pour some gas on the vision of the business and really start executing on it. So thanks for joining me, Steve. 

You bet, Zach. It's a pleasure. And we're going for jet fuel instead of gas, by the way, but... 

I can play that. That's cool. Let's start here. I introduced you, but if you were to have the opportunity to share a little bit of the background of how you and Meghan got to this place, like, what's a 30 second, one minute intro that you would like to frame things up for you? 

Well, it all started personally, on a personal level.

Meghan and I met in 2018 and were dating, still are by the way. And at the time my last company had been sold and I was what we jokingly called the patio guy. You know, I'd get up and go to the patio in the morning and drink my coffee, and then somewhere around three in the afternoon would switch to wine and..

Yeah. 

And I wasn't working, but I was talking to every private equity firm that I knew and trying to figure out what I was gonna go do next. And the idea was to partner up with one of 'em and go find a company that they would buy and I would run, and then we'd flip it in three to five years and everybody would make a lot of money.

And then organically, you know, Meg and I were dating and she had this business that she was running, and I knew nothing about fashion, but she and I would have these little organic conversations. She'd be like, “I'm working on this,” and she'd ask, “What do you think about this?” And we'd bounce ideas around and one thing led to another, and finally it was like, why don't we do this together? This could be fun. 

And here we are today. I run the business side and she’s the creative and runs all of our production, and we just divide things up based on who's good at what and it works really well and it's fun. 

Yeah, yeah. And for everyone listening, what I know of Meghan Fabulous. She's been in the design world, fashion world for a while and in the LA scene.

Yeah. So share a little of, uh, her brand and what she's built and the businesses you have today. 

She's pretty extraordinary. I'm biased obviously, but it was funny when we were first dating and well… get to know you thing. And she said something to me like, oh yeah, just Google Meghan LA Fashion, you'll find me.

And I did. And all of a sudden up pops all of this stuff where she's on the red carpet, and there's videos of her out there, and there's Paris Hilton wearing one of her dresses. And I'm like, oh, who's this girl? So I got real interested, but she started her first brand in God, I don't know, very early two thousands.

And her mom taught her to sew when she was four, and she really has this incredible talent where she just sees things other people don't see and has a real vision. And she's been running this business for a long time and she's had a couple of various business partners over the years. And unfortunately some of them are like, everyone knows the story of some famous band or the Beatles and they go and they get a bad manager and they take advantage of them.

And from a business perspective, you know, I think that's a common story in the creative world. You know, whether you're making music or clothes or whatever, you get some business person and they're running the business, not necessarily, in your own best interest. She had highs and lows, like back in 2010, 2012 timeframe. 

Her designs were being worn by the biggest celebrities, Sharon Stone, Shakira, Paris Hilton, on and on, and she was for sale in, I think 33 or 35 countries around the world. She was huge in the Middle East, Japan. At one point, one of the Japanese retailers paid her first class ticket, all expenses paid to come to Japan and had her come in and sit at a dinner with a whole bunch of Japanese women where they all paid for a plate to come to this dinner.

Wow. So that's some of the places that- that she's been, and that's what we're building now. Really Cool. I want to ask, this is what's coming up as you're sharing that, and it's like, it might have been a better question to ask her directly, but I'm like, no, it's actually better that I'm asking you because Hmm.

I think most people just would diminish who they are. Like, oh yeah, I was nothing just doing my thing. Yeah. But the question on my mind is like, who do you have to be to attract that type of cache or like you're in the LA scene and 

Yeah. 

Getting to, what about her? Because there's a lot of fashion designers and creatives, but then here she is like on the red carpet. So what, what about her allowing..

One word, both things that you just said are true. I'll, I'll give you the one word that answers your question, why. And that's authenticity. She's real and she's also humble. So I'll come back to the authenticity, but I'll start with your comment about she’d probably downplay it because you're absolutely right.

She would, she and I go out all the time and when we go out, whether it's a dinner or a bar, a party or whatever, she's always dressed to the nines and she's always dressed, crazy is what most people say. She's not wearing your standard jeans and a top and you know what 95% of young women are out there wearing.

She's wearing something that you cannot help but notice it's probably got sequins, it's probably shiny. It may or may not be one of her designs, often is, but without fail, it gets a lot of attention and people come up, whether we're in a bar or a restaurant when, “What is that? That's amazing. How, where can I get when you look incredible, I love your whole look.” We hear that constantly. 

Mm-hmm. And you know how many times she tells people, “Oh, I designed this. This is my line. You should go check it out?” Zero. Never ever, and me, I'm kinda the business guy I'm kind of like “Tell them it’s your stuff!” And so it's totally common for me on the sly after we're walking away, to turn back and say, you just met the designer that's wearing her stuff. Check out meghanfabulous.com. 

But as they say, can't fake authenticity. Or there's an old saying, I don't know, it was Groucho Marx or whatever. But once you learn how to fake sincerity, you know you've got it made or something like that, but, but it just can't be, she's real, like her talent is real. The stuff that she dreams up is real and it connects with people.

We have customers that are almost cult-like, and I don't mean that in a negative way at all, but they feel connected to Meghan and they're messaging and they're talking to us on Instagram and well, obviously it's not always Meghan. Sometimes it's one of our people, but we've trained them how to respond and sound and talk like Meghan.

Yeah. And often it is Meghan, so you never know. Yeah. But she loves it. Her connection with the people who take energy from her designs is very real. And that works whether you're a celebrity or whether you're Jane every day. Yeah.

It's really real. And then me as a business person, I look at that as my mission, saying, okay, there's value there.

How do I take it and not pervert that authenticity? But I feel like it's my job to like show this to the world and just be like, “Hey guys, did you know about this? You might like this. Check it out.”

Yeah, yeah. So let's go there. Like, cuz this is this evolution where you guys, back to when you were just having those conversations and really connecting on the ideation of the business, and all of a sudden you're just, you're in flow and ideas were coming like, let's do this, let's do this together.

Mm-hmm. So what was that like as you set out on that journey to start to work together? And I would love for you to share two sides of that coin. Yeah. I'm aware that creative individuals, it's hard for them to let go and cuz there's just this bar of excellence that they hold. Man. That is so true. 

Which we love them, love them for it. Mm-hmm. It's inspiring as hell, but then as like the operator of the business, you're like, yeah, that's not realistic. I don't know how we can do that and then still do. So what has that dynamic been like? So let's start with as you began, like as we began the early days. 

As we began, there were a lot of learnings and we're still learning. If you're a good human being, you never stop learning, but in the beginning it was figuring each other out and that went two ways cuz there were definitely times when she's doing something creative and when my toes cross the line into something creative, which is obviously something practical, usually something practical, something like, “You know what, hey, how about we just get this design done and do it in black so we can sell it.”

That's my perspective, and she's going. “Shut up! I'm not done. This isn't yet my vision,” and so we'll go back and forth on that. But that's numerous things and it goes two ways. The other side of that, when we first started working, one of the very first things I did is I brought in an ERP platform. It stands for Enterprise Resource Management, totally geeky, nerdy, and it runs everything we do from purchasing to selling to the sales orders pipe through there.

It connects to every vendor that we sell with and updates our inventory and automates everything in the world, right? In the early days, there was this one time I'll never forget. We were driving home and she was mad at me, and she's like, “What the hell are you doing over there? Sitting in that corner working on this stupid platform all the time? You're wasting all your time building this thing.” 

Keep in mind, back in those days, we used to keep inventory literally on handwritten stuff that we'd create in Excel, and I was like, “Just chill and go with me.” And I don't know, six months later, a year later, everything's happening. Orders are flowing, POs are going out, and everything's just happening and uh, and she's like, “Okay, I get it now.”

And the same thing goes the other way. You have to figure out, as in trying to make the business go and constantly doing this balancing act of trying to figure out when do I need to try to push her along a little bit to get something done and when do I need to back the hell up and get out of her face so she can do what she does.

And it's a constant learning process because I understand the frustration if I'm trying to hurry along a process that is not a timeline type of a thing. And she understands where I'm coming from a lot of times, which is we gotta get this done. Yeah. And no, it's a never ending balance. 

And I, if you're listening to this podcast, I want you to be listening for what might be the opportunity for you, like do you already have that integrator in your business that's supporting you on your creative journey and building the business, or maybe you don't and you're still trying to do finance and accounting and all the other things like I want you listening for what's the opportunity for you? How could you better work with your integrator? 

Or how could you start exploring? Who might that be? Are they already in the business? Is there somebody out in your life that you find that could support you in that way. If this conversation could open you up to new possibilities, then Steve and I have had a great conversation. So back to us, Steve, that's important cuz that's what I'm hearing is there's this opportunity that opened up for you and Meghan to start to leverage each other's strengths.

Yeah. I'm curious cause I know this is real, working with so many creative visionaries, one of the things that it's so hard is like this idea of putting in processes in the business for the creative design and all the way getting it out to production, and we start systemizing that stuff. That's what I would imagine your mind starts doing.

How do we do this effectively, efficiently, scalably, is that a word? Scale, scaling? Yeah. But I feel now constrained and I feel like I have to create work to put into the pipe, and now all of a sudden, It's like I have writer's block, creator's block, or, 

Yes. Is that a real thing? Oh, that's a good analogy. 

How have you balanced that to introduce some process to what's really a lack of process, which is called creativity?

You know, I wish I could give you like the secret, the keys to the kingdom, how that works. But it, the reality is it's every day figuring it out cuz it is a real thing. And Meghan talks about this where if you look at, I won't name any, but look at our big company competitors that are out there, let's sell women's apparel and they're online. 

They're all is a big word, but mostly really uninspired. And Meghan will talk about this, that as a designer, and that this is, whether it's you're a writer or a writer's block or a musician or whatever, you gotta create, you run up against the wall. But it's like that band that has to put out a new album. So they phone it in and they come out with something. 

These big companies, they've grown and then they outgrow that. And their designers, whoever they have on staff. Gotta come up with something. And even if it's uninspired, it's coming out and you can see that in the collections, you know? Mm-hmm. And we see that in, even in some of the ways they connect with their customers, you know, we'll often order product from our competitors and yeah, it shows up in a brown envelope and a poly bag and there's nothing special about it.

And you know, we are very focused on that, which we can talk about later, the experience. That balance of how do I take advantage? How do I work with her so that her creativity comes through? Cuz it is our secret sauce. That's how I talk about it all the time. We would have nothing. Our product is Meghan.

That's the reality. Right? And that's the way that we think about it. That's the way we present it to the world. But the other side of that is, creative process can't take forever. The business has to survive. The business has to have stuff to sell. It has to have new things on a regular basis. And so it's a constant process between the two of us where it's usually me trying to gently nudge and you know, and she'll be like, I'm not done.

And I have a really funny, silly analogy that has nothing to do with business, but happened recently, literally yesterday. Is we're remodeling a house that she inherited from, her grandparents bought it in 1962. Right? And it's an old house. We're remodeling the whole thing and moving in there next month.

And we decided to paint the bathroom pink. She's like, you okay with the pink bathroom? And I decided it's you gotta be a real man to bathroom in a pink bathroom. Right? I'm totally good with it. So of course it can be pink. It's very on brand. So we go out, all the pinks that I bring home from Sherwin-Williams, none of them are good enough.

So I'm like, alright, well let's go out. She's, like look, I'll go to Home Depot with you. She's always trying to meet me halfway, right? Because I'm trying to, the painter needs the pink code, right? That to me is the deadline. She's like, I don't like any of these pinks. And I'm like, oh God. Okay. So we go out and we go to Benjamin Moore.

And that was funny because she looked at 'em, didn't like any of 'em, goes to the guy at the counter and says, don't you have any more colors than this? Is this all you got? And he literally looks at her and goes, what? 4,000 colors is not good enough? But it wasn't. Then we went to Home Depot and looked at the Glidden stuff.

Then we went to Dunn-Edwards and looked at all their stuff. None of them she was happy with. I had to balance this. She's like, I know I'm driving you crazy. I'm like, no, babe you’re not. But at the end of the day, like that's the sort of thing where I have to remind myself is, yeah, sure 90% of the world's gonna walk in there and they're gonna see pink and they're never gonna have a second thought about it.

They're gonna go, that looks great, or they hate it, or whatever people do, but their reaction isn't gonna change based on the different shades. But she has a very specific vision she wants to achieve and she's not gonna feel happy about it if she doesn't achieve that. So you've got to work together to find that balance and tone down that, Hey, I'm frustrated because the painter has a deadline and now we're driving all around town looking for paint.

And they're like, to me, I'm like, it's freaking pink or pink. Are you kidding me? Yeah. That's my perspective. I'm the Excel guy. She had to appreciate the platform I was building. I have to appreciate the creative process and value it. Well, my wife's an interior designer, so that's a great analogy of, she was picking out white for some trim, and I'm like, how many white?

I thought white was a color. I didn't realize there's multiple whites. An HOA one time that I was painting the shutters on the house and I was gonna paint them black and the HOA said, “You need to submit a paint chip. And what color black?” And I’m like “What color black? Close your eyes. That color.” Yeah. Oh yeah. I love that.

But sorry, I took us off track, but back to your point of we have to appreciate each other's strengths. Yeah. And in a way, every strength has a dark side too. The dark side of indecision of uh can't quite get it right or..

Yes

Or never shipping. But then the other side of it, the dark side of efficiency and effectiveness is you lose the creativity and you lose the magic.

That's exactly. It's absolutely right. Absolutely right. And by nature, if you're creative and you're an entrepreneur and doing what we do, you are a type A person, right? And you have a way you want to get things done. For me, it's whatever's in Excel for her it’s creative and you by who you are are a hard charging person.

And especially if you're in a partnership like this, you're gonna to some extent drive each other crazy and you have to learn to dial that down and it takes two. And if I'm really honest with myself, she probably got better at that sooner than I did. But she's like, well, Steve, I'm trying to meet you halfway.

And I finally later realized like, oh, okay I was being stubborn jerk about that. And you gotta be real honest with yourself. But if you're focused on getting better and what's good for the business, that's really what it's all about. 

And I think that's an often, that's a statement we hear a lot thrown around, what's best for the business.

But when we can get a group of people or a partnership all focused on what we're creating together, and it's not about any personal egos. It's all about what we're creating and I work with a lot of leadership teams and the best leadership teams I get to work with. There's tons of conflict in the room.

Oh a lot. Yeah. Uh, but it's not personality conflicts. There's not like personal conflicts, it's conflict around the best and right thing we should be doing to achieve our vision. That's good conflict. That's good conflict. And that's where two minds are greater than one and four minds are greater. But if people are showing up that way, if they're not and one person's just always deferring to the other, that doesn't work as well.

That there's magic in. That's true. What you're describing when you're willing to be and stay at the table long enough to understand one another and not just jump to conclusion

But you, you've gotta be willing to have that fight. I hate to say fight, but it's like both of you have to get to the point. You can have that discussion, listen to each other's views, go back and forth, defend them vociferously, and end up in a good place, and it really has to be what's good for the business. I mean, I spent 30 years in corporate world, big companies and too often there you've got all kinds of different stuff coming in people's own political agendas and turf.

Oh yeah. And all this nonsense. And like you said, what's best for the business is the pithy thing people throw around, but they often, what they really mean by that is what's best for me. Yeah. And it's easy in a small team cuz you're building your own culture. We insist on people here. If you're gonna work with us, we actually have a rule number one, we call it rule number one.

You will not work here if you are not authentically excited about what we're doing, especially if you're a woman, if you would never wear the clothes that we make, if this vibe doesn't speak to you, you shouldn't work here. And if you don't think it's cool what Meghan is doing and what we're doing, if you're not part of that, then you're probably not right for us.

Yeah, yeah. Really cool. Let's shift the conversation a little bit. I told you a little bit in my background how I coach a lot of creatives and just, I have a few coaching questions that I think will be fun to just have a conversation from. Sure. And I always like asking this question. It's subtle in how I want you to answer it.

I don't do subtle very well. I know. So this is where, let's try to play here. Imagine we're doing a second episode. Okay. Three years from today, we're out into the future and we start that episode with me asking you, like, Steve, tell me about the last three years. What have you built? And you can't wait to tell me.

And you start out by saying, holy shit, Zach. And you tell me everything that's occurred over the last three years, and you're so excited to tell me about it, what would you be telling me about? And it's critical that you stay in the present moment, like, we're in the future. So tell me about mm-hmm, what's life like?

What's the business like? Yeah. I guarantee you I'll be talking about. No, you gotta go in the future. See, I already failed. Yep. Failed. What we did, Zach is, we tried a lot of different things and we went with what worked and what we figured out that worked was we started doing some licensing deals. We already knew that our brand spoke to women and connected with women, not even just women.

We actually have decent percentage of men that buy our stuff too. And I even wear some of our stuff that technically is women's wear, but it's unisex. But what we found is we launched this collaboration, this license deal with the Grateful Dead and Warner Music, and that connected with a huge audience of fans who are all aging Deadheads.

Like me, I'm 55 years old. We all have a little bit of money now. Not all, but you know, you have money to spend, you're not poor anymore, and that really got us recognized. A lot more people came to the brand because of that. And we worked on licensing deals also for game day with the schools in the SEC and that connected with audiences.

So what it was, taking Meghan's talent and vision already, and then injecting it into very specific audiences and tuning her vision to fit with that audience. And as a result of that, we've had those two specific examples I gave you, but that's driven the overall brand. And what happens then is we have people organically come in that might have discovered us in a college shop buying a dress to wear to a game day, which I don't know if you've ever been to a game at the SEC, it's a whole new world.

My, my son goes to the University of Tennessee, or when he graduated, They'll find that there, and then they'll see, okay, Meghan fabulous. What's that? And then they come and find the website. Next thing you know, they're writing reviews that say, oh, I own this dress in every color. My closet's full of it. Yeah, it's organic and it's built on itself.

Our job is just to show it to the world, and once people nibble, they like the taste. What about you personally? What role are you now playing three years from now? Tell me about that. Far less operational than I was three years ago. Three years ago. I was the CEO, the CFO, COO, the janitor. I'm not even kidding.

I was three years ago. I used to clean the toilet from time to time. It was a totally normal thing. And now I have the luxury of taking a much more visionary, strategic type of a role. We've got a capable management team underneath us, which we didn't have three years ago. Three years ago. It was Meghan and I and staff, and we didn't have senior type of decision maker people. Now we do, and that has changed everything cuz they're able to go execute things that I, I used to spend time making sure the orders were flowing and things weren't breaking. I don't do that anymore. That just happens. Now I can focus on, okay, this Grateful Dead thing, crushed it, this game day thing, crushed it.

What are we gonna do next? Do we want a license deal with the Rolling Stones? Do we want, who knows? Whatever that idea is. But one of our sort of core philosophies is. More knowledge is always better. I always want to hear more. I always want to understand more about whatever idea that we might be considering that day, and then I might dismiss it and decide that it's bad.

But you also have to go through ten or fifteen bad ideas to find the one good idea. Yeah. And you gotta go dabble in all those different ideas to figure out which one is good and you're still not gonna always be right. But now I have more time to do that. I like it. And what are the dangers ahead of you in the business?

Both internal and externally? Internal being like how you might get in your own way. Mm-hmm. And external. Mm-hmm. I don't know What economy or competitors. What are some of the dangers ahead of you? Yeah. Well the danger is losing our soul cuz we started off talking about authenticity and why that connects and how it connects and you see that happen over and over again.

Pick any designer name. And odds are these big designer names are now licensed. That designer herself has nothing to do with the brand anymore. Maybe very little. We don't want to do that. So the question is how do we continue to perpetuate the spirit of who Meghan is? Without Meghan having to do it all.

And that means bringing in people that truly understand and appreciate and respect and can get inside her head and then replicate those for new lines, new products. Yeah. But that's probably the biggest thing. And there's that. And then there's also just our culture and we've built an amazing culture as a business where people are proud to be here and.

I always like to say that you're not really doing it right if your employees don't brag to their friends about what a cool job they have. Yeah. That's a real marker of success. And we don't wanna lose that. And it's hard. I mean, I've worked for companies that had hundreds of thou’ I used to work for the Bank of New York, for heaven's sakes.

It's enormous. Oh, their addresses. One Wall Street, I mean, wow. It's a whole new world. And you see when companies get big, it's easy to lose your way. What about for you personally? Like internally, like how might you get in your own way over like that it might get in the way of you creating that vision you just shared with us?

Man, that's a good question. Cos getting outta your own way is a- a big thing for me, even. I think for me personally, it would be trying to hang onto too much control. Yeah. And I recognize that as a risk. And not to hurt my arm, pat myself on the back, but I think it's actually one of the things I'm pretty good at too, is working with employees and saying, 

I want you to take this. I'm not gonna give you a task, I'm gonna give you a mission. Mm-hmm. right? This is what I want you to achieve. Not that I don't care how you achieve it, cuz I do, but. There's an openness to if you come up with a different idea, you achieve it in a different way than me. You think my idea is wrong and you achieve the end result and the goal in a different way.

Not only do I have to be okay with that, but if I'm really gonna be successful, I have to celebrate that and empower them and help making them get better. And most people don't get that or have a hard time doing that. And I had another funny story from way earlier in my career, I had a management team at this time of, I don't know, eleven or twelve people that were all my direct reports, it was big. 

And we all sat around a big table in a big conference room and I would say, “Hey, here's what we want to do.” And too often people would be, “Yes, boss, yes boss.” And they'd salute and of they’d go. And that was not what I wanted. So my number two in command was a woman named Tara, who, a sweetheart, still a friend to this day.

And we staged a little palace coup. And I told her, I said, in this next meeting, I'm gonna suggest this. I don't remember what the idea was, and you're gonna tell me I'm. And then you're gonna tell me what your view is, and then we're gonna argue about it, and you're gonna stand up for yourself and you're gonna fight back.

And then eventually you're gonna convince me and I'm gonna agree and we're gonna do what you're suggesting. And I'm like, I want the whole team to see this go down. And to this day, the rest of the team doesn't know we did that. But it resulted in exactly what I wanted, which was the other team. The rest of 'em now became willing to say, Steve, I disagree with you on that.

Yeah, that's good. Um, I think this and. Tell me more. If you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. So there's a strength in you to be able to let go. But you did say the danger of me getting in my own way is clinging onto too much control and being unwilling to let go. Say more, what do you see as the challenge there?

The challenge is I'm better at talking about it than doing it, sometimes. Good. Yeah, and I think all of us are like, I get the concepts, I've read, the management books I've read good to grade all the classics, but I still know myself. That something comes up that has to get done, well, I can just do it myself real quick and that'll take me a short time.

And that's right for that one time. I can do it myself way faster than if I go and I take whoever it is that works for me and teach them how to do it and tolerate their difference or celebrate their difference of opinion. But that's a process that can take forever. Yeah. Whereas I can just do it and get it done, and I'm, to this day inclined.

Well, I'll just bang this one out. As opposed to, alright, let me get Rose on the phone and teach her how to do it cuz that's gonna take me an hour. And then she's not always gonna do it right the first time cuz that's how humans work. And then I'm gonna have to coach her through that. And it might take a couple weeks, but 

Well, what happens? What's the cost of doing that? That cost of, I'll just do it, I'll just get it done. Not hypothetically, but what is it costing you personally to fall into that? Oh, it's a very real cost and the cost is you're borrowing from your future. 

If you could, like speak to that a little bit. Like what is it that it's keeping you from by you falling into that behavior of I’ll Mm-hmm. just do it because it's just easier than having to, Yeah. what would be different if you were no longer doing that in a certain area of the business, for you? Because if I go down that, you know what I'm inclined to do, just do it myself. The same task is gonna come up again tomorrow. Next week. Next year.

Yeah. And I'm gonna be like, stu’… dug on it. No one knows how to do this but me. I'll just do it again. And then you're trapped into it. And so that's why I say you're borrowing from your future, because that means a year from now I'm gonna be sitting here doing this stupid task, whatever it is, instead of doing what is.

My highest and best use is what should this business do next? Yeah, who's our next big customer? Where do we go? Is there some new way of selling in this omnichannel world? Whereas instead of borrowing from the future, if I spend that time now to train someone else, not only have I gotten it off my plate, which has lots of value, but I've also made some employee more valuable to the business.

And not only is that good for the business, but it's increased the value of their stock, they're now more valuable. And, I learned that very early in my career. I had a mentor, his name was Jay, and he was so hard on me, but there was never a question in my mind he was doing that because he wanted me to be better cuz he had my back.

And there were times where he explicitly said to me, look, “I'm going up. I am going to achieve a lot and I can't do it without you and you're going with me.” Yeah. And so when he was being hard on me, it was because, I knew he wanted me to be better. Mm-hmm. And he was helping me to get better. And sometimes that didn't taste good while he was doing it.

And so I've incorporated that into my management style today. It's not always easy to remember to do it, but when you invest in people like that, if you're authentic about it, they get it and they appreciate it. And now they're more valuable. It's more valuable to the business. There's no downside other than you better make sure you retain that person, cuz if you made them more valuable and you don't recognize that in ways that include compensation over time, they'll go be more valuable somewhere else. 

Good perspective. And I'm curious cause you are aware of this in yourself. You shared it just a little bit ago, like. Understanding, that's one thing, but doing it is another one. Like Yeah. And it's easy to say. Yeah. So where are you aware of that occurring right now, where you're falling into that short term trap and you're not staying true to what you know to be the best and right thing for the long term?

Does anything come to mind, if anything? Sure. No. It's usually operational stuff. And here's an example. We get an inquiry from, let's say a wholesale customer. And it's a complicated enough inquiry that I know my customer service folks who have trained to serve the wholesale customers will not be able to answer this.

So I have the choice right then and there. I can respond to this email and it'll take me four minutes and it'll be done. Or I can invest and the cost isn't big. Now it might take me eight minutes. But instead, I'll go back and I'll say the one that runs our wholesale for us, her name's Rose. I'll go back and say, Hey Rose, here's this.

In order to answer this question, you gotta look them up in the CRM and go get this piece of information about when did they last order, for example, and then, okay, they don't know our new showroom, so let's introduce them to the new showroom. Here's how you do this. And actually had an example like this just this morning, and I went back and I told her what to say.

But I later figured she did that, but she didn't CC the new showroom. That wasn't her mistake. It was mine because I had said, make sure you introduce her to our new showroom, which she did, and the email was in there but hadn't been CC'd. But I hadn't been specific enough, so I always look to myself first.

It's like, okay, now I had to go back and I'm like, oh, hey Rose, this is my fault. Go back again and say, whoops, sorry, forgot to CC the showroom, she's now on there. Good luck to you guys. Hope you get on well, go ahead. So instead of taking me four minutes to reply to an email that took, I don't know, fifteen minutes outta my day, but it's in the bank for the future, she now knows how to respond to that the next time she gets it.

What's, and I, this is just a curiosity question, like what's one thing that if you were to let go of it in the next 90 days would be huge for the long term? Is there anything that's coming to mind? Oh, huge big things, and we're, one of the biggest ones is operational stuff with order fulfillment. I spend a ridiculous amount of my time every day making sure orders are going out.

Now a big part of that is because our 3PL has been underperforming and that's been a problem and therefore it's forced me to do that. But if I'm really critical on myself, I have not trained staff as well as I could have, so they would be totally self-sufficient. I have some and they help, but I'm still very involved in it day-to-day, and I shouldn't be making sure order ship, but.

Strategically. I did put the time into fixing it in a way where we're shifting to a new 3PL. 3PL is third party logistics. Right. I don't wanna assume everybody knows that, but it's a warehouse that stores your stuff and ships out the orders. Right. And so we put in a lot of time, Meghan and I actually toured six different facilities.

We talked to twenty of them. So there again, we didn't do it exactly one way, but we invested in getting to the right firm and now it's gonna take a lot of my time with the implementation. How does all this stuff work? How does this individual packing slip have to look? All these little things. But I'm investing that now in the anticipation that by April I don't even have to think about that stuff anymore.

And it just works. That's the goal. What I get about you, Steve, is you have this ability to really leverage technology to streamline, automate, simplify. You have a knack for that and you gravitate towards that. Is that true? A hundred percent true. That's, yeah. What might be the dark sides of that? Because that's a strength.

That's a strength for sure. Mm-hmm. . But what's the dark side of that being the tendency, of what you gravitate towards? The risk of getting too impersonal. Cuz again, like everything else, I've been talking about a lot of things that are a balance. Here's the balance, is the reason our brand connects is because of this personal feeling.

And in a minute I'm gonna read a review that just came in this morning that we'll talk to this, but if you're gonna succeed as a business, you have to be able to scale. You have to be able to do what's called operating leverage in the business, which means I can add more revenue. And I can add more revenue with less expense.

I can add a dollar of revenue for an incremental expense of 10 cents. And when I can get to the point where I can do that for 5 cents, that's operating leverage. And that happens best through automation. You know, if you're doing it through hiring a whole bunch of people, that's tough and it's error prone.

But you run the risk of being impersonal. And here's the example I'll give you is I was just talked about us hunting for a new 3PL, right? And Meghan and I would go tour these  3PLs together and I would be looking. What are your procedures? How are you automated? How does this employee know if they made a mistake when they're, do you barcode scan everything when it goes in the box?

Those are the things I'm looking for. Meghan's going. “Show me a packing station that has custom packing” because our packages, if you order from our website, it goes out in a bright pink box and it's got custom tissue paper in there and a little bit of crinkle paper and a gift with purchase. And a Meghan fabulous sticker and a handwritten note from Meghan that once upon a time was truly handwritten order by order.

It's not anymore, but people often think it is, but it's really specific, and that's what she was looking for. And she designed that process herself, you know, the box and the packing. And she's even down to the point where she has a specific way the tissue paper has to be folded. And if that's not being replicated by whoever the person is standing at that packing station, packing it, she's not happy with it.

So that's our different viewpoints. That's what we're looking at. Right? Yeah. So it would be really easy and be super scalable to be like, yeah, just throw that dress in a brown envelope and send it out. And we could automate the heck out of that, but we would lose our soul and. Yeah, and that's the downside and that's the risk.

And this is the review that this review just came in today, and I loved it because it's, most of our reviews are very specific. I love this dress. This one covers the whole experience. It made me so happy. It's from someone named Lorraine T. It'd be amazing if she was listening at some point, and it says, 

“My first order from this website and I'm extremely pleased. Quality merchandise, easy ordering, nice website, and a very nice selection. Affordable, quick shipping, and the most adorable packaging I have ever seen.” 

She noticed the details. Yeah. She hit on every element. Yeah. And I was just like, thank you Lorraine. Cuz we work hard at that and so if you lose that, you're done. Yeah. If we were to lose what Lorraine felt doing business with us, we're done. And I literally just got the chills even saying that to you. That's how important it is. 

That's so cool. That's so cool. Well, you know, as we conclude our conversation as a coach, you know, I'm always curious cuz we've talked more than just this episode and of course, um, the energy and the, the, just the vibe I get from you and how you're able to work well with Meghan and you're creating this and just the visionary that's even you have a visionary like you can see the dots and you're able to Oh, totally. connect them. And my vision’s just nerdier than hers. Yeah. And what would have to be true for you to pour jet fuel on that? What would you have to, because I'm aware of, in myself and a lot of people I work with, there's tendencies where we stay in this comfort zone and our life is predictable.

But if there's something there that, like if we were to change and let go of something and move into a new way of being. It would just 10x. Yeah. Who we're being, how we're showing up 10x the business. Is there anything coming in mind for you? I think it's, it's obviously finding those new products that connect.

We expect the Grateful Dead. We were talking about it before, like it was already done, but it's, it's launching in March. We expect that project to be huge. We've been developing it now for almost two years. That's real labor of love. The game day project. We expect that to be big. Finding those new things.

That's where the jet fuel comes from. But you gotta build the jet. At least to a large extent before you can put the jet fuel in it. So which one of those two things are you better at? That light you up and energize you and you're, you have, yeah. You're, which one are you stronger? 

Yeah. I'm really honest. Probably building the jet. Oh, it's boring, but I build the jet and going out and finding that I'm good at that too, but I'm not a salesperson. I don't have the sales DNA by nature, so that's why we hire outside salespeople and hiring to your own weaknesses. And that's a whole podcast in itself, but you have to know that.

But what we've done, where we are as a company now, our financial performance is great. Top line, growing like crazy. We've never grown less than 70% a year. We're at 91% CAGRs since 2020. I- it's just we're blowing it out, but the expenses have come along with that. So we're still not dropping money at the bottom line like we want to be.

But that's for all the right reasons. Yeah. It's because we're spending a lot of money on advertising. We're spending a lot on infrastructure, automation. None of that stuff's inexpensive. And so the way I look at it is we've built the machine that can do this, which has been very expensive. And because that machine is built and ready, now you can put the jet fuel in the jet and it's ready to go.

And we're still gonna need to add people and capabilities and things like that as we go along. But a lot of businesses try to do that in reverse. And I don't remember if you remember that old commercial that was on TV years ago where there's a team sitting around the TV, the order clicker goes, oh, that clicks their first order, their second order, their fifth order, and they're all like, yay.

And then it clicks to like a hundred orders and it clicks to a thousand orders, and they all start looking at each other. Oh no. You know what now? Yeah. That's a, that's a great visual cuz that's, that is . That's so true for so many people. Yeah, it's very real, and most people, especially creatives, the analogy that I love is the restaurant analogy is most people think if you're a good cook you can go run a restaurant.

And it's different skillsets. You know, you gotta have someone who can build the restaurant and you gotta have someone that knows how to cook. You can't do it without both. And if you're lucky enough to have in your life, this comes into a personal relationship, then great. If not, you have to get it. And those resources are out there.

You know, you can hire freelancers and capabilities and there's lots of way of doing it, but if you don't figure out what you're not good at and get someone into the business who is good at it and is on your side and is not gonna take advantage of you and is gonna work with you, believes in the win-win, you're just not gonna get there. You, you gotta have all those things. 

A book that's coming to mind that really opened that up for me. It was, I think it's called, “Who Not How,” by Ben Hardy. Such a powerful, cuz that is to do anything great, you're gonna have to surround yourself with great people. Because what we're most afraid of oftentimes is that we're not good enough or we don't know enough, we're not experienced enough, and we fight against that.

And that's our fear. We're afraid that it might be true. And the truth is, if you could just embrace that truth, now you give yourself the freedom to go build a team around you and supplement who you are. 100%. and who you're not, and you get to be who you are unapologetically. And it's really fun. 

Absolutely. Yeah. You've gotta know what you're not good at. Yeah. And what you need to supplement yourself with so you can do the things you're good at. Yes. Because I'll go build the jets. Great. That's what I'm good at. I gotta get someone else to go do the sales. Yep. Obviously I gotta get someone else to do the creative.

That's why I wanted to start my own business for years. I never had the idea, I never had the magical thing, cuz I'm not an idea guy. Not that kind of idea anyway. Yeah. So that's why like when Meghan and I met, it was a marriage made in heaven, it. Perfect. Yeah. Well that's a great place to wrap our conversation because it comes full circle.

Yeah. To the opportunity and then that opportunity isn't done for you. There's an opportunity to continue to lean into what you love to do and you're great at. Yeah. and start building a team around you and that's the jet fuel and Absolutely. I'm having more fun now than I have in my entire career. Yeah, it, it's fantastic cuz, and this is all ours.

Meghan and I own it all. It's, we're doing it together. It's incredibly satisfying and it's fun. We work our tails off, but it's fun. We're here every day. That's awesome. As we wrap, where can listeners learn more about the businesses and what you're creating and. You mentioned the Grateful Dead Launch. Yeah.

Oh, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Obviously, check out our website. It's meghanfabulous.com, Meghan with an h, fabulous.com, all one word. You'll find us there. You can learn a little bit more about Meghan. You can see the products that we offer, you know, and we're not just selling products. We want you to be part of the tribe.

And we do have forthcoming, this coming March is that Grateful Dead Collection is launching in March. We think this is gonna be really big. And even if you're not a Deadhead, the designs are just like something you've never seen before. And. Meghan was walking, wearing one of the coats that we made walking through an airport recently on our trip to Dallas and couldn't get 300 feet without someone stopping her going, what is that?

And where do I get one? That's cool. I think you'll really like that. So if you come to the website, you can sign up for the mailing list and then you'll get news about when that collection is launching. We will be having like pre-orders and things. Not yet, but that's coming, but definitely check that out.

I hope you'll check out the brand. And like we love our customers. We want you to come into the tribe. We're real people here building a real business. We're just a couple of folks doing what- we have a good time. We're not some big corporation, and we hope you enjoy our stuff and enjoy Meghan's art and have fun with it.

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on this show, Steve. I really enjoyed this conversation. Me too. It's been a lot of fun. Good stuff. Take care. All right. Thank you very much. 

Real quick, I have a question for you. What would it look and feel like for you to lead your team and build your business? With more clarity, confidence, and conviction.

That's why I want to invite you to the Fully Expressed Leader. It's a full day workshop, virtual workshop to learn how to lead from the inside out. This is for creatives, artists, executives, and right brain business owners who are ready to be the fully expressed leader they were meant to be. My promise to you is that by the end of this full day together, you're going to be able to identify the critical element in your business that you've been ignoring.

You're gonna know the secret to unleash the full potential of your team and start to see responsibility as a gift and not a burden you're gonna make leading from the inside out your new automatic default. What I love most about this day is, I get to see the change in those that do the work, they come in exhausted and they leave energized.

Later on, when they check back in with me, they tell me that it's like someone turned the lights on. What once felt impossible, now feels inevitable. To learn more, go to www.createpurpose.net/workshop. This day is not about doing more. It's a way of being a way for you to shift your approach to building your business on your terms. So go check it out, www.createpurpose.net/workshop. 

Hopefully you really enjoyed this podcast episode, and my hope is you found it really inspirational and also most importantly, I hope you took away some practical things that you can start to do and apply in your own life. 

So finally, I have one small favor to ask of you before you go, wherever you get your podcast, whether that's Apple Music or Spotify. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. Love to hear your thoughts. Come find us on social media, share it on social media. it just really helps us get the word out, helps us grow our audience, so please do that. Thanks to my team, Ashley Bolden, who handles all the admin and Chris Skipper who handles all the music and editing of this podcast.

For more information on the Create Purpose Podcast, you can go to www.cratepurpose.net and you can also follow me on Instagram @zach.arend Please drop me a comment, reach out, drop me a DM, I'd love to hear from you and love to hear what you're taking away from these conversations. What would you like to hear more of? Do you have any guests that you would love to see come on the show?

And I'm always looking for great people to talk to, people with great stories that can inspire you. And so if you know of anybody, send 'em my way. Love to hear from ya. I'm your host, Zach Arend, and I'll see you in the next episode of the Create Purpose Podcast. Bye for now.