Channeling Your Passion into Your Work with Linda Findley

INTRODUCTION: Welcome to the Daily Bolster. Each day we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, co- founder and CEO of Bolster, and I'm here today with Linda Finley. Linda is a global E- commerce and DTC leader who has had leadership roles over the years at Etsy, Evernote, and Alibaba. She is currently the president and CEO of Blue Apron, which is a meal kit service that delivers pre- portioned seasonal ingredients to help you create delicious meals at home while reducing food and packaging waste. Linda, it's great to have you here.

Linda Finley: It's great to be here.

Matt Blumberg: So one of the first times I ever met you, possibly the first time I ever met you, I think it was right when you took the job at Blue Apron, so we had already met once or twice. You were talking about how excited you were about joining Blue Apron because you were so passionate about cooking and about food, and you talked very passionately about the role that cooking had played in your life and with relationships with your family and friends. So my question to you as a CEO is, how do you harness that kind of personal passion for the subject matter of your business in your day- to- day work as a CEO? Not just like, oh, it makes you a great evangelist, but how do you channel it into doing what you do?

Linda Finley: Absolutely, and it's interesting because I made a pact with myself a long time ago that I was only going to take jobs that I was incredibly passionate about the company, mainly because of how much work you're putting into the business as a CEO or even as an executive or any sort of leader in a business. It was really important to me to have that passion for any product because it's what gets you up in the morning. But with Blue Apron, it was really special because food has such a deep impact on my life and really bringing that together has been incredibly powerful of how it intersects sustainability, how it intersects family life, how it intersects health, how it intersects enjoyment and creativity, all of those things together, it's pretty hard to find that in one job. So it was a pretty special moment for me being able to take on this role. But I think it is more than that. It's not just about that passion and sort of loving what you do, but I do think it actually makes you a better leader first of all. I think not only can you sustain the long hours that you're already working as a CEO, but you're really able to experience the product as your customers do, and that really creates that feedback loop. Just like software developers who are using their own software, you always want to make sure that you're creating that feedback loop and that enables you to build a better company, build a better product. It doesn't matter if it's an enterprise product or if it's a consumer product. That level of engagement is always going to create a better product or service, and it's going to rub off on those who are around you and the company as well. They're going to sense that and they're going to feel that, and it's going to matter in being able to work as hard as we all do.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, that is for sure. It definitely sustains you. So what's number two on your list?

Linda Finley: Yeah, so number two on my list is I really think that you're bringing that same passion inside the company so that rubbing off around you isn't just about inspiring people, but it's actually walking the walk. So you shouldn't just be leading the company, but you should be really listening to your colleagues at different levels, making sure you understand their contribution across the product and how that works, and really not just doing that at the beginning, but throughout your tenure. One of the things that I consistently do is I go pack boxes in the facility on a regular basis, and I use the product every week at home. I go to the test kitchen and I learn about what's happening there. I have skip levels on a regular basis, but things like packing boxes side by side with my colleagues are a big part of how that passion comes to life, but then results in better processes. So the very first time I actually went on the pack line, I remember hearing a lot of the associates talking about the arrangement of the pack line and how they were sometimes having trouble pulling certain ingredients down, et cetera, and we quickly came to a solution of just changing the angle of the bays actually would help with efficiency, and it did, and we were able to implement it really quickly. You don't get that by sitting kind of isolated and not talking to your team. So I think that's actually really helpful.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah, for sure. I also find, just to build on that, that sometimes if your passion rubs off on others, that they will be more forthcoming with the challenges they see in the business too.

Linda Finley: Exactly. Because the point of listening at that level is not just to hear the strengths of what's going on and to get to know people and understand the product more, but it is actually to build that trust where they know they can tell you about a problem, which I think actually folds directly into the third piece, which is incredibly important. As important as it is to have the passion, you can't let that passion actually put you into a trap of not making the hard decisions or looking at the data objectively. So I think oftentimes you hear people talk about, oh, this person really has passion for the product or passion for the company, but sometimes that creates a world where you want to protect what you believe to be the best thing or people that maybe are passionate but maybe aren't the right people for the next phase of the company in your job. And I think that's the most important thing about passion is it's a great tool, but you need to make sure that it doesn't become a crutch, and it prevents you from making those hard decisions that are going to be best for the company long- term by making sure you're making data- driven decisions, making sure that you are adjusting when you need to adjust, and making sure that you're being honest about the company's performance and what steps you might need to take going forward to preserve the longevity of the business. So while I think passion is an incredible asset, I think that's the third piece, which is don't let it become the only thing. It needs to be that your passion actually drives you for a long- term vision of the company that may include making really hard decisions when you may not want to.

Matt Blumberg: All right. Words to Live by Linda Finley, CEO of Blue Apron. Thanks for being here.

Linda Finley: Thank you.