Sharon Price John 0:00 

Building a brand that lasts is not that much different from building a company that lasts. It's understanding the underlying promise, and it needs to be something bigger than the utility of the brand or the idea lots of Teddy Bear companies, but for us to it kind of hold and evoke this kind this emotion, that's because we stand for something, and it's to add a little more heart to life. In human terms, it's how does the brand make you feel?

David Novak 0:39 

Some brands sell products, but your favorite ones and the most successful ones are selling something else entirely. Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be. Today, I'm talking with Sharon price John, the CEO of Build A Bear. Now Build A Bear made a name for itself as a mall based retailer for kids. But as malls struggled, so did build a bear. Then Sharon took over. In her very first year as CEO, she brought Build A Bear back to profitability after a $49 million loss the year before, and the growth hasn't stopped. Since, with her at the helm, this brand has done something incredible. They've expanded into new digital channels, new demographics and new experiences for all ages. At the heart of it all is Sharon's belief that meaning not merchandise, is what makes a brand powerful, because people don't fall in love with what you make. They fall in love with what it makes them feel. So if you want to build a brand that connects, and I mean, really connects, this is the episode for you, plus we're going to talk about what's really happening in the adults only bear cave. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Sharon, price, John, you

you obviously love the toy business. You know you've worked at Mattel Hasbro, and you're now at Build A Bear. Looking back, what's your favorite toy of all time?

Sharon Price John 2:16 

Oh, see, that's so loaded, because I've worked on so many brands, but I honestly, I loved stuffed animals. I collected stuffed animals as a little girl, so being here at build the bear makes a ton of sense. And one of my favorite toys was Barbie. And I was that, I think that that was what drew me in. In the beginning, I wanted to do something fun after I'd gotten my MBA. And I know that's probably not a lot of people's objective is, what's the funnest thing you can do? But that was sort of in my I that was really part of my filter. And when I thought about Mattel as a big, really a branded intellectual property company that was focused on kids. Because I had been in the confections business as an advertising as an advertising executive, I thought I could get my head wrapped around kids and kids stuff, but when I got the opportunity to work on the barbie business, that really pushed me over the edge,

David Novak 3:19 

fantastic. And now you're at Build A Bear, which is one of the very first experiential retail brands in the country. You know, explain what? What makes your retail experience so unique?

Sharon Price John 3:33 

Well, first of all, I have to give so much credit to Maxine Clark, the founder Build A Bear, who envisioned this and launched it back in 1997 and it was really based in the most sincere construct of just her individual love for her teddy bear as a child, and the belief that if a if a child can make their own teddy bear, that that brings it to life in a way that's even more special and meaningful, and so that was her driver to do that. And when you come into a Build A Bear, if I wanted to break it down in a more sort of functional way, which isn't half as much fun, but more functional way, it's it's a very empowering, open ended, but kind of guided creative creativity process. But you go through then the stuffing process with a bear builder, which is what we call them, and then they come to life in the mind of a child, or even the mind of a child at heart, when you put that heart ceremony together with them. It's very unique, extremely personal. And they place that inside the teddy bear, or whichever animal they're creating, and they put attributes and wishes inside of that teddy bear and sew it up and then give it a hug, test the magic that goes on at that moment, the light that the. It just shines from their eyes on just this process. It's truly magical. And I don't think that even Maxine envisioned that it would be as memorable and special that it ends up like marking moments in time. In fact, when we did some ethnographic studies after I got here, I wanted to find out, like, sort of where the value was, how stretchable the brand was, all those kinds of things, the specificity with which now adults and teens could speak about that first experience at Build A Bear was indelible. You could see how emotional it was, and you're like, wow, how much equity do we have packed in this brand that we don't even know that's monetizable, that was like the big quest for me then, but great question, because it is that experience that makes this extraordinary. And

David Novak 5:51 

now you're not just into bears that your customers can buy. You have all kinds of animals that you can build, build these days. And you know, how have you really expanded the line over the years? And what drove you to do it? Well,

Sharon Price John 6:08 

the bit, there were always other critters. So even though it's called Build A Bear, there's, I always have been, you know, bunnies and puppy dogs and things like that. But we, over the years, leaned into licensing with key characters from other best in class intellectual property and entertainment companies, and that, you know, that's a very special experience as well. And those, those best in class partners, whether it's Warner or Disney or Sanrio or Pokemon, they see this unique value that we bring to their brand as well, and we're really good partners over time, like we we have a Sanrio exclusive store in LA I mean, we do some really fun stuff with all of these guys, because there's such an intersection with our consumers. But then we started getting into things where we stretched the brand, as we became multi generational around our 20th year, into different kinds of licensing, not just the big kids animated films, but things that were a little unexpected, and that's what caused us to build out our Whole bear cave, online age, gated area, where now 40% of our sales are now to teens and adults. People don't expect that usually when I share that information, but with the whole rise of adulting, we were right on the precipice of that trend, and people recall us with such fondness that it's so much fun to get a Deadpool bear or their Darth Vader bear, you know, like, just think about that. And then, you know, we also have something we call trend animals, where we do something a little bit edgy, like an oxolotl or a frog or a, I don't, you know, crazy stuff, like we have moth ban. I don't even think that's that's not real, but we have one.

David Novak 8:03 

I love the term consulting. Who came up with that one?

Sharon Price John 8:05 

Oh, gee, I don't know, but they should have trademarked

David Novak 8:09 

it. You know, I used to be the CEO of young brands, and, you know, went online and I was happy to see that you kept KFC branded. Oh, it's that people wear. You bet you can put a bucket on your bear. Yeah, I love that. And what would be the most creative, unique, Build A Bear that you've ever created? Well,

Sharon Price John 8:27 

I don't do much of that. I make a lot of suggestions, but the team is very involved. But I get a lot of suggestions from my own now, 20 something girls, and I will say that by both of them were just adamant that we make a strawberry Highland cow. And my team did make a strawberry Highland cow. Now listen, it could have come from anywhere, and they were, you know, just right on the trend as well. But, and that's been a very good seller for us. We love, we love our strawberry Highland cow and and I, you know, I like to give the credit to my daughters. That's

David Novak 9:08 

great, like any good moms. And, you know, I want to really get into how you lead, but I want to take you back for just a second here. And I'd love you for you to tell me a story from your upbringing that that really still influences the way, how you lead today. Oh,

Sharon Price John 9:26 

geez, you know, just like with you, any of us that have taken this most of the time, circuitous route that has been, you know, laced with some luck and and a little bit of talent, you're going to have those stories. And I actually wrote a whole book about it, you know, called stories and heart. And there's a lot of my dad was full of wisdom. My mom taught me a lot of great lessons. But I use, actually, there's a few that I use on a fairly regular basis. This, but one of them is a story about a climbing a tree. And it's, it's actually the first chapter of the book, and it's called Life's a beach. And by beach, I mean it's a beach tree. In that I stumbled upon this really big tree the year my grandmother died, when I was about 11, and it was way too big for me to climb, but I focused on it and tried to find a way to get it done. And finally, after many weeks of the summertime and many tries, I got up to this big limb, and I was so proud of myself. And there was, like, you know, people had scratched their names up there and, and I was like, Oh yeah, you know, small town, I'm like, I'm the only girl just going on, just going on the like the initials, and probably the youngest kid to do this, I'm super proud, and I'm up there and I realize I don't know how to get down. And so the first lesson in that is, wow, if you plan hard enough and think hard enough and keep trying, you can do that like the impossible. And for a kid climbing a tree like that was impossible. But you also have to know your your exit strategy. So I didn't have an exit strategy, and I needed to get home. And I and I thought, well, you know, if you're smart enough to get up here, you're smart enough to get down. And so I figured out a way to wiggle out to the very end of the limb where it got really, you know, like, you know, bouncy swung down and bounced hard and fell into, you know, like some pine needles and stuff, and rolled down a hill. And, you know, no worse for wear. And then the that, all of that is all life lessons in there, right? You know, if you just stay focused ingenuity. But the biggest life lesson out of that, it wasn't the first two things of try hard, planning tenacity gets you to the goal. Oops. Better know how to get out of it. But if you just stay focused, you'll still figure out a way to do it. It was the way I translated this experience. There are a lot of people in life that would translate that experience is, ooh, I should try something risky, you know, all but, but I might fail. I might get in trouble. It might be scary. I translated that as, oh, if I try something risky, it might turn out to be a blast. And the bouncing out of that tree, that the swinging on that that limb, was the most fun thing. I went back many times that summer and climb the tree, just to bounce up and down on that limb, to fall into the pine needles and roll down the hill. So sometimes the things that you think are gonna are the bad part or the unexpected part. And so just that translation of life and challenges and what I could have like labeled or stamped as a failure of don't try crazy things because you might get hurt. I was like, try crazy things because that's how you have a good time. And just Just think how that, like impacts every decision that you make, where you're like, Well, I've never done that before, and it looks totally impossible. Let's

David Novak 12:56 

go. I love that. You know, you and I have a little bit in common in front of our backgrounds, you know, for a I have a copper beech tree, which I happen to love at my house, is my favorite tree of my my life.

Sharon Price John 13:07 

And they're the best. They're so big,

David Novak 13:10 

you know. And I also grew up in small towns, and you grew up in a small town in southern Tennessee, and we both were in advertising, and you made your way to New York, and you got into the advertising business. I felt like a duck out of water when I was in New York. I so I didn't go to New York. I went to another sedan. I went to Dallas and built my advertising marketing career there. But you went to New York, and you succeeded extremely well. How did you go into that new environment and and succeed?

Sharon Price John 13:44 

Well, thank you for that layup, because it's the it's just another beach tree, right? I literally, I looked at that and said, Well, that's ridiculous and impossible. Let's go, you know? So I No kidding, set a goal that I wanted to go to New York and get a job in a top 10 agency in one week. Cold call. Like a cold call, people have a red book. Just I went down through the names and said, That person looks nice, that person looks nice, and I would just call until somebody picked up and I'm like, Hey, I'm going to be in New York such and such week. Can I just come by and have a cup of coffee? I really want to break into the industry. How hard can this be? And I got 15 interviews set up in one week, 1515, and, you know, three a day. I'm like, no problem. You know, five. How big is that? I mean, it's a tiny, little island. How hard can that be, right? Anyway, long story short, I got a job at DDB Needham in the training program on that Friday in this is that thing. Still it don't ever really it's so good to never really know your odds, or at least don't believe them. Somebody. He's gonna get that job, right? Somebody's gonna get that job. Why not you? So I kind of pushed the envelope on that even that last day. She's like, well, we'll just, we'll get back in touch with you. I'm like, what else do you need to know? Let's just do this now. And and she did it. She genuinely gave me that offer. Right then, wow.

David Novak 15:22 

You asked for the order. That's That's great. And, and, you know, you mentioned earlier, you worked at Mattel, and you you had the Barbie business, and you spent several years at Hasbro, and you've worked on many iconic brands. What advice can you give leaders on how to really build a brand that lasts.

Sharon Price John 15:43 

Well, I think that building a brand that lasts is not that much different from building a company that lasts. It's understanding the underlying promise, and it needs to be something bigger than the utility of the brand or the idea and people believe in and work for and and make sacrifices for ideas, not things. So when we could be a teddy bear, lots of Teddy Bear companies, but for us to it kind of hold and evoke this kind of this emotion, that's because we stand for something, and it's to add a little more heart to life. It's a mission statement for us, and that's not just to our guests inside the store. It's the way we run this company. So I think that that elevation of the the construct of brand equity, which is hard for people to understand when you're talking about it in business terms like but in human terms, is, how does the brand make you feel? How does that company make you feel like you know the shirt you have on right now? There's that shirt. I could probably get something just like it in numerous colors for a wide variety of prices, from 15 bucks to 250 bucks, depending on what might be printed on the front of it. Why the utility of the shirt is still the same, but it's because of the way it makes you feel. What is it saying about you? I use Coca Cola, one of the best branders in the world, we have our Chief Brand officers, actually Coca Cola veteran and you know, so you like, what? What's the difference between that liquid inside of that aluminum can versus every other liquid inside of another aluminum can, to the point that you will choose to hang a miniature version of it on a Christmas tree like it's the way it makes you feel that equity is it when you get back down to business now is extremely monetizable, and you have to understand what your brand truly means. Keep elevating. Keep elevating. Keep elevating. Do we mean a teddy bear? Do we mean a retail store, or do we mean something else? Why don't you throw our bears away? It's because we mean something else. Even after Why do you take your bear to college? It's because we mean something else. People are placing value on this item in a way that makes it not an item anymore, and that's actually the pivot of the whole company. So when I was at Hasbro, what we needed to do, and we did under Brian gold nurse leadership, was to understand that bill that the big idea is that thought that Hasbro is a toy company that can be the most efficient importer of plastic and stuff. We needed to understand that we were an intellectual property company that just happened to make toys. And that was when everything started to happen that took Hasbro to an entirely different realm, inclusive of when I was on I ran the boys business, the guy with the whole US toy division, but when we launched the first Transformers film, and just that alone was an extraordinary experience. It that in the irony of it is that it truly transformed the company. You know, we moved, we became, we were a car and became a robot like right before our own eyes. Just a fantastic journey of brand expertise, corporate evolution, leadership through change, how to how to monetize and set and spread and kind of like to brands into different categories and consumers just fabulous, fabulous experience. And I saw that same potential here and build a bear. I mean, we really needed to not be like we were like a mall based retail company for kids that accidentally built the brand one heart ceremony at a time, that needed to become an intellectual property company that just happened to have vertical retail.

Koula Callahan 19:49 

Hey, everyone, it's Kula from how leaders lead. And if you've watched our podcast for any number of episodes, you probably know that a common theme from all of the great leaders we interview is that they are. Are active learners. They have this commitment to continuing to learn and grow so that they don't stay stagnant and so that they continue to see success in their leadership and in their life. This theme of active learning is so important, and it's what David's latest book, how leaders learn is all about. It's all about helping you develop that skill of active learning so that you too can continue to see success in your leadership and in your life. The book is really entertaining. It pulls stories from some of our greatest podcast guests and pairs those stories with insights that you can incorporate into your leadership and into your life right away. Grab how leaders learn on Amazon or wherever books are sold, and I think you're really going to love it. You feel David's personality through the pages and through his storytelling, and it's a really powerful way to level up your leadership.

David Novak 20:47 

You know you go to Build a Bear, and the business is really struggling. Talk about the talk about the business situation when you first came in.

Sharon Price John 20:59 

So I said we started in 1997 and then we went public, and then there was, had the recession. I guess that started in 2008 somewhere around there. So this was, you know, eight, 910, really rough years in there. But then it Build A Bear had really not stabilized all the way to 2013 and continued to contract that. I mean, some of it is just bad luck. I would say the timing of the recession was when Build A Bear was kind of like on its upswing, and when companies are really expanding rapidly, you're really not that focused on the best deal you can get the most efficient process. That's usually the second phase of growth, right? You kind of get this revenue momentum, and then your next phase of growth from the investor community is just make yourself more profitable for every dollar that comes through. You focus on the bottom line for a minute there, and then you got to, like, reinvent yourself somehow. But they didn't get that luxury before the recession came. And then they didn't really know how to reinvent some of it was just the continuing, just focus on returning to what was in an environment that didn't exist anymore. The traffic had changed. Mall shopping patterns had changed. It was the rise of E com, and we just weren't not participating in the digital economy in any way, and really didn't see another way than than just to grow with malls. And look, that had been a really valuable model for a lot of different companies for a very long time, but we had to think differently. And so, you know, we were just the store base was unprofitable from my time at stride, right? I really knew how to clean up a lot of profit. I mean, I I'm not bad at making money. I know how to make money. So we brought in my CFO from from my previous company, and we had a playbook that we'd already created from the stride right days, we turned return that to profitability in three years, and had a 12 comp. And you know, so there were a lot of leverage we knew how to pull. But that whole insight that I just shared with you about pivoting the company from a to an intellectual property company that happens to have vertical retail that doesn't, and then you're going to build out new rev streams, right? You can't do that until your vertical retail is making money. So that was our first order of business, and we returned to profitability in the first year after losing $49 million the previous year.

David Novak 23:27 

Wow. And your company's been on a heck of a run. No question about that. And but I also understand you have a pretty interesting formula for a turnaround. It's called SDSS. Tell us about it.

Sharon Price John 23:40 

Yeah, look, the two things, I promise, is this easy in business, in life, is there's two buckets of stuff, right? It's stupid stuff and smart stuff. That's all there is. There's two buckets of stuff. And if you want to do a turnaround quickly, get the stuff in the buckets, the stupid stuff and the smart stuff. The first thing that you do is stop doing stupid stuff. And everybody knows what the stupid stuff is. I know you, you've seen this. Absolutely you've seen and some of it is a little gray, but most of it's just not like, okay, like, let's, you know, run, run the cost all the way through that. How much is it really costing you to do that? Oh, you're losing money on this endeavor. Why are you doing that? Like, just, we're still just stop doing that. Let's start there. Everything that is losing money, not on brand, not consumer centric, not data driven, not money making, not hurtling. Stop it. Do you know how hard it is to get people to stop doing stupid stuff?

David Novak 24:54 

Well, pretty hard, if they've been doing it a long time,

Sharon Price John 24:56 

right? It's really hard, even. Though they know it's too so that and I it's not a comment on the people. Most of the people that are doing this stuff were told to do it by somebody like you, somebody like me, right? It's processed like it's part of the process, like it's, you know, that report comes off. I'm going to do this 17 reports should get printed out every day. You're going to read them. You don't even know what you're doing with them. Maybe nothing, but here's the reason why you have to start with the stop stopping part is it's about a discipline of asking why. You're learning a discipline about everything that you do needs to be of value. And I'm not telling you to work harder and longer and more and do that, I'm stuck. I'm starting with a I want you to do less, right? Let's do that. If you don't start there, if you start with the start doing smart stuff, then they will do both, and then you're going to end up blowing your SGA, because you have to hire a whole bunch of people to do smart stuff while all these other people are doing the stupid stuff that's keeping you from being profitable. I mean, it's not really that hard. I know you're tracking with me.

David Novak 26:12 

I got you. I love it.

Sharon Price John 26:16 

I want you to think about it in your life, too. People don't. People need to do this in life. Just, you know what you do? And like people, I wish I could do this. If I could do this, I could just get this much in my bank account. Or I want to lose five pounds. You know what the stuff is that's keeping you from losing five pounds? I know you

David Novak 26:36 

do stop doing it, then you start doing this stuff. Then you can start doing the smart stuff, making some big time money. You know,

Sharon Price John 26:42 

free free up some

David Novak 26:43 

time. There you go. I love it. We'll return with the rest of my conversation with Sharon price John in just a moment. But first, I want to take you back to my conversation with Brian Nichol. I interviewed him when he was CEO of Chipotle, before he made the move to Starbucks last year. Just like Sharon. This is someone who knows what it takes to power a successful turnaround.

Brian Niccol 27:06 

When I first got here, you know, I'd say the organization was a little bit on their back foot. You know, they had a couple missteps. Had a lot of ideas floating around in the organization on what could be better for the organization, but we weren't, I'd say, following through on those ideas, and we didn't pick a lane on one or two of the ideas to go really big and go after it. And so that was one of the things I wanted to do, is make sure that we picked a critical few items. Once we picked the critical few items, it was like, do we have the structure to go make this happen? So, I mean, this is classic things you used to talk to me about all the time, strategy, structure now, execution, right? When you looked around the structure, I was like, man, we don't have some of the experts that we need in these areas to fulfill our ambition or our strategy. And so we had to make some changes. You know, we need to get a great supply chain leader. We needed to get a great marketing leader. We needed to get some additional digital capability. We had a terrific digital leader, but he needed additional capability with him, because we're going to grow this so much. So it was taking the time now to invest in having the right people in the right positions so that we could execute the strategy. And then, look, we held ourselves accountable. It's like now we're going to go execute against these things. And I'm happy to say, you pointed out when I started, I think our market cap was right around, like six or 7 billion, and today we're over 50 billion. For the most part, my team is intact. You know, we've only really had one person transition. I think that's a testament to the strategy. It's a testament to the people believing in the strategy. And then I think hopefully it's a testament to the culture that I've created around this organization and the values that we have.

David Novak 28:43 

Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Brian, Episode 168 here on how leaders lead you so you come in and you've been in situations where you had to turn things around. You just mentioned in the previous company you were at, and all that you learned there, what's your take on how much a company should focus on in terms of what's made them successful versus what's coming next? And you have this interesting analogy, which I loved about looking in the rear view mirror. Would you share that?

Sharon Price John 29:15 

Yeah, that was that I had mentioned that during the my first few weeks and months at Build A Bear, when I was trying to assess what was going on. And it was actually an employee of mine that had been at Build A Bear for a long, long time, and she eventually became the chief strategy officer. She came busted into my office one day. And we do a lot of white boarding. I just, I think, in sort of 3d so she starts drawing something, and I'm like, What are you doing? And she's she's like, I've got it. I know what's going on. Look at this, and she's showing this data. And she's like, like, I'd mentioned, she goes, they're just trying. Everything that they're doing is. Out of that first playbook that we had created. They're just trying to replicate, with significant specificity, of everything that we did when we were successful in 1998 1999 to that like and they've got to stop then they don't believe that you, you're gonna be able to do that. They also, which she didn't say, and I give her credit for this, they were also super afraid that, as a turnaround agent, a change agent, that I was literally going to rip the heart out of Build A Bear. Nobody wanted to change the company, at least the emotional part the culture Maxine had created a really wonderful culture. But I think you can be successful and still be and still have a great culture. You know, just winning wasn't a part of the culture anymore. So I needed to get give an analogy that they could understand, that I wasn't going to rip the heart out of the company, and I wasn't trying to destroy the past, but it doesn't mean that you it, that we that we're going to be successful if we don't move forward. And it was this rearview mirror analogy I drip painted a picture of what we could become based on all this equity that they've created, and we could be so much more than that based on what you've done, but you're going to have to change your mindset, and we're going to have to have a different kind of strategy. And I put up a big windshield of a car that had a rear view mirror on it, on it, like this huge screen in a in our presentation theater at the time. And I said, you know, a lot of a lot of engineering and math and thought goes into how big a rear view mirror is compared to a windshield. And I'm like, Do you know why? And they don't know why. And I'm like, Well, it's because of the ratio of time that you need to be looking forward versus looking back while you're driving. What would happen if all you did is look in the rear view mirror while you're trying to drive and like, well, crash. And I'm like, that's what we're going to do, guys. It doesn't mean that what we're going to stick in that rear view mirror doesn't matter. It matters where you've been. It's important you can, you know, sometimes you backing up, or you're referring to it, or it's important information. We're going to put all that in there. That's fine. I'm not trying to kill it, but we have to look out in front of us. And I don't mean right in front of us, I mean way out in front of us. And we'll put, we're going to put together a strategy. Think of that as a GPS. We're and I kind of took them through this whole analogy, and then I asked them who was in the car with us. And they start naming off things. And I'm like, This is good, what else? And they're like our guests are, you know, our factories, our you know, our investors, our board, our like, exactly the people working at the our mall, our mall partners. They're all in the car with us. Everybody has, anybody that has a stake in our success is in this car with us. And and I'm like, so who's driving? And they, they, I thought they were gonna think, I think they thought I wanted them to say, Me, but I didn't. I'm like, You're, you're driving, you we, together, are the drivers of this car. And, you know, and I, but here's the thing, and this was the the big like this, all of that was fun. They kind of went with me on this, this part, and then it got silent when I said, and what I don't need is backseat drivers, and if you don't want to get in the car, that's okay with me that, but you need to leave, because we don't have time for this. And it's not like I don't want new ideas. I do, but come to me with the new ideas. Don't take this strategy and then on the backside of it all, decide you're not going to do it, or talk it down, or not be or this is never going to work. That's can be the failure of companies. And I don't have time for that, and that, the place went silent. So

David Novak 34:04 

I'm sure it did well. That's the difference between being tough and tough minded. You were tough minded in terms of what you needed to have, not tough you know. And I think that's a great trade of great leaders. And so you turn the business around, and now you know, your stocks gone crazy. You've had three years in a row of record breaking revenue. What advice? Okay, excuse me for all right, four years of record breaking revenue. But what have you learned? Or what advice can you share on with people, on on how to overlap the big year? Because a lot of times when you have that big year, people go, Oh, she's, I don't know how we're going to do it again. What's your approach to to to overlapping the big, big

Sharon Price John 34:50 

results. It took a long time, actually, for the investor community to sort of figure out what we were doing as just as an aside. But, you know. Consistent results are clearly very helpful, but, but I think that you know, well,

David Novak 35:05 

they're not helpful. They're totally instrumental. If you don't have them, if you don't have consistent results, your stock doesn't go up. Let's

Sharon Price John 35:12 

face it's very true. Maybe, maybe they're, you know, if you, if you sell a big dream, sometimes they get, they'll, they'll invest in that. But I think that not only did we show those consistent results, I think that there's now more believability. It's more believable to them of the stretchability of this brand and the business model. And so it's not only just are you seeing an expansion of the stock price, you're seeing an expansion of the multiple, and that's because we're not being directly valued as a mall based retailer, and when you get kind of stuck in that bucket, it's hard to like break through. So now that we're expanding globally and all these other in being more overt in the we're a brand first that happens to have retail that's changing the conversation, and that's a good thing. But we, we had the one big year coming out of COVID. So 2021, to 2020, was not, I mean, while amazing, that's, you know, off a super soft year. And, you know, we had to maneuver through COVID. Our entire retail shut down, you know. So that's a crazy story, but we had had so so many strategies in place by 2019 on what we were doing, and we worked very hard on our infrastructure during that downtime, because it's one of those things where you're like, Oh, what am I going to do if I don't have to spend all my time, effort and effort running retail stores. We focused on e com and so, and implemented numerous things that were just sitting on the shelf that we hadn't done that helped us unlock that value and connect a lot of omni channel opportunities that we knew would add value, but we just had gotten to them. So 2021 was sort of just the first year of that. Now we're kind of expanding retail footprint on a global basis. So now we're kind of over that hump. 2022 would have been the first anniversary of a big hump year. Now it's more the conversation that I have to talk to the team. Look, we're in a kind of, in this sort of, like, trajectory of every year is going to be a record year. If you make one more dollar, that's not good enough, you know. So now it's like, you don't we're not gonna, like, the goal is not one more dollar, guys and, you know, so I'm going to be up saying another record year, another record quarter, or whatever it is. That doesn't mean we should all be yelling and cheering, because $1 is not the goal. So it's a whole different kind of discussion now, of not the Battle of just to be profitable. It's the Battle of trying, you know, pushing the trajectory to a higher, you know, to a higher curve, and getting people to understand that,

David Novak 38:09 

what's the, what's the minimum percentage you got to grow your your your revenues, or your bottom

Sharon Price John 38:13 

line? Well, you know, I can't tell you that so well, don't you tell you. Don't tell Wall Street what you're going to do. We've told them this year what, you know, we've given them guidance for the year, but it's kind of an odd year, because we're trying to, like, predict all this tariff stuff. And you know that it's just an odd kind of circumstance,

David Novak 38:33 

but you you now $1 over the previous year isn't enough, so you're raising your targets for your people all the time, right? So what have you what have you picked up on, on on how to do that so that they can embrace it? Do you have a process for getting buy in on that?

Sharon Price John 38:50 

Yeah. I mean, you know, like most companies, we do both bottom, up and down, bottom and top down planning. And usually I give the company a ton of credit, we are not devoid of creative ideas. There's we don't. We are have so many ideas and so many things that we could do is the hard part is picking them and and putting the right resources against them right and that's, that's, it's more of the pipelining process than anything, and getting and teaching the organization how to this, you know, this is still a half a billion dollar company. It's, and I came from multi billion dollar organizations where that process of at the lower, at the mid tier, you know, director level, VP level, that you knew how to put your business plan together, right? And you knew how to come in with the potential ROI and what the investment needed to be. That's still a muscle for us. You know, because for so many years, the money was made in the retail operations and all. Practically all of the money was made in the retail operations. So building out new conceptual opportunities is still a muscle for us. Now, you have people at the highest levels that have done that all their lives, and I'm starting it's really, really and I'm sure you've experienced this before, both invigorating and satisfying to see that evolution happen in your own company with your own folks.

David Novak 40:26 

Yeah, and it's definitely happening. You do have a lot of lot of great ideas. I mean, you your Valentine's Days are always amazing. That's your second most popular holiday. And then, you know, sometimes you have such good ideas, they're almost impossible to execute. Now it was interesting. You know, I learned about your birthdays are another that huge driver for you. Tell us about the launch of your count your candles campaign and what it taught you as a leader, because this is a great idea, obviously,

Sharon Price John 40:55 

that really like so many of these concepts, whether it's honey girls, which we launched and had a film with Sony Pictures, or it's Mary mission, which we also did our own animated film. It's born out of white space, right? So, like, Honey, girls was like, Oh, we're losing the little girl. You know there is, there was a K goy before a kid alt. K goy means kids getting older, younger. So they age out of, they age out of traditional toys faster. Now they get on digitized faster, right? So you want to try to create concepts that just hold on to that little girl or the little boy, like, one more year, which means, like, just get them to eight or nine years old. Like, you know, we would still be totally playing with, you know, put toy, the traditional and physical toys at that age, but they, they do get sucked out earlier now into the digital world. But so we came up with a whole concept on honey girls was like, all about the things that that little girl loves, right, whether it's music and being a superstar in a contest and, you know, friendship and better together, and girl power and so that that came out of white space. The whole thing about Mary mission was the holidays was how to insert ourselves into the tradition of the holiday, not just be the gift under the tree, because we were seeing that our traffic curve was flatter than the traffic curve of the mall, so we weren't getting our fair share, right? So how is it that people are coming to the mall with their kids in tow to go see Santa? They don't go to Build a Bear. The reason was because people say, Oh no, no, no, we're not gonna, we're not going to build a bear today that you wait and see what you get under the Christmas tree. So we had to create a story that you had to go to build a Build A Bear is part of the holidays, not the end of the holiday, the part of the holiday. So this was the same thing. What do we do? Because we know the number one reason why people come to build a bear for the first time is because of their birthdays. How do I get one year younger, one year younger, and increase the number of people who want to come to their come to build a bear for their birthday party, or their birthday parties too, but for the birthday in this case, and we did lots of calculations and figured out and said, You know what? We could have a bear where people can come in, we'll create a specific bear so I manage the cost, where people can pay their age. And on average, you know, if our math is right, we know exactly how much they're going to pay. And we you know, and is that in even though it's a sharper margin, that's really an acquisition cost right of pulling down, and we expected to pull the age down by one year. And I would also be as to be a to be a participant in the pay your HD program, you have to join our loyalty program. So there's an acquisition cost involved, and I get one more year of lifetime value, right? That's easy. That makes all the sense in the world. And so, by the way, all of that has worked, but for the launch of this idea, we're like, let's just make one big day where everybody can pay their age on anything so everybody knows about this. Also sounds reasonable, right? I mean, we had, and we've done crazy things. I mean, like, we call them crazy. Like, we had multiple national teddy bear days where there were lines around the block for $5 bears like no, you know, and we manage that and so. But on this particular day, for whatever set of reasons, with little to no marketing, just some social media, by the time, I mean, I was woken up at 5am by my chief operations officer because the malls were shutting down in the UK, and that I had to get up and come into the office immediately. And when I got there, there was a whole task force in the War Room. I'm like, what's happening here? And they're like, the. Stores are going to open in x, y, x hours, and they're already lines of outside the mall on the west on the East Coast. I'm like, What's it was incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. And, I mean, we were the news story of the day. It's, it's, I mean, that's the power of the brand, though. Well, in many ways it, you know, I don't want anybody to have a bad experience at Build A Bear, and I know that there were people that did have some less than than, than advantageous experiences that day. But we did offer a voucher for those who could not get through the line, just not enough hours in the day, but at the end of the day, it did tell us something that I don't think we even though I would have been the biggest advocate in the world for hey, we've got this super strong brand with 90 plus percent brand awareness and affinity numbers of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was an emboldened moment for us as a leadership team to go even we don't know what this brand means to people, even we don't get it. And you know, as much as I hope we've made that up to folks at this point, and I think it in a big, sweeping way, we likely have it. It really, that's it taught me a lesson of sometimes, you know, there couldn't have, we couldn't have planned it any better. I mean, there was, I can't look back on that and look, that's the way. And you know this, that's the way to drive yourself mad. Is, would you have made the same decision at the same moment with the same data? And I would have so but, but the lesson was, you may think you understand the depth of meaning of this brand or something else that you might be working on and you might not, and that that really said something to me about even, and I'm a big idea person. I'm and I'm a big optimist, and I had a vision of what this could be that changed my mind that my vision was too small.

David Novak 47:02 

Well, sometimes you you don't know what you you don't know what you don't know. And you found out in a hurry that your brand is even bigger than what you even anticipated it

Sharon Price John 47:13 

might be. I mean, like, Who would have ever guessed that Kentucky Fried Chicken would be the biggest fast food chain in China?

David Novak 47:20 

Well, that was a very good thing to happen to me as well, and we had a lot of lines. Let me tell you that, you know, you know, this has been so much fun, and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. So are you ready for this? I don't know. We'll see the three words that best describe you,

Sharon Price John 47:36 

creative, funny are fun and high integrity. High integrity.

David Novak 47:42 

If you could be one person for a day besides yourself, who would it be? Maybe,

Sharon Price John 47:46 

like a rock star, like just to do it,

David Novak 47:49 

your biggest pet peeve a lack of integrity. Who would play you in a movie? Reese Witherspoon? What's the one thing you do just for you? I

Sharon Price John 47:57 

go on long walks and listen to inspirational podcasts,

David Novak 48:01 

besides your family. What's your most prized possession my memories? If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I

Sharon Price John 48:08 

hear? It could go from 70s rock to current rap.

David Novak 48:13 

What's something about you? Few people would know I'm an artist. What's one of your daily rituals? Something that you never miss?

Sharon Price John 48:20 

Probably morning meditation. All right,

David Novak 48:22 

you're out of that lightning round. Good job there. Should you're a wife and a mom of three. What's something you've learned at work about leadership that you

Sharon Price John 48:31 

apply at home? Oh, it's the other way around. Well, that's a great learner. I learned more about being a leader being a mom, that I've learned about being a mom by being a leader?

David Novak 48:43 

What would be the top thing you've learned by being a mom as it relates to leadership? You

Sharon Price John 48:49 

gotta let some of it, if it doesn't matter, you gotta let it go. That's and let and let people make their own you know, if it's, if it's not endangering the company, let people make mistakes. They'll they'll create so much more value later if you give them that grace.

David Novak 49:05 

And last question here, what's one piece of advice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader?

Sharon Price John 49:12 

It's not about you, it's in the minute. You can find kind of that balance between understanding that there has along with this role, there's going to come a little bit of ego, because you're constantly making decisions with imperfect information that impacts millions of dollars and hundreds of people. The flip side of that is you have to not have so much ego that you don't understand why you're really doing what you're doing, and that people matter, and you need to listen to people and surround yourself with people that are smarter than you in every single functional area. And why are you spending the time, effort and energy on that if you're not willing to listen

David Novak 49:59 

to them, you know there. It's so hard to become a CEO, and, you know, there there are fewer female CEOs, and I think we'd all like to see in the world. Do you have any particular advice you'd give to aspiring female leaders on on how they can, you know, move up the ladder and achieve the kind of success that you've been able to achieve,

Sharon Price John 50:22 

I think that there is a statistically significant data that would imply that women are more can be more reticent about making those decisions in that imperfect world. Then, then, then men are often and yet they are equally as capable of making this the right, the most right choice in the moment. In understand that that contemplativeness is actually a power, not a downside. And everyone goes through that moment of trepidation, but the guy will pull the trigger and the woman sometimes will not. It's the same data with the same answer, but if you don't, if you can't do that, that's gonna it's gonna hold you back. And I think that sometimes it's, it's a it's a misunderstanding of the value of the penchant for action. And again, in learning to balance, you can't bring all of this with you. If you can put yourself back in that moment and say, I would have made the same decision with the same data, everybody's going to get in a situation where, if I'd only known this, if I'd only known that, but here's the key, you didn't know this and you didn't know that, and in most of the cases, that was actually unknowable. So look at it as a learning tool and move on. Those can be flywheels to further success, not reasons to burden you. And I don't know, maybe I just don't think like that. Maybe it's because I was a gymnast, you know, that just had to fall 1000 times before you got it right. Or maybe it's because I climbed that tree and I defined failure in a different way is it at an early age, but that's that, see, if you have to boil it down, and all the data that I've read, it's an underestimation of their own capabilities. And I don't know why that is.

David Novak 52:35 

Well, I think it's great that you represent a leader that shows people that it's possible. And you know, in a tough world, it's not easy to do what you've done, and you've done it, and I want to congratulate you on, you know, all your success and the fact that you are a leader that people can look up to. And for sure, I want my daughter to listen this podcast. And you know, for sure, I think any leader should, should listen this podcast, because you're an out and out leader. You know how to inspire people. You know how to make things happen and you get things done. And I want to thank you for taking the time to share some of your thoughts with me today, in this conversation, I've enjoyed it a lot.

Sharon Price John 53:13 

David, thank you so much. And you know just, I'm sure, as you have, you also just have to keep learning, keep growing. It's just been a pleasure to be here and I, and I always love having conversations with folks that have set that worn the same shoes. So it's always so valuable. Thank you. Well, thank you.

David Novak 53:37 

You know there aren't a lot of mall based brands that have managed not just to survive, but to grow, and, I mean, really grow in today's retail landscape. That makes Build A Bear a rare kind of success. But for me, what's really impressive is how Sharon pulled it off. She realized people weren't just buying a bear. They were buying a feeling it meant something. And that insight into the brand didn't just shape the marketing, it sparked new channels, new audiences, new ideas, not to mention serious growth. Because when you know what your brand really means, it doesn't limit your options, it sharpens them. You can stretch your brand to places you never imagined, and you can drive growth without losing what makes it special. So here's your challenge this week. Define the emotional core of your brand. What does it mean to people? What does it make them feel now? Do that for your business, and if you're not running a brand, do it for yourself, because this exercise will help you think of yourself as a brand as well, because a clear sense of meaning just isn't a fluffy feel good exercise, it's a strategic advantage and a powerful engine for growth. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders understand that meaning is your brand superpower. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Mike Cesario, founder and CEO. CEO of a cult favorite beverage company called Liquid death. So be sure you subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader that you can be.