IAM523- Retail Executive Helps Businesses Navigate Product Development

Juli Lassow is an accomplished retail executive with 20 years of experience in the disciplines of sourcing, merchandising, inventory planning, and analytics. As the founder and principal of JHL Solutions, Juli helps businesses navigate the complex world of global retail sourcing and private label product development, by supporting retailers and suppliers in finding, developing products, and better negotiating with each other. Before establishing her business, Juli held several progressive leadership roles at Target Corporation.

• CEO Hack: (1) Setting business development goals (2) Editing apps: Grammarly and Hemingway
• CEO Nugget: Connect with retailers by understanding their vision, structures and process
• CEO Defined: Deciding who you want to work with and the impact you want to achieve

Website: https://jhl-solutions.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/julilassow/
Twitter: @SolutionsJhl

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Transcription:

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Intro  0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless  0:29

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Juli Lassow of JHL Solutions. Juli, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Juli Lassow  0:39 

Oh, thank you so much for having me Gresh. I'm thrilled to be here and speaking with the community.

Gresham Harkless  0:43 

Yeah, absolutely. Super excited to have you on. What I wanted to do is just read a little bit more about Juli so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Juli is an accomplished retail executive with 20 years of experience in the disciplines of sourcing, merchandising, inventory planning, and analytics. As the founder and principal of JHL Solutions, Juli helps businesses navigate the complex world of global retail sourcing and private label product development, by supporting retailers and suppliers in finding, developing products, and better negotiating with each other. Before establishing her business, Juli held several progressive leadership roles at Target Corporation. Juli, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Juli Lassow  1:24 

I am. Thank you for the lovely intro.

Gresham Harkless  1:26 

No problem. What I wanted to do is just kick everything off to hear a little bit more about your story. What led you to start your business?

Juli Lassow  1:34 

Well, I'm very excited to tell that story. As you mentioned, just at the end of my bio, I worked for Target and that career lasted 17 years. I'm a very proud target alum. I had reached a point like many people who live in the corporate executive spaces do, I thought that I could start serving and supporting a community of constituents in a better way, to be honest. When I left Target, it was all with a mindset of how I help retailers and suppliers get on the same page.

 For me, what that is all about is really with the change in retail that we're seeing right now I'm finding more and more retailers are very focused on their consumers, which they absolutely should be suppliers are focused on production, manufacturing tariffs. Those groups are spending less time talking to each other. That means that it takes longer for them to develop products, and it's harder for them to find the right partners to grow their businesses. I think being able to speak that same language is a way to fast-track those partnerships. That's the support that I provide on the retailers and the supplier side.

Gresham Harkless  2:37 

Nice that that makes so much sense. I don't know if this is a result of it seems like the direct-to-consumer kind of ability that you're able to go directly to consumer, I'm not sure if that makes it such a I don't want to say more difficult, but you're spending probably so much time talking more to the consumer that you don't have as much time to kind of develop those relationships and build that out.

Juli Lassow  2:55 

That's an element of it. I think direct consumer growth from a business perspective is changing the retail landscape and the changing expectations that consumers have of retailers and the products and brands that they're getting. So that's absolutely a piece of it.

Gresham Harkless  3:10 

Yeah, that's what I figured that makes so much sense. I appreciate you providing information about that for one, but also helping out the retailers and suppliers to be able to make sure that they are providing the best products. I think if you're not having as many of those lanes open and that communication happened, then it doesn't necessarily help out the consumers as much. People like you who are able to provide their experience for one and then two also be able to help create better products, I think help out overall.

Juli Lassow  3:37 

Yeah, well, it comes from the benefit of the experience of when things have gone very, very well, which I'm happy to share certainly appropriately. Also, there have been a lot of mistakes along the way that I've seen where you can avoid a lot of delays and a lot of costly errors. It's in everyone's interest to minimize those. So I find a lot of both personal and professional joy.

Gresham Harkless  3:59 

Yeah, I'm sure your clients do as well. I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know you touched on a little bit, can you take us through exactly how you work with clients and some of those pitfalls and things that they might be able to avoid?

Juli Lassow  4:11 

Oh, exactly it’s such a fun way to think about it. Because really, I show up and I look very different depending on what the challenges are for the business. I focus on three main areas of partnerships. So that's vetting so how do you either know the right questions to ask if you're a retailer and looking for a new partner, or on the supplier side is more of like a self-betting? How do I know what a supplier or excuse me what a retailer partner is going to look for? I spend a lot of time in that early stage making sure that you are retail-ready on the supplier side and can answer those questions really effectively.

Then on the supplier side, make sure that you are slowing down and thinking about what are the ways that I can effectively onboard a new partner to my process much like you'd onboard a new employee to your team. When you book both groups take the time to put themselves in that other perspective, and have that business empathy, at the start of a partnership. Those questions can be very, very straightforward and it can help get you aligned very quickly to know that yes, this is the right partner to work with, or this isn't. The second major bucket of work that I focus on is in some ways, it's the project management piece. So building products together, I've worked in product categories from watches rechargeable batteries, bedding, and Christmas trees, and there are certain very common steps to how to develop products together, effectively, regardless of what type of business you're in.

As an organization, you haven't taken the time to organize how you want to develop a product, or as a supplier, if you've never developed or co-developed a product with the supplier or retailer before, you want to make sure you can understand what those steps are what's coming up because some of that work is not just in time work. That's work that takes weeks, if not months of preparation to do so. That's the second big bucket of work that I would do with other retailer suppliers, what's that process and making sure that that process fits appropriately to the retailer, or the supplier partners you're working with. Then the last big piece of work I do is all around negotiations deciding how and where products are being awarded. That process is incredibly important because there isn't a lot of extra margin floating around these days.

You want to be thoughtful, when you finally have developed that product that you're negotiating, that you're aligning on the agreements. In retail speak, there are a lot of different priorities that a retailer and supplier have. If you're working with, for example, your retailer working with an imported importer of record for the first time or someone's importing product versus making product domestically, there's an incredible list of challenges that come along with that, that your systems might not be set up to handle. That's a lot of the work that I do with retailers and suppliers as well.

The same for a supplier if you're working with a supplier who's never imported a product before, here are all the ways that you need to make sure that you are advocating for yourself and having really specific conversations around. How much inventory is going to be made, how long will it take to make the inventory and ship that, etc? I would say the big three buckets of work and underscoring all of that is its training, its process mapping, certainly opening lines of communication, and moving on to partnerships forward and at those three really critical points.

Gresham Harkless  7:22 

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I'm sure like a lot of times I don't know, if you find this when you work with the vendors or the entrepreneurs and business owners that create these products or are seeing that opportunity. A lot of times you think about that, but you don't think about that. I don't know if it's the right phrase, but bringing the market strategy, how exactly you're going to execute that? There are so many different aspects that you forget or forget to think about are my day has expert advice on it as far as like how exactly to execute. That's because that's just probably as important as actually developing the product.

Juli Lassow  7:54 

Absolutely. It's that business empathy piece of knowing, who is in the room that you need to talk to. You will have several different sets of influencers out so if it's the buyer, you might you'll be focused a lot on the product will be focused on market share, if it's the inventory planning team, its replenishment strategies, your quality assurance team, your sourcing team, each of those teams have incredibly different priorities, different metrics that they're focusing on, that they're being measured on, held accountable to. The better that you can shift and speak that language, again, the more likely you are to successfully launch a program and launch one. Maybe not error-free, because it's retail and there's always something but it's going to go a lot more smoothly.

Gresham Harkless  8:38 

Yeah, it's just probably the same as with businesses business, there's no guarantee that everything's gonna go smoothly, and it's going to be super successful. You just try to increase the likelihood of that happening by leaning on experts like yourself so that you can hopefully be more successful or increase that success rate.

Juli Lassow  8:53 

That's my goal.

Gresham Harkless  8:55 

I love it. You might have already touched on this, but I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Juli Lassow  9:05 

For me what sets me apart and makes me unique is the fact that I have been on both sides of the challenges. When I was at Target, the role that I played was very focused on supplier relationships. I felt like that gave me a really interesting perspective that I could look internally at the cross-functional team and understand what their needs were whether they were a merchant or planning team. Then on the supplier side, I was also the first line of conversation from the suppliers to say this is confusing, this is the challenge, this is what makes this what's making this partnership very difficult. 

After more than a decade and a half of compiling those challenges, I've got a fairly comprehensive map of where those pain points are, and have a lot of personal and professional passion for helping groups get out ahead of what those challenges are. Building out the processes and the approaches done to help neutralize the risk, and certainly resolve the issues when they present themselves.

Gresham Harkless  10:06 

Absolutely, that makes so much sense. I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app, book, or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Juli Lassow  10:18 

Something that makes me more effective and efficient and as someone from a sourcing background, I'd love to talk about this. So thank you for asking. I set both business goals, but then also business development goals every year. For 2019 as an example, the goal I set for myself was to be able to speak and write with more impact. I found as I was digging in and trying to get better with this, within this year, something that I wasn't really great at was copy editing.

My goal was to do more writing to get some more publications out to help other journalists have subject matter expertise inputs, and get the content out, but it would take me forever to edit. The hack I'd love to share with your community is if you are doing an increased amount of writing to get your ideas out and build your expertise, there are two apps that I have found to be amazing. One is called the Hemingway app. Once you've written a reasonable draft of your content, if you cut and paste and load the content in, this will review for sentence complexity and grade level.

Depending on the level of audience that you're trying to approach, I think their recommendation is usually like junior high level, and then you can get an assessment of how readable is your language. That's something for me coming out of the corporate world. Now in the consulting world, we have a lot of doublespeak and anachronisms and I'm not always the best at editing those out. That is a great filter for me from a context perspective. Then I also use Grammarly. Their free version is pretty great. I do their premium version, just to help get cleaned up that basic grammar, certainly spelling, but punctuation and tone are also really fantastic from a flexibility perspective.

Gresham Harkless  12:01 

Now when it asks you for what I call a CEO nugget, this is kind of like a word of wisdom or piece of advice, and it could be specifically rated related to your business. But what's a piece of advice you would give to people trying to launch their products and create services?

Juli Lassow  12:13 

What I would say that's business specific or subject matter specific around connecting with retailers. If you are looking to build an actual product, a physical product, I love when I meet with entrepreneurs, how excited they are about who they're serving, what change in the world, they're going to make for them, with their product as it reaches a broader audience.

I would suggest when you're reaching out to the retailer that you really understand that we tailor the structure, and their processes, certainly, but more like at a higher level what their vision is for their business. Because I think similar to the strongest personal relationships, the strongest business relationships are ones that are built on common values. If you are able to bring a product to life that's helping bring an organization's vision to life. From that retailer's perspective, you are much better positioned to help successfully launch that product.

Gresham Harkless  13:05 

Nice. I love those, those nuggets. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on this show. So Juli, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Juli Lassow  13:18 

Being a CEO, to me, means that I get to think about and very purposefully decide the businesses I want to work with, and the impact that I get to have in the space that I'm passionate about. For me, that's all about retail retailers and consumer goods and making those relationships and those products better.

Gresham Harkless  13:34 

Absolutely. I love that and I love it because a lot of times we forget, like I usually say like an artist you get to paint the picture of the world that you want to see. Obviously, you being a target alumni being able to have so much experience related to all the things that you do you get to help so many businesses and organizations and suppliers be able to see the vision of what they wanted to come to fruition and do it in the best way that they can see basketball. So I appreciate that.

Juli Lassow  13:58 

It's been a really fantastic journey. I'm excited to share more about it 

Gresham Harkless  14:02 

Yeah, well, I'm super excited for you. I'm super excited for all the awesome things you're providing the people who listen to glean all this information. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know. Then of course, for people that are listening and watching how best they can get ahold of you or find out about all the awesome things you're working on.

Juli Lassow  14:22 

Oh yeah, happy to share. Thank you for that open invite to do that so you can reach out to me. It's jhl-solutions.com or Juli Lassow j u l i  l a s s o w. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm always on LinkedIn and then through the site, you're easily able to access some contact information there as well. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about how to think about approaching suppliers or if you're reaching out to have the product produced for the first time I've got some really easy information about how to take your first steps and bidding retail supplier partners.

I'm happy to offer that to the community and hope it can be a value to you, knowing not knowing exactly when the information is going to be up for this podcast, you can check out the in-news page and it'll have all the stuff some upcoming events that I'm speaking in. If I'm in your neighborhood grade or MSP or there's a webinar available, I would love to invite you to join me for that conversation and understand what and how I could help grow your businesses.

Gresham Harkless  15:26 

Nice. Well, I definitely appreciate that Juli and we will make sure to have those links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you and see all the awesome things but again, appreciate you so much and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro  15:37 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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