Leading and Hiring at Rapidly Evolving CPG Brand Deep Indian Kitchen

[00:00:00] Roy Notowitz: Hello and welcome to How I Hire, the podcast that taps directly into the best executive hiring advice and insights. I'm Roy Notowitz, founder and CEO of Noto Group Executive Search. You can learn more about us at notogroup.com. As a go-to firm for purpose-driven companies, we've been lucky to work with some of the world's most inspiring leaders as they've tackled the challenge of building high-performance leadership teams. Now, I'm sitting down with some of these very people to spark a conversation about how to achieve success in hiring and create purposeful leadership for the next generation of companies. Kiernan Laughlin is the general manager and co-creator of fast-growing CPG brand Deep Indian Kitchen. Kiernan leverages experience from major CPG companies like Johnson & Johnson and Unilever, as well as an understanding of mid-size brands from his time at Gorton's Seafood. Kiernan joins me to discuss successfully transitioning from a corporate environment to an emerging company, how he hires and keeps his team aligned through growth, and his thoughts on current leadership styles. Kiernan, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's great to have you. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

[00:01:19] Kiernan Laughlin: Likewise. I've been looking forward to it, and thank you so much for having me, Roy. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:24] Roy Notowitz: Excellent. Let's dive right in. You spent the early part of your career in mid-size CPG companies like Gorton's Seafood and major CPG companies like Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, and I'm curious what core leadership or business principles from those early experiences continue to shape how you operate today?

[00:01:46] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, I mean, I think we're all a product of our experiences to some extent, and I'm fortunate that I've learned from each of my experiences, and, if I think back on it, Gorton's, it's a mid-size company. It's not very process-driven or bureaucratic, and I learned to make decisions quickly there and also to wear many hats. And I think, in contrast, big CPG, more, more siloed, moves slower, but really great at training and teaching frameworks and process. And, you know, I, I still use a lot of the principles today. And, from a leadership perspective, I've been really fortunate to work with some of the best in the world earlier in my career, and, you know, conversely, some who are very smart and talented as individuals, but maybe not the best leaders. And, I think, by being exposed to both sides of that, I've learned what I aspire to replicate as a leader, and, frankly, what I wanted to avoid. And I'll give you one core leadership tenet I've learned is the importance of what I call situational leadership. And I think, particularly in big CPG, a lot of people try to nail down their leadership type as one type, and it's in vogue to say you're a "servant leader," which isn't a bad thing. That can be a great thing. I think that is often said when you're focused on building your personal brand, which is true in, in, in big CPG, because, frankly, you're going to move off your role in a couple years in, in big CPG. But, in a startup brand, you know, it's more of a chaotic rollercoaster where you're living and dying based on the business results. Your personal brand is the business brand, right? And, and one size of leadership rarely fits all, so I think the ideal is when you've been able to hire performers or high performers, they fit your culture, and that's the case. You're able to delegate, and your job is to remove barriers, grease the wheels, if you will, to help them succeed even more so than they would otherwise. And that's servant leadership, right?

[00:03:44] Roy Notowitz: Totally.

[00:03:44] Kiernan Laughlin: But sometimes in, in a smaller environment, you've got employees, individuals, or teams who are struggling. And it's either that or there's just a crisis because they just come along more, more often in, in smaller businesses. And that can require more hands-on leadership and, sometimes, critical feedback. So I think, depending on the situation, I flex, and also I advise leaders on, on my team to do the same. And that's just a difference between bigger and smaller companies. And I think the situational leadership is important for success in a smaller environment.

[00:04:20] Roy Notowitz: That's really interesting and situational leadership obviously is a huge skill. Is there somebody, specifically, a leader that you worked with, or a company, that really gave you that foundation? Or are there examples that you can provide that sort of help us understand how that was developed within you as a leader?

[00:04:43] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah. I don't know if I would point to one individual that taught me that. I can tell you there were, you know, there were times in big CPG where you would sit down in workshops and try to develop your specific type of leadership style and develop your personal brand, which is very important in that environment. So I, I think a lot of it I've learned by doing, on reflection, comparison between the styles that worked in smaller organizations and larger. And I also think you learn from your mistakes. I'm not afraid of mistakes, and I tell my team the same thing, so there's probably been times in my career where I've delegated too much in a given situation, had to zoom back in, and have learned, through doing, a sense of when's the right time to zoom in and when's the right time to zoom out.

[00:05:27] Roy Notowitz: That's great. And what's the most surprisingly useful skill or lesson that you've learned or picked up outside of work that shows up in your leadership today? Whether it was when you were sort of formulating your experience or just maybe being part of a sport or something. Is there anything that you can speak to in terms of how it's shaped your leadership?

[00:05:48] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, you, you hit the nail on the head with sports. So I was a college athlete. I played tennis for Boston College, and, as an athlete, you learn to be competitive, obviously. I am extremely competitive, but also, you learn the importance of continuous improvement and the importance of identifying your mistakes so you can learn from them and get better. And also can't be afraid to fail because, as an athlete, if you play "not to lose," you end up losing. You have to play to win. So--

[00:06:18] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:06:19] Kiernan Laughlin: You have to be willing to take risks. You have to be continually trying to get better, and continually going for it, and putting yourself out there. And it's the same when you're in business. You have to have continuous improvement. You have to learn from your mistakes. And that's part of the core values I instill in, in the teams that I lead and the cultures that I create.

[00:06:38] Roy Notowitz: Absolutely. That's a great example. Thank you for sharing that. So tell us a little bit about your role at Deep, and how you work with your parent company, and what you're there to do. What's your mandate?

[00:06:49] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, so my role is I'm the general manager of the Deep Indian Kitchen brand, which I co-created about six and a half years ago and have been leading since launch. So I oversee the sales, marketing, operations, and finance, and all the finances for the business, which we've now grown about 12x over the last six years and gone from very unprofitable to, to now profitable. And we do have a parent company. Deep Indian Kitchen is an Indian brand. I am not Indian. There is a three generation Indian family that's owned Deep Foods, the parent company, since 1977. And they are phenomenal in terms of product innovation, and manufacturing, and, historically, had been serving the Indian American community in Indian American grocery stores throughout the US. What I run is the business that sells, now in 22,000 stores across the US, not just in Indian grocery stores. So, it used to be called the Tandoor Chef brand. We rebranded that to Deep Indian Kitchen, and now have been growing a business in that vertical.

[00:08:01] Roy Notowitz: So what were some of the biggest mindset shifts that you had to make transitioning from some of those more structured corporate environments to now leading an emerging brand?

[00:08:12] Kiernan Laughlin: There's a lot, and we could probably do a whole podcast on this, but I didn't know what it was like to move quickly and make decisions in the hallway. And I knew I preferred and operated better in places without a lot of bureaucracy, but it was still a transition. Especially because, you know, I've been with Deep now six and a half years, and the business was formally called Tandoor Chef. It was small, it was declining rapidly, you know, A) had to rebrand it. That, certainly, I'd, I'd done before.

[00:08:40] Roy Notowitz: Huge.

[00:08:41] Kiernan Laughlin: There wasn't a sales team when I joined. I was the sales team. And you know, having been in brand management in my past, I'd of course been in, in sales means before, but it's a different thing to have to carry the bag.

[00:08:52] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:08:52] Kiernan Laughlin: And there wasn't a P&L. I had to create the first P&L myself in Excel. And there, there were no budgets, there was no demand planning, there was no trade planning, there was no accrual accounting. So all of these processes and structures, I was wearing the hat of building those. So that was a pretty big adjustment. Um.

[00:09:11] Roy Notowitz: How many people did you have on the team at that time? And then how did you decide when and who to hire next?

[00:09:17] Kiernan Laughlin: Initially we had three people including myself.

[00:09:19] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:09:19] Kiernan Laughlin: And there wasn't anyone in sales. There wasn't anyone in ops. There wasn't anyone in finance yet. So part of it was we had to prove the product market fit with the rebrand, and start to get some traction, and be able to afford to hire more people. Clearly, we, we needed, uh, people to sell the product so that those were some of the first priorities and then. Operations, I think, was a close second after that to make sure, if you sell the product, it'll be on shelf, it'll sell through. So, you know, worked out some early plans, and as we've gone from there, so now about 30 people on the team, constantly looking at, "What are the new capabilities that we need to add, and what are some of the gaps that we have today?" And then working with my leadership team to figure out what's the big priority in terms of hiring.

[00:10:09] Roy Notowitz: That's great. So were there any other big mindset shifts that you had to make during that transition?

[00:10:16] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, so one of the things that happens when you're in a growth stage business, and, in the beginning of the business, it was turnaround problems, and there was a fire every day, and trying to hang on. But then, we've got it into a rapid growth business, which comes with its own problems, and they're growth problems, which are good problems to have, but, they're problems nonetheless. And when you're growing as rapidly as we have, and we've grown about 12x in six years, every few months, it feels like a different business. So, the big shift there, as a leader, versus leading a mature business, is if you think about what's worked for you in the past, it's likely not going to work for you in the present, and it's certainly not going to work for you in the future. So, you have to be continually evolving the operating model, continually evolving the resourcing of the model. So I've learned my playbook has to be very nimble. Often the people on the team need to evolve as you're building new capabilities, and the type of people that you have on the team need to be similarly agile. And if you don't get that right, you can fall off that growth trajectory.

[00:11:22] Roy Notowitz: So, if you're hiring people who, let's call it, have this ability to evolve or be fluid within the context of a business that's growing and changing constantly, that's one thing. So I'm curious, you know, how you find, identify, or evaluate people just to see if they fit that mold. But then, also, if someone's not able to keep up, and they reach sort of a point where they've maxed out, how do you know when that's the case too? So do you have any sort of insights around specifically that type of person or leader that you're hiring on your team and their ability to adapt, and evolve, and move with the business?

[00:12:01] Kiernan Laughlin: The reality is not everybody can do it, and it's one of the most painful processes that you go through as a leader of a growth business, where, sometimes, you have people who've been outstanding for you at a, in an earlier stage, and you get to a stage where they're no longer as good of a fit for where you need to go, and, in some cases, you're able to find another role for them and help them stay with the organization. In other cases, you have to have hard discussions where you talk about what's the right way to be thankful for what you've done for the organization while helping you find another role externally. And that has happened. And I would say it's really hard to identify those because, if you're in a smaller environment, you tend to have personal relationships with the people on your team and it's emotional.

[00:12:50] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:12:50] Kiernan Laughlin: And they've been through a lot with you. So those are really tough discussions and decisions, and, typically, you know, a few months after a separation has happened that you probably should have done it sooner, but, because of that connection, you've delayed it.

[00:13:03] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:13:05] Kiernan Laughlin: In terms of finding people who can "scale with you," that's hard to do too. But one of the easier ways to identify it, just from a paper perspective, is someone who's worked in multiple stages of business. So, someone who's worked in a bigger company, maybe they've worked in a mid-size company too, and they've worked in a, an early stage brand all the way through to a growth stage or mature brand. If they've seen those life cycles, then they've got a sense of what it takes to evolve as you scale up the business.

[00:13:37] Roy Notowitz: That's interesting. And, like you said, when you're making those decisions early on, if you have to help somebody transition to something that's a better fit for them, whether it's internally or externally, there's so many things that they're doing that are valuable too, right? And so it's hard to let go of that and say, "Okay, who's going to cover those things?" And you get afraid of making those decisions because of the status quo and being able to actually see beyond that. And it's a little bit of a process, and it takes time and energy, and it's a difficult thing to do sometimes to keep the business moving forward.

[00:14:12] Kiernan Laughlin: A hundred percent. And the smaller your business, I think the more important each individual's contribution to that culture is.

[00:14:19] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:14:20] Kiernan Laughlin: So when you have someone who's fit in with your culture and helps build that, it makes it all the more challenging to roll the dice and say, "Hey, we might want to bring in someone externally," but you're never a hundred percent right across every search that you do for bringing someone in. You may upset the apple cart a little bit in terms of culture.

[00:14:38] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I think, too, the difference between big companies and small companies is: A) there's more opportunities to move people around, and B) in a smaller company, sometimes you don't have the luxury of time just because you need to keep moving the business forward profitably, and everyone needs to contribute. So, what advice do you have for other executives who might be thinking about joining an emerging brand, especially those coming from bigger companies? That's always a great thing to have on your resume, big and small companies, but some people can make that leap, others can't. Some people want to, others don't, so what's your advice?

[00:15:19] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah. It's funny, and I'm sure you know this quite well, but most people in emerging brands, they want to hire people with a classical, big CPG background, plus one startup experience. Generally, people don't want to be the first one because there's actually a high failure rate and--

[00:15:39] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. It's a shock to the system.

[00:15:42] Kiernan Laughlin: It is. It's a total culture shock, and people think it sounds glamorous to have less red tape and move faster -- and that's the stereotypical answer for why they go from big to small -- but the reality, it's rarely a fit for big CPG people, particularly those who've been there for a long time because the people who thrive there tend to be very structured, pretty risk averse. The longer they're there, the more they're reliant on other people to get things done, and they're not used to operating in an environment where there's a lot of ambiguity. So, what happens is, yes, that less spread tape is a pro, and you move a lot faster, but they're a lot of cons and, in comparison to a more predictable, mature, stable environment in big CPG, it's pretty chaotic. It's a rollercoaster, and the highs are a lot higher, and the lows are a lot lower. And, to succeed as a leader, you have to be very decisive. You have to be able to rely on your gut. You may not have the reams of data that you typically had in--

[00:16:42] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:16:43] Kiernan Laughlin: --in, in a bigger environment, and you may not have 15 other leaders to bounce ideas off of and get consensus, which is also how you move faster. But you also have to be pretty willing to be humble. There's a lot more you have to do yourself, and you, sometimes, have to take out the proverbial trash -- and sometimes maybe the literal trash -- because you're going to lack the resources, and you also may not know as much as you thought you knew.

[00:17:08] Roy Notowitz: You have to connect a lot of different dots in areas that maybe you had teams or people focusing in on and didn't have to really think about or make those connections, but they happened automatically.

[00:17:20] Kiernan Laughlin: Right, right. And, in a big company, there's always "people for that," and, in a small company, you are the people for that. And--

[00:17:27] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:17:28] Kiernan Laughlin: --you have to be willing to admit--

[00:17:30] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:17:30] Kiernan Laughlin: --maybe you don't know something, you better build a network of, of friends that can help give you advice on, on what to do.

[00:17:37] Roy Notowitz: So I'm curious, what kind of guidance or advice would you have for those people who are trying to hire in an executive or a leader and are interested in trying to evaluate or figure out if they can make that shift? Maybe it's the first time they've done it.

[00:17:53] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, I mean, someone's always got to start with the first hire to make that transition. If I were doing it, I probably still would advocate to be the second startup that someone's done. And I approach it that way on, on my own business.

[00:18:07] Roy Notowitz: That makes my job a lot harder sometimes.

[00:18:11] Kiernan Laughlin: But I'm give you, I'll give you a "but," I'll give you a "but," I think if it's a category that someone's currently in. If it's a business that's at the inflection point where now they have to become more professionalized and more sophisticated, versus a sub-$10 million brand. Once you get a little bit larger, now some of those big CPG tools start to come into play and everyone will say, "Yes, I want less red tape, and it moves faster." If that's all they say, I would screen them out. If they've instead had a lot of conversations with people who are maybe five years ahead of them on that transition. They've gotten a solid understanding of what it looks like. Or maybe they sat on an advisory board for an emerging brand. Maybe they did a consulting project for an emerging brands. They've started to get a sense of what applies and what doesn't apply from their big company experience. Then I think you start to de-risk some of that move, but someone who, let's say they're working in snacks and they get recruited for a, an emerging snack brand, and they haven't understood why it's different and the different levers they're going to have to pull, then I think you've got a lot of risk.

[00:19:21] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I think maybe considering the board and/or coaching or there might be other resources to help that person also onboard, and adjust, and adapt to the transition as well. So let's talk about your situation. The CEO of your parent company is a product visionary, and, like many founders in the food industry, that's the case. Every product developer is different, but have you noticed any patterns that make those relationships more successful between the CEO and founders?

[00:19:54] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, and I think the first and foremost is mutual respect. And you know, I've been in the industry 19 years. I've been fortunate to work with product developers and R&D professionals throughout my career. And I know I can't do what they do, and I appreciate what they can do. My job, I can identify a white space. I can give you a brief on what we want and give you feedback. But my wife will tell you I'm not a good chef. I'm also not a food scientist, for that matter, but I bring a different set of operational skills and experiences to the table that are complementary and necessary to scale a business, build a team, build a culture on the foundation of that product. And I'm fortunate in my current situation that deep respects my ability. I have the autonomy to lead the day-to-day operations, but then, when we need to innovate, you know, I partner with Deep and-- the person and his family, and they create amazing products. And you know, you can't do one without the other. You need the product to be good, to be able to build the business around it. And the other thing I would say there is, it's important to realize from someone in my role that most product visionaries are going to be motivated by creativity, and that's actually what makes them so great. It also means they're generally more of Type B, whereas an operator like me is Type A and have to figure out how to compliment each other.

[00:21:15] Roy Notowitz: Right.

[00:21:16] Kiernan Laughlin: So, the operator and the visionary really have to align on vision, and strategy, and make sure that creativity is still there, but also channel it in the right direction. And that's where bringing in some tools like a Stage-Gate, not a big CPG, five year Stage-Gate, but light ones, can help to funnel those ideas and make sure right innovations are launched at the right time, as opposed to just unbridled creativity, which can quickly get you ahead of your skis.

[00:21:45] Roy Notowitz: Yeah, that's a great example. Thank you. How do you scale a business while staying mission-driven and agile? And what are one or two tangible ways that you've kept your team aligned and motivated as the company evolves?

[00:21:59] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, so the first thing you do is you hire good people, right?

[00:22:01] Roy Notowitz: Easy.

[00:22:02] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah. I wish it were easy, but you know it's not. But you, you aim to hire people who are agile, people who are bought into your purpose, bought into your mission, bought into your culture. And then, ongoing, there's a few tangible things that, that we do, and one of the core values that I have on our team and in our culture is transparency. So we do a lot of sharing out. We have two types of all-hands meetings. There's a benefit to the culture in that, but also there's a benefit to the day-to-day business, because, particularly in emerging brands, you're constantly firefighting. There's going to be a crisis, and it's usually a crisis that affects multiple functions on the team. So when these cross-functional team members are already friendly with each other, and they have to solve a problem, they can come together, versus just emailing someone they don't really know.

[00:22:48] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. When you're hiring, what qualities are you looking for that go beyond the resume?

[00:22:54] Kiernan Laughlin: Some of the most important, I would say, are shared values with our team's culture, and you got to have passion for a brand and business. Got to have the ability to influence others, to affect change, or, what we're often doing is building a new structure or process, and you're going to have to bring along, you know, a lot of people as you do that. And also I think it's really important to have the ability to think on your feet. So, most people, or at least most people, should be able to in interview, answer the question of, "Why do you want to work at this company?" Or, "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" But typically, I like to throw a little curveball question in there that someone can't prepare for, which is important because you do have to move fast in emerging brands. You don't always have the time to prepare and you, you do have to make decisions quickly.

[00:23:41] Roy Notowitz: So, when you think about, or reflect on your highest performing team members over the years, have there been any traits, or behaviors, or things that you've observed that stand out?

[00:23:53] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah, absolutely. I think the ability to pivot between being scrappy or sophisticated, depending on the situation is critical in a growth business. And we, we've grown a lot, but we still don't have the resources of a bigger company, so we still have to move quickly. We have to do more with less, and often ,we're fighting for more than our fair share of attention from a larger organization, externally; however, when we do get our attention with those larger organizations, we need to do our best to show up as sophisticated, if not more, as a larger organization. And then, internally, we need people who are, you know, selectively able to add more sophistication to our internal systems or processes, but, essentially, lighter versions of what big companies have. So it's important that someone we hire has a good understanding of when to be scrappy, when to be sophisticated, and the difference between the two because we have to go back and forth all the time.

[00:24:51] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. So what learnings or insights have you gained from reflecting on past hiring successes, or maybe, more importantly, hires that didn't work out.

[00:25:01] Kiernan Laughlin: I love talking about the successes, but the reality is hiring's hard. You know this, and no one gets it a hundred percent right. So everybody has both successes and failures, and I think the key is trying to maximize the probability of that success.

[00:25:17] Roy Notowitz: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:25:18] Kiernan Laughlin: So to, to do that, what we've done is standardize the approach, which is especially important when you're hiring quickly. Maybe some of your hiring managers are earlier in their career. They haven't hired much before. And aside from trying to avoid just hiring the wrong fits, one of the biggest challenges we've had in the past, because we're growing rapidly, is we're searching for a job. It's because we need to fill that job, and we need to fill it pretty urgently. And if we can't fill a job fast enough, let's say a search that should have taken two or three months, now takes six or seven months, then two things happen. One, we have an execution issue because we're not able to resource the business we need to. Two, you start to create burnout on the current team because now they're doing two jobs. So, the solution we found to that is, is putting in more time on the upfront, aligning upfront on the job description. We have a recruiting brief. So, similar to a creative brief if you're a marketer, and that's disseminated both internally in a discussion and externally, if we work with a recruiter. And then spending a lot of time on, on calibration. And all of that is, particularly when you're moving fast in the business and you're trying to hire because you need more resource, it feels like a big time commitment, but it actually makes the search go smoother and take less time, end to end. Because if you don't invest that time upfront in aligning, then, often you get midway into a search, you're off track, you have to hit the reset button, and it, it makes a small problem become a bigger problem in terms of your, your staff.

[00:26:49] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. I mean, I'm a huge fan of structure, first, and being consistent, and putting that thoughtfulness and that consideration on the front end, really. And then aligning that across the team with the brief. That's brilliant. And that's, I would say, a best practice for other people to, to emulate if they're not already. What part of Deep Indian Kitchen culture makes you most proud or is the most fun?

[00:27:13] Kiernan Laughlin: I'm, I'm most proud when we get to promote people. Those are the best days. And been fortunate this year already, I believe, seven people that we've promoted -- which is a lot. Our team's about 30, and when we promote people, not only is it a thrill to celebrate them and their individual development, but it also shows that, you know, our processes have worked. We, we've done the right thing in terms of hiring the right people who fit our culture, and then they've been able to thrive in it, and they've contributed to our growth, which has now opened up a bigger role, and they've now shown the ability to step into that bigger role. So, it's a great sign when we see a person is thriving and growing. The business is thriving and growing, and that, that creates new opportunity. And that's really the best, that's the most fun. When I joined, and the brand was called Tandoor Chef, we had about a 13% share of frozen Indian food nationwide. We now have a 47% share.

[00:28:08] Roy Notowitz: Wow.

[00:28:09] Kiernan Laughlin: Nationwide.

[00:28:10] Roy Notowitz: That's amazing.

[00:28:10] Kiernan Laughlin: So, dramatic growth. And that allows us really to play even more so with our purpose, where it was always about representing the Indian culture through food, and getting more people to appreciate it, and even sometimes correcting misperceptions. Now, from a business perspective, that's our only choice because, when you have a 47% share, you're not growing by gaining share from other people, you have to grow the pie. So we're at a really fun stage in our business where it's about how do we use marketing to, to create more awareness for frozen Indian food? How do we use innovation to create more occasions to consume Indian food. That's really fun when you think about it. You know, that's, that's our purpose, and every product that's sold by Deep benefits the Deepkiran Foundation, which is a foundation that helps underprivileged children in rural India get access to education. We can talk for a long time about that foundation, and how emotional it is, and how uplifting it is, but the reality is, there's no school bus that picks up kids in rural India.

[00:29:17] Roy Notowitz: Yeah.

[00:29:17] Kiernan Laughlin: And a lot of times, they don't get to go to school, so the foundation steps in and provides transportation, it provides books, it provides food, and allows people to have upward social mobility, which is really powerful.

[00:29:30] Roy Notowitz: That's amazing. We'll make sure to have a link to that so anyone who's interested in learning more can learn more. You know, you have a strong mission and purpose, and I'm curious if there's a recent moment, whether it's big or small, that reminded you of why this work that's happening, whether it's with the foundation or within the business itself, matters.

[00:29:52] Kiernan Laughlin: Yeah. Every so often I will hear on social media, or in person, from someone who is Indian, and I'm not, that they're proud of what we're doing, and they're excited to see their food and their culture being represented by us and in more places than they've seen it before. And that's a lot more than selling food in a box.

[00:30:13] Roy Notowitz: What advice do you have for the next generation of CPG leaders?

[00:30:17] Kiernan Laughlin: My advice is, if you aspire to a career in CPG, whether you want to go in the startup space or whether you want to build a career in the corporate space, is to, in fact, start your career in a big company environment where you can get classical training. And, if you want to go to startups long term, just be aware that you don't want to spend too much time in the big company environment because you don't want to lose the ability to be scrappy and do things yourself anymore. But it is extremely helpful to be able to learn best practices and frameworks from big companies and also observe what slows them down sometimes and makes it harder for them to innovate in certain ways. So then you learn both how to be disruptive and how to be selective about when to add some of that sophistication, some of those big company best practices to your business as they scale. But doing so in a way that you don't slow down a business.

[00:31:15] Roy Notowitz: What are you excited about as you think about the future and what's next for you?

[00:31:21] Kiernan Laughlin: The Deep Indian Kitchen business, it's in a really fun stage. We've been growing rapidly. Needless to say, our current five year strategic plan looks very different than our previous five year plan, which was really about, "Can we launch our product and core items into new stores?" And now we're sold in over 22,000 doors nationwide. So it's about growing the pie, it's about growing our portfolio and global flavors with new formats, new occasions. We've entered into adjacent categories and bringing in some more sophisticated tools and processes. So we have a light Stage-Gate that drives our innovation. Uh, we're now doing marketing, that's awareness marketing, not just bottom of the funnel marketing, and a lot around creating operational leverage so we can get more profitable. But that's adding systems, that's adding processes, and that enables us to invest back in the business, keep that flywheel growing, and now we go to market as a thought leader with the trade to grow the category. And you know that, that's a fun place to be. And the foundation for that is, is the products, of course, and continued innovation, but also it's people. And we're at the fortunate stage now where we get to continue to hire more top talent as we add new capabilities, and that's a lot of fun.

[00:32:36] Roy Notowitz: Yeah. That always helps. As you're starting to grow, and you have more and more success, you're able to keep elevating your team and that just attracts other great people as well, so, that's exciting.

[00:32:47] Kiernan Laughlin: Absolutely. Talent attracts talent. I believe that strongly. And many of our best hires have been internal referrals.

[00:32:54] Roy Notowitz: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time. You're a really unique and capable leader, and, obviously, able to flex between the big company and small company scenarios, and highly, highly respect the work that you've done. And thank you so much for taking time to share about your company and how you hire.

[00:33:17] Kiernan Laughlin: Well, thank you so much for having me, Roy. This has been a pleasure, and the most important thing you can do to grow a business is hire good people and you know, as well as I, that's easier, easier said than done, you know, hopefully been able to share a couple things that have worked for us, and it can help others. And just a pleasure to speak about it with you.

[00:33:38] Roy Notowitz: Thanks for tuning in to How I Hire. Visit howihire.com for more details about the show. This podcast is created by Noto Group Executive Search. To find out more about us visit notogroup.com. You can also sign up for our monthly job alert newsletter there and find additional job search strategy, resources, and content on hiring. This podcast was produced by Anna McClain. To learn more about her and her team's work, visit aomcclain.com.

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