Founder Series: Navigating Uncertainty & Disruption

w/ Rachel Reid, Founder & CEO, Subtl Beauty

Buzzwords like “grit” and “resilience” often complicate how we talk about the psychological and emotional pressures of business building. As it turns out, you can possess both and still have days where you—and your leadership choices—look and feel like a dumpster fire.

I’m always inspired by how our founders navigate uncertainty and disruption. Even more uplifting is how they are redefining what it means to build resilience and show grit... while also caring for themselves and for others.

It's a pleasure to showcase a few of their stories, in their own words. Enjoy!

Rachel Reid, Founder and CEO, SubtlBeauty

1) Knowing what you know about how quickly and significantly circumstances change, how do you think about long term planning? How do you balance the upsides of long term planning with the need to be dynamic, in real time?

Planning is extremely important to both achieving your goals and maintaining team sanity. I keep a long-term plan for almost every aspect of the business based on the information I have at the moment. However, things happen - timelines change, a product is more expensive than we expected, we sell out of something before the scheduled restock. When this happens, we change the plan, we get creative and we do something different. It feels very second nature to our team but maybe that’s what you get at a company that spent most of its life in a global pandemic.

2) What’s your take on transparency with your team? How do you decide what to share and what to hold back?

I’m very open with my team, if we have a rough week or month, we all problem-solve together because we all share the same responsibility to the company goals. How we perform as a company is an indication of how we are performing as teams and as individuals. Where I do hold back is if the information doesn’t serve them, or is out of their control. My job is not to burden my team but to encourage, motivate, and unblock.

3) How do you help your team navigate uncertainty? In what ways, if any, does uncertainty guide how you set and measure performance goals and other KPIs?

“Uncertainty” is just an absence of creativity. If you’re uncertain about X, figure out all the things that can contribute to X and then measure the impact of actively working on those things. If X changes, then let’s double down on what worked and start setting measurements for them. If X stays the same, then we iterate on the old list or come up with a new list.

4) Do you use any techniques / approaches for managing stress and prioritizing mental health (yours or your team’s) that you are willing to share?

I believe every founder should be in therapy as a baseline. If you’re crazy enough to start a business you’re crazy enough to be in therapy. On a more serious note, so much of what we don’t resolve within ourselves often seeps into company culture and structure, and can create a lot of destruction. Therapy is a competitive advantage.

When it comes to the mental health of my employees, it’s my job to ensure their work is well balanced and that they are fulfilled in their roles. This involves structured 1:1 meetings and clear company-wide planning to name a few.

5) There’s been a lot of conversation about the importance of “resilience” in business building. What does that word mean to you, if anything at all?

I think resilience is choosing to get up each day, and to continue working despite setbacks, uncertainty, or lack of instant gratification.

6) Startup culture has long celebrated “grit” as a pre-requisite for success, but often done so in a machismo way. If you could write your own definition for the word grit, how would it read?

I don’t have much of an opinion on this, I guess to me grit is just doing the hard thing despite it being hard.

7) What’s your favorite way to blow off steam or recharge after a tough day?

I’m less focused on reaction and more focused on proaction. If I know I’m going to have a particularly difficult day, then I start my day with a gratitude journal (it helps keep perspective when dealing with curveballs,) and I try to get in a really hard workout (to help feel accomplished before I even start my workday.) These two things usually help keep tough days more manageable. I’m not perfect so if that fails, I go for a walk or watch netflix or both.

8) If you could give one piece of advice to a new founder starting out today about how to survive the uncertainty of building a company, what would it be?

It wasn’t supposed to be easy, so just keep going.

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Subtl Beauty is the intelligence software connecting the digital marketing world to brick and mortar sales in today's dynamic marketplace. Clerdata gives CPG companies a data edge to drive better marketing and trade decisions through actionable insights and recommendations.

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