Mary Wiegand - Founder and CEO of Boon LLC: Flexible Employment, Work/Life Blending, and Freeing Yourself from Working “In” the Business

Mary Wiegand  00:00

There's people that know things more than I do. Like, I don't know everything about everything. So why wouldn't I just go to the expert on each individual kind of functional area, or in my personal life, right, like getting the support that I need to feel confident again, to be able to put myself out there and grow Boon in this way.

Callan Harrington  00:17

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone, to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Mary Wiegand. Mary is the CEO and founder of Boon LLC. Founded in 2017 and run by women, Boon LLC is a hands-on demand planning consultancy. Mary brings over sixteen years of demand planning experience across many channels, having previously worked for companies such as Target and Victoria's Secret. This was a really fun conversation. We talked about how Mary finds new partners for Boon, how she was able to free herself from client work in order to really focus her time on building the business, and we went into detail on the impact that that extra time working on the business has had. She gave great breakdowns on each of those. But the part that I found the most interesting was what Mary calls work-life blend. And she has created at Boon, one of the more unique employment models that I've seen today. It gives her employees at Boon flexibility to work when it's most convenient for them, instead of having set working hours. As a result, she's attracting top talent, and their employees have been much happier. It was really fascinating. She gets really into the weeds for anybody that's looking to do this in their own company. She went into the weeds, and it was really fascinating. It's so much so that it's something that I'm really looking at how can I implement this in my own business. But with that, I'll let Mary break it down in the episode, because I'm not going to do it justice here. So let's get into the show. Mary, I am excited to have you on the show today. And where I'd like to start out is tell us the story of the time that you donated 20,000 pop tabs to the Ronald McDonald House.

Mary Wiegand  02:46

Oh, yes. What a story. So this took place when I was twelve years old. At the age of twelve I was already having some entrepreneurial endeavors. And I saw a sign that said the Ronald McDonald House would take soda tabs actually, as I called them, and they would take them as donations that they could turn into cash to, you know, support their mission for the Ronald McDonald House. I found it interesting. And I thought, hmm, let me see if I can make this a thing where I can donate some soda tabs to them. But I started collecting, and I was not working very quickly. I was like this is not very many soda tabs. How can I find an opportunity to increase my impact on the soda tab donation? I then thought about where's a lot of soda being utilized and drank consistently? And I thought about airplanes. And I had at the time an aunt who was a flight attendant for American Airlines. So I called her up and asked if she would help me collect soda tabs by during her flights, clicking off every single soda tab from all of the passengers and collecting them for me. I then recruited two of her additional flight attendant friends, and they for the three of them, for about two months, collected all the soda tabs off all of their flights. And then we actually had a board meeting for the official saving soda tabs group that I created with the four of us. And they handed them to me in big gallon bags of all the soda tabs and we got about 20,000 that I then brought to the Mall of America, because then during this time I also moved to the city of Minneapolis, and Ronald McDonald had a big donation moment, and we got to bring the 20,000 to Mall of America and donate them all for the Ronald McDonald House.

Callan Harrington  04:27

How intense was this board meeting?

Mary Wiegand  04:30

There was actually a easel with a sign that said "saving soda tabs board meeting" and it had an agenda. It was held in the formal dining room in my aunt's home. There was also t-shirts with a large soda tab on the front of the t-shirt.

Callan Harrington  04:47

So you went all out. Well one, of course you went all out, because you got 20,000. If I was in the same situation, it's like, you know, my buddy Chris, drinks like a twelve pack of Coke a day, and that would be it, and I'd probably get whatever Chris drank, and that was it. I would win no awards and make no money off of this. But you had 20,000? Now, did you- So I guess this is probably an obvious statement, but did you always want to be an entrepreneur?

Mary Wiegand  05:10

You know, I don't know that I, in my head, knew that I wanted to. But yes, looking back, I was always doing things to try to find opportunities to create business to find unique ways to interact in the economy. So yeah, it was just kind of the start there with the soda tabs, and I didn't win an award. I got no accolades from anybody else, you know. But it was something that really, for me, it was impactful. And I tell the story a lot, even today, obviously.

Callan Harrington  05:37

So here's the question, was it the thrill of the build? Or was it the prize, that was the excitement at the end of the day?

Mary Wiegand  05:44

Oh, it was for sure the thrill of the build, and finding opportunity that I can tap into this market of flight attendants who touch hundreds of sodas a day to pull those pop tabs, see, and now I'm switching, the soda tabs, off of them. So I think it was really the finding that like, creativity, curiosity, and like how to make this thing better, instead of just myself saving the soda tabs.

Callan Harrington  06:08

I love that story. I think it is incredible. So here's what I'm curious about then. Because you started your career out at Target. Is that correct?  That's not starting your own business. Right? That's like, was that very intentional? Did you want to go to a very big company to learn, and then ultimately start a company, or were you not even thinking about starting a company at that point?

Mary Wiegand  06:23

Correct. Yes.  I was not thinking about starting a company at that point. But I was diverging from the norm. And so meaning that I had an a degree in economics, and when I was looking at my peers, you know, senior year, a lot of them were finding banking, insurance, things that like led, you know, financial institutions that led directly from their economics degree. And I just thought, That's not how I want to interact with the business world, how I want to use my economics degree. And so it was really discovering retail in that like, corporate environment, that was intriguing to me that thought, hey, I can actually use this micro economic degree that I have, in terms of supply and demand, and really put it to use at a place like Target. And so I had the opportunity to interview there and really kind of took that and ran with it.

Callan Harrington  07:14

So you talk a lot about Target in some of the interviews that you did. What was it about Target in particular, that was really impactful to you?

Mary Wiegand  07:20

They did have a very strong training program. So not that I knew that I was going to be on this path at that point. But they took it and you were put into a training group for four months. So for those first four months, you were shadowing, you were learning about corporate retail, you were learning about the mathematics of how we look at inventory, compared to the demand in the stores. It felt like they were really caring for those recent college graduates. And so I thought it was a really good opportunity to kind of start my career in that way and actually did not intend to move to Minneapolis after college. And so it was really Target that brought me back, having gone to high school there, and then came back specifically for Target.

Callan Harrington  07:58

I know we talked about before the show, I've heard Minneapolis is like the most underrated. People love it.

Mary Wiegand  08:03

It is the best. I know I shouldn't say it on air, because people don't want me to encourage people to move there. But I do love it. It's my favorite city. Yeah. It has the blend of kind of everything. So if you think about, you know what New York can offer in terms of hustle bustle, what the Midwest can offer in terms of general like, life, way of life, but with a lot of culture and exposure, which doesn't seem like you would get from Minneapolis, but they have a very high theater scene, a great restaurant scene, all the major sports are there. So you really get to have a lot of activity. And then the weather doesn't matter. We all, everyone that's there, plays outside, does activities outside, regardless of the time of year. So it really creates a whole community.

Callan Harrington  08:10

Why specifically? I love that last part. Like every time we talk to somebody from Chicago, like I love Chicago, it's well, it's one month, it's terrible.

Mary Wiegand  08:51

I mean, the weather isn't the best, but you get through it. Yeah.

Callan Harrington  08:54

So true. You went to Target. And I definitely- I hear you on that, you know, I started my career out at Northwestern Mutual. And it exposed me to sales. But I think I almost needed that right out of the gate because I needed to be in this structure, like they had tons, and tons, and tons, and tons of data on if you do this, you will be successful, if the psychology behind it, the numbers behind it... And a lot of that stuff I still use to this day. I quickly went into startups after that. So you've worked at some startups. What kind of led right up before founding Boon? What did that look like?

Mary Wiegand  09:25

Exactly. Yeah, I kind of, I like to say that I went from, you know, a large, large corporation and I've worked my way down in terms of revenue dollars, just because I wanted to get more accountability and more ownership of my role. So I've kind of done the same thing. And having moved from the bigger corporations down into right before starting Boon was at a startup full time. And what it showed me is taking all of that foundation, that I really did learn functionally from the big retailers, and say okay, wait, now there is no one guiding me. There is no milestone, meaning there's no three levels of hierarchy that's going to correct me if I'm making a mistake or if I'm missing a step. I have to start from scratch, and know what it's going to take to be successful, and understand cross functionally how everybody works together when you're doing a team of twenty five, instead of, you know, 25,000, or 2500. So it really did open my eyes to the applicability of all of those things I had been doing and really watching how it goes from like A to Z, and not just the one tiny portion that you were maybe responsible for in a larger corporation.

Callan Harrington  10:30

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point that you mentioned around, as you went down further, you had less checks and balances on the things that you're doing. So you had more room to be able to make mistakes. How do you feel that impacted you founding a company just in general, going down that path of- because what I'm hearing, it's really, there's two ways I think people do it, where it's, you started a big company, and I've heard this theme a couple of times on the show, where you're going to smaller and smaller and smaller companies, and then you build that confidence up on the way to start your own business, versus just you have to just jump into the deep end. Was that kind of what you were thinking along this path? And how did that impact you as an entrepreneur?

Mary Wiegand  11:09

Exactly. I mean, I think the confidence building is huge, in just the understanding of what you're functionally able to provide for a brand. And so I built building that skill set, and then the confidence to know that I could do it. But how I made the leap to Boon, I don't know it was quite there. Like I was building that confidence, still, at this point, not knowing what I was going to do, in terms of like creating the company. It was not a path. So back to my you know, saving soda tabs, that was happening inside of my personality. I know that entrepreneurship was there. But it was actually motherhood that kicked me into actually having to create Boon.

Callan Harrington  11:44

I see your back on the soda tabs and not pop tabs.

Mary Wiegand  11:46

Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Callan Harrington  11:47

Yeah. Okay. (laughs)

Mary Wiegand  11:48

I reverted back. Yeah.

Callan Harrington  11:48

You drew your line in the sand on that one. Let's talk about that. So what led up to, what was kind of that moment that said, okay, I've got to found this, I've got to start my, I have to start Boon? What did that look like?

Mary Wiegand  11:59

Yeah, so I had given birth to my daughter, who was my second child. So I had two kids, I'd returned to work after you know, a very typical twelve weeks of maternity leave, was back working full time at the startup, and trying to manage the kids in childcare and just life, and you know, a full time job. And I just thought I can't do this, I cannot commit myself to the job as much as I want to, I can't commit myself to the kids as much as I want to, you know. Many moms find themselves in this situation. And so for me, I made the leap and said, I'm going to quit the full time job, and I'm going to start Boon. Now even at that time, I thought I just wanted to keep my brain going, I did not want to lose the trajectory that I'd been on in terms of like really building this career. But I wasn't ready to like sell my soul to a single brand. So I thought if I can find a consulting opportunity that will allow me to be flexible, and be with the kids when I can, and maybe not work forty hours, which also turns to fifty or sixty hours, I could get that like nice blend. It did not start as like, I'm gonna start a whole company, it was a personal choice that I was going to find a route for myself, to be able to use my skills, and not necessarily thinking that I was going to build an entire company around.

Callan Harrington  13:12

It sounds like the challenge that you were having was, if I'm hearing that correctly, is that you were wrestling with this, I've built this career, and I'm continuing to grow on this track in this career at these other companies. I've had this life event, I'm a mom now, I don't want to give everything I have to the business at this point. But I still am very, I'm very ambitious, I want to continue to grow, I want to continue to do this. So your solution for that was I'm going to start consulting and see where that goes. Because if I'm consulting, this was a big one for me, give me a hell of a lot more flexibility. Was that a big driver in that for doing that?

Mary Wiegand  13:52

I mean, I think at the start, it was really just the total hours. I was like, I do not have enough hours in the week to devote forty or fifty to a full time job when I'm also trying to raise two kids and you know, run a household. So it was that flexibility and reduced hours. The joke is that I you know, say I was going to work part time, but that has never happened. As you can imagine in consulting, retail, and now running a company, I don't work part time, but I am able to be flexible. And we like to say at Boon that we blend our work and life back together, because it's not a balance, right? It's never going to be balanced. So work life balance, I don't believe exists, but a blend of work and life is really what I was going after of how do I better mesh these two. And to your point, I didn't want to lose that I had built a really strong foundational skill set that I thought could be applicable. And my brain is one that wants to work, so I didn't want to have, you know, a different course. I really wanted to stay on that like working mom course.

Callan Harrington  14:48

I wonder how many people struggle with that. I struggle with that a lot. I kept working my way up and getting these bigger positions. But it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. Not to say didn't enjoy a lot of the aspects of the work, but I knew I wanted to be doing my own business, starting my own thing, and things like that. But I had a huge fear of making that leap as a result of doing that. I guess my question is, once you made that leap, started getting some of those early clients, was that fear still there? Or did that evaporate? What did that look like for you?

Mary Wiegand  15:23

So the fear of like, you know, the trajectory that I was on, and what this was going to put in front of me, was still there. And it took a couple years, I would say. So today, as we stand, Boon is six years old, our birthday's next year, or next- sorry, next week. But yeah, it took a couple years, it took a couple years of me figuring out like, oh, this is consistent, this is going to be needed in the marketplace, we're growing. You know, I brought people onto the team. So the fear of not knowing where the path was, is even still a little bit around, right, I have to know that this is non traditional. It's entrepreneurial, but it's also non traditional, even for retail, in a big way. So I think the fear definitely is still there. And it's something we you know, we battle kind of every week in terms of like, what the path looks like.

Callan Harrington  16:07

I'd love to unpack a couple things that you just mentioned, right there. So you mentioned, it's non traditional. As I understand it, it's a non traditional offering, and it's non traditional, in your setup with employees internally. Is that correct?

Mary Wiegand  16:20

That is correct. Yes. It's non traditional.

Callan Harrington  16:22

Where do we want to start? I'd love to start with the employees, if you don't mind. Why is it non traditional with employees.

Mary Wiegand  16:28

So as I said, you know, my intention for myself was to work part time, and it hasn't quite come to fruition, as I've developed into this full entrepreneur, but my entire team does work part time. We do offer them what we call a non traditional work opportunity. And it allows them to blend their work and life back together how they want. And what that really means is we have people on the team that work twelve hours a week, up to thirty hours a week. And those hours are also split among whenever they're able to work. So more of our core day-to-day consultants who interact with the clients are working a more traditional, say, like nine to three o'clock time when their kids are generally in school. We have others who will pull hours in the evenings, when they can fit in when their kids are, you know, with their significant other or asleep. And they're only able to put in, you know, twelve hours a week. So we all kind of blend that back together and allow- we are an all women team right now- our females to have an opportunity to have a job that uses their core skills, but they again, are not committing to forty hours a week or any specific exact timeframe that they have to be at the office or, quote unquote, at their laptop.

Callan Harrington  17:36

So are they considered full time employees? Are they contractors?

Mary Wiegand  17:39

So within the Boon team, I have three W-2 employees, but also the rest are 1099 contractors, correct.

Callan Harrington  17:45

Okay, I'm probably going to get into the weeds here, because I'm super interested in this. Because I think about this sometimes, especially with- and I'm in a consulting company, and there's the debate, do you do this through contractors? Do you do this through full time employees. And there's pros and cons to both. And the reality is, you know, if I would have hired- in my world because I'm very dependent on the tech space, and over the past eighteen months tech's essentially been in a recession, but right before that, it was on fire, and I was going to flip three to four people full time, would have had to lay them off. But as a contractor, it was still able to kind of flex in flex out and it worked really well. I guess for you, what have been- first let'sstart with this- what are the biggest pros of this, of doing this in a flexible way in which that you're doing it?

Mary Wiegand  18:34

I think you've said it exactly. As the work ebbs and flows. The labor force ebbs and flows right with it. So I'm able to, you know, mitigate some financial risk, as you say, by knowing that my team is able to understand that like work comes and goes in that way.

Callan Harrington  18:49

What about the cons? Of course, right? It's very predictable revenue, the immediate con would be, if it's a W-2, you're taking the risk on the salary in order to get a higher profitability, right? Do you have trouble finding people for clients? Is there capacity concerns? What does that look like?

Mary Wiegand  19:06

I mean, the cons are, it starts out with I cannot tell them what to do in the same way that I could tell an employee. So if you think about that capacity idea, or a rush that retail, a client comes to us and need something relatively quickly, a lot of times it's myself or my W-2s that have to step in and do it. So it's a lot of pressure on us to kind of pick up the pieces at times, and then I have to make the decision, how long are we going to, quote unquote, pick up those pieces until we will hire another contractor or switch somebody around? So playing that workforce Tetris is hard, and not being able to direct them exactly when, how, where, they will work. I do not find a problem recruiting, because it is non traditional, and there's a lot of opportunities, for females specifically, to take an off ramp from their career. You know, a lot of my team maybe stayed home with their kids for a couple of years or many years where they have other entrepreneurial ideas they've done, but there's not very many on ramps back into their career. So some of you've taken an off ramp. And now you're looking for an on ramp. And Boon provides that. So I really actually have a pipeline of people that are interested in joining, it's still just making that right decision based on the number of workload we have, the amount of workload we have, and when we're ready to add them to the team.

Callan Harrington  20:19

With the concept, I've never heard that, I really liked that that off ramp, on ramp. Is that essentially that, okay, you can come in here, you're going to keep your skills very sharp, probably to grow them because you're getting really unique challenges, but you don't have to commit full time just yet. Is that essentially it?

Mary Wiegand  20:38

Correct. Well, I mean, the on ramp itself means think about like, let's start with the off ramp first. So the off ramp means, if you're a woman and you have your first child, you have a maternity leave, the off ramp is to just not return to work. Or you go back to work, you have a one year, work for one year after the child's born, you're like I can't do this, I take my off ramp. The on ramp is someone taking a chance on you. Maybe you've now been home for two years. They might be able to go in and get a full time job, they should be able to go on and get a full time job, they may not be ready to do that, and they want someone to start, we're helping them get their skills back up. So that on ramp is anyone that will take somebody back right after maybe a gap or a career shift. And for us, yes, our on ramp is very easy. Because we don't require hey, you have to be here from 9am to 5pm, you have to- we will call on you, we will send you emails at midnight, or anything like that. Right? It is about this is an easy on ramp. And there's just, I'm also saying there's not many on ramps even available.

Callan Harrington  21:34

That's kind of a huge competitive advantage. How do you manage that internally? Like the actual logistics of it? How do you manage that? And the expectations with the clients as well? And so I'm super curious.

Mary Wiegand  21:46

Yeah, so we build our team kind of around pods. So the clients don't necessarily, aren't concerned with how many people are touching what's happening within their their workload. They have one main point of contact, right? So the client, they don't necessarily see all the cog of the machine that's happening in the background. So they're kind of working with mostly a one to one relationship with a Boon team member, and, or myself at times. But then that Boon team member can turn around, and they have their group of contractors that will help them execute the work throughout the week, that's needed in order to return it back to the client. So it's a very internal process that we manage through project management, through task delegation, through a bunch of calendars, you know, a lot of color coding on who's doing what, a lot of bottoms up planning, is what we'll call it. I look at how every team member is working, what hours they desire, that rolls that up to a team level, and then how many hours the clients are paying, and push it back down and make sure that those two numbers are sort of jiving together as close as we can make them and divvy the workload up that way.

Callan Harrington  22:47

Are the FTE or the W-2s, are they the ones that are the like, that's the main point of contact?

Mary Wiegand  22:53

Exactly.

Callan Harrington  22:53

This is super interesting. As you can see, my wheels are spinning, because I could see- I'm very interested in- We do something very similar. And I found I had to move to a pod structure as well, because the clients actually get way more out of it, than if it was just one person on that.

Mary Wiegand  23:08

I pitch that to them, I want them to understand, like I say they don't concern themselves with it, but there's value in the fact that they're getting multiple brains, and multiple, just different thought processes on their particular client requests. But they don't have to deal with actually talking to multiple people like that.

Callan Harrington  23:25

Super interesting. With that structure, with Boon in particular, is that- it feels like that's deep rooted in the identity of Boon. Is that right? Because you guys have grown pretty rapidly. Is the plan that this is the structure, we're growing in this structure, we're not calling people in to where it's like, okay, now, we're only doing W-2s, at this point?

Mary Wiegand  23:49

Correct. I think my goal is to keep the structure somewhat similar. And just continue to like expand those pods, if you will, like more pods, but with a similar structure for everybody.

Callan Harrington  23:58

If somebody wanted to start this today, how would they do it? How would you coach them on how to do that?

Mary Wiegand  24:01

Like start your own Boon and all of this, with all the structure?

Callan Harrington  24:06

Not Boone, specifically. Not Boon, specifically.

Mary Wiegand  24:08

But a consulting agency that allows flexible work? I mean, I think you have to be planful. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but you know, I happened into this and really, you know, pandemic was a shift for us where we really did start to grow. And so I've been doing it for the last three years, rapidly, just learning as I go. If I could stop and have put myself back even in 2019, I would have created a lot of these structures to bring to the surface the transparency for me as the leader. What am I trying to accomplish here? So again, that tops down, how much am I trying to revenue pull in, but it's all about hours, right? So how many hours am I pulling in? And how many hours of labor do I have? And being really meticulous about understanding your revenue streams, just like you would in any business, you have to know your costs and your revenue, right? For us, it's like we look at it at hours, and how many hours are billable and how many hours are my team providing. I have just sort of run with that, until the last year is really when I've gotten down to the granularity of really understanding how to plan that out. So if someone was going to do it, you just have to think about putting all those pieces together. I think all entrepreneurship is like Tetris, but doing it this way, the Tetris pieces are just smaller, that you have to kind of hook together again. So you want to just be mindful, meticulous, slow, build it up, test and learn too. I mean, we are testing all kinds of stuff at Boone to try to make it more efficient.

Callan Harrington  25:35

Consider that smaller pieces Tetris example totally stolen, like 100%. It's like I'm just letting you know, ahead of time, I'm stealing that right now. I love that. So you've talked about this in other interviews about that you're a planner, and you obviously just gave a really good example of this. How do you do that within the business as a whole? Do you have a system that you use for annual planning, quarterly planning, with the team? What does that look like?

Mary Wiegand  25:59

So first of all, we don't have many systems. As a analytical person, I spend all my time in spreadsheets. So I'm just in Excel and Google Sheets for the most part, we have a couple you know, communication systems and project management systems. But the way we look at it, we do look at monthly financials, both pre planning, and then post planning, right? As I'm going into November now, I'm looking at with my leadership team, so my three W-2s, how are we looking tops down? How much hours are ready for us to work? How is that dividing by client? How is that dividing by team? And then, when we get to the end of the month, I am looking at okay, how do we actualize? And we're using, you know, our time cards and aggregating them back up at the very granular monthly level. We're also looking long range planning at every month, out through the end of 2024, for revenue and expenses and trying to plan that labor force, which is, of course, our largest expense, and all other expenses. But we're looking at it monthly with a heavily quarterly review as well.

Callan Harrington  26:58

Okay, that makes total sense. Here's what we forecasted, here with the actuals, here's how we were off, here's what we're going to do differently as a result of that. Is that correct?

Mary Wiegand  27:05

Correct. Yep.

Callan Harrington  27:06

So you talked a little bit about, we've got some systems. And I've heard you talk about this quite a bit, that you guys believe very much in its you can't rely on the technology, in retail in particular, can't rely on the technology. The people side to help support that is really where you win. Can you walk us through that a little bit?

Mary Wiegand  27:25

Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, technology definitely has its place. And it's not that I don't believe in technology. But when it comes to our functional areas, when you look at like demand planning and forecasting, there are a lot of softwares out there that will tell you that they will do your demand forecasting and your- or your demand planning and forecasting. And they will, if you have the right human putting the inputs in, so the real caution is that you cannot rely solely on technology, right? And the way our team will look at is if you have a technology, but you put garbage in, you get garbage out. So the wrong inputs into your demand planning and forecasting will just result in, you know, incorrect outputs that will then misinform your decisions. So for us, we really focus on getting those inputs correct, we definitely do not require and we don't, we don't even prefer at this point to work within the technology, we can do all of that work in Excel or Google Sheets, by taking in the right inputs, manipulating the data as we need to, and having the exports come out. And our clients are on the, you know, lower side of some of the revenue numbers. So we do believe that technology has a place, especially as you get more complex, you know, multi channel a lot of skews, technology can definitely help, but you have to have the right person there, or it's not going to result in what you want it to.

Callan Harrington  28:43

Gotcha. So if you don't have the right people putting in the right information, the technology is not going to be able to get the right information now.

Mary Wiegand  28:50

Correct.

Callan Harrington  28:51

Do you think that's always going to be the case?

Mary Wiegand  28:53

No, not for some, like if you think about back to our Target example, right? So like in Target, in paper towels, right? Like they can easily predict what's happening with paper towels. You don't probably need a human to tell you much about what's happening within the paper towel business day in and day out within the Target store. What Boon tries to work on, you know, as brands that are emerging, as they're startups, as they're in a growth phase, you can't just look at last year's number or last week's number, you have to manipulate enough different factors that will help you inform the future that's not just relying on last year. So it will always be the case for some of that like newness, or things that are not on a steady trend. But like, you know, steady trends can be found quickly too. So it's not that we will always be that way for everything but I do think there's always going to be an element of needing human touch.

Callan Harrington  29:44

Gotcha. What are your goals, the next level of Boon, what does that look like?

Mary Wiegand  29:48

That's a good question. I think, you know, we've definitely been in growth for the last three years. We've we've been trying to increase our exposure, really make sure that we are known in the retail space, as far as you know, a leading consultant agency, as far as demand forecasting, planning, analytics. I think I want to, you know, expand so that I can have more people on the team to provide this opportunity beyond just who is currently on the team, as well as you know, just grow top line and make sure we can service even more brands in this way, too.

Callan Harrington  30:19

You guys get a lot of referrals, is that correct?

Mary Wiegand  30:21

Correct.

Callan Harrington  30:22

Is it reactive? In that you have a lot coming your way? Do you have a process in place in which you ask for referrals? How do you continue to grow that referral number? Or is it, we do a lot of case studies, we do a lot of testimonials, we're at a lot of conferences, how do you get more referrals?

Mary Wiegand  30:39

I think, you know, that's something we're testing and learning. So everything you just listed there, whether it's, you know, direct referrals, whether it's partnerships, whether it's case studies, whether it's shows, are all things that we have been testing and learning to find which one hits the best. I think the way we do it is just continue to put ourselves out there and build that brand exposure, it will help across all of what you just mentioned. I do find that partnerships are very, very valuable to us. Specifically, if you think about a brand who's selling a product, right? They are probably going to go they're going to have a CPA pretty quickly in their journey, right?

Callan Harrington  31:13

Accountant, CPA? Okay, yeah, gotcha.

Mary Wiegand  31:15

Yeah, accountant, CPA, there also might have, you know, a fractional CFO, finance person. And those could be kind of blended between a firm maybe that does both, or an individual that does both. That person is very valuable to me, because they get into the books and start seeing the numbers and start seeing the inventory. And they're one who can tell the brand founder, hey, you need to find someone who has functional expertise in demand planning, forecasting, inventory management, find Boone. Because a lot of times, brands won't think to us in their first year, but we can be super valuable in that first year. So for me going to the partnerships, talking to these fractional, you know, accounting, CPA CFOs are really, really strong lead referrals, because I'm able to have an easier in with the brands.

Callan Harrington  31:59

How do you go out and find more of those? I'll give you an example. Because with our business in particular, most of our business comes from referrals from investors, typically venture capital, but sometimes private equity as well. And it really didn't dawn on me, this is ridiculous, but it didn't dawn on me until a couple quarters ago, why am I not spending more time building these relationships? How do you find new ones? How do you nurture the ones that you do have?

Mary Wiegand  32:23

I think for me, as you know, for as Boon's founder CEO, I have taken the last year and really pushed myself to get out of the billable work, right. So I had my head down, doing tons of planning work, and I realized I have to get myself out of that, give the team the power, you know, the accountability to do it, and give myself the space to do exactly what you just said. I spend most of my time cultivating relationships, the ones I have, whether that's monthly check ins, right? On my calendar, I have some people that repeat every single month. And just like, hey, what's happened the last month? Where are you at? What clients are you seeing? What trends are you seeing in the industry? How can I help you? How can you help me? I'm also doing a lot of other exposure things in terms of I'm constantly on LinkedIn, I'm constantly joining any networking calls I can. You know, there's so many things out there virtually now, that you can connect with other business leaders. As a female founder, there are a lot of female, you know, groups that you can be a part of, to just connect with others. And you really can just expand your network that way. But I have, I think the biggest thing for me is devoting the time to it, I had to really move the critical workload off of me, so that I can focus on the relationship side.

Callan Harrington  32:36

Tactically, how are you able to do that?

Mary Wiegand  33:23

I have an amazing, amazing team, right? And they were ready. And I had kind of gotten them ready over, you know, the year prior to that, in terms of training, in terms of, you know, empowering them, in terms of showcasing different examples of what Boon had done to clients, you know, exposing them internally. And then, you know, really working with them to be able to feel their own confidence, right? So it's kind of like a year and a half of building the team's confidence, which also built my confidence in like letting them run clients far more independently than I had previously.

Callan Harrington  34:05

Did you just have to let them make mistakes essentially?

Mary Wiegand  34:08

Of course. Yes. It's kind of like in a same parenting world, right? You're like, hey, like, I train the kids as much as I can, I teach them, but they're going to make a mistake, and the team's the same way, but I have very seasoned, experienced team members. So we're not talking about big mistakes, we're talking about them learning how to do things within a consulting realm, learning how to do things virtually, you know, with clients across the country. So I wasn't necessarily worried about their functional expertise. I'm just teaching them the Boon ways of doing things.

Callan Harrington  34:36

That makes total sense, because all these people probably had very good positions. And this gets back to the off ramp, on ramp situation. So you're setup, you're kind of tailor fit for this.

Mary Wiegand  34:48

Yes. yes.

Callan Harrington  34:49

It was just a little- which is, you know, there's a learning curve to going from that business, to a product business, to a service business, for sure. That's really interesting. So you got yourself out of this. You really doubled down on the business development, building more of these partnerships. I love that monthly check in. That's thing number two we're stealing today. Not stealing soda tab. (laughs) But what impact did that have on the business? Once you really were able to start kind of doubling down on going after these partnerships and nurturing these relationships?

Mary Wiegand  35:16

Yeah, I mean, we have seen it in, you know, defined ways already, where we are closing deals, that wouldn't have even happened, if I was still heads down. And to the simplicity of there would be emails, or I would have one quick call with a brand and think like, oh, yeah, they might want us and I'll get back to them, when I have a moment. And you know, six or seven weeks would go by, and I've had no communication with them, and the lead would just die. So you know, being able to generate the leads, so to have the partnerships that know who I am, that my calendar is open for them to talk to. And then when the lead comes in, to be able to actually turn around a statement of work and a proposal in a time that keeps them interested. And it still may take thirty days, sixty days, ninety days to close the deal. But in the past, it would have just sat idle in my inbox.

Callan Harrington  36:02

The lead would have sat idle, or you delivered a proposal and there wasn't any type of follow up?

Mary Wiegand  36:06

Either of the both. Either.

Callan Harrington  36:08

How do you follow up with those? And I found this to be probably one of the bigger challenges, in SaaS, because that's what most of my career was, like, I knew exactly what to do. And for people aren't familiar with SaaS, in the technology sale, like I knew exactly what to do at all times. It was totally different. In services, are you following up, you know, often? Or is it more, okay, we've delivered this proposal, they mentioned they're not ready. So follow up with, proactively, like an article, like hey, I read this article, I thought it'd be pretty interesting. What does your process look like for that?

Mary Wiegand  36:37

Well, so I think we do a really good intake job of like, what is the concern that the brand's currently having? Right? So trying to understand how quickly are you even looking for this support? And once we deliver, if we've already gotten to the point of delivering a proposal, then that check in is probably weekly for us, right? Because when we're talking about our inventory plan, we're looking probably three, six months out. So the longer you wait, the more that our support gets pushed into, like the future year. So we have the value of being able to say, let's start now so that we can make sure you're clean six months from now, kind of thing, right?

Callan Harrington  37:14

You've got built in urgency.

Mary Wiegand  37:15

Yes.

Callan Harrington  37:16

So like, it's like you reaching back out, you're not annoying them because it's, hey, you know, if this really is a pain, we've got to get going on this. Totally get it if you want to push this out to next year, but if you really want to get this in this year, we do need to start now. Is that right?

Mary Wiegand  37:30

That's correct. Yeah.

Callan Harrington  37:31

Man, I'm jealous of that. Jealous of that, but for anybody that's listening, if you have that, like, look for those, in the sales world, they're called critical events, right? There's events, like if you have a deadline, and you will, your pain will amplify if you do not make this change by this deadline. And that's your critical event, essentially.

Mary Wiegand  37:47

Yes, exactly.

Callan Harrington  37:48

I love that. That's excellent. So you've pulled this out. And now you're focused on, from what I understand where you mentioned, building the sales, the partnership, and then also getting the brand out there. How do you balance time between the two?

Mary Wiegand  38:02

Well, at Boon, we don't necessarily believe in balance, right. So we're blending.

Callan Harrington  38:06

Love it.

Mary Wiegand  38:07

We're blending sales and branding. And I think they do sort of mesh well together. I think when I'm doing one, part of me feels like I'm doing the other right. So maybe I don't separate them as much as you are indicating that you would, but I sort of do it all in the aim of building Boon. Both things are amplifying it in total. I think it's also what opportunities have come to us this year, right. And I have to be ready to jump on the opportunities that are there. So for example, my team and I are going down to Fort Lauderdale in two weeks to do a very branding networking event. And it came to us through one of our marketing partners that we're really grateful for. And so we're able to do that. Did I plan for that? No. Is it taking a lot of workload on us right now? Yes. But is it worth it? Because we're really heavily blending into branding right now. That's kind of like the opportunity we have. So I believe you take the opportunities that are given to you and make sure you capitalize when they present themselves.

Callan Harrington  39:02

Would an example of that be, you got asked to speak at a conference, this conference is filled with everybody else, so how can we go speak at this? That's our branding side, but also maximize this from a sales perspective and partnerships? Would that be an example of that?

Mary Wiegand  39:18

Yeah, I mean, exactly. Anything that we can do that, you know, we're efficient, we like to have things maybe do double duty. So exactly as you say, like how can we maximize what I'm doing, also the rest of my team, right? So in the same example, I'm bringing two team members with me down to Florida, so the three of us will do it, but the other twelve team members will continue everything at Boon, which wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gotten myself out of the billable work. So it's really back to like getting myself in the right focus and then finding the opportunities and maximizing them, but without the pressure, like I don't like the idea that this has to be the end all be all event. Like each time I do something, I learn about how to be a better leader, how to speak better about Boon, how to be you know, just a general, whether it's sales or branding, I just take each one as an opportunity.

Callan Harrington  40:03

That's- Yeah, that's really interesting. So how do you balance then being strategic? And I mean, you're very strategic on the partnership side, from what I'm hearing. How do you balance being strategic versus jumping on these opportunities that you have? Are you saying no to the opportunities that come across? Like, you know, this is not right in our wheelhouse? Or is it, if it's close, you're jumping on it?

Mary Wiegand  40:27

As far as, like, in the client work?

Callan Harrington  40:29

I would say more on the branding side. But actually, I am pretty curious in both.

Mary Wiegand  40:33

On the branding side, I think you know, we are trying to, I would say at this point, do kind of like a potpourri. So if we've haven't tried it, we're very interested, right? So it's like, have we tried this before? No. Okay, let's see what this might do. And, of course, we balance the expense. So like, how much is this going to cost us? Does this makes sense for where we're at today? Do we think there is any ROI on it, right? Is that financial ROI? Is that branding ROI? I'm very also protective, though, of the Boon brand, right? So you talked about, like how I have built this thing that's non traditional, and I want to keep it that way. So I'm not looking to put myself in a place that's going to disrupt the culture that I've built internally, or the branding of like, we are unique, we are flexible, we are human touch. So I do have to look at an opportunity in that light and determine if it's the right fit for us.

Callan Harrington  41:22

Gotcha. That makes total sense. So you're looking at it from the standpoint of, you've got this channel, you know that this partnerships channel is consistent, and these referrals that you're getting from current clients are very consistent, in that it's driving business. So now it's, if I'm hearing you, now it's okay, we're going to test out these different marketing, tactics, marketing and sales tactics, see if it works. If it works, great, we'll do more of it, and kind of systematize it, how we have this one channel, but if not, we know. We've learned from it, and we know when this one comes around again, this isn't a great opportunity, we'll pass on this. Is that right?

Mary Wiegand  41:57

Correct. Exactly. And I think it comes from even, you know, back to my Target days, or even just general retail, it's like we test a lot of products, right, on consumers. And so I'm sort of taking that approach with this service-based, you know, business here, it's like, I got to test certain things. I got to do a test read in a couple stores, quote, unquote, right, where you maybe make a product, you don't roll it out to the entire 1700 Target stores that are in the United States, you put it in the top 100, see what it does, before you make a purchase order to put it in all stores. So definitely taking that test and learn approach with the marketing opportunities, branding opportunities.

Callan Harrington  42:30

Okay, third thing I'm stealing. Mary, I've got 100 more questions, which I may ask you to if you'd be willing to do a follow up episode. But the last question I have today is, if you can have a conversation with your younger self, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them? Age totally up to you.

Mary Wiegand  42:49

Oh, I'm gonna put the age almost like agnostic or just like, you know, younger self and say, believe in yourself, have trust, but ask for help. Lean on, you know, there's a lot of great resources available, but also like your own network can help you. But ultimately, like, even back to the saving soda tabs, right. I knew it was in me. But I had to really find the opportunities to believe in myself and then ask for help when it was needed.

Callan Harrington  43:13

Yeah, I think that's such good advice. I definitely didn't. And then I got older and like, there's literally shortcuts to all of this.

Mary Wiegand  43:19

Yeah. I mean, there's shortcuts, and there's people that know things more than I do. Like, I don't know everything about everything. So why wouldn't I just go to the expert on each individual kind of functional area, or in my personal life, right, like getting the support that I need to feel confident again, to be able to put myself out there and grow Boon in this way. So yeah, there's a lot of ways to ask for help, not just direct help in the way of I need this particular thing done, but just helping the dream.

Callan Harrington  43:44

I love it. This is a perfect place to wrap it up. Thanks for coming on today, Mary. This has been excellent.

Mary Wiegand  43:49

Yes. Thank you so much. It's been great.

Callan Harrington  43:55

I hope you enjoyed Mary and I's conversation. I love the flexible employment model that Mary has created. It's one of those rare win-wins, and I'm excited to personally try it out. If you want to learn more about Mary, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know, and if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.