Rohit Deep - SVP of Engineering at BFA Industries

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:01) Hello, my friends. Today we are talking to Rohit, the SVP of Engineering at BFA Industries, and we discuss how BFA's personalization technology is enabling them to make beauty products for everyone, Rohit's strategy for hiring candidates that have an appetite for change, and the importance of always assuming positive intent in the interactions with your peers. All of this right here, right now on the Modern CTO Podcast. Here we go.

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:33) This is the Modern CTO Podcast. Hey, buddy.

(Rohit at 00:00:44) Hey, Joel. How are you doing?

(Joel Beasley at 00:00:46) Oh, things are great. I'm excited. We're building this new leadership program that we're launching, and the first cohort's going through in June. And just to be, I love getting to talk to leaders, but to be developing content and working with leaders to create these programs has been, I don't know, it's just I'm usually not this energized late in the afternoon, but I am today.

(Rohit at 00:01:09) That's good to know. That's awesome. Which part of the country are you based out of?

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:13) So we're down in Florida. Yeah. What about you?

(Rohit at 00:01:16) I am in the Bay Area. We have an office in Miami. I haven't seen that yet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:20) Our whole team, we did a dinner. We all got together a little bit ago. And all the girls that work at the company were so pumped up about Ipsy and makeup. They were so excited. And they're like, we get the makeup bags and all that. And now it's like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I'll ask this guy about what's going on over there at Ipsy.

(Joel Beasley at 00:01:38) What do you do, bud?

(Rohit at 00:01:39) So I manage engineering. I joined the company back in October 2020. And just to give you a little bit of idea about what Ipsy is, so Ipsy started out a few years ago, getting really into the beauty subscription space. The couple of goals that Ipsy focuses its energy on is really building a community of people centered around beauty. The second aspect is also really getting products and creating an environment for people to do self-expression. Those are kind of the two key fundamentals that drive Ipsy throughout all its business. And that's what we do. And I joined in October of last year as part of managing the engineering, the technology side of the house, in providing technology for retail as well as subscriptions. But for me, the biggest fascination and the reason for joining us is around the work that we do plus the work that we are going to be doing around personalization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:02:33) That's pretty exciting. Were you always interested in technology growing up, or is this something just as an adult?

(Rohit at 00:02:40) Always fascinated. My first technology experience was really going back in time with a computer called Commodore 64. So that's where the journey started. And throughout that, as I have discovered computers and the impact that the computing technology can have in different businesses, just kept on growing and growing, and then really choosing opportunities based on where my curiosity is more. So just trying to figure out things. It's very fascinating to see technology being applied not only to create new businesses, but also completely reinventing existing businesses. So that's how I've been in technology, I guess, forever.

(Joel Beasley at 00:03:19) Yeah. Can you walk me through your career progression? I'm interested to know more about that.

(Rohit at 00:03:24) Absolutely. So when I was just starting undergrad, I came across Commodore 64 and started learning, teaching myself how to use it, and then started making games and playing with it. And it was very fascinating experience for me. Before that, I was actually on my path to become a financial, in the finance industry. And that was the other fascinating aspect. So as part of my experience with Commodore 64, when my dad, who I credit with being technically ahead, saw my fascination and said, hey, you like this thing, what can I do for me? And so he and I got together and bought the IBM PC when it came out, and I started building software for him. And that was pretty awesome. Built a lot of software for him, his clients, started selling products around financial systems, and then later on decided to start doing this full time. And so after I finished my undergrad, I switched to masters where a group of us decided to teach ourselves current technology. So we formed a company. We started taking offshore projects. That's a pretty awesome experience, and that's where I met my wife. And she's in the same space. And then we both decided that since we are both, I can call myself geek. I think she may not appreciate it if I call her a geek, but we are very much into learning new technology, really understanding things. So we decided to come to the Valley. And throughout the Valley, things that have intrigued me, I have pursued those. Right? I started doing risk management software for modeling catastrophe impact for insurance companies. That's how I came to the US because that customer was a client of mine back in Delhi. And then I went into the dot com phase. I don't know how many people remember the dot com bust. Everybody seems to remember the boom. And so from there, I went into video indexing, maybe the early cursors of product recommendations, with a company called Digital Jones. And then slowly ended up landing at WebEx, which is where my large scale experience around meetings and recordings and all of those kinds of things that are the precursor to Zoom. And from there, I ended up getting into the ad space, and then finally at Walmart, the largest retailer, and learned a very different definition of scale. And then in all of these aspects, right from dot com phase, personalization has been something that's always fascinated me. Right? In the dot com, we were looking at selling ads and product reviews to people. And then slowly from there, going through it, really doing it at scale at Walmart. And so when this opportunity came up, this was a pretty awesome for me. It looked like a very awesome opportunity to really start focusing on the personalization aspect of it. That's kind of the journey. So really, at every instance, basically following the instinct and following my curiosity.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:12) Yeah. There's a lot of great leaders that tend to come from Walmart that I've come across.

(Rohit at 00:06:17) Yeah. Outside in, inside out for two different experiences. You see the scale, but you don't fathom the scale. When you are within the organization, you start thinking about hundreds of millions, billion dollars of impact, hundreds of millions of users, lots and lots of different kinds of scale that come through it. So it's a very interesting experience.

(Joel Beasley at 00:06:38) So you're interested in personalization. What are you doing at your current role for personalization?

(Rohit at 00:06:45) So in order to get the context, let me walk you through in terms of how we see these things. Right? So I don't know, when I joined this company, beauty is not an environment or a domain that I'm very familiar with, like makeup and things like that. So when I was going through the job offer, I had my youngest daughter sit with me, and she had heard about Ipsy, and she was very excited about it. So we went through the whole process, and I saw how the experience collects information about me as a person to be able to give me the products that match what I would like. And so that was my first signal in terms of personalization. So as you go through it, you'll see that we collect all this information from our customers. Then our customers also give us a ton of reviews. So we have a lot of reviews of the products that we have. We take that data, and then we have an amazing merchandising team. And what my team has done so far is taking those kinds of information and then starting to really create products from a personalization aspect. So let's take personalization for a second. Right? There are, for me personally, two aspects of it. We are very familiar with once somebody understands you or some system understands you, start recommending things that you like. And so as you see, we have enough data points that help us get there. The second aspect, which is also fascinating for me, and that's one of the things that gets me more excited about, is how you take that and how can I help you increase your taste profile? Right? If we know what you like, there's an aspect of personalization where I can introduce you to new products and see how you will like the new products. Sometimes you don't even know these things. So those are a few things that we are working on with personalization.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:29) You seem to be pretty into this topic. Have you ever written anything on this topic?

(Rohit at 00:08:36) Not really. I'm not good at writing. That's something, not good at writing like that. But I think it's an interesting point. I mean, I'd encourage my team to write. So if you start looking at, we just launched a Medium blog, and you can see some of the work that my team is doing over there.

(Joel Beasley at 00:08:51) Oh, that's cool. What inspired that?

(Rohit at 00:08:54) Especially in the Bay Area, as I went through the interview process, I spoke with my friends. Not many people were very familiar with the company, and not many familiar, especially the technology behind it. And I thought that's something that we have to start showcasing because there is a lot of work the team is doing. It's pretty interesting, and we have very passionate engineers who are working on these. And so that's one of the things I started is let's start a Medium blog. Let's start writing about what we are doing. It also helps in attracting talent as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:09:26) I think a lot of people would like to do it. Can you give me some details on how you actually rolled this out on a tactical level? Is it part of their weekly thing or they submit ideas? How do you actually execute this?

(Rohit at 00:09:40) Yeah. So we set an internal goal. We first did canvassing of the engineering teams to see how much overhead would it add and how much interest was there. So we found, not surprisingly, that there was a lot of interest, but people thought of this as additional work. And so we needed to account for that in their regular engineering planning exercises. So we did that. We set up a modest goal for the entire engineering organization. We have set two articles for a month so far. And we want to kind of build that muscle and kind of get that flywheel going and then see where it goes. We are ready to publish another new one, and that's gonna be very interesting. I'm not gonna reveal the surprise here yet, but it's not really about technology. And so really encouraging people, it's okay to talk about anything. Right? It's more about showing and being transparent about what we are doing and showcasing the things that we do because it's not just about personalization, machine learning, technology, or the cool things that we are doing. We also talk about other things as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:46) That's awesome. I've never had anybody explain how they actually roll out a blogging style culture. So thank you for that.

(Rohit at 00:10:56) We'll see how it goes. It's definitely interesting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:10:59) So you do, like, some people write up articles. They sort of take it upon themselves to, you know, they want to do this. Right? There's some desire. So then they have a peer review, and then you publish the articles?

(Rohit at 00:11:11) Yeah. So we have teams, individuals. They reach out to, I have a couple of people whose one of their job descriptions is to do exactly what you just said. So when the article comes out, we review it. Because it's in infancy, we're also doing it with our marketing and the legal department. So as we build that muscle and we start to, that stuff will start to die down. But yeah, people talk about it, and we make sure that they have the time for it. So if they sign up, we will make sure that in our sprint planning and allocation exercises, we give them the time to go work on it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:11:45) Nice. Well, we'll post a link in the show notes so people can find it as well. If they type in on Medium, what are they gonna search to find the blog? Is it BFA or Ipsy? Or?

(Rohit at 00:11:54) It's BFA. And just so that to be clear, BFA is our company. And as part of BFA, we have multiple brands that we offer to our customers. Ipsy is one of the brands. And back in December, we acquired another brand called BoxyCharm. And in December itself, we launched a personal brand called Refreshments. And then we have Complex Culture, and then we also have one of the brands, partnership with one of the social influencers, Addison Rae. The brand is Item Beauty. So we have a collection of brands under this company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:29) That's pretty cool. That's interesting. I like that. Thanks. What does BFA mean?

(Rohit at 00:12:35) BFA stands for Beauty for All. And that's, like I said earlier, that's one of our goals is to make sure that we create a community for people around beauty as well as self-expression. So the name speaks to our goals and objectives as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:12:51) Are any of those brands geared towards men? Or?

(Rohit at 00:12:55) Specifically towards men, not right now. Most of our business right now is all about makeup and personal care. Like, the Refreshments brand that's coming up, I am one of the subscribers. So we have shaving components that I can use. And there's body odor, deodorants, and things around those areas. So I just want to use them as well. Yes. I have a vested interest in the company, so that's definitely the predominant reason. But again, there is no line that says that this is targeted only at women or only at men.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:25) I would subscribe to a box that was, like, had stuff for men, like different types of things. I'm always looking for interesting, different types like deodorants and stuff like that.

(Rohit at 00:13:36) Yes. So give it a shot. Try Refreshments and see how it goes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:40) All right. Maybe I will. Talk to my wife about that. I'll be like, hey, I'm gonna get a Refreshments box. You're gonna get an Ipsy box, and we're gonna support our friends over here.

(Rohit at 00:13:50) That'll be awesome. Yes.

(Joel Beasley at 00:13:52) So the technology, when you're integrating a new brand, how do you do that? How do you bring a new brand into the company?

(Rohit at 00:13:59) There are two aspects of new brands. So we actually went both aspects in December. One is acquisition of a new brand. So BoxyCharm was an acquisition. Refreshments is something that we grew within the company and we launched in December. So a lot of work goes out. There's a lot of, our products are the products that customers use. So there's a lot of that kind of product development where there's a lot of back and forth, a lot of A/B testing and those kinds of work that goes through. And the second aspect just leads to building the experience, the site, the mobile experience so people can shop, find products that they need. So I would say significant amount of customer research to figure out the products and how they're gonna vibe to their customers. The second aspect is then once you have that, then formulation of those products. Refreshments is something that the products that we sell, the products we build. So there's a lot of aspect of creating those products, working with partners, making sure all the checkboxes are checked from a compliance and everything else perspective, the supply chain aspect. It's a pretty intensive and a fairly significant exercise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:15:05) What's the most exciting thing for you about your job, what you do?

(Rohit at 00:15:10) There are a few things I would say. The biggest exciting thing is that these are the products my kids use. So really understanding with them how they're using. Like I said before, for me, the whole makeup domain was just one word, makeup. And now that I have been part of the company, it's like an entire world in itself, and it's all the learning that I'm doing.

(Rohit at 00:15:29) And the interesting piece for me is because my kids use them, I'm able to see the customer right there and then really see how they interact with the products. The second aspect for me is that our mission about self-expression, how technology can help make that. And that's where I go back to personalization. How can you build personalization that's much better that helps not only really getting you the products that your needs are or your wants are, but also expanding your band, expanding your taste profile in terms of products and things that you can use? To me, those are the two fascinating things at this company.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:08) Yeah, no, you've got me interested in it. I was so curious going into this interview. I was like, I wonder what he's gonna be like, you know, working at a beauty company and building all of this technology.

(Joel Beasley at 00:16:20) I've gotten to talk to, like, maybe one, I think one other CTO who is at a beauty type company as well, and they were doing some interesting stuff. Yeah, and so I was fascinated by the behind-the-scenes technology of what's actually happening at these beauty companies.

(Rohit at 00:16:38) I see. For me, if you look at my career growth and how my career has progressed, it's always about going to a domain and learning. Like, when I joined Adchemy, I had no idea about how marketing, advertising, SEM, SEO work. And so I decided it was time for me to learn that, and so I joined that company.

(Rohit at 00:16:56) So it's like everything that you look at is a fascinating and very intricate world behind simple words like beauty or advertising and things around those. So it's always fascinating to go in and start learning.

(Joel Beasley at 00:17:08) Yeah, you sound very entrepreneurial. Have you ever built your own businesses?

(Rohit at 00:17:13) Yes. Back when I was in college, the whole Commodore 64 phase, once I started applying for business, my dad and I—actually, I should probably say he created a company because he funded it. He bought me the computer. And so we ran that company for about three years, built the software, sold the software. That was my company number one.

(Rohit at 00:17:35) Then we decided to sell it because I wanted to go do a master's path. So I ended up doing a master's path where we started another company to learn, to grow. And then I finished my master's. Three of us decided to run that company for a while. Again, we ran it for about four years, four, five years, before my wife and I decided to move to the Valley.

(Rohit at 00:17:56) And so that's when I sold that company. Here, I haven't done that yet. There's always hope for the future.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:03) Do you find it more restrictive, like, being on a team versus owning the business? Or do you just have a really great team and you have a lot of freedom?

(Rohit at 00:18:13) I don't see, especially at BFA, I don't see this as restrictive at all. There's a great team. There's a lot of freedom to experiment things. And then there's also a lot of people to learn from, right? Our founder, Marcelo, and all the business people that we have and the marketing people. And especially, like I said, a lot of the product development pieces, there's so much opportunity to learn and so much freedom to try things out. Not restriction at all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:38) Nice. Yeah, because that's the one thing I think about sometimes as an entrepreneur and founder. It's like, if I went and worked for a company, would I feel restricted? And at the same time, I feel like half the companies maybe, but the other half, not so much.

(Joel Beasley at 00:18:52) Because a lot of these leaders I talk to, they're exhibiting all the behaviors and traits of a founder and they're just a C-level role. You know, they're managing their own P&L and they're generating revenue and they have cost.

(Rohit at 00:19:04) And I'm like,

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:05) It's like, oh, that's actually pretty cool. There's this whole other level of business that I'm now being exposed to.

(Rohit at 00:19:11) Absolutely. I think in everything that you do, there are different kinds of constraints, right? It's those constraints that you can work with or constraints you can't work with. I think that's what a lot of these decision making, what should I do, comes in. So far for me, granted, from whatever I can see from people that I'm working with, that's not—it is not an issue at all.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:34) Yeah, there's definitely so many different paths to success, right? Like, you can found the company and grow it slowly so that you have enough money to have really great people, and then you're working around really great people as you're growing. Or you can just go jump right on in into a great team and be around a bunch of great people without having to pay that salary, you know, come up with the money.

(Rohit at 00:19:54) Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:19:56) I don't think there's a wrong way or a right way to do it. I think as long as you're persistent, you'll overcome and achieve and have some level of success.

(Rohit at 00:20:06) Yeah, so true.

(Joel Beasley at 00:20:07) So how do you look at success in your personal life?

(Rohit at 00:20:12) Like you said, definition of success is fairly personal. And for me, there are—it's always tied around two things. A, am I working with the people that I can learn from? And B, the area that I am working in, what kind of impact I'm having in that space and how much transformation I can use? Because even back when I started in college, the projects that we would work on, it was transformational for the companies because technology, especially the software technology, was just starting to show up in India at that time. So since then, this impact and transformation has been very crucial for my choices when I go and choose the next thing to do.

(Rohit at 00:20:53) And like I said, people and the impact, those are kind of the two things that I look at from as my parameters to define success.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:01) Do you think your early business background with your father set you up for some interesting perspective to grow as an executive?

(Rohit at 00:21:11) Absolutely. I think that was very, very helpful because, A, from him, I saw how he was thinking ahead. That's something that I picked up in terms of where the technology—I still remember he used to pester me about, hey, I just need to talk to the computer. Why do I have to go through? And at that time, speech recognition and transformation was not there to the level where he was comfortable with. So definitely that particular aspect. I think the second aspect, like you pointed out from a business piece, to me, what it helps me right now is that all the technical solutions, whether they are cutting edge, whether they are mundane operational automation, all the work that we do around technology is always oriented towards business goals.

(Joel Beasley at 00:21:53) How do you keep people focused on the business outcomes?

(Rohit at 00:21:56) In different companies, there are different things to do. I think in a startup, I would say it's a little bit easier because everybody joins a startup understanding the mission and align towards that mission. And that's the goal. They'll join the company that is growing and how big the company is growing is very important for them. It's also very important for them where the business is coming from because, again, when I hire people, I hire people who have a lot of curiosity, right? So I want them to ask all those questions. I mentor them from, hey, you're working in this thing. Do you know what the business impact is?

(Rohit at 00:22:30) And if I don't, then I will go ahead and walk them through it because it's extremely important for me. And what I see is that engineers are very, very focused and very motivated by the impact. And, yes, a lot of engineers, some engineers want to work purely on technical challenges. Some engineers want to work on other things. But in the end, they are very motivated by business impact.

(Joel Beasley at 00:22:52) What other tips do you have for hiring? You said, all right, so curiosity, understanding business impact. What else do you look for when hiring?

(Rohit at 00:23:00) There are a few things. Like, a lot of the questions I ask is, I ask them what app do they use the most. And they'll tell me, hey, I use this app for this specific accuracy. And so can you give me one feature that you love about it? And they'll say, hey, this is what I love about it. And I said, okay, give me one feature that you would add or change. And a lot of people get stumped by the second question.

(Rohit at 00:23:23) Because when you use something every day, you don't think about change. You just work with it. And to me, that's another important part of the behavior, the traits the person has, is because I firmly believe change is constant. And things that have been done in the past and they are working can always be optimized as new technologies come in. So I want that thinking always in the head of the engineer.

(Rohit at 00:23:47) So to me, a few of those things, like you said, impact, curiosity, really understanding what they're doing and understanding the concept so that they can know what to change. Big picture, what's the vision, what drives them. And then, I also—it kind of speaks to the curiosity—I always ask them, what else do they do outside work that drives their passion? Because passion is extremely important in day-to-day job for me in my team. And these are some of my tricks and tools to kind of suss out the passion.

(Joel Beasley at 00:24:22) So what do you do outside of work? How do you refill your passion?

(Rohit at 00:24:26) There's a joke in my house. Some of my close friends joke about me that if any new device comes out that's connected to the internet, Rohit will have it. So whether it's a piece, whether it's T-shirt or socks or cameras or—so I'm an early adopter. And I look at those things, and I connect them together, work with my kids. When they were younger, they were very fascinated by robotics. So I have like three, four generations of Lego Mindstorms.

(Rohit at 00:24:52) So a lot of those things around tinkering and kind of connecting in these things, the power of the internet in all of these devices. It's something that I do in my free time.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:02) That's pretty cool. My little ones are really into the Lego blocks right now. So I'm enjoying it. She's building me, like, she'll build me a structure, and I'll be blown away when she goes from just a basic stack to making it a 3D structure. And she's like, oh, here's a dinosaur, and it kind of looks like a dinosaur.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:20) I was like, oh, this is so great that you're smarter than me. I'm very happy about this because I was not that advanced at your age.

(Rohit at 00:25:28) Yeah. Yeah. I mean, a lot of kids have access to things, at least for me, that I did not have access doing that because it wasn't there, right? I mean, Lego was there, definitely. But just amazing. Like, one of my nephews uses Mindstorm. It's a block-style programming language. And so it's just about drag and drop. And his six-year-old can make small things happen. But the excitement that you see in writing something and making a physical thing move is just amazing.

(Joel Beasley at 00:25:59) It was the thing that hooked me about computers. I mean, not making the physical thing move. That's like a whole other level. But just making the computer respond with some output, that's what caught my attention.

(Rohit at 00:26:10) Yeah, that was my fascination as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:14) Android, I think it's Android has this kid tablet, kid operating system. So you can lock it up.

(Rohit at 00:26:20) I see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:21) And they can only access kid stuff. So it's really safe, and we give that to my daughter. Man, the amount of stuff she learns, and she'll just tell us something, some interesting fact or whatnot. And I'll be like, where did you learn that? And she'll be like, either school or the tablet.

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:37) And I'll—

(Rohit at 00:26:38) I'll be—

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:38) Going—so I go in to tuck her in the other night, and she's watching this video. And it's like these little cartoon characters explaining how atoms work. And I was like, what? I was like, she's interested in this? She's sitting there watching it for like twenty minutes about how atoms work?

(Joel Beasley at 00:26:56) I was like, you're four years old. This is crazy.

(Rohit at 00:26:58) That's pretty awesome. Yeah. I think just one funny story to share. There used to be a Maker Faire in the Bay Area in San Mateo, and I've been going there since I think it was a pretty small fair, like, a long, long time ago. And my kids used to go there about two years when they were two years old or three years old.

(Rohit at 00:27:18) So when they reached five years, six years of age, we came across a place that they had a panel, and then they had magnetic threads, electric threads, and they could be connected through a computer, and you could program them, little bulbs that all goes in the panel. So I watched my kids really fascinated by that. And then coming home, we ended up buying those kits, coming home and just creating crazy patterns on their sweaters. It was just amazing to see.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:46) That's fascinating. Have you—you're out there in the California area. That's where they film BattleBots. Have you ever seen BattleBots?

(Rohit at 00:27:53) Yes, absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:27:54) Yeah. Do you ever watch that with your kids?

(Rohit at 00:27:57) My kids used to love robotics, but not fighting with each other.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:04) Oh, okay. How old are they now?

(Rohit at 00:28:06) I have a sophomore in college and a sophomore in high school.

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:10) Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. Mine are very small. Yeah. I'm just at the beginning of this race, my friend.

(Rohit at 00:28:16) No, no. I mean, yeah, I think right now, they are probably gonna just shrug it off. It's like, who cares?

(Joel Beasley at 00:28:23) Do you have any tips for how to be—you sound like you've been, you know, successful professionally and really interested in the work that you do, and you've raised these kids as well. Do you have any tips for how to be a good executive but also be a great parent at the same time?

(Rohit at 00:28:38) That's an interesting question. When you look for people to grow, right, so I also spend a lot of time mentoring people. One of the things that I say is that when I work with engineers, one of my strengths is that I'm able to understand what's motivation for them, what motivates them. And, I'm gonna use this word again, but a lot of it is around curiosity, right?

(Rohit at 00:29:01) Like, so you need to—especially with kids—you have to make them curious so they can ask all kinds of questions, right? As you know, in your experience as well, right? There's a phase when they will ask 6,000 questions a day, right, about everything.

(Rohit at 00:29:19) So to me, that's just fascinating, and we're able to answer that and point that and encourage that kind of behavior to question everything. As an executive, to me, that's the same concept applied as I'm growing my team. Not the concept of treating them like kids, but more about ask, question the norm. Because without questioning the norm, we can't change, and you want that thought process for everybody to be there. So for me, that's one of the things that I can say as an executive and as a parent, there's a common thread.

(Rohit at 00:29:49) Ask questions. Question the norm. Always ask, why are we doing this? And there's always these three answer—like, here are the reasons why we are doing this. It can't be just because, or this is what we have always done. And it does not mean that every day you ask that question for the same thing. But when you come across something, you ask the question. If you're satisfied with the answer, you move on to the next day. So it's always allowed to me is like the curiosity aspects.

(Rohit at 00:30:15) That's understanding why these things are. And when you look outside around the things that are changing, like, if you look at Ipsy, if you look at BFA, these are the kinds of things that have helped the company grow. I mean, why did we launch the Refreshments business? It's a personal care business. Again, the same concept of why, what's the purpose behind it?

(Rohit at 00:30:34) See? Well, it's about people. It's about community. Well, then, you know, how do you do the community? Let's make sure that we have products that have broader community of needs.

(Rohit at 00:30:43) So to me, those are the kinds of things that always tie back into either exec or parenting.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:49) I like that. That's good advice, my friend.

(Rohit at 00:30:51) Thanks.

(Joel Beasley at 00:30:52) What's the app that you use the most?

(Rohit at 00:30:55) It has changed for me during quarantine. What's happened is that both of my kids decided not to do, even when the schools are open, not to do in-person classes. So my daughter who's in college, she came home and she's been with us. And my daughter who goes to school, she's been with us as well. So what we have discovered is our love for cooking. I mean, we haven't really cooked together as a family that much. And so now, different things that we are trying, especially when you're not ordering too much from outside, you have to cook interesting things as well. So we've gone into it so much that now in the morning, I'll send out a recipe that I want to make tonight, or one of my kids will send out. We'll have a debate over it, and then we'll agree to make it. Then during the day, I think everybody gets time between meetings and needs a break. We'll do some prep, and then around 5:30, we'll start cooking. So what has happened there is that most of my time now is spent on grocery delivery apps because I'm always looking to get the right groceries for the recipes that we want to make. So those are the apps I like the most right now, not only because I use them the most, but that gets me to do this activity that I do with my kids a lot. So Instacart, Amazon's Whole Foods, and there's local Indian delivery apps around those particular pieces as well. We went through a whole thing about meal kit delivery. So all of those, that's the genre, that's the category. And that's what for me is the app that I use the most and like the most.

(Joel Beasley at 00:32:28) What's one feature you love?

(Rohit at 00:32:30) The aspect in some apps, the suggestions. And like, for example, the part that I love the most in most of the apps is at least remembering my history of what I had ordered so that I can go back and see, instead of trying to maintain shopping lists and things about brands I like and things. I can just go back and click, click, click and say this is what I want. Because one of my kids, the older one, researches a lot about the ingredients and things, and so we can get focused on a few different products in the category. So just having it there and seeing when I bought it, especially Amazon does that really well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:04) Yeah, that actually is one of my favorite features of the Amazon app. What's something you would add or change?

(Rohit at 00:33:11) The accuracy of the inventory. When you order something, you are expecting to make something tonight or tomorrow from that. And it shows on the app, you add, you place the order, and the delivery comes in, it's not there because it is out of inventory. It's a hard problem. I mean, I was at Walmart for a long time, so I know it's a really hard problem. But for me, it's very frustrating to not get what you ordered and having to adjust to it. And not knowing if it is not there. A more real-time aspect of inventory is what I think I would love the most out of these apps.

(Joel Beasley at 00:33:47) Yeah. You know what? That's something we've experienced too, where it's like, it's letting us put it into the cart. Right? We use a local app for one of the grocery store chains here. Right? And it lets us put it into the app, and then they just tell you it's not there when they show up with your order. And it's like, well, that's not helpful. How come they can't connect that real-time inventory? Why is that a problem?

(Rohit at 00:34:11) Yeah. That will be a fascinating thing to fix.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:14) Do you know why it's a problem?

(Rohit at 00:34:15) It's the, it's basically what you said, real-time. Right? The number of orders being placed, the count of the inventory, integration of the inventory. Because you order, you put in the cart, when should I reserve it, when should I not? So it's a very complex system to be able to really show the right amount of inventory. It's not a, it's a non-trivial problem to solve.

(Joel Beasley at 00:34:38) I agree. Oh, I definitely agree. I was just thinking all the different ways you could solve it. Right? Like cameras. Right? Camera inventory and object recognition. You could see if it's just on the shelf. Just look at it. Right? You could RFID tag every piece of inventory.

(Rohit at 00:34:56) Absolutely. I mean, for even for us, where we don't have stores, inventory is a complex problem because you have different programs, you have different brands. And then when subscription add-ons open, you are looking at the demand that you have forecasted. Somebody shares it on social media, and suddenly that product is viral and everybody's buying it. So all of those patterns make it really hard to make sure to have an accurate representation of the inventory. But it's an interesting and a fascinating problem to solve.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:25) Yeah. Do you own your own warehouses, or do you use like a third-party logistic company to do the packing? How do you do that?

(Rohit at 00:35:30) So currently, we use third-party logistics companies for managing our orders and inventory and receiving the products and delivering the products as well. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:35:41) So do you get to work with them on the technology? How do you interface with them? Did you have to build custom software, or how did that go?

(Rohit at 00:35:48) Absolutely. So we have a supply chain organization that works quite closely with them in terms of technologies that go inside the warehouse. From the integration into overall technology systems, to your point about what the inventory states are, where the order is, that's an integration that sometimes is custom-built for every 3PL, third-party logistics company that we work with.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:11) That's pretty cool.

(Rohit at 00:36:12) Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to understand when you place a purchase order, you have to match what the system received to the orders that you have placed so that you know that you have received what you ordered. And then as multiple programs happen, you have to communicate them to the third-party logistics so they know exactly who to ship and how much to ship. So it gets really interesting also because, again, the same problem the stores have, we also have in terms of accuracy of inventory. So every company, every retailer, this is one of the most fascinating places in the retail space.

(Joel Beasley at 00:36:46) When you do your orders, does like, if you have a box that you're going to ship out, like these makeup boxes, right, do they all batch at the same time, or is everybody on their own schedule? How does that work?

(Rohit at 00:36:57) We batch it within a period of time frame because we open it to our customers on the same day for customizations. Like, we have ultra-personalization, the GBX product where you can go and customize all of your products in your bag. We have different tiers in terms of how many products you can customize, both on the Ipsy side as well as on the Boxycharm side. So that makes it complicated because if we already know what you're going to get, it's very simple to box it. But because we offer it in a certain period of time, there are a certain range of expectations when the customers will receive it. So, yes, there's a flurry of activity, but to scale it out and make sure that we can handle it, we obviously batch it out over a specific period of time every month.

(Joel Beasley at 00:37:36) What's the hardest part about all of this, running this business?

(Rohit at 00:37:39) The hardest, from the technology aspect, is that mostly for me, like, where I would really want us to be, where my team wants us to be, and as they work hard to delivering what the expectation is, how do we build things that allow the business to move quickly? Right? Like, we launched, over the quarantine period, made the decision to launch Refreshments, and we launched Refreshments in December. Right? How do we enable and create capabilities that allow the business to run experiments? Because a lot of things you have to try out to really understand how the customer, what is the customer wanting. Right? And there is no way to predict the viral aspect of it. Sometimes things go viral, but how can I build things that if they do, we can support it? So that's the challenging piece, is really understanding that and being able to build that capability. For at least for me right now, that is the most challenging piece on the technology side.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:37) That's really interesting. It does sound like a problem. Right? Something explodes and the inventory. So tell me what happens. Let's say I've got a product that goes viral. Let's say it's a lipstick. Is lipstick something that could be in there?

(Rohit at 00:38:52) Absolutely. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:38:53) Okay. So let's say it's a lipstick. Right? And you have 2,000 units. I'm just making this up. You have 2,000 units of this lipstick, and it goes viral and you need 40,000 units of this lipstick, but you're not the manufacturer of that specific lipstick. Do you process the orders? Do they go out of stock? Do you oversell and go, like, how do you connect all of those parties? So you have to go ask the source people if they have enough, but like, how do you manage all of that with the technology?

(Rohit at 00:39:28) That is the interesting piece that we are constantly looking to solve. Right? So there are multiple things that go in. In some aspects, taking this lipstick as an example, could we have done better at forecasting the demand? Right? It starts because we have customer data. We have, our machine learning team, there's a lot of models around this. So how can we help forecast some of these things? Yes. We can't predict the viral aspect of it. And so there's a lot of work that we can do moving there to really get to that level of forecasting. Seeing the demand, how quickly can we source it from our suppliers? It's not just a technology problem, but technology can assist in terms of building and removing the friction. But then again, it's a relationship. It's all the other things that we're working through. Then from a customer's perspective, I mean, it's also about the fact that if it is really going out of stock, I mean, it's selling that much, stopping the sale and setting the expectation. Right? It could come in the next bag. It could come in the next time, or it'll be available for ecommerce shopping later down the road because you don't want the customer to buy and then you disappoint them when they didn't get it. Right? It goes back to my earlier grocery app concept. Right? I ordered something. I was expecting it, but now I don't have it. So different strategies for different kinds of products and different brands. But in the end, focus is always on not disappointing the customer.

(Joel Beasley at 00:40:48) I like that. You sound like a, you sound very challenge-driven.

(Rohit at 00:40:52) That's the fascinating aspect of technology. Right? There are big problems to solve, really applying technology. And as technology changes, how do you catch up with it? Right? Can we make better packaging for our products? We have done a lot of work around sustainability. How can we put, what's the accuracy of the information we have so we can have the optimal packing for the bag? So a lot of these things are very fascinating. And to me, like, since my career beginning, whether it was fortunate or not, but I started my career by solving business problems and applying technology to it. And that's kind of how my brain is tuned. So that's why some of these problems are very fascinating for me.

(Joel Beasley at 00:41:33) When people ask you what motivates you, is this what it is, this problem-solving, or is it something else?

(Rohit at 00:41:38) It is problem-solving. It's really working and understanding the problem, the process aspect of it, and then figuring out how technology can solve it, improve it, make it efficient, because not every problem can be solved on day one. Sometimes you have to just keep on improving it before you reach the solution. And now you understand it enough, or you've tried things, and now you can solve it.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:01) I got a couple leadership questions for you, if that's okay.

(Rohit at 00:42:04) Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:42:05) You sound like a great leader. So I'm like, when I find great people, I was like, alright, I gotta ask them some of the leadership questions to help out. You know, a lot of the next generation of leaders are listening to this as well to figure out like, how people think and how they behave so that they can replicate these behaviors. Right? And I'm trying to help out the world here. So I'm curious to know, like, what's the most impactful leadership lesson that you've ever learned?

(Rohit at 00:42:31) For me, as I've grown and evolved with different levels of roles, right, the biggest thing that I learned which has worked out really well for me is that, I don't know if it qualifies as a leadership lesson, but assume positive intent. So when you work with people, people say things. Let's say I'm working with somebody in my team. I need this stuff done by this time. The person's like, well, it can't be done. Now as a leader, I can say, like, what the heck? I already told you. I need it done by this week. What do you mean it can't be done? Right? Or I can say, assuming positive intent that this person is really in the company to grow the company and provide 100%. I will sit down and say, okay, what is it you're looking at? And really working through with assuming the positive intent, figuring out the problem solution. And sometimes it is, yes, it really cannot be done. So we go back and work through it. And that hard process change from my side has helped me a lot in understanding the people that I work with, whether they are part of the organization or if they are my peers or other collaborators.

(Joel Beasley at 00:43:34) That's the second time I've heard that, and I love it. I love it because the first time I heard it, I was like, this is the best advice ever. And I hadn't heard anyone else say it, so I'm so glad that you brought this up and reminded me of this again because we need to hear this now more than ever, especially since most of our communication now is so remote. Right? So you lack some of that social credit of the human interaction.

(Rohit at 00:43:58) Yeah. Absolutely. And especially during this time and stress levels and people have various things going on in their lives. So yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:44:06) What are you learning, like, right now as a leader?

(Rohit at 00:44:09) Different things. I know it's maybe a little too shared, but these are interesting times. And lots of things have changed, right, in lots of ways. Like, when we used to do meetings from home, right, I would get anxious about if my kid is crying in the background. Now we have Zoom meetings where we encourage people to get their kids to show up and say hi. Or if the kid is crying, just leave the meeting or take care of the kid. A lot of that environment has changed. And that's the part, is like, how do you balance your the work-life balance. Right? So one of the things that we've talked about is, like, a lot of people have different ways in their day. Right? For me, I spoke about cooking, so 5:30 is like cut-off. Because I don't want to sacrifice that time. Because I know when the world opens, the kids are going to go back to college, and I'm not going to have that time. So really understanding these aspects of people, this is a lot of learning on how different people manage different kinds of situations, and it's not just work from home or work remote. Everybody's impact in work from home and work remote is very different. And really how people are handling that and giving them the space to handle, there's a lot of those lessons. There's a lot of things I'm learning around that particular aspect, but it's amazing to see how people manage these things. Right? They may have little kids at home.

(Rohit at 00:45:37) They may have grown up kids at home. They have other kinds of expectations and things that are going on. So that's been the biggest learning for me in the last twelve, eighteen months.

(Joel Beasley at 00:45:45) Nice. That's good. Yeah. We actually had to cancel a podcast once because the person's kids were all doing their online classes, and they didn't have enough bandwidth going on. So we just moved it to another day.

(Rohit at 00:45:56) Yes. Yes. That's why I have given my instructions to everybody. Just use video right now only if it's essential. If it's not, just turn it off.

(Joel Beasley at 00:46:06) What sort of leaders inspire you? What type of books are you reading? Who do you follow online? How do you recharge yourself as a leader?

(Rohit at 00:46:16) I've always been a fan of Bill Gates. So I go through the list of books that he publishes, because the thing that's fascinating is just the range and the broad range of books that he reads. I saw that Netflix series Inside Bill Gates' Mind, and then you see him walking around with like a tote bag full of books. That just blew my mind. I don't do that kind of reading. So I'd always have his list. For me, he's been one of the inspirations right from when I started my career. So really focused on that particular aspect. The second is, like I said, the second section, I would say, is that I read a lot about philosophies and things that impact people. Like, how do people take—how do they work? What's important for them? How do I learn all of those things? Because that's something I need in my day job. And not just day job. It helps me build relationships with my kids, with other people as well. And so those, I would say, are the books, the category of books that I read.

(Joel Beasley at 00:47:16) Yeah. I've found a lot of the TED Talks on like psychology or human behavior. Just kind of watching them, taking a look at them, seeing the perspective. It's interesting because I do a lot of technology stuff. Right? Like, interview a lot of people about technology. But to go over there and see this whole different discipline of like psychology and all they do is study human behavior all day. That to me was just fascinating. They have their own language frameworks and everything, and it's really quite fascinating.

(Rohit at 00:47:49) Yeah. I mean, and then you tie that into retail experiences. You dive into shopping experiences, and then you start realizing how much of some of the experiences you can correlate to something in—at least for me, I can correlate to something in psychology I read. I'm like, wow. I didn't realize that thinking went into that. And it's like—so that definitely starts to open up your mind in terms of what the possibilities are and how things are—I think how much thought has gone through in some simple things.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:15) Yeah. Yeah. And it's simple too. You're talking earlier about a couple different leadership principles that you mentioned about being curious and business outcomes and things of that nature. They are pretty simple. It's just doing them consistently over a long period of time. That's the difficult part.

(Rohit at 00:48:33) Absolutely. Yeah.

(Joel Beasley at 00:48:34) So what's one piece of advice for, let's say, an engineer that's looking to take on more management responsibilities?

(Rohit at 00:48:42) The reason I'm smiling is that I have a very different way of thinking about that. And so in my previous organizations, when an engineer wants to become a manager, I spend about forty-five minutes convincing them not to do it. And then I ask them to go back, give it a week, and think about it, then come back and see if they still want to do it. And if they come back and say, yes, I still want to do it, then I would support the transition and give them the assurance that, hey. In six months, if you didn't like it, it's okay. You can come back and be a regular engineer. I mean, we are investing in you because that's what we do with our employees. And the reason I do that is you have to be very clear why you want to get into management. Management is—I'm not gonna say it's harder. It's different. Right? So in my organizations, you never get promoted to a manager as an individual contributor. You always—it's a lateral move. It's not—there's no concept of management being a promotion path. It's mostly a change of function. So that's part number one. Part number two is, why do I spend the time making sure that they really want management? Because of the reasons people want. I want control. I want to be able to set a direction. Right? These are the most common phrases that are here. I want to be able to allocate resources because I want to be able—I know exactly how things are done, and my manager is not listening to it, and I know I can do it better. And so what they don't realize is the first line of management is the hardest because you really have no control. And during the transition path, you're so used to doing things by yourself and getting it done, right, by yourself, but then getting it done through a team is a very, very different skill set. And it's not that you can't learn and be trained into it, and that's the investment that they have to do. And a lot of people who jump into management don't understand. My career growth—I have been into management. I was a one person entrepreneur running a company. I was part—you know, next to my company, I was one of the six, seven peers who ran the company and founded the company. And then I ran the company for about four more years. I came into here, worked as an individual contributor, then went into management, and decided to switch back into individual contributor. So I have done these ups and downs and changes, and I just want to make sure that people understand what it is. It's a lot of program management, resource allocation, absolutely technical direction, but it's also about managing expectations from your team as well as the leadership above you. And that's something that people have to understand in addition to people skills. Right? Because as a manager, my success is extremely dependent on my team and how well they do what is expected from them or what is set for them. And also, what I can learn from them is where my growth comes from. Right? If everybody follows what I say, then, collectively, we are gonna be as good as I am, which is not necessarily a good place to be because there's so many people in the organization. So how do you grow that into the collective being? How do you listen to people, encourage them with this free thought process? And like I said in the early—at the beginning, how do you stop that curiosity and let that flow? So a lot of those things are skills that have to be acquired. So as you transition from an engineer to manager, you have to make sure that you are up for significant amount of training. It's a different function. And that's for me what would be the advice that, yes, it can be done. I mean, I did it, and I find the management aspect extremely fulfilling. But you have to go for a training exercise.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:18) Yeah. It's also very difficult. That's one of the reasons why I liked it. You know, I like the difficult problems, and then I started managing, you know, engineering teams. And I was like, woah. This is a whole different world. And I love the way you put it too because I wouldn't say it was like harder. It was equal—they're both maximum hard. It's just you're doing something different.

(Rohit at 00:52:41) Yes. They appeal to a different part of your brain. They appeal to a different skill set. So absolutely.

(Joel Beasley at 00:52:47) So I want to be respectful of your time because we've got only three minutes left here. But, man, we did it. We made a podcast. How do you feel?

(Rohit at 00:52:57) Pretty good. Yeah. It, in my mind, it went better than I thought I would do. So I think that's mostly your skill set, Joel. So really appreciate that, and thanks for inviting me as well.

(Joel Beasley at 00:53:13) Thank you so much for listening. And if you found this episode useful, please share it with a friend or colleague who you think would get value from it. And if you have topics that you'd like to hear discussed on the podcast, either add me on LinkedIn, or send me an email [email protected]. Every time I get an email or LinkedIn message, it absolutely makes my day and inspires me to keep going.