Carbon neutrality and creating a better product for a better future were the leading motivators for why Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks’s father started ECOS. She is now the CEO and president of the family business and continues its mission to prioritize the wellbeing of people and the planet through safer cleaning products. Kelly is widely considered one of the top effective leaders and influential voices for corporate social responsibility and under her leadership, ECOS has received numerous awards for innovation and safer green chemistry.
Tune in to hear Kelly talk about her journey in taking over the family business, how ECOS stepped up during the pandemic to help out, and how she finds the time to balance everything from business to family.
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Carbon neutrality and creating a better product for a better future were the leading motivators for why Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks’s father started ECOS. She is now the CEO and president of the family business and continues its mission to prioritize the wellbeing of people and the planet through safer cleaning products. Kelly is widely considered one of the top effective leaders and influential voices for corporate social responsibility and under her leadership, ECOS has received numerous awards for innovation and safer green chemistry.
Tune in to hear Kelly talk about her journey in taking over the family business, how ECOS stepped up during the pandemic to help out, and how she finds the time to balance everything from business to family.
Please subscribe above to be notified of our new episodes.
I put together a Free Top 10 Checklist for Every Entrepreneur. Click here to get your copy:
https://thebadassceo.com/tips-for-every-entrepreneur/
To learn more about our podcast guest, click here:
https://thebadassceo.com/her-business-achieved-sustainability-trifecta/
If you enjoy this podcast, please help support the the podcast by using the link to our sponsors and companies I use for my business. I receive a small percentage for each sale. Thank you so much for your support!!
http://thebadassceo.com/tools/
Follow us on Instagram at:
https://www.instagram.com/badass.ceo/
Mimi McLean:
Welcome to the Badass CEO Podcast, this is Mimi McLean. I'm a mom of five entrepreneur, Colombia Business School Grad, CPA, and angel investor and I'm here to share with you my passion for entrepreneurship. Throughout my career, I've met many incredible people who've started businesses, disrupted industries, persevered and turned opportunity into success. Each episode we will discuss what it takes to become and continue to be a bad-ass CEO, directly from the entrepreneurs who have made it happen. If you're new in your career, dreaming about starting your own business or already an entrepreneur, the bad-ass CEO podcast is for you. I want to give you the drive and tools needed to succeed in following your dreams.
Mimi McLean:
Before I get started, I wanted to talk to you about accounting and bookkeeping. As you may know, I'm a CPA and this is a topic that still makes my stomach turn. However, I found a company that does it all for you at a super reasonable price. They do your bookkeeping and tax returns with ease, I couldn't believe how easy it was to get my books up to date, actually, because they were a little behind and how inexpensive it was too. To learn more about it, go to the badassceo.com/bench. With that link, you receive 30% off your first three months. So definitely check them out and save some stress this year. Welcome back to the Badass CEO, this is your host, Mimi MacLean And today we have on Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks and she's the President and CEO of ECOS. ECOS was founded over 50 years ago by her father Van with the mission of creating a safer cleaning product that prioritized both the wellbeing of people and the earth. As president and CEO, Kelly leads the strategy and production of environmentally friendly cleaning products at ECOS, an essential business in the fight against COVID.
Mimi McLean:
She has been widely recognized for her highly effective leadership and influential voice in the green movement and in corporate social responsibility. Kelly has led ECOS to become a climate positive company, making it the first company in the world to achieve the trifecta of sustainability, manufacturing, carbon neutrality, water neutrality, and true platinum zero waste certification. Her sustainable practices have made ECOS a model for green business in the US. As a primary manufacturer ECOS has received many awards for its innovation in safer green chemistry, including the US EPAs safer choice partner of the year, four times. To get your top 10 tips every entrepreneur should know, go to the badassceo.com/tips. Kelly, thank you so much for coming on today, I really appreciate it. I'm excited to learn more about your business, the family business, and also what you're doing for the earth and it's something that's near and dear to my heart, so I'm excited to talk to you about that today.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Thank you for having me on Mimi. It's great to be here with you and to join in on the podcast.
Mimi McLean:
Yeah. You're welcome. Thank you so much for your time. So yeah, if you could tell me a little bit about, I know your dad started this business and so you stayed in the family business. So if you could just tell me a little bit about the backstory.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Absolutely. So my father was originally from Greece, from the Island of Crete and came to this country in the 1950s, did not speak English language, lived in homeless shelters and ended up going on to study chemistry at Roosevelt University in Chicago because of all of the Greek root words and became a chemist. And so during those initial years that he was working in the chemical industry, he saw firsthand so many of the dangerous ingredients people were putting in products and he started really thinking about their effects on human health and planetary health. He started reflecting to his childhood in Greece, where his mom was using vinegar and lemon and all of these natural ingredients and he thought that we should be doing things better here. So you can imagine how visionary he was in 1967 to start a green cleaning company in his garage.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And it's so interesting because I joined him full-time in 2003, and I can tell you when I joined him in 2003, we were a small business, we were hand filling products for a lot of the co-ops and natural stores, but it certainly is not the ECOS that we are today. In those initial years, consumers had not even thought about organic foods back in the 60s and so he was reading works by people like Rachel Carson who were talking, you could say she's the founder of the modern environmental movement, talking about the dangers of DDT and these things, but the conversation was really just beginning. And we've seen that people really think first about food and then what they put on them, but cleaning products, that's been the third front. And so I can tell you, I joined him in '03 in the family business and it was small.
Kelly Vlahakis:
I, myself actually grew up in Illinois, I grew up with my mom, so I'm a mixed heritage, I'm Greek and African-American. And I grew up with my mom in Illinois and when I was 18, I went to UCLA, I studied communications and history. I always think communications is so critically important because you're developing story and stories, compelling stories are so powerful. And history is important because it's important to know where we've been so we know where we're going. And after graduating from UCLA, I spent five years working outside of the family business. I would tell anybody who's thinking of going into a family business, it's of critical importance to spend some of those formative years outside of the business. Because when you do that, you really begin to learn organizational hierarchy and work ethic and really understanding how organizations run so that when you come back into the family business, you eliminate any sense of entitlement, you understand an org chart, you're able to separate the familial relationship from professional relationships. And I think that really served me well.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And so I had the great opportunity to join him in 2003 and work alongside him until 2014 when he passed away. And those 11 years were so wonderful and so valuable. I took over the company in 2014 and I'm just really proud to sit at a company that's socially and environmentally responsible. And that every day I get to get up and do something that I really think is making the world a better place. And ECOS has grown so much even in the last five years as consumers have finally become more aware of the dangers in cleaning products. I know Mimi, you're really involved with Beautycounter, one of the companies I really love. It's about transparency, it's about giving consumers the information they need to make an informed decision. And now that consumers have mobile problems and they're Googling and they're researching, and they're looking at things, they're looking for ways to protect their families, their loved ones and our planet. And so fortunately, ECOS has grown significantly, now, you find some retailers like Costco and Walmart and Whole Foods and Sam's Club and hopefully [inaudible 00:07:31].
Mimi McLean:
I mean, your dad was ahead of his time-
Kelly Vlahakis:
Oh, so ahead of his time.
Mimi McLean:
I mean, I even look about like, when I started getting into this world about 20 years ago, it's not on the radar. And that most people assume that anything that sold at CVS is healthy, that the government has researched it and made sure and only in the past couple of years, has it come to light about what's in the ingredients that most chemicals use in our products, either on our skin, on our food or in our cleaning supplies, have never been tested for human safety. And so he was totally ahead of his time. So I would love to just dive into the difference it was when you first started right back in 2004, what your distribution was like. It was probably totally different, who you were going to, you probably were trying to knock on the doors of Whole Foods and they didn't want to listen.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Oh, I was. I mean I was calling in all the lines. No. So when I joined the family business in 2003 one of the things that I think I brought to the table was connecting with our consumers and creating an emotional connection. We had never written a press release, we had never told our story, we had never done some of these different things and trying to really build information kits, press kits. And then I started really calling on some of the buyers of these large national chains and you can imagine in the beginning, I constantly got nos. People don't care about green products, my customers wouldn't want that, they don't actually work. And so there were really very few opportunities to make inroads, but I stayed really committed and really persistent to moving the needle. And then we started landing some of the larger accounts and then that was really great.
Kelly Vlahakis:
It was great to see the business really take full because for so long we had believed in it, but unfortunately the rest of the world was yet to catch up with that vision. And that's often the case with so many founders, they're individuals that can see a future that others haven't come to the table yet to envision. And so it was a completely different thing. I mean, I even think about the company when he passed away in 2014 versus where we are today. When I started just, I'm based right now in our California facility here in Cypress, California, but I have four other manufacturing facilities across the nation and Washington, Illinois, and New Jersey, and I opened our operations in Greece in 2018 to service Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And when I started 2003 here, we were in Huntington Beach in an 8,000 square foot facility.
Kelly Vlahakis:
When my father passed away in 2014, we were in a 40,000 square foot facility. And I can remember when we moved in that facility thinking, oh my gosh, 40,000 square feet, it was amazing. And the facility I sit in today is 125,000 square feet, that we moved into in 2016 and we're now looking for larger facilities. And the same thing has happened in every location across the nation. And it's been a really wonderful time for us as a company because consumers understand they're voting with their dollars and they want to vote for companies that are authentic, that walk the talk. And so I really spent a lot of time. My father really brought to the table, the green chemistry, and then since he passed away, I've really focused on building sustainable manufacturing facilities in which we produce the green chemistry.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So this year we became a climate positive manufacturer, meaning we give back more to our planet than we take, we achieved over the last several years, lead net zero waste, zero waste, zero energy, zero carbon. So we really want to champion that business and really do something. Now we're not helpless with the climate change and other things, but we have to act and we have to act now, and it's been great to see our customers, our retailer partners have embraced us because of that, our consumers have embraced us. And this has been, I can tell you, as a leader of these last two years have been some of the most challenging. It was very challenging in the transition after losing my father suddenly, it was also very challenging leading a cleaning products manufactured during COVID where cleaning products were undoubtedly the number one weapon in the war on COVID at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm just really proud of what we've built here.
Mimi McLean:
It's amazing. Congratulations to you. Do you mind talking about the difference of like a B Corp versus the climate positive? Or what did you call yourself? Climate-
Kelly Vlahakis:
Yeah. So, I mean, there's so many different third party certifications. So any of the B Corp principles, and certainly we have here, I've talked about us being a climate positive manufacturer. So on our journey to sustainability, we look first, the first thing that we looked at was carbon emissions and how quickly in all four of our manufacturing facilities reduce carbon, so we put solar on the rooftops. We did all sorts of things so that, hey, we have the limitless power of the sun. It might be hard for the initial upfront investment, but long-term, you have free energy from the sun. We looked at all of these different things and we look at the supply chain from A to Z, from door to door to make sure that everywhere we could, we minimized our carbon, we got to zero waste in 2016. I would tell people it's hard to get to zero waste in your home-
Mimi McLean:
Yeah. How did you do that?
Kelly Vlahakis:
If you're one family, and I would love Mimi, to host you one day in our facilities to see what our teams have done here to get to zero waste in manufacturing. We're servicing some of the world's largest retailers, but we're rethinking each and everything that we're doing, so if you have a box and our supplier is sending us something in a box, we're going to send that box to them and we're going to reuse that box until the end of its life. And then we're going to have a bailor so that will bail that box and we send it to the recycler who will actually recycle the cardboard so that things aren't ending up in landfills. And so that was a big accomplishment. I got to give a lot of props to our vice president of sustainability here Dr. Nadereh, she is a phenomenal woman, and when I think of women really leading, she has her PhD in life cycle analysis and education. I'd show up at work, she'd literally be in the trash bin with a water bottle saying, "Who did this?" It's like you've got to have-
Mimi McLean:
Get the camera out, let's rewind.
Kelly Vlahakis:
She'd be walking around the facility, "Who brought this plastic water bottle to work," and I'd be like, "Dr. Nadereh, got to get out of the trash bins," but it's that kind of leadership that you need to really affect change, and so super proud of where we've gone with the zero waste initiatives and then obviously energy. And this year we said, okay, we've done everything that we can to minimize our footprint on the earth, then I mean, we have 125,000 square feet here, the same in four other locations. So you can see, we have a significant footprint, we've done now, what can we do to give back? And that is investments in energy and wind energy and solar, that is restoring our wetlands and looking at ways in which we, as a company can contribute to the solution. Business shouldn't be the problem, we should be part of the solution.
Mimi McLean:
No, it's true. That's true. Now, a lot, the things that you mentioned seem pretty expensive to set up. So have you had to look for outside funding or is this all been family funded through your growth?
Kelly Vlahakis:
So we are self financed, when I need money I go to the bank and I borrow it. I really appreciated being able to run the business the way that we want to, with integrity, with authenticity. Sometimes when you raise outside capital, it can come with certain commitments and a lot of those strings would have asked for us to do things in another manner so that we could maximize returns for our investors. And what I'm trying to build here is a business for the long run and creating value for all of our stakeholders in the long run. And to that end, when I need money, I go to the bank and I borrow it. And that allows us to have the autonomy that we want to really create the vision to fulfill the mission we want.
Mimi McLean:
That's great. Did you have difficulty providing the supply that you needed as you were growing? How did you personally have the resources, the skills and knowledge to do that? And then also just putting and implementing in place, all these different facilities that you have throughout the country, that just for somebody who was never a CEO of a big company, typically they bring them in, you've been growing with the company personally. So I'd love for you to talk about that a little bit.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Absolutely. So one of the great advantages of being with a company from its infancy, because I would argue that even in 2003, we were still in our infancy, I would argue that today. I hope the company that with the generations to that the Helmet is, the size of P&G and those things, but it gave me the opportunity to learn every aspect of the business. So I have worked in operations, I have worked in sales, I have worked in marketing, I have worked in finance, I have worked in every part of the business. I've oftentimes done all of the roles. When my father passed away in 2014, we had no VP of sales, no VP of marketing, we didn't even have a marketing department. We had no head of HR, we didn't have a team in place. It was still largely family run.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And as much as I realized how beautiful that was, the first thing that I thought about is how can I scale the company for growth? And there was no way that if I'm handling HR and not doing my job growing the business, that will really get to the size that we want to get to. And so it was really, for me, the first order of business was about creating a team and onboarding people in various functional areas. And that was hard for me, Mimi a little bit, because I was used to doing it myself. And it was hard for me to let go of the control of some of those things to give the trust that my team really needed in order for us to scale for growth. And so I certainly had a lot of learnings in the first few years of building the team, but it was critically important to have that team in place because they create so much value each and every day, it's impossible to do everything as you grow the business.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And so some of it was about letting go of control and really understanding that the best use of my time is spent in certain arenas and I've got such amazing team members to join me here in many other areas. But I would say that that's the advantage of growing with the business, you really, you know the business inside and out. I've worked on the production lines, I've worked in the labs, and so as you're leading, I think team members have more confidence and connectivity with you because they saw you out there. It's funny, I have a 17 year old daughter and then she started school on Monday and she spent last week, we were at our Washington facilities and I put her on the production line. Why shouldn't she work on a production line? We were busy. I had her, her and three of her friends and it was just so great to see them out there because unless you do the work yourself, you don't have the same level of respect and understanding as you lead.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And so I think that is the real advantage of growing with the business. And then obviously once you lead a business as a CEO, you've been in for other businesses certainly, and lead other businesses, but growing with one is a special thing.
Mimi McLean:
That's great. It's true. And so do you have advice for, as a leader, how you hired people? How did you find that person that you know they're going to be the right fit? And then also, what kind of systems did you put in place to make sure that everyone's doing the right thing? Is it as a weekly meeting? Is there any advice that you can give to other entrepreneurs as they grow and they grow their team to make sure everyone's on the same page and going the same direction?
Kelly Vlahakis:
Absolutely. So first and foremost, it's critically important to find the right individuals. And I think that it cannot be underestimated that you really want to spend time and energy in the pursuit of the right team members, because if you don't have the right team and you don't share the same vision and you aren't locked step with one another, you can have so many challenges. And I certainly had experiences where I onboarded the wrong team member, so that's not entirely avoidable. But I looked back on those experiences and I could see where I missed a red flag or where I hadn't taken the time or the energy that I should have, and really selecting the right person, feeling hurried, feeling like I needed to fill that quickly, feeling certain things. And I didn't really step back and say, "Hey, listen, I want to have a team member that's with me for the longterm and I really want that in our business."
Kelly Vlahakis:
So I would say to people it's very important to be really connected to the hiring process and it's important to be connected to the onboarding process, especially if there's someone that's going to report into you. I see sometimes people farming out things a little bit too much, but it's really important that you guys connect and that you're able to really work well together. Like I said, at that time, we brought in many different team members and how did I find them? Some of them I found from my life, I will tell you while I was working, I did an executive MBA program. So I did my undergrad at UCLA, I did an executive MBA program at Chapman University and I truly believe wholeheartedly when JFK says that leading and learning go hand in hand, there's nothing more to than that, we should never stop learning, constantly I want to keep learning and keep growing.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And so I had gone back to do my MBA and while I was at my MBA program, there were some amazing students that I collaborated with while I was there. And when I took over, I brought some of those team members in, who were in the classroom with me. My director of financial planning and analysis, our government affairs director, our strategic director, some of those individuals were in the MBA program with me. We had a chance to work together in class, and then they joined me in the business and that was wonderful. So I would say that it's important to have a wide network, it's important to be part of peer groups and other organizations, so you maximize the individuals that are in your circle, so that when you're looking for top talent, you have places to go for it.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And I created a wonderful relationship, Chapman University is right down the road from us, I sit on the board of governors now at Chapman, but we had all sorts of programs in Chapman first and other initiatives we did where the university was supplying us with some of their top students and top candidates. And that was great. So sometimes a relationship with a particular academic institution can be helpful and sometimes being part of different organizations. So I, myself am part of YPO, Young Presidents' Organization. It has been a profoundly wonderful organization to be part of. Certainly one of the initiatives of YPO is to have more women in leadership, more CEOs, female CEOs, as part of YPO. Those networks have been very helpful for me in terms of identifying top talent. And then looking from within, creating upward mobility for team members that have been here, that have seen us through different seasons and making sure that we really take a look internally, oftentimes before we look externally, because we've got some wonderful team members.
Kelly Vlahakis:
My VP of sustainability, she used to be a plant manager and so she ran the operations of one of our plants. My general counsel, right now a hundred percent of my legal team is comprised of women, she was a plant manager and went on to become our GC, our VP of innovation now. So a lot of people have held various roles in the organization and then when they move into that role so, "Hey, you're now my general counsel," my general counsel understands everything about our business. She knows how production is scheduled, she knows how batches are made, she knows how to let, because she ran a facility. So that's really very useful to have a team that's also worked their way up through the organization and now serves in leadership roles. I would say my team is 50-50, 50% are our team members that grew up within our organization and then others are top talent that we recruited that could bring better practices into the organization say, "Hey, this is how we did it here or there." And we could be open.
Mimi McLean:
That's good. It sounds very collaborative.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Very collaborative. Yes. That's important. And so you also asked about meetings, I mean, communication is be meeting through whatever you do, so absolutely. So with my executive team, twice a month, we have our executive team meetings where all 10 department heads are coming together. I never want to have silos, I want everybody to be connected the fabric of the company. And I want everybody to know where are with our strategic goals, are we fitting them? Do we have an issue in one area? How can this department lean in to help that department? I mean, COVID was a primary example. I mean, I suddenly was having sales team members and everybody working on production lines so that we could meet the needs of our consumers. So having that is really important. And then every department, if you're in operations, every facility is going to have morning huddle and they're going to have all sorts of things so that we can keep everybody connected to our mission, what we're doing and make sure that we have constant communication, it's key for leadership.
Mimi McLean:
That's great. And you make everything seem so easy and digestible.
Kelly Vlahakis:
It's not.
Mimi McLean:
I know. So that's my next question because I know it's not easy even though you make it seem like it is, what have you found to be your biggest hurdle or struggle as you've been growing this company?
Kelly Vlahakis:
Oh, I mean, Mimi, it's definitely a challenge. So in no way, do I want to make it seem easy. We only have so many hours in a day and I've oftentimes found myself just not having enough hours, not having enough time. During the last year we certainly felt that, felt this working around the clock feeling. And so I would say that one of the challenges is always to try and figure out how to balance things, and so how do you at different points of your life lean into certain areas more than others? Because there's always going to be sacrifice, there's always going to be a give and a take and it's important to really just be mindful. I know for me, okay, this is a time that I have to spend more time focused on the business, this is a time I need to spend more time focused on the family. The idea of having it all at one time is impossible.
Mimi McLean:
Doesn't exist.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So the idea is how to really sit down and be honest with ourselves and say, when I schedule everything, you should see my schedule, it looks, whatever I'm doing is on schedule. And I always feel like I'm running behind on that schedule, but it really is about this carving out the time. Every single quarter I put together, what are my priorities? One of the things I started doing and one of my shortcomings is I always had a hard time saying, no, I find myself saying yes a lot. And then feeling exhausted or feeling like I couldn't really bring the best to the table because I was pulled too thin. I literally started creating a no list. And so rather than thinking of saying no as something I felt bad about, I started saying to myself saying no to that is saying yes to my priorities.
Kelly Vlahakis:
And so I created a list, these are my priorities and I list out my priorities, and then someone asks me something, "Hey Kelly, can you sit on this board? Can you do this event?" Whatever it is, I write it down and I'd look at it and I'd say, does this support any of my priorities? And if it doesn't support my priorities, I would say no, and then I would say, I just said yes to my priorities. And it's a silly little tool that was very useful to me in terms of that feeling of feeling overwhelmed, feeling like I couldn't possibly keep up with all these moving pieces.
Kelly Vlahakis:
What's best is to really double down on the priorities and to take the time to really think things through, to say to people, "Hey, Kelly can you?" "You know what, let me get back to you," to give myself a moment because I oftentimes have been, "Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure, I can do that." And then suddenly I'd be like, how am I supposed to be at my kid's event and that event and that event and that event, you feel like, that really writing it down is very useful.
Mimi McLean:
Yeah. I love all that advice. And I love your last saying no to something is saying yes to your priorities. That's great. Just to close, is there any advice, I don't know if you know this, but you probably do, that only 1.7% of female CEOs ever reach a million dollars in sales in their company and only 5% ever reach CEO status in corporate America. So for those who are listening that want to be a CEO or an entrepreneur, to make a million dollars in sales in their company, what advice would you give them? What do you think distinguishes somebody from making it and not making it?
Kelly Vlahakis:
First of all, I would say it's important to do something in your life you're extremely passionate about and something you're all in on. It's hard, you're going to make a lot of sacrifices along the way and you want to make sure that what you're doing be love because in the end of the day, every single day to stay focused, to stay driven and to take all of the rejection, all of the nos, all of the doors in your face, and you have to be really convicted about what you're doing. I know for me personally, I remember having a conversation with my sister one day with Gee, we had a sales meeting, didn't get it and she's like, "We worked so hard and we did all this stuff, dah, how can you just be okay right now?" And I'm like, oh, because I'm just focused on getting back in the door now.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So now I don't have the time to, now I need to just go back and see, where did I go wrong? What could I have done better? To have the energy to sustain you, you have to just be so passionate, you have to believe so hard in yourself, you have to believe in yourself more than anyone could ever believe in you in order to have those achievements. It's extremely competitive, it's extremely challenging. As women, there are so many more roadblocks in place and I mean, one of the things I can say that we've done here is try and build a company that's led by more women. 60% of my C suite, of my executive team is women. 65% of our leaders in R&D and in chemistry are women and so often women aren't represented, it's them, our management.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So we really are focused here on diverse leadership and more women in leadership roles because as women, we need to really focus on this, to level the playing field more women need opportunities to really come up the reigns. There is so much value created when you have diversity in leadership than it's too often thought of in organizations. So I would say that, I would say first and foremost to female entrepreneurs out there, it sounds easy, you talk about doing that, every day I'm fighting, every single day I'm fighting for our shelf space, our place in the market. There's not a day that I'm not fighting, there's never a day that I sit back and I go, wow, now that we've hit this milestone, I've made it because there is someone else that wants that spot. And so you have to always stay in the game, you have to always stay focused. There's never that moment of, now it's done unless it's end of life.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So I would say that, make sure you do something you really love, make sure you're willing to be all in, make sure you do not allow others to define what you can and cannot do. I mean, I'm, as I said, Greek and African-American, you could imagine in the Greek patriarchal society, there's a lot of thoughts about the roles of women, especially the roles of women in the workplace. And so, I mean, I sit at the helm of a company where I have a brother who's 20 years older than me. So often in companies like that, the young daughter wouldn't be leading the company, you have all these sort of things that are in place. And so it's really very important to judge people by their work ethic, what they're doing and really make sure that as women, we pull other women up as well, and that we really make sure that as we build out our leadership teams, and when I say leadership teams, I don't just mean the C-suite and executive teams. I mean the line leaders, I mean, all of them that we have women represented in those roles.
Kelly Vlahakis:
So that team members can always see that they can be anything they want to be in our organization and that other companies should do the same. And I think that it's been proven that more women on boards produce higher financial returns for companies-
Mimi McLean:
They do. That's why I don't understand why they don't invest more in them.
Kelly Vlahakis:
It's unbelievable. And so I think that a lot of it is, we're showing now the world what we can do and we have to keep at it. And I would encourage people to not let their dreams go, it's easy to become discouraged, it's very easy to absorb these setbacks, but to turn all setbacks into comebacks and to really just stay focused on what you want to accomplish in your life.
Mimi McLean:
That's great. I love this. This has been amazing. And I'm so proud of everything that you're doing.
Kelly Vlahakis:
You're an amazing woman too, Mimi. I just have to say, I was reading your bio, all the things you're doing, a mother of five, all of the various ways. And I just want to thank you for your leadership and for allowing so many of us women to have a platform to share our stories. I know you know firsthand what it takes as you've built your businesses and I thank you for creating a space for all of us for meeting and sharing.
Mimi McLean:
Thank you. [crosstalk 00:33:39] story and hearing everyone's story, that's why I do it. And I love investing in companies that are women led or just have something that I'm passionate about to, to make the world a better place, so.
Kelly Vlahakis:
Absolutely we have to do it, and businesses must make the world a better place.
Mimi McLean:
Thank you for joining us on the Badass CEO. To get your copy of the top 10 tips every entrepreneur should know, go to the badassceo.com/tips. Also, please leave a review as it helps others find us. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them. So email me at mimi@thebadassceo.com. See you next week and thank you for listening.