EW 063 – How To Prioritize People, Product and Profits To Successfully Lead A Family Business – Winning with Shaffina Mohamed, President of Jetco Heavy Duty Lighting

Gordon Sheppard (00:00.844)
Shaffina, welcome to the show.

Shaffina Mohamed (00:03.8)
Thank you, thanks for having me.

Gordon Sheppard (00:05.494)
Well, it's so good to have you here. I've seen you stand at the front of a room and win an award and then talk so eloquently about the origins of what it's been to be in the business that you're in now, the grace that you've carried, the history that's there. I mean, it was just such a great, wonderful, memorable thing that occurred there. And so I know there's a lot of people that are going to be excited to hear you speak, but many people haven't met you just yet. So if you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Shaffina Mohamed (00:35.406)
Okay, well, thanks, thanks, Gord. So I'm Shaffina Mohamed. I am the president of Jetco Heavy Duty Lighting. I'm a second generation member in the company. My father founded the company about 38 years ago, so back in 1988.

And the niche of the company has changed obviously over the years. Today we're an aftermarket lighting supplier to a very niche market or niche markets, specifically mining, construction, forestry, ag, trucking. Essentially true to our motto, we light things that move. My background is not in this area, so I do not come from the lighting industry nor did I have any background in mine.

etc. I graduated from the Faculty of Rehab Medicine with a degree in occupational therapy, ran a private pediatric practice in Calgary for a number of years and then about 15 years ago joined the business.

Gordon Sheppard (01:44.706)
Well, isn't that interesting? So you're a medical person growing up and you see your dad running this business in this niche area that does, it's funny, I'd love to talk to you for an hour about, you know, this really unique take, because it would, finding a niche and serving those high level, you know, clients is significant in terms of the, I'm going to say almost the thought process, IP process, things that you've done to really make their businesses run. Those are serious.

customers that you would have in those major areas. And there you are, you do your medical thing and you think, gosh, know, why, so why wouldn't, if you're running your own business, what brought you back into the family business? Like what, what was that moment for you?

Shaffina Mohamed (02:22.413)
Yeah, you know, I wish it was this incredible moment that I could share with you, but it was actually me having dinner with a friend one day who said to me, who's going to take over your guys' family business? And I said, I don't know.

And he said, what do you guys do? And I found myself flustered and trying to create a response. I essentially didn't know a lot of what we did either. And so he proposed the idea of coming to join the business. And I thought, no. So I immediately called my dad the next day and...

And so did like to come and spend the summer there, learn a little bit more about the business and that's where it started. That was back in the summer of 2009. Thinking I would just come and learn and I never ended up leaving. that's the transition.

Gordon Sheppard (03:21.226)
Isn't that interesting? And you could have had a thriving career medically. You know what I mean? It sounds like that was probably running pretty good. And then there's something about that moment. Sorry, You said you never stopped. The summer came and went that summer. What was it that made you stick around?

Shaffina Mohamed (03:34.606)
Yeah, you know, honestly, think when you work with a founder of a business, in my case it happened to be my father.

you see the grit and resilience and what they sacrificed to create the business. And something internally makes you want to be a part of it. And so I think for me, that was that moment of I'd started making changes. I'd started learning. My learning curve was vertical. It continues to be high, but it was vertical at the time. And so there's also a piece of, as much as there's a piece of exhaustion in that learning, there's also a

of excitement. You're a whole new industry, a very different industry than what I was used to. So yeah, that's what I would say, you know, that's what kept me in.

Gordon Sheppard (04:27.992)
And if we look at your industry over that 38 year period, we've got a big technological evolution in there. And I'm going to say this badly, but if I say from traditional to LED, do you know what I mean? Whatever those applications were, the fact that your father got this thing up and running, found those niches, found not just a niche with like, to be in the, again, those major sectors that you've described, that's quite something to get up and running. You arrived about 15 years ago, interesting inflection point, and we're going to explore that a little bit in the conversation. It sounds like you sort of.

We're attracted to it through what you saw and what your father was doing. And there's something in you, entrepreneurially. Also, we're going to hear a little bit about today that wanted to dig in and roll up your sleeves and be a part of this venture along the way. Wow, we've got a pretty good sense of who you are getting started. That's really good. If you had to describe your biggest win in this journey, what would that win be? And how would you describe it?

Shaffina Mohamed (05:18.381)
So I don't know it would be our biggest win, but maybe something I'm really proud of. sure, I think we could call it one of the wins. I think we've made it really easy for our customers to do business with us. And while that sounds cliche almost or standard,

We haven't taken it from the standpoint of just the forward-facing of the business in terms of how we deal with customers, etc. That's a given.

But the back end of the business, when you look at the operations of the business, every decision that we've made on the back end has also been with the customer in mind. And our customers wouldn't probably ever see this or even know this, but it's truly been, I think, our biggest win because it's allowed us to serve them even more seamlessly.

Gordon Sheppard (06:11.767)
Wow, you're saying that super clearly, but this is now getting, you know, with the leader of the company, I've got you right here, and I can say, what's, you said this customer focus in the back end being critical. Let's get some examples in there of what you've, what's an example of something you've done there that would be a win for your customer that they don't know about?

Shaffina Mohamed (06:27.981)
Sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay, so even if I kind of take a look at operations, and if I think of operations from a, like a five point perspective, so let's just start with product design. We don't design product in an oval office.

Often in companies, it's a small team that makes kind of very big decisions for companies based on some market intel and some assumptions. We often will work directly with our customers in the entire design process of what they need to make their lives easier. And then inherent to that, because we know they are working in industries that rely

on operator safety, visibility, high demand industries where there's no downtime. They can't afford to have a haul truck, for example, down for a light. We have to be able to design a light that's highly durable. So we look at the details in there, right? And with the customer, always the customer in mind. So what are our mounting brackets like? What kind of vibration can they handle? What kind of chips and LED and design technology are we using? How are we dissipating the heat in that light?

How is it going to handle moisture and water? How is it going to handle impact and rock? All of those things that often a customer will not see unless they happen to be the partner that's working with us goes into just simply our design process.

Gordon Sheppard (08:06.647)
I love it and so neat to thank you for describing that so eloquently. And I think what's interesting to me is there's a, fellow who was on the podcast, Patrick and mock pie. They have a box that goes into one of those large trucks that haul millions of pounds or whatever in, the open pit mining, open mining areas. And, it, instead of you having to take your truck in to get your oil checked and then it goes out to a lab and whatever they do it in real time. So now that thing goes.

You've got it going through the box and whatever. Now, the insight that I got from him there was when they went to introduce this product, they got a champion in the oils patch and the champion said, great, your lab tests worked out great. Bring your box up here. By the way, it's probably not going to go the way you think it's going to go from the lab out in the field in Fort McMurray, cold minus whatever, all those conditions. And he was like, no, no, no, it's the lab. It's going to work. It's going to work great. And you've just described the insights.

that would come from the benefit of working directly with your customer, because there would be a back and forth, there's a give and take in what you're describing. Is that a fair way to say it?

Shaffina Mohamed (09:10.925)
Yeah, absolutely.

And I would say even as you go to the next step in that process, you know that's product design, but then if you look at the next step in general operations, it would be you know your supply, right, and your supplier selection. So even when we're looking at that, we are looking at everything from their ISO rating, we're looking at the type of LED chips that we're going to put in, we're looking at the components and what can be fostered, we're looking at cost savings.

But often when companies look at cost savings they're looking at it for profitability, know, rightfully so. And of course we do that, but when we're thinking cost savings, we're thinking of it in an effort to pass that on to our customer. So when we do negotiations in that stage of the process, it's always thinking of our customer base. And again, they would not see that piece of it, but it's inherent at the forefront for us.

Gordon Sheppard (10:10.647)
But you've got this sort of thoughtful, what's sounding like almost an IP driven proprietary in the backend piece. you're, you're again, you're breaking it down for me and these, these clients are like the light has to work. You wouldn't be in business. Like there's just that thing at their end of like, they don't need, they don't, need you to know that you're going to make it work. They need to know that, that sort of, and if you're in business 38 years, you know how to do that.

but it comes from this back and forth that you're describing in those areas. That's so good. I'm just gonna back up, because I know we're gonna touch on even more of the operational things as well. We got this win where you have a customer centric approach, not only in the front end, traditional, which is a must have, but also this thoughtfulness in the back end that they may not be aware of. They're gonna be aware of it now when they listen to this, which is good. But this thing of that extra care. Now there's something insightful there that we need to explore in terms of what's going on. So we know what the win is.

And then we get into the anatomy of the win and we talk about, okay, what's the strategy, work plan, people, operations and results behind that? If we look at strategy and we think about vision, mission, values, goals in this case, what are the values? Why go this extra step? Why not just stamp it out? Do you know what I mean? And just send the stuff off and kind of deal with maybe a few returns here and there. What is it strategically that you would feel that this is an important investment to get this win?

Shaffina Mohamed (11:27.179)
Yeah, yeah. think that's a great question actually because I think it's hard for companies to do, to function in alignment with their values at all times. And I think it's something that we put a concerted effort into. So when we think of trust, specifically trust, it's very important that what we do, we are entrusted by our customers to be able to provide

a product and a service to them that is carefree, is hassle-free.

And we do that on the front end through, call it this warranty program. We have a hassle-free warranty program where, you know, there's no questions asked, et cetera. But also on the back end, right, the care with which we have put into designing that product, the care with which we put into filling your inventory rates, you know, which we boast to be 99%. The reason we do that, that kind of piece in there, what's the goal?

to maintain and to continue to develop and earn the trust of our customers and to stay in alignment with our values.

Gordon Sheppard (12:38.72)
Interesting. you're, it's in alignment with, and so there it is, eloquently said, trust and, we, this is extra mile. There's something in there. Like what is it? this is really interesting. What is it about you or your father, the founder that set this up strategically? Like what, how would you comment on that?

Shaffina Mohamed (12:59.745)
Yeah, so I think, you know, when we think of business, we think of it as a partnership, right? And in partnership, no matter what kind of partnership it is in life, there has to be a certain degree of not just trust, but a degree of loyalty. And what fosters loyalty, I think, is this inherent understanding. It's an inner...

it's an inner feel to what you want to bring to the table. And as a supplier, that piece, when I look at kind of what we put into that detail, it differentiates us. It takes us out of what would be, I'm going to call it a general lighting company to a company that has now very focused expertise where our customers can start understanding that we're not just buying a commodity, right? And it's moving away.

from that I'm going to call it commodity market.

Gordon Sheppard (13:55.916)
Moving from commodity to longstanding loyal relationships, which is a big part of profitability. When we look at the entire, it's one thing one year, someone's maybe gonna, you would have this experience. Someone's gonna step out to try and save 5 % or whatever it is they think they're gonna say. But in the meantime, they'll lose it on the backend and maintenance, downtime, whatever those things are that impact them along the way. So to have a trusted partner and the fact that you have that philosophy coming into it really reflects the values and the strategy and you're bringing it to, and thank you for bringing it to One Word.

Shaffina Mohamed (14:01.591)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (14:25.367)
trust and you're good at it and you've been at it 38 years and another 38 to come it sounds like as well as you kind of going forward. Yeah that's so good. So we've got we've got this win we understand a little bit about the strategic highlights anytime we have a strategy we need a work plan and I'm just going to go back to when you got started. So if we start the timeline there of like okay you came into the company around that time how would you describe some of the highlights along that timeline? Is it been just easy sailing or any ups and downs or what would you say?

Shaffina Mohamed (14:31.137)
We hope so.

Shaffina Mohamed (14:52.589)
I'd say nothing but easy sailing, no. It has been, like I said to you, was for me, for me personally, it was a vertical hill that I had to climb. I had to spend time in every part of the company, right from the warehouse, from shipping and picking and packing product, to answering phones, to...

working with R &D and to being forward-facing in sales and being out in front of our customers. Pretty well had to touch on all arms of the company. was, I spent many a nights, especially like when I go back to 2009, I must have spent, there were nights here, no word of a lie, that I slept on the floor, that I would be reading and learning and trying to get my knowledge base, you know.

up there to where I wanted it to be, recognizing that business was still running and so there's obviously, you know, things that have to still keep going. And you make blunders along the way. I have no shortness of those. But this kind of thirst and this quench to learn and so yeah, I was here learning at all times. I think one of my greatest gifts was, and I learned this from my father, was just...

to be authentic, be real, to ask questions. When I didn't know something, I never tried to make up a response to it. I might have tried once or twice and failed miserably, but for the most part, I learned the art of just being very authentic and very real in talking to whomever I was talking to, whether it be a customer, whether it be a staff member, whether it be a supplier. It didn't matter. If I didn't understand it, I would seek the education for it.

Gordon Sheppard (16:46.294)
Interesting.

Shaffina Mohamed (16:46.347)
I remember going to a mine site, my first mine site. I didn't grow up with haul trucks and excavators. I grew up with Barbie dolls. So you can probably appreciate, I didn't understand the size of these things nor how they operated. And I remember being at a mine and asking an operator, can you take me up to the cab? And, you know, and of course you do all these safety courses when you're entering a mine. But I remember this feeling of like, my goodness, now I know

why it's so easy for a haul truck to go over like an F-250, you know, because it's just, they look tiny, right? And I look tiny. And so, yeah, but people were very incredibly kind at the time. They knew, they knew that I didn't know this perception. And so I would just ask a lot of questions and I was excited to learn.

Gordon Sheppard (17:40.226)
What a great approach and you can hear your infectious personality would have broken through a lot of what would have been, it's funny when I think about when you entered the business, your father would have already had long standing relationships with many people at that time and you're the new person in the situation coming into those moments, but you tackled it with authenticity and again, you would have been demonstrating.

your own thirst for knowledge along the way. And we hear that in there. that's really neat. So we've got the strategy, a little bit of sense of the early days in the timeline. I could talk about COVID, you know what I mean? We could talk about other major moments, upsets, ups and downs along that sort of chunk of time. But we've got a little bit of insight in there. The third step is people, wherever we have a win. So when we think about the people that have helped this win to occur, this backend, higher level customer service, how would you describe your

father's influence on that because I'm guessing there's a through line that you picked up on there. Is that fair?

Shaffina Mohamed (18:33.345)
Mmm.

Shaffina Mohamed (18:38.539)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, because we are a smaller company in size, we have a, I'm gonna call it a flat hierarchical structure. So there's really direct communication between the leadership and the team. It allows for very fast decision making, so we're able to pivot pretty quickly. And...

little to no bureaucracy. so when you're, you know, so when I think of kind of just from a structure perspective, that has been a big asset for us and for our customers for that, you know, to that matter because we're able to respond to them very quickly if we need to make changes or pivot, etc. In terms of the team itself, we've been really fortunate, you know, more than half our team has been here for over...

12 to 15 years. We promote continuous learning throughout the organization, even in informal ways, where we will have the product lead every Friday, pull aside people and talk about development on a product or...

or kind of key features of a product. And it's not necessarily just with the sales team or the customer service team. It could be with the warehouse. It could be with accounting. It's really to kind of garner this holistic approach in the company. We've worked at kind of removing silos in this company. And so when you're a smaller company, you tend to wear multiple hats. And it's a gift to be able to do that because it allows for continuous learning.

takes away this kind of, I only work in this box. We certainly have our areas that we work in, but you'll see the type of personalities that we tend to attract are people who just want to roll up their sleeves and say, hey, I can see you're struggling over there, let me help you. We do things like regular top of week meetings on a Monday morning, for example, and it allows people to share kind of what's going on in their area, how do we better

Shaffina Mohamed (20:56.527)
service our customers, what is a change that might be happening, how is it going to impact our customer. That is always at the forefront, but when I look at the team, it offers a lot of that, I'm call it transparency and approachability.

Gordon Sheppard (21:12.074)
That gives us some insight into, again, another layer of talking about this backend customer service thing, because you're going to have people who are bridging their knowledge into other areas of the company. So they're going to be in a better position, either to serve the customer directly or to reach out and get those answers that they need. And it creates a much better scenario for that going forward. That's great. How would you describe your own attitude in this journey? Like we talked about the timeline. So there you were sleeping on the floor.

Doing what you do, like in early days, how would you describe your attitude throughout this ride? Has it been again, peaks and valleys or what do think?

Shaffina Mohamed (21:45.464)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you know, for sure peaks and valleys. I think more peaks than valleys at this point. I wouldn't have said that to you if you'd asked me that probably 10 years ago. I probably had more valleys than peaks at the time. Yeah, if I look at my early days, like I said to you, it was a steep learning curve. was exciting. It was also overwhelming. You know, I went from being in an industry where I was reasonably competent, successful. I didn't have to put a lot of effort in.

to what I was going to do every day to an industry where I had to kind of really roll up my sleeves and learn and ask and put in very long hours and feel reasonably incompetent, you know, on a daily basis. So in those early, and so it felt overwhelming in those early days. I came from a family where that philosophy of you either sink or swim was...

was how you kind of manage life. And I remember my dad always would always kind of say, I know you'll sweat. Like, you know, it was like this kind of very quiet, gentle vote of confidence in you.

My brother actually had joined the business at one point as well and he did some remarkable things for the company which was nice. So for me, when I came in, he had created distribution relationships, you know, and so he had kind of just built on the foundation that my dad had created. And so if I fast forward after that learning phase and those first kind of three to five years that were tough,

Shaffina Mohamed (23:29.429)
I slowly started realizing that if you let down your guard, if you let people know that you maybe don't understand something or help educate me in this area, etc. And if you treat your people and your customers as your partners...

all of a sudden it unlocks something pretty magical, I think, in any business where you don't feel like you're flying solo anymore. And so I think today, if I fast forward that journey, I would say it feels like you have this team that feels like family that rallies with you and for you. And I think that has made the journey pretty incredible.

Gordon Sheppard (24:16.438)
Well, thank you for that description and how lucky for the leaders that listen to say, yeah, I'm experiencing that incompetency feeling in my inner voice too, right? Because entrepreneurship is definitely tough as you're kind of going along. And then thank you for putting in the decade plus to get us to here where we're at your peak points, you know, and that you have the resilience to go through those early days in a sense. And then you can hear your leadership, you're leveling up all the time. I hear that continuous learning in your company, but I hear you leveling up. And in fact, you're not done.

I can tell also with your leveling up because you know what I You've gone this far and how much further can it go for talk? If we talked to you in 10 years again, what's that leadership discussion as you sort of put in your Yoda skills or whatever we're to call them as you kind of build them out. That's great. Okay. So strategy work plan people. We've got a good sense of maybe some of that contributing towards the wind operationally. You took me through a couple steps of this backend thing. And if you can recap me just quickly, maybe a sentence for the first step and a sentence for the second step. Do you remember what those were? Yeah, go ahead.

Shaffina Mohamed (25:11.373)
Yeah, I think we talked about product design, right, and how we partner with our customers in that area, supplier selection, and how we look at every little detail when we are kind of designing the light to make sure that it meets that. I think the next piece of that process I would think of is really inventory fulfillment.

Gordon Sheppard (25:15.338)
Yeah, product design and then.

Shaffina Mohamed (25:35.341)
We carry a 99 % inventory fill rate. It's from back in the day from my dad's time. And I thought it was crazy, to be honest, because in most businesses, it ties up all of your capital when you do that, or a lot of your capital. And I thought, oh my, yeah, yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (25:50.902)
You're sitting on a lot of inventory, that's part of like, that's a, again, a risk, a major investment on your part, but you've got it dialed in if you're at like 99%. That's crazy.

Shaffina Mohamed (26:02.637)
It is incredible. And not only that, so when we think of inventory, we, so I told you, like, we always are thinking about our customer when we're even on this backend. So when I started in the company, we had about, give or take, 1,300 part number SKUs, right? Today, we have about 400.

And so in order to drop that and you know it's a smart operational move because it allows your purchasing power to increase, it allows for proper turnover, all those types of things. But when we did it, we didn't do it with that as the forefront of our mind. We did it because some of the feedback we would get from our customers as they went through our very thick catalog at the time, they'd be like, you know, our customer service team would say, they're not sure which light they should buy. You've got like, we have, you know, you've got eight options.

to a restaurant and having, you know, like the Cheesecake Factory and having so many choices. And we learned really quickly what's going to help the customer. And we learned that if you limit the choices, if there's an option in any kind of tier for them, be it the good, better, best, it makes their life a whole bunch easier. So today if you look...

Not only have we dropped our SKUs, thinking about how easy it is, our customer can make a decision on lighting within 30 seconds. They can have an excavator and say, I need a work light in this area, and we can narrow it down to two options for them. There's only two in that category.

our catalog reflects the same, right? It's come down to probably, I don't know, 40 odd pages, very, like very quick. it just, we're trying to make it so easy for that customer to do business, but all from the back end.

Gordon Sheppard (27:51.262)
I love it. you're, yeah, that's so neat. And isn't that very intentional? Do you know what I mean? Because there's the shiny object thing of we can carry more. This is the type of thing we do. You reminded me of the last time I bought a vacuum. I just went to Costco and I'm like, which one do they have in that one that's got the attachment on the end? And I just bought that one because I trusted that Costco did the choosing for me. And I don't like it was just one of those ones as a consumer where I didn't want to go vacuum shopping. So what I'm hearing in your end is like getting it down to those things because

Shaffina Mohamed (28:12.972)
Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard (28:21.115)
Speed to decision making is massive for these people. Again, a third way that you're describing operationally where you've really dialed it in. And then it allows you the purchasing power. hadn't even realized that's remarkable. Wow, that's great. So we got through these three steps in operations. there, and there's a fourth one and fifth one as well. Is that correct?

Shaffina Mohamed (28:37.933)
Yeah, so I would say, you go from inventory, your next step naturally in operations is order processing. So everything on the back end, when we look at order processing, every order, we now have the ability to place orders online. So we allow our customers to place an order any which way. It could be online, it could be by phone, it could be by email.

But we look at order accuracy. So every order is double checked on the back end. And that's not just on the processing of an order, it's also on the shipping of an order. And so kind of, and we, we, we reward kind of order accuracy, right? That's very important to us, again, with our customer in mind. We know in this industry,

There's no room for downtime. Even though we're dealing with distributors, we're a B2B and distributors often carry stock. But it's a real hassle for a distributor to get the wrong product or to get too many of something, et cetera. So if you kind of look and our results show this, our order accuracy is at 99.99%. It's incredible, actually. But it's because of this back end processing.

Gordon Sheppard (29:53.622)
Well, congratulations. And you've set up a culture where that happens. Because that's a training investment on your part. That is a when mistakes happen, we're going to invest in continuous growth for that situation to allow that to occur and to get it to 99. That's a great investment on your part. And the fact that you're pulling it off. There's another case study right there in terms of how are you getting that?

And there's something about leadership meets people and the ownership that they have in things too. Is that fair?

Shaffina Mohamed (30:26.091)
Yeah, absolutely. And because we don't work in silos and because everyone is, I'm going to say, rowing in the same direction, always focused on the customer, it's in the inherent nature of our team to double check, to triple check, to get someone to check, to ask questions in order to better serve ultimately our customer. So yeah, I would say that would be probably the fourth step of that operations piece.

Gordon Sheppard (30:55.763)
And is there another? Am I missing another one? Because it's so good.

Shaffina Mohamed (30:57.485)
Well, I'd say the last, and I'm kind of just speaking in broad, there's probably way more steps and hopefully no operations person watches this because these are just my little steps. I would say the last is probably the technical support. We work in an industry that is technical and requires a certain level of technical expertise. And so we have technical support available at all times.

our customers. And this is back end in the sense of if a question comes in repeatedly and there's a threshold of how many times it would come in, a solution is put in place proactively on the back end. So for example,

We had one strobe at one point that I guess customers were calling in about all the time on how do I install this, the wiring, you know, I'm not sure which wire connects to which to get all these flash patterns, et cetera. And it was the same answer that was being given. And so very quickly, the product team put together a one-sheeter and it went in with every strobe after that.

to just, you know, just very quick. Again, customer wouldn't see this. They see the end result when they're getting that strobe and the sheet that comes out, but no idea that that on the back end was just somebody trying to resolve a solution really quickly so that you don't have to call, you don't have to waste more time.

Gordon Sheppard (32:27.156)
How lucky. Your team gets to sleep well at night because they know they've done their best by the customer every time. And you can hear this customer first continuity through the entire history of the company that you've been describing, along with you getting to lead with that level. And I can hear if it's 99.98, you're trying to take it to 99.99 for what you're trying to do in the work that you're doing. Strategy, work plan, people, operations. We've heard thank you for putting that eloquent sort of.

steps for us together. Finally, we get to results, quantitative results and qualitative results. Quantitatively, I don't mean to crack open your books. You've made a few bucks. Do know what mean in there? You're a viable business. Is your business in a growth mode? Are you adding people not staying? Any quantitative things that you'd like to point out for results?

Shaffina Mohamed (32:59.714)
Yeah.

Shaffina Mohamed (33:13.387)
Yeah, sure, Yeah, quantitatively, you know, the things that we look at and that we measure is obviously our top line and our bottom line.

both of which I would say we are in growth mode. I think we're always aspiring to increase that and have successfully been able to have new customer acquisition year after year for the last five years. When I look at things on the back end, you know, like our warranty rates or our return rates, we probably have, I would venture to guess the lowest warranty rate in the industry, which is probably why we,

We don't find it difficult to offer a five-year hassle-free warranty. Our warranty rates sit at .0001%. So it is in an industry where the average is typically 2 to 4%.

Yeah, so we build a good product. Our return rates are just as low. We give customers the opportunity to buy, try something, return in this B2B. So when I look at quantitatively, we look at that, and then we obviously look at things like shipping errors and order accuracy. They're all above that 99.99%. So we are, we're, you know, we would love for it to be 100, and we will always aspire to get there, but that's,

quantitatively where we look at that.

Gordon Sheppard (34:41.524)
Well, and those are remarkable numbers. when you talked about the win being your customer focus, right? Those numbers, you've got the proof in the pudding. You've got those numbers back. You're seeing it happen. You're making that investment over time, over years. This is not something you set up in a week. This is a culture build. It is a continuous learning environment. It's the breakdown the silos environment. reflects.

Shaffina Mohamed (34:58.08)
no.

Gordon Sheppard (35:03.784)
The leadership style that's in place, I'm going to say from all the people that are there, it sounds like there's many leaders in your company. Funny enough, I don't hear it just hanging on your shoulders. You're part of that team that you've built in terms of what you're doing. Really interesting. So some of the quantitative highlights. Qualitatively, how does it feel?

Shaffina Mohamed (35:09.61)
Absolutely.

Shaffina Mohamed (35:20.693)
Yeah, yeah. You know what feels really, we feel blessed. You know, I don't know of a better word, but I would say we feel blessed and we feel grateful that our customers can rely on us, can trust us.

It's nice to know that we are known for our product. know, when we do surveys to our customers, et cetera, it's one of the first things that we hear back is, you know, the delivery, the fill rates, the product, all the things that we have put the time and effort into to help our customers and to service a gap in the industry. It feels like that's been recognized and understood. you know, I think we're blessed in many, many ways. I mean, obviously, we always,

We have lots to learn, there's always gaps to fill. I think that's part and parcel of the entrepreneurial spirit and the journey as well. But it's been a great ride thus far.

Gordon Sheppard (36:18.484)
Well, and no wonder you're going to events and winning awards and getting the recognition from your customers and that kind of thing as well. Whenever I get great leaders on like you, I always have to ask if you could, if you were talking to another leader and they were maybe coming into the family business or they were trying to level up their leadership chops, do you have a few sentences that you like to maybe pass along to encourage the next leader who might be listening to this?

Shaffina Mohamed (36:44.109)
Yeah, Whew, that's interesting. I think in leadership, all I can say is surround yourself with really good people and then trust them. That's been a very big piece. Ask lots of questions and just be authentic. At the end of the day,

We're kind of in this thing called life for a very limited time. And as you know, Gord, I think I mentioned to you that I lost my father last year. And so it changes a bit of your perspective in life, you know?

while I always endeavour to honour what he has built and what he created and take it to that next level, you kind of realise that if you're here for a limited time, just do good work and enjoy the ride and have a little bit fun along the way, but be true as you go through it.

Gordon Sheppard (37:49.31)
We are in this thing called life. How lucky to spend time with you. I really do appreciate it. I learned a ton here today. Shaffina, thank you so much for being on the show.

Shaffina Mohamed (37:52.202)
Okay.

Shaffina Mohamed (38:00.545)
Thank you. Thanks, Gaur, thanks for having me.