This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kristin Toth, President & Chief Operating Officer at Vesta Home, a vertically integrated luxury design firm. Kristin’s career is marked by her ability to lead and grow companies – previously as President and COO of Fernish, COO of Dolly, CEO of Code Fellows, VP of Operations at zulily, and in various leadership positions at Amazon.com. In this episode, Kristin talks about systems thinking in sustainable business, the lessons she learned from leaving her comfortable position at Amazon, and why overcoming fears is pivotal for career growth.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kristin Toth, President & Chief Operating Officer at Vesta Home, a vertically integrated luxury design firm.
Kristin’s career is marked by her ability to lead and grow companies – previously as President and COO of Fernish, COO of Dolly, CEO of Code Fellows, VP of Operations at zulily, and in various leadership positions at Amazon.com.
In this episode, Kristin talks about systems thinking in sustainable business, the lessons she learned from leaving her comfortable position at Amazon, and why overcoming fears is pivotal for career growth.
“I think really in the last decade of my career, I've realized that if I wanna make a big impact, I only have 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And it's super fulfilling and exciting, but also like really crucial to impact, to be building and empowering teams, creating great culture, rolling through all of the ups and downs that you have in supporting the team through that, because by empowering a team, developing a team, developing individuals, you're able to make just such a bigger impact. And so, when I'm sort of measuring what I wanna do next, or how I wanna approach something from a personal perspective, it's really about how do I make the biggest positive impact I can on people, on teams, on companies, on, you know, the world.” - Kristin Toth
(00:29) About Kristin and her background
(08:39) Systems thinking in sustainability
(12:10) Lessons learned from leaving Amazon
(18:51) Addressing skill set gaps for success
(23:00) Overcoming career fears
(33:04) Driving change for people through the organization
(38:37) Strengths and weaknesses of the business model
(42:46) Final thoughts
[00:00:00] Phil Dillard: Hello, and welcome to Thruline to the 4th Sector, where we're exploring fourth sector capitalism and impact investing as an invitation to innovation and changing the world.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Kristin Toth, President and Chief Operating Officer at Vesta Home, a vertically integrated luxury design firm.
Kristen's career is marked by our ability to lead and grow companies. Previously, as President and CEO of Fernish, CEO of Dolly, CEO of Code Fellows, VP of Operations at Zulily, and in various leadership positions at Amazon.com.
In this episode, Kristin talks about systems thinking and sustainable business, the lessons she learned from leaving her comfortable position at Amazon and why overcoming fears is pivotal for career growth.
Now, please enjoy this interview between Phil Dillard and Kristin Toth.
Phil Dillard: Hello again everyone, and welcome to another episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, here today with Kristin Toth. How are you today, Kristin?
[00:01:06] Kristin Toth: I'm doing great, Phil. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat.
[00:01:10] Phil Dillard: Thanks for coming. I'm very excited to speak with you. There are so many interesting things to dig into and I can't wait to get started. So, you know, we start the first segment, just trying to get to know a little bit about you and your journey. So I start with the, I think hopefully the easiest question of the day. When people ask you what you do, how do you describe what you do?
[00:01:29] Kristin Toth: That's a really great question. Sometimes it depends on who's asking me, but I think where I've gotten to in a sort of bigger sense is I'm about like, what impact can I make every day, every month, every year? And that impact, I realized kind of early on that I had this sort of curiosity and of natural affinity toward.
Uniting things, pulling things together, looking across an entire context, being able to go deep into like the things that [00:02:00] matter, but also just sort of knitting things together. And then I think really in the last decade of my career, I've also realized that if I wanna make a big impact, I only have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and it's super.
Fulfilling and exciting, but also like really crucial to impact, to be building and empowering teams, creating great culture, rolling through like all of the ups and downs that you have, and supporting the [00:02:30] team through that because by empowering a team, developing a team, developing individuals, You're able to make just such a bigger impact.
And so when I'm sort of measuring what I wanna do next, or how I wanna approach something from a personal perspective, it's really about how do I make the biggest positive impact I can on people, on teams, on companies, on, you know, the world. So I. That's, that's really what I do. Sure.
[00:02:56] Phil Dillard: Absolutely. Okay. So that's very mission, right?
Kristen's vision [00:03:00] and where you see, so how did you get here? If you go back to, you know, to the beginning and what you studied, do you find that there was a consistent thread of where you started to, where you got and, and where along the way did it go from, you know, performing a certain job to being on paths to this, this mission that you have now?
[00:03:19] Kristin Toth: Yeah. So let me start so that everybody knows. Kind of what I'm working toward today. I am the President and c o O of Furnish, which is a furniture and decor rental service that provides [00:03:30] just a, a really, really flexible, convenient way to make it effortless, to create your home with home being not just a space, not just the things in the space, but actually how you feel about it and the fact that, you know, the sort of legacy in the world is purchasing these big things that you have to like, Transport around, put together, move store, manage, live with, even if they're not the perfect thing because you already bought them, and we are just providing this sort of flexible [00:04:00] model for people to, you know, invest in and love the things.
That they really, truly love and are going to serve them throughout their lives, but also if there are things that are more temporary or you just don't know to give them that flexibility. So I get to support all of the teams across the organization. Outside of finance though, obviously we're very. Close partners, whether that's the demand driving teams of sales and marketing, or the product and technology teams or our operational [00:04:30] merchandising teams that sort of make the things happen.
And so that's what I'm doing today. But how I got here, um, If I really look back, I always had a lot of left brain, right brain things going on, right? I was a musician from early on. I got into, you know, theater and some other like creative aspects. Though please don't ask me to do anything visual. I'm stinky at that.
But on the other side, I really liked math. I really liked science and I sort of fell [00:05:00] into. Basically just based on the different schools, I was kind of interested in being an engineering major at Michigan, and at the time they were building this, this new program that was very cross-functional. Right. It was in industrial engineering operations research.
I. But you also had to take business classes. You also had to take foreign language and culture classes. And because of that well-roundedness and the ability to sort of like follow an academic [00:05:30] plan that ran across different schools and different ways of thinking, it just appealed to me. The idea around it was to make amazing operations leaders by.
Emphasizing both the like strategic and like business parts of things, the global nature of business and the engineering and sort of technical things that you need to know in order to, to sort of thrive in that and lead in that environment. And I wasn't all that interested in it, honestly, um, when I started, but I liked the educational [00:06:00] portion of it.
So that was kind of a big. First milestone, it's just sort of being lucky in the right place at the right time and liking the type of education it was gonna provide me. And what happened was we had this really incredible lean manufacturing. Team of instructors who, one of them was the first American manager that Toyota ever hired, and he was just a guru.
He took us out into manufacturing plants. We like interacted with people and the [00:06:30] whole thing around lean manufacturing was how to make. The best processes and eliminate waste so that you could sort of accomplish your goals and make it sort of pleasant for the people who are actually doing it. And that appealed to me.
So I sort of got pulled into operations, logistics, supply chain. I. But the other thing that was happening was just the internet was starting to become a lot more mainstream and everybody was trying to figure out how to use this. And I know that, you know, in 2023, that sounds ridiculous, [00:07:00] but in the mid nineties, every company, even like super heavy innovators, were like, what is this internet?
How do we use it? And so I think because that was just a natural curiosity, the idea of blending this like technical piece. With like a strategy and a technology sort of just became where I wanted to live and thinking across all of those things. So as I went from school into kinda my professional career, I started off at Dell who was really turning the supply chain [00:07:30] and manufacturing upside down, really using technology to do it.
And um, I had benchmarked them for a project and so I really wanted to go. See it from the inside, and it was an incredible experience. And then I went back to grad school, I came out to Seattle and I started working at Amazon. And I spent eight years there in the early two thousands. Really just constantly innovating and learning in that sort of umbrella of like, you know, how do you use technology for things that technology is best [00:08:00] at?
And then marry that up with things that people are really best at and constantly work backwards from the customer. And I was sort of hooked, so I spent a couple years at Amazon. Building out same day delivery and a number of other programs, and from the capability perspective, and then I switched over to the sort of marketing and then category management perspective, because I really wanted to be on that more business side.
Understand like the more frontline direct, you know, demand side, customer interaction. How do you build [00:08:30] an offer? How do you price it? How do you get people to love it? How do you. Sort of evolved that product, uh, or capability over time from, you know, the, the top line perspective. And so I spent five years on that side of the business before I left.
And the thing I realized while I was there is I just loved building things and I'm not a very good software developer, so I had to do it through, you know, business and, and it sort of naturally led me much more towards startups and entrepreneurship. And I went then to Zulily and helped. [00:09:00] Build out the whole backend before we IPO'ed.
I ran a coding school for a while, which is just a really exciting kind of career detour. And then between Dolly and furnish, I've been sort of at that like c o o President, uh, side of things. Again, trying to like build a company from scratch, build a culture from scratch, build processes and capabilities from scratch.
And I just love it all. And that's how I got here today. Well,
[00:09:24] Phil Dillard: it's a heck of a, a heck of a journey and I really appreciate you sharing with us. I'm curious, [00:09:30] there's so many little interesting, um, things to dig into, but I'm curious about like, other than lean manufacturing, was there any particular process or approach or ethos that kind of made a major shift in your thinking?
We talk about, you know, systems thinking or. Natural systems thinking or design thinking. There are certain influences that often trigger something in someone, and I'm just curious if there was something that went off in you that was really interesting or really helpful. [00:10:00]
[00:10:00] Kristin Toth: Two things immediately came to mind.
I think I was doing system thinking before it was called system thinking. That's just sort of how my brain works and where I get really energized and excited. So I naturally sort of gravitate in that direction. Um, so that is huge. And in fact I took a really great system dynamics class in grad school and it has ruined me for the rest of my life.
Like, I walk around and I'm like, What are all the different things that are happening here? Where are the feedback loops? Like what's gonna happen down the road? It's actually [00:10:30] sort of a curse 'cause it's sort of, you're living in the matrix and seeing it now, but I think systems thinking is really just core to what I think I bring to the table and, and sort of making sure that you're looking at like all the different things that come together and not sub-optimizing for one piece or the other and really understanding.
Feedback loops and delays and where are things that, um, you know, you need to see around corners for, and how do you sort of bring everything together as opposed to sort of one thing at a time and creating sort of natural [00:11:00] waste in that system. So that's, that's definitely a core for me. I think the other thing that I will say is it's more the Amazon way of looking at.
That flywheel, right, that everybody's now seen sort of drawn on a napkin, but that idea of like selection, value and convenience, so how do you give people the most option? I. With the highest convenience and the best value, and just taking those concepts and constantly innovating on those and working backward from the customer.
[00:11:30] Reimagining not just what competitors are doing or what customers are telling you that they want, but what are those primary needs that customers have, and using those three pillars to sort of, Figure out how to innovate on their behalf and create things that didn't exist before or do better. And so that was really huge.
And the other thing from Amazon is really that long-term thinking, right? So like, even though this might be more expensive in the short term, you know, not optimal in the short term, if this is the right thing to do, work [00:12:00] through that sort of startup phase, work through that, uh, learning curve and ramp and get to that point if it's truly the right thing for the customer.
So, I would say that that was super influential for me as well, um, and is certainly something I carry with me every day. I.
[00:12:15] Phil Dillard: Super. That's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing. They're, they're both really, really cool. I'm like, I wanna research that course now I might, I might need to take it. Um, I'm a glutton for punishment.
It's on
[00:12:25] Kristin Toth: course x I think so. You could, that's awesome.
[00:12:29] Phil Dillard: One [00:12:30] of the things that we want to do as part of this podcast is to inspire people. To make the transition, make the lead that they've been thinking about and do certain things that they might care about being mission-driven companies being climate tech companies, that sort of going from comfort to impact and that sort of thing.
And you know, I think it's kind of a natural segue given where you just landed to talk a little bit about. Taking that leap, because some people might say, my gosh, you were at Amazon. It's amazing. Why would you ever leave? So and so forth. [00:13:00] But you know, you're a builder, you're an entrepreneur. And there was certain points where it said, I need to take these steps.
That got you here. So can you talk a little bit about the catalyst for making the decision to leave what seemed like, you know, a great. Career to take a risk in these entrepreneurial ventures that bring you to, you know, a whole lot of uncertainty, but seemingly like a whole lot of excitement for what the future holds.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
[00:13:26] Kristin Toth: For sure. Um, because this is definitely something [00:13:30] that I. You know, psychologically has been a journey for me. I grew up in the Midwest, in Detroit, and most people that I knew or were sort of mentors to me had sort of decided what they wanted to do sometime in college, gotten their first job, and then worked their way up sort of linearly within these companies for their entire career, and for whatever reason, that felt less comfortable.
For me when I was sort of doing my in early internships or thinking about what I wanted my career to look like, [00:14:00] and I realized that I was just sort of around some. Like risk averse, uh, kind of culture. And the worst thing I could think of was to be without a job or to be fired or passed over on a promotion or something like that.
And that just caused a lot of fear in me. And I think it was after I left Amazon, I really felt this the most, and my first startup at Zulily. There were days where I was just like, I'm gonna get fired today. I don't know what I'm [00:14:30] doing. This is so hard. Things are kind of messy. And I think at some point, after having a few reps, I had this sort of revelation that as you go up and you have bigger, more impactful jobs, which is really what I wanted, that people take bigger risks and sometimes.
You might get fired or you might not be the right person at the right place at the right time, and that isn't a reflection on you and your skillset, but rather the [00:15:00] situation that you're in. And also, I was like, oh wow, CEOs get fired all the time and you know what they do next. They're CEOs again, it didn't ruin their career, right?
So I think for me, it just sort of de-stigmatized this idea of like the worst thing in my head was risk of something not working out either the company or my job or my role or whatever it was. And so I think sort of de-stigmatizing that took me probably a good decade in my career, but, But once I sort of got over that hurdle, [00:15:30] it's like, all right, great.
Now I don't have to spend any energy on that and I can really look at why I am doing what I'm doing and making the biggest impact I can. I mentioned I went from Amazon to a startup. I realized I was sort of like starting things all the time within Amazon, and I had a sort of natural curiosity around could I do this without the training wheels that I have in this established company that has incredible technology and has like really, really smart people.
A foundation on which I'm [00:16:00] building, could I do that from scratch? Where you have to build a team and you have to build that foundation and all of that. So I was sort of just curious and wanted to find out if I could lead through it without it sort of already being there. And that's really just became this sort of like nagging thing in the back of my mind as I was sort of thinking about what to do next.
And it was pretty common at the time at Amazon too, like look for your next thing every like 18 to 24 months and usually you were moving internally. And I had kind of gotten to [00:16:30] that point. We had launched digital music. In the cloud. And that was not the paradigm at the time and we were the first ones to do it and it was really a, a rewarding thing.
But now this was sort of like becoming this big beast and it's like, do I really wanna stay and sort of play a role post-launch in this much bigger machine or do I wanna go build something else? And I was sort of reflecting on that. It just so happened that I got this call asking if I knew anybody that might be.
Good for a couple of jobs at [00:17:00] Zulily, and I just got really curious about it. It was an upside down supply chain where they were selling things before they had them. You know, they had agreements to get them, but they didn't actually have them in hand, and so it was like such an interesting e-commerce.
Knitting your like strategy in front end and customer offerings with the experience that you're able to provide. And I just loved the founders and the team that I met and so I was really excited to go try it out. And I figured, well gosh, if this doesn't work, Amazon will probably still be there and I could probably come back [00:17:30] and get a job there if I really wanted to.
And I had, you know, not burnt any bridges and you know, I still had really great friends from the eight years I was there and lots of great support. So. It was sort of like, Hey, I wanna see if I'm capable of this. I wanna see if this idea that's been nagging at me that I could actually go and do this and build it from scratch and build the team and lead the team through it.
I just wanted to go see if I could do it and if, if I couldn't, I knew that there was something sort of waiting for me if [00:18:00] I really wanted to go back to where I had come from. But I, it was just sort of a personal goal to say like, let's see if we can take these training wheels off and if I can really do this, and if it is.
As exciting as it seems to me.
[00:18:12] Phil Dillard: Oh man, that's so cool. You covered a lot of really interesting points. I have three that I want to carve out for the benefit of the audience before we go into talking about the company and how it delivers, um, impact on the planet. Because something you said really interesting, right?
Everybody has fear. Everybody has fear about all sorts of [00:18:30] different things. Anybody who says he doesn't is, is afraid of telling the truth, right? Um, so I love what you said was as you go up, And have more impactful jobs. You take bigger risks and CEOs get fired all, all the time. Right? Like I can't believe that Travis Knick got another job.
Right? I can't believe that the guy, what's his name from um, from WeWork, was able to actually raise more money after that. Right? And it's unbelievable. But you know, there is a lot of, I learned a long time ago, there is a lot of learning that is a [00:19:00] value, what do you call it, value creation. That you get from the experience, whether it was successful or whether it was unsuccessful, and need to take that and turn that into something.
So there's three things that I wanted to talk about. One was talking about skill sets. You said something about skill sets as failure. You talk about getting fired isn't the worst thing, and you talked about your inner voice, and I kind of wanna take them one by one because I think they're really, really interesting.
The first thing I I thought about is you said, um, because you feel at a position it. Doesn't [00:19:30] necessarily reflect on your skillset, but sometimes it does. Sometimes it reflects on the fact that you're like, I'm trying to go here and I can't do it. If I'm an athlete and I need to run a distance in a certain period of time or jump so high or do certain things, figure out how to hit a curve ball, I'm not gonna progress in my career till I figure out that skill.
So I'm curious if you have any thoughts. That you would share, like for people when you go, when you're dealing with that failure, when you're dealing with that transition and you need to think about skillset, what [00:20:00] sort of things have you done to kind of address the skillset gap so you could be successful in the next position?
[00:20:06] Kristin Toth: Yeah, that's such a huge call out and I'm glad that you made it, um, because you're right. I, I think the thing that's great about failure is. It almost forces you or gives you a really, really strong, glaring opportunity to reflect on things. And so I think that's why failures can be so. Impactful in terms of your learning and in how you sort of move forward from that.
[00:20:30] It, it can be devastating, right? And, and if you're sort of in your feelings, um, for too long, you'll miss the opportunity to reflect and sort of learn from it. But failure is more than success, I think. Slow you down a little bit, set you back, allow you to really recognize. No kidding, there's an opportunity to reflect and learn here.
Certainly as I think about those times in my life and even things that don't go according to plan, that aren't like full failures, right? Like that [00:21:00] ability to like take that step back and say, what did I learn from this? Yeah. It's not a reflection on my overall ability or my long-term ability, or sometimes it's bad luck, but you still learn from it, right?
What do I learn from this? Was it a people thing? Can I look back and say, I made all the best decisions I possibly could with the information and skill sets I had at the time, but what would've helped me? Where were those pivotal moments and what were the things that even though like. [00:21:30] It felt really genuine.
It felt like it was the best thing to do at the time. What could you apply in retrospect and what could you get better at? And so many of those things are softer skills or working with, you know, organizational dynamics of humans interacting with each other and recognizing things a little bit differently, communicating better.
Dropping an ego and sort of having a tough conversation, uh, where you're willing to be [00:22:00] vulnerable and humble. And that has taken a lot of, I. Work throughout my career and still, still does every day because you know, you wanna project that strength. You wanna be the one that knows things. You wanna, you know, as a leader it feels like you're supposed to be strong.
Um, but I think that humanity is very powerful. And if you don't know, modeling the behavior of saying, I don't know, but let's figure this out together. So powerful changes. The dynamic in the room absolutely opens up the [00:22:30] conversation in a different way so that everybody can put their heads together and solve whatever's ahead of you.
I think that that like reflection and the humility and the willingness to be honest with yourself and say, I'm actually not good in these situations, and that might be because I'm afraid of them and I avoid them, or it might be because I'm not sure what to do, so how do I go get the help that I need there?
Whether it's. Skills training, it's coaching. It's just really good friends who are willing [00:23:00] to like give you advice and help you work through things. There's a lot of different ways to do that, but I think it starts with. Trying to dispel this fear that like the failure or the things that you're not good at are just things you're not good at yet.
Or in that situation and saying like, next time we're gonna do better. We got this. Me and my brain, you know, we're gonna get this, like we can move forward and what didn't work out last time isn't necessarily not gonna work out next time because I'm gonna get [00:23:30] better. The situation's gonna be different.
I'm gonna try some different things and. May or may not work out next time, but you get multiple shots at that goal.
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It sounds like you've done the work on giving yourself self-love and grace and just, um, the reflection that you're not perfect, but your work could be, work can be better all the time. So I appreciate that and respect it and I see it in you. So, I mean, [00:25:00] thanks for sharing that with us. It leads to then to the next question, which is kinda like you said, you know, getting fired isn't the worst thing, but what is the worst thing?
What have you seen that's distinguished people's momentum or fire? I. That you would warn people against?
[00:25:16] Kristin Toth: Gosh, I think fear. I think fear is probably the one because so many things come back to that fear or a true lack of self-confidence. Like you can be confident in yourself, [00:25:30] even if you're not confident in what you're doing, you can be confident that you're gonna.
Figure it out. But that fear will hold you back because it'll keep you from being vulnerable. It'll keep you from being reflective. It'll keep you from being honest with yourself. It'll cause you to act ways that may or may not be. Actually accretive to what you're trying to accomplish and they actually work against you.
But that fear is just such a like dark filter over everything that you're doing and it'll cause you to sort of lose perspective. [00:26:00] So it's not that we aren't all fearful, like you said, I'm scared all the time, but I think it's just almost being comfortable, being uncomfortable, and. And sort of like, I'll give you an example.
So when I took over a C E O of the Coding School Code Fellows, it was being run by somebody who had very different skillset than I did. And I was like, my gosh, I'm trying to like fit into this. And I had massive imposter syndrome. And I think one day I just sort of sat down and thought, [00:26:30] you know what, I'm never gonna be successful trying to do it the way that it was being done before.
And there's a reason why that. Is not the way we're doing it now, right? Like that we made this change. So it's okay for me to sort of take the reins and actually go after this. And if that's not su, I know I'm not gonna be successful doing that, what has been done. So that is a surefire way to not be successful or to fail.
I gotta let that go. I've gotta do something that's very genuine to what I believe needs to be done here. I need to [00:27:00] like lead from a genuine, authentic place of, you know what I know and bring the team along with me, obviously, but I. I think that there was just this fear that was really keeping me in this like old paradigm of like business as usual, and it was keeping me from sort of understanding like, Hey, look, even if my way is not the right way, I know I'm not gonna be ever comfortable or successful doing it somebody else's way or something that's not authentic to me.
And [00:27:30] so I think after I turned 40, I realized like, There's nobody in the world that everybody likes all the time and letting yourself go, uh, of that like thought that you could be that one person. I mean that's, I was like, gosh, if not everybody loves Mother Theresa, then like, what poke do I have? Right. So just sort of understanding like, look.
You've gotta be the sort of person that you wanna be. But if it's not authentic, if you're not working in an authentic way, it's [00:28:00] going to be very clear and it's going to have, you know, some, some issues. That doesn't mean that you can't change. It doesn't mean that you can't adapt how you interact with people, right?
If you're sort of just like authentically a jerk. Try not to be a jerk at all times in places where it's, you know, not going to serve your actual goals. But I think that there are just realities to like accepting that. You are who you are and you're on a journey. And if you are [00:28:30] trying to be somebody else and you're covering up a lot of stuff that will come through both directly and indirectly in how you're interacting with people, how you're leading a team, how you're thinking about things.
So I think what happened was I've just gotten really comfortable with being sort of uncomfortable, like. It's almost like what you do in meditation. Oh, that thought came in. I'm gonna acknowledge it and name it and I'm gonna move on. And so mindfulness is super helpful I think, in some of this journey.
But I think it's very [00:29:00] true that like if you are super fearful and that is going to like dominate, I. You know, the majority of your day and your week and your month and your year, then it's going to hold you back in so many different ways. And so that's the thing that I would, would go back to like, what are those limiting factors?
And I think most people get caught up in fear.
[00:29:19] Phil Dillard: Thank you for sharing. It's such a tricky thing, right? To get, uh, I remember when people say, well, you need to have comfort with ambiguity. You have to. Get comfortable being uncomfortable. You [00:29:30] have to, you know, be comfortable with uncertainty and you say, oh, I'm comfortable with that.
You have to be yourself and be your authentic self. And I think some people are very fortunate to have the gift of understanding that early. And I think the rest of us have the challenge to try and figure it out and try and evolve with it over time. And I think the more you hear those stories, who are, some people go.
And I don't get it. Why is this so hard? Some people go, how'd you do that? You know? 'cause it's like, uh, somebody's definition of, uh, pornography. They're like, I know what it [00:30:00] is when I see it. I can't really describe it, but I know what it is when I see it. You can't describe mastering that, but you know, when you have, you know, when you have an awareness of it, it's like it, everything looks a little different and the conversation with the inner voice is a little different.
That's the third thing I wanted to go back to because you talked about your nagging inner voice. Getting after you, and then at some point, I assume you listened to it and you changed the conversation with it. Can you talk a little bit about that transition too, because I think it's a key part of this [00:30:30] discussion.
[00:30:30] Kristin Toth: Sure. I recall a very kind of, Pivotal moment where I was having lunch with someone and having a really great conversation, and this was somebody I admired so much, and I was saying like, I'm not really accomplishing all of my goals, or I don't feel completely aligned in my career path at Amazon. And I'm starting to try to pull apart why that is.
But I also like maybe this is just not a good fit for me. And I think ultimately that wasn't actually [00:31:00] the case, but. I was like, I sort of want somebody from the outside to just tell me like, you're not gonna be successful here. It would've just solved all of the, the mysteries. But nobody did that, and I don't think that that was probably truly the case.
It was something else that was going on inside of me and I think that conversation of, I. First of all, I had sort of defined success in really like narrow terms that looked like outputs. And at Amazon we talked a lot about outputs, but the inputs to those outputs, and I [00:31:30] was still so output, I wanted to have X, Y, Z title.
I wanted to have x, Y, Z responsibility. I wanted my. Compensation to look a certain way. And I wasn't successful unless I like checked all of those boxes. And yet as I was moving toward that there was something that just didn't feel aligned and I couldn't really put my finger on it for a really long time, but just being super uncomfortable made me keep coming back to it.
And I think what came up is like, I [00:32:00] took the lowest offer I had out of business school for a reason because I knew that I wanted to, like at the time I was like, what I really wanna do is work with great people who are smarter than I am so that I can learn a ton. I'm still in learning mode. I wanted learn, and I had sort of lost that, like first principles, input orientation around like how I was measuring success for myself because I had sort of.
Done it with something that was very external and [00:32:30] output oriented. And so that was causing me to just feel like I'm not accomplishing what I want to, I don't know how to get there, and yet I still just feel uncomfortable. And that really caused me, like the conversation at this lunch was very much around like, well, why don't you just go talk to a bunch of different leaders and see A, what they do and B, what they have to do on their teams.
And you'll get a gut sense of if these are the next things you wanna do or not. And also have those conversations with [00:33:00] other companies so that you can sort of say like, all right, where are the trends here? For me, it was just like, go gather a lot of data and I, I also learned like early on, like, how do I make decisions?
I have to go get the data, I have to make a spreadsheet, I have to make a pros and cons list, and then I need to put it all away. For like 24 or 48 hours, uh, you know, take a bath, take a shower, go on a walk, whatever it is, try not to think about it because that then my gut is informed by all that work I did.
[00:33:30] But my gut's gonna really make the decision that is aligned with me. So, I sort of took all of this data and I was like, you know what's really calling to me is this thing about building and I wonder if I can really do it. I wonder if I'm really good at that and now is a really good time in my career to figure that out.
And if I'm not great, it's actually not a one-way door. I can come back to this other. But I think it was just a lot of feeling disoriented and not aligned and, and super, super uncomfortable in a way that [00:34:00] I didn't know how to work myself out of. That just forced me to start listening to that inner voice, and now I just look for it all the time.
But you know, like you were saying, even mastering. You know, being comfortable with ambiguity or being comfortable, being uncomfortable, all of those things are non-linear. They are not like up and to the right in a straight line. It's a rollercoaster. It goes up, it goes down, it goes around. You start back where you were, and that is the journey that you're on.
And. As long [00:34:30] as you sort of let go of this idea that everything's gonna be perfect, linear and continuous, you give yourself more grace, it's much more realistic. You recognize that it is a journey and that's been super huge for me. And you know, listening to your inner voice or all of the other things we've talked about, those are things that I am not a hundred percent of the time.
So,
[00:34:51] Phil Dillard: ah, I don't think we are any of them a hundred percent of the time because it's such a moving target. And the more nuance you develop, the [00:35:00] more nuanced there is to uncover and the more self-awareness you have, and the more, the more expression there is to uncover. So it's a, it's all about the the journey, right?
'cause you're continually growing. I think the best way I've heard it still is it's like, it's like the Shawshank Redemption. Get busy living. Or get busy dying. Either you're getting better or you're getting worse. David Goggins. Right. You know, so there's no, there's nothing in between. So we should just look at ourselves and say, I was worse today.
I wanna be better tomorrow. You know, [00:35:30] let me start that right now. Which is really, uh, an interesting segue. It kind of think into the. Execution into the company. And you talked a little bit about the company, and I guess there's a, a couple things that we would wanna start with as we kind of make that transition.
You talked about the organization. I'm curious about how your organization drives change for people that you seek to serve and how you define. Impact of the company.
[00:35:54] Kristin Toth: Yeah. Like I said, our mission is to make it effortless, to create your home and for your [00:36:00] space, your living area, to actually feel like a home.
And you have that comfort, you have that joy, you have that safety, whatever it is that you're seeking. And then it's very like evolutionary. And I think today, We're starting to acknowledge that things change rapidly in our lives, and it could be where you're living, how you're living, whom you're living with.
All of those things are changing and we're giving ourselves the space to do that, to evolve, to change, to try things out and, [00:36:30] and so we really want. To provide a solution that's incredibly personalized. Do you need one thing? Do you need an entire home of things? Do you need it for four months? Do you need it for, you know, 18 months?
Do you want to just rent it for a period of time and it will take it away? Do you wanna rent it and have us move it somewhere else When you move, did you really fall in love with something and you wanna apply everything that you've paid so far to owning that thing at the same price that you could have [00:37:00] bought it out?
Outright. And so I think, you know, just the act of, of sort of managing your life and your home can take so much time and can and feel like it doesn't have the right solutions for what you're really trying to accomplish. That's really the customer driven mission of what we're doing. The other thing is, is that we've just.
Seeing what people do when this solution does not exist. Leaving furniture on the sidewalk, throwing things out that are great, [00:37:30] great pieces of furniture, but you don't have time to deal with them and they're not gonna fit for this next phase of your life. And that is a huge amount of waste just for the planet.
So, All of the effort that was put into sourcing the materials, assembling and manufacturing that item, shipping it to wherever it was before it came to you, all of the, you know, things that you've done to get it to you and to like get it to you throughout your life. And then it's just discarded or wishfully donated, um, which a lot [00:38:00] of furniture is actually discarded because it's difficult to deal with on the, the charity side of things.
And so, You know, that results in 10 million tons of furniture going into US landfills every year. And a lot of that furniture is still really great furniture. It's just with the wrong person at the wrong time. And that's where what's really special about furnish is you don't find this very often where it's a really good business.
From a financial perspective, if once we get this to scale and we do it right, it's [00:38:30] incredibly valuable to to consumers, right? So like they pay less, they have more convenience. It's super flexible, and then it's also really good for the environment. All those things actually pushing the same direction instead of fighting with one another.
And that's what is so great about this company. I really joined the company because I loved the team. I loved the mission. I think it's a really fun business to build and I am so glad to be a part of it. But like at the [00:39:00] end of the day, it really was like the people that were doing this and the passion that everybody had and the way that they work together and just being excited to get up every day.
But like that mission of the company that unites us all, uh, that we're working toward and ideal of being this the effortless way to create your home and the best way to like have furniture for the planet, I think is. It's so rewarding and it's not often that you find things that are aligned in that direction where everything's sort of pushing in the, the same [00:39:30] direction, but it's really special when you can.
I'm very, very lucky, uh, but when I was sort of thinking about what I was going to do next, I actually invested in furnish before I joined. Because I just wanted it to exist for customers and for the planet. And like I said, I was sort of having this revolution for my own life that like impact was really what was guiding me.
And here I was like, great, there's incredible people. I can make an impact there. And then there's also this like mission-driven company that makes an impact on [00:40:00] customers' lives and on the planet. And so kind of once in a lifetime. Opportunity to spend my days and nights and weekends sometimes, you know, working on that.
[00:40:10] Phil Dillard: That is super, you know, it makes me as think of a, a pretty, um, well, I hope, interesting question is when you think about, I. Impact. And you think about the business model in particular, right? 10 million tons of furniture goes to landfill every year, but how do you capture the [00:40:30] economics of that, right?
Because if there's corporations putting wood waste, for example, into landfill, they're paying tipping fees for landfills. But it's not like you're recovering the tipping fees for municipalities un, unless you are. But can you talk a little bit about the strengths and weaknesses? Of the model, how you balance the economics of the three parties in the equation or more.
'cause it's, it's you, the consumer, the provider of a ma or manufacturer of Furnishers or others. I guess, I guess the fourth party is the, the groups who manage [00:41:00] the end of life of these things. There are some, you know, interconnections amongst these folks and I'm curious like how you manage that and how do you balance that to drive the economics of the company?
[00:41:10] Kristin Toth: Yeah, so I think the first thing is we have to be really thoughtful about what we're sourcing. So both how it's made, but also the durability, modularity, and the longevity of the product style and, and that sort of thing too. Because in order for this to really work financially or, you know, ecologically, these things have to be in [00:41:30] rotation for a while and we've gotta be able to refurbish them.
We've gotta be able to like replace a leg if that. And not have to buy a whole new thing and trash the whole old thing, and it has to be something that people want for a long period of time. If we have that for four to seven years on average, that means over that time we're monetizing it and customers are paying.
Portions of the retail price just for the time that they need it. But we're able to make multiple times the retail price. And yes, there's a little bit more logistics and handling and refurbishment and cleaning and [00:42:00] all that other stuff, but it's dwarfed by the availability of, you know, getting the right thing in the customer's hands at the right time and being able to monetize that time.
So, You know, I think that that's really where it kind of comes in and because of this business model and the fact we're able to keep things into in rotation for a lot longer and monetize them for that whole time, and customers are just paying that small amount, you get that sort of financial alignment with the sustainability part of it, and [00:42:30] again, in all kind of pushes in the same direction.
Not that it's not a balancing act to get that all right, but for sure that's the sort of business model and, and how we're going after it.
[00:42:38] Phil Dillard: Did you have unexpected constituents in the model that are outside of where you expected them to start earlier in the company's, uh, lifecycle? You know,
[00:42:47] Kristin Toth: I don't know that there's any super interesting, um, unexpected constituents that we've uncovered so far.
I think we have pivoted a little bit in terms of our channel strategy, so we knew [00:43:00] this was gonna be great for consumers. We built it as a consumer offering, and that was really our focus. And about a year and a half ago, we realized there were other companies in the business of making it effortless to create a home, whether it was corporate housing or relocation, short-term rentals that are becoming much more a part of everybody's lives, whether for vacation or just because we're moving around a lot more.
And those folks were not necessarily. On our radar is, you know what we really [00:43:30] wanted to do, but because we were building this thing that customers wanted with amazing product that was durable and lasted and a great service around it, we started getting sort of inbounds from these. Other companies. And so that's been a great exciting opportunity for us to sort of say like, Hey, we built this platform of services and capabilities and we can leverage it to have an even greater impact in either fuel, new opportunities for these other [00:44:00] companies, or replace, um, legacy providers that aren't measuring up to that service or that product, um, bar that we
[00:44:06] Phil Dillard: have.
Super. Thanks so much for sharing that part. You know, it gets me to, and I know we don't have a lot of time left, it gets me to kind of, I guess what would be the last question because if I think about a consumer experience with this brand or someone new to this brand or this conversation, they go, there's a great story, there's a great person behind leading this company and I really want to experience this, and I might actually think about my [00:44:30] consumption.
Patterns a little differently. Thinking about furnishing my home as a service as opposed to being part of a consumptive cycle that doesn't lead to the type of impact that I want to have on the planet. So there's actually a better way of doing that thing that might be a better way of doing other things.
So I'm curious, you know, in that light, and you're talking about consumers and their impact, and whether it's how they buy or how they live and work, What do you think is like the best [00:45:00] thing or the most important thing that an individual can do to lead to a better future?
[00:45:05] Kristin Toth: We've been kind of touching on it almost as a theme of, you know, in, in my career, in my journey.
But I think it's very true for everybody in terms of recognizing, although it may not be perfect, and you may not make every single step in that direction for various reasons. Not abandoning sort of what is in the back of your mind or the, the awareness [00:45:30] or. Groundedness of being mindful of what you are doing and the impact that it's having, and allowing yourself to be open to doing things differently and exploring where there are options.
And again, don't have to do that every single time, but I think that that awareness, that mindfulness is so impactful and. Can lead to on the right timeline for everyone, the right decisions that start to align your actions with [00:46:00] your, your goals and your philosophy.
[00:46:02] Phil Dillard: That sounds great to me. You know, if I'm hearing you right, you'd be telling people that because they think something that's different than people around them or because they feel something that they're being drawn to, there's nothing wrong with them.
For, there's nothing different. Well, we're all different and we're all unique, and that's a wonderful thing. And they should embrace that for themselves to be the best version of themselves, to give the best version of themselves to the planet. And whether it's in your work, you know how you [00:46:30] do and follow your path like Krista did, or whether it's in.
The how you think about your managing your life, managing your home, like your company gives you the ability to do, you can align your values and your ethos and what's drawing you from the inside more and more as you get to understand it and as you explore ways to execute it. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
Really, really appreciate it and I hope everybody else does too. And for those you are out there, I hope you come back and [00:47:00] join us again on another episode of Through Line to the Fourth Sector. I hope we could follow up, Kristen, sometime down the road and, and see how things are going for you and, and for your company.
[00:47:09] Kristin Toth: I would love it. Thank you so much for having me today. It's been super fun.
[00:47:13] Phil Dillard: Thank you so much. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and join us each week for a new episode. Thank you for listening.
Phil Dillard: Thank you for listening to this episode of Thruline to the 4th Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating and tell a friend. To learn more about the four sector economy, visit thrulinenetworks.com. That's T H R U L I N E networks.com. Thanks again and we hope to have you with us in the next episode.