Your Seat at the Table - Real Conversations on Leadership and Growth

Why Focus Beats Speed in Leadership with Tim Molek

• Mike Maddock & John Tobin

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What happens when an engineer-turned-marketer takes the wheel of a consumer brand inside a 175-year-old, family-owned enterprise—and decides focus is the strategy? Tim joins us to share how a “fewer, bigger, longer” philosophy transformed a sleepy category, why he tested a bold spin-mop bet online, and how Amazon visibility quietly lifted Walmart sales. The story isn’t just about product wins; it’s about the discipline to say no, retire legacy SKUs, and build a flywheel that compounds with every cycle.

For decision-makers dealing with complexity, sprawl, and pressure to do more, Tim makes the case for a question-driven approach to growth: What actually matters to the consumer? What deserves long-term investment? And just as important—what’s not your problem anymore? Those answers fueled a form of peer-powered disruption inside the organization, aligning teams around a flagship strategy instead of chasing every opportunity.

We dig into the realities of leading in a privately held company owned by 400 descendants, where patient capital enables long-term bets but profitable growth still sets the pace. Tim contrasts private and public pressures, explaining how slower decision cycles can create stronger outcomes when leaders prioritize relevance over distribution games. Through these six lenses—focus, talent, timing, culture, capital, and consumer memory—he shows how strategy travels when it’s simple enough to survive real life.

Tim also opens up about the hardest lessons: delaying tough personnel moves in the name of empathy, underestimating culture during a merger, and the subtle drift that happens when success crowds out personal life. For any leader who’s ever felt alone in tough calls, his reflections are a reminder that leadership often means choosing clarity over comfort—and learning when to run toward the roar instead of avoiding it.

For anyone ready to challenge their comfort zone around strategy, focus, and leadership habits, this episode delivers a practical playbook: hiring experts who think beyond their silo, simplifying assortments around a hero product, and using online demand signals to fuel retail velocity without gimmicks. Stick around for a sharp lightning round on leadership regrets, rearview-mirror management, and the one voice Tim trusts to tell him the unvarnished truth.

Real leaders. Real stories. Real action.
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Mike Maddock

What kind of what decisions have you overthought the most as a leader?

Tim Molek

What decisions have I overthought the most? I go back to what I said earlier, uh firing people early in my career. I would overthink that way too much. If they're not right, they're not right.

Mike Maddock

It's hard to change the track. That's because you're kind and it is symptomatic of most people.

Tim Molek

Empathetic, but empathy you put the empathy in the right place. And as I said, I learned to put the empathy towards the other people in the business and that person that needs to leave, it's better for them too. And do it in the right way.

Tim’s Path: Engineer To Marketer

Mike Maddock

Welcome to the Your Seat at the Table podcast with your hosts, Idea Monkey Mike Mattock, and ringleader John Tobin. We're two founders, a serial entrepreneur and a billion-dollar operator, to talk to leaders about how, when, and why they made their most pivotal decisions in life. Join us as we share wisdom, mistakes, and a few laughs learning from the brightest minds in business today. Imagine leading a privately held organization that is owned by 400 descendants of the founder. That's what Tim did. And I imagine he's got all kinds of stories to share about leadership. And I'm going to try to get him to share a few of them. Tim, welcome. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you having me on today. Yeah, I appreciate you being here. So, Tim, give us a little bit of your background. How did you wind up uh with the wheel in your hand for such a famous organization? Tell us about the organization. And if you could, just like as you go through your career, drop in a couple of nuggets of wisdom you learned along the way.

Tim Molek

Absolutely. So um I started my career as an engineer. Um I worked as a manufacturing engineer many years ago in a still a steel food service plant. Um I hope the dogs, and I'll come in on this as well. Do you have a dog, Tim? What kind of dog do you have, Tim? I have two dogs. Uh the loud one here is a a mutt that we got from the shelter. Uh, and we did the doggy DNA test because my daughter wanted it for Christmas. And he is part Bichon, part doxin, and part supermutt. And he very rarely barks. So I can't believe this is happening right now.

Mike Maddock

You could be being robbed right now. Are you okay? Do I do I need to send help? You know, I had a dog in college and I got two of them. I got them out of the shelter. Long story won't bore you. But one of them would bark incessantly. So I got toilet paper rolls, and every time it barked, I would wing it across the room at the dog's head. So I t I taught the dog two things not to bark and to duck. So it would anyway.

Tim Molek

This this guy's hard to stop the once he starts. And then I I have a 17-year-old dog. He just turned 17 in December. Oh, good lord. And he's lying quietly over here on the floor. I'm gonna switch to headphones. Okay, great.

Speaker 3

Here we go. Okay.

Mike Maddock

Yeah, okay, so um we won't we will edit that out, I think. Um that's okay. So um so go ahead and give us your um your your uh how you got your career. We'll edit all this out. We'll let's do a quick pause right here, and then you can just start.

Big Company vs Small Company Lessons

Tim Molek

Okay. So I started my career as a manufacturing engineer. Uh my degree was in industrial engineering from Northwestern University. Um, and it was the late 80s, and I really loved it uh because that was when manufacturing was really learning a lesson here in the United States from all the things that the Japanese were doing to really kind of uh change the way we produced for years, from batch manufacturing to just-in-time manufacturing and laid the foundation for what we use today, which is called lean. Um, so I was doing that, and I had a great boss, and he gave me a lot of flexibility. Uh, and when I looked around, though, I realized a lot of organizations had leaders that weren't from the engineering side, other than maybe Motorola at that time. Everyone else was not engineering based. So I decided to go back to school at night and got my degree in marketing and finance from Northwestern. Uh the original goal was actually operations and finance. Um, but interestingly enough, uh I my operations courses were actually behind what I was learning at business every day because the the market was changing so quickly that the textbooks were old. Uh so I ended up taking a marketing class, which I really enjoyed, and decided I was going to change my career. And so I dropped operations, focused on marketing. Um, and uh after five years at that company, finishing my degree from Kellogg, I was able to get a job in CPG. Um moving.

Mike Maddock

So you're you're a unicorn because most uh most marketers are not engineers by training.

Tim Molek

That's true. It is true. And I was fortunate that uh Unilever gave me a chance to make that shift because uh they don't necessarily want to hire engineers as well often.

Mike Maddock

Hey Tim CP. This isn't gonna work.

Tim Molek

I can't believe this hang out.

Mike Maddock

Okay, welcome to your seat at the table podcast. It's Mike Madock Sands John Tobin today. I'm here with my buddy Tim Molick. Imagine running a company uh that is privately held and owned by 400 descendants of the entrepreneurial founder. That's what Tim got to do. And so he's got lots of stories, I'm sure. I'm gonna try to get him to tell a couple of juicy ones and some lessons about uh growing and running a private firm. Tim, welcome to your Seat at the Table podcast.

Tim Molek

Thank you, Mike, and I appreciate you having me here today.

Mike Maddock

Well, it's great to see you. And okay, so let's do this. Tell us how you wound up uh with your hand, uh the wheel in your hand. Um, and along the way, if you could give us a little nugget of things you learned along the way, that'd be great.

Keebler, Unilever, And Sales Reality

Tim Molek

Sure, sure. So um I actually started my career as a manufacturing engineer um in the 80s. Ages me a bit, yeah. Um my degree was in industrial engineering, and uh I was fortunate to work for a uh a really a boss who had great foresights, and he saw what was happening in Japan at the time. So when he brought me in, he asked me to learn as much as I can about what the Japanese were doing and try to implement that in our factory. We made stainless steel food service equipment at the time. Um so this was around just-in-time manufacturing, cellular manufacturing. Uh these were things that are all predecessors to what we now call lean manufacturing today and 5S systems. Um, and so the the factory was kind of my lab, and I was able to do a lot of things. It was really an amazing experience. Um, while I was doing that, I looked around at organizations, realized that you know I wanted to keep growing in my career, and saw that engineers typically weren't running organizations other than maybe Motorola at the time. Uh so I decided I'd go back to school at night uh while I worked, and I wanted to get my degree in um operations and finance. But what I found was the operations was changing so dramatically at that point. What I was learning in the classroom was behind what was actually happening on the shop floor, which I'm sure is happening today, as a matter of fact, when we talk about AI.

Mike Maddock

Every single day. Yeah.

Tim Molek

Yeah, for sure. Um so I looked for another area of expertise and I took a marketing course and I really enjoyed it and realized that at heart I am a marketer, uh, even though I like numbers. And so I decided to get my degree in marketing and finance. Um when I finished, um, I was fortunate enough that Unilever took a shot on me. I moved to New York City and went into brand marketing.

Mike Maddock

Uh okay, so hold on a couple of questions. First of all, an observation, you're a unicorn. So you marketing and finance, two sides of the brain that usually don't uh like each other too much. Was your first when you were doing stainless steel manufacturing, was that how big was that company? They were about $40 million. Okay, so privately held small company.

Tim Molek

Privately held small company, yeah.

Mike Maddock

And you it sounds like the person that ran that company gave you a lot of autonomy to learn.

Tim Molek

Yes, they did.

Mike Maddock

Okay. So so you went to Unilever, which is not a small privately held company and learned about consumer package goods. What'd you learn?

Tim Molek

Uh actually one of the interesting things I learned is there isn't a huge difference on a lot of the things you do on a day-to-day basis from engineering to marketing. It's a lot of project management, it's a lot of getting other people to do things. Um, it's about leading teams. Wow. Um so that was that was uh quite insightful that I was surprised about that.

Mike Maddock

Do you think so? I know Unilever, uh we've done work for Unilever, and it's they're very formulaic. And I've noticed over the years that marketers used to be artists and now they're data scientists in a lot of ways. They it's shifted. So I can see how having an engineering background, uh which I'm sure made you and lean, early lean six sigma stuff, made you very aware of process and systems. So that served you early in your career. Yeah?

Tim Molek

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. It it did.

Mike Maddock

How long were you at Unilever?

Tim Molek

Um, I was at Unilever a total of seven years. Yeah. But I had a brief stint with Kebler in between.

Mike Maddock

Side story. My father's license plate was Ernie the Elf. He worked for Keebler for 37 years.

Tim Molek

That's funny. I wonder if he and I ever crossed paths.

Mike Maddock

George Maddock.

Tim Molek

Uh George Maddock.

Choosing Home And Career Direction

Mike Maddock

Don't forget the cones. My dad ran their cone factory. That was his, I remember they call him at work. That's how he his voicemail was. Anyway, I digress. So the Unilever, Kebler, did you go back to Unilever? Or what how did that?

Tim Molek

So I was working with Unilever in New York City. Um, after a couple of years, I love Unilever, by the way, they're a great company. Um New York City was kind of getting to me. Um, so I wanted to get somewhere other than New York City and I ended up taking a job back here, which I'm from the Chicagoland area, with Kebler. Um, and that just was by chance. And uh it was with Kebler for a few months, and I learned that selling food products is much more difficult than detergent. Um, because in detergent, if you start losing share, you kind of know where to go. But in food, and I and at this time, this was like the mid-90s, people were moving away from traditional cookies and crackers to pretzels because it was a healthier alternative. But if you didn't look at pretzels in your alternative, you know, if you were just looking at competitive cookies or crackers, you were missing where the volume was going. Um it's extraordinarily hard. I have a high level of respect for people that work in food marketing.

Mike Maddock

As do I. I and it used to be well, yeah, there there are lots of lessons around there. So Keibler from Keebler, you went to So I was at Keebler and then Unilever called me back.

Tim Molek

Um I was only at Keebler maybe eight weeks, and this was when the trend of putting customer-specific marketing managers in the field was starting. And so Unilever wanted to put someone as a customer-specific marketing manager in the Midwest, and it would have been here in the Chicagoland area. And uh yeah, so I said yes, I'd do it because I had done a number of years in marketing. I'd never really done the sales side, and this was an opportunity to see what happens on the sales side and be on the other side of the desk.

Enter Freudenberg And Vileda

Mike Maddock

So what I'm noticing is that you are bouncing around from engineering to marketing to finance, uh, to from small company to large company, from consumer package goods. Like you're you're obviously you're curious and you're a learner. Question that nobody's ever asked you before. So you go to you go from Unilever to Kevler and back to Unilever. What per you don't have to tell me the exact amount, but what percentage shift in revenue did your household have? Did they pay you more coming back? Was that like a because a lot of people are afraid to make moves from one company to another? You did it. You had to think, oh my gosh, eight weeks and I'm going back? That's gonna look interesting. Did you make more or less going back?

Tim Molek

It's funny you asked me that question. It was about the same amount of money, but I got a company car for the first time. There you go. And that was a big deal. Yeah. And I remember, Mike, it was a white caprice classic. It looked like a cop car. Yeah. That's awesome. Remember those? Yeah.

Mike Maddock

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, that's cool. Okay, so now you get now you're back with then what happened?

Tim Molek

Yeah. So I'm back at Unilever. Uh, Unilever consolidated. We had a bunch of different businesses uh across the country, and they consolidated and everything was going back to the East Coast. And for me, my next step was going to be back in the East Coast. Um, and while I was back in the Chicagoland area, I met my re met my wife. We'd known each other earlier, um, started a family, and she and I agreed we didn't want to go to the east coast. So I started a soft search um for what my next opportunity would be. As I said, I really enjoyed Unilever, but I didn't want to go back east. But one of the things you talked about earlier, the learnings I had through my career was I was at this small company, and what I really liked about that was I got to be the big fish in a small pond. Unilever was great, but I was working on the Dove brand at the end of my career, and I didn't get to make any decisions on Dove. Because it was such an important entity, of course, you know, it would be almost C-suite decisions. And while I understood it, I prefer to be the person more making those decisions.

400 Shareholders And Governance

Mike Maddock

I think that's a really important insight for young people listening. Um it used to be you could go to General Electric or a company like that, and they would, they, if you were on the executive track, they would switch you from sales to marketing to finance because they were trying to uh teach you how to do all those things. When you're in a small company, uh, you know, big fish, small pond, a small university, a small town, you get to play all the sports. You have to. If you if you're in a small town in Iowa and you don't go out for basketball, there's no basketball team. If you're in a small company uh and you don't take, you have to take stuff on. You you become almost a a great generalist, which serves you. And so I think starting in a small company is a really good strategy. I'm very proud of people that have come through um our small companies and gone on to do to run really big companies, but they because they learned a lot, because they had to. There was no one else that was going to do it. Is it was that your experience?

Tim Molek

For sure it was. And I was lucky enough to find this opportunity with Freudenberg, even though, as you said at the beginning, as it's a large company, they're very decentralized. Yeah. Um, so I was lucky to find an opportunity with them in the Chicagoland market. And when I went to them, they were about 25 million. And it was just the US business at 25 million, even though we're part of this $10 billion conglomeration at that time.

Mike Maddock

Okay, so it's Freudenberg household products. Just tell people what a little bit about what that company does.

Tim Molek

Sure. Um go like we'll go back up for a second. So Freudenberg, as Mike said, is a 175-year-old family-owned company. 400 family members all have equal stake. Um, we're we're about 15 billion US dollars today. Um, I remember years ago, BASF used to do this commercial, and Freudenberg's very similar. They make a lot of stuff you interact with every day, but you don't know it because most of it's B2B. So they make sealants and gaskets in the automotive industry, they make uh uh things that uh control vibration on airplanes, uh sound control in the inside of your car, the thing that helps muffle the sound on the roof is Freudenberg. Uh they make, if you've ever seen a uh ever been to a tailor, there's the exterior wool and the interior silk lining of a jacket, the inside white stuff. Fredenberg makes that. So all kinds of stuff. And we were the household products division. So we were kind of the the stepsister, so to speak, because the rest of the business was all about B2B. Um and we were there because we had a technology and non-wovens that made sense for the consumer to use, which is uh the Vilea cloth, um, which means like leather uh and it's a cleaning cloth.

Mike Maddock

It's kind of like 3M, you know, you're in everything, but nobody knows it. So I you you jumped past those dollars. And so when you started with the company, it was how much in terms of revenue? It was about 25 million dollars.

Tim Molek

And and what is it today? It's more than 300 million. That's just the US, yeah. Amazing. Yeah.

Mike Maddock

Yeah. Okay. And so you 400, you've got 400 shareholders.

Tim Molek

Yes.

Mike Maddock

Let's talk about that for a second.

Tim Molek

For sure.

Family Dynamics And Culture Tensions

Mike Maddock

I imagine there's an 80-20 rule in the shareholders where 20 per 20% of them are total pain in the butt, but they're driving most of the decisions, and 80% you never hear of hear from. Is that accurate or is it more like a 95-5?

Tim Molek

Mike, we were really fortunate. The Freudenberg family, the founder, and well, in the 30s when they really set this up. So we started in the 18 1849. But in the 30s, um, at that time, they said, hey, we're gonna make equal stake for every family member, but they also wanted to try to keep family members out of it. Um, so they actually created, they sit on a board, the family members do, and they nominate one person to be that person that communicates with the organization. And they started to move all the family members out of the business because they didn't want them in the business. Yeah. Um, so we actually worked fairly well. Now, having said that, you know, there's a hundred family members in the U.S. We'd get calls of like, hey, I can't find this product at my little stopping shop in, you know, Englewood, New Jersey. And so those are the kinds of calls we'd get. But in terms of in the business on a day-to-day basis, they did a really good job keeping themselves out of it.

Mike Maddock

Interesting. Yeah, I we work with a lot of family businesses, or I have a lot of family businesses and flourish advisory boards. And the what's amazing, you know, America was built on family businesses. And what's great about family businesses is that, you know, there's this imbued trust, people uh, you know, it's all in the family, everybody looks out for each other. What's terrible about family businesses is Thanksgiving dinner, or when you have to replace your brother-in-law or your sister-in-law or your grandfather or your father, or when, and this happens more than you might imagine, where grandfather skips his children and says the grandchild really should take this over. And you can can I just imagine how that would tear. a family a partner could. So uh it cuts both ways with family businesses. Can you is there a story or a moment where you had uh that you can share where you had family m members working against each other or did did the founder do such a good job that that never happened?

The Toughest Delay: Letting People Go

Tim Molek

Yeah we had an interesting situation. So um the at the time the person who was the speaker of the family um you know was meeting with the CEO and global CFO of our organization and his son was actually in our business unit running the professional side and they clear and they clearly didn't see the business the same way. His son was uh much more aggressive came from a consulting background wanted to make so many changes do things quickly more kind of an American way which is kind of funny and the father was much more in the Germanic let's take our time make sure we get it right pragmatic risk averse and so there was this conflict and we had witness it all the time uh and you know you talk to one and you'd get one side you talk to the other you get the other side and you're just like I just need to stay out of this right they need to resolve it themselves.

Mike Maddock

Aaron Ross Powell Did you have a coach in the business or someone that whose job it was to orchestrate the uh or manage the tensions between factions in the in the family or it just all worked itself out?

Tim Molek

It all worked itself out because the basic tenant from Freinberg is they wanted to keep family members out as much as possible. Today there's only two of those 400 that actually work in the business and the two aren't even in positions of major decision making. Incredible so it was an unusual case the one I described was unusual where the where a son came in to the organization at that point. And he's since left um of his own decision um so it's kind of taken care of itself.

Mike Maddock

Now he left the the position he didn't leave the family so he still you know gets a disbursement now and then yes his last name's still Freudenberg so he still gets a disbursement yeah did you from from your seat um what's the hardest decision you ever delayed um and what did that delay cost the business?

Tim Molek

Yeah you know Mike I would I would say I wouldn't say it was one specific decision but I would say it was a lesson I learned over time and that is when someone isn't right in their role making that decision to move them out. It's a hard decision to make and early in my career I would always delay that because I would feel bad about that you know because this person is running a household or needs the income and it just isn't working and I would always try to give them more time and I had a very smart HR person who said this isn't fair to the other people and it took me a while for that to dawn on me that you know what it isn't fair to the other people who are working hard and getting things done every day. And if the this person isn't fitting I'm I'm being empathetic to what's happening for them but I'm not for all the other people. And that really helped a mind shift change for me.

Privately Held vs Publicly Traded

Mike Maddock

Making it making decisions for the good of the whole is what leaders have to do. Did you have you ever had to fire a buddy or a friend? Uh yes I have yeah that must have been heartbreaking are you still buddies and friends or is was that relationship over?

Tim Molek

No we've always kept I've always kept good relationship with good relationships with them because um I'm always open and honest. Um and they always know. I mean people always know and it's not working out or it's not fitting in. And as long as you do it in a fair way it it works out. It works out. And most often and I remember I learned this I had this advice early in my career when I got my first job um a friend of mine's dad was actually the head of HR for the Pritzker group and he's the one that helped me get my first job and he said to me um don't ever feel bad about getting fired or losing a job because it's always the beginning of something else. And it's that worked out very well for me.

Mike Maddock

Yeah.

Tim Molek

Have you ever fired a dog? I wish I could I wish I could do something with this daughter right now.

Mike Maddock

I I I think I told you earlier that my first dog barked all the time and I I got a a bunch of toilet paper rolls and I'd wing them at the dog every time it barked so it would bark and dock. I taught the dog I trained the dog to dark to bark and dock for the rest of its life. Okay so so do you have um so keep going. So you you you're at at FHP and how is it that you finally wound up running an organization? What what was that like?

Mandate: Profitable Growth In Americas

Tim Molek

Yeah so um when I came in I came in as the marketing director kind of closed that loop so I knew that I didn't want to go east and I knew that I wanted to find a small company where I could be a big fish in a small pond. I wanted to stay on the marketing side and I wanted it to be consumer products. And I was really fortunate that this opportunity came up right here in my backyard in the Chicagoland area with Freudenberg and they were looking for someone to launch their global brand Violeta. They had just acquired this company called Rollomatic I don't know if you remember the old I remember infomercials from years ago Rollomatic and they wanted to use this company to launch their global brand Violeta into the US market. And so it was an unbelievable opportunity. So I took it um and it was perfect. It was exactly what I was looking for the only thing I missed on I thought I wanted a publicly held company because you know this was 99 and everyone's getting rich from shares. This was a privately held company but in the end I was glad it was a privately held company because I think it I I learned a lot from that. So that brought me into the organization.

Mike Maddock

Yeah so so that let's pause there for a second. So uh you know what do you know about working for a privately held company versus because you did both versus a publicly held company that would be a value to someone listening to this like if you're trying to decide should I go work for Unileader or should I go work for FHP like what are the top three things to consider do you think?

Tim Molek

Yeah um I would say the first is the the speed is different. Family owned companies don't have to worry about quarterly reports. So often decisions can be slower but at the same time decisions can be made that are better for the long term than the short term. I would say that's one of the biggest biggest things. So if you're looking for a much faster pace something that's more publicly held will be faster paced. If you're looking for equity in a company of course the only way I could get equity is if I married a Freudenberg daughter that's a different podcast. That's a different I hope my wife doesn't listen to this but publicly held companies of course you have an opportunity to do that. And then I would say the third thing is publicly held companies have a lot more access to capital than privately held companies do.

Get The Team Right First

Mike Maddock

Because obviously they can they can play against our market equity where a privately held company has to go to banks and get loaned based on their um yeah I would I would build on that that from my experience in innovation land uh privately held companies since they don't have to answer for quarterly reports can take more risk. In other words that you know when you when you set up a bunch of soldiers and say you're gonna be measured every quarter by shareholders they're not going to put many chips on the table because they they want to be conservative and make sure they make their numbers so my experience with FHP is you took some chances you launched a bunch of new products um which is something that is harder to do um at scale from my again from my experience unless you've got a really really great innovation engine like PG had for many many years. Okay so what did they ask you like what was your charge when you when they when you're leading North and South America what was the request is it was it growth was it alignment what do they want from you?

Tim Molek

Profitable growth um Freudenberg has a great vision where they want to be a third in each of the key uh regions of the of the world so they want to be a third of their net sales and profit coming from the Euro area a third of their profits coming from the the Americas sales and profit and a third of sales and profits come from Asia Pacific. And uh North America as we were a German based company North America and South America were a bit behind.

Mike Maddock

So my charge was we need you to grow we need you to grow quickly but we still need profit so it isn't just uh you know in invest and we're we're willing to take a loss yeah okay so here's a here's a here's what I want to know so it in flourish advisory boards we've got we've got the operator the strategist the rainmaker the visionary the tech futurist and the orchestrator those are the types of presidents and CEOs that we have based on your pedigree I'm not sure which one of those seats but I know that you have a finance degree operator you have your you worked in sales rainmaker you are a marketer visionary so what are the key so when someone says you need to grow profitably what are the levers or lessons like what do you do? What what what did you do to make sure that that happened?

Tim Molek

Yeah so um I wouldn't say I've specifically followed the book Good to great but a lot of what I did was that pathway um when I when I first took over as the regional president in 2014 I started with people and I mentioned earlier I had a great HR person and she really helped me make sure that we had the right team in place.

Facing Reality In Mops And Brooms

Mike Maddock

So she was already there fortunately so she and I were together we made sure we had the right finance person so we found this outstanding person within the Freudenberg group we moved a marketing director in from Europe um as the head of marketing sales was always difficult to fill but ultimately we did find the right sales role um operations was always challenging as well but fortunately we have a lot of bench strike within Freudenberg um to move in the operations side so getting the team right was the first thing first who then then what is the Jim Collins good to great yeah so so get the right team on the bus and just real quickly when you say I had a really good finance or really good oper what what made them really good? Were you looking at values? Were you looking at C V what makes a good teammate for you?

Tim Molek

Yeah it was um twofold they have to be experts in their field but they also have to know that we're running a business oftentimes especially in smaller companies um if you get someone who's a great finance person but that's all they see is the balance sheet and the PL and they don't realize sometimes you have to make decisions that are based on other points you can have a struggle. And so those people are the ones that I was fortunate enough to bring in that saw at the end of the day, this might, you know, from an HR standpoint, this might not be the right decision today, but for the long term this is a good decision. And so they fully support it.

Mike Maddock

So Tim I I have made the mistake and I've seen other leaders make the the mistake of um unwittingly surrounding themselves with people who were expert at finance, expert at operations, expert at sales, but they thought too much like me. In other words like they they their reaction was to have new ideas instead of doubling down. Did you ever realize oh my gosh I have hired someone that it thinks too much like me um that's it's very rarely a problem when you're at odds with your executive team because you want people that disagree but did you wake up any time in your career and say I've got someone on my team that is just you know agre too agreeable.

Tim Molek

Too much like me. Fortunately no I haven't I haven't had that experience. Okay well you're way better than me that no no and maybe just maybe Mike I just wasn't as sightful as you are and maybe they were nice try.

Mike Maddock

No it could be right clearly you're better. So um and how did it go? Uh profitable growth.

Tim Molek

Profitable growth so you know following that process right then it was confronting the brutal reality. So we're talking about mops and brooms um and that's not the sexiest category and at the same time actually a day after I started was the day Swiffer launched. So Swiffer was a direct threat to us. And Mike if you remember you and I met because we were making packaging for our competitive product to Swiffer called Ecstatic.

Finding The Hedgehog: Spin Mop Bet

Mike Maddock

That's where you and I first I recalled each other yeah uh we had worked in the past prior to that with PG on a number of uh really interesting products that are in the market today so it's a great category.

Tim Molek

Yep yeah but but in general mops and brooms are kind of a sleepy category that were under fire from PG and the competitors had and we had tended to not so much worry about the consumer we worried about getting sh space on the shelf. So it was all about distribution. So we were creating more SKUs that weren't because the consumer said they wanted a mop with a brush on the head but it was because we could do it. So we'd make a mop with a brush on the head go to Walmart and say hey you got to carry this one and this one because now it's different right and that's the way the category had been run. So that was the brutal reality of saying okay every year we're launching new stuff that's not consumer relevant. We're creating this massive portfolio of a thousand products so we're spending all of our time on operational efficiency and then next year we launch a new product and the old one is now you know not really important anymore but we don't kill it. We created this big monster.

Mike Maddock

So that was the reality and it sounds like um my uh I have a friend Dave Patrick and he has a great idea around the center of gravity in a business and he tells a story about how he worked for a company that had all these apartment complexes and he was doing interviews with their employees and you know one of them said hey I went across the street and they're offering 10% off if you sign a lease and she was like we don't do that. Well they also have this promotion we don't do that and he realized that the center of gravity in this company was the accounting department. They had built a business that said no and oftentimes in consumer package goods company this companies the center of gravity is in sales and the salespeople are like I need something new I need something new I need something new. So it sounds like you showed up and like okay hold on a second.

Using Amazon To Prove Demand

Tim Molek

Yeah yeah yeah yeah Mike Mike I hated the words I already sold it in yeah Walmart already said yes and like to what I don't even know what we're talking about yeah but to be in fairness because we weren't giving them anything on which they could build right so now comes the hedgehog part it was we looked around and said we need a product that's going to be our lead product that's going to change this game and we're gonna take the risk and invest in it. And we had this product that was developed in Europe called the Easy Ring and Clean it was a spin mop. It still is a spin mop um and we thought that could be the one um so we actually put it out on Amazon and we had it in limited distribution in Walmart and we noticed pretty quickly there was a high consumer affinity to that product. We also did some consumer research and we're like okay this can be our product we're going to build around so that's interesting you used Amazon as a market test. Yeah yeah did you do that all the time after that because that goes so in hindsight right I wouldn't say we said let's put it on Amazon as a test but we were like well we can get it on Amazon. So we did that. Oh and the person who was running Amazon was trying different things and we could see that our sales were going up and then we started to see the magic thing. We saw our sales at Walmart increase when we would do things on Amazon that would make it more visible and we realized there's this correlation.

Mike Maddock

Oh so so you uh it's like putting two Starbucks next to each other and if if people see it on it becomes like a marketing strategy to put things up online at the same time they're in retail. Am I getting that right?

Tim Molek

Well yes because it's about points of contact you know so there's what you see on TV there's advertising all kinds of forms of advertising today um but if you see it on Amazon now you have kind of a product that is in your mind and you've seen it before. Now you're walking in Walmart and you see it in the aisle I've seen that before. So you're willing to take a chance on it.

Building The Flywheel: Fewer Bigger Longer

Mike Maddock

So you're talking about uh Jim Collins and I was I had a chance to be one of the lucky 500 people that was with him a couple months ago in Chicago for a day and uh I love his work. I mean I I've read read Good to great and built to last probably six times each and yet when I was with him I learned for the first time about how to actually implement a flywheel I've been using the metaphor since I first read the book. Did you have a flywheel that was like uh so he Jim Collins says that if you get your flywheel right it's your strategy forever. Did you have one that you could just systematically continue to improve each part of your flywheel and get the same results or better.

Tim Molek

Yeah. It was so this product as the hedgehog be was part of the the strategy of fewer, bigger longer and that was kind of the flywheel and what I mean by that is we talked earlier we'd launch a new product every year. So we had no consumer perception because they were buying a product every four to five years. So if you're launching something every year that's not even their frame of reference from a production standpoint it's a disaster because every year we're launching something new and we've got a supply chain and everything else and we've got to bring that in. So we're spending all this time on the supply chain of the product and then we wouldn't support that thing much longer and then it would just kind of be in the end of our portfolio. So this item fewer bigger longer was we are going to launch this thing it's consumer relevant we know from the research we did we are not just going to launch it for a year we're gonna support that for five or six years and we're gonna make that the biggest product in the category typical penetration on a mopper broom that we would launch I mean literally being the one or two percent we are today with easy ring and clean about 30% in the US at 50% in Canada household penetration. So 30% of the households in the US have it 50% in Canada have that. So that's kind of the flywheel and we're making it an Aurora so we're making this millions of the same thing over and over again you could see how that would transform a business who was making basically a job shop making you know 500 different SKUs in really small amounts to starting to make the same thing over and over again.

Mike Maddock

The efficiencies are enormous I think that um I I think that that's incredible and and like a takeaway for the flywheel and from Jim Collins was that he he uses the phrase if we do the this then we must certainly do this as a way to connect each part of the flywheel. So if I say that like if we do this then we must certainly do this what connect two parts of your flywheel with that phrase between them.

Tim Molek

Yeah so if we if we start supporting this item we need to give up on the other items. We need to say no to things we used to make in the past we need to say no to the retailer when he says I want something different.

Mike Maddock

Yeah and we say right what that's the art of strategy.

Saying No As A Strategic Muscle

Tim Molek

We're gonna keep supporting this we're gonna make it's better for you. You're gonna be able to take fewer SKUs now in your category because this is going to be the lead item this is you're gonna make more money on this than the rest of your you know eight feet or 12 feet combined. So saying we must get rid of These other items. We must stop producing some items. We must start building innovation based on this idea of fewer, bigger, longer, and not go back to the old world of let's just create something that kind of looks like this. Playing the distribution game. We must stop creating different SQUs for every retailer because that rips our business apart and it actually lowers consumer consumer consistency with your products because they see something different when they're in Target versus Walmart versus I wanted to say Kmart, then ages me, versus Amazon versus Costco versus uh Sams. If they see something different everywhere, they're losing consistency of that product. So we must have the same product everywhere.

Mike Maddock

I love it. I I um I'll murder Michael Porter, but he it it the quote is something like um strategy is more about what you're not gonna do than what you are doing. And I can imagine you starting executive meetings with the stop doing list. Let's start by talking about what we're not gonna do anymore. Because it creates the clearing and it got it lines up right with what you're talking about. If we don't do this, it's gonna create more oxygen, more fuel for this thing that we can really focus on. Right. So I have some lightning.

Tim Molek

Yeah, I think really quickly though. Because I I actually this came up late last year. There was um it was uh something that um uh the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. Why am I blanking on his name? Uh uh Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett said it. And he said, Great managers say no, like the best managers say no a lot. And that is so true. And that reminded me, I used to use the Great Big No. It's a song from the Lemon Heads. Yeah, the Great Big No. Because it is saying no is more part in your strategy than saying yes. It's easy to say yes to everything, and then you really don't have a strategy, you're just doing what you always did. There's some great stuff out there on YouTube. You can find videos of Steve Jobs talking about saying no is ultimately it led to the development of the iPod, otherwise, he just would have had another Blackberry type product. So saying you hit on the most important thing in developing a strategy is knowing what you're gonna say no to.

Lightning Round: Lessons And Regrets

Mike Maddock

Yeah, sorry. I love it. I know I did don't be sorry. That's that is um and I I wanna I want to notice that um I I I could always tell when someone had psychically left one of my companies because they start talking about the company like, well, you guys really need to figure out how to do this. I'm like, you guys? And I'm noticing that you are still weing. Oh, no. We did this, we do this, we've got this going on right now. And I want to make the point that you are on to other things. So if anybody out there, I don't I'm I am now your pimp, Tim. I am Tim. I like uh I know you're not looking. I know you've got you're you're doing uh executive coaching and doing all kinds of great things. You're not in the market, but if anybody out there is hearing this and looking for someone that has worn all the hats and knows how to uh grow a consumer package good company, my goodness, um, I would hire you in a moment, uh, mostly because of your values um and secondarily because of all the good things you've done. I've I've gotten to watch from the cheap seats as you've grown a company. So let me give you some lightning round questions. All right. All right. And just say the first thing that comes to your uh your head, unless it's Mike, you're a jackass, and then hold that for later. Um what what kind of what decisions have you overthought the most as a leader?

Tim Molek

What decisions have I overthought the most? I'd go back to what I said earlier, uh firing people early in my career. I would overthink that way too much. If they're not right, they're not right. It's hard to change the track.

Mike Maddock

That's because you're kind and it is symptomatic of most.

Tim Molek

It's empathetic. Empathetic, but empathy you put the empathy in the right place. And as I said, I learned to put the empathy towards the other people in the business and that person that needs to leave, it's better for them too. And do it in the right way.

Mike Maddock

Yeah. Um It reminds me of a story. I had a partner walk in and he said, Okay, I just caught this person talking about you behind your back. Either you're gonna walk out there and fire this person or I'm gonna do it right now. I'm like, okay, you know, because I'd been making excuses. Okay. Um, best advice you ignored and later regretted ignoring.

Tim Molek

Oh, it was um, yeah, it was when we acquired OCER in 2003. Someone told me to watch out for culture, and I thought I did. Um, I thought I watched out for culture. Um, but what I did is I just looked at HR processes. So I made sure we transferred all the, you know, the the files, the HR files. We made sure we did the Warren Act, whoever was getting laid off, and did all that, but I never thought about culture. Um and it bite the bite us in the in the ass. Because we were about the same size as the company you acquired. And we brought in a whole bunch of people from other companies. And without thinking about culture, we ended up with like a mass of nothingness. No one knew how to make decisions, everyone was fighting. Uh, I wish I would have listened early on to say, hey, make sure you do something about culture.

Mike Maddock

That's really interesting. I'm surprised by that because I you're a values guy. So but thank you for sharing that. Um What do presidents or CEOs worry about that they shouldn't?

Tim Molek

The tomorrow. Often often what happened, what happened yesterday. I remember I I think what made me uh where I am today is I had a lot of great leaders through my career and some bad leaders. And I've learned from all of them, and I've always carried along those moments that I learned the most about. And it was the first restructuring at Unilever. Our CEO Charlie Strauss said, we are spending too much time where the executives are driving the business by looking in the rearview mirror. Yeah, we can't do that. We can't keep looking in the rearview mirror. We need to know the lessons, but we're the ones that need to be looking through the windshield to where we're taking this thing. Um, so that always that always stuck with me. Awesome. So too often too often you're worried about what happened yesterday without taking the learnings and going forward.

Mike Maddock

Yeah, there's there's some great quotes about anyway. I I I won't digress, but uh wonderful. Um what gets harder the more successful you become.

Tim Molek

Making sure that you have a personal life and a professional life. And making sure that you keep things that have been important to you for years, important whether that's family, friends, whatever that might be for you. Pets, make sure that you still keep that uh as part of your life. Because that's what made you who you are. And once you start losing that, I don't think you know overnight you'll realize it, but in 10 years you'll regret some things.

Mike Maddock

Yeah. Awesome. Um let's see. Last question. Who do you trust to tell you the truth now?

Closing Gratitude And Sign Off

Tim Molek

Oh, my wife by far. She she uh she knows me extraordinarily well. And you know, we talked business a lot. Um, even though she didn't work with me, she has been with me through most of my career. So she knows what I can do and what I can't do. She knows, matter of fact, once early on with Unilever, I was frustrated and said, I'll quit and maybe start my own business. She was like, You could never handle that. You you couldn't handle it if you had to put a bunch of money on a credit card and you had to pay the interest on the credit card. She's like, You couldn't do it. And early on, she was absolutely right. So I trust her. She always gives me the cold hard medicine.

Mike Maddock

Well, lucky you. Lucky us. Okay, Tim, thank you so much. Um uh I I just love spending time with you, and I um I'm grateful that we've been part of each other's journeys and that you would show up and share some of your wisdom with our audience. So thank you so much.

Tim Molek

No, well, thank you, Mike. And then as we said, we met years ago, and I really appreciate watching you grow and develop, and the things you have done are really outstanding and have been um a source of inspiration for me in many ways. So keep it up and thank you for having me on the podcast today.

Mike Maddock

Uh, coach uh John Wooden said, Show me your friends, I'll show you your future. So I'm happy you're my friend, Tim.

Tim Molek

Yeah, likewise. Thank you, Mike.

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John Tobin

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Mike Maddock

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