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Early this year Janet Bannister, HBA ’92, became the first woman to lead one of Canada’s largest early-stage VC firms. Janet has built her career on quickly figuring out what matters, and then becoming the best in the world at those things.
She has had a diverse career, with roles at Procter & Gamble (P&G), McKinsey & Co., and eBay, which led to her founding the online marketplace, Kijiji. On this episode, Janet talks about her entrepreneurial beginnings, why a career in management consulting is great training for life as an entrepreneur, and how to cut through the noise to focus on what really matters in your start-up or scale-up.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morissette Institute for entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series, Ivey entrepreneur and Ivey faculty member, Eric Janssen, will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
Well, Janet Bannister, thank you so much for coming in and sharing some time with us.
Janet Bannister
Well, thank you very much. It's great to be here.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, it's good to sit down with you. We've been looking forward to sitting down and having a conversation for a long time.
Janet Bannister
Thanks. Well, I've been looking forward to this. I'm glad we could make it happen.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, good. So I got a lot of topics to talk about. I'm going to get into one of the main ones I want to focus on which is prioritization and how to prioritize what to focus on on an earlier growth stage company. But before we get there, I want to rewind, sort of back to your very, very early entrepreneurial career. So I did a little bit of homework. And I may have read that you started a potential baking business when you were 15 years old. Is this where it all got started for you?
Janet Bannister
That is where it all got started. So, you know, it actually well, I suppose it started the summer before that, when I was 14 years old. And I was at our cottage, and I read his line around the cottage was this book called Lee Lacocca, which was the story of Lee Lacocca, who had turned Chrysler around, and I read that book, and I was just I found this story fascinating. And I decided that I thought business was actually extremely interesting, and that I wanted to learn more about business. And so I am the youngest of four kids. And my four older siblings, were all working in the summer. So I had sort of decided that probably next summer, when I was 15-years-old, I would should get a job and start to make money. And so I thought, well, I want to get a job and learn about business. But I also thought, well, you know, what, who's gonna hire a 15-year-old girl with no experience to do something really meaty and meaningful? So I thought, well, I know what I'll do, I'll start my own business. And that way, I'll learn a lot. And so that's sort of how it started. And as you say, I thought about, okay, what do I love to do? And I thought, well, I love to bake. And I was also a competitive runner at that time. So I was also focused on eating lots of healthy food. So I thought I know all stirred a muffin business, and it'll be healthy, yummy, muffins. And so that's what I ended up doing.
Eric Janssen
So I know, you mentioned earlier before we got going here, that also your father was in sales. So did he help you get this off the ground from a sales perspective?
Janet Bannister
Yeah, so it was great. So I, I guess two things. First of all, I would have done the Junior Achievement program, which is a great program that teaches high school students about business. And then as you say, my father was an IBM sales rep. And so through that, you know, my father encouraged me, hey, if you're gonna do it, do it right. And so I, you know, in those days, we didn't look at things on the internet. We went to the library and got out of books. So I went to the library and got a book about how to write a business plan. We had all about it wrote wrote a business plan. My father taught me how to do projected financial statements, and did a bunch of market research during the school year, did unit cost analysis to figure out the cost of different types of muffins. Did research in terms of what flavors would be most popular? And so weended up writing a very comprehensive business plan with financial projections by week, etc.
Eric Janssen
Financial projections by week for your baking business at the age of 15.
Janet Bannister
Yes, exactly. And of course, my father made sure that I had a structured sales call, template to go by and so we lived in Toronto, near Young and Lawrence. And so, I decided I was going to sell my muffins, to retail stores. So I went up and down Yonge Street and Avenue Road and found little either bakeries, or delis, or butcher shops, or flea markets, or things like that. That could sell my muffins and so ended up getting 15 stores which agreed to sell my muffins and so then I would get up every morning, around one o'clock at one o'clock in the morning, bake about 30 or 40 dozen muffins and then deliver them to all of the stores when they opened on my bicycle.
Eric Janssen
Wow, this was not your run of the mill sell a few cupcakes door to door. This was you went commercial customers right away.
Janet Bannister
And this was like the I used to buy bags of flour, like 2530 pounds bags of flour and sugar and stuff. So yeah, I guess I went all in.
Eric Janssen
That's awesome. So who incur was it your father that encouraged you to do that? Why? Why not do what 99.9% of the other people do, which is I don't know, apply at the mall and get a job but what who encouraged you to stick your neck out at 15?
Janet Bannister
Well, I guess I think for whatever reason, I was definitely the instigator and I was the driver who did this and then my father when he saw that I was excited, he was there to support me. But it was definitely me who was the driver. And I don't know, I just, I think I just sort of thought about it logically and thought, hey, I don't want to work at a mall, like, and that's going to get dull after a little while, and what is the best way for me to learn? And I think the best way for me to learn is to actually run a business. So you know, let's run a business. And so that was sort of the extent of, of my thinking.
Eric Janssen
That's good. That's awesome. Good for you. What a cool experience to have at such a young age.
Janet Bannister
Oh, thanks. It was a great experience. And then I proceeded the next two summers. I mean, again, you learn things when you're young one, then I realized, you know, how do I scale this business, basically. And I thought, well, you know, I don't want to do this anyway. So I realized that you have to have a way to scale the business. And I wasn't sure that I could get a whole host of other people baking muffins. In their homes, I was getting up at one o'clock in the morning and doing an ad or doing a factory. And that wasn't going to sort of work. And so I ended up the next summer starting, like a student painting company with my brother. And so sort of like college pokes if we did it under our own label so that we wouldn't have to pay the franchise fees. And I realized that hey, the first summer, we had about 30 students working for us in the second summer, we had about 30 students. So first summer, we had about 15. Second summer, we had about 30 students. And so that's when I learned to have leverage and how important it is to scale a business and be able to grow it.
Eric Janssen
Wow, that's, that's neat. So College Pro, unfortunately, not around anymore, which I know a handful of people that did it as a experience between sort of third and fourth year university, but student works still going strong. So I actually encourage people to do that, if they're interested in an entrepreneurial opportunity.
Janet Bannister
Absolutely. It's an amazing experience.
Eric Janssen
So a lot of young people, when they graduate are faced with this decision of going to work for a company or actually going and starting their own thing. So you actually had a really entrepreneurial youth, but then out of university went to work for a big company, maybe talk us through that decision?
Janet Bannister
Absolutely. I mean, I think there are two things. First of all, with my career, I've always taken a very long term perspective. And so I thought, long term, I want to do something entrepreneurial. But I thought, I think in the short term, I could probably learn a lot by going and working for an outstanding company. And so that when I do become an entrepreneur, I can know more, and be more successful as an entrepreneur. So that's one part of the answer. The second part is, I think, if I was graduating in today's world, I probably would have gone straight out and started a business. But it was very different than I mean, I don't know, I didn't know anybody from our graduating class, who went and started a business after graduating from business school. I mean, a couple of people went into a family business that their, their parents had already well, it was already up and running, and they went in that way. But entrepreneurship just was not a thing that was considered. And so I think it was part of that. But as I said, I thought, you know, that's what I want to do long term. So let me take advantage of this opportunity right now. And work for somebody else and learn as much as I can first.
Eric Janssen
And for you, reflecting back you said you do it differently now, but was that the right call for you at the time?
Janet Bannister
Absolutely. For me, it was the right call, I suppose in life, you know, you go down the road, and you never really know, hey, how it would have turned out turned out if you went down another road. But I can say that, I feel very lucky. And I'm very happy with the choices that I have made in my career. Of course, you know, some things not wasn't perfect by any by any stretch. But I joined Procter and Gamble. When I graduated, I spent four years there, I was a brand manager there, it was an amazing learning opportunity. And then following that I spent about three and a half years at McKinsey. And both of those experiences were very formative to me. They taught me a lot about business strategy, about analytics about managing people. And, that experience has been absolutely instrumental in helping me throughout my career.
Eric Janssen
I see a lot of handful of my guests that have come on, I've actually made the move from consulting to then either joining high growth startup or going on to start their own thing. I have some ideas why that might be but can you talk to why maybe your opinion on why that is or why it was helpful for you to go from consulting to your first you know, higher tech venture.
Janet Bannister
So I think that the advantage of consulting is that it teaches you to I think two major things. One, it teaches you how to get into into a situation and very quickly assess what's going on, and what do you need to focus on? And you know, this talk is a lot about prioritization. And consulting definitely teaches you prioritization in terms of, okay, there's so much information here, there's so many different things, what are the key things that I need to focus on as a management consultant? What are the key questions that I need to resolve? And it very quickly teaches you to focus on those, and to think through those things. So I think that's one thing. And then secondly, you know, frankly, teaches you to work really hard, you know, consulting, and I guess investment banking as well is known for long hours. And I think that that, frankly, I mean, it teaches you, hey, you know, what, you just sometimes got to put in the long hours. And I think that that has been very helpful as well. And I see that a lot with the people that we work with, it just teaches you hey, you know what, sometimes you just got to get it done and work hard and power through.
Eric Janssen
So then after three years at McKinsey, you went into your first might have been a leap of faith at that point. But in 2001, you went to eBay, maybe give us a feel for where was eBay at in 2001? Was that a risky move at the time? Or were they already at a firm footing?
Janet Bannister
Yeah, so it was definitely a bit there was a firm footing, they had already gone public. But of course, though, in those days, companies went public far earlier than they do now. I mean, the company had raised just over $30 million when they went public. So again, very different than today. But where eBay was, when I joined, it was a collectibles marketplace. 90% of the things that were bought and sold on eBay, were collectible. So things like stamps, coins, etc. And so, I joined eBay to as the head of what we call at that point, the practicals category. So that was basically everything on the site, excluding collectibles. So Home and Garden, jewelry, books, those sorts of things were all my responsibility. And it was an amazing opportunity. Because what I got to do was helped to transform eBay, from a collectibles to a mainstream marketplace, I suppose in terms of where the the risk was, if you call it that is definitely there was a lot of skepticism among the senior management and probably amongst everybody at eBay at the time in terms of hey, can eBay ever actually become a mainstream marketplace? Because, as I said, it had always been a collectibles marketplace. And E-commerce purchasing was E-commerce was still very early in those days. And so the concept was, hey, I understand if I'm a stamp collector that I'm willing to buy stamps online or trade stamps, you know, buy collectible stamps, or collectible coins, or whatever online, quote use because use are the only things that are collectibles. But people were like, okay, well wait a minute. So people are actually going to buy used clothing from each other online? Like how does that work? And, you know, people were barely buying new clothing online. And so, but so, you know, as I said, there was a lot of skepticism. I remember initially, when I joined after a few weeks, I went and met with Meg Whitman and the rest of the executive team and I laid up this plan in terms of how we were going to grow these categories. And, I could just tell they were sort of like, looking amongst themselves thinking, okay, this is like this person is crazy, because I had forecasted, you know, sort of tripling or quadrupling growth year over year, and so laid out why eBay could transition. And so, it was a I suppose for some people, it was a leap of faith, but I believed in my heart that we could change eBay. Maybe it was a bit of dumb luck or dumb faith, that I just thought, well, of course, we can do this. And so. So anyways, that's what I went on to do. But it was it was an It was a wonderful experience. And I'm very feel very fortunate that I got to spend that time at eBay in Silicon Valley.
Eric Janssen
Any advice for people who are making that transition to looking for maybe a company to join? How did what were your criteria for choosing the company that you were going to join coming out of McKinsey?
Janet Bannister
Yes. So when I left McKenzie, because I decided that I wanted to join a younger tech company. And by tech, I meant just something like he could say, hey, is eBay, really a tech company or not, but at that point, it was in those days, you know, it was technology enabled. And, I have changed my career a few times, you know, make and make decisions in terms of joining for instance, Procter and Gamble, joining eBay, etc. And so, the advice that I would give is, first of all, you need to feel a level of passion and excitement for what you're going to be doing. And then. secondly, you want to go to a company, think about both the company and the role and make sure that you're role is central to the company. So for instance, I wanted to go into marketing, because I thought that was a good general grounding. And so. I went to Procter and Gamble, because marketing is a core competency of Procter and Gamble. And it is, you know, it's sort of if you looked at the history of the company, it was through marketing slash brand management, that is where people went through in order to get to the senior leadership role. Now, if I had wanted to go into finance, for in`stance, BMG may not have been the best place to go into finance, I would say, hey, maybe if you want to go into finance, maybe you should go to a bank as an example. So I think there needs to be an alignment between what functional area you want to go into, and is that functional area, a core of the company's success and a core driver. So I think there's that there's so as I said earlier, there's the sort of passion, do you feel the passion for whatever this company is doing. And I remember after meeting, I actually was introduced to eBay through Meg Whitman. And when I had my first meeting with her, I remember leaving, and I was just so excited about this opportunity to join eBay. And it just sort of like resonated through my whole body. And I thought, like, this just, it just felt right. And I think that, you know, you need to have that level of passion, when you're going to make any career decisions, because you're going to be working hard, there's going to be tough times. And if you don't have that level of passion to begin with passion with what the company is doing, passionate about what the role is, then I think it's hard to get through. And then, I think the third thing that I would say is, think about the people who you're going to be working with, I don't think that you should necessarily pick a job because of your direct manager, because your direct manager could leave the company in two months, or there could be a reorganization and you could get a new direct manager. So I don't mean, but you know, look at the quality of the people overall. And are these the types of people who you want to work with? Can you learn a ton from these people, then I think that would be the third thing that I would encourage people to look at.
Eric Janssen
Interesting that you mentioned that gut, the feel, the feel of component. So I feel it, at least for me, it took me something that you sort of listened to when you're younger. But at least when I started my career, I almost ignored it, or push it out for maybe five to ten years. But then as you get a little more experienced and get confident again, you start to listen to it. So I had posted recently, I posted on LinkedIn about a comment about doing what feels good. And I'm not gonna say I got chastised for it. But I got a lot of pushback on, you know, doing what feels good is not always, you know, the right answer. But I think, as part of the whole equation, actually listening to your gut, that does factor and especially when you get confident enough to listen to it again.
Janet Bannister
Absolutely. I think 100% I think that, you know, I have had, frankly, a few times in my career, I would say where I did things because I thought this is what I should do. And it never really worked out. Um, I think that if you're going to do something like yes, it has to be both. If you could say it has to check both boxes, it needs to be something where you think, hey, you know what, this helps me I'm going to learn, I'm going to build my track record, I'm going to build some skills, like that's great, absolutely, it needs to check that box. But it also needs to check the box that you're passionate about it, that you're going to enjoy it because it doesn't matter what you're doing. If you are not passionate about what you're doing. If you do not love what you're doing, then that will show and on the reverse. On the flip side, if you love what you are doing, you will bring a level of enthusiasm, a level of energy, you will think about it and you will perform at a much higher level. Not to mention the fact that you'll be happier in your life and all that stuff. But I just, I do not think that you can be you cannot be as successful as you can be you cannot maximize your personal success doing something that you do not like to do.
Eric Johnson
So got started at eBay. I want to get into sort of the second half of our conversation here, which is maybe the craziness of Kijiji. So you started at eBay grew the component of the business that you were responsible for. But take me back to the early days of Kijiji. How did Kijiji come out of eBay? And how did you come to be responsible for the Canadian component of it?
Janet Bannister
Absolutely. Absolutely. So what happened was, so I've been at eBay in Valley for about four years, was great, grew those categories that I was responsible for sort of tripled or quadrupled them every year. Year over year, wonderful experience. However, I was from Canada and wanted to move, and my husband. is from Canada as well and wanted to move back to Canada and so I went to eat eBay and said, hey eBay, I want to move back to Canada. This is where we want to have our family long term. And they said, no problem, we'll support you. Let's go find out what was available in Canada. And then, they came back to me and said, okay, well, the only open position in Canada is head of product. So basically responsible for the ebay.ca website, which for me was like, okay, well, wait a minute, I'm have been running this $200 million business in the US. And that's really exciting. And now I go and work on ebay.ca website where a lot of the functionality is dictated by the US team. But I thought, oh, well, that's okay, I want to go move home, that'll be my ticket home, I'll figure out what I do when I get there. And so I moved back to Toronto, with eBay. And then, what I did was, as soon as I got to eBay, I thought, Okay, let me benchmark how eBay is doing versus every other country around the world. And what became immediately obvious was that eBay in Canada was doing a great job of getting people to the site. So about 30% of online Canadians every month would go to eBay. As I said, one, that was one of the highest ratios anywhere in the world for eBay. However, once Canadians came to eBay, the likelihood that they would actually do anything on the site. So bid, buy, or list an item, was half that of every other country around the world. So I thought, okay, this is interesting. So then, I started doing some things on the product side and digging into it to say, hey, what can we do the website to sort of change their service, or their shipping policies or something like that, that we can change that we can implement so that we can change that ratio, and simultaneously started reading about the Canadian market. And the conclusion I came to after a few months was, hey, this is a more macro problem. Canadians spend a ton of time online, the research online, however, they are very reluctant to purchase online. And in fact, ecommerce purchasing in Canada was about half that level, half the level as it was in the US, whether you looked at is as you know, percentage of commerce that is done online, or percentage of GDP, or however, however you cut the metrics. And so, I thought, okay, I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to change that fundamental, fundamental dynamic of the Canadian market. So therefore, maybe there's a better model that would work. Or maybe there's a different model that would work better for Canadians. And so I actually came up with four or five different models, one of which was a classified site. And then I did some more research and thought about them and came up with the idea and sort of solidified my thinking that, hey, we will, eBay should be launching a classified site in Canada, because that enables people to, quote, research online transacting person, besides which those classified sites, you need to be in the same city. And, you know, Canada, despite being a large country and a small population, it's actually one of the most urbanized countries in the world. So that played into it a few other factors. And I saw, I went to the senior executives that I knew at eBay, and I said, hey, here's all the data, here's all the rationale, we should be launching a classified site in Canada, because the eBay model, I do not think we'll ever achieve the same type of growth in Canada that it has seen in other markets. And they said, okay, that's all very nice. But two things, first of all, Canada is not a priority for us. And secondly, Craigslist is already there. And, you know, this is a network business, and Craigslist is already there. So how are we going to win versus Craigslist? So then I went my way. And I thought, yeah, but you know, I still think it could work. And so I kicked in and give up on it. And then I found out that eBay was preparing to launch a classified site in Europe. So I went back to the executives and I said, okay, now, I hear that this site is being built to launch for like a classified site to be launched in Europe. And I'm wondering if I could basically take that fundamental site and localize it for Canada, so put it in English in French, and launch it in Canada. So after a few more conversations, they finally said, okay, but you're not going to get any budget, and you're not going to get any headcount initially. And I said, okay, that's all right. I'll just do this on the side. And so then we launched Kijiji, in Canada, originally, we just launched it in Quebec, because they were so convinced that it would never work in English, Canada. So then we just launched in Quebec. And then six months later, we launched it in the rest of Canada. And then over time, luckily got some more people and a bit of money, and started growing the business in Canada.
Eric Janssen
Wow. So such an interesting topic to dig into when we talk about prioritization because high stakes, huge opportunity that you had had drawn up for the business plan. Can you talk through maybe, before you get to how you prioritize what to do? Give us a feel for all the things that needed to get done as part of that launch? There must have been a huge list.
Janet Bannister
Yeah. There was I mean, I sort of just bucketed it right there was, I mean, the product was there. And so a lot of it was localization. So okay, we got to figure out, so which categories are we going to launch? And it doesn't hit me. As I think about it, I'm like, okay, there's nothing overly exciting. But it was just like, block and tackling. So okay, now we need, like, our policies, like the privacy policy, and we need, you know, the FA Q's, and they need to that needs to be in English. And then, we need to say, get the legal review and figure like, it's just sort of like, you know, yeah, basic stuff.
Eric Janssen
List it all out. There will be probably hundreds of things to do.
Janet Bannister
Yeah. And then I just sort of plowed through it. I remember, um, yeah, we're just gonna plow through it, and got it done. And, I don't know, it was just sort of like, okay, yeah, we did have very long to do. But, you know, you just sort of plow through it, get it done. And then, it was just a matter of, okay, now we're gonna launch it and you say, okay, what do you what do you focus on in terms of launching it? And I think a couple of things. And this comes to prioritization. But, in my mind, I thought, okay, there's three major buckets, there are three major steps that we need to go through in order to build this site. So the first thing we need to do when we figure out how to launch fo so first things we need to do after we launch it, is we need to make sure that the site works, like when people come to the site, do they actually do stuff? You know, does this site fundamentally work in terms of meeting a buyer and a seller? Need? Does, it just fundamentally does it work for consumers. And then once we nail that, that is sort of works, then we need to figure out how to get traffic to the site, and make sure that traffic is there. And then the third thing is we need to figure out how to get money, how to monetize it, how to make money. And so, I very much thought about it, I'm only going to focus on one thing at a time. So first of all, let's make sure that you know, that we people come to the site, I used to say to the team, hey, when people come and say we want good things to happen. So, we started doing a little bit, a very little bit of spin to make sure that to get some users to the site. And, then they came and I we noticed, hey, you know what this actually works when people come there. And if you want, I can talk later about the supply and demand and how we did that. But hey, people are actually like, coming in, they are listing items, they're responding to items. You know, as I said, I was okay guys, I would say the team, which by sort of a little bit that we had a one or two other people who had joined the team, I say, okay, guys, now when people come to site, good things happen. So now we can send more people to the site. So then our next. So the next building block was the traffic. And again, I can talk more about that if you want, but then we get the traffic and make sure that hey, more traffic, and that traffic continues to be active on the site. And then hey, once we get that nailed, then and only then, when we've got a very robust site, then we're going to start, you know, working on the monetization.
Eric Janssen
So interesting. So I think the slippery slope would be the thing, I've got to do all of these things. Oh, my gosh, how do I run them all at the same time, but you very much just said, Nope, we're gonna take the most important thing and focus on that first.
Janet Bannister
Exactly. And then once the site, I remember, once the site was working, then I said, okay, then I was like, okay, now, we need to focus 100% on traffic, and figured out how we were going to get traffic and experimented, right? I think it's a matter of it's not just blindly say blindly saying, hey, we're going to focus on these things. It's, I think, it's more nuanced than that. Because you need to say, hey, I think that these things are the right things to focus on. So let me do some testing and iterating. And let me also test another thing, and then figure out what works, and then hammer down on those. So for instance, in terms of getting traffic, we tried several things. I remember going to a trade show, early, early days, which was a complete waste of time, but we had fun, make popcorn all weekend, in our low tradeshow booth. Like that didn't work, then we did some other community things that didn't really work, but that was okay, you know, you just try these things, learn. And then finally, I realized that there were three things that we had to focus on, number one was SEO or search engine optimization. So that was, I make sure that when people go onto Google and search for you know, sofa for sale or whatever, or, you know, buy, you know, dog or whatever, that the Kijiji came up. So that was sort of number one thing because as I said, we didn't have much money. So it was like, okay, we got it. We got to nail that one. And then, the number two thing that I said was search engine marketing. So basically making sure all of our money was basically spent on if people go on to Google and search that they would be the right ads for Kijiji. And then, the third thing was PR, because again, I thought, hey, that's basically free. And I can do that myself. And we would do PR. But each of those three things, I said, these are the only things we're going to do. And we are going to be world class, particularly in the first year, the PR, I was running, so maybe not world class. But I said that first do we are going to be the best windows, and we did a ton of work. And that's really what drove the success of Kijiji was we simply focused? As I said, it was primarily SEO and SEM, and out executed everybody else on those things.
Eric Janssen
So how did you? How did you do that? Did you start doing it yourself? And then build people? How did you start?
Janet Bannister
Well, so hired a great person, but it was basically done in house, by tools, I think, you know, I hired somebody who was amazing, fantastic person who ran the paid search. But then, we also did it very on a on a granular level, we would optimize our by word by arbitrary by city by category by, you know, at the most granular level, so we would and we would vary it every single day. So we would say, oh, wow, there's, let's say there's a lot of sofas on the site in Halifax, and the sofas have been listed, and they're not getting many bids, okay. Therefore, we need to turn on the search engine marketing for sofas in the city of Halifax. And we would have tested all the different iterations of what words we should use, what landing page we should do, etc, etc, to optimize it. So, it was really a big mathematical algorithm driven, continual test continual optimization process to do the to do the search engine marketing. And, as I said, it was it was just a focus and a thoughtfulness in terms of how are we going to do this? How are we going to think it through? And, every single day, I think the other thing about prioritization, is every single day trying to get better trying to get smarter in terms of okay, how do we improve this even more? And how do we get better? And how do we get better? And never sort of say, okay, great, we did that. boxes checked. Now we can think about something else.
Eric Johnson
And with your team, did you, were you, that explicit and clear to literally write down and say, okay, we now good things are happening. Now, everybody, this is now the focus and like, literally, like how did, did you write it down?
Janet Bannister
I used talk to the team all the time. They actually thought this is funny. I mean, I'm sure if you talk to them today, because I'm still very good friends with some of them. But um, like, they would say, oh, yeah, Janet, remember, you used to say that all the time. Good things are happening. Say, they say I would like, okay, we had a small team. But oh, yeah, I would say it all the time, there was no question what our priorities were. And it wouldn't just be talked about, but then, we would have our quarterly plan, our monthly plan, our weekly plan, our daily check in, like, there was no way anybody was gonna be in that office and not know, what our priorities were, and how what they were doing contributed to advancing our priorities.
Eric Janssen
If you don't mind, maybe spend a couple of minutes on that. How did you, what was the cadence or the sync to keep all the teams aligned?
Janet Bannister
So you know, as in the early days, it was just a couple of us. It was pretty easy. I but I think, you know, as the team as the team grew, and then I was promoted, because I had mentioned that, you know, we're talking about a lot a lot about Kijiji in Canada. But what happened was Kijiji and Canada was the fastest growing market. And so then, I was promoted, and I headed the global Kijiji business, which was Canada, and China, Thailand, and a few European countries. And then we expanded into several when I was heading the global business, we expanded into the US, and to several more European countries. And so then. it was even I think, more of a challenge in terms of how do you keep everybody in line, like when you're all in one office? It's relatively simple in terms of you know, every week we have a meeting, okay, here's what we're focused on. Here's our metrics. When you have a global team, it's a little bit more difficult. And there are, you know, sometimes the priorities, some, there's some overriding priorities, or for the entire organization, in some countries specific, but I think metrics are gray way to always be driving. So I'm a huge believer in like tracking the metrics. And so, every week, whether it was, when I was running the Canadian business, or whether I was running the global business, you know, it's like, what's that expression, like you do what you measure. And so, if you are measuring, you're gonna be measuring a ton of things. But if you put the spotlight on the metrics that index against your priorities, then that can be very helpful. If every single week, you are talking about how are the metrics tracking against our priorities. and hey, what have we all done, to move the metrics, that evaluate how well we're doing against these priorities, and then boil that down so that everybody has their own individual metrics, that track to moving the priorities. And so I think that's how you can sort of, as I said, at a high level, keep it high level, make sure you're talking to everybody, in your meetings, make sure everybody knows, hey, here are the metrics, but for the whole company, but then as I said, that's sort of one step in terms of talking about it to everybody. But then, that's one step. And the second step is, making sure that every person then understands how their work directly impacts the priorities. And it may just impact one of the priorities, but they need to understand, okay, I understand that I need to do this, I understand why I need you know, if I'm an engineer who's writing code, I need to understand how this quote this initiative, or this product enhancement that I'm working on, I need to understand how this is integral to our overall priorities. And then, what that does is it creates alignment throughout the organization, and it creates a greater sense of ownership. And people feel like, hey, we're all on this team together. And we all understand that we're all working to move the same needles.
Eric Janssen
Are there any? There's a few methodologies that I think have been around for a long time, but have maybe just been popularized? So I know, Andy Grove used to talk a lot about OKRs. And John Doerr just wrote a book called measure what matters that talks about them? I think maybe it just sort of hit me at the right time. I was in a business that was, you know, kind of chaotic and growing quickly. And I think that methodology hit us at the right time and made a lot of sense to us. So we embraced it. Was there any methodology that you used? Or was it the
Janet Bannister
There was, um, and by the way, a lot of our companies now, a lot of the portfolio, a lot of these, I should say, a lot of the tech companies that I work with, they use OKRs. They're definitely very prevalent. We didn't have like, there wasn't the, okay our lingo around as much as it today. So I just did what I thought made sense. And, I often look back at those documents, even now as templates. And they really at the heart, they were like OKRs, yeah, they were just like, okay, here, I didn't think of it like that. I just thought, well, this makes logical sense to me, we've got, you know, here are the priorities we need to hit as a business. Here's the, here's our strategic priorities, here's the metrics in terms of how we're going to track them. Here's how we're, we want to move those metrics. And then okay, let's track them down. Let's figure out how everybody in the organization is working on that. Let's make it transparent what everybody's doing. Let's ensure that everybody has a metrics driven goal. And you know, I guess part of that, you know, comes back to what we talked about earlier in the conversation, when you talk about, hey, starting to work at Procter and Gamble, and McKinsey, that sort of thing. It came to me naturally, it was like, well, of course, we're going to do this is that we do have the plan, we have metrics, we are, first you have the strategies, and then you've got the metrics. And then you funnel it down, and you make sure that hey, if everybody moves, their own individual metrics, or if everybody delivers on what they're supposed to do, that you will get, as a team, to the end goal that you want to get to, you know, all of that, I suppose it came sort of naturally to me, because I had had that foundation earlier in my career in terms of how to think about businesses how to be very quantitatively driven.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, it's, it's, it's simple, but not easy. I guess, you know, when you're, when you're in it, it's a lot more challenging, you get caught up in the day to day, you know, there's a million things to do and your calendar is always full, and everybody's demanding your time. And it's easy to sort of lose track of those things unless they're written down. And there's a cadence or a rhythm around, keeping track of them. So
Janet Bannister
Absolutely, absolutely. And you know, what I mean, it's interesting, as we talk about prioritization, I was in the, in San Francisco a month or two ago, and I had dinner with a great friend of mine, who is the CEO of a very successful publicly traded tech company. And, he joined a few years ago, and it's really turned the company around. And we were having a great conversation. And he's got a couple young kids. And so you know, he has work life balance that he tries to maintain. And, you know, as he was telling me about what he's focused on, and how he decides what to do, and the key things that he had done to turn the company around, I said, oh, by the end of it, I looked at him, I said, you know, really all business comes down to is, you know, identifying the right things to focus on. And then focusing on those, like, on one level, it's as simple as that, like, you need to make the strategic decisions of prioritization, those decisions need to be right. And then, you need to make sure that you focus and you execute against those, and absolutely, it's simpler said than done, but in a way, that's what it all boils down to.
Eric Janssen
So in your role now, as it's q general partner at Real Ventures? How do you help your portfolio companies do that, because as you said, it's one thing to be able to do it when you're in the room with, I don't know, 10, 20, 50 people, another to do it internationally, but a whole other to do it across a whole portfolio of different companies. So how do you do that?
Janet Bannister
Yeah, you know, so I, I'm very fortunate in that I have a total of 17 companies that I work with that are in my portfolio, these are all fast growing, young tech companies. And, I think that, frankly, I can have a unique role because you talk about the importance of leveling up. And for you know, so I, what I mean by that is lifting yourself up from the day to day and thinking about the priorities. And the I tried to play that role with my founders, to ask the questions, and help them make sure that they're working on the most important things, and then, being the you know, if every week on talking to them, and okay, great, let's come back to those priorities that we that we know are priorities, and what has happened in the last week to push them forward. And then, I think that it often helps them to have an outside person who's, you know, always saying, hey, well, what about those priorities? What about those priorities? Right, so that can be helpful. And I also think, just bringing an external, an external viewpoint, somebody who has seen as I said, I've got 17, portfolio companies, I've got a bunch of work experience, and having that perspective, that I can bring to a founder, is hopefully useful to them.
Eric Janssen
Are there any companies or resources that you'd say do it really well, or resources that would help people see it or understand it a little bit better?
Janet Bannister
So I think that in terms of the OKRs, you mentioned that. Absolutely, I, I would say, generally speaking, we most of our companies use OKRs, as a way to both prioritize and ensure that everybody is aligned. So that is one thing. And, I also find, you know, I was talking to a founder the other day, and, and she was saying, she's CEO of one of our companies. And she was saying, hey, is this the right way? Or is that the right way to set this up? And I would say, you know, at the end of the day, don't get too worried about hey, should I have this format or that format, you know, if OKRs work for you. That's great. A Salesforce as an example, uses slightly different thing, code V2MOM, which is, you know, a different way. And then, there's also, you know, you maybe you make up your own methodology. So I would say do something that works for you. And works for your team, as long as it is something that keeps everybody on track, keeps everybody on the same page and ensures that everybody knows what they're supposed to be working on and why it is important.
Eric Janssen
That's great. That's good advice. Lastly, as we wrap up here, any advice that you'd give to current, could be Ivey students, could be students in general, that are maybe either working on a call it a side hustle, trying to decide if they want to start it, whether they should join a company, or even just general advice that you'd have to some of these students.
Janet Bannister
Yeah, I guess the one thing that I would say what strikes me when I come to Ivey is and I love coming here. I graduated with HBA several years ago, but you know, love the school, love coming back. But what strikes me, is the students today. I sense a level of anxiety that I don't think existed when I graduated 25 years ago, there's a level of anxiety in terms of what should I do? How do I get the quote, right job? What is if I have two offers, which is the quote, right offer for me, and my heart goes out, frankly, to these students as I see them and talk to them, and feel the level of stress and anxiety. And so, I think what I would say to those students or anybody is that there's no right answer, and there's no wrong answer. And, you know, think about hey, what do I want to be doing? What is going to enable me to learn, and to grow, and to keep my options open, and then, do that and do that to the best of your ability and learn as much as you can, you're going to have some great experiences, you're gonna have some bad experiences, and that's okay. And if you get a manager that you don't love, that's okay. Just like learn from that. And then, you know, your career will change and you will move on. But you know, you will end up in a great spot if you just keep your mind open and always try to learn and contribute and make the most of every opportunity.
Eric Janssen
That's fantastic advice. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you. You being so generous with your time and sitting down with us to have this conversation. We really appreciate it.
Janet Bannister
Okay, thank you very much. It was great to be here.
Eric Janssen
Thanks to you.
Introduction/Outro
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