Robert Pasin – CEO of Radio Flyer

Episode 90

Robert Pasin, CEO of Radio Flyer toy company, joins me on this episode of The Kara Goldin Show. In 1917 Robert's grandfather founded Radio Flyer in Chicago. Remaining in the family for over 100 years, Radio Flyer has brought a lot of smiles and great memories to young families and their children. I'm sure you've seen their iconic Little Red Wagon out on playgrounds or around the neighborhood. Robert is the Emmy winning producer of the animated short film, Taking Flight, and author of the national bestseller book, Radio Flyer: 100 Years of America’s Little Red Wagon. On this show, Robert talks about the key strategies to building a successful company over the past 100 years, what he loves about his job and his ability to engage in the creative process as a CEO, tips to team building and creating a healthy work culture, and much more.

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Transcript

 

 

Kara Goldin:
Hey everybody. It’s Kara Goldin from Unstoppable, and I’m here with Robert Pasin. Nice to see you.
Robert Pasin:
Great to be here, Kara.
Kara Goldin:
Robert is the CEO of a brand that is worldwide, incredible, incredible brand. I think pretty much everyone had one as a child, and then some. But, Radio Flyer. So I’m so excited. Whenever I say that name, smiles are coming out of my mouth. Does that make sense? You know what I mean.
Robert Pasin:
Yes, it does. We look for that, we look for smiles.
Kara Goldin:
I love it. So Robert is the CEO. The business was founded by his grandfather in 1917. So cool, that’s just awesome. Iconic brand. Robert is based out of Chicago, and just incredible, works with the team on the mission to create products that bring smiles to kids. I mean, what a mission statement, right? It makes total sense. We were just chatting about YPO. We’re both part of the YPO network, which is … shout out to that group, which is Young Presidents’ Organization. But company sales have grown significantly with Robert’s focus on building highly committed and creative teams that really are thinking about new and innovative products, but never really disrupting that core product I see when I’ve been in the toy stores over the years.
Kara Goldin:
But definitely has expanded, which I think is amazing beyond the little red wagon, to include tricycles and scooters, and other ride-on toys. Really, really cool. And Robert is also an Emmy winning producer of the animated short film Taking Flight, which is very, very cool. So anyway, welcome Robert. Very excited to have you here.
Robert Pasin:
I’m excited to be here.
Kara Goldin:
Very excited. So first of all, tell us a little bit about the history. Your grandfather founded the company. What was the vision?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, my grandpa came from a poor working class family in Northern Italy. And they were carpenters, so his father and grandfather were carpenters. And as a small boy, my grandpa, whose name was Antonio, tagged around with his dad and grandpa, learning all of those essential carpentry skills. But they were really poor. So when my grandpa turned 16, he felt like he could find a better life in America. He landed in Chicago, and he worked in any job he could find, like any immigrant. So carrying railroad ties, working on construction crews, washing celery. And so he was a day laborer, and he saved every penny that he made. And after a few years, he was able to save up enough to rent a small garage on the west side of Chicago. And in that garage, he created a workshop. And he started making furniture, was the first thing that he made.
Robert Pasin:
He also made phonograph cabinets, those old big [inaudible 00:03:44] that you crank up and play records on. And he also made a wagon, a wooded wagon, that he used to haul tools. And pretty soon, customers were buying more wagons than anything else. So I guess today we’d say he pivoted to the business that was working, and he just went with what was selling well. And he called that first wagon the Liberty Coaster, because the first thing he saw when he came to this country was the Statue of Liberty, and he was so inspired by that. And then one day when he was visiting an equipment supplier as the wood wagon business was building up over a few years, he was introduced to the metal-stamping technology pioneered by the auto industry. And he realized he could apply this new technology to his product, to mass produce it, and stamp these wagons out of steel instead of making each one out of wood.
Robert Pasin:
And this is what resulted in the creation of the iconic little red wagon that we’ve all come to know and love. And because he mass produced wagons, it earned him the nickname Little Ford, because he did-
Kara Goldin:
I love it.
Robert Pasin:
… for wagons what Ford did for the automotive industry. And this was also the birth of brand Radio Flyer, and everybody always says, “Why is the name Radio Flyer?” It’s because in the late 20s, those were the two highest tech innovations of the day, the radio and the airplane. So they were just two cool buzzwords that my grandpa put on the product. And I like to joke, if he were naming it today, it might be something like Quantum AI [inaudible 00:05:08]. That would be the equivalent of what the name [crosstalk 00:05:11].
Kara Goldin:
So there was no branding agency, right?
Robert Pasin:
There was no branding agency.
Kara Goldin:
That’s amazing. I get that question all the time with Hint. And there wasn’t … it was just me sitting there thinking about it.
Robert Pasin:
I think oftentimes those are the most authentic brands because sometimes there’s a little [inaudible 00:05:32] of a disconnect with, “Why Radio Flyer on a wagon? It doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t have anything to do with the radio.” But I think maybe the incongruity of the name with the product is one of the things that’s made it-
Kara Goldin:
I totally agree. That’s such an awesome story. So he went on to grow this … I mean, it sounds like he didn’t even know if it was a company. It started with a bunch of products, right?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah. I mean, he was a builder. He was a carpenter, and he was super passionate about design and quality, and he had a unique personality to do what he did. He only had a third grade education, coming here with no money, building this business. He was an incredibly generous person. He had this huge big smile. He was very gregarious, friendly guy. He had really high integrity. I mean, I remember being at his funeral many, many years later, he lived a very long life, and all these people came up to me saying, “I knew your grandpa. I worked with him for many years,” or, “I worked at the company, and he was amazing guy. His word was his bond.” I met an equipment supplier that he bought lots of equipment from through the years, and he said, “I never had a contract with your grandpa, it was always a handshake deal. And I didn’t do that with anybody else because I could trust him.”
Robert Pasin:
So he had this amazing blend of quality that I think that it really … what made him so successful. And I think the design, the passion for design, the passion for quality is something that really got baked into the DNA of the company, and it’s something we’re still super, super passionate about.
Kara Goldin:
That’s awesome. Now, did your dad go on then, to take over the company, or?
Robert Pasin:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, I’ll tell one story about my first visit to the company, was with my dad. So I was just five years old, and I vividly remember that day, because my dad brought me to work with him. And I’d never been to work with my dad. And I remember holding his big hand, and walking into the building, and everything seemed so huge.
Kara Goldin:
So awesome.
Robert Pasin:
And walking around the factory, and the loud noises of this punch presses stamping out wagons, and the smell of grease and paint, and all these shiny red wagons were going by on a conveyor line. And as a little kid, it looked like some sort of magical Rube Goldberg machine that was cranking out these shiny red wagons and sending them out into the world. And it just seemed so magical to me, and really that was when I fell in love with Radio Flyer, and I fell in love with that creative process of things being made out of steel and paint and rubber, making them into these adorable toys. And I started to fall in love with what Radio Flyer meant to people. And as I got older, I worked at the company during the summers, and that’s when I started to fall in love with what I thought the potential of what Radio Flyer could become.
Kara Goldin:
That’s super interesting. I mean, I guess he sold them literally to friends and people he would meet on the street. What was his retail strategy?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, the retail strategy was that all of our wagons are assembled by the consumers from the moment my grandpa built them to today. So this is the IKEA furniture style. And so he built this first prototype, this wooded wagon. And he would disassemble it, put it into this big old leather battered suitcase, and he’d walk down the street to a hardware store, a local hardware store. And he’d go in there, and he barely spoke any English, and he would smile a lot, use a lot of body language because he didn’t have a lot of language, and he would start putting his wagon together. And he got a lot of doors shut in his face, he got a lot of reaction, he got a lot of ridicule for not being able to speak English and being an immigrant.
Robert Pasin:
But he just kept going, and he found that one hardware store owner who’s like, “Sure, I’ll buy one.” And then he sold him another one, and another one. And it was very, very slow going for many, many years. It took years for him to build up the business.
Kara Goldin:
I think it’s fascinating. That’s what I thought you were going to say because I bet … It was actually somewhat brilliant because you had a customer that was coming into the hardware store and trying to keep your kids busy, right? And he didn’t intend that to … I’m sure he didn’t sit there, and think, “Oh, I’m going to go and sell in all these hardware stores.” I would say that was probably the first place that I used to actually see it. And then of course, there was probably a … now you call it a pull strategy, and toy stores were probably … FAO was probably then coming to him, or your dad, or whatever, years later, and saying, “Maybe we need this because we’re seeing …” It’s an interesting case study, I’m sure, on him … He’s an accidental … I have a book coming out in a few weeks, and one of my chapters talks about me being an accidental entrepreneur.
Kara Goldin:
I didn’t sit there, and say, “I want to be an entrepreneur one day,” although my dad was a frustrated entrepreneur living inside of a large company. He worked for a company called Con-Agra, and he developed a brand called Healthy Choice. And so I was the product of living in this house where my dad’s always tinkering, and thinking of ideas, and them not wanting to do his ideas. But healthy choice is still such an iconic brand that he created. But what I learned about entrepreneurs, and about large companies, and about pull strategies, and all this, and slotting fees, and things like that, that I do, I clearly learned from him. But I still never connected the dots. I spent years in tech prior to be deciding to be a beverage executive.
Kara Goldin:
And even still, I don’t consider myself a beverage executive. I’m really about health, and about … I believe that everybody should have the right to drink clean water, and everybody should be able to drink things that actually help them get healthier if that’s what they choose, versus getting tricked. And so those are the things that I think about, and the Hint product was really that healthy vision come true. And I feel like, when I hear your story, that’s what I start thinking about as well, that he may not have been able to articulate it, but what he was doing around helping people smile, helping people keep their kids busy, he was doing it, he just didn’t know he was doing it.
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he had a very simple philosophy, and I think it’s one of the reasons why it’s endured for so long, because it’s these eternal truths, of build a really good product that has some intrinsic value, that people can use and enjoy. And if you do that, and you treat people with kindness and respect and integrity, over time, you will build a brand and a company. And that’s how our brand was build. We never did any advertising. It was all word of mouth, from consumers telling each other, “Hey, I love this product,” and them going and buying one. And doing that year after year for so many years, if you can build a brand like that, it’s really, really powerful.
Kara Goldin:
Obviously, you’ve done an amazing job of leading this company. But what are the pressures of running a family business and taking over an iconic brand like that, like, “If you mess it up, that’d be really bad. We’d all be really mad at you, Robert, for doing that.”? Do you think about that? I mean, I feel like my kids, people always say, “Are your kids going to take over the business?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t really think about it right now, but they might. I don’t know. You never know.”
Robert Pasin:
Yeah. Well, what comes to mind when you ask me that question is my first real day on the job when I was 23 years old in 1992. So I told this story about being a little kid, coming in with my dad. And now, fast forwarding to 1992, I wandered in my dad’s office, and basically not much had changed since the Eisenhower administration. It was the same paint, same furniture, same drapes. There was even a clock on my dad’s desk that was stopped. And it felt like everything was frozen in time. And then I realized that the bank was there saying, “You guys have no cash, you have no cash.” And the fact was we were in financial trouble. And any company that’s been around for as long as we have, will have ups and downs, and we were clearly in a down period. And then shortly after that first day, competitors came out with plastic wagons.
Robert Pasin:
And so fuel was just poured on the fire, and we were in complete crisis. So, that’s how I started my real career at Radio Flyer. And in many ways, that was an incredible gift, because I was just thrown into this crucible of we had to figure out what we’re doing. And the external environment had changed, consumer preferences had changed for our product. So these plastic wagons offer a lot of features that moms especially really like, like you could mold in cup holders, you could have high-back seats so the kids were contained in the wagon, versus a steel wagon. And we weren’t talking to consumers, we weren’t doing market research. We basically an inwardly focused manufacturer that had worked great for 70 years, but it wasn’t working anymore.
Robert Pasin:
And so it was really clear to me why we had existed, and that was to make wagons, baked steel wagons. But it wasn’t really clear why we should continue to exist, or even if we needed to continue to exist. So we entered into this process of asking a lot of questions, focusing on the brand, and saying, “Well, what does Radio Flyer mean to people?” I mean, you started this whole conversation by saying smiles. And that seems very obvious, but it was something that we uncovered in this process because we didn’t think of ourselves and the company that way. We thought of ourselves as a steel manufacturer. And so we unlocked all these really great themes of kids playing outside, wind in your hair, sand in your face, and being with people you loved. And so we started to articulate that. We went from, “We make wagons,” to, “We bring smiles and create warm memories that last a lifetime.”
Robert Pasin:
And that became our mission, and it unlocked all this potential for more new products and growth. And that was really when we started to reinvent the company.
Kara Goldin:
So interesting. And so your father was there at the time when you came in, in [inaudible 00:16:46]?
Robert Pasin:
Yes. Yeah, my father was leaving the company. And my dad was an incredible mentor to me because he allowed me to do so much at such a young age. I mean, he allowed me to make a lot of mistakes, get my hands dirty, and learn a lot, and was incredibly supportive. And stuff I never would have been able to do somewhere else. Because it was our family business, and because my dad was the CEO, he gave me a lot of … loosened the reins a lot so that I could learn. And I just learned like I was a sponge, and I had my whole goal was, “I’m a student here, I want to learn as much as possible,” and it was amazing.
Kara Goldin:
That’s super, super cool. And you’ve got four kids. Are any of them working in the business?
Robert Pasin:
None are working in the business, and my approach on that is that I always say to my kids, “All of you are welcome to come into the business. There are some criteria. The criteria is you have to really be interested in the business, and you have to be well suited to the business, because it’s not for everybody, and the family business cannot be a default like, ‘I dropped out of college, so I’m going into the family business,’ or, ‘I can’t get another job, so I’m going into the family business.’ That’s not how it works here. And it’s completely fine if you don’t come into the business, and do your own thing.” So that’s been my approach, and really that was how my dad treated it with me too. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t feel this obligation to go into the business. And you mentioned earlier, “Are you worried about …? What if you screw it up?”
Robert Pasin:
It’s not so much that, but it is highly motivating to me that I feel like this was just an incredible gift. I mean, I lucked out. I have a grandpa who started the company. That’s total luck. I’m incredibly grateful for it, and it really motivates me to take this gift, and turn it into something amazing.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, but also you describe it very passionately about you know what your grandfather went through in order to build this too. And I think that’s something that as a CEO … I mean, I think my kids see this, even building Hint over the last 15 years. I mean, they will be able to describe that. And they describe it today. They’re like, “Oh, I listen to your mom’s podcast,” and my kids are somewhat horrified by the whole thing, right? But then they’re also like, “Oh, yeah. She works really hard. She’s off doing this, she’s off doing this.” And so anyway, I think being a founder-
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, I think that’s an incredible gift to your kids when they can see that, because they see the full true story. I think they see the really good stuff, the wins, the thrills of having success in a business, but they see the tough stuff too, and the challenges of the time that has to be put in. And so I think it’s a very realistic view when you can see one of your parents working like that.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, I know. I think it’s really powerful. And I have story in my book about getting kicked out of Starbucks. And my son was … one of his friends told him another horrifying … that, “I ordered your mom’s book.” And he’s like, “Oh, my god. [inaudible 00:20:14].” And so he apparently, he heard me talking in an interview about this Starbucks story, about being kicked out there. And in the story, I talk about what happened next, which was actually a really good thing. And so I talk about the journey, and sometimes these bad things happen. You talked about in 1992, when that situation happened. And you have lows, but I always say, “The lows can’t last,” right? You have to look at what else can you do. And so for us, we had all this inventory that we were stuck with. We were trying to figure out what to do, and then I got a phone call from Amazon, and they were launching this Amazon grocery business.
Kara Goldin:
I didn’t know if it was going to work or not, but I was like, “I have all this inventory, I’ll send a truck today.” He said, “I buy it inside Starbucks all the time,” and I didn’t know if I should tell him. But he wasn’t asking, so I wasn’t going to tell him we just got kicked out of Starbucks. And so I just told him I had the inventory. So anyway, my son, he said, “Oh, yeah. I guess your mom was saying they got kicked out of Starbucks, and she told this whole story of how devastating it was for them when they had 40% of their business, and overall business in that retailer.” And I remember talking about it in YPO, and just being like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” and went through all these lessons, and etc.
Kara Goldin:
But the key thing that I feel like I got out of that conversation too, was that my son said to me, “I remember when you were going through that.” That was a really like … you couldn’t hide your feelings, like how one minute you were pissed and blaming someone else, and then the next minute, you were saying, “I never should have had 40% of my business sitting in someone else’s hands.” And I’m sure you’ve had situations like that as well, where it’s just you don’t know who to be mad at, and you own it eventually yourself. But you’re like, “I’m never going to make that mistake again.” And also realize that Howard Schultz was just trying to run his own business, and make the right decisions for him, and that his decisions were not in my favor, and it sucked.
Kara Goldin:
So anyway, but it’s interesting because he actually has his own perspectives, and now he’s in college, and he said he was in a class where he was talking about that experience. And so you just never know what people pick up on, and you as the recipient of your father and your grandfather. Anyway, I just think it’s …
Robert Pasin:
Yeah. Well, I think it’s that old Winston Churchill quote, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” And if you can learn at a young age that sometimes these crises are incredible opportunities to either retool your business, or learn something new, or take it to a whole new level.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, I think that’s so critical. So we’re recording this, obviously. Hopefully ending COVID. Maybe I’m too optimistic, but I’m, “Why not? I’m going with it.” But in all seriousness, how has the last few months been for you guys as a brand?
Robert Pasin:
Well, I mean, the first impact to us was in March. I mean, we went from 100% work in-office, to almost 100% work from home within one week. So we had never had a distributed workforce like that. And so much of our work is so highly collaborative, like product development and designing products. So it was a huge, huge change for us. And our team did an amazing job, everyone got really up to speed. And we had to adapt a lot of the ways that we do things, like for example, when we’re developing a new product, we have a prototype shop here in our building that can make anything. We have 3D printers, and CNC machines, and welders. And so usually, the process is the designer sketches something, we markup a quick prototype, we all look at it together, we make changes, and we just keep iterating day after day on the product. So we had to come up with new ways to do that.
Robert Pasin:
And we were able to have our two prototype people here doing that stuff, but that prototype would have to be dropped off in somebody’s front yard. And it was all these exchanges and hand offs, and our team started doing some brainstorming. We do all this brainstorming in a room with post-its, traditional brainstorming. We went to using a MURAL software, where people can brainstorm together online. So the team’s done an amazing job, and actually we haven’t really missed a beat-
Kara Goldin:
That’s amazing.
Robert Pasin:
… once we got up to speed. We were really worried at the beginning about sales because of the economic impact of this pandemic. But we were surprised to find that because families couldn’t go to the zoo, or couldn’t go to the amusement park, or couldn’t go on vacation, they started buying more of our products. So instead of going on a vacation, or going away for the weekend, we’ve got kids riding tricycles and scooters around the block. It’s a mini vacation. So that has been really, really I think gratifying for the team because we always get lots of stories and photos from families with adorable kids and our products, and we love that. But now more than ever, we have heard back from our customers, like, “Radio Flyer is a bright spot in our life.
Kara Goldin:
I love it.
Robert Pasin:
When our kids are bouncing off the walls, they can go out and ride on our product.” And one of our newest products that we launched last year, it’s an electric go-kart that has three speeds, it goes pretty fast. It’s for kids three to eight. And that thing has just been selling like crazy because it’s so fun. You can spin out in the cul-de-sac, you can ride it all the time. And so that has helped make the other challenges a lot easier because we’ve been playing that role in people’s lives and families’ lives.
Kara Goldin:
And direct-to-consumer, where do you see that in your world?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, we sell on radioflyer.com. We have a really robust website. The things that we sell the most out of radioflyer.com are products you can’t get anywhere else. You can’t get them at other retailers because they’re customizable. So we have our own version of NikeID, where you can customize a wagon. You can put your kid’s name on it, you can put your family’s name on it.
Kara Goldin:
I have some child gifts that I need to buy. I’m headed there right after this, Robert.
Robert Pasin:
Yes.
Kara Goldin:
That’s awesome.
Robert Pasin:
Yes, we even have a Tesla. We have a partnership with Tesla. So we do the Tesla kid’s car, the electric kid’s car. And you buy just like a Tesla, but at radioflyer.com. So you pick the color of your Tesla. You can pick the battery size. You can put your kid’s name on the license plate.
Kara Goldin:
How long does it take to get a Tesla?
Robert Pasin:
Well, about a week. About a week. I think we might be-
Kara Goldin:
I should really tick my friends off, and tell them that I’m getting my Tesla in a week, right? That’ll make everybody like … I got to look this up to just really annoy some people who’ve been waiting for their Tesla. I’ll tell them, “I skipped the line, and I got my Tesla.”
Robert Pasin:
Right, exactly.
Kara Goldin:
That’s hysterical, that’s so funny. I love it. I’m definitely going to go there. That’s such a good idea. But you’ve definitely seen an increase in eCommerce, yeah?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, we have.
Kara Goldin:
That’s awesome.
Robert Pasin:
And in all of our customers at Walmart, Amazon, and Target, all of the online retailers have had a big increases.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing that I think many people are waking up to around the Hint brand is that we’re really an omnichannel brand where yes, we are in retailers like the ones that you mentioned, but we’re also … we’re in Amazon, and we also have our direct-to-consumer business. Our online business grew from 40% to 55% of our overall business since March. So it’s pretty nutty, and it’s …
Robert Pasin:
Wow, that’s a lot for a beverage. I’m surprised.
Kara Goldin:
And that’s the thing that I think … I mean, I came from that background. I was at AOL for seven years, and I never really even thought that that business was doable in grocery. And I always talk about Amazon, in my mind, was really the one that opened it up to possibilities, and it was game changing for the grocery industry. But the challenge with Amazon, as you know, is that you don’t really have a relationship with the customer. So you’re not getting the emails. And so at the beginning of March, when we were out of stock, people were hoarding in grocery store, the shelves were not getting replenished as quickly, we were doing our best to help and support the retailers. And we’re an essential product, which definitely helped.
Kara Goldin:
We were in a better position than other people. We reached out to our customer base, which was well over a million people, and we just said, “Hey, if you want to stay inside, and you should, and you don’t need to go to stores, or you don’t feel safe to go to stores. You can definitely go to drinkhint.com and order.” I mean, we had a crazy response. Like 60% of our base ordered from this email. It was insane. And so it really spoke to that relationship that we have with the consumer and guiding them. But also a different product than Radio Flyer in that for … I feel like the one thing that has really, really been highlighted for me as a leader in 2020 is the importance of health. And I’ve been talking about that for the last 15 years, and I’ve waited for the consumer.
Kara Goldin:
I’ve always said, “It doesn’t matter your gender, how much money you have, where you live, it all doesn’t matter. If you don’t have your health, you have nothing,” right?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah.
Kara Goldin:
I’ve talked to so many people about this, and it just stops you in your tracks. And so I think this pandemic has created an awareness like I’ve never seen since I’ve been alive around that topic for everyone. And I think people are trying to stay healthy, and they feel like they’ve got to do whatever they can in order to stay healthy. And I think just what you actually put in your body is the first step for so many, and exercising, and all of that. So anyway, that’s something that we’ve really …
Robert Pasin:
My grandpa always used to say … he’d always say, “You only get one of these,” and he’d point to his body. “You only get one of these. So take care of it.”
Kara Goldin:
It’s true, right? It’s true. I love it. I would have loved your grandfather. I love hearing stories like that, it’s super great. So just a couple other quick questions. So best advice you’ve ever received? Best advice, that’s a hard one actually, right?
Robert Pasin:
Okay. I think feedback is a gift. Feedback is a gift.
Kara Goldin:
I like that a lot. You seem like you’re this type of person … I always say that we should always be learning, even as leaders, that it’s so important. And I always encourage my teams to hire people that are better than them, smarter than them, know stuff that they don’t, because I said, “It’s for you selfishly, because you’re going to keep learning when you hire people that are not just working underneath you, and doing that stuff that you don’t want to do, or you know how to do it.” It sounds like you have the same theory.
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, in terms of culture, another one of my favorite quotes is the Peter Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” And I think what culture means to me is that it’s your habits, it’s how you do things on a team or a company. And everybody talks a lot about goals, and goals are really important. But when you think about it, pretty much everybody’s got the same goals. In business, your goal is to grow your sales and to satisfy customers. On a sports team, your goal is to win and to have championships. So everybody’s got the same goals. The thing that makes the difference is your habits, it’s how you do it. And the accumulation of your daily habits as a team is what makes a culture. And so we spend a lot of time on our culture, and we’ve gotten a lot of recognition of our team, on best places to work list. And I think it’s because we spend so much time on it.
Kara Goldin:
I love that. So I always ask this. Last question, what makes you unstoppable?
Robert Pasin:
I think just not stopping. Is that answering the question in a circular method? Yeah, I think not getting complacent, and I think really understanding that you can be stopped, you can lose your business. I think having those early experiences that I had where we were close to the brink taught me that you can lose something, and you can lose stuff pretty quick. So it’s like your health, that metaphor of it takes a long time to get in shape and get healthy, and it’s really important to maintain it because you can backslide really fast.
Kara Goldin:
Yeah. No, I love it. And how do people reach you, Robert? And obviously radioflyer.com, but also you, are you on social …?
Robert Pasin:
Yeah, LinkedIn would probably be the best way to get me, and all my contact information is on LinkedIn.
Kara Goldin:
I love it. Well, this was so awesome, and on so many fronts.
Robert Pasin:
Thank you.
Kara Goldin:
I loved it. And you guys definitely if you’re listening, and definitely put high marks for Robert on the podcast, and definitely subscribe. We’re now doing these recordings twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays, and we’re super excited to get your feedback as well, or if you guys know any people that we should have on here, we would love to hear from you. So thanks so much and have a great rest of the week.