← Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 548 - FAN FAVORITE | Poshmark COO John McDonald - Why Weirdness and Love Drive Explosive Success
00:44:59
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- [00:00]
Cameron Herold
Just a quick note before we dive in. This is actually one of our older episodes, but we're bringing it back because it's one of the most downloaded ones we've ever released. Clearly it struck a chord with a lot of listeners and I know there's so much value packed inside. So whether you're hearing it for the first time or revisiting it, enjoy this fan favorite.
- [00:17]
John McDonald
What hasn't changed, I think, is our vision for the business and kind of the strong framework or model for the business. But I think certainly sophistication in particular, I think on the analytics side, you know, our understanding of how growth happens, the marketplace, how people interact. I feel almost every year we make some big breakthrough in how we understand how things operate and that ends up changing. You know, whether it's our advertising strategy or some of the key features that we build or just how we run the business, I think probably, probably that more than anything is kind of really just starting to build a deeper and deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the business. Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herold. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your host. Host CAMERUS Harold.
- [01:29]
Cameron Herold
John McDonald is the chief Operating Officer at Poshmark, a leading social commerce platform for the next generation of retailers and shoppers, where he manages product data and analytics and the marketplace operations and is responsible for marketplace GMB growth and profitability. John draws from a deep expertise in community and marketplace management. He developed at eight years at eBay in category management, trust and safety and seller experience roles, as well as four years at Ning where he led support and sales and then as General Manager of the business. Earlier in his career, John focused on consumer marketing and product development at Procter and Gamble, Monsanto, the Monitor company, and Ebite. John has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from the University of California at Berkeley. John, welcome to the Second Plan podcast.
- [02:18]
John McDonald
Happy to be here.
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Cameron Herold
Every time I see Harvard, I just start getting all nervous. I remember the first, first business book I ever read was what they don't teach you at Harvard Business School and you got to go there so. Well, you didn't get to go there. You earned that spot. I couldn't spell Harvard when I was in college. Can you, can you walk us through a little bit about what you pulled from that experience that you still use today?
- [02:42]
John McDonald
I think probably the best thing I got out of Harvard and I think it's. A lot of business schools practice it now is this very fast, you know, several times a day case study method where you would be constantly exposed into kind of almost context switching into, you know, different aspects of different companies and what situations they were in. And, and you know, frankly, that's kind of what almost every day is. You know, it's context switching, you know, seven or eight times a day and different kind of challenges of the business. And so I think, I think that that really sets you up well, you know, to be able to make judgments on a, on a very fast basis in different business situations. So that's probably the biggest takeaway.
- [03:27]
Cameron Herold
That's really cool. Before we dive in. Cause I've got a whole bunch of questions I already want to dive in with. But tell us a little bit about Poshmark. So we know exactly kind of what the brand is and what you're doing. It's weird because I actually saw a post about it just yesterday.
- [03:39]
John McDonald
Fantastic. Yeah. So as you mentioned in my intro, Poshmark is the leading social commerce platform for passion. And kind of. What does that mean? I think first you need to step back a little bit. If you think about, you know, maybe the last 20, 30, 40 years in retail, we really went from kind of that small shop on Main street to large big box retailers. And then really with the advent of E commerce, you know, this, this phenomenal revolution in, in convenience and price and selection that's happened. And you think about Amazon. I shop Amazon probably on a weekly basis. It's just fabulous in terms of the selection you can get in terms of the pricing, the convenience, the delivery options. But what's kind of gotten lost in all that is the human element. And in particular when you think about fashion, the human element of that is so important. It's that personal recommendation, the personal sizing, the personal just affirmation that you are selecting style and looking good. And so really what Poshmark has done is, and I think a big part of our success is to bring that personal human interaction back into shopping. And so what does that mean? Well, you know, Poshmark at its core is a consumer to consumer market. So we have now over 7 million sellers that have listed well over 75 million listings and they sell to a community of about 50 million users. So very large, very broad. We just expanded in Canada, but primarily US based. The actual marketplace itself. We started off mobile only, an iPhone app, and then gradually added web and Android to that.
- [05:29]
Cameron Herold
Wow.
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John McDonald
But what that led it to be really the focus all along on the actual kind of marketplace side of this is to make it as simple as possible for buyers and sellers. So we've innovated in shipping, tracking, taxes, even disputes that you have in a peer to peer platform. We've made that just very simple all within the app, you know, just all encompassing. And the idea is we want to make the mechanics of buying and selling so easy that it allows our buyers and sellers to focus on the social side of the experience. And so what does that mean? Similar to social media, you know, and if you're on Pinterest or you're on Instagram, on Poshmark, you follow people, we call them closets. You know, it's, you follow people in their closets that you love, you engage with those people and you share content with them. You know, just very similar to any other social platform, really. On Poshmark though, you're, you're sharing content that is really forms of fabric of, you know, the commerce interaction. So for a seller, you succeed by, you know, expressing your style, building a following, getting a lot of people on Poshner to follow you. Wow. And then you're curating your items as well as other people's items to those followers and, you know, creating just this fabulous shopping experience. And in the process, as we say, when you, you lead with love, you leave with styling. You know, commerce is going to follow, you know that these, the sale's going to follow. So just to give you a sense of what this means in terms of metrics, Currently well over 30 million listings are curated or shared with others every day. We have kind of Snapchat or Facebook like engagement metrics. So users visit seven to eight times a day and spend about 25 minutes a day in the append social experience. And through that social experience, you're both buying and selling. It's very integrated, you know, integrated social and commerce that just leads to this very intensely personal interaction.
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Cameron Herold
So is it, is it kind of a, I mean, in real layman's terms, is it kind of a mashup of Instagram, Pinterest and ebay?
- [07:43]
John McDonald
Yeah, actually, you know, I mean, we, we sometimes hear it as kind of that, that way, but absolutely, you've got the marketplace, but then this, this very different way of, you know, discovering fashion. Yeah, through people, through, through what other people are kind of suggesting to, to you, what other people that you admire their style have in their closet. So I think there's, there's very strong elements of Instagram. You know, Instagram has become A you know, very strong kind of center of social media for fashion. And so absolutely interesting.
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Cameron Herold
Now you guys have made the news or somebody on my team mentioned somebody were in the news that you're expanding into home goods now as well. Is that true or is there accurate there?
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John McDonald
Yeah. So one of our really exciting things we did this last year is it's kind of interesting we have something called, we called it posh markets. So one of our challenges is when you have an app, it's such limited space and so as you add bring in different types of people. So as we brought, we were primarily a women's fashion marketplace and then we brought men into it. How do you allow people to have a little bit more segregated experiences? And so we created this concept. It's almost like an app within an app. And so we have a men's posh market. And what it also allowed us to do now is to start to branch out into areas that are very analogous. Home furnishings have, has a strong fashion element to it. And so it allowed us to this summer to add home furnishings and, and it's been very successful now. You know, I think one of the interesting things is we often take the take the lead from our poshers as we call them. And there were a lot of home goods already being sold on the site. So what we did is we formalized that and made it a, you know, fantastic experience to buy and sell.
- [09:39]
Cameron Herold
I love that you guys started with, started at mobile and then it have kind of expanded to the web from there. So when you were and one of my kids strangely enough buys and sells high end shoes like thousand dollar shoes and flips them and you know, wears them for two or three months and sells them for 200 bucks more than he paid for them. Is that something that's happening on your site? And, and how do you guys make your money?
- [09:59]
John McDonald
Yeah, so two different questions. So yes, we actually have a kicks posh market. So absolutely. It's a, it's obviously a very big trend in fashion right now. Sneakers. But getting to your question of how we make money. So we, we have a very simple fee structure. So we, we basically take 20 commission on every sale that happens on the platform. And you know, included in that is, you know, is, is everything for the seller. It's payment, it's shipping, it's customer service. All of that's handled by us. And it makes that experience incredibly easy. And then a very simple fee structure. There's no nickel and diming, nothing kind of that extra fees outside of that, that's really cool.
- [10:50]
Cameron Herold
All right, let's get into the nuts and bolts of the business. So you've been there for over five years now, so I'm sure you've seen some huge growth in the business. Can you walk us through what it was like in the early days and what was it that attracted you to Poshmark in the early days?
- [11:04]
John McDonald
Yeah, so when I start with the latter question, it was kind of interesting. I was at a SaaS platform for building communities and was looking around and at the time, this was back in 2012, 2013, I think my perception was that innovation on E commerce had kind of finished. And I know that sounds kind of negative, but, but you know, really Amazon had won and so I had, wasn't actually even looking for a role in E commerce. I was looking more on the social side of things. And I met, you know, had a, a friend refer me into Amanish Chandra, our, our CEO. And I gotta be honest, we, we met for I think three hours and you know, and then I came back about a week later and, and had another three hour meeting with them and I was sold. And, and, and I think what really kind of sold me on it was part of it is, is I, I was at ebay for about eight years and if I, I, I kind of felt if I had left ebay and, and written kind of a, you know, what would be the, the perfect kind of social marketplace, when I left on the back of a napkin, it would have been exactly what Manish had built. And so I, I was sold. And so when I, when I joined, it was probably about 35 people orders of magnitude smaller in sales. And I think what is, what has changed? I think what hasn't changed, I think is our vision for the business and kind of the very kind of strong kind of framework or model for the business. But I think certainly your sophistication in particular, I think on the analytics side, our understanding of how growth happens, how the marketplace, how people interact. I feel almost every year we make some big breakthrough in how we understand how things operate and that ends up changing, whether it's our advertising strategy or maybe some of the key features that we build or just how we run the business. I think probably that more than anything is really just starting to build a, a deeper and deeper, more sophisticated understanding of the business.
- [13:20]
Cameron Herold
How about the team itself? Has that really scaled or have you been able to stay lean over the years?
- [13:24]
John McDonald
We stay pretty lean. So we're about, you know, 10 times that size now. You know, you know, I don't even know if we share that number, but, you know, upwards of a. A little bit over 400 people. But, you know, I think as a, as a business team, very lean. As an engineering team, you know, hype lean. And I think that allows us to be very focused and I think have a lot of common knowledge of what everybody's doing. So I think we're still at that size where, you know, it feels like we can be very nimble and very focused.
- [13:58]
Cameron Herold
And what would, how roughly, how many employees were there when you came in then? About 40?
- [14:02]
John McDonald
Yeah, about 35. 40.
- [14:03]
Cameron Herold
Okay, so that's where the biggest part of the growth has had to have come then, in terms of the complexity of the business for you, right? What, it just wasn't as complex or was it complex and just smaller when you got there?
- [14:14]
John McDonald
I think when I first joined, it was very much kind of single thread, you might say, you know, we have a feature initiative and that was what everybody was working on. I think, you know, when you, when you have over 400 people, you know, you're clearly executing on multiple lanes of, you know, multiple large initiatives. You know, right now we're, you know, as we mentioned, we expanded into Canada at the same time we were adding a major category, you know, and there were a number of other facets of our business that we were, you know, working on at the same time. So managing from an engineering, from a business, finance, marketing side across multiple major initiatives. It definitely takes a bit more juggling, for sure.
- [14:58]
Cameron Herold
Now I'm Canadian as well, so I kind of appreciate the fact that you came into Canada, but I also, at the same time kind of understand why, like, why would you bother with Canada when it's smaller than California?
- [15:08]
John McDonald
Yeah, I think some Canadians might. I think it was a natural place for us to take a first step internationally. You know, you had similar payment systems, similar shipping. We already had some brand awareness in Canada, you know, similar time zones. You know, in terms of just, you know, infrastructure, you don't, you know, you don't have a big geographical distance to get any kind of latency in your back end. There's just a lot of reasons why it was, it was a, it was a great first step, and I think for us, it was it. We built a lot of confidence, you know, our ability to expand internationally from it.
- [15:46]
Cameron Herold
That's interesting. So, yeah, I, I remember when I was building a company years ago called 1-800-GOT junk and we were opening up in Australia, and it was our first test market after doing Canada in the U.S. and we kind of felt like if we failed in Australia, nobody would, would know. But you guys are, are big enough that you can't fail. So have there been any struggles in starting up in Canada and what do you think you've learned from that experience?
- [16:07]
John McDonald
I would actually probably flip it the other way. It's gone better than we expected. Some stumbles, more from a growth perspective. I think probably the areas that we are learning from are probably some more the basic operational aspects. Banking, you know, just, you know, certainly going into a different tax regime, you know, dealing with a different postal carrier, you know, with its own idiosyncrasies. So I, I actually think probably we expected on the more, on the advertising and the more product side we'd have more issues and that's gone very smoothly. It's probably more the, you know, the pure operational, the local operational aspects that, you know, maybe we didn't account, you know, or kind of foresee as much.
- [17:00]
Cameron Herold
I think your timing on coming into Canada is great because Canada is finally starting to catch up with the us. Like you mentioned, you know, buying on Amazon and a weekly basis. I've been saying for a number of years now, if you can't get it on Amazon, it's not worth having. But in Canada we hadn't really caught up to that yet. I, I live in two cities. I go back and forth between Scottsdale and Vancouver, Canada and in Vancouver I might order off Amazon once a week. But in the US it seems like it's daily but we're catching up. So I think your timing is really good in Canada. What's your leadership team look like and how do you interact with the leadership team?
- [17:32]
John McDonald
Yeah, so from a leadership team perspective, we're mostly still functional. We have a CTO, an SVP of engineering, and then several technical VPs that report up to them. You know, we have a CFO and a VP of Finance. We have recently added a GC. We have a CMO with two VPs under, on the marketing side. And then we just started to get a little bit matrixed, you know, as we start to expand both internationally and category wise we, we have a SVP of new markets and then starting to work on the international structure. So. And then. Oh, sorry, I missed out on kind of analytics. And on the operations side we have a couple of VPs there. So I think in terms of interaction, a lot of my role or a major part of my role is really around the planning side and supporting the team. In terms of how we prioritize, both kind of near term and now looking a little bit longer term, how we both prioritize and then resource both on the people side, but the engineering and development side as well, to support, kind of have a roadmap and support the executives in executing. And then I directly manage several pieces of the business as well. So I have both my CEO roles, both facilitating and planning, but also directly managing product analytics and then what we call marketplace operations in Canada as well.
- [19:14]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, you guys have got a huge, huge scope to actually to oversee. So I want to get into some of your meeting rhythms that you have and how you. How you got to kind of stay on the same page. But I'm also really curious on the politics side is how, what have you had to do to avoid company politics or kind of prevent the silos from occurring? You know, going from 40 employees to 400 in five years is pretty rapid growth. How have you guys had to navigate through that?
- [19:41]
John McDonald
Yeah, we've been very fortunate. I think it starts from a values perspective and who you hire and making sure everybody kind of shares the same set of values. And I think foremost among them is kind of respect for each other. And I know that sounds kind of trite, but our CEO and our funding team, you know, the three co founders, all of them have, I think, a very strong kind of shared set of values. And I think one of the things that I've learned with Poshmark that I don't think I ever really recognized as much in the other startups and larger companies I've been with is how much the CEO and the founding team, how much their values reflect on the whole company. I really think that the fact that we have avoided politics has a lot to do with that values. Yeah. And foremost among them, it's respect for each other. And it's not as if we don't have conflicts, but I think underlying it is respect. I think another one is we've had a fairly clear shared vision of where the business is going that might get more contentious in the future. But so far the path, you know, the six years I've been here, it's. It's been, you know, fairly clear where we, where we're heading. And I'd probably say the third thing is, is so far we've had a. Primarily a functionally based organization. And I think one of the things we're really trying to think through is as we, we have to bring in some type of matrixing as we, you know, we start to have now these separate lines of business. How do we do that and not bring in Politics.
- [21:25]
Cameron Herold
Yeah.
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John McDonald
So I, I, I recognize it's something I'm, I'm, I'm very happy we've been able to avoid, but it's something I think we really have to actively work towards. Does that answer your question?
- [21:35]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, it totally does. And I, I don't want to dive in on all three, actually. So talk to us about the shared vision first because that's your, normally where I kind of start off. If we don't know where we're going, anywhere, it'll take us there. So what, how, how did you all stay on the same page with that shared vision? What systems or tools did you use to be able to do that?
- [21:51]
John McDonald
I think it starts, I keep on coming back to our CEO. I think it's been a successful vision of the business and what Poshmark is all about. And I can't say it's actually even formalized, but I think it's been something that's been articulated verbally and very consistently over the past six years. But, and we've stuck with it. But yeah, I'm not sure I can articulate more than, I think as new employees come on board, we have quite a strong orientation program. I would say the vast majority of employees are also participants in the platform. So many of our, and particularly even our support side, our community team are very active buyers and sellers. So I think the ability to participate in the product that you, that you build and manage.
- [22:52]
Cameron Herold
Sure.
- [22:53]
John McDonald
As well. So I think, I think another aspect of it is we have an extremely active community and so we, we throw events around the country. We call them Posh Party lives about, you know, twice a month in different cities. Every year we have a get together. We just had it about two weeks ago in Phoenix, which is called Posh Fest, where this last one we brought in about 1500 of our very active poshers to come in and basically learn from each other, connect with each other. So by having all these events and kind of real world interactions with our community, I think it really gives you a very direct connection with what Poshmark is. So, so I, you know, it's not a, it's not a, a place where we have written down the, you know, the 10 laws of, of Poshmark. But I think it's, it's through a lot of osmosis and, and participating in the community that, that I think people have a really, a strong connection, you know, to who our customers are, who our poshers are.
- [23:57]
Cameron Herold
Yeah. Hey, it's Cameron Herald, your high energy leadership guru here to pump you up on the Second in Command podcast. If you get frustrated because your managers aren't leading like you want them to be, check out my game changing leadership course@investinyourleaders.com that's investinyourleaders.com for just 347 per leader you get 30 years. My proven experience straight from taking 1-800-got junk from 2 million to 106 million as COO and it's packed with 12 easy modules. Learn situational leadership coaching, delegation, conflict management and more all in under 6 hours. @investinyourleaders.com with straight to the point videos, worksheets and real life scenarios, your team will master time management, be able to hire a players and get aligned with your vision. It's all backed by a 30 day money back guarantee and raved about by hundreds of CEOs and thousands of managers already learning from the content. Grab this now and watch your business soar. Yeah, I wrote a book years ago called Vivid Vision. It's just a way to articulate the whole company vision. I was curious whether you were in that same direction, but it sounds like it's more on the indoctrination and the culture and the fact that so many of your employees are also users that it's just so clear on what you're building because everyone's a part of it, which is amazing. On the core value side are those. You know, so many companies just kind of have them articulated and they're on the wall, but no one really lives them and breathes them. It sounds like from the sea level down, it's just been a core part of the business. So how, how do you live them? And do you recruit based on those core values? Do you fire people if they're breaking the core values? You know, what do you do to make sure that those core values are so strong in the company?
- [25:43]
John McDonald
Yeah, it's, it's, it's all the bub. Pretty simple. I'll, I'll just. We have four core values. Put people first, grow together, spread the love and embrace our weirdness. And so really, you know, very simple values. And the interesting thing I think that makes our values really, really work is, is they're not only the values of our, you know, our employees, but also the values of our community. So, you know, for instance, when our CEO gave his State of the Union address at our, at this posh fest that we had, you know, he, you know, basically went through our values in the presentation and, and it really kind of permeates, you know, throughout the community. That it's all about, you know, putting people first, you know, everybody in the community. It's about growing together. It's a hugely supportive community, very, I would say, uncompetitive. And, and you know, in this idea that, you know, you spread the love so you lead with love, you're helping others, and out of that you're going to grow. And then lastly, you know, with fashion, embracing your weirdness really resonates quite a bit because it's about your preppy. You were telling me you're, you know, you're stuck in the. I don't know which decade it is with preppy, but early 80s. That's your style and that's your weirdness and you can. So what do we do with this? So, yes, we do actively have, within our interview panels, as we hire people, we have someone focusing on the values and in different ways asking and probing for these type of values. And I would say anytime I've kind of gone astray, I've made a couple of mistakes over the years. And you always regret it. I would probably say in the first six to nine months, really working with, getting someone who might have some rough edges with these values and working with them, I, I have let go a couple of people that didn't fit with the values. So it. Absolutely. I think everything you said, we use to make sure that these are prevalent and as well as our, you know, it's part of our performance reviews. So you know, our annual review process, we also call them out as part of that.
- [28:07]
Cameron Herold
Yeah, and I love, like, I've always had some pretty clear rules on core values and you've nailed all of them. One is that you stick to four or five core values. You did that. Another one is keeping the short, easy to understand phrases that need no explanation and not single words. You did that. Third is to never try to make it into an acronym because then it's like, you know, is it about the acronym or the core values? You nailed that. And, and then just, you know, live them from the top down and you guys do that as well. So I think that's, I think that more than anything or is a huge part of why your growth is what it is because people are operating that way all the time. It's become part of your DNA.
- [28:42]
John McDonald
Yeah, no, it is. And it, and it's. I think the part that I really found felt very good as we started to do as you know, because we're bringing in so many new people. We've had kind of a rotation where an executive will have lunch with a new cohort of employees. And this was a couple of months ago. I sat down, I was having lunch, and I had them feed back to me kind of their first week or two. And was it as expected? And, and what was fascinating was how strongly some of the values came back and they were finding that resonant just in their first week in the company. And so it makes you feel really good about the future of the company.
- [29:25]
Cameron Herold
That's really cool. That's amazing. I've got a couple of advanced questions. We actually started to take questions from some of our listeners in advance of me doing the interviews. So I've got some questions of people that knew you were going to be on the podcast. The first one was how does, how does the Poshmark platform assist the smallest sellers from being cannibalized by the largest sellers?
- [29:44]
John McDonald
Yeah, so I, you know, one of the terms we use for Poshmark is that it democratizes retail. And, you know, it's a, that's a big phrase. But I, I like it because when I described earlier how Poshmark works, really the way you succeed on Poshmark is by getting others to follow you, and then as you're following on Poshmark increases your ability then to market, you know, to, to share and curate items to that. That group. That. That's it. That's. That is the extent. And so what is involved with that? Well, you have to be a, an active participant on the platform. You've got to be following other people, sharing their items, you know, liking their items, connecting them to other postures. And when you altruistically are doing that, they're going to naturally do that to you. And so it's, it's pretty crazy what it, you know, kind of that, that, you know, you're passing it forward almost in, in the community. But what, what's kind of democratic about that is any high schooler, college student, you know, housewife, you know, entrepreneur, you know, retail owner, they start from the same spot, and it's basically their ability to connect with other people and have them follow, you know, them. And, and what we've had is these phenomenal success stories of people with just a passion and a certain style. You know, it could be kind of crazy. And they've been phenomenally successful on the platform, but because we don't have any. Anything in the platform that, you know, you pay your way into or, you know, as, as a, you know, it's a large, you know, retailer, brand, or seller, you know, really, it's all about Your ability to connect with others and you know, it's very democratic, very egalitarian. So for a small seller, even our, we do have a program called Posh Ambassadors which is exactly, you know, what the name suggests. It's over time we've, we've built this program where people, you know, they're, they're expected to reach out and help other poshers on the, on the platform. And even that the hurdle number of sales is very low. The main way you earn into this program and become a posh investor is the amount of social activity you want to do on the platform, how many shares you've done, how many times you've helped other sellers get exposed. Oh, there's a certain threshold. So even in our kind of program, which gives you a little bit extra exposure, it's not about number of sales, it's about the amount of sharing you do.
- [32:24]
Cameron Herold
That's really interesting. I love it. That's a big question.
- [32:27]
John McDonald
Yeah. So I would say to answer your question, is assisting small sellers, you know that the whole design of the system is meant to make it very egalitarian and very equal playing field. Yeah.
- [32:37]
Cameron Herold
So is, is your model meant for the person selling, you know, five items a year or 50 items a year or 500 items a year? Like what's the, is there a magic kind of number target that you try to think about?
- [32:50]
John McDonald
Well, it's interesting because we don't. So I'd answer your question. No. We have put a lot of focus into making it as simple as possible. So, so anybody could start and get selling and, and succeed. But you know, our, our largest sellers night and I think we share this, this number, you know, are upwards of, you know, 500, 000amillion a year on the platform. Well, so you know, over time you're building a following. You're building, you know, your, your people love your style and love what you, you offer. And some of these sellers are creating their own brands. So they, you know, creating their own brand on Poshmark and quite successful at it.
- [33:32]
Cameron Herold
So then how that's. That leads into the second question that I was asked in advance as well is how, how does Poshmark keep the larger people from leaving to start their own platform? How do you kind of keep them in? I'm guessing that it's just because the community and the tribe is so strong that they don't want to leave.
- [33:49]
John McDonald
You have this amazing asset. So, so the answer is, is, is some of our largest sellers have gone off and started their own brick and mortars. You know, boutiques in their towns, a number of them sell as well, you know, on other platforms or through their own website. But once you built up a following of, you know, several hundred thousand followers on Poshmark or even why leave? That's a phenomenal asset. Yeah, exactly. Why leave?
- [34:16]
Cameron Herold
So there's at least you'd almost liken it to. They've built a lot of retail traffic to that store. Why would they leave that location?
- [34:24]
John McDonald
Right, Correct. Absolutely.
- [34:26]
Cameron Herold
Makes sense.
- [34:27]
John McDonald
Yeah.
- [34:28]
Cameron Herold
So maybe I have a place I can sell my plaid pants then that I've been wearing in the preppy world forever. Probably not. Probably not. All right, the other questions related to the. Your organization, your org chart and, and thinking about moving from this functional based org chart to more of a matrix one. What thoughts? How do you start to think about that and, and when do you need to start thinking about that as an organization? I was talking to a client recently and they had about 120 people and they were trying to, to go there. Is that too early or what tells you that you need to move to a matrix or bring in some of that?
- [35:04]
John McDonald
I think what really has struck us as the need, and it's been about a year to two years that we've really had this need, has really been around category expansion and specifically bringing men on the platform. I think without a dedicated team or focus across functions, not just one person advocating for men on the platform, it's difficult to see growth in that category faster than the overall platform. So what we've found is you get success, but it's just growing. It's basically maintaining a percent of your overall sales. To get that kind of acceleration, you need focus and not just within. For instance, Tracy sun is our SVP of new markets. She certainly can have someone who's focused on, or even a whole team focused on men. But unless we are identifying dedicated resources within our growth team, our advertising team, within our product team, even within our community development team, and integrating those activities across in a very focused and kind of clear, cohesive way against men. We couldn't get acceleration of the men's business. And so that's, that's where we've had success with it. And I think it's, it's a great, you know, example of kind of, I think it. At that point, I think where you, you have disparate pieces or segments of the business, I think it almost becomes necessary, especially when you have such a, you know, women, you know, women in the US Women's fashion. Us is such a large percentage of our Business. It's monolithic, you know, for sure. And so you really. That I think to start getting some of these emerging pieces of the business accelerating. You know, it's, it's an area we had to.
- [37:02]
Cameron Herold
It's about focus. Yeah, it's interesting. I was in one of the original Lululemon locations. It's actually we're from Vancouver where Lulu started, and to walk into one of their locations now where they have an entire side of. Well, it's really two stores. One store is all women, one store is all men. But for the first 15 or so years it was almost exclusively women with maybe like four pairs of guys shorts. But they, they did start to focus on that and brought in that demographic. Curious on what you've done with your design and marketing side, have you. Because most of your customers have been women. Have you stayed, you know, with female designers and, and women copywriters and women UX people? Have you, have you gone that route just believing that they're so different and think different to, to actually hire based on that as well?
- [37:52]
John McDonald
I'd say just started to do that. So we've been successful at accelerating the men's business without it, you know, by, you know, taking a similar formula and, and applying it on men. But I, but I think the, the feeling is, is to continue going down that route, we had to find, you know, especially in the product marketing side, merchandising side, we really had to find people who could bring a kind of a unique men's voice. It's not, you know, not going too crazy, far from our poshmark, you know, female voice. But, but how do we, how do we layer a men's, you know, a male voice on, on merchandising as well as kind of our PR story as well. So, so we've had some success recently with that. We've, for instance, we recently did a piece on NFL and NBA in terms of pro sports fashion and you know, as a way to, you know, to reach out and make fashion poshmark relevant to men outside and, but, you know, finding that way of connecting. But I, but I do think it takes hiring specifically for that. So. Yes, yes.
- [39:02]
Cameron Herold
Was I, was I correct then that your current marketing team had been on the like female on, on your copywriting design UX side, were you most them? Yeah.
- [39:11]
John McDonald
And recently we've, we've hired in to. To build that capability.
- [39:15]
Cameron Herold
I, I read about something like that years ago, like 20 years ago in some book called Trends where they just, they, they kind of gave that nudge. I was like, oh, my God, it makes so much sense. Like, how could you ever have guys writing anything marketing or thinking? Because we just. We're just different. I mean, especially when it's a female fashion brand or started that way.
- [39:33]
John McDonald
And we, We. We've also done, you know, springing and working with some celebrities. So we do occasionally do a celebrity closet where we'll. They'll donate the proceeds to a charity. And we've done a couple of. A couple of sports figures recently with, you know, male sports figures. And that's. That's worked out well, too.
- [39:52]
Cameron Herold
That's really cool. I love it. All right. Thinking about your growth just in terms of a leader, so you've been with the company for five and a half years. How have you had to grow as a leader over the years?
- [40:02]
John McDonald
I'd probably say the biggest change for me has been probably twofold. One is in terms of people management. I think in terms of. This has probably been the largest team and in particular, kind of a disparate set of teams that I've managed. And I think learning how to manage managers and managers of people, I think has been, you know, and has forced me. And I, you know, I'm always amazed by people who have fabulous eq. I would give myself average grades in that regards, but it's really forced me to really listen, I think a lot more, you know, really try and slow myself down on reacting too quickly and, you know, just be much more thoughtful in terms of people and people structure, people, organizational structure and how that influences people. So I'd probably say that's one. The second one is more just directly kind of figuring out what COO means, which is really. It's kind of interesting in separating myself from wanting to dive in and drive things in the business. And how do I become more of an enabler and a facilitator more and more? And I got to be honest, that's tough for me. But I'm gradually learning how to do it to be a, you know, be more of a resource for the other execs rather than, you know, my initial, you know, impulse is just to dive in and grab it. So that. That's been another area I think I've had to grow, and I'm. I'd say I still need to keep growing at.
- [41:42]
Cameron Herold
Did you ever come across the article that Harvard wrote or the Harvard Business review wrote about 15 years ago called the misunderstood role of the COO?
- [41:49]
John McDonald
No. No, I haven't.
- [41:50]
Cameron Herold
Great. Really? Really? Really. I'll send it to you afterwards. It's fantastic. Piece. And they identified seven distinct types of chief operating officers. And it's just, that's one of the reasons why you're confused is they're, they play very, very different world, different roles. And I even started an organization about three years ago called the COO alliance, just as a way to try to bring COOs together to network and, and learn from each other and share with each other. Because we tend to go to all these entrepreneur events, but we don't really fit in. We have a different mindset. So, final question. If I wanted to think back to, you know, you were, maybe you're graduating Harvard or you were just finishing off your undergrad and you were kind of finishing off the University of California or UC Berkeley, if you were to give yourself some advice as like a 22 year old advice that today, you know to be true, but you wish you'd known at 22, what would, what advice would you go back and give yourself back then?
- [42:42]
John McDonald
Wow, that's a, that's a deep question. I think probably one of the things I've learned most, you know, through, especially through my, my 20s and 30s and maybe even early 40s, was to bite your tongue, listen, be a much, much better listener, much more adaptable, much more flexible. And you know, you come out of college, you come, you know, at youth, you know, I, I, I, I had a couple pretty hard stumbles in my career. And so I, I think to, to get to a point where you can, you know, you can lead, but lead in a way where you're listening and you're adapting and you're, you know, taking into account everybody around you. You know, I think, you know, I think it took me a while to, you know, I would say even decades to get, to get, get to the point where I, I achieved that. So I, I think, you know, thinking about myself when I was graduating from college, I, I think it takes a lot more than smarts to get ahead in the world. And a big part of that is listening, listening to people and being considerate and respectful of people.
- [43:48]
Cameron Herold
So yeah, I think, I think that's where the wisdom component starts to kick in. Right. We just, you just need some years and decades under our belts before that part kicks in.
- [43:56]
John McDonald
Yeah, unfortunately, and we run out of time, there's probably fortunate people out there that don't bang their head, but I, I banged my head a couple times pretty bad. So. Yeah, but you learn from it, from it.
- [44:08]
Cameron Herold
I'm six' four, I bang my head constantly. John, thank you very much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast. I really, really appreciate it. John McDonald, the chief operating Officer at Poshmark. Thanks for being with us.
- [44:20]
John McDonald
Thank you Cameron. You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder Cameron Herald. If you to intend if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com.