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[Photo: Reinhard Hunger for Fast Company]
The Hardest Part of Doing Good: A Q&A With Ido Leffler, Founder of Yes To Inc. and Yoobi
Join Fast Company’s Kc Ifeanyi for a live chat with Ido Leffler, founder of socially conscious companies Yes To Inc. and Yoobi. The event starts Friday, September 19 at 12:00 pm E.T.
For-profit companies founded on a social mission face a unique challenge: businesses have to balance bottom-lines with giving back. It’s easy enough to want to make an impact on the world, but how can your company become great at doing good?
Ido Leffler has answers.
Leffler, the man behind natural beauty products company Yes To Inc. and now school supplies line Yoobi, has built successful brands on the base of meaningful social missions. A portion of Yes To’s profits goes toward a “Seed Fund” that has provided 50,000 meals to kids worldwide, while Yoobi operates on a one-for-one model, giving one item to schoolchildren in need for every Yoobi item purchased.
Before speaking at Techmanity 2014 on Oct. 1-2, Leffler joins us for a live chat to answer your questions about building and fortifying your business and its social mission, as well as cracking the hardest part of “doing good.”
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Hello, everyone! I’m Kc, assistant editor here at Fast Company, and I’ll be hosting today’s chat with Ido Leffler, founder of Yes To and Yoobi. We’ll be starting in 10 minutes, so get your questions ready! Read up about Ido in the meantime.
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We’re all set to begin our live chat with Ido Leffler, founder of Yes To and Yoobi. I’ll get things started and then open the floor to anyone who has questions for Ido on how to successfully build and grow businesses with social missions.
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Thanks for joining us today, Ido.
I’d love to get a sense of the how and why behind Yes To and Yoobi: How did the ideas come to you and why the social missions behind the products? -
Sometimes it feels like it was a crazy dream :-) In creating Yoobi, we set out not only to introduce bright, ridiculously awesome school supplies, but also to solve an important problem along the way: providing access to school supplies for those in need.
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To create a social mission was always part of our DNA.
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With Yes To the Seed fund—this was my wife's idea—we truly wanted to create something that a made a difference, when starting a business today why wouldn't you try to have impact?
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Beauty products and school supplies are two very different products to sell! Where did the ideas for Yes To and Yoobi originate?
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Both times were via either my wife or my kids!
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For Yes To we wanted something better for us! With Yoobi we wanted to create a brand that my kids would love and that you and i would want to use!
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At Yoobi our Target market are kids aged 4-104
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Today my business partners and I walk the aisles of the retailers and think whats missing here, how can we make it better!
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Love your sources of inspiration. Walk us through going from your “a-ha!” moment to execution: What hurdles did you face and how did you clear them?
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A good example is with Yoobi. The idea was born from a very uninspired trip down the school supply aisle with my daughters.
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They almost ignored the entire aisle altogether! I wanted to create school supplies that would make them excited to go back-to-school shopping and eager to learn. Once I had the idea I started to mull it over with my wife and then introduced the idea to my friends and partners.
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Especially once I started visiting classrooms and meeting with teachers, I realized how great the issue is and saw an opportunity to solve an important problem along the way. Once we got a kickass team started and pitched to Target, the rest was history.
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Yes To was your first company, so what have you learned from starting and growing Yes To that you're applying to growing Yoobi--or are the challenges completely different?
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First and foremost is patience, I used hate this word.
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Now i try to take some time and try to plan things out 24 months out and clear a path to get there!
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The second thing is hiring the right people from day 1! we have a simple mantra, incredible people lead to incredible results! Thank fully today the team in both companies are quite amazing!
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You’ve managed to secure Walgreens and Target as very valuable partners for Yes To and Yoobi, respectively: How did you form those relationships and what’s the key to maintaining them?
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Walgreens and Target have been instrumental partners to the success of my businesses. When dealing with large retailers like Target and Walgreens you have to bring incremental business through their doors and totally differentiate yourself from the other brands they work with.
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We did this by being brutally honest about your limitations and celebrating successes.
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We created kickass products that thought would bring in a different customer/guest. But we also screwed up A LOT!!!
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When we did, we were very honest about our mistakes and worked with them to solve these issues, it nearly killed Yes To once, but we came out of it stronger than ever.
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It’s more about building real, meaningful relationships than it is about the seller – retailer relationship. With both Yes To and Yoobi, we couldn't have found a better partners
to bring the change we want into effect. -
Great advice! We have some questions coming in for you from our live chat watchers.
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Ido - thanks for joining us today! I was reading about Yoobi's classroom pack donations and your partnership with the Kids in Need Foundation, how did this partnership come about? Is there any advice you can give to businesses looking to partner with nonprofits to achieve a common goal?
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Great question, We met the Kids In Need Foundation through some of our friends at Target! When we met them it was love at first site! Our goals were perfectly aligned. It took some time to work out the logistics, but once that was sorted, it has been a great partnership.
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My advice is to find a non profit that is a) credible b) aligns with your vision c) are people that you can feel great about partnering with.
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Thanks for the question, Billion + Change!
Ido, what would you say are the brand identities for Yes To and Yoobi and how do you make those identities resonate with consumers? -
Both companies have an identity which is approachable and that makes people smile!
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For both brands we want our consumers to feel part of the product development process and part of the decision making process
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Thankfully social media has allowed us to truly be social with are consumers! Since most of our consumers are vocal, we try and work with them to understand what they love and more importantly what we can do better.
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We've got more questions coming in from our live chat watchers.
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Hi Ido, love what you do and have been inspired by your work for a number of years. You seem to have so much on the go... how do you maintain the balance of giving each business / idea your time and effort while still giving it room to breathe?
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While we wait for Ido's answer, here's a video about Yoobi's story:by Miles Kohrman via YouTube 9/19/2014 4:25:26 PM
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Great questions! It is always a challenge to find the perfect balance!!
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I am very fortunate to be able to work with an amazing team who support my wacky schedule, which included a 6am flight this morning :-)
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I try to give my opinions and vision to each of the companies but truly rely on the people who are running their individual units to execute in their own way. NONE of our business has been successful just because of me or the leadership team—it needs to be a true team effort.
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Wise words, Ido. Another question coming in from a live chat watcher...
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Wouldn't it be fun to have a Yoobi Airline... for every flight you take we give a flight... :-))))
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The little Yoobites, inside the Yoobi labs are busy working on some great new launches for January and some HUGE announcements around March!!!
