I have been laid off not once, not twice, but three times.

It totally throws off your whole plan for yourself.

Patricia Cohen she's an experienced supply chain, professional and passionate developer of people and high performing teams.

A leader who's willing to say hey, I got laid off three times.

A lot of leaders have shame about it.

There are two things personally that have really helped me get where I am today.

First of all, and you just have to be adaptable.

So many good insights in that.

When I was talking about the three year plan, you can't just be focused on today.

In order to advance, you always have to be thinking about the future.

There are a lot of people in that situation right now.

What advice do you have for leaders trying to grow a high performing team?

My first suggestion on how to create a high performing team is that.

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Welcome back to lead the team with number one bestselling author and in demand corporate trainer Ben Fanning.

On this podcast, the world's most innovative senior leadership leaders share their top success strategies to motivate your direct reports, cultivate your top leaders and accelerate your career.

Let's get started.

Here's Ben.

Hey there everybody.

Welcome back to Lead the Team.

It is time to unleash your operational excellence with COO at Pura, Patricia Cohen.

She's an experienced supply chain, professional and passionate developer of people and high performing teams.

She has worked for some incredible brands like Stockx, John Hardy, Maybelline and Jones Apparel Group and more.

Her company Pura is currently revolutionizing home fragrance a use smart home technology and they are very fast growing and they are changing the way people experience scent in their personal spaces.

Patricia, welcome to Lead the team.

Thank you so much for having me Ben.

So what personal quality or characteristic do you believe has been the most impactful in your career trajectory and success?

I am always talking to my team about what are your personal leadership superpowers?

What are your personal traits that are your superpowers?

And I think for me I would say there are two things personally that have really helped me get where I am today.

And that is a bit of resilience and scrappiness.

I think when you start out and you are in college, in my case, I also went to business school.

You plot your whole career, at least if you're a person like me, analytical and methodical, you say, I'm going to start at this position, I'm going to be promoted at this time, and then I'm eventually going to end up at whatever that idea of my ultimate career goal is.

And along the way, I have been laid off not once, but not twice, but three times.

And when you are laid off and you are unexpectedly unemployed, it totally throws off your whole plan for yourself.

And you might have to take a step back at a different company in order to advance.

You might have to go slightly off the path of what your next ideal career move was.

And for me, that has been such, in the end, a gift and a great experience.

Because what it's meant for me is that I am someone who goes into a company and I can onboard very quickly.

I come in and I hit the ground running.

I've not by my own design, but I've had the opportunity to work at a lot of different kinds of companies, a lot of different size companies and a lot of different industries.

And so that means, for instance, when I come into Pura, it's like, oh, this is not new to me.

I've seen these challenges before and I'm just able to adapt very quickly.

And so I think for me, that has been a real gift and an opportunity that I've really embraced.

Wow, I love that.

It just gets me excited to hear a story like that and a leader, a COO who's willing to say, hey, I got laid off three times.

And I learned a lot from that experience.

And so, all right, first off, how hard is it or how, like the first time, like, looking back, okay, like, I got laid off three times.

Yeah, in the time.

I think a lot of leaders have shame about it.

They're like, oh, I got laid off.

And what.

How did you.

And you may not have felt the shame in it, but I think a lot of people might.

How did you process it in the moment?

And if a listener and an executive is laid off from their position, like, what do you think a helpful response or a helpful way to think about it is in the moment when you're having that?

I think that when you are laid off, there are so many emotions that go through your mind and through your body and your heart.

I will tell you the first time it Happened.

First of all, even though I saw that many people were getting laid off, I knew the company was struggling.

I was young, and I felt like, why me?

That's first and foremost, why me?

Why are you picking me?

Even though, of course, many people are getting chosen.

But I thought I was special.

I'm exemplary.

So obviously, even if the company is struggling, you will retain me.

And so you kind of have those feelings of, why am I the person being singled out?

I think that's one common feeling.

And I think there's also, for me, as a leader, I learned so much empathy and compassion through those experiences.

There is a movie that George Clooney did years ago called up in the Air, and it's basically about mass.

Yes.

It's about, like, layoffs.

And it made a big impression on me, like, thinking about that and.

Yeah.

What.

What was your impression when you had lived through the.

You had seen the movie in real life.

That movie, to me, was like ptsd, because it so accurately depicts what that experience is like.

And so I've certainly also had to lay people off.

And so that really has given me just, like, compassion and empathy of, like, how do you talk to people?

How do you treat people?

Because one of my experiences was very, very negative.

And even still to this day, if I think about it too much, I am angry about how I was treated.

Right.

And so.

And so it's a hard decision when a company has to make that decision, and it's certainly hard for the employee who's on the receiving end of it.

And so I think there's all different kinds of ways that you can be supported as a team member who's being impacted in that situation.

And I think you can't allow yourself to be defined.

You can't allow shame to take.

Take over you.

Right.

You just have to say, what do I do now?

How do I reposition myself?

And you just have to be adaptable.

That would be my message for anyone who's going through that.

And there are a lot of people in that situation right now.

Yeah.

And what I hear in that is you're not alone.

Like, when this happens, like Patricia sharing her story.

This happened to a lot of executives.

You've been successful in your career.

Like, it's not the end of your career.

And it's easy by any means to maybe feel that way.

But I love the other perspective that you took on it.

You're like, well, I've been through this three times myself.

I've seen how not to do it.

Yes, to do it.

So can you without maybe share.

You don't to share all the details.

What was it like and what did you see as like what not to do if you're a leader and you delay people, lay people off versus hey, I need to do this.

And what.

And what did you see as the right way to go about doing it?

Every organization is going to be different in terms of what their financial situation is and what they can offer team members.

Having said that, I do think it's important that you are treating people in a human way.

That's a big value at Pura is how can we treat each other as humans.

So what does that look like?

It looks like a decent severance package.

As an example, if there is an opportunity for outplacement services, that is something I did receive in one of these layoffs that was extremely beneficial.

I also think it means offering if this is a strong employee and if it truly is a just reduction in workforce situation references.

Can I help you?

That is something that we've done in the past at companies I've been at where we know of other companies that may be hiring and we were referring team members to those other companies to see if that's a fit.

So I think there's all different kinds of ways that you can support people in these kinds of actions.

Yeah.

So good.

So many, so many good insights in that.

What I hear that too is when you're experiencing a layoff or either you're being laid off or you have to do that in a difficult situation, how you frame it for yourself and for the other people is critical.

Right.

And in terms of how that experience is going to go, it's more than just a transaction that's, hey, this is not the end.

This is just another turn in the road.

And then it sounds like your perspective has been, how can we help you along on that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it's.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, I did not expect that story, but it's so cool to hear, you know, how you've gone through that.

And also what I really liked about it is how it's accelerated your career.

It sounds like on the other side, yeah.

You feel like this is a terrible setback.

Especially, like I said, if you're a methodical, planful person like me, but then you just, you quickly learn.

Actually, I am learning adaptability.

I am learning how a bunch of different organizations work.

I am getting the opportunity to see healthy cultures and unhealthy cultures.

I am learning so much in this process.

So I've been in a similar position where at the time I felt like I had a bad boss or I was in a bad work situation.

This is not how you run a company.

But sometimes it's better to learn or more effective to learn how you don't want to run things than just say, hey, this is the way we do it here.

This is the way you're going to do it your whole life.

And definitely made me wiser down the road.

And I mean, you've, man, you've worked for some big brands, so you've seen a lot along the way.

And I can.

And I can see them.

The.

Maybe the more methodical planning of your career as an industrial engineer.

Have you always had sort of a engineering mindset because you were at Stanford?

You go in industrial engineering.

That's a, that's a discipline of planning, preparation, organization, analysis.

Have you always gravitated towards that sort of aspect?

Absolutely.

I've always been a very analytical kid.

I was the science fair nerd.

I was the how does this mechanically work?

Let me take this thing apart and see how it comes together again.

So when I got to Stanford, I originally actually thought I was going to study chemical engineering.

And then I made a pivot to industrial engineering, which is all about optimizing systems, optimizing processes.

People.

A lot of industrial engineers work in factories.

And in fact, there's nothing I love more than going to a factory.

So.

So I'm super nerdy in that way.

But it is essentially a supply chain major.

And so I have actually worked in supply chain my entire career.

Yes.

So what for people that are maybe early on in their career and they're trying to think through these things, there's a lot of new technology coming out.

Like with AI, there's the globalization of supply chain.

I was looking at your time span of your career.

You've seen a massive globalization in the time that I guess you've been in this field.

But putting your.

I guess I'm like getting out the crystal ball with all these factors swirling right now.

What's your.

Like what.

Where is all this headed with the supply chain?

But also thinking about people maybe that are early in their career and they're still trying to chart their growth ahead.

What advice do you have for them.

Specifically for supply chain professionals?

Well, or.

Or any.

Since you're working more broadly than supply chain.

So it could be specific to supply chain or could be a little broader than that too.

I think specific to supply chain.

What was happening very early in my career and continues to happen is this kind of shift of where the value Stream is when I was laid off.

The very first time in my career.

I was at a company called Silicon Graphics that doesn't exist anymore.

And essentially at the time, Silicon Graphics was manufacturing completely vertically integrated.

So there was a manufacturing plant in Mountain View and we were manufacturing our computers right there.

Yes, we were in Mountain View View, I promise you.

A little expensive to manufacture computers in Silicon Valley right there.

It was very expensive.

And then over time, that kind of shifted to an outsourcing model.

Right.

First with printed circuit boards being manufactured in final assembly and then basically taking everything outsourced.

So that's a trend that's been happening for many, many years now.

It's not new.

And so I think that's just something that anybody needs to understand, which is just like the business environment is fast paced, things are always changing and how do you stay abreast of that?

And even now, what's happening for our business is at Pura, our devices are manufactured in Asia, and our fragrances are all developed at fine fragrance houses in the U.S.

but the final assembly is filled in Mexico.

So we are dealing with the pressure of tariffs right now.

Right.

And so this is a new wrinkle in the supply chain that we have to respond to that.

We sort of thought there was a signal of that last year.

We didn't think it would be happening this soon.

And now we have to respond.

And again, as a person who's very planful and methodical, I'm always thinking about managing my cost of goods.

My team does such an amazing job managing cost of goods.

And now we have this, and now what do we do?

Right.

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Yeah, so that.

So tariffs, for example, like, and a lot of things in business, like during the pandemic, there was supply chain shutdowns all over the world causing massive havoc.

And things can happen so quickly.

What are the things or what advice do you have for leaders so they can stay adaptable?

And I'm thinking about specifically supply chain, because supply chain, a lot of times it's built for cost and speed.

That's right.

We want to do it the lowest Cost possible so we can have protect our margins and give.

That's right.

About our price to our customers.

But if you go too low cost and you're too rigid.

Right.

You.

You can adapt is as easily but.

But you might be operating with a higher cost.

So what.

How are you, how are you thinking about having a supply chain that maximizes for efficiency cost but also able to at least somewhat respond in a crazy environment where things can change that quickly.

So for me and my team, I'm always thinking we always do a sort of three year plan exercise.

Right.

And the three year plan is a strategic exercise to say where are we and where do we see ourselves two, three, four, five years from now?

Because long term planning takes a little bit of time.

And so we were always looking at the puzzle of how we are structured in terms of geographic diversification.

So even before the threat of tariffs, we never want to have all of our production in one basket.

So we were always thinking of as the business expands, if we want to enter Europe, we can't be filling our product in Mexico.

We need to have facilities in.

Want to just be locally in China.

Are there opportunities to produce in other places like Vietnam or Thailand?

So that was something that was already in the works.

And now we're presented with this new concern.

It's about accelerating plans that we were already thinking about.

And so I think that's one thing is that you can't just be focused on today.

You always have to be thinking about the future for reasons beyond tariffs.

It could just be for geopolitical reasons.

We don't want to be in one country.

Hurricanes exposure, Storm exposure.

Exactly, exactly.

Our distribution center is in Atlanta and Atlanta recently had a snowstorm.

It never snows in Georgia.

Right.

They had hurricane threats.

And so if we only have a fulfillment center in one location and something happens geographically, what do we do that can really be devastating for our business?

So even distribution, we're looking at other places that we can be placed.

So I don't want to put words in your mouth.

So tell me anything about it.

It is you.

Even if it's a little more expensive to have multiple locations or a different geography, it's worth the cost.

Additional cost to some extent because the bigger cost would be catastrophic if you just went with one location.

Even though, even if the one location is more cost effective.

That's not putting words in my mouth.

That is absolutely correct.

And that's exactly the math that we're looking at.

So when I was talking about the three year plan in terms of our Device manufacturing, it is more expensive to produce in some of these other places.

And so it's about finding the right mix.

Is it 50, 50?

Is it 80, 20?

That's exactly what the math is.

Yeah.

The ability to be able to sleep at night knowing that you have a plan B is worth a lot.

And it's just good for leaders to be thinking about that because there's so much, there can be so much pressure to reduce cost.

They're like, well, why are you, why are you wasting all this money in this other country?

You could be saving 10% over here.

And, yeah, they think about it as broadly as possible there.

Yes.

So, so, yes.

And thankfully, our board has a bigger vision.

So as I was presenting that plan, they were actually 100 supportive and understand the need for diversification.

Good to be aligned on that, y'all.

So I, I, during the intro, I mean, it's, y'all are an interesting business.

So I want to talk about this, this fragrance business now.

One of the things that it struck me, there's a hotel here in Charleston, and it's just, they're just one.

It's not a chain, it's one hotel.

But you walk in and you always smell the same scent.

Yeah.

I finally asked somebody, I'm like, why does it always smell so good in here?

And they're like, well, that's a unique scent that was made just for our hotel.

Yeah.

And we're selling candles over here for that set for an expensive cost.

But it's interesting.

I, I, I just, I'm noticing it so much that this has become such an important thing.

And then I look at your.

I got excited reading about your company and also some of the bigger brands that you're partnering with.

What is going on with Sense right now in terms of your business and mixing it with technology and this focus, like, why is it getting so much, so popular?

I think that people are starting to understand the power of scent.

I don't know if you're aware of the research, but if you ever have a memory that is associated with scent, it actually is retained in your brain much more strongly than memories that don't have a scent associated.

I did not know this.

Yes.

So, like the scent of your mom making cookies, Thanksgiving dinner.

What?

All of those, like, things that just are so evocative will become seared in your brain when they have the scent associated with them.

There's also the transporting quality of scent, whether it's the smell of the ocean when you're on vacation or just the comfort of a Vanilla scent in your home.

So I think people are really understanding the power of scent for relaxation purposes, to transport you, to calm you, all of those different factors.

And in the case of brands, a brand, signature scent.

So yes, you walk into this hotel and it always smells the same way.

And it just lets you know whatever that is evoking, if it's luxury, if it's comfort, if it's this home away from home kind of feeling.

So that can be very, very powerful.

And so we do work with a lot of huge brands so that people can bring those sense into their homes and into their cars.

So what's one that would surprise people in terms of like one that you partner with or maybe a story of the impact of this?

I mean, we work with Nest, we work with anthropology, we work with Tommy Bahama.

So if you go into a Tommy Bahama store and you love their products and you love the way it smells, you can have that scent in your home.

I know for me, I'm a big anthropology shopper, and if you go into anthropology, you can't help but smell the scents in that store.

And so I've always loved all of the anthropologie scents.

So the ability to have that in your own home is just incredible.

Pura also develops our own line of fragrances.

We have performance fragrances.

So if you're cooking and you have this smell of onions and garlic in your home, we have scents that actually will dissipate those specific molecules in the air.

If you have a pet, we have scents that are specifically for pet odors.

So there's kind of functional scents, and then there are those scents that you just love for everyday use.

Well, so it, does it integrate with Nest?

Does it integrate with the Nest wheel?

Or how does this, how do, how do you bring sense?

How do you bring your scents into our homes?

What's the technology?

The technology is that we have a device.

So we are a technology company that manufactures our hardware device.

And then we're also a fragrance company that works with fine fragrance houses to develop all these different scents.

And so you will have a vial of fragrance that you place inside our device.

And the device is controlled by an app, which is incredible because it means that you can control when the device diffuses, how intense is the scent?

Because some people are actually scent sensitive.

They don't want it to be too strong.

How often does it diffuse?

You can program it to diffuse Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for five minutes.

You can diffuse every day for 10 minutes at 3pm you can diffuse right before I Go to bed.

We have some scents that are great for sleep that are lavender based.

So I'm going to go to bed at 10pm, diffuse the scent for 10 minutes at 9:50 so that when I come into my bedroom it smells of lavender.

It relaxes my body and prepares me for sleep.

Yeah, it makes so much sense because just the normal plug in ones, they just run all the time.

And if you're on vacation, if you're not there.

Yeah, it's y'all, it's really, really cool.

And I think I'm question for you.

Are any companies using specific ones in their offices or executives like yeah, we need to run a high performance set in the office here.

Everybody fired up or we have a.

Scent actually that's specifically for focus.

And so that's a great scent if you're trying to sort of spur focus and performance and attention.

Right.

So that's a great scent for.

I would say for that.

Well, when it's homework time for my teenager.

That's right.

I'm going to start diffusing the focus.

That's right.

And leave the phone in the other room.

That's the ultimate focus hack.

But yeah, that too would be the set.

Absolutely.

So, so good.

We all.

Yeah, check it out man.

Y'all doing some really cool stuff.

Patricia, so from your standpoint, this has been a blast, a lot of fun and we've covered so many cool things.

What, what parting thought would you like to leave with our listeners today?

I think my parting thought would just be the importance of having your own leadership brand and really knowing yourself and what those qualities are in yourself that can help spur you to the heights that you want to reach in your career.

We didn't talk too much about team development, but that would be the other thing I would leave leaders with.

It's just the importance of developing high performing teams.

So what?

So you've developed a lot of high performing teams and I can't let you get out of here.

You're right, we didn't touch on that.

Share a little bit with us about how to create a high performing team based on your experience.

My first suggestion on how to create a high performing team is that you have to assess the team members that you have.

We don't always get to pick and hire an entire team ourself.

More often than not you are inheriting the team members and so you want to make sure that you have the right team members in the right seats in your organization.

Sometimes you can have a really strong performer, but they might just be Misaligned in the actual role that they're playing on the team.

And then I think once you know that you have the right team members in the right seats, then you want to assess their skill sets and capabilities.

Sometimes more junior team member might need a little bit more education on their role.

I have some junior team members who are basically, this is their first job out of college.

So that's a lot of training of actually like how do they get their job done?

What are the important things they need to do?

The tactical things.

Right.

Sometimes I have a more senior team member and they might need a little bit of support on presentations, how do I publicly speak, how do I communicate up to the executive team and giving them that kind of support.

So I think that's really.

And then it's just about how does the team work cohesively together and making.

Making sure that you have a supportive team that really has each other's back that can balance the strengths and weaknesses of the other team members.

And I think when teams are functioning at that level, they're not only high performing, but they're very healthy, strong teams with a collaborative working spirit.

Thinking back, and maybe we'll wrap up on this one, but thinking about either a person that you helped develop, like, one of the things I hear is, hey, Ben, be thoughtful about it.

Each person kind of needs their own customized plan based on their experience.

But also, so maybe a person that you were able to help along in their development, or maybe a team who wasn't working that well together or performing well as a team and you tried something or tried a strategy that was helpful and how it helped them have a turnaround.

I have a great example of that.

I started a role at a company that I will shall remain nameless.

And my boss said, hey, you have two people on your team that are not that strong.

And so I'm going to allow you to assess them.

And if you need to make a change, meaning terminate the team members, that will be your decision.

I'm going to leave that to you.

And so I started working with those two team members and I didn't think that they weren't strong.

I did think they had a couple of developmental opportunities that I needed to work with them on.

And so I brought one of those team members to my office just for a coaching session.

And I said, hey, listen, this is the feedback that people have for you and this is what I see and I would love to work with you on shifting that perspective that people have about you.

This particular team member was working as a demand planner, which is a very analytical, data heavy role.

And she had a very heavy Ukrainian accent.

And she also was someone who spoke very quickly.

If you have a heavy accent and you speak quickly and you're giving people a lot of data, the way that she was perceived is someone who was very like frenetic and didn't really know what she was talking about.

And I just said, listen, you need to slow down.

Also, if you know 10 things and you're talking to the president of this company, maybe figure out the two things that are the most important takeaways for the president.

You don't have to prove to everybody how much you know, I know how much.

But just distill down the one or two takeaways and do not try to communicate all of these things to the room.

And when she started to do that, everything shifted for her and she's still at that company today and has been promoted and has been very successful.

So I really take a lot of pride in just being able to coach her through those perceptions.

So you, you realize quickly she knows what she's talking about.

Absolutely.

She needs some help with her communication style and even thinking about the company too.

Every company and executives, they have different ways that they take in information and communicate it.

And if your style doesn't match, sort of the framework of success of that company, it may not work out.

But it sounds like you were able to get her.

You really help her align her immense data understanding with how to get it out there.

And man, there's Patricia's MBA crash course.

Patricia, so much fun today, my friend.

Thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

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