Iclif : From Home Business to Billion-Dollar Corporation | Janine Allis
Channel: Iclif Executive Education Centre at ASB
Date: 2017-02-08

Janine Allis is the executive director and founder of Retail Zoo, the $2bn holding company of Boost Juice. In this uplifting interview, she discusses the assumptions around success, the public’s perception of herself, leading with positivity and the importance of branding.

People have assumptions about success. Throughout Janine’s journey, her definition of success and the public's assumption of success haven't always matched. In the eyes of many, Janine has already made it because she has a great business that’s done really well. In her internal perception of success, Janine still sees where she can be better because of her high level of self-awareness and drive. Hailing from Melbourne, she sees herself as someone who’s worked really hard, taken risks and walked through the journey one step at a time to get where she is now. 

Energy is a powerful tool. At certain moments in her life, Janine has felt capable of pushing through anything. Even when things are dark, leaders need to be positive, to say, “We have a solution. We're going this way.” People want to follow a strong leader. People want to be led by positivity, not by indecisiveness or confusion. Businesses fail when their energy and dynamics spiral downwards. A leader needs to believe they’ll get to where they’re going, and often that manifests in success.

Brands exist holistically, and a lot of things come together to make a brand successful. There’s a magic behind Boost Juice, and that is caring. Other competitors haven't been so successful without the caring factor. Every element matters when it comes to branding. Walking into a clean store. How a receptionist greets you. Marketing material that stays on brand. Smoothies that taste the way they should...there must be care for every single element. Boost Juice didn’t invent juice and smoothies, but package them in a way that communicates heart and soul and love. It’s a brand people can believe in. A brand that embraces “loving life”.

A lot of leaders today are talking about getting the culture right to drive performance and results. Care is an essential element of a culture, but care doesn't mean soft. The culture of a business needs to be a high-performance culture. Give support, love and everything the business needs to be successful. But if you don’t have the right people for the business, you're actually doing the wrong thing by the people working the business. It’s rare that someone's falling in a role and they don't know it. Leaders are sometimes at fault of hiring people and unintentionally setting them up to fail. It is a learning journey.

If you lead to be liked or believe that you need to please others, you will be a poor leader because you won't make decisions. It's better to be respected than liked.

Make sure you surround yourself with great people.  Janine had a really supportive husband and mother, which enabled her to travel all over the world. It's easy to say you can do it on your own, but you can't.  If you want to start your own business, if you have children, or other challenging or difficult situations, you need those people around you. Set yourself up to succeed. Get people around you who want to help you, not doom and gloomers. Surround yourself with support.

Communication is key to overcoming resistance and persisting through opposition. You don't actually get resistance if people have faith in you. If people look at you and think you have the answers - even though deep down, you might not have the answers - if you're positive, and focus on working things out, there's less resistance. 

Don’t run a dictatorship. A great leader is a listener. A great leader gathers all the information from the right people and considers all angles, but they make the final call. At the end of the day, the buck stops with you when you're a leader.

This Iclif Leaders Room Interview was conducted by Peter Webb, Director of Research and Curriculum at the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre following the Leadership Summit Asia 2016.

The Leaders Room, an initiative of the Iclif Leadership and Governance Centre, is a place for conversations with people who have either already built or are continuing to build a better future through their work, passion, and purpose in life. 

In this space, we invite leaders from all walks of life, to talk to us about their values, life purpose and the mindset that keeps them moving forward when they confront resistance and challenges.