Join Katie as she talks with Lauri Kien Kotcher, CEO of quip for a conversation on her unique career journey, embracing challenges, her midfielder mindset, navigating career moves, networking, and calm leadership.
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Hi, I’m Katie Kemper and welcome to Perspective, which is a series of inspiring conversations with remarkable working women. And I am thrilled today to be talking with Lori Keene Cotter, the CEO of Quip. Lori, welcome.
Thank you. And I’m so happy to be here, Katie. You have had, we’ll just jump right in and you have had such a fantastic career journey. Could you start by talking up until Quip and then we’ll go into all things Quip?
Sure. And I’m going to start a little bit backward and give you a couple of themes that I’ve realized looking backward, which I didn’t know when I started out and have just sort of developed over time. And I think there are a couple of themes that are helpful, you know, as we then quickly go through my career journey. I’ve had a really unique career in the sense of finding success in really unlikely places. And I’ve been able to jump into very challenging situations. I find myself drawn to challenges and figure out a way to make it work. So just consistently defying the odds. And I’ll explain a little bit more about that, you know, in a few places.
The other thing is that, you know, I am really focused on winning. I just have this hardwired will to win. So I’m going to find a way through. And that comes from my early time being, you know, a competitive athlete, even, you know, when I was in high school. And it’s all about the external. So it’s bringing a team along and really focusing on how do we win externally.
The approach I take, again, based on my competitive athletic background is I come at it with a midfielder mindset. And I’m always looking at where’s the puck going. I used to play field hockey. So like being, you know, the point guard on a basketball team. But, you know, even a little more so. There’s this bigger field. You know, you’ve got this funny little thing you’re playing with, which is not so easy to handle. This puck, which can go kind of anywhere and small and hard. And I’m looking at who’s on the field. Who can I pass to? Who’s the right person to take the ball down the field? And I’m used to being really the sort of defensive midfielder and walking everything and thinking about how do we move down the field in a way that we can win? And who do I have on the team? What are their skills? And I’m going to figure out making sure everybody shines in their position. And then I’ll pick up what’s left. So I’m versatile and agile. And I’m not the best at really probably anything. I know we’ll talk about that more later. But what I’m good at is figuring out where things are going and who do I need on the team and who can shine in that moment to get us there.
So those are kind of three themes that I’ve sort of discovered. I’ll say about myself as I think about it. And the thing about being the midfielder is all about the team. I can’t do anything without a team. And, you know, they always say there’s no I in team. So it’s really all about distributing opportunities, making sure you have the right people on the team and they’re in the right roles. And you give them, you know, chances to shine and do their best.
I love what you’re saying because a lot of leaders say, oh, I should surround myself with great people. But then a lot of times, especially and, you know, you’re the CEO in this position. So you’re at the top. But especially people that are maybe not quite there, on the one hand, they say they want to and they probably do mean that they want to be around smart people. But a lot of people also feel threatened by smart people. So they don’t want to let other people really shine. What I’ve seen from talking with incredibly smart women like you is that that’s a mistake. Because showing that you can put yourself around really smart people and you have the best people for each job makes the company shine and you shine even more.
Yeah, it’s exactly right. I’ve learned that at the end of the day, I’m accountable and I’m responsible, but I never have to use the word I. And so I’m going to be way moresuccessful and we are going to be way more successful if I figure out how to let everybody do their best thing and do their best work. And I think that’s something that comes with experience and growth over time. And when I was younger, trying to take more on my own shoulders, trying to just sort of figure it out, and then realizing, oh, I’m making a bunch of mistakes, and then realizing I can get help. You know, getting help is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s actually a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.
So quickly then, take us through your career trajectory up until now. Yeah, it’s so varied. I’ve had pretty much every seat at the table in a really wide variety of circumstances, starting with post-college being a banker, investment banker, you know, typical big investment bank, analyst training program, went back and got my JD-MBA, came out and went to McKinsey, stayed at McKinsey for 15 years, which is an awfully long time in McKinsey years because the average is two years. And I was a partner there for roughly half that time.
And then went to a 10-year stint as, I’ll call it a chief marketing officer type. That wasn’t always the title, but that was essentially the role with different flavors, starting first at Pfizer Consumer, where I led all the global brands, $5 billion business. I had never done marketing, but here I am, the lead marketer, I’m the head of marketing for a $5 billion consumer business and leading the global brands, which included Listerine and Nicorette.
And then went on to, after Pfizer went to Lehman, and that was probably the side, the weird sidestep, but I wanted to be back in New York. Pfizer was in New Jersey. And I wanted to expand my set of marketing skills and categories that I could play in. I’d always done consumer at McKinsey and then obviously Pfizer was consumer healthcare. So I went to financial services and then Lehman went under, which was kind of crazy. And Pfizer had gotten bought by J&J. So that’s why I left there. So now I had two situations I never thought would happen. I might’ve stayed at Pfizer forever. And Lehman, I was kind of just getting going and only been there a little bit over a year when Lehman went under. So it kind of makes you realize a lot of things can happen are not about you. There’s all sorts of externalities and you have to be ready and able mentally and just professionally. You have to be ready to take that next leap and be nimble and agile.
And then I went to Godiva, which was amazing as the CMO. And the timing was great because their prior CMO had just departed. And so if Lehman hadn’t went under at that exact moment, I probably never would have been the CMO of Godiva. So that was incredible. Was there for about four years and then took another career shift, went to private equity and was at Alcaterton on the operating partner team. And my goal at that point was to run one of their company. And it’s always just a question of, is there the right seat at the right company at the right moment?
And then I got a call completely separate. I had put my hand up for one or two things, got a call from a recruiter about Hello Products, nothing to do with Alcaterton and got recruited to go lead the company. So went over there. So that started my, what’s been roughly 10 year stint as a CEO. So went over there. It was a crazy situation. It was tiny, two year old, founder, very, very creative founder still there. It was the first time I did not know the people hiring me. Every other role I’d been hired by people who knew me and that’s why they took a chance, even though I wasn’t the exact right background necessarily on paper for the role. So this was the first one, my first CEO time. And here I am doing this with people that I did not know. And it was a really tough situation. The company had just run through a ton of money and we were managing for cash for two years. We were literally not in a great stable situation. And there I am my first time being a CEO, dealing with the investors, very fortunate to have really patient, well-heeled investors, really fortunate to have an incredibly talented founder, super creative, different skills than I had, but whoalso wasn’t so happy to have me there, didn’t think they needed me. So kind of some things to deal with there. And we were able to find our way, and this is the finding success in unlikely places. We worked our way to a great place. We just kept putting out great product.
And when I joined, we didn’t have the right product. We didn’t have the right distribution. We didn’t have the right marketing or the right marketing team. And so when we kept working on all those things, and it was a clear focus on the consumer, learning what the consumer wanted, matching that up with the right white space of new product, and then launching some amazing, amazing product. And we built it from a million to almost 100 million over six years. And turned it into a profitable, great gross margin, great business. And Colgate acquired us in year five for the highest revenue multiple ever in the category. And Hello is still doing really, really well under Colgate’s ownership. So that was exciting.
And so then I had loved that experience, loved doing it, wanted to still do it again. Went to the Shades store as the CEO, kind of not ideal timing from a market standpoint, joined in end of 21. The idea was to potentially take the company public. The markets changed. That clearly wasn’t going to happen. Parted ways. And then was still really excited about doing something new, got recruited by the investors and the board at Quip. And I joined Quip about a year and a half ago.
And similar situation, a lot to unpack, a lot to do, a lot of opportunity, and a lot of exciting things ahead of us. Changed the strategy, changed the positioning, launched our best new product, two of our best new products ever. The same thing, really understanding what the consumer wants, creating a really strong product pipeline, launching it, doing great marketing with this new positioning, great retailer partners, just incredible partnerships with our leading retail partners. And just really building into something that’s really special.
And I tell everybody here, we have such a special opportunity. And we’re just at the beginning. We’re just at the beginning of our journey, about a year in.
So anyway, so I’ve done a lot of different things and along the way have been on boards. I’m on the board of FreshPet, which is a public company. I’ve been on the boards of many, many private companies, not-for-profit. And so I’ve had all these different seats at the table, the CEO, the CMO, the board level, and all these different experiences, I feel like all usually come together to inform my viewpoint and help me think through the right decision at any time.
I mean, that’s amazing. And I have a few questions from there. One thing really is, career moves can be very unsettling, whether you choose to make them, which for many people is a luxury that they may or may not be able to do, or whether they’re forced to make them. So do you have any advice for someone who is either contemplating a career move or in the middle of one, not by their own choice?
Sure. I know it’s a great question. As I was leaving McKinsey, which was really the first place that I was leaving and I’d been there such a long time, it was kind of a daunting prospect to think about what do I do next, right? And you have a lot of different options and you have to define it.
I was very fortunate at that point in time when you’re a partner, they basically paid us for a year of off-ramp. So I was able to spend this time networking and figuring out, nobody tells you, figuring out how to do a job search at a senior level. So I came up with a couple of tips that I often share with people.
I would say the first one is if you’re approaching a job search, whether you have to or you want to, and I’ve been in both. I mean, look what happened at Pfizer, we got sold. And I had to, there wasn’t the right role for me there, so I had to go find something else. AndLehman, we went under. I was one of those people walking out the door with boxes, or if you’re leaving a wonderful, secure place like McKinsey or some other amazing place, it’s to not approach it as a job search with just an end point. I really sort of redefined the process in my mind, and I said, this is, especially at McKinsey, this is the beginning of a wonderful networking and exploration opportunity, and I need to start building an external network that could serve me forever. And so I really approached it much more from a how do I explore and what are some smart ways to explore things.
One of the things that I did to sort of figure out how will I get somebody to talk to me who might not want to talk to me, you do not go and say, do you have a job for me? That is death. Nobody will talk to you. But what you can do is if there’s some other role you’re looking at or considering or even thinking about, you can call somebody who, and maybe even people you don’t even know, and especially now with LinkedIn, say, hey, I’d love to get your advice. I’m thinking about XYZ. I know you know about this, but you give me some advice. And most people love to give advice. So that was one of the things that I figured out, which has also served me really well. And then just help me create a set of people, networks, and they change over time that I often go to to get advice in lots of different times.
So I think it’s to shift it on its head and find the positives, and I’m outgoing and I love talking to people, so as you can probably tell. So I get really energized by a job search. But even if you don’t, I think there’s just so much opportunity to have it feel more comfortable and to find ways to shift what you’re doing.
And then the other thing is to potentially take on consulting assignments or do some work for free for people. A lot of times if I’m in between roles, I’ll just offer to help somebody with something. And that’s another thing is I’m always looking to help people, and I feel like if I’m out there offering to help, eventually something good will come of that. It doesn’t have to even be in that relationship. It’s just good things come, I think, to people who will give. And so I just have always approached things that way. It’s like, how can I help somebody? So it’s not so much how can they help me, how can I help them? So those are kind of two perspectives that I take on the process.
I love that, and it’s very nice to hear someone who has achieved your level of success say that because it’s really giving back. You said something earlier that I want to go back to because I think, and I’m about to forgive me because I’m about to use a gross generalization, but you said that some of the jobs that you got, maybe you didn’t seem like the right person on paper, but you got them anyway. And over the years of talking with my guests, a lot of women will say, women, and I am using the caveat that this is a generalization, but that women are more inclined if they’re looking at a job that they’re not 100% qualified for or they’re in a company and they hope to have a promotion, but they maybe don’t have all the skills, they won’t apply. Where a man, if he has like maybe 65% of the skills, will just go right in. So I wonder if we could talk about that a little bit.
I mean, well, like how did that work? How did you go about it if you thought you weren’t maybe totally qualified, but you wanted to put your hat in the ring? Yeah, and it came back for me to relationship. As I said, I love networking, I love chatting with people. And so up until the time of hello, where I probably actually, aside from not having been a CEO, I, in fact, on paper was very well qualified for that role because I knew the category quite well, the category I’d worked in. I had done several of these marketing stints and it really needed a lot of marketing. That was something that was missing. And innovation, and itneeded the right. So it needed skills I had. So interestingly, I probably was more able to come at it with, you know, I can do this. And I had a point of view, which is something you learn at McKinsey, to have, I had a very strong point of view on what they should do and just shared it. And, you know, so I think I did approach it a little differently and I will say somewhat fearlessly because, you know, if I didn’t get it, I didn’t get it.
Earlier, I think what happened is if I didn’t have the right qualifications or I didn’t think necessarily I did, someone I knew saw that I had the skills and capability to build the experience. And it was, that was, I think the thing is people who had worked with me saw the breadth of my skills and thought I could develop.
So for example, at Pfizer, I got this huge marketing role, never having been a marketer because the head of the division had been my client. So Pfizer had been one of my clients and I knew everybody on the leadership team and he had been looking for so long for a senior marketer and he realized he wasn’t finding what he wanted and he had an aha moment. I contacted, this is actually how this happened. I contacted him. I knew they were just having done this merger with Farmacia and I contacted him and I sent him a resume of somebody else for a sales job. And I said, don’t know if you need anybody, but here I am. I’m helping you. He calls me the next day and said, whoa, what are you doing? And I said, well, I’m looking. He said, well, do you want this role that I have, which was this head of marketing role? And I said, sure. So we like literally within two weeks, but he knew that I had, he said, you know what? I’ve been looking for a marketer, but I realized I need somebody with influence skills and collaboration skills. I have enough marketers on my team and I need somebody who can build things and who can work with a lot of people. It’s one of those roles in the middle. And so he was realizing and rethinking it and realizing I had some skills and that I could build the rest or get the rest from the team around me.
So it did take a few instances. And interestingly, they were all men. And my boss at Godiva, you know, when I showed up out of Lehman and he said, hey, come have lunch and I’ll offer to help you, which was lovely. I knew him from McKinsey and I’d been and stayed in touch with him over the years. And I come have lunch and he said, and by that point, I knew he was looking for a CMO. And so he said, well, what are you doing? I said, I want that CMO job. And he’s like, really? Why do you think you’re qualified for that? And so then I was able to go through everything I’d done at Pfizer and, you know, the collaborative influencing being and I had built a lot of marketing skills. So he just hadn’t thought of me that way. But then, you know, after a lot of interviews, he did literally 14 references himself. I’m not kidding. And, you know, the other people on the team who I got to know, they interviewed with everybody in the team, felt like I would be the, you know, would be the right person. And it was it was one of the most exciting and most, you know, glorious and fun jobs I’ve ever had.
So it sometimes just take somebody sort of looking at things differently or seeing seeing something in you that maybe you didn’t even see.
So to that end, do you think it’s better to be more of a Swiss Army knife type of person who can do a lot of different things and can see a lot of different things or to really specialize in something? I think either can work for me. I’ve I’ve always been the more broad doing a lot of things and not really truly a specialist while I lean into marketing and innovation and anything consumer customer facing, because that’s what I love. And mostly where I’ve spent time, I still wouldn’t even call myself anymore. I’m a specialist really in anything. And as a CEO, you need to be a generalist. You need to and you need to know what you’re stronger at and what you’re not as strong as. So you you know how to deal with deal with each of those pieces differently. But I think for lots of people being a specialist could could work. And I’ve seen lots of CEOs chosen, especially for things in private equity where they’ve literally done one thing and kind of come all the way up the ladder just doing that one thing. And they’re, you know, really specialized could be beauty, for example, like a lot ofpeople in beauty. Beauty CEOs have come up through being marketers in beauty or being in sales in beauty. And they’ve been at lots of those roles and that can work really, really well too. And I’ve seen many of my friends be really successful going that path as well. So I think either can work. It’s really a question of what works well for you and recognizing which career path you might be more suited for. That makes a lot of sense.
So I have one more thing just that I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you this. So these are unsettling times for a lot of people for a number of different reasons, but would be a whole other series of shows. But no matter what is happening, business goes on. And I’m wondering if you can share with us any leadership tips on how you’ve been able to create such a thriving culture in uncertain times where everyone, and I hear a lot about your company and how wonderful it is to be a part of it, you know, how people can understand the vision moving forward and feel as safe as they can in these times.
Such a great question. And I certainly won’t profess to have all the answers, but I’ll just give you a couple of things about the way I approach it:
Be authentic and be true to myself. So I just try to be myself and be consistent.
Be really calm. And I am really calm. And I’ll say when I was at Hello, people were so impressed with how I just stayed always, you know, kind of rock solid calm. Because if you’re not calm, everybody else is really gonna lose it. And so it’s this projecting this sense of calm and can do. And it comes back to that will to win. We will find a way to win. I know we’ll find a way to win because I’m determined and we will be determined together. And so it’s just projecting that sense of calm and confidence. And, you know, we might not have all the answers, but we’re gonna figure it out. I think those are really key.
Lean on my leadership team. Making sure that we all are in the same place on the big decisions, that we are focused on what are the priorities. And, you know, you can imagine we’re having a whole lot of extra meetings that we didn’t, you know, we have a daily meeting now to kind of, are we on the right priorities? What are we doing? How are we moving on our game plan? And so I think it’s just a lot of that.
And even if you don’t feel calm, I usually feel reasonably calm because I’m just sort of wired that way. But even if you don’t feel calm inside as a leader, you have to project calm and you have to have a big smile on your face and you have to project this is all gonna be fine. So I think those are, but, you know, in the way that authentically works for you.
I love that advice. And just to end, you’ve given us so much to think about, but just to end, is there one piece of advice that has really helped you through your life and your career that you could please share with us?
You’re gonna laugh at this: Choose your spouse wisely. That is the single most, you know what, that’s the single most important thing. You know, they’re really your partner, hopefully in all regards. But, you know, and I’ve been so fortunate and have a, you know, multi-decade marriage and, you know, we met, we were very, very young. We met in college and, you know, my partner has really been a partner in all regards. But I think that’s probably the one most important thing.
Amazing. Well, that is terrific advice. It took me two tries, but the second time was the charm and that is working for you. And thank you so much for talking with us. Thanks, Katie. Love being here. And thank you for listening. Thank you.
