 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, and this is Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My book Beyond the Lines is about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence, and finding greatness, which is what this show is all about. My special guest today is the general manager of Bloomingdale's Hawaii, and she is a very caring and respected leader. She is Adria Stephens, and today we are going beyond luxury stores. Adria, welcome to the show today. Thank you, Rusty. Thanks for inviting me on the show. It's great to be here. I want to know where you grew up at, if you can tell me about your early years. Sure. I grew up, I was born and raised in Long Island, New York, and I lived there until I was about 12 years old, and then my father's job took us to California, and we lived in the Bay Area, and that's where I learned my love of dance and of acting, and I actually worked on the, or participated in the auxiliary squad with our marching band, which was a lot of fun. That brought me into high school. And then after high school, I went to Cal State Hayward University, and shortly thereafter moved back to Manhattan, where I started a career as a makeup artist. Nice. So, Adria, what was the first job that you ever had in your life? Oh, wow. My first job was working at a carnival selling stuffed animals at the Pleasanton Fairgrounds. That was the first real paycheck I ever received. And what did you learn from that experience? I learned that you need to be very patient and understanding of all different types of personalities, and I learned how to work in a very hectic and busy environment. Yeah. Now, what other jobs have you had leading up to you going into Bloomingdale's? I've actually had quite a few. In high school, I worked as a line cook, which is kind of interesting and completely different. And then I worked in luxury beauty for many years. I started off behind a counter as a makeup artist with a brand called Prescriptives. From there, I grew in the beauty industry working as a freelance makeup artist for numerous brands. After I had my oldest son, I took a more corporate approach, and I started working as a regional trainer with a company called Stila Cosmetics, and that was great because I got to travel nationally for them and do special events, do spots on the Today Show in New York, you know, a lot of really fun fashion week, a lot of really fun opportunities there in fashion. After Stila, I started working as an account executive, and I worked with NARS. I worked with Kiehl's at L'Oreal, which was the final job that I had before I joined Bloomingdale's. That's a lot of stuff that you worked at a lot of places. Yeah. Now, Adria, let's talk about your family. Tell me about your husband, John, and your three kids. So my husband, John, and I have been, this actually will be our 10-year anniversary. Congratulations. This year in September. Thank you. And John is a substitute teacher here on Island, and he actually works at James Campbell High School and some of the elementary schools on the west side. We live in Ewa Beach, so he works over on that side, and very involved. He can teach any subject, whether it's Spanish class, calculus. He's even taught some Japanese classes, although he doesn't speak Japanese. And he coaches baseball. He and I both work on a beach ministry together every weekend with the homeless. And then I have three beautiful, amazing, smart, funny kids. I have Miles, who is 19, and Patrick, who is 8, and Lily, who just turned 7 a few days ago. Wow. So eventful. Now, how did you and John end up meeting? So I was having lunch outside in an outdoor café with one of his co-workers. I didn't know that they worked together, and he was leaving work. We were down the street from their real estate office in New York City, and he happened to walk by and saw her and said, hello. And she introduced us, and I said, hey, who's your friend? And then probably a couple of weeks after that, we ended up hanging out, and from the moment we met each other, and I know that might sound cliche, but we ended up spending every day together, and nine months later, he proposed to me, and we were married. Well, I'm looking forward to meeting him hopefully sometime soon, and I want to ask you now, Adri, about how you ended up getting to Hawaii and becoming Bloomingdale's general manager here in Hawaii. So I've worked with Bloomingdale's for 10 years this April, and I actually started in Bloomingdale's as a selling manager on the floor, managing the men's department, which was a really big change from luxury beauty. I knew nothing about men's wear. I didn't know how to tie a tie. I didn't know anything about suiting, and I took a big leap of faith and started working there. That was actually, we had moved to California, so I started at our south coast plaza location. And then throughout my journey within Bloomingdale's, I worked as a group manager in our Roosevelt Field Store and just kept taking on different roles and experiencing and learning about different departments. While I was at Roosevelt Field in New York, I found out that we were going to be opening the store in Hawaii about two years before we broke ground. And I literally, first thing I did was call my husband to tell him. And then I ran down to the general manager's office and asked if I could send an email to the CEO to put my name in the hat for the store. And he laughed and said, we haven't even put a brick up to build the store. But if you want to, yes, you can. And I sent this long five paragraph email to our CEO telling him how much my husband and I always had a passion and a love for Hawaii and really wanted this opportunity. And that's how it came about. Wow, I love hearing that. And tell me about the culture of Bloomingdale's, Andrea. The culture of Bloomingdale's, we're a store that I would say innovative risk takers, very people-centric. So we talk about being fun, fashionable and personal. And the personal piece, really important. We really try to create an experience in our stores for our customers. Yeah, I love hearing that. And I know you personally have such a really high culture of excellence for yourself and for your team. What do you do to keep improving on that culture for your team? Well, I think it starts with foundational excellence. So making sure that the basics are well recognized and observed, things like be on time. That's important. And sometimes people forget that. Setting high standards to push yourself further than you think you can go, which helps inspire teams beyond what they think they could do. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with my team where I've said, this is great, but what if we did this? And their response will be, oh my gosh, that's impossible. There's no way I don't have enough team. I can't do it. And we'll sit together and say, no, I think we can. What's the plan look like? How can we get there? What's that first step? So really encouraging them to think beyond and keep driving themselves is incredibly important for us to be able to continue building on a culture of excellence. Yeah. And let's talk more about your Bloomingdale's team of employees. You have such a great team that you put together. And everyone seems to work well with each other. And I want to know what do you do to keep enhancing the trust and respect among your team members? I think the key factor in enhancing or really creating trust and respect is for everyone to understand just how important every single individual's job is. There's no job too big. There's no job too small. We're like a machine, and everyone is a part in that machine. And if one part isn't working, the machine doesn't work. So we all play an incredibly crucial role. In addition to that, communication is key. So I have touch bases with my team twice a day. We meet in the morning first thing to talk about the day, talk about our game plan. And then we meet in the middle of the day around four o'clock where we sort of break down where are we at, and we get the closing team prepared for where they need to go. We have regular monthly touch bases. We have regular weekly touch bases. I think not overdoing the meetings, but making sure that we're meeting consistently and talking about where we're at and what our opportunities are is incredibly important too. Yeah, talking about meaningful, impactful things rather than just having a meeting just to do a meeting. Yes, correct. No meetings about meetings. Yeah. Now, Adria, I love shopping at Bloomingdale's. And how important to you is your frontline employees? I think the frontline is, you know, they're the most important part of the store because they're the heart and soul of the store. They're the customer's first interaction in many cases with Bloomingdale's as a brand. So it's incredibly important for them to be warm and genuine, greeting the customer, listening to the customer, and really displaying, you know, what we represent in Bloomingdale's, making it fun, making it fashionable, making it personal for the customer. Because that becomes the customer's idea of who Bloomingdale's is. Yeah, and they are a reflection of you and you are a reflection of them. And I just find that, you know, they're so, they're all experts in their field. I mean, they're so professional. And for me, when I come in, I'm always asking, you know, the person helping me is like, you know, what do you think about this? What's the style? I think that's really important. I agree. I mean, I think, you know, we have so many different customers. There are customers who come in knowing exactly what they want. So we need to make sure that we've got a team that is fast, you know, that they can make it easy and get them in and out. And then we have customers who need a little bit more guidance. And, you know, that's where, you know, we empower the team to be what we call mixed masters, which are basically associated to understand up-and-coming trends and understand how to put together a full wardrobe and be, you know, a style master for that customer who might need a little bit more direction or even for the customer who knows what they want but might just want something new or want something different, different perspective. And then what do you guys do online, you know, in terms of online selling and versus, you know, in-store selling? So we do have Bloomingdales.com. You know, obviously online is a, you know, a thriving business in most companies. And what we've noticed, you know, a lot of times, the stigma is that if your customer's shopping online, they're not going to come into the store, but it's quite the opposite. So for our Omni customer who shops multiple channels, we find that they end up spending more with us. And, you know, a great example of that is we might have a limited assortment in our Hawaii store but we haven't expanded assortment online. So even if they can't find something in our store, they can also shop online to get different brands or, you know, a different colorway, a different product. So it gives them the opportunity to tap in with the team and have the personal connection, but then also do independent shopping to fill other needs, which keeps them wholly in the Bloomingdales family. Now, Adria, what are some of the challenges you face in this business? I think the retail market's ever changing. So remaining relevant is incredibly important. You know, it's a very competitive landscape. As we do see more and more customers yielding towards online purchasing, you know, you see things like Stitch Fix where they can have a box sent to them with a whole entire outfit picked out for them that they get to experience and bring back. For us, you know, we need to maintain animation and experience and a reason for the customer to want to come. We need to be a destination. And, you know, when you're competing against many different retailers, you have to continue reinventing yourself to make that exciting and make that compelling, different events, localized events, events that speak to the customer in your neighborhood that are meaningful to them. No, I totally get that. Adria, we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna continue going beyond luxury stores, okay? Great. You're watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest, Adria Stephens. We will be back in a quick minute. I'm Lillian Cumick, host of Lillian's Vegan World, the show where we talk about veganism and the plant-based diet located in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am a vegan chef and cooking instructor and I have lots of information to share with you about how awesome this plant-based diet is. So do tune in every second Thursday from 1 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back to Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My special guest today is the general manager of Bloomingdale's Hawaii. She is Adria Stephens and today we are going beyond luxury stores. Adria, you have an amazing executive team and I was a guest speaker for your executive team last year. What kind of impact did we make with them? Well, first and foremost, thank you for joining us and being a guest speaker. The team thoroughly enjoyed their time that they spent with you. I speak in lots of sports analogies often when I'm quoting different things and I think your relevancy with a sports background to business, it resonated with them and when I go into their office area, I often see little quotes or excerpts from the book that they have taped up there to remind themselves. They keep you as their own personal coach within the store, which is exciting and we certainly look forward to continuing on all of those things that we learned with you as we head into 2020. Well, it was so much fun for me to be there with them and I could see that everybody was absorbing it and really appreciative that you cared so much about them to bring someone like me in and to really make a positive impact and really kind of inject some insights with them in. I want to ask you about, I saw a segment of you and Nancy look on KHON2 and I know Nancy has been with you for a while and she just recently retired. What was that KHON2 segment like for you? So we do a lot of work with KHON2. The segment that you're speaking about was actually for the kind campaign which was an anti-bullying campaign that we did and it was exciting. It was fast but very exciting to be able to speak about our care and concern for really creating an inclusive environment where everyone can feel loved and respected and appreciated and also with KHON2 we do an annual or twice a year, we do a makeup date event with them where they come and they are live hosts to us. So great, great fun working with that team. Well, you know my super close friend Justin Cruz. I mean, I was hoping that the makeup segment was gonna be there so you could put some makeup on him. I don't know if he'd love that. But we love having Justin as one of our co-hosts. That's wonderful. Yeah, he's super amazing and I saw a picture of you with some flamingos about breast cancer awareness. Can you tell me about what that was about? Yeah, for many years Bloomingdale's has done an event called Give Pink Get More and it's a charity event that raises funds for breast cancer research and provides breast cancer awareness. The Pink Flamingos were a photo op for survivors, families of survivors and just our customers to come and share a story and take a picture, come and meet our team. It's a really terrific event. We have many survivors in our store. It gives them an opportunity to share their journey and share their story with the store family and with our customers. Adria, let's talk about my book Beyond the Lines a little bit more now. What parts of the book stood out to you the most? I would say the first part that stood out to me was really the whole idea of speak last, listen first. That's a big life lesson for me and so relevant. I think that when you're taking the time to pause and listen to what your team has to say instead of in your mind, thinking about what your next response is going to be, you actually learn, it's very humbling. And I think it's incredibly important to understand the temperature of the crowd around you and if you are constantly giving direction and telling them what to do, you're not creating an environment of empowerment, you're not helping them become critical self-thinking, critical thinkers, you're just dictating and that's not an environment for growth. We can learn a lot by listening and we get to really learn what the vibe and pulse is of our team and what they're feeling and thinking as well. Now, you're a great leader obviously and great leaders have to have courage and I talked about that in the book as well and you have to have courage to make some tough, difficult decisions at times. Can you give me an example about you making a tough decision? Sure, when I was working in luxury beauty, I worked for the L'Oreal group and we went under a major restructurization. We basically took three different divisions and combined them into one division and within doing that, there were many layoffs and navigating through that with our vendor partners, with our team, having to decide who stayed and who went was extremely difficult. You have to make great decisions for your business because at the end of the day, it is a business but you can't forget the human element. Every decision that you make is impacting a human being and impacting their life and their family and that was a big learning experience for me. I love your awareness about that and I wanna share a quote with you and I wanna get your thoughts about it. The grass is not always greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it. Well, that couldn't be closer to the truth. I mean, I completely agree. I think that so often people have an idea of what it could be like instead of really looking at what they have and how they can personally add to it or enhance it or speak up to change things that might be a concern to them. A great example of that, we have what we call bloomarangs and these are people who have left us and come back and it's not just in Hawaii really throughout the company but particularly here in Hawaii where we've had people leave and maybe they left for a higher salary, they left for a bigger job and then ended up coming back and every time that happened and someone came back, I asked them the question, what made you decide that you wanted to come back? Why did you wanna come back? And all of them said, it's the culture. This is a culture where you feel like you belong, you don't just feel like a number. It's an ohana, it's definitely a close knit family and it's a lot of fun. So that was really meaningful to me to hear that, that we were able to create that kind of environment that wasn't necessarily about a higher dollar. They love Adria. I hope so. Now, Adria, we've all been on teams in the past whether it be sports or business and we know if the leader was good or bad, what are some of the things that bad leaders do? Yes, I've certainly had experience with some more challenging leaders. I think not listening and just telling, all the time, telling, telling, telling. I think that leaders who aren't connected with their team, so maybe they only operate out of their office or by email, there's no personal connection. Leaders who are consistently concerned with their own empowerment growth or gain as opposed to looking at the bigger picture, whether it be the company, their team, the store that they're in, I think that you've got to really take yourself out of that equation and always have a bigger view of what you're doing and how it's impacting the greater company. Totally agree with you. Now, what do you feel the best leaders do? Well, so the exact opposite. Listening to your team, being connected, for me personally, with everything that I have to do in a day, I always make time, multiple times a day, to walk the floor, to walk the floor with my managers, to walk the floor with my senior executive team, to walk the floor and interact with our customers. I think it's incredibly important for them to see me out there, see me on the floor and also to spend time with the associates. I learned so much about how my managers are doing by asking questions of the associates to determine what knowledge they have, what they may or may not be learning or what's being communicated to them. See, Adria, that's why you're a great leader. Thank you. Now, Adria, I want to ask you, have you experienced a big adversity in your own life and how did you overcome that? Biggest adversity really was being a single mom in New York City, so I didn't meet my husband until my oldest son was eight years old and I had a fairly big career in beauty and by big, I mean a heavy workload. I had 96 stores that I was responsible for and I was traveling quite a bit and having to find that balance between being mom and having my career needing to support my son and provide for him and doing all of that under the lens of Manhattan, which is so fast paced, definitely difficult but taught me so much in my life and I'm very, very grateful for that time. Very admirable, Adria, I have to say, very admirable. Now, I want to ask you, what's the best advice you ever received in your life? Best advice I ever received came from Mike Gould and it was don't try to boil the ocean. And I tell that to my kids when they're freaking out about something that's, or freaking out about many things and that's really what the quote means. You've got to deal with one thing at a time. If you think that you're gonna be able to solve every problem, you're wrong and then you're disappointed and you're fretting and you're worried but if you take everything one chunk at a time and you stay persistent and you keep moving forward, it gives you energy to continue going and to continue striving. You know, for me as a coach, words and actions meant a lot, you know, whether it's for me or for my team, how important is words and actions to you? Words and actions are everything. I mean, your words are extremely powerful. I think people don't realize just how powerful their words are, you know, you can say something in passing and in your mind you're thinking, oh yeah, I was just shouting out a quick, you know, correction or comment to someone but to that person, you know, they perceive it very differently so you have to be very hyper aware of, you know, what you're saying and how you're saying it and who your audience is and then really backing that up with your actions, you know, I would never ask my team to do something that I wouldn't do or haven't already done. You know, I think that you have to be genuine and you have to work with integrity and that's mostly with your words and actions. Yeah, if you say you're gonna do something, do it. I mean, if you tell somebody, hey, I'm gonna call you back later today and you don't call them back, then you start to lose respect and credibility, right? Sure, absolutely. Now, what's a valuable lesson you learned in your life through these years? The most valuable lesson and we touched on it in your book, you know, it was really just be quiet, stop talking, quiet down. You know, I remember being, oh gosh, I was probably six years old and all my friends telling me, wow, you're bossy and you know, clearly it worked because now I get to lead a team but you know, not through constantly trying to direct people and tell them how to do things and you know, I have a real control struggle, personal control struggle where I like to constantly give advice and I think that I know how to do it and you know, you really have to humble yourself to listen and to be quiet and to observe and give other people an opportunity to share. I learn from my team every single day by listening to their contribution. Yeah. I love hearing that and Adria, I wanna ask you one more thing before we wrap. Who is someone that inspires you? Nelson Mandela, very inspiring to me and I think a lot of his life lessons are very applicable not only to personal life but to business. But you know, someone who really just sought after you know, peace and justice and an unjust circumstance. You know, honesty didn't pull any punches, you know, very, very admirable. No, I totally agree with you there. And Adria, I wanna thank you for taking time in your schedule to join me on the show today. Oh, it was my absolute pleasure, Rusty. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for watching Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii and a special thank you to my clothing sponsor, Yolani Incorporated. For more information, please visit RustyKomori.com and my book is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I hope that Adria and I will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs. Aloha.