101 Years, Zero Layoffs: Inside The Torani Playbook With CEO Melanie Dulbecco

0:00Can a company that sells flavored syrups keep growing even as consumers are increasingly ditching sugar? Our next guest says that this is possible, and in fact, it's possible to do without laying anybody off. Welcome to C-Suite Unscripted. I'm Maggie McGrath, your host, and for today's episode, I sat down with Melanie Dulbecco. She is the CEO of Torani. It is a 101-year-old flavored syrup company that last year surpassed$650 million in revenue. Melanie and I talked about how her team finds and builds new flavors for their products. We also talked about why 20 % growth is good, but north of 20 % or hyper growth is bad over a sustained period of time.

0:43And finally, we talked about how she's managed to have no layoffs in an age when companies are increasingly ditching jobs in favor of AI tools. Let's dive in.

1:00Melanie Dubeco, CEO of Tarani, thank you so much for sitting down with Forbes. So happy to be here with you. You run a company with a 100-plus year history, flavored syrups, and right before we started recording, you said that every day you go to work, you go to a flavor factory. Yes. I'm going to ask you a very different first question before getting into the more standard questions. What does it smell like when you walk into this factory? It smells fantastic. And I have to say, recently we started making sauce, chocolate sauce, and you can smell the cocoa coming through and it's delicious. Now, because we work in a stainless steel environment and enclosed environments, you can't always smell it.

1:41But all the flavors are there in the lobby. We play with it all the time. So you get to have a sensory experience every day. I was going to say, because there's the vanilla simple syrup, but one of your original flavors was anisette and grenadine and lemon. And so does one rise to the top when you're walking through the floor? Oh, they all have different aromas. What I would say, I start every day making a Tarani beverage. I make one for the security person who works out front, who's wonderful, for somebody who works at the front desk. And I make them their drinks. I make my own. And I know what Gerson wants.

2:15I know he wants a caramel latte. Hot. I know Sean might want something different iced. I always do something iced, but we have different flavors every day. Other people might join, and we start the day with the cheers. That's a great way to start the day. It's a great way to start the day. And that leads to the slightly more standard question, which we're talking about a flavor company. We're talking about Tehrani. People listening or watching might think, this sounds familiar, but I can't quite place it. And I think if I say red, yellow, blue bottles, some people will start to put it all together.

2:45But can you give the 60-second overview or maybe history of the company, what you make and who you provide to? A lot of people will recognize us the way you described it, which is the colorful label and the bottles that you see lined up in cafe shelves. We created the flavored latte and popularized the flavored latte. And I joined 35 years ago. It's a really long time ago. And we went into the cafe era of our business. We are at the forefront of beverage culture. That's what we work on. But what a lot of people don't know about us is who we are at the core, which is an opportunity company. So we make flavor.

3:24Of course, that's what we make. But we also talk about it being what we bring. Each person comes from a different walk of life. And it's a reflection of our customers as well. We'll get into some of that opportunity. But just to put a fine point on it, you are mostly a B2B company. It's you are selling to cafes, not necessarily me as an individual consumer. That's how we grew the company starting 35 years ago. But we are now a consumer company. OK. So, yes, we call them drink shops now because they serve various kinds of drinks, more energy drinks with flavor than coffee drinks with flavor in a cafe, which we now call a drink shop.

4:04And then we're in consumer retail. We're online. We're everywhere. We want to be in people's kitchens. No matter how they're using the syrup. So let's talk about the opportunity that you're seeing in 2026. And it kind of goes back to the early days of the company founded in 1925. Yes. You well, Torani. Torani. You were you were not there in 1925. No, you have described it as a liquor and cordial business in the beginning. And then it evolved into more flavored coffee. And now you are. Are you in the beverage era or are you beyond the beverage? Well, when we got started, it was during prohibition.

4:38So alcohol was illegal and we did not bootleg. We've always done the right thing. We started with flavors that were for the growing immigrant community of Italians in San Francisco. And so it was just a few flavors with recipes brought from Italy to get us started. And then when Prohibition was repealed, we got into liqueurs and cordials. So when I talked with the family that was a second generation and third generation, they described Tarani to me as a liquor business because that's what we were making three days out of five. But we were still making flavored syrups. So we shifted the business.

5:12I joined because I cared about where the business was, which was in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood in San Francisco, the most economically disadvantaged. And I was motivated by that. And they liked the idea of building the company and building from the neighborhood. So we moved into the cafe era around the time of the financial crisis. Right after 2009, 10, we began to do a whole learning journey around innovation and what might come next. How would we continue to add more value? Because just like product life cycles, organization life cycles, business models starts to stale. And so we thought, how do we add more value?

5:53How do we innovate? So coming into the consumer era came next. Now we're in a different era. We are. And I was thinking about syrups, sugared syrups. And I know you have sugar-free syrups. We do. But I was pulling some industry reports. One that I pulled said 11 % of U.S. adults are on GLP-1s. And that's, of course, affecting sales of snacks and sugars and desserts, chips, all the things, not just sugar, right? But we've had Walmart. We've had big companies talk about what this has meant for their bottom line on the grocery side. I'm wondering if some of the evolution that you've had to look at in the last few years has come from this consumer pressure.

6:32And I should note that in spite of some of the declining sales of sugar, your business grew last year and you've been growing. We've grown 20 percent a year on average for the past 35 years. $650 million, 2025 revenue, thereabouts? A little bit more than that, yes. This year will be well over$800 million. We're already almost there. and what we see is yes we we have to pay attention to all the different trends things like the glp ones what we look at though in young beverage culture especially is what the trends are and people might not be eating all their meals but they might still want a treat maybe it's a little bit smaller maybe it's portion controlled but they still want something where they have an experience and it's self-expression.

7:20So they customize it. So current and future of beverage is cold, it's customized and it's flavored. And that is strong. So when you look at that growth, is it new flavors that are driving it, new product types, maybe smaller bottles, smaller packaging. So you have the original big bottle, maybe now smaller bottles. Or is it also geography? Are you expanding into new places? Because that is a remarkable amount of growth in an era when sugar is a little less palatable to people. Well, and we have all different kinds. So we use pure cane sugar. We also have, as you mentioned, a sugar-free line. We have stevia and monk fruit.

7:59So we have all different kinds of ingredients so people can make their choices. But people do love flavor with a little sweet and they might want that in their matcha. They might want that in their energy drink. They might want that in their dirty soda. You know, with every trend, there's what's happening on the other side of it, which is people still want their little treat. And it's an affordable little treat. It's interesting because for the 2026 flavor of the year, which we were talking about before we started recording, did you say it's forest pine? Forest pine. And people are enjoying lavender lattes.

8:34I just had the most divine lavender scone, not here in the States, at a farm in Australia. But it was infused with these lavender leaves in a way that it's I want to try to replicate it. And so you're hitting on something with floral, too. Yes, there there's a floral botanical trend right now. So we hit on that with forest pine, along with the movement around foraging, getting back to nature, especially post covid. People are getting more rooted. So we apply that to flavor trends. So we're always looking at what's in right now. Like some years ago, we were the first to do salted caramel. It's on every menu, right?

9:12It's a staple. But what's at the edge? So we see a flavor like forest pine at the edge. What makes you put forest pine in a bottle? Is it you testing it? Or is it a food scientist that you have on staff coming to you and saying, just trust me and just go with it? There's a whole process that's actually really fun to participate in. And it starts with consumer research. So we have a number of people who are watching trends from all around the world. And then they get together with the R &D team. We have a whole staff of food scientists who are so inventive and creative. And you put those folks together with people who are looking at consumer trends and they start to come up with concepts.

9:52And then they look at how could this be realized in a flavor? And then they start trying it. And then I get to come in, hear what the concepts are, and then we start tasting. So this has been going on for our 2027 flavor of the year, starting at the end of 2025. So can you say what the 2027 is? I cannot, but we'll tell you in November. In November. OK. Yes. That'll be after this airs. Yeah. I'll have to email you guys because I'm curious. Has there ever been a flavor that you have thought, no, this isn't going to work? And the team persuades you and it goes on shelves. It goes to your clients and then it sells like gangbusters.

10:30And you have to say, you know what, this was a surprise. I'll tell you one that really surprised me a long time ago. Bacon. Bacon syrup? Yes. Huh. Bacon surprised me. And what we saw is that people who were mixing up beverages wanted, they were fat washing bacon, mostly in alcoholic beverages. And our team said, you know, we could make that for you. And our team did. And we use flavors from all natural sources. That one was derived mostly from a toasted soy. So it was vegan and bacon, which made it kind of fun. And people started flavoring milkshakes and all kinds of things with it. And that surprised me.

11:11And then we did an April Fool's online one year and people wanted chicken and waffles. So we made one batch of chicken and waffles flavor and said, we're selling out this batch and we're not going to continue it. So we have fun with it. Did it sell? We sold it out. Yes. People ask for another batch. We did one more. And then we said, that's it. That's fun. Yeah. You managed to have fun with it while growing the business. And I want to talk about this growth because I think it leads into some leadership philosophies you have in terms of how you manage the company. I've heard you say that the 14 to 20 percent growth is the sweet spot.

11:45And once you go past 21 percent, that's hyper growth and it gets hard for your company, the employees to manage. Can you talk about that philosophy? Because I think that was, it was interesting to hear. We've gone through a lot of periods of hyper growth, and we can sustain that for some time. What I think about is how we create sustained momentum in the company. It's not about managing based on financials. It's about creating momentum with a team of people. And we can look at our past success and people will say, oh, you must manage your financials really well, look at this. We go, yes, that's the trailing indicator of our success.

12:24The leading indicator is the growth development momentum of our team. When you go past hyper growth for a sustained period, you start to break people down. So I've heard you talk about schedules of work, you know, like 996, right? And I think you can do that. You can do that for a while, but how are you going to sustain it past 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? How do you do this, not just as an individual or a few committed people at a beginning stage or early stage, how do you sustain this and keep people in the momentum of growth? Are there key indicators that you hear from your fellow members of the C-suite or just anyone at a company that is a signal to you that people are breaking?

13:11Is it a question that people ask, a statement people say? I'm wondering for executives watching this, are there early warning signs that people are breaking down? People will say it. You can hear people talking about it. And we can talk about it for a certain period of time. But when people are really breaking down and they need more support, they'll ask for more roles. And we have to look at that and whether it's merited or not. But the other thing is, it's pretty obvious to look at turnover rates. And we closely watch that. That's a really key performance indicator for us. We want to keep our annual turnover in the single digits.

13:50And do you? Yes. How? By caring about people first. And this is, again, it's about trust being built over time that a team knows how we're going to lead, how we're going to care with them, and how we're going to share success. I've read that in the 101 now years that Tarani has existed, there have been no layoffs. Is that true? That's true. That's a remarkable fact when you consider in that time period was the Great Depression, financial pressure in the 1980s with inflation soaring, the financial crisis of 2008-2009, COVID, so many businesses shut down, even if temporarily that had a major impact on the food and beverage sector.

14:31Now you have the consumer pressures of lower sugar. How has that been financially feasible? Those are good examples. And I lived through with Tarani, the financial crisis 2008, 2009 and COVID. And just let's just take COVID as an example. When we hit COVID, we didn't know how long it was going to last. Our cafe customers were closing their doors. And we had to do some quick financial scenario planning. Not only did we have to do that to make get through that, but we had just built our new flavor factory. It had been a two and a half year process. We'd taken out a big honking loan from the bank.

15:08The first payment was going to be due in April of 2020. And our move happened to be timed for the middle of March, 2020. Great time. Exactly the same week as a stay at home order. So we got together as our executive team, which we call the strategic leadership team. And we said, all right, we're going to do financial scenario planning. But before we do that, when we get to the other side of this, and we will, what will have made us proud? And the thing that was true for all of us is that there would be no layoffs, no furloughs, none of that, not on our watch. And so when we did our financial scenario planning, we did it with that objective in mind.

15:50So does that come down to keeping more cash on hand than the average company? Because treating employees well is a core tenant of your company, I know, and that can help in a lot of moments of crisis if people feel loyalty to their company. But is there some sort of financial mechanism that you've put in place that gave your executive leadership team the confidence to move forward on that plan? Yes. We always think about how not to overextend ourselves. It is a form of care that we take. We leave a little bit of cushion. We never set our plans to go as high in growth as we might think we might achieve for that year because we want to leave that little bit of cushion so that we can over deliver, overperform, add more later.

16:35We think about how we fund our own growth through our own cash flow and with bank debt rather than taking on outside investment, which leaves us the ability to make choices based on the right things to do. But we also have good financial management. So we knew, ah, we're going to cut this, this, and this, and we'll make it through. But then I look at what happened afterwards. We could turn to our team and say, the only way we'll make it is together, and we need your help. We can't afford two leases. We need to get out of this one building and into the new place. And they were incredible. It took us six months instead of six weeks to move, but we made it.

17:14Everyone's safe. We couldn't have done that if we'd done layoffs or furloughs. And then following that, as we all know, came the great resignation. People were leaving their businesses. We had single-digit turnover in that time frame. And with all the supply chain craziness that happened then, we needed people who knew how to operate together so we could take advantage of a situation to grow and provide products for our customers where other people were struggling. It's easy for me as a Forbes reporter to push you on the how much free cash flow do you have? What are the financial mechanisms you have in place to maintain the ability to not lay people off even at the height of a global pandemic that is shutting down cafes, severely affecting the people who use Tarani's products.

17:57But I believe you have a belief that some of what's taught in business schools about financial management, maybe some of the way I think about financial management is not complete, not the whole picture? I would say it's incomplete. What would you say? Yes. I think it's a discipline that's really important for us to learn and to use. But what I see happening is that most people use financial management in the foreground of what they run and people become the tools. And if we just switch it the other way around so that we think about how we grow, develop people, the team, and the momentum of the value that we're creating.

18:35We lose our eye on the value we're creating together when we focus only on the financials. So by using the financials to support those things, we have better financial success. But it is a distinctly different way of operating. And I think that probably for my first 10 years at Tehrani, even though we were really successful and growing, I think people didn't take that as much seriously as they do now after 35 years, because I think there was a question about, is this just a fad? Can you talk about care for people in the workplace and be a real business leader? Is this because it's a woman saying this?

19:16But I think what we're finding is it's if we think fiercely about people in business, we can really operate in a different way. Sounds like you value institutional knowledge. You appreciate that you have people working for you that have perhaps, I heard you tell one story of someone who had been there for 20, 25 years. And that is someone who has built up so much institutional knowledge. And to lose that one person could potentially damage the business. And that's not always a perspective that I hear executives say publicly. It's the people. It's each individual person, but it's also how the team works together.

19:50And we have to be really thoughtful about how we inculcate our core values around how we learn together, how we grow together. One of our core values is grow, baby, grow. So we think of that not only is the growth of our company, which means growing our customers and how we're going to help them do that, but how each of us grows individually, how I grow. I'm always thinking about what kind of leader do I want to be? Do I need to be when we're twice the size and hopefully more than twice the impact? So I'm always learning. Our team is always learning. Our folks, everyone in the company is always learning into the next era.

20:26Grow, baby, grow is one of your mottos. And we're also in an era, in addition to the slightly decreased sugar consumption of increased AI consumption by America's corporations and I think a lot of employees. Part of why some executives are implementing AI tools is because they know their employees are using ChatGPT on the side. So it can be easier to offer a bespoke tool that they can control rather than some wild searches on ChatGPT. So there are business cases for AI. I don't want to vilify one side or the other. That being said, there's a lot of concern among regular Americans about what does this mean for our jobs?

21:00And I have noticed a real cognitive dissonance or dichotomy between the conversations I have with friends at dinner versus the conversations I have in this room. Executives are bullish. People are scared. Right. What's your response to that, knowing that you run a company that even through the Great Depression didn't have layoffs? Yeah, I think it comes down to intentional leadership. There's AI, but it's leadership choices that we make about not only whether or not we're going to deploy it, and we should deploy it, but how will we do it? There are intentional choices to be made. And we have a lot of learning from what happened in American manufacturing, right?

21:39Automation has been happening in manufacturing for many, many decades. And we can see the devastation that wrought, where efficiency was pursued for financial benefit, but not benefit of all the people who were involved. And we don't want that to happen. So as an opportunity company, we think about how will we use AI thoughtfully to automate and elevate work. There was no way that we would ever implement something to drive efficiency and eliminate jobs. We think, how do we innovate more? And how do we engage everybody who's involved in whatever processes in which we use AI? How do we get them all involved so they can all elevate and we can create more value for customers and in the market and hopefully elevate people's skills so they can earn more?

22:29It's interesting hearing you talk about your leadership philosophy, because on one hand, grow, baby, grow, I think is a motto that many CEOs share with you. They may not say it as much as you do, but I think they might believe in it. But you've also said, I heard a 2024 interview, I'm not motivated by money, I'm motivated by making a difference. And you also have said that you disagree with the hire and fire fast, hire fast, fire fast. And in Silicon Valley, where you are based, that is kind of the MO. So do you feel like a contrarian CEO right now in 2026? I go to participate in a class at Stanford on managing growing enterprises.

23:08And I am mobbed by the students at the end of the class because they are so hungry to hear a different voice than they normally hear, which is much more people-centric, human-centric. There are natural ways we can work and be productive. And when we have a track record like we have, of 35 years of successive growth and financial success, we have the proof points that this approach works. You mentioned that economic opportunity is ultimately one of your motivations in your career. And I think that's a good transition point into the steps you have taken. You mentioned Stanford, you are an alum of the university.

23:46And I was saying that normally, when I research a CEO, I look at their LinkedIn, and that shows all the jobs they've had. Your LinkedIn doesn't have everything, but I'd love to start with you go to undergrad. What do you want to be when you grow up when you're 18 years old? I had no idea what I wanted to be when I was 18 years old, but I knew I wanted to make a difference. I'd seen my mom struggle mightily. I'd seen a lot of inequity as I was growing up and it made me a little angry. I wanted to do something about it. And initially I thought maybe that could be done through politics. So while I was in college, I went to undergrad at Cal.

24:22I got involved in a political campaign. Somebody was running for Congress, was involved as a scheduler. I ended up going to D.C. and working in D.C. and I loved it. I had so much fun. Worked there for a year and realized this isn't for me. And went back, finished up school, and then thought non-profit is where I want to be because my motivation is around economic development and creating opportunities for people, especially those who haven't had the same opportunities as the rest of us. There are fantastically talented people everywhere, but they just don't always have the on-ramps. So I've always wanted to figure out how do we create on-ramps.

25:03So I worked in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit went bankrupt. Thought, wow, this is hard. When I was in business school, I worked in an economic development startup along the Mississippi Delta. It was a fantastic experience. I ended up meeting people across the U.S. who worked in coal mining regions in North Carolina, New Mexico reservations, south side of Chicago, people from all over. And they said, go to the other side. You're getting a business degree. There are a lot of like minded people on the nonprofit side. Go to the other side. Build a bridge. We'll meet you somewhere in the middle. And that's what I've been working on ever since.

25:43I love the discipline of business and it can create sustainable success for many. So I think about instead of the shareholder model, we use the stakeholder model and we focus on our team members and our customers first. And that creates financial success. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed Sponsored Jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Get a$75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com slash podcast.

26:25Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. I normally ask when going through someone's resume, what's one hard skill and soft skill you learned at XYZ Job? I'll instead reframe the question for general nonprofit policy work between your time in D.C. and your time at the nonprofit working in the Mississippi Delta. Is there a hard skill you learned that you use to this day? And is there a soft skill you learned to this day? It's an interesting way to look at it. You know, I think it's about how we turn soft skills into repeatable hard skills. And anybody can learn the hard skills, but it's how we communicate, how we motivate, how we engage.

27:11And I think what I learned across politics and political organizing to motivating people along the Mississippi Delta to a team that's grown from eight people to over 500 people, it's how we engage. So I would say a soft skill is curiosity, inquiry, and how to make it into a hard skill is to figure out how to do group process so people can get their fingerprints all over the ideas and go fast together. Or how to turn curiosity and learning into figuring out what the next stage of growth will be. Because Grow Baby Grow isn't just about growing the business. At the root, it's about growing ourselves.

27:54So what do we need to learn? We don't know everything when we've graduated from business school or even run a business for 35 years. There's a lot to learn into the next space. Let's talk about your growth within Turani. When you joined, you were employee number nine. Revenue was$700 ,000, less than a million dollars. Yes. At that time. Today, you're north of$650 million. That is north of$800. I guess we're deeper in 2026 than I realized. That was a 2025 number. I apologize. That is tremendous growth. Did you start as CEO? Were you recruited to be the CEO? Or were you appointed later on after?

28:34It felt really weird to think about a CEO title when there are eight or nine people. And you're doing everything from setting up the first ERP system to figuring out how you're going to plan production to taking out the garbage, Right. So I was a general manager. I didn't care about the title. Very quickly, I became COO. And then I've been the CEO for over 30 years. I ask folks for this series. Did you ever aspire to the C-suite in general or to be a CEO? It sounds like that hadn't been on your radar. You joined this company ready to get dirty. I think I've read somewhere that you were doing deliveries at one point in your early days or dealing with a truck.

29:15I mean, if you're taking out the garbage, It sounds like everyone had every job. Yeah. And you get to wear every hat. Yes, our delivery driver was sick one day. We had customer deliveries to do. It gave me a great appreciation for that role and a strong realization that we were not going to be able to grow unless we changed the way we got product to market. So I got huge learning out of that and figured out a whole distribution model. We went to market with coffee roasters as distributors. So we always think of business as a circle of success. Who are we going to market with? Who are we supporting and helping?

29:53It takes a community to go to business successfully together. I find it interesting when someone has such on the ground experience because eventually you have to transition out of that mindset. And that can be hard for people because sometimes it's fun to be the jack of all trades. I say this as someone who I think I've grown my career by being a jack of all trades. But eventually you have to specialize. eventually you have to hire people under you. Some startup CEOs say that the culture changes every time revenue doubles or employee count doubles. I think it depends who you talk to. But what's been the biggest stretch moment for you?

30:24I've noticed that there are strategic inflection points at very distinct phases that I've checked out with some other CEOs and business leaders and it's true for them too. A huge one is around$50 million in revenue and around a hundred people. It changes really dramatically and that was the biggest stretch for me. There was another one at 100 million. There's one around 250, but 500 is a big one. And now we're gearing up for the 1 billion because it's fast approaching. And what we do is learn our way into it. So at 50 million, that's where I was working so hard. I had a young daughter at home.

31:03I wasn't showing up for my family and friends the way I wanted to, and I was stretched so thin, but I knew that I was the glue holding a lot of things together. And what I had to do was figure out a whole different way of operating. So we did a visioning session off site where we looked at what we were going to be when we were$100 million in revenue, what strategies would get us there. But then we had another session where we talked about what kind of leadership is it going to take. And I thought, I'm going to make it because I'm going to really take a hard look at how I need to change the way I operate.

31:35And I looked around at my team as well and thought, are they going to make it? Are we all going to make it? There was one person I was sure who would make it. She was the first one to come to me and say, I'm not going to make it. I can't make that kind of commitment. And I'm going to be a mom and I'm going to look for part-time work. So, well, I hope you're going to look for the part-time work here. And she did. She just retired after 29 years with Tarani. She did a rotation among different scoped roles and then ended up being our incredibly strategic, amazing head of R &D. She did stretch herself and she scoped down to work just a few hours for a number of years.

32:17And what a value she was to have. So for me, I had to change the way I did work. I had to figure out how to work effectively as a leader of others and what role I would play in making sure that we retained our culture. So I would say hiring based on core values, not just skill, is really key so that we get people who are voracious learners, who are interested in the growth of others, who care about people. Often they'll have experiences in their lives where they've been affected by a lack of that and they're looking for that in a work environment. So we interview for core values as well as technical skills in a role.

33:00So then it's how we grow together. So right now, knocking on the door of$1 billion in revenue. I was going to ask, how are you gearing up to change your leadership for that eventual, I imagine, eventual revenue figure? We do learning journeys. So they are a structured approach to learning our way into something new. So last year, our executive team took seven months working on the side, learning as much as we could about what choices there are to make and how to operate as a$1 billion to$2 billion company. And we read books together. We read articles. We talk to people who've been there, done that.

33:38We learn from people who say, don't do it this way, or people who say, this made a huge difference. And then, like we heard from Jim Weber, who's the former CEO of Brooks Running. Jim said, oh, it's all about scaling culture and how you do that. And then there was somebody else who said, it's going to be a lot about innovation because if you don't innovate, you could end up needing to sell out at that stage. And then other people said it's about how much you inculcate your leadership across the team. We ended up downloading our learnings, picking a few paths together, presenting it to the board of directors.

34:19And now we're in the phase of implementing. So we just expanded our executive team to 10 people. And it includes people who bring in different perspectives from the business, but also people who are operating cross-functionally with a whole perspective of the company. And it's how we bring that and continue to bring that to build cross-functional perspective among the whole team. Same thing in strategic planning. Last week, a week before last, we had a strategic planning meeting with 50 people. And I remember thinking, how can you get 50 people in the room and have a good strategy meeting? It doesn't sound possible, does it?

34:57I agree with that. Yeah, it was maybe the best one we've ever had because it doesn't all happen in the room. There's a pre, during and post. And what we figured out how to do was break people into teams to explore in different ways. So I would say our strategic planning is like a cross between a concert and a business meeting. It's really fun. It's really engaged. And it's important for people to understand the direction and be able to have smaller conversations. about where we're headed. So we're always looking at a vision of the future that's three to eight years out. We are always looking at a three-year plan that we revise every year.

35:38And then in our annual plan, it's how we get everybody engaged so they can put their fingerprints all over it and then build the plans coming out of that. So it's about getting synced up in strategy before we do functional planning. You are very future-oriented, and I always love to close with a forward-looking question, if you will, to borrow a phrase from Wall Street. I normally ask one year in the future, but since you just mentioned three years, if we were to speak three years from now, what would you hope to report to Forbes that you and Tarani have accomplished in the ensuing three years?

36:09I love that. And I love looking at it in three years instead of one year, because it takes about three years to bring about change. There are two big things. One is we are now in the experience era. We have digital natives all around us, and they live a life in real life and in their virtual life. And as a sensory product, we want to figure out how we can make a difference for them in that life. We will have cracked the code on the experience era. Right now, we're testing online and in pop-up experiences and in other ways to make that happen. So that's one area. The other is we will have further cracked the code on not only how to be an opportunity company, but what the practices are that can make a difference for others.

36:49Melanie, thank you so much for sitting down with Forbes. This has been such a delightful conversation and I appreciate all of your insight. Thank you, Maggie. It's really fun to talk with you.