The Daring Creator

Helena: [00:00:00] And during the pandemic, it was a big question mark. I know many manufacturing companies simply shut down. And what Só Dança decided to do, even though there were zero orders coming in, and many orders canceled, we continued to produce. It was the opposite of everyone else.

Kristen: [00:00:25] Welcome to Archetypes, a podcast by Future Commerce. I'm Kristen Vencel. Even with just a glance over the course of history, it's easy to see how important and powerful story has been throughout time. We humans thrive on story, whether we are the storytellers or the listeners. We feel connected to others through story. Archetypes is an exploration of the roles that we play in the story of a brand and features interviews with people who create the brands and experiences that are changing our world. It's an investigation into how we as people take part in these stories, ultimately making them our own. No matter who you are in this world, you engage in commerce. Commerce touches every living soul. We all have a role to play. We all have a story to tell. Archetypes is the story of commerce. The Creator: the parent of new ideas, visions, and realities. The Creator naturally tears down and rebuilds, moving toward positive change. A tenacious visionary and a dreamer who pursues their goals with unwavering dedication, confident, and very willing to take risks. The Creator has a strong sense of vision, sometimes restructuring traditional forms. When it comes to brands who exhibit this archetype, Só Dança is an easy choice. Helena Hines, Chief Operating Officer at Só Dança, shares what it's like to be a Creator in a space that's needed some restructuring for a very long time. Welcome to this episode of Archetypes. When you took the Archetypes quiz and you saw that your result was Creator, what was your initial reaction?

Helena: [00:02:24] I was very surprised when I received the results because I have a whole creative team. I really enjoy working with the team and for the position that I'm in currently, I have a lot of creative people that work with me. So really right away I was thinking, "Should I retake this? Did I do something wrong?" {laughter} But once I read the definition and even reading the definition, I was really interested in the other ones as well, of course. I'm sure everybody was. But when I read the definition, there were a couple of things that I thought, "No, this is me. This is very me." Yeah. So I never thought of myself that way. But I've always thought of myself as a person who likes to be around creative people. And I know how to bring out the creativity of others, but I am very much a behind the scenes person as well. So if you can be a Creator and be a behind the scenes and that's what I had to understand, you can have your fingerprints in a lot of places. You don't have to be in the spotlight, but you still can be considered a Creator. And I said, "Oh, that's me."

Kristen: [00:03:40] That is so cool. I love that point of there are different ways to be a Creator, and it's not always the person out in front. In fact, maybe most often it's not the person out in front who's actually the Creator. Right? That's a really good point.

Helena: [00:03:55] I thought right away when I read it, I was thinking, "What? Yeah, I'm not this." I am very much... People are introverts and extroverts and I think I'm both so.

Kristen: [00:04:08] Yeah, me too.

Helena: [00:04:10] Yes, I think I'm both. And so it's one of those things that I was thinking I can be, doing this with you and talking with you and still being an introvert. You know, I'd rather someone else, I'd rather inspire somebody, give them the tools to let them go get the job done. That's more of my personality. But [00:04:32] there was one sentence here in the definition that I kind of want to bring back. That is "a strong sense of vision and an ability to take ideas from nothing into reality." And I love that sentence because that is very... I love to do that. Whenever an idea is dead, whenever a concept is dead or people consider it gone, I like to bring it back and say, "But is it? Can we challenge that? How can we bring it back?" [00:05:04] So also being a risk taker was part of it. Let me see if I can find that. Yes. "Overly willing to take risks. This can lead them towards success and disaster alike." Isn't that the truth? So that's been really very true in my career.

Kristen: [00:05:26] That is so cool. And I have seen that in you myself and seen that in your career in the time that I've gotten to know you. And I think that goes with further in the definition "restructuring of traditional forms." Because you have to take risks to challenge that, to even bring something back or change something in the way that it needs to be changed.

Helena: [00:05:47] Good point. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Kristen: [00:05:50] That's so cool. So it seems like you've continued to think about this definition since then, and it seems like your insights have continued to go deeper on what it is to be a creator as well in your personal life and your professional life.

Helena: [00:06:06] Absolutely. It's been an interesting journey with developing a team, you know, helping this brand to grow, but also understanding myself, my limitations, my goals, my strengths. And so I really don't know if you guys are also into the Enneagram. I love it.

Kristen: [00:06:33] Yes. I am.

Helena: [00:06:34] I love it. So this kind of played into that a little bit for me, understanding myself, understanding my strengths, also things to watch out for and people that I bring on the team, people that I have as my left and right hand sometimes, and what I look for in them. So understanding myself is really important.

Kristen: [00:06:55] So that is a really interesting look at The Creator [00:06:58]. Really understanding the tools you have to work with and who's in the room, I think, is something that maybe comes naturally to a Creator, to see what do I have to work with here to make something. [00:07:11] And even that collaborative element I think shows a really healthy Creator as well, because there's humility there and you recognize the strengths of others around you and how you can work together to bring about something good.

Helena: [00:07:24] Oh, yeah. You understand how important the team is, the group is, the whole company. I might be a part of it, but it's so much more than me, so it's understanding the vision, understanding the collaboration that goes into creating something wonderful.

Kristen: [00:07:45] In what ways do you see Só Dança fulfilling The Creator role in the story of commerce, and specifically even within the dance world?

Helena: [00:07:54] Só Dança, for those of you who don't know, it literally means "just dance" in Portuguese. We started as a Brazilian-originated company for dance wear. So we are the manufacturing company for dance shoes. So that means ballet shoes, jazz shoes, tap shoes, dance tights, dance wear, leotards, dance warmups, and anything dance-related. So really it's just dance. And there are other dance manufacturing companies out there. We have been from the beginning, innovators, risk takers. I know you'll appreciate this coming from having a dance background yourself. We at Só Dança, from the beginning, have had, for example, different colors, skin tones, shades of shoes, and of tights before it was something that was a trend or a need. It was always a need for us. So we were always at the forefront of that. And now everybody does. It's like, if you don't do it, what's wrong with you? But [00:09:15] from the beginning, we were innovators like that and we were creating things that made sense for the brand and made sense for the dance world, even if the dance world didn't even know it yet. [00:09:28] For us, it made sense. So really pushing that, adding innovation to dance, which was always a very difficult thing to do. Dance is a beautiful tradition. So it was keeping the tradition and also adding technology, adding innovation in a really beautiful way, in a strategic way, not to change the tradition. We've seen pushback always. But then there's in the end, acceptance, when everybody fully understands. And if that's with a shoe... In the past, everybody had drawstrings in their shoes. It was just a thing. But when we came up with a shoe without drawstrings, it sounds silly, but the pushback received, it took us years for people to accept it.

Kristen: [00:10:19] Wow.

Helena: [00:10:20] And now you don't have drawstrings in your shoes.

Kristen: [00:10:25] No. And I have Só Dança shoes and that's the only thing I wear now because I absolutely love them.

Helena: [00:10:30] So things like that that were just common sense or things that were risks, I should say, that we didn't know if they were going to be accepted because of the deep tradition. This is just the way things have been done for 300 years. So changing that alone and not knowing how this is going to succeed. So those are very small examples of how the brand and the leadership are not afraid to take risks. I do have to share a story that it was during the pandemic, and we have our own factories. We have many employees at the factories, wonderful people. Also outside, we have a distribution center. That's where I'm at right now. And many employees here: shipping, warehousing, marketing, sales. And so we have a wonderful team. And during the pandemic, it was a big question mark. I know many manufacturing companies simply shut down. And what Só Dança decided to do, even though there were zero orders coming in, and many orders canceled, we continued to produce. It was the opposite of everyone else. And to tell you the truth, when I sat down in that meeting, [00:12:10] I had questions and I thought, "Is this the right move for us to continue to bet on ourselves?" because we don't know how long this will take. We don't know how long this will be. The whole time everybody in leadership said, "We move forward. We don't stop. We don't halt because we believe in our people and we believe in this company. And we know we need to be reliable. We need to invest in ourselves because when the consumer needs it, we need to be able to deliver."  [00:12:41]So that was, I mean, talk about risk.

Kristen: [00:12:45] Yeah.

Helena: [00:12:45] Talk about just not knowing at all what the future would hold. I mean, today we do, as every brand does a forecast and bet and you're kind of off. But in that case, it was flying blind. So as a brand, I'm very proud to be part of that group that's not afraid. Part of a group that looks at the dance community, looks at the customers, looks at the dancers, and thinks, "How can we be better for them?" And that's unique. And some people, I think a lot of companies would say, "You guys are crazy." But that's part of the dedication of the brand. That's part of outside, of course, of the quality, outside of the service part of it, is reliability, is delivery and making sure that we are able to supply our customers and support our people. So it's a beautiful brand and it fits so perfectly with the definition of Creator.

Kristen: [00:13:55] That is a really beautiful example of having a philosophy as a foundation and staying with that and looking at the bigger picture. And a Creator has to have that long-term view, right? Because in the process of creation it can be such drudgery and such tedious work until the product starts to show itself. And then the beauty that you are creating for is there. And it is really a long game in that way. So I think that's such a cool example of just having that philosophy that really steers the ship in the storm, which we were definitely in a storm in that time. And that strong conviction is what you guys could rely on to steer that ship.

Helena: [00:14:44] Absolutely. Thank you for saying that. [00:14:46] It's about following through with who you say you are. Staying true to the message that you're sending out there for your internal team and external as well. Are you going to deliver what you said you're going to deliver through the good times, but most importantly through the hard times? And that takes vision. [00:15:06]

Kristen: [00:15:06] Are there other companies not necessarily in the dance space? It could be in commerce in general that you see also as having that Creator role in the larger story.

Helena: [00:15:16] I'm always looking at different companies and what are they doing. What are they working on? There are the big tech companies that are always surprising us with new changes. There's Tesla and Apple, of course, that are always blowing us away with innovation. And I really like watching them run. One company that I really enjoy following is Nike. They're always evolving, always changing. There's that new movie, Air, that I watched. I don't know if you've seen it about Michael Jordan.

Kristen: [00:15:53] Not yet.

Helena: [00:15:53] Oh, my goodness. Just how they were smaller back then. But how that vision changed everything when they saw what they could be. So they were looking at big picture and they brought Michael Jordan in. And it was tough. Just internal turmoil of how can we change who we are. So I really enjoyed that. Just recently, this just came to me. Are you familiar with the brand Liquid Death?

Kristen: [00:16:29] Yes. Yes.

Helena: [00:16:32] That one always catches me by surprise and makes me laugh because it's water and sparkling water and seems simple-ish to make. Being in a company that has over 100,000 SKUs, I mean, they don't have many SKUs, but their vision for the brand and the risk that they took with their marketing, I believe they're doing extremely well and getting people's attention. And it's been really fun to follow that brand, even though I'm not a crazy hard rock person, skull driving a motorcycle, I can appreciate their vision.

Kristen: [00:17:15] As a professional dancer. I really appreciate Só Dança. And I think it's so clearly evident, that underlying foundation you have, a philosophy of making things better for everybody, of accessibility of the product, more people being able to participate in dance, which is something that I'm very passionate about, and I see that philosophy really guiding the decisions you make as a company that we see as customers. And then just also in hearing the stories you've shared, how behind the scenes that is congruent. There's authenticity there. And so I appreciate you and I appreciate Só Dança in my personal and professional life as well. And thank you so much for taking time with us today and sharing these insights into what it looks like to be The Creator. And we just really appreciate what you bring to the table here.

Helena: [00:18:17] Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate coming together with you and having this chat. Anytime. {laughter}

Kristen: [00:18:28] What an incredible season we've had so far on Archetypes. Let us know how you are enjoying these episodes and how thinking of Archetypes within the commerce landscape has impacted you. Check out more about The Creator in the Archetypes Journal. Get your copy at ArchetypesJournal.com. Archetypes is brought to you by Future Commerce. Discover the world of Archetypes, take the Archetypes quiz, and get the Archetypes Journal at ArchetypesJournal.com. You can find more episodes of this podcast and all Future Commerce properties at FutureCommerce.com.