
A Conversation with Jodi Berg of Vitamix
Season 27 Episode 30 | 55m 54sVideo has Closed Captions
A Conversation with Jodi Berg, Former President & CEO of Vitamix
When many hear the brand "Vitamix," they think of high-quality blenders that have played a leading role in the whole-food movement. What they may not realize is that Vitamix is a 100-year young, Cleveland based, family owned company--employing more than 700 people, with most at its Northeast Ohio headquarters and manufacturing facilities.
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The City Club Forum is a local public television program presented by Ideastream

A Conversation with Jodi Berg of Vitamix
Season 27 Episode 30 | 55m 54sVideo has Closed Captions
When many hear the brand "Vitamix," they think of high-quality blenders that have played a leading role in the whole-food movement. What they may not realize is that Vitamix is a 100-year young, Cleveland based, family owned company--employing more than 700 people, with most at its Northeast Ohio headquarters and manufacturing facilities.
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(upbeat electronic music) (bell ringing) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.
It's Friday, July 29th, and I'm Mark Ross, a proud City Club board member, and recently retired managing partner of PWC here in Northeast Ohio.
It is my pleasure to introduce today's forum, which is part of our local heroes series in which the City Club spotlights champions right here in Northeast Ohio, whose hard work changes the way we view ourselves and our community.
And what an honor I have to introduce our speaker today, Dr. Jodi Berg, executive advisor and immediate past CEO and president of Vitamix.
When many hear the brand Vitamix, they think of high quality blenders that have played a leading role in the whole food movement.
What they may not realize is that Vitamix is a hundred year young Cleveland-based family owned company.
It employs more than 700 people with most in Northeast Ohio at its manufacturing facility and headquarters.
Dr. Berg is recognized as an international presenter and driver of personal purpose and culture.
She's an agent of change and recently completing her tenure as the fourth generation president and CEO of Vitamix, heading toward retirement from the company at the end of September.
During her tenure leading Vitamix, Jodi catapulted the brand from beloved to iconic and expanded distribution to over 130 countries, and successfully navigated over 400% organic growth of the company.
Prior to joining Vitamix, Jodi held leadership positions in the Residence Inn by Marriott and the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company.
So what can we learn from Jodi during her tenure at Vitamix?
And what's next for Northeast Ohio's iconic brand?
Moderating today's conversation is City Club CEO Dan Moulthrop.
If you have questions for our speaker, you can text them to 330-541-5794.
Once again, 330-541-5794.
You can also tweet them @City Club.
City Club staff will try to work them in during the second half of the program.
I thought I would end on a personal note.
Jodi and I became close friends when we were paired up on a life-changing 2019 mission to Israel hosted by the Jewish Federation, and she's an incredible travel buddy.
I also saw firsthand her collaborative leadership as board chair of Team NEO.
At the time, I was helping to lead the innovation project as a board member of GCP.
Finally, Jodi has personally provided me virtual adult supervision to unclog my Vitamix at home when I fail to use enough liquids.
(audience chuckles) Members and friends of the City Club, please join me in welcoming an incredible business leader, a collaborative civic leader, and an amazing friend, Jodi Berg.
(audience applauds) - Mark, thank you so much for providing our introduction today, and Jodi, welcome to the City Club.
It is great to have you here.
- Oh, it's an honor, an honor to be here.
Thank you.
- So I kind of wanted to start, I mean, Mark, told a bit of the Vitamix story, and actually I'm going... See, I warned you that I would go off script and not stick to the plan, but I want you to kind of fill in some of the blanks there.
I mean, it was funny, he said that you came to Vitamix from Ritz Carlton, Marriott, but you were really returning.
- True.
- Because you'd done a fair bit of work there as a young person.
But fill in the blanks a little bit, when you were growing up and, you know, like what was the company's story then?
- So Vitamix, as we mentioned, is a hundred and one years old now, right, we finished our 100th year last year.
- Barely look a day over a hundred.
- Thank you.
So it started by my great-grandfather, actually in Illinois.
And he started, because if you recall, in 1918 was our last global pandemic.
- Yes.
- And in that global pandemic, I lost my great-grandmother, and I lost one of my great uncles.
So my great-grandfather's wife died, and they lost their third son.
And he was devastated to say the least.
And not only is he devastated, but now he finds himself, back then, without much support a father of two sons trying to figure out what he's gonna do next.
Well then in 1921 is a recession.
Actually, it was a depression.
It was considered a depression, a precursor to the Great Depression, and he literally lost everything else financially.
He found himself completely upside down.
As we were preparing for a 100th anniversary, we went back into the archives and found that in one of the letters that my grandmother wrote, I think that's where it came from, But my great-grandfather had considered committing suicide after losing everything.
Can you imagine?
I clearly would not be here today, one, right, so this...
But he managed to persevere and he decided the reason that he lost everything financially is because he owned a lot of property and land.
And he not only lost it, but he found himself upside down, right.
Sounds familiar to 2008, not that long ago, with a lot of what other people experienced.
Imagine both of them happening back to back, right.
And we may be finding ourselves in something similar today.
We might be able to learn from history.
Don't consider suicide, seriously, it's worth it, right.
People like me can be here because you stay alive and stay focused.
But what he did is he decided, how can I make a difference?
Clearly the pandemic, he understood the health implications and the value that health contributed to the people that survived and didn't survive.
And he also understood he needed to get back on his feet again.
So he started selling something called a can opener.
And you think a can opener today.
But back then, the canned goods were coming into the market for the first time, the consumer market, they'd been in the military market, right.
They're coming in the consumer market.
They are an opportunity for people to have produce all year round, which we didn't have a lot of the things that we do today to be able to do that, right.
And they were opening these cans with a knife.
So picture - We've all been there.
- Here, son.
Now open our beans for dinner, right.
It was a very precarious thing.
So the can opener was something that allowed people to have access to whole foods, even back in 1921.
That's a common theme that just transcends over our entire hundred years.
We've never given up on that, that very laser-focused purpose of how do we help people think differently about whole foods and how to prepare it.
So he started with the can opener, and then he started, went into vegetable peelers and other products.
And you flash forward, 1936, 1937, Cleveland was booming.
- Yes.
- Right.
Over 900,000 residents in Cleveland.
It was really an incredible place to be.
And they held the Great Lakes Exposition, which was a big exposition, two summers long.
So they brought their products, and they had booths here at the Great Lakes Exposition.
So they lived in Cleveland for two years and fell in love with the people.
Literally fell in love with the people of Cleveland and said, if we're gonna have our company and it's gonna grow, there can't be a better place for that to be than in Northeast Ohio.
- Really?
- So we moved here.
- Cleveland has this way with people who, you know, with those of us who move here from elsewhere, and it's not a hard place to fall in love with.
And Clevelanders are not difficult people to fall in love with.
Having married one.
- So for a while, we have this strategy that we love it, let's not tell anyone else because we don't want anyone else to come and add to it.
But really it was not a good strategy because right now we need everyone else to fall in love with it.
And, like you said, it's so easy to do.
So they packed up their business, their lives, and they moved to Cleveland, and we opened a health food store in downtown Cleveland on Superior Avenue.
And we were selling dry goods.
We were also selling, we didn't sell the Vitamix at that time.
The blender had been invented, but hadn't really been acknowledged yet, right.
At the Great Lakes Exposition, or shortly thereafter, was when somebody introduced us to a blender, and my great-grandfather, my grandparents had this Aha moment where they were selling blending equipment primarily for bars and restaurants to make the margaritas.
I'm not complaining, like that's not a bad use for them at all.
But my great-grandparents, or my great-grandfather and grandparents said, what if every single person had a tool like this in their home and they could put all that healthy food in it, and it would be easy to prepare, and we could just increase the intake of healthy food.
So they picked up the blender at the end of the 1930s and early 1940s, and then flash forward again with... we had the health food store.
My grandfather found this piece of property in, rural at that time, Olmsted Township, and he decided to move the company out there.
He built the house that we just turned into the family museum that if you watched, there's videos out there in YouTube of turning this...
He's not into construction.
No, it's best that he was a salesman and running a company, building was not his thing.
So we kind of had to go back in and shore it up a little bit, it was about ready to fall apart.
So we shored that up, that became our museum.
Then he challenged his father and he said, Dad, I really want our company to be outside of downtown.
He just didn't really love being in the city.
He wanted to be out with all of the animals.
And he said, if I can build you a building in 30 days and get us moved, would you let me move the company?
And his dad said, there's no way you can do that, so sure, I'm in.
Right.
30 days later, they moved out to Olmsted Township in the building that my grandfather built.
- Wow.
Wow.
- So that's how we ended up out there, was a bet between him and his dad.
And then a couple years later, in 1948, this TV was coming out, right, and people were watching television, and another debate happened, and my grandfather said, you need to take your demonstration, Dad, and put it on this newfangled TV thing.
You could be in everybody's living room with your message about whole food health.
And my great-grandfather said, no, this is a fad.
TV is gonna get thrown out, and it's gonna destroy the fibers of the family, right, and... - How right he was.
(Jodi and audience chuckles) - And there's actually a documentary of the gentleman who owned the first TV studio.
I think there's one of 12 in all of the U.S. was started here in Cleveland.
If somebody knows, they can correct me 'cause I may not have my numbers quite right, but one of the very first TV studios.
And when he did a documentary, he tells the story of this eccentric older gentleman walking into a studio and saying, I just wanna buy some airtime.
And he says, well, Sir, you don't know how it works.
We have to build you a set.
And he looked around, he said, there's a kitchen.
I'll just use that.
Can I use that?
I'll use that.
And he said, well, then we probably need to do some rehearsal.
He said, I got this down.
Like I do this every day.
I do it in my sleep.
Okay, well, we're gonna take a couple of takes and then we're gonna edit it.
He said, no, we're not editing it.
Let's just do it live.
So this was the first infomercial that was ever done in the history of infomercials was my eccentric great-grandfather who said just put me on the camera.
And they were like, well, okay.
And they're thinking, nobody watches anything on Saturday night, so let's try Saturday night.
No, I made that part up.
I really don't know what night it aired, but I do think we started Saturday Night Live, and we don't get credit for that.
But my great grandfather just stood in front of the camera and he spoke from his heart about whole food health and this new Vitamix machine that they were then carrying.
And halfway through, this was my grandfather's idea, he said, Dad, halfway through, just give him our phone number and have 'em call us.
So he did.
He gave 'em the phone number on air, and the phone started ringing off the hook - Crazy.
- Until middle of the morning where the operator who was connecting all the calls with no warning, by the way, - Right.
- Nobody told her this was coming.
So they're connecting all the calls.
And she connected into my grandfather and she said, I'm sorry, Mr. Barnard, but I have to go home.
You're not gonna be getting any more calls tonight.
They sold more Vitamix units that night than they would normally sell in over a year.
And the infomercial was born, and a new venue to be able to say, if you have a message that resonates and people need to hear it, think outside the box about what opportunities there are to get that message across.
Not that different than the City Club, if I might say.
- I feel like there's so many, like sparks flying in my head right now about like public television and pledge drives and QVC and like all of these things that kind of trace roots back to that moment.
That's intense.
- And, in 1950, within... so he did it live for several months, then they decided to record it.
So we have, and he still went through it.
He refused to let them cut anything.
So in this recording, which is on YouTube, if ever wanna watch Papa Barnard or Barnard with Vitamix infomercial, right, it'll pop up.
I'll prepare you.
He's a little offensive to all of the women because back then he blamed us for everything.
But if you can get over that part and realize it was filmed in 1948 49, it's a little bit better.
- Moment in time.
- Yeah.
Moment in time, right, keep everything into perspective.
But it is a hoot and a half to watch.
And it, harshly through, he realizes that he doesn't have the celery that he wanted to put in his drink.
So he's kind of, as it's live, right, they don't cut it, and he finally has to walk off set, grab his celery and come back on.
So, you know, like it's not edited.
- [Dan] It's real.
- At all.
- [Dan] It's for real.
- It is somebody's real voice, unedited, which is where you get, I think, that's where you get truth, - It's authenticity.
- Right, authenticity.
- So, fast forward to your childhood, 70s and 80s, and looking at this company that is just a part of the fabric of your family.
What did you think of it?
- So I grew up in, I was born in upstate New York, and I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania with my father, who was not involved in the company, because although he was involved in high school, they made him demonstrate and he hated it.
So he's like, I don't want anything to do with this company.
So he got his engineering degree, he got his MBA, and he was out doing his own thing.
So that's how I grew up.
And the only time I was connected to it was when I came back for family reunions and we would have a family reunion in the little house next to the little Vitamix building.
And at one point in the 70s, my grandparents had six children, and then I have over a hundred descendants at this point.
So we outgrew the little building, and we had to hold our family reunions over in the Vitamix building.
So one of my earliest, I shouldn't say earliest memories, but one of my probably most memorable moments was we were having a family reunion.
I think I was a tween.
Anyone had tweens in their life, like raising them?
Oh, it's amazing that they survive, right.
So we're in this family reunion, and we're doing skits and activities and just all together, just enjoying each other.
Well, my grandfather had set it up in the company that when the phone rang, if it was the customer one 800 line, we were one of the first one 800 line people as well, he had it ring throughout the whole company.
So if somebody that was focused on customer service could not answer the phone in two rings, somebody somewhere, he didn't care who, answered the phone.
So this is a Saturday and the phone rings, the customer service is working, but it rang more than two times.
He leaps out of his chair, and he goes running into his office and answers the phone.
And I, like I mentioned, was a tween.
I was like this is our time, right.
This is a family reunion.
I'm here like to visit you.
We came in from outta town, hello.
You know, you're full of attitude at that age.
So I decide to follow him, and I sneak into his office, and I sit and I listen and I'm glaring at him to the best that I can, and at 12 you can glare really, really bad, like, we're good at that.
And he was giving a woman instructions about how to make bread in her Vitamix.
And he says, okay, no, we're gonna start over.
I want you to... wanna wash your Vitamix out and dry it really well.
Oh, no, no, that's okay.
I'll stay on the line.
Now we're gonna put wheat in your container, which you can still do, by the way, one of the best kept secrets is you can make bread in your Vitamix, and I want you to grind the wheat for a minute.
No, no, it's okay, I'll stay on the line.
And every time he said, no, no, it's okay, stay on the line I'm like, seething, right.
So we finally get done.
I'm like, what's up with that Grandpa?
Like, I'm here, all attitude.
I just poured it all out at him.
And my grandfather was this very tall, very... he loved children, he loved people, he was always smiling.
He just had an incredible presence, right.
And at that moment, it was the first time that my grandfather was not smiling at me.
And he looked me in the eye and he said, Jodi, he said, this is not about us selling machines.
He said, this is about us changing lives, and I can't change someone's life if their Vitamix isn't gonna be on their counter and they're not gonna be comfortable using it.
So that's what we're all about.
And then he came over and gave me a big hug.
And at the moment, it was just one of those, it stuck with me, but later, when I had the opportunity to run the company, I realized, you know what, he's right.
He's right.
And we have an incredible following of people all over the world.
And anyone in the audience, if you have a Vitamix, thank you, and I hope that you use it, and I hope after today you use it more, right.
It's all about creating a community of people that can help other people successfully achieve what they wanna achieve in life.
And health is kind of a root behind all of it.
So we're not about selling blending equipment, we're really about changing lives, and we're about inspiring people to be successful in that journey so that they can one, live longer.
We talked about people are gonna live longer than a hundred years, a greater ratio.
Hope we have something to do with that, right.
It has to do with what we're eating and how we're eating and how we feel, and then inspiring other people to do the same.
- Let me just mention for our listening audience on WKSU that we're talking with Jodi Berg today.
Dr. Jodi Berg is the recently retired CEO and president of Vitamix Corporation, family-owned company, and celebrating their hundredth anniversary with the City Club of Cleveland.
I'm Dan Moulthrop.
And Jodi, I wanna come back to this idea that like this isn't just about selling great blenders, it's about changing lives.
Do the employees of Vitamix feel that, as well?
- I hope so.
But we purposefully go out of our way to make that possible.
So how do you do that?
Well, let me step back for a few moments.
A lot of people are surprised that we're over a hundred years old.
They think that maybe we have been around for 15, 20 years, because that's when we kind of feel... to a lot of people feels like we came outta nowhere.
Before that we were very focused and there's customers that were very loyal and loved Vitamix, but they already got and understood health.
And our job was very difficult because we had to bring people from no understanding that the food that we actually consumed had an impact on us.
I mean, it's hard to believe today, - [Dan] Right.
- That it was just a couple decades ago where people didn't really make, most people didn't make a connection about what they put in their mouth and how their cell structure reacted to that, right.
So today, it seems like, how do you not know that?
But our job was to help people understand that the food that you ate did impact you, and that there were choices that you could make, and that if you have the right tools and the right equipment, and you put the right food in it, that the impact that it could have.
So it was just a lot of heavy lifting to get people there.
Well, in 2004, personally, I can be a little socially awkward in conversations.
So if you've ever had one-on-one conversations with me, I apologize.
- You're doin' great today.
- Whoo.
But no, one of the... back in 2004, I was over sales and marketing for the company, and I would get in conversations with people, and eventually, whenever I found that opportunity, I'd start asking 'em what they ate and why.
That's where the awkward part comes in.
- [Dan] Right.
- So most people are like, why are we going there?
I'm like, you don't understand, I'm doing research.
Could be why I got my PhD, but that's another story.
So I would ask people why they ate the way they ate.
And oftentimes, if they were choosing to be extreme at that point, which was vegan or vegetarian, it's called very extreme.
I would say, well, why are you choosing that?
Up to 2004, most people, I'd say everybody, would answer because of the precious animals.
Like, I wanna save the animals, I feel bad about how they're being treated.
It's not a bad reason to change diet, but it is a sacrificial one, like you are suffering because of something that's important to you.
And in 2004, I started to hear people say, because it's good for me.
It's better for me, I feel better.
And, of course, we've known that for decades, right.
But to hear people start to say it, I was like, wait a minute, something's happening, right.
And words like whole food and natural and organic were coming out and you're starting to hear those words.
And people, this was one of the biggest ones that was changing in 2004.
For the first time, people were taking ownership of their health in a mainstream way.
Not just a few people, but people were saying, wait a minute, I don't have to suffer the same ailments of my parents.
It's not hereditary.
Like I can change, I can own, I can make a difference.
And so I put all these different dots together, and I said, wait a minute, like, this is all the stars aligning.
How often does it happen in our lifetime, right?
If my great-grandfather could be here now.
And so I realized that if we could join this platform of multiple organizations and people and companies that were helping change the way people think about food, we could make a bigger difference.
So I realized that there's this great opportunity for Vitamix to finally grow.
In order to do that, we had to literally transform our entire company.
We're relatively small at the time, and become from a biplane to a jet plane, and we were already a company that was in the air, right.
So I realized there's no way I could do this by myself.
That was my first Aha.
A little humbling of an Aha, right.
- [Dan] Right.
- The second one though was I, in my 30s, I had an autoimmune disease that almost took my life.
And as I was being rushed into the hospital with the doctor telling my mom, Linda, we're just gonna try to get her out right now.
We don't know if she's gonna make it.
My mind is going, wait a minute.
I'm only 30, and I haven't like even gotten started yet.
I don't know how much time I have.
It could be a day, it could be a month, it could be an hour.
I wanna make a difference.
So I set out to be purpose-driven.
And I realized, at first, I wanted to be purpose-driven because I'm like, I wanna make a difference in somebody else's life.
But then I realized that I gain so much more with my focus on a purpose.
I was fulfilled.
You couldn't stop me.
I felt like when I was living with purpose, when I was doing something that I knew mattered.
Has anyone felt this way?
Like you can't stop, right.
I mean, you honestly feel like you could go through... leap buildings in a single bound, did I say that right?
- [Dan] Yeah.
- Leap buildings in a single bound.
Like, you feel like you have all these superpowers.
You could go all day, all night, you're not gonna stop me.
But the most beautiful thing is that you're fulfilled.
You have energy, like, it doesn't drain you.
So I have these two things.
I'm like, I can't do it myself.
And I know that when I'm in that mode, I make really good decisions because I'm focused on the end, not on whatever's in front of me, and the decision to overcome or get through, and I have this boundless energy.
So my thinking was, I've never been a president or CEO before.
What if I just created a culture where everyone in the company got to see their own personal purpose in what we are trying to achieve?
Like if they could make the connection.
So it wasn't... now if they wanted to adopt our purpose as a company as their personal purpose, that's okay.
I'm not gonna stop them, right.
But there's a lot of people who if you help them identify their personal purpose, they can see that I can live with my purpose and the company will benefit as a result of them living with their purpose.
So I said, what if I created a culture that really released all of this, not only just the intrinsic motivation, but the laser-focus on doing the right thing, and the focus of everyone coming together with one voice, which makes it significantly louder than individual voices, kind of like Horton and the Who, I don't know if you remember that book, but all of the voices coming together.
And that was the power that navigated us through this unbelievable growth that Mark was talking about and got us as a company to where we are today.
So I was just one voice of all of 'em.
So you asked, do our employees feel that way?
- [Dan] Yeah.
- I say, a lot of 'em do.
In fact, I've had employees come up to me and say, Jodi, I love you enough that I'm actually leaving.
And I'm like, what do you mean?
I have truly found my purpose.
And one of 'em was, she said to me, she goes, I want to be a yoga teacher, and I wanna live in Seattle.
- She can't do one of those things in Cleveland.
(audience chuckles) - (chuckles) True.
She is an unbelievable advocate, for Vitamix, and so she's still a salesperson out there.
And so yeah, I'd say they do.
- So you got your PhD recently, as well, Dr. Jodi Berg.
And your research in that process was around this finding purpose in the workplace.
Can you just talk a little bit about what you learned?
- So I can summarize it very quickly.
There's a lot of research that's already been done about if you are a company with a higher purpose, that people are more engaged with what they're doing, right.
And also that they have a higher commitment level to an organization with a higher purpose than one without.
I would bet if I asked that question today, and you raised your hands, do you work for an organization that has a higher purpose and are you more engaged?
Like we could validate that research over and over again.
So we already had that research.
I wanted to understand this whole thing about personal purpose and what happens in the workplace when you simply have... when you're driven by personal purpose.
And what I found in my research was not only are you more engaged in what you're doing at work because you have personal purpose than if you are just working for a company with a higher purpose.
Think about that for a minute.
Companies think, oh, we have to really go out and promote what we're doing as a company.
But if you let... if you really have that relationship with each of your employees and understand what matters to them, and give them a means to release it in a way that it connects with your purpose, the power of that.
So that was not a surprise to me, but a validation of what I experienced.
The second one was the commitment to the organization is significantly greater.
But the third discovery, which I actually love the most, is that people who are living with a purpose, if you can identify what makes you get up in the morning, makes you wanna just go and make a difference and gives you energy, if you can identify that, there's a level of life satisfaction that doesn't even exist if you're working for a company with a higher purpose.
Like think about the joy, the joy that you can create for each and every one of your employees, by literally giving them the opportunity to identify and live with their purpose was really high.
And it just, it cracked open to me how simple the root cause to so many of our challenges, and we're facing a lot of them today because of Covid as far as retaining and attracting talent.
We thought it was hard before, right, it's just gotten a lot harder.
Our own burnout and the burnout of our employees, and the ability to innovate and be competitive.
Like all of that can just come to life if we just step back and say, let me take the time to actually get to know the amazing, incredible people that are on board within our organizations and what matters to them and how I can help them connect what matters to them.
Releasing all that energy and focus to driving the business forward.
- Do you ever think about the connection between that work and the work that you've taken on as a board member at the Greater Cleveland partnership and Team NEO in terms of creating a culture of purposefulness across our community?
- Yeah.
If anyone knows me, they realize I can't stop thinking about it.
Because I think, especially, when you think about...
I'm gonna step back to the superpower part of personal purpose.
One of the ways to identify your personal purpose is to identify what your superpowers are.
We all have superpowers.
Those are the things that we are really good at.
And that by us doing 'em, we can do 'em faster, more efficient, than most people out there.
Plus it gives us energy, right.
And that works at the individual level, but it also works at the organizational level.
And when you think about Northeast Ohio and all the challenges that we're facing, and the amazing organizations that we have that are working on all of these challenges.
When you step back and look at all these different organizations, they were created for different reasons, which means they have a different focus, and they have different superpowers because of how they're organized, because of how their membership is developed and who belongs to it and everything, creates different superpowers.
And if you take these different organizations, say, instead of fighting for resources within organizations, which being in an organization and leading one for many years, we're faced so often with people coming and say, well, I want money for this and I want money for this, and I want money for this, and I want money for this.
And it's really confusing as a leader of an organization say, I don't know where to give my money.
It sounds like there's all this crossover.
Can you guys just get your act together, right.
And what's happening in our greater, I'd say all of Ohio, because Jobs Ohio is a part of this movement to bring us together and say, let's align and recognize the superpowers of the different organizations.
Let's be clear on what their focus is and realize that if we really focused on what we're super good at, and we can walk into an organization and say, if you contribute money here, this is how it's gonna help, and there's these other amazing organizations and they're focused on this.
And if you have more money and you put a little bit more to this one, like two plus two is much greater than four, five, six, or 10, right.
So culture really does transcend the individual level, the company level, but also entire community and state level.
And I think this is not...
I'm just one of the many people that are understanding this and sitting back and watching our different economic development organizations, our civic organizations within all of Ohio, finally recognizing that we have so much more that we can accomplish if we understand the powers of the others and we work together.
- Excellent.
Are you ready for questions from the audience?
- Sure.
- All right.
Dr. Jodi Berg, ladies and gentlemen.
(audience applauds) - Thank you.
- So we are about to begin the Q and A with Dr. Jodi Berg.
I'm Dan Moulthrop, Chief Executive here at the City Club.
Jodi Berg is the past Chief Executive Officer and president at Vitamix, which celebrated its hundred years, 101 years, almost, serving our... serving America, really, with top-notch blenders.
- [Jodi] The world.
- The world.
America and the world.
We welcome questions from everyone, City Club members, guests, and those of you joining via our livestream at cityclub.org or the radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU, Ideastream public media.
We ask that your questions are, you know, brief and to the point, and after you ask your question, please return to your seat so that we can keep the aisles clear.
If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it @thecityclub.
If you wanna text it, text it to 330-541-5794.
Again, that number is 330-541-5794, and our staff will work it into the program.
Here, we have our first question?
- Great, thanks, Dan.
Jodi, that was great.
Wanted to ask you about your decision to go back as a busy executive and get a PhD.
Your own personal decision to take the time to do that, and maybe more broadly, what do you recommend to folks, busy professionals, in terms of going and getting additional continuing education?
- So, and what, I'm sorry, what was your name?
- I'm Michael.
- Mike.
Thank you, Mike, for the question.
So I'm very, very purpose-driven, clearly.
And, for me, I had to have a near death experience to get me there.
My wish is that everyone can understand the value of that without having to go through that experience similar to what I did.
But understanding what your personal purpose is and why you are on the planet.
For instance, mine has been, I've narrowed it down to I believe that Jodi Berg is on the planet because I love to help people find their wings, wings that they don't even know that they have and give them a chance to fly.
And I had a chance to do that on the platform when I was with Vitamix.
I have a chance to do that with my daughters and with the organizations and communities that I'm in.
Like, that's what I do.
So then when you have a focus on what you wanna achieve, of why you exist, whether you go back to school or whether you don't go to school or whether you continue what you're doing, whatever path you choose to take, find a path that will help you do that more and better.
And for me, I had experienced what the power of purpose can do in just the unbelievable growth that we experienced at Vitamix.
And we didn't become iconic because of our growth.
We ended up becoming iconic because the people within the organization, the amazing people that work in our company, were so focused on making sure that we met the customer's expectations and exceeding those expectations in not just in the delivery of the product, but the product itself.
In fact, I just read a testimonial the other day of a lady who was... she said, I need you to read this.
I called your customer service.
My Vitamix was eight years old, my warranty expired a year ago.
And it didn't start, or there's something that was happening with it.
She goes, customer service looked at my... first, they told me exactly when I bought it and where I bought it 'cause you guys kept those records.
And then they said, well, I can see that you never took advantage of our service warranty during the seven years that you had it.
Is that something that we can offer to you now?
She's like, but it's over that.
She goes, I understand, I understand, but what you're experiencing is, and she just went on and we ended up the company, the person, the customer service agent talking to, you didn't have to go to management, supervisor, me, whatever, the person on the phone said, I think it's appropriate for us to have you send that machine in and we're just gonna refurbish it for you and send it back.
And the lady was floored.
Like, how often does something like that happen, right.
- [Dan] Not often.
- So their focus, their purpose is to figure out like how to really service customers.
We've got employees that are going back to school.
We have employees that are leaving the company 'cause they're following their purpose.
But every time they leave, we know that we have their heart and soul.
So find out what your purpose is, identify that.
That's a whole 'nother conversation about how to do it, unfortunately.
It's not hard, and I'm gonna write a book someday on this, so just, you know, stay tuned.
It'll come out and I'll walk you through it.
But if you understand what your purpose is, then the choices that you should make about your life make a lot of sense.
- So even if that choice is to go back to school for five more years to get a PhD, you should just go all in.
- While you're working.
- While you're working.
- But what I was studying.
- While you're running a company.
- What I was studying and what I was learning, I was literally applying it as fast as I was learning it within my organization and allowing the people within the organization to even be that much more individually successful.
So that then therefore made it possible for me to continue.
So it wasn't an add-on, if you will, it was something that just really made my whole life more fulfilling and full, yeah.
- Do you have another question?
Go ahead.
This one's gonna be tough.
- Thank you, Jodi.
Pardon me?
- It's gonna be a tough question.
- I know, of course, it's gonna be a tough question.
Thank you, Jodi, thanks for sharing.
Jodi, you are an accomplished mother, business person, community person, you've got a lot of energy, a lot of passion.
So I have a two word question.
What's next?
- Ooh, thank you, for that question, John.
So, I can't wait to get started, to be honest.
But I'm still in transition, so I don't wanna jump too fast.
But I don't know exactly what's next, and I don't know exactly what it looks like, but I do know that I will continue to help people find their wings, and I will continue to help people figure out how to fly, and I will look for the right platforms to make that possible.
There are definitely a couple books inside of me that I really wanna get written, so I will probably be looking for a team of people that can help me make that happen.
I might be involved more in public speaking.
I've had lots and lots of requests come already for positions on boards and going back and helping with universities.
So right now I'm choosing not to make any big decisions until I can just take some time, and then, look out world, I am not done yet.
And my secret, by the way, (audience applauds) Oh, thank you.
Thank you.
I actually don't drink caffeine.
After I started living with purpose, I realized it gave me so much energy.
I was married at the time and my husband said, yeah, no, we're cutting you off.
And he cut me off from caffeine, it's the best thing he could have ever done 'cause apparently I spoke so fast that nobody could keep up.
- Well, there you go.
More life lessons.
Go ahead.
- Jodi, I'm (indistinct).
Thank you for being here.
Love how you tell stories.
You talked about how you wanted, you helped the individual employees within Vitamix to find their personal purpose and release that boundless energy.
And I wanna hear more about the story around how you then take that personal purpose and build that collective energy and connect to the overall Vitamix, if you don't mind.
- Oh, I think I can do that relatively quickly, but that also is a great question because there's definitely power there, right.
So once you as a person have identified your personal purpose and your superpowers, as I talked about, every superhero has superpowers, but they also have kryptonite, right.
And we have to acknowledge that there's things that we are not necessarily good at, but others might be good at it.
So when you identify your superpowers, the things that you're really good at, you love to do, it gives you energy.
Then take the time to identify your kryptonite, and recognize that kryptonite is that thing that you may have to do it.
I'm not saying that everyone should stop doing those things, that sucks the energy out of them, right.
You might have to do it in your jobs.
I had several of them.
You know, mum's the word, but reading financial reports can't, no.
Did not give me energy.
So what I did on those days when I knew I had to do things that were my kryptonite, I had two choices.
One, if there was somebody else that could do that job and it was a superpower and it would give them energy, then I would find that person, and I would bless them with my kryptonite, and they would turn it into a superpower and they would have energy, right.
Now, you can't do that with everything.
Like the financial reports, I had to do that on my own.
So my other option was... oh, but an example of that is my cousin Loree, she has been our CFO for years, and now she's the director of our family office.
She's amazing if you haven't met her.
But she has an unbelievable superpower of knowing where absolutely everything is.
That is a kryptonite for me.
I'm not organizationally blessed, just ask anyone in my world, right.
Anyone who's ever tried to be my assistant, I'm not organizationally blessed.
But she loves it.
So anytime I needed to find something, I would go to Loree and she'd be like, I'm on it, right, and she'd run and she'd find it.
But the other option as far as to say the financial reports that I had to read, I make sure that on those days I have this time allocated where I can do something that gives me energy so I can use my superpowers for part of the day.
So your question is how does that work with a team?
Well, there's a team activity that you can do where the entire team will identify their own superpowers and they also identify their own kryptonite.
And when you have a team that feels that level of trust that you're identifying your kryptonite, because it means you can get rid of some of it and you may not have to do that.
And then this team, you go through the exercise where all of this information's on the walls, and then you literally at one point go around with your kryptonite and ask the person who had put that down as their superpower, if there was a way that there is something that we could do such that would you mind when I'm supposed to be doing this, that I come to you?
And, usually that exchange in a team, they're like, are you kidding?
Yes.
And that means I've got this kryptonite that I gotta get off my plate and that person goes and finds it to another.
And now what you've done is you've developed, not a group of individuals, but you've developed a web of people who are working with each other to make everyone else's life more fulfilling and in the meantime, their own life more fulfilling.
And really a lot of efficiency happens that way.
Because if we have a day's worth of things we have to get done, what is oftentimes the last thing we're gonna do?
We're gonna leave it till the end of the day?
It's our kryptonite, right.
If we recognize that and we say, I don't have to have it hanging over my head till the end of the day sucking all my energy out right before I go home and walk in the door and I wanna go on my second half of the day like, I want energy, right.
So you're able to work with this group of people, and even if this person is not even... they're not in that necessarily same area of business, but this is a superpower.
Now you start to reach across teams into organizations and greater units that can come together.
So, thank you for that question.
- Thanks.
Do you have another question?
- Thank you so much for your time.
This is a text question, and this viewer wants to know many of our country's innovative and leading companies are struggling today with supply chain issues.
Have these challenges been faced in the past, and if so, what lessons and best practices has Vitamix employed to overcome these challenges?
- So that's a great question.
This is all about supply chain challenges, and many other challenges that we've experienced in Covid.
So when you have a strong functioning organization with a lot of communication taking place, when Covid hit, we were able to very quickly go back to our culture and our core and say what matters to us most?
Let's make sure we align on it.
And then once we aligned on it, we were able to push the management of making sure throughout the organization, everyone understood that down to the lowest possible level of everyone who was out with our employees.
And then as a leadership team, we said, all right now... and we know that we shared values and we were like-minded, so we didn't have any concerns.
Whatever you need to do.
In fact, we empowered our work units, but we manufacture our units right here in Northeast Ohio, right.
So we're manufacturing throughout all of Covid here in Ohio.
And we pushed it down to say, this is what we know about Covid.
We will tell you everything we know as we know it.
You know, things too, let's talk about it.
And what do you in your unit that works closely together need in order for you to feel safe?
In order for your family to feel that you are safe?
We even went further and said, in order for your children to feel that you are safe in your work environment.
And all's we became was not the idea generators.
We were the ones that made it happen for them, right.
So all of that's happening.
Meanwhile, another group of cross-functional employees at all different levels came together.
And the question we asked ourselves was, because this is happening, and we've never seen it happen in our world before, what are all the possible things that could happen as a result?
And so very, very early on we had this.
And how do we identify what would trigger one of these possible things from happening?
So supply chain issues was identified within Vitamix at a lower level within our organization, very, very early on.
And we were out, but we were buying ahead, we were developing relationships with our suppliers.
A perfect example of it was we helped develop a material called Triton, which is a BPA free material that's strong enough to withstand the blast that happens in high performance blending.
It's now used in applications, just universal applications in so many places.
But we, Vitamix, knew that we needed to develop something without BPA because people had a concern about it.
There's lots of people that were trying to invalidate the concern.
And we said, it doesn't matter whether it's real or not, it feels real.
So we went out and worked with an organization called Eastman to develop BPA-free material.
And so when we recognized that actually this one had a result of the storms in Texas, that it wasn't even Covid.
But the storms hit in Texas, and somebody on our team said, whoa, wait a minute, big oil area.
Oil connects to plastic, plastic connects eventually to the Triton.
We are gonna have a problem down the road.
Like, how are we gonna do this?
So they got on the phone immediately with Eastman, who now sells Triton to everybody, and we're just a small purchaser of it.
And said, well, this is how we'd like to work with you.
We have gotten all of our suppliers together that use this Triton material.
We can tell you in advance exactly how much we need when we need it.
We're not gonna overbuy, we're not gonna be hiding it, right, and then we will take on working with all of our suppliers and sometimes competing with each other to say how much do you need this week?
I have an extra week's worth for various different reasons.
And we, the suppliers actually, every day were calling to make sure that they had enough Triton material to continue supplying us what we needed.
And Eastman, their first response was, no, everyone's asking for it, everyone's demanding it.
And they got off the phone, half hour later they called us back and they said, you know what's occurred to us?
You're actually the only company that actually called us and didn't threaten us and didn't try to play a bunch of games with us.
But literally through full transparency of information, said that you wanted to work with us, and that you'd only tell us what you needed and no more.
And they said, we're in.
And we literally have no supply issues with that particular one.
And they handled it the same way with all of the different components.
And it's still been challenging.
And our supply chain is unbelievable because they're being so proactive in trying to address things in advance if they can.
So I'm not saying it's easy, it's just a different way of being busy by being proactive and ahead of it instead of behind it.
Incredible, incredibile group of people.
- [Dan] Awesome.
- So that's how we did it.
- Next question from the man who's responsible for me owning a Vitamix, actually.
- Paul Federico with the Greater Cleveland Partnership, also unofficial part-time salesperson for Vitamix.
Thank you, Dan, for that pitch there.
You haven't really lived until you learned how to make your own peanut butter.
It is life changing.
I loved how you, Jodi, I loved how you talked about your family and the buildings they were building early on and changing locations.
I wonder if we could talk a little about your own legacy, and the new museum you put together and what's happening there and what that means to you.
- Thank you.
Thank you very much for that question, Paul.
So I did touch on the fact that we opened a family museum in the original building that my grandfather built.
And then we just opened a company museum, we did the ribbon cutting just probably about two weeks ago, within the past two weeks.
And it was fascinating because when I first talked about creating the museums about 10 years ago with my father, and I said I wanted to take the home that he grew up in and turn it into a family museum.
He said, that piece of junk?
He said that wasn't built right when I lived in it.
Why in the world would we wanna restore that and keep that?
And I said, because the people that weren't there would love to be.
Like, so what we did with the family museum is we took a period of time.
We took 1950, and we froze the whole house, recreated the house into what life was like in 1950 with a whole buncha kids, trying to run a business, trying to start a business, continue to innovate, right, and grow and raise your family wherever they were out in the middle of Olmsted Township.
Now the company museum is a little bit different because the company museum transcends truly the 100 years.
And the reason it was so important to memorialize that was not because, oh, isn't it great, we've memorialized it, but the lessons that we've learned along the way are still the foundational launching pad for what will take us into our future if we understand them and purposefully choose to either follow or diverge or go a different direction.
But understanding what we've done and why, and not having to reinvent the wheel.
We're calling it a museum because it has so many artifacts in it, but it's really an unbelievable training ground for new employees, for people who are passionate followers around the world that want to just... they feel so connected to the Vitamix family, and this gives them a chance to find themselves and where they joined the journey.
So it's really meant to be more of an immersion experience of walking through the past hundred years in the eyes of a family-owned business that really transformed marketing, ways of looking at marketing and product and thinking outside the box.
I know we're getting close to time, but let me tell you a really fast story.
So we've been in the household market since 1921, that was where we started.
It wasn't until the 1990s that we decided to go into the commercial market.
'Cause the commercial market was coming to us and saying, why can't we have a blender as strong as what you're selling to all these households?
Like we need one as well.
But the one that we were selling didn't pass all the requirements.
So we created blenders for the commercial market in the 1990s.
The first time we took it to the National Restaurant Show, we introduced the first Vitamix commercial blender for $399.
I just rejoined Vitamix, and I heard people laughing as they walked away from our stand, and they said, there's no way this company thinks that they could possibly sell a blender to our industry for $399.
That's ludicrous.
Like they will fail.
And they're laughing as they walk away.
- [Dan] Was it too expensive?
- They couldn't comprehend why they would spend that much money.
- [Dan] Okay.
- But then when you transform the way people think about something, with just by free speech, that changes.
- I did not see that coming.
- (chuckles) It's so important because you need these ideas to develop, right.
And you need to work with them, with other people.
And when we change the formula of how they thought about the expense around this particular piece of equipment, and we changed the understanding of what could be done as a result of having a piece of equipment that was able to do what the Vitamix does from the power and everything.
When we reframed the message, we reframed the thinking.
- Well it's one blender for 10 years rather than eight blenders.
- Or 20, right.
- Or something, yeah.
- And so, that's the formula for the financial.
But then the other side is it can do things, and it can release flavors and textures that, to this day, are not possible any other way.
And I would bet that any restaurant that you went into that has chefs in the back, they're most likely using a Vitamix to create something that you've enjoyed in their restaurants.
It is that prolific around all the restaurants, around the world, really, it's been amazing.
- Dr. Jodi Berg, ladies and gentlemen.
(audience applauds) Thank you, Jodi, for joining us here at the City Club.
Today's forum, as we mentioned earlier, is part of our local heroes series, which we present in partnership with Citizens Bank and Dominion Energy.
We would also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by Serenity Partners, the Cleveland Leadership Center, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and PNC.
Thank you all so much for being with us today.
Coming up next week on August 5th, next Friday, we will hear from local entrepreneurs in the midst of their own small business startup story.
Danielle Sydnor, CEO at Rise Together Innovation Center will lead our panelists in a conversation on how investors, developers, and others can better support black and brown businesses in their neighborhoods.
On Friday, August 12th, Ideastream reporter, Kabir Bhatia will continue our series on behavioral health, this time focusing on care for the region's unhoused.
And if you missed it, there's a whole batch of new forums added online at cityclub.org, including an opportunity to hear from Nan Whaley, Mayor Nan Whaley of Dayton, Ohio.
She's a Democratic candidate for governor.
And Jasmine Long with birth beautiful communities.
Also, Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award winner Ishmael Reed.
So if you wanna check out any of those, tickets are available at cityclub.org.
And that brings us to the end of our forum today.
Once again, thank you Dr. Jodi Berg.
Thank you Members and friends of the City Club.
I'm Dan Moulthrop.
Our forum is now adjourned.
(bell rings) (audience applauds) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to city club.org.
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