Founder's Notes: Leadership Is Not What You Think

When COVID hit, everything changed almost overnight.

Our retail stores closed for months, so retail revenue stopped. At the same time, online sales didn’t slow down. They actually increased.

But because YUMMY was not considered an essential business, our fulfillment team could no longer come into work.

We went from seven fulfillment team members to zero.

So I stepped back in.

Fulfillment became me, my EA, and one team member helping cover the work while online order volume had grown to nearly three times what we were used to handling.

I worked two shifts. I picked orders. Packed boxes. And on top of fulfillment, I was also handling customer service, responding to customers and making sure they knew what was happening with their orders.

There was no distance between being the CEO and doing the frontline work. Whatever the business needed, I had to be willing to do.

And I remember thinking how different leadership looked in that moment.

There was nothing glamorous about it.

Nobody cared that I was the CEO.

The business had a need, our customers were depending on us, and my responsibility was to make sure we delivered.

That experience reinforced something I still believe today:

Leadership is not the title you hold. It’s the responsibility you’re willing to carry.

Sometimes leadership means setting the direction.

Sometimes it means making the difficult decision.

And sometimes it means stepping back into roles you thought you had already graduated from because that is what the moment requires.

We could have easily said, “It’s COVID. We don’t have the staff. Customers will understand.”

And maybe they would have.

But I’ve learned that the moments when you have the best excuse to lower the standard are often the moments that reveal what your standard actually is.

If you accept average when things get difficult, eventually average becomes the culture.

Leadership is not about maintaining the standard only when everything is working. It is about refusing to lower it when everything around you gives you a reason to.

A lot of people want the title.

Far fewer want the responsibility that comes with protecting the standard when it is inconvenient, uncomfortable, or requires more from you personally.

That is the part of leadership people don’t always see.

The work behind the scenes.

The responsibility you take when there is nobody else to take it.

The standard you keep when nobody is watching.

And the willingness to do what needs to be done, even when the work is no longer supposed to be yours.

Sometimes leadership looks like going from CEO back to fulfillment and customer service because seven people became zero and the orders still had to go out.

That’s leadership in action.