If Saje Natural Wellness principals achieve their goal of opening a total of 50 stores across Canada by 2018, it will be largely because of their ability to manage their business and their marriage.
Kate Ross LeBlanc and Jean-Pierre LeBlanc launched their 22-location Vancouver wellness and natural products chain 23 years ago and have so far inked 10 leases for new stores that will open in 2015. They are close to signing two more leases for store openings this year.
Success has come in part from identifying how their personalities and that of their 25-year-old daughter, Kiara LeBlanc, who joined the business six years ago and is its creative director, differ.
“Kate is the leader principally driven by her intellect, whereas I’m a leader primarily driven by my heart or emotion, and Kiara is driven by her gut, or intuition,” Jean-Pierre LeBlanc told Business in Vancouver.
The family members determined their personality types by using the Enneagram of Personality model, which is a typology of nine interconnected personality types.
“Understanding what drives Kate and what drives Kiara gives me great insight into how we can find common ground in many situations, whether personal or professional,” he said.
Tasks flow from these personality types, explained LeBlanc, who wrote a book called One Minute Goddess: The Surprising New Rules for Winning the Relationship Game.
LeBlanc “passed the baton” of being CEO to his wife in June and is now focused on training his company’s rapidly expanding team as new stores open.
“While Kate conceives the big-picture solutions and is the visionary, Kiara uses her gut to make critical decisions that allow the Saje brand to be timely and on-trend,” LeBlanc said.
That includes developing or finding new products and taking the lead on store design and marketing.
Going into business with family can lead to what LeBlanc calls “the greatest bliss,” but it has the potential for great pain.
That risk is what he calls living life “squared.” Including a daughter in the mix is like living life “cubed” because the potential for bliss or pain is amplified all the more.
The key to making it work is open communication and honesty, LeBlanc said, because there is nowhere to hide.
Like the LeBlancs, Mandy Randhawa and spouse Leigh Cousins have made their 10-year-old Flygirl Productions a success by splitting tasks and above all never competing with each other to show that one is more valuable to the enterprise than the other.
“Couples in business together can get competitive and [insinuate] ‘I can do this better than you.’ Or ‘Why are you doing that task? I should be doing that.’ We don’t have that,” Randhawa said. When organizing their primarily lesbian-focused events, Cousins provides the vision whereas Randhawa provides the execution. “When organizing events, it can be hard to turn your mind off,” Randhawa said. “You’re always looking for how to improve things or to determine what’s working well, but we try to create some boundaries and say that at some certain times, ‘No, we’re not going to talk about work.’” •
