Who is Aaron Henderson?

Aaron Henderson is the CEO of SweetLeaf, the pioneering brand of stevia in the United States.

About SweetLeaf

Founded all the way back in 1982 by James May, SweetLeaf has only continued to evolve and grow ever since. It all began when May brought stevia and Yerba Mate to the US for the first time and turned it into a legacy. Today, SweetLeaf is involved in more than just the traditional stevia sweetener that they were founded on. They produce a variety of plant-based, natural sweeteners that make foods taste sweet without the artificial ingredients. 

Found in thousands of retailer stores around the globe, SweetLeaf has truly revolutionized the sweetener market by making it healthy and all-natural. 

Aaron’s Journey

Aaron’s journey doesn’t start in natural food products. Or even in E-Commerce in general. It actually starts in politics. Steve May, a State Representative met Aaron in politics and convinced him to help him build the SweetLeaf brand. 

Aaron joined the company and helped them to grow and build until 2006 working in a variety of roles.  Aaron then left to consult and build natural food brands for the next 20 years helping to run The Touch Agency.  His focus became helping brands and even working to found a top Venture Capital company – Midnight Venture Partners.  But nearly 20 years later, Aaron returned to SweetLeaf, this time as a board member and, eventually, as CEO. 

The Exciting Face of E-Commerce 

When it comes to E-Commerce there’s a great deal to love and Aaron’s favorite part is that it offers the opportunity for real-time data and a chance to pivot quickly. Where retail can take years to fully pivot or to fix problems, E-Commerce offers entirely different opportunities. It allows the team to make changes when they’re needed, such as changing out the entire Instacart strategy in just a day or updating Amazon listings just as fast. 

Building a Strong Team

At SweetLeaf the team consists of only 25 people, made up across the US and Canada.  Including Aaron, the team is mostly hybrid, with many people based in Arizona with the company who come in daily. But half the leadership team is primarily remote.

Aaron does maintain a hybrid schedule of his own, coming into the office three days a week and remaining at home in Washington state the rest of the week. The key is having the right team and the right culture who can support that kind of hybrid or even fully remote system. 

What it Takes to Run the Business as a Leader

Meetings are a fact of life when it comes to leadership in a company and when he’s in the office, Aaron says he gets pulled into them just as much as any other leader. But when he’s away, that’s when he can focus on the more exciting things, while he’s working remote. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean he always gets the free time that he wants for that big idea development. While that’s where he’d love to spend more time, and he’s working on getting more time to do it, sometimes the general needs of the business just take up all the time. 

SweetLeaf’s CX Philosophy

As with any business, customer experience is an essential part of the process and Aaron doesn’t take the customers for granted. In fact, he believes that the customer should be first in everything that the company does. And that doesn’t just mean the product itself. It also means the pricing, packaging, font size on the bottles, how people answer the phone, and so much more. And it also means making things right for the customer, no matter what it takes.

To that end, SweetLeaf gives every one of their people a budget that they can use to ‘make people happy.’ So if there’s a problem no one needs to look for approval to do what it takes to make it right. They can act and help keep that customer front of mind at all times. Making them feel valued is, after all, instrumental to the overall success of the business. Aaron believes that anyone who calls is telling them something, good or bad, and they deserve to be listened to and adjustments can and should be made. 

It Pays to Go the Extra Mile

SweetLeaf recently had an opportunity to venture out with a new major customer. One that has the potential to be a huge growth opportunity for the company. But at this point they’ve only had a single one-off shipment. That shipment, however, wasn’t straightforward. It required them to jump through several hoops to make it happen, especially in the timeline required. And after they finished the delivery they got a call. 

It was delivered to the wrong place – sort of.

The shipment needed to be delivered to eight different warehouses rather than the one warehouse that was originally in the paperwork. And the customer wasn’t able to divide and re-ship it. They wanted SweetLeaf to do it. 

Some companies would say that it wasn’t their responsibility. That they had already delivered the product to the location the client had listed. It would cost a great deal of money to pick things up again and redeliver to the new locations. But SweetLeaf knew that the most important thing was the customer and making sure they got the service they were looking for. And so they did. it

They took care of the customer because it was what felt right in the moment. And only time will tell if that experience will pay off going forward. 

Innovation and Adaptability

Fostering innovation can look different to everyone, but for SweetLeaf it starts with looking at all of the available information and making decisions that benefit the consumers. For example, customers who purchase stevia packets through retail stores are generally looking for a product they can use at home at their table. The box sizes that SweetLeaf originally sourced were perfect for this. 

But SweetLeaf also sells stevia on Amazon and a quick search determined that those customers weren’t always looking for packets they could use at home for personal use. Rather, they might be looking for something to use at a café or coffee shop and the sizes they needed for that purpose were different. 

Because E-Commerce offers the ability to pivot in real-time, SweetLeaf was able to produce larger box sizes in a period of months and see triple digit grown as a result. 

But that’s not all. They’ve also been able to monitor the market and determine that the top search term in the category wasn’t something that they were involved with. It was a product they didn’t sell. But it was one that they could easily develop. So they did. And it led to even more growth within the company. 

Where to Put the Focus

Understanding what the important things are in business and which areas of growth are the best for the company is important. And that’s part of the data and the pivotability that’s available with E-Commerce as well.

SweetLeaf has been able to look at their market share data to find that they dominate 56% of the market share for a particular segment in Amazon. But while getting that 56% up to 60% might seem like a good metric, it would cost a great deal of time and money for a modest reward. However, focusing that time and money in another area, where the company represents only a 5% market share, could get them up to 10 or even 15%, representing a much larger reward. 

On top of that, Aaron’s priority for the next several months and even years is two-fold. First, to bring the legacy of the company and the story of SweetLeaf back to the forefront. To tell the story of where they came from and how stevia came to be part of the cultural conversation. But also, the culture itself.  He often speaks of the cultural relevance of stevia

Building a strong culture within the company and among the team is also crucial to Aaron. And it’s more important than any of the standard metrics that businesses use to measure success. Aaron’s future goals don’t have to do with revenue, new item launches, or any other standard business areas, because he believes that when you focus on the customers and the internal culture, company success will follow. 

What New Leaders Need to Know

What’s the most important thing about starting an E-Commerce business? Testing and learning.

To Aaron the number one thing to know is that you have the potential to make a decision, try it out, and then pivot to try something new. In fact, he recommends it. Fail and keep failing until you figure it out and that’s something you can do with E-Commerce that’s just not possible with standard retail.

Where E-Commerce gives you the opportunity to test and learn and pivot within 2-4 weeks, the same strategy in retail could take a year or more. And that could cost a whole lot of money as well. But with E-Commerce you have so much more opportunity and potential, as long as you’re open to the information that comes in and you’re willing to keep adjusting as necessary.