Kim Malek
Title: Co-founder and CEO
Company: Salt & Straw
What it does: Family-run ice cream company with 25 retail shops in three states
Founded: 2011
2020 was the year that just about broke Salt & Straw co-founder and CEO Kim Malek.
“Three months into the pandemic and we were all trying to pull ourselves together and claw our way back. I called a handful of people (other CEOs) and I remember saying, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’”
At the time, all of Malek’s stores were closed. The company, amid expansion, wasn’t making any money.
“We were going to run out of money. For sure. Hard stop,” she said. “And then I had three little kids who were trying to go into online learning. My husband, who is a doctor, and I were working 24/7. So every aspect of my life was in super-charge mode and there was no safe harbor.”
See also:
For Malek, that stress manifested itself in fear. She was scared for her husband working with Covid patients, she was scared for her kids who were on their own a lot and she was scared for her hundreds of employees.
“That was the final straw for me. I can kind of manage my own fear, and my family,” she said. “But we had hundreds of employees up and down the West Coast and shouldering their fear and making sure we had a safe environment, that seemed overwhelming. I didn’t know how to do it.”
Despite being an entrepreneur, Malek doesn’t love risk, having watched her father go bankrupt owning his own company. The trauma guided how she has operated Salt & Straw, taking a cautious approach, especially around financing the business.
Malek hasn’t experienced burnout, per se. But she does have moments of being overwhelmed, and she can envision burnout on the horizon. Sometimes, it takes a good cry to get through it, she acknowledged.
Along her journey she has developed support systems, consulting a therapist and an executive coach. She also has other CEOs with whom she talks through challenges.
Malek espouses the importance of staying healthy, telling other founders to visit doctors and get necessary tests. She also promotes the importance of general wellness, in particular, sleep.
“It’s really hard to do, but over the last year and a half, especially when I am stressed out, I take extra time to get eight of hours of sleep,” she said. “And, I take my morning meetings on a walk. Really simple things like that, they can be hard to do.”
However simple her technique, it works. Salt & Straw is back on track, having added stores after the initial shut-down. It's even continued its national expansion, having opened new outlets in Florida last year.
