Female Founder Leadership | Emma Woods, Chair of Ancient+Brave, ex CEO of wagamama

0:00Emma Woods:Don't wait to feel confident. You know, don't wait because actually what you've got to do is you've got to stretch yourself. And it's by putting your hand up and saying, I want that challenging assignment that confidence will grow.

0:14Emma Woods is a senior female leader in CPG who I really admire. She has a portfolio of board positions. She's chair of Agent and Brave. And I asked her to come on the show today so I could explore and learn what it means to have senior female leaders on your board. a CPG company that can really bring something different. What I love about this episode is exploring what it means to have a growth board rather than just, you know, a board for the sake of it. We learn so much about what it means to have confidence. In fact, Emma has a podcast called Conversations in Confidence, which she's launched on YouTube, which is highly worth watching.

0:50Dive into this. I think you're really going to get loads out of it, particularly around who you want to have on your board and what kind of board you want to have.

1:01Emma Woods:Emma Woods, welcome to Brand Growth Heroes. How are you doing? I am very good, Fee. Very good. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you so much. It is great to have you on. Look, I was really delighted when Kate from Ancient and Brave introduced us in Edinburgh last September. I think it was last September. Yeah, it was at the Female Founders event, wasn't it? It was. It was, which was a really, really great event. it's not very often that I personally have the opportunity to meet someone who has been on such an incredible career trajectory starting in Unilever a bit like myself I was in Nestle but you made it all the way through the top you then you know took on some very senior marketing director roles in some really big food companies and entertainment companies and then you went on to become CEO of Wagamama isn't that right and then you are now a portfolio chair and board director of some incredible, fast-growing, high-scaling CPG businesses, but also some FTSE, what is it, 200, 100?

2:02Emma Woods:Well, I sit on a FTSE 250 business, but as the REMCO chair, not as the chair. Not as the chair. Okay, okay, brilliant. I thought it would be absolutely brilliant to understand what it takes for a woman in business to get to those very top positions, like what kind of traits and strengths and powers inside do you need to be able to run businesses like that and then also sit on the boards of those companies. And one of the things I'd love to explore for our listeners is what does a really great board do versus say a board that's just like nominally, oh, we've got a board because we feel like we have to have a board.

2:39And what difference does having women on a board do for the company? You know, these are all the kind of things that I personally, because I haven't had, you know, years and years of experience, as you have being, say, for example, a chair on a board, I'd love to explore that personally, you know. So start, maybe take us back to the beginning. Tell us about, you know, very briefly about your career in Unilever and then how you got into the very senior roles in food service in Wagamama and all of that.

3:06Emma Woods:Yeah. OK, well, my, I feel like a bit of an imposter on your podcast because I'm, I mean, the real heroes are the founders, and I'm definitely in a situation now where I'm trying to support founders. So let me start by saying that. My career, I did psychology at university and really stumbled into marketing because I was fascinated by how consumers change behaviour. And actually, it's very difficult to change consumer behaviour because we're kind of hardwired to sort of think the same and behave the same. But I'm really interested in that. So the only career option that felt sensible after university was marketing, perhaps a bit like you.

3:47Emma Woods:And then ended up in this incredible sort of school of marketing at the time, which was Unilever. And lots of great people have come out of Unilever. Dave Lewis, who now leads Diageo, was sort of one of the cadre of Unilever marketers, a whole host of brilliant marketers. And also it was interesting at the time because people thought they were going to be in Unilever forever. there was a real coaching culture and I think that's something that I benefited from so I went through Unilever and did lots and lots of interesting roles and they moved you around reasonably fast so some of the most formative experiences for me in Unilever were at the end of my career when I actually got sent to work in Mexico and I was running a bit of the skincare division for Unilever and what was interesting about being in Mexico at the time versus being in food, I'd always worked in food before, in Europe was food in Europe was growing at, I don't know, somewhere between two and 5%, pretty slow growth.

4:45Emma Woods:Whereas when you went to a region like Latin America, you know, it was at least sort of, it was a double digit. And so it was much more of a kind of land grab mentality. And it was a case of it, it wasn't a question of whether you were going to grow, it was a question of whether you're going to lose share. And you just had to move much faster you had to innovate without kind of heaps of research you had to use your intuition you had to inspire teams and I just I came alive in this sort of high growth market and so when I got back from that experience I just thought I need to work in higher growth environments and so I moved for the second chunk of my executive life into working essentially for private equity businesses trying to drive first restaurants and then leisure concepts like Merlin Entertainment.

5:34Emma Woods:So I worked in Pizza Express for a very long time, then went to work for Merlin and then ended up coming back to Wagamama in a chief growth officer role and was fortunate enough to get promoted to CEO when the business was sold. The CEO at the time then sort of steps aside. So yeah, that was executive life. And then the third tranche of my career has been to say, well, okay, you know, how can I now sit on a number of different businesses and help other people grow and other brands grow? And that's what I've been doing over the last, I guess it's now over five years, but I'm really enjoying it.

6:19Welcome to Brand Growth Heroes, the leading podcast for the founders of Challenger grocery brands. I'm your host, Fiona Fitz. My 25 years at global giants such as Nestle and challenger brands such as Goo Chocolate Puds, Chobani and Strong Roots, as well as coached to over 400 scaling brands, means I have the experience to ask the questions that truly matter and get you the insight that will inspire you to think differently and drive serious growth for your brand.

6:50So let's talk about that then, you know, the role of your role but the role of a board of a fast-growing company what role does that play

6:59Emma Woods:for the founder well I think you have to decide when it's useful for you to have a board or even to have a divisors um and it's probably not right at the start but I you know it is as you still it will be as you take on investment and actually as you I think probably when you're into sort of years three four five if you're still in high growth and you're having to make some sort of quite big decisions about which markets uh what size team what investment strategy you're going to you're going to take i think it is very useful to have a board um so i joined ancient and brave when kate who you've talked about and talked to took on investment from piper she essentially she run the business around her kitchen table very successfully for about, I guess, probably about five years by then, although she would say the first year and a half, she was kind of on her own.

7:53Emma Woods:And, you know, at that stage, she wasn't, didn't have a monthly cycle of board meetings. She didn't have a huge team. She was very much concentrating on a UK business. And what I think I have helped her do is just put in place, you know, some of the structures and governors that can help not slow her down, but make sure we're making the right decisions. Like what? And obviously not talking about Ancient and Brave in particular, but just what kind of structures and governance would you put in place? I think one of the challenges for perhaps the founders, but for everybody is, you know, what's the role of the board meeting?

8:29Emma Woods:And, you know, if you, I have a real belief that the board meeting should be a force for good and that people should look forward to the board meeting. And it should be, especially when you're working so fast, it should be a moment in the month where you go okay let's just step back a little and think what have we achieved what are we trying to achieve and generally if you've got great kpis that you're looking at once a month or once every six weeks you will start to see patterns that kind of um ltv it's kind of coming down or it's all churn rate what's happening there is there something going on or what's happening with our CAC or and and and you need to make sure that you're just sort of observing those you also see you know really positive movements that you can then double down on and go goodness me look at how quickly x or y is taking off have we thought about spending a bit more money on that so and the problem is in these very fast growing businesses you're moving so quickly and you're looking at numbers so constantly probably most of the people listening to this sort of sit on daily apps that you don't see that and the point of the board meeting on the board that moment in the month is to go okay where are we and then once a year you should at least once a year you kind of go you know are we strategically heading in the right direction i think there's a role for a a good board to help a founder sort of reflect on that so yeah so i think a bit of structure is when it's where is at the point that the business decides it'd be really useful to have perhaps a little bit more structure and there's probably more people.

10:02I think it's important as well to differentiate between commercial performance review every month and the board review because you'll be looking at different things, right, at different levels.

10:12Emma Woods:I don't know necessarily. I would agree with you. I mean, surely, in a really big business, if you take any of the sort of the FTSE boards, there will also be an executive committee meeting that's going on once a month and then the board might happen sort of once every two months. But in small businesses, you don't really have the luxury of having a double running. And I think the board should feel like an extension almost of the CEO or the founder's team. You know, they're the team. The difference I'm trying to make for the listeners is for those people out there who don't have a board, they're not at the stage having a board, they are having a meeting once a month or, you know, probably a bit more often where they're looking at their sales, their marketing KPIs, right?

10:55but they may not be. They're in it. They're thinking about the next listing. They're thinking about the next bucket of growth. They might be looking by say last 12 weeks. They mightn't be looking ahead for the next year. They mightn't be looking at capital resource allocation. They mightn't be looking at people. They might be just looking at sales and marketing. And I suppose what I was trying to do is almost raise their eyes up to say there's a place at a certain period of time a certain stage of growth as a place to be looking almost in a more mature more strategic fashion at more than just your sales figures and your marketing figures that I think that's the

11:32Emma Woods:point absolutely yeah no I I mean I'm a really big believer or okay gets this in the air in the sort of concept of a vital five okay tell us about your vital five then actually um Alan Layton taught me when I was working for him at Wagamama and he's like really organizations need to obsess about five things really obsessed and in Wagamama obviously one of them was people happiness and he would often and why why people happiness because in a in a leisure business or a hospitality business uh people are at the front line they drive right service service generally mps is usually a predictor of sales growth it's a predictor of sales growth because people come back it's very very very highly correlated so you know if you get and it and it works at store level so if you know you've got great experience in a store or restaurant you're likely to see people come back if you haven't and you lose it then people will will will not return so anyway he used to he used to give us a really hard time because one in our vital five we had this sort of thing about there was something about the you know the brand being having zeitgeist and being the coolest restaurant brand in the country and there was there were a couple of other um you know there was some one something about international growth and there was something about we really want to have the happiest people.

12:47Emma Woods:And he would sit there and go, OK, so what have you done every month? What have you done? I don't see it. He was really, and that was a very healthy board discussion. So I think you're right. This is great. And each business will have different vital lives. I'm thrilled to introduce Brand Growth Hero's newest partner, Jolson. Jolson is a leading B Corp certified commercial law firm that specializes in guiding the founders of scaling CPG brands. With long-term relationships with clients like Little Moons, Trip, Eat Natural, Bear, Graze and Pulsin, Jolson is also famous for advising the Innocent founders in their landmark sale to Coca-Cola.

13:28And believe it or not, they still work with the Innocent founders at Jamjar Investments today. I'm especially impressed by how Jolson sets founders up for long-term success and by their commitment to championing female founders. Recently, I asked one of Jolson's managing partners, Phil Halesmith, to talk to us about how Jolson supports female founders on their scaling journey. We're fortunate to have worked with loads of female founders who've had some very successful businesses, raised huge amounts of capital and are happy to give back. And that's part of what we're trying to do in terms of running a regular program that supports them both here in the office, but also enabling them to actually access getting VC financing.

14:06If you'd like to find out more about Jolson's female founder club, Hercules, Why not go to their website www.jolsonlaw.com or send a quick email to hello at jolsonlaw.com. Huge thanks to Brand Growth Heroes podcast sponsors, Jolson. Now let's get back to the show. What are your favorite Vital Fives? I'm sure they change by industry, but you know, if you had to pick the ones that you've seen make a big difference, or maybe ones that potentially a founder or a CEO didn't have and they weren't looking at, but it made a big difference once they started saying, okay, we'll look at that. And it actually really moved the dial a bit like what you've just talked about in Wagamama.

14:45So sorry if I'm making you repeat yourself.

14:48Emma Woods:I mean, I think one of the things with consumer businesses, you just need to be assessed about are you, your consumer penetration numbers? Are you, are you, because actually fundamentally, all of these businesses are leaky buckets. Talk about that because I don't think we talk about that enough, actually. We're not brand loyal in the way that we used to be. You know, our parents would have grown up and used the same brand of soap powder for years and years and years. But actually, we're exposed to lots and lots of brands, we're overstimulated. And I think COVID has changed sort of the whole concept of brand loyalty a little bit as well.

15:19Emma Woods:So you're always going to have people kind of coming in and then moving out of your brand. And you've got to make sure, and that's sort of inevitable, that's sort of the sort of marketing gravity, if you like. And you've got to make sure that you're doing as much as you can to both keep people and then get them coming back, but also just keep reaching new audiences. And so marketing penetration is always something that I'm fixated on in any sort of brand sort of KPI sheet. And actually, let's talk about this because I think your experience will be absolutely invaluable. When you are looking at marketing KPIs, what is on that?

15:57Now, I'm not talking about necessarily the D2C ones, which are really important, you know, but the growth, the growth performance ones. I'm talking about, you know, is it penetration? Is it awareness? Is it NPS? What are you looking at and how often?

16:09Emma Woods:Well, it would vary by business, but all of those things should feature. And I think ENPS in terms of team happiness also has to feature. OK, ENPS, employee NPS. OK. probably look at that twice a year not kind of every month but you should be looking at those things and i think that then there are some amazing tools now to measure something called well which you know when i was running business we called brand buzz i'm sure it's called something else now but you know you know is your brand being talked about okay has it got that kind of zeitgeist okay it'll be interesting to see if you agree with this because you've got lots of extensive brands but i think brands develop momentum they've got swagger you can kind of tell which brands in the marketplace at any time have got that want your brand to have that and of course there'll be moments when you sort of you dip but you've got to be fixated on are we doing enough interesting things to attract new customers and Byron Sharp who's one of the great sort of marketing theorists has this big thing about if your brand is interesting enough to attract new people it's also interesting enough to keep people so you should drive focus on driving penetration rather than loyalty because loyalty will is almost a consequence of doing things and so I'm pretty fixated on that and if I think about the times in my career when businesses I've been leading or brands I've been leading come backwards it's when penetration has come backwards when I was leading pizza express the marketing I should say of pizza express I was responsible for the heresy, which is the two for one offer.

17:36Emma Woods:And we introduced it sort of as a one-off. There was this thing called handbag.com. I remember handbag.com. Yeah, it doesn't exist anymore. But anyway, they said, would you like to do an offer? And we were really keen to get data. And they said, we'll give you the data. We had no data at the time. So we said, yeah, let's do a two for one offer on our pizza. And we'd never done anything like this. And we had queues around the block and we ran out of Coke and everyone was excited. And what was really good about the period of the early offers on Pizza Express was we brought in new people, brought in new customers who had not seen Pizza Express as a brand for them.

18:15Emma Woods:It's like it was stuffy and old fashioned. But we just did it too much. We did it far too much. We didn't think about the long term effect of that. and we degrade the brand so that by the time we'd done it for sort of two or three years you know you didn't go into pizza express unless you had an offer and actually the subsequent team you know i did quite a lot of work but then subsequent teams have been really much more thoughtful about how they use offers and the current leader of pizza express i know it's very passionate about that a lady called paula mckenzie but anyway what was interesting was you could see the penetration young new new customers in particular young people kind of going up over the initially and then the coming off looking backwards it's easy to sort of understand where we went wrong but perhaps we should have used that data more thoughtfully um that's brilliant it's a that's a great thing to share thank you and actually for anyone listening Emma has got a fabulous YouTube channel called Conversations in Confidence and you interview Paula McKenzie don't you on that and I really enjoyed that I didn't know Paula and I I really loved that interview.

19:18Really warm, really, really personable. It was a great interview.

19:22Emma Woods:Yeah, she's one of the most impressive female CEOs I know. I definitely follow her.

19:29If this episode is inspiring you to think about new ways that you can drive growth for your business, don't forget to click follow or subscribe on your favourite podcast app and even leave a review. Your small gesture has a big impact on me and my business and will be truly appreciated. Let's talk about being a female CEO. I understand that the macro trends are that, you know, it is much easier or it is. There are far more men in senior roles and on boards than there are women. That has improved over time, but I believe it's gone backwards last year, has it a little bit?

20:03Emma Woods:If you take kind of women on boards in the UK, actually at a total level, it's really impressive. We have over 35 percent of women taking on board seats across the FTSE 350. is harder to see than the stats for private businesses because they're not kind of reported in the same way. But the sort of disappointing thing, and that really has came about through, not through the government saying you have to do this, but through a number of very impressive chairs and boards and getting together and saying that they supported this sort of 30 % movement and we're now at 35%. but the real issue is that women don't occupy the what might be called the power seats the roles that make the difference on a board so there are very few female CEOs and in the FTSE at the moment there are seven which is a real low point we were at 11 last year four women this is the FTSE 100 four women stepped back and they were all stepped down you know some of them retired but they were all replaced by men.

21:05Emma Woods:So we're at quite a low point in terms of FTSE 100, seven women in 100. The stats aren't any better across the FTSE 350. This is the same on boards. There are very few female chairs. And that's also probably the kind of key strategic role that's supporting the CEO. The sort of challenges to think through, well, why and what can we do to the pipeline to encourage more women to take on those roles. People are beginning to ask those questions. And then if you transfer that over to the sort of organisations that you support, the founders, you also see it with, there are some great female founders, but the numbers are still quite small.

21:46Emma Woods:And when they come to put their hand up and say, I want money to support my business, you know, they're still marginalised, which is, we know, and that's why great people like Debbie Walskow are chairing the Invested in Women Task Force. So there's lots of good movement in terms of saying this is an issue. but those are the numbers. But we're playing catch up basically in a big way. Yeah and my worry certainly on public boards and big company boards is actually we're not playing catch up we're going backwards. Let's talk a little bit about the structural issues you know why is it that women are not getting into those power seats I mean obviously there's the having children thing certainly you know anyone who's had children has gone backwards in their career very few people manage to stay at the same trajectory or same speed of growth that they were Is that just too simple?

22:32I mean, talk to me about what the structural issues are.

22:34Emma Woods:Well, I think at the moment in the UK, we're quite risk averse. I mean, certainly public markets aren't really working. There's not much liquidity. So what's happening? And we had a really interesting conversation with some male chairs last week, a group of us at the 30 % Club. And they said, you know, the old days when they were coming through the ranks, people took bets on people. They said, oh, you know, you're a bright 35-year-old. I'll give you a chance. Whereas actually now, because we're quite risk-averse at a macro level, you actually sort of say, well, look, I want to have somebody who's done it before.

23:10Yeah.

23:10Emma Woods:And that means they'll be older. They're likely to be male. They're likely to be white. So it's not just a female issue. So it's a much broader diversity issue. And it's the same in private markets and in private equity. If you're asking to invest other people's capital, you sort of want someone who's done it before. So you can go, it's all right. We can trust this person because they helped give a 4x return or 5x return. Let's use them. And that means that you end up with the same cycle of people going around. And it takes quite a brave person to go, do you know what? Let's use somebody from another industry.

23:45How did you manage it then? I mean, did somebody make some brave choices about you at any point?