Thea Green: The beauty entrepreneur behind Nails.INC

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0:47Nail polish is like, which is what I've always liked about it. It's nicely frivolous that you go, oh, I'm going out on Saturday night. I just really want to have a color that matches this. So I want to buy a little pick me up treat for my friend. I'm going to buy a present for my daughters. It's a very joyful element of beauty. if a woman regularly at home does her own manicure in like 10-15 minutes why can't a professional do it the same amount of time everyone was always challenging our numbers I think it takes you a little bit of experience before you go actually I'd like to see your numbers when I sit in any meetings I only ever think about the customer I just literally think about the end consumer and how she will experience a product and I'm customer obsessed

1:35I'm Dougal Shaw and this is the Business Leader Podcast, where we look at the stories and strategies behind modern businesses. Today I've come to the head offices of Nails Inc. in Mayfair, London. It's a bustling office filled to the brim with cosmetics. I'm here to meet Thea Green, the founder of Nails Inc. and one of the UK's most successful entrepreneurs in the beauty and self-care space. Her background is in journalism, but she's spotted a gap in the fashion market back in the late 1990s, and she grabbed her opportunity. She first made her name with trendy nail bars, but these days the business is a global retail empire, famous for its collaborations with brands and innovative nail products.

2:16I wanted to find out from Thea Green what lessons she's learned about leadership while scaling her business.

2:28Okay, a disclaimer at the start. I've never had a manicure or a pedicure. I have two teenage daughters and so I have an insight through them. But there may be some questions that would kill my ignorance. But actually, ignorance is kind of at the heart of the story because it begins in America, doesn't it, in the 90s? You discovering that the British audience was ignorant of an opportunity. Definitely. So in the US, people got their nails done really regularly. back in the 90s they would get their nails done typically once a week once a fortnight in the UK when we did panel testing with British women they'd really only ever got their nails done never or for their wedding day you know it was really really rare it was also seen as something that was very kind of upmarket luxury it would take a long time you would get it done in a spa whereas in particularly in New York at the time they were sort of upstairs very quick you know 30 minute services in and out more of a kind of lunchtime or after work fix so quite a different philosophy to what was here.

3:24And at the time when you spot this in the 1990s, you're a journalist, you're at Tatler, you've been at the Mail as well. So how do you go from a business idea to actually putting it into action? So I was super young, I was in my early 20s. I'd literally gone straight from London College of Fashion to I'd worked at the Daily Mail whilst I was a student and then worked full time at Tatler. There was a lot of the same team that was ex-male there. And I literally went straight from uni into that role, was there for a few years, had the idea for Nails Inc. I didn't have any business experience at all.

3:54The only thing that I had is, I guess, in magazines, what I realized was a little bit of a skill was that you are constantly reading and predicting what women will want next and working very far ahead. And you're just used to kind of working on trends, working on what consumers want, delivering it to them in that right time, and almost also sort of storytelling and telling people what they might want and why they might want it and having that hook. And so I think that kind of marketing branding piece that you learn in a magazine, which you don't really even think of as particularly marketing and branding, but it is because every day you're telling the consumer what to wear, what to eat, what beauty, you know, what's happening and how to live their lives actually was quite an interesting way in terms of creating the storyline behind Nails Inc.

4:40But no business experience in terms of raising money, managing a budget, writing a business plan, you know, meeting with investors, none of that experience, no operational experience in terms of HR and operationally, you know, kind of creating a product and getting the product to shelf. So no experience in any of those areas. So tell me about opening the first nail bar in London. Were you nervous? I think, you know, like there's something about age, isn't it? That's just, I see it now in my kids because I've got my eldest one is 21. There's something about actually being in your early 20s. That sort of naivety is bliss.

5:15I've spoken about it with lots of other founders who say, if you were doing it again now, I'm like 49. If you were going again and setting up a new business now, almost all the lessons that you've learned can come up with it. You can come up with a hundred reasons why something won't work. And actually you just need to start. And I think there's something great about being in your early 20s that you just start and then you move the business and pivot if you are entrepreneurial you keep pivoting around the business and what the plan needs to be and I think I just had that attitude all the way through almost the more you know the harder it feels to to now pivot but I think certainly back then it was very easy just to keep going well that's not working to try something different or well they don't you know if you know if we went to see a retailer and they weren't excited about the business we were like well they don't know yet they don't get it yet we'll need to go again you know we'll need to go and see them again so they really understand it rather than ever thinking there was anything you know kind of wrong with the concept.

6:05It was more, well, they don't get it yet. So let's educate them very much that magazine background. Well, they don't know it yet. We've spotted this trend. It's ahead of where everyone else is. Let's explain it and educate everyone so that they understand it too, and they want it. But yeah, I think the naivety was quite blissful, really. Did the first nail bar work or did you have to kind of make changes? Well, it worked in the fact, it depends on what you say works. So it was not profitable. So it didn't work in terms of profit. It worked in terms of it was queued out and there was, you know, kind of media and TV, you know, companies coming down to film women that were, it was in South Malton Street in Mayfair and there were women all the way up South Malton Street queuing for this 15 minute manicure on their lunch break.

6:47So it was a phenomenon and it definitely was successful in terms of the crowd came. And the other thing that the crowd did was kind of business plan one said that you would have your nails done and you would buy a product afterwards. And very quickly we got product into people's hands, which quickly We built loyalty because the product was very high quality, a very nice like kind of trend setting product. So we built that loyalty very early on. But what we didn't have was a financial model, you know, kind of paying Mayfair rents on the whole point of Nails Inc. It was, you know, kind of really affordable, low price, you know, come in and out in 15 minutes.

7:22It had peaks, you know, so at lunchtime, it would be absolutely queued out. You couldn't fit people in. After work, it would be the same. but you know between kind of 10 and 12 in the morning it would be very quiet so we had to work out the model to do things to encourage people to come in in those quiet times and that took time and that you know building that loyal customer that knew it was probably a nicer experience to come in at 10 and you get more attention at 10 than you would at 12 or 1 but that took time to to come and actually very quickly we moved into a department store model where you had that constant flow where it would be busy at 10 10 30 in the morning rather than just at lunchtime.

7:59Because I think being on a kind of coffee bar street like South Malton Street, it actually had, I think it had one of the first Starbucks and it definitely had the first Coffee Republic. So I remember the founder, Sahara at the time, she was new to Coffee Republic and I was new to Nails Inc. So it was definitely like a coffee buzzy place that you would nip to at lunchtime, which meant it had that kind of trade. And department stores were different in the fact that it just had a constant flow. So once we moved into department stores, the kind of traffic element was much better. And also really just the overall P &L because you weren't paying rent on an entire building and all the hassles and things that can go wrong, literally like owning a house.

8:35And it's like owning a house on steroids. Everything that can go wrong in a building that happens versus being in a department store where you automatically get quite a lot of support. There's a lot of things that are paid for by the department store that you don't have to then financially cover. I mean, another key thing is hiring the right kind of people for it. And I know from speaking to Marcia Kilgore or Jane Wervan of Dermalogica that it's all about the soft skills in these kind of treatment type businesses. Even though yours was, you know, 15 minutes quite fast, did you still have to search out that quality in people?

9:07Definitely, definitely. And also traditional manicurists didn't think you could do a manicure in 15 minutes. So my kind of, you know, kind of initial conversations with manicurists was, well, if it takes an hour for a professional to do it, 45 minutes for a professional to do it. But if a woman regularly at home does her own manicure in like 10, 15 minutes, why can't a professional do it the same amount of time that a woman at home is doing? Because women at home, that's what they do. You know, it's like doing your hair. You do your hair yourself, you know, 15 minutes, half an hour. You might go and spend an hour in the salon.

9:36Women are very good at doing those kind of like quick fix and finding like, you know, good little ways of doing things and cutting corners themselves. So why couldn't you do a professional grade manicure if you're a professional? so I think it was kind of turning the industry on the head because it had always been the pampering of a manicure was all about the fact it did take an hour and you had a a paraffin wax like a hot wax on your hands and then you had a huge massage and it went on and it was treatment and it was like a one-off experience rather than actually the thing about a manicure is the end result is do your nails look great you know do you have painted nails that match your outfit and do you feel more confident rather than um the calming experience of a manicure which is sort of two very different concepts um so yeah it took time but it definitely took time to we were very lucky actually the first team in south malton street were excellent i think we did a huge amount of training with them like masses um and we definitely always kind of took the kind of cream from the crop as well in terms of there were people that would come on to those training sessions that didn't make it um and very quickly in south malton street we had an upstairs floor that we turned into a training center so that trained all the other teams for future stores and a lot of our stores early on were all around that West One area because we opened up in then Fenix, House of Fraser, Debenhams, Selfridges.

10:46So we ended up with a kind of, you know, a good collection where all the teams could support each other. I think in terms of scaling at this point, I think you got some seed money, but were you using institutional investment to scale or how were you funding it? Just individual, you know, seed investors, you know, some family investment, And some friends of friends, you know, I think once you start going out and raising money, I know now being sort of on the other side of people coming in and asking me to invest, other people will, you know, it might not be right for me, but I'll very often say to someone, this probably isn't for me, but I know another founder who would love your, you know, who loves your space, who'd be interested in meeting with you.

11:22And you very quickly get that network. And I think at any one time, there are people that have probably, you know, recently got a capital gain for some reason and are looking to invest and particularly like certain sectors. So for us, we definitely appealed to people that liked beauty or liked retail. I think we also appealed to people that sort of felt like they were missing out on anything US. Like if you hadn't backed the kind of coffee shop craze and you wanted to get that little piece of New York that was happening in London, people liked it for that reason because it felt very, it was a time when things from New York really, you know, did very well in London.

11:53And it felt like a piece of that New York culture. Even though you weren't.com, certainly in the 90s. And that was the year. So we were 1999. 1999 so everyone that we were raising against every we did actually go and meet with um p mvc and it was too early and and actually the whole experience wasn't great um versus individual investors but everybody that we were talking to was like just rename it nailsinc.com we were like but it's a service the whole point of this is like you know and i guess we were almost the antithesis for what was going on the rest of the industry we were going no we're going to have people sitting down and we're going to touch and talk to consumers in an era of dot-com starting um what investors did like about that was it felt quite bulletproof in terms of dot-com, whereas typical retail, people were nervous about it, whereas obviously you can't do a manicure online.

12:35So I think people also felt there was protection in the fact that in the event that the internet became what it obviously then did become, there was protection that actually services would still continue and people would still need that touch.

12:50And you were saying that it was more efficient to be based in the department stores but what was your strategy around scaling through the stores did you have to find them persuade them to get a concession there or you don't we were I think incredibly lucky so Fenix came and saw us in South Malton Street there was an amazing woman there at the time called Jill Streeter who was you know kind of I guess something from sort of like Devil Wears Prada in terms of you know how she ran Fenix and she was like a tyrant in the most beautiful way she was so elegant so stylish she was absolutely like a stickler for detail she ran retail like you know an old school retailer and she taught us a lot of lessons very harshly very early on um in terms of just like the standards that we needed to be keeping and you know we thought we had absolutely excellent standards you're then in a department store and you know somebody turns up you know on the shop floor one minute late and you know that they don't get to come back the next day so it was very very strict in fact you were not you know you were late if you were on time I think everybody had to be all the team had to be you know they're sort of 15 minutes before you know they were due to start at 10, 10 meant 9.45.

13:51Whereas I think we probably gave people, you know, their pattern to say you're from 10 to 1. And very quickly, it was like, okay, 10 to 1 is not 10 to 1. 10 to 1 is late. That means you need to be on the shop floor by like, anything later than 9.45 means you probably won't get to come back tomorrow. She ran a tight ship. She ran an amazing tight ship. I have to say, in terms of people that influenced me, I look back on her and just go, she was phenomenal. She actually loved the Nails Inc team. She brought us into department stores. She brought actually quite a lot of brands into Fenix. Fenix at the time was very innovative in terms of bringing brands, you know, from all over the world in first.

14:23She was an incredibly creative person, but I do remember, you know, if she sent you a message saying you need to come in and meet, I remember feeling like a small school child and actually being frightened, you know, standing outside her office and knowing I was going to be in trouble for something. And I was only ever in trouble because we were running service people. It was a completely different operation. She loved the business and she loved the fact it brought theater and drama and excitement to the department store but it was also we were employing you know relatively young teams probably on their first and second job whereas typically the teams in fenix would have been 40 year old plus very experienced customer service um you know retail account managers you know that that had worked for a brand for a very long time and then been promoted to fenix bond street we were taking people from beauty college and putting them on the shop floor in Fenix Bond Street you know and it was yeah it was really challenging in terms of getting everything right but her standards taught me a lot and I think on the back of doing a great job in Fenix and landing it we obviously rolled out into further Fenix stores but we also then won House of Fraser, Debenhams.

15:29Debenhams was a particularly supportive partner because they wanted us out in so many stores. We did a deal with them where they part-funded, you know, some of our growth because there was just no way we could open in 30 stores, you know, in the space of a few years. It was too fast investment for us. But actually they were incredibly supportive. Again, they saw the theatre that this brought to a ground floor of a beauty hall. And I guess no one told us, but I guess department stores even then were nervous about their future with dot-com. And they were seeing the numbers dwindling a little bit.

16:02Probably took a few years of us being in the business before we started asking. Everyone was always challenging our numbers. I think it takes you a little bit of experience before you go, actually, I'd like to see your numbers. You're challenging us. I'd like to see, you know, like your, let's see your footfall numbers. And the footfall numbers, obviously, in department stores because of dot-com were starting to decline. So anything they could get into the shop floors that were theatre and activity. But also, if you go to a department store four times a year, suddenly if you want to go to Nails Inc once a week or once a fortnight, it's a very different customer you're bringing in.

16:32So I guess we also realized how powerful we were in department stores after a few years that we were bringing in this traffic, this regular customer, and then they would always shop. You know, you don't come into Fenix, get your nails done and then walk out the door. You're going to buy, you know, a lipstick from Chanel or go downstairs and have a coffee or a lunch. You know, you're going to make a bit of a time of it. And so I think we realised we could actually probably negotiate back with the department stores and ask for some better terms that made the business more profitable, because service is a tough business to make money in, but also some funding in terms of growing more department stores faster.

17:08These days, Nails Inc. has a turnover of around$40 million. But it doesn't have any nail bars left. The last one in Selfridges closed recently. So all its revenues come from its retail products like nail varnish, nail art packs and gel effect polishes. It even has sub-brands like Holler and Glow, which allows it to reach those of smaller budgets. So how did the business idea evolve from those revolutionary nail bars to a consumer product business, much of it in the United States? So the product came out right from day one. So when we first opened South Moulton Street, that was kind of one of the financial challenges.

17:45And I guess you just don't know it until you do it. I remember standing in the stock room in South Malton Street, and I think we had 50 plus colors. And there must have been a minimum quantity of either 5 ,000 or 10 ,000 per bottle. And I remember standing in the stock room and you couldn't move for boxes and thinking, oh, good God. I mean, it will take us 10 years to sell this polish. You know, like you're just doing the maths and going, OK, 50 people are coming into the store a day or 30 people coming to the store a day. Even if they did that, you know, seven days a week, which they don't because Mondays are quiet and Sundays are quiet.

18:16I remember just thinking this is app. If every single person buys a nail polish, this is 10 years worth of stock. So that put the pressure on fairly early on in terms of, A, we need to get this into more stores because we have invested in this stock. And it's currently hitting the P &L of one store, which is ludicrous. The department store model worked even better because people were used to buying beauty products in a department store. So the fact that you then sold them a nail polish at the end of the service for them to top up their manicure at home felt very natural in department store. And you do need to buy the color after you've had a manicure done.

18:49That's actually the joy of nail polishes. There almost is no point having a manicure done and then not taking the color, which really makes it a very nice friendship relationship when you're talking to a customer because you don't need to cold sell the product. You need that product afterwards. I don't really think what else there is in beauty where you would need it, but definitely after a manicure, you would need the top up product. and then we started to do deals outside of um the nail bars really so it's in the uk qvc in the uk was huge for us and really helped us in terms of brand storytelling um growth of the business john lewis um across all their stores and then um sephora in the us we did henry bendel initially actually as a pop-up in in the states and then we got a deal with sephora in the us i don't think we could really believe our luck that sephora in the us was sort of taking this you know small British UK brand.

19:37And that really was an amazing changing point for the brand. Everyone says, you know, the US is kind of 10 times bigger, it's probably 100 times bigger in the US in terms of beauty. So it's just a very, very different model and allowed the business to really invest in lots of different ways from having that US, that business. And as you mentioned, we all know department stores have, many of them have closed down. It's a kind of dying model. But again, you've had to adapt, change. We have no now bars now. We are a fully product business. I think services belongs to someone that really just wants to focus on services.

20:10You know, like I think we had an amazing time for years, really, really servicing and looking after those customers. And my golly, it's hard work. It's like running restaurants. It is so intense. And so, you know, especially when you get it right and you've got the volume, you know, really high, it's a very, very challenging business and today you know for many reasons it is far more profitable and a much higher margin business to be in a product business so from the financials absolutely stack up in a product business versus services our model was in department stores department stores as you say on are you know few and far between um certainly struggling certainly less volume certainly you wouldn't walk into a department store on a wednesday at 10 a.m and see the traffic we used to see.

20:52And because the service was always so affordable, those economics just don't really work. It needs to be a really busy department store. And actually, there are a handful of really busy department stores left, probably in the world, nevermind the UK. So yeah, we've absolutely pivoted. Product was always going to be the future of the business. I mean, the services we set up as a touchpoint to engage with customers, for the customers to be loyal with us, never with the intention of closing services down for sure. I think it was always, you know, an integral part of the business plan, but the future and, you know, the, the end goals of the business were always relying on product in every way.

21:32And obviously you can have a global business selling product in a way that, you know, it's so complicated to even run. It's fairly complicated to run nail bars in Glasgow, nevermind running them overseas. You know, it's, it's, it really is an all consuming business. And I think it belongs to people that are in that early stages of their service journey when they are obsessing about customer service and spending time on customers, not a business like Nails Inc. that is now, you know, stocked in thousands of stores all over the world, who is making sure that our customers get their products on time, wherever they're buying them.

22:04I think you really do need to focus. If you're a service business, you need to live and breathe service all day long. Presumably you had a choice as well between selling through retailers or going direct to consumer with that question. Well, we probably weren't a direct-to-consumer timing, right? We were in 1999. So actually, beauty really didn't take off on the web for many years after that. So we were never looking in 1999 as a direct-to-consumer model. I mean, later, you know. Later, yes. But I guess we'd already done, you know, we've been a bricks business for a long time. We were talking about that recently.

22:36It's kind of odd, isn't it, to then pivot and become direct-to-consumer when consumers have had you so available in their stores. nail polish is also not such a considered purchase it tends to be something you kind of pick up as you're doing other beauty products you know skincare is obviously very considered you're you know going back nail polish is like which is what I've always liked about it it's nicely frivolous that you go oh I'm going out on Saturday night I just really want to have a color that matches this or I want to buy a little pick-me-up treat for my friend or I'm going to buy present for my daughters it's always had probably like lipstick this really like joyful frivolous nature which is one of the things I like about it is it's kind of, it's got a fashion element to it rather than just beauty.

23:16It doesn't take itself too seriously, except customers, you know, really want it to kind of last and perform. But I think that it's a very joyful element of beauty. So no, we didn't really have the opportunity of direct to consumer. We do obviously now have a very strong DTC business and also a strong Amazon business. And then with our key retailers like target.com and walmart.com in the US and super drug here but um yeah we are very much you know in mass retail and the other very big change that's happened in i don't know the last five seven years is the explosion of social media yeah the rise of influencers that must have completely changed the way you reach your audience and find new customers absolutely and we absolutely love that we were very early adopters in terms of being you know kind of socially savvy and social first um i remember actually years ago doing a blogger event in South Malton Street.

24:08You know, everyone called them bloggers then rather than for this blogger event. And we had bloggers and press there together. And I remember our PR company saying, you've done the unspeakable. You shouldn't have press and bloggers in the same room. And I was a bit like, this sounds ridiculous to me. I'm just going to ignore that as a piece of advice because I don't really understand. You know, everyone's writing about your product. But there was a real snobbery against, you know, kind of bloggers and then obviously influencers at a point in time. And, you know, if you look at it now, all those journalists that were probably snobby about it are all in their own right.

24:37Influencers and bloggers or writers, you know, they're writing online. But I do remember at the time sort of, you know, my PR saying to me, this will kill you. You really shouldn't be doing this. And I was like, I think I'm going to be OK. I feel like we're not going to hold back the Internet. So I think we're going to keep going with, you know, making sure we're socially savvy. But, yeah, we just launched a product recently called Topless, which is a nail polish where you don't need a base coat or top coat and everything for that campaign. campaign was online it was all you know socially driven and it was a really joyful campaign in the fact it was you know women not necessarily beauty women just regular women using this in their normal day-to-day life because nail polish is historically you know quite a slow process you do a base coat you wait for it to dry you do a color you wait for it to dry you do a top coat you wait for it to dry so most women will complain about it's annoying it's not just instantaneous it's like other products in beauty it's not like lipstick where you're done in 60 seconds um and the joy of topless is you don't need a base coat or a top a top coat so you can throw it into your makeup bag put it in your rucksack and we had women you know on the diving board doing it you know all these kind of amazing athletes doing it and it's just brilliant to see it like out in the wild because it's a really it's something that probably a corporate beauty company wouldn't do because it sort of goes against the idea of can't you still ever want a base coat a color and a top coat and we went well can't you just get it right for the customer like if the customer can do her nails now in seconds and she can do it anywhere you know in your school bag anywhere on the go isn't that won't we be successful for just delivering the consumer what actually it's like moving it forward so we took a bit of a risk because you're not selling treatments at that time you're not selling base coat and top coat you're just selling colors but um many people buy you know two or three shades into it because it's so easy to use another thing you do is you do these um let's say eye-catching collaborations and there's been things like cheese flavor cheese smelling ones and um is it fruit loops the cereal yeah i was thinking is that partly because you're you're thinking about social media and what's going to become a meme or get shared is that part definitely it's definitely um yeah there's sometimes that they're sort of they're the unexpected collaborations so the cheese one was belvita which is that huge belvita brand in the us you know it's kind of in everybody's um fridge in the us and that's um you know cheese scented nail polish it it hit kind of all the major tv shows in the us and obviously people love it and hate it and people are velveta fans and it just got a huge amount of attention and it's just about putting the the brand on the map and we've done those things you know really strategically to then go you know you're in the middle of having a conversation with walmart and suddenly you know the walmart buyer is watching tv and she is seeing on the today show nails inc velveta and nails inc is a tiny uk brand how are we going to get the attention of you know the walmart buyer and suddenly it's on her you know on her you know kind of top sofa tv show in the us so we've definitely done things that are quirky to grab headlines you know to grab social attention to make them go viral um belvita went very very viral the cheese one um fruit loops we did magnum ice cream chocolate scented um they actually sell these sales products in their own right though they sell us products in their own right they're often sold on our website the mcdonald's collaboration was sold through Target stores in the US.

27:47So yeah, I mean, they go to, they absolutely, they go to retail. Yeah, we sell the products and we sell out of them all really quickly. They're always limited edition and they're usually just around for days or weeks. I didn't know you did a McDonald's one. What was the kind of theme? McDonald's one we had, we had, you know, like really cute little McDonald's Happy Meal star packaging, a little burger packaging set. Yeah, it had its own, had its own like stand in Target stores in the US. It was fantastic. Last year, Nails Inc. was acquired by private equity firm Pacific World Corporation in a reported£30 million deal.

28:20But Thea Green has continued to lead the company. I wanted to know how she has evolved as a person and leader over the course of her time with the business. Your business has been going for more than two decades now, which is great to be going that long. But it starts with seeing an idea in America and translating it to the UK. That's the opportunity. then you've had to evolve a lot as well in terms of starting as more as a service with the nail bars moving into department stores now it's more retail it's collab social media it's been non-stop evolution yeah one how does that feel from your point of view as the founder who's stayed with the business because you know not everyone stays with it and also where do you think it goes next i think it's a roller coaster journey being a founder so i think being a founder and going through, you know, you'll have those tough times where business, you know, businesses, businesses don't go forwards for 25 years, like you have those, you know, those years where it goes backwards.

29:13And so I think that it is, I don't know, I'm sure that's the difference of people that, you know, carry on and build their businesses rather than business, you know, people that fail, you have to have that stamina to keep going, pivot, that worked, that didn't work. Okay, keep that, keep that messaging going, because that's true to who we are, we can't ever lose that at the same time as, okay, that we need to move on from this. And you're constantly questioning and analyzing. I do think if you've got the customer at the forefront of your mind all day, like when I sit in any meetings, I only ever think about the customer.

29:47I just literally think about the end consumer and how she will experience a product. And I'm customer obsessed. And when I meet other founders that I, you know, when I admire their brands, I think it's the same thing. You have to just be obsessed with that end user and you just have to keep on thinking of her or him in your mind and what they need and why you're still doing what you're doing. And then it also, it teaches you, I think if you're customer obsessed, it teaches you to also go, I don't care about that. So let's stop talking about it. It's not relevant to them. It's something that we care about because we're, you know, nail geeks and we've got really into it.

30:19No one cares about that. They just want to know, you know, we could talk about the formulation and all the kind of chemistry behind it's topless, which is the one step, or we could just go, hi, you don't need a base coat and a top coat. It's the first one step nail polish. There's like a thousand things we could say about it. Actually, that's what the consumer cares about. So I think, you know, you have to have that stamina and that energy to pivot. And I'm sure that's why a lot of people run a business for a period of time and then don't, you know, longer or, you know, why people have become serial entrepreneurs and want to do it again and again and again and why people don't want to do that again.

30:50Yeah, I think it's a ride. Would you ever have been tempted to exit and just leave with a nice amount of money or did you have to keep going? So we've sold the business recently. So we sold the business nearly two years ago to a private equity fund, a beauty company called Pacific World in L.A. that are backed by Prospect Capital in New York. So we sold it two years ago and I'm still actively involved and I've just signed up for a new contract. So I'm still continuing to be actively involved in the business. I think there's still a lot to be done. And I think, you know, our growth in the U.S. in particular is really exciting.

31:22And we've just literally scratching the surface and building a brand in America is a long, big job. and we're, you know, I don't know, a few steps into that, but there's still a lot more to be done. So I think whilst there still feels more to be done, then not going anywhere yet. And the last question, if you look back to late 90s, what's the one piece of kind of great business advice you could give your younger self with the wisdom you now have from doing the journey? I think I'd worry a lot less. I really do. I don't worry now. I don't get angry. I don't worry I don't stress about anything I generally just go when things when you know something the point of business is bad things happen all the time in your business like it absolutely good things happen all the time too bad things happen as an entrepreneur you've only focused on the bad things because you need to fix them somebody else is celebrating in the office about the great thing your job as a founder is only ever to be focusing on the bad thing um but I now will focus on the bad thing but it doesn't stress me out worry me I don't haven't had a sleepless night about my business in a decade.

32:24I just don't worry about any of it. I know that everything gets resolved. I know the thing that I'm most worried about, which is always something absolutely ludicrous, is so unlikely to happen. It's ridiculous. And I just know that, you know, you keep that consumer in mind, you keep moving on with a better product, a better formulation. And, you know, you, if you keep doing that, and you keep delivering a great product, I don't think there's actually very much to worry about. So I think I would tell myself to relax. I would say you'll be absolutely fine. Relax. I heard you say in another interview, actually, that it's almost like your body gets used to stress.

33:01And so you deal with it differently. I don't know if that comes, I'm the same age as you. I don't know if that comes with age or it's because you're an entrepreneur who's just had the constant stress, you get used to it. Yeah. I mean, I think that, I think I lived in sort of that fight or flight mode for so long, which you do. And actually it's funny because I'm now part of various different founder groups and I can see some of the people that are early on that anxiety and that stress and that kind of their in fight and flight. So I think you're right. I think part of it is age. I'm sure having, you know, kids and just, I guess, realizing what's important in life, you know, kids, older parents, you probably just relax in lots of ways that, you know, you realize that, you know, it's nail polish after all.

33:42It's all okay. But I also think it's experience in terms of business, which is most things that go wrong now in my business, I've seen a version of it before. It's not new topics. I think in the early days, you know, I said to you, I was from a magazine background. I just knew nothing about anything. So everything was a lesson and everything was a hard lesson because to be honest, I got everything wrong until I knew how to get it right. And so it was just a brutal first couple of years of whenever you thought you'd got your head above water, there'd be a new challenge that you didn't know and something else that you'd made a mistake on.

34:16And I see that in other founders today. But I think overall, if the sales are moving in the direction, the product is great, and the consumer is happy, then like you take the fires and the little wars all the time. And that is running a business that are fires and little wars every day. And that's just that's it.

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