Georgie Coleridge Cole, Sheerluxe Founder | Building a £40M Business By Ignoring the Rules

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0:38Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Welcome back to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. Today, I am joined by one of our most requested guests that we've ever had. Georgie Coleridge-Cole has built ShearLux. ShearLux is a fashion media brand. Now, that won't surprise you to know that it's not something I know a great deal about, but it has been a phenomenal success.

1:16Over the last 20 years, she has been ahead of every single media trend, starting out with just a single email newsletter. She's been at podcasts, socials and YouTube before all the bigger established players were there. It's a remarkable story and it was great to sit down with her and talk about their recent acquisition. On to today's episode. Georgie, welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future. I can't wait to dive into this conversation. You have built an amazing kind of media business after 20 years of doing it. Five years into my journey, I'm hoping to learn quite a lot from you as well. what is it you look for when you're hiring people and how's that changed over the 20 years right in there I would say we are looking for a culture ad as well as a culture fit we are looking for it depends which team you're looking in we are looking for in the sort of journalistic sense of the world, the media sense of the word world we are looking for broadcasters, curators, and tastemakers.

2:22They're not looking for journalists that sit behind a desk. We are known for having created a business that combines the authority of a media brand with the creator economy. And our people are our biggest asset. And they are why we have this incredible engagement, loyalty trust community how we drive the results that we do so they are absolutely paramount to everything and digital media is a great business model almost 100 gross margin our costs are our offices and our people so it's a very high slowly fly quickly we're not in the hard way i have a very good chief of staff i don't take much credit for it anymore that's interesting chief of staff and business startups as well well just before we get into that role perhaps what's the um what's kind of the breakdown what like what is the organogram of sheer looks and where are the sort of different teams kind of based well in terms of teams we have an editorial team we have i mean this is how we structure we have an editorial team who write curate other tastemakers the creators some of them broadcasters, not all of them.

3:37We have a social team that shoot, edit, ideate, work very closely with that editorial team. We have a content team that builds every piece of content. So a lot of digital businesses have their team build their own content, make their own content live on whatever platform it is, whether it's a content management system or a social channel. We long ago chose to separate the two and let the curators, the tastemakers, focus on what they do best and not build the content. So we have an incredible content team that builds everything you see. They are a total machine. So how is editorial different from content then?

4:22So, I mean, this is our own terminology that sort of stuck around for a long time, but editorial, so we have a beauty editor, a wellness editor, a lifestyle editor, a homes and interiors editor and then we have a large fashion team a growing beauty team and those individuals are i'm gonna be really basic about this and we don't do this very much anymore but if we were going to say you know 10 of the best places to go on holiday this year with children yeah our one of our lifestyle editors would be curating that guide yeah Once they've done that, I mean, it goes through a huge amount of people, product editors, sub-editors, managing editors, creative directors, editors, editors.

5:09Should Arts is incredibly manual, despite this world that we live in, despite the digital world. We take our role, our curation, taste-making role, and the trust that our community place on our recommendations really, really seriously. So there's a lot of manual, several layers of manual approval to get our recommendations as strong as we possibly can. So that is done by the editorial team. And as I said, there's all these layers of approval. Once that's then approved, it goes off to the content team. It's also been through a design team. We've worked on image, layouts, artwork. That's fed into the content team as well.

5:50That's then built. so there's an editorial team a content team a social team a design team there's a marketing team there's a commercial a sales team and on and on and on so how many people are you about 100 gosh okay i think um and what what different sort of stages of that being like when did it feel sort of when was there a sort of tipping point was it around 40 or 50 or 10 i mean i i often say that the goal posts always move and in in the early days of shared arts i remember thinking when we've got 40 000 email subscribers we'll have made it and i'll be you know drinking margaritas in the bahamas still haven't still haven't done that which is probably a good thing for my health but i mean i will say just sort of a context i launched shared arts in 2007 as a website with an email connecting an audience which I work very hard to grow with the best brands and products available to buy online and as the 20 years has gone on the business has evolved as the digital world has evolved so we were the first to podcast in our category in the very very early days of podcasting we were the first really on Instagram to do what we do to to create content with creators.

7:13We had a show on YouTube before podcasts even existed. It was like a chat show. We had a behind the scenes docu-series, which was sort of docu-reality, which played a huge part in building the engagement that we have with our community. We haven't had events. We had great success on TikTok. We have a community app. We have a WhatsApp channel, et cetera. But our mission has always been the same to connect an audience with the best brands and products there are to sort of live your best life if you want to be basic about it. And that has stayed the same, as I said, the ways in which we communicate with our community.

7:48So you think of a magazine. In the old days, you sold one magazine to a community. You made money through advertising. Hopefully that advertiser got an ROI if they could measure it, except you couldn't imprint. And, you know, that's how you made money. It's the same for us. It's just quite complicated because the digital world is ever-evolving and moving and diversifying so we've had to keep up with that so sort of back to your question you know the the goal at the beginning was 40 000 subscribers and and then instagram comes along and then podcasts come along and then a youtube show and a docuseries and tiktok and pinterest and on and on and on so i don't think there's ever really been a moment where we've gone right that's it you know this number of people this reach means we've made it but there must have been some sort of significant moments on the journey that kind of made a difference because i know and so you've come back to a slight push on that but also what how do you decide how long to invest in something before you start seeing an roi and so it's like tiktok or whatever these things notoriously difficult to kind of get off the ground and so on obviously you've already got a bit of an infrastructure anyway but how do you how do you sort of launch those new channels with gut instinct and i think that is something that in this world of digital shouldn't be underestimated we are our reader our viewer our listener our subscriber our follower and so we're always thinking what we would find interesting and entertaining and i launched our behind the scenes docu-series which the audience of which many who i won't know was was a weekly hour-long episode on YouTube which was filmed by one guy who was a bit like the Stig.

9:32No one ever saw his face and he followed us around. He filmed four days a week, about 50 hours of footage often. And at the weekend, he would edit it into one hour. I'd get the edit on a Sunday night and it would go live on a Wednesday. And it was just flat on the wall, darky reality. And it wasn't scripted or dramatic, but it built this great, great, great engagement. That never made money, but it took us into long form content on YouTube, which now has really started to make money, which is really interesting to be in that space as a publisher, because very few people are making money there.

10:05But the purpose of our behind the scenes series was not to make money. And when we launched TikTok, it was about engagement. How do we show up here? How do we broaden our reach? And focusing on, as we always say, entertaining, inspiring, educating our audience with who we are and what we do and knowing that if you focus on those three and the order within which you do it changes wherever you are so we always used to say on the website we educate inspire and entertain in that order okay on instagram we inspire first and the sort of minute where it all sort of made sense was where on tiktok so penny drop moment was on tiktok we entertain first and if we get that right if we get the order right then the revenue will come but it doesn't always need to generate revenue so Pinterest for us is really interesting at the moment growing it's not about revenue I mean it is because the KPIs that we're monitoring do impact incremental revenue but it's not always that's not always the primary purpose and you know we're in a stage now where it's about depth and connection with an audience it's not about mass reach yeah and if you can get that right I just don't even believe it the rest of it takes care of itself So I think it's facing that.

11:19That said, everything we go into, we're always thinking about how can we monetize that. So WhatsApp is very new to us. We have, I think, close to 20 ,000 WhatsApp followers. And we share a sort of tidbit with them every day that's a bit like being on a group chat. So today it was, right, get Georgie to answer which one of these three questions do you want to answer? And one was about, I was hoping no one would say it, but one was about what treatments have you had? what did you buy after you sold your business and what are you doing with your kids in the summer holidays? No one wanted to know the last one.

11:53I won't tell you which order they wanted to know the other one. But equally, I know that if we can get engagement on WhatsApp, the brand will come along and go, okay, I want access to that audience and that we can monetize it. I think that quality and engagement are the most important things to focus on. And if you can get those right, then as I said, the revenue comes. I always say that the rule book to approaching digital success or publishing success maybe is content and with that we put people so shared arts is a media brand with creators people and people who are listening that don't understand what that means that means that shared arts isn't just a brand we have tiktok daily vlogs social content coming out of our ears all this youtube content it's all using our team and our people and unlike vogue for example anyone who knows shared arts could name probably a dozen of team and they follow them.

12:45It's a bit like pick your player or you know it's a good sort of analogy and people follow different people you know there's people in their 40s 50s there are people in their early 20s and you sort of connect with different people or there are lots of people you mentioned one of my team Harge earlier he's in her 40s but my god the 20 something year old girls are like I want to be her when I'm older she's the queen so people really connect with people and and so so just going back to the rule book for me it's sort of content and people and then it's reach and if you've got your content and your people right you should be able to grow that reach that's step two and if you've got those two things you've got great content and you've got reach then you can monetize it and that's the last step so much i want to unpack that when did it start with the because the dreadful phrase corporate speak is employee generated content right which uh i found it's um the phrase i love but i think it is becoming more important you guys been doing it well presumably for about 10 years at least don't say you loathe it because we're known to be pioneers no no no no but i think the phrase no i think the phrase itself it's quite useful phrase though it's quite useful egc egc i know but it just yeah like because i'm always trying to persuade the team like to do more post more talk more behind the scenes and whatever it's a young team so they're often quite nervous about it right like and they just don't know their voices yet and so on so i understand that and i probably wouldn't wanted to do much of it before i was um 25 26 either but yeah i'm just fascinated how that's been a part because when you started it that wasn't so much of a thing you didn't have the ability to kind of do that really in the first three to five years of sheer looks individuals doing it as much right i would say it was something i did from day one and i i suppose i was someone said to me once there isn't much to be gained from recommendations and I remember when I lived in Paris and I was a student a friend of mine in hindsight how silly it was asked me for a recommendation for her dad's 50th and I recommended somewhere as a 21 year old student I thought was quite good and off they went for his 50th and I think it's pretty shit um so I like I remember my husband boyfriend at the time saying yeah there's not a lot to be gained from recommendations but I guess I'm always somebody who's just why that way yeah and so when I started showlucks whilst it was never a blog which were sort of personal diaries I it from sort of not quite day one but almost I had editors picks yeah and then the next employee I was like right you know we're selling stuff how are we going to package this up in a different way so for me it was just it was a way to sell stuff and a way to do it authentically and give something personality.

15:27So I would say it just organically happened as a way to sell stuff, as a way to make a connection, be authentic. And, you know, EGC didn't exist then. It wasn't a thing. It was subsequently labeled that. But we were well on our way to just using our people to build connection and not always being from a third-party brand. And I think as Shea Lux has gone on, and the way that brands speak to their customers has changed hugely. I often reference Sofa.com, which was a brand, a business that when it started used to say, never on sale, always well priced. And it would send you an email saying, hi, I'm your sofa courier and just let you know right now it's being packaged up and while I'm on the ship, I'll let you know when it's on the ship.

16:11And that was quite new and different then. But I think we've just ridden a wave of brands and businesses not being able to sort of stand behind walls and be very third party and get away with marketing messages. All those barriers have kind of been knocked down. Yeah. And I think, yeah, we were very much a part of that. So your first hires were people who kind of wrote the newsletter and so on, if I'm right in saying. Yeah. And then how did you kind of like build from there? our first hire was our managing editor who's still in business um people by the way who joined share look seem to stay yeah we have an average tenure of over four years which with the team of our sizes is very good our senior team bar one or two have all been there over a decade our that's our sort of senior leadership our leadership team have all been there pretty close to a decade our managers team have all been there quite a lot of them several years like yeah it's not for everyone the pace is ferocious i've often said you know it's not for everybody it was busy when it was a daily email and website and now we're in the social world and it's absolutely relentless and that's not for everybody and that's understandable but we are really proud of our retention rate uh in terms of the team and the grace of the team so it was me laura black who came in as managing editor with as is often said the best eye in the business and the product edit was so key.

17:39Words on a page, words on a digital page have to be seriously freaking good. Like you've got to be the Cut or the FT or Pandora Sykes back in the day to really hold someone or an interview with someone that you've never got access to. But now, you know, the website is almost a dinosaur and we are now a digital publisher and social broadcaster. And the emphasis is hugely on the latter. So the written word has to be really good. it had to be really good then it has to be amazing now so yeah the next high was laura who came in not for the words on the page she came in for the product edit and that was of the most paramount importance and still is and to my point earlier the layers of approval that go through every product that gets put out are quite hard for people to sort of rationalize but it's served us really well we then brought in a junior writer girl called natalie we brought in a commercial hire to start monetizing what was then a directory a digital directory uh not a business model i massively recommend um the need to update it is is huge and you don't get much traffic even the busiest website doesn't get much traffic through individual listings in a directory um and from there we built out the editorial team yeah but that editorial team from day one really was not was not just about journalists who sat behind desks very quickly they became these tastemakers They were always tastemakers and curators.

19:04The broadcast didn't come in on day one. But I would say it's that that grew. And then as the digital world grew, we brought in a social person that became a social team and a marketing person that became a marketing team. And I failed to mention our video team earlier. Sorry to Eloise. He's head of that team and reports to Hodge. But, you know, that is a thriving and growing team that produces our podcasts in-house. Yeah. All our video content. And how did you go about making these hires in terms of knowing what you needed? Because the other context for people that might not have heard your story before is that you pretty much started straight out of university, right?

19:37It was like a year or two. I think you said somewhere you don't have a personal email address or something. Just getting one now. It's quite difficult. My whole life is tied into one email address. I'm discovering my assistant is sitting there now with my phone actually changing over passwords because I can't even get a GP appointment without my work email. So yeah, quite an unpicking. But how did you make the, yeah, how did you know what you kind of needed? You speak about it obviously now with such kind of like fluency in terms of like the product edit and so on. But how did you think? Because this was an entirely new type of company you were building in 08, 09.

20:15It was, but it's always been the same model as any publisher has been. It's always been about curation, recommendation and connecting an audience with a brand. And I didn't necessarily have the sort of fundamentals or the rulebook of publishing in front of me. I didn't. I hadn't worked in publishing. But I suppose we're all consumers that are marketed to, and I understood that principle. I started Shedlucks a year or two after leaving university, having intern at Coty throughout university in their marketing team. So I had a bit of experience in that sense. but I suppose just gut instinct and knowing that I was looking to build an audience and that I needed really good content and so it's, there wasn't a rule book but it felt quite intuitive at the time.

21:07And you raised money just before Lehman went down. That must have been quite a week. The day Iceland fell through the floorboards or whatever you want to call it, It was a day before that we got some money in. We raised 60 grand. I launched the site in February 2007, and that Christmas we raised 60 grand. Nick Jenkins of Moonpig Dragon fame was a contact of a contact, and put 20 grand in. Ben Rex of BC rang me up, and then the other 20 was friends and family, and we raised 60 grand, hit some targets to test a few things shall i say um we hired a commercial person and an editorial person borrowed nick's old moon pig offices set some targets and and tested a few things and that went well we hit those and then we raised 200 and something um benrex followed nick followed and then let's put in quite a bit more and that was to last us a year mm-hmm set more targets hit those targets as I said before went in for a meeting with the fan rex and and Nick and put a plan in front of them and they said that's not ambitious enough we want to see ten times our money and I was like which we'm out you know we've hit our targets we're a trading business and as I've said before my husband then said and um that was a year after we'd raised the sort of 250 just under you know we got that money yeah the day before i said went down the pan um and i think you know worked in our favor there's you know it's hugely distracting raising money it's very easy to spend it yeah i i have seen in the lifetime of sherlock so many businesses come and go and raise big amounts of money in these tiny offices.

23:04And I always felt really intimidated by that. But actually, it served us really well. It's not always easy, particularly if you're producing a product that needs manufacturing and cash flow is obviously key. But for us, it was the best thing. Yeah. And you were profitable by 2012, essentially? By, no, sooner. I think by year three. Okay. By about year three. That's pretty incredible, right? Well, we didn't have a choice. I'm a marital accountant who instilled good principles in me. And we didn't have a choice. Ben Rex weren't going to go in again at a valuation that was right. My husband was always very focused on not giving away equity unnecessarily.

23:49And that served us so well. I would have given it away to anyone walking down the street. Not only stationary, yeah, it was 10%. But, you know, that, yeah, that served us really well. And you, you know, it makes you, it makes you find different routes to market and do things differently and in your own way. And those foundations and principles are still very much in business today in everybody. I mean, it helps that we have the same team. I remember a friend of mine who'd worked in a big business and going to a beauty business and she went to a founder-run business. It was quite a big business, but she went in and she was like, what's my marketing budget?

24:30And they went, she's like, I've got marketing budget. Well, you've gone from my PhD to whatever. And that's quite hard, I think, when you bring in sort of grown-ups who are used to operating in a certain way. There's something to be said from having sort of homegrown talent that don't know anything else. Definitely. You touched on the culture earlier and one of the people that I spoke to ahead of this interview who's kind of worked with you described you as fearsome and fearless which I thought was an interesting description and well but I I think I thought that summed it up from like watching and engaging your content and so on I thought that was quite a neat summary

25:12uh I suppose yeah in my own way I probably am I think I think there's a sort of misconception that that means you're a pit bull and you don't have heart and you don't care and you're not warm or likeable and can you be everything to everybody? No.

25:35I'm a huge fan of Jamie Dimon and I was very lucky to go to breakfast he hosted the other day and he was talking about greater leaders leading with and I couldn't agree. I sort of wanted to jump up and say, yes, I agree. I mean, the guy's the biggest hero in our house, but he talked about leading with all key characteristics being heart, curiosity, drive, and grit. And I think I probably really do have all of those. And I just, I mean, he's the most brilliant man, I think. But I just remember he said that, and I was like, I literally messed with my husband. yeah and um but yeah yeah no ignorance is bliss youth is youth you know youth and ignorance go hand in hand and naivety and all those things um how important is it that somebody wants to kind of be a almost in-house creator i suppose for you when you're hiring like how much of that is a is a question and i guess partly now how much of it do you look for proof in what they've done thus far no well yes and no um no as i'm sure would say differently as i said i have a phenomenal chief staff she's just brilliant it's a hard job um but tell us about the job of chief of staff and what that what the it's operations of of people it's how teams function it's the mechanics of a team it's the workload of a team it's the bottlenecks of a team it's the drive of a team and going the extra mile and pulling one's weight and Sherlock's is really a team place like it is really it is not there aren't it just wouldn't function if it wasn't as collaborative as it is so her role is sort of all of that and and hiring and and retention and yeah yeah I would say in terms of previous experience it's very competitive we get a huge amount of applications for every role and so we're looking for that culture add as well as that culture fit and often that goes hand in hand it doesn't always, I mean we've just hired somebody I'm not going to say which role because if they were listening I wouldn't want them to think that we don't see that potential in them But they're there for their skills.

28:05And it's a role that needs somebody to function with this amount of experience and get a job done that doesn't necessarily allow for lots of outwardly facing elements of the job. But I would say a big attraction to working at Shellux is that opportunity. And we launched a creative agency, Blush Talent Management, a few years ago, which has been really successful and was something that we had to... there was a leaky bucket of brands going to our talent sort of round the back door, if you like, and potentially internal talent, as we call them now, or team building their own audience on their own channels via the exposure that they were getting on Shillocks.

28:46And then that being the leaky bucket, and then them potentially leaving or going freelance or going somewhere else. So we launched Rush Talent Management to manage internal talent and to find a way that it works for both Sherlock's so that we didn't cannibalise a lot of revenue. Well, a lot of revenue, actually, going around the back door. Because in an ideal world, your team might come to Sherlock's and be this sort of Sherlock's IP that no one can access anywhere else. But the point is, you bring in someone as a fashion editor, they build their following, then they sort of broadcast on their own channels.

29:23Ideally, they don't get the broadcast, but that's not the world we're in. And so it's been, it was a solution that we came up with to prevent too much leakage from Shearlocks, but empower our team, make it a benefit of working for Shearlocks, make the tree work hand in hand, prevent it having to be all or nothing. So you know we have team members who come in full-time, they might grow their following and then go from five days to four or to three or to one but they're still part of the family we still benefit they leverage our audience we benefit from them when it comes to commercial solutions and it's been it's something I'm so proud of I don't take all the credit Maya Lucky who is our head of marketing and also MD of Blush has played a huge part as has Charlotte our editor-in-chief as has all our senior team.

30:19And I'm really proud that we've created an agency that works for everyone and is great for retention and great for acquisition. So a lot of people do come along and they're like, I'm going to get a shit. I want to work in the social team. I want to work in this team. And I'm going to build my following. And it's happening right in front of us. And it's honestly great. And you have people that come into a video team or they'll come into a design team and they haven't come in as curators and broadcasters and taste makers but they've come in had exposure on our channels they've started to see interest in their own channels that's grown they're then managed by blush and everyone's happy now look nothing is perfect i hasten to add and it's not something that works for everybody even if people might want it but it is it's a pretty good solution it is yeah yeah interesting and we also represent external talent.

31:14We've just taken on a male butcher who joins the roster this week as well. Actually, the male talent is great. So we have internal talent. So that represents Sherlock's internal team. And then we represent external talent also. So we've got about 40 on the roster. Don't quote me on that. Who's the butcher? He is called Nigel. He's based in Sunningdale. His engagement is off the charts. Our Blush WhatsApp channel said, Nigel joins this week with a steak emoji. I was like, I'm dead at the steak emoji. I was like, I need to use it too. Here's a fillet steak. Actually, I think it was a ribeye. Definitely a ribeye.

31:54Not something I'd order. Brilliant. Let's talk a bit about the sale and so on, because that was a huge moment at the start of the year. And you sold for 40 million to future. And one of the things that really struck me in the Times interview afterwards was you wanted to put the number out there. Why? It's so funny how this is, as someone said, someone messaged me after and they went, yes, Georgie, if you were a man, no one would have even questioned that you were putting the number out there. Put it out there because for years and years, sort of snidey people online have said, oh, shit, this team are all bankrolled by their husbands.

32:35It's been the sort of general consensus. Let's find out what do all their husbands do. well this one's husband does this you know meanwhile do not complain do not explain we're all sitting there going and you know charlotte our editor-in-chief my lucky sarah temperman sapna daisy nana i mean i could go they're all doing effing well like they are absolutely smashing it our sales team smashing it and there is this there's been in this sort of undercurrent of snide comments about the fact that we can possibly be making money and work in the industry that we do and that we're all being supported by our husbands.

33:19And so when I said to the team, and I think for our industry as well, we've just had our head down. I'm actually going on a panel later today and the woman interviewed me. She said, I think you're like me. I spent 15 years and it took me 15 years for anyone to take notice of what I was doing. and we worked so hard for so long and had to prove ourselves every step of the way and had to drive an ROI and focus on like, you know, nearly 70 % repeat business year on year and nothing but double digit growth ever, ever, ever, even during COVID. And still we weren't taken seriously by, you know, big brands.

33:58So for that reason and for our team, it was really important to me. And when I asked a senior team, I was like, what do you think? My husband and I didn't really agree. and they were like, hell yes. So, you know, there it is. Plus future listed business though. I think it would be possible not to disclose it. It was going to come out at some point anyway. I just thought it was a really interesting... It's actually a bit more than that. They hit us some targets and I'm happy to say we smashed them. And how long is that? What, three year period? Because I do want to know about the future as well.

34:26But let's talk a bit more about the sale because you got an offer a few years ago for a million. Did I get that right? A bit longer than a few. I must go back to when it was. Yeah, it was. It's probably about a decade ago. I need to find out exactly when. From quite a well-known media group. And met them quite a few times. And yeah, I said before, one of the guys rang me up and said,

34:57yeah, don't do it. There we go. Thank God. But I was just, I've just so always, it's really never been about the money it's never it's always just been about this mission for to do what we do and be taken seriously and create something that How much do you think that has been a driver of it, of just not being taken seriously by people? I think I don't think sort of not taken seriously but I've always Or not given the credit And that hasn't eaten me alive at all I don't think I've ever stopped to think about it enough. But I suppose when you do what we do and it's quite public, the alternative is public failure, which, you know, not that there's anything wrong with failure, but it wasn't something I'm particularly aspired towards.

35:51Or, you know, I've sacrificed. I don't see it as you've sacrificed, but I have worked really hard. and I'm only really understanding now how hard unrelentlessly, unrelentlessly day after day you haven't come that far to then fail. But I also, I think one of the things I found so refreshing about that Times interview was just how honest you were about it all as well. And I think there's a lot in entrepreneurship land which is crushing it it's all of this of course we're going to be bought and actually you like a declaring the figure and why you did that i thought was interesting and also describing it the sale process is like an exorcism like i just thought like gosh i bet it i bet it is like that right but it's been years in the process 10 years perhaps with other offers and so on like and i just thought it was really refreshingly honest yeah it was when when we signed or the lawyers called us as a video of and I'm sitting in my sitting room and my siblings and turned up uninvited having been to a football match and my FD was there and her husband and there's a bit when one of my brothers is filming it and the lawyer calls and I just put the phone down and I just I hugged my husband for a sort of uncomfortable amount of time and my brother kept filming it and it's almost like you kind of see these like demons blow you off my back yeah it is I mean I've never stopped to think that along the way you just keep going you just keep going and I would say that you know it hasn't been I was saying someone on this panel today and one of the questions was you know when were the times where can you talk me through some of the times where you thought that's it and I'm not going to go on and we can't do this and I would say that's not my the Sherlock story it's always been organic steady quite safe I'm a female um and cautious yeah cautious and it's been steady you know we've grown as a business we've tended to grow sort of like this and then like this and then like this and then like this but it's always been net positive growth and there've been a few like hairy PR moments that have not been nice but it's been very slow and steady and chipping away chipping away and being razor focused but open to change and movement and pivoting and not having all the answers but having gut instincts and just keeping going and never saying no to any opportunity never not doing 110 and And it is, it does, I think it does just take that long.

38:39And there are a few poppies around just drinking a can of the prebiotic soda that sold for$1.9 billion. But there aren't many of those. No. And that won't be overnight. I don't know when it launched. But so I think it's slow and steady. When's the race? And you've always been, clearly, as a sort of luxury brand media company, you like nice things. And I think that is something that we don't actually have enough of in British culture, like an openness of that, and that they make you feel good, etc. And so what was the first thing you bought afterwards? I