Darcy Laceby: From Student to Co-Founder of Absolute Collagen

0:00I remember my head teacher pulled me into his office and was like, why are you changing from psychology to food? Do you want to be a chef? And he kind of looked at me like, why are you wasting your education on doing that? That annoyed me. And I think that gave me a bit of fire to be like, right, you can make something of this. Darcy Laceby, co-founder of Absolute Collagen. At the age of 20, Darcy made a decision most graduates wouldn't dare take. Instead of taking the traditional career path, she threw herself into building a startup alongside her mum. I'm always like, if you need me to step back or change or leave, whatever it is, I'll do it I was just like well these people must know everything like they were bringing in MDs of really big companies really cool people and I was just like said yes to everything because I thought they must know but what I've realized is I know the customer better than anyone else.

0:45What's the hardest part about working with your mum? We're not very good at identifying when like I just want her to be a mum versus a co-founder or business partner or whatever so I'll sometimes you know rant or moan and she'll do the same at me and she goes into like fixed mode. Welcome to Screw It Just do it. The show for those who decided to screw it and just did it. I'm Alex Chisnell, host of this podcast and co-founder of the Festival of Entrepreneurs at the NEC in Birmingham this October 8th and 9th. This is the podcast that brings you face to face with the entrepreneurs and business rebels who threw caution to the wind and built something extraordinary.

1:19Quick heads up, registration is now open for this year's Festival of Entrepreneurs. Join us at the NEC in Birmingham on October the 8th and 9th for two game-changing days with 200 plus speakers and thousands of ambitious founders. Get your free limited two-day pass at festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk or click my personal link in the show notes. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Alex. You know, I didn't realize I would be the youngest, so thank you. I love things that happen like that. Amazing. Well, look, thanks for your time. Lots of questions to ask you. First one is, when you were finishing uni and when Absolute Collagen began, was there an exact screw it just do at the moment you thought, I'm going to go all in on this instead of going down the graduate career path?

2:07No, so I went to uni in year one, year two, didn't really come home for the whole year one. And then year two, Maxine started looking, Maxine's my mum, I do call her Maxine, it freaks people out, started looking at Bone Broth. And so in year two, I kind of came home a little bit and the end of year two um I was doing a little bit more on it but not massively and then my year three contract came around and I was like oh I think I should just move home like I can help out a bit more and so me and Maxine were just like kind of independently doing bits to the business but there was never like a moment and in the background I was still applying for jobs like applying for grad programs and you know failing at the numerical and verbal reasoning tests every time.

2:47So no, not really. And what were you looking at, like career wise, if you, if you were applying for graduate jobs, etc, what was the path that you're going to go down? Yeah, so about three months before I was due to start uni, I'd used all my options to do psychology, and then realised I don't want to do psychology, I want to do something I actually enjoy. And that's food science nutrition uh so I changed actually went through clearing and did consumer management and food science uh and I wanted to go into um procurement of food which is so random and so not me I'm quite creative um but yeah my whole degree was focused around product and innovation and food science but yeah it would probably been quite like logistics and I'm quite uh uh like I'd message people on LinkedIn that has like similar jobs and I'd go like speak to them and stuff I'm a bit of a I'm not a nerd it's not clever but I'm quite nerdy in terms of I like to find things out no I get that I always run things past like an inner circle or search out people who've kind of been there done it as well I think that's a that's a sound way of doing things um what were your friends thinking um when you kind of backed away from the idea of going down that route then and decided to go go all in on the business with your mum Maxine yeah well when I was at sixth form actually when I'd swapped I went to grammar school and yeah I was always more focused on sport and arts and things like that and I remember my head teacher pulled me into his office and was like why are you changing from psychology to to food do you want to be a chef and he kind of looked at me like why are you wasting your education on doing that and that annoyed me and I think that gave him a bit of fire to be like right you can make something of this and um I always wanted wanted a business that was always what I'd like always on the sidelines when I was in sixth form I'd like do little bits and bobs and things and sell stuff um but I think people are a bit concerned when I've changed to to food to be honest my mum and dad had always been pretty supportive of whatever I wanted to do like I'm really lucky there but yeah I don't really think anyone had an opinion all my friends were going to do like psychology or like law and things like that which yeah just didn't just didn't really suit my personality I don't think but it's interesting my uni degree like in my second year onwards is all my coursework is all on collagen and gelatin and brain broth and yeah it was really instrumental I remember we had training standards come around too I say the office and warehouse it was our house and garage um and they were like do you have a HACCP program do you have this and I was like yes here's one I made at uni uh like everything was so aligned and I probably use it way more than anyone else does that I know in terms of my degree and the kind of, yeah, skills that I learned there.

5:35So I'm happy. Well, more than happy I made this story. I bet. I bet you are. And so when you were a teenager then and you had thoughts of maybe starting your own business, was that just before your mum started Absolute Collagen? Yeah, so I've always been pretty independent. My dad had a company from when I was little and he sold that when he was about 50. that's like a glass like he's tough and tough and glass basically um it's funny my sister had a baby in in february and i always say i always wanted a business and she wanted a baby and we got we got what we wanted so like when i was 14 i'd like started well i started like a little catering company i do like wakes and things and and things like that and like i don't know why i led with wakes but do birthday parties too uh like sold like phone cases like stuff off ebay and things like that um like I've always been interested in in doing things like that and like I'd write business plans and weird things and it's funny I speak to people from school and they were like what like no one ever knew about any of that um yeah like I keep it to myself really when I was 17 I wrote a cookbook and self-published that and used to go to like events and sell it and things um but yeah I've always liked to be busy I think I love that and and you just say that both your parents um encouraged you kind of down that route they were aware that you were thinking that you would um like to start a business yeah i mean they both know like i've always been pretty entrepreneurial and like think on my feet and stuff my dad's probably less so and he'll hate me for saying this he my dad's quite traditional he's quite old school so he worked from this you know had this factory environment company and i remember on my 16th birthday he went for dinner and we were with some of his friends and he was like darcy i just sometimes it'd just be great if you're a boy because you could have taken over the business and at that point he didn't quite understand and i bring that up to him now and he looks at me like i'm so sorry and he gets it but i guess it's just the way that he was brought up in the environment that he's in and yeah i know that he's super proud of of what what i do now and yeah yeah yeah no betty is as a father myself I think it's amazing what you what you've achieved so I could imagine what he thinks as well so for you like what was the moment that you decided to join forces with your mum can you tell tell me a little bit about that you mentioned it earlier when she was kind of experimenting with with bone broth and I don't know that with your background that you you've done did you identify what the the main compound was within that which was collagen tell me tell me a little bit about that yeah so I take um so basically Maxine started cooking up bone broth after this art project where she literally opened my bedroom door one day and had taken the color out of her hair and it goes like orange I've got quite like long curly hair so did she she basically chopped it all off uh got a nose piercing and a tattoo that said I'm more than just a body and I was like oh my goodness and what that basically she was her own art project basically and what that kind of led her to to believe is what she wanted to do was see how people perceived her but what she actually ended up doing is realizing that no one really gives a gives a crap about what you look like um it's really your own confidence and your own self-belief and your value on on you as a person uh personally um and she realized she didn't have much much value on her character or her personality and it was all kind of her whole life had been framed on how she sort of looks um it's weird if you speak to someone that knew her 20 30 years ago compared to now it's like two different people and she's really her own person now and she's actually quite an introvert and I think people wouldn't expect that um from her she always used to be like the person that you know held a room and things like that um but she started looking what she was putting in her body as kind of this whole process started cooking up bone broth in the kitchen which I genuinely think we should have had shares in like crock pot or slow little slow cooker things because there'd be chicken feet and pig strotters in black vats all the time and you'd put them in and you'd have to leave them for a while of hours and you'd then get a potato peeler and peel the chicken feet it was quite grim we don't do that now don't worry yeah um so i would just see her doing that eating it and literally giving it to her friends thinking she was barking mad come back from uni occasionally and there'd be like gravy boats in the fridge and I'd be like yeah whatever ignoring her to be honest and then in my second year this is probably six months after she started so she came up with the formulation I I didn't do that um she's kind of like the ideas foot to the floor like full speed ahead and I'm like okay let's just like not hurt anyone let's do this properly and the things um so I could just take it to uni and you know what my projects would be like okay look at the nutritional spec for a product or create a create a product safety sheet for a product and I'd be like oh I'll just do it on what you're doing um and then we kind of developed and refined and realized it was the collagen that was doing the good thing not the gelatin and how are we going to find the best form of collagen and that stuff so at this point I'm still just doing my degree and she's just giving it to her friends and we're not really trying to create a business um and then she started making it for people and it was really hard work like the yield is like pretty low and that's when we realized it was collagen we can just buy it and we actually found a letter she hand wrote a letter to some chinese manufacturer to buy collagen that's that's how like yeah computer savvy she wasn't honestly she'd never turned a laptop on in 25 years so i don't know how she started it was bad like i think the you've got the true like resilience there in her um so yeah i could just use labs at uni and i'd remember she put in in bottles originally um and she put the first the first order in and i was still like what are you doing and she paid the supplier twice and i was like oh my god no we can't do this that's when i moved home i was like maxine we need to organize yeah yeah that's what you want a bit of clarity exactly like bottles aren't the right format like let's change out of bottles let's not overplay the supplier let's refine the formulation to make it taste good and things like that um so we've kind of just quite compliment we're very complimentary in our skill set to be fair um what was the kind of timeline for that darcy then so she um started looking we officially launched in december 17 and that's when we went into sachets um but it was about a 18 month process before that really um that kind of led up to it and that's you know probably six months of that was just doing bone broth but not even as a business and it's funny like if you'd say what's your business plan aspirations at the beginning like there was never one like we never we just had this product that people were like what are you doing I want what you're taking and at the time it was the the bone broth um concentrate that Maxi was making and they were like your hair looks good you look like you got more confidence and it's funny we sell a product but we really sell transformations and and kind of like a feeling and like an enabler to a lot of women um but yeah then we were just like how can we make this formulation better and how can we get it to as many people but originally it was create this collagen product people wanted it we actually tried to find it online to just send them the link and it wasn't there i was gonna say to you like what was the competition like around then oh non-existent yeah actually i thought okay like so we were one of the first kind of there was two other brands that sold collagen um but it was as part of a bigger formulation so like it was never already the hero uh so whilst collagen's literally everywhere now um we were well we were instrumental in in leading that and creating that market to be to be fair and kind of to rewind when you were when you were 20 what would you say was or even like early 20s um what was one of the advantages of co-founding a business then would you say oh my god the naivety but i think that's the same with so if you look at my mum she was 49 um had no business experience like she was lucky to be able to look after me and my sister growing up um so I think we both came with the same lens of like meh this is gonna be okay we'll just we'll just start a business and I remember we started um like I said May 17 is when we we launched and no one was buying anything and I was like why is no one buying anything off this website uh well we weren't pushing any traffic there for a start like honestly if you looked back I was like we we didn't have we did not have the pieces to together but we found the right people and to be fair that's what Maxine's really good at is finding the right people so we went to a digital marketing company and we sat down and she was like okay this is eight thousand pounds a month I don't know three grand in agency fees five grand in ad spend um should we do it and I was like that's a lot like eight grand a month we're not making any profit we're selling to your friends like that's a big jump and she was like we'll just sell the house we'll just move into a smaller house bear in mind we'd already well she'd already remortgaged the house and put 125 grand of her own money into absolute collagen like the risk appetite that woman has is is insane so you you were you were kind of balancing that out then the voice of reason yeah but to be fair like it would ac wouldn't exist if maxine hadn't had the kind of world yeah yeah yeah no no and yeah i totally get that i think somebody in the business has to have that risk appetite or otherwise it stays as an idea doesn't it or it stays as a selling to your friends or at a market stall or it's one of those isn't it yeah and i was like she said she'll just do it i'm like okay yeah we'll just she's like we'll just move into a different house we'll rent somewhere and it was so like she's so blasé about a lot and i think that's part of her adhd she's constantly like selling a house not selling a house moving somewhere else not moving somewhere else and you can kind of get quite exhausted by the whole thing and I don't get um I'm pretty mellow like if she tells me something now I'm not like oh my god that's great because I'm like is it gonna happen is it not gonna happen yeah yeah okay do something else or not I don't know and we laugh about it but yeah she uh she's funny it's funny like when you when you mentioned before that she had um written a letter you know to the company in China I thought that actually reminded me of um of Richard Branson like back in the day because I always remember him not being able to use a computer he didn't send an email didn't know how to use an email account pretty sure he's changed over the last you know 10 years or 15 years since I left Virgin Atlantic but that was certainly the case like back at you know kind of dawn of social media and all that didn't have a clue wasn't interested in learning how to either just you know used to come on the plane with a with a notepad and pen and just write stuff down in his in his pads and that was it yeah yeah I always tell the story i've mentioned it a few times on the show but he would instead of i didn't get it at the time i'm like why isn't he sitting in upper class why has he gone down into economy and he sat in economy and then he spent you know the majority of the flight you know seven hours to new york just walking around the plane asking people questions and writing them down in his book and you're like you look back on it now knowing what i know and going well that's genius isn't it there's no better way to get you know um you know customer focus and find out what people like what they don't like the customer journey than doing that and especially you know back in maybe like the 90s or noughties where there wasn't that amount of information online that you could you could get that kind of stuff people kind of hoarded that on their own airline but looking back on that I was like that's brilliant more people should have done that you know but it's actually really interesting like at the beginning we used to send or I used to send so many emails just with surveys attached to them like so we could speak to customers ring customers up and in the past probably year or so we've really moved to like paying for external qual and quant and you know you can pay big 30 50 100 grand for pieces of research and whatever more than that but on this recent product that we've been working on we've stripped it right back and run it all ourselves and i've been in i've done the qual with customers at one to one or one to two one to three and genuinely i feel like that has been so much more insightful because you actually get the kind of raw stuff back also i know research agencies are great at doing the the kind of research but it can be swayed by whoever and the company is running it with them and things like that um but yeah just actually picking the phone up and speaking to them has been like super valuable and we do it we do it a lot actually we invite customers here to our office and they love to come in i bet yeah yeah yeah Yeah, especially we have a well, we have an internal team called the College and Connoisseurs who like are 20 people from the team who are like taste trained and we test formulations on them.

18:26But then we get our customers in and they'll do the same, which is interesting. And we have to ban Maxine from those meetings because they'll just say everything's great otherwise. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Force of character. That's brilliant. That's really insightful as well. And what would you say some of the disadvantages you've experienced at, you know, co-founding a business in your early 20s? Yeah, I used to think, well, a couple of there's been a couple of situations that I've been put in that have made me at the time quite uncomfortable, like comments. I remember I was on the phone to someone and they were like, do you have the spending, like do you have the decision to spend this money and things like that?

19:08or I was in a lift and I went to this was only like two years ago I went to grab um someone had a meeting but they were overran so I went to grab the people that were coming in and I was in the lift and they're like oh are you um are you so-and-so's PA and I was just like one why why assume that because one I'm a woman and two because I'm quite young and then another person in the meeting was like oh are you the marketing assistant I'm like I don't really give a shit but like why is she like why assume and that's I think the hardest part and I used to kind of get quite caught up and pent up about it and get like that imposter thing and what I've realized is it's all that really matters is my opinion of what I do and I'm as a person I don't really care for external validation like even if someone's like oh my god that is an amazing piece of work we've done so well I don't really believe them unless I think I've done a good job so it's kind of just shifting that narrative a little bit um because I have found it hard like taking investment was a difficult one like I that's quite it's quite random you know we've got investment from Livingbridge they're great the first meetings were with me and my mum in our house like that's strange for them um they've never really experienced that before and I was speaking to one of our actual investors um I was like what did you think about us in our like first meeting and he was like oh my god I walked away and thought absolutely not like you guys know So, yeah, and he said it so candidly.

20:33And I was like, well, why did you invest? And he was like, oh, the other person I was with was like, if we could build a brand like them, we'd be building brands like them. And then we're quite open, me and Maxine, to I always just want the business and the people in the business and the customers to be taken care of. Whatever happens to me, I don't really care about. If it's Darcy, you're stopping progress. Darcy, you're not growing as fast as the company. And I thought we'd take investment, which we did in 2020. and I don't think I thought that would be kind of the end of the road for me but I've actually grown quite well with the business but I'm always like if you need me to step back or change or leave whatever it is I'll do it um I just want to see yeah like it's but that's also been the worst thing for me as well in the fact that when we did take investment and they brought all these amazing people like they do and into the business and you have some really great conversations I was just like well these people must know everything like they were bringing in MDs of really big companies like Nivea or whoever it might be like really cool people and I was just like said yes to everything because I thought they must know but what I've realized is is I know the customer better than anyone else um and so you can take bits from people but I have to like try and stand my ground which I'm not confrontational at all so yeah I've learned to to kind of believe in myself a bit more and just take kind of temperature of different things and push back where necessary but also to take on other people's ideas.

21:53And that's probably the most negative sides of it. But I think it's just kind of ingrained in my personality as well. Yeah, maybe. If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes. Real entrepreneurs, real stories, real strategies, exactly like what you're hearing right now, but live and in person.

22:30Go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone. When you took the investment, which I was going to ask you about at some point as well, you thought you were done then. You were ready to step out. Yeah, so there's kind of three of us that sort of started AC and it was me and my mum. and there's a guy called brad as well and he always looked after the tech and web as website stuff um and i thought brad would absolutely thrive in this kind of invested led environment and blah blah blah and i would be the one that'd be like oh i don't know how to cope there um but it was actually the way around and he ended up leaving about six months after the investment he didn't like the kind of rigidity and the reporting side which i kind of love like yeah kind of fits into your organizational mindset and yeah like okay run with it for a month and report back on everything and it's kind of like you run in the little sprints don't you so I've really enjoyed it um and like the rooms I get to sit in and the people I get to meet I'm like I'd have never got this far 100 % if I was in like a traditional career path and like I know I know I know so much more about even just how business works and like operates and and things like that and my network that I've got is is insane and I know that I love AC but in the future if I wanted to do something else like nutrition is what I love sports nutrition I like I know would have the tools and the resources and that kind of mindset to to do so but yeah I'm just thankful for for that really I get to meet some well like even like you like some insane people yeah and do you know what that's the biggest thing I always say that that I've gotten from this is that you have these people on pedestals.

24:08And I love, you know, like relatively early on, I was, well, the first interview I had was like Stephen Bartlett. And then it was like Lewis Howes from School of Greatness podcast. Then it's Richard Reid from Innocent. And you come in with all these ideas of what your perception of this person and what they built is. And then you suddenly realize everybody's actually the same. Everybody was winging it to start with. No one started as an expert with what they're doing And what got them there was, you know, that, you know, strength of character. It was that surrounding themselves with the right people kind of realized, you know, as you said, you and your mom have got opposing complementary skill sets.

24:45And it's it's realizing, you know, those people who've put those different pieces of the puzzle together to get get where they are. But they all say you all say the same thing. They all say that they're winging it, whether it's, you know, like the founder of a billion pound business I've interviewed or 100 million pound business or 50 million pound business or, you know, single digit figures, whatever it is, you know, and people who've had, you know, numerous failures along the way to getting to the successful thing. And then you'll speak to other ones who've had that big success. And then they go to try, you know, had the exit, and then they go to replicate it again, and not being able to quite come up with that magic formula that what it was.

25:21So, you know, I find it fascinating. And interesting that you said that as well. What about, you know, around the investment? Were there conversations around, you know, continue to bootstrap by keeping 100 % of the business? Or do we, you know, take on some investment and try and grow the business quicker? Was there ever that conversation of, we keep it as this size of business, you know, more kind of lifestyle rather than actually let's shoot for the moon and see if we see where we end up? For us, investment was more of a decision about capabilities than the money. Like, AC has been profitable since day one.

26:04Luckily, we're direct-to-consumer subscription model. So we've been really lucky there. We marketed mainly on, like, Meta, and in the early days, it was great. Less so now, but then it was really, really great. So investment was like, okay, me and my mum were sat there one day, and we looked out. And at the time we had about 15 employees, I think, we were turning over 14 million pound. And I think it was kind of, OK, do we want to have business forward? If we do, it now becomes less about the risk on me and Maxine and my mum. Like if something goes wrong, there's 14 people probably supporting families and things like that.

26:43We've never done this before. How can we bring people in that are going to strategically help us? And looking back, like we could have done that just employing like a good C-suite. but who's going to believe like the slightly nuts 50 year old woman and her 20 year old daughter because it is a weird proposition like um so that's when we started looking at investment and genuinely didn't have an idea about investment didn't know what due diligence meant didn't know what data room was they're going for me like heebie-jeebies and the creeps now um but that was like so we started that in february 2020 and then completed on 17th of december 2020 we really just went down the PE route and actually interestingly we didn't take advice to start with we just went straight to one of the PE houses that reached out to us and they valued the company at about a sixth of what it was actually valued at so they tried to like lowball us and they did end up putting a bid in for the correct valuation but I'm glad we took advice off Elantra in the end and they were really great um but they kind of held held a hand i think through it um but yeah so we ended up with i think three offers on the table um from really good outlets to be fair and we kind of went through the one that because we're a bit of a weird joe to work with uh that we thought we'd get on the best with really um and that would support us and have the right kind of contacts but we'd never we so we never took any money out the business um which when we did dd they were all really surprised at like i was getting paid like 12 and a half thousand pounds a year i'm actually the same uh yeah like i don't know we never really treated treated it as sort of our money it was always the companies and um looking back now you know being p invested you can't really can't really take much money out the business anymore so probably um but yeah it's a it's a weird one yeah it is a And I was chatting to, again, I don't know if you know her because she's not a million miles away from you guys.

28:46Juliet Barrett from Grenade. Yeah. And I was chatting to her recently for this. And I've interviewed her before and she's come to one of my events before as well. But she was saying that they always, if she could have done something differently, it was like going back because they did take a lot of, I think the first investment they did, she was saying they did take cash out of the business and that enabled them to buy the houses that they got now. when Al's gone and bought his helicopters and his boats and all the rest of it. But she was like, if I could redo one thing, it would go back in time and redo that.

29:21And I was like, that's interesting that you say that. But yeah, everyone has different experience, don't they, when it comes to that route? And especially maybe the naivety helped you, but then equally, given that lowball offer, it made sense to actually speak to a few different people. And I remember chatting to Richard Reid years ago, and he was saying literally from the first couple of years with Innocent, they were constantly getting offers for the business. And in the end, it was just a case of we can't say no anymore. I've got an offer on the table for half a billion pounds from Coca-Cola.

29:54They can take this where we can't take it. So we'll bow out gracefully and then start another business literally 24 hours later. um so your would you say your your passion you mentioned before sports nutrition what would you what would you think that you could you would want to do with that would that be now do you think you could work for anyone else again or do you think you'd have to be the founder of a business and you'd be in charge of that oh I have never had another job apart from bar work or waitressing and things like that so I've never actually done like an office job or like a nine to five I guess a traditional one um I know I'd be like 100 % motivated in whatever I do if I find it interesting but I also know that I'm quite opinionated and like what what I like in in quite direct in in that respect I find nutrition health longevity super interesting I think the UK's kind of health crisis that we're in uh you know we've had like 100 years of being advertised about how to be healthy and this and that but we're just going backwards and in so many many ways and I think there's a supplement approach and I think that's really cool um but I think there's just a wider piece on kind of what I'm sort of passionate about is just like food in general and education on on that piece I think it's really interesting like school kids and the food that they're eating and things like that I think we have such a bigger job to do there um but yeah the personalized health space I take about 12 pills a day uh supplement yeah I take a lot of tablets um but equally I eat a good diet I eat whole foods like I'm quite obsessed with all of that so yeah I definitely go into that sort of area like I know e-com like the back of my hand like I love that digital space and I think it's just so exciting about where it's going to go but also in like the high streets like we launched in boots in april 25 and that's gone really really well like we've got some really good figures from them and they're really happy with our performance there and it's interesting how you know ecom shifted the kind of market during covid but now it's kind of going back a little bit and one of the things i learned actually this week so we can correlate the temperature outside to our new customers so if the temperature goes up to like 27 28 people aren't on their phones so we see less customers and we've like overlaid that but with boots because they're then outside on the high street they're popping into the store so our sales are going up on boots it's i find that fascinating and the psychology behind it yeah i always remember a friend of mine who's in the restaurant business and he used to always just say when it's sunny we make money i can't remember the next bit because it because it rhymed as well and i failed on that bit but i just always remember him telling you could just literally tell by the weather how much money they were going to make and it was like the difference between making a couple of hundred pounds to making like tens of thousands of pounds and I was like really that's insane tell me um chief people officer you've seen your brand grow to a team of I think you said around 70 people now um tell me about like the the the band the timeline of so you started 2017 we're now 2025 how quickly have you um built that team and are you directly involved in that um is that like one of your main responsibilities and um what are your thoughts on scaling the business scaling the number of people in the business yes so when we first started like i said it was me and my mum and a guy called brad um so employee number four was uh we employed a community manager actually which people would think that's probably quite bonkers full-time um but call her like the social butterfly um she would just reply to customers and that was always the number one priority like we've always just centered everything around the customer like what does she want how can we better her experience etc um and then yeah built out our kind of marketing team from there so 2017 there was kind of like the four of us um fast forward to 2020 we're about um 15 at the beginning and about 24 at the end um so we kind of grew pretty rapidly after that i remember when we took investment for instance we um our allowable cost of acquisition because we didn't really understand lifetime value versus cost of acquisition and all of that like we were just we were winging it to some we had really good marketing company that was ace and that helped us but in terms of the financials that sat behind there we we weren't that great analyzing like i'm not really like a finance guru nor is maxine as you can probably imagine from double paying the invoice at the beginning um but yeah so we had some some cool people come on board after that but yeah we allowed our cpa to to kind of kind of double um and that allowed us access to a lot more customers and sort of 2020 um well 2021 we went from kind of 25 employees to to probably about 50 well 45 50 at the end and and that was that was quite yeah there's a loss of recruitment and it's kind of sad for for me seeing people leave but people generally here leave on good terms um like I stay in touch with a lot of them but I've always been directly involved in recruitment probably until about six months ago like I'd pretty much interview everyone that started here um we've got some really great well HR teams based on on there's two people um in it um Sasha and Laura they're they're ace like I know I can trust them with who that we're recruiting and we set kind of really strong parameters on our company sort of principles, which is, it stands for ACers, which doesn't really make much sense, but everyone remembers it.

35:34And it's about authenticity, being kind of caring, entrepreneurial and responsible. So kind of with B Corp and on that basis. So everyone is kind of recruited on those basis. It's like we have a employee nomination kind of board and everyone's nominated on those four principles. So for me, it's I'm not great at the well, I don't know the HR law side of things. It's not my forte. But we have good people that know that I'm good. I know I'm good on the cultural side of it and in kind of that piece. And that's what Maxine is also really good. But yeah, my role here is predominantly people in product.

36:12So the double double piece. But yeah, my passion's really lying. product development and science and I just love I just love people so that's kind of always been sort of my area but yeah it's been interesting seeing like how we recruit people and that's developed over time I remember interviewing our first customer service person and her name's Charlotte she still works here she was a hairdresser from the age of 16 and she probably started here when she was maybe I don't know she won't mind me saying this I can't remember like 40 or something and she'd never had another job outside a hair salon she didn't work on the reception desk she was actually the hairdresser she'd never really worked on a laptop but I was like oh you're kind you're really nice let's employ you and the kind of we employed a lot of nice people at the beginning that were really nice and friendly but probably didn't necessarily grow with company because they might not have had that skill set and the resilience there and we've kind of had to reach frame that narrative to okay we probably do need people that it's hard work here it's hard work growing like an e-com d2c well any any brand to be honest any business any business exactly yeah it's hard yeah um so it is like you know interviews now and i'm kind of brutally honest like this is this is hard graph like it's not you know you're not swanning in here swanning out of here and especially if you're in you know performance marketing if something goes wrong on the evenings you're gonna have to have a look at it and sort it out otherwise we're gonna overspend underspend and not hit our budget numbers and we've been quite um we've got a really good team they really care about what they're doing and we're all on the same mission but we've definitely had to change up the kind of people that we recruit a little bit uh to more to that entrepreneurial side yeah and it's i think what i've learned in you know the kind of 600 odd interviews i've done done with this and all the live events with different entrepreneurs and running businesses myself is that the people that you hire at the start at the start aren't necessarily the people to get you to where you want to be ultimately and it's it's always i i'm again not non-confrontational i always remember having to tell somebody in a previous business i had like um sports therapy business which are like scaled to a number of different locations i always remember having to tell this like massive big macho aussie guy that we're letting him go because no one was rebooking you know he's the loveliest person but no none of the clients were rebooking and i told and he just burst into tears and i just didn't know what to do with that it was like the last reaction I ever thought I was gonna get from telling him that I was expecting him to like you know I was moving my chair further back thinking the first thing he's gonna go for me you know he's gonna take my head off or something but he just burst into tears and I just felt horrendous obviously then it's like the worst feeling in the world but sounds harsh doesn't it but it has to be a business decision um based on where you you you see taking the business yeah yeah we've gone through things in the past and you know we've had to maybe let people go and things and I've hated having those conversations but I've always tried to be involved in them because I think it's fair but generally when you speak to them they're also unhappy or something they've you know even if they don't agree with the decision they've gone into better roles more fulfilling roles completely changed up the career realize this isn't for them and I find that a bit quite hard because I'm I'm a people person I'm not necessarily I'm not a people pleaser but I'm a people person I care about people um so that's been been quite tricky for me but always learning and like doing those experiences and going through them every person has probably ended up better on the other side and the business I think that's quite hard like I've got a couple of friends that work here um and those the conversations are always always tricky uh because not everyone's perfect like sometimes things go wrong etc but yeah they're um they're still here still kicking them out still doing a great job so i'm like it's not my decision anymore uh which is yeah it's hard but it's nice working with people you trust at the end of the day and i think that's like my sister works here uh at the moment um obviously my mum um but it's moved out now and we used to have the finance function quite uh was was family run but it's not anymore um but yeah it's just trusting other people and it's it's hard that trust piece it is um so coming up to we've got a quick fire round to finish up before i do a couple last questions darcy bring it back to your mum funnily enough what's the hardest part about working with your mum and what's the best part the hardest part is probably um we're not we're not very good at identifying when like i just want her to be a mum versus like a co-founder or business partner or whatever so I'll sometimes you know rant or moan and she'll do the same at me and she goes into like fix mode and I'm like or like she's like trying to fix things I'm like no I just I'm just off offloading stuff and there was one time I told her I told her something and or I didn't tell her something actually and she was like why didn't you speak to me about that I went I can't I can't talk to you about that you're my mum and like it's that's kind of tricky and I don't know what sort of relationship we'd have if we didn't work together um I get to spend a lot of time with her I get spend a lot of time with my sister and that's lovely and I don't think we'd spend as much time with each other but I can't say if our relationship would be better or worse like we've got a great relationship but it's definitely different from those mums and daughters that I see that don't work together um like we're going down in the car in a minute uh for a couple of hours and I know she wants to talk about tax so that's fun uh that's definitely different yeah never had that conversation with my mum yeah yeah um have you ever disagreed on a big business decision um weirdly not really uh actually there was one um Maxine is quite erratic in her decision making and doesn't necessarily look at the big picture um but I don't necessarily think this is the wrong thing she basically like fired our whole uh marketing agency with like three days notice once and then I had to kind of figure it out in the background like what we're going to do uh I don't really cry but I cried a lot um looking back it was probably the right decision but it's like the way in which it goes about it she goes about stuff is very she's got ADHD I think can be quite like disruptive uh she wouldn't mind me saying that um this was in lockdown and we lived together and it was we locked ourselves in separate rooms for about about three weeks to be honest because I was very annoyed but in terms of she's really respectful of my decision I'm really respectful of her decisions and we don't necessarily we're very direct with each other but we don't actually disagree massively on stuff and even if we do we always end up at the same place just discussing things or I think because of your family there's none of that like judgment you don't need to prove yourself and blah blah blah you can just like be yourself and agree disagree change your mind and I think that's really quite powerful that you haven't got that kind of wall up that you always need to prove yourself to stay in that position if that makes sense yeah that must have been that must be tough living under the same roof as well have you like moved out now or do you still oh god yeah right so i lived at home because we basically did all the packing from the garage so we were sending out like a thousand orders a day from our garage which was weird and then we had about six desks in our lounge um and then we we i was like well i'm not moving out there's no point my office is downstairs and then i got to the age of like 23 three and thought this is not this is not for me yeah no I totally get that um what do you think you'd be doing now if you hadn't joined forces with your mum at uh AC I think I'd be doing a food product development to be honest I think I'd be working in like a like a development kitchen or something probably in nutrition like I've always liked that space um yeah I think I'd probably be doing something something to do with that all the grad schemes I was applying for were like buying roles and things like that but yeah I think I've realized that I have to be really motivated to want to do something and I think that motivation is probably like the key part like I think that's like 50 % of the success in a lot of things it's like I said that naivety but doing things that other people said that's not going to work and you're like yeah it will and that was a lot with our formulation like one of our suppliers and um my mum speaks about it quite well they were like this is a silly formula it will never work and they came and apologized to us after and was like oh yeah i get it like we do certain things to it and blah blah blah um but that's the naivety and even go to suppliers now and like i can't do that and i'm like well you can if you do this or this or this they're like oh okay fine um but it's that like motivation to to go the extra mile isn't it and want want to make a change someone's got to be first indeed um i'll finish up just before a quick quick quick quick fire questions um as a younger founder of a business um what would be a biggest piece of advice you could give to other young people listening who are considering starting a business believe in yourself more i know if i had that advice like i think we'd be i genuinely do think the company might be in a slightly different position right now i think um in terms of products and and things like that i think we've moved a little bit too slow and i know that i should have just believed in and stood up for what i believe even a little bit more.

45:29Because it can be hard when you've got loads of experience. I've got, what, now eight years of experience, nearly nine, ten years of experience. But, you know, when you're sitting in a room with a combined experience level of like 100 years, it's quite hard to be like, oh, I think this is better because of XMIL. But, yeah, I think a lot of people I speak to, kind of similar age to me, starting businesses, they've got sort of no money and they're quite, you know, beholden to investors and things like that, which is hard because they have such an opinion on things, but they haven't built brands.

46:02I think that can be quite tricky because they want to go in, especially if they're, you know, giving you 15 grand for 20 % equity to basically start your business and buy that stock. They're going to have such an opinion on everything. So yeah, it's hard. Yeah, no, good advice. Okay, finish up, quick file rounds, five or six questions. First thing that comes into your head, short and snappy whatever you think first one Darcy what is an entrepreneur someone that thinks outside the box and does things that other people haven't necessarily thought of doing or doing something different perfect what do you think this country needs to do to get more startups sort out the way in which companies are like funded and founders get paid probably I think that's quite a tricky one like we're now with beholden to private equity because we sold some shares yeah yeah yeah i'm not negative about in any way but we couldn't just take it back and we could if we financed it but that would be a big risk on your family and i think that whole thing and the tax on it and stuff is difficult yeah yeah no agree um what in your mind is a is a scale-up business so different to a startup oh i think we're probably going through that phase at the moment and there's a lot more um I guess proper functions and and people doing less scrappy things and better decision making processes and things like that but it's we've gone from zero to to nothing well nothing to to where we are now in sort of seven years and you kind of just go through iterations and one of the things we've never got right is uh organization communication like how to communicate down and I thought you know you get to a point where that would be crystal clear and everyone would know what they're doing but that never happens i've learned um any thoughts on why the usa is better at producing scale-ups in unicorn businesses than the uk people in the us when you speak to them are just so much more optimistic and want to help each other so much more i'm from the midlands like i grew up in overhampton like we work in birmingham and people don't want to see people succeed people don't want to share contacts and i genuinely think that's a big part of it and if you go to london you have that such a wider pool of like ethnicities and where people come from and you have almost like a different feel down there and people kind of want each other to succeed but that needs to kind of disseminate into the rest of the UK and in my opinion.

48:24Now it's so true I was chatting to a friend of mine Nell Daly who's speaking at the event she's just launched a 70 million pound fund for not just female founders but for those who've you know come from a background where it It might be difficult for them to try and get funding. And we were having this conversation. She's American and she's flying over from New York for it. And she was like saying, I literally get a text message going, you need to speak to John in Miami. And she's like, I will then just phone John in Miami and have a conversation. She goes, in the UK, you guys go, well, who's John from Miami?

48:59Let me look online and go, ooh, what difference is he going to make? Why should I meet John? You know, what does he want from me? And you're like, that's so true, isn't it? It's such a different mindset. Yeah. And also the crowdfunding startup stuff. Like we are so like people put their money in ISIS, don't they? Or things like that. But just if you've got 10 grand, go put it in a company, take a bit more of a risk. Like we don't do that. I think that would help a lot of startups. But I just think we're so like risk averse. Like no one wants to do anything. You can't fail. Yeah. We've got weird, quite grumpy attitude sometimes.

49:35Yeah, and the mindset is definitely different. What can entrepreneurs look forward to when hearing you speak at the Festival of Entrepreneurs? Oh, well, me and my mum will be speaking about running a family business, which is always interesting because we kind of always discuss it a little bit before. But you can't, Maxine says what Maxine wants to say and she will, I guarantee you say, probably shouldn't say this, but probably look forward to seeing my squirmish face. like what the hell is she going to tell the world to be honest which uh is more of a question mark in my head and yeah i normally have to brief her on what not to say what rather than what to say i look forward to this um is there a founder at the moment or historically that you admire the most oh um do you know what her name's completely gone from my head but the lady that founded spanks i think she's uh yeah uh it's la jessica because i follow her husband jesse it's la um I was just looking at their bloody Instagram earlier today because I follow her husband, Jesse.

50:36Sarah Blakely. I think she's super cool. I remember when she sold Spanx and when she gave everyone like a business class ticket to so and so. Right, really. Amazing. I just think the way in which she's done things is super cool and it's innovative and it's changed people's lives, I guess. it's funny when I follow them on Instagram and you literally see like their lives um you know and they you know they've got young kids and he's just bought like a sauna boat so it's a sauna that's a boat and they're just like going out into the lake saunering and he's like they're both like totally bonkers and just inviting like doing random events at their house and they're in Atlanta in Georgia and like the amount of people and she's like and he's like right Sarah has now said to me I'm not allowed to keep inviting random people I've met on the internet to our house to sleep over and, you know, do marathons and shit like this.

51:27It's just hilarious. But they're both super successful exits, billion dollar companies, each of them like separately, not, you know, not working in the same business. But no, she's got amazing. I would love to interview Sarah Blakely. Yeah. You ever get a connection to Sarah Blakely? I'm in. go for it yeah no there's some really cool companies at the moment like um he's like david bar the guy that started rx seen that no okay the guy that started rx bar um oh right okay yeah yeah no rx yeah peter rihal i think so he started a company called david which is it's uh it's like this like perfect protein bar um but the second product launch was a piece of fish because it was like the perfect source of protein it's it's it's wild yeah interesting um anyone that's uh last question would be does it anyone that you would recommend having been on screw it just do it anyone that you would recommend for the show don't have to give me your answer now um think about it i can come back to you but anyone you think would be super cool i've got loads of young young female founders amazing yeah thank you very much steve it's been an absolute pleasure.

52:36Thanks for being on the show and look forward to meeting you in person at the Festival of Entrepreneurs. Cool. Thanks, Alex. That conversation just proved something. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge. Upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection.

53:11Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance. It's missing the opportunity entirely. If this conversation resonated with you, don't just sit there, act on it. Make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it.