Rory Sutherland, Elfried Samba and Lottie Whyte on founder focus and knowing your customer

23:30And so I guess that comes back to... Which products in particular do people find massively beneficial? Particularly the ice baths. So how a lot of people use those is it's five minutes in the morning where A, they're doing something difficult, so they're proving to themselves at the start of the day, you know, eat the frog kind of thing, basically. And the second thing is, you know, there are a lot of benefits. They say it's like literally having six coffees when you get out of the ice bath, right? It also has some effect on anxiety, doesn't it? Exactly, yeah. It helps to reduce anxiety. There are so many mental benefits to it.

24:05And so that one, and then the second piece around the sauna, I mean, there's actual data around how it improves your brain health. But also for a lot of people, it's people's 20 minutes to shut the door, have complete tranquility at the end of the day. So, you know, those two products in particular, I think. It's really interesting because when everyone talks about habits, right, and consistency, etc. But you realize that a lot of people optimize for them at their most motivated state, not for them when everything is just like going to shit, right? And I found in my own personal journeys that I now have habits that, because I have to control the downward spiral, right?

24:47The reason why a lot of people don't continue with whatever it is that they set out to do is because you'll put a goal to say that I need to do this seven days a week. Exactly. And the week that you do it six times, you're like, oh, my God, I'm a failure. I'm off. And then you're off, right? And one thing that's really interesting about the energy management side is if you now optimize for energy management and not just productivity management, you start to look at context. What am I doing that day? When do I need energy? And how does my day need to be laid out to ensure that for that moment in time, I have the utmost energy possible?

25:20For example, before when we did the first couple episodes for the podcast, I would treat it like a normal day, right? But I forgot that I needed a different part of energy to be able to be present, have a conversation. What I ate mattered. How much sleep I got mattered. I get destroyed by Rory in the podcast because if you're not switched on, you don't have enough sleep, you don't have enough food, and you almost structured your day to be ready for that optimal moment, it has a categorical effect on the quality of the time that you spend during that period. So actually, are most people utilizing the ice bath in the morning, sauna in the evening?

26:02Is that the usual cycle? Or do some people flip it? Are different people utilizing it different? Or is that just like the standard way? I think, obviously, as you pointed out, the thing about energy management is it's so personal. And this is the problem with kind of like broad brush pieces of advice, is that everybody operates totally differently. The kind of early morning, early riser versus late night owl is a classic example. It's right. Some people are just more productive at 11 p.m. at night. I'm most productive at 5 a.m. So like I'm getting my ass out of bed at that time. Rory, can I not up at 5 p.m.?

26:35No, no, no. Being a bit of an introvert, my problem is that I stay up insanely late. I mean, if I go on holiday, I effectively end up going to sleep at four in the morning. Partly because I like that nighttime quiet so much that, in other words, the phone doesn't ring, there are no interruptions. And the problem is, it's fine if I can work from home the next day, pretty much. I'm not saying staying up until four o 'clock in the morning, but staying up until two in the morning is fine, or 1 in the morning is fine if you get out of bed at 8.39. But if you've got to get into London, I find it an absolute pain in the ass.

27:09But it's very difficult. And my father was exactly the same. He was self-employed. He got up at about 10, 11 in the morning every day and would work. But he'd be working typically at sort of 11 o 'clock at night. And it's partly just the peace, you see, because there are no distractions, mercifully. But equally, funnily enough, I mean, one of my arguments I was making the other day is, I don't mind getting into London at 7 o 'clock in the morning because, yeah, it's effing early, but you get a really early ride in and you end up with two bonus hours. The really dumb time to get into work is 9 o 'clock.

27:43Yes, it is. Because it's, you know, basically either get in at 7 or get in at 11. Everything else, you're just battling with everybody else. Everything goes wrong with the tube at that time. And it's also, from an energy management point of view, it's really stressful. It's really, really stressful. It puts you out in sync, right? Yeah, so you're basically coming into the office or wherever you're going, stressed out, you've been frustrated because the tube has been delayed, all these things happen. And I really think that it's really important to make sure that clutter, right, is a big... So I used to be one of those people that would just expect people to accept me for just being a bit of a mess, right?

28:24All over, I'm just being creative, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, there's nothing worse than one of those creatives. Yes. Okay. But I started to realize that really, the clearer my space, the clearer the mind, the more I'm doing things in themes. So my Monday to Wednesday is completely different to my Thursdays and Fridays, right? That's clever if you can partition that. Yeah. If you can start to almost say, okay, I basically say between Monday and Wednesday, I'm a mercenary. Yeah, yeah. I'm in like go mode, like I do it this way. And then on Thursdays and Fridays, the types of meetings that I have is completely different, right?

29:02So I wake up early now, not by choice. It's because I had to do it to be able to make sure that I have the right energy at the right times. If I want to be creative, I need quiet. So I actually solve the most creative problems between around five o 'clock to nine o 'clock in the morning. So that's when I get into like the real core of a problem. Then I go to the gym. Deep work, yeah. Yeah, then I do all my like quick jobs, like email responses. And then from the afternoon, basically, you can just have my time. I'm ready to connect. I'm ready to speak. But it took me a while to be able to understand myself.

29:33One of the greatest tricks is just only doing email for certain portions of the day. Yeah, not letting you constantly. I mean, actually, slowing down what it is, how frequently it pulls the server, so that you only get new emails every two hours. The problem is, then, people use bloody email to tell you, the meeting's been canceled. I mean, actually, the whole system of messaging is a mess. Because everybody egotistically thinks that if they use WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, you do too. And that arrogant assumption that you will obviously use... So it's like, you know, I'm at the church, but there doesn't seem to be a wedding happening.

30:10Did you not get my message on wank chat? You know what I mean? And you're kind of going, for fuck's sake, I'm 60 years old, you know, for crying out loud. I'm not going to be on your dumb platform. And this business is unbelievably irritating. I mean, it's just so stupid. And actually, I think we should go back to telegrams and things like that, where the postman comes once a day and you deal with it. And that's it. That's about acceptable. Actually, I'm deep in a conversation with about, I'm not joking, 50 other founders who are all saying WhatsApp is the most stressful thing in their life. It's awful.

30:45So just groups upon groups upon constantly being bombarded with information. But also, you can't delegate, by the way. You cannot. Because if you forward a WhatsApp message, it doesn't explain who you forwarded it from. Yeah, exactly. So I then forward something to my wife and say, can you contact this person? And they get, well, I have no idea who this is from. So it's more work. And email is appalling to begin with. And WhatsApp is worse than email. Yeah, exactly. Which is quite an achievement, really. And incidentally, I mean, Paul Graham makes this point. No one has attempted to improve email significantly.

31:15I mean, it doesn't nest well. It doesn't... Now, theoretically, we should expect AI to solve this problem for us in some shape or form, but I'm not sure it will. I'm genuine. Some people use this thing called superhuman. Is that right? So, shameless plug, there's a tool called Fixer. Yeah, I was waiting for that. Yeah, Fixer, I'm gonna say, it's not a sponsor of the podcast or anything. Not yet. Not yet. Where's the camera? Yeah. But it allows me to have drafts written. So when I come to respond to emails, it's understood how I respond to things. It's also a plugin to other chats across the business so it knows how to respond and gives it context.

31:58So now I'm only editing 10 % of the time. But really, That's astonishing. Yeah, because a lot of the email responses, they don't need your thinking. It just needs you to sign something off or move things on, right? And you realize actually how many other times or how much time you spend thinking about a response. Because you've just come out of a different mindset. You come into this email and you're like, wait, hold on a second. What was that again? What meeting did we have? What happened in that session? And then you end up spending time to be able to respond to a very quick email. But if that context is already put together and you just have to basically approve and sign it off, it's just saved you so much time.

32:34I've got a question about your habits, right? So you talked about you've understood your energy and how best to optimize yourself. That partitioning of the week is really interesting, by the way. It is, but what about when you're leading a team? Because you can't, everybody has different ways of doing this, right? So how do you juggle, right, you might not want to talk to me in the morning, but my best time to talk to you is in the morning. Like, how are you creating boundaries that work for everybody else as well? So I know that between 10 till 11, there's a slot there where I, Anybody can hijack it if it's important.

33:07But also, if something is important, you can just call me, right? So if I know that if I get a call, it's important. It vetoes the whole system. You can't be very rigid. There's almost a process or system that works for like 60 % to 80 % of the time, which is enough. But then when there's an emergency and you need me, just call me. I think that we forget that that's an option, right? So a lot of the time when we work with our partners, somebody will be like, oh, I emailed them last week, But I'm like, if this is important, that's why, sorry to add to the stress, we're on WhatsApp, right? And sometimes when there's certain things that's really, really important, just call the person.

33:44A lot of people hide behind text, right? And actually, when you think about how we've structured our business, it's really about building trust with everybody that we're working with. And you have to understand how they work. They have to understand how you work. And you obviously have a system for the majority of the time to limit everything being in chaos. But there's sometimes when you have to go outside and say, you know what, the inquisitive thing is to talk to this person at this time. I know, Alf, you're doing this, but actually, this is really important. And I know when I get a Slack or a message or something around that time, it's important for me to pick that up.

34:20And I couldn't have done it two years ago. Two years ago, you just had to be in it. But then if you're fortunate enough... Because of the stage of where you're at on the journey. Yeah, I think a lot of the times people give you advice on businesses not in the right season for your business. A hundred percent, yeah. And I think that instead of having like sweeping statements of we should do this, I mean, you actually spoke about this. And this is a nicely comes into like this next topic of the conversation, which is you've gone from being like you found the problem. You speak to the consumers. You are now a business.

34:51How do you build the team? How do you set structure? What is the journey beyond that point? That like raw idea, we're just shifting numbers and run out of business. What is that transition that you guys made? And how is the business right now? Yeah. Okay. Really quick potted history, because I think it's really important for people listening. You know, you listen to those podcasts of people and you're like, oh, they got from here to here. But what about all the shit that happened in between? So 2021, quit my job to start the business, hired one employee, got to like, I don't know, 250k of revenue or something.

35:252022 uh raised a little bit of capital not much angel investment maybe like 300k of angel investment thought oh my god this is loads of money hired like eight people uh tried to like launch on amazon do b2b um you know do e-com be at events do all the things like anyone who launched in selfridges anyone who came to us with an opportunity we took it because i thought that's just how you scale a business, right? More opportunity, more sales, better. Obviously, that didn't work because you cannot do all of those things with 250k and eight people, or you can't do them well. Anyway, failed, spent all the cash, basically.

36:08Which of those things succeeded? Or would you say that none of them did because you spread it too thin? Spread it way too thin. Which would you have focused on if you'd have the time again? Well, then we had to focus on something because we were this close to going bust. And so we restructured the team. I had one guy, it was me and one guy in the world's most awful box office with no windows, no heating, nothing. And we just said, I said, look, we've got to either break a million quid this year or let's just call it a day. And me and him sat there and decided we're just going to go all in on e-com and we're going to go all in on MetaAds.

36:43Website, MetaAds, that's it. and we're going to become as good as we possibly can at those two things. So it was us two. And then in about April, we hired a videographer basically to make the ad. So we didn't have to outsource that anymore. And we broke like 1.2 million by the end of the year. Yeah. And then 2024, we went on Dragon's Den in February, ended up doing like 5 million, but kept the team super lean. There was three or four of us. 5 million. Yeah. and then on track to do like eight figures pretty much now and have still a pretty lean team, like eight or nine people. But I think probably the core lessons are, and I say this to founders all the time, I'm like, just stop trying to do so many things.

37:28Like just do one thing and do it really, really well. Like pick a channel, you know, pick one to two SKUs. You don't have to have a million things. It's so distracting. Unless you've gone and raised, you know, a huge amount of money, then it's a different process. But if you're building something from scratch and you're effectively bootstrapped, I think you stay focused and you can do a lot with a few talented people. How do you maintain that discipline? Because now that you're obviously on the momentum of growth, is it because you remember what it was like to be... I'm steeply scarred. I've got post-traumatic stress from that period of like, oh God, this whole thing is...

38:03And also, you know, when you take money from people, you know, I know in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't a huge amount of money, but I still took money from angel investors, real people who signed me 25 grand or 10 ,000 pounds or real money out of their bank accounts. And so, you know, when you're about to let people down because you made all the wrong decisions, I think that kind of sharpens your focus, right? And you're like, I'm not going to let this happen. Yeah. I found it really interesting how in today's culture within business, people celebrate when they are able to raise money. So wild to be.

38:35Right? Which is, really, that's the start of a journey, but people celebrating like it's the end of a journey. Well, it's a bit like when you get married, right? And like the biggest celebration of your marriage, of your relationship is the day you get married. But really like the big celebration should be, we got through 10 years, or we got through 20 years. Interesting point. That is way, way tougher than going and having a great celebration. I've always been very fascinated by happily ever after. Yeah. So you get to this moment and then it's happily ever after. No one tells us what do you do beyond this moment.

39:08Yeah. And you're about to get in the trenches, right? I've always said that if I was ever a film person, I would start a film that starts at the wedding. Yeah, and really tells the story. And then it says, and happily ever after, then the film starts. Yeah. I think that if more people knew what happens at happily ever after, then we'll have more happily ever after. You could do a sequel to four weddings and a funeral. Exactly. Not at the funeral, obviously. But no, that's a very interesting point. Yeah, that is the resolution point. for so many films that it's a beginning, not an end. Yeah.

40:14Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Yeah, and so one of the daily constants that you know are the important things you need to focus on. Because I remember when I heard about focus intelligence, right?

40:52So everybody tells you about IQ. A few people know about EQ, so emotional intelligence. Now there's this whole concept about focus intelligence, which is doing less things, but doing it better. So how do you do that? Speaking my language. How do you do that? Well, I think the reality is it is a daily battle for everybody. Because at the end of the day, like there's just so many or there are opportunities everywhere also if you're an entrepreneur you get excited by opportunities because that is the reason you're an entrepreneur to start with right that's why you're doing the thing you're doing but i am really bullish on being very clear like next year we're just doing two things like the whole team is focused on two things and if you are not working on one of those two things don't be working on it like you shouldn't be touching it and i think as a leader you have to be that clear with your team they need that level of direction i appreciate you know, it maybe gets a little bit more complex as you get bigger.

41:43But, you know, I was speaking to the CMO of Jones Road Beauty and he Cody and he was saying the exact same thing. He's like, I don't know, they're 200 million pound business or something. He's like, we're doing three things next year. That's it. Like these are the three things that make us better that will make us win everything else. Forget about it. Did you go back to the trade fair business at all? Have you have you abandoned that? Well, we haven't completely abandoned it. No, it's not there in our coats every single weekend. Got it. Fair enough. But I try to make a habit of doing it like a couple of times a year to be on the ground.

42:15Because that is the one problem with putting it in meta, which is you learn a lot less about your customers. Well, I mean, you do, but you don't. Okay. People are vocal on those comments section exactly as you mentioned. They are really talking to you. And the other thing is we're a very founder-led business, you know, because we went on Jackson's Den and the story and we're in all of our ads and we're out there. I mean, people every day write to me on LinkedIn and they say, I just want you to know I've had it. You know, this is rare. Just to be clear, anyone who's thinking about buying a sauna from Myer Master.

42:45But they say, you know, I've had a terrible experience and this is what happened. Let me send you the email chains of how this went down. And they're actually like, I just wanted you to know because like I'm a fan of the business and I want you to get better. Was that an installation experience? Bad installation experience principally? Yeah, that could be it could be that or it could be like, you know, they had an objection to buying something and they didn't get a quick enough response. or, you know, whatever. It could be anything. But I think people are really vocal on social, arguably too vocal.

43:10They're very quick to be like, in a way they will make it to your face. There's massive negativity, Bars, because no one has a pretty good experience ever bothers commenting. You never say anything. No, no. But that's really interesting because when we spoke before, you mentioned the fact that Amazon is a massive competitor, right? So the role of brand, right? What role has brand played in terms of setting Maya Master apart from the competitors that are currently in the same market as you. Do you think that that's played a massive role? Your personal brands, your story, Dragon's Den? It'll be great to know what is the thing that made you different to the masses.

43:46Yeah, I think storytelling is everything, right? I think we play in a world now where nobody's product is really different. You know, really, I mean, we make improvements to our product. We listen to our customers. We try to bring a great quality product to market. And there are tweaks and things to it. But really, who is coming out with something that's totally radically different? Nobody is doing that. And what people want is they want to feel something. You know, they want to feel something beyond buying a product. And having the founder story, especially when you're at the beginning of the journey and you maybe don't have massive marketing budgets, it gives people a reason to believe in you over others.

44:23And if you take the state of play as, okay, everybody's got a great product in this space, just say. I mean, of course, there are some tweaks and advantages, but it's like, then what am I getting behind? I'm getting behind their mission. I'm getting behind their story. I'm getting behind who they are as people. I want to be aligned with those people. And I think that is something that everybody can leverage. That's why the barriers to entry are so much lower now, right, to start a business, because everyone has a story and actually everybody has an audience, whether it's 100 people or 100 ,000 people.

44:51And you were obviously in the creative space before, right? You were in the creative industry. What role did that play in terms of knowing the importance of storytelling, the importance of branding? Did that play a role or was it just a necessity and it just instincts clicked in because you recognize that you couldn't go cash for cash against the competitors and just like leaned into what worked? I think it would be great to understand whether that was premeditated or was that just like instincts for survival? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I worked at agency, but my role was always like people, business development, acquisition.

45:29So it's actually much more commercial than it was creative. And so I would say I have been not as bullish as I should have been on creative. And I've been not as bullish as I should have been on storytelling. I think we could have done way, way more of it, actually. Yeah. But you have a lot more of your journey to come, right? Yeah. Well, that's why we're working together, right? Because it's like, That's what we wanted to really think about as we enter the next stage. On the flip side, though, can I just add something? There isn't a single person who we were competitive with four years ago in the UK that still exists.

46:00There's not a single brand. Yeah, all of them have died in the time that we've been going. And I think it's almost because they were too bullish on brand. You know, they were too bullish on... A lot of them were bootstrapped, right? There wasn't anyone who raised a lot of money. and going out and doing, you know, little pop-ups with 100 people and, you know, doing these sending out free products to anyone who, you know, would ask for it with any influence status. And they just died because commercially it wasn't viable and it wasn't scalable. And so actually we've probably helped off some of the brand activities you would talk about and we've been more bullish on performance.

46:39And I think that was the right decision to this point. I always say that, and here is almost, I would say that this is a warning to people within the creative industry as well. I always say this, that people focus on the nice to haves a little bit too early sometimes. Really, if the goal is for a business to be around for a very long time, you first need to get past the survival stage. Exactly. You need the basics to be able to run as an organization. So when you are coming up with a strategy, you should be very intentional about whether this is something that helps the business today, tomorrow, or in the long term.

47:22Often than not, when you look at something like paid media or performance marketing, I often describe it as it feels like a salary. Although it's very predictable, you know what you're going to get. You know it's going to come in a very consistent manner. And then when you go with community, which I think is your insurance policy, that's your get-out-of-jail-free card when things go to shit, right? Whereas I will criticize a lot of businesses becoming, you know, where effectively conversion becomes a kind of fentanyl to which they become completely addicted as the only metric that matters, I'll happily criticize some businesses for that.

47:57I wouldn't criticize any small business for focusing at the bottom of the funnel to begin with. Because, you know, ultimately, if you can't make that work, you can't make anything work at scale. Yeah, I think the Black Friday thing is a really good example, because there's a lot of small brands that are like, we're not participating, because, you know, we don't want to be seen as a brand that ever takes money off on quality. And I get the stance from like a brand point of view. But at the end of the day, it's the biggest shopping moment of the entire year. and it's like you know at a small point who are you to take a stand to opt out of that no one's gonna notice it's also like you said to me it's like almost during that period you fill the coffers to essentially have the budgets to do amazing brand things for the rest of the year right and so i think that's a really good example of sometimes brands kind of prioritizing brand over keeping the business alive and healthy from a commercial standpoint which allows you to do all of the other cool things you want to do from a brand point of view.

48:58A lot of times people live in echo chambers. They don't realize that the world is much bigger than what's happening. I used to say that the world's bigger than Blythe Valley, which is where Gymshark was based. When you get outside, you realize that there's more people doing different things. So you can't kid yourself to believe that you're at the center of everything. Exactly. And I think that's what a lot of people do, is that they think that they're at the center of everything, decisions revolves around them. But really, the world doesn't really care, right? Exactly. And if you're not involved in the conversation, it just moves along.

49:27Yes, without you. Which is really interesting. So obviously, MyoMass is going. You are now a leader. Describe your leadership style. How do you get the team bought into the brand? How do you get the team bought into the mission? It'll be great to know how you rally the troops to go on this journey that you're going on right now. High levels of integrity is my number one thing. And I just think it's so missing often in leadership. and I experienced it a lot when I was in agency. You know, you often learn the most from the worst bosses that you have. But for me, it's like I am all about transparency.

50:03I don't hide anything from the team. I mean, they know every number. They know everything. We're very authentic with what we're trying to do and very honest about what we're trying to do. And also, you know, we're genuinely excited about what we're trying to build. You know, this for us isn't about like, how can we get exit and take cash off the table as quickly as possible. It's like, we're passionate about the mission. We love what we're building. Of course, it has to be commercially successful. But I think people buy into authenticity and they buy into integrity. And when you have a trusted relationship, that's amazing.

50:38And also, I think they're excited about... It's easier when you have momentum like we have right now. We're growing really fast. Of course, you can get really excited about that. It's like the wheels are turning. There's so much. We just had the best month ever. It blew all of our targets. Everyone's like, oh, wow, we did that together. And just giving people their flowers. You know, I think the thing is none of the success is mine. When you have a success, you give it to the team. You're always shouting people out. And when you have a failure, it's always your fault. And I think that's a good philosophy to live by.

51:07How many employees do you have now? Maybe 12. Do you think it's problematic that when you reach a certain size, isn't a little way to go yet. It gets harder and harder to have that complete openness and integrity and also, you know, of necessity. I always wonder about this, you know, what size it... Because, you know, there's always a number, the Dunbar number around 150, where everybody knows everybody else and they also know how everybody relates to everybody else. And you reach a certain size of business where effectively you have to compartmentalize it. But at that point, you do lose something.

51:43Yeah. Yeah. Is that definitely true? Do you always have to do that? Fundamentally, it's... I mean, the whole question of team design is very interesting. So, Shopify, for example, I think this may be also true of Octopus Energy. Their customer service teams tend to be 10 people. Yeah. With, you know, they're charged with a particular group of customers, so there's continuity. But the argument is that when you have a team of 10, for instance, people feel bad at free riding. In other words, no one bunks off ill because they are actually pained by the idea of letting the other nine people down. It's close enough.

52:22The model that I think it was a chap called Toby Shannon used at Shopify was he said, there are sports where you have teams of five and there are sports where you have teams of 15, but there aren't any sports where you get a team of 55 or 60. And he argued that you can achieve a kind of cohesion and mutuality at that size, which doesn't necessarily scale up as you get bigger. It's complicated, because obviously, you need central specialisms and all that kind of thing as you get larger. And if you think about probably the biggest bowling squad is American football. They get to 55, but they operate as different teams.

53:02Yeah. So the defense... Like sub teams, yeah. That sub teams, the defense are completely different. That's completely wonderfully bizarre, isn't it? And also the special teams are completely different. So they are still part of the same team, but they operate as micro teams. How I see it, especially with modern technology, AI and everything that's happening, I do think that a lot of the reasons why people were just hiring a lot of people was because of empire building, right? I think that if clarity across the business is prioritized, and honesty and systems are prioritized to ensure that you make the most of what you've got.

53:36I think that the team at Telegram only have 50 people. And they're like a 12 billion or plus, I don't know the numbers, like company. And apparently the founder still, they have no HR department. He does it all directly. It's because they set the business up like that in the first place. Optus Energy has no HR department. Yeah. I'm bothered by HR because I think it creates It's an intermediation between one employee and another, which is there was an awful lot, for example, between a more experienced and less experienced employee. You had that kind of master-apprentice relationship, which was very tacit.

54:15It was very reciprocal. But you now have a world where no one can actually fire anybody. Nobody can hire anybody. Nobody can promote anybody. that the people you deal with day to day have less and less control over your future. And consequently, it's... That actually, in a sense, that breaks down the nature of a team. Because effectively, you have this weird third party outside force, which is responsible for all those decisions. And so, things that used to be within your gift, or which you could earn, those decisions which used to be taken by the people immediately around you who knew who you were day to day and now being taken formulaically by someone based on some you know algorithm or principle it's not the same thing you basically don't want to have roles so i have this weird thing about the word management right i i don't like roles that just obviously if you're a system I prefer black belts, right?

55:20So I prefer... Well, what I found, especially what happens with a lot of startups, they have a core team of people that help them build that momentum. But now, because the corporation will say that you now have to become a manager in order to earn more, you now have a very great executor that you're turning into a not-so-great manager. Exactly. Because that's not their skill. That skill is not working through people. That skill is, I'm the best at doing this thing. But because life gets in the way, I have bills to pay, I want to get married, I want to do all that kind of stuff, I now have to change that and give that away because the organization does not deem that to be a valuable skill.

56:01whereas I think that if people and it's never an all conversation it's always an and conversation if you have a path of people that become the black belt of the thing going from white belt to yellow belt to blue belt of the thing and they're getting compensated for their execution skills and then you have people that are great at coordinating and bringing people together more like project leads as opposed to managers right they're there getting the most out of people they're there to report the performance of things are there to make sure that the the the there's no friction between the team and leadership.

56:31I think that's a much better position. Otherwise, you'll just have people that are there trying to make themselves useful or trying to prove the value that they have. And it actually ends up creating bureaucracy. Really what you want is clarity and directness. And I feel like a lot of businesses just do it because that's how we've always done it. It's exactly that. That's just the structure. You start here and then you get promoted and then you become a manager. And so many people, A, don't enjoy it and B, are not good at it, but they're amazing at their jobs. And I think, why can't you create a structure where if that's your thing and you want to do that and you want to learn about that, great.

57:06But if you're just really great at doing the thing that you're great at, you should be allowed to progress and be rewarded equally. You see that in the tech world. It's also strange because in many cases, what you developed on the way up as a practitioner is a very, very unique skill. Exactly, yeah. And then you effectively put someone in a managerial role, which turns the whole thing generic. Yeah. And there's no particular correlation between someone's technical ability at a specialist job and their managerial ability. And it's a fundamental flaw, actually. The idea that, I mean, in a really, really well-run business where people knew what people were worth, it should be perfectly possible to earn six figures in a call center.

57:46Because the very best practitioners there are that good. Exactly. Very now and then, I make quite a lot of calls every now and then to customer service. And every now and then, you come across something which is like a 10x. You go, okay, this person is genuinely 10 times better than I expected. And the effect it then has on your loyalty and subsequent attitude towards that brand can be absolutely transformative. And yet, those jobs tend to be treated as if they're minimum wage jobs, which is a nonsense. And there's a front line with your customer as well. Absolutely that. And of course, salespeople can sort of lay claim to the revenue they generate, because it's immediate.

58:25But a really good call center person, you could measure it, but it'd be quite time consuming because loyalty is obviously slower to measure than acquisition is. And that seems to be a fairly major distortion, which is we're rewarding people not on the value they create, but on their ability to lay claim to it. Exactly. And that's what's interesting. If you have a small team, everybody knows how valuable someone is, even if there's no metric attached to that person's performance. Yeah, because there's... Because they just go, I couldn't cope without X. Yeah. And then the whole thing becomes formalized.

58:59You need formalized sort of, you know, bonus or reward structures. And in effect, it takes a step back. It becomes stupider. Yeah. Because you then suddenly only value someone by what you can measure, which in some cases, of course, leads people to game the system or to pursue one particular metric, you know, to the point of insanity. Or it can lead to all kinds of perverse outcomes, in fact. Or to be selfish, so you're not actually putting the goal of the organization above your individual goals, right? Because you are rewarded on your individual performance, right? So you will get people in procurement who get a bonus for effectively choosing a lower cost supplier who aren't then held responsible for the loss in customer satisfaction that results.

59:41You talk about the whole concept of being micro-rational but macro-stupid. That's when you get those decisions. So within your narrow sphere of responsibility, you're being perfectly rational in what you're doing. But if you look at it within the wider interest of the business, it's actually daft. I mean, the example I always give is, you know, a well-known retailer's car park in Sevenoaks. Very prestigious, extremely good retail. It's Marks and Spencers. And, you know, don't get me wrong. I absolutely venerate them as an organization. I think they're absolutely brilliant. But they have, OK, they have this car park underneath the shop.

1:00:17and it effectively fines people too readily. Because you drive in, the number plate recognition clocks your arrival. You then pay five minutes later after you've sorted out the app, and it tells you you've got an hour left. But as far as the ANPR is concerned, you've already used five minutes of it between driving in and paying. So people drive out, their app says you have three minutes left, they then get fined, because technically they stayed for an hour and two minutes. Now, it occurred to me that the person who got the contract to run the car park, almost certainly that was awarded by procurement.

1:00:52And of course, the reason they can offer the best deal is precisely because of their propensity to fine people because it's part of their whole business model. Now, the person who appoints that person has no responsibility for the fact that certain people are driven batshit insane and stop shopping there. Because Because that doesn't come within... Customer satisfaction doesn't come within your remit. Purely paying... And then, of course, what's fascinating is in the lifts in the M &S, you then travel up and it says, please do not address any complaints about parking to store staff. You must address them to the car park operator, which is the classic example of an accountability sink.

1:01:29Yeah, palm it off. Which is we've palmed this off. Yeah. Now, it's kind of... I don't know the legality. As far as the consumer is concerned, this is your car park. Exactly. Yeah. You can't palm it off by saying, no, no, no, it's an independent operator who's responsible, because you chose the independent operator. And so, this kind of thing is insane, where effectively what you do, it's rather like, you know, a retailer. This literally happened to me. Probably... I won't name them... Yeah, go on. He's gonna name them! Okay, okay. Yeah, well, something bought from Harvey Nichols, and it arrived...

1:02:06This wasn't me, it was my daughter bought something. It arrived without the belt. And we bought it from their website, but it was delivered from the manufacturer. And it arrived without the belt, and so we get in touch with the retailer who sold us this thing. And they said, oh, no, you have to take that up with the manufacturer. Sorry, right? Now, interestingly, the manufacturer... Luckily, my wife speaks fluent French because that's when she studied at university. So, she was able to do all the cher, madame, monsieur, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, 95 % of customers, you're requiring them to deal with a French company in French to sort out this problem.

1:02:43And this question of an accountability sink seems to be happening all over with larger organizations where effectively it's a bit like Douglas Adams' conception of the someone else's problem field. Do you remember that? There's a wonderful thing in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is a somebody else's problem field which renders things invisible because it's not my problem. Yeah. And the extent to which organizations are doing this in a way that seems perfectly reasonable to them, but which is literally deranged to the customer. I mean, you know, absolutely. You sold me this thing, okay?

1:03:17And, you know, similarly, you know, I think kind of if you buy something from a retailer, the retailer should take responsibility for delivery. You shouldn't say, oh, it didn't arrive, you need to take it up with DHL. That's not sorry. I mean, legally, you may be in the right there. I have no idea, to be honest. But fundamentally, no sane consumer will think that's a reasonable way to behave. But somebody's done it effectively to create an accountability sink again. How can we create things so that as soon as it leaves our hands, we can wash our hands of the whole affair? And that seems to be happening more and more.

1:03:55And, of course, don't even mention the public sector there, which probably does the same thing but worse. And that's not to criticize. I'm sure the marketing people of both those brands I've mentioned are absolutely admirable people doing the best they possibly can and, as far as I can see, doing a very good job. But then these decisions are taken with no reference to marketing or to the customer. They're simply taken to optimize some cost reduction approach. and effectively these people can get the credit for reducing the cost but don't get the blame for the destruction of long-term customer value and that's that's micro you know micro intelligent macro dumb yeah yeah but really it comes back to customer experience and how you really need something that sits across the entire organization and so often it's just siloed right and i guess the question as you get bigger is how do you keep our little conversations that we had you know on understand how do you stay as close to that as possible and make sure that it's integrated or somebody's looking at it across the entire thing and it's not like right well we sell the product we ship the product we deal with the customers yeah but then even when you talk about breaking the business down to its core essence of i remember a time when at gymshark our names was the department that we were looking after so i was called social and craig was called email and and you could speak in a round table and you can ask somebody a question you'll get the answer I was watching a podcast, or I was listening to a podcast, but I was watching it, about Oracle and the fact that they talk about the fact that they would ask three questions and it will take months to get the answers to those three questions, right?

1:05:31Because you have to go through these different departments and everything wasn't joined up and it took them 10 years to fix that, right? So it's almost like the game is when we've got something going that works and we can get information instantly, when we can have communication instantly, when we can have We can figure out problems instantly. How do we keep that as we grow? So basically, the output or the input of that and the output has to stay the same as we grow to keep us very simple to understand as a business and keep it very frictionless to move and be able to attain information and be able to make sure that decisions get made faster.

1:06:07Whereas really, as businesses go bigger, it's almost like making it more complicated is supported. Yeah. Which is weird. Yeah, it's so weird. But also it's like, to the point about clarity, if you are really clear as a business about what your customer experience philosophy is, what is, you know, what's the stance on this? Like, how should our customer be treated? What is the number one vision mission on this thing? Then everybody in the organization should be aligned to that thing. It's like, okay, we're off the suspense. I think that survives in family-owned companies and I think it survives very well in founder-led companies.

1:06:41keeping that alive in a PLC where the preoccupation of the people at the top is no longer their customers. In other words, they've effectively shifted focus towards the investor community. And I've often argued, I don't think you can solve the problem, but nice though it would be just by putting a marketing person on the board, good though that would be, because they're still on their own. And they're still going to look like the weirdo if they raise marketing questions. I personally think that large organizations should have a customer board. And I think it should, you know, obviously there should be shared representation between the two boards.

1:07:17But effectively, reserving some time for people at the center of an organization who can resolve these conflicts between, you know, what procurement wants, what marketing wants, for example. and having time each month to focus on those questions would be an enormous leap forward because, you know, fundamentally board meetings have become ludicrously financialized. They're about cost... And as a result, they're about cost reduction first. Value creation takes a back seat. And then we wonder why there isn't any economic growth in a way. You know, in other words, it's about minimizing risk and cost, not maximizing opportunity.

1:07:55Yeah. And it's also about remembering why we're doing this in the first place. I think people lose the energy, the drive. We were speaking about this sweeping statement about the fact that the people that got here will not be the people that take you to the next direction. No, it just means they have to play a different role. They're there to remind everybody coming in, why are we here? Why do we do things this way? Why the customer matters to us? all those key founding team members, they may no longer have the skill to be the best at CRM or whatever, but they are the extension of the founder.

1:08:30And they... So Alex Ferguson, I'm not a Manchester United fan. I'm an Arsenal fan. Just to be clear. I'm just disassociating myself. You're disturbing about you. But I wasn't born in the UK. Okay, fair enough. So you're allowed to choose. Ian Wright's got my dad, Henri, I was locked in. I get it, I get it. There's a whole thing, right? But effectively, there were certain players, like the Neville brothers, that were not necessarily in the team purely because of their talent, but because there were his soldiers on the pitch that set the culture, right? So this is the extension of him. Here's how we operate on the field.

1:09:04And he knows that they will make sure the message is clear amongst the players. And in businesses... There's a name for it, I think, in business, sometimes called a plant, which is by analogy with an office plant, which is someone who effectively is, it's like a catalyst in chemistry. They're there actually not for what they themselves do, but for the effect they have on the behavior of everybody around them. Very interesting, very interesting conception. Especially when you have a founder-led business or fast-growing business, when you have people that have gone through the wars and seen the stories.

1:09:33Now, if they leave, then the founder has to be the one to always vocalize this, which is impossible, right? So you actually have to say, all right, these are the people that we are building the foundation of this business with. Let's document that entire journey and let's make sure that everybody beyond this point that comes in understands why we're doing the way that we do this, why we don't do certain things, why we're open to certain things. That's the thing that makes you different because at the end of the day, when you think about the definition of a company, it's a collective of people.

1:10:04The collective of people that you have versus other people is the thing that makes you different, which is why people is a priority, not just externally of your business, which is the consumers, even internally, is the priority of leadership, right? Because that's the things that make you different. And actually, you should opt. I mean, Ogilvy always did this. You over-optimize for staff retention, really, on the grounds that, you know, three people doing a job for two years is not the same as one person being there for six years. You know, I mean, the cynical view is always that only a third of people in any company do all the work because a third of them have just arrived and don't know what they're doing and a third of them are planning to leave so they don't care.

1:10:42Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably a bit extreme. But I would agree that actually, you know, length of tenure matters. I mean, this is another thing, because what we try and do is we try and formalize everything. We try and make it rule-based. And then you end up effectively treating people as units of production. And the idea being that they're fungible, because all we need is someone to perform this tightly defined function. But nearly all people have... It's the Dorman fallacy. You may remember me talking about this. Nearly everybody has a value and function that goes way beyond what their job description, you know, attributes to them.

1:11:17As their, you know, you have a core responsibility. But, you know, anybody actually doing their job will spend a third of their time devoted to things beyond their absolutely narrowly defined role. Yeah. A friend of mine who worked for Goldman Sachs always said the really magical thing about it, what made it different was that he said everywhere else, you know, if you got a request from the Uruguay office, you'd kind of go, well, I mean, there's nothing here for us. Let's just get this off our desk. Are they going to pay us? Goldman Sachs, no one asked those questions. If someone asked for help, you helped.

1:11:55And now, admittedly, probably the guy who heads the Uruguay office of Goldman Sachs is going to be the Minister of Finance six months later. So it pays to keep them sweet. But nonetheless, there was this automatic culture that by default, you made yourself useful. And so, you know, it's very interesting because we don't think of those organizations, you know, particularly not a large investment bank, as being socialistic. Because obviously, as an entity, they're deeply capitalistic. But within the organization, they're actually surprisingly socialistic. You know, there's an enormous amount of, you know, sacrificing self-interest for collective good.

1:12:33It pays to understand people because they're the common denominator in everything that we do. Yeah. Right? And so Lottie, we've come to time. Obviously, I'm going to ask you to do the phenomenal task of summarizing your biggest lesson throughout your journey right now. Oh my goodness. And if there was a parting message to send to entrepreneurs that want to do the same thing or go on to their journey or solve a major problem, what would be the number one advice that you give them? I'm going to do the advice piece first. The number one piece of advice is that the barriers to entry to start something have never been lower.

1:13:09And the cost of failure, I think, has never been less. Like it's okay to start, to try and to fail and to start again. And you should totally embrace that philosophy and be totally unafraid of giving something a go because I truly believe that entrepreneurship is one of the most incredible things you can do in your lifetime to create something you believe in, to bring other people along with you on the journey. So just start, give it a go, try and be totally open to failing and starting again. And the second thing was, what was the second thing? The first thing that is my second thing. Well, that's, you basically answered both.

1:13:42All right, cool. Yeah, I think you did. I mean, one of the things that's sort of rescuing, I think, the UK economy is this extraordinary change even in my lifetime, which will be, by the way, even more important because we've created 50 % of the population become university graduates. and there simply aren't the graduate entry-level jobs for them anymore and there will probably be even fewer of those. But the extent to which entrepreneurialism in general has enjoyed this reputational, I think it's probably a revival, but it was considered, my father always said, when he went to university in the 1950s, you were expected to go, it was, bear in mind, this was 1953, it was sort of law, medicine, church, which there were, you know, civil service, military was acceptable back then, but you went into one of these sort of five socially approved activities.

1:14:34And, you know, if you went and did something interesting, it was kind of indulged, but you were thought to have, you know, slightly lost the plot. Yeah. And that's completely changing. And I think it's really, really important. And hopefully, we'll also acquire this, it's okay to fail mentality, which the US has had for probably quite a few more years. Yeah. There's more problems to solve than those five professions. Exactly. There's more problems to solve than those five professions. Nassim Taleb put it beautifully. He said that actually an entrepreneur who fails in business is no more a failure than a soldier who dies in battle.

1:15:07It's part of the overall process. It's part of the process. I wish more people were comfortable with that. Failing is totally part of the process. I'm so comfortable with it now. I'm failing all the time. One weird marketing point. How much are you starting to gain business through referral? Yeah. A lot of our businesses. A lot of it through. That's really interesting. Have you found ways to amplify it? Yeah. Because obviously I wouldn't take ice baths in public, but people just... You have got products which are highly talkable. Yeah. And it's very cult-like, right? It's a bit like they say...

1:15:40I think I heard this on a free... You just killed me with that. You only took an ice bath in public. Well, actually, they do. I mean... Yeah, they do a bit. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's one of those things that people love to tell you about. It's like, you know, I asked Bath, and I did it for this long, and I did it at this temperature, and it's a bit of a like, I'm wearing a mask. It's a bit like, you know, when someone's a vegan, don't worry, they'll tell you soon enough. Exactly. They love to tell you. And so, you know, there's not a lot we need to do to encourage people to talk about it and to share it.

1:16:09Brilliant. And that's a really exciting thing, I think, that we can tap much weather into as well. That's fascinating. Yeah. What's the longest you've lasted in an ice bath? Three minutes. Oh, yeah, I can't compete with that. What's the target length of time? Well, you don't want to do any less than 60 seconds, really, but you've got to work up to it as well. Got it, got it. So don't be hanging out too long if it's your first time, you know what I'm saying? Disclaimer. Yeah, you won't see me doing three minutes. Lassie, thank you. You've been incredible. Fantastic. Thank you. And this is one of my favorite episodes.

1:16:42Again, all the guests. Do you get the female handbrake on ice baths and saunas as well? Yeah. Yeah, because there's one obstacle. Do you convert a room into a sauna or is it just a standalone? No, you can just put it in your garden. You can just put it in the garden as a... ...build and chuck, yeah. ...as a fantastic... ...standalone thing. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. Episode 10.

1:17:11Thank you.