#71 - Alice Galsworthy - Mother Root [Chief Operating Officer]

0:28Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to Young Founders. point. We talk Dragon's Den, we talk about the growth of the brand from two people to now 15 plus, the business is going from strength to strength, Waitrose, Sopado, all sorts of great places and it was fun to dig into Alice's background working at M &S, Lidl, Aldi, all these other great businesses and brands and the lessons and learnings along the way. There is so much in this episode, I really hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, let's get on with it. We all know that brand is important right? But what if I told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50%.

0:58Against Ordinary are a brand agency who help founders, marketing departments, scaling teams ensure their brand is the most powerful tool for growth. From brand strategy, tone of voice, and visual identity, to helping you get retail ready with ongoing brand growth retainers. They really are the full circle agency for growing your brand. Being the team are absolutely fantastic. Just imagine what they could do for your brand. So what are you waiting for? See how they can be your grand growth partners at againstordinary.com.

1:35hello and welcome back to unfounders today i'm joined by the wonderful alice schoolsworthy so alice can you please let everyone know where you work and what your role is there hello thank you so much for having me yeah i'm alice i'm chief operating officer at mother root we are the feel good non-alcoholic aperitif brand we make bold complex drinks that serve up a dose of good feelings and my role kind of spans across ops people product and growth so before we recorded i messaged beth and i was like look who should i speak to in the team and she was like you need to speak to alice she's not the founder but she lives and breathes the brand is my right hand woman and i was like that's exactly why i do this so what is it about mother root that makes you feel so passionate about it and so much like it is your brand essentially yeah so my introduction to the brand was as a customer I was one of our earliest customers I was going through a kind of transition where I love a drink uh but it wasn't serving me in the same way and I was just desperate to find something which was delicious because you know food and drink is such a fundamental massive part of my life and I came across Mother Rue having tries everything in the market and I was like whoa this is so good um and then from there I was just super hooked I became a super fan told everyone I know about it and after drinking it for a couple of years and um I wanted to change career path and go into something smaller I actually saw Bethan advertising for a role and I was like I just need to be a part of this because at the time the brand was much smaller but I just knew it had what it takes to become a worldwide name.

3:15Yeah, so Mother Root for me is just everything around providing those moments of joy or sharing with other people or moments yourself, which are so important to me. We're on a mission to redefine what it means to drink well and feel good because that's what Mother Root did to me. So that's why I'm so engaged in bringing that to more and more people. I love that. Yeah, I think for a lot of people, I remember when it first came out, well, when I first saw it a few years ago, the branding was very different. And I think as soon as you guys did this rebrand, it was like, wow, like it just took it to another level.

3:50And then I've seen obviously distribution growing and all of this. And I think obviously we can't not mention Dragon's Den because that was a huge moment for you and the brand. Yeah. Behind the scenes, what was that like working? Firstly, doing that kind of interview process and prep with Bethan to then actually having the airing and going live and being like, right, how do we get ready for sales? Because hearing from like Perfect Ted and other brands, it's like, you have to prepare for the website traffic, the sales, all of this. So I'd love to kind of dig into all of that because I feel like it's such a fun area of conversation for a brand.

4:21Yeah, definitely. Yeah, Dragon's Den was amazing. It was intense, completely surreal, but such an incredible opportunity. In terms of prep for the actual filming itself, yeah, it just involved a lot of practice. Like it really forces you to get into the weeds of your business. and when you're busy and you're short of time and back then it was just Fethan and I full time and you know we were stretched but it really forced us to get into the granularities as to what has happened in the past and where we're going in the future which is actually an amazing exercise it just forces you to over a short period of time I mean at one point I like scraped every transcript from every episode to get every single question they'd ever asked and then I rank them in terms of how frequently they ask them.

5:09But what obviously you don't know is that only kind of 90, 95 % of the discussion actually never makes the TV. And we also reached out to other founders who'd been there, done that, you know, the likes of kind of Amelia from Bowlbeam gave us so much amazing advice. But that is just like the community of the FMCG world, like everyone's there to kind of support and back each other. So in terms of like the pitch, we must have rewritten it 100 times over. We're like, no, that's boring. But it was amazing to do it with Bethan and we were fortunately living down the road from each other then we had kind of five weeks of Monday to Sunday and her kids are like why is Alice over again but it was amazing and it was such a good experience and then in terms of preparing for the aftermath fortunately we've got an exceptional team and they put so much work into it like we normally have like a slightly slower summer which allows us to rebuild and get ready for peak but this this summer was just all about Dragon's Den so we haven't had any slow moments this year so everyone's feeling quite tired but the response was like extraordinary but fortunately we were just in such a good position and we just really planned well we'd got so much advice from the likes of Fussy to understand DTC and then Bold Bean to understand Grocery and we yeah we managed to kind of handle a large amount of volume from a website perspective but also stock and so yeah and the response afterwards was extraordinary we were so supported by our community who were basically just like cheering us from the sidelines from the moment the episode aired so it's been amazing yeah i think it's it's so nice to see and get that visibility and success off the back of it and i mean since wagon's den's gone live obviously a lot's changed with brand as i've said around the branding but where can people find you now because i remember recently i was in waitrose and saw an amazing like end display which was beautifully merchandise and all of this stuff so for for those who still are going I think I've heard of the brand but I don't really get it like can you explain like what the liquids are and kind of how people use it because I think it's it's such just a great concept and obsessed with the brand oh well thank you so much so yeah mother brew is based on the kind of tradition of drinking vinegars which dates back to ancient Greece um vinegar much like alcohol has an amazing property of extracting flavor so we refer to it as our liquid seasoning and it brings that kind of body and depth that often you're lacking in other non-alcoholic products.

7:35So we macerate vinegar, apple cider vinegar, organic apple cider vinegar with ginger juice, honey, and then a lick of chili. So it's just four simple ingredients, a really, really bold, intense liquid that you then serve one part mother root to six parts soda. So you get 20 drinks out of one of our bottles. Serve it over lots of ice, slice of lemon, rosemary, whatever suits you so it's a really really simple serve but something that makes it really really easy for people to make it home and make well and if you're interested in buying mother root then we are available on our website we are available on amazon waitrose sainsbury's ocado and then a few lovely kind of indies the likes of the national trust and selfridges whole foods and then yeah So just check us out if you want to have a look at kind of a map on our website, then we show where we're listed to.

8:31Amazing. And I know before recording this, you mentioned you were doing interviews and said you're hiring for five roles or something at the moment. So how big is the team and obviously how big are you currently growing the team? Because I think that is also testament to the success and growth you guys are having. Yeah, definitely. So we are a team of 12 and yeah, we're hiring currently for five positions. we wanted to take the approach of leveraging the brand visibility before we did a big hiring push after dragon's den because it you know really put mother root on the map and that was part of our strategy to also support and us attracting really good talent so we are yeah in the process of hiring across all departments so operational roles but we're also focusing this year on And going from that transition of you need a lot of generalists when you start a business to remain scrappy.

9:23Everybody's got to be spinning many plates. They have to get stuck in on things that they may not have done before. But that really enables you to scale in a way that means you're not losing so much money. And then as you continue to grow, it becomes more and more important to hire T-shaped specialists, we call them. So T-shaped generalists even. So people who have some specialist skills that they can bring from elsewhere help us really review how to do things better at Mother Root. We're not looking to kind of replicate anyone else's playbook, but equally still need the expertise and the talent.

9:58Because when you really deep it at the end of the day, like running a business is just about having really, really good people. So now that looks like us bringing in a creative studio in-house and to really help us scale our paid media. But yeah, there's lots of roles kind of across the board just to really help us level up, but also introduce that a level of kind of middle management, because right now, Bethan and I are doing a lot of that across the team, but you get to a place where you're probably not doing it as well as you should be anymore. So bringing some really good people in is the goal.

10:32Yeah, love that. I'd love to understand what you mean by the T-shaped people, because I haven't heard that term or reference before. So yeah, I think that's piqued my interest. Yeah, so T-shaped generalist is like an expression that you would use where someone who possesses like deep expertise in one area, so the vertical bar of the T, whilst having like a broad range of knowledge across like multiple disciplines, which is the horizontal part of the T. And I believe that each phase of like scaling a business kind of requires a different level of person. But I think T-shaped actually is something that potentially like some of those bigger blue chip businesses don't hire enough of and they get too deep into a tunnel vision.

11:17And I actually think that is the secret to success with like a lot of challenger brands is that they manage to attract that person. And it keeps the role very interesting, but it also brings a level of specialism that allows you to, you know, really do the important stuff well. I love that. Yeah, I think I'm going to be stealing that phrase. I think that's a really interesting way of thinking of it because I know I've been a founder, I've been an employee, I've kind of done all sorts of things. So I'm always like, where am I? I'd be more like an E or like an O or something where it's just like all over the place.

11:49In terms of like how you guys operate as a team now, have you got an office? Are you fully remote? Like what's your working setup and how do you guys come together both for work and to relax outside of work? Because I think that's always really important for brands like this where it is go, go, go all the time. I think you need to have that balance right. Yeah. Both from how you communicate, how you switch off, all those things. So, yeah, I'd love to unpick that a bit. Yeah. So we are based in Borough on Salt Lake Bridge Road in Sandbox. So shout out to them full of like lots of other FMCG brands.

12:19and we are typically in three days a week sometimes that is varied sometimes we're in four sometimes we're in two it just depends on what we've got on we are trying to build the business to be office centric because we get a lot from that we think there is a lot to be gained from having that agility deeper communication especially when you're bringing new people onto the business because i think there is we see real benefit from people like absorbing information and discussions that happen like outside of a specific remit that isn't the case for absolutely everyone on our team we have hired previously so some of our roles are more remote or they come in on a less frequent basis but yeah going forward it looks like trying to hire with more of an office hybrid model in mind and yeah I would say we have been really really fortunate of like hiring and attracting great talent I would say the biggest challenge that we're facing is that we have which is a nice problem to have but like exceeded forecasts in the last year and and with that you know you you exceed the resource capability and the capacity of your team and so inevitably people have felt stretched um so i'm hoping it's something temporary we're bringing in really great talent but the nature of startups is that you always feel like you're bursting at the seems because you're always kind of chasing that growth and the next opportunity and you can't always plan perfectly for every eventuality so there is an element of getting comfortable with sometimes that feeling but also we need to be super wary that everything has to come in balance and and it needs to be like ebbs and flows so yeah we're trying to strike the right balance between working hard and and ensuring that we're going for all the opportunities that make sense for us but equally ensuring that we're like really encompassing what it means to be mother root because you know we're all about kind of carving out moments of joy and and pleasure and that means having some appropriate downtime as well yeah love that yeah i think it's it's definitely important to get that and as you said i think for for people who've been part of a fast growth startup when you feel like you've got 50 things to do and then as soon as you're finishing one there's more to come the fact you're hiring more resource and investing into the teams a great sign of kind of growth and balance for the teams it's like right bandana hatches we'll get through this guys we're gonna grow and we'll be a little bit more comfortable soon but um yeah i think i think you need that when you're in this phase of massive growth as you guys seem to be right now and it really forces you to prioritize because you know it might be for us like we always say which is uh unpopular but we are allergic to events and there is always some like nice things that come opportunities that come across the table but sometimes we have to like question ourselves like do we actually have the resource to do this um feels like a nice moment but it forces you to make a difficult decision it's either that or it's this and then and then it really helps you focus um so that is like one benefit yeah there's definitely a lot of opportunity to be doing something almost every day every week spending money at every angle so I think being very focused in that approach sounds like you guys are doing the right thing now I'd love to kind of dig back into your career because I can't imagine growing up you ever imagined working for an apple cider vinegar based spirit brand so going back through your career when you were young what were you passionate about and where were you like okay I think I want to do this when I'm older yeah I mean originally I actually wanted to be a doctor.

15:55I'd been preparing to get into medical school since I was about 13 years old and but I didn't get a place and at the time I thought this is the end of the world. I was like should I reapply, reset but I didn't and actually super cliche but I am such a firm believer of everything happening for a reason. I have been obsessed with food and drinks for as long as I I remember my mum's an excellent cook and I came from a household of seven people and food was very much at the centre of that. And then the most defining part of my teens and kind of early adult was working in for many years in a really great French kind of gastropub in my village run by two guys from Alsace.

16:39I learned so much about food and wine from Alsace and like a Trimbac Riesling is still like one of my favourite wines now and actually is what Bethan and I bonded over. in my first interview because she's a real wine fanatic but that really set the tone as to like what I loved to do so I then um I yeah I did some stuff for Aldi but more marketing when I was at uni but my kind of my career really kicked off and I joined Marks and Spencer's I'd applied to their food buying graduate program and I I didn't get the job but they'd offered me another role which was more in kind of buying administration but it really like opened my eyes to the world of food and I loved it I was obsessed and it was such an amazing place to work back then and super inspiring and then but I definitely wanted to pursue something more commercial so I then started working for Lidl on their graduate program and it's very well known that they are like kind of famous for pushing people in their graduate schemes and but it was an amazing foundation and platform to learn at like an insanely accelerated rate we were responsible so early for like a massive amount of SKUs.

17:46And like within three years, I was responsible for half of dairy essentially. So all of cheese, frozen desserts, fresh desserts, but I kind of dipped my toe into lots of different things. So yeah, that was incredible, super fast paced, sometimes exhausting. And it was definitely a steep learning curve. It was actually part of the time where I started to reduce what I was drinking just because I found the combination of the hours plus alcohol not to be super favorable for me. And then I then started working with the young group. So for Taco Bell, obviously slightly less well known in the UK, but I was working for their European group and they were going through what felt like a startup phase.

18:26There was only a team of 15 of us and they were massively scaling in Europe. So I knew I wanted to work for startup, but I couldn't find the right thing. So I started working with them, which was again, like really interesting, but I would say probably less rooted in what I'm interested in on a personal level so that felt like a bit of a conflict of interest so I then just came across the mother root opportunity and honestly I felt like absolute fate and whilst I came in a head of ops and kind of commercial role but I was doing a bit of everything but I'm so grateful because the previous roles had really taught me like resilience, pace, like clarity, how to better build systems and how to better build teams, that kind of thing.

19:11But Mother Root really like brings all of that together. And yeah, for the first time, I feel in such a deep level, like completely aligned with my values and my passions. So I read something last week, which was like, what a privilege to feel tired doing something that you love. And isn't meant to sound like the Molly Mae, everyone's got the same 24 hours but it did really resonate with me because sometimes I'll get to the end of the week and I'll be like whoa I feel really exhausted but actually I feel so passionate about what I'm doing it feels worth it and yeah it has been again a really steep learning curve and I definitely am not doing everything right but I think as long as you give yourself a little bit of slack then you know just like enjoy the journey and that's definitely what I'm doing.

19:57No brilliant yeah I think I've had that quite a few times now I think Chris Williamson on Modern Wisdom says it quite a lot as well and I think it's it's very good to kind of think of because there's a very different level of tired when you're tired of just like getting through a day of doing something you don't enjoy versus doing something that's fulfilling you're like wow there's so much to do and then you finish a day and you're like oh I've only done half my to-do list or I've completed my to-do list today amazing that feeling of going to bed going oh I've accomplished so much today it's just such a nice feeling definitely um so it's just it's a good habit to get into to focus on some of the things that are going well because often your brain can take you to a place where you're only focusing on things that uh have not gone to plan yeah and i think the the other really important thing that i don't think it's talked about enough is just celebrating all the little wins like there's so many little things that every single week even every single day you could be doing that kind of moves the needle that bit further or you improve operations that bit better or marketing kind of hits another landmark and it's like there's always so many things but when you're so busy going oh this is the goal we're trying to do or this is the like where we have to put all our focus it's so easy to kind of like forget that and forget to kind of go hang on guys take a step back we have done amazing stuff like look at where we were at the start of year look where we are now yeah so for you with um your experience in like Lidl and M &S how did they differ in terms of your experience kind of as a employer because both of them I imagine very supportive in terms of growth and development you said little it was that kind of accelerator idea yeah I'd love to know if there was anything that you kind of have taken from those experience like you said about kind of systems and that that you brought into mother root but if there's anything kind of more tangible or very different between NS operated this way little operated like this yeah I mean they are chalk and cheese uh is what I would say my role was very different within the businesses so I think that's part of it but um I would say NS did the job amazingly of inspiring I remember in my first week for the first couple of days you basically go through kind of an introduction to food and and you spend say a day like exploring borough market getting lots of ingredients like learning about trends then we go into the test kitchen they had chefs kind of cook and talk to us about quality of food and what's coming around the corner from a trend perspective and then you like go deeper into the wine room and and learn that I just remember thinking like yeah this is really like where the foundation of excellent food comes from it's like that inspiration part And that's definitely something we've tried to take and inhibit at Mother Root.

22:23You know, we were really obsessed with good flavor, good products. We know, you know, we're such fans of so many products in the market and we have them all in the office. And we're, yeah, we stay really, really close to like how things are changing and trends. But equally, we're also passionate about like setting new trends too. And then when it comes to Lidl, I mean, one of the massive takeaways is just getting people to feel super engaged, working through something that feels really, really difficult. is we were, you know, when I joined Lidl, I think we were at about 400 stores and now it's at a thousand.

23:02So it's like, whilst it's not a startup, it was still scaling incredibly quickly. And it was, it felt super early stages. And it was that kind of conversation where you were talking with suppliers and it was, it was more like a sell. So we were trying to sell ourselves to get them to come and supply their products to Lidl, very different to what people assume those negotiations is always like um and you know you can apply that logic to mother root as well like you've always got to be selling and and bringing people into the story and lidl's passion and everything they stood for is around providing the best possible quality for the best price so that everyone could be buying good food and you know a lot of the supply base is exactly the same as marks and spencers like the quality is so aligned um so there is so much of that that you can take and bring into the world of startup as you continue to sell.

23:54And we are now starting to feel the shift slightly of people are actually wanting to approach us, which feels like such a step change because it's felt like many years of hard graft to get people to notice who we are. But I essentially think the biggest takeaways for me is getting people into the same wavelength and getting people to feel really focused and energized by the mission of what we're trying to do. And yeah, Lidl just did that very well. Yeah, love that. Great. I think it's always fascinating for me, like trying to unpick all these things because it's like I've had people from Pepsi, Unilever, Kellogg's, like all these big businesses.

24:33They're big for a reason. They've clearly got enough practice and things in place to be able to grow and be the scale of business they are. So I think from smaller brands, any kind of little nuggets or bits you can take away from how they do that to bring into the business you're working in. I think there's so much value in that. Yeah. For you now, kind of coming up to three years at Mother Root, what have been some of your kind of like favorite moments or like best kind of like days where you're like, wow, this is just this is a different level? Yeah, good question. I mean, obviously Dragon's Den aside, because that felt like a pretty amazing moment.

25:06We honestly like you were talking about the idea of making sure that you celebrate your wins and actually Steve Hewitt we went to a Phoebe event and he spoke about the fact that they always give as much time for wins as they do losses so it's 24 hours you celebrate it's hard and really recognize everyone for what they've done but then you move you move on and you focus and the same for losses you shouldn't dwell in them you should accept a loss 24 hours you can dwell and then after that you move on and that really like hit home for us and something that we've really applied to the business so um I mean we were laughing yesterday because Bethan and I were reflecting a couple of years ago we'd hit 50k on a monthly revenue and at the time it felt absolutely huge and we were just like we had a bottle of champagne and we went out for dinner and it felt amazing and we were like wow we're literally unstoppable and then when you kind of reflect on that now it obviously feels like such a different scale but I feel like we'll have that moment kind of going forward for us like things like getting the waitress listing felt absolutely huge for us they are you know the perfect retailer to sell Mavaroo into and it just felt like a real moment of even though DTC was growing really really well there is an aspect of people don't always understand or contextualize the size or success of a brand through DTC and whilst it shouldn't be an ego play sometimes it's quite nice to get recognition when you go into a retailer because people like oh this brand are really doing well even though it's like a much smaller part of our business because it really helps put us on the map and it and it felt like a massive step change for us and then more recently we've launched into the states so a month ago yeah we we've taken the decision to to test a new market and I know some people think that's questionable and you should continue to kind of go deep in one market and stay focused but it really felt like the right time There is so much tailwind from the growth of non-alc and we don't think it's a trend.

27:07We think it's here to stay. In addition to the boom of the wellness industry over there, and whilst we don't position ourselves as a wellness product, we are obsessed with this idea of whole being. And so we're at that kind of intersection between pleasure and health. And yeah, so the US is a big risk and, you know, people describe it as the graveyard for UK brands. but we feel like we've got the confidence and we've got what it takes. So we're just going DTC only first. And we're going to build our brand awareness through online in a similar vein to how we've done it in the UK. And fingers crossed, touch wood, it's going really well.

27:45So yeah, we've had such a great response from customers and influencers. And so those feel like the big things. But if I'm honest, it's just actually the moment of like hiring the team. It really just, whilst I loved working with Beth and we worked together for just a year and a half her and i now having the energy and like experiences and vibe that you get from having a team is the best thing that's so fun like everyone who reflects on like moments after they've worked from the startup just like oh yeah when you're in the like winners and enclosures area you realize all the fun was had in the race and i'm just like such a firm believer of that so i like relish in the now because this is this is the best moment i'm sure yeah no absolutely aligned um i think for for me i've always worked in those challenger brands where the battle has been to get into retail and i think with this year at packs we've done sainsbury's and tesco and it's like oh okay now i need to get it off the shelf like that's a new a new game and a new learning for me and it's all of that and um great fun but this is coming out um in january so anyone listening this will be second week of january i think will be when this goes live so dry january kind of i feel like dry january it's still a big thing and obviously people kind of go yeah i'm going to do it from a health or wellness perspective but i think from a brand perspective alcohol free is no longer niche i think it's just so common like even for myself it's like i'm going to have an alcohol free drink i might have a beer or wine like it's very interchangeable and i think people's behaviors are changing but for you guys as a brand for january have you been doing anything what's your kind of january approach and thoughts towards dry january because i've i've kind of had it from both sides where some non-alcohol brands are like very much yep dry january is amazing for us like big peak like you see all the sales go we push really hard and other brands are like no we don't really want to over egg it because it normalizes it's just that one month whereas we want to be year round yeah interesting question definitely a couple of years ago january felt like a much bigger peak i would say and i think this is backed by a lot of data this year consumer habits have just totally changed so a lot of our um customer base are just mindful drinkers or um throughout the whole year.

29:53January will still be a big occasion. We don't lean into even referring to dry January because we're a brand that wants to kind of promote the choice and people, you know, we don't want to be overly prescriptive. We're not anti-alcohol by any means. In fact, we have some serves which have alcohol in them. It's not that. We want people to totally restrict themselves, but equally it's still a moment where people like to have a reset so it might not be dry but it might just be I'm going to make some different choices after Christmas because I want to feel healthier so December really is like the peak I would say nowadays it's super interesting because there are more and more occasions where people are drinking or have an occasion to drink whether or not that's alcohol whether or not that's non-alc people are getting together they're celebrating and with that comes way more demand so december is actually an amazing month for us um but in terms of are we doing anything particularly to prepare for january not really it's we um are like in waitress for example today we've just done our first front of store activation which is feels really really exciting and yeah we prioritized it in december rather than january because we we know that that will be such a great occasion for it we are going to do so we did the starter kit from box for dragon's den on a very good promotion we're definitely not going to repeat that that was a one-off but we are offering that starter kit in january as well but yeah we don't lean too heavily into dry january as a brand but i respect it if people decide that's the moment they want to kind of change their drinking habits and actually in terms of like when we reviewed our cohorts our january cohort is actually a really sticky one and the retention rates are really good.

31:45And we do lots of custom interviews. We aim to do kind of about four a week where we're really understanding the jobs to be done of our customers. And when you speak to them in January and then or speak to them a couple of months later, it's really interesting that they're like, oh yeah, I start in January and then I just kind of didn't stop because it really suited me. So we do see a lot of that. Yeah, I think that's the nice thing. It's kind of like the gym membership thing of like the ones who are actually kind of open to change. Like, right, I'm going to sign up to the gym. I'm really going to do it.

32:12You get the ones who, from a drinking perspective, it's like, okay, I really need to cut back. They'll discover something like Mother Root and go, wow, this is amazing. I don't just need this this month. I'm going to keep having this because it's delicious. Yeah. So I think it's great from that awareness and that piece. And I'm sure you'll be in lots of roundups and all of this. Speaking of which, going into Christmas, Nigella's obviously mentioned you in her gifting guide, which I thought was fantastic. Yeah, she's amazing. She's such a big fan of the brand. She supports us a lot. She always messages us, which is really, really nice.

32:44And yeah, what a compliment. She really is like the queen of Christmas to me. And she, you know, is such a trusted person. She's got such an amazing palette. So getting recognition from someone like that is such a nice thing. So yeah, definitely don't take that for granted. And we haven't done a lot of PR up until the kind of last six months, but it's really nice to start seeing traction, especially on those kinds of lists. because nowadays, ChatGPT is going to be replacing more traditional SEO to some extent. And when you look at the sources that ChatGPT often use when prompted with questions like, what is the best non-ALC?

33:23They're taking top 10 lists and you need to focus on trying to get into those. So that has been an interesting learning. And we're, as everyone is, just trying to prepare for the new wave of AI and new wave of ChatGPT and get ahead of it so that we remain relevant. so yeah that one was a nice one yeah nice yeah it's good good insight on the the listing side of things because um yeah i mean i think a lot of people listening will be going yeah i use ai for this and that and checking it and i think yeah it's only going to get better and better 100 % and soon you'll be able to buy product on chat gbt like you'll be checking out straight there so if you're not getting your business to a point where you're like really chat gbt native or then you'll soon feel left behind which i'm sure we're about to feel like that ourselves because we've not done enough yeah i'm sure many brands are like yeah need to really get on it yeah but no i think i'd like to ask a final few couple of questions just because i'm wary of time we've talked about kind of all the highs in all the different businesses and all this but what have been some of the tough times for you like when things haven't got to plan in whichever role that is i mean in yeah in startups it feels like there's loads but from early days or mark spencer's little any of these like to you when you think core that's probably like one of the toughest days yeah what's the what's the first one that comes to mind honestly right now the list feels ever growing i mean where so january 2024 we actually ran dry of stock in dry january which felt chaotic we were on d2c and we literally didn't have any product left and we were trying to produce as quick as we could so we had it on pre-order and then we would like replenish stock but it was super stressful because you know you have worked so hard to get this demand and then it comes and it exceeds what you'd anticipated and you know you're that natural friction of like shit we haven't got enough cash to invest it in stock and it's just that natural friction it was before we even knew about like debt funding so if anyone is in that situation please explore debt funding um so yeah we had stock shortages and I was owning operations back then and it felt like oh no I'm doing the worst job possible but right now we're also running relatively low on stock as well so it feels like we're repeating but hopefully we've got some solutions for it and then this year I mean we probably haven't even spoken about this openly yet we had just done kind of an entire Christmas campaign around beautiful gift boxes and been working on them all year and then we're not launching any of them because unfortunately the boxes didn't withstand our courier testing we had some with small tears and it feels like shit what a waste but equally it's just one of those things you just have to get on with it and it's not the end of the world at the end of the day it's only a gift box so it's good to give some um context but sometimes the list feels endless um but you just have to kind of reflect and as long as they're kind of outweighed by the good ones you just have to get comfortable with the idea that stuff does go wrong and it goes wrong all the time and if it's not it's probably a signal that we're not kind of testing quick enough or learning quick enough or pushing ourselves enough.

36:31And I would say, yeah, startups, definitely. But also this was the case when I was at M &S. It used to get developed for a year. We'd have a set launch date and then it just wouldn't come because something would have happened. And that's like massive. You know, they put PR behind it. Same with Lidl. That would always be the case. So no matter the scale of the business, it's coming. And I would say just learning to navigate them requires you to stay humble and resilient and just taking a lesson of like why it happened, what's happened, take the learning, move on and try and avoid it in future. But getting used to the fact there will be something bigger and uglier coming down the track.

37:08But it's how you manage it, how you manage team morale and making sure that you cultivate a culture where people can openly tell you that something has gone wrong. Because, you know, me and Bethan are very open when stuff goes wrong to try and encourage other people to feel like it's fine we can move on so yeah i'm sure we can continue to do it better but it's definitely something we're focusing on yeah i think it's that whole fail fast mentality and owning it and kind of accept responsibility like whatever's gone on say like look guys i messed up this happened but here's what we're going to do and here's how we can move forward and let's go on i think it's it's definitely a maturity thing like i think back to like when i was younger and be like oh no like hide that like it wasn't me like and like now it's like no no just accept responsibility it helps everyone yeah just having that culture of actually it's okay to fail like if you're failing you're trying things and if you're not failing then are you pushing hard enough so i think it is that like there is that margin of error like yeah the gift box thing i'm like my head straight away goes to can you send them flat packed and let people pack themselves like is there like thought that yeah we're like could we just send them themselves like i don't think if the receiver is someone who's receiving the gift it's not it's a great experience so we aren't gonna throw away the boxes we're gonna use like the outer shell and then we'll rebuild the kind of inside so i feel like this is a ms like in-store gift wrapping experience like jump on that like do it like get on tiktok get down to mns be like right come and see us we'll gift wrap this for you in store there you go yeah one of those but you just um have to it's an uncomfortable feeling uh but you just have to get used to it yeah love that um now this is the the music question that I ask every guest and it's a song that represents your time in the working world it can be linked to one job one experience one office banger that's always playing what's the the song that comes to mind I have gone for Woman by Little Sims Bethan and I are absolutely obsessed with her and um we saw her perform coming up to a couple years ago now together at Ali Pally and it was so good and I feel like I am as I mentioned before I'm so privileged to work for an amazing female founded brand and bethen is like a wonderful leader and this song really captures everything it means to be a woman who's building and grafting and breaking barriers um and yeah it captures so much of what the startup journey has felt like for me like resilience ambition the fire to keep you going and there's just such like a bold femininity to it um not a like delicate, not apologetic.

39:43It's just like a real sense of like momentum capability. So yeah, I would say that feels very aligned with Mother Root world, like warm, bold and hopeful is like where we position ourselves and it's fueled by strong women and amazing men doing big things. Yeah, so that's why I picked that one. And we also always play in the office. Love it. Yeah, perfect. And you're, if I'm not mistaken, you're part of By Women Built as well. Yeah, another kind of shout out to all the other amazing female-led brands. yeah love it no it's been fascinating i mean it's super evident like how passionate you are about the brand obviously bethen speaks highly of you sounds like you're doing amazing things and the success you guys are having clearly you're building a great team and business so i'm excited to see what 2026 brings for you well thank you so much for having me and yeah have a lovely christmas for everyone listening if they want to get hold of you or find out more or they go you know what I'm going to try some like I'm new to it like where's the best place to contact you or find out more yeah LinkedIn probably best place to contact me and yeah check out our website loads of nice information on there but also I recommend checking us out on TikTok we have an account called a dose of good feelings which is kind of like a hope talk and we interview people on the streets and they talk about what brings them joy and yeah that's really nice and if you want to get hold us some products yeah our website's a good place to start or amazon or waitrose cicado sainsbury's all of the above yeah find them find them on google you'll find them um but no loved it uh absolute pleasure and and thank you so much for your time thank you for having me and to everyone listening thank you so much we will see you on the next episode goodbye