How She Built a £16M Business in a Category Nobody Wanted to Talk About | Founder of JUDE

0:00If you have a challenge in your life and you're able, and I think everyone is able, to go around that problem, to think about that problem in a different way.

0:18I've got 40 investors on board after like seven months of fundraising, but it was me, just me and an idea on Zoom. That loss of dignity. Right. You know, is this what I'm going to wear for the next 60 years of my life? Essentially, the table was the boardroom.

0:35Olly Fawcett:Wow. That they fought. I don't think after maturity to actually build a proper business at the time. You didn't. I made, I think, a 300k mistake just by, like, improved our acquisition costs by, like, 40 % every month. So that was the moment I knew it's not a category problem. It's how we tell the story.

0:59Olly Fawcett:Peony, welcome to What It Takes. How are you? Yeah, really good. Good to be here. Oh, look, it's a pleasure to have you. Now, you've built an incredible business in a very interesting space and you've kind of recreated a category. So there's lots to talk about today around your journey and how you've done that. But before we do, as we like to do on the show, is really understand your beginnings and kind of what life was like when you were younger. So can you just tell me a little bit, because I know you came from a pretty interesting entrepreneurial family. So I'd love to just understand a bit more about that.

1:29Yeah. Well, the honest summary of my childhood is I've got a lot of time on my own. I love alone time. My parents are obviously entrepreneurs. Yeah. And so they take a lot of time to build their business. And so it's a very independent childhood. Like, don't get me wrong, very privileged. I was always provided for. But I have a lot of time in my brain, like a playground. lots of imagination lots of possibilities lots of questions and needing to navigate a lot of different life stages on my own I think it's probably the most prominent feature of my

2:06Olly Fawcett:childhood wow because you grew up in Hong Kong right I grew up in Hong Kong amazing I moved to the UK when I was 15 on my own on your own yeah but I did boarding school fine that kind of stuff but before 15 like give you some context I think I share meals with my parents twice a week and if I'm lucky I get to see my dad maybe once or twice a month wow it's been like 20 minutes with my mom maybe every day like 10 in the morning 10 at night so it's a lot of figuring things out on my own and did you have siblings as well I have an elder sister right also went to went abroad to study when I was only 11 wow yeah wow that's great so the environment around entrepreneurship and building career and your future how was that for you in your mind at you know before you turned 15 what was the sort of perspective you had i hated because i hated what my parents was doing um they were running businesses together as a couple so the good thing is that decisions get made really quickly it was really efficient but then they have so many different thoughts and opinions about the business so you know those two meals i talked about essentially a table was the boardroom wow that they fought and every meal was just them fighting about the business and talking about the business so if you think about it like you know when you're eight or you're like 10 you're just hearing all these fights and you just want to run away from that as much as you can so i hated it for a long long time um but the art the irony is that now i'm following their footsteps i'm doing basically a similar business in a similar space um and that that on its own it's i think it's quite an interesting journey yeah for you were you wanting to kind of actually follow in their full footsteps and take over the business they were building was that ever an interest for you?

4:05I think now I'm still trying to run away from it. Really? The thing that I wanted to do is to try and build up my own business in a similar space. So then I think a big kind of is a discovery journey of wanting to understand why were they so obsessed about building the business? Why were they spending the time not with me doing what they were doing? And I think at the time I was thinking about how why they prioritize work over spending time with me but now I understand that they're actually prioritizing building the financial security for us of course it comes with satisfaction it comes with trying to build impact for other people as well now I'm getting all that satisfaction of building this business trope so she understanding your parents as a full person rather than just a caretaker for you it's it's what i guess i've taken away from from doing this myself yeah and how hard it is you know and the work ethics honestly like all they do was just working and the work ethics are just so inspirational like my dad is 70 my mom is 67 and they're still working full-time and it's not right behind the desk like they were like on their fee going to warehouses going to their factories going to care homes and keep pushing going to germany in november like the most miserable time you can go i'm just doing conferences doing boxes and yeah i mean what do you think is driving them now then

5:38Olly Fawcett:considering you've kind of got your new thing and and i don't know what your sister's doing now but you know there's a level of like you know success there for you what do you think keeps driving them forward i actually think it's a survivor mode that happened it hasn't a funny they haven't fully recovered from that survival mode because they grew up in poverty right and um at the time like in hong kong if you're a little bit more hardworking really push forward like you can really build up wealth right back in the days is this like the 80s and 90s or like a little bit earlier than that 70s right okay exactly and i think they got they got like the formula of if you work hard then success will come financial security will come and i think that's really die-hard formula has not left them even though they're now you know like living a really good life okay life like children are all grown up i think they're still used to that way of working yeah and for you being around it you obviously mentioned it was tough because you weren't able to spend time with them or you know didn't feel like they were present or you felt disconnected for them did it make you want to I guess you said you didn't like entrepreneurship as much but did it make you want to kind of do anything else in terms of going to a more stable career and not build your own business at that time or was there always an idea that like I might not like this but actually I think I want to do this too um I thought I wanted to go into a more stable career right um so there's less ups and downs but then the first job I got was you know investment banking really structured really promising start of like an early career and lot when you first start and like i just realized that that's not for me because of the structure the rigor and the habit you have to get to i just don't understand you need to check in into the office face time until 4 a.m and the weekends as well it's a bit of an extreme version but i just find like find it so boring so did you go straight to you went to university and then went straight into investment banking yeah but you were thinking that's gonna be what was beyond end all really was that what was driving you in that was it the was it the cash or was it the opportunity to grow opportunity like maybe the peer pressure like everyone was trying to get into the most promising like high-flying career like when you first start and a lot of my friends still in in the city right but then i think like fifth sixth month in i'm like well this is not what i learn about work seeing how my parents are like even they're really busy they're really flexible and they do things that they understand meaningful yeah and they're impactful and purposeful yeah and what i found that i was doing in the city was just powerpoint presentations changing color from this color code to that color code honestly uh and i'm just like why am i doing this why am i spending my time till 4am every day doing this thing because i i get the impression from kind of learning a little bit about you before the show that you're incredibly intelligent academically as well right you did very well at school and you enjoyed that process and that level and going to investment banking i find it interesting that for you someone with a very high intelligence academically actually going into the the world of that that can kind of pay for being at that level actually it feels like your creativity was being squashed and would i be right in the same math intellectual curiosity is just not being satisfied yeah at all yeah problem solving like there's no capacity to solve problems and i think it's really at that point i'm like i really need to think about what i actually like and what i don't like mainly what i like is really entrepreneurship starting something and I was still in a little bit of a denial that I don't want to follow my pants footsteps maybe it's a charity I want to do maybe it's a community that I want to build but everything is surrounding building something from scratch you know yeah and so for you was tell me about some of those ideas so obviously we'll get on to Jude which is where you ended up yeah but did you try a couple of other things did you explore what was started a mother of a community okay even though i was not a mother but then at the time like people were talking about um like not the the not glamorous bit about motherhood and being a woman yeah um and then i was like okay let's put a community together like women community and just think about these topics that wasn't serviced uh on the magazine on tv shows and then boom like 10 000 moms joined like in the first few months wow and i was like that's incredible i can actually create forums for people to talk about things.

10:21And going back to when I was young, I spent so much time in solitude, just in my own head. And then I think this is account to that is wanting to build social groups and belongings and to express myself in ways where I felt I haven't got when I was young. So that was the first bit. And then the second bit is after banking, I went to Founders Factory, which is a startup accelerator incubator and there I just surround myself with ideas innovation founders and things just being built every single day around me and I was on the side like I I think I was on the sideline because I was only doing investments right but it was amazing just observing them and filling my mind with that creativity and that imagination again that I I loved doing when I was a child um after that I started to do it to build another business but it was just just just this didn't happen what was it it was again for women okay um it was again like a women's platform where we gave them tools to be able to look after their health okay there's a marketplace where we match um women with mental health physiotherapist um sleep therapist so then they can actually get the different things that they need so actually it's very much similar themes of communities um bring impact and benefits to women's lives um and seeing how we can solve that why didn't that business work i think a i just actually i didn't believe in it that much right interesting and then b i didn't think the business model was sound because it's a marketplace and you're basically charging a commission of that transaction or that consultation.

12:12And so at the time, Babylon Health was amazing, but it was at the edge of people questioning about unit economics and things like that. And so it was a bit shaky. And also, I don't think after maturity to actually build a proper business at the time.

12:27Olly Fawcett:You didn't. I didn't. I only had two career experiences then, banking and then doing startup investments. so I did actually quit founders factory to try and explore this but then you know when when you have so many ideas but your your body wasn't you know your muscle is not strong enough to actually lift that weight like that is how I found it but I do have the networks and I have to invest in networks and I try to kind of bounce ideas with investors and you know they think the space is interesting but they didn't think there is enough and so I went to go and you know put a founding team together but things just haven't really stack up how are you feeling at that point personally were you feeling a little bit lost how do you deal with that how were you dealing with that yeah I you know I was trying to think about it at the time is that actually there is so much that I want to do and I'm still what 24 years old yeah and so maybe I just need to go and get more experience i just need to train up my muscles and train up like my capacity to be able to actualize what what what this what this brain you know are capable to to deliver and so then i went to um a very early kind of women's health team as an operator head of operations i learned so much from the founder and the team was that a day a day it was pre-launch and so from there i was like okay this is actually how you do it this is how you go from an idea to fundraising to just reaching out to people to executing stuff because that i hadn't had experience doing that before you know i was always kind of on the sidelines i call it um but what really came together was um another business that i did during covid which is distributing protective equipment to nurses frontline workers and carers and care homes um and it was a very simple i know this is a very short time horizon for that business um but it really gave me that confidence to go and say actually i can i can do it and i can do it as a solo founder um but yeah we distributed about six million pieces of ppe six million me on my own um it's a half a million pound business is profitable wow the profit margins are quite low because you know it was a social impact project more so yeah then like a profitable business but that gave me the startup capital for jude actually um that ppe business was a funny one um it was me from sourcing products shipping them over it was stuck in some warehouses because covid all the logistics were like messed up messaging the CEO of FedEx and DHL on LinkedIn and be like you are holding up essential goods and protective equipment like wow where is it right now I messaged your team and and then he replied and like gave me a contact and then I have to go to the contact I have to go to the the warehouse in London to retrieve basically boxes that it's like the size of this room wow And then drove to my home, stack up all the boxes.

15:46And next day, a lorry come to pick up to deliver it to a care home. So I did, I think, 10, 20 rounds of that kind of delivery. And then there was obviously trying to connect with frontline workers, like, on my own rather than delivering in bulk. So I got this mailing list of, I don't know, like 20 ,000 frontline workers and nurses and just email sending them. This is the price. We can do same day delivery or next day delivery. Do you want it? And so every day was printing like miles and miles of like shipping labels, putting on like my DIY packaging. It was fun. I was going to say, did you enjoy that kind of like, I guess, the grind and the hustle of that time?

16:33Loved it. Honestly, I loved it. And I think that was the moment I was like, God, this is really the golden triangle.

16:40Olly Fawcett:What I'm looking for, you know, supporting people in the time of need for their health, doing something that I've got the flexibility, the problem solving capacity, intellectual curiosity. and um also being able to to find sustainability in my own life and financial compensation i was like let me scale this where can we do this where else can we do this i guess before we do talk about what you then went to do that feeling of being a bit lost and the plan not working out like for you it was kind of coming to the uk at 15 great education going to the investment banking world lost you know that was your experience what would be your advice for someone who is going through that themselves when the plan they had in their mind for that maybe a lot of their childhood in the early years their first step into a career what would be your advice to them i would say overcoming challenges is a privilege it really is um if you have a challenge in your life and you're able and i think everyone is able to to go around that problem just to think about that problem in a different way to find these answers and um they are like springboards for your life yeah put a put aside career i think yeah um we're tested in our life and i believe everyone is capable of being a greater versions of themselves but what can really bring those moments to you and improve is about overcoming challenges yeah definitely so starting the business day one where did the initial idea really come from obviously it seems like it came from a lot of your lived experience today of starting jude but what was your inception point where you thought this is where the direction i want to go yeah so um i had bladder problems when i was um 15 just about when I was moving countries to the UK so my health care system I have to navigate a whole new health care system I don't have a support system around me I mean boarding school they don't really talk about anything any of these things um and so that really was like the starting origin story of again not feeling heard again feeling really overlooked I already felt that way when I was young because of not having time with my parents but then that's another kind of episode of just needing to navigate things on my own and I was dismissed by so many doctors waiting around emergency rooms and doctors rooms for hours on end um and then after after like after the PPE business um I've got a flare up again because I was really stressed and so I went into boots and went into the supermarket and then just look at look at these aisles by the time i was already like i know the tampon space very well because of day and then i was like is this another aisle actually i can do something about you know that aisle is full of pads nappies and that i would just make every woman everyone who walked into that kind of space just felt loss of dignity right you know like is this what i'm gonna wear for the next 60 years of my life do i need to spend this amount of money just to manage just just to cope um and i think that was really the inception point of i can do something about this let's find solutions that i personally adopted um to manage not not using pads why why would none of the big pharmaceutical brands doing anything about it do you think because it seems like from what you're saying in my interpretation of that it was a pretty large-scale problem in many ways that was getting not really spoken about and there's an opportunity within that do you think there's a reason why big pharma weren't doing anything to do more in the space i think they are doing right stuff in the space um from a medication point of view from a surgical uh medical medical kind of product point of view yeah so that market is like huge market size massive market share that they have to be conducted by a health care professional and i think the dots between self-management proactive management using supplements for bladder problems and pelvic floor problems it's just a white space right and i don't think any founders probably that are my age um have come across their own personal problem and maybe felt like this is a really unsexy topic to talk about i think there is a product market found a product market fit there yeah so you're in the art of boots thinking my skill set is a solution to fix this right first and foremost feeling miserable you know these diapers or nappies you have to wear they're just horrible really they're like so buggy it's like giving your baby that nappy but you have to wear it now it's terrible so you so what was the idea originally that you were going to fix that problem what was that what where did it start because what i always find interesting about brands like jude especially in in health and supplementation or medical or even in like fmb in these areas the original idea is quite different from what it now is and i love that kind of like expansion piece so what was the original what was the first idea of what you could fix yeah i was thinking to make a super pad that absorb like a nappy but it's like so thin and very feminine and it's also plant-based so it's like good for the body good for the environment and because my parents are in this space and they're a manufacturer in these disposable items I was like well like let's put my ego aside and work with my parents for once and so we then like developed this plant-based pad and it was great and we tested with a lot of women and they were like oh it's so good that I almost forgot about my incontinence and I'm like so why don't I solve the why in the beginning why don't i solve not having bladder problems to start with so then i went into research papers um to look at ingredients because i've been doing that a lot on my own when i had my own problems all right um looking at ingredients okay lifestyle intervention looking at exercises um that could fix this issue and you know it was fixed apart from some flare-ups now and here and now and then um so then i like partnered with a professor from harvard a scientist a doctor and we looked at all the research that talks about overactive bladder utis pelvic floor problems what kind of supplementation herbal extracts that could solve this problem and that has placebo trialed um placebo controlled golden trials that we can actually lean on um so all this research been happening for a while that independent research actually has been happening for a long time right in asia okay in asia and these trials have been conducted in japan uh in korea in china um and so we're like okay let's test it with the uk cohort with the western cohort and see is it effective and so um yeah i remember harassing the raw ingredient manufacturer as well because there's only one ingredient manufacturer that can do the ingredients to the spec that we want to the extraction ratio that we want that also you can only find these pumpkin seeds in austria in one part of austria well it's in the product yeah that's our hero ingredients so like the supermarket pumpkin seeds like does not work all the amazon stuff doesn't work like you have to go to this austrian pumpkin how did you get to austrian pumpkin seeds is this through the research work you were doing through the research work and it's a specific strain of pumpkin seed from that region that they have that soil and that climate to produce the bioactives um that that is in that pumpkin seed so i was emailing our raw ingredient manufacturer and we actually still work with the same person now i just had a call with her um a few days ago um and i even got the her whatsapp and just whatsapping her i was like can you ship us just some samples and we'll make it into capsules and then we'll send it to our community by the time we already built um a few thousand people community right that can test these products so um we sent it to them and the response was just phenomenal.

25:21She was like, a lot of the women's like, week five, I cannot believe I don't have these problems anymore.

25:27Olly Fawcett:And what was this supplement fixing directly as a problem? Overactive bladder, urgency, needing to go to toilet a lot in the day, needing to wake up at night to go to the toilet. It just feels quite trivial, but actually 80 % of women over the age of like 45 have these issues. I imagine it can also control a woman's life pretty much, right? the anxiety of that the stress of that i was forced to live a very small life when i was in university really because i had to be near the toilet all the time yeah if you think about sports yeah if you think about going out partying and having alcohol which triggers these playoffs yeah even going on a on a day trip with friends or you know it's a long hard journey yeah yeah the smallest things wow so you when you're going through this process of discovery in terms of your or figuring out what products we can create in trial and test.

26:20Olly Fawcett:Because of your journey and what you've been through, what was that kind of emotional connection to you? Did you feel like you're not only helping yourself, but you're helping so many others? And how much of that was quite, I guess, quite emotional for you in a way? I always actually say Jude is not just a bladder brand. It's a women's strength brand. Right. Because I think the strength comes from having dignity, having the knowledge, having tools, but also having agency for your body, knowing what you can do. And I think like Jude is a culmination of all of that, that I want to bring to another woman who have never felt seen in our healthcare system, who are told that there is no solution.

27:02Paths is going to be your endpoint and your destination from now to the day that in your deathbed, you're going to be wearing that pad. You know, I think it's about giving that dignity. And so the connection to me, it's actually going back to my childhood. of like i want to be able to have agency for what i do um i want to be seen i want to be heard

27:23Olly Fawcett:so as you start to develop out the products i imagine this is all getting quite expensive very expensive so how how are you overcoming that challenge so we have to do it step by step because we also don't have a lot of funding to start with um we're now talking about a biotech company that goes into clinical trials that goes into molecular testing like this is what we're now doing as a company yeah but as we started we don't have that capacity so we have to lean on independent trials that were done before us um in asian cohorts we bring it to the uk uh we work with a manufacturer and the raw ingredient manufacturer to do what we call v1 of our product right so at this point you have the um pads that are yours that there was that in mass distribution or was that just being used were you selling those as well i was already selling fine so there's revenue coming from there and you were developing one main product right got it then i was developing the supplement yes so actually the first version of the supplement didn't take long because as soon as i got hold of the raw ingredients and a manufacturer we can start shipping right the products and because we know it already worked and there's a lot of science behind it um but the second version of the product actually came like three years after three years we have to set up our own apps our science team uh partnerships with two universities and clinical trials for us to be able to actually patent the product wow and hence the product so it doesn't just work for asian cohorts it works better for like western cohorts as well um and sort of the first product and the new product what people don't see behind the scenes is actually we then become a biotech company wow so how are you actually funding this growth did you raise capital at this stage we raised two million at the start right um and then we raised another two and a half three million for our like seed round um and that's to get you to the point of having v2 of the product completed yeah and ready to distribute and our revenue and our profits also all goes back to women's health r &d and actually every woman we support now we put 13 pounds back into women's health r &d so think about the cac on top of the camp we have yeah yeah as well wow so how how did you find um raising money is interesting right and this was when was this what time is this 2020 this is no this is 22 23 first round is 2021 2021 yeah how did you that was an interesting time to raise money because there was a lot of money being raised it was amazing it was a great time I think people call those the golden years when I speak to people even though it was a good and easy time so not easy but like it was a it was a better time to raise that kind of capital how did you find selling the idea to other people because listening to you now I can understand the passion for it I can understand the problem you're trying to solve but I know in in a lot of these health and wellness brands a lot of investors don't get it and they actually care more about what's the LTV a year going to be on a subscription or whatever it might be.

30:26Olly Fawcett:So what was your experience like? Yeah, I pitched like 100 investors. Wow. I think only one or two say yes. 100? What do you think, what was the biggest challenge for you in that situation? I think people were just like, are you mad? Really? Like, what are you talking about? Incontinence. It's the last thing we'll invest in. There's no virality. People are not going to talk about it. You're selling to older people. so digital is going to be very hard oh they thought you would be selling to sort of like 45 50 plus because that is like it's still our biggest demographic right it's like 45 plus women yeah um at the time like it was quite hard like cac is going to be high so when they look at these fundamentals they know this business is now gonna like fly or work but one or two like understood the size of the problem understood there were no competitors um understood the white space and were kind enough to give me so much time to really talk about it.

31:26And when I pitched, I also don't have a product. It was really the idea in my brain. And going back to this really rich inner world, I was quite good at telling that story of the inner world and showing videos, showing this community that we've built and the depth of despair these women are in and this unmet need. And that alone at the time when capital is sufficient was actually enough for me to get one yes. And that one yes rolled in two yeses. And then I got 40 investors on board after like seven months of fundraising. But it was me, just me and an idea on Zoom. Yeah.

32:07Olly Fawcett:Where does this self-drive come from in sitting in front of 100 people? It's more than 100 people sometimes, right? Because there's various people on a call. and getting those a lot in COVID, in a pandemic, but you believe in the idea so much. Where does the drive come from? I think it's being able to probably tell my parents, yes, even though you didn't spend a lot of time with me, I am a valuable member of the family. Really? They see me and I can do as good as you're doing in your business and now I'm in business, so maybe you'll spend more time with me. I think that it came from that. Really?

32:46Olly Fawcett:Do you still battle with that today? I think so I think so but at the same time I think it's quite I think it's quite difficult to let my parents know what I'm doing now because they know I'm running a business but it's a space that they don't understand the funding model is very different because they were bootstrapping the whole way but I still I still believe I mean I believe that they love me a lot honestly and they of course treat me as a very valuable member of the family but I think it was held beliefs that I had then and now it transpired to well we can talk about something else you know we can talk about that we have more topics in common it's interesting right you're kind of basically saying that the driver is proving people wrong a little bit right it really is and it's so interesting how many people I've interviewed now where like that's really the root cause and I think that it feels really negative because it feels like that's negative energy driving you forward and there's there's like uh something you're holding on to and that's a bad thing but actually i do think that some of the most exciting brands and businesses are proving people wrong do you know what i mean it's like the investors it's the family member it's the friend it's the ex-business partner whatever it might be you know it's the people that you're like oh no everyone thought this wasn't going to work i'm going to prove that forward but in the moment when you're going through fundraising and so many people are saying no how did you personally deal with that because you were by yourself yeah so how did you how did you go through that like how did you have that conversation with yourself i just said a lot of people are gonna say no because i i knew what it's gonna be like um i've been an investor before i've said no to a lot of people right um when it comes to them asking for investment so i know the default is going to be not i'll be lucky if i get one yes that was my mindset that really was my mindset And so if I set the bar so low for a response, then what I can do is to give it my all.

34:47I recorded all my investor pitch, actually. And then I look at the investor pitch. I can do better here. I can tell a better story here. And I think that is a fuel to just make it better for the outcomes, really.

35:03Olly Fawcett:And that first round, you wanted to raise two million quid or you were raising less and got more or you were raising more and got less? I wanted to raise 700K. oh wow because i also didn't know that i would be able to raise two million um if it's just one person yeah that has done you know a ppe business that wasn't really you know valued by investors i suppose um so it wasn't like very oversubscribed round so you raise about five million quid i think to get to v2 of the supplement supplement business and in that going live what was the what was the kind of initial response to that product being on the market because it was basically a brand new category right as in like a few years ago yeah um yeah the response was actually really good um i think we found product market fit for the supplement really quickly right and then the retention was also really good because the product actually works and so I knew I got something for the business when we tried to scale it it was really hard scale that product market fit right because of category awareness because people not knowing that there is a bladder supplement or whether they can trust it so like I think about you know acquiring customers and there is a part of customers like really early adopters they will try anything you know to get better and then once you get exhausted that pool then you have a more difficult customer to go after and then what more chasms that you have to cross yeah and so actually before dragon's den it was about a year and a half of like running the business we were it was very challenging and you had raised five million at this point the product was on the market yeah of the five million quid you'd raised how much of it had to go into product versus growing the category and marketing it yeah i would say maybe at the start 20 went into the product right okay and then a lot went into testing the proposition right um getting trust signals for the product is also not an easy thing to do so you have the product you have the marketing but then actually for women's health there is a lot of trust building assets you have to do and you have to invest in so investing in clinicals investing in doctors investing in um scientists investing in partnerships that will build that mold for you right um and i think this is the part where a lot of brands don't talk about you have a product and then you ship that product and you put marketing spend in it like that that is a standard model for a lot of products but for health so how much can we spend on facebook ads yeah this is the layer where we spend a lot on right so that's investing in building reputation of the product and the brand yeah but you think a lot of brands don't value that i think a lot of brands don't have to do it if you think about it if you're selling leggings the product is good and then you put marketing spend and brand that's it of course a lot of the trust signals come from what fabric you use um you know the environmental impact of the leggings it's just an example yeah who's wearing them that kind of thing but then for supplements you have a product but you have to explain the product um the austrian pumpkin seed we have to go to austria like we have to do a lot of these things we have to understand the l like the bioactivist l-arginine the ratio in it how does it compare with other pumpkin seed then lots of testing needs to be done um so yeah that that that is i felt quite particular to our category quite particular to health and women's health yeah and the run-up to going on dragon's den which you mentioned a second ago you're saying it's quite a hard time how hard did it get i think we had some early success and that early success made us like let's put more in letter Yeah.

38:56And then to a point where I've heard that story.

38:59Olly Fawcett:It was so hard. It was like it's not we'll never get profitability from any cohorts in our in our customers. So I was really questioning, OK, like it feels like this product has a place, but can it scale? You know, is it really a viable business? Like I have a lot of these questions in my mind before Dragon's Den. You were asking yourself this stuff. That's quite a hard time. know it was a really hard time because you're really questioning your own abilities but also something you spent a lot of time doing yeah how do you how do you get through that how did you get to the other side it's a good question i think i've like some blackout for that for that period because it was so tough um and the way that i'm doing it's just really putting spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks do you know what i think everyone's been there yeah like in in building or something it's like you go through that blackout phase where actually you're kind of just on autopilot you're just basically trying to stay in the game you know you're just sort of keeping the dice on the board if you will um and moving forward in that it seems like that was very similar for you yeah i think one thing that i did right though um is try to go back to doing unscalable things um so really reaching out to influencers even though they're not there is no influencer program we still don't have an influencer program we don't really believe in it we believe in efficacy and so reaching out to people one by one like by myself shipping products going to visit them um talk to them really get them to believe in the brand that takes a lot of time and then once we have this initial actually for influencers and for like i guess thought leaders in the space we then started filming content and now we're scripting because i want to make sure um the script is exactly how the category story is being told um and then i just brought along a content creator with me and filming filming in the field with a dog because she can't walk a dog because she needs to go to the toilet so we did that and those content and those creatives like improved our acquisition costs by like 40 every month so that was the moment I knew it's not a category problem it's how we tell the story and how much we have to get into telling that story makes or breaks this business we um my main business is a marketing agency right and that's kind of where I spent my years and I think at the moment it's basically resonate or die that's kind of how we think about things is that unless you are resonating with an audience you can't just shove down an offer down their throats or tell them that it's great or whatever might be if you don't resonate with that key persona and those sub personas as well particularly on meta now and particularly within organic social and with creators you know kim kardashian could pick up your brand tomorrow right it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work because like it's a different people want different things and there's so many different opinions and personalization and that sort of stuff right so it's a really different game in the in the marketing world um and it's so fascinating what what the question i want to ask you the attention to detail piece of the way you work do you find it exhausting i think my team find it quite exhausting i mean at a young age i i like i i know how important attention to details are right um banking was one color coding it was like drilled into me but i was also a part of there's a sidebar side story i was part of building a real aircraft um that building a real aircraft a two-seater it's called rv8 it flew around the world um i was part of that team to build that plane and i made i think a 300k mistake just by riveting a wrong river into the aluminum sheet and that was the day I learned attention to details has a huge cost and it stopped our production for that plane for about three months because you drilled in the wrong river yeah so what was that like this setting stone for you from that moment on you just attention to details and sweating the details and I think my team find it quite exhausting because i'm obviously a founder and i don't want to micromanage but i think it's about getting them around to understand the resonance the customer resonance actually you have to know their languages like how they talk about some stuff you can't just ship a box standard script to creators and i think that really shifted the mindset that we work when it comes to creating how do you it's interesting so many people have been on the show recently actually we've done we've done a few episodes with a lot of chefs you know chefs at the top of their game michelin star you know doing incredibly well and um a couple of conversations i've had more recently is around like the level of detail of that environment people have obviously got like a outside perspective on it and those sorts of things but like kirk who was on the show recently he was explaining around the way that in a restaurant he worked the way they would cut the tape to make a label was a certain way and it's that crazy level of detail everyone's like what the hell and he was explaining it's like the skill he's been trying to develop is being able to communicate why that stuff's important do you know what I mean so it's like yeah we do it this way and it seems a bit mental it seems very crazy and like it seems unnecessary but we are at the top of our game and we know that that's needed do you also struggle with communicating why attention to detail is sometimes so important when it's probably in the annoying things your team don't need yeah i do and i'm i'm still learning um this skill and i think it comes to different levels i think for for individuals who are just starting the careers it is it's actually about their reputation it's actually about you've done such great work yeah but there's one little typo that you have just is going to reverse all the great work that you've done and it's not worth it you know it takes you one minute to make this piece of work perfect yeah i mean it's never going to be perfect but at least like do that little checks because i think they can understand that yeah but when it comes to like the operating beliefs of the company i think we need to move with momentum and so how do you square with that and there's pockets it's not about needing to have every detailed path i don't think that is is about the important things that we need to get into, like customer psychology, like product packaging.

45:41These are the ways where it's the biggest leverage, where attention to details is going to give you outsized impact. So think about how do we actually think about the attention to details there.

45:55Olly Fawcett:That's amazing. So after, I mean, we were speaking about Drangon's Den before, but after being live for a period of time, you did you did end up going on the den did you did you apply were you approached what was the oh i i hustled my way in yeah a lot of my story is about just hustling and i can tell yeah yeah emailing the uh ceo of fedex fair enough um why did you want to go on the show if you'd already raised five million quid yeah i was i feel like i need an outlet to tell my story i need an outlet for women to hear that they're not alone in suffering from bladder problems, forcing to live a small life.

46:36I think the problem of this category, I would say our enemy actually is accepting, accepting that this is going to be the end point. And we're here to say, no, that's not true. And trust us and try us. And I think that story, it's very hard to tell that on a social media ad, really. And I thought Dragon Sense is going to be a perfect platform so then I can be challenged. I can be challenged about the business. I can get amazing business people to say, this is not working. This is working. And I think it was such a valuable experience just from, I guess, imparting some of the knowledge and seeing what part of the story that they felt is investable.

47:20What part of the story is like, we're not sure. And the parts that like Stephen is not sure about, I knew, I already knew the CAC and the LTV is not in the right place at that time. And there are questions about, oh, why can't competitors do it? But I knew why they're not doing it. They want someone to do it until it's proven for them to get into it, you know. And then, but what was lovely is that they bought into the story. They understood the need for this category. and just for that even the economics wasn't stacking up even though there's a lot about the business that is not proven they were still willing to be like i'll give you an offer i'll be in that journey i'll be with the journey with you and so i think that was that was a really good experience and you know prepping for dragon's den um helps me to understand the business actually a lot more yeah brought so much clarity to what is needed in the business to work and what is just

48:21Olly Fawcett:noise you obviously got some offers you didn't take them i think in the end you the company was about you valued the company about 10 million quid i think at the time um and from memory the offers just didn't work out because it was quite a small amount you were giving away and that sort of stuff do you fun question who did you really want to invest if you could pick one of them Emma Greedy. Oh, because she was a guest? Right. Why her? I see a little bit of her, actually. I see a little bit of me in her and vice versa. Like her story is also one that is trying everything, grinding, hustling, get her way into the dreams of her lives.

49:02And I just love that part of her. But also she talks about her own encounter. She has four children. and if we want to go to the u.s market i think she'll be amazing for that but actually it's also about storytelling i think she's a great storyteller yeah yeah i mean like because she

49:22Olly Fawcett:was behind good american and that kind of stuff right so she just knows how to convey a message and a meaning a message and a meaning that will work with today's culture like coming out of the show and obviously not raising um the money and not getting the investment and stuff did you sort of feel like you had done what you wanted to do anyway because you got a chance to tell your story um definitely not right like i need to do more of these um i need to get you know more opportunities to be able to tell the story in so many different formats and honestly the story has also changed a little bit you know at the time it was about smashing this taboo, wide open, destigmatizing it, really say like F you to incontinence, like this angry teenager shouting about a category.

50:13And the story has changed a little bit. We're an evidence-backed brand. We're actually about women's muscles. And figuring out how we communicate this new vision or new way of matching it with today's culture. I want to tell that story now. how has that changed the product lineup because you've done more that like at the time of leaving

50:36Olly Fawcett:the den i think you had a couple of products effectively a few skews yeah and then you've gone into develop quite a lot is that part of that story changing um after after the den we've only pushed out two new products right okay two new other supplements and they were planned when you're in the den they were planned after after planned after and was that part of that sort of story changing um i think that the changing of the story is required not because of the den right i think a part of it is because i realize how important trust and getting the medical community to be on my side and that's why we need to invest in all that got it and we're still investing we're publishing two papers and at the end of the year um because i think deborah was asking you quite a lot about that right she was because that's a big thing i think for her i've seen her do that a few times she really goes in on that area yeah she gets it right she knows why it's so important so did that make you react that make you learn that we need to go further into this yeah right i think that was like a stamp of like we need to move and we need to invest in those pillars now and how do we ring fence an amount that's not going to kill the business for us to be able to do it how much would you be spending on that we spend about three million in r &d so far three million yeah wow yeah and that's three million not just to help your business grow but help the category grow and help others grow and the work has not been seen so far the three million there's no roi in that the roi is going to be a long time i'm in i'm in this company for the long run right like i want products to be in the market and that benefits not just women now but the next generation and the generation after and i think a lot of brands today and i mean in in this culture of instant graphification yeah investors want to see j curves i really want to embrace the art of building slowly i think patient is like a really underrated trait of building sustainable businesses and sustainable brands that people can trust a lot of amazing brands today we see have been around a long long time and we see the tip of the iceberg of these exponential growth brands and we think that this is success but actually success is over decades you build value into a brand that is not going to be replaced tomorrow by a new gen z brand i think that is why i'm here why is that more why is it so important to you I think it goes back to I don't want one more woman to sit in this waiting room for three hours and then be told you don't have a problem go home you're just imagining that you have bladder problems I mean this is the state of affairs Is that really what people are saying?

53:23It is like a huge proportion of older women who have UTI are being diagnosed saying that you have delirium

53:32Olly Fawcett:that that's really it that's great yeah and then uti then needs to actually bladder problems are the one main cause for people going into care homes and nursing homes and then end of life because they're not they're not depend like they're not independent anymore um and then they're not very mobile because they need to be around toilets and if you think about it this problem starts after childbirth during pregnancy right you from 35 years old to 80 years old you have 45 years of your life to actually do something about this so when you think about this problem in this horizon there's no way i can use shortcuts to build jude i mean we have tried many shortcuts you can't really grow the heck giving women dignity back i don't think you can no makes sense what has been i mean after the den you were on the den 2024 two years ago yeah the growth from there to where we are today has been quite exponential yeah just to put some numbers towards it revenues when you're in the den the size of the brand at that point it was about like 90 to 100k a month and now we're doing about so you're doing like what 1.1 to 1.2 million a year and now you're doing we're doing like more than 1.2 million a month so we have a 10 times growth since in two years in two years yeah that's incredible i think it's incredible for this category like i say there's no shortcuts and you know we're embracing the arts of building slowly you're not really building that slowly but the den is actually an accelerator right and i think we have to find little accelerations because we do need validation we do need to test product market fit you know for the for these different customer groups that we're going after and so without these little accelerations and accelerations need to come from the right things that we're doing the right partnerships um the right brand exposure um and it's not just about we want to work with 200 influences and boom there you go like that that i think that that is what i'm saying about building slowly building thoughtfully i think yeah i totally get what you're saying in terms of like yes you guys have 10x the company in 24 months basically yeah which is incredibly fast and that's one of the biggest success stories of the den from a kind of revenue and growth perspective but you're not wanting to do that every two years if it's then just going to fall off a cliff on year six or seven right it's about that sustainability out of interest though in those 24 months what do you think was the biggest driver of that growth it's not facebook ads and it's not influencers what is it um i think it's discipline right discipline to you know going back to attention to details going back to understanding that customer very very well and then showing them like creatives and content to reflect that is a woman like you and if you see yourself in this woman on on Facebook or on Instagram she is much more willing to take action like that day when they see it and I think it's about that discipline of like really resonating and speaking to that woman so then they feel heard again yeah What's the hardest part of that growth been for you personally?

57:02I think actually team and people.

57:04Olly Fawcett:Right, okay. And we were 13 people last year still for a big part of last year until end of the year. We increased it to 17. So we're a very lean team for the revenue that we're making. And I'm actually a very frugal person, like personally, as well as with the company. and what I've learned is that you actually need to hire ahead of the curve right and the system that once we're working when you're 13 people jumping to 17 is a completely different beast and then the talent you need to bring in is also different and once you bring those talents in the way of you working with them is also very different so it is a personal leadership shift as well as a complete mindset shift of the foundations that we need to build for the business for it to for it to be actually be sustainable has it been have you ever questioned the way you lead that team oh yeah every day really day yeah what's the biggest question you ask yourself i guess am i the right founder for this business am i still you really ask yourself Am I still providing value for the team and this business?