REPLAY: Changing the conversation on sexual wellness with Lucy Wark, founder of Normal (live Sunrise edition)

0:01Hey, Wild Hearts. Welcome to a special replay episode recorded live at the Sunrise Festival. A day when thousands of creative minds come together to reflect, learn and drive the creative momentum that's building in Australia. At that unforgettable event, I had the privilege of interviewing Lucy Walk, the founder of Normal. With Sunrise back in action on the 30th of April and 1st of May, we're revisiting one small moment to one of the thousands of others that happened over the couple of days. We have 10 more episodes before we wrap up this season and the next one will be coming back to you as per our Normal Weekly cadence next week.

0:37Let's get to it. More than one in five searches on the internet is about sex. There's an incredibly large amount of organic interest in this topic. That's Lucy Walk, the founder of Normal, and this is Wild Hearts.

0:54Welcome back to season three of Wild Hearts. I'm your host, Mason Yates, and this is the podcast dedicated to revealing the secrets from the founders looking to change the world. This was a special episode that was recorded in front of about 1 ,000 travelers at sunrise, a startup festival hosted by Blackbird in November. I chatted with Lucy Walk, the founder of Normal, about how she is changing the conversation on sex and relationships, how to build a successful community when the starting point is loaded with so much stigma, and the challenges that are confronted when you are trying to launch a range of sex toys, the nuts and bolts of launching a D2C business at speed, and of course, a heck of a lot more.

1:39Here is my conversation with Lucy live at Sunrise.

1:46Hello. Five, thank you.

1:52How good. This is a seriously good turnout for the 4pm graveyard session as described by my good friend, Andrew Rothery, if he's still here. Yesterday, as sort of Tom touched on, the great challenge that we all have is to tell our story. And founder tells story, inspires others. They do something about it. Then at Sunrise, you've got a bunch of different companies, some of which like Harrison, Fleet, XY Sense, Ed Rollo. Since they first joined us on the Wild Hearts podcast, they've gone on to hire hundreds of people just from that first story that happened a while ago for them. And so to come full circle in the first episode of Wild Hearts was with Tim Doyle, Earn the Right to Exist, if some of you have heard it.

2:39At that time, there was probably 20 people in the Eucalyptus team. And one of the people out of the 200 that they've added since was Lucy. And now it's with great privilege that I get to sit here and we get to explore Lucy's story and really come full circle. So I'm truly honored. Lucy is honestly one of the smartest friends I know. She is being super courageous with the mission that Normal has. And so I would also like to note two things. One, this is a live podcast, so I need everyone to yell and get amongst it so whenever someone's listening back at home, they can go, wow, that was a 10 ,000 strong crowd.

3:24But in all seriousness too, I do want to highlight that this talk might cover sexual harassment and trauma and stress. And I just want to acknowledge that and just make sure that everyone in the audience and listening at home just takes care of their safety first. So thanks everyone for joining us on the Wild Hearts podcast. Yesterday, Flavia mentioned at Fleet that impact is in the soul. without sex, love, intimacy, relationships, there is no soul. So why is it so hard to talk about sex? It's a great question. Big one. I think, as you say, sex, intimacy and relationships are an incredibly important part of human flourishing and wellbeing.

4:09One of the things that we are normal hear all the time from our community is that I don't know how to put into words what I want. I've never seen it modeled on screen. The main examples that I see of discussions about sex are in porn or in pop culture, but they don't feel like something I can execute for myself. I don't learn this in school. And so like people feel like they have to invent that language for themselves. And that's a pretty high burden to put on anyone. And so I think, you know, as a culture, like we have a long history of religious and cultural ideas about sex being sinful, about sex being something that should only exist inside marriage or should only exist for the creation of children.

4:47I think even if as a society, less and less of us believe those things, it doesn't mean that we've taken the kind of proactive step into how do you develop language to speak well about sex and relationships. And we haven't, I think, given enough examples in our culture of what that should look like as well. And is there a demand to learn? Are people curious? Where are they going? Yes. So, I mean, more than one in five searches on the internet is about sex. Wow. Yeah, there's an incredibly large amount of organic interest in this topic. And you can see that in everything from like the levels of engagement that you see on content on social media about this to like the levels of kind of searches that you see when people are in spaces where they feel comfortable and able to ask questions, which is often not in person.

5:35It's digital and it's in places where we feel we have anonymity. And yeah, I think you also like see it in the response to what happens when you see good ways to talk about sex being modeled. So we do a lot of work with universities. So we sort of work with about a quarter of Australian universities presently delivering sex education and consent education in various forms on campus. And I think one of the really interesting things that we see there is like the most popular moment of most of those workshops is where our sex coach, Georgia, who's amazing, will put up like a slide on the screen that's like, here are 20 specific phrases to talk about what you want.

6:08The fact that you might want to stop, the fact that you might want to pause, the fact that you might want to change the way that you're doing things or to ask someone about what they want. And people like don't actually get down on their knees and pray, but it's like, I think react really, really strongly to getting information that helps them to have those conversations properly. I guess the next question is then, like how do we start normalizing that conversation how do we like where do you go and and make it a safe place and evolve our language and maybe like I know that you did social sciences uh in uni in college so maybe look through that lens of like changing uh that conversation yeah definitely like for background like I studied social science which is like all the ologies it's like psychology sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, like a kind of blend of those things.

6:59And like the basic idea behind most social science is like, what are the units of human society? How does human psychology work? How does our individual psychology work? How does it work in groups? What creates order? And then what creates change? Like that's kind of like the big themes of social science. And I think on a topic like this, a lot of the time what you're trying to do is tackle really like old ingrained social stigmas that prevent us from having open conversations about sex. And you can lean on a lot of interesting concepts from social science. I actually think a lot about the gay rights movement as an example.

7:33In terms of social movements and movements for change, the gay rights movement is one of the fastest and most effective changes we've ever seen in our history. In a process of decades, it went from being illegal to have gay sex to the legalization of same-sex marriage to complete tone shift in popular culture to a complete change, particularly among like a generation like Gen Z, where now like one in five people identify as LGBTQ. Like you can even see like higher rates of identification generation by generation. I think there's a really like, you know, how did that process happen reveals a lot about how does change occur?

8:08So like one of the things that was really important in the gay rights movement was the coming out movement, which was effectively saying like lots of people who were in the closet, who weren't out to their families or their workplaces or their loved ones taking kind of courageous individual decisions to come out because it's very easy to be scared of, scared of or disgusted by something if you don't know it. And if a member of your in-group, so someone who is recognizable to you or who you share identities with or who you share experiences with, like there's no one in your in-group who shares that characteristic.

8:39So what was really powerful about the coming out movement was actually the fact that you saw, you know, people who are like, I don't know any gay people. And you're like, actually, my son is gay or actually my neighbor is gay or actually this person who I know is gay. I think knowing that this is like not foreign to you and this is not an other was a really powerful thing. And like, we see that a lot through something like normal, like in, uh, for example, word of mouth being like the single biggest channel through which we grow and particularly like friends speaking to friends and, uh, making the decision to do something like buy a sex toy or the decision to go to a workshop or the decision to like self-educate about sex, move from something that feels like edgy or a vice or sort of controversial into something that feels normal in the name.

9:20But like another really great example just like off the gay rights movement would be like I think the power of parasocial relationships. So if anyone knows the TV show Will and Grace, like that was the first mainstream broadcast TV show where a gay character or a couple of gay characters were sort of main characters on screen. And that show actually like has a noticeable, like is correlated with a noticeable uptick in support for the gay rights movement in the United States in like lots of polling data. I think one of the reasons for that is a parasocial relationship is like a relationship that we perceive ourselves to have with a character or a person we don't actually know personally.

9:53And I think for a lot of people, like knowing those characters and associating those characters with like not threat or risk or something that was controversial, but something that was familiar was really powerful as well. And like in something like what we do, where for a lot of people, if you've internalized a lot of stigma around stigma and shame around sex, it can be very difficult to be like, I want to go and try out a sex toy. Like that makes you feel disgusted, scared, ashamed, like it's something you should hide. And I think being able to kind of leverage things like social proof, make sure that we are foregrounding creators who people identify with and can see as leaders and sort of feel comfortable around.

10:30or even things like having, you know, when we designed the brand, we made a really conscious decision to make sure that we had visible, warm, engaging faces of human people in it, like myself and our sex coach, Georgia. So every piece of, like every product you buy from us has like these explainers from like real lovely humans being like, awesome, here's how you use it. Here's a little bit of social history about the one massager. Like it's like, you know, ways to use it solo, here's ways to use it with a partner. And like, yes, that's education. but it's also everything that sits under that is it's saying this is something that you should feel comfortable doing and this is something that you can you can do so i think like it's a space where social proof and parasocial relationships and framing and all those kind of concepts become really impactful um like it's not like selling toilet paper or mattresses you're you're trying to help people tackle like quite deep sort of psychological stigma yeah and like i want to extend and sort of explore it a little bit more so like as you said it's sort of like on the face of it seems like the anti word of mouth opportunity.

11:33Can you share how, I guess, your learnings or experiences as you've been building out the community with normal and you touched on there like a few examples of like sort of the emotion someone should be feeling but how have you sort of seen that play out especially in the early days at normal? Yeah, it's a really funny and interesting one around community. I think early on we kind of had this like set of decision points where we were like do we want to create like a digital community that is like a space where people can come and speak about sex. And we actually kind of decided not to create like a Facebook group or whatever, you know, a discord, because we thought that like in a community like that, without mediation, with lots of people bringing a whole range of different experiences from trauma to positive experiences around sex and a whole range of different understandings of sex, that you may well accidentally create a space where people are not comfortable or having bad experiences or interactions that don't feel positive for them.

12:27but the other insight that came through incredibly clearly early on was that uh we're all really really because we don't talk openly about sex we're all really curious about what normal is like the biggest question that people have about sex is am i normal the biggest fear that people have about sex is that they're not and so being able to show people's experiences to each other without necessarily making people feel exposed and vulnerable or creating interactions that are not positive became a really important part of it so like think of it as like latent or dark community or like mediated community.

12:58One of the things we do that sort of is a really big foundational pillar of the brand is basically facilitating like en masse conversations about sex. So we'll do like call outs on our social media, call outs on our emails, asking people for perspectives on different issues or asking people to sort of give us their thoughts or to send in their questions. And then we'll make sure that we like answer those and share them back to people. And I think it can be such an incredible relief to know that like an issue that you've struggled with is something that someone else has struggled with or that like you know a question that you had is something is a question that someone else had and so that type of stuff I think can be really powerful um and then a big other part of it is doing research that actually fills the data gap around sex dating and relationships like in Australia you'll have like the ABS and the AIHW doing like the census but they don't ask particularly detailed questions about sex yeah yeah once it's one day one day they won't ask particularly detailed questions about sex in fact you also can't properly filter on things like lgbtq plus status so we even can't get answers to like you know how often do people have experiences of discrimination or how often do people um have issues with accessing health care like we really can't even literally answer those questions and then you have like the other at the other end of the spectrum like lots of private actors like brands who will sort of survey like a few hundred of their members and be like, it turns out like 90 % of Australians own a sex toy.

14:19I don't know if that's like a statistically significant sample. So, one of the things that we also try and do is do like high quality sort of demographically representative research that allows us to speak with authority about what's going on for Australians and sub-segments over the population. And that is part of everything from like briefing into media and sort of shaping conversations with media through to like sharing back to our audience and it also becomes part of like product development and how we think about our roadmap too. One of the earliest questions I think on this sunrise like stage like Rick would always ask what was it like when your product got in the hands of customers?

14:53What was the first moment like? Like your very first customer how did that feel? What was the emotional like roller coaster like? I actually remember being like because it had been a really quick building of the brand like incredibly fast and we'd been like air freighting you know products to make sure it made it out of China before Chinese New Year and the whole country shut down for several months and like I was exhausted and like kind of falling asleep at the launch party I remember going to bed and being both incredibly excited to be at the end of that process and like have got to that point really excited about what was to come and then just like deeply terrified that we'd fucked up and like all the customer research was wrong and no one was going to buy anything and then we would just have like a warehouse of sex toys that we had.

15:42So yeah I think they're just scary but like also like amazing like I think the thing about getting to work on a space which a brings people pleasure but also like can really like profoundly change their experience of like sex with themselves sex with a partner and change their confidence in a really intimate area of their life, like is that when you get like reviews or when you get feedback from customers that's positive, it's like an amazing feeling. So, like, yeah, there's a lot of times where I've like cried at reviews and just being like incredibly grateful that we get to do that as well. Yesterday, I think Mel was talking about like this analogy of like chaos to clarity.

16:20Where did you find yourself, I guess, on that string when customers started using the product? how did your vision or roadmap or product change as a result of that information? I think like when we launched, we'd taken a look at like how a sexual wellness products, which is like sex toys, essentials like lube, cleaning spray, like you can expand that kind of like realm out as far as you want. But like broadly, like physical products that help you to have better sex. We're taking a look at the space and seeing, well, the history of this space is like really confusing and alienating customer experiences.

16:55So either you're going into like a sex shop that's like hidden from the outside, overcrowded, like wobbly pink dildos everywhere, like no one's comfortable asking any questions. You're worried that like the dude behind the counter is going to open the overcoat at you. Like it's like, you know, for a lot of people, like that experience of like too much choice, not enough knowledge about your own anatomy or about what products do to actually make a good choice, not enough kind of customer decision support. And also like, you know, these are quite high value products. And if you choose the wrong one, then you're kind of left with something that you don't feel you know what to do with.

17:33And so like, this is a long winded answer, I'll get to it. But when we launched, we tried to tackle that problem really clearly, which was like, how do we solve all of these pain points that customers have to make a whole generation of people much more comfortable engaging with this space. And I think we built like, you know, product education really clearly into everything that we were doing. So, everything from like, we'll have like a recommendation quiz that helps people choose the right thing to like, we'll have these kind of like quite rich video explainers about the products. We'll have a lot of education on the site that's like taking you through the anatomy that you missed in school.

18:06Because what we get taught is basically anatomy is about preventing pregnancy, but not anything that's about having pleasurable sex. So, we were really trying to do that. I think the thing that we rapidly started to see once we got product into the hands of customers was that that is only like the first step on the journey of people sort of having the type of sexual experiences that they want to and that so many blockers around sex are things that require education, content, community being made to feel normal, being shown how to have conversations about these types of things. so like call it like the sex learning curve like you know the first part is anatomy physiology and technique but actually the things that come after that are much more like communication skills and like personal self-reflection skills as well and so I think we we sort of became more and more aware that um if we want like if our vision is like that you know everyone has like the tools to explore sexuality on their terms that that isn't just physical tools there's a lot more that has to happen in in education and content as well yeah let's let's stick to that like what what does the future kind of hate the future of x what does sex tech sex robots obviously like everyone everyone hears sex tech and they're like it's sex robots yeah but running through it like an experience with normal looks like in five years time or yeah um i would say like i would feel like done or like i would feel very excited i probably won't be done but like um it's always day one yeah always day one but yeah I think if we get to a point in five years where across a lifetime of sexual concerns curiosities and challenges like from everything that's like as a teenager you're trying to understand your own body you're trying to understand what feels good to you you're trying to learn how to communicate you're trying to explore dating intimacy for the first time through to like you start having long-term relationships things like libido, desire, arousal, changes in the body, sexual dysfunction, like relationship skills and like sex while aging, sex and menopause.

20:07Like there's this enormous suite of challenges for which we are just incredibly poorly prepared by formal sex education that happen across a lifetime. If we have like free, high quality expert led education around those topics where people and in a place where people are choosing to look for that information, I would be incredibly pleased. like if we're at the top of every search result for those types of sexual concerns and if we're the thing that comes up on Pornhub and if we're the thing that comes up on Reddit and if we're the thing that comes up on social like I really want to meet people where they are on those types of concerns and I want anyone who needs that information to be able to access it as well.

20:42Yeah so it's like you know not ambitious it's fine. It's not ambitious at all. It's a library. A huge library. I think that's like a really interesting point go where the users are. is there sort of a disadvantage to going in like some of those darker spots on the web? Yep. Like how do you think about that? Our comment section is pretty interesting. Yeah, I bet. Yeah. There's a lot of why is this on my For You page? No, I think like there is a downside to, you know, obviously going to like places that are more like the wild west of the internet in terms of like the types of receptions you can get from various different people in those places.

21:19I also think that's actually where I really want to see a lot more like sexual wellness brands go. Like I think the first wave of this space has been brands talking to allies and like preaching to the converted to a degree. Like lots of brands are focused particularly on the issues based by people with vulvas and LGBTQ plus people, which I think is incredibly important because for a long time, those groups have sort of their sexuality has been erased or neglected in representations of sex. and that has consequences like the gender orgasm gap. And, you know, I think like even the fact that our sex education basically doesn't cover, say, LGBTQ plus sex.

21:55But if you want to solve problems in this space, you can't just speak to the people who are clamouring to hear from you. I think even like we'll do lots of workshops with our users and particularly we'll hear from kind of female identifying people like, hey, look, I've actually done the work of myself. Like I feel empowered. I've learned what I like. Like I have like closed the orgasm gap for myself in our relationship, but can you please go talk to my partner? And I think what that reflects is like there is a really big conversation that needs to happen around like masculinity and sex. And it's going to be in the Andrew Tate corners of the internet.

22:36In addition to I think people who already like bought into that as an idea. Yeah. We can't talk too much about the product roadmap. So maybe like if we look in the room now, What was it like building a hardware product? Tell me through some of the challenges. Strangely enough, I actually grew up around people building hardware. So, like my dad runs a playground company. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I like to say we're both in play in slightly different ways. Yeah. So, actually, like I grew up with him being like, I've sketched a product. And then like three months later, it was like welded and like in the ground and like could actually like see that process happening, which yeah strangely it sort of actually felt a little bit similar when we started doing it but yeah I think like developing like products in this space is maybe the thing that I draw attention to is that it is different to if you're just developing like a product in a category that's slow moving and simple and where people don't have strong emotions about it the product choices that you make in this space everything from like color and shape to like usability to like packaging to just like everything that you are doing is communicating to a customer about how they should feel about themselves in a way that like toilet paper probably doesn't.

23:48And so, I think there's like some complexity to that. So, like, you know, for example, we've been developing like new products since we launched and some of the ones in the pipeline like began with like really extensive like surveys of like 500 to 1 ,000 people asking about not just like what are your goals for sex, but like much more deeply about like values, beliefs, and attitudes, because in the way that you create a product and then you wrap it in like content and experience, like for someone to take the leap of doing something that feels edgy or risky to them, you really need to design for that.

24:21But yeah, like, you know, do survey, gather up like the things that we want to do, think about how we pay our content and physical product, think about what like visual cues will convey. And then there is like, you know, think about how many vibrations, what level of frequency, Is it buzzy or rumbly? Like just the hike, how big is it? Like, which can occasionally be a really interesting problem as well. Like we accidentally, like we were developing a butt plug at one point and we think the manufacturer accidentally like two or three X is the measurement that we were asking for. So I got to the office and we were like, Oh God.

24:54I was like, it's going to be good for someone, but that was not what we intended. Yeah. So I like around stuff like that, like, you know, you do all that process and then there is honestly a moment where you like draw a thing on a whiteboard and you're like that. And then everyone laughs at how bad your drawing is. And then you hand it to a 3D renderer and then they start like mocking up versions of it. You start 3D printing it so you can actually see and look at it. And then you start working with a manufacturer on like golden sample, well, working through iterations of samples until you get to a golden sample that you're happy with.

25:22And then you press go on manufacturing. So, it's a little different to software. A little bit different. Yeah. I completely forgot that your dad had a a career in building programs. It's amazing. But it sounds like building products is in your DNA, but you've also had a career in consulting, which is quite service orientated. What did you need to unlearn from going from that sort of service background into building something from scratch? Yeah, I think like with consulting, like it teaches you some incredibly valuable skills. And I'm really grateful for those, particularly, I think in like a zero to one stage of a startup or when you are like thinking about the prioritization that you have to do and what will move a lever and what won't.

26:01But I think as a consultant, I probably spent like 50 % of my time proving to clients that I was solving the problem and like only 50 % of the time max actually solving it. I think the shift into like a product company has been so much about being like, do you think it's a good idea? What's your level of confidence and what's the level of risk? Okay, go do it. So it's much more action oriented, which I think is really valuable. And I think some consultants kind of struggle with that shift as well. Like you might actually prefer being an advisor to being someone who has a really direct feedback loop for all of your good, bad and middling decisions.

26:35So, that was probably like the biggest one. It's just like… So interesting. So, what was the journey where you started to pick up speed in that final 20 %? We went, I did something, I did something, I did something. And then you picked up and sort of rid yourself or divorced yourself from like that 80-20 idea. Yeah, I remember a moment where like we had to make final decisions and commit probably like a few hundred thousand dollars to like our first like big shipment of product. And we had like a deadline to do it by Christmas. And I wanted like more iterations of the product and I wanted more research and more certainty about what we were doing.