Ep.128 Everything I Wish I Knew When I Was Starting A Business (From World-Renowned Founders of Whoop, Refy, Odd Muse etc)

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1:29What is up and welcome to Working Hard Hardly Working. This episode might be the one I've spent the most time thinking about and planning ever because when I asked after our last compilation episode which one you guys wanted, so many of you asked for a compilation episode on the best business advice from the over 120 episodes of this podcast and let me tell you that was a huge task because when you spent five years finding your favourite founders to speak to, choosing is like choosing between your ducks. So if you've ever thought about running a business or you've just started one or you've been running one for a decade or you're just nosy about how to make lots of money working for yourself I'm hoping you're really going to enjoy the next hour before we get into the podcast if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on it makes a huge difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have the types of guests we're able to get on so no it's probably something you don't think about but if you could just go rate it now or follow it it makes a huge difference.

2:26Thank you so much.

2:31Okay, so we're starting at the very beginning of your business journey with how to actually make a start. When I was picking out these clips, one thing that really stuck out to me was how many entrepreneurs with incredibly different stories and businesses said really, really similar things. So I'm going to play you two clips here, one from Rekia Canem, founder of Canems, and one from Castamico, founder of Aurium, about why you don't always need a thousand contacts to get going and in fact all you need to do if you want to start a business is begin with a google search honestly it was such a challenge because at that point i already had my nine-to-five and i get the new nine-to-five that i didn't want to lose so i went after work and you know get the violins out it was rain it set the scene it was raining torrential rain and i'm walking down green street going to every single shop showing them my designs and they're just giving me a crazy cost price and I was like oh my god what am I going to do like maybe I can't do this business and then I was sitting on the back of the bus and I just thought let me just google manufacturers maybe in India and go directly to the source itself rather than going through a third party and then I found you know I listed down 20 potential manufacturers emailed them all sent them my design only two got back to me one was super keen I sent them the design they told me it will be ready in like eight weeks send them the money for the first sample um how much did that first sample cost do you remember it was probably like 180 pound yeah and then I just thought okay let's do this and then I went to my parents house and I was saying to my brother oh I'm gonna start a business because he's always like very much interested in business and he just said to me you do know that they've run away with your money and you're not you're never gonna see that sample ever again but I did a week later I received I can't imagine how much your heart would have I was like oh my after all that I've worked so hard yeah exactly so then I received the first samples and I was so pleased I was so so pleased I was so happy with it um and then I decided to do like a DIY I didn't have the funds I used up my salary from my nine to five job to get to pay for my sample to do a diy photo shoot to get a photographer pulled in some favors wrote on social media does anyone fancy like um doing a photo shoot i scratch your back you scratch mine kind of thing and then that's how we did the first photo shoot amazing i would love to see when you do have that yeah i mean my ones at the beginning i cannot relate on they're not bad i think one of the things that really throws you off when you're trying to start a business is actually finding manufacturers and working out how to work with manufacturers and all of that and it really doesn't need to throw you off because I think it is one of those things because you haven't when you start in this world you have absolutely no idea how to even start but actually it's not as hard as you think and you just have to get going and that is why I spent so much time when making the business method on actually deep diving into how to find manufacturers and how to make sure they're good ones and the types of contracts you should get in place because it can really fuck you over if you don't get the right ones but at the same time it will absolutely you make your business if you do get the right ones.

5:44And here is Cass talking about how her and her partner actually found their first suppliers on Google. Obviously, you say that the business was kind of very much built on like Google and cold emails and like all of this. For someone who's starting a business now, a product business, what would you recommend they do if, you know, they're coming into the space, they have zero connection to it, they have zero, I guess, ability to ask people? How would you recommend they do something like finding manufacturers? you honestly can just google it like i remember even when we first started orium i was running around new york city getting samples made by manufacturers in new york like for the first year or so everything was made in in the u.s and we have i think you have to also realize that maybe your first manufacturer isn't going to be your lifetime manufacturer and be okay with that i think in the very beginning when you have really small minimums and you need to be able to do like just smaller runs of things.

6:39Cause like we started with the business with around like$10 ,000. We really didn't have that much money and we scaled it to seven figures the first year. It was pretty insane. It's incredible. And I think you need to just kind of take those risks. Like I feel like our product is definitely so much better now, but that's also because as we continue to grow and we, our minimums got bigger, we were able to find those other people. And it's literally just Googling. Maybe figure out where you want something manufactured and Google Italian manufacturer. Just nonstop emailing people. You're going to have to email a lot of people to get an answer.

7:16I feel like I'm constant. I spend hours just looking up who makes the rose. I really try to figure out also maybe seeing what other brands they do is really helpful. That helps with trust but I think a lot of it is just realizing you might not get the best one off the bat and eventually you'll get more connections like one of our jewelry manufacturers reached out to us but that was once we were a tiny bit bigger so I think once you could just kind of start and get the process moving you'll start to get more opportunities as you keep growing and I think that goes for all different areas of business as well I think that again it's one of things that you can really stunt yourself by being so set on the end goal like an end goal is important and like a mission and a driving force that's so important but if you are set on like the fact that like I want to launch this business and I want it to have 10 different pieces and I want them to come in these different colors and I want you to be able to select this this and this like I had such clear views when I started Tala and so many of them I literally like should have been told like or if I was talking to anyone about like them and welcoming kind of feedback I would have been told billion dollar companies can't often do that because of x y and z like as in and I would have been like no but I want to do this like I had this vision that I want I didn't want to launch the website until you could select a size and see a model in that size and it'd be like all of this anyway we did our first ever launch and the website there was so much data on the website that it literally glitched so badly and basically fucked up our whole like first three months and this was because I was like I want to be able to click on the size of like all of this and it's like that's great should we maybe just like start the business first and if you need some motivation to keep going once you've had that first idea this is a clip from my episode three years ago with the incredible Nicola Kilner founder of Desiem the parent company of The Ordinary but before The Ordinary's success Nicola and her late co-founder Brandon built 10 brands first this is such a testament to why you shouldn't rest on your laurels if you have one idea you're not totally sure about.

9:18Building 10 brands in one, that, I mean, it seems completely like insane. It seems just like the wildest idea. And I can completely see, you know, high risk, high reward, big ideas, you know, result in big things. But even just that as a starting point, I think, I mean, I think it tells you a lot about branding as a person. But I also think that, you know, the amount of ambition the amount of excitement the amount of passion and everything to be able to make those things come to life and not just say I'm going to start this one brand but I'm going to start 10 brands that cover all these different things um did that did that terrify you at the beginning it never it was just excitement yeah and I remember like you know so when I left Boots you know I'd have been like 23 uh 24 and I remember my mum you know she's like you've got a good job you're in like a good company like who's Brandon like why are you leaving it while you're taking this risk but you know it never felt like a risk you know when you just your heart just tells you it's just the right thing to do and you know just follow excitement kind of follow where you you think it wants to go um and so what's interesting so you know we launched the first four then we had hiff we had abcree abnormally stem other brands came and then when we could eventually launch facial skincare we then launched two brands called thymine and then neod so actually the ordinary which you know is the the hugest part biggest part of our business and obviously kind of a huge success story actually it was the 11th we launched so it was a good job we didn't stick it down yeah and and i think you know again what was actually really good about this philosophy of trying multiple things is you know you can come up with an idea that you're so passionate about you know you really believe like this is the thing but ultimately getting getting a group of consumers to also love what you've come up with is risky you know they might not all show your viewpoint and so actually it was almost kind of like we kept doing things and you know they'd have different waves of success and then suddenly the ordinary launched and the concept of the ordinary we never designed it to be really like a brand in its own right we launched it because NEOD which is a um you know we call it skincare for the hyper-educated it's really kind of high technology kind of future thinking skincare and we're all so proud of really what like the chemist you know brand and like everyone has cheated with the formless for neod it's truly like next generation phenomenal skincare so we would get frustrated when we would see you know one of our neod products on in a magazine next to another premium brand who were shouting about like a new vitamin c product and it's eight pounds because we'd be like vitamin c is not an innovation like that's yeah that does not need to be 80 pounds like how how is this you know and again i hate i hate saying bad things about an industry because there's so many good things in the world of beauty but it's kind of like there was no transparency and even i could feel that as a consumer i guess it goes back to a little bit about the beauty wise concept that you know i could walk into a department store and you're like whoa like where do I start like what do I pick did you feel like each of the brands that was started as part of Desiem came from the same kind of light bulb disruptive moment or not and do you kind of feel like that was the reason that The Ordinary kind of went the extra mile so so when I think about kind of the development process I wouldn't say when we were talking about The Ordinary that we felt like this is a light like as I said like we didn't think it was going to be like a big brand Like we thought it would actually naively push NEOD to actually be the bigger brand.

12:56Like, you know, we always felt like NEOD would be our like kind of crown jewel and kind of really that hero brand for the portfolio. And it was only, but I mean, it was, we actually did the first launch with Victoria Health, a website in the UK. I remember just everything sold out literally within a day. And it was just phenomenal. But again, you know, it made a lot of sense to us. but actually we had a couple of huge retail partners who we actually are with now. At the beginning, you know, the first kind of concept stage, we actually presented The Ordinary too and they didn't decide to list because it was kind of like consumers won't understand this.

13:33Yeah. You need to call things anti-aging serum and brightening serum and kind of use the, you know, the terms that consumers are used to. And I think it's quite hard, you know, and I know often with like entrepreneurs, you hear people say like, you know, someone comes up with an idea someone's like well if it's a good idea you know someone would have done it before and it's just such a stupid like phrase and I think you know it is sometimes like you do something and people might be like it doesn't make any sense but if you can take the risk and do it like you should just try honestly Nicola is absolutely incredible that episode is three years old now but I still go back and listen to it from time to time because her story is just so amazing and she is so incredibly smart but now it's time to talk about one of my favorite bits of the entire process of building a product business and that is the actual product.

14:17This clip from my episode with Candice Nelson, founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes, really stuck with me as it shows how you don't need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to product. You just need to differentiate in a way that solves a new problem for your customer. It's also a great example about how to use your product as the marketing. In actuality, I think the way I considered the cupcake was very similar to the way you might consider an article of clothing. I started with the ingredients, which for you would be the fabric or the material. And I wanted that to be the best that it could be. So the world's best vanilla, the world's best chocolate.

14:50And then I moved outward to the outward aesthetics. So you might be thinking of a special stitch or button or zipper. I considered the cupcake wrapper, which was a dark chocolate cupcake wrapper because I thought it looked more sophisticated and it grounded the cupcake. And then I considered the frosting on top, which was a hand frosted cupcake because I wanted it to communicate that this was an artisanal cupcake. This was a handcrafted product. And then ultimately I had to consider the decoration on top. And if you think about what traditional cupcake decorations were, they were either those standard sprinkles or a plastic cupcake pick.

15:30And neither of those was going to do at all because I had reinvented the cupcake. Here was this modern, upscale, aspirational cupcake, and I needed a decoration to match. So I worked on a lot of different ideas, but ultimately landed on this double dot that looks almost like a bullseye. And it's made out of sugar paste, and we call it the modern dot. And these dots just became synonymous with Sprinkles cupcakes. My goal was that if you were to look at a table, a buffet of desserts, that you would be able to pick out a sprinkles cupcake immediately. And that's what that Modern Dot did. And so we applied for trademark protection, actually, for the Modern Dot, and we were granted it.

16:16And to your point earlier about fashion versus food, it's really not that different than the red lacquered sole of Christian Louboutin's shoes. That's essentially what that modern dot was for us. So really creating branding within the product itself in the same way as I hope that when someone wears Tala, the person who sees them walking down the street and can read that Tala and they can see how good that person looks and they go, wow, I want a pair of those. It's also being able to identify that when someone's coming to a birthday, you want them to pick up sprinkles because they can show everyone that they got it from sprinkles.

16:50and I feel like that's a really valuable lesson in understanding branding in all different industries. We are now moving from product ideas and getting started to choosing your business model and finding suppliers. This clip is from my chat with Odd News founder Amy Smale on how she decided on her business model and why she thinks it changed the game for her business. I was more actually on Instagram and I was really explaining my mission. I was like guys I know we can't go anywhere but I'm not selling you like something that you only want to wear this weekend I'm selling you something that I want you to wear for years and years and don't just take my word for it like look at the product like when would you not want to wear wear this blazer so the actual day of launch we did quite well um and instantly pretty little thing copied it within like four weeks very on brand uh yep and I remember thinking like that is so annoying and someone messaged me like you have to put this on twitter like you have to use this as like just marketing if they're going to use it you might use it too and so I basically put it on Twitter and it went majorly viral and all of a sudden I had all these influencers buying the product and they were like tweeting me back like I've just bought this I was like okay and then Lorna Lux bought it and I remember saying to everyone everyone be like who do you want to wear your brand and I would say Lorna anyone in the world Lorna because she was just this creator I followed that I felt I don't I felt like she genuinely just had this like really fab life that she was taking us along for and she literally bought it put it on her story like just got my shipping notification like I'm receiving it tomorrow I'm gonna shoot it in Paris I wish I had my old phone on me because I was literally on the floor crying like everyone walked in like what is going on like thinking that and my iPad's just going ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching like Shopify sales so Lux has just worn my blazer and like her influence is just absolutely crazy because of that thing that I recognize like she gen it is genuine like there's obviously there's so many there's like a twofold with creators nowadays and I feel like you can always recognize the sort of really influential people and she picked it up quite quickly and she I credit a lot to her she's very modest when I say this to her but she really changed the game for me and she gave me that exposure early on don't get me wrong I've literally been running ever since that moment.

19:12And I chased that stock. I put 700 units on pre-order. I knew these people weren't going to be waiting long. I've been running since that moment. But she really set me up for that. And she really gave me the exposure that I needed. It was like the right time and the right person. Yeah. And that was the first launch. Well, that's incredible. And you don't get that without having an amazing product too. Like I think that that same story could have happened. Like I'm such a big believer in product as marketing. Oh, absolutely. I think it's all in the reaction as well, though. Yeah. There's so many people that have like an amazing moment where someone really influential has worn their product, but they don't know what to do.

19:49I was like, I need to chase stock. How soon can I get these blazers that people want them? And immediately I was like, I need to put them on pre-order. And that's how we fell into the pre-order model that honestly has scaled my business so much because essentially for a long time, we are moving out of it now. But essentially for a long time, we've been able to sell as much stock without actually paying our suppliers yet. I'm only just getting into a position where me and my suppliers can actually get on good payment terms because we both started so small together. But yeah, that's allowed me to like get the full potential out of all these launches because I'm able to put a lot of stock on pre-order and like de-risk a lot really.

20:34So what happened is that she obviously posted and then you basically, obviously in order to be able to take advantage of the fact that she's posted about that, did you already know that you could get a shipment within X amount of weeks or were you going to work that out after you'd put it on pre-order? Oh, no, I'd already had the order confirmed. I did this really weird thing, which I put a response box on Instagram and said, leave me your email if you want a blazer. And I had thousands of people and I manually messaged them all like updates. Like it wasn't like, I didn't even know what Klaviyo was then.

21:08Like I didn't know about email marketing. I didn't know. Now we have like Shopify apps that do all the waitlist for us, but I was doing that manually. and I think that I think that lends to like how personal people how like that personal feeling of Muse has because at the beginning I was like thank you so much guys I'm like doing everything I'm messaging you all personally like this is crazy um and I really I think it was two weeks between Lorna wearing it and me putting 700 units on pre-order and then that's when we hit 100k it was like in the first like two and a half months that is insane I know the day I did that pre-order we took like 60 000 pounds and i remember just sitting on my stairs looking at my mom and dad like i just say i don't know whether to say anything yeah i'm just i've got six i've just made 60 000 pounds like how insane i was literally just sitting on my stairs staring at everyone like do i say something what do i do it was almost like i didn't know how to act for a long time with i've not really known like how to whether to be like happy or like how to The market's uncertain.

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23:23Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost. With their 30-day money-back guarantee, what have you got to lose? Head to bluehost.com to start now. react so you found your product you've decided on a business model but how are you going to actually get people to buy it there is so much incredible marketing advice in the archives so it was incredibly tricky to choose just one but in the end i chose two clips from jenna meek and jess hunt the co-founders of revy who i've had on separately over the years and their take on community building and viral marketing is genuinely world class and here is what jess had to say on starting out as refi started we were a much smaller team obviously at the very beginning so i'd say there's probably like a laugh at it now but for example we're going on a shoot next week and i think i'm sounds crazy i'm taking like 10 people just to like shoot right which is crazy which is crazy that's like a lot of people and um that seems to me like what a big brand would do i guess at the very beginning it would be like right my business partner jenna on the iphone getting the social content literally i'm there getting the flat lays like and then one of the person like doing the makeup doing the style do you mean you just all like come together and just do what you've got to do so I think going from that dynamic where we kind of like something happens and we react to it so quickly to then having a much more very grateful for it because it wouldn't be where it is today but a much bigger team yeah has honestly been like such a big adjustment what are the cool girls doing right cool girls what what what gives you FOMO like what are you dying over right now tell me because obviously things have changed so much as well but no I do think we take that that like that outlook in terms of like we just want to do cool stuff like we're very fortunate that the brand has gone well and the products I would never ever bring something out for no reason like as I said everything has to be solution-based and has a purpose but I just want us to be that brand like who's doing these really cool things and as you said like even down to the marketing I'm never ever going to be like sail on buy this guys like that's just not us I'll always just be like okay well there's a brow sculpt balancing on a rock in the middle of santorini like do you want it do you know what i mean i think that's just would you like it if you don't no worries no worries if not it's fine because i've got loads i'll use them that's fine and here's jenna's take craziest launch for us was was when everyone got the product and was like oh okay this actually is really good um and then we sold out completely it was our relaunch where we were like what just happened like what just happened we were out of stock for like two months we put the product back in stock and it was just like whoa whoa whoa what is going like people went crazy for it and i was just like yeah we were not prepared for that yeah but that's also a testament how much of a not just quote-unquote influencer business based on people buying because jess is saying this is great it's people you know maybe being aware of the product first of all at least at the beginning stages i would say you know there's a huge i see refi everywhere whether it's with jess or not now but in terms of kind of being able to go from you know an initial amount purchasing something which will be the early adopters the you know the fans the people who see the amazing marketing all of this and being able to try the product and then come back and be like I need 10 more or like I've told all of my friends and now they're all coming to purchase just shows how different it is creating a influencer business or something that started as an influencer business that isn't just about the influencer I think with all of this rise of celebrity skincare lines all of these different kind of beauty lines that every single celebrity seems to have the ones you can tell are going to do really well is it's like almost a coincidence that it happens to be an influencer line it's a great brand and product regardless and I think when when it's kind of obviously not when it's one of those things that's like you know if x percent that they're following bought it great but like are they going to repeat in the same way have we made the same investment into like brand and actual efficacy of the product and all of these things and you can really tell with refi that you've spent so much time like whether no matter how people found out about it it's clearly an incredible product um and brand and there's something they can buy into and that kind of dependent like no matter what which is obviously always the aim when kind of starting from that standpoint definitely and i feel like jess as well and i'm not sure how you're obviously heavily involved in yours as well it's like you can tell the brands where they're not involved like where it's a face yeah exactly and i think that's what makes refi as well so different it's like i thought i was a massive affectionist and i met jess i'm like you joke like i'm like we've ready to sign stuff like no we need to change this and i'm like i didn't even notice that i was crazy i was like so she is like literally putting her stamp and standard which is so premium on everything so like if she's not happy with it it's not going anywhere and I think people do follow Jess for that level of like her style and everything it's just it's lovely to see it and I think you know you're getting that standard and I think that's what you obviously do with your brand I think you can just tell when people are in it and making it to their standard.

28:28Now we're on to the scaling section and there is one person we need to hear from it is the incredible Jordan Brompton founder of the nine-figure EV charging business My Energy. I loved this episode for many reasons but mostly because Jordan was so raw and open about her journey, not afraid to tell me what she hated and what she loved, and also so unafraid to be truly herself in an industry so dominated by men. Here is her story and advice on scaling beyond a startup phase. When it really took off, it was probably about 15, 16 or so people by that point. Right, and how did that feel to suddenly be managing 15, 16 people?

29:01Were they in office side or were they doing the manufacturing side? it was office and manufacturing it was all very hands-on yeah it was like orders were growing and momentum and right everybody was doing a bit of everything and you know when you're starting up you hire people you know you'll hire anyone who's willing to help you right you don't hiring on skill you're hiring on help me like family and friends begging people to work for you and pulling in the family and the husband and stuff on easter buying holidays and stuff to get orders out and it was wild um but I found the hardest part going from about that size to probably about 40 50 because it had gone from feeling like everyone felt like there was family to then all of a sudden you're trying to put processes and procedures in and bring people in that are qualified and it starts I went I remember going and that was when I was pregnant I remember going through a really hard time and a really hard transition of going from like friendly family startup fun vibes to all of a sudden this is getting a bit too successful and people turning and being a bit weird and then somebody just oh the politics yeah it was hard work but now I think once you've got over like the couple of hundred mark of people it's a fully functioning business it's less like personal it's more yeah I definitely have found that that transition between being like four people in a room to being like I mean we're only like 35 people but even at that stage when it's like you know everything's pretty process driven and it has to I remember our CEO once saying like it was in one of our like all hands type things and she said the other day she was like the fact that half of you probably think we're too corporate and half of you probably think we're too scrappy and messy probably means we're in the exact right place that like a startup that scaling needs to be in and I was like that is so so true but also it genuinely does mean that usually half the people there think you're an absolute shit show that's got nothing in place and like they're running around being like I need more process and half the people there are like you've added too many layers and like it's too complicated and you like that's how I feel constantly at the moment I feel like we I'm finding this stage so hard in terms of people and team and actually being able to like work out exactly the types of people we need exactly like the types of processes we need what's too much what's too little how do you incentivize like innovation within the team whilst also putting things in place to mean things that don't go wrong it is just I mean I think I'm finding it the hardest I've ever found it in terms of people at the moment for exactly that reason it's normal and it's the hardest stage I think once you get through that growing yeah except you said it's fine when you get to a few hundred and I'm quite far away from that and I'm having a tough time Jordan do you I think good management good management is key like you need your core like a team because that's what I found I call them my a team yeah and that's like getting that right is a blessing and I've you know it's like anything in relationships you kiss a few frogs you go you get it wrong a few times I've had the imposter syndrome where I've let people come in and be really corporate and I think well I trust everything they say because they're better than me and then it's gone horribly wrong for the culture.

32:08I love Jordan and that episode so much I will say as well like one of the things I really try and do with this podcast is platform female founders as much as possible. I talk a lot on Instagram and pretty much anywhere you'll hear from me about the funding gap and how only two percent of venture funding goes to women and how terrible that is but I think that like the first step to changing that is actually knowing about women entrepreneurs and knowing what companies they own and knowing their stories and all of this because I think that you know there's some terrible stats out there about the fact that like if you ask people on the street to talk about a female founder like they can't name anyone and so I do kind of see it as my duty even if it's not someone who's super well known to like put them on this podcast and deep dive into their journey deep dive into what they found a lot harder deep dive into their story as a whole so that we can all build up this like base of knowledge of what being a female founder is like but also like how many incredible female founders there are out there because there's this huge misconception that women just don't want to be in entrepreneurship and we're just risk averse and we have no interest and we just want to stay home and raise some babies and actually it's just so untrue and I know so many incredible female founders and the aim of this podcast has never ever ever been just to get the biggest people, the biggest names, the people with the most followers and I hope that really shines through when it comes to the actual content on the podcast and so many people messaged about that episode and how much that changed for them as an entrepreneur so I highly recommend you listen to it if you haven't already.

33:36Another key part of the scaling phase is hiring. It's something I ask pretty much every established founder that I can speak to as it can really make or break a business and it's one of the hardest things to deal with. So there is a lot on hiring in the archives. But this clip is from way back in the day. Here is founder Will Stirrup, founder of the electric motorbike company, Maving, and what he had to say on hiring Well. We interviewed this guy in a park in Leicestershire during lockdown. Like it was a heat wave and I'm on a picnic rug sort of lounging around going, so tell me about how you build a motorcycle.

34:07You know, it was the most absurd scene imaginable. And he's kind of riding around the product going We're like, yeah, this will probably work, kind of thing. And we're like, this is the head of product at our dream motorcycle company. It was, yeah. So as you say, having those things does enable you to detect talent, proper talent. And so he gave us, not only did he bring this kind of incredible raft of experience, but he also gave us the credibility to hire what we view as the most talent-dense motorcycle engineering team on the planet. It's not that big for an engineering team. We're 16 people now.

34:40um but they've all got you know 15 25 some one guy's got 40 years experience so that you know and it's that it's them they are the reason that we have been able to build the product to the standard that it now is in the time frame that we that we have for the price that it now is and that's you know it's it's interesting the kind of by far the most important part of the business has very little to do with me and seb you know finally we managed to get these people but they are the ones who've delivered this product that we are really really really proud of i know we were talking before this episode and um i asked you for some notes on what you kind of wanted to talk about and your career and all of that and i absolutely loved this point and i'm going to read it out for people who are listening um so you said i'd also like to talk about just how fucking hard it's been we finished our first prototype and launched our first fundraise in february 2020 as covet hit since then we have battled crisis after crisis after crisis there have been some triumphs there have been some really fun bits but a lot of it has been a nightmare i suppose i would like to discuss how i really don't think entrepreneurship is for everyone but if it is for you as it was for me you will totally ignore that advice and do it anyway but don't glamorize it because except in a very small majority of people and businesses it's not glamorous at all so i think this is so powerful and also so not what you hear the majority of media um about entrepreneurship kind of talking about which is where you almost exclusively see success stories or glamorized failure stories.

36:10So it's kind of failure at a hindsight 2020 point. It's like a humble brag. Exactly like, oh yeah, but my first business failed. And now I only have 7 billion pounds. I'd kind of like to hear more about this from your side and who you do think entrepreneurship is for. Yeah, that's an interesting question. So I suppose that on the glamour point, like this is without question the most glamorous thing I've ever done. You know, I, I spend most of my time in a warehouse in commentary. It's the lights. It's the fact that it's not in the Midlands, you know, there's like my, my day to day life is incredibly unblamorous.

36:48Uh, you know, I'm either sitting behind a spreadsheet or I'm like in a workshop, you know, choosing whether there's a brush finish on a part or a silver finish on a part. um and so and that is and you know there's no glamour to actually going through like interview after interview after interview to you know having to let people go it's a really it's really challenging and it's really upsetting and fundraising is as i said earlier the most horrible soul exposing part the the few moments of glamour are are as much relief as they are anything else you know when you close around you're not going oh i'm amazing you're going thank god we're not gonna run out of money you don't go to the i i literally said in our first funding round um i said don't like you'll know that my my housemates kept saying like are we closing yet are we closing yet just sort of shut shut the fuck up and um i was like you'll know when we're closing because we'll be going to a club yeah it'll be having a great time and we close and i went to bed like i honestly went to bed i switched off my phone and i just slept and I was like I I didn't go on social media for two weeks I just I was like I do not exist anymore yeah yeah exactly exactly that's it it's you know it's really not glamorous so so don't get into it because you know you've seen something and you're like oh cool I'll see online I'm like oh cool that's a version of like my life that looks interesting um the point the point that I that I made in that was like you will do this if you're going to do this you will do this because there's no way that you won't.

38:21There is just absolutely nothing stopping you. No amount of sensible advice, no horror stories will ever, ever put you off. And that's fine. And if you're like that, then I would say go do it. But don't kid yourself. It'll probably fail. Our business, if you look statistically, whatever version of success our business has achieved, which, you know, is not very far, it will still probably fail. You know, it's, it's like the odds are not for us. I will probably still have to go and do something else or, you know, probably not start another business, but find another way to make a living. Um, so keep me in the job.

39:01Um, so, so yeah, so I would say, um, what do you need to do if you are going to do it? What do you need? So you need to absolutely 100 % know that it's, there's nothing else you could have ever done and that you need to do it um you need to fully which is linked you need to fully commit to it so you need to like you know we talked at the beginning of this conversation about whether you could do it whilst doing a job at the point you decide you actually want to be an entrepreneur you have to really really go for it like you have to put everything on the line for it this is another less well-known founder who i'd had a conversation with and was like you have to come on the podcast and the episode like i feel like especially when people don't do social media as their main thing they can be incredibly incredibly honest and open and vulnerable on these types of platforms really with like what they've been through and what their business journey has looked like and that was really what like that episode with Will was and I think that or at least I hope that what we're able to do here is like bring you this unfiltered content that yeah it might not be the most engageable on Instagram but actually like it truly does show you the behind the scenes of building a business.

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40:41but continuing on the subject of scaling this clip is from my conversation with the founder of whoop will ahmed this episode is a gold mind for anyone looking to build a really big business and it is such an insight into his mindset this was his great advice on what decisions that you should be making as a founder when your business is scaling and i think about it all the time i think a lot about the decision making within an organization so like pace and control are interesting levers to think about because they can end up being a little bit on opposite ends of the spectrum. If you want your organization to move really fast, what you need is everyone in your organization to be making decisions on a daily basis.

41:23The more decisions that are getting made, the faster things go. The more committees you have, the more processes you have, often the slower things will go, less decisions getting made. Take the most extreme example. Say every decision that a hundred person organization made was made by one person. You'd have a lot of control, but you wouldn't have a lot of pace. Well, what is that balance in between and where do you find yourself based on your business? Hard to say without actually knowing what someone's business is. I've found for Whoop that it's generally best the more decisions being made all the time versus I made the decision.

42:07Having said that, you still have to figure out where are these moments where you're going to insert yourself to have a strong point of view. And another good framework to thinking about this is whether the decision is going to have a small impact or a big impact and whether the decision is a one-way door or a two-way door. So what's a one-way door decision? Well, it might be the capability of your key product launch. What is that key feature that a product you're launching has? You only get to launch that thing once, right? So that's a one-way door. A two-way door might be the specific price of something, like a newer product.

42:58you can change the price later you know but that's still fairly important but it's still actually a two-way door when you really stop to think about it anyway a lot of decisions are two way doors that at the time feel like they're one-way doors and so it's just important to really ask yourself one-way versus two-way and big versus little ideally one-way door decisions that are big decisions like big impact decisions you can get yourself more involved in and what you want to avoid doing is finding yourself making key decisions on two-way doors that are actually small impact because that's all of a sudden where you realize you're deep in the org or you're micromanaging and this and that also this wasn't in the plan and is kind of zooming back to our section on product development but this clip from will on why whoop doesn't have a screen got over two million views on our tiktok side note follow us there if you don't already um but it is such a good example of why you don't need to do everything with your product.

43:55You just need to do one thing that matters for your customer really, really well. The thing about having a screen is that once you have a screen, you tell the time. And once you tell the time, you're a watch. Okay. The problem with being a watch is that people have great affinity for a lot of other watches. And by the way, watches are like the original wearable technology. Some of the most beautiful pieces of jewelry in the world are watches. What watch you wear says a lot about who you are and your identity. Long story short, I didn't want to compete with watches. Right. And at the same time, there's a lot of scope creep once you put a face on something.

44:37You'll be sitting in a meeting and it'll start with, well, it'll show you your heart rate and your time. And then someone smart will say, well, shouldn't it show you some of the other metrics? specifics and then you'll agree to that and then someone smart will say well shouldn't it also alert you when you get an email and you're like yeah well i guess yeah we should do that and then right next thing you know well what about a phone call well what about a text but next thing you know you've built a smart watch right and all of the resourcing that you had previously put into health and fitness and being the best health and fitness monitor in the world is now getting divided it up into 50 other things that you didn't even realize you were building.

45:18And I think this can happen to a lot of companies with really good intentions. Again, each one of those things was easy to say yes to. But when you wake up after 50 yeses and all of a sudden you're building a smartwatch and not a health monitor, you're a different company. And by the way, you're squarely building what App is building now. So good luck with that. So by being really, really focused on health monitoring we've also been able to be the most accurate at it we've been able to collect the most data at it and whoop is great at all the things that we do for all the things that we don't do this clip was really important to me to include because i also remember being so surprised when i heard it so getting what you found a jen atkin on was such a pinch me moment as i've followed her journey for such a long time this clip is talking all about what to do when you need to rethink and when everything just doesn't go right something she found when she started her most recent business and I love how candid she was especially when she's at the stage where like she's already building with a huge huge audience now so being able to make mistakes and talk about those mistakes and talk about what's gone well I think is a huge strength and a gift to us in terms of the vulnerability.

46:23So I came out with these ceramic hair tools and I was adamant about it had to be instead of you having to buy a kit of like detachable tools I'm like not everybody wants to use all three of those tools so let's like do a you know kind of a price deduction and we'll have like we call it the power bottom base but like I wanted customers to be able to choose their own adventure right it has been a disaster because at shelf everyone's like it's too complicated doing the math and figuring out like well how much is it if I were to buy all three but then how much is it if I just buy this one and it's been so hard and so after our first quarter sales report I said to Sephora I go you know what forget it I'm gonna like we're going to just sell solid tools we're not going to do this story anymore it's just not working and even Sephora said to me they go this is wild that you're making this decision so fast but actually we've seen brands not do that and it hurts them in the long run so much so it's really brave that you're like taking it off now and fixing it so I I mean I again I do not know everything like I can give my opinion but I'm just like one opinion I'm a strong believer that no one knows everything it's how you like respond to the information you're given and I think that a lot of people like it's really easy to get too attached to thinking that your idea is right or like that is what should sell especially if you know you've done market research and you've been really thinking like this is going to be the next big thing like it's tough like I know firsthand like sometimes when you come out with something that you're like this is my favorite thing we've released for a long, long time and it like sits there.

48:00It is painful. But it's also like as a business owner, how you receive that information, how you adapt from that information, how you speak to the customer. And I love how transparent you are about it as well, because I do think a lot of people assume that when you've got to your stage in your career, there's kind of none of that. Like everything somewhat turns to gold. Oh my God, no. It's humbling experiences all day long over here also how iconic is it that her best piece of advice was from chris jenner i've got to include it here i got some really great advice from chris jenner because i was stressing out about something with way and i was just like being really hard on myself and she was like you are doing so amazing for your first time this is your first brand this is incredible and it's not going to be the last thing you ever do like you're going to go on and do so many amazing things in your life you're not like you're in your 30s you know i'm now in my 40s but she's like you have a whole life ahead of you of doing all these incredible things.

48:52And I, it really like took hearing that for me to be like, Oh my God, I'm so like stuck in this moment and letting it like take over in a bad way. And so I kind of just feel like I started to relax a little bit more. So I'm definitely like, I, I feel, um, I feel just really like lucky. And I try to, I got to tell you the biggest thing for me is meditation and gratitude. When I don't do that, that's when I start to get anxiety, like shortness of breath I start to feel like oh I hate everybody but when I'm like regularly doing like a morning meditation and writing down three things I'm grateful for in my life it and my habit tracker is my favorite thing too like when I'm doing the things that are good habits and make me just like you might not feel it that day but like a week of doing it you're gonna feel so good so that definitely helped too and another theme that's come up again and again on this podcast is selling your business and letting go it's obviously a pretty unique experience and the end of a huge amount of hard work and if it is something you're considering i direct you to the episode with anchor nagpal candace nelson and lovenia erico this clip however is from the great serial entrepreneur debbie wasco on how to know when to let go i've only ever done things and i'm going to sell them yeah i'm all about the selling love that i really really love that and i really i think that there's this especially on like business podcasts and stuff the amount of people that sit there and go and it doesn't absolutely this is not me saying that it's then all about the money it's not at all otherwise you wouldn't get up every day but actually being able to sit there and just be like no this is a business and I am aiming to sell it the aim is to create an incredible business sell it to the right person and have done that like I think that's really important the amount of people who sit there and say like oh no don't care about that at all I think two things on that I've I really admire people um and I've met many of them who have built a business over 20 plus years and then sold it I've got five years of anything in me and then I'm bored and I think that the issue and perhaps this is a thing around doing b2c d2c and fronting things up in the way that you do and I have done in the end you feel like a stand-up comedian in need of some new material like to the point on the movie the holiday I mean it it's fine now because there's sort of clear blue water but during that time when someone will go how did you count the idea and i feel like i have to do this again i'm just gonna so i think you you come to a point as a storyteller where the story either needs to change or you need to change the story that you're telling and and then back to the point of have fun make money don't work with assholes can we please make some money right can we not stay in a business forever and ever and not paying ourselves properly with investors with a screwed up cap table I mean Grace I've seen so many women's businesses where it's just a mess and I have to sit with them and say what are you getting out of this what do you think what do you want what do you and I think that entrepreneurship can be the most amazing path to upside um personal fulfillment being in the world and getting rich let's not forget to talk about that last bit and I think yes there are different ways of doing it but my to date anyway I have conventionally started a business raised external finance owned less of the business than I did at the beginning sold part of the business or all of the business to make money if that's the cadence and and I know not all of your businesses are like that but if that is the cadence you're not making much money as you go along so make sure that there are some moments otherwise you're stuck and I've seen a lot of people get stuck okay that is it we are done it is time for you to go and grow or launch your business because in my humble opinion there is nothing better than just starting and you can spend so much time in the discovery phase really what you need to do is just get up and do it thank you so much again for watching and listening if you enjoyed this episode please go and hit that subscribe button or leave us a lovely review or a comment it means the absolute world to us on our team and it'll probably end up in our Slack channel.

53:00As always, please let me know any more episodes that you might want a deep dive on or a compilation on. We are here to provide a great resource for you. So what you want, what we want. And as always, I hope you have a wonderful day.

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