00:00:00:05 - 00:00:31:08
Speaker 1
You go to start a business. And a lot of people think, oh, well, what I need to do is I need to sit down and write a paper about how I'm going to do this. And. And you don't you need to do is you need to be clear about what you're trying to achieve. You need to know where you need to find resources that support you, but then network with people who've been on the journey.

00:00:31:10 - 00:00:55:12
Speaker 1
So right. Co-Founder of you furnished com is a furniture finding platform for for retailers and consumers across the UK. So if you think of this like right move but for furniture. So so that's what we do. The quick backstory to the business is that it's founded by my wife and I, and we created the business after buying our first home together, where we bought an apartment.

00:00:55:14 - 00:01:07:15
Speaker 1
We were moving into it. We didn't have any furniture because we lived in a rental beforehand that was furnished and we needed to find the furniture. And one day she turned to me and said, why isn't there a like equivalent of right move, but for furniture where you can

00:01:07:16 - 00:01:10:05
Speaker 1
find everything in one place? And I went, I don't

00:01:10:05 - 00:01:10:14
Speaker 1
know.

00:01:10:20 - 00:01:13:10
Speaker 1
And so here we are of 6 or 7 years down the line, and

00:01:13:10 - 00:01:16:06
Speaker 1
we created it. And that's what we do. Yeah.

00:01:16:08 - 00:01:18:10
Speaker 1
So it's 6 or 7 years old now. Yeah. We

00:01:18:10 - 00:01:25:22
Speaker 1
launched in 2020. So you know we went through a process of obviously, you know, building up prototypes and stuff before we sort of launched it raised a bit of

00:01:25:24 - 00:01:26:13
Speaker 1
that kind of thing.

00:01:26:13 - 00:01:35:11
Speaker 1
But we officially launched in 2020 as you furnished. Right. And so that was like in the midst of the pandemic, or just as that was kind of coming into sort of well, it's sort of hard to say what was the midst

00:01:35:11 - 00:01:41:12
Speaker 1
of the pandemic as well. But at the at the end of the pandemic, really probably late 2020 like November time.

00:01:41:12 - 00:01:54:14
Speaker 1
So we were just coming out of it. Yeah. But it was interesting because we really started building the business in earnest during the pandemic, which was a really strange circumstances. Right? Very. We had built in 2019, we

00:01:54:18 - 00:01:58:06
Speaker 1
built a prototype of calm, and actually we had a

00:01:58:08 - 00:02:04:18
Speaker 1
different name as well. It was called Cordia, which was a play on Cool Idea, which we thought was a cool idea.

00:02:04:20 - 00:02:06:10
Speaker 1
And so we built out this prototype

00:02:06:15 - 00:02:21:03
Speaker 1
website. We had an agency sort of help us with that. We got some retail, some board. We worked with alien, but it was literally just me doing it. D was still working full time at that point in time, and I was sort of doing that and doing a bit of consulting work just to keep some income coming in.

00:02:21:04 - 00:02:25:05
Speaker 1
And we got to a point where we launched that in around August of 2019,

00:02:25:07 - 00:02:30:17
Speaker 1
and what we really wanted to know was could we get people onto the site, would they use it? And we saw

00:02:30:17 - 00:02:42:10
Speaker 1
that and they were using it, and then we started to monetise. And so what we did was we put together a bit of a prospectus for investors, and then we said, look, we need to build a platform in earnest here if we're going to stand this up as a business.

00:02:42:11 - 00:02:43:24
Speaker 1
So we then went on a journey of

00:02:43:24 - 00:02:49:09
Speaker 1
raising investment, which closed at the beginning of 2020, around to the end of Jan. And from

00:02:49:09 - 00:03:06:03
Speaker 1
there we were able to go out and recruit a team and ended up building the platform, which took us about ten months to get the first version of euphonia. Com and the reason it changed from Cordelia calm is one of the stress tests we put on the business was what do you think of the name, the brand, that kind of thing.

00:03:06:03 - 00:03:14:17
Speaker 1
And most people had no idea how to pronounce the name, so you need to change it. So we then said, okay, let's find a new name. So we rebranded to com and here we are today. Got

00:03:14:17 - 00:03:22:01
Speaker 1
it. So we did either of you have experience as previous founders of businesses or was this your first venture at kind of attempting

00:03:22:04 - 00:03:22:09
Speaker 1
anything

00:03:22:09 - 00:03:22:17
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:03:22:21 - 00:03:35:01
Speaker 1
first venture. Yeah. Yeah. So these background was in investment banking so law and investment banking. And she came from that sort of world. So very good on the fine outside. So so that was her background and mine was

00:03:35:04 - 00:03:41:00
Speaker 1
in marketing technology. I had worked for two Start-Ups that had both been successful, but I wasn't the founder.

00:03:41:01 - 00:03:47:05
Speaker 1
I was sort of early stage in, so I guess I had a bit of a grounding around what you need to do in the journey that you're going to be on,

00:03:47:05 - 00:03:55:23
Speaker 1
never as a founder, which carries a whole different way to responsibility, because when you're an employee, you can obviously close the door and you can pack up for the weekend doesn't quite work that way.

00:03:55:23 - 00:03:59:05
Speaker 1
Well it's yours. So. So yeah, it was our first foray. Yeah,

00:03:59:05 - 00:04:08:04
Speaker 1
yeah. And I wanted to I mean, this whole series is about speaking to founders, about those early challenges that they might have had in founding their business and some of

00:04:08:04 - 00:04:18:02
Speaker 1
the hurdles that they had to overcome, maybe some missteps and mistakes along the way. I wanted to ask you, what's what is the single biggest failure or setback that you've experienced as a as a founder?

00:04:18:03 - 00:04:18:10
Speaker 1
Yeah,

00:04:18:10 - 00:04:26:14
Speaker 1
I mean, there's there's, there's a lot. Right. Like and it sort of you put it on a spectrum of like failures because there are like micro failures that occur

00:04:26:16 - 00:04:31:03
Speaker 1
every day, every week on that side of things. And you're always winning and losing in various things.

00:04:31:03 - 00:04:31:10
Speaker 1
But

00:04:31:12 - 00:04:36:13
Speaker 1
there are a couple of standouts. I would say the hardest part is probably the hiring part,

00:04:36:18 - 00:04:38:19
Speaker 1
being really candid, like people are

00:04:39:00 - 00:04:44:08
Speaker 1
so important, particularly in an early stage business where you need the right people on the journey.

00:04:44:12 - 00:05:11:24
Speaker 1
And that was very hard for us, trying to build the business through the sort of Covid period where we were trying to find technologists that understood the problem that we were trying to solve and how to build the technology was really hard. And we had a couple of missteps with some of the hires that we made and then trying to recourse, not only finding replacements for those hires, but also the technical missteps of those people had made was really hard.

00:05:12:00 - 00:05:29:08
Speaker 1
You know, like as a non-technical tech business founder, you've got to learn quickly. And for me, like that was a bit of a baptism of fire because you're trying to make decisions on the fly and you're taking consultation from the people you've hired, but sometimes they're just not giving you the right. Of course, sometimes they're actually out of their depth.

00:05:29:08 - 00:05:29:11
Speaker 1
And

00:05:29:11 - 00:05:30:22
Speaker 1
the soldier a good story.

00:05:30:24 - 00:05:49:23
Speaker 1
So over the journey, it's sort of it galvanises you because you learn what works and what doesn't and what questions you need to ask. But we certainly had some issues with that over the first year or two of our business. And I would say those are the hardest moments. And there's another reason why they're the hardest moments, which is beyond like just dealing with the fact that there is some mistakes made.

00:05:49:24 - 00:06:00:21
Speaker 1
It's actually dealing with the weight of then having to manage those people and those relationships and several relationships and legal crap that goes with it. Like you end up, it's hard to sleep at times because

00:06:00:23 - 00:06:02:12
Speaker 1
you're dealing with that and you're

00:06:02:12 - 00:06:10:24
Speaker 1
thinking about like the impact, you're thinking about this person or and so you're trying to compartmentalise your life, but you can't get away from it at the same time.

00:06:10:24 - 00:06:16:22
Speaker 1
So those are the hardest bits. Those are the biggest mistakes. They're the hardest bits for me. Yeah,

00:06:16:22 - 00:06:17:05
Speaker 1
with

00:06:17:05 - 00:06:28:18
Speaker 1
some of those kind of, I guess, like hiring missteps or was there ever like an exact moment where you thought like, you know, this isn't working out? We've got to kind of make a decision now that to let

00:06:28:18 - 00:06:30:03
Speaker 1
this person go, unfortunately.

00:06:30:03 - 00:06:34:24
Speaker 1
And is it kind of like a single moment or is it kind of a oh, it's a build

00:06:34:24 - 00:06:53:07
Speaker 1
up. Yeah, it's yeah, it's a build up of moments. But like there's there's always a specific moment where it boils over and, you know, there's one particular person in the business who made a pretty critical error of judgement that was actually quite impactful on the business in the early days.

00:06:53:07 - 00:07:02:14
Speaker 1
And like, that was like, we have to instantly remove this person from the business there because they're compromising the business. And that's that's pretty hard. So but like

00:07:02:14 - 00:07:04:07
Speaker 1
there'd been a build up of things to that

00:07:04:10 - 00:07:11:03
Speaker 1
moment. But that was the moment where I was like, no, we really need to deal with this right now. And it literally was Monday morning.

00:07:11:03 - 00:07:28:21
Speaker 1
Come in, pull that person in. Look, you're you're done and you're done now. And we need your laptop back. And like, that's bloody hard because not only because you're making a decision, you know it's going to impact your team, but also that's a person as well that you're having to deal with. And they've got responsibilities. And like we all do.

00:07:28:21 - 00:07:44:15
Speaker 1
So like those those moments are probably the really hard ones. And then the fallout from that is you have to deal with undoing that situation and that set you back. It sets back your roadmaps, all that kind of stuff. So there's like a contagion that comes off the back of it. Yeah. Those experiences

00:07:44:19 - 00:07:52:14
Speaker 1
that you've gone through in that respect, have they informed the way that you've approached hiring now today are 100%

00:07:52:19 - 00:07:57:23
Speaker 1
like you're so much more diligent around the hiring process?

00:07:57:23 - 00:08:13:18
Speaker 1
One of the big things for us that is that as critical is it's really getting to know people that we're bringing into the business and like recommendations is a key part of our recruitment process now. So networking really feeling like, you know, someone, you've got that background, you know a bit about them. You've

00:08:13:20 - 00:08:15:18
Speaker 1
seen their work to a certain extent

00:08:15:18 - 00:08:17:10
Speaker 1
and that puts you in a much better state.

00:08:17:10 - 00:08:26:09
Speaker 1
But then you know what questions to ask. Like you just work through lived experiences and then, you know, you still get a bit of gut feeling there, but you're probably a bit more informed than what you were 3 or 4 years ago. One

00:08:26:09 - 00:08:30:24
Speaker 1
thing that's very unique about your business is obviously the fact that your co-founder is your wife.

00:08:31:01 - 00:08:34:09
Speaker 1
I wanted to ask you a bit about that dynamic, if I can. And sure,

00:08:34:11 - 00:08:38:15
Speaker 1
how did you kind of come to a place where you, you talked about Deirdre as kind of like own

00:08:38:17 - 00:08:40:11
Speaker 1
experience and background and yours being quite

00:08:40:11 - 00:08:48:23
Speaker 1
different. So you come to many each other in that regard? Yeah. Yeah. Just working together as a, on a day to day like, how do you find that and how did you get to a place where that was working quite well.

00:08:49:00 - 00:09:06:07
Speaker 1
It incredibly because you hear different stories from different people. It works really well for us. I mean, we're both like 100% in and we believe in what we're doing. And, and we've put a lot on the line to go out there and do that. So, you know, you sort of know what the opportunity is. But you also know what the downsides are as well.

00:09:06:07 - 00:09:26:07
Speaker 1
But I think the part that really works is because you're both on this journey together, you never really feel like you're compromising something. Whereas if one person was on that journey and the other one wasn't, it might be harder on the relationship. Sure, it makes things a little more challenging, like on a Friday night where you want to go and have a drink and have a dinner and go, oh, what about that meeting?

00:09:26:07 - 00:09:28:21
Speaker 1
Or what about that conversation that happens? But but actually

00:09:28:21 - 00:09:32:10
Speaker 1
we love that because we're both like sort of business. Nafees kind of like rules around

00:09:32:14 - 00:09:36:18
Speaker 1
no, we can't kind of talk about work now. This is our personal time. No no, no,

00:09:36:18 - 00:09:41:24
Speaker 1
no, no. We're happy to talk about it. And and so it works really well and that sort of respect.

00:09:42:02 - 00:09:47:20
Speaker 1
One thing that is interesting and and this isn't just like a husband and wife and this is a business founder thing

00:09:47:22 - 00:09:50:07
Speaker 1
when you look at ownership of a business

00:09:50:09 - 00:09:59:22
Speaker 1
and then you look at the way that it's structured in terms of, you know, share delineation and that kind of thing, someone has to have a higher percentage than the other because the buck needs to stop somewhere.

00:09:59:22 - 00:10:20:23
Speaker 1
If you had equal footing on that, then actually you could end up at an impasse in the future. God forbid that doesn't happen. But like you need to have that conversation. You actually genuinely need to have a conversation that goes through every single outcome that could occur in the business, be it good or bad. And you do need to have that conversation around, well, what if our relationship ends?

00:10:21:04 - 00:10:26:00
Speaker 1
Where do we end up there? What happens if something happens in the business? And so we actually went through

00:10:26:00 - 00:10:34:17
Speaker 1
that entire process and talked through it and made sure that we were clear on it and documented it before we even went into this venture together.

00:10:34:17 - 00:10:40:05
Speaker 1
So, you know, and that's quite an odd conversation to have with someone that you're romantically linked to.

00:10:40:06 - 00:10:40:15
Speaker 1
This is

00:10:40:15 - 00:10:47:23
Speaker 1
quite unique to do though, right? Like, you know, probably more relationships with would benefit from that kind of candidness about, you know, the future and your plans

00:10:48:01 - 00:10:56:05
Speaker 1
Absolutely, absolutely. And like, you know, like, am I feel a little bit uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, like, you feel better for having had the conversation because at least you've got clarity.

00:10:56:07 - 00:11:08:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. I think if you live with any ambiguity that's hard. And then that's going to fester its way up to the surface and probably come out in some conversation at some point in time. But because it's on the table and it's documented and it's clear,

00:11:08:14 - 00:11:11:05
Speaker 1
it doesn't even come up in conversation now and we just sort

00:11:11:05 - 00:11:11:19
Speaker 1
of get on with it.

00:11:11:19 - 00:11:20:24
Speaker 1
So for us, it really works, you know, and we enjoy it and we're on the journey together. And yeah. Yeah. Long made that continue. Yeah.

00:11:21:01 - 00:11:30:18
Speaker 1
you've been going for six years or so. I wanted to ask you more generally about like, was there ever a point with the business, you know, all founders go through this all kind of early stage Start-Ups, particularly where

00:11:30:23 - 00:11:33:01
Speaker 1
you just genuinely thought things, they're just

00:11:33:01 - 00:11:34:07
Speaker 1
not working out so well.

00:11:34:07 - 00:11:37:06
Speaker 1
And this might not work out as a, as a business. I don't

00:11:37:08 - 00:11:40:10
Speaker 1
think that if it goes away. Yeah. And you hear that from

00:11:40:12 - 00:11:49:14
Speaker 1
founders of big and small companies and people that have made successes. I was actually talking to one yesterday at this event and and they were

00:11:49:16 - 00:11:56:10
Speaker 1
saying exactly that, but their business was turning over a lot and, and perceptively, you know, there are there are larger organisation.

00:11:56:10 - 00:12:08:16
Speaker 1
But yeah, I think that I don't think it never goes away. And then it goes in moments. And those moments could be anything from recruitment to look raising capital. You're looking at cash flow, those types of things, even

00:12:08:19 - 00:12:16:03
Speaker 1
down to moments where you lose the key clients and then you look at the impact of that and and yeah, so it does happen.

00:12:16:04 - 00:12:17:03
Speaker 1
You try to plan

00:12:17:06 - 00:12:20:07
Speaker 1
scenarios though, like for us, a critical

00:12:20:10 - 00:12:35:05
Speaker 1
aspect of how we structured the business was we wanted to establish a board and a chairman very early on in the business. So that was governance around what we do. And we we did do that, and we have a number of those board members still with us today.

00:12:35:07 - 00:12:52:05
Speaker 1
And effectively, what that allowed us to do was to sort of scenario plan so that when you end up in these difficult moments, it's no surprise that these moments are coming upon you, because every month you've got a process around reporting to the board, having conversations. And these aren't stuffy meetings. These are proactive meetings around where

00:12:52:05 - 00:12:59:23
Speaker 1
are we from a cash perspective, where are we against our objectives, you know, have we had any big losses, wins, etc., etc. so you

00:12:59:23 - 00:13:04:20
Speaker 1
can sort of see what's coming ahead and then there are no surprises and U-turns and that kind of thing.

00:13:04:20 - 00:13:22:12
Speaker 1
And also you're accountable to what you said you would do because that's strategically what we're aligned to. So that was really important for us to try and mitigate around it. And and I think a lot of founders also avoid that kind of stuff. They sort of think, oh no, but but I'm in charge and I'm the captain of the ship and all

00:13:22:12 - 00:13:24:18
Speaker 1
this kind of thing, and it's like,

00:13:24:20 - 00:13:31:01
Speaker 1
you are, but you're running a business and you don't know everything and you haven't experienced everything.

00:13:31:01 - 00:13:48:13
Speaker 1
So what you need is you need structures around you that enable you to succeed, but also you need that fallback in case anything does happen, that you've got the support network that helps you move through it. And we've we've had that. We've had like with some early funding rounds, we've had some issues where we had people who had committed money.

00:13:48:13 - 00:13:54:13
Speaker 1
And then at the last moment. They've decided that they're not going to commit that money anymore for whatever reason. And then

00:13:54:16 - 00:13:58:09
Speaker 1
you're like, oh God, we're going to come up short on this round, and then you need to find and then

00:13:58:11 - 00:14:08:22
Speaker 1
you need to work through it. If you were just on your own, that could be overwhelming. But actually when you've got a board around you, you sit down and go, okay, so what do we need to communicate to people who are investing in this round?

00:14:09:02 - 00:14:23:11
Speaker 1
What does our current shareholder base need to know about this? And then where do we need to get to, and do we need to extend our target. But there's like a sensible voice at the table that takes you on that pathway, and you realise that it's not the end of the world, it's just a speed bump and then you get through

00:14:23:13 - 00:14:23:16
Speaker 1
it.

00:14:23:17 - 00:14:25:00
Speaker 1
So that's the key part.

00:14:25:03 - 00:14:25:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think one of

00:14:25:22 - 00:14:32:18
Speaker 1
the things that's come off the back of the other conversations I've had with founders is that it can be incredibly lonely all the time, but I can imagine that the fact

00:14:32:18 - 00:14:33:23
Speaker 1
that your co-founder is your

00:14:34:00 - 00:14:37:04
Speaker 1
wife, that it's maybe less of a sense of loneliness

00:14:37:06 - 00:14:40:04
Speaker 1
and you don't. I haven't, and I see this a lot.

00:14:40:05 - 00:14:46:08
Speaker 1
Right? I've not for one day felt like I'm lonely or on my own or any of that kind of stuff, and I certainly hope that she

00:14:46:10 - 00:14:48:06
Speaker 1
hasn't. She hasn't told me that if she and

00:14:48:12 - 00:14:54:09
Speaker 1
she she has. But no, I mean, that is one of the benefits is because we're doing this together. You don't feel like you're on your

00:14:54:11 - 00:14:56:09
Speaker 1
own or it all sits on you.

00:14:56:10 - 00:15:05:09
Speaker 1
You feel a weight of responsibility, but you feel like you're genuinely doing it together. So we've we've been fortunate in that respect that we haven't felt that. Yeah, yeah. Whether any individual

00:15:05:11 - 00:15:14:18
Speaker 1
examples or instances where what something that first looked like it was maybe a loss, but actually over time you could see that it had some real benefit to the business.

00:15:14:20 - 00:15:19:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. No there are loads, loads of things. Loads of things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean one one

00:15:19:17 - 00:15:34:14
Speaker 1
thing that stands out to me in that respect is it sort of comes down to like retailer relationships. And, and it was a very significant retailer a few years ago who all of a sudden went into administration. And it was game over.

00:15:34:15 - 00:15:35:10
Speaker 1
Right. And

00:15:35:14 - 00:15:58:10
Speaker 1
we had a lot of money that was owed to us and committed to us by that retailer. So it impacted our immediate cash flow, but it also impacted our forward forecasting quite significantly because of commitments that they had made and stuff that we had communicated back into our board and our shareholders and everything else. And so you look at that and go, okay, that's like, that's quite a hole that we've got to fill

00:15:58:10 - 00:15:58:21
Speaker 1
here.

00:15:58:22 - 00:15:59:22
Speaker 1
Yeah. But

00:15:59:22 - 00:16:07:00
Speaker 1
what happened on the other side of it is some of the people that were involved in that process who sort of worked with or in and around that retailer, then

00:16:07:04 - 00:16:21:16
Speaker 1
also needed to find new opportunities and new homes and new jobs and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. When I say new homes, like, I'm sort of talking metaphorically, like a new job, they lost their home and those people because they had worked with us and they knew us.

00:16:21:17 - 00:16:46:21
Speaker 1
We'd built strong relationships. So they've gone on to other businesses and and actually that strengthened our relationship with those businesses now, which has more than made up for what we lost in that specific situation. But at the time, you're probably not thinking that you're sort of think I had or I recover the situation here. And actually the fact that you built these relationships meant that it's paid itself back a hundred times over now, you know, 3 or 4 years down the line.

00:16:47:01 - 00:16:49:00
Speaker 1
So this specific example I'm

00:16:49:00 - 00:17:09:03
Speaker 1
talking about, I had a meeting with this company at 3:00 on a Friday, and we were talking through plans and committed spend and all that kind of stuff. And it was a great meeting. And I was like, this is what we're doing, Greg, Greg, Greg got bang, bang, bang away we go. On the Monday morning, an email comes in and there was a market announcement about this business to say, this business is now an administration.

00:17:09:03 - 00:17:16:21
Speaker 1
Everyone is immediately let go, yada, yada yada. And I was like, where has that come

00:17:16:21 - 00:17:28:16
Speaker 1
from? Like, is this? And I thought it was spam. I thought it was a joke at first. But then, you know, things started to come through on sort of publications and oh, this is genuine. And then you start to go into this, okay, well, what does this

00:17:28:18 - 00:17:28:22
Speaker 1
mean?

00:17:28:22 - 00:17:44:09
Speaker 1
And everything else, when you first see it, like you don't immediately panic when you first see it, you're sort of like, okay, right, well, we need to deal with this, but it's sort of when it sort of sets in, like what it's going to mean sort of financially and things that you plan that you go, okay, this is leaving a bit of a gap.

00:17:44:09 - 00:17:59:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. But I think you go into a mode of or certainly I do anyway. How do we resolve this? Like, I don't tend not to go back into my shell and go, all, God, this is terrible news. And what do we do? It's like you start thinking about solutions and resolutions and all that

00:17:59:06 - 00:18:00:21
Speaker 1
kind of stuff and what we need to do in

00:18:00:23 - 00:18:04:11
Speaker 1
communication, which is sort of really key, particularly the key stakeholders.

00:18:04:11 - 00:18:15:07
Speaker 1
So that's the sort of way that you approach it. But I don't think anything sort of prepares you necessarily for it. But I would say that the thing that has come out of it over the years is that you become less surprised when

00:18:15:07 - 00:18:19:01
Speaker 1
this stuff happens because, you know, when it happens for the first time, you're like, how could this happen?

00:18:19:01 - 00:18:21:20
Speaker 1
And now when it happens, like, oh yeah, okay,

00:18:21:22 - 00:18:35:09
Speaker 1
this kind of stuff happens and you're trying as hard as you possibly can to make sure that you understand all of these situations and what might occur. But sometimes things just come out of the field. But you're a little more, you know, paid for it. Yeah. Yeah.

00:18:35:11 - 00:18:47:12
Speaker 1
Mentally other kind of like, you know, like you say these things can come out of that field, but with the experience that you've got now over time, are there warning signs or red flags and things that you've suddenly become more accustomed to?

00:18:47:13 - 00:18:52:18
Speaker 1
Kind of like observing? You're like, okay, I think we need to keep an eye on this particular situation over here. Yeah, there

00:18:52:18 - 00:19:10:14
Speaker 1
are actually, yeah. The biggest one is when a retailer, an advertiser comes to you and says, out of nowhere, like they're spending X amount per month and you're doing this type of activity comes to an end over end says, we want to spend this and we need to do this, and we're trying to hit this and stuff.

00:19:10:14 - 00:19:13:17
Speaker 1
And a lot of it is based on they need outcomes. That is

00:19:13:17 - 00:19:20:20
Speaker 1
an immediate red flag. And the way that we look at that now as a as a commercial team with a new furniture com is these

00:19:20:20 - 00:19:29:01
Speaker 1
things come in, we get this random brief and before our commercial team actually jumps on it and goes to respond, we're like, right, what's going on with this business here?

00:19:29:01 - 00:19:50:19
Speaker 1
And then you're on companies House, right? Then you're contacting other people. Okay. So are they overdue in their submissions into companies House? That's like a surefire sign. Yeah. Any other noises reaching out into your networks across the industry to go dealing with these guys? What's the story here and stuff? And then other people were like, oh, actually, you know, and so the noises get around pretty quickly.

00:19:50:19 - 00:19:51:03
Speaker 1
So

00:19:51:07 - 00:20:01:15
Speaker 1
before you respond and go, yeah, absolutely. Like, let's do this for you and everything else because it all looks great. Like, you know, we've just done this deal out of nowhere. But like, if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't true. Yeah.

00:20:01:17 - 00:20:07:20
Speaker 1
So so your reaction is actually different to these. Let's call them like unicorn opportunities that come in because it's a Hail Mary.

00:20:08:00 - 00:20:18:02
Speaker 1
And that's that's the sign. It's like someone has said we need to generate X amount of revenue this month to remain solvent. Yeah. And if we can't it's probably all over,

00:20:18:06 - 00:20:19:06
Speaker 1
you know. And

00:20:19:08 - 00:20:29:03
Speaker 1
but they're not going to communicate that to you. They'll come and put on the nice veneer of yeah. And we want to do this and we want to grow here and stuff, but it's all smoke screens and mirrors so you can see through it.

00:20:29:03 - 00:20:29:15
Speaker 1
Now it's

00:20:29:18 - 00:20:34:04
Speaker 1
going to shift to that more short term is mindset. Absolutely. Yeah. This needs to happen now. And

00:20:34:04 - 00:20:46:08
Speaker 1
can you get this live on Monday. And can you hit this many things and whatever else. And like it's all quite random. Yeah. And it sort of seems like it's structured on the surface of things. But it's like a yeah, we're in we're in trouble.

00:20:46:09 - 00:21:05:07
Speaker 1
So, so and you don't. Yeah. I wouldn't be as brazen to like ask someone, hey what's the situation here when they're bringing that in? I'd rather go and do my DD in the background and just sort of get a broader layer of the land, and then maybe there's a conversation with that person to say, hey, is there anything we need to know here on that side of things?

00:21:05:07 - 00:21:18:18
Speaker 1
Because at the end of the day, like, you know, you're also taking a risk, like you're leaning in and you're selling inventory assets that you could sell to somebody else to them, and you're putting a lot of time into asking your team to commit to it. So

00:21:18:20 - 00:21:21:03
Speaker 1
yeah, you've got to be able to see through those types of things.

00:21:21:03 - 00:21:21:12
Speaker 1
But that

00:21:21:16 - 00:21:28:16
Speaker 1
is the number one thing, and I've seen it multiple times over the journey. So now now you know, so if any retailers are out

00:21:28:16 - 00:21:31:01
Speaker 1
there watching this, if you come to me

00:21:31:01 - 00:21:34:05
Speaker 1
with it you'll probably get a few questions. Yeah, yeah. And the

00:21:34:05 - 00:21:45:00
Speaker 1
reverse of that initial question that I was asking you, has there been anything that you've trialled or tested as a business that you thought, oh, this is going to be a definite success?

00:21:45:01 - 00:21:46:05
Speaker 1
Like, you know, I can really

00:21:46:08 - 00:21:47:10
Speaker 1
see the value of this

00:21:47:14 - 00:21:56:19
Speaker 1
and for whatever reason, it just hasn't panned out and it's just ended up being something we've just had to say, like, hold our hands up and say, you know, that really was kind of a lost their we've had to take.

00:21:56:24 - 00:22:02:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. There are plenty of things like you know, you're always a B testing things.

00:22:02:10 - 00:22:22:22
Speaker 1
One of the things that we've actually repackaged and it's turned into a success story. So maybe that whole piece of like loss and. Yeah, so about three and a half years ago, maybe four years ago, we had this idea around content creators and creating this directory of content creators, and then what they would do is they would create content pieces for you.

00:22:22:24 - 00:22:24:02
Speaker 1
Com we create

00:22:24:04 - 00:22:25:15
Speaker 1
a profile about them,

00:22:25:15 - 00:22:50:07
Speaker 1
they would link into us, and then we would like link out to products and all this kind of thing. And it was going to create this like ecosystem of content creation. But it would be hosted on and and it just didn't work. And it was a lot of effort as well, like trying to sort of brief them on what we were looking for, all that kind of stuff, and then standing up like building out the assets on the website, like we stood up a whole area of the site to do it and create these profiles.

00:22:50:07 - 00:22:56:21
Speaker 1
And it just it just went nowhere because it was just too hard for them and for us. So but what

00:22:56:21 - 00:23:01:18
Speaker 1
it did do was it did spawn the idea for our home awards because

00:23:01:22 - 00:23:19:06
Speaker 1
we saw what they were doing, but we also saw, without creating the content, the way people are engaging. So then we went, actually, there's a different way we can approach this, because we want to recognise these people, want to work with them, but let's let's do it in a different guys rather than asking them to give us a hell of a lot, let's just celebrate what they already do.

00:23:19:10 - 00:23:31:04
Speaker 1
So there was a learning that came out of it as a silver lining, but that doesn't replace the six months that we spent trying to build the other bit at an early stage in our business where, you know, we probably didn't have that time and resource, but we thought the bet

00:23:31:06 - 00:23:33:00
Speaker 1
was there. We probably could have

00:23:33:00 - 00:23:33:23
Speaker 1
been a little more prepared for it.

00:23:33:23 - 00:23:43:22
Speaker 1
We probably get a bit giddy and a bit carried away, but yeah, that was one that stood out to me. Like the chief definitely wasn't worth the squeeze there, but at least it's worked out into something much better now. Exactly.

00:23:44:00 - 00:23:59:09
Speaker 1
One of the questions I've been asking all of the founders that come into the studio with us has been around like the worst business ideas that they've had. And that might be something that, you know, you've ventured while doing, you furnish or even predating that, you know, years and years ago. Is there anything that stands out in that respect?

00:23:59:14 - 00:24:14:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. So I did have a little foray when I was about 19 into the entrepreneurial world because I worked in a in a shop, and the shop had a few different elements that sold sports gear, but they also used to do like, like team equipment, like, you know, warm up jackets and that kind of thing.

00:24:14:01 - 00:24:31:20
Speaker 1
And so I'd sort of got to know some of the suppliers and work with us. And so I started this little business on the side when I was at uni, which was actually going to sports clubs and like organising like their sports jackets and stuff and getting like 100 to the made and that kind of thing. And it was just like super low margin.

00:24:32:01 - 00:24:37:20
Speaker 1
They were really particular, their sports clubs. So the design specifications were horrendous.

00:24:37:22 - 00:24:39:00
Speaker 1
And like I'm

00:24:39:00 - 00:24:45:11
Speaker 1
running around the show out there in Melbourne, Australia, like trying to organise these things whilst at uni, driving around in my banged up car,

00:24:45:13 - 00:24:46:11
Speaker 1
you know, with no cash

00:24:46:13 - 00:24:52:11
Speaker 1
and like you do this entire job and maybe they spend like 3 or 4 grand getting all these like jackets made.

00:24:52:12 - 00:24:55:21
Speaker 1
But in the end you've made like 3 or 400 bucks out of it. Yeah. And then we

00:24:55:21 - 00:24:57:10
Speaker 1
spent on petrol. Absolutely. Like,

00:24:57:12 - 00:25:05:24
Speaker 1
you know, you've more than spent that. And so yeah, I'd put that on the, on the shelf pretty quickly. So like you know, but that was my first sort of little let's call it entrepreneurial.

00:25:06:01 - 00:25:08:17
Speaker 1
Was there anything of value that you learned from all of that.

00:25:08:19 - 00:25:23:12
Speaker 1
Yeah. It was more on the relationship side than anything else, which is like expectation management. Yeah. And stuff and like actually asking questions and getting clear briefs. Like, you know, you get the president of a football club comes to you and says, oh, I need 100 of these ten kits or whatever. And

00:25:23:14 - 00:25:25:02
Speaker 1
then they're going, oh, great, great, great, great.

00:25:25:04 - 00:25:29:19
Speaker 1
What do you want? I want them to be sort of like our colours, and I want to have our name on them and stuff.

00:25:29:22 - 00:25:36:01
Speaker 1
And then you're, they're going great. And then you take that out to the company that would make them for you. And they're like and like, what do

00:25:36:01 - 00:25:37:12
Speaker 1
these need to look like? Exactly.

00:25:37:12 - 00:25:47:07
Speaker 1
Like those colours are great, but like, is there a certain, you know, and then your backwards and forwards, like mucking about phone calls, emails in a day where email was pretty nascent.

00:25:47:07 - 00:25:50:11
Speaker 1
So you're asking some 60 year old bloke who can't even operate his

00:25:50:11 - 00:25:52:01
Speaker 1
telephone, you know,

00:25:52:03 - 00:25:59:07
Speaker 1
and and so yeah, it was just a, it was a learning that, you know, you could be more efficient with what you do. So we got out of that one. So if you

00:25:59:07 - 00:26:03:16
Speaker 1
were to hop into a time machine and go back and see 25 year old Ray.

00:26:03:18 - 00:26:04:24
Speaker 1
Oh yeah. What would you say to him?

00:26:04:24 - 00:26:10:05
Speaker 1
Lots of work. The one piece of advice that you'd, you'd offer,

00:26:10:05 - 00:26:30:09
Speaker 1
I would say be more curious about these things. And don't just assume that, you know, these things are a given within a business, and someone else will take care of it. Ask questions like, involve yourself in it. Align yourself to the people who are practising and those sorts of roles as well.

00:26:30:11 - 00:26:48:10
Speaker 1
You know, you tend to. I remember the company that I first worked for in Australia, and we had an amazing head of finance, and she was always willing to give her time and stuff. But you'd have these like, passing conversations in the kitchen there where you're making a cup of tea and you never really sort of got into how does that work or how does this work.

00:26:48:10 - 00:26:51:16
Speaker 1
And so I sort of wish that I had

00:26:51:18 - 00:26:52:00
Speaker 1
sort of

00:26:52:02 - 00:27:03:21
Speaker 1
spent more time asking her questions and wanted to, wanted to learn more about it. But I was too waylaid trying to do something else and thought that someone else's problem. But I could have soaked up a lot more and probably

00:27:03:23 - 00:27:08:06
Speaker 1
accelerated faster in what I wanted to do in my career had I just spent that time?

00:27:08:10 - 00:27:15:03
Speaker 1
Is that the sort of advice that you would offer to an entrepreneur, young entrepreneur starting a business today? Like what would you what would you kind of like?

00:27:15:05 - 00:27:23:23
Speaker 1
Offer that to anyone starting in a business like any team member that comes in and we've taken on a few younger team members recently, a couple of graduates coming out of uni.

00:27:23:24 - 00:27:27:09
Speaker 1
And my first piece of advice is be curious, ask questions.

00:27:27:13 - 00:27:39:12
Speaker 1
If you don't understand something, make sure you ask. Do not suffer in silence. Do not be that person that says, I need to go and research this and disappears for a week when you could literally just ask someone else in the team who has the experience. So

00:27:39:16 - 00:27:44:11
Speaker 1
be curious and and always be that way and and absolutely.

00:27:44:11 - 00:27:57:10
Speaker 1
And like that goes for entrepreneurs as well. Like, you know, you go to start a business and a lot of people think, oh, well, what I need to do is I need to sit down and write a paper about how I'm going to do this and that, and you don't. What you need to do is you need to be clear about what you're trying to achieve.

00:27:57:14 - 00:28:13:24
Speaker 1
You need to know where you need to find resources that support you, but then network with people who've been on the journey. Reach out to an entrepreneur. Like literally people. There are so many people who pay it forward, like see someone that you admire who's done something incredible in business on LinkedIn,

00:28:14:04 - 00:28:17:08
Speaker 1
send a message and ask for half an hour of their time even.

00:28:17:08 - 00:28:17:10
Speaker 1
It's

00:28:17:12 - 00:28:24:06
Speaker 1
for a virtual coffee, and you'll find that a lot of them will give you the time. Yeah, they'll actually have a conversation with you because they want to support. Yeah, yeah.

00:28:24:06 - 00:28:27:13
Speaker 1
Do it. What have you got to lose? Finally, I was going to

00:28:27:13 - 00:28:35:09
Speaker 1
ask you just around, like, you know, we've talked a lot about losses and losing and kind of, you know, missteps and mistakes that might have happened in the past that you've learned from.

00:28:35:11 - 00:28:37:16
Speaker 1
What does winning actually mean to you now

00:28:37:22 - 00:28:38:24
Speaker 1
within the business?

00:28:39:04 - 00:28:56:23
Speaker 1
God, it's really hard to sort of describe. And the reason being is like winning. When people think of winning, they try to compartmentalise it into like sporting events is like there's some kind of outcome and there's like a start and then there's an end and business is just to continue, right.

00:28:56:24 - 00:29:12:02
Speaker 1
So, so winning is like that build up of gradual success. And it comes from a few different elements. It's have we built a team like have we built a cohesive team who work together, who respect each other, who understand each other. And and actually when you see

00:29:12:05 - 00:29:17:01
Speaker 1
that in play, you go, oh wow. That's like that's great. Like we're actually legitimately

00:29:17:01 - 00:29:20:22
Speaker 1
achieving things here and people are getting satisfaction from their job and stuff.

00:29:20:22 - 00:29:41:04
Speaker 1
And so that's like a form of winning. And in the way that that plays itself into the business, winning is you see it coming through in what you deliver from a product perspective. You know, what you deliver from a revenue perspective, the outcomes that your business is achieving from a growth perspective, be it people using the website, effectiveness of advertising, whatever it might be.

00:29:41:04 - 00:29:49:02
Speaker 1
But it's like this continuum. So you never look at what you're trying to point out milestones, and then you celebrate those milestones.

00:29:49:02 - 00:29:51:09
Speaker 1
But it's not the bill and up. It's not like you've

00:29:51:09 - 00:30:00:20
Speaker 1
won the League Cup. And then all of a sudden everyone's there celebrating it. It's like, no, then you're on to the next thing quite quickly. So I think winning is like the culmination of all those things.

00:30:01:00 - 00:30:04:05
Speaker 1
And you can feel it culturally within the business, like you can you can

00:30:04:08 - 00:30:16:01
Speaker 1
sense moments where people are really up and about because things are moving in the right direction. And there are other moments where you can sense that people are a bit flat, and it's maybe because things haven't gone in the right direction. So you need to then

00:30:16:04 - 00:30:20:17
Speaker 1
work through that to get to that moment where you feel like things are moving in the right direction again.

00:30:20:18 - 00:30:22:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's when would you

00:30:22:08 - 00:30:30:23
Speaker 1
say that that definition of success or winning has changed over time from where you were when you first started the business, in your first kind of vision of what success looks like to where you are today?

00:30:31:00 - 00:30:32:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

00:30:32:10 - 00:30:36:20
Speaker 1
Definitely. I think we're less short term than what we were in the early days.

00:30:36:20 - 00:30:54:17
Speaker 1
But I think in the early days you're just like you're desperate for something because you really want to prove that your business can work. And so you're really, like, grinding hard to get to some kind of outcome. And maybe this is a change in my behaviour over the years as well, because I come from a sports background. So it is like

00:30:54:17 - 00:30:56:14
Speaker 1
you're either winning a match or you're not winning a

00:30:56:16 - 00:30:57:00
Speaker 1
match.

00:30:57:00 - 00:31:14:11
Speaker 1
And and so yeah, so like you're really pushing super hard and you're trying to get something, you achieve that and then but but actually what ends up happening when it comes to like how you're building your team culture and how you're managing relationships is you end up burning people out in that respect because you're focusing them so hard on this outcome because you want to win.

00:31:14:12 - 00:31:32:20
Speaker 1
And then what happens is they give everything to it, and then they haven't got anything else to give for a while because you've burnt the candle down, and then you realise that that's not the way that this works, because it's a marathon, not a sprint. So you need to recalibrate yourself on that. But we we definitely, in the early days operated that way.

00:31:32:20 - 00:31:46:03
Speaker 1
And it did lead to some bad decisions, particularly from a tech perspective. We just need this outcome because we need this where now things are so much more structured and planned and thought through and considered, and there's details and

00:31:46:05 - 00:31:48:06
Speaker 1
and then there's outcomes that come off the back of it. And

00:31:48:06 - 00:31:50:17
Speaker 1
his patience around those things as well. Yeah.

00:31:50:18 - 00:31:56:20
Speaker 1
If you spoke to me in like 2020 early 2021, I doubt that's where we were. That's probably not where I was. And what about

00:31:56:20 - 00:32:05:23
Speaker 1
the future? What does winning look like? You know, three years out from now, have you got like an idea of what that kind of future looks like? Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah

00:32:05:23 - 00:32:07:10
Speaker 1
we do. Yeah, absolutely.

00:32:07:11 - 00:32:23:02
Speaker 1
Like I think there are a few things for us like, there's a certain a with that, like let's call it that benchmark in our mind about the direct to consumer side of your right move is our gold standard of what they've done in that space.

00:32:23:04 - 00:32:25:20
Speaker 1
Right. And obviously things are changing your life. But like we do love

00:32:25:24 - 00:32:27:02
Speaker 1
that business in particular.

00:32:27:02 - 00:32:38:18
Speaker 1
And that was sort of the thing that gave us the motivation to do. So I look at it and say the way that they sort of operate in that home space, and the way people use that platform and how strongly they feel about

00:32:38:24 - 00:32:46:12
Speaker 1
I'd love us to be in that position in 3 or 4 years time, where it's like we're on our way there, but we're nowhere near at that level.

00:32:46:12 - 00:32:51:22
Speaker 1
But I'd love people to always be thinking of, oh, I need to get something from home furnished that comes to the place I go.

00:32:51:24 - 00:33:04:15
Speaker 1
then on the sort of more B2B side of what we do. There's a whole raft of publisher relationships that we're rolling out at the moment, but they're very much in like pilot scaling up stage and we're all learning

00:33:04:15 - 00:33:05:08
Speaker 1
together.

00:33:05:08 - 00:33:05:18
Speaker 1
I love

00:33:05:18 - 00:33:15:01
Speaker 1
it in a couple of years that those relationships are really rocking and rolling. We're seeing success together and we're expanding, and that's the journey. Ronsard.

00:33:15:03 - 00:33:35:21
Speaker 1
That's all for this episode of Lessons from Losing. Next time, I'll be joined by Mike Tompkins, co-founder of Top Cashback, to explore how a simple idea, a shoestring budget, and a dining room table became the foundation for one of the world's biggest cashback businesses. If you've enjoyed listening, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the rest of the series.

00:33:35:22 - 00:33:45:20
Speaker 1
And if you'd like to watch the full video interviews, just head over to a YouTube channel. Until next time, thanks for listening and join me again for another lesson from losing.