Speaker 1: Okay, read welcome, straight Talk.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me, Thank.
Speaker 1: You for wearing your ballgan today.
Speaker 2: Hey, straight talk, I'm no angel, but.
Speaker 1: I like it. I love it. It's awesome. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: They can't sue me. They're can only sue me from
Speaker 1: and you from here up. But we'll flash it you later,
Speaker 1: so don't worry.
Speaker 2: Having fun.
Speaker 1: Already, engineer here an error. You're an aerospace engineer, correct,
Speaker 1: but probably better known, well, probably maybe not better known,
Speaker 1: but soon to be better known. As a word is
Speaker 1: patissier batisseri. What was the French word for.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's chef petissier, chef bertissier. But I
Speaker 2: wouldn't exactly call myself that. I spent a month in
Speaker 2: a bou lingerie in Paris, which is certainly not long
Speaker 2: enough from a training perspective to be formally classified as
Speaker 2: that I learned just enough to give myself the confidence
Speaker 2: to come back and open a business that specialized in
Speaker 2: only croissants, which was also so not nearly enough. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think some people call me a pastry chef, but
Speaker 2: I would not call myself that. You're definitely a founder, Yes,
Speaker 2: definitely a founder.
Speaker 1: You're a founder of a well known business, which I
Speaker 1: don't tell me you've never had my mark. I am right.
Speaker 1: I heard you because I've been down the other room
Speaker 1: and I just heard you trying to sort something out
Speaker 1: for cast Race Street. My building is right across the
Speaker 1: road from there.
Speaker 2: Perfect.
Speaker 1: So my main office, our head office where all our
Speaker 1: staff are not for this for another business, is in Chiffley. Okay, wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: So we had a floora chiefly there so and of
Speaker 1: course everyone in my building was extraordinarily excited when I hope,
Speaker 1: hopefully I pronounce a word right because I only know
Speaker 1: what to look at it from spelling.
Speaker 2: But it's luna loon loon, so luna is the Italian
Speaker 2: pronunciation and lone is the French pronunciation of the word moon.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, the word moon, since the word we'll come
Speaker 1: back to that a moment. Like but it's a cross
Speaker 1: crosshant shop, if I could say, and as plain as
Speaker 1: Aussie language, I think that's perfect cross on shop. That's
Speaker 1: actually what I call it.
Speaker 2: Like I'm going down to the croissant shops.
Speaker 1: And it's just around the but it's pretty bloody good.
Speaker 1: I've had them and they're very good and I've taken
Speaker 1: them home and I've actually lined up.
Speaker 2: You've actually lined up, actually lined up impressed.
Speaker 1: Not at the beginning. So when you first opened, there
Speaker 1: was like mental lines going right up into the new
Speaker 1: railway station there. I waited to start over. Time has
Speaker 1: dropped off a little bit, but if you get at
Speaker 1: a busy time, you still get on a decent line.
Speaker 1: But I've worked out at the times of the day
Speaker 1: when it's not as busy and there might only be
Speaker 1: four or five people on the line, and then I
Speaker 1: can just jump in.
Speaker 2: I think for your sake, I would not mention those
Speaker 2: times because they might not be so quiet after you
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell them. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: reveal my secrets. But I do really enjoy your exotic
Speaker 1: cross once amazing. Thank you Exotic. But we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a bit later, because at first I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about is Kate Reid, the aeronautical engineer you
Speaker 1: know in my business, I have to if I just
Speaker 1: might explain this to you, I have a young guy
Speaker 1: when he's young, he's probably forty something, just had.
Speaker 2: A kid young. I like that.
Speaker 1: We'll go with that as relative. It's age a relative things.
Speaker 1: So I found out about three years ago that he
Speaker 1: was formerly an aeronautical engineer okay, and he's from South Astralia,
Speaker 1: and that he would be my number one most successful
Speaker 1: mortgage broker Australia by numbers of transactions by because you know,
Speaker 1: he's lending into Soustralia. People borrow less moon in so Australia.
Speaker 1: Therefore he doesn't lead as much into the toddle volume,
Speaker 1: but interns of the numbers of transactions he does more.
Speaker 1: And I once went to his office in Southstralia, should say,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, Andy, can you explain to
Speaker 1: me why he wrote so much business? I just wanted
Speaker 1: to know. He's all he'sed to be an aeronautical engineer.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, when I was doing that job,
Speaker 1: he said, to look around the people in the room
Speaker 1: with me, they're all much older to me. And he said,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, I don't want to be doing
Speaker 1: this when I'm sixty or seventy or whatever. He said.
Speaker 1: I couldn't think of anything worse. So I decided to
Speaker 1: go on a mortge broke and said what I've done?
Speaker 1: He said, I've broken up the process and remapped it
Speaker 1: from the moment summarrings the phone to make an inquiry
Speaker 1: about them all, which the moment the mortgage settles. And
Speaker 1: so I've broken up into every single part and I've
Speaker 1: now automated ninety percent of every one of those parts
Speaker 1: and only ten percent of it does it require a
Speaker 1: human And as a result of that, I've been able
Speaker 1: to do I can process a greater percentage of my
Speaker 1: inquiries because I've just got more hours to work with.
Speaker 2: And I imagine also that small component that still requires
Speaker 2: the human element, he can put more effort into that
Speaker 2: one so that people still feel like they're getting that
Speaker 2: human connection part does That's very smart. That's my next
Speaker 2: career done.
Speaker 1: So we then borrowed that. I said, can I borrow
Speaker 1: your process? My point being is this aeronautical engineers engineers generally,
Speaker 1: but aeronautical engineers are very good at steps in a process.
Speaker 1: And I want to I would I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you a moment about have you employed that engineering
Speaker 1: learning process skill into your business to make your business successful?
Speaker 1: Because your business is not just about cool, sexy looking
Speaker 1: cross on Twitter are exotic looking and having all the
Speaker 1: very good on photos and some of that, but it's
Speaker 1: also about execution, about delivery. You've got to get the
Speaker 1: shit out and getting but you've got to get these
Speaker 1: things out. You've got to get a manufactured made vart
Speaker 1: off a customer to buy. And I noticed your whole
Speaker 1: shop is a process. It's a process going on. I
Speaker 1: can see it from the back. I'm intrigued about that.
Speaker 1: I will talk about that. But is the fact that
Speaker 1: you were an error a autical engineer. Did that affect
Speaker 1: you like it affected him? Like he got bored off
Speaker 1: his head, had to do something different? Why did you
Speaker 1: go from meronautical engineering into being founder of across On business.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. No one's ever put it to me
Speaker 2: quite like that. Did you get bored off your head?
Speaker 2: I think you've maybe just gotten right to the heart
Speaker 2: of it. When I was younger, my father loves cars.
Speaker 2: He loves motorsport in particular, loves Formula one and F one.
Speaker 2: For me, was this perfect opportunity to get to spend
Speaker 2: time with my dad, you know, one on one time,
Speaker 2: us hanging out, bonding over fast cars. But then I think,
Speaker 2: as a little girl, as like you know, from my
Speaker 2: earliest memories, I can remember sitting watching F one races
Speaker 2: with him, you know the ones that travel around the
Speaker 2: world with video them when I was really young, and
Speaker 2: then we'd wait till the Monday night and watch them together.
Speaker 2: And then when I got old enough, I was allowed
Speaker 2: to stay up late on a Sunday night. And then
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six, the Grand Prix moved from Adelaide
Speaker 2: to Melbourne and for the first time I got to
Speaker 2: witness it in person, and it was that defining moment
Speaker 2: that made me think, I actually want my entire life
Speaker 2: to be about these cars.
Speaker 1: How old were you there?
Speaker 2: Thirteen?
Speaker 1: No, so I just stop there.
Speaker 2: Okay, I can't imagine a third year old girl.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine a ten year old girl, six year
Speaker 1: old girl watching these cars race around the joint, especially
Speaker 1: if you watch you on television. Then at thirteen saying
Speaker 1: this is where I want to be. That's amazing. It's
Speaker 1: pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: I think I've always been someone that when I find
Speaker 2: the thing that like I'm obsessed about or passionate about,
Speaker 2: I just lock onto it and then everything in my
Speaker 2: life becomes about how to work towards that thing and
Speaker 2: achieve the goal. And experiencing the cars in person for
Speaker 2: the first time, I mean I'm sure you've been to
Speaker 2: an F one race before.
Speaker 1: I've been to Monte Color Grand Prix four times, You've been.
Speaker 2: To Monaco four times.
Speaker 1: In may Nico is.
Speaker 2: My favorite, and I've been three times, so it's it's
Speaker 2: unlike anything else, and especially Monaco. I mean, the cars
Speaker 2: really shouldn't be allowed to race around that circuit. It's
Speaker 2: by today's modern circuit standards. It's dangerou, especially.
Speaker 1: When it comes up the hill, pass the the casino there.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and then through the tunnel, Like, have an accident
Speaker 2: in that tunnel, you're done. But I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: a spectacle. It feels like a feat of human engineering
Speaker 2: that is beyond what we could have ever imagined. These
Speaker 2: cars traveling so quickly on circuits that are narrow, I
Speaker 2: mean three hundred kilometers an hour. It's wild. And when
Speaker 2: you experience one in person, And when I was thirteen,
Speaker 2: it was the V ten still and like that's the
Speaker 2: sound of that car just rips through you. It's like
Speaker 2: and I remember it. I could put myself back on
Speaker 2: Brocki's Hill on that May that March day in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six, and I can remember what it was like
Speaker 2: to still witness that, and for me, I thought that
Speaker 2: engineering Formula one cars would be the most exciting thing
Speaker 2: on the planet. Like, yeah, maybe working as an engineer
Speaker 2: at an automotive company like Ford or Holden back in
Speaker 2: the day, that wasn't for me. I knew that that
Speaker 2: wasn't going to move at the pace that I wanted.
Speaker 2: But working in F one sounded like you were working
Speaker 2: at the edge of technology, creating things that might one
Speaker 2: day cascade down into the automotive industry. Like I think
Speaker 2: Williams created active suspension and now that's on every car
Speaker 2: that you buy these days, but that's started in Formula one.
Speaker 2: And I think because the turnover of the design is
Speaker 2: so fast, I imagined these groups of like brilliant engineers
Speaker 2: working in a really collaborative environment with a lot of resource,
Speaker 2: a lot of money, the best equipment, wind tunnels, everything,
Speaker 2: The whole thing sounded just fabulous, glamorous.
Speaker 1: Is it glamorous or is it more intellectually exciting?
Speaker 2: So the only experience I'd had with Formula one was
Speaker 2: trackside as a little girl, because you know, you can't
Speaker 2: get work experience in a Formula one team, So the
Speaker 2: only interaction I'd had was the glamorous side. I knew
Speaker 2: that engineering wasn't going to be trackside. I knew I
Speaker 2: was going to be based in a factory, but I
Speaker 2: imagined that being based in the factory would be some
Speaker 2: sort of extrapolation of what you saw on the track.
Speaker 2: I think, not glamorous, but definitely highly engaging from a
Speaker 2: technical perspective, because.
Speaker 1: The drivers are glamorous. That they are, I mean, they
Speaker 1: really are. I was there in eighty six when I
Speaker 1: met in Santa One in Monica.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you saw ed and winning.
Speaker 1: Actually, I tell you something. I had a bed on him.
Speaker 1: So I went to a Calcutta and as my first
Speaker 1: Calcutter i'd ever been to. I didn't go to the Calcutta,
Speaker 1: but I invested in a group of guys who went
Speaker 1: to the calcuttter in Monte Carlo. They're older guys. I
Speaker 1: didn't get invited because I was pretty young, and but
Speaker 1: they asked me would I like to put a thousand
Speaker 1: bucks into the Calcutter. I didn't even know what a
Speaker 1: Calcutta was, but they explained what it was to me.
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1: You go, you go along to a night. It's like
Speaker 1: a big event. And syndicates of people can buy the driver.
Speaker 1: So you you don't buy the driver, you can say,
Speaker 1: well we'll we as Cindy will bid for that drive.
Speaker 2: You bid on his success.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you bid for the person who's
Speaker 1: going to win the win the So it's not like
Speaker 1: under the chair. I've been putting one thousand bucks onedon
Speaker 1: Center where everyone could do that. You actually buy it,
Speaker 1: and so you are the highest bit of buys iton Center.
Speaker 1: And I was part of the syndica that they all
Speaker 1: had more money than me, but I was part of
Speaker 1: the part of it. I put a thousand bucks on it,
Speaker 1: and I've got a very good return.
Speaker 2: One thousand bucks in nineteen eighty six was of money
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of money. Yeah. And by the way,
Speaker 1: you have to put it up front, which is great.
Speaker 1: I was punding that. I was hoping you'd win or
Speaker 1: second or third, Lise, I get some money back and
Speaker 1: then I wouldn't have to pay. But we and he
Speaker 1: did win. But I never forget it. I'll never forget
Speaker 1: the glamour and excitement. And I was like eighty six,
Speaker 1: so we're talking twenty forty years ago. I was thirty.
Speaker 1: I was twenty nine, so I mean it was really
Speaker 1: exciting for me, Like.
Speaker 2: It was eating center like he is, he is not human,
Speaker 2: He was a legend. He was he was a god
Speaker 2: amongst men at that time in motor racing.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I think he was a very spiritual man as well.
Speaker 2: And you like the way he's spoke about being in
Speaker 2: the car. It was almost like he levitated out of
Speaker 2: his body. And it's to watch him win a race
Speaker 2: in Monaco would have been my all time dream.
Speaker 1: It was. It was amazing. Was it was hot, it
Speaker 1: was hot, the noise.
Speaker 2: It's all the senses. You still remember senses.
Speaker 1: I mean I could smell, I could smell the fuel
Speaker 1: and rubber, and you're right, the speed which they got
Speaker 1: around this kind of like you were, it was amazing,
Speaker 1: Like you would think to yourself, that's not possible. How
Speaker 1: could anyone sit monastering will and do that? Exactly crazy?
Speaker 1: So you're right, all the senses a sort of going crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, I love hearing you describe it now, like almost
Speaker 2: forty years later and you're remembering the smelling, sound and everything.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, And that's how I feel about my first
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six Grand Prix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's and you're saying, as a young girl,
Speaker 1: that was enough to sort of form in your mind
Speaker 1: at least an academic career or a career in terms
Speaker 1: of academia. So what you're going to study towards it
Speaker 1: end up going to do couniversity.
Speaker 2: It was done and dusted that day. So I was
Speaker 2: a huge fan of Damon Hill, who raced for the
Speaker 2: Williams F one team, and that year he won the
Speaker 2: World championship and for Christmas, Mum and Dad bought me
Speaker 2: a coffee table book celebrating his championship winning year. And
Speaker 2: years later, when I was moving to the UK to
Speaker 2: work for Williams, I pulled the book out of the
Speaker 2: shelf and a note fell out of the front, and
Speaker 2: I'd written a pledge to myself at that age saying
Speaker 2: that by the age of twenty five I would be
Speaker 2: offered a job by the Williams F one team. And
Speaker 2: I got it when I was twenty three, So like
Speaker 2: literally that moment I experienced it, I was dead set
Speaker 2: that that was going to be my thing, and I
Speaker 2: went along to the ri MIT career day. I thought
Speaker 2: I'd study automotive engineering, but as you said earlier, it
Speaker 2: really is. Aerospace is the pinnacle. You know, if you
Speaker 2: can figure out how to get a rocket into space
Speaker 2: and landed on the Moon, that's one of the most
Speaker 2: technically difficult things to a problem to solve. So e
Speaker 2: lecturer at THET day said to me, look, how about
Speaker 2: you consider studying aerospace engineering because what you want to
Speaker 2: get into is one of the hardest jobs in the world.
Speaker 2: Because there are so few jobs, you need to give
Speaker 2: yourself the best chance. So that's what set me down.
Speaker 2: The trajectory of aerospace and.
Speaker 1: When you went and did this at university and what
Speaker 1: was the process of getting a job at Williams.
Speaker 2: Huh, that's such a good question. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people out there, especially with the new interest in
Speaker 2: F one ju to drive to survive. I get asked
Speaker 2: so often, so how should I get a job in
Speaker 2: Formula one? Literally you just have to do everything in
Speaker 2: your power to make you stand out more than the
Speaker 2: other thousands and thousands of people that want that job.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, in F one,
Speaker 2: there was maybe fifteen aerodynamicists at Williams, and there are
Speaker 2: at the moment ten teams on the grid. So you're
Speaker 2: looking at one hundred and fifty jobs in the world
Speaker 2: to be an aerodynamicist F one team, and there are
Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of aerospace engineers out there and many
Speaker 2: of them probably who have that dream. So you need
Speaker 2: to be loud. You need to get experience wherever you can.
Speaker 2: Like I during university, I volunteered at a Formula three
Speaker 2: team based in Melbourne, and that was tough. Like I'd
Speaker 2: come from an all girls school, an all girls private
Speaker 2: school in Melbourne, and then when I started studying aerospace engineering,
Speaker 2: I was one of I think one of eight girls
Speaker 2: in a course of one hundred and twenty guys. So
Speaker 2: I went from all girls to all guys. And then
Speaker 2: when I showed up at this F three team asking
Speaker 2: to volunteer, these mechanics were they were like old school,
Speaker 2: rough as guts, and they just saw this like wet
Speaker 2: behind the years, private school educated girls studying aerospace engineering,
Speaker 2: and like they literally ate me.
Speaker 1: Alive, get the box of hammers and all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. Oh, like they box sparks.
Speaker 2: Like I think, like they bullied me and they teased
Speaker 2: me and ribbed me, but I didn't care because I
Speaker 2: knew that being around them, and I think that This
Speaker 2: made me a bit more thick skinned as well. I
Speaker 2: knew that being around them simply by osmosis. If I
Speaker 2: just watched what they did and listened to their conversation,
Speaker 2: I would learn. And years later, when I got the
Speaker 2: job at Williams, I was living with one of the
Speaker 2: race mechanics and one night I was speaking to.
Speaker 1: Him about WIMS or yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was my housemate, and I was telling him
Speaker 2: about this time that I volunteered with the F three team,
Speaker 2: and he said, you don't know how invaluable even just
Speaker 2: being around those mechanics would be. Because if you design
Speaker 2: a a component of a car theoretically as an engineer,
Speaker 2: but in F one it takes you half an hour
Speaker 2: to change the part, it's completely useless from a practical perspective,
Speaker 2: Like in a race engineering moment, you have to be
Speaker 2: able to change that part in ten seconds or you've
Speaker 2: lost the race. And he said, like, they taught me
Speaker 2: how to break down a gearbox and change suspension components,
Speaker 2: and I learned so much practical hands on stuff from
Speaker 2: them that I then took into my engineering Korea. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that was one of the examples of me
Speaker 2: maybe trying to set myself apart from everyone else who wanted.
Speaker 1: Them and telling everyone about it though because you have
Speaker 1: to talk about it, doesn't have to talk about it
Speaker 1: and be prepared to prosecute it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, But how does a Philly daunting?
Speaker 1: So Williams is in the UK. I don't know which
Speaker 1: part of the UK, but London.
Speaker 2: I was somewhere, I don't know where, southwest of London,
Speaker 2: just near Oxford, Okay, so I think it's called the
Speaker 2: Motorsport Valley. There's a lot of F one team's base there.
Speaker 1: So you're here applying for the job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're I'm writing off to every single F
Speaker 2: one team And then I started to go down the list, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: if I can't get a job in F one, maybe
Speaker 2: I'll start in F two or F three or A
Speaker 2: one was big at the time. I wrote to Lemon's
Speaker 2: team's rally teams. I just wanted to get my foot
Speaker 2: in the door. I mean, if you owned a motorsport
Speaker 2: team back in the mid two thousands, you probably got
Speaker 2: a letter from me. And I got a lot of
Speaker 2: silence and a couple of rejection letters. But then one
Speaker 2: day I got an email from Williams from the team
Speaker 2: that was my dream team to work for. And I mean,
Speaker 2: I think this goes against my scientific engineering brain, but
Speaker 2: I am a bit of a believer in fate and
Speaker 2: like for the one team to actually reply to me
Speaker 2: to be the one that i'd written that note about
Speaker 2: saying you're going to get a job with them.
Speaker 1: Did you tell them that, yeah again in your application?
Speaker 2: Actually no, not in my application, but maybe that would
Speaker 2: have been.
Speaker 1: A good idea there.
Speaker 2: Well, they sent me an email saying we're actually recruiting
Speaker 2: for junior aerodynamicists and we'd like to interview you. So
Speaker 2: that was like, that's all I needed. I'm I think
Speaker 2: I'm pretty compelling in an interview perspective, Like, once you
Speaker 2: get your foot in the door, you can really let
Speaker 2: your personality and your passion shine. And I knew that
Speaker 2: if I could just get my foot in the door
Speaker 2: and be interviewed by a team. I mean, I had
Speaker 2: the aerospace engineering degree like everyone else. I'm sure other
Speaker 2: people had experience working in volunteering with other teams. I'd
Speaker 2: done my thesis on the study of the rear wing
Speaker 2: of an F one car. I'd tried to do all
Speaker 2: the right things, but once they talked to me. I
Speaker 2: was pretty sure I could convince them to hire me,
Speaker 2: and they did.
Speaker 1: Have you always been like that though? In terms of personality, yes,
Speaker 1: you're Is that a confidencing or is that a learned behavior?
Speaker 1: I thin give your success and reward.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's definitely not a confidence thing. I think I
Speaker 2: would probably say that I've lived most of my life
Speaker 2: feeling not confident. Maybe it's I feel like I have
Speaker 2: have something to prove.
Speaker 1: Is it a performance? Then you turn it on?
Speaker 2: I think, so, Oh gosh, these are good questions to
Speaker 2: backtrack right to when I was an infant. I was
Speaker 2: diagnosed with very severe asthma when I was eighteen months old.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've spoken to many psychologists over the years,
Speaker 2: and there's some belief that as a very young child,
Speaker 2: not understanding why you're so unwell and having to fight
Speaker 2: for your life, that builds a level of resilience and
Speaker 2: determination in a kid from an early age. So I
Speaker 2: think maybe that had something to do with me feeling
Speaker 2: like I kind of had to fight for my life
Speaker 2: all the time. I think I'm going to think about that.
Speaker 1: More, Yeah, because I mean, I mean, some people think that,
Speaker 1: for example, someone like me they think, oh, with make's
Speaker 1: natial interviewer. But I am actually this a performance for me, Like,
Speaker 1: but I know how to perform. Yeah, but it's something
Speaker 1: I've learned. I've learned how to do it. It's not
Speaker 1: natural for me. This is not natural for me. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm socially awkward. I'm hopeless.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I would not have guessed that.
Speaker 1: Put me in the room, the cameras and the lights
Speaker 1: and you can turn it on. I've learned how to
Speaker 1: turn it on. Yeah, over time and know I've done
Speaker 1: two hundred episodes. So but in the beginning was a bit,
Speaker 1: was a bit that wasn't anywhere you perhaps as.
Speaker 2: Good someone sat here twelve hundred times opposite you. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's what we do a lot of
Speaker 1: We do a lot of podcasts in this joint. So
Speaker 1: you're i'd imagine then once you get the as you said,
Speaker 1: you got your foot in the door, you're going to
Speaker 1: nail it. You'll convince them. Whether it's a performance or
Speaker 1: if it's learned behavior or it's natural, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: And I can sense that. And what what do you
Speaker 1: think though, is the element that gets you over line?
Speaker 1: Is that your knowledge of the topic, is your passion
Speaker 1: for the topic, is your sort of sense of I
Speaker 1: take passion. I don't believe in passion. I believe in obsession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no point being passionate.
Speaker 1: Lots a bit of passionate about things, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to success. You'd obsessedly I agree with that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's because of bullshit. Otherwise, Yeah, oh really passionate.
Speaker 2: You're passionate. It's a word that's thrown around a lot.
Speaker 2: But if you're obsessed with something, it's almost like you're
Speaker 2: admitting that you get consumed by it. It's got a
Speaker 2: slight negative connotation, but like if you say you're obsessed
Speaker 2: with something, it's like I'm admitting I'm all in for this.
Speaker 1: I'm all in. That's the word all in. All the
Speaker 1: words all in? And is it that? Do you think
Speaker 1: it's convinced them? Do they read that? Do you think
Speaker 1: did they read that in you? When the Williams people interviewed.
Speaker 2: You, I thought about this moment a lot. I was
Speaker 2: told when I started at Williams that every week, three
Speaker 2: thousand cvs land on the.
Speaker 1: Desk well, which is huge.
Speaker 2: So what made first of all mine stand out, And
Speaker 2: I think being a girl would have made me stand
Speaker 2: out because I was the only female in the entire
Speaker 2: company working in a technical capacity, and it was a company.
Speaker 2: At a company of five hundred people. There were women
Speaker 2: working in marketing, hospitality, human resources, more of the support
Speaker 2: type roles, but from a technical perspective, I was the
Speaker 2: only female, and I was the only female in the
Speaker 2: entire aerodynamics facility the building. So maybe being a girl
Speaker 2: made me stand out from the three thousand other people
Speaker 2: that had sent their resumes in I in the interview,
Speaker 2: and knowing that I'd get to this point, I can
Speaker 2: be charismatic. I can show my obsession and my dedication
Speaker 2: to something. And I had the I guess, the backup
Speaker 2: to speak to, like the volunteering and everything else that
Speaker 2: I'd done. But it was interesting when I got into
Speaker 2: the office. The one thing that was immediately obvious to
Speaker 2: me was I was the loudest person in the office.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean to volume sense, no, I.
Speaker 2: Mean as in a communication sense. Almost everybody else in
Speaker 2: that office was a pretty much a head down, work quietly,
Speaker 2: stare at your computer for sixteen yeah, tell.
Speaker 1: Me, okay, why is it? Engineers across the world like
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean it was aeronautical or medical engineering or
Speaker 1: any other typ of engineering. I like that, what is that? Well,
Speaker 1: and what's your observation. I'm not an engine but I've
Speaker 1: certainly seen it.
Speaker 2: I think it's they don't become that when they become
Speaker 2: an engineer. I think that personality trait is attracted to
Speaker 2: engineering because it requires very quiet, focused work, long hours
Speaker 2: in front of a computer without much human interaction. And
Speaker 2: that was essentially my undoing.
Speaker 1: I'm just say they're not collegiate. Ah, but you know,
Speaker 1: not naturally collegiate. They just opened a little cell and
Speaker 1: they're in there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, it's And it's funny that you say that
Speaker 2: because I worked for two Formula One teams. In the end,
Speaker 2: I moved from Williams to what's now the Aston Martin team,
Speaker 2: but it was called Spiker when I worked for them,
Speaker 2: and my observation was, instead of working together as a
Speaker 2: team because both both the teams weren't performing well at
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 1: They were themselves teams.
Speaker 2: Yeah, ironically, because they weren't performing well at the time.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of pressure on all of us
Speaker 2: to make the car better for it to perform and
Speaker 2: it became kind of a like a competition for could
Speaker 2: prove that they were the most dedicated to the company.
Speaker 2: So instead of us all coming together and really collectively
Speaker 2: solving this problem, you'd look around the office and you'd
Speaker 2: be like, if I wait longer than him, and him
Speaker 2: and him all look like I'm more dedicated to solving
Speaker 2: this problem. And we became competitive amongst ourselves rather than
Speaker 2: competitive together against the other teams. And no one in
Speaker 2: a leadership role ever really swooped that up and dealt
Speaker 2: with it and acknowledged that it was creating a negative
Speaker 2: culture in the office.
Speaker 1: Because I am going to be going to talk about
Speaker 1: lunars in a moment. I like the Italian version, but anyway,
Speaker 1: but like, I'm just wondering if you've taken any of
Speaker 1: those experiences out and put it into your own business.
Speaker 1: So I'm apart from coming up with a great idea,
Speaker 1: Execution is what you're talking about. When it comes to teams.
Speaker 1: You know, executing it to be the best, but that
Speaker 1: does take teamwork and everyone but he's going to be
Speaker 1: on the same page. You've got to have the same
Speaker 1: architecture and sure everyone have a different part or a
Speaker 1: different role, but you've got to be collegiate to make
Speaker 1: it happen.
Speaker 2: I think also an experience that I had in both
Speaker 2: teams was that I came in at an entry level.
Speaker 2: I mean, even though I was I was one of
Speaker 2: fifteen aerodynamicists at Williams. I was classified as a junior aerodynamicist,
Speaker 2: and I had ideas. I mean, I was obviously brand
Speaker 2: new to that level of the industry. But no matter
Speaker 2: how old we are or what experience we have, if
Speaker 2: we've got an idea, if that's not heard, that might
Speaker 2: be shockingly the one idea that makes the car perform better.
Speaker 2: But as a junior aerodynamicist, I wasn't allowed to have ideas.
Speaker 1: Did you then? Notwithstanding that, did you bug you know,
Speaker 1: your direct report and say, look, I just thought I
Speaker 1: worked on this the other night and I don't know what.
Speaker 2: But I didn't have time to It got so flat
Speaker 2: out like all you were. My role was modeling, like
Speaker 2: three D computer ator design, modeling components that my senior
Speaker 2: aerodynamatist believed we should be testing, and that probably came
Speaker 2: down from the chief aerodynamicist, and maybe that was from
Speaker 2: the technical director, but whatever, that cascade of level of
Speaker 2: management was I would spend up to sixteen hours a
Speaker 2: day just trying to keep up with modeling the components
Speaker 2: that someone had told me I should model. There was
Speaker 2: only one person when I was working at Williams, a
Speaker 2: guy called Frank Deerney, who almost started at Williams at
Speaker 2: the same time that Sir Frank founded the team, so
Speaker 2: it was the two francs. Frank Deerney is a mastermind
Speaker 2: in like he's a legend in Formula one from a
Speaker 2: technical perspective, like he was one of the people that
Speaker 2: introduced wind tunnel testing to Formula one. But by the
Speaker 2: time I was working at Williams, he'd been reintroduced into
Speaker 2: the team more as a role model and someone that
Speaker 2: would walk around the offices and maybe he was the
Speaker 2: only person that was trying to make the team more collegiate.
Speaker 2: And I'd love it when he came into the office
Speaker 2: because he actually wanted to have a qualitative chat about
Speaker 2: what was going on, and he'd come into our little
Speaker 2: cubicle and he believed and I actually think that I
Speaker 2: think it's the Renault team of committed to or sorry
Speaker 2: Alpine have done it this year, which is bold and
Speaker 2: it'd be challenging from a financial perspective. But Frank Derney
Speaker 2: believed that in two thousand and six Williams should just
Speaker 2: scrap the entire season because we weren't going to get
Speaker 2: enough better to be like cham to be competitive. He
Speaker 2: thought we should scrap the entire season and then put
Speaker 2: all the team's effort on designing the two thousand and
Speaker 2: seven car to have a championship winning car. And that
Speaker 2: probably would have worked. But how do you explain that
Speaker 2: to all the sponsors on the two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: I would give their name on the car, So, yeah.
Speaker 2: They don't want to be at the back of the grid,
Speaker 2: knowing that everyone at Williams has absolutely given up on
Speaker 2: the car that their name is on for it to
Speaker 2: sit at the back of the grid. But yeah, Frank
Speaker 2: Deurney had maybe more of a a nebulous view on
Speaker 2: we need to improve this car and the way that
Speaker 2: we're doing it right now, not operating together as a
Speaker 2: team and just chipping away at little things that may
Speaker 2: or may not help, it's not really getting us anywhere.
Speaker 1: If you look back on that period in your let's
Speaker 1: call it your career period or growth period, what are
Speaker 1: some of the things you learned from that that you've
Speaker 1: taken into your new business so much.
Speaker 2: I think we haven't really gotten into it. But staying
Speaker 2: in Formula one became incredibly bad from my mental health
Speaker 2: and then my health. Ah, I do really want to
Speaker 2: come back to your question about how I've employed my
Speaker 2: learnings from F one in.
Speaker 1: Lauckon when we talk about a learning a bit more.
Speaker 1: Just just talk about what was happening though.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Perfect. So I was at Williams for about a
Speaker 2: year and pretty early on twenty three. Yeah, pretty early
Speaker 2: on I acknowledged that, to quote you, I was bort
Speaker 2: out of my mind. It was so unstimulating in a
Speaker 2: way that I was so shocked that, like I assumed
Speaker 2: that it was going to be, as I said this,
Speaker 2: like brilliant collaborative group of minds solving big problems in
Speaker 2: an exciting way with a big budget, and like that
Speaker 2: could have been really exciting. And maybe the teams that
Speaker 2: were winning Renout was winning that year, and because they
Speaker 2: were the leading team with all the exciting ideas, it
Speaker 2: might have been a different experience if I'd ended up
Speaker 2: in that team, but I didn't, and that, like Williams
Speaker 2: wasn't a bad company to work for I just arrived
Speaker 2: at the team at a time where it really didn't
Speaker 2: suit my personality and I needed something that stimulated me more.
Speaker 2: And I was sitting at a computer without engagement with
Speaker 2: my brilliant teammates solving big problems in a really fun
Speaker 2: and exciting way. I was staring at computer screen for
Speaker 2: sixteen hours a day designing ideas that weren't my ideas.
Speaker 2: And another team approached me and tried to head hunt me,
Speaker 2: and I ended up confiding in of one of my
Speaker 2: teammates and at Williams. Yes, he'd worked for this other
Speaker 2: team at the start of his career, and he said,
Speaker 2: look the experience I had there as a junior aerodynamicist.
Speaker 2: They're a smaller team with lesser budgets, so you're more responsible.
Speaker 2: You're responsible for a bigger area of things, and it
Speaker 2: might be good for you from a learning perspective, But
Speaker 2: by the time I got to that team, they were
Speaker 2: performing even worse than Williams, and the culture in the
Speaker 2: office was shocking. And it was really at that point
Speaker 2: where you know, something that I've been working toward at
Speaker 2: least since thirteen, if not having that obsession for earlier
Speaker 2: than that, I'd defined myself by Formula one, like that
Speaker 2: was my identity, and it was going I wanted to
Speaker 2: be the first female technical director of an F one team,
Speaker 2: and I'd planned out my entire career and my retirement
Speaker 2: and I was going to be this incredible person to
Speaker 2: change Formula one and it wasn't working out. Like do
Speaker 2: you serve yourself for disappointment one hundred percent? That sums
Speaker 2: it up. So I've defined myself. I've moved myself to
Speaker 2: the other side of the world, away from the country.
Speaker 2: I love the city, I love my family, my friends,
Speaker 2: and I'm in a job sacrifice. Yeah, and I'm in
Speaker 2: a job that ultimately I start to hate. But letting
Speaker 2: go of that means letting go of the thing that
Speaker 2: defines me and letting go of my purpose for.
Speaker 1: Living full conflict, full conflict.
Speaker 2: So I stick it out, and I stick it out,
Speaker 2: and then I end up moving into a Formula one
Speaker 2: marketing role, which was kind of like my last gasp,
Speaker 2: like my last hope in this And by then depression
Speaker 2: had already sunk in an anxiety. I was having panic attacks,
Speaker 2: but neither of them were diagnosed, and I just carried on.
Speaker 2: And then eventually I like, and I think this goes
Speaker 2: back to obsession rather than passion, which is another example
Speaker 2: of how I'm an obsessive person. Having all of these
Speaker 2: big things out of control in my life. Automatically, I
Speaker 2: started to grab for the things that I could control
Speaker 2: in my life, and that's what I ate and how
Speaker 2: much exercise I did. And so the depression and anxiety
Speaker 2: morphed into anorexia and I became incredibly unwell so and.
Speaker 1: In terms of food and training, yeah, overtrain, overrate, overtrain, underate.
Speaker 2: Like you're talking to an aerospace engineer. I had crazy spreadsheets.
Speaker 2: I would weigh every morsel of food that I ate.
Speaker 2: I had websites that i'd access to then calculate how
Speaker 2: many calories I'd record that. I'd then record, you know,
Speaker 2: how much exercise I'd done. I'd calculate, if I'm running
Speaker 2: at this pace, how many calories will that burn. I
Speaker 2: made sure that every day I had a deficit, like
Speaker 2: I was essentially tracking my body like you would look
Speaker 2: at the data on a Formula one car and I
Speaker 2: was getting results because calorie.
Speaker 1: Debta rewards well, results rewards you, so you got so
Speaker 1: I got something good out of that without even knowing
Speaker 1: about it, yeap.
Speaker 2: And like a result is my goal for today is
Speaker 2: to be lighter on the scales tomorrow, and so if
Speaker 2: I do X, Y and Z, that should happen. The
Speaker 2: thing about anorexia is, and I guess our bodies like
Speaker 2: you can't account for things like water retention or a
Speaker 2: whole lot like you know, with females, you cycle like
Speaker 2: a whole lot of stuff. And so sometimes you do
Speaker 2: exactly what you did the day before, and you'd stand
Speaker 2: on the scales and you were a bit heavier. But
Speaker 2: because I descended below a weight where really you can
Speaker 2: think rationally, and also I had depression and anxiety. Seeing
Speaker 2: that number higher, to my engineering mind made no sense
Speaker 2: and it would send me into a tail spin of
Speaker 2: like panic and it was. It was terrible.
Speaker 1: I understand. I don't understand to that extent, but I
Speaker 1: do understand obsession. You're talking to a person who's still
Speaker 1: plots on a spreadsheet. What time the sun? The sun
Speaker 1: doesn't rise, but let's call it sunrise, you know, whereas
Speaker 1: on the horizon halfway between half below you know what
Speaker 1: what I still does that I still do it. I
Speaker 1: don't do sunrise and sunset anymore, I just do sunrise.
Speaker 1: I love that, but but a I can do it
Speaker 1: for me. But so I have to tell you I
Speaker 1: used to spreadsheet that stuff.
Speaker 2: So in my brand new memoir Destination Moon, I write
Speaker 2: when I'm in Paris about the light in Paris being unbeloved, different.
Speaker 2: And because I was by this stage pursuing my baking career,
Speaker 2: I was working at a bou lingerie and I would
Speaker 2: walk to work as the sun was rising, and as
Speaker 2: I was writing Destination, which is that day.
Speaker 1: Every day changed by the way, yes, thirty thirty five
Speaker 1: second change each day, but it doesn't matter. Go on.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to know the eggs like it's something
Speaker 2: like eighteen degrees when the sun reaches like eighteen degrees
Speaker 2: above the horizon is classified exact sunrise.
Speaker 1: As opposed to the first light. There's a big difference.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, yeah, yeah, So I actually remember I was
Speaker 2: sitting in my little village in Tuscany writing the book.
Speaker 2: I'm like, I want to know what the exact degree
Speaker 2: of sunrise is. So I love the fact that you
Speaker 2: PLoP that.
Speaker 1: I love that, but I use AI now, okay, because
Speaker 1: it's much easier than it was. Just I don't have
Speaker 1: to go and actually put it on a spreadsheet, but
Speaker 1: and I actually do things to that, to that to
Speaker 1: that rhythm. What do you do to that rhythm, Well, exercise, wake,
Speaker 1: wake and exercise. So like dallat size, darlote saving foks
Speaker 1: me up a bite. So this week I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit all over the shop. But because we're recording this
Speaker 1: during the daylight saving, we first week saving. But I
Speaker 1: tried to expose myself to the first light because I
Speaker 1: you know, I quite like the fact that the distribution
Speaker 1: of light, particularly one particular part of the light which
Speaker 1: is not visible to the eye, but it's six hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty nanometers, which is the back part of your eyes.
Speaker 1: The retina actually converts that light energy of those photons
Speaker 1: into a certain chemical in your body, and it gives
Speaker 1: you a certain feeling and it's very good for your
Speaker 1: health mental health. Especially.
Speaker 2: I've been to Gwinana on the Gold Coast and every
Speaker 2: morning you go out in time for sunrise, so your
Speaker 2: eyes can look unfiltered at the sun. Because they never
Speaker 2: described that to me. But it's a lovely feelings.
Speaker 1: About the distribution of light. So the ultra violet rays
Speaker 1: which sit down the other end of the spectrum, compared
Speaker 1: to the red rays which are down the shorter, the
Speaker 1: shorter end.
Speaker 2: Of the spectrum, so these a longer race, so they're shorter.
Speaker 1: So there's six fifty meters, which is six and fifty
Speaker 1: billionths of a meter. It's not very big. But the
Speaker 1: ultra vile rays are much longer. They're twelve hundred there,
Speaker 1: and they're more They're much more distributed at that time
Speaker 1: of day because of the because of the axis of
Speaker 1: the Earth, and it's a bit like if I shine
Speaker 1: a torch on a on water, it spreads quite broadly.
Speaker 1: And that's what happens at first, not a first light
Speaker 1: at sunrise. I actually all sunrise because sun never rises,
Speaker 1: by the way.
Speaker 2: But I have the most random thing to tell you,
Speaker 2: But I think you'll be interested in this. But this obsession,
Speaker 2: by the way, yeah, another obsession. Another thing that I
Speaker 2: write about is for three years in a row, I
Speaker 2: was part of the World Solar Challenge and it wasn't
Speaker 2: with the Australian team. The Dutch team from tu Delft
Speaker 2: reached out to ask me to be on their support
Speaker 2: crew and the first year that I was on the
Speaker 2: support crew, they won, so it's a race that traverses
Speaker 2: Australia from Darwin to Adelaide, and they smashed the record.
Speaker 2: But they had read designed solar cells. So classically solar
Speaker 2: cells are pyramid shaped and to get the maximum energy
Speaker 2: from the sun, the sun had to be hitting it
Speaker 2: perpendicular to the surface of the pyramid, and they designed
Speaker 2: curved solar cells, so no matter what angle the ray
Speaker 2: of light.
Speaker 1: Was endicular, there was always eight parts of this perpendicular.
Speaker 2: Very clever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. Why did they think about doing one
Speaker 1: that elevated or changed Maybe maybe because it's used power
Speaker 1: to do that, but anyway, so that it's just move beyond. Sorry,
Speaker 1: that was such a deviation obsessed Yeah, right, and the
Speaker 1: obsession with your weight and was it about look or
Speaker 1: just or was it just was it just about the measurements?
Speaker 2: It was about the number the measurements.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's very much an engineering trait by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, because engineering is very much about measurement and geometry.
Speaker 1: But measurement and geometry.
Speaker 2: They sort of go together, but it's about measurable progress,
Speaker 2: which is one of my favorite things, like the idea
Speaker 2: of getting even one percent better every day. If you're
Speaker 2: like edging towards perfection. While you'll never get there, it's
Speaker 2: it's still measurable progress, and an eating disorder tracks measurable progress.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so how did you get out of that disorder?
Speaker 1: So what did you do?
Speaker 2: So I came home Mum, Dad, No, I I got
Speaker 2: so sick in the UK.
Speaker 1: What's a sickness? Like, well, what happens? I mean, obviously
Speaker 1: you lose a lot of weight, but what what is
Speaker 1: the sickness? What are the symptoms?
Speaker 2: So, first of all, anorexia has the highest mortality rate
Speaker 2: of any mental illness. It's not only like as you're
Speaker 2: starving your body, you're obviously restricting nutrients to all your
Speaker 2: internal main organs. But then the flip side of that
Speaker 2: is suicide and it's a less like it's a lesser
Speaker 2: known thing that anorexia is the worst of the mental illnesses.
Speaker 2: From that perspective, symptoms are.
Speaker 1: Really feel sick and no energy.
Speaker 2: No energy, very sleepy, irritable mood like huge mood swings
Speaker 2: forgetfull foggy. From a physical perspective, like it was the
Speaker 2: winter in the UK when it all started, and I
Speaker 2: just like stopped having feeling in my extremities my hands
Speaker 2: and feet. My blood pressure went very low, my pulse
Speaker 2: went very low, my hair started to thin out. When
Speaker 2: I got really really bad, my skin got bad. And
Speaker 2: I spoke to my doctor about that, and she said,
Speaker 2: the only job your skin needs to do right now
Speaker 2: is to hold everything together. It doesn't need to look good.
Speaker 2: So it's just using the nutrients to like actually stay together.
Speaker 2: It's an is it insiduous? Is that the right way?
Speaker 2: It's an insidious disease. And all of this started to
Speaker 2: happen to me when I was in the UK.
Speaker 1: How are you now? Ah? Thirty?
Speaker 2: Then No, I'd been in the UK for about three years,
Speaker 2: so twenty six twenty seven. It got to the point
Speaker 2: where my dad actually flew to the UK and brought
Speaker 2: me home. And I first thought, I think we all
Speaker 2: first thought that, you know, get me home. Feed I
Speaker 2: didn't think this, I have to be clear. I think
Speaker 2: everyone thought we'd get home, feeder up, feeder up, and
Speaker 2: then she'll be okay. But food is only a symptom
Speaker 2: that the issue is why did you start doing this?
Speaker 2: And I think I understood that, like if one had
Speaker 2: occupied this area of my brain that requires obsession, and
Speaker 2: then When I let go of that, I just it
Speaker 2: allowed the eating to disorder to just take over my brain.
Speaker 2: And until I found another obsession to take its place,
Speaker 2: I was probably going to die. I made this realization yesterday, actually,
Speaker 2: that it was a ticking time bomb like I needed
Speaker 2: to find I was going to keep losing weight, and
Speaker 2: you know, either, I mean I did have moments where
Speaker 2: I had suicidal thoughts. I've obviously never acted on it,
Speaker 2: but and you know, by bone density wasn't very good.
Speaker 2: Something was going to go wrong, so I needed to
Speaker 2: find something before anorexiaor one. But the ironic thing, you
Speaker 2: knew that I knew that, well, maybe subconsciously, I knew
Speaker 2: that I was desperately seeking a new passion because it's
Speaker 2: not a good feeling to be caught up in an
Speaker 2: eating disorder. It's you know, it felt good to be
Speaker 2: working towards this thing with Formula one. And although I
Speaker 2: was trapped in the eating disorder and controlled by it,
Speaker 2: it didn't make me feel happy or good. But the
Speaker 2: ironic thing about an eating disorder is that all you
Speaker 2: can think about all days food because you're starving your body,
Speaker 2: and so every part of your body is sending signals
Speaker 2: to your brain telling you to fuel it. And you
Speaker 2: don't dream about boring food or like healthy food. You
Speaker 2: dream about the thing that you really really love eating.
Speaker 2: And my whole life, I've really loved baked goods.
Speaker 1: So as in bread and cross ons and.
Speaker 2: As in all of it, cakes, scones, biscuits. Like Mum
Speaker 2: was a great baker when I was growing up, and
Speaker 2: we'd come home from school and she'd always make something
Speaker 2: beautiful for afternoon.
Speaker 1: At the moment I'm actually pretty hungry. You just have
Speaker 1: to get a cart race not far from you.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Anyway, I think it sort of started this
Speaker 2: obsession with baking myself when I was still living in
Speaker 2: the UK, desperately unhappy at work, and I'd come home
Speaker 2: from a really long day at work and I would,
Speaker 2: you know, bake a brownie or a cake. And it's
Speaker 2: when you think about baking compared to cooking, Baking is
Speaker 2: very scientific. You know, you bring you have to weigh
Speaker 2: out your ingredients perfectly, and then you have to follow
Speaker 2: a method to the letter about how you incorporate the
Speaker 2: ingredients and it relies on you know, temperature in an
Speaker 2: oven and airflow exactly, and so for me, I'd get
Speaker 2: home and I could live vicariously through the process of
Speaker 2: bay without eating it. And then I'd take it into
Speaker 2: work the following day and we'd know pause mid morning,
Speaker 2: and everyone would gather around and we'd cut it up
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't eat it, but I would live vicariously
Speaker 2: through seeing how happy it made everyone else. And So
Speaker 2: I came back to Australia like a twig, but with
Speaker 2: this dream that maybe I wanted to pursue baking as
Speaker 2: a career.
Speaker 1: You already had that thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the day I landed back in Australia at
Speaker 2: like so unwell, I had an interview with a bakery
Speaker 2: in Melbourne to just work as a counterhand. Like I'd
Speaker 2: gone from being an aerospace engineer at a Formula One
Speaker 2: team to like serving people at a local bakery in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: And how long did it take you before you worked out?
Speaker 1: You started thinking to yourself, I can change this process.
Speaker 2: I can change the anorexia.
Speaker 1: No, no, I can change the process of the bakery.
Speaker 2: Oh with croissants.
Speaker 1: Well, whatever you were doing working in this bakery, did
Speaker 1: you I know people like similar to yourself.
Speaker 2: Mark, I'm going to send you a copy of my
Speaker 2: book after you cannot wait to change the process and
Speaker 2: improve it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, faster, more efficient, more output, more productivity, better
Speaker 1: take whatever.
Speaker 2: So I was forty kilos at this point, I'm assuming
Speaker 2: you understand bm my bam, I was like thirteen. Wow,
Speaker 2: I for such an intelligent person, like I would cross
Speaker 2: roads and like not even look left or right. I
Speaker 2: would just Dad said there were several times where you
Speaker 2: nearly just got cleaned up by a car. It would
Speaker 2: terrify him when I'd go out for a walk. I
Speaker 2: don't think I was thinking about improving the process at
Speaker 2: this stage yet. This was like ground zero recovery.
Speaker 1: So the bottom about as low as you can.
Speaker 2: Get, yeap, And it, honestly, it got a bit worse
Speaker 2: before it started to get better. I think full recovery
Speaker 2: back to a healthy weight where I could operate in
Speaker 2: life again was probably about five years.
Speaker 1: When you say your mean function.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and functioning like a high performing way because for me,
Speaker 2: there's no other there's no other way. So I'm going
Speaker 2: to tell you a quick story to explain to the
Speaker 2: point where I started to see opportunity for improvement in
Speaker 2: an existing industry. I'd borrowed this book from the library
Speaker 2: about Paris potisseries.
Speaker 1: Got at home, White Parises.
Speaker 2: Well, I was baking. I talked myself into a job
Speaker 2: at this beautiful local cafe to do their baking every morning.
Speaker 2: But we were doing pretty simple stuff like biscuits and cakes,
Speaker 2: and while it was fun, I knew that my brain
Speaker 2: needed something more challenging to feel really fulfilled with what
Speaker 2: I was doing. And I was starting to research French
Speaker 2: pastry a bit more because it's highly technical. So I
Speaker 2: borrowed this book about French partisseries. Got at home, sat
Speaker 2: on the floor, flipped the book open randomly, and there's
Speaker 2: this beautiful, zoomed in double page photo of Panoshchokola stacked
Speaker 2: up on a counter. And I was so wowed and
Speaker 2: enamored by this photo that I walked back up to
Speaker 2: the shops where the library was, but into the flight
Speaker 2: center and I booked myself a ticket to Paris.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you're going to the next version of Williams.
Speaker 1: I was formula one it literally and in terms of yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what it was.
Speaker 2: So I went to Paris, and on my last day
Speaker 2: in Paris, I went to the boul Lingerie where the
Speaker 2: photo had been taken and it's like it's a pastry wonderland.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most beautiful places in Paris, definitely
Speaker 2: one of the best croissants. I was hypnotized by the experience,
Speaker 2: and the following day I sent an email. Like I
Speaker 2: did with the F one teams, I sent an email
Speaker 2: to the owner of the Boull Lingerie asking if he
Speaker 2: would take me on as an apprentice, just so bold
Speaker 2: now thinking about it like this like your hand, yeah chance,
Speaker 2: Like if you don't ask, you don't get So he
Speaker 2: replied to me within an hour and said, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's like I wouldn't normally because you don't speak French,
Speaker 2: you have no experience, like I don't even know if
Speaker 2: you've got a visa everything. But he said, for some reason,
Speaker 2: I can see the same passion and motivation in you
Speaker 2: that drives me. So yes, when would you like to start?
Speaker 2: So I get this like I get the Williams F
Speaker 2: one version of the bakery offer. And a few months
Speaker 2: later I moved back to Paris and we initially agreed
Speaker 2: to do a one month stars which would I guess
Speaker 2: assess my level of viability longer term in the business.
Speaker 2: And suddenly I find myself in the Formula one kitchen
Speaker 2: of the baking world. Like this bakery was so highly technical.
Speaker 2: They had this huge marble bench on the first floor
Speaker 2: that was like chilled from beneath with the fridges, so
Speaker 2: the bench was already cool. When you roll out the pastry.
Speaker 2: It had blast chillers and this like laminator that looked
Speaker 2: like the Ferrari of the Laminador world. And it was amazing.
Speaker 2: And I get to work in this place and suddenly
Speaker 2: I'm making pastry that's so highly technical. It's three days
Speaker 2: to make it from start to finish. And now my
Speaker 2: weight's starting to come up a little bit. I'm starting
Speaker 2: to regain the ability of like rational and critical thought.
Speaker 2: And again, kind of like those mechanics with the Formula
Speaker 2: three team, I wasn't allowed to do a lot, but
Speaker 2: I was allowed to observe, and I watched Sebastian, the
Speaker 2: head chef, and I was thinking, like, why did you
Speaker 2: do it like that? Because I think it could be
Speaker 2: better or more perfect, or more accurate or faster if
Speaker 2: you did it like that. So this is where the
Speaker 2: critical thinking really starts to come to think. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: I came back to Australia. My money was running out.
Speaker 2: A stage is an unpaid internship, and you can't really
Speaker 2: live in Paris with no money. And I came back
Speaker 2: to Melbourne with the view to maybe carrying on my
Speaker 2: education in croissants in a bakery in Melbourne. And so
Speaker 2: I started this obsessive tour around Melbourne's bakeries to try
Speaker 2: and find a croissant that was anywhere near as good
Speaker 2: as what we'd been making in Paris. And it just
Speaker 2: didn't exist. And so then I had this light bulb moment, Well,
Speaker 2: I know everything there is to know about croissants after
Speaker 2: my one month in Paris, so maybe I'll start the business.
Speaker 2: So lun was born.
Speaker 1: So what what? Just what is it about? Like you
Speaker 1: see all sorts of I've seen all sorts of cross ons,
Speaker 1: and I do love cross ons when I've had them
Speaker 1: in France, but I ordinarily wouldn't buy him here, but
Speaker 1: I have bought your ones. What is it? What? What
Speaker 1: is what is the what is it? The MESA cross
Speaker 1: on really good?
Speaker 2: I love that you asked that because I'm really onto
Speaker 2: my hot topic now. I feel like the first time
Speaker 2: I had a cross on in Paris, I had this experience,
Speaker 2: and it formed the blueprint for me of what a
Speaker 2: truly exceptional croissant should be.
Speaker 1: This is this is just a playing cross on.
Speaker 2: This is just a traditional croissant.
Speaker 1: Nothing on top like you guys do no, but like.
Speaker 2: The traditional loon croissant is my favorite anyway, I think
Speaker 2: it's also the foundation of every product on our council
Speaker 2: g Og.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this first cross on I had in Paris, which
Speaker 2: wasn't actually from the place that I did the Stars at,
Speaker 2: it was relatively fresh out of the oven, like when
Speaker 2: I picked up the bag and they gave it to me,
Speaker 2: the bag was still warm, and then when I opened
Speaker 2: the bag there was just this overwhelming scent of beautiful
Speaker 2: cultured butter, like butter like I'd never experienced with a
Speaker 2: croissant before. So the products was literally a celebration of
Speaker 2: the butter that it had been made with. And it
Speaker 2: was quite big, but it was the bag was really light.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is a big pastry, but it feels
Speaker 2: quite light and you take a bite into it and
Speaker 2: the outer layer shatters and it doesn't It's not tiny
Speaker 2: little flakes. It's like beautiful, big curved shards of like
Speaker 2: crunchy buttery pastry. But then the internals of it are
Speaker 2: so light that it's like butter air as well as layers.
Speaker 2: It's like more air than it is dough. And it's
Speaker 2: just this thing of beauty that like you finish it
Speaker 2: and you don't feel full, but you feel so perfectly
Speaker 2: satisfied by this perfect thing that you've eaten. That to
Speaker 2: me is a perfect cross on.
Speaker 1: And when you say butter, because it's funny people talk
Speaker 1: to me. You were talking. You just mentioned then the
Speaker 1: experience you had eating this cross on and I immediately
Speaker 1: were all the same in terms of memory, especially when
Speaker 1: it comes to food. I remember once my family's Greek.
Speaker 1: Once I was in Greece is like a lot, like
Speaker 1: a million years ago. I was twenty five, so that's
Speaker 1: how long ago it was. Was it was forty five
Speaker 1: years ago. So I was in and they had a
Speaker 1: little bakery. It didn't make crossants, but they make it.
Speaker 2: But Greek bakery's amazing.
Speaker 1: And it's on the island of Idra, which is very
Speaker 1: close to the mainland, and it's not there any that.
Speaker 1: The heart is there, but the baker's not there anymore
Speaker 1: because I tried it out. But I have the same memory.
Speaker 1: It was six in the morning going down to this
Speaker 1: thing that've been baking since probably two am. And the
Speaker 1: thing was warm. What was it? It was a boogatza,
Speaker 1: which is it's a It was a savory buogutza. The
Speaker 1: booguts can be sweet or savory. And it's only the
Speaker 1: only in those days, only bacon at a certain time
Speaker 1: of year, which is to celebrate the the festival, our lady.
Speaker 1: It's in August, generally in August, and and the boogutza
Speaker 1: was a I got a savory one.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a cheese, but a sweet cheese inside.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it's made from, but I have
Speaker 1: this memory, and and it's about the taste, the smell
Speaker 1: of the bakery, the smell of the thing I bought,
Speaker 1: the weight of it also, and it was also the crunch.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting you took me back to a time.
Speaker 1: I can remember the morning that I first tasted and
Speaker 1: therefore when every single morning was was on that island and.
Speaker 2: Only one of these things. Now, this sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: Booboo guts and you don't get them, you don't see it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of people make them now all year round,
Speaker 1: but they're they're not made. It'd been some old artist
Speaker 1: and the guys will be dead by now. But it
Speaker 1: was my ardors and go. It was making these things
Speaker 1: that imprinted something on my mom. Did imprint something on
Speaker 1: your mind?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: To such an extent that I must try to reproduce
Speaker 1: my version of this. Yes.
Speaker 2: And so I get back to Australia. I signed the
Speaker 2: lease on a tiny shop already. Well no, no, no,
Speaker 2: So I mean I'm carrying on from the story earlier.
Speaker 2: Where come back? And I've done my tour around Melbourne.
Speaker 2: Can't find a bakery, find a shop, sign the lease,
Speaker 2: think about a business name?
Speaker 1: Loon? What was the fascination with moon?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, obviously my book's called Destination Moon. The first
Speaker 2: chapter details how even from a very very young age,
Speaker 2: I've been obsessed with the moon. And when I was
Speaker 2: very bad with asthma when I was young. To get
Speaker 2: me to go to bed, the only way I would
Speaker 2: do it is if Mum and Dad took me outside
Speaker 2: to say good night to the moon. And like still
Speaker 2: to this day, if I'm out and I can see
Speaker 2: the moon at night, or like say good night to him,
Speaker 2: I think it's a hymn, I don't know.
Speaker 1: And what'd you call lune?
Speaker 2: So that's the friend that Okay. So when I was
Speaker 2: working in Formula one, my boyfriend, who was also an aerodynamicist,
Speaker 2: we went for our one year anniversary to Bruges, which
Speaker 2: is the.
Speaker 1: Home of Tintin. As in Belgium, Ye, the comic Tintin.
Speaker 1: It was a very famous as a German TV show, Tintin.
Speaker 2: No, it's Belgian, Belgian, is it ye? So they had
Speaker 2: this beautiful, very.
Speaker 1: Famous, very famous star on television. But it was a dog, yeah,
Speaker 1: Snowy Snowy. But then Tintin was Snowy's owner, and I
Speaker 1: think it was a bit of a I don't know.
Speaker 1: I didn't fully follow it, but we went into the
Speaker 1: Tintin shop and right in the window there was a
Speaker 1: poster and it was a poster of a rocket about
Speaker 1: to take off from the desert, and all the scaffolding
Speaker 1: was around it, and Tintin and Snowy were in this
Speaker 1: jeep bouncing towards it, and the title of the poster
Speaker 1: was objective Loon, which in French translates to destination Moon.
Speaker 2: And I was so captivated. Sorry, I was so captivated
Speaker 2: by this poster that my boyfriend bought it for me
Speaker 2: and brought it home to England and had it framed.
Speaker 2: And by this stage I'm already coming home from work
Speaker 2: and baking at night. And he'd been joking that I
Speaker 2: should open a cafe and he said to me, if
Speaker 2: you ever opened a cafe, you should call it objective loon. Now,
Speaker 2: objective loon is not particularly catchy, but loon is. And
Speaker 2: then when I started to think about it, like loon
Speaker 2: means moon in French and croissants are crescent moon shaped. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I studied aerospace engineering and fell in love with
Speaker 2: the early space race during my university years. And then
Speaker 2: thinking all the way back, for my whole life, I've
Speaker 2: had to say good night to the moon every night
Speaker 2: and for me, and also croissants are French and loon
Speaker 2: is a French word, and for me, it just felt
Speaker 2: like the business couldn't be called anything else.
Speaker 1: It sounds comforting, Yeah, it's also a nice way to say,
Speaker 1: it's quite comforting that the story sits around it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I'm someone and I'm only realizing this now.
Speaker 2: I really love a full circle moment. And for me
Speaker 2: that like in that where you describe comforting, it feels
Speaker 2: like it ties back to everything. So yeah, for me,
Speaker 2: maybe it was that opportunity to bring all of these
Speaker 2: important things in my life together in one little business,
Speaker 2: the important emotions.
Speaker 1: And it's quite interesting for someone who's an engineer and
Speaker 1: who probably thinks in a engineering process, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of emotion around you. It may well have actually
Speaker 1: been responsible for you getting unwell, and may but also
Speaker 1: maybe where you are, where you land it today may
Speaker 1: be responsible responsible for getting you well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think you've actually just summed up
Speaker 2: the core theme of my book, Well done, don't read it.
Speaker 2: That's that's actually it. It's this idea that perfectionism and obsession,
Speaker 2: when applied for good can have very powerful positive impact.
Speaker 2: But then on the flip side, when used in a
Speaker 2: negative way, you can have a very detrimental, very detrimentally.
Speaker 1: But that's quite binary. So it's it's not maybe this
Speaker 1: or maybe.
Speaker 2: That is No, it's not that or that. Yes, it's
Speaker 2: one or the other.
Speaker 1: It's good or bad. It's it's like, how have you
Speaker 1: applied It's not it's not you know, there's nothing gray
Speaker 1: in there.
Speaker 2: No, it's probably not a gray area.
Speaker 1: Very mathematical, you know, like it's zero or one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you're right, Yeah, very mathematical.
Speaker 1: So least, okay, I'm done to know about how do
Speaker 1: you design? I can only tell you what I've seen.
Speaker 1: So the crosslands you have in your store probably most
Speaker 1: people center, but they're all beautifully designed and sort of
Speaker 1: quite exotic looking, apart from the OG the original one,
Speaker 1: the rest of us sort of and they just make
Speaker 1: you want to eat them. I'll buy one of those,
Speaker 1: and I buy one of those. A bit of trama
Speaker 1: of those, because I don't know what any of them
Speaker 1: tastes like, but I can just look at him. I'm thinking, well,
Speaker 1: that looks interesting. That looks interesting, that looks interesting. Where
Speaker 1: did the design process come from? What was that idea?
Speaker 1: What's that thinking?
Speaker 2: The design process? I'm going to use an analogy I think.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've been to our now what
Speaker 2: I would call the flagship store in Melbourne. It wasn't
Speaker 2: where I originally started Loon, but then to bring you
Speaker 2: up to speed quickly, after about a year and a half,
Speaker 2: my brother joined me in the business and he's been
Speaker 2: instrumental in helping me grow it. So we outgrew the
Speaker 2: initial space very quickly, and then we moved into this
Speaker 2: four hundred square meter turn of the century warehouse and
Speaker 2: we built a bakery that it was unlike any bakery
Speaker 2: on earth. We put a huge glass cube right in
Speaker 2: the center of it, and we climb it, controlled it,
Speaker 2: and became the raw Pastry kitchen where we made the
Speaker 2: raw croissant pastry, which meant that chefs working in the
Speaker 2: kitchen could be in the heart of the customer area
Speaker 2: and enjoy the customers eating eating the pastries and enjoying them.
Speaker 2: And it also meant that the customers could watch how
Speaker 2: much care and attention and detail was being put into
Speaker 2: the pastries. Like, you know, when I first started Loon,
Speaker 2: some people would say to me, oh, so do you
Speaker 2: just get up in the morning and whip up a
Speaker 2: batch of croissants. I'm like, no, I started them three
Speaker 2: days ago. But for me and for Cam designing Loan,
Speaker 2: like this was the opportunity to showcase just how difficult
Speaker 2: it is to make a croissant. Well, so when we
Speaker 2: ll probably properly, yeah, thank you. So when we were
Speaker 2: presented with this empty, you know, one hundred year old factory,
Speaker 2: we could have thought about it from a beautiful design perspective,
Speaker 2: or we could have thought about it from like, how
Speaker 2: can we make this how can we engineer this space
Speaker 2: to best serve the people in it, to make the
Speaker 2: croissants the best that they can.
Speaker 1: Also showcased at the same time, well did you showcase it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, But we weren't really thinking about it like that.
Speaker 2: We were thinking about like Cam and I were the
Speaker 2: ones making the croissants at the time, and we didn't
Speaker 2: want to be stuck in a room with out windows
Speaker 2: out the back. We kind of wanted to be in
Speaker 2: the thick of it, and so for us, we kind
Speaker 2: of designed the room that the glass climate controlled room
Speaker 2: for ourselves and then had this moment a little bit
Speaker 2: later being like, that's going to be really cool for
Speaker 2: people to be able.
Speaker 1: To watch it hily immersive.
Speaker 2: But then when we thought about the layout of this space,
Speaker 2: I mean, we didn't need four hundred square meters to
Speaker 2: make croissants. We went from twenty square meters to four hundred,
Speaker 2: So it was excessive, but it gave us this open
Speaker 2: plan to design the perfect flow for making croissant pastry.
Speaker 2: So we thought about every single step in that three
Speaker 2: day process engineered. Yeah, and how the journey that the
Speaker 2: pastry moves from from the dough being made to the
Speaker 2: croissants finally being pulled out of the oven, and like
Speaker 2: what is that perfect journey for the pastry and also
Speaker 2: the people that work with it. And you know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have a huge amount of money, so we were like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we've got this beautiful old warehouse. We need to maximize
Speaker 2: our spend on bakery equipment. So we really designed that
Speaker 2: space for perfect function. But when you watch people working
Speaker 2: in a space that was designed with them in mind
Speaker 2: and their ease of work and their efficiency, suddenly the
Speaker 2: space becomes very beautiful in its form. And to go
Speaker 2: back to talking about the croissants, Yeah, I mean some
Speaker 2: of our garnishes are maybe elaborate and for design, but really,
Speaker 2: when we think about designing a new pastry, we think
Speaker 2: about the eating experience and when someone takes a bite,
Speaker 2: are they going to get a little bit of each element?
Speaker 2: How do they work with each other, what's the flavor?
Speaker 2: What's the experience?
Speaker 1: So it's really so it's not about it's not about
Speaker 1: the physical or like they of it.
Speaker 2: No, it's about the whole experience. Of eating it, and
Speaker 2: I think, I mean, you know, I've got a team
Speaker 2: now at Loon of nearly three hundred people. We've got
Speaker 2: an executive team of fifteen people, and we all every
Speaker 2: day come to work thinking is there something that we
Speaker 2: can be doing better, really applying that engineering mindset and
Speaker 2: giving everyone in the organization the agency to impact positively
Speaker 2: the business if they have an idea. And I think
Speaker 2: this is a nice full circle moment that's coming back
Speaker 2: to the opposite of my experience of working in Formula one.
Speaker 1: Teamwork, proper team work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if a kitchen hand comes up to us and says,
Speaker 2: this job that you've had me doing for the past
Speaker 2: three weeks, I actually think there's a more efficient way
Speaker 2: we can do it, or a better way, or a
Speaker 2: cheaper way without affecting the product quality. We allow them
Speaker 2: to present to us, tell us how you're going to
Speaker 2: test it, what you're going to look for, and if
Speaker 2: you can prove that it is better, then that will
Speaker 2: become the new process.
Speaker 1: Give an opportunity. Do you do coilabs with people like
Speaker 1: Messine or etc. We do. Yeah, if you're doing a nick.
Speaker 2: We haven't done a Massina one yet, but now he's
Speaker 2: got shadow baking. I'm sure the idea of him. I
Speaker 2: love shadow baking as well. They also Flow, who's one
Speaker 2: of the owners, did a couple of years with us
Speaker 2: and he's an incredible pastry chef, so to have him
Speaker 2: at the Helm.
Speaker 1: Is But there's a different type of pastry what they
Speaker 1: do a shadow No, they do croissant pastry as well.
Speaker 1: Cross to recall, they've got breads and like yours. Really
Speaker 1: just no.
Speaker 2: I think we might be the only business in the
Speaker 2: world that I know of that every product on our
Speaker 2: counter is made from croissant pastry. You know, we don't
Speaker 2: have a donut or a briar sure cookie. It's all croissants.
Speaker 2: And that was very That was very thought out and
Speaker 2: specific on my behalf, because when I came back from
Speaker 2: France and I did my obsessive bakery tour, I learned
Speaker 2: that there were three types of bakeries. Pastries were good
Speaker 2: and bread was average, or bread was good and pastries
Speaker 2: were average, or everything was average. And if I was
Speaker 2: going to start a business, I only wanted everything to
Speaker 2: be the best that it could possibly be on the counter,
Speaker 2: and bread and croissants require very different environments for them.
Speaker 2: To be made the best way possible. And I had
Speaker 2: like a twenty square meter kitchen, and I'd fallen in
Speaker 2: love with the Corossant in Paris. Anyway, I already knew
Speaker 2: that that was the one that I wanted to innovate
Speaker 2: and to try and perfect.
Speaker 1: I love bread. Can you fall in love with bread
Speaker 1: and make really good bread? Because I'm not. I really
Speaker 1: love bread. I just love bread.
Speaker 2: I mean I love bread and butter, bread and olive oil.
Speaker 1: All of me. But I like olive oil. Yeah, not
Speaker 1: from Greece, but I actually if it's from Greece. I
Speaker 1: got one particular olive oil I love from Greece. It's
Speaker 1: called wild olive and it actually comes from wild olive
Speaker 1: trees in Greece. And I know that Evan Caravens, who
Speaker 1: imports or he produce it. He's Australian from Melbourne actually,
Speaker 1: but I do think Australian olive oil is some some
Speaker 1: of the best olive oil in the world. In fact,
Speaker 1: we're just about to do a testing process of olive.
Speaker 2: Oils around sometime next week. I'm willing to help out
Speaker 2: good bread and olive oil.
Speaker 1: You must just on things like bad. Would you consider
Speaker 1: going into other areas outside of crossponse. That's a request.
Speaker 2: It's actually not a question, it's a request. I there
Speaker 2: are some things that I've come across in the last
Speaker 2: few years. Actually I've already done it. Not bread. But
Speaker 2: I went to New York for the first time in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, a year after The New York Times had
Speaker 2: written the article that really made Lune globally.
Speaker 1: Fa gradulation because that's pretty hard to get.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was really like a mop me up from
Speaker 2: the floor from my puddle that I've just melted because
Speaker 2: the New York Times have written about Lune. And I
Speaker 2: had dinner with the journalists who wrote the article, and
Speaker 2: he said, if you eat anything in New York, you
Speaker 2: have to go to Daily Provisions and have a crueler
Speaker 2: crueler or a craller. I'm not one hundred percent sure
Speaker 2: of a disronunciation. It's shoe pastry, like normally what a
Speaker 2: profiterole or a claire would be. But it's piped with
Speaker 2: a star nozzle in a ring a donut and it's
Speaker 2: deep fried. And honestly, I went to Daily Provisions the
Speaker 2: next day and I ordered a maple glazed cruler and
Speaker 2: my life was changed, similar to that moment of having
Speaker 2: a croissant for the first time in Paris.
Speaker 1: Well, we can see another business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's happening.
Speaker 1: It's for you. Yeah, you're doing it.
Speaker 2: So No. In twenty twenty one, Cam and I, you're
Speaker 2: doing it already, we opened Moon.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it's like Lune's little sister.
Speaker 1: I've seen Loon, but I haven't seen Moon.
Speaker 2: So Moon only operates on a Saturday and Sunday out
Speaker 2: of out where our office is in Melbourne at the moment,
Speaker 2: but we're getting ready to open its first ever permanent
Speaker 2: store in the city. And I also haven't really seen
Speaker 2: a business that just specializes in crulers and.
Speaker 1: A lot of Bella cruel. I've never heard of.
Speaker 2: A cereubl Ei.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm gonna be looking out for that.
Speaker 2: If you come to Melbourne, meet me or meet you
Speaker 2: at Moon, It's they're like one fresh out of the
Speaker 2: fryer with the vanilla glaze on. It is. It's like
Speaker 2: childhood levels of excitement happiness.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: It's pretty good.
Speaker 1: I love that. So just at less around it all off,
Speaker 1: if talk about full circle right off, full circle, has
Speaker 1: anyone ever reached out to you and said, Hey, Kate,
Speaker 1: I'm a patry chef and I'm dying to many nineteen
Speaker 1: years of age, and I live in London and I'd
Speaker 1: love to come and work for your great business loan.
Speaker 1: Have you had that experience yet?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Countless times?
Speaker 1: Oh really.
Speaker 2: And there have been several people that we've welcomed into
Speaker 2: loun and they've done stags And there have been some
Speaker 2: people that have come and done a few weeks and
Speaker 2: they've loved it so much that they've stayed on and
Speaker 2: worked for us. It does feel like a pay it forward.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's pay it back for Yeah, I think I am.
Speaker 2: I'm incredibly grateful to the opportunity that Christoph gave me
Speaker 2: because that month in Paris really defined for me that
Speaker 2: turning point in my illness where I got that new
Speaker 2: thing to latch onto and obsession that pulled me out
Speaker 2: of the anorexia and gave me something very hopeful to
Speaker 2: work towards again.
Speaker 1: And you're well, completely well now or do you have
Speaker 1: to still manage this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think eating disorders are kind of like maybe alcoholism,
Speaker 2: where you reach a point of sobriety, but then you're
Speaker 2: constantly required to manage that. There have been moments in
Speaker 2: the last fifteen years where I dip into a very
Speaker 2: stressful period and I start to go down that path
Speaker 2: of using eating an exercise to control. But I can
Speaker 2: catch myself and like now, I know it. I know
Speaker 2: I can sense when it's coming, and I just have
Speaker 2: to put mechanisms in place to look after myself. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a there's Once you've had an eating disorder, you'll
Speaker 2: never not have an eating disorder. But I do enjoy
Speaker 2: food again.
Speaker 1: And I'd love you to comment on this if you
Speaker 1: wouldn't mind. But everyone sort of freaks out about obsession
Speaker 1: or having obsessive characteristic, but maybe you could just give
Speaker 1: a commentary on this one last thing. If you understand,
Speaker 1: this is obsession approaching me now, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: use obsession to get this outcome. But when I've got there,
Speaker 1: I've got When I've got that outcome, I'm going to
Speaker 1: put it in a box and just park it over
Speaker 1: there and grab it again when I need it. In
Speaker 1: other words, using the emotion to your benefit. Is that
Speaker 1: something that you feel as though you're able to do,
Speaker 1: and if so, how important is that for you to
Speaker 1: be successful because you've been successful in everything you've done,
Speaker 1: including overcoming obsession.
Speaker 2: It is it is crucial to me. I think, ah,
Speaker 2: I think it's my superpower. And from having the eating disorder,
Speaker 2: I can now spot when I use obsession in a
Speaker 2: negative way, and as I said, I can catch it
Speaker 2: in and that can be in multiple forms. But I
Speaker 2: don't think I would have had success without that very
Speaker 2: strong personality trait. It's been one hundred percent crucial to
Speaker 2: making me who I am.
Speaker 1: Therefore, people who worry about it having obsessive it's only
Speaker 1: disorder when you can't control it. So therefore, if you
Speaker 1: can recognize that trait within yourself and harness its.
Speaker 2: Actually there's this one perfect way I can sum it up.
Speaker 2: Based on being very vulnerable about the eating disorder. I
Speaker 2: have a lot of people, whether it be parents or
Speaker 2: people who are suffering from one themselves, reaching out. And
Speaker 2: I learned when I was going through it that it's
Speaker 2: very important not to say the wrong person to someone
Speaker 2: suffering from an eating disorder, because it can set them
Speaker 2: back significantly. And now the one thing that I say,
Speaker 2: which I one hundred percent believe, if we are stubborn
Speaker 2: and determined and strong enough and obsessive enough to get
Speaker 2: us that sick to like restrict like daily human need
Speaker 2: of food, then we are strong enough to get ourselves
Speaker 2: out of it and do anything else, and do anything else.
Speaker 1: So, in other words, and I think it's a good
Speaker 1: place to finish this off, Kate, is that that thing
Speaker 1: that got you into the hole is actually superpower if
Speaker 1: you know how to manage it.
Speaker 2: And it's probably the thing that got me out of
Speaker 2: the hole again and.
Speaker 1: Got you and got you to where you are now
Speaker 1: in terms of your success.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, k Read.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much. That was awesome.
Speaker 2: Thank you