Speaker 1: Welcome to the mentor. I'm Marke Boris.
Speaker 2: Really I came to realize exactly as you say, for
Speaker 2: that last couple of years, I was not the right
Speaker 2: CEO to take it forward. I was the right CEO
Speaker 2: to close out the transaction, but I was on a
Speaker 2: plane three to three weeks of every month and it
Speaker 2: was great, but I'd lost that connection. You know, I
Speaker 2: had a thousand employees and I didn't know everyone's name,
Speaker 2: I didn't know all their stories. I focused on my
Speaker 2: team that I was directly responsible for, and I got
Speaker 2: joy out of that. But it was certainly unsustainable and
Speaker 2: there are different people that should run that bigger size
Speaker 2: a business. And I was very happy to pass on
Speaker 2: the business and don't have any regrets about not being
Speaker 2: in it anymore.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me through the story of how you
Speaker 1: got involved. This was when it was valued at say,
Speaker 1: fifteen million dollars. Just you know, what were the circumstances
Speaker 1: by would you be came involved in Swiss?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of. I told you my backstory and
Speaker 2: my father and so dad always had this kind of
Speaker 2: and my mum's a medical scientist too, so she reads
Speaker 2: people's blood and tells basically gave analytics to my father
Speaker 2: on the nutrition that people had in their blood, and
Speaker 2: that would help Dad prescribe various supplements, nutrition, meditation programs,
Speaker 2: the whole thing to get the individual as healthy as
Speaker 2: they possibly could be to deal with Western medic since
Speaker 2: treatment program And so Dad had this whole league of
Speaker 2: people that would follow him or be meant he'd mentor
Speaker 2: or support, and a lot of those were entrepreneurs in
Speaker 2: the industry, and one in particular was Michael Saba, who
Speaker 2: I just saw today, which is amazing. On the flight down.
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen him for years, and in typical Michael mode,
Speaker 2: He's a shareholder of Pana Chocolate and gave me some
Speaker 2: pan of chocolate and he was handing it out to
Speaker 2: every hasty that he could see. And he's got his
Speaker 2: Sabor Organic cleaning and fragrance range and he had that
Speaker 2: as well, and he was handing out to everyone at
Speaker 2: Easy Ultimate salesperson. So I learned a lot from Michael,
Speaker 2: and Michael was running the Swiss business when I got
Speaker 2: to know Michael, and that was through my father. He
Speaker 2: was getting mentoring from my dad. His mum was unwell
Speaker 2: and she wanted to get off HRT because she was
Speaker 2: getting very side effects from the medication, and Dad recommended
Speaker 2: a whole program to help her do that naturally, and
Speaker 2: she had wonderful results. And forever they became friends, and
Speaker 2: Dad would help him with his supplement formulations and give
Speaker 2: advice on what he thought were the right dosages in
Speaker 2: exchange for knowing that he could recommend his patients the
Speaker 2: best possible product that would have the best result. And
Speaker 2: you know, hence WI Swiss was a great product. Dad
Speaker 2: did that out of the goodness of his heart. He's
Speaker 2: an academic. He just loves doing what he did. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, we struck up a friendship. And I was
Speaker 2: at Village road Show. I'd kind of worked my way
Speaker 2: up from the candy bar through various operational roles internationally,
Speaker 2: locally treated my role as you know, I'm getting paid
Speaker 2: to to learn about the basics of business while my
Speaker 2: other mates are at university, which I was at university
Speaker 2: as well. I had to pay for that. So we
Speaker 2: may as we get paid to learn about the basics
Speaker 2: of business and do this job properly part time and
Speaker 2: work my way up through the ranks of that. And
Speaker 2: so yeah, that just the timing was Michael was always
Speaker 2: at me. You got to come and work with me.
Speaker 2: It took a couple of years and we got to
Speaker 2: know each other, and then you know, I saw there
Speaker 2: was no future for me a village as a CEO
Speaker 2: and the next sort of five years, so it was
Speaker 2: time for me to look elsewhere. And health, because of
Speaker 2: my father being a professor lectured to me all the time,
Speaker 2: came to me very naturally, and I stepped across to
Speaker 2: a business that required process and structure to grow. So
Speaker 2: that was the beginning of my journey.
Speaker 1: And just helped me out it. Why was it called Swiss.
Speaker 2: Swiss Swiss with an AD and so it was basically
Speaker 2: because we couldn't patent the word Swiss.
Speaker 1: The why Swiss at.
Speaker 2: All because there's a connotation of quality that comes with that,
Speaker 2: and you have to be a premium which set us
Speaker 2: apart from the others. We always had a premium price
Speaker 2: put of around twenty percent higher than the average cost
Speaker 2: in the category. But that meant we had to have
Speaker 2: premium ingredients to deliver a better outcome, and so we
Speaker 2: had the highest retention in the category of over seventy percent,
Speaker 2: and so when people tried our product come back for it.
Speaker 2: So the next step was to market. As you know, well,
Speaker 2: if you've got a great product, you just got to
Speaker 2: tell people about it, and we got on the front
Speaker 2: foot about that.
Speaker 1: So just I mean, I've always been intrigued about vitamin businesses.
Speaker 1: Or it wasn't quite a suplement, there's more of vitamin
Speaker 1: business with it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was vitamin's minerals and hoops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, supplement and and of course I were for sailing.
Speaker 1: A lot of the chemists been placed like love La pharmacies,
Speaker 1: you could buy them. Did you make did Swiss make
Speaker 1: the vitamins here in Australia and did they source from it?
Speaker 1: Was there any play in terms of where you source
Speaker 1: your ingredients from.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we made them here and and we'd sourced
Speaker 2: just from the best possible places that we could source ingredients.
Speaker 2: So for instance, vitamin B and vitamin C, you can
Speaker 2: only source that from China. They've got a monopoly over
Speaker 2: the market. It's a dirty product to make, so not
Speaker 2: many people like making those ingredients. Whereas you know, your
Speaker 2: your herbs generally come from India and then processed.
Speaker 1: In Italy as in gin sing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, all your traditional aravatic herbs, and
Speaker 2: then you know us is Cranberry. You know, there's sort
Speaker 2: of places that they come from around the world, and
Speaker 2: then you make the product locally and you know, and
Speaker 2: then there's plenty of good manufacturers here. But we had
Speaker 2: to make it in Switzerland, for instance, when we launched
Speaker 2: in Switzerland, because we couldn't be called Swiss without being
Speaker 2: made in Switzerland, so because it was deceptive. So and
Speaker 2: same in Russia as well, So we launched in those places.
Speaker 1: Manufacturing your global business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did the biggest licensing deal that an Australian
Speaker 2: company had done with Procter and Gamble and TeV they
Speaker 2: had a health partnership and then we're also the biggest
Speaker 2: natural health brand in China by the time we'd sold,
Speaker 2: So the business was a beast. It was trailing to
Speaker 2: me in a billion in sales, I should say. So
Speaker 2: it was just just, yeah, a great business to be
Speaker 2: involved with.
Speaker 1: As I call it. It was a white plastic with
Speaker 1: a red top top on top of is that right?
Speaker 1: And a fairly it wasn't an overly it was an
Speaker 1: overly highly decorated sort of what do you call it,
Speaker 1: like labeling on it either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was as basic as it could be.
Speaker 2: You know that the tub was the cheapest tub you
Speaker 2: could buy. We put everything we could into the ingredient.
Speaker 2: We enhanced the tub as we went down the path,
Speaker 2: and the labeling was very scientific and looked to just
Speaker 2: pop off the shelves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, totally. And as I there's a few
Speaker 1: Aussie brands sort of around at the time, but not
Speaker 1: probably not as well to me, not as well known
Speaker 1: as Swiss, but one of the things I know as
Speaker 1: best Swiss. It was pretty good at marketing. I mean,
Speaker 1: you were pretty good at getting people to be your ambassadors.
Speaker 1: So you had a recording Nicole Kidman as one of
Speaker 1: your ambassadors in her early days. I mean this is
Speaker 1: late what period were talking about it.
Speaker 2: I came on in twenty would have been twenty eleven, right, so,
Speaker 2: and then Ricky was our first ambassador, Ricky Ponting and
Speaker 2: he would have been two thousand and seven. Yeah, two
Speaker 2: years into my time.
Speaker 1: And how do you go about finding those sorts of
Speaker 1: people like I mean, were they probably not as famous
Speaker 1: then as are now, or maybe Ricky would have been
Speaker 1: in his prime.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was captain Australian career team and Nicole was
Speaker 2: she was struggling a little bit in Australia, but her
Speaker 2: credentials in the US, she's like royalty there, she's like
Speaker 2: Lady die Is.
Speaker 1: To us, she's you pick her.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I think it was for that and also
Speaker 2: we want to open up the Asian market, and she
Speaker 2: was Jimmy chou Chanelle's face. Yeah, so big news Amiga
Speaker 2: as well. So everywhere you'd go, you'd see a poster
Speaker 2: and I just saw a big gap, you know when
Speaker 2: you talk about supplements back in the day. And I'd
Speaker 2: go to a party and I worked for Village Road
Speaker 2: Show and I talk about the new movies we have
Speaker 2: and want to talk to me and ask me questions
Speaker 2: about the next premiere, and so the old center of
Speaker 2: the attention. And then I'd get to these parties and
Speaker 2: start at Swiss and I'd start, you know, where do
Speaker 2: you work? And the barbecue conversation. As it goes, they
Speaker 2: sort of respond Swiss, and they go, is that the embassy?
Speaker 2: And I go, Brand's in trouble here? And then I'd
Speaker 2: say vitamins and then they would want to change the
Speaker 2: subject because I'd walk into two pharmacies and you know
Speaker 2: it would be ibs that the marketing would be about
Speaker 2: it'll be bound syndrome or you and retract infection. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm going to really want to talk about that at
Speaker 2: a barbecue. So it was all very science based or
Speaker 2: too hippie based as well. And and I'd look over
Speaker 2: to the perfume or the cosmetic sign as well, lit
Speaker 2: up these beautiful faces projecting health and so forth. But
Speaker 2: that's from the outside and beauty from the inside is
Speaker 2: most important. So which turned it into a lifestyle brand,
Speaker 2: and that lifestyle brand gave us permission to work, you know,
Speaker 2: with personalities like Ricky first. And Ricky we started with
Speaker 2: because we were a supplier of the Australian cricket.
Speaker 1: Team into the supplements.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we would give them supplements each year, and
Speaker 2: the dietician there was a big fan of what we're doing.
Speaker 2: And so I knew Ricky was taking the product and
Speaker 2: I could do a deal with the cricket team for
Speaker 2: probably probably a third more of the price, or I
Speaker 2: could go straight to Ricky and probably being more flexible
Speaker 2: with what we could do. And I knew he was
Speaker 2: taking the product, so it was just simply a call
Speaker 2: to his manager and so hey, you're not in this category,
Speaker 2: and not many sports people are. In fact, the only
Speaker 2: one was Rob de Costello for Centrum, and that'd be
Speaker 2: the occasional person at those parties that would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'd take Centrum and as Rob de Costello and I'd
Speaker 2: walk into pharmacists and say, wow, you've got so my
Speaker 2: space for Centrum. You know it must get best margin.
Speaker 2: They get no, no, no, it's the advertising on fifty two
Speaker 2: weeks of the year. And they got Rob de Castella
Speaker 2: there with a product in his hand and they were
Speaker 2: taking less margin. But it was all about the ease
Speaker 2: of selling it. And I went, oh, hang on, what
Speaker 2: about our product? They go, well, it sells itself, we
Speaker 2: don't have to sell it. And I was like, well,
Speaker 2: what if we gave them the tools to sell it
Speaker 2: and dial it up? And that started with Ricky and
Speaker 2: then it carried on with probably three hundred different ambassadors.
Speaker 2: Really yeah, yeah, of all different ages, personalities, sexes, the
Speaker 2: whole lot and event based stuff that we would capture
Speaker 2: people's attention and get them consider taking our product.
Speaker 1: Because today we drop about influencers and by the way,
Speaker 1: it's no different what's always happened to those people when
Speaker 1: you just meet and influencers and they just happen on
Speaker 1: a different medium, which in those days would have been television, newspaper,
Speaker 1: radio or whatever. And posters. I guess you when you
Speaker 1: pick an individual, do you pick it for the brand values?
Speaker 1: I mean, like, so you know these days, obviously influencers
Speaker 1: are just a very transactional thing and you want to
Speaker 1: get just to put some influence out on the local,
Speaker 1: especially micro influencers on their particular Instagram page or whatever happens
Speaker 1: to be. But then did you pick your ambassadors to
Speaker 1: take pointing? Did you set out your own the Swiss
Speaker 1: values and the Ricky sits on suits all as particular
Speaker 1: values that we stand for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, our secret weapon was our culture, and our culture
Speaker 2: was very values driven. Would make decisions by calling out
Speaker 2: our values and they weren't just written on the wall,
Speaker 2: and that would extend to our ambassadors the way it
Speaker 2: presented ourselves to our customers, suppliers, everyone that was connected
Speaker 2: in our world. They would have a strong sense of
Speaker 2: that we were a values driven business. And so you
Speaker 2: kind of like a track like as a result of
Speaker 2: presenting that. And yeah, so you're dead right. The influencer
Speaker 2: part you know with sa Nicole Kidman in the and
Speaker 2: you know, we failed in the US with launching with her,
Speaker 2: which was the primary reason why we went with her
Speaker 2: and Alan DeGeneres at the time. But we knew that
Speaker 2: doing this amount of advertising was going to work somewhere,
Speaker 2: and it worked in Australia to a Chinese audience, and
Speaker 2: we had one hundred and thirty thousand resellers of our product.
Speaker 2: So talk about influencers. This was kind of in those
Speaker 2: days where it's just starting out as kind of buying online,
Speaker 2: and China took off with this kind of B to
Speaker 2: B sales mechanism where you know, the Alley Barbers of
Speaker 2: this world, the ten Cents of this world all had
Speaker 2: consumer offerings that were more advanced or probably up to
Speaker 2: where we can now see in Australia where you know,
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, they'd see this Hollywood start And
Speaker 2: it wasn't the actual people in China that were trying
Speaker 2: because of her, it was the influencers that knew Nicole
Speaker 2: Kimmen went we're going to try this product. They tried
Speaker 2: it and they went, oh, this is great. They started
Speaker 2: talking about how great the product was with authenticity, and
Speaker 2: then it just took off like wildfire.
Speaker 1: Then my point was I'm thinking about it, and don't
Speaker 1: leave it to my age to start thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Think about it now. And if you're insteaventy six eight,
Speaker 1: you're forty eight, You've got another twenty on top of that. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: But these things are given to us by somebody as
Speaker 1: a gift. You've got to make sure you optimize every
Speaker 1: single one of them and enjoy every single one of them.
Speaker 1: And part of that is having a good strategy like sleep.
Speaker 1: Sleep is part of the strategy for me, and I
Speaker 1: haven't really up until more recently been thinking about and
Speaker 1: trying to understand eight hours, seven hours, six hours interrupted sleep,
Speaker 1: not interrupted sleep, write temperatures, and I think most astroylians
Speaker 1: don't think that way. I think they know they should
Speaker 1: have seven or eight hours, but they don't know about
Speaker 1: deep sleep, ram sleep, temperature controls. And okay, let's get
Speaker 1: into measurement, because if I've got to manage my sleep,
Speaker 1: I can't manage what I can't measure. Owing can in business,
Speaker 1: if you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So
Speaker 1: if the business is right now, and I've got businesses,
Speaker 1: but if the business of mark Boris is to live
Speaker 1: longer and better or optimize. Then I've got to measure
Speaker 1: it before I can manage it. And this is a
Speaker 1: great this is a really important I can go to gym,
Speaker 1: measure what weight lift's going to do my body weight?
Speaker 1: Can I jump this high? And also stuff that stuff's easy.
Speaker 1: But sleep is a bit is a bit mysterious. Is
Speaker 1: that sort of where you guys are at taking the
Speaker 1: mystery out by putting numbers around it.
Speaker 2: We're thinking too their mansions.
Speaker 3: On one side, we want to measure everything, but very
Speaker 3: soon you will get to a point of so what right,
Speaker 3: So okay, this is my percentage of deep sleep, this
Speaker 3: is my percentage of RAM and this is main sleep quality.
Speaker 2: It's not good and so what?
Speaker 3: And so the big difference between us and all the
Speaker 3: wearables is that then we take action for you and
Speaker 3: we do things to improve sleep for you. And that
Speaker 3: is the big difference. And that is also why we
Speaker 3: don't see wearables as competitors for us. They are the
Speaker 3: best thing that could be out there because they are
Speaker 3: cheaper and they educate customers and then people start thinking,
Speaker 3: oh wow, my sleep is not good. Now, how do
Speaker 3: I improve it, and that is when a sleep comes in.
Speaker 1: And that's a really good point because someone I'm off
Speaker 1: a measurement, I'm off wearing wearables and or rings, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And I get it. And some people are obsessed by
Speaker 1: that stuff. But for me, one of the things I
Speaker 1: said to somebody more recently, well, I know, if I've
Speaker 1: had a bad sleep, I don't know a mean to
Speaker 1: tell me or something else to tell me that I
Speaker 1: had a shitty sleep last night, or I wake up
Speaker 1: three times and you know, and I wake up feeling
Speaker 1: pretty crap. What I think, what you're saying is that
Speaker 1: you're doing something about it.
Speaker 3: Correct, And that is the whole number one principle I
Speaker 3: et sleep is the data is just the first step.
Speaker 3: But what a sleep does is we seamlessly improve.
Speaker 2: Sleep for you. We do the job for you. Is
Speaker 2: actually one of our values. We do the job for you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, like it's interesting, you said, so what relations to
Speaker 1: the data? Maybe that's the problem you're solving. You're solving
Speaker 1: the So what correct?
Speaker 2: For me?
Speaker 1: It was a problem. So what I know I didn't
Speaker 1: sleep very.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can track all the sleep, but if my
Speaker 3: sleep is crap, so what Yeah? And so actually we
Speaker 3: have what we call a wall of love, so it
Speaker 3: is a link to a web page whereas there is
Speaker 3: plenty of people wearing Anora or a Whoop or other wearables,
Speaker 3: so you're important to have which is important you have?
Speaker 3: And they past the screenshot of their Aura Whoop and
Speaker 3: Apple data before and after using our product, and that
Speaker 3: is the best marketing ever because they had the score
Speaker 3: of let's say sixty. Then they start using a sleep
Speaker 3: and the score goes to eighty. Or they travel and
Speaker 3: they measure their sleep when they're traveling, when they're back home,
Speaker 3: and when they travel without the pod they get fifty
Speaker 3: five and with the pod they go back to eighty.
Speaker 3: And this is not our tracking, it's a third party
Speaker 3: device tracking. But is the best of that tasting ever
Speaker 3: because it's not a sleep telling you that we improve
Speaker 3: your sleep? Is your a waarable telling you that you're improving.
Speaker 1: Someone like me, I travel a lot. Is there a
Speaker 1: period it going to be period of time in terms
Speaker 1: of your plans where you can see yourself, say doing
Speaker 1: a deal with I know one of the big hotel
Speaker 1: groups high to say American one for whatever it is,
Speaker 1: and where I can go and get they say, Mark,
Speaker 1: if you come and stay at our hotel for an
Speaker 1: extra fifty bucks a night or whatever it is, you
Speaker 1: can use the aid sleep product on our beds, on
Speaker 1: their beds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it should be right, and I think
Speaker 4: it should be these hotel groups that are thinking about it,
Speaker 4: because you basically pete to go sleep somewhere else. So
Speaker 4: it is the most important thing.
Speaker 1: And that's when I sleep the worst. Yeah, when I'm
Speaker 1: in a hotel room because it's got a conditioning. Generally speaking,
Speaker 1: i walk in the room, I've either got turned there
Speaker 1: because I hate the condition going at night. If it's
Speaker 1: freezing gold outside, it's too hot and dry inside. If
Speaker 1: it's boiling height outside freezing holding on the inside like
Speaker 1: both which I don't don't enjoy. And and it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a one size fits also in other words,
Speaker 1: every room it's got the same temperature. And having an
Speaker 1: eight sleep mattress, what do you call it?
Speaker 2: Pod?
Speaker 1: Is that we call it a pod an a sleep pod,
Speaker 1: which is basically just a mattress covered with you some
Speaker 1: tech around it, not basically, but that's what it is
Speaker 1: that I don't don't people get confused, but that can
Speaker 1: actually maintain what I wanted to do, and I could
Speaker 1: just turn all the other ship off. And if I
Speaker 1: knew there was a hotel group that did this specifically
Speaker 1: in Australia, for example, when not travel interstate every month
Speaker 1: every week, I would use those hotels.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you two things you were like. The biggest
Speaker 3: aha moment for our customers is the first time they travel,
Speaker 3: because they get so used to it as I'm thinking, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the first time they travel is when they've write us,
Speaker 3: They've wrote to customer Support and say I didn't realize
Speaker 3: how great they sleepy is until when they travel. The
Speaker 3: most requested feature is the travel pod because they struggle
Speaker 3: when they travel.
Speaker 1: Is there a travel pod?
Speaker 2: It is not yet?
Speaker 1: Can you organize?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like me, I would send it in advance. What would
Speaker 1: be good is if I could buy another one and
Speaker 1: I could say, listen, I always stay at this hotel
Speaker 1: in Melbourne. Send it there and they can store for me.
Speaker 1: Mister Boris is coming. I'm happy to pay for it,
Speaker 1: put it on his bed.
Speaker 2: But why not.
Speaker 1: Yeah it sounds small, bright, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like it's good for business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you are going there for business and we
Speaker 3: can give you twenty percent more sharpness, no mental sharpness.
Speaker 2: You need it.
Speaker 5: So I have athletes that do that, so yeah, yeah, drivers, we.
Speaker 3: Have a team. For some of them, we go and
Speaker 3: we install it in all the races. For some of
Speaker 3: our tennis players for the Grand Slam, we install them
Speaker 3: the pod with tailor freeze. For the Olympics, we sent
Speaker 3: one of our guy to install the pods so Taylor
Speaker 3: could sleep on the party.
Speaker 4: Actually had a custom sized pot because the beds in
Speaker 4: the village were not a size that we make, and
Speaker 4: so our team made a custom site spot for him
Speaker 4: and a few other athletes and they took it into
Speaker 4: the Olympic village and used it and then you know,
Speaker 4: they win medals and that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Well maybe it's funny, you know, because I was just
Speaker 1: thinking media, thinking how do you develop your business? But
Speaker 1: I was seeing in Australia there's a mob called Coola
Speaker 1: Mattresses is like the mates of mine sort of set
Speaker 1: up and they've sold this now private eqred own it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter. But they're really good because like
Speaker 1: you ream up and you know, email them or go
Speaker 1: online you can get the stuff delivered to you. Really quickly.
Speaker 1: It's in a really easy box, not like a big
Speaker 1: mattress or a delivered you. When you take about the box,
Speaker 1: it sort of expands, it becomes a mattress and they're
Speaker 1: pretty good price. But if you teamed up with someone
Speaker 1: like that, you know, I go buy a Cola mattress
Speaker 1: and I want to put it in my farm. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Byron Bay earlier on before we're recording, and
Speaker 1: I have a farm up there, like a little resort there,
Speaker 1: and and I got all Coola mattresses every every room,
Speaker 1: like fifteen rooms whatever we got there. And you know,
Speaker 1: if I was given an option to put a sleep
Speaker 1: on there, I would and say to a guess, you're
Speaker 1: going to go to the best sleep of your life.
Speaker 1: When you wake up in the morning, you're going to
Speaker 1: feel refreshed, and you're going to enjoy the Barren Bay
Speaker 1: weather and stand on the grass and you know, get
Speaker 1: some minerals India system and you're going to come back
Speaker 1: from your Barn Bay break like like Godzilla. You can
Speaker 1: take on the world. I mean I would do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe partnership with some of these mattress providers here in Australia,
Speaker 1: because I reckon. That's fantastic. I mean, like and people,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1: Why is it we take for granted our sleep? Why
Speaker 1: is that?
Speaker 3: Because I think there is this legacy of what you
Speaker 3: were saying, right, you and I we grew up with
Speaker 3: in this environment where sleeping or sleeping too much was weak. Well,
Speaker 3: instead sleeping very little was strung was mcha. Well instead
Speaker 3: this is completely different now, right when we go out
Speaker 3: with our team, they don't drink at dinner, No one
Speaker 3: orders a cockail.
Speaker 2: We don't.
Speaker 3: We don't drink either, right.
Speaker 1: So now it is yeah, although I own a whiskey business,
Speaker 1: which is Beig Christy.
Speaker 3: And so now there is this completely and opposite thing
Speaker 3: where if you're the CEO of a public company you
Speaker 3: say that you sleep only four hours a night, it
Speaker 3: looks like you're s CEO is not taking care of
Speaker 3: himself and might die every any day.
Speaker 1: Well, the insurance policy just went up on you, exactly right.
Speaker 3: Well, instead, if you say, look, I don't drink because
Speaker 3: it's CEO, and the imagine you're the SEO of a
Speaker 3: public company, I don't drink. I go to the gym
Speaker 3: and take care of myself and sleep eight hours every
Speaker 3: single day. Then you look like, Okay, this guy is
Speaker 3: sfe yeah every thing. He's the right person, he's in
Speaker 3: the right mindset.
Speaker 4: It's a business athlete, right. I think it's so common
Speaker 4: for athletes that are practicing a sport to talk about
Speaker 4: these things, and they're probably the first ones that started
Speaker 4: talking about it years ago and how they invested in
Speaker 4: all the products that they use and their routines and sleep.
Speaker 4: But we don't realize that each one of us is
Speaker 4: an everyday athlete. Obviously for people running business, it's very
Speaker 4: clear now and there's a lot of conversation about it.
Speaker 4: But every single person out there, you're an athlete, and
Speaker 4: you get one body and you get one life, and
Speaker 4: so why not treat it like you are an athlete
Speaker 4: and taking care of it the same way.
Speaker 1: So that sort of a little bit away from just
Speaker 1: being a longevity discussion. It's more about today in a
Speaker 1: transactional sense. Today you're going to perform a certain way.
Speaker 3: And Jeff Bezos talks about that, and he there was
Speaker 3: an interview where he says, look, I sleep eight hours
Speaker 3: every single night because my job is to take the
Speaker 3: two three ride decision every single day, and so I
Speaker 3: need to be a peak mental performance and sleep is
Speaker 3: foundational to that.
Speaker 1: So in other words, we have business athletes as well
Speaker 1: as someone who wants to live a long time or
Speaker 1: optimize that period. While so I am leaving in terms
Speaker 1: of being able to do as many things.
Speaker 3: Suppose your favorite athlete who was living every night four
Speaker 3: hours per night, you wouldn't think the NESCo. Any executive
Speaker 3: at a company is a business athlete. They just use
Speaker 3: their mind to express their performance.
Speaker 1: So sleep fitness then is sort part of a mantra.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all of our sleep performance. We improve your
Speaker 3: sleep performance, so then you can use that performance to
Speaker 3: achieve whatever you want to achieve in your personal and
Speaker 3: professional life.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm totally sold, and I'll bet I've got one anyway,
Speaker 1: But I'm totally sold, and I look forward to sort
Speaker 1: of giving you a bit of feedback on this stuff
Speaker 1: because I have been one of those people who have
Speaker 1: I understand more recently how important sleep is, but I've
Speaker 1: been one of those people have taken sleep for granted
Speaker 1: and therefore, and there's now time for me to be
Speaker 1: a bit more responsible relative to myself and also all
Speaker 1: my family and everybody else who relies upon me, my staff,
Speaker 1: my shaholders everything else, and to some extent, I want
Speaker 1: to sort of share with my audience too, because I
Speaker 1: feel an obligation to share with my audience, because I
Speaker 1: don't think Australians yet are as on board with importance
Speaker 1: of high quality sleep, perhaps as your audience has been
Speaker 1: in the part is currently and part of my game
Speaker 1: is to bring interesting people on, like yourselves, who have
Speaker 1: got a product that's there to solve a problem. The
Speaker 1: problem gets solved, and my game is to play back
Speaker 1: out and to the audience and tell them what this is,
Speaker 1: what they should be doing, what they could be doing.
Speaker 1: I white say what they should do, what they could do.
Speaker 6: I don't want to be like every other fashion boutique.
Speaker 6: I don't like our social media. It's not authentic. It's
Speaker 6: size six girls, it's curated, it's pretty.
Speaker 7: That's not who we are. That's not how I am.
Speaker 6: I'm outspoken, I'm loud, I'm pretty rogue, and I want
Speaker 6: that to translate on our social media. But it took
Speaker 6: us like six months to kind of find our place
Speaker 6: because you have to be careful in fashion. Everything is beautiful, curated,
Speaker 6: driven by ego, and then I wanted to come out
Speaker 6: and just be like rogue and loud and you know,
Speaker 6: it's instagrammable, but instagrammable and catch people's attention in the
Speaker 6: right way. I don't want people adding us for doing
Speaker 6: things that are not in line with how they want
Speaker 6: to see fashion. So we were trying all different things,
Speaker 6: and then one day my friend who was working in
Speaker 6: the business, so during COVID, we were coming to work
Speaker 6: every day from nine to five, even in lockdown, so
Speaker 6: that we could sell clothes, like go on the internet
Speaker 6: and sell clothes. She came up to me and she said,
Speaker 6: I want to do this thing where we both wear
Speaker 6: the exact same thing. You're a size twelve, I'm a
Speaker 6: size six, and I want to.
Speaker 7: Talk about it on camera.
Speaker 6: And I was like, I'll do it tomorrow, and she
Speaker 6: was like, hey, tomorrow, we're doing it. So the next
Speaker 6: day I got in, She's like, we're doing it today.
Speaker 6: I've got the outfits. So we did this video and
Speaker 6: then we started doing these videos every single day. And
Speaker 6: so we do a video, so we wear this outfit
Speaker 6: and I wear it and she wears the exact same
Speaker 6: out or like these clothes like a Blaser. But during
Speaker 6: that time, we'd wear maybe like a tracksuit set, and
Speaker 6: it'd be the exact same outfit, style, the exact same right,
Speaker 6: and showing how two different bodies can wear the same
Speaker 6: outfit and look really good together.
Speaker 7: And we'd say, hi, everyone, welcome to the same same
Speaker 7: but different size.
Speaker 6: Today we're showing you the Camilla Remark jumper, the Camilla
Speaker 6: Remark tracksuit. I'm in a size twelve pants, I'm in
Speaker 6: a size twelve jumper. I'm going to do Bondai de
Speaker 6: Bonnie with my friends, and I'm going to stop at
Speaker 6: ex cafe and buy a donut, and then I'm going
Speaker 6: to go here and do this, and then there might
Speaker 6: be another video and it's hey.
Speaker 7: Everyone, welcome to them some a different size. Today. I'm
Speaker 7: out of Lockdown.
Speaker 6: I'm at Mateo, I've ordered Tommy's margarita, I'm wearing my
Speaker 6: Rebecca Lance dress, and I'm in order a prestrudo pizza.
Speaker 6: And we were getting people excited for like life and
Speaker 6: the life that was to come, because eventually we were
Speaker 6: going to be out of lockdown. So we're making these
Speaker 6: videos every day, but also we were going pretty st crazy,
Speaker 6: like it's the middle of Lockdown. So we're being funny
Speaker 6: and lighthearted and we're telling people about our day on
Speaker 6: the internet.
Speaker 1: Did you work out that that's what people wanted to hear?
Speaker 6: Yes, because instantly we were getting messages, I'm at home,
Speaker 6: I'm having the worst time. My mum's in hospital, I
Speaker 6: can't see her, and you've brightened my day. The next
Speaker 6: day we're receiving like cakes, boards of fruit. They're calling
Speaker 6: our local cafe and ordering our coffee and paying for
Speaker 6: it for us. Like we could tell straight away that
Speaker 6: we were making women amzing.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, yes. And then we were going live. So every Thursday,
Speaker 6: Hey everyone, on Thursday, we're going to go live at
Speaker 6: twelve o'clock and we are going to play a game.
Speaker 6: And all these people would come live and like play
Speaker 6: this game. We were in the shop and we'd have
Speaker 6: to like pick an outfit. Ella would say, oh, I'm
Speaker 6: going to be going on a date to Icebergs. When
Speaker 6: we get ou've lockdown, I have to quickly find her
Speaker 6: like cool outfit and style her in it.
Speaker 1: And catching on.
Speaker 7: Really a lot up and during that time, Yeah, so
Speaker 7: that was that was catching on.
Speaker 6: And then when we reopened in October in twenty twenty
Speaker 6: two twenty one.
Speaker 7: In twenty twenty one, we.
Speaker 6: Reopened, We renovated our store, we reopened with a new
Speaker 6: brand mix, and we reopened with this new social strategy
Speaker 6: and people were literally flocking in to come and meet
Speaker 6: the girls behind the.
Speaker 1: Same same but different size, the same same but different size.
Speaker 1: That was a handle yep on Instagram and everywhere else.
Speaker 7: We just kept talking about it, and it would be
Speaker 7: like over the top of our.
Speaker 6: Videos that we would po hashtag same same yeah yeah
Speaker 6: exactly to chalk Instagram.
Speaker 1: So you did TikTok and it was going anywhere else.
Speaker 7: No TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1: You didn't worry about Facebook and stuff like that. No, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: And how did you work out who the protocols so
Speaker 1: the platforms usually go on to based on did you
Speaker 1: do any research around the audiences your audiences or did
Speaker 1: that just just let it grow naturally.
Speaker 7: We let it grow naturally.
Speaker 1: And so you saw the audience growing and you thought,
Speaker 1: well that they are TikTok audiences and their Instagram audiences,
Speaker 1: and that you did what did you do in terms
Speaker 1: of analytics? It was your husband involved with this stage analytics, so.
Speaker 7: He was doing all of our ads.
Speaker 6: At the time, we didn't have anyone doing ads, and
Speaker 6: he went and launched it from one of his friends
Speaker 6: and he was pushing all the ads out of the
Speaker 6: same same with different size and they were going crazy.
Speaker 7: So we knew it was working.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so and so, how much of this was about,
Speaker 1: you know, being Lea and a friend being their authentic selves?
Speaker 1: Like what was what was it that was working?
Speaker 7: It was being our authentic selves. Honestly, that's what it was.
Speaker 6: Because when so she eventually left, say eight months after
Speaker 6: we reopened, she left to go overseas for an extended
Speaker 6: period of time. And when she resigned, I was like,
Speaker 6: we have to close the shop because I can't do
Speaker 6: that with anyone else.
Speaker 7: She's the only person I can do that with. I
Speaker 7: can't do this without her.
Speaker 6: It ended up that the girl that was filming us
Speaker 6: for the last eight months, because then it ended up
Speaker 6: that someone was filming us instead of us filming ourselves,
Speaker 6: she was She had listened to us for eight months
Speaker 6: every day, so she just jumped into that position someone
Speaker 6: else is filming and it just worked.
Speaker 7: So it was fine.
Speaker 6: But I think it's about being authentic, like seriously authentic.
Speaker 6: People know when you're being authentic.
Speaker 1: And when you're trying to be all that well, they
Speaker 1: don't like poopo full of shit, so.
Speaker 7: They can just tell you. You can see it, you
Speaker 7: can feel it.
Speaker 1: Nick and his team at Messina actually did disrupt at
Speaker 1: least here in Australia. I don't know anything about anywhere
Speaker 1: else soces, but at Lisia in Australia, what was considered
Speaker 1: to be the cutting edge of what ice cream should
Speaker 1: offer us. Prior to this, you could get your standard
Speaker 1: ice creams, you could get an ice cream shop if
Speaker 1: you get a fresh scoop and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: and you've got the you know, the visual thing you
Speaker 1: had a bit excited about looking at all the colors
Speaker 1: and all les sort of stuff. But what Nikinis to
Speaker 1: have done, the actual machine has actually become extraordinarily creative.
Speaker 1: In fact, you just have a little lab next door
Speaker 1: to your machine. Your main machine is sawed down here
Speaker 1: in Victoria Street. When did you discover or was this
Speaker 1: just a little foible of your own that innovation was
Speaker 1: going to be really cool and important.
Speaker 9: It came from having so many ideas in my head
Speaker 9: of all the different types of flavors. Because inspiration comes
Speaker 9: from everywhere I go and eat in a fine dining restaurant,
Speaker 9: the dessert would come out and I would, you know,
Speaker 9: break down the elements of that dessert and think, how
Speaker 9: can I turn that into an ice cream into a gelato?
Speaker 9: So deconstruct basically how how I could you know it
Speaker 9: can be as the inspiration comes from every anywhere. You know,
Speaker 9: we've made flavors with look of Mather's, We've made flavors,
Speaker 9: you know.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite.
Speaker 9: It just comes from from it from everywhere, and that
Speaker 9: back then you've only got X amount of flavors on
Speaker 9: that you can display at any one time.
Speaker 8: And so.
Speaker 2: How how do we.
Speaker 9: I'm capable of more than this, more than twenty flavors
Speaker 9: or thirty flavors, so you know, what do we do?
Speaker 9: And so that's come again coming from the restaurant background,
Speaker 9: we came up with the idea, well what do we
Speaker 9: do with a specialist menu where we constantly change? And
Speaker 9: the funny thing about that is that it coincided with
Speaker 9: kind of like the beginning of social media, right with
Speaker 9: all the Facebook and all that, thank God, And it
Speaker 9: was the perfect thing for social media hundreds right, it
Speaker 9: was perfect. It was it was like social media was
Speaker 9: made for that style of operation. Like I see a
Speaker 9: lot of my mates in the restaurant business, right and
Speaker 9: they post stuff and everything, and and you know they're
Speaker 9: always looking for shit to post to stay relevant. And
Speaker 9: it's just so hard, you know, when you're a restaurant
Speaker 9: because how many dishes can you change on a daily
Speaker 9: You can't, you know. So so for us it was
Speaker 9: this perfect thing where where every day we could come
Speaker 9: up with something new and we had something to talk.
Speaker 1: So is that the rhythm though every day? So do
Speaker 1: you do that like personally now? Yeah?
Speaker 9: Back no, Well, back then one of my business partners
Speaker 9: who another chef who he joined, he joined the team.
Speaker 9: He joined me and my brother Danny. We basically started,
Speaker 9: you know, he started posting on Facebook and stuff like that.
Speaker 9: And then we had another made of mind that we
Speaker 9: were sharing an office in Techlan who you know, he
Speaker 9: was x DJ, and like he was listening to us
Speaker 9: post stuffing us that you guys are doing all wrong.
Speaker 9: So he started doing it and then we thought, fuck it,
Speaker 9: you're doing a great job, man, why do you become
Speaker 9: a partner resource And now he's a partner, and so
Speaker 9: that's how the business has grown and we've just grown
Speaker 9: it this way. But like I said, social media for
Speaker 9: our brand was absolutely perfect. You know, it still drove
Speaker 9: the innovations it became. It was like a feedback loop, right,
Speaker 9: so you see that, you get a good response, so
Speaker 9: you keep doing it again. Right here we are ten, twelve,
Speaker 9: fifteen years later, still still doing it and we don't
Speaker 9: know any other way now. And the funny thing about
Speaker 9: that is that now we get kind of accused as
Speaker 9: being not a traditional gelato joint. We're an ice cream place,
Speaker 9: you know, which is absurd because if you want the
Speaker 9: huge thirty five traditional flavors, we still have them. It
Speaker 9: just just people gravitate to the specials, the five specials
Speaker 9: that we do every week, right, so.
Speaker 1: Excus you competitors and stuff.
Speaker 9: But the funny thing about that, yeah, I honestly couldn't
Speaker 9: give rats. But the funny thing about that is that
Speaker 9: you see all these guys start up, right and they're
Speaker 9: doing good products. You can't fault the product with the
Speaker 9: traditional hat on because they've gone to Bologna, they've learned
Speaker 9: how to make it. Now they've come and done their
Speaker 9: business the experts.
Speaker 2: That's great, but.
Speaker 9: Slowly, slowly slowly, slowly, you just see it creeping in
Speaker 9: that they starting to do more Australian stufle flavors more,
Speaker 9: you know, the non traditional Italian flavors are starting to
Speaker 9: come through because that's what the market wants.
Speaker 2: So why why would you fight it?
Speaker 1: You know, what's your most popular I mean, would you
Speaker 1: say you've got the most popular thing flavor?
Speaker 9: Yeah? It used to be used to be salted caramel, yep,
Speaker 9: and now now it's pistachio, prelling is your most popular
Speaker 9: most it's we can't.
Speaker 2: I don't get it.
Speaker 9: I just don't get it because pistachio traditionally has never
Speaker 9: really been a flavor that used to sell.
Speaker 2: But I don't know what is.
Speaker 9: I don't even I don't know what's gone on in
Speaker 9: the last three four years. But the world's just gone
Speaker 9: pistachio mad like and so yeah, it's a number one
Speaker 9: seller and buy a lot.
Speaker 1: So do you you must manufact for it or somewhere else?
Speaker 1: Do you know you're not down here?
Speaker 8: Right? No?
Speaker 9: No, So we've got our central factory in Marrickville, right,
Speaker 9: and we basically make everything in there. We don't buy
Speaker 9: anything in so everything is made there. So we've got
Speaker 9: our own haze nut farm in Seymour. We've got our
Speaker 9: own dairy farm. We grow on haze nuts. So we
Speaker 9: get our first commercial crop this year. We've got a
Speaker 9: little bit last year, but this year we'll get our
Speaker 9: first commercial crop. It won't be enough for the whole
Speaker 9: year for our needs, but it's a start. Hopefully within
Speaker 9: about two years will be self sufficient with haze nuts,
Speaker 9: so we don't have to import the hazelnuts from Italy.
Speaker 9: And it's an Italian variety so it's similar quality. And
Speaker 9: we've got our own dairy farm in America just twenty
Speaker 9: minutes out of shap Sheping I'm been talking about. And
Speaker 9: again just Jersey cows. You know, we've got about what
Speaker 9: to three hundred milking at any one time.
Speaker 1: Milk yeah, yeah, for your own needs, your own supply
Speaker 1: for and supply.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 9: We don't sell it to anyone else.
Speaker 1: What do you bring it up here? Cut it up here?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So we pasteuralize it on the farm and then
Speaker 9: we stick it in pelicans and every twice a week
Speaker 9: it comes up pastalizing.
Speaker 1: Being warm in the milk, up a bit of bacterias
Speaker 1: and you bring it up. Then you put it in
Speaker 1: a big tanker. You bring it up here and then
Speaker 1: you you turn it in the formula so and where.
Speaker 1: So I always saw it just down the radio. I
Speaker 1: thought that was your experimentation place. I thought these dudes
Speaker 1: were sitting in there and were like with hats and
Speaker 1: sort of you know, coming up with a whole lot
Speaker 1: of ideas. Chef hats to think, other ideas what to do.
Speaker 1: It's actually happening in miracle something. So when you first started,
Speaker 1: some of the mistakes, what are some in terms of
Speaker 1: business mistakes or flavor business stakes. Flavor is far and
Speaker 1: away the biggest mistake I made was, you know, we
Speaker 1: we just the brand started off being built with a.
Speaker 2: You know, we wanted to do multiple sites.
Speaker 9: We thought, yeah we could do you know, we could
Speaker 9: do fifty of these in Australia and discovered really quickly. Yeah,
Speaker 9: I discovered really quickly. The people that I did it
Speaker 9: with were lovely people, but they were more financial people.
Speaker 9: They were investors. And it was for me being an
Speaker 9: Italian background. And I mean I'm generalizing here, but Italians
Speaker 9: should stay away from multiple side operators. We're too emotionally
Speaker 9: attached to our businesses, you know, and you need to
Speaker 9: be it need to be a level of not ruthlessness,
Speaker 9: but a level of you need to be able to
Speaker 9: be content with, say, you need to be more consistent
Speaker 9: rather than worrying about the most amazing quality if you
Speaker 9: want to franchise, you know, and that's just not I'm
Speaker 9: not built that way. So it was a massive mistake
Speaker 9: opening up all those stores so quickly.
Speaker 1: So when did you happen?
Speaker 9: We happened that got to seven, I think six or seven,
Speaker 9: and it just was just a disaster. So they were
Speaker 9: down and just as this one was about to shut down,
Speaker 9: I thought, no, I did a deal with my partners
Speaker 9: and basically I said, you know what, you guys can
Speaker 9: have everything and I'll just take this on my own
Speaker 9: and basically just started there again, just just concentrating. There
Speaker 9: was never going to be no visions of grandeur. I
Speaker 9: just wanted one shop and it had to be the
Speaker 9: best JEO you could possibly make, and slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly,
Speaker 9: we just grew. We just grew organically. They're not franchised,
Speaker 9: they are all company owned.
Speaker 2: Soores so your.
Speaker 1: Stores in terms of distributing your product, At one stage
Speaker 1: you thought about it, you and your investors sort of
Speaker 1: better being up fifty soores you got to seven didn't
Speaker 1: work out? How do you just so in terms of
Speaker 1: distributing your product, now you have company owned stores, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but how else did you distribute like you distribute through
Speaker 1: wars or any.
Speaker 2: Of those environments.
Speaker 1: Stepped away from all of that, where do you go then?
Speaker 1: How do you just always gonna have it? It's just
Speaker 1: our store? So where else you are apart from Darlinghurst now.
Speaker 9: Darling Oh in Sydney, We're in Bondi, Surrey Hills.
Speaker 1: We're in.
Speaker 9: Brian Lea Sands, We're in where are we?
Speaker 1: How do you push the areas?
Speaker 9: I really wish I could say there was a scientific formula.
Speaker 9: It really is out of base.
Speaker 1: No, not at all.
Speaker 9: It's just we just think, is it a cool area?
Speaker 2: Do we like it?
Speaker 9: What's happening around us? It's if I was to present
Speaker 9: Messina as a business plan and picture to everyone, you'd
Speaker 9: raise five bucks, Like, seriously, how do you deal with that?
Speaker 8: I think for me, it was just another meeting in
Speaker 8: my day at the time, it was just another meeting
Speaker 8: in my day where I wanted to be able to
Speaker 8: be useful in you know, bouncing off ideas and really
Speaker 8: understanding the situation. I did.
Speaker 5: I did at one point in the meeting.
Speaker 8: It was probably early on think what you just said earlier,
Speaker 8: which was, why the hell did you buy this? I did,
Speaker 8: and I asked him. I just sort of like leaned
Speaker 8: over the table and I was like, Will, why did
Speaker 8: you buy this asset? Like?
Speaker 1: What is it? What'd you say?
Speaker 2: I'm don know.
Speaker 8: He leaned back a little bit in his chair and said, yeah,
Speaker 8: I don't know, literally said I don't know.
Speaker 5: And I thought, okay, that's a curious response. O could
Speaker 5: let's talk more about it.
Speaker 8: We sort of dug into and of course, you know,
Speaker 8: he bought it for really sound reasons, which then resonated
Speaker 8: with me as well. But yeah, the interaction was one
Speaker 8: that I think left me really curious about who he
Speaker 8: was and why he had this asset.
Speaker 5: I knew he didn't know retail and he wasn't an operator.
Speaker 8: He was an investor, And so that led to a
Speaker 8: bunch of conversations about the potential of this brand that
Speaker 8: had kind of been this latent asset that you look
Speaker 8: at it and you're like, there's gold there. There's such
Speaker 8: love and goodwill in this brand, and if we can
Speaker 8: reignite that it's got a whole future head there.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I was when you were saying that,
Speaker 1: when you said latent brand. The same sort of happened
Speaker 1: for Aaron Williams, the bootmakers and Apparel and Drives the Bone,
Speaker 1: and those sorts of brands which have sort of been
Speaker 1: more recently rescued more recently over the last few years,
Speaker 1: have been rescued by people like Will, wealthy individuals, and
Speaker 1: they've actually all doing very well now and apart from
Speaker 1: the other brands you mentioned, which are the more of
Speaker 1: the fashioned brands, like you said Camilla remark, but like
Speaker 1: those sorts of Australian brands that are well and they're
Speaker 1: doing well overseas. But those iconic brands you're talking about
Speaker 1: Lake in Oreton, they did get rescued by a number
Speaker 1: of people, and I think about it, and most of
Speaker 1: them are doing pretty well because they just need to
Speaker 1: be put some life back into them, which is I
Speaker 1: find quite interesting. And that no one else really recognized them,
Speaker 1: one of which the people didn't recognize as me, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty pissed off of myself they didn't actually think about this,
Speaker 1: But good on Will for doing that. A lot of
Speaker 1: people would be listening this Jenny, and they'd be saying
Speaker 1: to themselves that what they say to them is because
Speaker 1: these people tell me this stuff. They say, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I've I've got my business I'm running, or I've got
Speaker 1: my profession I'm doing and I and I go to
Speaker 1: seminars and I, you know, upskill PD days, Professional development days.
Speaker 1: I go to industry events to see who's winning awards
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And every now and then someone
Speaker 1: reaches out to me on LinkedIn or something of that
Speaker 1: and says, oh, I like what you're saying we're doing.
Speaker 1: Could we have a meeting, just a coffee catch up?
Speaker 1: And they say, And loads of people say to themselves
Speaker 1: say to me, I don't know whether I'm wasting my
Speaker 1: time or not because I've got so much, so many
Speaker 1: other things to do with my job, my job. Could
Speaker 1: I could be working seven days a week, twenty hours
Speaker 1: a day and still not get everything completely, which I'd
Speaker 1: imagine would be the case for someone working McKinsey's.
Speaker 8: But then again, had no time.
Speaker 1: They say, I've got no time, Craig. So do I
Speaker 1: say when someone like Will reaches out to me, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do I work out the priority list of who
Speaker 1: I should attend or where I should attend to or
Speaker 1: is this a bit of a luck game.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's a recipe to it.
Speaker 8: I think for me, having something clear that you're dedicated to,
Speaker 8: that's your personal strategy related to your career clearly important.
Speaker 8: I think there's a lot of people that I mentor
Speaker 8: and coach and see, especially young women who don't have that,
Speaker 8: and so all my work with them is what is
Speaker 8: that three year goal?
Speaker 5: What is that five year goal? How do you really
Speaker 5: shape something that you're moving towards.
Speaker 8: But if you're not open and opportunistic then about opportunities
Speaker 8: that you could never foresee, then what are you doing?
Speaker 5: Like that's not a way to live life.
Speaker 8: And so opening yourself to people you find interesting or
Speaker 8: have something curious that could contribute to how good you
Speaker 8: are as a leader or a human being, I mean,
Speaker 8: that's what life's about.
Speaker 5: So I think it's so important to stay open to that.
Speaker 1: Okay, before I get back, well, but just put a
Speaker 1: question to you. So I got a deadline deadliness at
Speaker 1: the end of February, I'm as a team and two
Speaker 1: thirds of the way through getting the deadline work completely.
Speaker 1: We'll probably make it, but like it's intense. I'm the leader,
Speaker 1: let's say it to you. You're the leader of the team.
Speaker 1: You might be the propriety of the business as well.
Speaker 1: It could be deadline relation of the business. Then four
Speaker 1: or five people reach out to you. Which ones just
Speaker 1: have a coffee?
Speaker 2: Catch up?
Speaker 8: Do you?
Speaker 5: How do you prioritize?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 8: I definitely think there's a periods of time you'd have
Speaker 8: the same thing, or your head's down, You're like, this
Speaker 8: is a period of time where I just external influences,
Speaker 8: like I have to say.
Speaker 5: Really focused.
Speaker 8: Typically for me, those are pretty short periods of time
Speaker 8: when I'm then in the prioritization mode. I mean, there's
Speaker 8: obviously links to the core nature of the business and
Speaker 8: things that could enhance what we're doing that make the list.
Speaker 1: What about you personally?
Speaker 2: Though?
Speaker 5: Personally?
Speaker 1: How it's going to help me personally? I don't mean,
Speaker 1: what can I learn from this individual? Is that important?
Speaker 5: Absolutely? I have that filter on all the time. I
Speaker 5: Mean I was like, what can I learn from Mark?
Speaker 8: How will this experience shape me and make me a
Speaker 8: better person and a better leader? And all of those
Speaker 8: things right, Partly just being nervous. As we talked about
Speaker 8: at the beginning, it's like, Okay, well, I'm probably going
Speaker 8: to learn something about myself that I'm either good at
Speaker 8: or need to work on, or something from Mark. And
Speaker 8: listened now to a ton of your podcast and I've
Speaker 8: picked up lots of things that otherwise I wouldn't have.
Speaker 8: So I think the curiosity of what you can learn
Speaker 8: from experiences and.
Speaker 5: People is tough on my list.
Speaker 1: Curiosity. I love it absolutely because that drives me when
Speaker 1: I have do this podcasts. And it does because I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here talking to someone. I look, I don't even
Speaker 1: read the brief for it. You're coming to be honest
Speaker 1: with the team sets it all up. I quickly quickly McKinsey,
Speaker 1: will Vicka's name, then Oreton, I thought of the Lame Boys,
Speaker 1: and then I think, well, it's gonna be a really
Speaker 1: good conversation for me because I'm going to learn something
Speaker 1: from you. That's why I do this, because I'm curious
Speaker 1: as to what I can learn. So if we're just
Speaker 1: talking to now our audience, people who are in business,
Speaker 1: the curiosity factor you're successful, and it's like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of ladders and snakes to get there. You're up
Speaker 1: and down, up and down. Eventually you're up there. And
Speaker 1: that's about consistency and you know, work ethic and all
Speaker 1: that other stuff. But how important is the curiosity factor
Speaker 1: and your success? How important has it been?
Speaker 5: Critically important? I try to I don't even try. It's
Speaker 5: just part of how I'm wired.
Speaker 8: The thing that I was most curious about when I
Speaker 8: first started was what's this whole fashion thing about? Like
Speaker 8: what's the X factor in fashion? And sort of digging
Speaker 8: into that, I think has then paved my first two
Speaker 8: and a half years at Orton in a very different
Speaker 8: way than I would have led otherwise. I mean, I
Speaker 8: was a commercial beast, like that was what I was
Speaker 8: trained to do.
Speaker 5: Analytical I could tear down the P and L.
Speaker 8: I could like diagnose the business and what do we
Speaker 8: have today and what do we want to be and
Speaker 8: build the strategy. But if I had just stayed in
Speaker 8: that place, I would have been a miserable failure. And
Speaker 8: I probably still think some days that I am a
Speaker 8: miserable failure, by the way, But being really curious about
Speaker 8: what what does fashion matter? Like what like is this
Speaker 8: a frivolous, superficial thing like it's super vain.
Speaker 2: It's what is it? You know, what is it?
Speaker 8: What is it? And and then you start learning things
Speaker 8: right that are really critically important, which is actually great
Speaker 8: brands fashion are not. But great brands create the fabric
Speaker 8: for culture, like they are deeply important, and fashion is
Speaker 8: deeply primal, like it's an expression of people's individuality and
Speaker 8: themselves in a way that has made it a massive
Speaker 8: industry financially but also has kept it around for something.
Speaker 1: So it must be something. There must be something in
Speaker 1: it because it's still here and it's massive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look at the richest person in the
Speaker 5: world that he is in fashion.
Speaker 8: So yes, So these are the discovery wor is that
Speaker 8: without actually being curious from the very first, you know,
Speaker 8: time I laid foot in the building, I would have
Speaker 8: just missed and I would have then gone down that
Speaker 8: path of the classic consultant coming in and you know,
Speaker 8: thinking about costs and ripping things out and looking at
Speaker 8: profit and so on and so forth. But there's a
Speaker 8: real X factor to be respected and cared for in
Speaker 8: our business and businesses like ours, which has to do
Speaker 8: with creativity, which is another whole area of I had
Speaker 8: never contemplated how important creative forces, sort of that magic
Speaker 8: fairy dust that you sprinkle throughout the value chain of
Speaker 8: our business, how important that was, And how to strike
Speaker 8: a balance between commerciality and creativity, a whole new charac