How Gymshark took on the sportswear giants - Carly Natalizia

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Uncensored CMO. Now one of my favourite brands is Jim Shark, and regular listeners will know that we had the wonderful Noel Mac, their chief brand officer on the podcast just a couple of years ago. Now one question that I get asked over and over again to cover on Uncensored CMO is the commercial side, so not just brand, but how do you activate and how do you deliver the commercial performance of a brand. So in this episode, I'm being joined by their chief commercial officer, Carlie, who tells me all about the secret to Jim Shark's continued success and commercial growth. This is an amazing episode. There's lots in it. Carlie is great. You'll love it. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you, and this is a lovely addition to my conversation with Noel from a couple of years ago. And I feel like everyone talks about sales and marketing, don't they? Yeah. And one bit of feedback I always get on the show is John, can you talk about commercials a bit more? You always talk about the nice sexy stuff on the brand side. We need to know how it's delivered and commercial. So I've got the other half of the equation. We're doing it now. But before we get into Jim Shark, it's an amazing story. You've got an amazing role. Tell us how you got to a Yosteg. If you have some high profile roles in finance in particular. Yeah, definitely. I mean, 25-year career at this point, but the first 18 years of it was actually spent in financial services for my sins. I've always been in marketing roles, always in very mostly in growth-focused businesses, a lot of digital roles as well. But yeah, 18 years in financial services, so I spent the first 10 years of my career at a company called MBNA, an American credit card company, since part of Bank of America, amazing place to start my career, amazing learning ground, really high expectations, very, very data-led, very commercial business, huge growth trajectory over those 10 years. So just year over year growth, like you've never seen before. I spent five years at Virgin Money, which I loved. So if you're going to be in banking, being in the Virgin Brand is a really fun place to do banking. It gives you the freedom to be a little bit more out there with how you go to market versus in other businesses. And then I made the jump over into the retail sector after those first 18 years. I spent three and a half years at the very group, and then I've now been with Jim Shark coming up on four years. So yeah, retail sector, hugely different, massive shift, but loved every minute of it. That's an amazing trajectory. Looking back, have you ever go back to young Carly and give her one bit of advice? Having done all that, wouldn't be? I think I would, so the very early me, I would say, chill out a bit. It's all going to be fine. You don't need to just kind of rush you way through things. And then I think I would just say, back yourself. Have the confidence. I think I'm much, much more confident now. I think a lot of that just comes with age and experience too. In my 20s, I doubted myself so much. And I think I probably could have just backed myself a little bit more, push myself a little bit harder. I don't know that I would do it differently though. I think that kind of a little bit of reticence to push myself has made me build my career in a different way, which I actually reflect back and think is a good way to do it. But taking a little bit of that self-doubt away, I think, would have helped me. I'd have been exactly the same as you. I just think, like, take the jump, right? Because also when you're young, you've got less commitments. It doesn't matter as much if it goes wrong. And you've got that kind of energy and I'll try anything kind of thing. I just think I wish I'd just taken the bets. Because often you learn, don't you, when you make the jump. But that's when you learn the most. It's actually jumping slightly ahead of when you think you should. Yeah, yeah. Which is absolutely the opposite of what I've done. So I've kind of waited to tell him super ready, then probably have been ready for ages, and then have made the jump. But I actually think that's allowed me to then approach it all with huge confidence because I've had this really solid grounding to know, I can really do this. This is not a stretch beyond what I'm capable of doing. And so I've been able to deliver with confidence without that horrible self-voiced, like that nagging thing in the back of your mind making a new question whether or not you're ready. That's real, isn't it? That is real. And I feel that. And it's funny actually, when you get to the point in your career, when you just go, oh, I do know something. You know something. It takes it while I was saying, oh, yeah. You suddenly kind of talk something else, your advice. Yeah, I do know what I'm talking about, you know? Yeah, exactly. Which is good to discover. So what inspired the move from finance to fitness? Because completely different industries aren't that, and different cultures and so on. I mean, when you spend 18 years in financial services, you know a lot about financial services. So I kind of got to the point where I was like, oh gosh, am I a banker? Or am I a marketer? Because I'm only really a marketer if I can go and do this on another sector. Because otherwise, I just know banking really well. And banking is a really interesting industry, because you've got nothing to touch. You're creating propositions for a customer's, basically, out of thin air. You're trying to convince them to get engaged with something that let's face it. They don't always necessarily want to engage in. We don't all kind of like jump out of bed in the morning and think, I want to think about my finances today. And so really what I wanted to do was push myself to go. A bit like we just said, get proof to myself, I can do this. And I can do this in a different sector. I was really lucky to get an opportunity at the very group. So the very group is kind of, you know, mostly a retailer, but also partly financial services, because there's a credit offering that underpins that customer proposition. And so I was able to go into a retail part of the business, but in a place where my financial services knowledge was hugely valuable. So that again gave me that boost of the confidence that I would be able to add value straight away whilst learning retail. And I moved into that business in very much a sideways step, I guess, back to the point of it. If I'm going to change businesses, I want to go in at the level that I know I can deliver at and add value immediately. And I didn't know how long it was going to take me to learn retail and whether that was going to be a big adjustment. I think within about four or five weeks, I realised, other than a ton of different acronyms and a huge pace to retail, which I think is very different to financial services. Actually, understanding your customer, how do I reach them, how do I get their attention? It's all the same. You're just thinking about a different product. And this time you've got a product they're excited to get engaged with. So that's really fun. And was able to quite quickly progress through that business. And so yeah, that again gave me the boost. I was suddenly responsible for a creative studio. So we had models and we were shooting product and all these things that never existed in financial services. I found that so energising. The pace of retail is like nothing I've ever seen. In financial services, you can get your results over a month, a quarter, a year. You don't need to worry by day. In retail, you lose a day's trade and that trade has gone. And so the pace of reacting to commercial performance was very, very different. But there's so much data to feed off that I loved that part of it. Yeah. And anyone I talked to in retail, I was blown away by how fast it goes. Because I guess in my background, FMCG, well, I suppose you're fast moving. But you might plan something for nine months or 12 months out in terms of product innovation or new campaigns. In retail, things are changing literally every single week. It's like, what price are we going to be this week? What we're going to promote this week? What are your products will be launched in the, or how many will be products will be launched in this week? And the pace and the competition in retail is intense. Tracking your market share every single day. It's a real place to cut your teeth, isn't it? It really is. And you have to react so quickly, right? You put a product live, you think it's going to fly, it doesn't. You've got to react. The reverse happens. You put a product live. It's flying off the shelves. You can't keep it in stock. You have to react. So the reaction speed is the thing that's different. But I'm a naturally fast pace person. So that just, that works for me and I enjoy it. Amazing. Right. Now, for anyone who doesn't know Jim Shartt, now I know in the UK, I've always heard Jim Shartt, but people listening to the US and other parts of the world may not know about Jim Shartt. Just give us a short summary. Because the story is amazing. I mean, ultra-competitive category, Nike and Adidas and hugely powerful brands. You've taken on the giants and been rather successful. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it goes back to 2012. So our founder CEO, Ben Francis, back in the day was, he couldn't find the clothes that he wanted to wear for the gym. And so he basically got himself a sewing machine. He learned how to make them. And he started making those products for himself. So he was very much, it was born out of, he could see a gap in the market because he knew he didn't have what he needed. So he started just diving in and doing it for himself. And he literally built the business that we have today from a garage at home in Birmingham. We're still headquartered in Birmingham today. And the brand now sells in 230 countries around the world. We've been hugely successful, largely in e-commerce, D2C, until much more recently. So massively fast-paced growth off the back of those very humble beginnings. It's incredible, Stephen. I mean, my name's Steve. No, I've got a pleasure of coming around and having a look. It's an amazing place. Obviously, you've got an amazing gym, right? I kind of expected that. But the space is amazing. We do have podcast studios, all sorts of things going on. So anyone who's thinking about a job, it's-- Yeah, go check it out. Definitely. And yet, our gym is amazing. We've got the lifting club that's there for all of our staff to use. Best gym I've ever been in. Yeah, pretty impressive. Now, I wanted to know what it's like working for Ben, right? So he is-- I think he is the UK's youngest billionaire. One of the most successful people in the country, bat himself, been hugely successful, and built an amazing brand. What's it like working for somebody like that? Yeah. Well, I think the first thing to say is-- because people always ask me, is he actually in the business? So he is in the business. He's literally in the office every single day. I think when you work for a founder, the energy that they bring is just different, right? Because there's no work-life balance there. It's like work-and-life for him is all one thing. He lives and breathes the brand. He's always on. His expectations are really high. He wants to do everything tomorrow. He's always buzzing with ideas. And so I think there's just an energy that comes with working with a founder that is very different to working for a CEO of a business in another environment. He is great to work for. He and I click-- really well because I think at the core of it we've got really similar values. So, you know, we've had really similar upbringing, we've got the same hard work, ethos, I think we're both very optimistic, we're focused on self-development, so at the core of it we've got a lot of those natural aligned values, then how we work is so different. And so it gels really well because we're really opposite. The things he's amazing at, his superpowers are literally the opposite of mine. When we come to a discussion, we often start from a very different place. And so, you know, the debates that we're able to have and, you know, influence each other and educate each other on how we're thinking about things. And it just works really, really well for us to find that middle ground in the middle. You've got to take a closer look really beautifully actually. I love the way it's aligned on values and then differentiate on skills or competencies basically. That makes some sense, right? Because if you're not aligned on values, you're not pushing in the same direction, you create friction. And equally, if you employ everyone to do what you can already do, there's no point doing that either. So I think that's really really smart. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, he's there to build 100 year brand, right? He's making decisions for the long term. So I think if you're going to work in a founder environment, you have to believe in the mission. So, you know, we know we're trying to make decisions to build a 100 year brand and we're aligned on that, but the way that we think about getting there will be different. And that's where there needs to be tension. And I think the worst thing you can have around a founder is lots of yes people. And so I think the ability to bring an opinion to the table, have a debate is really important. And the brilliant thing about Ben is he's really open to that. So he wants to be challenged. He listens. And because he's so focused on self development, he's building his picture, he's learning, he's understanding, and then he does, he will change his mind. You know, he does start from a strong viewpoint. As do I, honest, they would both probably start with really strong viewpoints, but he will, you know, listen to the people around him and round out his views. And he does change his mind. That's really good to know. How do you deal when you have like literally, why happens when you literally have completely opposite point of view on something? How do you kind of get through that? I think it take, you have to be quite a resilient person and have quite a lot of strength. The character I would say. So if we're in that place, I might just say, I've got a different view. Let's discuss or on popular opinion, I'm going to chuck it out there. And then we just get into the discussion. I think the other good thing that we have is there's a good disagreeing commit at the end, right? Like we might think different things, but 99% of what we're dealing with are not right and wrong questions. It's a decision that we're making about a direction that we're going in. And so sometimes I share my view, he doesn't agree. We disagree and then we commit and I move on and I'm back idea 100%. I love your disagree and commit because often when teams fall apart because you disagree and you don't commit because like, well, I thought this, I thought that and it becomes this big issue between you, whereas actually going, right, we're calling it and we're doing this and I'm all in. Exactly. And I think you can do that when you felt hurt, right? It's easier to commit when it's like, okay, I've been hurt, but I get it. The rounded decision has gone in a different direction and that's cool. So then you have to get on board. I love what you're saying about being a founder or the traits of being a founder because you're right. They do think in much longer terms. Yeah. And when you're thinking in terms of years and decades, you make entirely different decisions in terms of investing for the future, building a team out, you know, not just chase in the next quarter's results, really. Exactly. I read this amazing book called The Founders Mentality and it kind of looked at founder led organization between commit corporate ones and it brought it down to three things. It was frontline focus. In other words, what founders are greater is being with the customer every single day. Right. And it's amazing how like founders will often be, you know, in, well, in Ben's case in the gym, right? He was the customer. Exactly. Yeah. He's in the gym. He's talking to these people all the time. The second one was a bias fraction. And that's what you see in founder organizations. I spent a very short period of time at Brew Dog and about three months anyway, but it had James on the show actually last week, which is great. But the, I mean, his question to me was always, how can it happen 10 times quicker? Yeah. And it's just the stretch of your thinking, that kind of sense of how do we do it faster? And we're going to learn from it and we'll improve it. And you know, a corporate company will have an 18 month road map, you know, and you know, small business will do that in 12 weeks, which is very exciting. Ben definitely has the bias fraction. I think as well, when you, when you're dealing with a founder, they've got, there's a risk appetite to do things wrong. So I think sometimes in a corporate environment, things can take ages because they've got to be perfect because failure is not an option. I always say like, one of Ben's superpowers is he's really happy for something not to work. And so, you know, going a little bit faster and accepting that some things will work amazingly and will double down, some things won't and will stop. He's got that natural risk appetite. And he, he bounces back from something going wrong faster than anything I've ever seen in my life. And that's something that I'm really trying to lean into and learn from. That's really pathlessly. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, because we are, yeah, corporate life is really about risk mitigation as well. Yeah. Rather than risk opportunity. Yes. And this, that's the different kind of mindset. I like, the way you've just said that is how you bounce back from a failure says everything, doesn't it? Because you're going to learn from it, improve it, go again. I'm going to use, you know, use it to kind of not do the right thing. Yeah. Which is the danger, isn't it? Yeah. That's really fascinating. Now, we've got some breaking news, haven't we, on the show, you've just got a new role. I do. So tell us about the new role. So, I'm just transitioning out of Chief Digital Officer into Chief Commercial Officer. So essentially what the Chief Digital Officer role was, was our end-to-end digital customer experience. So all of our offsite paid marketing, things like CRM and our loyalty programme and how we manage our customer base, and then also our e-commerce experience. Essentially what the Commercial Officer role does is roles in other channels of business alongside that. So after having many successful years as an e-commerce only business, we're now venturing into Omni Channel. So we've got retail stores and we've also got some wholesale and franchise partnerships. So really thinking about any way that a customer can interact with Jim Sharp product and purchase, whether that's through our website or through one of our physical environments, all of that now will be in one place. So we're able to really see things as the customer does. And how do you keep yourself close to the customer as well? Because I mean customer obsession is such an important part of the role, isn't it? Yeah and I think, well I mean there's a brand of Jim Sharp. We've got so many people, we can talk to it at different times, right? So we can physically get people together. So through our community events, so we do big lift events, for example, where thousands of our community are there and you can literally, you can literally stand in the middle of your customer and be completely surrounded by them. You can see how they're behaving with each other, you can see what they're wearing, you can see what they're queuing for, what they're excited by. We've got an insider's programme where our customers are very active in giving us feedback about different things that we put out to them. We'll have user trials on products that we're planning to launch. And so yeah, we consume customer feedback from every direction. I also think a lot of us as a business just live and breathe it. So we're all in the gym, people are lifting and so you understand it a little bit through the own lens of your fitness experience as well. That's true. You're unusually in that you can be the customer at your old pace of work because you've got a whole big gym and you've got classes going on there as well. So you get to sort of like, you know, the feedback is instant really. And it can be dangerous. Yeah, it can be dangerous though, because then you start to think, well, I'll straw poll of one, I know, it's important to make sure where our customer, our news that we're listening to them all of the time as well. Now one of the challenges often find when talking to kind of CMOs and senior leaders like you is the difference between being a functional expert on a thing like I'm the threat to consumer expert, I manage digital through to leading an organisation and a large team. You've got a couple of hundred people probably under you kind of working for you. What are the tips to how to be an effective leader in the C-suite and lead others? I mean, I think within the C-suite, I think in a role like I've got the important thing is peer relationships like they go right, because if you've got a marketing budget and you haven't got a strong relationship with your CFO, then that's not going to be a good recipe. If you're in any kind of customer-facing role and you haven't got that good relationship and engagement with your CTO so that you understand how all of the technology is working. So I think you've got to be quite literate in all the different areas so that you can engage through peers. I think in terms of leading a team, I mean, I just try to keep communication channels high as much repetition as possible of what the priorities are, we have our OKRs that we execute and so that filters down through the team and I just try and stay as connected as I can on a personal level with people. It gets harder and harder because when people ask for time, my bias is to say yes, let's have time and obviously as the team gets bigger, that gets harder. And so for me, it's about really making sure that my leadership and I are really aligned so that I know that they can represent that with the teams as well. Well, talking about peer relationships, of course, working with no, your dynamic duo combination. Reason to ask you about this is I think in my experience, in most organisations, the friction you get between the kind of sales and marketing function is probably the biggest fault line in most organisations, but one thinking long term, one thinking short term, one valuing price, one valuing equity, it's where a lot of attention can come out. So how do you and know work together for the benefit of the business? It's an interesting one because on paper, you've basically got two marketing professionals in the same executive team, which isn't how most people would draw out an or great, you wouldn't necessarily start there. It works amazingly well for us. So I think firstly, no one on that I've just got a great relationship. So I think just straight out the gate, we invested in our personal relationship and we built trust with each other. So there's huge respect there. There's a really nice Venn diagram as to how we work together. So his superpowers and his amazing skills are literally the opposite of mine. And so it's always really, really clear when he should lead on something or when I should lead on something. But we've got this lovely bit in the middle where I think we just both believe in, Roedd i Berlyagogue hen oestau pwared iawn un gyda eich ni'n gweld hungryfyr ar yna dog genach yn y wneud hynny. Mae'r hynny'n gwneud i'r gwybod am amdwyr a gydynnau. 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Elawwyr pot oedd oedindu syddioipping osighsu cyflwyn beasts gayfnworiawyr raceau mae, yma gweissau'i gwyll excessive esid and *Bychau bre am y fSP 않 Afterwell* I swear, mae'n terweolut syddio ag bro fleegog fo fo byg fwysioor wedi yna ond some of those more customer-focused conversations that we get into as an exec team. It's often the case, actually. If organisations would go one way or the other, most of them, I think, default more to sales and commercial experience people in the C suite rather than market, who marketing can often be within the commercial function-counselt rather than having a voice. So to have two marketers in the C suite, I think it's amazing. I mean, personally, I'm very biased. I've done three roles in my career that have been commercial sales roles. And I've done really well in all of them. And I've really, really, really enjoyed it. Because I think, for me, what I've been able to do is I've been able to bring consumer insight into the conversation, which has been super powerful. The second thing is, I'm thinking long-term as well. So if customer says to me, you know what would work in this category as if we had this product, a normal commercial person would just bat that away. And I'll go, "Harkest all that for you." And if I did do that, would you list it in all your stores? You know, that kind of thing. So thinking about that. And also understanding how to bring brand value into the customer. So most commercial people just think about the deal, think about how many sales are going to go through that week. But you can leverage the power of the brand. You know the power of the brand. So you know what you're dealing with with customers in a way that I think a pure commercial person would just be maximizing the short-term over the long term. Yeah, absolutely. And we know, when we have big brand moments or when a product really resonates with our consumer, the commercials just follow. So the sales job, if you will, is so much easier when the brand and the product is firing on all cylinders. And we talk about it as the product is that it all ships rise when our community loves the product. And so that's at the heart of our business. And then we just need to make it through the channels of business as easy as we can for it to reach the right customers. And then it will just fly. So the sales job is a lot harder when the brand isn't there. And so the two have to work together. And so I think we both recognize that across the C-suite, everybody recognizes it. So we're not having to convince anybody that that's the case. And that's when we win. Great marketing makes sales easy, doesn't it? So easy. Yeah. I know I launched Mountain Dew years and years ago in the UK. And it was just such an incredible success that literally we had to allocate certain quantities to each customer's because we couldn't fulfill everything. And it's just the easiest thing ever. If you get all the brand bits rights, then you get customers asking you for things rather than negotiating on the price. Exactly. I guess that when you launch a new range. And I'm like, how much of this can we have? Can we have it first? Yeah. And that's the nice debate. And we're like, oh my gosh, we need to chase more of this product. We know this is going to sell out way faster than we thought. Those are the nice challenges then to have as a team to be responding to. All right, all right. Sorry to interrupt this conversation. I promise you it's for a good cause. So I've just put a rather large deposit down on a very big venue in central London called the Outernet that can hold 400 people. It's an amazing venue. Now, we're going to be doing the very first unscented CMO the calling. Now, what is the calling? The calling is your opportunity to join us live and be inspired by the world's best founders, the most inspirational CMOs and the best thought leaders. This is one day that will completely transform your career, I promise. It will be well worth it. I'm so excited to be doing this. And if you want to find out more details, please go to the show notes and check it out. And I really look forward to seeing you there. It's on the 21st of April. Do not miss it. Now, back to the show. Now, one of the, I think, challenges any successful startup has is how do you sustain that growth, right? And I noticed that you're a last fall financial year. You cleared 600 million for the first time. So congratulations on that. And the brand has been around 12, 13, 14 years now, isn't it? So it's not the new brand on the block. So what's the state creature's sustainable growth? Yeah. Well, I think we've-- the bulk of that time has been e-commerce direct to consumer. Very much a global brand. So customers can buy Jim Shark, as I say, in over 230 countries around the world. So hugely successful from a digital availability perspective, if you think about it that way. The next stage of our growth really is about expanding into physical availability. Our brand is foreign analysts, cylinders. People know what it is that we're there to do. Now we just need to get in front of more people and make Jim Shark more accessible. And so very much the next phase of growth is all about Omni Channel and how we bridge that gap into physical availability. There's still people who, when they're trying a new brand, particularly a powerl, they want to see it touch it, feel it. And so there's only so much you can do through digital experiences to help them understand the product. And so when you put it in the store, I mean, the first time I walked around our region street store and saw the product, I mean, even I, I'd been responsible for e-commerce for a little while by that point. I was like, I don't think I've even seen this product on our website. When you see it in the store, it just brings it to life in such an amazing way. So the next phase of growth for us is really all about that physical availability. And I think people forget that the shop window effect, because the shop is not just to buy. The shop is there to basically sell the brand as well and get people that will come back. Now we must talk about your teacher, of course, and anyone who's not watching this is listening, you've got a New York teacher because-- New York teacher. You've just launched your first flagship store in-- It is. --not just New York, but in Bond Street. Bond Street. Anyone doesn't know New York has a Bond Street like we do as well, which is very premium real estate. Yeah. Yeah, it's an amazing building yet. So we went live with that store, Middler, December. So we've traded it all over the Christmas period in the new year. The launch was phenomenal. So I was there for launch weekend. We were closing up the shop on the Friday evening, the staff had just got everything ready for the launch on the Saturday. And literally as they were locking the door, the first people started queuing. So fully overnight in New York, which was subzero temperatures at that point in time, people were setting up their camp chairs, sitting by the front door, because they wanted to be the first ones through the doors. Those particular customers had also flown in from another part of the US, so they had traveled to make sure they were there. We arrived on the morning of the launch, and the queues were literally looping around the block, thousands of people queuing to be the first ones through the door. So I think for a retail store opening to get that kind of reaction from the community, it just shows that our customer is ready to experience Jim Shark more in real life. The following day after the launch, I went into some of the retail stores in and around the Jim Shark store. They obviously didn't know that I was from Jim Shark. And the staff were commenting on how I'd seen the Jim Shark queues the day before, because it blew their mind. They hadn't seen a reaction for any brand of that scale. So we were really proud of the launch. The stores done amazingly well in terms of trade over that period. We got over $1 million within the first 18 days, which is a pretty phenomenal milestone to hit. And it's got also lovely community spaces within it. So just like we do in our region street store, where we bring the community in, we're going to be able to do all of that in the Bond Street store for our US consumer. So it's very much for us, a stake in the ground for the US, and the beginnings of big growth ambitions to expand our IRL footprint out there. I mean, the only thing I've seen close to what you describe is probably supreme. When I go to New York, I usually stay in Barry and opposite the hotel I stay in, there's a supreme store. And it shut most of the time. And then every now and then it opens, and they restrict them on people that can go in. And they're massive queues, whatever the weather, all around the corners are there. It just feels like it's quite very impressive. Yeah, it's an exciting reaction. And some of it is product that they know there's going to be product exclusives there. Some of it is the athlete partnerships that we have as a business and they're keen to come and meet their heroes in that environment. And so all different reasons why they feel passionate about being there. But to be able to have that level of community reaction is pretty special. That is amazing. Some good news for you, actually. Because before this, I ran all your latest campaigns through the system on database just to go, how's it all going? And the outdoor campaign you've just done, 4.7 stars out of five stars on the system one database. We love to hear it. And also outdoors quite hard to get right, actually, because it's static. You've got a couple of seconds to grab people's attention and communicate the message. I thought your campaign was both kind of funny and obvious and memorable as Jim Sharp. Yeah, and the message is so simple, right? We do Jim. It's a very simple message. Some of the visuals were-- really, really powerful. We love that message. I think it's also been a really amazing rallying cry inside the business. Just to be able to be like, no, we know why we're here. We do Jim. We talked earlier about Noel. He finishes every presentation with, we are Jim Shogh, we do Jim. And it's just, it is that. Just reminder of why we're here, what we do. And so that we've always got that reminder of the core of our business. I love the simplicity and focus of your organization, because you might think that just focusing on Jit, he says, just focusing on Jit. Now is it down? In a weird way, it kind of opens up. I was listening to the CEO of Nvidia, and he said for a long, long, long time, before they got into AI, they were obsessed about only being the best gaming chip. We just want to be the best chip that can make gaming experience brilliant, right? It turned out accidentally, by doing that, they became the best AI, because by solving a gaming problem, they created an AI solution. And I see, and the game sometimes not stretching yourself being really super clear about who you're for, what you're for, and how you're going to do it. I think it's quite liberating. And that's in its purest sense, that strapline is exactly. Exactly. And you need to be amazing at your core to have permission to do anything else. So we're not making the best apparel to wear in the gym. Why would anybody trust us for anything else anyway, right? So we have to do that. That's the non-negotiable that we have to deliver for our consumers. I have permission to even engage with them about anything else. Now, Tom, like you and Noah's, but something else you remind me of, I had Thomas Barter on the show, and he came up with this lovely rebel matrix, right? Which is really stuck to me actually from the conversation to have with him. The basis is really simple, ideas at one side, execution on the other side. And he said, most marketers tend to fall somewhere in the ideas or execution, right? Because some people are like, I'm more on the ideas than my team will vouch for this one. But I'm always thinking about the ideas and what we could do. But ideas are worth nothing unless you can execute. And of course, the rebel CML, the rebel marketers, he was describing it, is the one in the top right that can figure out both the idea and execution. And he advice on how to get those two things working together, giving them how well you and Noah kind of seem to have got this cut. Yeah, I mean, he is definitely the ideas, man. So he settles on that side of the camp definitely. I would say I'm an executor. It's an interesting one because I would have always said, I'm not a very big creative ideas thinker, but I am very good at creative problem solving. So when I've got the idea there, like how to navigate getting that out and making it happen, definitely my sweet spot. I think you need both kinds of people ultimately, right? And you need an organization where there's respect for both of those things. And there's the right interaction and handoff points between the two. And yeah, the trust that someone's going to take it and run with it and go and make it happen. But I think ultimately you need both, for finding somebody who's excellent at both of those things, I think is hard. I think that's a real unicorn kind of individual. And so create an environment where people are able to co-create and bring those two things together, I think is important. Your problem solving point is really spot on actually because I think one of the skills I've developed is to work out how to apply creative to the commercial context of the organization. And this is something a lot of people miss. Is you have to work out what does the organization need? What does it value? And what is it capable of doing? Because you can come out of the great new Jim Shark idea, but if it isn't aligned to how the business operates and what people feel passionate about and where their skills are, that's not going to work. So translating an idea to actually this is an idea that we could execute in the organization and also working back from almost saying, what are we uniquely in a position to do? Exactly, because there's loads of things you could do, but not necessarily lots of things you should do. And I like to think that's where I can add a lot of value, because I think there's so many things we as Jim Shark can do, but being able to really be strict about prioritising and thinking, but that's the thing that's going to move the needle or this is the commercial problem that we're trying to solve and that's a good answer and connecting those two things together. Otherwise, we're just doing cool stuff, right? Which is also fun, but it's nice to do cool stuff that you can immediately see the next day. You'll be like, okay, we can now see this in the performance of the business. That is super rewarding. I totally agree. It's funny actually, you reminded me. So we're just about to launch the first uncensored CMO live event. Nice. And we took a massive brave pill. It was a bit like you guys openly, not on the same level, but opening up on the street in New York. It was like, are we actually going to do this? How much does it cost to put this on? But we're kind of thinking, well, what are we uniquely positioned to as a podcast team, right? And we thought, well, we have a big audience of marketers, mostly C&M marketers, which is amazing. So we have the audience. We have access to best talent in the world through our people that come on the show and the network that we've got. So we can get the talent. We can get the audience. If we can put on the event theoretically, it'll happen, sort of thinking about to what are uniquely positioned to do. Definitely. And sometimes you do just have to go for it, right? So now that you've booked it, you'll figure it out. This is the thing. I realize sometimes you have to commit. It's a bit like, actually, it's a bit like fitness, isn't it? I find you kind of have to say to somebody, I'm going to meet you there, and we're going to go for a ride. And then you can't get out of it. Whereas you don't do that. You can wiggle out of it when the demons sort of start nagging. Exactly. And there's a lot of that that's happened for Jim Shag. If I think back to when the region street store was initially an idea, the team were actually tasked with finding a pop-up, a 12-month pop-up space. And then Ben just challenged them. She'd be like, no, no, we're going to go straight for a flagship. And we were like, do we know how to run a flagship? And it's like, well, we'll figure it out now that we've signed a lease, right? So he enjoys that sometimes that forcing mechanism to make sure we get there. That, I think, is a unique trait of a founder, actually. Is the belief in yourself is so great that you will take the leak without knowing all the answers. And you'll back yourself to discover the answers as you go. Whereas I've found, it's taken me a long time to get to that point. I want to know all the answers first and make the safe bet. And I think that's a real difference. Founders have got that almost unshakable belief that they're going to win eventually. Exactly. And it's that gut feel, isn't it? So it's hard for him to articulate that. But when it's guttulling him, this is the thing to do. Then he backs it. And then look at the success that Regent Street has been. So he was completely crushed. Well, well done. Yeah, exactly. So looking at your gym shock experience, your new role, what you've achieved. If you could pick one thing, if there's one thing that people listening could take out of your journey to hear and what you've done. What are the things I think about my journey that can be a little bit different? Is when I've moved between businesses, I've taken sideways moves into businesses to give myself a really good grounding to learn quickly and move upwards within that business. And so I was like, yeah, don't chase the promotions. Don't seek to be promoted maybe a little bit before you're ready. Just take those experiences. Like take the sideways steps, say yes to the new thing and see what evolves from there. And in my experience, it all comes good over time. Titles overrated experience is underrated. Always go for experience over the title. And I think particularly when you're young, you just think, I must get the senior brand manager title. I must be VP of global marketing or whatever. And actually it's the experience that will make you successful, not a title. - Agreed completely. - Great, that's top advice, Carly, thank you so much. - Thank you. - So I hope you enjoyed that episode of Unsense to CMO as much as I enjoyed making it. Now by the way, I've got a new newsletter. So if you'd like to get my thoughts on the one thing that I take out from each episode every week, then do subscribe to the one thing newsletter. I'd really appreciate it. Also, I have another podcast. Just launched Unsense and Renegades with the fabulous Corey Marchesoto. She is one of the world's best CMOs. She's an absolute rock star. Every week we pick one topic, spend 20 minutes trying to fix it. So check out that. It's in your feed Unsense and Renegades. And finally, I want to give a huge thank you to my sponsor, System One. They generously provide so much support for this podcast. It would not happen without them. It's a big thanks and lots of love to System One. I'll see you next time.