What Bellroy Got Right That Most Startups Get Wrong

we created between the three of us nine different ideas we sort of thought most of them would fail hungry for profit and patient for growth and that that would be how Bellry needed to function we went from seven wallets a day on the website to 30 wallets a day on the website but if the product isn't loved by the customer I think that that's the problem number one when I think about what am I trying to do here it's like whoa and then you say a bunch of things and then you think man was that too heavy like was I short on kindness there was that like an overdose of honesty and an absence of kindness it's it's hard to kind of get the leadership thing right it turned out everything was fine but then it's like well is the worrying helpful is it the thing that focuses the mind I think that there's an advantage that a founder CEO probably has all the way up to the top of the list I think that there's an advantage that a founder CEO probably has up to the moment where that advantage becomes a disadvantage welcome to the executive espresso I'm Verge Das Neves and this is where senior leaders talk honestly about the decisions doubts and trade-offs behind their titles no rehearsed answers no leadership slogans just the stories of what it actually takes to build lead and keep going when the answer is not always that obvious now before we begin this season is made possible by the team of our partners ProSite Change Management and Boyd and Moore Executive Search three partners who believe in better work better leadership and better conversations our guest today is an engineer who helped build one of Australia's most loved product companies and she did it the patient way no shortcuts no rush to raise money just good people a great product and a longer game than most founders have the nerve to play this is a conversation about what it actually takes to build something that lasts Lina Calabria welcome to the executive espresso thanks Verge nice to be here thank you so take me back to the beginning so doing research on your profile and your background qualified as an engineer yep and now you run this sort of fashion brand right can you sort of take me back to those early days yeah I mean we might get there but we don't really see it as a fashion brand so like asterisks on the I'm like fashion brand what brand so early days the engineering degree I met my partner Matt and his brother Andy and Matt and I both doing engineering also Andy doing engineering in a different uni and we started talking about that we thought it was really cool the way businesses create value in the world and while we went off and sort of did our own careers we just kept chatting about it would be really great to do something together to sort of see what businesses could do we kind of had a wacky ambition and ended up starting um nine different things one of them was a um a website development company and so it then created other things but but we created between the three of us nine different ideas we sort of thought most of them would fail um Bellroy was one of them you know my background had really developed into supply chain and sales planning and those sorts of activities and I think that's where we kind of got into it is Matt was in tech and legal data and Andy very much design and product and I think maybe the three of us had the right mixture of skills that what we noticed when Bellroy launched amongst all the other ones was that immediately the customers loved what we were doing and maybe we didn't quite know how to be profitable immediately or how to get lots of sales immediately but like customers were just saying hey I really love this slim wallet thing that you've done and we thought okay well if the customers like it then we're going to do it that's probably the thing to put some fire underneath yeah if you can think back to those early days was there a moment in time when you thought hey we've we've got something here like you could turn that interesting idea into actually a profitable business yeah I mean there's lots of little baby moments I think I think the first moment was that customers started saying oh we really like your product um so that was sort of step one that meant okay this is the thing to lean into it was interesting because this was 2010 that we launched and then about two or three years in um this is pre-e-commerce being a really big deal as well and so google ads had started to become a thing and we thought we thought a lot about would those bits of blue text be bad for the brand or would they be okay and the I wasn't involved in this piece of work but what they did and I was watching it thinking this is fascinating is they said okay if we're going to do ads on google the thing we need to do is make it a really amazing experience so that was where the slim your wallet campaign was born from they created a landing page that a customer would come to if they clicked the ad that they saw in the search results and I think like after that campaign went live we went from seven wallets a day on the website to 30 site within a week um and that was huge and and that kept growing so that slim your wallet idea that we'd created really really landed and we then spent the next couple of years kind of production constrained and like having to be in the factory in India trying to increase production because that was working incredibly well so I think in those very early years I think um a the customers loving it and be seeing the success of the slim your wallet campaign and I think that's a really amazing thing that we've done and I think that's a really amazing thing that we've done and I think it was something that was really resonating for customers um to bring growth were probably two of the key like actually we've got something here yeah moments I suppose it's that from a customer it's that kind of um justification that you know we're on to something yeah definitely because because you know you can create you can create like great business plans and you can be really disciplined and you can do lots of things but if the thing you're putting out into the world isn't loved by the customer it's kind of like you know you can create like great business plans and you can create like great business plans and you can create like great business plans and you can create kind of hard to it's cut you have to keep working on the product and then you can work on everything else but if the product isn't loved by the customer I think that that's the problem number one yeah so I mean coming coming at it from an engineering mindset do you feel like that had a huge influence on some of those early products and some of the changes I mean absolutely yes like I think that um as manufacturing engineers we spend a lot of time in the factory with the supplier that we were using actually working with their team on how to how to set up production lines and how to assess the quality and how to take variability out of the process so I think the manufacturing engineering was really critical and you know Andy is a product design engineer and so the designs that he were he was creating were really very innovative at a time when wallets were a little bit ignored I think in the carry access I mean carry didn't exist as a concept then but in the sort of accessories and maybe fashion industry I think a lot of brands would go to a factory select something from the designs that the factory had and put their logo on it and I think we really came at it from a different direction and we said no we're going to do our own designs and Andy had a lot of innovation around how he would make them slim and that you know you would have a lot more products that you could use all the time versus a stack for the cards that you only needed sometimes and a lot of innovation loyalty cards yeah yeah yeah exactly so he was really thinking about that and I think the combination of like me being able to bring the manufacturing engineering skill and him bringing the design engineering skill really was was really critical um and we still bring a lot of engineering knowledge into our product work today whether it's the physics of how a product strap is going to function or how do we get repeatability from a phone case or like what kind of material where properties do we need to be aware of a lot of the stuff that we learned about I think at uni becoming engineers is just so relevant to the products that we make it sounds like you almost you had this sort of holy trinity of three perfect skill sets coming together it feels like we kind of did um it's an accident that that happened I mean it you know because we actually all really enjoyed talking about the same kind of topics but um and it's interesting a lot of people ask how do you how have you worked in that very complicated situation a with your partner b with your brother-in-law like is that not hard and I think like one of the pieces of magic is that we we work in parallel um so we're not all working on the same thing and and these days maybe you know they're still very very in the business but maybe not as much across the whole business as I am but we work in parallel rather in series we have a good model of what each of us can do and we're sort of not on top of each other all the time and I think the other thing that is really critical is that we don't talk about it a lot outside of work actually not us at home or not with Andy when we're at a family kind of get together we talk a lot about our values and what we think is happening in society and what we think of the zeitgeist and what we think of other brands. I think we spend a lot of time aligning on value and then when we're in the work context is when we're sort of focused on the product or the progress of a project or whatever it is. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Do you remember back when you guys started who the first person you hired outside the three of you? Well, there was, there was a network of people who we knew and we all started tapping into those people. So there's a few of them. Okay. What was the skillset that you got outside of you three? Well, so one of them is now our chief creative officer. So he really brought a graphic design skill, a brand view, vision creation skill. Another one is our chief business officer today. Her and I worked together a lot in the previous job that I had. Okay. Talking about how do you set up supply chains? How do you approach warehousing? Where do you put your stock? How do you analyze and forecast for sales? So it was interesting that I felt like between the three of us, we had almost all the skillsets at a baby, like, you know, at a startup level, we probably don't have all the skillsets today for where Bellry's at. And then there were people who we really knew we liked working with who we started kind of saying, hey, could you spend two days a week on this with us? It sort of looked like that. Okay. Yeah. I want to touch on the value set that you mentioned earlier. I think it's so important in today's leadership realm. What are the values that you really hold dear? Yeah. I thought about it really explicit. So I can't, you said at the beginning of the podcast, like no practice dances, and I fear this one sounds slightly practiced, but I kind of thought about what do I want to be as a leader? What do I want to be as a leader? And I think that's a really and what are the things that I have that I'm really happy to bring? And what are the things that I want to develop? And so I have sort of four things that I value, um, bringing honesty, kindness, competency, and energy. Um, so I think my more natural spaces are probably competency and honesty, and maybe my less natural spaces definitely are energy or being energetic. Kindness. I don't want to say I'm like not a kind person, but, um, those were the four things that when I think about what am I trying to do here, they, that's how I want to turn up as a leader. And if I think, if I don't like the way something's going often, I kind of come back to those four areas and think, which bit am I not leaning on here? Um, that, and often I find an answer in that. Yeah. It's a good way to look at it. Because they're often in high pressure times or uncertain scenarios at times. Yeah. Sometimes the value set gets lost a little bit because you're so focused on what the crisis is. Yeah. And I think it can get lost because it's not like you're panicking, but you're on the verge of like, this is a really hard problem that I don't know how to solve. And you start going a bit too fast, perhaps, you don't kind of stay calm and, and think so, but yeah, I really, I interrupted you, but yeah, I think it can get lost. Do you have a sort of go-to moment that when, when you feel yourself getting lost in getting drawn away from your value set, are you able to catch yourself in that moment and then just step away? I mean, I hope that I've got better at it over time. You know, I think probably in my 20s, it's harder because, you know, I've got a lot of time to think about what I'm going to do next. You're less wise. And I mean, what I would say, it sounds a bit woo-woo, but I think you can kind of feel it in your throat or your chest or something. If you're paying attention, you start to feel that the vibe, the energy, the something it's like, whoa, I'm kind of getting a bit of a rush of adrenaline here, or I'm, I'm starting to get a bit clouded over about what I want the answer to be. And, and I think maybe it takes a long time to learn that feeling and to realize it's there. But I, I, I think I try to pay a really a lot of attention to that feeling. And if I'm in a meeting or talking to someone and I kind of notice that I can feel in my chest that I'm getting a bit constricted, maybe my throat feels a bit uncomfortable. It's like, it's interesting, like even thinking about that, both of us kind of shuffled in our seat just a tiny bit. Cause it's like, oh, you need to not have that tension to pay attention to that. Yeah. And like you say, it takes time because you've got to understand yourself. You've got to understand your own body, your feelings, your emotions, because they all come to the surface, don't they? Totally. They do. And what I also found really interesting as I started to pay more attention to like, what are the clues that maybe I'm not approaching this right? What was interesting was that, so we're a really, really high feedback culture and we try to encourage feedback. And often I'd be in a meeting and this is even a bit more recently, like recent by like the last five, 10 years, but you feel that kind of rush of, gosh, I'm, I'm frustrated by this situation perhaps. And then you say a bunch of things and then you think, man, was that too heavy? Like, was I short on kindness there? Was that like an overdose of honesty and an absence of kindness? What I also learned though, is that if I asked afterwards, one of the managers in the meeting, who I really trust, you know, one of my colleagues, was that too much? Was that okay? Like, can I have some feedback on how that went? In my later years, I found that they would say, actually, no, it was fine. You said the thing that had to be said, and it was really good that you did. And maybe in my earlier years, I'd be like, honestly, yeah, a bit too much. And it was probably not the right thing to do. And I'd be like, well, I don't know. I don't know. I don't a bit scary. And it would be better if you did a bit less than that. And so it was interesting to kind of learn, okay, this is how I'm feeling around this. And then try and understand what do other people perceive about how that feels? Yeah. Have you felt that that from a leadership perspective, that's come naturally? Or is it something that you've had to work on over the years? Definitely not naturally. I think that like, that's why I sort of say, I feel like this, leadership feels like I have to make things explicit for myself, which feels like an unnatural thing to do. You know, I think when it's implicit, you are just kind of naturally doing it. You're feeling comfy. You like the outcomes that you get. You don't really contemplate it that much, but I feel like it's, it's hard to kind of get the leadership thing, right? How much should you, be present in the conversation? How much should you sit back? Um, how much energy do you bring to an idea? How do you get your words precisely right? So that your opinion isn't the thing that people just center on because it's, it's easy for you to say, Hey, I think we should do this. And what I'm doing in my head is saying, kicking the tires, here's an idea, perhaps this, and it can be read as this is the decision, um, which is not the goal. So, you know, really learning to use hedging words like, I don't think this is what we should do. Here's an idea. I could change my mind. We should explore it to really make clear. I'm not saying this is what we have to do, but I'm saying here's what's in my head. Let's think about it. Um, so no, I don't think it came easily at all. I think it, I think it's a hard thing to do and I think it needs a lot of thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with that because you can read as many leadership books as you like and as possible and do your MBA and all that sort of thing. But it really just comes down to experience and the scars that come along with it. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think you learn best through doing, um, through being in the situation that is challenging and hard and having to do something and then looking back and saying, what did I think about the thing I did? Like, did I do it well? Look, I think that MBAs or books or podcasts, like, um, I think they give you frameworks that you can use to make a plan to diagnose how things went to perhaps give feedback to other colleagues that, you know, other people that you're working with, but I don't think they teach you how to actually do the thing. They kind of give you really good scaffolding to, um, work out what you want to do. Something you mentioned earlier, around bringing that design and engineering piece together. And I think I read somewhere on your website, it was, um, art and science being brought together. I just love that concept of the art and science of, you know, carrying everyday things. Um, you know, one of the things that I, these days can't leave the house without is an external display just because when I'm traveling or if I'm in a coffee shop or whatever else, I just need something else in order to, you know, look at or make some, notes on or whatever it may be. Is there something that for you personally, you just can't leave the your mobile phone besides my phone um i think that it really depends on the context that i'm heading to um i mean i guess what i would say is i'd probably like to try and leave the house with as little as possible um so often i'm saying to myself am i wearing something that pockets will do do i need a bag then what bag should i bring um and so i think that's like what's going on in my head when i'm thinking about leaving is what's the what's the thing i'm off to do is it a one is it a one-stop activity or am i like going for sort of eight hours from here to four different locations and so um yeah i guess i like to carry as little as possible if possible um so can it just be car keys on my phone um or does it need to be a crossbody bag because i want to have glasses and maybe like a daily kit that kind of has some you know some medicine in it and band-aids and some useful stuff yeah right um or am i going to be doing some work so i want to have something that lets me carry my laptop and maybe a tech kit to kind of have charges and cables and those sorts of things yeah you can't leave the house without a charger these days well that's true i mean maybe if you're only going for a couple of hours you're okay hopefully you've got a laptop that can kind of survive that kind of journey but yeah exactly it's kind of like what am i off to do like what's the context is it a work context or a casual context and then how do i kind of structure what i bring am i right in saying that it took you guys probably the best part of a decade to start looking at outside funding for the business we started almost the best part of the decade yeah i think that we probably started looking around um 2018 so you know that was eight years in um yeah we were self-funded we we'd all kind of the three of us had gotten really strong on the idea that we wanted to be hungry for profit and patient for growth and that that would be how belray needed to function i think that you know in the early teens um obviously there were a lot of tech companies getting a lot of money yeah and not really turning their mind to profitability and maybe for a tech company there's there's logic in that you know i i think there's logic in that because actually scaling a tech business really doesn't drive its cost base um it it really drives its revenue and so you can scale out of profit i'm sorry um i think a product business i think a lot of companies in the teens were going on the assumption that a product business could be treated like a tech business and that it could it could scale into profitability but i i don't think that's the way product businesses can work because i think you know as you track down the p&l you've got the the cost of goods sold you've got um logistics costs you've potentially got some variable digital marketing that you're doing all of that really consumes a lot of the revenue before you get to i guess um fixed marketing and people and space you know as sort of the more fixed costs but as you scale those costs are going to scale too and i think if you don't have profit um from pretty early in your model then i don't think that problem gets solved all that to say we focused a lot on making sure we had a profitable business and i think that's the way we're going to do it and i think that's the business model which meant we didn't have to raise money um we put in some of our own money you know it was a bit tighter in the early days it's like kitchen tables and all that sort of shenanigans but um we managed to to generate the profit to pay ourselves back out of that and kind of be in the clear so we started with wallets we then moved to phone cases um then to like carry accessories like pouches and things you would use in a meeting context then to bags so that sort of happened over that first seven years with bags launching about 2017 and we we'd seen what wallets looked like um growing really quickly but what we found was that like phone cases and bags and accessories were all independently growing at like a hundred percent year on year having been introduced and we thought it's amazing this is like three times the business that we were trying to grow when it was just wallets um and the reason we really raised some money we didn't raise a lot relative to the share of the business like our two families are still very much majority owners of belroy but we more or just as equally wanted the expertise we felt like that bringing on some investors we would get advice and connections and networks and that that was what felt as useful or equally as important as um maybe shoring up a balance sheet yeah yeah yeah i think that that pays for itself in spades yeah it's just that that extra piece that maybe the three of you or the other members of the teams just don't know some of that background or information or expertise yeah and then they could bring that in yeah i think that's right yeah was there a feeling amongst some of the employees that maybe something would change if you had some you know external stakeholders or i mean i guess we predicted that that feeling would be there so um so we were very active in talking about that with the staff and saying hey here's what we're doing here's what we've done here's the implications of that and i suspect you know many people raise external funds bring on investors and say it's not going to change anything and probably sometimes that's true and probably sometimes it's not um and maybe probably it's as well and so i think you do have to be really transparent like the honesty thing i think really matters about what's happening so there's no confusion or suspicion you know no rumors be very clear about what's happening and then i think you have to do the do for a little while and let the team see what happens because i think they're they're judging us on what we say and if we're looking at a program and then we say our investors will never accept this well it doesn't matter how much we say our investors are not going to change the culture if we say our investors will never accept this they're just not going to believe that yeah whereas if the conversation goes well will our investors dislike this and the answer is well once a year we work with the with the board to approve our budget and make a plan and this is how that function works and the budget's approved and now we're running the business so this isn't really related to the investor then i think the answer is very different and they realize that it's true so i think it's good to preempt something that might be culturally significant with honesty but then i think your actions are the thing that people actually believe yeah yeah that's great yeah the um i think in today's world we're always looking for a quick one when it comes to these especially you know maybe in the last five years with the rise of ai and technology companies it's just it's all happening so fast yes right whereas i feel i feel like you and the team you've almost you know gone in that opposite direction of taking your time over a long period of time to see that amazing growth yeah were there moments where yourselves or your employees were getting maybe a little bit frustrated that maybe it wasn't going as quick as maybe a lot of the other you know tech companies or product companies around you and then a sort of second question on that how do you as a product company how do you as a person lead through that and did that change i guess over that period yeah i mean i think that we probably never felt frustrated that it wasn't growing quick enough overall i think there were probably a couple of years in different ways you know i think our average growth over the journey has been about 20 percent year on year something like that i think most companies will take that totally but what that actually looks like is some fives and some forties and you know i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think that's a good point i think a 900 at one point you know early on like it's actually not that number every year but um a lot of different numbers and i think that when it's the fives you are sitting there saying what's not gelling because we kind of want it to be these days say between 15 and 25 percent is a keep developing your systems to keep up like it's hard fast work um so it kind of feels quite different depending on what you're sitting in even though the outcome at 20 percent on year on year feels like a very stable situation i think that though um the yeah the other thought i wanted to share was that there's a lot of businesses out in the world doing something similar to what we're doing like not necessarily even in bags but just trying to grow a product in the world and our team amazingly and sort of our surrounds They're always watching those companies and paying attention to what campaigns do they run, how often do they release product, how do they run. And I think then they come back and say, well, should we do this thing? Like is that a thing that we should do or is that a thing not to do? And I think my sort of approach from a leadership perspective is to say we don't ever do things because other people are doing them or because it's the standard way to do it. But maybe it's a good idea, like let's assess the idea on its merit and work out actually are those guys doing something really interesting that we should pay attention to. Do you feel like there's a – because you've got an emotional attachment obviously as a founder to the business. Do you think there's a little bit of a different shift in being a founder CEO of the business than being an external CEO coming in and running it when it comes to those moments of change? I mean, I guess. I think that there's an advantage that a founder CEO probably has all the way up to the moment where that advantage becomes a disadvantage. You know, I can remember when we're talking about a problem today, I can remember the five different ways that we did it before this one and say, okay, so here's the reason that thing didn't work. When we did it eight years ago. And so I think it's not the emotional connection as a founder for me that I think feels like an advantage. I think it's the history that you have. It's just so useful. Just like employees that have been around for a long time, they're just so useful because they really understand how all of the cogs work. And I think that's a huge advantage. Until it becomes constraining, I suppose. And the risk is that a founder CEO probably can say, can not want to make a change at a time where the world has moved in a different direction. And the thing that, I mean, the staying, you know, the thing that got us here isn't going to get us there. And I think a founder CEO at some point could probably become a, a bad thing for a business if they're not moving in the way that society's moving. Because the way we did it 16 years ago isn't going to be right today. And so like keeping on moving feels really important. Do you have some people that you lean on to help you with some of those thinkings and ideas, maybe advisors or mentors or your partner? Kind of everyone. You know, I think, I think that you, you create, a very rich information flow. Like it's probably the people I lean on the most is the Bellroy team. Like in the company, we're always talking about, are we doing the right thing? What should we do? What should we change? Has this thing come to an end? Is there a thing we're not seeing? Let's spend three hours talking about the cultural zeitgeist. You know, where is the world going? What are people after? Are we responding to that? Quickly enough. And so I think I, I find the team hugely valuable. Then I think there's sort of the, the people that you're friends with who are themselves running businesses or our investors or that network. What are you guys up to is really interesting. Then I think there's podcasts and sort of books, nonfiction. Okay. That is interesting. And then I would say there's fiction, you know, sometimes if I have a, a challenge, I mean, it might be personal or business. I like to look for fiction that kind of centers on those themes, um, to just let my mind get a whole lot of ideas about the problem and maybe it'll help unlock something. Yeah. When, when you started seeing the business grow, what did it feel like when those large companies like Apple and Qantas, um, came knocking on the door and started using your products? Oh, it's, it's a huge compliment. Um, it's kind of like, okay, we're talking to Apple and we're like having calls with them. And there's this moment of realization, purchase orders, and we're going to send stock to the warehouses that they've asked, and then we walk into an Apple store and you see the product and like, cause you, I mean, you admire Apple, right? As a product brand, you're always looking at what they're up to because the journey that they've been on from the early eighties is fascinating. And it's been a, it's been a journey of ups and downs, you know, as well. And watching what they did is really amazing. And to think that there's people in there who think our product is interesting. And the thing that we're doing is interesting. Um, it's, it's very lovely actually, is how it feels. It's like, great, amazing. Um, I'm glad that, that everything that the team's doing is turning up on a world stage and being recognized and respected. Yeah. It's validation, right? It's a big piece of validation. I think it leaves everybody in the company feeling really proud, um, because people want to feel proud of what they're doing and they want, I think that they want to be able to tell their friends and colleagues, um, the things that are happening at work that feel interesting. And I think that's a fun story to tell. And so, yeah, I think people feel proud. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. With, um, starting a business with family members, you know, I've often over the years thought of starting a business with family members and then I rethink it pretty quickly. Yeah. Um, I'd love to know what the dinner talk is. Yeah. Like you mentioned earlier, there's not a lot of, you know, business talk when it goes home. So I'm pretty certain in those early years, it's all you guys would have spoken about, right? Yeah. Maybe in the early years there was more of it because I think in the early years you're solving all of the problems because the team is tiny. Um, you know, what we're actually talking about is more, Hey, I read this book or what do we think of what, you know, of Claude versus, um, chat. GPT, um, or what do we think of what, you know, the new CEO at this company or that this brand, um, did this thing. So I think that it's that calibration thing that we're probably talking about a lot more. We really are not talking about the people at work or the projects that we're working at sometimes. I mean, I think people kind of know now, but like at some points people would say, well, I mean, I assume, you know, like you talked to Matt about it and it's like, no, actually I don't know anything about this thing. We absolutely have not talked about it. Um, and so I think maybe people assumed that we would do work and then we'd go home and do a full like realignment, but it didn't happen. No, it doesn't work that way. Yeah. It's too much. Yeah. Yeah, it would. It would be, it would be hard to strike that balance then between personal life and professional life. I think so. Yeah. I think that, um, I think that it would be, it would be bringing into the home, I think a thing that belongs in the office. Um, you know, it's like, I don't know if you have this experience, but when I'm sitting at my desk in front of my computer and I've got my emails that I want to address and reply to, like generally I feel like you can kind of flow through them pretty well. But even when you get an email that you don't like, you just chill because you're like, okay, no, we need to deal with it. And then you get your phone out at some stupid time, which is not work time. And you look at it and you get that email that's irritating. And then you spend three hours thinking about the stupid thing. Ruminating. Right. Cause you ruminate on it and you think about it. And then the next day you go to your desk and you reply and the whole thing's gone. And so I think your brain does. different things in different places and it's best not to talk about all of the complicated work things at home. Yeah. I find I have those moments during the school holidays. Yes. So when I am at home with the boys, I know I still should be doing work, but I try to not do work. Yeah. It's harder said than done, or it's easier said than done, but because I catch myself in those moments where I've glanced at a message or an email, but the boys need my full attention, but then I just cannot stop thinking about what I need to reply. Yeah. And then by the time I reply, my head's all over the place because I forgot to, you know, take the bread out of the toaster or I didn't put enough jam on the sandwich. A hundred percent, yeah. So I think being really disciplined about not, not doing that and, and facing problems, A, with a good night's sleep actually is what i want to say i think if you haven't slept well it's really good to recognize how lacking in competency you may well be yeah um but be in the right context like try and solve the problem when you're in a space where you can solve it where you're with the people and have the tools to solve it and not like when it's 5 30 a.m and you woke up a bit early and you pick up your phone it's the wrong time it's not gonna happen not the right time yeah talking about a good night's sleep i haven't had one in ages we've got a new puppy oh and she she's beautiful and i love her tidbits and she's an absolute sweetheart yeah you know she wakes up twice every evening yes you know but it's it's almost it's like clockwork now yeah two o'clock and four o'clock how old is she six months now yeah i mean i guess so you should almost be there you we're almost at the year yeah yeah we got a we got a new dog last year and i and actually we and we have a an 11 year old dog as well and i remember with both of them thinking this is like children again like what but then like three months later their children like all of the sleepless nights things passed and it's like oh it's kind of like children except it doesn't last anywhere near as long with the crying and the feeding and all that sort of stuff so yeah you might you'll be almost there we're almost there yeah i agree until i can palm her off to one of the kids and like it's your problem now yeah yeah that's that's the ambition yeah that's the goal yeah yeah what's the next um what's the next part of the journey for you the team um and the group yeah i mean so i'll intro that by saying um we think about where our resilience comes from as a business and it's by bringing diversity into our product range into our sales channels that we're approaching and into our geographies and what we like to do is be working on um expanding our ability or our breadth in each of those areas it's probably one of the things that makes us sometimes slower because we're we're sort of building in a few different areas but at the same time i think it's the thing that brings our resilience um brings our resiliency so what we'll be doing is building out our luggage range for product um the first you know the the first items were released last year with carry-on bags um we just released a check-in bag a couple of months ago and really so that's kind of gets us to five styles for us that's a mapped out five year program where we've got a lot of different ideas for luggage and that that project has kind of gone through its zero to one stage and we've got a lot of different ideas for luggage and we've got a lot of different ideas for luggage and we've got a lot of different ideas for luggage um where we didn't have any luggage and we had to work out all the luggage things and it's now sort of in its one-to-many stage but um that'll be a lot of work for the team to kind of continue to build that out and and exciting because it feels like travel is a really it's it's when carry has to be extra good so it's nice to be playing in that forum yeah from a sales channel perspective i think it's going to be a lot of fun and i think i think it's going to be a lot of fun and i think i think it's going to be a lot of fun and i think i think it's going to be a lot of fun the thing that we've said no to just until now has been our own retail stores and we are embarking on that journey and we are very much in the zero to one phase of that journey we don't have a one yet um by the end of the year we'll have a melbourne store and um we'll be close to thinking very hard about a couple of others super exciting um it is very exciting but that's interesting because it's very zero to one you know it's it's a lot of fun and it's a lot of fun and it's a lot of it's that everything has to be thought of for the first time and it's touching a lot of the business and but it's it's really um been exciting for everyone you asked the question about like you know i was talking about what does it feel like for apple or quantus to kind of be engaging with us and what i notice is the team is really excited about the retail store they want to be part of it there's a great buzz there is a really good buzz it's um maybe it feels like it would be great to visit it would be great to have the brand be seen in person exactly so there's a lot there's been a lot of really great buzz about it that's great um yeah i feel though that there has been a shift it's almost gone 360 there's been a shift away from bricks and mortar into the online space yeah i feel there is a little bit of more momentum of it coming back i think so too yeah i hope i hope it does yeah the so prosci who are friends of the show they often talk about the people's side of change this sounds like a big change for the organization yeah going from that you know predominantly online presence to now having that retail touch and feel store yeah how do you approach that from a leadership perspective in taking your people through that and taking them on the journey with you um i guess i guess the first thing to answer is for them for the team um we've spent 16 years not doing this for reasons maybe they were good maybe they were bad but like for reasons and now we've decided we are going to do this and so i think from a change perspective um making clear what's changed and why we think now is the right time so that people understand well why are we doing this when we didn't do it before i think that that's the beginning of like introducing a program like that is to say why why did the decision that we've had in place up until this point stop being the right decision and what is it about the world that's feeling really relevant now and kind of letting those conversations happen quite a few times so maybe you know we we um we have an sort of a quarterly all eyes meeting which is kind of like an all hands but we started it in covid so it was all eyes so now it's just called all eyes but you know we have our all eyes meeting and we might present in all eyes to say hey retail's coming this is what we're thinking this is what's changing um and that might be me talking about that maybe andy as well like the two of us really like explaining that idea taking questions and then probably for the next few months in the kitchen or at the before a meeting starts like answering lots of questions about i'll tell me more about this what do you think about that so i think that's sort of step one yeah i think then there's something that leadership needs to do about setting the ambition um so is this going to be one store that runs for three years we watch and tell and then we're going to have to do something to test is this going to be like quick and dirty let's get anything up in a distressed space and see what happens and then aim for 10 next year you know what does what what how are we going to go about this um and what does the next like three years look like yeah if this goes well so i think sort of setting that tone brings a lot of clarity and and giving people the opportunity to say that sounds like a bad plan or great sounds like a good plan and then we're going to have to do something i'm behind it but yeah i think sort of after saying why is this now happening then i think you need to sort of paint a picture to say what's that going to look like and then you need to like project manage the hell out of it really good program management lots of planning hiring the people that need to be hired it's a different thinking process when it comes to talent as well yeah absolutely like who are the where are the talent gaps what's the sequence that they should be hired in making sure the team know that they're not just going to be asked to do this for five minutes at 505 at once they've done all their other work but that there is a there is a plan to hire staff to support this um you know i think all of those things then come after that you mentioned um claude and chat gbt earlier yeah what what's your your thinking around ai and the evolution of ai and the tech especially within your business and what that looks like going forward it's um i mean i think we're on our like fourth version of the answer within 12 months yeah um sounds like most of us actually yeah like it's it's moving super fast and we're trying to work out um what the right answer is i think that i think we're still working it out you know i probably approach one is be willing to be very agile and accept that it's going to feel quite noisy and i think that's going to be a big part of it and i think that's going to be a big part of it and sort of settle into that um probably step two is that what i see within the company we are all currently using claude um so everybody has a claude account and that that's kind of been the last i want to say it could be four or five months we've been there amongst all of the things we've done um i kind of see three levels of workers like like engagement emerging because you know the bill was big and then we kind of developed a reporting on usage person process and it's like well that's kind of weird and how do we like is it good if people use a lot or is it bad if people use a lot like what does good look like we don't you know that's all up for grabs um but we we and then how do we handle budgets and limits and all of those things this is just every month it's you know more thinking and practicing but yeah we sort of see that there's like a level of and pretty much all borough staff are doing this at this point um claude is kind of an effectiveness support it's present it helps you get a document written more quickly it helps you process your inbox um it's kind of there and a little bit useful then i think the second level um and this second level might be more like 25 of the team 20 of the team a start starting to create pieces of workflow agents scheduled tasks whatever you want to call it because i think that name's still got some developing to go but whatever you want to call it where actually they're using claude to kind of not just support their effectiveness but to to to run a meeting structure from minutes to recording actions to whatever it is but you know they're kind of have developed a tool that they're using to do part of the job and then i would say kind of at the five percent level and you know i think our like tech ops starter team is sort of this point those users kind of have multiple agents running a lot of the time writing code doing analysis producing reports um at kind of a higher level again so that's just what we see emerging um i think we think we see ai as being a huge support um i think it's so i think there's a lot of change still to come yeah we're not there yeah yeah and it's um we're coming to the to the end of the show but you would have seen a lot of these different changes throughout your time with the organization obviously this tech piece is that the newest piece of change yeah if you think back to 2010 yeah or even you know before or after that around you know the stuff that you stressed about and worried about back then is there anything that you feel you know maybe i shouldn't have worried about that as much as i did and in hindsight it actually doesn't matter i mean everything right yeah like it turned out everything was fine and but then it's like well is the worrying helpful is it the thing that focuses the mind this is a bit of an eternal question for me how much is worrying a thing that focuses the mind and is really important for excellence versus how much is it unnecessary and you were going to be fine and you were going to solve the problem and the time was going to pass and it was going to be okay um it's not clear to me that there was a thing that we worried about that didn't play out it's more i think was any of the worrying necessary or could you just trust the process and maybe that's kind of the zen like can we just trust the process and believe that in time the things get resolved and that's what the journey's about i think that's a perfect place to leave it cool thank you so much for joining me today yeah it's been a pleasure fun conversation © transcript Emily Beynon