Keeping It Scrappy: Straight Talk and Scale-Up Lessons from Georgia Aubrey

So I think although you let go of some stuff and you prioritize other parts of the business, when you know you're leaving it with somebody who's very capable because you've given them the time, you took them under your wing and you showed them the way, it's much easier to let it go. And actually they are better. They are better than I could be doing that right now. So I come in and pop my head in, you know, to certain people that I've known for years and years. And it's great. It's nice to be able to let them look after that element of it.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Leading the Scale Up. It's the podcast for business leaders navigating growth, change and everything in between. I'm Ben Morton, a leadership trainer, executive coach and keynote speaker. And in this episode I'm joined by Georgia Aubrey, the co founder and partnerships director at Love to Visit. Together with her identical twin Alice and their co founder Fed Perera, Georgia has helped build one of the UK's fastest growing travel tech platforms, now listing over 2,700 experiences and serving more than 3 million users. In today's episode, we are exploring what it really takes to lead through scale. Georgia shares how she's learned to lead with greater clarity and directness. How the founding trio balances decisions and disagreement, and how they've kept the heartbeat of their mission championing local events and experiences alive as they grow. That's it. By way of an introduction, let's dive right in. Georgia, first of all, welcome to the show.

Cool. Thanks Ben. Thanks for having me.

It's my pleasure. Been looking forward to chatting with you. So let's dive straight in with what is rapidly becoming my first go to question on this show and that is do you consider Love to Visit to be a startup or a scale up?

It's a good question. It's not the first time somebody has asked that question. We're definitely in scale up mode now. I think that for us a startup was achieving the product market fit. So it was sort of like those early days when we've always known as founders, we've always known that it's going to work. You have to have that belief because otherwise it's not going to work anyway. So we've always known that it's going to work. But you know, when you're starting to go for investment and when you're talking to VCs and everything, you have to achieve product market fit. And there are certain KPIs and metrics that you have to hit. We did. And I think that we're definitely in the scale up, sort of like mold now. But what I will say is that, I mean, and I constantly remind the team of this and we remind each other of this, myself, Alice and the other co founder Fed will always have a startup vibe. I don't think it matters like how you define the company or anything, but I do think that it's important to always feel like a startup and attack every single day like you're a startup because it's that energy that just keeps you pushing and pushing and pushing past barriers and to visit will always be a startup.

Yeah, it's so interesting. That's becoming a real theme. I'm picking up from all the guests that talk on the show that they all say, yeah, we're definitely in scale up mode, but we don't want to lose that sort of that hunger, that scrappiness that we have that we had in the, in the startup phase.

Yes, I think scrappy is a really good word for it and I think that if you look at us as founders that love to visit. Scrappy's a good word.

And was there a particular moment where you and your co founders realized, you know what, whilst we've always believed it, like we have got the product market fit now and at a moment where you really felt and realized you were making that shift from startup to scale up.

I think there's been loads of moments like that. I don't think there's been sort of one. I can remember a source sitting around a table when the first sort of like tickets were being sold and we haven't really, we hadn't gone like publicly live, you know, it was more of a beta sort of phase. There's been loads of little moments like that, Ben, I'd say, but then we're always moving on to the next thing as well. But yeah, it's wonderful that what we've, you know, what we thought of those years ago sitting in a warehouse together is what it is today. But like I said, the start of you. We've always known, we've always known that it can be that. But yeah, we do try and take all those little moments and enjoy them.

Yeah, I want to dig into that. We've always known comment you, you, you made just then. Right. Because I often get asked that myself, like with any sort of decision, like how do you know whether to keep pushing forward with an idea or strategy versus knowing when, when to call it a day? And it's a very common entrepreneurial trait. Right. That utter belief that it is going to succeed, like, was that a absolute, genuine belief that it would always succeed, or was there an element of we have to tell ourselves it will succeed in order for it to succeed?

The first one, because the first one, because our heritage was working in this industry already. So I think this sort of. When you think about an entrepreneur, a lot of people think that an entrepreneur's got loads of different ideas and they pick the one that we think is going to work the best. This was the idea we didn't have loads of ones and then decide what to do. And the reason why we started it was because we were already working in this sector and we saw the huge demand, so we knew it was going to work. Because if somebody's going to pick up thousands and thousands of leaflets from a leaflet rack because they. They want information for something, then if we build something that's fun and more convenient, easier, right in the palm of their hand, then it's going to work. So we've always, always known that it's going to work, but we have to have the right team, obviously, to build it.

Yeah. And have you and your sister especially, always known that you would build something yourself, that you would have a business? Were you looking for a business idea or was it one of those moments where you're like, oh, hang on, there's a problem and a gap and an opportunity here. Why don't we solve it?

Well, so Alice and I are very close as sisters. I was speaking to somebody who was a twin the other day and they don't get on. And I find it bizarre, but, you know, we're very, very lucky that we get on. But we went to separate universities and we sort of, you know, were ourselves for a bit of our lives, which I think was very important because it did give us our time to be Alice and be Georgia separately. We weren't looking. We weren't looking for a big business idea. We were working in separate companies after university, myself in the company that was within the tourism and leisure sector. And me and Fed, the co founder, was sitting there one day and we weren't even thinking about love to visit at this point, but we knew we were growing the previous business. And he said to me, don't you think Alice would be really, really good? I mean, if Alice was here? And I went, hadn't even thought about it because I didn't think that, you know, you'd think that it was a good idea. I was like, but of course I'd love to Work with Alice. Let's bring her in. And as soon as she sort of joined us, we call ourselves like a triad. It sort of completed this, sort of like this, this core net, this core team that we had and then it developed from there. So no, Alice and I have never ever thought we'd go into build something together. But whatever we put our minds to, we always push it as far as we possibly can. I want to succeed, so it's great.

So the previous business you worked in with Fed, was that your business or were you employed in that business?

It was Fed's business. Fed had started it with his brother 20 years ago.

Right.

So I went there quite by accident really. I was having to go travel and I love traveling, I love exploring. And then, yeah, we grew it as much as we could, but we couldn't scale it that fast. And then we were all just sort of three people with a, with a big old dream. Started off as a project, became a massive, massive monster. And this is where we are today.

I love it. So you mentioned just then as well, couldn't scale it fast enough. I think I said if we come back to love to visit. How did you know it was time to scale? Obviously you've got that product market, market fit. What else was telling you? What else were you seeing? Metrics, KPIs. It said actually we can scale and it's time to scale.

So we've always wanted to make sure that we grew sustainably for that. And the tech and the amount of employees that you have have got to match up as well. So because hiring people is really, really difficult, you've got to find the right people. So you want the tech to automate it as much as possible, but then you don't want to lose the human side of it either. We were doing really well. The core business was doing extremely, extremely well. We were selling a lot of tickets. We could see very clearly that the more product that we onboarded, so the suppliers that we had, the more sales we were making. So we knew it was the right time to scale at that point. So we had to improve the tech. We had to get more people into onboard. We had to streamline the onboarding process. So it was very, very clear that it was time to scale.

What did you have to improve personally as a leader, either for yourself or your, or your sister, as the business started to grow? Like, what's your leadership evolution look like?

I'm going to try and say this as straight as possible because the thing that I've had to really evolve is being a straight talker. You have to see it as it is. Sometimes time is so precious for us. We are very fast paced. You know, we don't have the luxury of beating around the bush. And I think at the start, and I know Alice feels this way as well, is that we didn't want to come across like meanies by saying something as it is. And we also maybe were a little bit trepidatious about just declaring that we didn't understand something or we didn't realize we didn't know why somebody was doing something a certain way. But as soon as we became the straight talkers that we are now just meant that you move faster, people respect you for it as well. You know, to sit there in a meeting and say, I don't get this, can you explain this? Why is that right for the consumer means that the business grows faster. It means that people respect you more and people learn that actually you can be that way in a meeting as long as you get the balance right and you aren't too mean.

So on a much more practical level, like how did you personally manage that shift? Because I'm guessing from what you've said and just briefly getting to know you kind of, you seem like a lovely person. Right. So I assume kind of some of the concern is like, I don't know, upset people or as you said, like you don't appear as a, as a meanie. That can sometimes be, be quite hard. Right. So how did you, I guess how do you get out of your own way and move towards being more direct and straight talking? It's not easy, right?

No, no, it's not easy at all. And the fact is like I'm surrounded by the team all of the times. The last thing that I want to do is to be, be a meanie. But it gets to a certain point and I think it was when we sort of switched from startup to that sort of scaling part of it when we just simply don't have the time. And you can see the frustrations around as well. You can actually feel the frustrations. And then as soon as you get frustrated yourself, you can see that everybody else is frustrated because something's not happening. And then you say what you think in that moment in time, you notice everybody's like, yeah, somebody needed to say it. You run out of time. And as soon as somebody starts to do it, then everybody else can learn how to do it. Yeah. Personally, it was just getting to that point of frustration, saying it hopefully in my lovely way. And then, yeah, it's gone well from there.

Brilliant. Love that. I think linked to the Time piece you mentioned there as well. Like, one thing I notice a lot with founders who are going from startup to scale up and be interested to see if this has been the case for you and how you've dealt with it. As you start to scale, you have to start letting go of a few things and sometimes that can be really hard because there might be parts of the business that you've really had a close hand on and you really enjoy and you love it, or maybe there's a relationship with a particular customer or supplier that you've nurtured and you really love it, but actually you're no longer the right person to be doing those things. We can sometimes really struggle to let go of bits like, what's your experience of that been so far, Georgia?

Well, you've hit the nail on the head because, I mean, you know, before we even went live with Love to visit, it was us founders who were going out and speaking to the suppliers. So the attractions and the theaters and the event organizers, I love that part of it. I absolutely love it because they're the humans who are, like, bringing the fun. So I did have relationships with a lot of attractions. I do still talk to them, but the best people to look after them have been my team. So I think that you've. There's a point when I don't want to. To lose the relationship with the suppliers. So what I've actually had to prioritize is passing on the information that I had and how I. How I would speak to the suppliers and getting the people on my team to do exactly that in their own way. So I think although you let go of some stuff and you prioritize other parts of the business, when you know you're leaving it with somebody who's very capable because you've given them the time, you took them under your wing and you showed them the way. It's much easier to let it go. And actually they are better. They are better than I could be doing that right now. So I come in and pop my head in, you know, to certain people that I've known for years and years, and it's great. It's nice to be able to let them look after that element of it.

Yeah, I love that. For you personally, what's been the hardest thing you've had to either stop doing altogether or kind of do a lot less on the journey? What's been the one thing you've really struggled to let go of?

The Initial onboarding meetings. I think the initial onboarding meetings, when you first get to know a supplier, it's a bizarre thing because, you know, we're a tech company, we're a consumer brand, but the, you know, the lifeblood of Love To Visit are these people on the ground running food festivals or monster truck shows or country fairs and things. And I love, I love the human aspect of it and being able to let them know why we built Love to Visit in the beginning. And it wasn't to patronize them in any way, but it was just to give them another avenue to reach people exactly like our previous company did, you know, but is to help the people on the ground do what they do best, which is putting on a great show, putting on a great circus or food festival and leave everything else to us. But they don't pay. It's all results based. I'm a natural onboarder, Ben. That's what I miss the most.

If I've got this right. Whilst you've got sort of some big brand attractions on the, on the platform, like you, Merlin, Alton Towers and stuff like that, you've always been a big champion of the sort of small local events, is that right? Has that always been a big part of the driving force behind Love to Visit?

Yes, it has. Because my accent isn't from London or a big city. Myself and Alice are my twin. Obviously we're from the same place. We're from Port Albert in South Wales in a little village north of Port Talbot. The other co founder feds from further west Wales. We've always had this passion for the more rural or regional things because other companies might have, you know, worked with the larger organizations before because those larger organizations know more about tech. So that's fine. And we love working with the big brands and we love putting our own spin on it. But these hyperlocal events, you know, being able to put them in front of somebody and say, did you know this was going on down the road? Has been huge for us. And you know, when we did start thinking about what Love to Visit was going to be, it didn't have a name. We were looking at the aggregators. Just Eat, Deliveroo, Airbnb, all of these really big aggregators and it's in the hyperlocal content, you know, like I mentioned, all these tiny little things going on all over the uk, that's where you get your sort of your value proposition. That's where you get the content that people, everyday people will need wherever they are in the uk. So yeah, we're Passionate about those.

That's a nice lead into something else I wanted to ask you about as well. So I think, again, one of the challenges that many startups have as they really start to scale rapidly, can sometimes be losing sight or losing the connection with the original mission and purpose and values and why you started the business. Right. So as you potentially look to scale internationally, how do you keep that focus on the hyper local activities and the relationships? Right. Because there's gotta be a danger that you lose the essence of Love to Visit. Right.

Have you seen the movie, the founder, the McDonald's? Yeah, that was a. I watched that movie not long ago. It's that feeling of losing who they are when they were changing the menus and it wasn't. But yeah, for Love to Visit, there's no silver bullet with it. There's no. There's no silver bullet for us. It's been putting in the time and the energy, you know, to show people around us what that is, repeating it over and over again, taking people under our wings so that they feel for the platform the way that we feel. Because as we scale, you're right, you know, we're not going to be able to speak to everybody on the team one on one. We do know that, and it's scary. But because we've surrounded ourselves with incredible people, we know that that's going to be the future as well. And I think Alice, Fred and I were talking about this a couple of weeks back. The first 10 hires for a starter are crucial. Crucial, because those are the people who are with you from day one. I think a huge proportion of what we did was luck. I will say that it was. We were so lucky to have the first people that we hired with us because they had no reason to join us. I mean, like, there was no platform, There was no line of code written for the platform. They just, they believed in the obsession and the passion that we had. They could see what it was that we wanted to do. So maybe, you know, partly it's because of how much they could see in us as founders, but also, gosh, a lot of luck. We're very, very lucky with those first 10 hires, for sure.

Two things on that, though, like my previous podcast I hosted where I'd interview MDs, CEOs. Like, I lost track of the number of those who at some stage, probably nearly every guest said, at some stage, well, I was just lucky, right? And I've always had this thing like, do we make our own luck? Or is there any such thing as luck? Now, clearly, There is. Luck exists as a concept. Right. But it was General David Petraeus, a US military general. General, former head of the CIA. Like, he put it perfectly when I asked him a similar question around luck. He said, luck is where preparedness meets opportunity. There is a degree like we create our own luck right by we're focused and we've done the work. We put ourselves into positions where we can get lucky. So, I mean, that's one thing. The second one, I don't watch it as much these days as I used to, but Dragon's Den in the uk, Shark Tank in the us and you've probably heard this because you've been in front of Avestas and Visas, you can't.

Watch those programs anymore. It's too much.

No, I can imagine. But nearly always the common line you hear is like, we believe in you. Like it's often the entrepreneur they are really investing in or that seals the deal rather than the product. Right. So again, like, you probably got those first 10 hires because of you and Alice and Fed. Right. It's not like you. You've made your own luck, surely.

I will tell them what you've just said and about the military person, what it was we experienced because I've never heard it put so eloquently. We were lucky because those people were around at that time. But again, they could have been paired with the wrong founders or they wouldn't have joined the right founders because. Or they just wouldn't have done it at all if we weren't the people that we are. So, yeah, it's where the two of them have met. So, yeah.

And in terms of. I know there's your three founders, but because it's quite unique, I mean, intrigued. And I'm sure listeners will be intrigued around the dynamic that comes with running a business with your twin sister. So let's just pick on, I guess, one element of leadership and running a business. How does making important decisions kind of pan out in your business? Between you and your sister, do you have any rules in place? Have you kind of spoke about what we'll do when we're faced with a difficult decision that maybe we've got different views on? What does that look like?

We've never spoken about Deborah, so it's just happened naturally. So we're both, obviously. Alice has recently had a baby, so she's back in work now for a day or two a week, but she's been off for a little while. But we're both based here in the office in NOW HQ and Cardiff So we're both in the same room with the people. And I look after more of the partnership side of stuff. Alice looks after the content side of stuff. So she's got the content team. And I think whenever a decision or whenever anybody needs to be led in those certain areas, we just trust each other to make the right call, the right decision. So that's been easy, really. And then when it's something that, you know, overlaps, if it's an overlap of that or anything else business wide, we talk so much, we just get into a room, we'll talk about it, and then we'll know exactly what we need to do next. So it's happened quite organically. I think we trust each other. We talk a lot as sisters anyway. But the amount that we talk about business is crazy with our founder as well. We talk and talk and talk. And then when you talk that much, you all know what it is you need to do next. You know what the right decisions are, what needs to happen. And we trust each other implicitly with whatever we do, wherever we do.

Hey, let's pause for a moment and think about something. Your strategy might be rock solid, your product market leading, but here's the real question. Do you have the leadership capability, the strength and depth to take your function or business to the next level? Because leadership isn't just another function of the business. It's the force multiplier that makes everything else work. The leadership capability scorecard gives you a fast, clear snapshot of how well your senior managers are leading right now and where you need to focus to scale effectively. It's free. Takes just a few minutes and. And instantly gives you real data to work with. Take the scorecard now. The link's in the show notes. Back to the episode. It's good that you've got Fed as your third co founder. That probably, I guess for people working in the business balances out or is a counterbalance to the sibling nature of the business. Leadership, right?

He's like a triplet. Ben. He's like a triplet. So we. The great thing is about having three and you know, I've spoken with like sole founders before and how they do it. I mean, hats off to them. The brilliant thing about having the three of us is that one of us will always play devil's advocate and we'll just strategize everything. We have like a scenario game. If somebody is disagreeing with it, they'll sort of say, well, what if this happens? What if this happens? What about this? What about this? It doesn't last very long. We're all on the same side by the time we've sort of scenarioed everything out. But it's because Fed can play it or because I can play it, or Alice can play devil's advocate that we end up coming out and we've strategized the whole thing within five minutes. And because we're almost all like siblings, we don't leave the room. We have a rule if we're all having a chat, nobody leaves the room until we've agreed on something. And because we've got that family connection, Alice is going to be with me for the rest of my life. She's my identical twin. And it's almost passed on throughout the whole of Love to visit. So nobody ever leaves a room on a disagreement. We work it out, we talk it through because we're all family. At the end of the day, you can't. Or to bed in an argument or anything.

Yeah, yeah. Have you given much thought yet to. I assume you probably will. You probably will have to. Right. At the point where you bring another senior leader effectively into your executive team. Have you thought yet about how that will shift the. Shift the dynamic?

Well, we've had to bring on a cfo.

Okay.

We've got our CTO and things like that. I think they all think that we're pretty weird, but we like that. I mean, like, that's another word for scrappy, I guess, with the way that we are. And. But I'd like to think that we're quite approachable people, albeit, you know, a little bit weird and another. And another opinion that we can scenario out. You know, it's. It's another opinion. And as long as we're solving the problem for the consumer, which is everything that we always come back to, then we'll be making the right decisions.

Yeah, yeah. It's a link to that as well. You said you've brought in your CFO cto. That's often another challenge. Right. When people are scaling, scaling businesses. Like, I don't know what, what their background is, but often, often people talk about, or they describe it as bringing in some big hitters. So people who are very experienced, who've worked in often larger organizations, and that's an interesting dynamic as well. Right. Because on the one hand, you want to bring someone in because they've got experience of scale and systems and you want that knowledge, but then they're coming into an organization where you don't have that scale and systems and SOP so often it can create Some tension. Right. Like, what's your experience of that? Been at Love to visit as you've grown out the senior team and how have you managed it?

I'll let you know when we do it. So our CTO has been with us. He was the second person that we hired. Yeah. And he's absolutely great. And the CFO is a fractional cfo. We love her, but we haven't actually brought in anybody from the industry or whatever just yet. So I'll let you know as soon as it happens.

I think come back on for part two.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. You are absolutely right, though. And it is something that we've spoken about before. Do we bring somebody in who's done this before, but maybe in a different sector? Because we don't want there to be any preconceived ideas about what Love to Visit needs to be from somebody else's experience. We can see it. We obviously want to listen to what people have got to say, but we have to choose the right people.

Yeah. Have you had any pressure yet from investors to do that cfo?

They wanted a CFO because obviously it's going well and we'll find the right people when we need to find the right people.

There's no pressure yet from the investors to bring in people who've got, like, bring in someone from, I don't know, X business because of their track record. You've not had any of that yet?

No, no, not yet. I mean, we've got some good neds. Honestly, we've got some really good investors. When we had the VCs join us last last year for consumer VCs, they trust us. We're very, very open with them. Very, very open. If we've ever had any problems or anything, we'll. We'll say it as it is. Again, the straight talking. That's another thing that definitely evolved the way that I need to be straight talking. You talk to investors or you have enough meetings with investors or potential investors, you just need to make your point to finish it, move on.

Yeah, yeah. And on that note, you've moved on.

See, it works.

Yeah, absolutely. You said earlier, Georgia, you're essentially a tech company, Right. It's a tech platform. Obviously, the big thing everyone's talking about is artificial intelligence, machine learning. Like, how do you see that kind of playing out in your business? Kind of. What are you already starting to do in that space? Because I'm sure you are right.

Yes, yes. And, you know, we've been speaking about it for a while and the senior members of our team as well, are constantly researching it and looking after. We don't want to use AI for the sake of using AI. And I think that's very important because we tend to hire in an AI team, you know, to really push it when actually AI is through everything that we do.

Yeah.

So we don't want to use it for the sake of it. We want to use it so that it makes it better for the consumers, a better experience for the consumers, more fun experience for the consumers. And there are great third party people who use AI. So we use Google AI to help us match intent. We use Azure's AI for our natural language search. We use Zendesk AI for our customer service stuff. We use Braze AI to help personalize and tailor content. We use a ton of AI throughout everything that we do. But the reason we use AI is to streamline our processes to help us scale and ultimately to make it a better experience for the consumers.

Do you think the business would be where it is now if it wasn't for the recent proliferation of AI?

I think it would, but it would be very, very manual. And when you get to this point of leveling up and the reason why we went for the investment is because we concealed a visit being a huge, huge global brand. So without AI in that regards, or being able to use Braze as a customer engagement platform, really good AI that helps us personalize the content. We couldn't scale that. There's no way that we'd be able to scale it. So we'd be stuck.

Yeah, yeah. If you don't mind sharing. How many people in the business?

Roughly just 35.

Cool. So how many people do you think you would have needed to get to where you are now without the use of kind of AI?

Probably over 60 by now, potentially more because we've completely streamlined what we call our fundamentals. So fundamentals is the first outreach to the supplier, which always needs a human, a human touch because you know, the humans on the ground putting it through onto the platform, getting the tech sorted for the bookings, integrations and everything, then getting the content ready on platform and then pushing that content out through customer engagement platforms and stuff. So if you can imagine how many people it would take to run all of those different things for the number of products that we, that we're going to have or we have, we need a huge workforce. So I'm really glad for AI.

Yeah, it is amazing. No, what? Yeah, it's amazing.

Keep having to move up, we keep having to move offices because we keep Growing my team. Luckily, I brought on three members on my team two weeks ago. Another person's joining my team in a couple of weeks. So it's nice to give people space, but we keep having to move like hermit crabs, you know, to different offices. So I can only imagine the size of the office we'd need if it wasn't for tech and AI.

Yeah, it's a lovely problem to have there, having to keep moving office. Right. Especially you need new office because you need more space rather than less space.

Yes, very true. But they have to say moving desks and monitors and everything is becoming tedious.

Yeah, it is for sure. Yeah, yeah. Just going back to the point around decision making from a few moments ago. What would you say has been the sort of toughest decision or call you've had to make in the business so far?

You've probably heard this answer quite a lot of times, Ben, but it has been letting people go, letting certain people go. It is tough. And it goes back to what I was saying, you know, about having the right people around you and things. We are continuously as a company, you know, we have to, every time that we do grow, we have to level up. So our team have got a level up. We've had to level up massively. So at every single stage of growth, we have to level up. Now, not everybody, you know, the team that you need at the start of your journey isn't the team that you need later on. So unless people are able to do that sort of transition into the level up that we need, we have to let people go. It's the right thing for the business, but it's tough. And you know, we talk about debt a lot before anything happens. We have to make the decision at the end of the day for the whole company, the people who have leveled up for our investors, for everybody involved. But I'm glad that it's tough. I'll never get to the stage when letting somebody go is going to be easy. It's always going to be tough. But I'm glad, I'm glad it's tough, but we have to make the right decisions.

Yeah, I think you're spot on there, Georgia. Like, if you go on any leadership or management training course or whenever I'm kind of running them for clients. One of the things people always want help and support with is having difficult conversations, having challenging conversations. And that can encompass a huge raft of things. Right. It could be letting somebody go, it could be telling someone they've not got a promotion. There's so many things A myriad of things that come into the challenging conversations banner. And everybody wants the way to make it easier, right? To make it feel less, less difficult. And I think what you said there is, is spot on. The more you do them, they might become slightly easier, but the discomfort I don't think is ever gonna, gonna vanish. And I think that's a really, really good thing. Like perhaps if you're a complete narcissist megalomaniac, then it might be easy. You might not care at all. But I think for most of us, like we, we do care and that's a, that's a good thing. And they're never going to be a joy to, joy to do. They'll just be slightly less uncomfortable, right, because we know experience, we've got some tools and tactics for making sure they run as smoothly as they can considering the sensitive topic that you might be talking about.

Like I mentioned, like, we talk all of the time. And I think when it's ever got to that point, we just made sure before anything like that happens, we ourselves know that we have done everything that we can to help that person level up or we've done everything that we can to help that person get the promotion. It still doesn't make the decision easier. But, you know, being able to talk to somebody and you know that there was nothing else you could do and we have to keep getting better at that as, as we grow. And also training people around us to be able to make those decisions as well is very, very important because I want everybody to care as much as we do about those tough decisions. So we're very, very open and honest with the wider team as well. And if we can help them to get to where hopefully we think we are able to care and offer as much as possible, then we're doing the right thing. But it's never easy.

Yet I think the people in the business working for you, your sister and fed honestly from what you just said there, I think they will be lucky to have you as the leaders in the business. And the reason I say that is again, a question I get asked a lot is Ben, how do I know sort of when enough is enough and it's time to let somebody go versus continuing to try and get the, get the best from them. And it's like so many things in leadership, we often look for that black and white answer. Well, if you've had them on a development plan for four weeks, you've done X, Y and Z, then it's time to let them go. But leadership is gray. Like I always talk about, leadership is making decisions in the gray. There is no black or white. And my answer to that question is like, how do I know it's time to let someone go? It's exactly what you just said, Georgia. It's when you have the conversation and you go home and you either talk to your family or you look at yourself in the mirror as you're brushing your teeth. At the end of the day, if you can stand and go, you know what? Hand on heart, I've done everything I could. We've done everything we could to get this person to the level required and we've supported them and it still hasn't happened, then that's fine. Hand on heart, I can sleep well knowing I did all I could. And it's the right, right decision. Like, I think ultimately that is the only way to make, make that decision.

It totally, totally is. And, and you know, that energy that you have done and you should put all that energy in, you've got, you've got other people on the team who have, who are leveling up. So you have to make the decision sometimes for the wider team because you, you want to be able to help them improve faster and, and to climb the ladder. But, yeah, it's never easy. And the leadership thing being gray is great. I think if, if leadership was black and white, we'd have a lot more leaders.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then the other thing, of course, is you've used the phrase kind of leveling up a few times, actually. If that individual who isn't levelling up doesn't, and either we continue to have to invest a lot of time in them ourselves or we start asking other members of the team to pick up some extra work because they're not. You end up dropping the level. The overall performance standard often drops to the lowest acceptable standard.

You can call it lovers common denominator.

Yeah, you have to, or other people will think, well, hang on, this isn't fair. If David over there kind of isn't doing this, then, then why should I be picking up the slack for him? And a. You start to get the frustration and discontent breeds, but just the performance, the performance drops. So you, you do have to, you do have to do it.

It just, it just makes, it just. It slows the whole thing down and it just makes. It requires more energy and we've got to preserve the energy and, you know, keep the momentum up. But, you know, it is never easy.

Talking of which, wasn't going to ask this, how do you preserve your own energy Right. It's. I'm sure you work. I'm sure you work kind of a lot. Spend kind of most of your waking hours and probably some of your sleeping hours thinking about the business. How do you, as a co founder, how do you maintain your energy and enthusiasm for it?

Well, first of all, Lucky, I love what we do, but I was really hoping you weren't going to ask me the question because I'm a terrible advocate for it, because I love what we do and I do think that, you know, I conserve energy by going home, sleeping, preparing food for the next day. You know, having lunches already here in work means I don't have to think about going out for lunch, but, like, you know, finishing the day and being really, really tired. It's a good feeling because you know you've achieved something that day. Next question. I'm a terrible, terrible advocate for what you're asking.

Cool. Finish up with a few quick fire questions. Firstly, I guess this next question has got an obvious two sides. What's the best thing about leading a business with your twin sister?

Quick decision making. And when she's here, she makes me lunch.

What's the worst thing about running a business with your twin sister?

We're very close. I said this in the beginning, to not be affected by her, but if she's getting frustrated or if she's, you know, not to not feel that is very, very difficult because we're very, very in sync. But both of us being frustrated and feeling that way is not going to help. So that's. That's very hard. And also, when she's on maternity leave, she hasn't brought me lunch.

So very selfish of your twin sister to go.

And I know she could at least prepare me some lunch when she's thinking about the baby.

Yeah, brilliant link to the. Link to the business and what you do. What's your favorite UK attraction or little hidden gem, if you want to disclose it. So then it's not a secret anymore, right?

No, it's not. I hadn't heard about it until we started working with them. But there's a really, really cool forest festival that happens. Merthyrmal Forest Fest Feastival. It's in the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales and I got to experience it last year. It happens on certain weekends and you just go down, like a trail of, like, fairy lanterns and lights and things, and you go down and there's like a whole food festival in the middle of a forest next to some sand dunes. You wouldn't. You wouldn't Know about it. It's really cool.

Very cool. Best investment of your time as a leader or founder in the past 12 months.

Spending as much time as possible in the office with the team, being there.

Being actually present with the team. Yeah, cool.

It takes a lot of energy, Ben. It does, it does. You know, but that's definitely the best investment of. Of my time.

Is there a favorite quote that you constantly remind yourself of as you are building and leading the business?

Does that make sense for the consumer?

Nice. Yeah, nice. Very important for the consumer.

Yeah, that one.

Yeah. Great. And most helpful book or resource that's helped you on your personal leadership journey.

From Good to Great by Jim Collins. Yeah, that was very important for us at the start of this journey. I think I've spoken a lot about having the right people on the team or having the right people on the bus, I think, is how he refers to it.

That's right, yeah.

So, yeah, that one.

Cool. The bit from that, I love that book myself as well. The bit that I constantly say to myself is keep pushing the flywheel. This concept. Flywheel, the breakthrough. It like, rarely can anybody who's led one of those good to great businesses pinpoint the moment where it took off. It's more. More gradual and it's just the process of keep pushing forward, keep pushing forward, keep the momentum. And then suddenly, before you know, it's like, whoa, how did we get here?

I speak to my team about daily.

And final question, which might be slightly longer than a. Than a quick fire one. What would you say is your favorite failure? It could be linked to the business or just more more broadly, personally. And by that I mean something that on the surface appeared to be a failure, but actually, when you look back on it, actually it was really fortuitous and there was some learning or growth and opportunity that came from it.

This is quite a recent one, I don't think. Maybe I shouldn't say it, but it's exactly what you've just asked. We left a competitor's contact information on our mailing list because we don't have anything to hide but doing what we do. But definitely I learned from that, that mistake is that information in the wrong hands can be twisted into something to suit what their best interests are. So we, you know, we. We definitely learned from that. And the second point of it, although it was a mistake because of what happened, we've got even closer relationships now with, with our suppliers of the ones who were affected by. By this. And we just got to talk more about all the amazing stuff. That we're doing because it opened up another element of what we could talk about. So, yeah, that's, that's that one that.

Is so often the case. Right. When something like that happens, I guess it's showing a degree of vulnerability. Right. You drop the either personal mask or the corporate mask for, for a second. It enables a slightly more human to human, humble, humble conversation. And through that the connection builds, doesn't it? Like it's. That's so true. I think of every aspect of leadership, like through some of those sorts of mistakes, the greatest learning and growth and strength of connections can emerge, I think.

No, and it was definitely what happened for us. And, you know, you asked me in the beginning what I missed the most and I do really miss being able to talk to partners, our suppliers, and it gave me the opportunity to do that and to explain the situation and say it's not what it seemed. But I'm glad that you've called and I'm glad that you've, you've spoken to us about it. But now let's have a conversation because I'd love to actually hear what your thoughts are on our rebrand or our new UX UI and all of these different things.

Yeah, love it. Georgia, one final, final question. If you could give just one piece of advice to another founder or founder team where they're about to scale, they know they've got product market fit and we've got a viable proposition here. It's time to scale. What is that one most important piece of advice that you would share?

Except for have a really good twin.

Sister, it's difficult to achieve if that's not the case.

Just try and find, see if you've got one. Never, ever devalue the time that you spend, the energy that you spend with the people around you and your team. Because although the people in our team didn't come up with the idea or something big, you cross your life, you'd think that they did because of how much they've been around us and things. So I think that even though you do have to take a step back, the time that you can spend with the people closest to you in your team or the people, you can give them a chance and they'll love it as much as you will, and then you'll actually be able to scale because you don't have to be there driving it in years to come because there'll be a succession stuff, you know.

Yeah, I love it. I said this earlier on, like, I think you've got a great co founder team in the business. And just from chatting to you this past 48 minutes, I think the team that you are leading are really lucky to have kind of you, your sister and Fed as the co founders. And as a result I'll certainly be really intrigued to see the journey of the business because you're doing great stuff and it sounds like you're leading the people brilliantly well. So thank you for coming on the show, George. I really appreciate your time and I'm sure everybody listening, whether they're looking to grow and scale a business or not, will have found it really, really useful and insightful. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. There's still so much for us to learn, but we're happy to learn more and more every day by being straight talking and just saying we don't know the answer to that. What can I learn? So yeah, thank you so much Ben. It's been lovely.

And that brings us to the end of today's episode with Georgia Aubrey. I loved hearing how she, her sister and co founder Fed have grown love to visit whilst really staying grounded in their purpose and values. If you're in a similar stage of growth or simply want to understand your leadership strengths better, do check out the Leadership Capability Scorecard. It's a free tool to help you assess where you and your team are thriving and where there's room to grow. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for joining me. And until next time, keep leading those scale up businesses with clarity, purpose and as Georgia said, a bit of scrappiness. Until next time, lead on.