86 | From Startups to Fortune 500: Lessons in Leadership & Culture | Jo Dutta

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

In the expert's mind, there are few possibilities, but in the beginner's mind, there are thousands. And I love that quote because I have to stop myself every time and just rethink, can I take something and reapply it from a big company? Yes, absolutely. Is it the right thing to do? No, 100% not.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Firstly, as we always do, first of all, a big shout out and a thank you to our friend and sponsor Workvivo. As I've said before a load of times, if you're struggling with communications as you move into the realms of hybrid working, it's all a bit gray, we don't really know what to do to make sure that we keep everybody feeling part of our cultures and part of our organizations, then maybe Workvivo is the answer for you. They do a brilliant communications and engagement platform, which allows you to make sure that everybody, regardless of location, has all the information they need from a company and culture perspective. So, they're worth a look at workvivo.com. A little more on them coming up later on, but a big thank you and a shout out to them. We love having leaders on the podcast because actually it's all well and good having people like me and all the subject matter experts telling us what good looks like and best practice this and that. But actually, when you're on the ground doing the job, the reality and the actuality of how you do things can be very, very different despite wanting to do the very best all the time. That's just not possible all the time just because of things going on at work and personalities and everything else. So I love talking to leaders because that gives us a really good reflection of what it looks like actually on the frontline of business. And I'm delighted today to welcome Jo Dutter onto the pod. She is the Chief Marketing Officer in Moosh. She's going to tell us more about that in a second. They're a Chicago-based startup. But what's really interesting as well is that she's also come from big business, a former VP of marketing in PepsiCo. So Jo brings with her, I think, a really interesting perspective on how business works in the small factor in the startup world. And then if you move to the other side of the page in the world of PepsiCo, the huge mega company, global organization that is PepsiCo. So really interested to get to both of those perspectives. Perspective. So Jo, hello there, how are you?

Good morning, good afternoon, Scott. Thank you so much for having me.

You're welcome. You're more than welcome. Listen, why don't we kick off? We always do this, and I just, I do keep saying that we will change this one day, but just not today, because I haven't thought of something better to do yet. Let's just kick off with giving you maybe a few minutes to tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about where you've come from and your role today in MUSH.

That's great. Absolutely. So I'm a Brit, actually. I'm British. And as you mentioned, Scott, I'm based in Chicago. So at the moment, I am the CMO of a very fast-growing food startup that's called Mush. We are plant-based, we're vegan. It's actually oats, we're overnight oats soaked in plant-based milk. I would love to send it over to the UK, but at the moment we're just building the business in the US. It's, uh, it's an incredible company, very, very small. The founder actually is an ex-Goldman trader who quit her day job and went to really start making products out of her kitchen, ended up selling it in San Diego farmers markets and got picked up by Whole Foods. I mean, fast forward 5 years and we've actually just been expanded across all Whole Foods. We're going into Target and into Costco. Um, so we're in a stage of what I'd call sort of hypergrowth, slight chaos, but very fun chaos. But as you mentioned, what's really interesting is my most recent job before this was also— I, Scott, I seem to have a thing for oats. I was running the Quaker brands globally out of Chicago. But again, that was like a $2.5 billion business. So definitely I've gone from big to small and just really figuring out how to do a lot more with a lot less in a startup.

Brilliant. It is a big challenge, isn't it? Because I mean, you do have a huge amount less, don't you?

You have a lot less. But I think what's really interesting about that is, you know, on a daily basis, I have to remind myself that actually constraints really breed creativity. And what I've really learned in this startup, and a lot of things, but a lot of things that I wish I'd known in big business, which is actually, you know, when you really don't have money and you don't have resource, you can be a lot lot, lot more creative. You end up being a lot closer to the consumer, just because you don't, you don't have a lot of resource. And you end up having actually quite a lot more fun. And I think you can be a lot more effective.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Let's chat a little bit, something, something that you said to me in, in our pre-chat, this whole idea of being customer obsessed, obsessed also means being employee obsessed. What do you think practically an obsession with employees— that sounds a bit weird— an employee obsession, an obsession with them? I don't know, either way it sounds weird.

Yeah.

What does that practically look like? What should organizations and leaders be doing to be able to drive a culture where you're employee obsessed? What does that look like?

I think it's a really great question, particularly in a small company. I think I'd kind of lead with, again, as a marketer, you know, what does it mean to be consumer obsessed? And for me, I say, I say very often our consumers are our brand. Like, we don't own the brand, our community actually, our community is our brand. The other very humbling fact as a marketer is people don't care about your brands, they just don't care. People care about people. And so that has been really interesting as we've built a community around Moosh. We've almost got like a bit of a cult-like status. We have celebrities reaching out to us, we have athletes who we partner with, we have people that really wanna be involved with the brand 'cause they love the community that's been built. And part of that is because we don't pay people. We have people come to us, they become spokespeople or influencers, and we partner together. We send them product, we sometimes send them hoodies. We don't ever use models, we don't use actors. We have people that are in our community that we sort of are on Instagram with, who we communicate with on a regular basis, who really present our brand. And on the flip side of that, our employees are also our brand. And that's where we think we get obsessed with them. We're obsessed about our brand and our employees are an extension of that community. So employees, they live our brand, they're part of our community. We're in events. The last weekend we spent at the Chicago Marathon. So the entire team were handing out products with the athletes side by side. So we're constantly in a constant dialogue with our community. So I think employee obsession is a two-way street, actually. I think it's, you know, your employees love what they're doing and they love the mission behind what you're doing. And then you really treat them well make them as part of your community.

And do you think that gets harder? I mean, if you think back to your time in PepsiCo, that whole idea of an employee obsession, do you think that gets harder in bigger organizations? Because the people in the organization are just further away from the customer and don't feel as though that they're able, or maybe they, maybe they feel as though they're making a difference, but they're not able to necessarily see that.

That's exactly right. I think that's exactly right. And I do think I get asked quite a lot, you know, what do you learn from startup that you can really, really apply in a big company? And I know that you Scott mentioned John Lewis, because that was somewhere that I had actually worked. I worked at John Lewis quite, quite a long time ago now, but it was interesting, 'cause you asked the question, like, what did you learn at John Lewis? And even though John Lewis is quite a big company, I think they've done a really incredible job of almost taking startup principles and applying it in a way that they are still consumer and employee obsessed. And I was reflecting on it. I think there's a few things that, that happen, obviously, in the partnership, the John Lewis partnership, the employees have skin in the game, a bit like a startup.

It's a cooperative, right? It's an employee co-op.

Yeah, exactly. For anybody who's in the US, John Lewis is just an incredible, incredibly well-trusted company. It's a little bit like Nordstrom in terms of service level, but Crate and Barrel in terms of content. It's fashion, it's apparel and electronics. But the partners are co-owners. It's a cooperative and it's incredibly flat. So there's a bonus that's given out hopefully every year, and it's the same amount from the amount of bonus that's given to the chairman, all the way through to the Saturday shelf stacker. So it was an amazing, an amazing place. So I think that owning part of the company is really important. And then I think the second is this idea, like you mentioned, being really close to the consumer. There's such an incredible feedback loop at John Lewis at the frontline. So you really, really know your consumer. And it's a function of a few things. One is just retention. So employees at John Lewis tend to stay with the company sort of 4 to 5 times longer than anybody else. They really know their consumers and they get to know them and kind of grow with them. And I think the other thing which is really important in a company is just to really empower your employees just to do the right thing, which encourages them to get closer to the consumer. So in John Lewis, the partners were empowered to return products, to send flowers, to create acts of kindness. There was actually a budget in the marketing P&L, which was quite a big one around goodwill. And it's something that we are really thoughtful about at Moosh as well. We send refrigerated products, so mushes, oats, but they're cold and they're soaked overnight. So if we ever have an issue, we immediately send somebody new products. If we find people have issues, we're really quick to send them hoodies and swag. If anybody's sick, the team sometimes writes handwritten notes. So I think there's something about employee— empowering your employees to really get closer to the consumer and have that very, like, emotional loyalty, loyalty as opposed to transactional loyalty.

And do you think that's, in big organizations, do you think that's easier for the staff who are on the frontline, who are customer-facing? How do you translate that for somebody who works in accounts, or in HR, or somewhere that might be considered a support function that isn't completely customer-facing? How do you make sure there's an obsession there as well?

I think that's such a great, great question, Scott. And in our company, again, this weekend, like every single person in the company was slinging oats at the weekend, you know, at the marathon. But I think, What I would do going back into big company was definitely have everybody in a situation where you're either volunteering or you get to get really close to the consumer, or you spend time on the shop floor or on trucks, which again, every role I've been in, I've always encouraged people, you know, even at Pepsi, get onto the trucks, get out into the stores, get as close to the consumer as possible, because A, that's the most fun and that's the place you wanna be, but B, that's where you're really gonna get a passion for the business.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I remember there was a few years ago, we'd bought a couple of tubs of Häagen-Dazs in the supermarket and opened it one evening as a little treat, as you do. And I probably open it too often these days, actually. I need to get back to it being just a treat occasionally. But when we opened it, it was all icy. It was as though it had defrosted and then refrozen. It was really— it was icy and horrible and stuff. And I just got online and just sent them a note and said, hey, listen, how are you? Bought a tub of Häagen-Dazs today in the store. "Look, it was icy. I don't know if it means there's a problem with your distribution or something, but listen, I just thought I'd let you know." The next day I got a call from a representative from Häagen-Dazs or whoever their distributor is, and they said, "You know, I'm really, really sorry about that. You know, we're looking into it right now. Can we send you some samples? We'd love to send you out some ice cream that isn't broken, if the ice cream gets broken." And I said, "Sure, yeah, no problem. But look, we're actually renovating our house at the moment, so we actually don't have a freezer. So, you know, it's very kind of you, but don't worry about it. Thank you though." "Really appreciate the call." 3 months later, my phone rings and it's the same lady. I said, "Hi, it's the lady from Häagen-Dazs." She said, "How are you? Have you got your freezer yet?" I said, "Yeah, we finished our reservations." She said, "The ice cream will be with you tomorrow." And I arrived in from work the next day and there was a refrigerated box on my doorstep with 8 tubs, proper pint tubs of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer box ready to go into my freezer. And that for me, that's somebody that really, really cares.

It's incredible. And the amount of money you're gonna now spend with Häagen-Dazs.

Yeah. And tell this story to, you know, the 1,500 people a month that listen to this podcast. And they're gonna go, "Oh, that's great customer service. Maybe I'll buy a tub of Häagen-Dazs over Ben Jerry's the next time." Yeah, that's incredible.

Such a great story. Well done to Häagen-Dazs. And again, I think it's empowering the employee to make that decision, right? To really trust them, know they're gonna do the right thing, and knowing it's what really matters to you.

Yeah, absolutely. I was actually looking the other day at a case study around employee engagement and one of the big— it's Marriott, I think. I think it's Marriott who empower their employees. They each get given a budget of $2,000 to keep customers happy. And that might be, as you say, spending money on a taxi, getting flowers, buying a dessert, getting somebody a drink, whatever it is. But that's there, that they're empowered to make that happen. And it's actually funny how rarely they actually spend the money. But the feeling of knowing that they're empowered to spend the money is nearly enough to drive the engagement within the organization. It's incredible.

That's incredible. I think it's so interesting when you, similar to Haagen-Dazs, when you think about the brands that really understand their community. And it's the difference to me, again, like Marriott could just say, hey, here's a bunch of Marriott reward points. Completely missing what your consumer wants. I think a lot about Peloton. I don't know if you have a Peloton, but that is a company with unbelievable, like, brand obsession. And they know that what the consumer wants is not a bunch of loyalty points and a discount on the bike. They want a shout-out, right? You want a shout-out in the lesson. Or if something goes wrong, you want someone to send you some Peloton swag. Like, that's really truly understanding who you are and who your consumer is, right? Rather than something very transactional, which is a bunch of loyalty points that nobody's gonna use. So I think, again, get your understanding of consumer and then empower your employee.

Absolutely. To deliver on that promise.

Exactly.

Yeah, absolutely.

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It's interesting when you, when you touched earlier on, on the startup thing and trying to take some learnings from startups into big business. And of course, Jeff Bezos talks a lot about this day one philosophy where We need to keep thinking like a startup. The day that we stop thinking like a startup is the day that we die, because we want to be agile and we want to be fleet of foot and we want to get things done quickly. We want to try and fail and experiment and all that stuff. And I just wonder from your perspective, when you're thinking about that whole idea of kind of day one philosophy or thinking about the startup culture, What is it that exists in the startup culture today that's about creating great cultures?

That's such a great question. And I love the Jeff Bezos Day One letter. I think it's so relevant. I think for me, I think there's three things. The first one that was so humbling to me coming from a big company, and it's what we call beginner's mindset. So it's actually a Zen Buddhist philosophy called Shoshin, And it's this idea that in the expert's mind, there are few possibilities, but in the beginner's mind, there are thousands. And I love that quote because I have to stop myself every time and just rethink, can I take something and reapply it from a big company? Yes, absolutely. Is it the right thing to do? No, 100% not. It's a great way to burn through money, you know, completely kill the corporate culture and, and probably get fired. So I love that idea of, Every day you have to start with that kind of white piece of paper and really start with first principles and how are you gonna solve a problem. And in my first week at work, I was in one of our, we didn't really have a proper office. We had some kind of doors that had been created into desks. We didn't have enough space. I had to take investor calls sitting on the floor in the corridor. But in the one room that we had, we had a lot of Post-it notes on the wall and we were trying to figure something out to do with our manufacturing. And I found a Post-it note that said, said, you know, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this. And then another Post-it note just said, we're gonna figure it the fuck out. And I love that Post-it note, and I took it and I've kept it, and we actually have it on our social media. Because I think to me, that also is a less eloquent way of talking about beginner's mind, because every single day you're trying to really, really figure things out. So I think that's number one. I think the second one, and when you and I were just talking about this, is thinking about failure as data acquisition. And that to me is just such incredible, shift from big companies, but just this idea that you are gonna screw up every single day. We do something at work, we have shout-outs on a Friday where we kind of thank each other for things that have gone well during the week. And what we also do is we call it #unscared. We actually have a Slack channel where people absolutely state it very quickly when they've really screwed up. And what I love about that is it comes from the top and everybody's on board with it. So for example, the marathon, we ran out of product within 2 hours and we had 2 days, and that was an absolute disaster on paper. The team immediately, somebody jumped on a truck and drove products to the marathon. We had an absolutely incredible time, we were absolutely slammed. We sampled about 15,000 people. It was incredible. So the minute you flip it into an opportunity, you know, #unscared or I screwed up, you don't hide it, you bring it to the fore and the team will fix it. The other example we had this week is accidentally in the plant, we put too much coffee into our Coffee Coconut product. So we actually have 5 times the amount of caffeine. So the team were like, the marketing team were like, "That's incredible, I can market that. That's like buzzed up coffee. So we're gonna send it to our people on our direct-to-consumer site. We've got a whole big campaign, we're partnering with a coffee company." So it's just this notion that, you know, create psychological security and just really great things can happen. So I think that's, I think that's absolutely the second one. And I think that the third one is just this idea that you— we always say you've got to start, even if you don't know how. Just in small companies, you just do not have the time, which I think is a bit back to Bezos's point, but it's just incredible how little time you have. So you just get it done.

That whole, you know, every journey starts with the first step is so true. And, you know, it is about Actually, there's one of the banks here in Ireland, their campaign at the moment is Begin. And that's the foundation stone, the capstone of the whole campaign, Begin. And it is just really powerful. Just, you know what? We don't know what the answer is going to be. Perfection is the enemy of progress. We're not going to get anything done if we sit looking at our navels for weeks on end, wondering what the first right thing to do is. It's probably the wrong thing you're going to do first, but that's okay. And I think having, you know, That idea of being able to very quickly put your hand up and say, "I screwed up," is powerful. One question I've got, which is an interesting extension on the psychological safety piece, is what if somebody really, really screws up? Like, what if somebody does something really quite bad that isn't really, it's not quite as forgivable as accidentally putting too much coffee in the product, and that's given us a whole new product line? What if it's something that's really bad, and kind of almost anti-company? What happens then?

Yeah, that's a great question, 'cause there's screw-ups, and then there's fundamentally the wrong fit. And I think that's another thing in a startup, right? We talk about the fact that there just is no slack. But one of our— our COO is just an incredible person. He's— there's nothing he can't do. He's so funny, he's so great, he's such a great leader. And he's an ex-army, ex-Navy SEAL. And—

I say nobody messes with him.

And nobody messes with Guy, he's phenomenal. But, sorry, to your question, when he talks about how in the Navy SEALs, you have to carry a boat, you have to carry a boat, and you don't know how much effort everybody's giving, but if any one person is giving less than 90% of their effort, nobody can carry the boat. And this is during Hell Week, right? You're pretty tired. And that, to me, is such a great metaphor for being in a startup, because you have to, every single day, every single day, give 90% of your effort, or else we won't be carrying the boat., but you don't know who's giving it, but there's no slack in the system. So, I'd say to your point, you know, the philosophy of, you know, unscared, getting out there, failing is absolutely fine. If you have somebody who can't give 90% of their effort or does something and isn't an A-player, you don't have any time and you do have to quickly make a decision and move on. Just because of that, you need real A-players in a startup and they have to adapt really quickly. Otherwise, you're going to drop the boat.

And how do you pick the right staff? Because I guess you haven't sat down and thought about values-based recruiting and all the other stuff that big— Exactly, you're laughing. All the other stuff that big— Values-based recruiting, please.

Yeah.

You don't have any of that. So how do you pick the right people? I mean, somebody can be brilliant on paper, they can be amazing in an interview, How do you get the right bodies on the ground? How do you make sure that happens?

Such a great question. And we were really lucky. Our founder is one of the smartest people I've ever met. She did Columbia, put herself through Columbia in 3 years, ended up on Wall Street, just incredibly thoughtful, values-driven, really smart, really humble. I think what happens is, at the very beginning of the startup, you need to really quickly build an A-team, because that A-team is the team that's going to build the next level of A-team. A-team. So, if you have anybody who isn't an A-team and isn't carrying the boat, it's gonna bring you down. So, yeah, we don't have a manual, there is no policy, we don't have HR, but you rely on the strength of this team who's gonna kind of take you up higher, the A-players, and hire people who are not only absolute rock stars, but can adapt really, really quickly. And the reason I say that is, there's this really interesting article that was written called, Give away your Legos, which again, I really wish I had read before I'd worked in a big company. But this notion that in, just like with children, children love playing with Legos, in a startup at the very beginning, you probably have about 10 jobs, right? When you're somewhere between the 1st and the 10th employee, you have endless possibilities. Everything you do is really fun and you're making huge impact. If you want to grow as fast as a company that's doubling its growth, or in hypergrowth, you have to give away your Legos and you have to redefine your job every 3 months. And that is really, really hard. So, we talk a lot about that as a leadership team, which is, we have A players, the A players then need to look at a pile of Legos over here that look phenomenal, give away the Legos they have, because actually that's the work of 3 people. So, we do think, you know, even though we don't have the manual, we don't have HR, we don't have everything written down, we just need to have this great instinct about, great A-players, or bring in the A-players. And then when we look at it, it's absolutely aptitude, but it's this ability to, to be humble and know that you're going to grow and get excited about the new challenge. You don't want to kind of keep your Legos like a child, right, which we all do instinctively. We don't want someone— we're working on a tower and we don't want anyone to take it away. Um, but sometimes you do have to hand those over and go and find the next challenge. So I think it's, it's a mixture of those two things.

When do you hit a tipping point where you've gone from startup fleet of foot, agile, we're A-team players, hiring A-team players. That's great when you're 20 people. But I just wonder, what's the tipping point where you do need to have shared values, where you do need to have a stated purpose, where you do need to have an HR team or an intranet or any of those things that what we might term big business have? When do you hit that point?

I think there are multiple inflection points. I think when you hit, I think they say when you hit sort of 20, 25 people, you should start to get an HR person. That's always like, anyone thinking of joining a startup, quite often the advice you're given is, think about whether you want to join pre or post HR, because that's a sign of many things, many things, Scott.

I was just taking a drink there when Jo said that, and I nearly regurgitated my drink all over my desk.

That was everywhere. And there are many other stories I can tell you about that. For not having HR, but that's for another day. But I think that's a really important inflection point. There's obviously the Malcolm Gladwell point, which is when you hit 150 people, you suddenly lose that network and that connection. For me, I think we're currently in an open loft, and we have people who are geographically separated. I think the minute that you can't turn around to somebody in that space and ask them a question is when you need to write everything down. I wouldn't even call it process, you just need to write everything down. And then I think as you get to sort 50 and you start to, you really just cannot have that conversation, and that's when it really starts. You have to create not even process, just the foundation. And then I think the next point is when you get to 100 or the 150 where you really are start starting to, to professionalize. And we're currently at a point that we're at 20, but we're planning for 40 for next, for next year. Um, so again, we're just kind of under-skirting underneath the, the point where you can turn around or get on the phone or Slack somebody.

Yeah, okay, interesting. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's go back to something you talked about earlier on, which was psychological safety, because I know that's something you're really passionate about. And it's something that I talk to clients and groups about all the time. And the examples you gave there about people just very quickly putting their hands up and we ran out of product and, you know, I screwed up today and I put 5 times too much coffee in the product than I should have done. You know, sorry about that. Is great. And actually having that culture where we do that and it's all right and we'll work with it. And actually maybe to your point about because we've got that beginner's mindset, hmm, well actually let's just make that into a high octane caffeine product that we can then sell to people. This is what a brilliant thing we accidentally did. I think in lots of bigger organizations, I don't think, I know in lots of bigger organizations, because that same culture of psychological safety just doesn't exist. And I wonder, you've seen both sides of the coin. You've seen big business in PepsiCo and you've seen the startup in Mush. And I wonder from your perspective, why is it that bigger companies suffer from that? And how can they perhaps nurture that part of their culture to become more psychologically safe? What can organizations and leaders do to really help that along?

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I do think, I think first of all, it has to start from the top. I'm thinking, I don't know if you watched Ted Lasso. I'm a huge Ted Lasso fan.

No, but we must actually, 'cause we're now, we've recently run out of Netflix things, so we need to start something new.

You gotta watch it, Scott, it's amazing. But he, there's a moment in it, which I won't talk about in the show, where there's a real demonstration of psychological safety from the top, which really cascades and has a huge impact on the team. And I think it literally has to come from the leader. I think you've gotta build it in, to the culture. So again, I mentioned when I first joined the startup, I was like, why do we have a meeting at 3 o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday? Like, nobody's best thinking, this is gonna be hideous. And we went in and it was like words of gratitude and praise before we went into the weekend. And I thought, oh my God, this is so millennial. This is gonna be dreadful and self-aggrandizing. And it was wonderful. And we do it. And it's just a moment of pause in a crazy week just to say, look, I'm so thank you. I'm so thankful for what you did. And this happened. And everyone goes, you know, into the weekend fairly energized, even if they're absolutely spent.. And we use those moments as real teaching moments just to be like, this happened, right? We turned it around. So I think start from the top and build it. Yeah, build it into meetings and then always have curiosity, which I think is what you were talking about, which is, okay, this is fascinating. What happens when you put 5 times the caffeine into a product? How can we talk about it? Who's our consumer? Do they want it? Is this new innovation? What's the cogs on it? Can we make it work? Or similarly, God, what's happening in marathon? Why, despite COVID, are we getting mobbed? Like, what do we know about runners? Like, as long as you can use curiosity, it just takes all the pressure off who screwed this up, who got the number wrong, who put the coffee in the, in the product, which is very difficult in a big company. But I think if you can encourage that mindset and encourage curiosity and just focus on how can this become a better outcome, I think even in a big company, I can think back to examples of when mistakes can just be incredible opportunities.

Yeah, I love that idea of curiosity. I love, and I've been doing a lot of work recently with Denison with their organizational culture survey with a few clients. And that's one word that the person I'm working with in there uses all the time, be curious. When you're looking at the data, when you're looking at the results of the survey, actually try and be curious to ask questions about, I wonder why this is this while that's that, and this is that. That seems really weird. I don't actually think I don't think we're curious enough in work. And I think to your point earlier on about the beginner's mindset versus the expert's mindset, I think when you get really far down your career and you're 20 years doing something, you do have a go-to way of doing things. You do have, we've done this before, we'll just reboot and do it again because it worked fine the last time, it'll work fine this time. We don't have the curiousness to say, well, actually, let's just stop for a minute and see and just ask ourselves the question, could I do that better, differently, in a different way with different people? Do we need to come up with a different outcome? And it's, it's a really powerful thing, I think, to stop and, um, yeah, just stop and ask yourself that question. Is this the right way to do this?

Is it the right approach. Yeah, it's interesting. I— a friend of mine always says, if you want a great answer— she's a great innovator— she's like, go ask a 6-year-old.

Yeah.

And I, I have a 9-year-old, and I asked her, what should we do with this? And she had like 100 ideas of what to do with the coffee, and she was drawing ideas. And I think it's because 6-year-olds don't have an ego. And it's so hard, right, in a big company. But just get beyond it, be curious, and really figure out, you know, how can we turn this around? I think the other Obviously, in a startup, the other angle is that you have no money, you have no time, you can't ponder on it. You've gotta make a yes/no decision and move forward, which is a bit like the Jeff Bezos point, which is, you know, commit, disagree and commit and move forward. Which again, you know, we have so much going on. This was just a mistake that happened. Let's commit to it, move forward, agree, let's see what happens. The other thing I talk about a lot with my team is that, you always have to test before you invest. So in a big company, quite often this would've been a really big project and something would've gone wrong. We talk a bit about, you have a cupcake. If you're gonna bake a cake, Scott, you wouldn't start with a wedding cake, you'd start with a cupcake, then maybe you'd make a birthday cake, and then you think about making a wedding cake. You wouldn't jump straight into the wedding cake. The beauty of a startup is you do not have money to make a wedding cake, nor do you have the time. So a lot of our mentality is around, ooh, this could be a cupcake idea. We actually use that language. This is a cupcake test. If it works, great, we'll put more money behind it, and we'll launch a whole new line. But I'm not going to take this coffee SKU to Whole Foods tomorrow before I've tested it with 1,000 consumers on our direct-to-consumer site. So I think, again, always having that mentality that you can go small scale, and then you can scale it up, also helps with sort of de-risking and playing.

And it's that experiment. I think it's that experimentation piece that many organizations are missing. I was only having a conversation about it this morning, that it's just, we need to try and fail. Fail.

Oh yeah.

If we're not, if we're not failing, we're not learning. Yeah, absolutely. We, we just aren't, we're not, we're not progressing. We're not putting out our best work.

Yeah. And I think also when you do that cupcake test and something that I would've done way more of, I think even at Pepsi is the, the example at the marathon, um, that's cupcake, cupcake testing. That's not a big stately $500,000 piece of research. That's just 6 people at a booth handing people product and getting immediate feedback. Who likes it? Who doesn't like it? What happens at a marathon? How do you not mess up? What's your routine? How much energy do you need? What benefits work? So I think there's something about when you do it, do it in a very grassroots way and then scale up.

Yeah, for sure. Last question. Let me ask you a little bit about leaders.

Yes.

Because you've talked about your A-team leaders, they're hiring their A-teams. And I'm sure you saw the same back when you were in your previous life in PepsiCo and other big big organizations. What do you think? What's the big thing or the big couple of things that leaders can do to really help their people to shine, to be amazing at what they do? Because I think people really struggle with the whole idea of leader versus manager. That a leader, "Well, I'm supposed to do things, aren't I? I'm a doer." No, no, no, you're not a doer. You're supposed to help other people 'achieve.' That's your role now. And I wonder, what have you seen that's kind of out there as the top things that leaders should be doing to help their people shine?

That's a really great question. I agree with you on leading and managing, and they're so often misquoted. I feel so grateful, 'cause I have been able to work for some incredible leaders across my career, in Pepsi, at Bain, at John Lewis. I think what's a universal, Really seeing people as whole people, really understanding their motivation, I think is everything. And then understanding how to work, how to put them in the best position and train them for success. I think, as I mentioned, in a startup, leadership or giving people a platform to shine is exactly what we talked about before, which is being able to find A-players, like understanding who's gonna really work. In a startup, you have so much ambiguity, so much stress and chaos. I think it's what, what really making people shine is again, having the Lego talk, understanding what rapid growth looks like, reassuring them constantly, being pretty vulnerable and saying, look, I'm experiencing chaos. People are taking away my Legos and I'm having to change my Legos. And by the way, we're gonna like rotate the Legos. So I think in the startup, just because of the speed you're going at, you do have to be pretty transparent and pretty reassuring and just give people the opportunity again, to fail fast, to be unscared and help them to adapt rapidly, just 'cause you're moving so, so fast that you don't necessarily have all the ways to lead you would in a classic organization, which is a lot of training and a lot of coaching. This is a very much, run at it culture, where it's pure grit and determination and hustle every single day. And just making sure, you know, you're kind of, your troops are with you, and they understand what it takes to adapt.

And imagine if, you know, back to your PepsiCo days and Bain and John Lewis, if teams of 20 people in those organizations had the same mentality and culture and ways of doing things as your team has now, at Mush. What, what difference would that have made?

I think it would have made a huge difference. I think startups are the hardest thing you will ever do and the most rewarding. And I do think now, thinking back again to the John Lewis example, giving people that ability to own and feel ownership in something and pride in what they're building, and then giving some constraints, because I do think that is where you get to be your your most creative. We talk at the team quite a bit about this notion that we don't have a helicopter. There's no helicopter to take us to the top of the summit. We have to scale the mountain. And Ashley, again, our founder, who's incredible, she has, she lives by this motto that's per angusta ad augusta, which is Latin for through two high roads, through narrow, through narrow roads to high places. Apologies. Which is this notion that, you know, we could all get to the summit, but it's actually the obstacle is the way. And actually it's through the hardness and the tough and the grit that makes it good. And I think people at their core want that. You know, we really thrive sometimes with what that feels like, you know, and when you put people in that situation, yes, it's the hardest thing, but it's the most rewarding thing. You feel the growth, you feel your impact. It's hard every day. These are really, really difficult, but I think people really, really thrive. So I think, yeah, what I definitely would take is that idea of ownership, some constraints, taking away some of the sort of almost the process, right? Taking it back to day one that you talked about from Jeff Bezos and letting people go and empowering them to go.

Brilliant. I think we'll leave it. I don't know, I can't top Latin, can I? I think we'll just leave it there.

Listen—

She has it. She has it.

Tattooed on her rib cage. That's how intense she is. Yeah.

Oh my God, that's really sore. Oh, I wouldn't— oh, I wouldn't— I think that's given me the shivers now. Jo, I think we'll leave it there. Thanks very much for coming on the podcast today. It's been wonderful chatting to you and good luck with the business.

Thank you so much, Scott. And thank you so much. What a wonderful podcast. And yeah, thank you for inviting me.

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