Molly Goddard & Joel Jeffery | Co-Founders of Desmond & Dempsey: How to sell luxury goods

Selling any product is a skill but selling a product with a luxury price tag is a nuanced skill. As this season is focused on sales I wanted to interview people with experience in differentiating their product in a crowded market & find out how they managed to sell it.

Molly Goddard & Joel Jeffery co-founded the luxury pyjama brand Desmond & Dempsey in 2014. Over a decade the couple has redefined the concept of luxury sleepwear & secured listings in Harrods, Harvey Nichols & Selfridges very early on in their business. 

Keep listening to hear Molly & Joel’s advice on how they tackled sales.

Molly and Joel’s Advice:

• Impart your message (in their case the benefits of relaxation) with positivity; buying this product is a treat for yourself, it’s all about fun
• It’s one thing to love your product but you must take sales seriously
• Enjoy the art of selling!  Share news of your product as widely as you can, and always in an optimistic way
• Pay attention to the market and always note customer preferences
• Ask your clients questions, constantly monitor their tastes and their attitudes
• Be aware of daily sales; if you can achieve wholesale orders this will give you the freedom to take out loans
• When selling to retail clients, find your niche in the market
• Use instagram / a website / word of mouth / email your customers
• PR will pay off and is a valuable tool
• Branding is important; while obviously the product must be good, you also need to make your customers feel special.  This is often achieved with some extra-special packaging
• Your customers are buying an expensive product and they should feel excited by both the purchase and the product, the anticipation and the reality

FF&M enables you to own your own PR & produces podcasts.
Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

[00:00:00] Selling any product is a skill, but selling a product with a luxury price tag is a nuanced skill. And as this season is focused all on sales, I wanted to interview people with experience in differentiating their product in a crowded market and how they managed to sell it. Molly Goddard and Joel Jeffrey co founded Luxury Pyjama Brand Desmond & Dempsey in 2014.

Over a decade, the couple have redefined the concept of luxury sleepwear, secured listings in Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Selfridges all very early on in their brand story.Keep listening to hear Molly and Joel's advice on how they tackled sales.

 Thank you both, Joel and Molly for joining us today. Before we get into all things sales, I would love it if you could give a brief introduction as to who you are and a bit about the brand that you've started.

 Thank you, Juliet, for having us. 

 My name is Molly and this is Joel and we're the founders of Desmond & Dempsey. We launched in 2015, but it took us over a year to work out how to actually make a pair [00:01:00] of pajamas. We do that. We make very fancy PJs and the brand. It's all about Sunday mornings and the feeling of having a moment of peace in your week. And sometimes it's peace with your friends hungover. Sometimes it's when we started, that's very much what it was about. 

And it's an ode to Sunday. And I think it's funny that we've just missed your productivity season, because that's what we talk about a lot is how in this busy world, it's so important that there's a moment of pause in your week.

And, in making fancy pajamas, we don't take it too seriously. We don't try and compete in the self help world. We decorate the downtime and make leisure pleasurable again is, what we're really trying to do.

I 

Oh, I love that because it's so important that every single person I've interviewed has said that you need to take time away from the business. You need to relax if you don't look after yourself [00:02:00] and that she, I think it was three episodes ago, Dr. Kristy Goodwin, an Australian neuroscientist said this. Amazing woman. She's like our human operating system. We're not working with it. We're ignoring that for our digital debt. And I'm like,

Oh God.

 I've been tasked with learning how to relax, which I find quite hilarious because I'm like, what? No, must do more. So your whole brand ethos is take that moment and wear beautiful pajamas whilst you do it.

Yeah, I think the PJ bit has always been secondary to what we do and how we do it. But we all now need to actually practice stopping. And I think also now rest, recovery and play are all just shoved in an hour at the end of the day and aided with Netflix. But actually, they're three separate things.

They need three separate, inactivities or activities in your day. And I think what, as a brand, we've always tried to do is, [00:03:00] focused less on lecturing and talking about the result of enjoying your Sunday morning, but just really praising it and celebrating it. And I think there's two ways to convince people.

There's the scare tactic or there's a celebration and I'm sure we've gone back and forth a hundred times about have we gone down the right route? Would we be more effective? Would we get more sales if we scared people into relaxing? But,At the end of the day, they're fancy pajamas and as a business, we take ourselves very seriously, but as a brand, it's balancing out the earnestness and the playfulness. 

You can see that in the prints and the color and the joyfulness because, you look at your stuff and you're like, wow, that's fun. Can I wear that under a denim shirt? Can I, wear that out? it looks colorful and enjoyable. And when I said I've seen you guys around for years, it's always been that thing. If I get a promotion or if I want to reward myself and give myself that moment of [00:04:00] pleasure, I will treat myself to that. That's the brand you're going to go to for it. it's functional. Obviously it looks and works what it needs to do, but it looks, it's got that, I don't know, something about it that's really fun.

That's so interesting, but also very lovely of you to say, thank you.

 When we speak to customers that is really the main thing that comes up time and time again is D&D is a treat for myself and that's what really people are lookingto us for and I think yeah, so it's interesting that you pulled out the same thing. 

What was the most challenging, because looking from the outside in, it all looks like a well oiled machine, all looks great. What was the most challenging part of launching the brand?

We talked about this a bit recently and truly the hardest thing was actually making the first set of pajamas. And I think,most people had a little bit of a career before they go and start a whole business around, said career.

We were both very early in [00:05:00] our work lives. 

 I think it was a blessing and a curse I think if we'd known what we know today about how hard it is we maybe would have been too scared 

to take the leap. 

If you told me today what I'd have to sacrifice to get here today, there's absolutely no way it would have happened. Ignorance is bliss.

Yeah. But having said that, I'd still do it again. But anyway, I think that, I guess so many things today, the first step was, you Google something, for me, I remember sitting there and googling

factories

in London. And zero results that are helpful come up.

Because it's just such a closed industry, that people, and most factories don't have a flashy website. So we found it so hard to just get a foot in the door. 

It may sound like a really obvious question, but how important are sales in the startup stage?

 Yeah, I mean, you're not a business without them, right? When we started, we knew that we, hadn't really had careers. We didn't have any credentials that we could point to and go and [00:06:00] raise money. And people were going to believe these sort of 20 year olds who'd come up with this idea to sell like fancy pajamas.

So we knew that eventually if we were going to fundraise we would have to show success in some numbers to start with. And I think that the first hurdle was figuring out, can we make a product? And if someone's gonna vote with their wallet that they like that product and that they engage with the brand and they get what we're trying to dothen the rest will just keep building on that I guess but I think It would you know, I don't think it's helpful to have a business that looks great that no one's wanting to buy that tells you something I think even if it takes a long time to get there, butyou have to have those sales goalsto hold the mirror up to yourself. Now, when you look at brands and with Instagram. You can get carried away with the love of something. I think the [00:07:00] mechanics of a business, it's been a really hard lesson for me to learn the difference between making a sale and selling a product we love and like trading a business and trading stock and what that means.

And it's interesting. It's such a reflection of, your life, but at the beginning sales, it was more about the product market fit. They've always been important, but we didn't need a lot to live. We were renting, we were doing it together. So all of our attention and focus was around getting this thing off the ground.

We had other jobs. We didn't have any dependables. We could really hold every single value that meant the world to us true. And at the beginning it cost us £85 to make a pair of pyjamas. And we were selling it for £95. We knew we'd get economy of scale, but the more important thing was we wanted to make sure that we could make it for at the time it was a night out. And I think [00:08:00] now as we've grown up and our life has changed, like sales means something different.

I think sometimes if you talk about sales and if you talk about profitability, in the startup world, that's a little bit unsexy, it's all about growth.

And then in the consumer facing world, you can't talk about that becauseYou know, like profit over people, which isn't

true. If you're good to people and you're proud of what you do, you typically are profitable. 

You got B Corp, didn't you, into 2023 and I think we, what are we now, 24? Yeah, we also, September 23 and it was putting people and planet above profit, but you need profit to have money to be able to make the change. And I think what you're saying is there's no shame in that. You should be allowed to say, yeah, we're profitable. I don't know if you found this cause I'm now nearly five years in, a lot of people were saying, Oh, you're doing really well. And I was like, but you haven't seen my P&L. And I suddenly thought, what does well mean to you? Cause to me, it means my brain is happy. My team are happy. My [00:09:00] clients are happy. And we're making some money to make that all happen. But to other people, they all have different metrics of success and actually. Sales, I think a lot of people very quickly become aware of how important sales are and becoming the master of it. And you cannot ignore it because without cashflow and without revenue, you have nothing. Which is quite scary when it gets hard and dries up and you're faced with, difficult decisions. How do you become sales experts, especially in luxury, given you're saying fancy pajamas, which I love, but you're selling a very premium luxury product.

Yeah. I think we're different sales experts. I love to sell things. If I fall in love with a television show, every single person in my vicinity will hear about that show and hopefully end up loving it. I think when you're a sharer and you're passionate about something selling as an entrepreneur or someone who is optimistic, isn't [00:10:00] hard. I think, yeah, being like that and also like having a very strong work ethic behind me, like that bit of it at the beginning. I do think came quite naturally. I was in retail, mum and dad sent us out and we had jobs when we were 12 and I was at,best and less. And then I went from, which is a very like an M&S of Australia.

And then quite quickly was like, Ooh, this isn't glamorous. I'm going to go and find another job and got another job in the city and was always in front of people and learn how to communicate and understand. And I think to like, it sounds silly, but like really listening to a customer and online, I find that particularly hard because you're listening to data and listening to different things instead of just watching what someone gravitates towards. It's so interesting that you, not interesting cause we've designed it that way, but people pick up print. And like, [00:11:00] when we have a pop up or when we're, I go and stand in Selfridges all the time and just watch who comes towards our pajamas. And,not many women in print come towards us, but then you see their face light up.

And then when they often say are these pajamas? And the fact that.the pajamas gives them a chance to like, feel a bit special at home.It's really lovely to be able to listen to that and hear that and think, okay, we need more print. And sales is about listening. It's about,getting excited about what you do.

I think people like that. But trading the business and moving the stock has been, I think in the last two years, one of the biggest lessons that I, and to be honest, like I just stopped, sales, for example, like going on sale, I was like dead against it, would salary sacrifice not to do it, just, be totally ridiculous about it. And Alina, who's our head of product and just [00:12:00] such a, Wonder Woman in every single way. She's been with us for so long. She was like, yeah but Molly in the last two years like I've had to buy in sale. That's how you buy. Like you buy in sale and like shopping should be pleasurable and a luxury for everyone. And are you listening to the market? Are you watching the market? And it was a really good wake up call and Joel kind of was on another path of like, well I love you but we're going to do this.and had learned that lesson a bit faster and, probably had less emotion attached to it.

 How important is knowing your client when it comes back to feeding the sales machine?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just it's critical. It's kind of easy when you're starting up right because you seeat least in our experience we'd see them we'd stand and we'd watch them we'd call them we'd answer the phone we'd be writing every email we'd be responding to every customer would be packing up the orders ourselves so you it's easy to feel close to them.

I think obviously we did [00:13:00] all the research to where we thought the gap would be and what the opportunity was and you know all that good stuff and that bit's relatively straightforward, right? and then it's okay does that then you start to meet your customers speak to them and find out what they love and why they're buying

your product and maybe that's slightly different or maybe you've hit the nail on the head but I think that the hardest thing is then as the business grows, how do you stay close to your customer?

 Ask them questions and be interested in how their attitude is changing, and I think that's been a big learning for us is that our customers have also gone through different stages of life that we have.

Lots of our customers, weren't parents when we started the business. They now are. They've bought their first home. Everyone's going through these changes and, we've grown up alongside our customer and of course, some people have moved on and we've, new customers have come in.

But, I think we've tried really hard to make sure that we keep [00:14:00] that. And we have a meeting every Thursday where, the whole team stands up really. And we go through bits from the, from every department. But one of those is always, an update from our customer experience team with specific.

 insight from the customers every week and I think there's so many things that you discover that customers are so willing to tell you about if you just ask. 

That's so fascinating you say that. I'm Chanel trained. I am now that person that if I have customer feedback, I feel like it's my duty to share it with the brand or the service provider, because I am so grateful for our client's feedback and part of our B Corp was surveying and learning a lot more from our clients and the testimonials that eventuate from the feedback are incredibly rewarding.

And sometimes it's really harsh feedback. You're like, wow, I had no idea, but I've learned so much. And we are now so much better for hearing that. And any founder you ask will be brutal because they know how valuable it is. And it's never meant [00:15:00] with any malice, but I think it was my mum in COVID. She'd overheard me on the phone.

She's but why are you volunteering to share that information? It's just I know it's going to help them. It's she thought, who are you to offer? And I was like,no. Trust me

But yeah,

knowing your customers and asking for feedback. So when it's coming to selling, you're creating the product, you're putting it out to market and then you're learning and iterating from the feedback you're getting from your first tranche of output and then for you guys, when you set up a business, you're wearing so many hats as a founder, your production, your ops, your payroll, finance, everything. How do you earmark time to focus on that sales? I think it was someone in season three said this, it's like businesses don't fail because they're not good ideas. They fail because they don't have any cashflow. Did you very quickly put a plan in place or sort of calendarise when to check in on these things?

Like how did you manage it at the beginning?

 guess the way that we've always when we started it was very much. we were an e com brand. We started it as an e com [00:16:00] only business, and the original business plan, we thought we were going to be a DTC business.

It was the time when,the sleep aid industry and those DTC mattress brands were just starting out. So it was a good time to be talking about sleep on the internet. Lots of money flying around in venture capital and things like that. and what we realised is that what we hadn't appreciated when we put the kind of initial business plan together was how much money that would require to raise from investors that we just didn't think we were in a place to go and have those conversations so you see the sales every day because you get the Shopify app and you literally I used to get a cash register sound every time we made a sale on my phone. 

I'm so jealous that I sit next to product based businesses in a co working office and they get that. And I'm like, we're a service based business. It's totally different. 

And it's so you can't escape it it's almost the opposite problem so you're very acutely aware of everything you're selling every day and I think that the difference really came for us [00:17:00] when we realised we needed to go into wholesale, because that would then allow us to secure loans against future orders and things like that, that we can actually have a conversation with the bank and be like, Hey, look, we've got this order from Selfridges, can you help us pay for the pajamas?

And that was really where then Molly stepped in. And, from a sales perspective, I think, I've never met anyone that Molly can't sell a pair of pajamas to and move to having those conversations with the retailers, right?

I was going to say selling to one client is one conversation, but how did you broker the retail side of things? How did you get yourself into Selfridges, which is most brands', holy grail of department store.

We were lucky and we didn't mess around. So when we launched, we actually went into Selfridges. We talked about the idea because I was wearing Joel's shirts to bed, as the story goes, and Joel was literally like, come on, let's go and buy you some. And the idea really cemented in Selfridges of, okay, wait, this is actually, let's do this. And [00:18:00] there was a silk brand that is still beautiful.

I still admire what they do. But it was, At the time, 500 pounds for a pair of silk PJs. And then there was, a White Company that was also very beautiful and more aligned to the price point that I thought was reasonable, but all white. And I now would be a customer looking at them for all the reasons that they're lovely, but especially then there was no one really having fun in this space.

And so we knew right then and there that was going to be our niche of like cotton pajamas under a hundred pounds was actually important to us. The thing about luxury. We have this conversation all the time. I really find the word tricky, but when you go into Selfridges, it feels like a treat.

It is a pleasure to walk through Selfridges.

 It's like the joy of leaving your day to go into [00:19:00] somewhere where someone has thoughtfully put things for you and, you could go to the, counter, the food counter and buy like a bread roll and it still feels like a pleasure to just leave your everyday.

I think we, we knew we wanted to make something that felt like a treat, and could sit alongside these other brands. 

But we knew they, they had to be printed and they had to be cotton. And that was like our thing. And so for a year we spent, we actually started the Instagram, and a website all about Sundays first and we started to get a little following and then we started to post about like the BTS of building this, pajama brand. And I think because that was so clear in what we wanted to do. when we finally got them, honestly, like a year later, some like horror stories, like hilarious now, but as a mum of daughters, I'm like, Oh my gosh, Molly, what were you thinking?

Do not let the girls do that [00:20:00] to get these pajamas made.Joel was like, okay, we've got 10 card on the credit card debt, like we need to sell some of these pajamas. We've launched it on Instagram, thinking it'd go off. We had a few sales. I did two things. The first was I emailed every single time someone bought a pajama, I would email them directly after I knew they'd been delivered because I went to the post office and got the tracking number and would track it every day. And I would email them Say, how were they? And everyone replied and then I would reply back to them saying please, would you tell a friend about us? We're really trying to grow. And, it was old school word of mouth, but it worked. So that was one thing. And then the second thing was Joel was like,we've got no cash.

How are we going to get this out? So I sat down with Vogue, the Telegraph, I think Elle at the time and just went through, and I was always a magazine lover, but I went through and just circled the names of editors and [00:21:00] didn't just email them saying hi, can I introduce you to my product? hi, Julia, I love this piece.

I loved how you picked out the stitching. We have this, please could I take you for a coffee, show you our product? And still an editor who now is a huge name in the industry. She sat down with me and she was like, I had four samples and I was like, which ones would you do? And she was like, these two. And I was like, cool. We're doing production. She was like, let me know when they're done. And I showed her the boxes and how it was all coming together. She's okay, cool. Let me know when it's done. And I emailed her straight away afterwards and, didn't ask for anything. Just said can I send you a set? And she put us in this great piece ofthe newest pajama brand or something. And so we had Selfridges, Fortnum Mason and Bergdorf Goodman email us 

off the back of PR and then what's even crazier is I, because of my emailing, after the customer had bought it, I won't mention [00:22:00] names, but all credit to them, and you've interviewed them on your, yeah, in your series. she was at Vogue at the time, and she was going to the airport with her sisters in laws too, and it was a Thanksgiving gift that she bought three sets of our bocas print, and she was off to the airport, and I had emailed her, and she was like, oh, sadly, I missed them, 

I'm off to this very lovely island with my sisters in law. It's such a shame. and in her signature, it was Vogue House. And I remember calling Joel being like, I've had to call in sick to work. Jeff will understand. I'll catch up on Saturday.

I'm off to Heathrow with bocas pyjamas and like race to the airport. I think we met halfway and Joel ended up doing the final draft, but we got these pajamas to

the airport to get in the suitcase. Didn't make a big deal, just handed them over and was like,

thank you so much. Like we really value you buying three sets. Anyway, two weeks later she emailed me being like, these were the biggest hit. Would [00:23:00] you like to come into Vogue House and do a pop up? And we were like, hell yes. And lugged our little suitcases and embarrassingly, I knew quite a few, but I was so overwhelmed that we're standing in Vogue House with showing out pajamas pre Christmas and Alexandra Schumann, who, now I know, I don't know her personally, but love her book, love everything she's done. And she like bought quite a few sets. And then I said to her, could you, what's your last name? How could you spell for me? Like literally devil wears Prada moment. But,I think that because we were in this world, not because we were like press agencies, but like really cared about the customers that were offering a new product. We, we kept getting a good bit of press. 

 I have to say that's a very good PR pitch because a lot of people just blast out press releases and don't tailor them. You, the founder came with an angle at the right time to the right person, having done your research [00:24:00] and that email, the editor would have gone. Yeah, that's interesting to me. So you did the hard graft of the PR pitch, but I absolutely love the fact that helped you then broker your retail deals because so often in our day job we have clients where we teach brands and businesses how to do their own PR or we do it for them. Same with podcasting, but it's, they're like, what return can you guarantee?

I guarantee you that you will have a gut feeling that something feels really good about this when it feels really good about, but I can never say how much money I'm going to bring back to your business with a PR article. We had one client in how to spend it with a double page feature, no ad spend behind it because the angle was so gorgeous. Took us two years to get it. Two years later, we got it again, unheard of. She's still selling from those stories, but you can never say, I can't go to a CFO and be like, I made exactly this much money for your business. Buy that article, which drives me mad.

And you can tell I don't wear the commercial hat at [00:25:00] D&D and, really believe in the commercials, but sometimes magic is what makes something special. And 

now with PR and I feel so, we've always invested in PR and we've always told anyone that's asked invest in PR. But now what I find really heartbreaking is not for any other reasons than magazines are struggling. And now it's all about like referral marketing.

And it's not about it's cause somebody asked recently how we did that. And I was like, it's not the same. 

But the magic can still happen. Don't give up on the magic. You need the angle and the magical part of pitching that story that you shared 

what journalists want to hear. There's still room for pure editorial. Affiliate marketing absolutely is part of the mix now. It used to be advertorial and print affiliate now, but that, that magic dot connecting thing that happens where you have a coincidence and someone refers you to this, and then you have a conversation and you bump into somebody and da, da, da, da, da, da. That for me is the entrepreneurial [00:26:00] spirit. I don't know about you, but it's when that happens that it gets super exciting.

But I love that. So exciting. 

 I think what a couple of questions I want to get into for the end. How important is a compelling brand story do you think when you're selling your product?

So important, I think branding's the spirit behind something. Of course you need a really good product and I genuinely believe a good product in today's market is underrated sometimes and we should all make sure our products are unique and interesting. 

If I'm not going to say who it is, but we've got one company who are blatantly heartbreakingly devastatingly looking at what we do, like, and, and just copying and like, that's their business model. The reason I'm telling you this is because people still are buying us and some people are buying them. The point I'm trying to make is that like, The brand is what [00:27:00] makes something feel good. And especially with what we're trying to do is make one moment in your busy week, feel really special, feel like a treat, feel like a luxury. Every single thing in how you've bought that is going to come into your mind consciously or unconsciously when you put that on and sounds small, but we do these boxes and they are lovely and honestly, it costs us an arm and a leg. And we've ummed and ummed so many times about is this value for the customer? Do they want this? Because, at the end of the day, we want to make sure our customers feel like this is really worthy and this is deserving. But they are, they make it like when you pop the box and you get it in.

And like, whenever Joel does me a cheeky order of D&Ds, he always says no packaging. I'm like, Hey pal, where's my box?

 I've got old boxes from old things over the years and you keep them and they either become laptop stands or bookends or there's [00:28:00] nothing like a good piece of really rich cardboard that is just perfection. 

I remember this at Chanel about how people, when they open the lid, the click of a lid, the texture of the cream, the smell of the cream, not just what the cream does to your face, but the packaging it comes in. All has a meaning and it's part of that whole journey and the loyalty. So what you're saying with the consumer brand sort of face and the story behind it breeds loyalty

and people will come back because they get all of the other bits that they wouldn't get from a mimicking company.

 With the mimicking stuff, like you, when you create it, when you're giving your creativity to something, or we're asking our team for creativity and you're small. You've only got so much creativity, you can fit into a day.

And when you're pouring it all into this business, like you're giving away this creativity and you're giving away like a little piece of you, there's so many collections that have got touches of our intimate story in there and like you can't [00:29:00] mimic that and I think customers feel that and like nowadays we have so much choice.

I genuinely believe we have so much choice it's actually causing us more harm than good. 

 On the copying thing, if it makes you feel any better, Chanel and Dior you'll see in department stores, there'll be the white logo on the black background or the black logo on the white background Dior would copy Chanel and Chanel would then reverse it again so they weren't doing what Dior were doing and it was just every other year they just changed the banners in department stores and so you're running a good race.

 I think it's on our mind at the moment because it's, as founders, you've got thick skin. Like I'm like, okay, whatever, good luck to you. But when the team and when it's a young team are watching it and they come

to work, slog their guts out for this business that yes, we've been around for 10 years, but we're still like, we started it when we were 22, like we've made the mistakes that you would usually make in your career in this business.

 Take it as a compliment. One question we have from the previous guest [00:30:00] who finished our productivity season is George Vaness, who's the ex captain of the GB boxing team and has set up JAB Boxing and Fitness Club in

Victoria. His question for you guys, and perhaps Joel, you might want to take this one, is if you gave someone the steps to execute a startup perfectly, what would they be?

Given that you have made all the mistakes, now you're 10 years in, you know everything.

 One thing would be don't worry so much about it being perfect. Don't let perfection stand in the way of

progress towards whatever you're trying to do. Because I think, we've definitely been guilty in the past of moving slower than we could have because we wanted it to be perfect.

I love that. And you're completely right. And a lot of people say this is done is better than perfect. And until you get it out there and get that feedback, you're not going to know you're still building something, but you haven't got any sounding board about it. The sooner you get it out there, the better. And as I mentioned, Chanel trains, you do 150%, 110 is okay. You [00:31:00] rarely come in at 90. That's not a healthy attitude when you're starting a business. And I have to be quite honest. Brutal with myself and also not put that onto my team of our level of output, but it's when, especially with products, it's such a thing that you can see and feel in touch, it must be very hard to let it go out of the world, into the world.

And you're like, Ooh, could we get a bit more? Yeah.

 Someone said it to us in a totally different context the other day, but I think we've been pretty good with it internally, isset the things that you really care about, that you're not gonna, I'm not gonna not do. This whatever that however big or small that is it might be a product sacrifice that you're not willing to make or something with the marketing and comms or a culture piece, but whatever those things are agree those and then the other bits you can probably be flexible on but I think that customer experience for example for us of when someone Receives D&Ds has always been one of those things [00:32:00] like it's an 

expensive product. It's luxurious and we've not done our job if at any point in that process a customer gets a pair of D&Ds and feels like underwhelmed like they should be excited to get it. You should be excited to open the box it should be excited to put it on and then feel great when they put it on. 

 I think another one that we've learned recently, and you mentioned at the beginning is defining what success is to you right then. And like checking back in on that to make those decisions. Because I think, in times that we could look at the business and say, we've been unsuccessful.

it's usually like also times our personal lives needed to take priority. And actually that is successful to be in a business where you've been allowed to do that. 

Oh, you are speaking to someone that's just moved house single handedly and is self employed single handedly. I have a wonderful team at work, but I was like, you can't be in five places at once. 

I think [00:33:00] that's, to me is so successful that you get to do that if you enjoy doing that. Choosing how you use your time or whatever it is actually spending. And it should, I also think that shouldn't take you days. Like you don't need days out of the office to plan that or big thinking. You need thinking time, but it should be like five minutes. You should be able to remember it and come back to it daily, but not

being afraid for that to like, change as well.

Yes. And I think knowing what you're doing it for is so crucial because when you're in the weeds and working that hard to pull yourself out and be like, no, big picture. And for me, B Corp gave me a massive sense of, okay, there's a kind of big brother that's validated us. I needed that because I didn't have a boss and I was like, I've got B Corp, it's my boss.

That's fine. They've told me I'm okay. What would your question be for our next guest? And it could be anything around sales or starting a business.

 How do they practice doing [00:34:00] what they love? Because I think when you're starting a business, maybe you'll ask a question better, but I'm going to give you what I want to know. When you start, you do it because you love this thing that you're doing, and you love, usually entrepreneurs also like, I keep saying like I'm so an entrepreneurial like minded person, but, my personality, Joel's personality, we like starting lots of things.

Like we're always the first to kick off a project and not usually the best at finishing a project, and you're usually not experts at one thing. 

 You have to be multitasking on, much as now I know multitasking is bad for us. You have to be able to whack a mole your day

and that's where you get addicted to it as well. You're Oh, new shiny thing. New shiny thing. New shiny thing. And the team like, we need to do this over here right now.

And, I think that's it, the kind of high when you start, it's the first couple of years we were learning to build a website and you're learning how to use Xero and you're learning what your terms are, you're learning how to find your clients and communicate and all of, and employ [00:35:00] people and then fire people, all of that newness is quite exciting and then you hit a groove of, this is just a regular job now and it feels a bit more normal. And that's I'm conscious that we've, brought in podcast production and we've brought in training podcasters, all of this other stuff. You get a little bit hooked on that newness and I think it does become a normal job in the end, which is okay.

But I also find I kept giving away the stuff I loved. Cause I was like, this is important. And I've hired one person that's made everything so much easier and okay, now I need to do that for everyone. And then I kept coming back to oh wait, like I'm doing this kind of not dodgy job, but like the important jobs

that I don't actually even like this bit of the job.

So my question is like, how do you hold on to the stuff you love? And your last guest actually answered it [00:36:00] and I've done a similar thing to him recently and it's changed my life. But I think hearing how lots of different people do it is interesting. Talk about hiring a PA and how you feel like a wanker when you do it, but it is a game changer. And for me, it meant instead of having a nanny, I have a PA. So she does all the boring logistical jobs for me while I get to play with my kids and then I come in and do all the fun jobs at work, but until you're older, you don't like, that's taken me so long to learn and I want to know, like, how do I do even more of that?

Like how do people delegate the important stuff? 

 Because it could be someone else could be like, I meditate and then I come back clearer or it could be anything for you guys. You found a PA that's game changing for you

but everyone will have a different answer. I might ask every single guest that question. I did think of going back and asking all 130 guests, like 10 of the key questions that always come up

because it'd be fascinating.

Thank you guys so much [00:37:00] for your time 

Joel, do you have a better question? Sorry, I feel

Oh yeah, Joel, what's your question?

I think that was quite a good one. I was trying to think of one about sales. I was,to tie it into the season. What is something to do with sales basically, that was the biggest step change in your business when you were starting?

That's brilliant. Thank you. Thank you so much guys for your time. It's been great chatting to you and hearing all about Desmond and Dempsey.

Thanks 

so much, Juliet. Lovely to meet you.

Next week, we're going to talk to Thea Green, founder of Nails Inc. as to how she built an internationally recognised brand.