#4: "Losing Purpose As You Scale" - Chris Sheard

~ This transcript is automatically generated so may contain some errors ~

it's a real challenge for these businesses. I think when they scale, they've, they've got a purpose, they've got a why, then how would you scale with that without losing it?

Welcome to Statements of Intent. In this 20 minute episode, we're addressing how e commerce has lost sight of the people at its very heart. You, the customer. It's a chat that's optimistic, it's casual, it's probably slightly ranty in places, but that's okay. But it's a place where I talk to senior e commerce marketers.

And share their statement of how they're looking to change the status quo of e commerce, adding more care, being more considerate to those very people that they're selling to the customer. I'm your host, David Monheim, the founder of Made with Intent. And we're going to jump right into it. Have fun

Hello everyone and welcome to Statements of Intent.

I'm here with Castor Chris. Uh, Chris, we're both in our Castor gear, uh, because we're merged up. Although I think I have slightly more Castor gear

on. He's doing well. I mean, I've got the lanyard, but that's, that's unfair to kind of expect that from you.

Well,

when you send me a lanyard, I shall wear it, uh, until then we actually go, we actually go pretty way back because I knew you from your current body days where you're a head of e commerce there, uh, and now you're e commerce director at Castor. Uh, how is everything going? How is the world of Castor?

Yeah,

it's pretty exciting right now, I guess. Um, I think that the, the The latest bit is the, the round of investment that's kind of hit the press. Um, so from a business perspective, really strong. It's been a, I'm, I'm slightly fatigued both with baby as we were discussing before the recording. Throw in the, um, the.

The worst time to do that on Black Friday, but from a business perspective, it was really successful. It was the first time we've taken all our partners through that Black Friday period as well. You know, Feyenoord and Red Bull and there's a few big kind of partners, but um, no, no, it surpassed expectations.

So we're in a good spot. And how, how big

a Castor now? Like how many brands do you, do you, do you manage and look after? Cause I remember you talking to me about the concepts of Castor and me naively thinking it was just a single brand, a single entity, but it's so much more than that from the manufacturing, retail to the production.

Yeah,

that's it. We're up to about, well, I look after about 30 sites now on the portfolio. So six of those are Castor and localized versions of that, but. Yeah. Yeah. So you've got, um, everything like you and my F1 team. So McLaren and Red Bull, um, we've got our football clubs, uh, Rangers, Newcastle, um, Milton Keynes Dolmans, Charlton.

Um, then you go into cricket with ECB and, uh, down into rugby teams as well. Scarlets, um, Harlequins. Um, so yeah, it's a fairly big roster now that we've got that we, we look after in my team.

Absolutely mental.

And your Your statement of intent here today is losing purpose as you scale. So I thought I'd nicely segue from, tell us how big Castor actually is.

Obviously I'm not talking about Castor losing purpose as you scale being directly related to Castor but That's your statement of intent. Talk to us about that as a statement. Why do you care about that so much? Yeah, I think

I almost flip it into a positive, really. I mean, the two most recent examples, you mentioned me and Jörg, uh, uh, coming on in, you had obviously great insight in terms of what we did there, um, and what the guy's still doing there.

And I sort of cast up, um, and hopefully that's two really strong examples of people who've managed to get over this hurdle that have scaled without that. But I think, um, it was curious when we were discussing this, right? Because, um, I've been at some bigger businesses and I've, I didn't particularly enjoy it.

So I've always tried to leave, gone for those kind of fast growth companies and enjoyed that a little bit of a journey. Um, now current body I was with right from the early days when they were, you know, relatively small speaking in terms of, you know, seven figure revenues going through, but it was, um, it was their first round of funding at the time.

Um, and I think obviously I wasn't there for the cast off period. So I don't want to speak with confidence about that. But both of those two were in. You know, markets were crowded already. They were cast also a very good niche. They could go after this and they could do it better. You know, more premium materials, more premium products.

Current body was going into the beauty space, which was crowded, but they thought that we can do this better. Um, we can sell up, you know, curated selection of products. We'll make sure that the products are shot beautifully, that the product descriptions will be on right, that they have the best customer experience that's possible.

No one else can deliver. That was really their why that they went out there at the start and said, for investors when they were looking to fast track things, that was their why, their purpose. And then it almost does it kind of slide a conflict with bringing in someone like me in there who's typically tasked with growing that, right?

Castor went from two websites when I was there to 20 in like four and a bit years. And then we joined Discuss Castor and then Castor was up to five websites when I arrived and it's up to 30 in just shy of two years. So it's that real challenge we see where brands try and grow. As they grow, suddenly what was, you know, look at their cover body days.

12 people sat around an office space with far too many empty desks and the owners couldn't touch everything. And you know, you know, Andrew Shilman, he loves to touch everything. I did. There we go. They were, they were, um, amazingly smart individuals and they, their touch was obvious across everything from both designs, descriptions and everything.

And as soon as you get something like that, you know, you think about the first task we had at CurrentBody, which was right, let's bring in a German recruit, a Spanish recruit, and a French recruit and launch these localised sites. And then suddenly, That extra layer comes in, that the owners become that little bit further away from it.

They're the core people of this purpose. They're the owner of that purpose, aren't they? And suddenly they have to hope that this seeps through. But as the business and organizations gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and you know, you look at Castor here, that's gone from, I think, 125 people to 500 people in the last two years.

That's a massive shift in people. You know, I'm sure the owners don't want to speak on their behalf, but they used to know everyone's name. And now, you know, every day, sorry, every week you'll get the talk and you recruit. So it's, it's a real challenge for these businesses. I think when they scale, they've, they've got a purpose, they've got a why, then how would you scale with that without losing it?

And I think you see some really interesting examples out there where we probably all know those companies that have done that. It looks diluted, doesn't it? Because what was there?

It feels inauthentic at times. Um, I was chatting to a chap called Ed Deason about this.

Who's the ex head of eco Um, customer experience, uh, head of customer experience at Wiggle and Pret a Manger.

And he was talking about this concept of as you scale, you, you have more need for efficiencies. And those might be things like on the phone, not speaking to as many people or. Being very short and succinct about your response that you type back to that individual, that person, whereas previously it was all about, I guess, care and intimacy.

And you almost lose that as you scale because of the need for efficiencies. Does that, does that resonate with you?

Would you say that say that efficiencies are almost the antithesis of scale and necessary evil?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, I think the, um. The bit for me is how that narrative can flow through when you hire someone from it, especially from the two organizations I've been out recently, where you've grown to this international field.

That's where it almost becomes tricky as well, because you've suddenly got to take what is. a Y that is very concrete and easily for everyone to assess and see whether it's, it still matches that Y. But then you, you throw it into another market where you can't easily, imagery, yeah, you can evaluate relatively easily, you know, unless you're a very multilingual, you're going to go into areas that just aren't ideally adjusted, whether it is even relevant for that market.

I think there's the, but I think it's a really valid point of, yeah, suddenly efficiency And cost saving does play that part, doesn't it? As soon as an investment becomes involved, going that adds that extra level of pressure, which means you might lose that love, care, and attention. But you know, I put it back to the fact the current body, you know, so they, they, they, it's carving out that part of money to make sure that you don't lose that, right?

They still have live chat agents on there who talk people through their buying process still, that they still train them up to a certain level. But you can see with businesses of a similar ilk being passed on whether That's the first to go in a P& L that's going to make it look a bit more attractive.

Yeah.

Especially within like a sales

process or an investment process, it's

required to be more profitable and therefore the only way to be more profitable is to decrease your cost, to increase your margin. Do you feel as though, do you feel as though bigger businesses have more of a purpose than smaller businesses?

Is that like a far reaching statement? Is that to leading your question?

That's curious man, but I think a lot of small b To survive and make that shit from small to large, it's got to be purpose, right? Because unless you've got, unless you're an Elon Musk and you're bringing a product out there that is completely game changing.

The chances are you are entering a market that some would deem saturated, whether it is or not. But with the two that we talked about that these guys have been relatively successful in beauty and sport, you know, if we'd had a conversation about seven years ago, is there a room for another big sportswear brand on there?

We'd probably go, it's probably not the most sensible one to go out there. And, you know, there's some gambles there, but they, they're purpose shown for a group. I think that's probably flip the question a little bit and go in. I don't think The small, larger purposes have necessarily a more of a purpose together, but for a small to grow into that large section, purpose is really the only thing you've got, unless you're completely innovating in that space.

That's

right. Like a made with intent, for example, that it feels like a very natural segue.

Yeah, but it is a little bit like that, because I think that's the whole thing with made with intent is remembering your intent all the way through with this, right? I think this is a really curious question. And then what you kind of bring to the table with this is when we discuss about, you know, how we look at these things, I'm probably the worst for it because.

My role typically is increase awareness, increase revenue, reduce costs, improve efficiency. It's probably four KPIs I get talked about the most. So there is that temptation. But, uh, look beyond those harder metrics and look at some of the softer KPIs that probably underlie that. I think it's a crucial one.

Time spent on page, conversion rates, individual product level. You know, are you still reflecting those true values that made the brand what it is? I think, you know, this is probably one of the key.

Resolutions to that problem in my mind is that you have to recruit a senior team that sits underneath the owners that can remove them from the business and allow them to do what they need to do, that share that passion and share that understanding of it and be able to pass that on to the team to execute, right?

So I think that's, that's kind of yours and my role in this when we, when we take on Andrew Sherman's latest challenge.

Two name drops in a, in one podcast. Uh, he's gonna hate us. Um, . Yeah, that's, I I find that really fascinating as a concept. How do you, how do you feel as though as purpose changes internally for the business, that that impacts how they communicate to customers?

Extra?

Another topic. Very interesting answer. No, no, no. I think it's the, that's the challenge of these businesses on a scale, right? That suddenly the purpose can get diluted and lost. And you, suddenly the teams underneath you look at current body again. It's a prime example, when you get to a team where you have 20, 25 people and you can't look at every single email that goes up, you can't look at every single product description that's done or even understand it because of the lack of skill sets.

Um, you can look at things that are a little bit more scalable, like imagery and past comment. Um, and it becomes a. I think this is, again, goes back to that senior manager role goals, isn't it? Within the organizations going, do you have those people who can take that purpose and that understanding why? Can you translate it through?

Because you're not going to be able to be across all everything. So you have to be able to, it's communication skills. It comes back to, can you pass that purpose? Has the business clearly defined what it's about? It's the purpose clear, because often that is the case. You go, well, you know, they're doing with the best with what they can do, but they haven't really understood what the, the, the USPS and the products are.

Um, if they haven't understood the, the USPS and the products and the, the purpose of the brand, it is gonna get diluted because they're gonna default to something that they don't know. Processes is great because you can go, okay, have you ticked a box? You've written the product description on this, but that's almost where that, that level of going a tick boxing is a dangerous thing.

Because it's actually quantity, uh, quality rather than quantity, isn't it? In terms of, you've got to understand that that product description doesn't need to be executed. It needs to be executed with the intent and the purpose of the people.

Um, whenever someone mentions the, the, the term intent in a, in a, like a casual sentence, there's nothing, I don't know, my, my ears always prick up because I'm now so used to it, you know.

Um, it's funny. You've got to drop

your brand in there a few times, haven't you? You dropped Castor in there, it's

funny to return the favour. I do, I'm repping the Castor brand, so it makes sense for you to reciprocate. Um, Oh, when I get the made for me

intent

cap, I'll put that on. We actually have them already.

In fact, you can buy them. We have a, like a drop shipping, uh, test site where you can get caps, mugs, and iPhone cases. I think it's very, very geeky. But we move away, right? Move away for the purpose of our discussion. I was just chatting with, um, the CDO of Ripple Cycles, Matt Lawson, who I think you may know, actually.

And he was talking about their purpose over at Ribble being one of, uh, going for the brand, not the sale, is how he describes it, and this, um, like, uh, conflict almost between long termism and short termism or immediacy and nurturing, like, what is the purpose and therefore, uh, how do you communicate that at Castor?

Yeah, I don't know, I think I could

certainly, um, resonate with that. I think, um

Castor YNAB is growing so well, but we've got to remember what we're about. We're about making athletes better. We're about the quality of our products. We're going to be proud of that. Um, Castor is in an amazing position where there's so many opportunities that are coming in front of us, but it's about selecting the right ones and what is true to our values.

And I think that's it going. Probably the one I can speak most comfortably about is around the digital marketing side, right? You get opportunities going, what are the channels we're going to grow on this? What's the best thing to do? Um. Not necessarily what's the easy way, like there is discount retailers who want to work with a discount affiliates who want to work with the et cetera, et cetera.

And it's talking about brand alignment at that point, isn't it? Going a short term to, to pull it back to his example, a short term win is there. Can I smash my weekend figures? Yes, I can. Will it make, get me a pound back on the weekend? Yes. But is that going to undermine my ultimate goal? Which is about representing the cash store brand in the way it needs to be.

And fulfilling that in the long term. Because, people like yourself, there's a reason, hopefully you bought into it. I don't know why, we never discussed that.

Why did you buy into the cash store brand? What was it about for you that kind of attracted you into it? Good question.

Flipping the script. Um, honestly, one of my good friends, Ryan Jordan, he loves the brand so much, and he always looks so good in the stuff, and then when I started, I don't know if I should say this, but you do, uh, like, um, stores at like Cheshire Oaks, discounted stuff.

We do, yeah, we have an outlet store, yeah. Um, so I went there once, tried on the stuff and I was like, wow, this is actually excellent quality. Uh, like this feels brilliant. I think it's like a waterproof material, but it's warm inside. The

Garcia you've got on, right? I think it's the Garcia. It's the Garcia you've got on, I think, isn't it?

No idea

what it's called, buddy. Uh, and you did a, like a Reese combination recently, you've done a 007 collaboration as well. So I don't know. For me, it was less about the brand, the more about the, maybe it wasn't, but the aspiration probably is there and the feel. I think you feel like, yeah,

that's exactly what we want to get across.

And, you know, I think it's that sticking. I love the brand rebel. I think they're a great brand. Um, and they've got similar challenge that there is. I can absolutely see that he'd have short termism temptation with it, but he's got much more bigger aspirations. And again, I don't want to speak on behalf of Castor because the owners and the C suite will have their strong views on this.

But I think for my side, it's about being, I'm a custodian of this brand and I don't want to dilute that in any way. by going after that that short term win? I wonder

if that gets, that's a harder stake in the ground to hold as the business increases in size or whether it's an easier stake in the ground to hold as the business increases in size.

Have you found it or is it a consistent set of values that you just believe in throughout despite the scale of the business?

I generally believe, I think that the The whole thing is, it is definitely hard though, is it? Because, um, you know, you, you have owners and C suites that believe this. They then trust me as a director to be consistent with that and pass that on to the team.

But we're a melting pot of our, of our past histories, right? You know, we hopefully not try and get us sued, but you drop in certain companies that people have come from who you get brilliant set from, but will have certain mechanics they're used to. Um, and you bring them there because of the people they are and the abilities they've got, not necessarily their past experiences.

So you have to achieve that to, to what you want them to believe in. And also the, you know, the harsh reality is that you're always going to have those hard metrics that you hold those people to as well, right? So You know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're demanding one thing out of them at the same time.

You, you, you also got to be that. You've got to have that brand hat on all the time. Literally the brand hat you've taken off actually. That would be a good time to put mine on.

Yeah. The concept of. Your purpose and your values on your mission relates to how people interact with each other and communicate internally.

And therefore that impacts how they communicate to people externally, i. e. customers. And that surely is the winning combination. So it feels as though if you work backwards and you start with your mission and you ensure your mission is consistent. And is of, uh, of good grounding, and that in theory should flow through despite how big or small you are.

Yeah, especially add to your point, the bigger you get, the harder it is. But, it's a necessity because that purpose got you there in the first place. And therefore despite the temptations, I think it's so key to, to kind of pull out from and make it consistent.

I love that, Chris. Chris, you're a very self aware individual.

Uh, you're clearly doing a really good job over at Castor. Thank you so much for like spending just 20 minutes of your time with us talking about what you believe in. So I really appreciate it. No worries.

Thank you for being a customer.

There we have it. Thank you so much for listening. Please do like, subscribe and share on whatever platform it is that you're listening to on today. This show comes from the team behind Made With Intent, the customer intent platform for retailers. If you are of course, interested in being more profitable, whilst being more personal.

And please feel free to check us out at madewithintent. ai. Thanks again for listening and joining us on our mission to change how e commerce sees, measures, and treats their customers. I've been your host, David Mannheim. Have a great day.

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