Ep. 45 Rebecca Williams, CEO of Seed & Sprout– The Honest CEO Show

The Honest CEO Show, Episode 45: Rebecca Williams, CEO of Seed & Sprout

Caroline Kennedy:
Welcome to the Honest CEO Show. I'm your host Caroline Kennedy and today's guest is Rebecca Williams, CEO of Seed & Sprout, one of Australia's most innovative, sustainable lifestyle brands. And Beck's story isn't just about business, it's about stepping into a brand with an existing identity too, reshaping it and leading it into a new chapter, which can sound easy, but it is a lot harder than most people anticipate. So welcome to the show, Beck.

Rebecca Williams:
Thank you, Caroline. It was a lovely introduction and really happy to be here with you today.

Caroline Kennedy:
Great, so take us back to your earlier career and what's the journey to get you where you are today?

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, sure. A of a frenetic one, a long one, I suppose. I actually started as a student straight out of, or still at uni at GM Holden, which was sort of a household name back in the day. And the reason I started there was I, first year uni, started hearing a lot of the kids saying, it's really, really competitive to get into these exceptional grad programs with a big four. So I thought, how do I differentiate? Let's go and get some experience in a brand before I even finished uni. So lo and behold, I end up as an intern at Holden and I'm at the spare parts division, which is not where I intended to be, but very grateful for the experience. And that was a really the kickoff of my journey career wise. I started as a student and 10 years later I'd had 13 different roles I think and it was the best apprenticeship I think I could ever have asked for through lots of different areas of the business. We were the number one, number two brands who were always sort of jostling for that top position and then went on to work at quite a few different automotive brands before ending up in my first CEO role at Seed & Sprout.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And what attracted you to Seed & Sprout?

Rebecca Williams:
Oh, that's a really, really easy one. You said it in the very kickoff there about being a purpose led business. So there's something really, really emotive and yeah, sort of soul touching. That's a very Byron thing to say, but it gives you a real purpose when you're walking into that door every day and it gives real meaning to your work. And even on the hard days, you know that you have affected a positive change, not only on a new customer or returning customer, but you're also in our own little way, making the world a better place, which not many people get to say that about their nine to five, but that's generally what we do and what my team does.

Yeah, that is so true. Not a lot of people get to say that. And I can feel that your passion for the purpose as well, which is clearly important. What were the first few months like as CEO? What did it feel like? And, you know, what was your focus areas to?

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, sure. So I think, I think to go back a little bit of a step, I'd always had the ambition that I wanted to lead a company. And I very much thought for probably a good 15 years during my time in the motor industry through GM Holden, then moving over to Mercedes Benz, then to Nissan and Fiat Chrysler as my sort of last automotive gig. I genuinely had a passion that I wanted to lead an automotive brand and I wanted to be the first female MD or CEO. And that proved to be quite a difficult proposition. And so it was a dream that I gave up on, but coming across to Seed & Sprout really gave me the license to build a company in the way that I wanted it to be built, the way that we would work as a culture, the way that we would present ourselves in market and really shape that. We had had a previous CEO when I walked in the door in September 2022, but we'd been through a very, very difficult period as the world had through COVID.

We'd also had the destruction of the Northern Rivers floods as well, which I don't think most Australians really understand how devastating that period was, not just economically, not just from an ecological perspective, but from a psychological perspective. People in the region have been through COVID and then they had the floods that hit as well I've literally arrived on the door straight after those two events. So it was probably for sure that the team was ready for transformation. And that was my agenda.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah and transformation does take a lot longer than we anticipate but it sounds like you made some great inroads in the beginning and how do you balance honoring a founders original vision with making your mark as a leader and transforming.

Rebecca Williams:
That's a really good question. get quite often. So Sophie is obviously a visionary founder and she's been a part of the business for nine years. was, was her baby and she certainly was in the business in the trenches very much for the first sort of three years. And then I think Sophie made the right decision in pursuing things that she was passionate about. So it's very famous that she has an incredible off-grid tiny house in the hinterland environment. And that's where she's been pouring her energies into for the last couple of years. And so she's very much still the founder of the business, but not in the day to day. So that means that I was in a really fortunate position of a partnership with the founder for me to honor her vision and to bring that into the next stage of creating a bigger impact than what we'd already had in the first six years. So Sophie and I have an exceptional level of trust in me and me and her. And so we're 100 % aligned on everything that we do and understanding that there's certain things that I'm not fabulous at, but Sophie is and vice versa. And so in many ways, we really are a partnership that leads the business, which again is very, very unique, but it works for us.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah, I was going to say that is very unique. I deal with a lot of founders and particularly when they bring in CEOs or general managers, it can be a very difficult transition. Majority struggle with it. And so I wonder, because this is a unique partnership, what were the steps you took that allowed for that seamless transition?

Rebecca Williams:
Really good question. think my corporate background was probably a great compliment as well for our partnership. So Sophie and I definitely in the very early stages of us talking about me coming into the business, it was all about alignment, making sure that our values were aligned and that we could build that trust and also the guardrails of, okay, what is the decision for me to make and what is the decision for Sophie to make? What does Sophie want to be involved in day to day? And what should I be running? And so you do that in corporate businesses all the time. It's delegations of authority. And so I brought that same concept into Seed & Sprout, which we were definitely lacking. And I think that means that Sophie and I were always very clear on who was running what and what needed to be done at different points. And also just that radical candor of getting on the phone, getting on text message. I'm not sure about this. What do you think? What's your opinion? We're very, very open and transparent, with each other and I think that fosters that same level of trust. So yeah, it probably sounds like some pretty basic stuff, but you're right. There's some really, there's some real horror stories out there about people just not meshing as a partnership and it has to be a partnership at the end of the day. You can't do it without each other and your team needs both of you, but in different measures.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And I also think too, for founders, they can be not all can be really challenged with holding that mirror up to what obstacles am I placing in front of the CEO, et cetera. And how can I reflect on what I need to do differently based on what the business needs as opposed to what I need and particularly around significance. I see this quite a lot and that is a transition and it can hinder the growth of a business if the founder is challenged to go on that journey. And there's no right or wrong with it because, you know, I don't think anyone's in a position to judge, but I also think it is an important step that a lot of founders are challenged by. But when they do actually make that transition, that's when the businesses scale quite rapidly as well. And then for them to work out what's their identity in the business moving forward. And they're always the founders. That's what I always say. Even if you hand it to a CEO or a general manager, ultimately,

You are the founder of that business and that never changes unless you want to exit, of course.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, absolutely. I think there's little nuggets that you had in that section there. I think for Sophie and I, I take my hat off to Sophie every day because the level of trust that she has not only in myself, but in the rest of her team has always been sky high. She's a person that once you gain trust, absolutely she will back you all day every day. And that is also very, very unique. But I think what's unique about Sophie in comparison to some other founders that I've worked with is Sophie is really clear about what her lane is, what she's fabulous at and where areas that are either a growth area for her that she wants to pursue or does not want to pursue. And I think that's that conversation about getting on the same page and me saying, here's my blind spot, Soph, I'm going to need help with that. And so when you see that call it out and we continue to keep recalibrating because nothing stagnant. What Sophie wanted three years ago and what I wanted three years ago is quite different as we ebb and flow. And it's just that checking of what would you like to be involved in? What's really important for you to be involved in and making sure that we're on the same page, but also for staff.

And I think that's where I see that in some of the other organisations is you might have a CEO and founded that work quite well together, but the team's completely confused as to who they go to and that just adds a layer of complexity, particularly in small teams when you're scaling and there's so much to do. So yeah, I think we in many ways are a really unusual and unique compliment to each other, a bit of a yin and a yang. And the team respond to that really well. There's absolutely no ambiguity of where the team goes for direction on different parts and pieces. And Sophie's involved in as much as she is capable of and wants to be, and that's totally okay.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And what I love about what you've said is the yin and yang, because I do see that a lot when founders bring in CEOs and general managers, because the business, you know, we all go through life cycle stages of businesses and what got you start up into scale up and maturity, they require different levels of leadership as well. And it's acknowledging that.

And what I see particularly for founders is they're creative. They love that creativity. And then when the business starts to grow and it needs greater structure, that's when you can bring in that complimentary skill set and they work quite well, but you're differentiating between the strengths of each individual. And then you know exactly which lane you're in because that can be quite clear.

And what I loved about what you said before about radical candor, I often see in businesses that when there isn't that level of transparency and honesty with that radical candor, it actually has a ceiling for the business as well. And it is so critical and it's a skill. I always find that is how I talk about it is because a lot of individuals and not just founders, but even in organisations, they are hesitant to be honest, but honesty is clarity. if you, and it's a gift for an individual, if it's done the right way with the best intention for that person. So giving people what they need, not necessarily what they want.

And what they need can sometimes be, they just need that honesty so that they can understand where they're challenged and what's next for them and how they grow and develop. And if it's done with the right intention, it lands. And tell me perhaps a little bit more around how you use radical candor, because I think for our listeners who are hesitant and there's so many individuals that are how they can reframe how they think about it.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, really, really good question. think there is a term that we use in the business a lot, clarity is kindness. Everybody comes to work to do the very, best work that they can and sometimes the critical missing piece is not understanding the who, the how, the what, the why. And so being really intentional and spending that time with your team members and we have a very flat structure so-- open door policy, we work from home and remote at the moment. So that's kind of an unusual term, but a virtual open door, if you like. We have a lot of conversations like that, a lot of check-ins and it's making sure that people feel really comfortable with asking the uncomfortable questions. And my position on that, and I think probably one of my strengths looking back on my career has always been those check-ins, those conversations, understanding where somebody is at, what's important to them, and also making sure that we're having those check-ins and providing the clarity, providing the context.

The majority of our team really needs the context. Why are we doing this? Why is it important? Why does it need my time and my energy? There's so many things to do in a scaling business. So context is always really, really important, being really clear. And the other side of the coin on that, and I think where I've been great as a leader is what you get out of those conversations is not only a greater buy-in, it fosters trust, it fosters engagement. Everybody understands in a purpose-led business exactly what their role is and how they're laddering into whatever we're chasing for that particular month or quarter, but it also leads to an incredible opportunity for development and growth. And so if I am having a difficult conversation with someone, I always make sure that the, obviously the timing and where you're having that in person is always best if you're having a very difficult conversation, but providing the context and then also why are we having this conversation? I'm having this conversation because I would really like to see a level of growth in this area from you at the moment. I think you have potential to be great, but this is what might be holding you back. And so let's work through a structured framework. Let's work through how that's going to work best for you.

And I think probably apart from the commercial success we've had in the last three years, I think the thing that really fills my cup and probably talks a little bit about what's important to me as a leader is the growth that I've had within the team. The personal growth, the professional growth, we've been on really exciting journey, but when I look back, it's how those individual people have grown over that period of three years. And I've grown and Sophie has grown and the rest of the team has grown. And that's a great reflection point on us because it's not just the commercial success, but it's also that people are actually growing and evolving and changing.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah, yeah. And I really do get a sense of...leadership for you is very much about wanting to see people succeed. And I've always had that lens too, because when people level up and the tide rises, we all rise together. And even saying to yourself as a leader, I'm like I said before, I'm going to give you what you need, not what you want. And that's a commitment I make to you because I can see the potential in you. And I want you to realise that potential.

And I also think with what you were talking about before with the context is so critical because I always say we judge people based on their behavior. We judge ourselves based on our intention. And when you start to realise that when you communicate your intention to people, it becomes really clear to them and it builds that trust and that psychological safety.

And they want to then be the best versions of themselves for themselves, but also for you and for the opportunities and for the good of the organisation. What I find is in our earlier careers, we don't necessarily have that skill or we didn't have that role modeling at the time. And then we become curious around how do I be the best leader? And then we go on that journey of discovery around developing our own skills, but with the intention of developing others as opposed to thinking about self thinking about others first and foremost. Now, was there a moment when you thought, maybe I'm not the right person for this and what kept you moving forward?

Rebecca Williams:
Gosh, I don't think there was any particular point in time where I thought I was not the right person. I think Sophie has always had an unwavering faith in me and all of our board advisors as well, which is incredibly helpful on those difficult days of, okay, no, if Sophie's backing me and the rest of the advisors are, and my team has faith in me, then okay, we just keep pushing forward. But there's certainly been times where I've thought, gosh, this is a make or break moment. And that moving of warehouse on the 14th of May last year, that was a big one. There's

It's nothing more humbling than standing in a very empty warehouse with the keys and thinking all of our stocks now in this new location. Wow, this is a big step forward. And it literally was the unlock that has allowed us to scale. And the new warehouse team is absolutely phenomenal, a real extension of our team. And it was the right thing to do. And all of our successes really flowed off the top of that. But yeah, that was probably the critical moment over the last three years where I thought, gosh, this is where we either fly or we start to sort of etch up.

Yeah, we've sort of run 300 % year on year growth and this year has been absolutely huge and we're biggest year, biggest September. We've just done our first seven days of consecutive revenue to tally up to a million dollars, which I didn't know until this morning, which is another milestone for us. And looking at a $20 million calendar year this year, which is huge for a business based out of Byron that's just turned nine.

Caroline Kennedy:
Congratulations. That is a major milestone. And if you were to look particularly around strategy, tell me a little bit about your decision making process for strategy.

Rebecca Williams:
Sure. When I go about setting strategy, I approach it really with a test and learn frame of mind. So there's always scenario plans, one, two, three, and then we back validate with the fear setting. So for example, is next year going to be a $40 million a year? And if so, how would we then get to that end result? What blockers do we have? Where do we need to start? What's the top priority? Do we have the people? Do we have the processes? Do we have cashflow to be able to do that? Is that ambitious enough? Would then be one of the other questions as well.

There's probably more of the technical frameworks that I use, but when you're bringing on a team that is scaling at such pace, that's probably the easiest way for me is we back validate a lot of our numbers and that helps with the fear setting of, okay, actually we all kind of meet in the middle here and this strategy does seem like the right thing. Yeah, strategy is really interesting one when you're dealing with people that have been with business for quite a long period of time. And then of recent reporting quite a few new people. So we're kind of in that meshing stage of the old team with the new team.

And as you said, bringing in those skillsets of people who have been in fast gambling, very, very successful businesses. So we're all really learning from each other. So it is very democratic. It's very collaborative, probably a lot more collaborative than most businesses would expect. But that's my way of A, developing, B, engaging, and C, it means that everybody's really lined up straight away because we've had that kind of robust discussion and debate. And Sophie's quite often involved in those conversations as well of what does her view look like? So that's how we set strategy at Seed & Sprout. It really is.

Yeah, an unusually democratic process. Obviously the end goal and the sign off is for myself, but we have some very, very talented minds in our team. And so it would be relatively arrogant of me to set the strategy and say, team, this what we're doing. It just, doesn't really fit with our culture and it would take away a learning opportunity for so many people.

Caroline Kennedy:
And that's a smart strategy because you want alignment and you want individuals to buy in and feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves as opposed to just being directive and then people aren't as engaged. And it certainly is the approach that I recommend because when I talk to founders or even CEOs, who love being the genius, right? And then transitioning into how do you create geniuses within your business, which is tapping into that critical thinking and the ideas that people have and helping that to then form the strategy.

But I also loved what you said about fear testing, particularly around, I always work on the basis of we start with an outrageous massive goal and we map that out and, absolutely anyone that I work with, always say that's not possible. Then we use the data to validate particularly around market share. That's the easiest question I can ask. What's the size of the market? What's your market share? And it's generally very minor and therefore the opportunity is great. And so the outrageous massive goal doesn't seem so intangible anymore. And then we start to look at, so how do we build back from that? What does that look like? Exactly what you said. Yeah.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah. think the other key part there as well is, having those reflection points as well. So I've been guilty of this in other organisations as well, where you're, you're running so fast that you're ticking off all of the goals, but you never really stopped to actually, how did we get there? What paid off? What, where was our success? Why was it that we were able to achieve what would seem on paper to be a very radical goal? And there's a couple of inflection points for me of, it was probably January last year where we, one of our big months is our back to school in January. We're a lunch where business, kicked off with one lunchbox and 450 different products later, nine years laid down the track.

But January last year, we were sitting in the old office, really looking at, well, what does January next year look like? And I remember seeing these bewildered faces around the boardroom table of, my gosh, please don't ask us to go and do that. Like, that's, I don't think that's achievable, to your point. Okay, well, maybe it's not achievable. And then we back validated, okay, what's happened in the prior January's. And so we root cause analysis, which is a really simple, you know, why, why, why? And we got back to, okay, well, it wasn't that we were not successful. It was that we were thwarted by things that we could control this year. We were thwarted by the fact that we didn't have all of our key products arrive at the same time. How do we make sure that that doesn't happen this year? We need to pull things forward. What does that mean for the product and marketing team? What does that mean for the warehouse and logistics teams? And so we kind of removed all of those roadblocks that might have stopped the success in previous years. And really also built that confidence that just because we hadn't been able to line those things up in prior years didn't mean that we couldn't do it this year. I'm really proud to say that this January was

It's our first million dollar month in history and all the things, well, most of the things lined up, nothing's ever perfect. was both sort of delayed, but that's fine. At the end of the day, know, the strategy and the plan that we had, we planned for a really flawless execution and we did that. And then here we are sort of looking at next year and there's not those bewildered faces anymore because they've been there. We've had the reflection. We could do that.

And so we do that monthly wrap up of this is what we succeeded in last month. These were the things that we did particularly well. What could we do better next time? You know, what skills do we not have at the moment? What resourcing? What's going to be roadblock in the future? so everybody has that confidence. And so you're actually walking up to your point about being aligned. You're walking into that same conversation thinking, we're in a really positive mindset here. Let's go for that big hairy audacious goal and then work backwards. And we use all of the different analytics tools that we can. And there's probably four key people that we do that. And we're from varying backgrounds. It's myself, the head of supply chain, our product and marketing leads. And so between the four of us, we'll always get to a happy number that we're okay with.

And then we layer in our chief of staff to make sure that we actually have the resourcing, whether it's external or internal, to make that happen. And we don't second guess ourselves. We're we're just aligned. Let's go and do it. And then halfway through the month when we're 50 % over what we thought we'd do, we need to recalibrate again. That's kind of the, that's the funny thing where we're kind of re-forecasting on a very regular basis, but that becomes a bit of a joke for us as a team. It's like, oh, it's another, another re-forecasting round. Let's do it. Whose number is going to be correct? So yeah, it is collaborative and I wouldn't have it any other way. It works very well for us as a team, but

I understand that it's not quite traditional and maybe some other brands wouldn't approach it that way, but it works for our team and our culture and everybody has the opportunity to learn. There's a lot of the more junior team members that will sit in on those meetings just as observers of how does this work? And then it's what were you talking about? It sounded like you were talking a different language. Okay, let's break it down. It means this, it's not scary. And that's how I was given the opportunity to learn. And again, I want to able to pay that forward.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. Yeah. That story reminds me of the first time I ever sat in a boardroom at an executive level, looking at a P and L and being very quiet going, my God, what does this mean? I'm just going to observe and I'm going to learn. And now I love P and Ls. They're like, love data. love numbers, but initially sitting there and going, I'm not going to say a word because I might, you know, I might appear as if I have no knowledge, which I didn't at the time, but then I learnt and I grew.

And the other thing I want to circle back to as well is what you said about obstacles or constraints or problems. I always say the obstacle is the way. And you just articulated that so well because they're opportunities. We remove the constraints, then we excel. Yet I do see a resistance at times within organisations whereby they want to be, they want to dismiss the problems. And to me, always say that opportunities, let's lean into it. Let's be realist about where we're at as opposed to optimistic with no realism, but definitely the obstacle is the way.

Rebecca Williams:
Absolutely. I think the other lesson that I learned in my previous role before Seed & Sprout, I was over at Thermomix and Grace Majua, who led that business for 20 odd years and is just a force to be reckoned with. She's such an incredible human. And one thing that is burnt into my brain from my time with her was she would challenge you by saying, what's holding you back? And that's a very beautiful way of opening conversation. But the most important part of that question is with you, because it's generally between your two ears. And so then when you start to unpack what is holding you back.

Is it something you can control or can't control? Five wires, you generally get back to, I'm not sure that I can do this, or I think there's, I'm not sure that I have the relationship with that person to work through that project. And so as a leader, I think that's a really, really powerful question of what's holding you back or what's holding the organisation back. And there were various things that were holding us back as an organisation, but that was certainly something that I was very focused on in the first 90 days was the speed dates and really understanding where everybody was at. What does the last six years, three years, one year look like for you? What does it look like for you going forward? Do you want to be here? Is this something that you're really connected with? Yeah. Do you see us reaching, you know, the heights that we think that we have the potential for?

And that was a really nice way of me clarifying and also having those conversations with people and giving that permission of if this is the end of your journey and you want to move on to work on the next incredible brand out of Byron Bay, then absolutely. Some people are experts in the first three years of a business, but don't like the six years after that. Or yeah, they're different stages of scaling, right? You have to be comfortable, particularly where we are with the fact that changes the new norm. There'll be lots of new faces, lots of new processes, new markets, new opportunities, new ways of doing business. if that's not something that excites you or you think is something that you want to go through, then there's a permission to say, that's okay, I'll help with you moving on to your next role or what's important for you. Maybe I can connect you with other people. But really, really important for me at that stage to understand where everybody was at and what skills we would need to go to market and try and find. And we've been blessed with such incredibly talented people. And I think that's because we work very flexibly, which I'm sure we'll talk about at some point.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah, well tell me actually, let's segue into that.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, sure. So yeah, I think for me and having come from corporate, one thing that really frustrated me throughout my time was seeing incredibly talented females head off on a maternity leave and then come back to what does my role look like now? The lack of the complete ambiguity of being on mat leave and that's not an experience that I've had, I've not knowing what you're coming back into. It's a lot of life change, a lot of professional change as well. Completely frustrated by the fact that women were generally not welcomed back into senior roles. They would generally step backwards, and that was really, really alarming for me.

And so when I came into Seed & Sprout and I said to Sophie, one of my mandates is to build the kind of company that I think all females should be in. And all parents, I should say, should be in. It needs to be inclusive. It needs to be flexible. There are incredibly talented people out there. But if we're doing a nine to five, Monday to Friday in our really natural office, I can guarantee you we can't attract the talent that we need. And so we changed that.

We were previously a very rigid model under the previous CEO. And that changed probably from week two, once I started to get to know people. What's holding you back for some people? Working in a very loud, gregarious, fun office, open plan, is not very conducive to doing sales planning and spreadsheeting. So permission to stay home and do those things where you can get the peace and quiet and the focus and the attention that you can. So it grew quite organically. We developed the process as procedures, but it really grew out of being very, very trusting. And so everybody being very clear on what their roles and responsibilities were. We have incredible trust within each other, but we also have the flip side of that where we hold each other to account really strongly.

So, we're an e-commerce company. We're open 24-7. We sell in every market around the world. And so to think that we would be constrained by a Monday to Friday, nine to five working hour a week is probably pretty ridiculous. And so we're very flexible. Our customer care team works seven days a week. That means that some staff members most likely are going to be reached out to on the weekend. There's no mandate for them to be responding to that, but it just so happens for some people that, yeah, on a Saturday, they're happy to put two hours in, but they really want to go and drop their kids to school. And so you work your life around what we're doing.

As long as you're hitting your targets, you're not letting your teammates down, you could work from the moon as far as I'm concerned. So really high trust. And for us it works. And it means that we've been able to attract and retain really, really talented people, a high majority of females and a high percentage of them are moms. And so we manage school holidays with grace because school holidays are not an unknown. We know when they come, we know that we can plan around it, we can prepare for it. And so when you're feeling really engaged in your personal life, you obviously bring your best self to work. And so we have that in our organisation and I'm really, proud of that. We have some people who are fully remote and will always be and work interstate. We also have people who work internationally as well. And that works for us. Communication, trust, alignment. Yeah, in e-commerce business 24-7, things don't just happen between nine to five. They really don't. Our peak selling period is when parents are on the couch scrolling at nine o'clock when the babies are in bed. yeah, if people want to to sort of change their hours up a little bit, it's fine. As long as we've got a period of time that we're together, we do that. And my intention is that we hold that culture as we scale as well because there is absolutely no end to talented females out there who are frustrated by a nine to five in the office pleas every day. How is that rewarding and enriching? And it differentiates us as a proposition.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yes, and then attract the high caliber of talent looking for that flexibility. Absolutely. But it's really interesting because I've always had that philosophy. It's about not the hours you work, it's the outcomes that you deliver. And when people are given that flexibility, they take ownership, they're empowered, they will make the commitment to work on the Saturday, not that it's expected of them.

But they know that they can and I remember years ago and I'm probably talking about 15 years ago now, still having that philosophy and working as a CEO in a founder led business. And remember the founder coming to me and saying at the time, I just walked past such and such they're on their phone. They're looking at Facebook. You need to go out there and deal with that. And I remember just being like kind of gobsmacked, in saying, but is that individual delivering on the outcomes for the role? Yes. So why does it matter if they could be on their lunch break? She could be taking a five minute break. What does it matter? And how do we ensure that it's not about time? And even if somebody was a minute late, he'd be in my office, that person was late, you need to go talk to them. And it was really frustrating to work in an environment like that and to really try and shift and reframe that mindset because from a cultural perspective, you didn't have that empowerment individuals. And, and, and you can see how that hinders the business growth. And yeah, and it was very challenging to actually turn that tide, but for me, it was really critical to be able to do so. And that is in a journey in itself, particularly if you don't like, like yourself, you've got that alignment with the founder, et cetera, and you know, the environment you want to create and, you, you can clearly see the success that it's delivering and the talent that you're attracting. And, and I wish more organisations had that approach because it certainly leads to success if done correctly. Of course, there are many caveats to that.

Rebecca Williams:
Agreed. There's definitely definitely guardrails that you need there and I think at the moment because it is so unique absolutely nobody takes it for granted at all and I think maybe if it was available to everybody all day and all that kind of stuff it may be a little bit more of a challenge but I think the other thing that's really really important and I've noticed this it was an unintended consequence of the flexibility policy but what I've noticed is and it's great as a leader to be able to observe this in real time is people work in different ways and they get and for my team to be exploring what works best for them.

Now I would have categorically said, I'm a night owl. I'd worked incredible, crazy corporate hours and then you come home and you do the night shift and you get everything done for the next day, right? Like we've all been on the treadmill. And so I would have said, no, no, no, I'm more of a, can get hyper-focused and be very productive at night time. Moving to the Northern rivers where the sun is up very, very early, it's a different lifestyle. And so I'm online very, very early, but I'm a bit of a nana now. I'm in bed pretty early. And so to watch my team go through that journey of discovery and say, look, play around with your hours. Again, it's about output. So work out where you are most productive and how you're most productive.

And let's go from there because maybe it's not what you thought. And if you can be incredibly productive, that's a bit of a superpower to understand exactly how you work best.

Caroline Kennedy:
So Beck, tell us a little bit about how you're innovating and what innovations you've used that have led to success.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, sure. I think this has probably been a common one throughout my career and probably has been quite annoying for people that have led me in my early career was really that test and learn mindset. So we definitely have that embedded in our culture at Seed & Sprout and certainly for my time at Thermix as well. So making sure that everybody has a high level of trust and that they are really looking at all opportunities to try and innovate. So particularly in the position that we are in at the moment as a purpose led brand that's trying to inspire, educate and ultimately have a behavior change at the end of of the journey, that test and learn mindset is really important.

So we apply that to the way that we develop our products, which are all developed in-house from the very conception to manufacturing design all the way through. And we do it to the highest level of certification, which is very, very hard to do. But we do that in a test and learn in that we will only produce up to 500 units of the first round of product. And then we let the market decide whether that's something that does solve the problem that we thought we were going to. And that test and learn mindset really applies across every element of the business.

My philosophy is that the great ideas don't come necessarily from the CEO's office. Sometimes they come on warehouse floor. Sometimes they come from customers, definitely from our customer care team. Gosh, lots of innovation there, but everybody has the permission to test and learn. And we have our experiments are set up in a very uniform way. So we know what we're testing. We think we know what the outcome is. And then we're often quite pleasantly surprised at something completely different. So I think that's been a really big part of our success. And something as a leader is quite hard to instill. But once you do have that culture set up people have the freedom to really explore, curious, innovate. What if we could do this? What if we could use a different material? What would prevent us from doing that? It's a really nice way of working. So that would definitely be one of the things that's allowed us to grow as quickly as we are. And with that confidence of as well, we've got the really robust testing conditions. We're not going out doing crazy things. But yeah, that testimony mentality is really important for us.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And how would you say that you've introduced that into the business from a cultural perspective to make it successful?

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, I think it probably comes back to the idea of having the safety and the knowledge that nobody's going to be penalised for running a test that doesn't come off for the way that you thought it was. There is no such thing as failure, there's just lessons along the journey. And that even applies to products as well. We've had times where we thought a material would perform away at good wood and it doesn't. That's not necessarily a failure, that's a learning. And that's an opportunity to then go and find a better material that's more robust. So it started with the safety and the permission to fail, which is a hard one to instil.

And I think that comes down to individual conversations with the staff because everybody has their own level of comfort with the ambiguity and so okay how comfortable are you with change? If I said to you you you've got permission to go and do that how would you feel? Would you feel overawed? Would you feel excited? What support would you need? That's a really important one. What help are you going to need on that journey? And also to have a lot of buy-in from people who are comfortable with a test to learn and let them role model and so you follow.

I don't think it's been too difficult with us. Probably the first 12 months it was something that people didn't want to come on board with. And I think that also probably accelerated some of the self-selection to move away from the business. This is not the kind of place where I want to test and learn. I want to come here and be told what to do. Sorry, that's not our culture. That's not the business that we want to be, for us to be having a greater impact, not only locally but internationally. We need to be able to test and learn and fail fast and keep moving. And some of the best businesses in the world and organisations and cultures have that embedded.

It was a bit of a non-negotiable, but it was okay for people to come to that conclusion themselves and go on the path. And again, that's the learning opportunity of are you comfortable in an environment where we move fast and we test and learn and fail? And if not, yeah, in the future, this might not be some way that you want to be, but that's okay. We're all different. There's other businesses that work in different ways. So permission to fail is probably the big one. I've had to repeat a lot because there's that natural tendency of, I thought it was going to do this. And then we ran the experiment and it didn't happen. But what else did you learn?

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And do you measure, example, people to come with what they've tested and what they've tried and report on them on a regular basis? Because I always believe what gets measured improves. So yeah.

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, data, absolutely. And I think that was probably within the first 90 days, was one of my big insights was that we were lacking in usable data. We had a lot of data in disparate pockets of the business, but we weren't bringing it together. We had the Monday meeting as a team, but there wasn't a lot of buy-in. The warehouse was not reporting on their KPIs. Marketing was, product wasn't. Our forecasting was good, but could have been better. So we definitely spent probably the best part of that first nine months really honing our data and making sure it was accurate. It was measurable. It was usable. It wasn't too...difficult to pull out a system. So automation systems processes. Yes, we definitely a data led organisation and we just we weren't in the six years prior to me arriving.

So I think that's probably been a big change. And now it gives me great joy when the team are debating over data saying, you sure that's right? Because I don't think that systems giving you the answer. And even as we're playing around with AI tools in Shopify, yeah, there's always the hang on, what's the source of this? you confident that it's right? Okay, rerun the query back validate. So critical thinking still a really big part of our team, but I think it started with, yeah, what gets measured matters and also making sure we're data centric. And then the second layer is how do you apply critical thinking? Because it's not as common as we would like it to be. think that's going to be the next frontier of the very, very talented people will be the critical thinkers because data will be everywhere. But is it real? And what can you do with it? And how do you back validate? So yeah, we're really on that journey at the moment of the critical thinking and inspiring with each other.

I love nothing more than the product and marketing leads sitting across the table, having a really robust conversation about what their assumptions are and where we think we'll land. That's great. That's what makes a business great. Everybody's learning and bringing their best to the table. But it's backed by data and it's also backed by, we have some really long serving team members and one of our product team had their sixth anniversary yesterday. And so she brings this incredible knowledge of the seasonality and this happened in 2020 or 2023, let's not do that again. And so having that muscle memory of where we've been is laid on top of all of those discussions, which I'm forever grateful for. And fusing with all the experience of the new people on the team that can say, when I was at this business, when we scaled, this is what we saw happened. Okay, we should be prepared for that. So we've got a really good mix of analytical brains and curious brains and very creative people. So very, very blessed.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. And I absolutely agree with you in terms of the critical thinking and the curiosity, those skill sets are going to be in high demand. And interestingly, they are not skills that have necessarily been prioritised previously. And I can tell that you're leading the way and you're at the forefront of the future of business and skill and leadership because right now that's the conversations I'm having with large organisations, particularly in my speaking gigs around AI is that we absolutely can use AI to help carry the cognitive load, but we should never lose our critical thinking or now that those skill sets really need to be prioritised because you get AI slop otherwise, and therefore, but it's it's interesting because data and numbers, they give you insights. A lot of people are challenged to see the insights of the stories that it can tell. if you're curious, and you're asking the right questions, and even as a leader, if you're asking the right questions of your team, they develop those skills, but absolutely agree with the critical thinking and for any leader out there, I think, test that all the time. Are teams critically thinking?

Rebecca Williams:
I think that you touched on something there, which I can think of probably a handful of people throughout my career that have had exceptional skills in this where they can take very, very complicated data, validate it, and then tell a story with data. And I think about the people that are in senior leadership positions within our team now, they all have their own way of telling exceptional stories that engage people with very, complex data. The best accountants do it. Bring a P &L to life. What are the numbers telling me? And the hypotheses, the assumptions, and being able to actually engage people in what can be quite overwhelming for people that are not naturally data and numbers driven. In the right, it's about role modeling, it's about coaching. And yeah, that's probably a good reflection for me of something that I've been able to bring to the business, which helps with the engagement, which helps with the trust. And also the learning of how you actually do that and how that skill is so incredibly important. It's probably not just in our day to day lives, it's going to be in our personal lives as AI gets involved in all things and everything. Funny question, do you say please and thank you to your AI?

Caroline Kennedy:
I do not. I did at the beginning. I do not now.

Rebecca Williams:
This is a topic of discussion within our team at the moment. Did you just ask on the sidekick in Shopify, please run this? I was like, yes, I did. And now a little bit more brutal of that cannot be right. Re-run the query, please. You're absolutely right. That's not correct. But yes, we're very much in that very careful and cautious about whether the data is actually correct. Because if you took the data at face value, right now, the systems are probably not sophisticated enough or our ability to prompt those systems is not mature enough. And so therefore, you're right. You end up with ambiguous data or data that doesn't quite feel right. we do a lot of back testing, but the first question generally from the team is where did this come from? And are we confident that it's correct?

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah, I love using it as a sparring partner and I'm challenging it constantly because I'm bringing my critical thinking to the environment and to the conversation and like you I would say, what about this that doesn't marry up and it goes, yes, are correct. Good spotting Caroline.

Rebecca Williams:
Correct. Yeah, there's no substitute for experience, right? And sometimes it just doesn't look right. But you can spot that in board reports. You can spot that in the P &L. That comes with experience.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah. Okay. So as we close up, I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation and I would love to know Beck, what's the future journey for Seed & Sprout and what does the future hold and where are you guys going to play big again?

Rebecca Williams:
Yeah, again. Yeah, I think that's the fear setting piece of we've been in periods where we've had 600 % year-on-year growth. And so we talk a lot at the moment about what does sustainable growth look like for us? We've always been a sustainability company, but how do we grow at a rate that is appropriate for us so that we can take everybody on the journey, but also have the most impact that we want at the end of the day, we're trying to change the world, which, doesn't sound like a difficult thing to do. For us, we're going big next year. Next year's shaping up to a really, really big one. had a call this morning with the team and we're off back-melodating each other's assumptions and thoughts and ideas. Definitely some key international markets that we'll pushing into very, very shortly, which is very exciting. And yeah, how big is our market share potential is huge for us. We know that. And fortunately, unfortunately, we're in a world where people keep throwing problems at us.

So we're in a problem-rich environment. We have many things to solve and hundreds and hundreds of different product ideas that could solve those said problems. So for us, it'll be about prioritising what's really important, chasing those big dreams, bringing the right people on board. But yeah, 2026 is going to be a big one for us. 2027, very, very big. But I would imagine that our international markets in the very near future will start to overtake our Australian, which is that VEX scaling tipping point.

Very exciting times ahead. We're all making sure we have some leave in the back end of this year because next year is going to be very, very big. We want to be rested and on our game. yeah, stay tuned. It should be really exciting to able to come back at some point and let us let you know how we've gone in the next 12 months of the journey.

Caroline Kennedy:
Yeah, I can't wait for that to happen. I'm watching the journey as well unfold. look forward to you continue to succeed and continue to dominate and grow. And thank you so much for your time today, Beck. I think your story reminds us that business can be born from an everyday frustration. And particularly around what you talking about, you know, the problem solving and the critical thinking and that's at scale, something extraordinary can happen when you have that focus and when it's anchored in purpose as well. So thank you for sharing your journey as CEO and for what the future holds.

And for our listeners, if today's conversation resonated with you, don't forget to subscribe to the Honest CEO Show for more raw, insightful stories on leadership and growth and I look forward to seeing you next time. And thank you again, Beck, for your time today. I've really appreciated it. And for your insights, I have no doubt our listeners will get a lot out of your insights and your strategies and your journey to date.

Rebecca Williams:
Excellent. Thanks for your time, Caroline. It's been fabulous. Thank you.