Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / She Works 4 Days for Profit and 1 Day for Free, with Kate Hardcastle

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She Works 4 Days for Profit and 1 Day for Free, with Kate Hardcastle · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

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  There were many, many times to take an easier route.
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  could I have made more money doing something else?
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  Yes. Could I have got to success quicker?
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  Could I have the notoriety that other people crave?
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  Absolutely. But with the right people around you and sticking to your core values,
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  I think I've started to get there.
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  All right, Dave Gulas back here at Shop Talk and I'm with Kate Hartcastle.
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  Hi, Kate. Fantastic. How about yourself?
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  Hello, how are you? I'm
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  good actually. Nashville has a habit of doing that to you I think.
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  It makes you ready for the day.
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  Yeah,
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  it's so fun here. There's country music everywhere,
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  there's all kinds of stuff going on.
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  You walk out on the street and everyone's excited to be here.
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  Everyone is really excited to be here,
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  sometimes a little too excited to be here.
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  Right, right. We've seen some of that.
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  so Kate, love to hear about your entrepreneurial journey.
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  I know you're big in the UK, of course,
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  and here in the US as well. You do keynotes at a lot of big retail conferences
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  and you've been an entrepreneur for about seventeen years now.
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  That's right. And you came up in the interior home and design corporate ranks before
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  making the leap. So why did you decide to become an entrepreneur?
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  Well, it kind of chose me really.
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  I was very honored to be mentored by a lady called Dame Anita Roddick,
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  who was the founder of something called The Body Shop,
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  which is an incredible international brand in beauty.
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  And she was, a rock star entrepreneur.
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  She really had a very different way of looking about things in terms
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  of how you could be profitable,
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  but also purposeful. And she did so much work for communities and
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  her supply chain was built on
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  helping communities to build themselves when it came to that.
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  And her words, her wisdom really stuck with me.
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  although I was mentored in corporate roles and I was doing very well there,
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  winning the big gongs and being celebrated for the work I did,
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  I felt it was time for me to put what I thought was good use to purpose
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  and have a business, which we still do to this day.
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  We give a day back a week to small businesses.
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  community projects. We've helped over 2,000 across the world so far.
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  that's what we do. So we work four days corporately,
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  commercially, and then one day we work on give back.
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  And the other reason, the other driver,
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  was I was very into tech, always have been.
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  And I knew that with the movement of technology,
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  consumer would get definitely more information in the hand.
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  And I felt that it was time to be able to make sure that businesses
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  did the right thing.
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  by customers. That doesn't always mean that you can't make profit or have
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  a great business, but it's very important to make sure that your customer,
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  your consumer, feels that they're in a relationship with you and one they feel very
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  respected into.
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  Okay. All right. Interesting. So that mindset,
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  that way of doing business, okay,
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  sounds great, but how challenging was it,
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  especially once you made the leap,
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  is getting that practically done,
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  especially with bigger corporations to where
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  so often the consensus is it's all about profit and they can be very ruthless
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  in terms of cutting costs and how they treat people and how they even treat
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  customers the bigger an organization gets.
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  How challenging was it implementing that type of mindset in into those enterprise
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  level customers?
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  It was excruciating. If you try and build a purposeful business now,
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  I think it would be even more challenging in some ways because I think we're fixated
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  sometimes on numbers and what good looks like and I think it's very difficult
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  to set out something different.
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  The biggest challenges for me have been carving out what I wanted to stand for.
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  So with the broadcast work that I do,
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  I work internationally on many,
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  many TV stations and channels.
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  We create documentaries with production companies.
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  The latest one is on Netflix about chicken and fried chicken food
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  and the whole supply chain to that.
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  It is very difficult to be somebody who goes against the grain because people don't
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  tend to enjoy that. It feels uncomfortable for them
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  and it's definitely uncomfortable for you as the disruptor,
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  if you like. So trying to build a business consultancy and advisory as we do,
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  putting customers at the heart,
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  but then also doing good was very difficult.
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  I was told many times not to do it.
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  to fight for the right of not just being a retail analyst
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  or a sector-specific analyst and actually being a consumer expert that works across
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  everything from automotive to celebration of life to nursery products
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  to theme parks to travel. That's really been challenging as well because again
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  you're an outsider and the outsider is your strength but actually you're trying
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  to help businesses understand what you do and I think also just
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  in the business community you know to be let in the room when you don't always
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  fit a specific sector but if you look
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  My original bet was right. My bet was that there would be more closing
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  of the gap sector to sector. And I think even in your sector,
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  you've seen that particularly.
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  It's not a linear route anymore to success.
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  And I think some of that prediction that I was working out would happen,
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  definitely fueled by technology,
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  as to light.
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  Okay. Now through that journey,
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  like you said, it's not a linear process,
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  even though we want it to be, right?
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  We think it's gonna be, we all believe,
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  right? But often life takes you on all these detours and alternate routes.
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  But through that process, was there ever a point in time you thought about giving
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  up?
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  Yes. Yes. Next question. No,
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  I very much sure. mean, I went through personal journeys at that time.
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  So I became a parent and then I became a parent to twins at one point as well.
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  And, you know, physically and mentally,
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  that's quite the load. And you run in a business at the same time.
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  Covid we had in the UK, Brexit,
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  the separation challenges that all impacted my clients,
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  my workflow. There were many, many times to take an easier route.
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  but it wasn't as principle the route.
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  And I think I would have been in some way letting down the people I serve
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  in the end, which is the end consumer,
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  if I didn't try and keep my value set in.
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  So could I have made more money doing something else?
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  Yes. Could I have got to success quicker?
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  Could I have the notoriety that other people perhaps really crave?
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  Absolutely. But with the right people around you and sticking to your core values,
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  I've managed to
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  breakthrough, I don't know if it was a glass ceiling or a cement ceiling sometimes,
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  because it certainly feels like it,
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  but I think I've started to get there.
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  Okay. And that's certainly inspirational too for all the entrepreneurs that
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  are listening, right? Because everyone goes through their own challenges,
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  their own journeys. But like you said,
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  right, you wanted to be a disruptor,
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  an outsider and do things differently.
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  You picked a very difficult route,
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  you know, purposeful yet profitable businesses in the enterprise level.
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  Like you said, it was excruciating.
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  You wanted to give up many times,
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  but you stuck to your values, you broke through.
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  And even though maybe it was a detour not the way you planned it,
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  you got notoriety, you got success.
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  now you work with clients such as Disney and L VMH and some some very,
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  very big companies. So knowing you went through all that and you stuck
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  to your principles and you did it your way,
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  so to speak, how good does that feel?
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  Well, you know, right at the outset,
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  I agree with everything you just summarized apart from one thing that I wanted
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  to be a disruptive I didn't want to be.
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  It feels really uncomfortable.
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  And so there's nothing in me that goes,
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  aha, I did it in the end. I'm just not built like that.
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  I'm built on curiosity, which is what I think serves my client.
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  I'm built on purpose and I'm built on serving the end user.
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  So I don't feel like there's a mile that I've got to on the race where I've gone,
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  yeah, I'm here now. I don't. I'm always looking bigger,
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  better, more opportunities, bringing more sectors in.
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  not very good at self-celebrating.
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  I don't think a lot of entrepreneurs are actually,
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  but I also feel that we do sort of dot the I's and cross the T's.
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  I like to think that we do things really in a wholesome way.
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  I was really interested in Shop Talk.
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  We're here at Shop Talk. I'm here doing some panels,
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  but I attended a session yesterday with ELC,
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  the Estee Lauder Group. And we heard that from a massive international corporation
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  who I have dealings with, but they were saying how much
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  they need to act with this very new,
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  fresh, almost small business mentality.
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  And I think our purpose, we can offer that into larger organisations.
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  I think that's been the big aha moment for me that actually is that mindset that
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  will break a lot of the opportunities for the bigger businesses too.
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  Yeah, and it's ironic you mentioned that too,
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  'cause that's something I talk about too in my content 'cause we have
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  a small business, right? And we see the difference in many sectors between just
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  the way these big box companies operate where it seems like there's no urgency,
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  people are just punching a clock,
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  no one really cares, things don't happen quick for customers,
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  and so many larger customers are leaving for fresh founder led companies where they
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  know it it's all about how the employees treat them.
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  So we see that out there.
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  But given what you're saying is like these big companies can introduce that small
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  business feel, like how do you implement that where a company's so
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  big and there's so much bureaucracy,
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  like how do you infiltrate that mindset and bring a small business feel
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  to a company like that?
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  I think it truly sounds a lot easier than it is because what you need
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  to build to create the opportunity for anything that's different is trust.
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  People have to almost fall into your arms and trust that you're going to catch them.
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  And I think that trust is earned.
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  I don't think it's anything you can shortcut at all.
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  So I have built that by being 365 days a year of doing what I'm saying
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  I'm going to do, delivering it,
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  getting the results, getting onto the next piece.
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  And therefore I think
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  as hard as it might seem, you have to earn the trust to then implement
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  the opportunity that's so important and critical.
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  I think that's how we can be purposeful and useful to bigger businesses,
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  to show what we have done and why it would work for them.
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  Okay. Love that. a couple more questions.
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  So you are branded as the customer whisperer.
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  what is that and how did that come about?
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  It came about by a TV production company.
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  In the world of broadcast, everything is very much about ease of understanding,
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  even on really big topics. I've learned that over the years.
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  I've been doing broadcast now for 18 years.
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  And that was part of the reason as well I made the journey,
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  because I had to be an independent voice to be able to take opportunities
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  in broadcast. And so they were trying to describe what I did,
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  this kind of bridge between the boardroom and the end user or the end customer,
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  et cetera.
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  And someone said, yeah, it's like a customer whisperer.
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  And the only thing I'd ever seen was the dog whisper program and no slight
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  on that guy whatsoever. I was like,
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  man, I've done a lot. we're saying?
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  Like from the boardroom and the customer and me,
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  this doesn't feel right. But you know,
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  it's stuck. And so it's a moniker that I wear with pride now.
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  And yeah, it's a bit weird to have a nickname,
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  isn't it? That's been invented for you,
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  but it kind of does explain what I do,
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  I suppose.
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  All right. And you also wrote a book which is The Science of Shopping.
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  Yeah, well remembered.
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  Yeah. Yeah, tell us about that.
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  A lot of entrepreneurs go on that journey.
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  I've been offered many podcast opportunities,
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  many book opportunities, and I only want to do the ones I want to
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  do because there's great ones out there like you.
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  I don't want to be going, OK, well,
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  let me just do my version of that.
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  I think it has to be your own.
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  And the reason I wrote that book with a publisher is the publisher allowed
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  me to write a book that a customer could read,
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  a retailer could read, a brand could read,
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  or a consumer could read and just create something that explains
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  the science for everyone behind it.
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  So we use loads of case studies,
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  loads of the work I've actually done in business as well where I'm allowed
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  to talk about it. And we really explain it in a very fun,
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  I think, but joyous way. And that's now selling across the world,
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  which is incredible. It's been translated in Arabic,
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  so many languages. Yeah, thank you for buying if you did.
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  Love that. And you've had such an illustrious career and done so much
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  and you're still, you know, like at Shop Talk and all these other events doing head
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  you know, doing headlining keynotes and and all this stuff.
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  given all you've done, what's next for you?
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  you might have me stumped on that one.
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  very opportunistic, so something will happen and then it'll be like,
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  that sounds great. If you'd have asked me last year,
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  would you like to be on a documentary about chicken food,
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  I probably wouldn't have said yes.
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  But hey, you you actually start getting on that curve and I'd done so much work
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  in grocery and then you start helping the production crew and you go,
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  actually, this is really fun and it's gonna be really cool.
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  And then we worked with a comedian on it and it was Netflix top
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  10 all through summer. So, you know,
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  those things will come to you.
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  because the opportunity and your values match and suddenly you say yes,
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  I'm gonna manifest something now and then we can look back.
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  ~ I'm gonna manifest something.
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  I would really, so what I'm doing today is the first panel ever with teenagers
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  on the main stage here. So it's gonna be an interesting one for me.
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  I'm usually talking to a business leader like you are and they're quite
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  set up in their ways. We could go anywhere with this.
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  So let's say we take that teen conversation into a business and that becomes
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  a live teen boardroom that I can help organizations that appeal to teens with.
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  I think that could be something I'd like to manifest next.
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  Okay. All right. Well here it is.
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  You heard it here first. And well I'm gonna have to check in with
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  you in several months from now and we'll see what happens.
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  Next
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  orbit? Yeah. right.
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  Thanks so much.
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  Thank you.