In this episode, Louise Hill, Co-Founder and CEO of GoHenry, discusses her journey creating a successful prepaid debit card and financial education app for kids. She highlights the need for practical financial education for children, shares marketing strategies for GoHenry's growth, and emphasises the importance of resilience for CEOs. Louise's commitment to financial education extends to advocating for its integration into UK primary school curriculums. Her story showcases business growth, personal development, and dedication to a cause benefiting society and future generations.
In this episode, Louise Hill, Co-Founder and CEO of GoHenry, shares her journey of building a successful prepaid debit card and financial education app for kids.
The inception of the now global entity, GoHenry, was sparked by Louise noticing her children's inadvertent overspending online, highlighting a gap in practical financial education for children.
In the episode, we cover topics such as the marketing strategies her team has used to amplify GoHenry’s growth, the rewards and challenges of running a startup and the significance of adapting to different markets.
The episode delves into some valuable lessons Louise has learned throughout her journey of building a global business.
Louise shares the challenges of fundraising, the importance of resilience for CEOs, and the power of world-class partners.
Louise Hill's commitment to financial education extends beyond GoHenry, as she is an advocate for integrating financial education into the curriculum of all UK primary schools with a petition backed by everyone at WealthBuilders.
Her story is not just one of business growth, but also about personal development and dedication to a cause that benefits society and future generations.
Resources In This Episode:
>> Make financial education compulsory in all schools from primary age [Petition]
Next Steps On Your Wealth Building Journey:
>> Join the WealthBuilders Facebook Community
>> Become a member of WealthBuilders
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Speaker 1 0:01
The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform, and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.
Speaker 2 0:17
Today's episode is brought to you by wealth builders membership a proven step by step process that helps you achieve financial security within two to three years. Find out more head to wealth builders.co.uk forward slash membership.
Speaker 3 0:31
Hello, and welcome. This is Kevin Whelan, founder and CEO of wealth builders. always thrilled to be talking to other CEOs who've got fantastic wealth lessons to share. And today, we've got the very, very successful and very interesting story. I'm sure she'll share it all with you. Louise Hill, founder of and CEO of go, Henry. So welcome, Louis.
Unknown Speaker 0:59
Thank you, Kevin, that was quite an introduction,
Speaker 3 1:01
what do you have got an interesting story. And of course, I have sought your permission to go for the highs, the lows, the aha moments and the OH NO moments, so that you share warts and all some of the journey that you've been on, but I'm sure it'd be great for you just to give a brief introduction to what go Henry do and where you are in the world.
Speaker 4 1:24
As Kevin said, my name is Louise Louise Hill. I am co founder and now CEO, although for a long time I was CEO of go Henry, go Henry's a prepaid debit card and financial education app designed for kids aged six to 18 with a very, very simple mission to make every kid smart with money. So we launched I guess we pioneered the category really in financial education when we launched back in 2012. And we provide parents with the tools to help kids learn about money by earning saving, spending, responsibly giving and more or with parental oversight. About a year ago, we teamed up with acorns, to deliver financial wellness to the whole family and to provide our members with an opportunity to manage money through all of life stages. I haven't said what Acorns is. Acorns is a US based investing app that aims to bring investing and enable and encourage investing with what they call the everyday American. So easy entry simple to understand investing.
Speaker 3 2:35
Well, it's been an incredible journey. And thank you for the introduction to what you're doing. And we'll come back to that. So I'd like to just circle back if we can to the beginning. Because, you know, from a curry house experience to a business reaching 2 million members in five countries and multi million turnover. There's got to be some lessons along the way of that surely. Yeah.
Speaker 4 2:57
I mean, I guess a little bit of background about me, perhaps I started my working career in retail, with the house of Fraser on our graduate Fast Track programme, and kind of veered slightly off the bricks and mortar retail and into E commerce. And as home shopping kind of morphed into E commerce and I've got over 25 years experience in E comm. At the most brilliant time when when econ was emerging, and the whole retail industry was transitioning to digital. So for a lot of the big household names in the UK, I was able to be involved with their move to E comm. And I guess from that, I got a huge amount of experience in the online world which I needed for go Henry, and of leading really large scale cross functional teams and projects, which again, I've needed in order to have the skills to build go Henry to the size it is today I learnt a huge amount from a previous econ business, or from an E commerce business that I launched back in 1998. So this is not my my first foray into launching my own business. It's the second one. In 1998, I launched an E commerce business with a business partner, which we sold to a retail group in 2002. So just four years later. And really the big takeaway from that for me, was we built the business to use the startup phrase we bootstrapped. We did it on very, very little money. We did get to a point where we were turning over about five, 5 million pounds. We were making a profit we were paying ourselves a proper salary. But then I realised that I'd run the business into a corner we we didn't want to just keep it ticking over at that kind of level. We wanted to grow it and I'd left no space to grow it so we didn't have enough cash cash in the bank to bring somebody in to take my place so that I could step away and fundraise. Nor did we have bandwidth for me to step away and fundraise with because there were only four of us running the business. At the time I was I was really, really cross with myself for not having foreseen that, I guess. But it made me realise two things. If you want scale, build for it from day one. And number two, just how important having your eyes open about the amount of time you need to dedicate to fundraising, if you're going to be a really fast growth business, and you you can't keep that growth going from your own revenue.
Speaker 3 5:43
Well, why don't we go there? Because when you started the business, and it'd be interesting to go back to that story. Because it's a fun story, isn't it? How you kind of had that catalyst moment and anybody who's a budding entrepreneur, is who's thinking about it, there's a catalyst moment where they can make a step and say, actually, there's something here there's a problem I think I can solve. And I can probably do it profitably. But I need to think about that and get my head in gear, and then make a decision. How did that come about? Tell us the story of how go Henry was founded in your mind?
Speaker 4 6:21
Well, I said to somebody the other day, I blame I blame my children. I blame them for lots of things. But I co founded go Henry with two other parents, really, after having been faced with my kids with their hands out in front of me expecting their pocket money on a Saturday morning, and realising two things. One, I was using cards all the time. And so I very, very seldom had changed, I might have a, you know, a 20 pound note and a couple of a couple of pens, but I certainly didn't have the four pound coins for one of them and five pound coins for the other who was a bit older. And secondly, they'd both been lucky enough to have been given iPads. It turned out many of my fellow parents at the time, I'd given them the login to my iTunes account. And my kids. They were having a ball, they were downloading music, thoroughly enjoying it, obviously, without a care in the world without any concept that that was spending money. And I was trying to figure out, what do I do printing out the invoices that iTunes used to send you pinning them on the fridge, handing them over to my kids on a Saturday morning, giving them the residue of their pocket money. And the more I started to joke with that about other parents, all the stories came out of the woodwork. You know either either it was somebody spending a child spending money on working their way through gaming levels, or buying something stars points, hair scrunchies for their little pony or something. Or it was children shopping on eBay without realising how much money was worth without contextualising what they were doing. There's a story I've trotted out a million times, I'm sure. One of my friends, her son managed to spend 600 pounds on what he thought was a model car. And it turned up on a on a flatbed truck at the end of their drive and got unloaded. It was a full size, wreck of a car in a restoration project. I started working with a couple of the dads at the school who were good friends looking at, could we build something that would solve this problem that would give parents the tools to allow their children to use money in the ways that we were using money, but also in a way that taught them the consequences of it and protected them. So whether parent could set limits. I've always been a huge believer in learning by doing so I didn't want purely educational content I wanted. They can use a car the same way I can use a car but be safe. That's
Speaker 3 9:06
interesting, because I mentioned the catalyst moment is logged in most people's minds when they remember creating the solution to the problem. But then they got to come up with a name and go that route was not the original name, right?
Speaker 4 9:20
Correct. You have done your research. Yes. Love is one of the mistakes for you. We launched called pocket money, but spelt without any vowels. So PKT and why and every conversation we had with journalists press, even people phoning up. There was a there was a lot of conversations or people having to explain, do you see what they've done there? It's sort of tech speak. Not smart when you're a purely digital business and you need people to be able to find you immediately. So yeah, we set about enjoying it. I said, I'm a firm believer in learning learning by doing so we latched on to go, we knew we wanted to be go something. And a lady who's who's still with business today has been with us. Right? Since the very, very early days, Claire, she was in another part of the office working on something completely different. She was flagging in our database, the test customers that we've used in our beta to test the app, so that we could separate them out from true customers for reporting purposes. And she suddenly piped up and said, Guess what the name was of the first child ever to use one of our cards. Now, you know, obviously, what his name was, it was an 11 year old boy who lived in Bristol, called Henry. And somebody said, Go Henry, and it stuck. No,
Speaker 3 10:53
no, no, you mentioned acorns a little earlier. to that. But originally, by recall, the focus was very, very rigid, it was
Speaker 4 11:03
six to 18. Yep. In fact, when we launched it with eight to eight in eight to 18. So why the change? Because customers kept asking for it for younger siblings, they would they would start with their eight 910 year olds, and then say, why, why isn't this available? For my seven year old? My six year old, of
Speaker 3 11:22
course, has been incredible research to show that children's ideas and money habits are formed earlier than that. So probably is quite appropriate, I guess.
Speaker 4 11:30
Yeah, it was. Yeah, there's a fantastic piece of research, lots of people cite from Cambridge University that was commissioned by money and pension service that shows financial habits are formed from the age of seven. And if you think about that, and the fact that we don't teach it at school until secondary school, you can see the problem that
Speaker 3 11:54
well, yes, that's if it's if it's taught particularly well, and one could argue it is or it isn't. But that brings us to the petition, I guess, because that's how we started sort of pick up within wealth builders, were very passionate about the wealth of the whole family. So the generation, the pioneers, as we call them, the people who are creating the wealth, now the recurring income now, and the younger generation, and we wanted to curate as much good content as possible. And the Go Henry name kept coming up was the I know that some competitors have come into the market since then. But it was always there. And then I noticed you sponsored a petition? How did that come about? What was the logic behind it?
Speaker 4 12:35
It's at the heart of what we do and why we exist. It is financial education for kids. You know, I've felt very strongly forever, that financial literacy should be a compulsory subject in schools. And as we approached, we've been talking to government, probably for two years now, about it, anybody who would listen to us, we've engaged with Treasury, House of Lords house of commons, cross party, MPs, all sorts of people. But as we approach 2024, it's actually the 10th anniversary this year, of financial education being added to the secondary school curriculum in the UK. And there, for me, there are just so many problems with that. It is mandatory on the secondary school curriculum, but I'm not sure if many people realise there are only 20% of schools in the UK that are left that have to follow the curriculum. It is not assessed, and there's not even specific content. So it really is, I hate to use a cliche, but a postcode lottery, it depends which school you happen to go to, you might have really fantastic engaged, appropriate financial education in your secondary school. But equally, you might have absolutely nothing at all. And we know from our research, and lots of other research that six out of 10 Teenagers are leaving school saying they have no recollection of having ever had any financial education. And that really is a frightening statistic. You know, if you think about the complexity of financial services today, and we're launching young people out there, without the tools without the confidence that they need to understand and manage those and learn from and use those financial services, then we're leaving kids behind it, we need to address
Speaker 3 14:43
it. Well, I can see that the original idea was leaving kids behind in terms of being able to have functionality, but now we're seeing particularly with AI with you see there's lots of things going on with teachers and and mobile phones and so on. And increasingly younger people, teenagers and young adults are being targeted by scammers and fishers, and so much evidence that people are looking to social media as the source of that education that needs to be grasped. And I agree with you wholeheartedly by the educational system. But are they the right people to teach it?
Speaker 4 15:20
I think that's a really challenging question. So we've done quite a bit of research that shows a lot of teachers. So I should actually go back a step and say, my fundamental belief is that it needs to be taught in primary school, leaving it till Secondary School is way too late. So it needs to be taught in primary school in every primary school in the UK. And when we've talked to teachers, and looking at other research in the market, as well, teachers really raise to barriers to that, not that they don't want to do it. Absolutely not the case. But it is time in the curriculum to do it. And that they don't feel they have the skills required to do it. Because like it or not, it is quite a specialist subject. And part of our petition, and certainly part of the I was lucky enough to be called to give oral evidence at the Education select committee inquiry a few weeks ago into financial education in schools. And one of the key points I wanted to put across was that there are, there are other life skills, and I firmly believe money. Confidence is a life skill. Financial education is a life skill, like swimming, like riding a bike on our public roads, that are mandatory in schools, and are funded differently and are delivered differently. So there is for what used to be called cycling proficiency when I was at school, is now called bikeability. There is a model of bikeability, which is funded by the Department for Transport. And any school can approach the Department for Transport and ask for funds to use one of the approved providers of bikeability, who will then come into the school and deliver the lessons. And we believe that would be a really good model to and
Speaker 3 17:19
certainly best to do it early. Because there's there's a confidence skills on day that you are, who do that money weaves itself through the very fabric of our lives. And if you are really, really great book called Living 100 year life, and I'm a granddad now and and as I was reflecting on the birth of my first grandson, that the life expectancy of him will be 100 years. It's incredible. Isn't that sounds great, doesn't it? You're going to the next generation going live 200 years, how they're going to fund that life? Yeah, without the knowledge, the skill and the confidence to be able to manage money. And to fund it all the way through when you think from a macro perspective. My background is in economists. And from a big picture macro, there's a government would you think sit up and take notice there's evidence is there not that the more financially educated are younger people are, the more likely they are to earn. So the the textbook would go up, but the pension age keeps getting pushed back and back and back. So our younger people, if they don't organise their, I suppose their skills and their applications in the right way could be working to 80 they could be working and be the longest worked children in history, let alone the longest living. So it's an interesting one. And I'm so passionate I shared with you, by the way. Yes. How did we get this petition out? And about more? Because I know there's give or take 11,000 signatures is record this and we're doing our best. But how can we get everybody who's listening to this podcast to sign that we can obviously post that in the show notes in we'd be delighted to do that. But is there a target number you've got? Well, I would
Speaker 4 19:08
definitely like to get to the 100,000 which means it has to be debated in the House of Commons. But the more ammunition we can get the more signatures on that petition, the better. I do believe Treasury is engaging. And I was really pleased to see that the education select committee was set up, you know, that's an independent inquiry into the impact of financial education. I have to remain optimistic and hope that that will lead to something but I am equally mindful that there is an election coming up at some point. And who knows what that will mean for initiatives such as this. So yeah, we you can go to go henry.com and search and you'll find the link to the petition there. It's called Make Money count. So
Speaker 3 19:58
interesting. Let's switch gears if we can. And I'm sort of interested in the transition of both you and the skills. Because as you move from House of Fraser to House of Commons, you know, there's a whole different set of skills going on, isn't there? So when you discovered that you have a business in mind, and you shifted from money to go, Henry, how did the marketing start? Because you have to get the message out, what was that journey like, frankly,
Speaker 4 20:30
trial and error. So I always think it's amazing when I say these words, but we were the first in market, unbelievably, we believe in the world. And so in that nanosecond of somebody's attention that we had, you've got to put across what we are, and why somebody needs us. You mentioned that, you know, today, there are a few other players in the same space, who offer the basic debit card with parental controls. Now, there's 80% awareness of go Henry in the UK. So I won't say we're preaching to preaching to the choir, but there is much higher recognition of who we are back then. It was trial and error. We tried, we tried everything I spent, I can't tell you how many hours I spent on cold, wet, muddy football pitches and hockey pitches, at places where we thought we would find parents with their children. So you know, what I learned from that is that when parents are out doing something with their kids, they want to focus on spending the time with their kids, and they're definitely not interested in listening to me banging on about a debit card for kids. So that didn't work really didn't work at all. We tried local radio, which is great for raising awareness. But does it actually drive traffic to your website and conversion? people signing up for the service. We tried digital advertising. So Facebook, Google, we tried working with schools, talking to schools, and either looking at it as a fundraising method for the Parent Teacher Association, or just as a service in schools schools might want to think about, we tried so many things. So so many things. I think what we learnt fairly quickly was that the power of word of mouth. So the power of people who had signed up for go Henry, who were using the service, telling their friends, because if you think if you think about the Parent Network, if you're the parent of a six year old, seven year old, eight year old, you are regularly seeing meeting interacting with other parents of 678 year olds, because there are playdates, there are school pickups, they're all sorts of things. So word of mouth was incredibly powerful for us, and continues to be today. And digital. Digital Advertising worked much better than, as I say, standing by the side of a muddy muddy hockey pitch trying to kind of DOS doorstep parents. But
Unknown Speaker 23:18
you years there, isn't there. Oh, god, yes.
Speaker 4 23:23
Blood, sweat, tears and money. You know, because all of those things cost time. And when you're in the startup, you know, startup mode? Well, in any business, you've not got a lot of time, it's valuable stuff, and money.
Speaker 3 23:36
So let's talk about the money then. So it seems to me there's an interesting challenge you went through? So is it easier to build something from new and be a pioneer? Or is it better to fix something and join a market that's already maybe fragmented, but nonetheless, well established? What are your views on that?
Speaker 4 23:55
If you're joining a market that's already established, you have the ability to say, we're like x, y Zed, but better when you're new in the market. As I already said, You've got to explain what the heck you're offering and why that's important. So but I think both have their challenges. And I don't think I have a preference. I guess my first business econ that was launching into a market that was building strongly, we did launch with what we thought was a different take. What we were seeing was lots of what I'm going to call Scandinavian loft living style EECOM sites. We were a homeware furniture and homewares site, and we launched traditional country house style offering. So we thought you know it was a different take on what was in the market. Now. I don't think I don't think I would pick a preference. I think it depends on where you see the opportunity.
Speaker 3 24:56
But that has to feed through though to funding because As convinced the the initial either the seed funders or precede, yes. Now did the funding go? How did they How did you start that?
Speaker 4 25:10
asking everyone I knew if they knew anybody they thought might invest. I mean, it was the first time I'd done this. So I really didn't know very much about Angel networks, I'd heard about them. But you know, I was on Google, Googling it to try and find them. That's how we raised the first that's how we raised sufficient to launch in 2012. And we raised almost 700,000 pounds. But it literally was, I guess, going around a little bit with a begging bowl, you know, obviously, with a pitch deck and a business plan, and I hope, a convincing pitch, but it was going door to door and it took ages. And you know, that's that was a long slog with some hiccups on route because we believed we'd raised all the funds, probably eight months before we actually did, with quite a chunky slice of it coming from a family bank. And we got all the way to I remember coming up to London to sign we'd got heads of terms, we were ready to sign final paperwork, we're going to both with our lawyers either side, and a another member of the family flew in from somewhere else and hated it. And it just, you know, it fell apart in a single meeting. And that was a long old trip back on the train to Lymington, where I live on this Africa just thinking, do we have the strength to stand up and go again, all three of us had full time jobs as well, and families and kids relying on us. And it took another I have to check my notes, but somewhere between six and eight months to find the remaining funds so that we could actually go ahead and start to build and build a product and launch.
Speaker 3 27:00
It's fascinating, isn't it to hear the resilience that's needed to be to be backing in idea, you know, will work and getting knocked back to the old nodes, as I call it, but still having the resilience to continue? So how did? How did it help having three of you to do that?
Speaker 4 27:18
I think it helped immeasurably. You know, everybody has bad days, everybody has a day where you know, the knock back is harder to take than another day. And having co founders means you can you know, you can talk to them. And hopefully they're not having a bad day. So they're like No, no, remind you of why you're doing this and spur you on. And, you know, I get involved now in a lot of founders groups, and particularly trying to help early stage startups, the whole conversation about co founder or sole founder is a really interesting one. I think it must be very, very tough to do it entirely alone. Although having said that both of my co founders left relatively early on in the business while I was that one left six, eight months in, kind of always knew that that would happen. His love was the new idea forming, forming what it was going to look like, not really interested in staying for the long haul and putting the slog in and making it happen. So he left fairly early on, and then the other co founder left, probably two years in, and that was largely a financial decision. We'd all been lucky enough to have pretty successful corporate careers. It was a big jump over the cliff to launch the business at a point in our lives, trying to think how old I was 4847 when I had a big mortgage and two kids and so did they, you know, we weren't the stereotypical 24 year old with only themselves to look after. So he went back to a corporate career and a much bigger pay package at that time. Well,
Speaker 3 29:15
that's always the sliding doors isn't an opportunity, you which one you go down. So in order to keep you going? Yes. Did you need more funding? Um,
Speaker 4 29:25
we have taken in several rounds of funding over the years i i believe the up to date figure is $123 million so far, which is a colossal figure. And that's made up of several rounds of funding. We had some top up but a couple of top up Angel rounds in the early years and then in 2016 we did some crowdfunding, we thought we were ready for our first kind of proper VC round crowdfunding was is becoming a thing. And the team at crowd cube. Talk to me about how it works. And I guess the characteristics of a successful crowd fund and go Henry ticked almost every box. And so we thought, well, you know what, we'll, we'll give this a go. And we'll, in parallel, start talking to VCs. And because we're, well, we assumed we'd need the majority of the money from VCs, as it happened. And this is where I blow our trumpet. We were the first company in the world to break what was then the legal crowd funding limit of 5 million euro euros. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it was astounding. It was an incredible moment. And largely, you know, very heavily supported by our own customers, which was fantastic. We were able to issue people with badges on their go Henry accounts, say, investor, there are still a lot of customers today who, you know, they're contacting our contact centre will say, I'm an investor,
Speaker 3 31:02
I suppose back to that word of mouth and being proud of sharing the same vision. You've mentioned different language. And I just want to kind of explain things where people perhaps don't pick up the language because now you're so used to it. So when it comes to funding, there are always different levels of funding and different paybacks required from different people. You mentioned the word VCU, do you mind explaining that to our audience, please? Yes.
Speaker 4 31:28
And I have to say, Yeah, hands up, I shouldn't use abbreviations. I didn't know anything about any of this. And I've learned the hard way. I do you know, one, life skills that I think I have. I'm not scared of asking dumb questions. You know, I'm not, I hope I'm not arrogant. I've will ask anybody anything. And if it doesn't make sense, I kind of put my hand up. Can you explain that? VCs venture capital funds, they are funds set up to fund growing businesses, startups, there's then a phase called scale up. So I'm not quite sure exactly when you move from a startup to a scale up. But for companies that are succeeding and progressing, they move into scale up stage. And you can go to a venture capital fund, never go to just one you need to go to lots you need to talk to lots of people, and you pitch your business, you you present them with an investor deck, which is effectively your business plan saying what's the market? Why do I think this is going to be a success? Who are the people in the business? Why are they capable of doing this? What customers have we already got? You know, what are all the fingers around that? How much is it costing us to get a new customer? How long are they staying with us? Those sorts of things, and then they either invest or they don't. And I do think when you, you know, you read a lot of success stories. It's very easy to say, and we found funding here and we found funding there. And then we went for this funding. It's a long, hard slog, I had no clue how much of my life or the rest of the exec team's life would be taken up with fundraising, you have to set a good portion of your time to fundraising. If you are a business like go Henry, where really the the expenditure on acquiring the customer is up front. You know, we're a subscription model business, that customer stays with us. If they like our services, they stay with us for a long time. And they pay their subscription every month. That's great. But to get the get the customers to grow fast, we have to put the money in upfront. And so I guess the term is we're cash hungry if we wanted to grow at high speed, which we did. And so we went for successive funding rounds. And I mean to give you an an idea, our a series
Speaker 3 34:01
that's the first level after the preceding the seed, right? Yes, thank
Speaker 4 34:06
you. We had two crowd funding rounds in the middle that brought in 4 million and then 6 million. But when we were ready to do a series a and I sometimes call it a late stage series A because we were late stage because of those two crowdfunding rounds. We spoke to over 100 funds.
Unknown Speaker 34:24
I wonder how many pitches you've done. Oh, my
Speaker 4 34:26
God, I I dread to think you know, some of them great. Some of them catastrophic. Some of them to warm audiences, some of them to stony silence. You said the point about being resilient. Do you know I was I was lucky enough to be Gosh, this sounds like I'm name dropping. I was at Downing Street for a entrepreneurs event a couple of weeks ago. And a female founder called Tessa Clark from OLIO was on the stage. We have a couple of other founders and the Prime Minister. And one of the questions asked was, What do you think an entrepreneur needs as a superpower? And she said, resilience every day, you take a small step forward, you get punched in the face, you go home, you go to bed, you get up the next morning, you take a small step forward, and you just, you know, repeat. And Rishi Sunak actually said, Yeah, I can relate to that. But it's not easy.
Speaker 3 35:33
Well, that's the point of the interviewing you to share that. That's a really powerful lesson. And certainly when we're talking to people about creating their own recurring income, we invite them to take one small step every month. Yes, just a baby step on top of another one compounding, getting momentum. And it sounds like this is the very epitome of that lesson. So you mentioned this cash hungry business, but I wouldn't mind going back. Because you're you're meeting lots of different people. You didn't know it at the start, you're asking good questions. How did a new startup business created by a woman getting into banking in an environment, which is not famously revered for the treating of new new people entering it, particularly as you've changed? The kind of model and structure because not traditional banking, just making a margin on cards? Yep. You said we're going to charge a subscription? I mean, how did that come about? And what was the attitude of the banking industry? Because you needed a banking partner to pull this off?
Speaker 4 36:40
Yes, absolutely. Yes. I mean, I spoke at the beginning and said, one of the lessons I took from my first business was, if you want to scale build for scale from day one, so we use the term internally world class partners. And so we went out and found world class partners from day one. So we work very closely with Visa. We work with FIS, which is one of the biggest card processors in the world. We work with Andean for our card acquiring, again, a name that most of these names as the starter would, you know, they ask for recommendations, same as if you were going to a restaurant, and then check them out. So we built for scale from day one. But I suppose the other most important thing is is hiring great people. And that sounds a little bit like a cliche again, but you can't possibly do everything yourself. And you certainly can't possibly know everything yourself. So you need to bring in really, really good people to form the core of the business. And trust them, let them do their thing. Did you ever get in the way? Now I'm thinking you've you've listened to previous conversations, but I've had, yeah, yes. So I reckon I don't know how many years and probably five, six years ago, we were growing at an insane pace. Really, we're hiring people like crazy, new customers coming in, like crazy. We've launched in the US that business was was growing. And I realised that I'd become a roadblock. i Well, first of all, I realised I was drowning. That's that's actually the truth. I realised I was drowning, I was really struggling to keep on top of my inbox to keep on top of all the meetings I needed to be in. And I tried to sort of step back and think what, you know, what's going on? Why? Why is this happening? And I realised I become a roadblock. Really, it was not because I hadn't heard I, we hadn't hired great people we had. But a lot of the a lot of the rationale for why we did things, the way we did was in my head, a lot of the business relationships, who was the right person to talk to at all of those world class partners that I talked about, was in my head, everything needed to come through me. And that's a really bad plan. So anybody out there thinking about growing a business, that's a really bad plan, you might want to retain that control so that you know what's going on. But actually, you can't possibly if you're going to grow, you know, to the scale that we've managed to grow. And so I started the campaign that I called single points of failure. And guess who was right at the top of the leaderboard, it was me, but I wasn't the only one in the business. There were others there as well. It was a really, really valuable exercise. It made me stop and think, change the way I was doing things. And it's something that we've tried to embed into the company so that it's a continuous process. You know, you you can be in many meetings or work groups Go Henry, and you'll hear. But is that a single point of failure? Right? You know, it's something we we use as a bit of a mantra. And
Speaker 3 40:07
it's something, perhaps you'd recommend any business to think about. Because you could do that from straightaway. You, couldn't you? Yeah,
Speaker 4 40:13
no, it's irrelevant from it's irrelevant from day one, you know, we And so, today, you know, together with acorns, we've got over 6 million subscribers across five countries just to give a an idea of scale. We had an exact session last week, we took an afternoon out to talk about succession planning, Number Two's Number three's, rising stars, as we call them. And one of the topics to consider in preparing you know, in preparing for it was single points of failure,
Unknown Speaker 40:48
that affect your work life balance in any way.
Speaker 4 40:54
Don't believe anybody that tells you starting a business will not affect your work life balance, you have to be all in. It's interesting. I've been asked several times over the past years about, you know, network of connections, that helps you in your work life, maybe women are more open to being very honest about this than some of the men I've spoken to. But, you know, my network consists of and I hope this isn't advertising Accardo deliveries, a dog walker, people who when my kids were younger would friends and, and tutors and things that would pick my kids up from school, you know, you achieve your work life balance, I think through juggling your home life in exactly the same way you have to juggle your work life. So, you know, I have some amazing friends who've helped out with all kinds of things. And some amazing dog minders, dog walkers, and Accardo. Who can deliver almost anything anywhere, when needed, and save the day. And I have a few things I try and carve out for myself. So Monday night is yoga night. And that became a little bit more challenging when we came together with acorns, because they're actually based in California. So if you think about the time difference, sudden, suddenly that sort of four o'clock to seven o'clock in the afternoon evening, became very full of group calls. But not on Monday night, because at 6:30pm. I go to yoga. So
Speaker 3 42:29
let's touch on the expansion, then. We've talked about the fundraising and you broke some records, you pioneered the idea of charging a subscription. And over time, the subscription nudges up I guess, what have you done just as far as testing that in, in different countries? Because you started off looking at Europe. And I'm sure there's everybody will talk about cultural differences. But when you're I think you were working with pics pay and they already had a footprint didn't know. So culturally, they sort of already know what was going on there. So how did that come about?
Speaker 4 43:06
Originally, when we started thinking about geographical expansion, I have to say I assumed we would go to Europe first. But when we did our research, we we decided we would go to the US first. So we launched in the US back in 2018 blush. It's a long while ago now. And then it was only in probably late 2020 that we started really seriously looking at Europe as well. Okay, and we ran up a project team, originally called organic and inorganic, but I could never remember which way round that was. So I called it buy or build. Because then it kind of does what it says on the tin. So really looking at if we were to build go, Henry, we were going to launch in France, France first. What would that look like? Who were the partners? What did we have to change? What could remain the same? And the by side of that project? We were looking at who's already in the market? What do they look like? You know, what's the competition landscape? Are there any potential acquisition targets and you mentioned the name pics pay, we met the guys at pics pay. Fantastic team. They'd started the business two years earlier, had launched in France had already expanded to Spain. And very, very much the same mission as as all about education and empowerment of kids and teens with money. And we got on brilliantly with them. So yeah, we went into acquisition talks and we acquired them we signed the final paperwork. I'm getting my make sure I don't get my years muddled up in June 2022. And since then, We've left the branding the same as pics pay in Europe. But we've launched with them in Italy, in January at the beginning of last year, so sort of 12 months ago, and they continue to grow quickly. In Europe, there's there's very much screen space in Europe for the services. And it's been interesting to see you mentioned cultural differences. You know, there are, there are certain cultural differences, they actually offer cards from 10. And above, rather than from six and above, because they feel that there is more conservatism about younger kids having access to money, but we'll see whether that remains the same over the next couple of years as the brand grows, and people become more familiar with the service.
Speaker 3 45:52
Well, I suppose you're used to pioneering aren't you as well. So you tried our brains across the pond in many a tragic company has fallen foul across the Atlantic. So how did that go? Again,
Speaker 4 46:06
massive learnings, I think one of the biggest challenges was trying to open a US bank account for a UK company, I think I had to send my mother's inside leg a measurement, nevermind my own to get through the due diligence involved in that. But taking any business to a new geography, it was really, it was fascinating to learn that the same call to action in an ad in the UK, that worked really well for us, if we put it in the US, it might bring us in a completely different demographic of customer. And sort of understanding that and trying to unpick that and adapt, it goes back to you have to try try try again, you know, you've just got to keep putting new ads out into the market, keep trying new straplines, see what people respond to, and then look at the customers come in, look at the behaviour of those customers, how they're using your services, and see whether it's bringing in the customers that want to use the service and stay with it.
Speaker 3 47:11
So at that core level of service, by providing the cards mission lead business across, I guess that, but you're providing the card, you're providing the app or the education, it's the difference between the acquisition, cost of the customer, the pricing, you charge for the access to the card, and the length of time they stay as a customer, in order to sort of get that business model and see how it works across the globe.
Speaker 4 47:39
Those are key metrics. So to use the jargon CAC, so the cost of acquisition per customer, the length of time they stay with us lifetime value, I can't give you the actual metrics that would that would be confidential or virtually commercially sensitive, but don't work out whether they were similar. I see what you mean, right? You've got to take into account. I know, you know, this, that the stage of the business. So when we launched in the US, no, they weren't the same as where we were at that point in time. So 2018 in the UK, because in the UK, we'd established a brand presence, we got a decent sized customer base. And people kind of knew what go Henry was and could have a look and check with their friends. And they'd probably find one who was using us. So you know, when we launched, it was much more expensive. And you know, you have to go in with your eyes open to that. Because there's a there's a period of building awareness and building trust. And, you know, this is a phrase we use in our onboarding of every single person that joins the team is we look after people's money. And we looking after people's kids. And he really couldn't pick two things that people are more sensitive and protective about, you know, we have to build trust, we have to show that we're worthy of trust. And and so that in a new market, that takes a little bit of time to grow. So yes, the early days, more expensive. You know, the same is true as we launched into Italy in at the beginning of 2020 to 2023. Sorry, get my years muddled.
Speaker 3 49:27
Well, I can see that. I'm just trying to imagine the difference in you, you know, compared to the employed person going back to 2012, to all the pitches you've done, all the business conversations, you've had all the lawyers, I'm sure you've sat opposite, and learned all about the lawyer speak and the frustrations you've had and resilience you've shown. How would you sum up how you are different compared to the person who would have had a job for life probably or a job that would have been well paid? Pick up your pension at the other end, and live a happy life. How's that different to a who you are? And yeah, it all worth it. That's the key.
Speaker 4 50:11
Oh, it's all worth it without a shadow of doubt. Yes, I love what I do is something my dad used to say to me sometimes. He said, just stop and think, occasionally, how did I get here? And that was before go Henry. But, you know, to be sat in the Palace of Westminster three weeks ago, as one of only four people, non educationalists invited to give evidence to the education select committee. If that wasn't a pinch me moment, I don't know what was, I guess this is going into my character, I've never been very good at being told what to do. You know, I have a very stubborn streak. And if somebody tells me what to do, that's probably the last thing I'm actually going to do, even if I know it's the right thing to do. And I think that's probably part of why I went this path. But, you know, I do talk to lots of people who tell me about their business ideas, or things that they thought of a while ago, but hadn't done. And now, there's something in market that's doing the same thing, fundamentally, at some point, you know, an entrepreneur, whatever that is, you've got to jump off the cliff, you've got to believe that this is a good idea. And you can do it and you are prepared to take that risk. And some people are prepared to take that risk, and others aren't. It's not a comfortable choice. And it's maybe, no, it's not a comfortable journey. You know, the adrenaline is, is there and is real, but I think I wouldn't be doing a job that didn't demand that of me, because that's what I thrive on. You know, and I thrive on building things, making things better fixing things. For me, the minute something gets very settled, and there's no longer any challenges, that it's time for me to go. That's not what drives me is not what interests me. So I think that's part of it. You asked me financially, what difference does it mean? You know, if I'd stayed in my corporate life, I suspect my pension would have been an awful lot more than it is today. That was a lesson I learned very late in life, about putting funds, putting money into my pension and stashing that away. I hope I have imparted my lack of wisdom to my kids so that they don't do the same thing. They're 23 and 25. Now, you know, and I invested some of my pension into my business, into the business, we're an all in. Yeah. And, honestly, you know, on paper, I've got a large number of shares. If at some point, we successfully IPO and, you know, acorns, and go Henry, as the group are hoping that there is a relevant IPO point in the future, then. Fantastic.
Speaker 3 53:16
So an IPO is a public offering of shares to the marketplace. So just letting letting our people know that some of these these words, again, use to your vocabulary, common parlance, but maybe not on theirs, but really getting the whole thing out to the public, which is sort of the final exit strategy. And if you've had money in from different places, wherever they were, the procedures or the cedars, or whoever they've invested in, particularly VCs, who are often the venture capitalists are obviously looking generally for a payoff within five years. What does that looking like then? For you, as you pilot the ship still further towards potentially some kind of IPO? Well,
Speaker 4 53:59
we've got so much more to do yet not least get financial education into every primary school in the UK. So there's more to do before we get there. But yes, I mean, if, if that happens, then I would end up very wealthy, it's very easy to get carried away with that, you know, at the moment, it's all on paper. And I need to make sure that I'm looking after my own financial position, because it might not happen or it might all go horribly wrong. Who knows? So, as I said, I learned very late the lesson about putting more money into your pension. So I'm 60. The last few years I've been trying to put as much into my pension through salary sacrifice, as I can. I've also tried to make very sure I've taught my kids as they've come along, as they've been growing up, about saving about investing. Again, investing haven't even I crossed my mind, it wasn't something my parents did, didn't cross my horizon as a child as a teenager as it just didn't. And in fact, it's only been relatively recently that I've opened an ICER. And that's really learning from other people here at go Henry, and I've opened an ICER stocks and shares ICER and started investing. But my goodness, you know, if you, if you look at the numbers, I'm like, I didn't I know this when I was 25. But what I can do is, make sure my kids do an
Speaker 3 55:32
interesting you've, we talked about all these role changes, you've heard, I noticed recently, you move from CEO to CEO, which is sort of a different front facing viewpoint. How did that come about?
Speaker 4 55:47
So I, I've always been the public face of go Henry, because I was the founder. But I've been CEO, Chief Operating Officer, since day one, really, because that's where my skill set is. It's it's, you know, building teams, processes, supply chain partners, as we were talking to acorns, about coming together with them. Our existing CEO, decided it was time to step back. And he'd been with us for seven years, you know, which is a really long time, really substantial tenure really, for any CEO. And he'd taken the company, through internationalisation. So you know, he led us into into America, and then with the acquisition of Pixabay, into France, Spain, and Italy. And really, His love is taking early stage startups, and really scaling them. And I think he felt he done his job. And it was time to step back. And I put my hand up. Yes, that's been an, you know, it's been an amazing transition. I talked to the CEO at acorns about it actually know a colonel, who obviously, I've been working really, really closely with for the last year and a half well, and And before that, he said, How'd you feel about it? And I said, I'm gonna have to be careful not to swear here. I said, you know, there's part of me, that feels about flipping time. You know, I've been CEO for 10 years, 11 years, time enough to step up. And then the other, the other part of me thinks, oh, now I've got to put my money where my mouth is, you know, the decision stops with me. And that's, that's a little bit scary. But it's also really exciting. And I have a really, really strong team around me here at go, Henry, and we're excited by what we've got in front of us,
Speaker 3 57:54
when you're used to being a little bit scared on you. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting, because when I was looking at the business model, and seeing that, in reality, when someone reaches the age of 18, or when the card expires, I suspect a little bit longer. Service comes to an end. So whatever the length of time you have a relationship, and I know that sensitive information, but what is the difference? Now, that's going to happen with the connection between you and acorns?
Speaker 4 58:27
I think they're coming together. The two companies said we were very much aligned missions. It answers a question that people have been asking for both companies for a very long time, you know, I've had to explain to investors for 10 plus years, why it's okay, that it ends ageing. And what coming together with acorns means is, we can now continue to provide those services for every every life stage for parents with newborns, we have a go Henry, Jr. Eisah product for families with young kids and teenagers, we have go Henry. In the US, we've already put this into place. So the Go Henry app. The Go Henry service is now embedded inside the acorns premium tier. But if you subscribe to the acorns premium tier, you get all of their banking and investment tools, all of the rewards and benefits that go alongside that and go Henry free for your kit. And, you know, we're very excited by what that means we're able to offer customers in the states already and we'll be able to offer to customers in the UK and Europe in the coming years.
Speaker 3 59:50
So will logically extend the service beyond the age of 18 which will then really expand that relationship and and make the business more successful and profitable, which is great. So when go Henry says go Louise, and you're not here anymore? What do you do? When you get the big payday? Let's assume that happened. Well deserved to Yes. And whatever that sum is, you're not there yet. What are you going to be doing? How are you going to be? You're not going to switch off. I can sense that. But what will you be doing and where will you be? Do you think I cannot
Speaker 4 1:00:26
imagine switching off? If what you've said happens. I'm very clear. I love being involved with startups. I love trying to help and support any startups that I can even better if they're female founders because there are not enough of us. And so I already do quite a bit of free advisory work for a number of startups. I'm also involved with the University of Oxford, Oxford University, with their side business school and some startup accelerator there. I would love to do more. Love to do more of that. And if I end up with some money from this, then that might give me the space to do that. My Plan D always have a plan D. My my friends in Lymington are hoping this happens. I'd like to open a cheese shop. Nice.
Speaker 3 1:01:18
That will be relaxing bit of wine as well, surely. Oh, absolutely. Well, fantastic. Well, listen, it's been a real pleasure and thrill and thanks for sharing so much of your personal situation, the story, the growth, where the exits will be coming for you and the challenges in the future. Thank you very much for sharing today. Thank you, Louise.
Unknown Speaker 1:01:40
Thank you.
Speaker 1 1:01:44
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