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Redefiners
Paws, Purpose & Profit: A Conversation with Pets at Home CEO Lyssa McGowan
00:48:09
The global pet industry is expected to grow from $320 billion today to nearly $500 billion by 2030, as more pet parents treat their pets like their own children, often sparing no expense on their pets’ nutrition, health, and wellness. As we celeb...
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- [00:00]
Hoda Tehun
Call them change makers, call them rule breakers. We call them redefiners. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Redefiners. I'm Hoda Tehun, a leadership advisor at Russell Reynolds Associates, and I'm joined once again by my very captivating and fantastic colleague and co host, Simon Kingston.
- [00:25]
Simon Kingston
Hi Kings co host Lehoda. Very good to be with you.
- [00:29]
Hoda Tehun
Before we get started, Simon, just a quick reminder to our listeners that you can find all episodes of Redefiners and the Leadership Lounge on YouTube. If you're currently watching on YouTube and you haven't yet subscribed to the show, please go ahead and hit that subscribe button below so you don't miss an episode. And for our audio listeners, don't forget to rate redefiners wherever you get your podcast and please share your feedback on each episode as well as guest suggestions. We'd absolutely love to hear from you, Simon, as we start to think about this episode, do you have any pets or did you grow up with pets when you were younger?
- [01:04]
Simon Kingston
I grew up with a great many pets. I think the maximum score was six cats and three dogs at one point.
- [01:10]
Hoda Tehun
Oh my.
- [01:11]
Simon Kingston
Named after board games by my insane parents who had four children. And we now have, we have one dog now in my family who was bought to be a companion in his old age to a lovely purebred parson, Jack Russell, that we had, who is at that point, this is three or four years ago, getting a little bit old. And so in West Cork, where I come from, we bought what was allegedly a fox terrier, but transpires to have been a cross between a Jack Russell and a Corgi. And Lisa probably knows this, but the term of art for one of those is a Kojak and older listeners will get the reference. And he is a total hooligan. He now lives with us for most of the year.
- [01:56]
Hoda Tehun
And what is his name?
- [01:58]
Simon Kingston
His name is Tiberius, obviously.
- [02:00]
Hoda Tehun
Okay, well, with a name like that, it kind of says it all.
- [02:03]
Simon Kingston
Small dogs with emperor like tendencies. So he's known as Tibby, but he's really a farm dog and not well suited to London life. But he spends most of his life here terrorizing passersby. So he's really, he's a thug. He's a terrible person.
- [02:18]
Hoda Tehun
I'm not a dog owner, but I am a terrific dog auntie to a number of dear friends. And what I have learned is that people who have have pets of any sort truly love them and treat them as their own family members and pet parents know that Their fur babies are not only adorable and will do anything for them. They are so loyal and so lovable. In fact, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, the global pet industry is expected to grow from 320 billion today to almost 500 billion by 2030. Pet parents tend to treat their pets like they would with their own children, often sparing absolutely no expense to make sure their beloved pets are taken very well care of. And I can tell you, Simon, my friends spare absolutely no expense from the grooming to the colorful little accessories. It's really adorable, it's true.
- [03:06]
Simon Kingston
And it's not just driven by my children alone. There are an extraordinary range of things and I think we're going to talk a bit about this. The breadth of the services and the products that we procure for our pets has grown. And that of course includes the food, it includes the accessories, it includes those toys you've mentioned, but also thinking about their health and thinking about preventative care in a much more systematic, much more serious way than I think was the case not so long ago. It's an important part of the pet owning household budget.
- [03:36]
Hoda Tehun
Well, today's guest is leading the charge on redefining the pet care industry to create a truly holistic pet care experience. This CEO will shed some light, pun intended, on the industry and share how she's leading her company in a very growing and expansive market. Simon, please tell our listeners who our guest is today.
- [03:55]
Simon Kingston
Well, she has quite a tale to tell Lisa McGowan, who is chief Executive officer of Pets at home, that's the UK's leading pet care business. We're going to hear a lot about that. But before joining Pets at home in 2022, Lisa had had an extremely successful career in leadership roles at sky, where she was chief Consumer officer and she led the whole of the consumer business. There's serving more than 10 million customers and running a business with revenues of around about $10 billion. And before that she had roles at both McKinsey and at Teliwest. And alongside it, she was formerly a non executive director at Morrisons. So she brings a breadth of executive and non executive experience to this. And in addition to all of that, she is, I believe, the proud owner of two Labradors, Freddie and Barney. And incidentally, but we might as well have it for the record, is mother to three human children as well.
- [04:58]
Hoda Tehun
Lisa, welcome to Redefiners.
- [05:01]
Lisa McGowan
Thank you for having me. It's lovely, lovely to be here.
- [05:03]
Hoda Tehun
So, Lisa, before we jump in, I read that 85% of your team are pet owners. I'm a Little curious. What does bring your dog to work day look like at your company?
- [05:15]
Lisa McGowan
That's a great question. Bring your dog to work day is every day.
- [05:19]
Hoda Tehun
Oh, wow.
- [05:20]
Lisa McGowan
Yep. So we have pet kitchens. We have an agility course behind, behind the support office. We have a lot of expensive cable trays to stop the pets chewing cables under the desks. No, it's really lovely. There's pets always in the office. The odd. The odd rabbit comes in. So, yeah, really, really, really lovely atmosphere. And I think it. It's part of the culture of the business that we have pets everywhere. Our purpose is to create a better world for pets and the people who love them. And that starts right at home.
- [05:53]
Hoda Tehun
How amazing.
- [05:54]
Lisa McGowan
I have to say, though, I've got a very similar dynamic in my two Labradors as Simon does in that my elder one is this lovely elderly kind of support dog. He's so calm, so sweet, so lovely. And so we bred from him, hoping that his temperament would come out in the puppies. And we got Barney, who is an absolute hooligan. And so I can't take him to the office because he's so naughty. And I do sometimes take him on photo shoots when I'm in the press and things, and he just always, always gets his private parts out and refuses to comply. So he's just so naughty. But we love him. He's absolutely gorgeous. But, yeah, it's not. He's not office trained, shall we say?
- [06:33]
Simon Kingston
Well, yeah, he sounds like he's got a lot in common in terms of character and genital tendencies with Tibby.
- [06:39]
Lisa McGowan
Indeed.
- [06:39]
Simon Kingston
But it does make you slightly doubt the science behind selective breeding. But that is not the purpose of this podcast. Lisa, as we mentioned, you, you became CEO at Pets at home in 2022, but prior to that, you'd had this very interesting career at Telewest and@sky UK. So can you talk a little bit about the sort of the journey to your current leadership role and what, in the end, it was that caused you to. To make that move into the. Into the whole pet care area?
- [07:07]
Lisa McGowan
It's always a bit weird on how far back do you go? So I'll go back to kind of my uni degree, I think, which was in geography. And I really love that because it was this balance of the human, the physical, the arts, the science, data and creativity. And that kind of, I think, set me up really well for a career in business because it's those hard and soft skills that you really have to bring together. And actually, ultimately, as a CEO, really important to get that blend. So I knew I wanted to do business, and So I joined McKinsey. And they had this program at the time where you did a couple years with McKinsey and then a couple of years in industry and then go off to business school and then back to McKinsey. So I followed that path with one slight deviation, which is I had my first daughter when I was in the middle of my MBA at Harvard Business School, which was a real introduction to work life balance. And nothing has ever felt quite as hard since because they have rules at Harvard Business School, like they did in those days 20 years ago, about missing class. So you're allowed one day off for your own marriage, one day off for the death of your nuclear family, or one day off for the birth of your own child. So when I went in and they said I was pregnant, they said, oh, don't worry, those are meant for the men. We have had women here who've taken two, three, four, even a whole week off.
- [08:18]
Hoda Tehun
Oh, wow, how generous.
- [08:21]
Lisa McGowan
So I. I negotiated a. Some half a semester. So anyway, so that was. That was interesting. So then I went back to McKinsey as a mum in my. In my 20s, and I got to kind of my early 30s, and I had a bit of a. I know this podcast is about redefine a moment. So I had a bit of a redefine a moment as I got just approaching 30, where I just realized that in consulting, I was only really bringing half of myself to work. It was only really half of my skillset. I loved actually the problem solving. I love working in small teams on big strategic problems. But I wanted to do as well as think. I didn't want to be the person whispering in the ear of the person making the decision and then never being around for it to happen. So I decided that I wanted to go into industry, into a role where I could grow businesses and lead big teams of people and actually kind of get things done and kind of see the impact of the decisions. So that's why I joined sky, and it turned out to be the most brilliant decision. I spent 12 years there. Absolutely loved it. It's such a unique culture at Sky. It's a really believe in better is the tagline. And that's how it feels. Both the belief that the kind of the confidence, the ambition, but also the fact that you. There's this discomfort with the status quo, like a restlessness. And so we kept innovating. We always felt like the challenger, never the incumbent. It was a really high performance organization. And I was able there to really grow my career. First of all leading the broadband business. Then we started a mobile business, which was like an amazing startup, but with all the resources of a big incumbent. We were able to do some really innovative things there. And all of this time, because it wasn't the core business of sky, everyone was really focused on tv. I got to do, do loads of really interesting and cool things as I was sort of growing my exec career. So I've always been attracted to roles maybe where you're doing something a bit innovative and different and then eventually came on to run, run the whole, the whole consumer business. So that was a great, a great time and it was actually a real wrench to leave, I have to say, because it was, it's such a fun, dynamic place. And I'd been on this journey from taking it from an analog TV provider to kind of a media and telco behemoth. But ultimately I just felt really ready to be a CEO. It was just the time.
- [10:44]
Simon Kingston
And when it came, I mean, how logical or different did that sort of transition to the CEO role feel? Because you've been running a big, big business, as you say.
- [10:55]
Lisa McGowan
I mean, I often talk about the CEO role as not it's not kind of quantitatively different. I thought it'd be 30% harder than a divisional like, you know, owner or executive. And it's not any percent harder. It's just a completely different role. And with any transition, what gets you to be successful in your old role is almost the thing that will hold you back in your new role. People say it's lonely. I didn't find, I don't find it lonely because there's actually lots of people that you can talk to. I've got lots of mentors, lots of people will give you soundings and advice, but in the end, the buck stops you. You have to make the call. When something is difficult and you're an executive, your job really is to figure out the plan. Ideally keep the CEO away so you can figure out and get on with it. But if you have to involve the CEO, convince the CEO of kind of what's the right next step. But when you're the CEO, you have to convince yourself. And it turns out I'm a much harder sell than than any of my bosses. And quite often you're choosing between, you know, not great options and you're only 50% sure that one of them might be the best. And then you have to kind of perform this alchemy where you pick one and then convince the organization that it's, you know, absolutely logical and clear and we should all follow it and performing the alchemy is repeated. And so I think it's just a very different role. You know, an exec leadership team is not the same as a, as a divisional team. You know, you've got much bigger people with much more gravitas, but also, you know, you can't manage them in quite the same way. And you've, you know, you've not really got a boss, but you've got a board and you've got shareholders. So it's more diffuse. But that doesn't make it, that makes it somewhat more complex. So I think just the role itself is so different and I'm not sure anything can prepare you for it, but almost going into it, knowing you, it is so different is quite helpful and that you have to leave a, what a lot of what made you successful before behind. Because when things got tough before, I would go faster, dive in harder, kind of, you know, get into the organization, make things happen. And you actually, you can't do that as a CEO. You have to stand back and create space. So very different.
- [13:06]
Hoda Tehun
Lisa, as you were talking about your time at Harvard, it made me smile because I think a lot of our listeners who are sort of our female listeners would sort of resonate with a lot of what you said. And this episode is actually going to come out around International Women's Day and you've been very generous in lending your time to Russell Reynolds Art Artemis program as a contributor, as a mentor, you talked about some of the mentors that you have. For our listeners who don't know about Artemis. It's our unique one year experiential accelerator program for women executives who are considered one to five years away from becoming a credible CEO contender. But Lisa, will you tell us a little bit about your experience with Artemis and what made you choose making time for this program?
- [13:49]
Lisa McGowan
You know, I spent a lot of time coaching and mentoring women throughout my career. I think the experience of women who want to become senior executives and the barriers that they face are generally quite different than, than what I've experienced when I've been coaching, coaching men. And so I feel quite, I feel incredibly privileged to live in a geography and a time in history where my opportunity to be a CEO is even possible. Like it's probably only in the last 30 years and only in like 10% of the globe where this is even an option. So I just feel that, you know, I, that I don't carry that weight heavily. I just responsibly I just feel incredibly privileged. And so I want to pay that forward, and I want to make sure that, you know, I help women frame their experiences and their capabilities in the way that helps them succeed. So it's quite. It's quite core to me.
- [14:50]
Hoda Tehun
And what do you think are some of the key barriers holding. Holding back women from becoming CEOs?
- [14:55]
Lisa McGowan
So when women come to me for coaching in this. That kind of area of their career, or actually any area of their career, any point in their career, it's such a different experience than when men come. And I think it starts really early in childhood where when boys fall down, they're told, get up and try again, right? Get up and try again, keep going. And they frame success as like 51, 49. Whereas little girls are told, don't fall down, you'll get dirty. So women frame success as a hundred out of a hundred, right? And if they get to 99 out of 100, they think they failed. All the women that come to me say, my issue is confidence, right? I don't have confidence. And I'm like, well, you have to have confidence as a CEO. It's like saying, I want to be a CEO, but I can't do analytics or public speaking or. These are just table stakes, table stakes for the job. So helping I help, you know, I help build confidence. And I think, you know, explaining that the frame of reference is wrong. You can't be heading for a hundred percent and beating yourself up because you got 99 right. You need to reframe that as you're 51, 49. And that is so powerful because I say to women, you know, everyone compares them. Every woman compares themselves against what their perfect self would have done. I call her Perfect Lisa.
- [16:14]
Hoda Tehun
And doesn't really exist either. I mean, this notion of perfection, it doesn't exist.
- [16:17]
Lisa McGowan
It's impossible. It's impossible. And, you know, you can't compare yourself to perfection. You have to compare yourself to, am I the best person in this place right now to do this job? Yeah, in that case, I'll get on and do it. So for a lot of women, it's about frame of reference of what success is that is actually holding them back. You know, there's that thing that everyone says, oh, if women can do, you know, nine out of ten things on a job, they might put themselves forward, whereas men say, oh, six out of ten, I'll do it. But it's all of that. It's the frame of reference. And so I try and coach people to look around at everyone around you and say, am I doing as well as. If not a little bit better than that? Okay, I'm good. Rather than this idea of perfection that no one likes that cow.
- [17:00]
Hoda Tehun
And is there. Are there maybe one or two gems that you help them with the confidence piece? Because it's such a. It's such an important topic, and a lot of people are talking about this right now, but do you have one or two key takeaways that you sort of point them that you point them to?
- [17:13]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, there's a couple things. So I hate it when people say I've got imposter syndrome because it sounds like it's a syndrome that's like, okay.
- [17:21]
Hoda Tehun
It'S like a disease.
- [17:22]
Lisa McGowan
Exactly. You can't have imposter syndrome and be a co. Because then you're thinking about yourself all the time. You're thinking about, what's everyone thinking about me? How am I showing up? How am I feeling? And as a. As a senior leader, you can't be thinking about that. You've got to be thinking about, how's this person take. What's this person taking from me? What's. How am I leading this person? You know, how am I showing up for this team, for this organization? So one thing is, like, stop focusing on yourself. Stop worrying about your confidence. Think about other people and what you owe to them in a leadership position. And. And then you kind of. Your frame of reference again has changed. The other thing, of course, is just fake it. Like. Yeah, just fake it till you make it. I was once on this training course where there was this really geeky guy, really, like, shy and unconfident. And we were given, like, it was a. It was really early in my career. I was like, 21. They. They gave us all a status card and said, act this status because, you know, they were sending junior consultants in to talk to CEOs. They wanted us to understand the kind of status thing. Anyways, this guy is, like, really shy and geeky. He gets given the card 10, and immediately he's like, shoulders go back, and he starts, like, being this, like. Like, CEO, like, character. I'm like, dude, you just need to do that your whole life.
- [18:36]
Hoda Tehun
Like, be that person. Yeah.
- [18:38]
Lisa McGowan
And I think there's, like, you just. If you fake it for long enough, the people respond to you in the way that you're appearing, and therefore, that builds your confidence. And eventually you forget you're faking it, and it just becomes normal and the.
- [18:52]
Hoda Tehun
Two align in some magic sort of. Magic timeline.
- [18:55]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah. Anyway, those. It's a hard one because so many people feel it. But top tips.
- [19:00]
Hoda Tehun
Thank you. Those are great.
- [19:03]
Simon Kingston
We'll be right back with Lisa McGowan. But first, let's hear from Hetty Pai, leadership advisor and co founder of RRA Artemis, a movement designed to accelerate the development of women from the world's most influential organizations into the CEO seat. Hetty will discuss our latest research on the media's representation of women CEOs.
- [19:22]
Hetty Pai
The way we talk about women CEOs matters more than you might think. Women accounted for just 11% of CEO appointments in 2024. And we also know that substantively fewer women leaders globally say they aspire to become a CEO to men. So what's behind this? One key reason is the higher level of scrutiny and unconscious bias that women face in society and the media. To explore this further, we analyzed over 20,000 news articles covering nearly 750 CEOs across major indices, which revealed a number of challenges in how the media portrays women leaders. Two I'll highlight here.
- [20:06]
Lisa McGowan
1.
- [20:06]
Hetty Pai
Women's CEO departures receive nearly twice the media coverage of their male counterparts and are described in much more critical terms. 2. Women CEOs are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They were being described as being both too ambitious and not ambitious enough in media coverage. We have created RRA Artemis to seek to change the conversation around women CEOs and accelerate progress towards having more women CEOs. Why is this particularly important, especially right now? Well, the world is getting ever more complicated, yet we don't have the quality choice needed to lead. To ensure we do have the very best leaders in place. We need to enhance leadership optionality, which includes broadening our selection of the 50% of the population women who are currently significantly underutilized at the CEO level. And this is what Artemis is all about. To learn more about how we can change the conversation around women CEOs and accelerate progress towards a future with more of them. You can find our full report in the show notes or by visiting russellreynolds.com.
- [21:25]
Simon Kingston
Now back to our conversation with Lisa. Lisa, thinking of the context in which you arrived as CEO at Pets at Home. Like lots of retail businesses, there'd been a boom during the the pandemic. You arrived after it. But no doubt at this point where in the uk, like everywhere else, there'd been a boom and then there was a cost of living crisis. Just as we get through the pandemic, suddenly there's a contraction in people's sense of what their incomes really were and what their discretionary spend was going to look like. How was that for you as a first time CEO, coming into a business that's been through that, how did that expansion and then potential contraction play out at Pets at Home?
- [22:11]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, it's tricky because Pets at Home is a hugely successful business and you know, the number one pet care retailer, the number two biggest vets in the uk. It was number three when I started. It's number two now. We've got number, you know, one, one spot in grooming, you know, accessories, nutrition, like it's a huge business, hugely successful, way bigger than the, the next kind of two or three bricks and mortar competitors combined. And a very proud business, proud of its heritage and it managed the pandemic brilliantly. So it was open throughout the whole pandemic. And the culture is very strong at Pets at Home. Incredibly pet centric. This purpose of creating a better world for pets, the people who love them, runs right through the company. You know, we've got 16,000 expert colleagues, whether they be veterinary surgeons or nutrition experts or experienced groomers or write the gamut, but they get up and come to work every day to create a better world for pets, the people who love them. So you've got this incredibly purpose driven organization that was open all through Covid and then this massive pet boom. So the dogs, when cats were just walking in the door, we couldn't the biggest stress. But how do we get stock on the shelves fast enough to service it? And it was, you know, this huge thing and actually when I came, everyone was really tired, especially the vets, because we were one of the few vets that stayed open. They'd been under a lot of pressure, they'd given their all. I'm rightly proud of how we'd performed. But then you had this cloud on the horizon that was coming and the strategy that we needed to deploy going forward was much more about the skill set that I bought around technology, consumer insight, data, digital building platforms, but without breaking the brilliant stuff that was going on in vets and retail. So it was very much a jigsaw piece to kind of bring in those new skills, sort of change the culture a bit so that we were a bit more. We had a very high support culture, but not a lot of challenge because it had been, you know, very much about how do we service pets. The new world, the new level of competition, the headwinds that were coming required more challenge in the culture to get to a high performance culture, but without breaking all those things that were really special. And that lovely pride in how well we'd manage the pandemic. So I thought of it really as a tightrope and it was a tightrope on many dimensions. Keep the support, but add the challenge. Keep all the brilliant retail and veterinary skills, but add the capacity and capability around technology and digital and data. It was a real balance. Sort of keep the pride in what had been achieved. But be honest about the challenge that faced in the future. And I think in some ways that's harder than a burning platform because a burning platform is just clear, right. You know, stop doing all of that. We've got to do this. And in a crisis like Covid, things become boiled down to their essence. And I think when you're, you're in a growth, great culture, lovely culture, but you've got to be different. That balancing act is tougher.
- [25:24]
Simon Kingston
And what for you were the kind of signs that you were getting close to overbalancing in one direction or another. What did you develop as your kind of way of gauging that you were still on the tightrope?
- [25:36]
Lisa McGowan
I would have every sort of quarter, I'd have hour long calls with, with my top 40 people just to kind of check in. And I think because you know, a lot of times CEOs talk a lot to their exec team, but you, I think going a level down and even a level below that and just building those relationships with long serving, long standing people and just getting that, that feedback. Also spent a lot of time out in stores and bets and that was for two reasons. One is to gauge what's going on at the front line. But the other is to be visibly out there and be seen to be there at the front line because you, you want, you know, in a business that's rightly proud and very connected to pets, you want to be out there feeling that. So I don't think there's any substitute in a multi site operational business for spending a lot of time at the front line. So yeah, I think those things and then I made sure that in my team I had those culture carriers. In fact, I promoted one of them to, to be our chief people and legal officer. She's fabulous, but she was a real culture carrier for the business and a kind of lightning rod and very much kind of, you know, could just sense because it was such a different culture to sky and such a different culture to McKinsey where I' on the big stints in my career, I needed that help and just figuring out what was going on, bubbling under the surface and.
- [26:58]
Simon Kingston
There must have been. I mean, in that post pandemic period, I mean, it was a sort of perennial headline, the number of pets that had been bought during the pandemic who were being neglected or abandoned. I mean, your people must have been encountering some of that and must, in a way, have been the front line for some of that.
- [27:15]
Lisa McGowan
We are the biggest funder grant maker to rescue charities across the UK. We support over 800 rescues and have donated £50 million over the last decade to supporting them. And we also, in the cost of living crisis, launched a scheme to feed pets because human food banks were reporting that humans were. People were taking food and sharing it with their pets because they didn't want their pets to go hungry. So we stepped in and did it with the Blue Cross, did a food bank. So we're pretty close to those issues. And I think what actually happened is during the pandemic, you know, all the shelters emptied as all the pets got adopted. And then afterwards there was an increase, but actually only in proportion to the pet population that, you know, the big stories about all these abandonments, they're not. They're not really. They're not really born out in the numbers. I mean, they make a good newspaper headline. But most people, as you would know, Simon, would not give up their pet unless they absolutely had to. And some of that might be cost of living and some of that might be, you know, they don't. They took on a pet while they were working from home and they really don't have the capacity to care for them. But equally, they may have become too elderly to care for. I mean, these are things that have been going on, you know, for years and years, but people are really reluctant, rightly so, to give up their companions. So it's not that there was like this wave of adoptions and we did respond. We have an adoptions club, so you can get all the benefits of our puppy and kitten club. But, yeah, I think. Think the. The work. I'm really proud of the work we're doing with the Blue Cross to keep puppies and. Sorry. To keep dogs and cats in the homes that. With their owners, rather than having to give them up for adoption.
- [28:53]
Simon Kingston
There were a couple of things to be did last week that made me.
- [28:56]
Hoda Tehun
Yeah.
- [28:56]
Simon Kingston
Question that commitment. But yes.
- [28:58]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, I know when, when Barney ate my brand new shoes, I was a bit like, oh, I don't know. But yeah.
- [29:05]
Hoda Tehun
Lisa, when you were describing the shift of where the business or the core business was, what it was when you stepped in versus where you're migrating it now and sort of expanding on some of these other facets. So you know, the grooming, the clinics, the distribution centers, et cetera. Tell us how have you been able to make that transformation from a leadership standpoint and what is your vision going forward?
- [29:25]
Lisa McGowan
I think of it as a bit of a jigsaw puzzle in that the business skills and capabilities when I turned up were amazing. Right. So you know, really well invested national footprint of pet care centers which had vets and grooming and ret a really strong culture, great category authority, you know, a joint venture vets model which is, is really unique and very powerful. So the sort of core veterinary and retail skills were there and the job there is learn them. So I asked a lot of questions, spent a lot of time like working in vets in the distribution center, cleaning out fish, really understanding from the bottom up how that stuff worked and preserving that, but then wrapping around that, the kind of digital technology, marketing, customer insight skills that the business needed to go forward and bringing in people to do that. So you know, the jigsaw puzzle, the two pieces needed to come together. And so the vision that, that we set for the business was to become the world's best pet care platform and that is a omnichannel platform. So you can do, obviously you can walk into one of our pet care centers and that's really powerful. And face to face treatment, medical, you know, buying big 15 kilogram bags of dog food, these are things getting your dog groomed, they're all things you're going to always want to do face to face. But wrapping around that, a digital experience which is not just E commerce but advisory, telemedicine, e pharmacy, virtual hybrid. So all of that omnichannel and we've got huge economies of scale there in terms of our distribution, in terms of how far we can amortize a digital platform. Because digital platform doesn't really care if I'm doing a post surgical consult with a vet or a, you know, nutrition advisory with a, with a colleague in store. It's just, it's a functionality. So there's real economies of scale in that omnichannel experience and being there where the customer wants to be and then in terms of the integration. So having vets, grooming, retail, all of this because there's a spectrum of, you know, cardiac surgery on a hamster all the way through to probably not on a hamster actually, but you know, at least on a cat all the way through to buying a, a tennis ball for your dog and all of the Supplements and wellness and food and nutrient, everything in between. So to the extent we can integrate that and make that a super easy experience and get customers to spend more of their share of their pet wallet with pets at home, that's a really important part of the platform. So omnichannel integrated and then the third leg is consumer centric. So we have an enormous amount of data. We've got 10 years of data on half the nation's pet pets, more than half the nation's pets. We know what your dog's vaccine record is and what it ate for breakfast. So if we can leverage that into really great advice, support, you know, and triggers to get you more engaged in the platform and do everything that you can. So, you know, if we know your cat or your dog came in for a gastric issue in the vets, we should be marketing, you know, the particular sensitive stomach food to you and probably giving you a discount because you're a club member. And so it all comes together into this platform and that's what we're trying to build. But it has to wrap around a core business that's really working and then you bring in the rest of it to make it hum. So again, it's slightly that tightrope of how do you stretch resource without just kind of adding a load of cost to build the future? But make sure that the core business is still humming and as that's underway.
- [32:51]
Simon Kingston
Because it's an extraordinarily compelling proposition, the breadth of the offering and clearly differentiates you from people who are merely engaged in the retail side of it. But what was the, the conversation with your customers like along the way and how much did that shape the way the integration and the consumer centric bits of that played out?
- [33:12]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, it's a funny thing, I mean I've spent my life building consumer centric technology enabled businesses. But consumers can tell you some things. I mean, I can't remember the old Ogilvy quote, but they kind of, they can tell you what they like and what they don't like. They sort of can tell you what they would like if you give them some really clear options. But they can't really imagine a future that you're imagining and tell you they want that. So it's quite, you know, I think it's really important you get consumer insight and deep consumer understanding of where consumers are. But I don't think they can tell you what they don't know. And if you're trying to build something that no one else has done before, you have to, you have to find proxy for what you think consumers want and a little bit of gut feel and understand. So you know, when I built the mobile business at sky, we came up with this concept of a piggy bank. So the issue at the time, and still now is, you know, you pay for these big data packs because you're terrified of running out and getting, having to pay a load of extra money for extra data. But then it's really annoying because you know you're overpaying but you need that buffer. So we have this concept called roll. So any data you didn't use rolled into a piggy bank at the end of the month, month and anyone in your family could draw down from that piggy bank. Now that insight didn't really come directly from consumers going what would you like to do with your data? But it came from looking at adjacent industries like with rolling, kind of charging. It looked at understanding consumer behavioral economics. It was from my experience of my daughter spending £400 with Vodafone because she was watching dance mums in her bedroom and the wi fi was too slow. So you know, all of these things you're kind of of. You get insight from consumers but you have to put it together, understanding your P and L, your technology capability, your economics and project forward what you think the experience is.
- [35:05]
Simon Kingston
And wrapped up in that purpose is a commitment to sustainability externally. And you've got some pretty punchy targets. How did you choose them? How did you decide how that component of purpose was going to be realized?
- [35:19]
Lisa McGowan
When I turned it up, we had actually a huge number as like as you would expect in a company that's sort of got purpose, it's just like a lot like tens and tens of sustainability type kind of objectives. And so we cut it, I kind of work with the board and with the business to cut it into three clear pillars so people, pets and planet. And I think you, if you want a sustainable business, you actually for us we need to, to work across all three of those. So it's not just about environmental sustainability and so on the people pillar. It's very much a commitment to being the best promoter and developer of pet care talent. So we invest in graduate programs for vets, we invest in training and development, social mobility, bringing people through, working with charities because quite often people that have found other jobs, jobs challenging for various reasons find their home in pet care because they just love animals and we find people just flourish in pets at home that maybe haven't been so happy elsewhere. And we've got really low turnover and really High tenure and that, that's, that's part of it. So the people pillar is really important. We also invest in workshops for long standing relationship with the scouts. We do the half term so kids can come in and learn about handle some guinea pigs and learn about taking care of animals. And that's part of our developing the pet care owners of the future. Then we have our pets pillar and that's about, you know, welfare standards. The work I talked about, the foundation that, the fundraising, the grant making and just that is in everything we do every day making sure that we take care of pets. That's what most people in my business get up to do hands on every single day. And we also work with, you know, government and with a bit lobbying to sort of make sure that pets and advocate for them is a big voice in the industry. So that's the pets pillar and then the planet pillar is pretty broad actually. Again so in the vets we're working with low flow anesthesia because actually anesthetic gas is quite a big problem for the atmosphere. We've got partnership with a company called Meatly which is making cultivated food in labs so that you know, one day hopefully we don't have to slaughter animals to feed pets. And importantly, we've got a commitment, as you say, to carbon net zero. The biggest thing we can do there is get dogs and cats from eating wet food to dry food because dry food is actually about an order of magnitudes better in terms of environmental sustainability. So that's a real direction of travel for us as well.
- [38:00]
Simon Kingston
And on that, how do you see your role in sort of educating and changing your customers behavior? I mean, because there's a fine line between informing and directing, isn't there?
- [38:10]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, well we have these debates at the board all the time actually, which is great. My view is I think we should be slightly ahead of the consumer, not miles ahead of the consumer and not behind the consumer, but a little bit ahead. And I think we have a real role given the expertise of our colleagues, given, you know, the advice of both of our, of our vets and our retail colleagues and our grooming colleagues to really help educate consumers. They already come to us for advice. That's one of the big reasons that, you know, 40% of puppies and kittens in the UK will become a pets club member.
- [38:40]
Hoda Tehun
Did you just say 40%? Wow. Amazing.
- [38:45]
Lisa McGowan
Because they come because a lot of first time pet owners or they, you know, they just want that advice. They can talk to them about nutrition, about grooming. You know, I've Done. I obviously do shift shifts from time to time in. In the retail side, like, people ask me all these questions. I've got a clue. And every time that, like, everyone else is like, oh, yeah, you need this or that, and I'm like, it's. It's crazy, the depth of knowledge we have. So actually, environmental is no different. Our colleagues care greatly about the environment, and so we're. We're footprinting all of our food or fingerprinting, I can't quite remember which one. You do one or the other. That's it for printing all our food to figure out very. And we'll be talking to our colleagues about that over the coming months so that they in turn can say to customers, you know, if you switch from this to this, then it halves your carbon emissions, for example.
- [39:35]
Simon Kingston
And the currency of trust you must have is. Is really striking, particularly at this moment in social time.
- [39:42]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, we did some research, actually, before we launched our all for Pets campaign, and we are seven times more trusted than our nearest competitor. So it's an enormous bank of trust. I mean, we've both got older pets now, but I remember when we first had Freddie, I mean, we were. We're in all the time asking because we had no idea. Right.
- [40:01]
Simon Kingston
Is he supposed to have one of those?
- [40:02]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, exactly. And then we had Barney and we're still in all the time. We're like, really? What have we done wrong with this one?
- [40:08]
Simon Kingston
But that, I mean, that. And that could be a topic for an entirely different and longer podcast. But that idea of trust in a time when trust is at a premium, I think is. Is fascinating and must be kind of part of what you and the board. And you've touched on the board relationship a couple of times, and we should just come on to that. But I mean, in a way, what you're custodians of is that. Is that. Is that trust?
- [40:28]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, no, exactly, It's. And you, you know, it takes decades to build and it's very easy to destroy. So it's. It's really important. And what, what I. What part of what I want to do is bring that to life online as well. So when you turn up onto our online experience or our app experience, it should feel as advisory and warm as when you walk into our store and our colleague says hello to your dog and then to you.
- [40:54]
Simon Kingston
Yeah, that's really interesting. You mentioned Lisa at the beginning, the kind of the transition to being a CEO and it being a different job and that in a sense, you don't have a boss. You've got a board. Tell us a bit about how you work with the board to discern strategy for pets at home and how that, how that dialogue happens.
- [41:12]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, no, I have a great board. Actually. I'm very lucky. I was and, and I sat down before I joined with my chairman Ian. And Ian's coached a number of first time CEOs into CEO positions. Really experienced and he actually had like a five page document that talked about his role versus my role. And he. And we worked through it and I think that was just so helpful to kind of figure out and have those discussions up front before we got into the actual job.
- [41:43]
Simon Kingston
And any advice you would offer somebody else about to step into that CEO role on the board relationship in particular, clearly a very good relationship with the chair, clearly setting the terms of engagement. But anything else or any observations that surprised you despite having been an ed yourself before?
- [42:03]
Lisa McGowan
I think the right board have a good mix of challenge and support. Right. Because that just like the right execs and the right businesses. So I think being open to challenge and not being defensive and not misinterpreting challenges kind of, you know, something else is, is quite important so because in the end Neds want to be helpful, right? They, they turn up 10 or 12 times a year that they, they want to be useful and they want to get engaged. So the more you like invite them in, the more you're going to get out of them. And I know that from being a Ned, it's very easy not to be defensive at the beginning because it's not really, you know, the problems aren't really your problems, but two or three years in, you know, they are actually critiquing things you've done and advising you to do things differently. And I think staying non defensive and open is probably harder than starting that way.
- [43:04]
Hoda Tehun
Well, Lisa, it's been an absolutely wonderful discussion and we've now come to the part of our conversation that we like to call rapid fire questions where we ask you a series of questions designed to help our listeners get to know you even better. All you have to do is answer as quickly as possible. First thing that pops to mind. Are you ready?
- [43:21]
Lisa McGowan
Ready.
- [43:22]
Hoda Tehun
Okay. What type of dog breed best describes your personality?
- [43:27]
Lisa McGowan
Cross between a, a Labrador and a border collie.
- [43:31]
Hoda Tehun
Okay.
- [43:33]
Lisa McGowan
I don't know what you call that. A collie? I don't know.
- [43:37]
Simon Kingston
A Labby? I don't know. I've read your mother is a chef.
- [43:41]
Lisa McGowan
She is.
- [43:42]
Simon Kingston
And you love cooking.
- [43:43]
Lisa McGowan
Yes.
- [43:44]
Simon Kingston
What is your favorite dish to cook?
- [43:47]
Lisa McGowan
Thai green curry.
- [43:48]
Hetty Pai
Ooh.
- [43:49]
Hoda Tehun
Love that.
- [43:50]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, definitely. Although I'm in a massive, like, culinary competition with my husband. Up until, like, 10, five years ago, I was the chef in the family, and my friends knew me as quite an accomplished chef. Then he went and did a. He went and did a cooking course, and now he's, like, much better than me. And the kids are like, oh, Mummy, that was quite nice. It's almost daddy standard. And I'm like, so, yeah, we can't really talk about cooking anymore.
- [44:15]
Hoda Tehun
What is your favorite way to exercise?
- [44:18]
Lisa McGowan
My favorite leisurely, exercisey thing is scuba diving. That moment when you get beneath the water and exhale and your daily sales reports are on the boat. You just. Yeah, that. I love that. But I used to really, really like doing, like, weightlifting and body pump and these hot. But now it's yoga. I'm just. Yeah, yoga.
- [44:39]
Hoda Tehun
Yoga is a great one.
- [44:40]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah.
- [44:41]
Simon Kingston
What's the best advice you've ever been given?
- [44:44]
Lisa McGowan
People won't remember what you said or what you did, but they'll never forget how you made them feel. It's Maya Angelou. I love that quote.
- [44:50]
Hoda Tehun
I love that one.
- [44:51]
Lisa McGowan
It's very true.
- [44:52]
Hoda Tehun
Now that you're a few years into your CEO role at Pets at Home, what's one thing you wish you had learned sooner?
- [44:59]
Lisa McGowan
I think I knew intellectually, but it's. It's not until you experience it, just how much impact every single thing you do say if you look at someone funny, like everyone is looking you all the time. And the kind of. The weight of the office is so weighty it brings with it. There's certain things you can and can't do, and I think, you know, I knew that intellectually, but experiencing, that's quite different. You need to. You need to carry the weight of the office lightly. But seriously.
- [45:33]
Hoda Tehun
And what is one important skill every person should have?
- [45:36]
Lisa McGowan
Sleeping.
- [45:37]
Hoda Tehun
That's a great one.
- [45:38]
Lisa McGowan
Yeah, I'm very good at sleeping, and it's turned out to be an incredibly amazing. My husband really isn't, so I can see the difference. But, yeah, being good at sleeping, it's a superpower.
- [45:50]
Simon Kingston
Can I ask one bonus question, Hoda, with your permission?
- [45:53]
Hoda Tehun
Yes, of course.
- [45:53]
Simon Kingston
And Lisa, with yours? How do I persuade my daughter that she doesn't really want a Syrian hamster.
- [45:59]
Lisa McGowan
From Pets at Home? Oh. I think it's more about how does your daughter persuade you that you really need one in your life? Send us to me, and I'll give her some top tips.
- [46:10]
Simon Kingston
I had a horrible feeling you were gonna say something. Lisa, thank you for that incredibly engaging description. Of a very successful career, but one that also sounds like it's a lot of fun and one where at Pets at Home you combine a real sense of purpose and commitment to the communities you serve as well as profit. The idea of balance seems to run as a vein through all of it, from the decision to do geography with that mix of the human and the scientific to that point where having survived an MBA and a first child, you decided that you wanted to do as well as to advise the customer centricity of the time at Telewest and at sky comes through. And then that need to take what was not a burning platform but a highly successful business at Pets at Home and help it become the broader platform to support people who care for pets was really compelling. The advice that you gave new CEOs that it's not a quantum step as an executive, it's a completely different job with a completely different set of stakeholders and a sense that you're on and being observed all the time I'm sure will resonate. As was that sense that you came back to a couple of times that you need to be just a step ahead of your customers. Even while you listen to them, they can't necessarily tell you they want something they haven't seen yet. That comes through. And it comes through also that openness and that continuing communication in the description you have of the dialogue with your board and the art of staying non defensive. Something I'm going to try and do when I talk to my daughter about the Syrian hamster.
- [47:57]
Hoda Tehun
Well Lisa, we have absolutely loved having you on Redefiners. Thank you once again for joining us.
- [48:02]
Lisa McGowan
No, thanks for having me. It's been a delight.