David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learnings so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guests is Timo bull, founder and CEO of Gousto, the largest meal kit company in the United Kingdom, which Timo founded at the ripe old age of 27. In the last seven years, its valuation has grown to over $1 billion. Now, that's some seriously impressive growth. And you're going to love hearing how Timo and his team have done it. He's constantly and I mean, constantly pushing himself and his company to grow and get better. They've been through all the standard founder led challenges and have come through them with a culture that's obsessed with delivering great value, working collectively, in dreaming big dreams. You know, it takes intention to push yourself and stretch your belief, but it's worth it. Because to paraphrase Timo setting mediocre targets is a really good way to get mediocre results. This conversation is basically a blueprint you can follow if you want to find creative ways to stretch yourself and your team to go for big goals. So here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Timo bolt

David Novak 1:36 

Timo, thanks very much for being on the show.

Timo Boldt 1:38 

Thank you so much for having me, David. Absolute pleasure.

David Novak 1:42 

Good. You know, Timo, I always like to start at the beginning. Tell us about your upbringing.

Timo Boldt 1:47 

I grew up in Berlin, Germany, as you might be able to tell from my accent. And back then Berlin was divided in four zones following World War Two. So a lot of my neighbors were Americans, my mom, which was quite unique. She lived in the US when she was 16. So both my neighbors and my mom always encouraged me to live in the US one day. So when I was 1617, I lived in California in Napa, graduating from high school. And then I came back to Germany, I studied in Germany. And then I went back to California, to study at San Diego State University. So I've lived in different countries. And then for the last 12 years, I've lived in the UK.

David Novak 2:33 

Do you have a story from your childhood days that will tell us a lot about the kind of person that you've become

Timo Boldt 2:38 

I, I was the type of kid that just loved being outdoors all day, surrounding myself with lots of people. I'm a very social person. I love people. So I played all day, and I got into a lot of trouble because they wouldn't come back for dinner and my parents had to run outside looking for me. And I think that's pretty pretty typical of me. Just you know, being outdoors, having fun being on my legs, not sitting at a desk.

David Novak 3:04 

What do you want to do when you grew up?

Timo Boldt 3:07 

You believe it or not, I always said I wanted to be a chef. I watched how my mom made amazing food. So I always thought as a kid, I would be a chef one day. And then I stumbled into finance as one debt, pre financial crisis. But I always loved food. And I had the opportunity to live in Napa Valley. Where worked in a supermarket. You know, I I've got godparents, in Napa Valley, who have vineyards and ice cream shops. So always like aspiring entrepreneurs who set up food businesses.

David Novak 3:41 

Yeah, you know, you went to Cambridge University. And so what was your first job out of school? And what do you learn from it?

Timo Boldt 3:48 

I did an internship. I mean, I had a couple of obvious jobs in a supermarket in a Vinyard all kinds of small things. But then my first proper job was an internship at BMW. And I spent six months in Germany and Spain introducing a new car. And the key manager from the BMW got ill. So they gave me the management job as an intern. So I really learned kind of the lesson of, you know, you work hard, you're ambitious. And then you're given huge ownership. And it really instilled a lot of confidence in me.

David Novak 4:26 

What was the route that that you took that ultimately made you an entrepreneur from that point?

Timo Boldt 4:32 

I saw. So I started in finance. I had a small startup at university. And then my godparents are hardcore entrepreneurs. They have built a dozen of companies over the last 50 years. Some of them failed others that did really well. So I always looked up to them. I started the small company at university, just having fun.

David Novak 4:55 

And then I went into finance. What was that company? What was that?

Timo Boldt 4:59 

To be honest So the stock market went up and up and up and up when I studied. So we launched a student fund raising money from students and investing student money. And we did phenomenally well. But to be honest, plain luck, we invested into Chinese sugar manufacturers. And since the stock market went up, those penny stocks went up even further. And everyone thought we were amazing at stock picking. But we weren't.

David Novak 5:28 

So so how did you get out of that business?

Timo Boldt 5:31 

We again, we were so incredibly lucky we we shut down the fund. I mean, we made we made a decent amount of money, but we shut it down when we graduated. And we graduated in in late 2007. So right before the financial crisis at the peak, and it again, it looked like we're amazing at stock picking, but obviously only luck.

David Novak 5:54 

Well, what does that say? Do you want to be both lucky and good? It sounds like you were both in that case. But now you went from there to you work at a hedge fund, right?

Timo Boldt 6:04 

Yes. So I joined investment banking first. And I feel like I got an amazing toolbox, lots of analytical skills, how to talk to clients, how to talk to CEOs, how to kind of, you know, be financially knowledgeable. But I felt like I don't want to be an advisor. So I joined a hedge fund spinoff from Goldman Sachs, and was given huge ownership at a very young age, I did all the trading, I was managing the London office, and we had a $200 million long short equity fund I was in charge off. So it was tremendous pressure, tremendous ownership. And it just changed the way I thought, you know, before joining the hedge fund, it would have never occurred to me to pick up the phone to a CEO. And in this environment, you know, I was encouraged to just fly somewhere, meet the CEO meet a team for my own opinion, if I liked the stock, buy the stock. If not sell us the stock was a tremendous learning experience. So I'm really grateful for

David Novak 7:07 

it. So you started out very early on, you end up managing a BMW business, then you end up managing a hedge fund business. You know, you're you're not even 25 yet, how do you how did you get so much responsibility? So early?

Timo Boldt 7:23 

I, I really, I think I've always managed to surround myself with people who are better than me. I'm a but how

David Novak 7:31 

do you do that? How do you do that at 20? I mean, you know, that sounds all nice and good. But, you know, how did this happen? What do you have that made that happen? I guess

Timo Boldt 7:41 

I'm a learner Holic, I listened to all types of people all day, I learned very, very fast. I'm good with numbers. And then I work incredibly hard. My parents have taught me the value of kindness, generosity, and you know, people focus. And then I always had really good work ethics. And I took ownership over whatever I would do from from an early age.

David Novak 8:05 

Tell us a story of how you came up with your idea for Gustavo.

Timo Boldt 8:09 

So I in 2011, I traveled to Italy, during truffle season, which is phenomenal. And we were 14 Guys traveling to Italy, a couple of Italians, we ate phenomenal food. And in the back of my mind, I enjoyed working in finance, I enjoyed the responsibility, but I really wanted to start my own business. So when in Italy, I really felt like I have to start my own business, I have to do something around food. So I kind of combined the two. And then I did a little bit of thinking, you know, I saw four big trends in the market sustainability, health, convenience, and online. Those are the four biggest trends in Europe, and I'm sure in the US as well in grocery land, and they're absolutely seismic shifts in the market. So I felt like this idea of gusto is taking all four boxes, it's a much more sustainable way. It's healthy for you. It's so convenient, because you get everything delivered. There's no food waste. So this is how it kind of started. But to be honest, I was quite naive when I when I launched it. And I obviously had to throw away the plan on day one.

David Novak 9:18 

You know, it's really hard to build a business from scratch yet yet you've done it. Can you tell us a story of what was your, your biggest struggle early on?

Timo Boldt 9:28 

I mean, initially, I got this all wrong. I focused on myself as a customer, young, cash rich time poor. And to be honest, the people who cook the most are families who live outside of big cities who live incredibly busy lives. So I think I got the proposition all wrong. And then secondly, the biggest learning has been around how do you build a team? How do you really you know, empower a leadership team. How do you hire people who are more senior than you Um, what's a good culture? How do you against hire against that culture? To be very honest, the first three senior executives I hired I had to fire because they absolutely killed the culture. And that was enormously painful from an emotional point of view. And one of the biggest learnings, what would you

David Novak 10:19 

tell entrepreneurs for maybe one or two clicks behind you in terms of their thought process and where they're at? What have you learned? That's sort of untaught and unspoken?

Timo Boldt 10:30 

I think I think leadership looks really glamorous from the outside. But when you're on the inside, I think it's really all about learning to manage yourself, what are your demons? How do you turn limiting factors into into sources of energy? How do you how do you energize yourself when you are in the energy trough? This stuff no one really teaches your business school. But But everyone has ups and downs and personal issues. And so managing yourself before you lead others, I think is kind of my biggest, biggest lesson learned.

David Novak 11:06 

How do you energize yourself, when you get in that trough,

Timo Boldt 11:09 

you know, I all the typical stuff, I exercise. If I've got a bad day, I know I have to go to the gym, even more exercise, running good diet, but it's all about mental mental fitness and mental health and putting your mindset to it. And then obviously, helping others is a phenomenal way of getting yourself out of the low.

David Novak 11:32 

Now that your business is a success. How do you make sure that you keep your edge.

Timo Boldt 11:37 

Um, so I mean, as a company, we absolutely obsessed about the customer. So it's all about listening to customer feedback. It's about really obsessing about customer net promoter score, and, you know, putting putting everything, all our energy behind customer roadmaps, even if it takes a couple of years. On a personal level. I'm trying really hard to educate myself, I'm you know, I went to Cambridge University on weekends, and becoming a certified coach at the moment. So I'm coaching two CEOs, who are 20 years older than I am, and two other phenomenal people. And I also sit on to two company boards, which I tremendously enjoy, because it gives you so much perspective into other companies and coaches.

David Novak 12:21 

So what makes you a good coach? Well,

Timo Boldt 12:25 

I'm not sure if I'm a good coach, I'm not claiming that. But I think I think coaching is all about listening. It's about understanding what makes people tick. It's about raising questions, rather than subscribing answers. And it's, I think what I find fascinating is 30% of time, people want to talk about confidence and impostor syndrome. 30% of time, people want to talk about how to build a leadership team, how to build a great culture, and then 30%, it's individual topics. But you know, the level of pattern recognition is actually quite large. Which took me a long time to realize. So I guess the more you coach, the better you get this huge network effect. And it's, that's really rewarding.

David Novak 13:11 

You know, I know you do lectures for the industry and at Cambridge, tell us a story about how that experience is powered your own leadership.

Timo Boldt 13:20 

Yeah, so I give them guest lectures. You know, I speak at conferences. And I think it's, you know, if you're forced to distill your thoughts on a piece of paper, and you have to write it down. And you know, the audience is really educated and sophisticated, and you can't just wing it. It's amazing for you on a personal level, how it helps you to learn what you already know. But just by articulating it, I think it's immensely powerful. And the first couple of times I did it, I was so nervous, I practiced and practiced, and you kind of make it through and you feel, you know, I didn't feel great about myself. But then you get really good feedback, and it builds your confidence, you feel better the next time. And you go back into your organization and you see it in a different way. You take some of the lessons into your team. It's powerful. You know, I'm

David Novak 14:10 

really curious, I saw where you went back and got an MBA after starting Gousto Was there a specific experience that made you do it?

Timo Boldt 14:21 

Just for background, I came from a very high salary to no salary starting gusto and and it took me two, three years to draw a salary. And then after that, I pretty much had to tell my wife oh, by the way, I'm, you know, the small salary I'm no drawing and reinvesting into doing this MBA was a very, I mean, she's always been massively supportive, but in hindsight, it it felt quite brave back then. Yeah, I always I've known a couple of people who did MBAs and I felt like no one has ever taught me how to lead people or manage people. Everything I did was got fear. In finance, you don't learn anything about cars. etc. I mean, that's not fair. But But it's, you know, to a lesser extent, I think. So I felt like I should really train myself and do this. It's a weekend course. So every other weekend, spending two days learning, I was the youngest guy in the cohort, everyone else was managing a lot more people. So I felt like I shamelessly learned from other people and stole their ideas. So it was it was amazing. I met made friends for life, and I met many great people. Two of them I,

David Novak 15:30 

you know, that's great. You know, you describe your style as a as a data company that happens to sell food. Explain.

Timo Boldt 15:37 

Yeah, so data is running through everything we do. We apply algorithms and automation in the supply chain. But we also push personalization. So you should really never ever see the menu I'm seeing. If your daughter turns lactose free, or your son was vegan for months, or whatever it is, we should really be for you, you should never see the same stuff. So personalization, customization, total customer obsession, and to win in this market, given how emotional food is, we felt like early on that we really needed this technology and data focus. Because if you don't automate the factory, there's no way you can next day, same day deliver food across all of the UK. So we've always played this really long, long game, but it's really ingrained even in smaller things. Every marketing campaign, we do we a be tested in real time on Facebook, Twitter. Everything we do is tested from a data point,

David Novak 16:38 

you know, you've personally been described as an inspiring leader that can get all levels of the organization fired up about your vision. How do you do it?

Timo Boldt 16:47 

That's enormous ly kind? I don't know who said that. I think I mean, it's I think leadership is all about kindness and listening. And it's about, you know, walking the floor and talking to people and understanding what their issues are, what their challenges are. I don't think there's a magic wand for leadership, but it is really down to basics is how much care do you take of your people? Do you understand them? And are you mindful of their personal issues, which might cause performance issues and so on? So I think it's this mentality. Care is one of our biggest principles that goes to one of the three values we have. So we hire people specifically for empathy. For that level of kind of leadership thinking,

David Novak 17:35 

Can you give us an example of how you raise the bar and balance between being a cheerleader and believer in people? And, and just the need to really make sure that you're jumping over the that hurdle?

Timo Boldt 17:49 

Yeah, I think it's all about high high support high challenge. If you're only in the high support area, then then I think, you know, you're not unlocking the best potential and people, it's all about finding this balance of stretching people, but at the same time supporting them. So I think, you know, for us as a company, we've worked really hard to create psychological safety. So everyone, including, you know, people in the factory floor, and so on, everyone can speak up. Everyone can share their opinion, but at the same time, it is it's a meritocracy, it's very data driven data is usually transparent, you can look up what anyone is working on. In the company. Everyone has goals. Goals have timelines. So I think you create this high performance culture, where people really want to strive. And then you try to reinforce it. So every time somebody succeeds at anything, we, we celebrate them. So we have quarterly events, we give people, you know, extra holidays for achieving amazing things. People nominate people for ownership awards. So the culture becomes reinforcing.

David Novak 18:56 

It's obvious, you're almost crazy intentional about building culture, you go back to get an MBA, so you can learn more about it. You know, where did this? Where did this come from?

Timo Boldt 19:05 

I think my mom has always taught me the value of kindness and generosity. And my dad has always been, both of them have always been extremely curious. Curious. So we would have, you know, going back all the way to kind of me having dinner as a kid, my dad has those huge books everywhere, you would pull them out whenever we discussed anything. And you know, we didn't have Google back then or Wikipedia. So you'd pull out huge books. And he would kind of instill this idea into me that if you don't know stuff, it doesn't really matter. As long as you look it up. You can't not know it, you have to look it up. So we would interrupt dinner probably 510 times every single day and look up stuff in big books. Now. It's easier. My dad still puts out books. But I think it's it's that mentality. Doesn't matter what you know, it's about how you get the information.

David Novak 20:00 

You mentioned care and hiring for empathy. What are your other cultural values? And how do you go about creating them? Yeah, so

Timo Boldt 20:09 

the other other, so we have three values, their dream, deliver care. And then we have nine ownership principles that are kind of nine, nine behaviors that underpin them and bring them alive. But I mean, Dream is all about thinking big, no one knows how this model can look in the next 10 years or 20 years, your idea might be much better than than my idea. So it's blue ocean, it's not me knowing how the future looks, I really need you and everyone to think big to figure this out. So this is kind of the first idea. And and part of dream is also this idea of self development, you know, taking ownership over your own development. The second value is deliver. I mean, any startup has to deliver value fast to customers, or you fail. It's really, really simple. So we've always been obsessed about results, numbers, data, building a meritocracy, where people really get promoted fast for for doing amazing things. But then the third one is just care idea, doing it collectively, collaborating across functions as we get bigger. I mean, by your standards, we're still a tiny company. But for us, it feels like we're getting a lot bigger. So collaboration is becoming increasingly important. No politics, no silos working, you know, as one team from pulling from the same side, super important.

David Novak 21:30 

I understand. Timo that you wrote and published a letter, which was entitled A letter to my younger self one day, you'll have to take your hands off the wheel. You know, why? Why did you write this letter? And what's the essence of it?

Timo Boldt 21:46 

It's been a fun exercise. It's been a while ago. I think it's difficult when you are, you know, in the grind you working really, really hard, long hours all the time, you almost have to force yourself to step out of the noise and force yourself to reflect and build this, you know, reflection practice. It's hard. So I felt like I should probably write down my thoughts and share them. And I guess one of the biggest lessons learned for me, is this whole, how do you empower a team? How do you move away from you being the founder and deciding everything to the team taking decisions in a much faster way, as a team collectively being better than you as a founder? Much, much, much better. And that's a very, it's a difficult transition as a founder, because you're used to being the number one guy, but it's not no longer scalable. So I think it's taken me two, three years to really, really, really build this team and power the team, you know, come up with a team charter, Team values, red and green card behaviors, all this good stuff. But now, it's amazing because I've got headspace. The team more or less runs the business. I've got headspace to think, you know, to take care of culture and people and strategy.

David Novak 23:04 

So you're obviously hiring great talent. Do you have anything unique about your hiring process that helps you really bring in the best and the brightest?

Timo Boldt 23:13 

Yeah, I mean, we've done all the standard stuff, you know, we do. We do personality tests that we do some intelligent tests and Case Study interviews. But I think what what ultimately works the best is once that's all done, it all comes down to personality. So I, you know, I like to take out future hires for dinner for brunch. I take the entire leadership team out for breakfast, including the new person before we make an offer. It's about chemistry, it's about understanding whether they fit in. And if we have certain reservations, we try to create, you know, a situation where we really push the person's button. So we roleplay one person on the leadership team takes a certain role pushes the buttons, and that really brings out certain things you can't figure out in interviews easily.

Unknown Speaker 24:09 

You mentioned earlier,

David Novak 24:10 

when you first started the company, you had a few people you brought on that you had to fire. What did you learn from that experience and how to do it?

Timo Boldt 24:19 

I think I think when I started the business, I didn't have the appreciation for culture I have today. And what I learned the hard way is you can only mess it up once. So if you bring in somebody, I mean, we brought in somebody from a hugely prestigious company. You know, the guy was 30 years older than I am he managed hundreds of employees. But then he joined our company and what we didn't know is that he shouts at people and he built a horrible kind of, you know, level of pressure on people. So so the how the what was good he achieved results but the How was all wrong. And so within a couple of days, I had you know the entire company. I mean we had a small company back then. But the entire company complained to me. So I had to lean into this tough decision. You know, the guy was kind of performing, but in a horrible way that would drive away my most talented people really quickly if I didn't, if I didn't do anything. So I felt obligated to act fast. And in hindsight, I think the best decision was to do it really, really fast. I fired him after 1012 weeks. And everyone pretty much said, well done. Thank you. This great makes perfect sense. No one was surprised. And then I sadly had to do it twice again, because I didn't learn fast enough from it. I think I was so blinded by the fact that I can hire those senior people, I was amazed by it. And I didn't put enough care into selecting them against culture. After after I mess it up three times, I feel like we now have a really, really robust way of interviewing. But even now, you only get it right 75% of times.

David Novak 25:59 

Right? You know, how do you know when to take your hands off the wheel? When when you're managing others?

Timo Boldt 26:05 

I mean, I think leadership is all about giving and taking space. Ultimately, I feel like my job is to define the vision where where do we want to be? And when do we want to be where, but then it's all about giving people space. So you know, whether they take Avenue A or Avenue B, it's up to them, really, they have to own the consequences, but they take the decision. And I mean, you quickly realize which which leader which function is capable of doing this and which one isn't. So I think for you, as a CEO, the key thing is to build up an understanding of what high standards look like by function. So I, if I don't know anything about marketing, I call up 20 CMOS to understand how their brain works. And then after I talk to 20 CMOS, I understand, or I start to understand how high standards look like. And if I realize my own function doesn't operate at those high standards, I try to enforce them. And I, you know, I tried to bring in this level of thinking. So I think it's your job is to constantly assess where we are, we have a wonderful mechanism for this, we have quarterly super days, which means I'm spending two full days and every single function, every single quarter meeting every person apart from the management leadership team. So everyone is presenting what they did last quarter, what they do next quarter, every junior person, and it builds this insane level of understanding where each function is how they progress over time, it gives you an opportunity to celebrate and recognize people. It's one of the most fun things we do. You know, speaking

David Novak 27:42 

of recognition, how does that play into your personal management style?

Timo Boldt 27:46 

So I tried to copy what you do. But it hasn't worked yet. I've we're not doing it right. My team doesn't want to sing. It's all I think it's all about. It's all about finding your own mechanisms. For example, we have, we have quarterly town halls, where people can nominate people who epitomize the ownership principles. So if you've done something amazing around care, somebody might nominate you, and then you win, you know, extra holidays, a bottle of champagne, everyone is clapping your pictures on the wall? It doesn't cost a lot people absolutely love it.

David Novak 28:22 

You've got a list of personal awards that basically takes up a full full page. You know, man, how do you stay humble? And do you have a story that really drives home the importance of being humble?

Timo Boldt 28:37 

I think business is moving so incredibly fast that you know, we we today have a business that's that looks like it's succeeding. But who knows how this business looks in two, three years, somebody might out execute us. So I think business is really about being humble and staying hungry and lean and focused. You can mess it up so fast. And you see this every single day companies great companies, going from great to poor to out of business. So I think it's it's really instilling this, this work ethic into the team, that you know, we have to relentlessly focus to win. So to me, it's, it's about celebrating the team and recognizing them, but I'm super future oriented. I think we on day one of building gosto we have you know, 1020 more years of hard work in front of us.

David Novak 29:30 

Well, it's how do you stay self aware as a as a leader and as a company and and how do you how do you also take this massive belief and learning and make sure it cascades across your organization?

Timo Boldt 29:44 

Yeah, so we do. We do twice a year we do 360 feedback. Everyone can give me feedback. People People are amazingly generous in you know, sharing the good stuff, the bad stuff, and it helps once you're past us This defensiveness really helps you to kind of build development plans by person. So I hope that everyone who goes to has personal development plans every single half year, and to focus on learning, because once you realize how much the company can do to create unique experiences for you as a person, it's just mind blowing how fast, you know how learning can be expedited. So that's kind of the belief system, you got to give systematic feedback, but then you have to turn it into development plans by person, and then you got to celebrate every single milestone they achieve.

David Novak 30:40 

I have to tell you, most of my interviews are with CEOs, leaders of the United States. And obviously, we've been going through COVID-19 here, and I just thought it'd be great to get a perspective on on how you're looking as a leader what's happening with COVID-19, with your business, and also across Europe, you know, you're based in London, I know.

Timo Boldt 31:00 

So, obviously, it's extremely difficult for for all of us. You know, in this time, I'm feeling enormous ly proud of the team for for rising to the occasion. My top priorities were to really focus on Team safety, focus on customer satisfaction, and then make sure that we have enough capacity to really feed the nation across all of the UK. And I'm really proud the team has done such a fantastic job, we're hitting 80%. Net Promoter Score, the team is safe. So we really, really achieved our core mission of safety and customer satisfaction. We continue to innovate. During this crisis, we have launched innovation that has seen our plastic scores come down. Usually, we've pushed new product launches to customers to make sure that our whites customers have to stay home and they at least get to enjoy amazing food. And now we're seeing real, real big breakthroughs on capacity. So for us as a food business, feeding the nation volume has been unprecedentedly high. And I'm extremely thankful to the team for doing such an amazing job. When you look at the UK briefly, Regarding your question on Europe. I think it's fair to say that Germany probably did the best job in Europe handling the crisis for various reasons.

David Novak 32:31 

Do you have a particular story that you're really proud of where you guys that have innovated and done something unique?

Timo Boldt 32:37 

Yeah, I mean, like, look, we you know, for example, we, we worked on this new innovation for 18 months, and I think most companies would have just postponed the launch. And I have a team of really, really, really amazing people who secured a coastal peyten for that solution, right, pre COVID. And they then decided to work every single day, instead of working from home, they worked out of the factory to make sure the launch goes well. And I'm just incredibly proud of them. Every single day, they drove to the factory, they worked seven days a week, night and day, they got it live, and it's meant that we've seen, I think another 77 million plastic straws are now taken out of the system, you know, the equivalent of those 77 million plastic straws, so enormously proud of those people rising to the occasion, going the extra mile going to the factory, despite you know them being able to work from home if they wanted to.

David Novak 33:38 

Yeah, that is great. You know, I suppose what you know, being in the middle kid business, your business has had to take off because people were getting home delivery. So are you having record growth,

Timo Boldt 33:50 

we are having record growth. We're just making sure we can fulfill. And I'm extremely, extremely proud of the team that customer satisfaction states so high, we saw 10 times the volume on certain days, then pre COVID 19. We're seeing, you know, five to 10 years of secular trend compressed into the matter of weeks. So pre COVID 7% of grocery was traded online. Now in the UK, it's 12%. You know, in a market that's hundreds of billions. So it's absolutely remarkable.

David Novak 34:27 

Yeah, that's, that's amazing. As you look to the future, what do you think is changed? That's going to be a major plus for your business down the road?

Timo Boldt 34:38 

I think ultimately, customers who try online for the first time and they then get into the habit, they get it five to 10 times they will stay in that habit. So that change the shift, the seismic shift towards online is here to stay. It's only accelerating because the shift has been artificially constrained by Cape cassity not being available. Now supermarkets, Amazon, everyone is heavily investing into online grocery capabilities. So we're seeing a second wave shift in the next 12 to 18 months, I would assume. And the online experience, the customer satisfaction is just so high, people will not return to what they did before.

David Novak 35:19 

You know, I talked to Brian Cornell, who is the CEO of target recently, and he said that he felt with all the virtual meetings and people from across the company calling in that he was closer to what was going on than maybe he was even before COVID 19.

Unknown Speaker 35:35 

How do you look at that?

Timo Boldt 35:37 

I totally agree, I think the big benefit is it feels to me that we're like squeezing months and months of innovation into weeks, simply because we're talking seven days a week. And the level of focus from the leadership team, the management team on very detailed discussion is greater than ever before. So I do think we're seeing a massive acceleration and execution capabilities.

David Novak 36:01 

You know, you're a huge champion of diversity, and especially women in business, and why is this a passion point for you?

Timo Boldt 36:08 

Yeah, it's a very personal one, I look at, you know, my wife, who works in research. She's a neuroscience researcher. And it's, it's a man dominated world. And it's, it can be tough, I think for for female researchers out there, because the culture is, well, very male dominated. And similarly, one of my best friends, she played tennis at the Olympics, she worked in investment banking, in the 90s, in New York, as a female trader, as the only female trader. And then she went away having two kids. Now she came back to work, only to find out that things haven't changed that much. Yes, there's a lot of, you know, language that that has changed. But when you look at the statistics, the world hasn't moved forward that much. And it's it's quite sad, in a way. So I feel this obligation for gusto to be, you know, a force of positive movement in the right direction. And also, from a purely selfish point, we need 5050 talent pool, we can't afford to not hire the very best people, whether they're male, or female, or whatever other background they have,

David Novak 37:20 

what would be three bits of advice you could give other aspiring leaders

Timo Boldt 37:24 

are you gotta manage yourself before you lead others. That's absolutely number one. And I think you got to play the long game. We see so much short termism, in this world. And quarterly earnings are obviously extremely important. But playing the long game, I really think stands out in today's world. And then I think it's about it's about, you know, setting big, bold ambitions. Setting mediocre targets is just the most commonly traveled avenue to mediocre Ness. And so you got to stretch yourself and your beliefs. It's as hard to work towards a, you know, a really big goal as it is to work towards a small goal. So those would be my three ones.

David Novak 38:07 

Great. Yeah. Can you share a little bit about your personal life and how you keep things in balance and perspective?

Timo Boldt 38:15 

I'm still working on that. Now, it's, look, it's hard. My wife and I work long hours, businesses all consuming. I'm obviously on email every weekend every night. But I think we make it work. We're very supportive of each other. We, we sometimes travel together. So if my wife has conferences, somewhere, I will travel with her to support her and she does the same. We do have a full time nanny, which is super, super helpful. And then I I've got my home gym, I work out at home, I run to the office, I take a shower in the office, you got to make it work somehow in the most time efficient way. And then we try to have dinner together as much as we can I'm I'm still cooking twice, three times a week, obviously I'm a paying gussto customer. And that's that's important to us. What do you

David Novak 39:09 

see is that the biggest trends happening in your your business?

Timo Boldt 39:14 

I think personalization of food is a huge trend that's powered by the necessity to be healthy. I think in five years gussto could be a preventive health care company. What I mean by that is for the last 100 years, you and I have been eating pills. And you know, healthcare was pretty much defined by eating pills. When you look at the future healthcare is all about being active. It's about fitness, but it's about food and food as a source of fuel. So I can see this way this world where convenience and online are powering the rise of personalization 80% of our revenues are coming from from mobile phone. And and people, you know, really, really care about customizing everything about personalizing it, what you eat is probably unhealthy for me. So I think this is the biggest trend we're trying to catch.

David Novak 40:13 

You know, you're I've listened to you, and you're so impressive. You're making so much happen within your company, and you've got great desire to grow. How are you planning the long game for yourself? And where do you see yourself going from here?

Timo Boldt 40:30 

My My biggest hope is to be fortunate enough to run this company. For a long, long, long time, I really think this is day one. And we've got so much opportunity to really have positive impact on people on the planet. Then on a personal level, I built those 10 year note plans, but you know, I have a view of where I want to be in 10 years, because I'm a massive believer in you being the best version of yourself and not looking at other people. So, you know, I want to sit on, on a publicly listed board. I think that's the next step. Currently, I'm sitting on two amazing boards, but but none of them is publicly listed. Since gussto. Eventually might publicly list I think that's that's a huge benefit for me, and the company for me to experience. And then it's all about staying, staying hungry, and you know, exercising, being healthy, and continuing to learn and managing more and more people to experience how it feels.

David Novak 41:27 

Personally, you just mentioned the boards, you know, but I understand that you've created your own personal board of advisors with with you have around 10 mentors, where do you get this idea?

Timo Boldt 41:38 

Yeah, so I know even by function have an advisory board. So I've got a tech advisory board and marketing advisory board. And over time, I realized that people are genuinely so keen to help and if you ask them to help they normally say yes. So since I'm not an expert in technology, I rely on other amazing world class chief technology officers to join me for a bottle of wine and discuss what gusto is doing well and what gussto is not doing well, so that I understand that, you know, can talk to my team in a better way. So I've I've also had the audacity to write crazy people letters. So I've written out go on a letter when I was when I was 22 or 23. And to my huge surprise, he invited me for dinner. I have not only emailed him a letter, but I've emailed pretty much five to 10 superstar people a letter I wanted to meet. And Edgar was one of the few people who actually came back saying okay, let's have Let's have dinner. So I had the pleasure of having dinner with a ghost three times in the last six years. So it kind of taught me the value of being slightly crazy and just asking you know, amazing people for help. Well, I

David Novak 42:59 

think your your I will make one comment or your crazy this is definitely going to pay off. It's already paying off for you even now. And it's so exciting to see someone like yourself, who is so passionate about what you're doing for people and the business that you're building. I want to thank you so much for sharing your insights Timo, it's been great.

Timo Boldt 43:18 

Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. I read your books a couple of times and it's been amazing meeting in person. Thank you.

David Novak 43:35 

Well, I just love how committed Timo is to constantly pushing himself and learning and growing. I mean, he's out there developing his coaching skills, injecting data into every part of the business. Heck even wrote a letter to Al Gore to see what he could learn from him on the environment. And he knows he's got to stretch himself if he wants to accomplish the big goals, he said at Gousto. And make no mistake, Timo has no time for mediocre goals. In fact, he says that's the most commonly traveled path to mediocre results. Boom, what a mic drop moment. He so right on. So let me build on that insight a little and offer you some coaching. I'm going to go out on the limb here and say if you're the kind of person who listens to this podcast, then I'd bet you have a list of goals, probably multiple lists for multiple kinds of goals. So this week is part of your weekly personal development plan. I want you to review those goals and look for one that's just not audacious enough. Maybe it's absolutely mediocre. Sometimes we set less ambitious goals because we don't want to fail or we sandbag a little because we want to say we hit those goals. Or maybe it's just that we don't have a big enough vision. Give your goals a hard look and be honest. Are they big enough? Are they only going to get you mediocre results To intentionally stretch yourself to get big goals and then make sure you're taking the actions to reach them, and I know it will be a game changing shift for you as a leader if you haven't been doing it before. So do you want to know how leaders lead? Well we learned today is the great leaders intentionally stretch themselves. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be