FULL TRANSCRIPT (AI GENERATED):
Finimize Studio (00:01.29)
Hi, Dan. How are you today?
Dan Garrett (00:02.578)
Hi.
Ah great, so excited to be here, in my own house.
Finimize Studio (00:09.102)
We're excited to have you. It's a lovely background behind you. Um, but I'm particularly excited to talk to you today because I actually started this podcast to talk about the great wealth transfer. So in nominal terms, that's five and a half trillion pounds are going to change hands from one generation to the next, uh, in the UK, but I hadn't actually thought that most of that's going to flow, flow through wills. Can you just talk a little bit about the size of that opportunity, the size of that business?
Dan Garrett (00:32.403)
Yeah.
Finimize Studio (00:37.984)
and obviously a bit of background on Farewheel's position there.
Dan Garrett (00:42.017)
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, I've been, I've been founded the company in beginning of 2016. I started doing this for quite, quite a while. And I'm, I'm overtly aware that the wills and probing funerals industry doesn't always have the sexiest allure. And I think one of the things that people really overlook is, um, making a will is essentially the biggest financial decision that you ever take in your lifetime, bigger than, you know, pensions, mortgages, deciding to buy a property. The average amount.
average kind of net amount in a state when someone dies is 334,000 pounds. So it's a kind of really significant financial decision. And if you think about the amount of time that you've spent, you know, either on this podcast or in Finamize as a whole, or just in the kind of general FinTech startup ecosystem, obsessing over credit cards or, uh, Neo banks, relative to this absolutely crucial
irreversible decision that you make it a will, it contextualises actually why it's so important and you know, relative to the headspace and airtime it gets. And it's a kind of interesting anomaly. So so roughly to date, and we're the biggest will writer in the UK, we've written wills covering with estimate over 100 billion pounds of assets in our probate business, which is all the legal and financial stuff that you do when someone actually dies, we probably oversee
somewhere in the region of definitely north of a billion pounds per year of intergenerational wealth transfer. And we also have we do a lot of work with charities to do with raising money for charities through gifts in wills, and we've just hit a billion pounds pledged to charity. So these are, you know, when they can consistently start with a B, you know, you know, you're playing in a big territory.
Finimize Studio (02:25.982)
That's amazing. And those are some huge numbers and congratulations on all of that. And what has the industry got wrong? Because we really struggled to engage people with, with finance, but especially when it comes to, you know, the industry of, of will writing and death, how, what are you doing right? And what is, what do you think the industry has done wrong to engage people with that?
Dan Garrett (02:46.837)
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And so first, it's worth saying we covered, it kind of is one industry, but traditionally is more like two, there's Wills & Probe, and then there's funerals, and we're one of the UK's largest funeral providers as well. And so all of the problems in the sector stem from the fact that we're pretty much neurologically hardwired to not think about death.
know, if you get up in the morning and you think, oh, well, these are the meetings that I have to go to, and I'm stressed about this, if you actually woke up in the morning, you thought, I'm off, you know, I've got a few more, a few more years here, and then I'm shuffling off, you wouldn't be able to do anything. So, so it's part of our kind of robust design of our brains that we don't spend all of our time pondering, you know, our own mortality. Otherwise, unfortunately, have done that a lot in the last 10 years. So I think it's, I think it stems from that. And
Finimize Studio (03:39.19)
can imagine.
Dan Garrett (03:41.973)
And, but then if you look at how the industries have developed, you know, a will used to be something, you know, declared in the Roman Forum or kind of dictated orally, or the average person just didn't have any assets. So, you know, if you're inheriting one third of a chicken in 1500, there's probably not that much need to pen it down. And whereas now people have
far wealthier, you have more complex family structures, people want to do different things with their assets. And there are things like inheritance tax to take into account as well. So the industry has understandably evolved in a very legal direction. And you know, you read the average will that gets produced and is an impenetrable load of legal jargon from start to finish. That's good in one way, because it means that you're using clauses that are bound to be interpreted in a clear way.
But it also makes it pretty inaccessible for the average person. Then you get this factor of, well, you actually need quite a lot of expertise to write a will for someone. So the price goes through the roof. So you have this combination of, right? Well, I don't really want to think about my death. I'm probably not going to die tomorrow. It costs a fortune and it's a pain in the ass to go and see a local solicitor. So all in all, you know, I'd rather go and, you know, chuck a tennis ball against the wall than go and make, make my will. And so that's on the will side of things. On the funeral side of things, you're just, it's this, it's the same thing. You know, you're, you're.
unlikely to want to mull over your funeral, even when you're in the final stages of life. And, you know, the funeral industry has a fascinating kind of macroeconomic history. There's a brilliant book written in I think in the 60s by one of the Mitford sisters called The American Way of Death that was an expose of the sort of pernicious macroeconomics of the, of the of a kind of PE and debt backed funeral industry. It's a bit like dentists or vets, you know, they kind of
geographical rollups, you go in, buy all the funeral directors in a town and then push up the prices and there's been an insane bull run of price increases in the funeral sector and in the UK over the last kind of 25 years, where every year the prices have gone up until kind of three or four years ago. So, so really, you know, there's fascinating history behind these sectors. Uh, but it's really changing at a faster rate than it ever has done at the moment.
Finimize Studio (06:02.002)
And how have you managed to be so successful? I guess from my perspective, like from building a brand in this space, you know, do you have like a framework that you approach that other brands could, could reuse or, you know, is there a way that you see yourselves messaging and communicating that is resonating the traditional industry hasn't.
Dan Garrett (06:22.293)
Well, so I think it's good to slightly go back to the starting point for me, which is that I started when I was at the Royal College of Art. And I did a course that was split between Tokyo and New York and London. And when I was in Tokyo, I spent, spent about six months working in geriatric care. And, you know, we had all these kinds of design researchers, ethnographers, anthropologists, and, and I felt like we missed the point of being there. All we focused on was the physical side of, of aging and dying rather than the fact that.
No one there knew how to think about their own demise, let alone talk about it. And when I came back to the UK, I spent a couple of months in the death industry. So mystery shopping, funeral directors, which I still do today, one of my, one of my top hobbies, um, and I got a qualification in wheel writing and just thought, this is amazing, you know, this is the biggest consumer industry that's been untouched by any sort of, not just technology, but customer centricity. And.
the my final project at the at the RCA was a will writing website that focused on getting people to leave messages inside their wills. And so some of your listeners probably seen the incredible Gerard Butler film PS I Love You, which is a real inspiration to me where this woman leaves messages to her husband in anyway. And we went from 1% of people including messages in their wills, which is the industry standard most wills that you know, kind of
an exercise in legal compliance to 80% of our customers writing the most incredible love letters, jokes, stories to their friends and to their partners and to their kids. And that, that for me is that is, you know, really what's at the heart of farewell is that this stuff is awful to think about because, because you love people so much and doing away is one of the most selfless things that you can do. You are 100% not going to be there.
see what happens after you make your will. And taking the time to do it from a position of caring about the people who you love or the causes that you love is an incredible gift to the people who matter to you. So it's always stemmed from that idea of, well, death is hard, actually, because, you know, you're losing the people who you love, or you're leaving people behind who are the people who matter most to you. And that, I think, any
Dan Garrett (08:47.205)
Any brand that scales also compresses and contracts into actually a pretty single, a pretty neat single specific idea at the center of it. Um, and for, and you know, there's tons of different ways of building businesses, but, but in this space, the majority of companies that have approached it. And if you think about your local kind of curtained funeral director on the high street, they've, they've not taken on the emotional challenge of actually dealing with what people are going through.
they're just, they're representing a kind of traditional way of dealing with things as a kind of subterfuge or I'd say a bit of an abdication of responsibility to actually deal with the emotional side of it.
Finimize Studio (09:31.07)
I love that. So you basically, you tapped into this sort of human insight and focus on the emotion. But I guess what I'm interested in is like, what, what did you change in the product that made you see such an increase in engagement?
Dan Garrett (09:42.697)
So, so two things, one is tone and I'm obsessive about tone. Our creative director, Denise Wilton is just truly one of the most brilliant creatives I've ever worked with. And it just, she'll be so embarrassed if I said her name on the podcast. I'm saying it Denise. Um, um, and, uh, shout out to Denise. She's going to kill me. Um, but, um, Copywriting, visual design.
Finimize Studio (10:01.23)
Shout out to Denise.
Dan Garrett (10:12.829)
colour palettes, the way that you make someone feel when they, when they, you know, step into the room of your website, they talk to someone on, on the phone, if they're organising a funeral with us or whatever else, that stuff really, really matters. It's a first impression. So you meet someone in the street, how do they make you feel? And, and I think particularly for this kind of area, it's, there's a, there's a lot going on. People are worried about things, whether it's money or the emotional side of it. And, and I think we, we've done a very good job over time at making people feel like this is, this is the right place for them to.
to do this kind of stuff. And that's not easy. And, and, and the other part of it is, is the product design, you know, we've experimented over and over again with what is, what's the placeholder text that you put in a box when someone is leaving a gift to somebody else? How do you make it not too overbearing so that they think, Oh, now I have to write my own eulogy or whatever, but they can actually just write these little short, meaningful sentences or love letters to someone else. So, so it kind of delicate, a balance of.
What's the, what's the overall vibe and how do you consistently chip away at that over years? And then what are the small bits of product experimentation that can change something from being overwhelming into something that's empowering and really, really easy to go through.
Finimize Studio (11:27.502)
It's amazing, isn't it, that you can just, as soon as you put that product hat on to an industry that no one else is looking at, how far you can come. What is it that sort of attracts you, is that something that you're always attracted to? Attracts you to an industry that is unloved and unused? What is it that attracts you to be an entrepreneur in that space rather than something a bit more sexy and exciting?
Dan Garrett (11:49.649)
I just think that's where really interesting innovation can happen. Um, I guess on one side you could say, well, we have way less competition, but I also like these, I love all sorts of design. I did study design. I'm really interested in it. I love very finely executed bits of design work in products or fashion or whatever else it is. But, um,
these sort of tricky areas of human suffering, I think a way you can often have the biggest impact for you have to have the biggest opportunity to kind of really make a difference in people's lives. So when I was at the Royal College of Art spent a lot of time working in kind of design, manufacturing design, which is, you know, if you're actually in industry or in kind of factory sort of settings, you know, it's absolutely fascinating place to be. And there is there's a huge opportunity for kind of
radical improvements in, in how design can change workflows or can, you know, change the types of products that can be made. I started a business, another business at the RCA that's still run by my friend Sheena Yu, which is called Airgo that makes kind of disability equipment, makes a kind of postural support, basically like a wheelchair back out of these inflatable bags, so you kind of reduces pressure sores and it moves around. And that was the sector where
You look at the average bit of disability equipment for, you know, an eight year old kid in a, in a, in a, um, in a school and it's hideous. It's like a piece of scaffolding. It looks absolutely terrible and kids have to use it all day. And that's the, that's the kind of space where you think, right, there must be an opportunity to do something so much better. So, so yeah, I'm, I'm attracted to, I'm attracted to spaces where there's clear opportunity. Yeah.
Finimize Studio (13:44.242)
I also think it's just, you know, it's a great beacon for the rest of the financial industry because there's loads of boring sectors and parts of, you know, the process that needs to be fixed that no one's really shining at that lens on onto. And especially in sort of the tech for good space, when you can see the social impact that you have by delivering a great product. What I would like us to sort of, um, kind of call out a little bit is do you have any stories?
that can bring to life the difference of writing a will and handing that money over in a positive experience. Like any customer stories that stick out to you that bring that to life for us.
Dan Garrett (14:21.337)
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I mean, I've got, I can read you a few messages from people's wills before anyone panics, got permission to share these sorts of things. I don't just go around reading out people's wills on podcasts on and let me let me just have a quick look at this. So so there's a few that really stick out to me over time. And there's a fantastic one from a guy who
Finimize Studio (14:34.39)
Hehehehe
Dan Garrett (14:50.025)
collects fossils, he left his fossil collection to his wife in his will. It'd be funny if she ends up hearing it on this. And he wrote to her, these are millions and millions of years old. I loved being able to hold them and marvel at the age and intricacy of the universe and the short sharp beauty of our lives. I loved living mine. I love you. I just think, you know, you basically got someone who's thinking, Oh, God, I need to sort out my will. It's a pain in the ass. I've had this on my to do list for seven years, being able to generate that type of customer interaction.
You know, the NPS, the net promoter score on our wheels product is 94, which is, I've never heard of business anywhere near that in the past. Um, and, and I think it is those sorts of interactions that have, you know, um, driven so much kind of loyalty and enthusiasm and enthusiasm and referrals into, into farewell. Um, you know, you, we've got amazing stories of people leaving gifts to particular charities that have supported them throughout their lives. And, you know, these can be
Dan Garrett (15:50.982)
transformative sums of money to charities big and small. And I love that when push comes to shove, you get the opposite of selfishness when you frame it in the right way, when you actually get someone, it's a kind of big Buddhist thing of thinking about your own mortality. When you actually put someone in the right frame of mind, they do and say the most wonderful and generous things.
Finimize Studio (16:13.758)
Yeah, I love that so much. And it's amazing as well that, you know, you're starting to bring that through the product, bring that through the brand and have that customer centricity to everything that you're building at Farewell. Now on that, I'd like to sort of shift focus to sort of you as a founder, you as a product led, design led leader. How do you go about building an organization that has that laser focus on the customer?
And how do you sort of set yourself up for success so that, you know, this, cause you're in a space that doesn't have, you don't have someone to copy. You're constantly having to innovate. You know, you are the sort of the, the leaders in, in your category. So how do you set your business up for success when it comes to being product led, design led, uh, and, and innovating and putting out new things at scale.
Dan Garrett (17:03.901)
Yeah, I think it's a really good question. I definitely won't pretend to have the right answer. And, and, and obviously, it's just a continuous battle. There's no silver bullets, lead bullets all the way. And, and so a few of the components, components that are really that are that I've found in my company, and there's always different ways to do it. I think so starting point, there's different ways to do it. There's different ways to be product lead. And I think
One thing that's really important is that you have a cohesive system from top to bottom. You know, you can run a company like Bridgewater Capital, you can run a company like Basecamp, and it has completely different, and they're both thoroughly successful. So I think the important thing is to do it with integrity and have your own specific way of running it. That said, there are unbelievably stupid things that I've done in the past that would be stupid in almost any organisation. So I can give you a little potted history of which ones you've got wrong.
Dan Garrett (17:59.913)
The most important one is hiring, which is just really obvious, but, you know, we have a team of people who are speaking to people day in day out, who've just lost their husband out of the blue, you know, lost a kid, lost like a teenage son. And they need to pick up those phone calls, support someone emotionally, help them understand what their options are and make the decision that's right for them and their family. Like, can you imagine how difficult that is? Doing that once a week would be hard, let alone doing it 30 times a day.
So hiring people who have that inherent warmth and empathy and ability to deal with those difficult situations is a, is a something that we've got better at over time. And then the biggest mistake that I've made in product, and I know this isn't me because anytime I meet up with other startup founders, this is the main topic of conversation is some degree of. Of.
what the hell is going on in my product org, or I've got a kind of communist revolution inside the product org, or, or like, or the product's working on something that is in no way aligned to what the rest of the organization is doing. And it's, it's really, really interesting. And, and, you know, definitely five years ago, the, there was a real cult of, you know, autonomous product teams and the Silicon Valley product group, like
And I love all of that stuff, but it became a real, uh, subcult style of how to build the right products, which is basically, um, the team knows what to do and engineers always know what to do inside an organization. And, and I'm not saying that's wrong, but that comes from a time when software was much harder to build. You know, if you're dealing with the fundamental, fundamental technical difficulty of building a product being
being actually technical, yeah, the engineers drive the ship. But if you're talking about consumer products, it's obviously going to be some element of, you know, technical complexity and architectural decision making that is really refined and nuanced and craft orientated. But fundamentally you need people who are going to know customers inside out and be focused on business goals. And so I feel like I'm going around in circles slightly here. So, so, um, the, the key to having.
Finimize Studio (20:21.186)
Hehehe
Dan Garrett (20:25.349)
a great product or is just goals. It's like anything else. What is the actual goal that we're trying to drive here? And, and I think there was a pretty long period in startup growth in the US and the UK where product goals became detached from commercial ones and, and you know, sometimes you can have one of just, you know, daily active users or monthly active users and it's a product one that is, you know, it's a goal unto itself, but
that only applies to certain types of businesses. And then what we went through at Farewell is this, okay, well, you have a matrix org of, you have commercial product, you have commercial leaders, and then you have product leaders, and they're in this interminable, intractable, you know, negotiation over time about who's setting the goals and who makes decisions. And for us, we found the
The thing that really enabled extreme clarity of goals and velocity and product focus is having one person who owns the P and L and drives the product team and those people are hard to find because they need to know the customers inside out, they need to have great product instincts and they also need to know every number on the P and L so that they know what to do. But I find that kind of, that kind of setup is massively correlated with an increase in velocity for us.
Finimize Studio (21:50.026)
So when we talk about farewell, can you just talk us through that? It sounds like to me, what you're saying is that org structure is a very important part of building a product led organization. Just talk us through the org structure that you've now landed on.
Dan Garrett (22:04.401)
Yeah, yeah, sure. So, so, um, I, I definitely think that all, all problems stem from, well, a huge amount of problems stem from bad org structure. Um, and I'm not, I'm not an absolute expert here, so I can only really talk about what we've experienced. But the first problem comes from having too many people. And, you know, we did this, we raised loads of money, we had too many people in the business. I would
I never ever, ever want to have a business that is even appropriately staffed ever again. I only ever want it to be on the borderline threshold of painfully understaffed because it's, I'm, I'm so sloppy. I'm so tempted to work on new ideas on a daily basis that you have to have that, that organizational pushback of like, no, we have to ruthlessly focus on, you know, no more than a couple of things in the business and being understaffed is what helps you do that.
Um, then, so our org structure is, um, uh, Jenny's our, who's our CEO, who's absolutely phenomenal, one of the single best growth leaders in the European startup environment, she led growth at, at bulb from 20,000 customers to over a million. She's just, she's, I've, I, she's in, she's like Napoleon. I have really, really a biography of Napoleon and all the different quotes and things about him. I was like, I've seen this before. It's Jenny's out.
Um, and she's a good foil to, to the things that I'm not so good at. Uh, but anyway, so, so Jenny has, uh, three business unit leaders. So wills and funerals and then probate. And, uh, each one of those people in the business, um, then set the quarterly, uh, goals for their business unit, set the product roadmap and has a product team to deliver against it as well. And, uh,
The interesting thing is that each one of those business unit leads also has other jobs inside the business. So, so we have a very versatile kind of generalist team. Uh, there's at one point in time, we had a lot more specialists and fewer generalists. We've always found Jenny's approach to this is, um, uh, higher. Talent and rent expertise. And that for us has, um,
Dan Garrett (24:29.613)
You maybe lose the top 5% of refinement in certain types of expertise in a situation, but you gain a 300% increase in speed. Yeah. So designing an org for versatility, I think is a really important one, particularly if you're in a startup where speed is the name of the game. So that's worked well for us.
Finimize Studio (24:47.939)
So you have essentially three mini startups, each with their own leader that is fully accountable for everything that happens within that company. And then that reports into you and the CEO.
Dan Garrett (24:59.469)
reports specifically into Jenny, who's our CEO. So there is still like Jenny owns the company P&L and then has fully empowered product owners beneath her who own both the P&L and the product roadmap. So someone has to do the, you know, someone has to do the negotiation and the connecting the dots between things at the top level of the organization, you know, Jenny's direct reports will do that between themselves as well. But
You know, that, that structure has worked really well for us. And I'm, I'm sure it'll work well until it doesn't. Then you've got to find, then you've got to find the next one. But Melissa Chauhan, who's our VP of people is, is very, uh, is, is uniquely brilliant at recognizing when this, this company structure doesn't match the company's strategy. And I, I've got, I've got to divert that instinct a bit over time when I speak to another founder and you're describing some amorphous problem in the business. And you realize the actual root of the problem is
structure, the factory floor that you've designed doesn't fit the product that you're trying to make. And you can grease the gears and you can tighten up bits of machinery, but if the machine that you've made doesn't produce, isn't fit for purpose, it's hell.
Finimize Studio (26:16.874)
And I guess what's interesting to me, right, is the more founders that I speak to are kind of adopting a very similar mindset. I think, you know, Brian Chesky has been very vocal about this, um, in, in his interviews, you know, sort of a shift away from autonomy to a more of a focus on serialization. Uh, Dan spoke about it in, in the previous, uh, interview that we had on here. You know, serial, serialization and one single roadmap, one clear focus, reduce the amount of work that's, um, going on around the edges.
Why do you think that's resonating with founders right now?
Dan Garrett (26:49.369)
Um, probably because they've seen a lack of results from trying to do too many things with a, with a kind of, uh, with a lack of clarity. So I'd say a lot of people have been burnt by it and you know, the, the wisdom is focus, try and create this one clear goal that has these nested objectives or technological challenges that sit underneath them. And, and.
far be it from me to sit here and talk about how much I love Elon Musk, although I do. Um, but, but I've learned that that's a, can be a bad look. Anyway, I love Elon Musk. He's one of the, he's, he's one of the most incredible goal setters, sets of incredibly clear mission and all, all roads lead to land, to Rome, all, all company strategy, the org structure all points towards a sim, a single objective. And that's where you get.
Finimize Studio (27:25.122)
Yeah
Dan Garrett (27:45.173)
magic happening. That's where you get incredible pace and innovation. It's not, oh, we do a bit of this and we do a bit of that. And you know, before you know it, you've got an electric smart fridge for your home that's got lights on the top and it's running around your house and it's burnt everything down. You know, all this stuff goes wrong.
Finimize Studio (28:05.454)
Totally. Um, but I think just moving on from that topic, cause I think this is very sort of directly related, right? Um, you mentioned about raising too much capital and some of the implications that might have on the business. You're not a founder that is alone in that situation. In fact, most of the startups, you know, are kind of nursing their wounds from that, um, uh, period. Can you just talk about your experience, you know, what led to that and what were some of the repercussions of raising a lot of capital and then we'll
if we can dive into kind of how you start to get that back under control as a founder.
Dan Garrett (28:39.869)
I actually missed a bit of your question, sorry, the internet cut out slightly. I am having slight internet problems. Is my video cutting out for you or not?
Finimize Studio (28:48.102)
Yeah, a little. According to Guy, it's like, according to Guy, it should be all okay. Yeah, because it will upload locally from your site. So it's just we can't hear it.
Dan Garrett (28:49.706)
Sorry, it's weird. I've yeah
Finimize Studio (29:02.038)
been doing a good job of picking it up when it comes back in. So, yeah.
Dan Garrett (29:05.721)
Okay, yeah, I mean, I've got the same thing of questions like cutting out and halfway through or you're freezing and stuff. But anyway, if you wouldn't mind asking that one again, that would be great.
Finimize Studio (29:12.89)
It'll all be good. It'll all be good in the edit. Uh, all right. So every founder that I'm speaking to now as well is, is kind of talking about profitability rather than growth. And you mentioned about raising too much money and now having to sort of get a handle back on that. Can you just talk about the process of what that was like as a founder? What led to that? And then some of the actions that you've had to sort of get the company back on track and refocus on profitability over growth.
Dan Garrett (29:39.185)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a very interesting thing to go through and, and I definitely think it made our company significantly better, although it was horribly painful. Um, and also, um, absolutely VC funded startups, it's like power law distribution and, and I'm not against raising loads of money and spending loads of money and blitz scaling and trying to take over market all at once. But, but those are long odds. So, so I think the.
I think the dangerous thing that it did to lots of companies was, um, there just wasn't a focus on, there wasn't a focus on, on profit. And that's where you start to have these slightly, uh, you start to have teams with goals that don't relate to growing the business, you know, you have product teams that are working on something that doesn't actually relate to, to growth or to, to commercial strategy, or you have...
you know, cultural things happening inside the organisation that aren't aligned with the progress of the business. And, and, you know, I've heard from friends that there are boards and teams and VCs saying, guys, you know, why is there so much focus on whatever, whatever it might be inside the organisation that isn't growth focus? And it's like, well, that, that hasn't necessarily been the marching orders right from the top, particularly on the profitability side of things. So, so, so I think, I think that was an interesting period in lots of startups.
trajectory. Luckily, I think we made changes quickly and, and relatively decisively and early enough that we had the runway and the morale to carry on going. But it's brutal, you know, you have to
Finimize Studio (31:22.762)
And what were some of those changes?
Dan Garrett (31:26.065)
Yeah. So, so, I mean, downsized our team by half, probably went from 150 odd people to where we are today, where we are today. I used to, when I met another startup founder, how great to meet you. How, how big is your team? 150. Now, now I'm like the smaller, not the smaller, the better, but I'm like, yeah, we've, you know, we've got four products. We're leading that we're leading the sector in each one of our products. We've been national wheel writing firm of the year, four years in a row, been national probate firm of the year, national best.
best direct cremation provider, low cost funeral provider of the year. And we have 63 full-time employees. We go, we work with two regulators. We've just hit a billion pounds raise for charity and it's all done by an incredibly lean, fast moving bunch of people. And that was a real journey going through. Oh, scale is good. Look at me. Look at, look at how many people are in the team to being like, no, now, every time we make a hire, our exec team sits around like pointing fingers at each other, being like, this is coming out of your budget or, um, and, and.
And I love that. That's, that's, I'm, I'm obsessive about listening to biographies. This is a great podcast called founders by David Sentra. And he reviews and summarizes biographies from all different types of, all different types of founders. It can be, you know, the founder of Dunkin Donuts or Estee Lauder or whatever. The thing I realized after listening to those was they were obsessive about cost. Not necessarily about growth, obsessive about cost, obsessive about product and the rest take care of it.
takes care of itself. Um, so anyway, that's a really hard thing to do. You know, we had to make a hell of a lot of people redundant, which I'm not proud of, not proud of making those mistakes and hiring them, but I am proud of how we treated people in the process. The, but, and then I've, you know, had found a friends going through similar things and, and hopefully had the chance to help a few of them to do it. Compassionately and really well.
Finimize Studio (33:16.034)
What is your advice when you speak to other founders about having to go through that process?
Dan Garrett (33:25.969)
I think that was what's advice. What's the advice when you speak to other founders? Is that right?
Finimize Studio (33:32.302)
Exactly. What is the advice that you give to other founders when you go through that process?
Dan Garrett (33:32.678)
Yeah.
Dan Garrett (33:36.309)
So a few things, one is, is go harder than you, you think in terms of redundancies, if you actually have a cash problem, that's just the advice that you'll hear from everyone. If you don't want to have to do this twice. And the second one is, is be generous in how people are leaving the business. Yes, it's nothing to do with them underperforming or you ought to performance manage them out of the business and just be respectful and kind and generous and supportive as you can and hopefully financially supportive too.
And the third one is that everyone, particularly the first time they, they do it, they obsess over the people leaving because they want to support them in the best way possible. Absolutely. That's one, one part of it. As soon as that process is over, you have one goal as a CEO, as a management team, which is get back to winning. You have, because everyone's just seen their friends being kicked out of the company, they're hearing that, you know, that the startup that they love that they're a part of is, is kind of. Crumbling at the seams. And.
And the most important thing that you can do is build that, um, rebuild that sense of shipping real value to customers, winning deals, beating your budget. So I'd often encourage people to set a pretty conservative budget after they go through it, um, to focus on a small number of very movable goals. And it's, it's crazy how short organisational memories are, honestly, you know, this can feel like the walls are closing in.
It's a, it's like a, it's a solar eclipse. It's going to last forever. And 10 days later, like the company is humming and, you know, you're getting back to focusing on what the mission of the business is and, and to winning. So I think that's the most important thing is, is morale. It's how do you rebuild morale? How do you draw a line under it? Which actually Brian Chesky did phenomenally at Airbnb. How'd you draw a line on it and move on, reiterate the strategy, clarify the things that you did wrong in the past.
and move forward.
Dan Garrett (35:42.71)
This is truly dire, dire straits on an internet basis.
Finimize Studio (35:45.442)
I'm going to jump straight back in.
So the thing, this is a fantastic sort of, I wouldn't say a turnaround story, but an amazing example of an entrepreneur sort of refocusing the business and driving towards growth. I'd just like to, before we wrap up, just talk a bit about that growth. What channels have been successful for you and any lessons on those channels that you will continue to apply to continue that growth.
Dan Garrett (36:12.261)
Yeah. So, so fundamental lesson on all channels is just great products win. So, so, you know, all of us have spent money on channels and, oh, we need to optimizing on something on Facebook. And ultimately it doesn't work. It's like, well, the product's not good enough. So, um, and then don't forget about pricing. We spent too long in the business, not thinking about pricing. It's always the last thing that you think of. And that was a huge mistake. Um, on the will side of the business, B2B is 80% of our business. It's grown 250% in the last couple of years.
And that's charities, banks, mortgage brokers, life insurers. And in direct to in consumer facing B2B, the thing to get right is the handover between different customers. It's very easy to go out there and do deals. The thing to get right is the drop off. I've made spreadsheets where it's like, you know, huge hockey stick because 1% of Barclays customers are going to start doing whatever it is.
managing the handover between company like partner A and your own, and your own company and building tools and flows to do that is how to make, you know, B2B2C really work. Um, a lot of our other products are search, uh, are driven by search because it's like, you know, someone has died or they need to organize probate. Um, and we've had immensely complicated PPC bidding strategies in the past that are now so much simpler than they used to be.
And that, that for us has actually scaled better. And I think is the direction that things are going, going in on a search basis, but it has to be backed up by great landing pages, continuous AB testing, great products, great pricing. Um, and then we also do significant amount of national TV advertising. Um, and it's very interesting to see how TV generated leads, particularly for funeral plants, which is our product where people are buying a funeral in advance convert differently. And you've got to be exceptional at.
uh, you know, media buying strategy and also the creative that you put on TV. But then also CRM is much more of a thing for our TV leads because they're less ready to buy than someone just searching. So you need a completely, you know, a lot of our product experience and journey for a customer is happening outside of a website. They might request a guide on a funeral plan and read it, and then we'll get a text or an email and, and thinking, you know, beyond the pixels of what's actually happening in someone's life and how can we get them to make this sort of decision? A lot of our customers.
Dan Garrett (38:35.441)
60 plus. And that's, that's been a really fascinating journey. Yeah. So, so good products cut through, and then it's just tireless, thankless, daily, hourly, weekly optimizations and experimentations. I wish there was a silver bullet. I really I still hold, hold on. I hold out for hope that there is a silver bullet, but I haven't ever found one, unfortunately.
Finimize Studio (38:55.47)
Thanks for watching!
Finimize Studio (39:01.686)
Well, when you go B2B, I guess the thing that's interesting, sometimes you can get a deal that changes the trajectory of your entire business. Is there a moment or a deal that stands out for you that you, you know, you couldn't believe that landed? Is there one deal that stands out that kind of changed your view on where fair will could go in the future?
Dan Garrett (39:20.181)
I'd say that was with the charity stuff that we do, where we realized pretty early on that we would generate massive sum, massive potential gifts for charity through our wills. And then we started working with Macmillan to test out doing basically free wills to their supporters. And the initial results from that test were probably 10x better than we'd hoped.
So, so that's the kind of thing where we thought, hold on a minute. This is, this is, I mean, it's quite cool when you have a partnership that gets, it's great for customers. They get free will. It's great for us. You know, we get paid to do it and we don't have any customer acquisition costs and it raises, you know, tens, hundreds, a billion plus of, of kind of future income for charity. So that's a, that's a nice partnership. I get to go to bed at night and think, oh, great. Um,
I've conversely had partnerships with massive national banks where you think this is it, you know, next week it'll be just, I'll be sitting back on the deck chair, enjoying, enjoying our, our brilliant rocket ship. And then four years later, you're in the same meeting room that you sat in four years before thinking, how am I here? How am I here? And who is this set of executives who I've never met before? Um, so, so yeah, there's when too good to be true. That's what I'd say. Like whenever I have that feeling.
of this is it, the business is solved. That's when something is inevitably going to go horribly wrong and disappoint me.
Finimize Studio (40:58.342)
That's the moment to get worried. Uh, okay. Well, what I'd love to do, Dan, thank you so much for today. And what I'd love to do is just finish on, as I do with all of our guests, finish on advice you would give to other leaders. So you've now been a CEO at Farewell for seven, eight years. And what, if you were to start over again, or you to advise a founder, um, also going through that process, what is the most important lesson you would like to share with.
Dan Garrett (41:28.821)
think about this for a minute.
Dan Garrett (41:48.905)
I think the most important thing, particularly for first time founders, which I am, is there's so much inspiring stuff out there about how to lead your company and how to set product strategy and how to do your org structure. I haven't regretted following my gut instinct pretty much ever. You know, it might be wrong, but I've almost always regretted when I've, when I've strongly gone against my gut instinct. And I think the important thing is
You have to do things your own way. You know, the culture is set from the top. It has to resonate with your way of doing things. That doesn't mean you can be a monster or you don't have to account for your weaknesses, but you have to run and build an organization in a way that, that has a lot of integrity to how you want to do things and find other people who are on that same boat. And it can be really difficult when you start a business for the first time, because there's so many different ways of doing everything. And, and, and I think I'm more confident now.
not in an ego maniacal way in, in saying, well, this is how we're going to do it here. And, and we've thought about it and this is, this is, this is what's going to work for us. Um, and I think that's where culture gets actually interesting and where products get, um, built with heart and with inspiration and, and the same on the brand front.
Finimize Studio (43:16.554)
Amazing and very sage advice. Well look, Dan, thanks so much. I've got the utmost admiration for what you've achieved with Farewell. I love the brand and also a good reminder that I need to write my own will very soon. But thank you very much for your time today.
Dan Garrett (43:30.723)
My absolute pleasure, I'll give you a 3% off.
Finimize Studio (43:36.161)
Thanks, Tom.
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