I managed to get two hours of sleep in I think from hour 46 to 48 because I started to hallucinate
so much that I was worried I was going to go into a state of permanent psychosis.
It sometimes means that I'll wear a hat and sunglasses to try and make sure that no one
does recognise me if that, you know, off chance of that might happen.
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review, and welcome to 15
Minutes with the BOSS, a podcast about success and failure and everything in between.
And along the way, we're hoping to get some great advice from our leaders.
My guest today is Simon Griffiths, the chief executive and co-founder of Who Gives a Crap.
Hi, Simon, thank you so much for coming into our Melbourne studio.
Yeah, hey, Sally, it's great to be here.
I haven't been in the studio before, so it's cool seeing how the sausage gets made, so to speak.
Let's hope we don't shock you too much about the way it gets made.
Now, Simon, as I said, you're the co-founder and chief executive of Who Gives a Crap, which is famous,
very famous for selling environmentally friendly toilet paper, as well as paper towels and tissues.
And you also famously give 50 percent of your profits each year to help people build toilets
in developing countries.
To date, I am reliably informed you have sold more than 640 million rolls of toilet paper
and you employ about 250 people across seven countries.
Yeah, it sounds big when you say it all out loud, but that is correct.
Sounds like quite a lot.
So thank you so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with you, the BOSS.
Let's start the clock right now.
So my first question is about your morning routine.
What time do you get up?
Are you a coffee kind of guy?
I always read those morning routines of people that get up at 4am and have this amazing morning routine
and then do two hours of creative work before anyone else in the house is up.
And that is the exact opposite of what happens in our house.
You know, when you look at athletes, for example, sleep is kind of the most important thing
that is necessary to be high functioning.
I wouldn't say I'm an athlete, but certainly kind of view the high pressure environment
that we're offering in as one that you need to be kind of at your best to perform well.
And so sleep is the top priority.
We try to sleep as long as we can, as late as we can every day until the kids wake us up.
And then my morning after that is usually kind of dictated by two things.
I'm trying to do something that gives me energy and I'm trying to make the least amount of decisions
that I possibly can.
So surfing or even lifting kind of weights for five to 10 minutes actually kind of gets me up
and gives me a bit of energy.
Coffee is something that I've previously said to AFR, I don't drink.
I've changed that a little bit.
I now have a quarter of a cup of coffee every day.
That's enough to kind of get me started without giving me any of the nasty stuff.
Life on the edge.
And then, yeah, and then not making decisions.
So I wear the same pair of trousers like 90% of the year, just every day.
I don't think about what I'm putting on.
My wife, we recently went through our wardrobe to get ready for a renovation.
And we discovered all of these pairs of old pants that I don't wear anymore,
that are all exactly the same.
And she was laughing at me because I just have the same pair of pants five times over.
And I just wear them until they're worn through.
That's all about not making decisions.
I kind of reserve my decision making for when it's actually important a bit later in the day.
So I try to keep it really simple in the morning.
Yeah, that's a great policy.
Keep it simple when you can.
Now, Simon, my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career.
Was there some point in your career which really changed the trajectory of what you were doing?
I think the first one was one day walking into the bathroom and seeing a six pack of toilet paper
and realizing that we could sell toilet paper, use half of the profits to help build toilets
and call it who gives a crap.
And that was one of those quarter second business idea epiphanies that you kind of hear about.
I don't know how often they actually happen, but it certainly happened to me.
And it was a pretty amazing moment.
It changed the trajectory of the rest of my life pretty quickly.
The other big one that I think about is when we first got started and we put the idea out
into the world for the first time.
And that was with our crowdfunding campaign.
Someone pretty amazing had the idea that I should sit on a toilet on a live web feed
until we pre-sold the first $50,000 worth of product.
It was a crazy idea, super high risk, but just paid off brilliantly and sent the campaign viral.
Back in 2012, just as the share button was added to Facebook, you know, a few months before that.
And after 50 of the most horrible, never ever to be repeated hours of my life,
I finally got off the toilet and we were in business and had the money we needed to get started.
So you sat there for 50 hours?
I managed to get two hours of sleep in, I think from hour 46 to 48, because I started to
hallucinate so much that I was worried I was going to go into a state of permanent psychosis,
which is what I was told by people on Reddit would happen if I stayed awake much longer.
And so I decided that it was probably important to get a couple of hours of sleep because clearly
my body wasn't in the right place if I was hallucinating and then got woken back up as
the final money started to roll in for the last couple of hours.
That must've been some relief when the last cent rolled in.
It was pretty amazing. I think at that point I was in so much pain, but also so tired that
it was hard to register what pain was kind of serious. And I had to get my legs checked for
deep vein thrombosis because I had all of the symptoms of DVT. Someone watching the campaign
knew a vein specialist. And I remember walking in and they said, what are you doing here? You're
in your twenties. We don't see anyone in their twenties. And I said, oh, I just sat in a toilet
for 50 hours. And they said, oh, let's get your pants off and check your legs are okay.
Everything was okay in the end, but it was one of those weird moments where you're like,
how did I end up here? And look where I got you. Yeah, exactly. Oh, love that. Okay. Simon,
what is the best piece of career advice you've ever had? The best piece of career advice was
at a short course I did at Stanford with one of the professors there, Michelle Galfour.
She studies kind of culture and what makes different cultures successful at different
things and applies that at a macro scale to whole countries, but also at a micro scale to
individuals. And she talked about individuals that have kind of this divergent skill set where
they're very good at ideating and bringing new things out into the world. And the individuals
that have this convergent skill set where they're very, very good at executing. And what really blew
my mind is she shared that, you know, most people are good at one of those two things, unicorns.
There's not many of them are good at both of them. And when you get someone who's good at one of them
and you try to get them to do the other, they actually become, you know, not very good at
doing the other thing that isn't natural. They become less good at doing the thing that they
are a natural at as well. So if you get someone who's very creative and you try to make them an
executor, they're not good at executing and they become less creative. That's what all the research
shows. If you take an executor and try them to make them be creative, they're not very creative
and they get less good at executing. And that really fundamentally shifted the way that I
started to think about people, you know, really started to make me think about how we build teams
and make sure that we've got groups of people together that can do both of those things and
be great partners to deliver creative ideas incredibly well.
And where do you sit on the axis?
I'm pretty close to the middle myself, but I lean divergent. So I am more of a creative
thinker, but you know, the other big realization I had was that over the last five years of my
career, I've really focused on the execution side and that's made me less good at being
creative and finding neat solutions to things. So something I'm working on is how I find the
great partners for me to be able to move back into more of that creative space and,
and be able to focus on the thing that I'm great at.
That is really excellent advice.
Okay. On that note, Simon, we're now going to take a short break. And when we come back,
we're going to open the beautiful chatterbox. Welcome back to 15 minutes with the boss. I'm
here with Simon Griffiths, the chief executive of who gives a crap. Now, Simon, this is our section
called the chatterbox. I've got this beautiful brown box in front of me. It would normally be
in front of you, but you're in Melbourne, so it's a bit tricky. You're going to have to rely on me
to be honest and choose the questions in good faith on your behalf. So inside the box are about
20 questions all wrapped up on bits of paper. I'm going to pick out a few and ask you to answer
them. So here I go fishing for my first question, first fishing, fishing, fishing. What keeps you
up at night? That's a tricky question to answer because it's probably changed a lot over the
years. I think early on it was just keeping the lights on in the business, but today I don't know
if there's that much that keeps me up at night at work. Maybe the stuff that does keep me up at
night's more some of the global challenges that we've got going on in the world. You know, the
last few years have been particularly tumultuous in terms of what's happened outside of work.
So does that, what are you from a personal point of view or from a work point of view? I
assume it doesn't probably affect your work that much. I think it does with both. You know,
I think when you've got a lot of change going on in the world, that does affect consumer sentiment
and it means that you need to be able to respond to that sentiment. So we've seen this really well
in the UK as a great example where they kind of faced, you know, cost of living pressures earlier
than anywhere else in the world as everything unfolded in the Ukraine and energy prices,
you know, got hit incredibly hard that first winter. You know, cost of living was a massive,
massive topic that you just couldn't avoid. And our local team there saw that really early on and
said, we need to think about how we can adjust our messaging to focus on the value that we deliver
to customers. And so they pivoted messaging pretty quickly and found a really powerful
message that was essentially that our products were, you know, 30% cheaper than the leading
brands on a per sheet basis. And we saw that message really resonate in the UK in a pretty
amazing way. And as a result, it became our fastest growing market that we have globally
over the last few years. So we sort of, you know, it does affect us at work. They're probably less
of the keeping up at night type situations. It's more of the how do we keep the business
on track. But I think, you know, the keeping up at night side of it is certainly through COVID.
That was definitely a keeping up at night kind of moment. Some of the stuff we've had recently
around wars and everything else, you know, Suez Canal and all of the other bits and pieces that
we've seen unfold in the world that have been particularly challenging over the last, you know,
12 plus months. I think they're the things that have probably kept me up at night more recently.
And have you adopted that value messaging in Australia now with our current cost of living
pressures? So what we did was we saw that that worked really well in the UK and then looked at
what similar value messages we could apply in the other markets. In Australia, the challenge is that
we're on a per sheet basis, basically the same price or lower than what you'll see for most brands
on supermarket shelves. But our customers don't realise that because we're selling double length
rolls. And so the cost per roll looks like it's twice as high unless you do the per sheet
calculation. And so double length rolls are just absolutely the best for everyone. They're, you
know, better in the house because you're changing them less often, much better carbon footprint
because you're able to ship more product in every single truck or carton. And also great for
retailers who now are able to make their shelf space work harder because they can fit more product
and have a higher ticket price on product that they're selling for every square metre of shelf
space. Okay, interesting. Okay, Simon, I'm going now to our next question. Hope you're game for
this one. Yep, let's do it. What part of your job don't you like? These are tough questions,
Sally. Where are the easy ones in the chat box? I'm sure there'll be some easy ones coming up.
There's probably been a bit of a weird thing that happens where you start to become recognised
outside of the business. Usually that's a pleasure because people are fantastic, you know, customers
that love the brand and love the product and are excited to chat to you. Sometimes that has a bit
of a weird side to it where you might not in someone else's eyes seem to be living up to the
values of the brand and that can cause them to have less respect for you or the brand in a way
that is quite difficult to imagine. And so it sometimes means that, you know, I'll wear a hat
and sunglasses to try and make sure that no one does recognise me if that, you know, off chance of
that might happen. So yeah, it's a bit of a strange thing. So what types of things would they expect of
you because of your brand? Because you've got an eco-friendly brand. Imagine you're flying to Sydney
and you do a lot of flying. So you've got status and you get an upgrade and you're stoked, you know,
like Qantas has just given you an upgrade. Now you're sitting in the front row of an aeroplane,
which is a highly visible place and someone might recognise you and think that the company's paid
for your ticket and that's not good for donations. You know, the company shouldn't be paying for my
ticket if I'm in business class. And so, you know, it can quickly lose its context and that can
potentially damage someone's impression of the brand, even though, you know, the only way I could
possibly deal with that is to say to Qantas, actually, can you not upgrade me? Which I don't
even know if you could do that. So it doesn't, you know, that's not an example that happens very
often, but is one that like should be a joyous moment that actually can kind of cause a bit of
anxiety for me. Yes. No, I can see their point. I mean, because it's the optics perhaps don't look
that great, but I feel really sorry for you because I understand that pure joy largely because it
almost never happens. Yeah. It's happened to me a few times. I've had it overseas and then I'm like,
yes, no one's going to recognise me here. So this can be completely guilt-free, but yeah,
when it happens in Australia, I do get a bit of anxiety. Now we're going to do another question
from the chatter box. Let's see, which one do I feel like forcing you to answer? I think you're
getting a bit of power trip out of this now, aren't you? I am a bit. How long should meetings go for?
Meetings should be as short as they possibly can. I think the bulk of a lot of executives' weeks
is meetings. I think meetings are the enemy of actually being productive. And so meetings tend
to be about 25%, max 30% of my week. And then the rest of my week is pretty free. And so that
enables me to respond to what's going on in the business, to be able to unblock things that are
critical that need to be moved forward. And so when it gets, when my calendar gets too full,
I feel the weight of that and that it actually slows everyone down. So I'm always a fan of trying
to get meetings as short as they possibly can be recurring meetings. We have as few as we possibly
can. And we try to make sure that they're not weekly. They could be fortnightly or monthly
instead of having a recurring weekly meeting in there as well. Shopify did something where they
built a tool that actually told you how much every meeting cost. I'm not a fan of this because it
takes people's salary data and makes it somewhat unanonymous, which isn't a good thing, but it's
a pretty interesting way of starting to realise the true cost of having too many meetings or
having people in meetings when they maybe don't need to be. So do you make sure that other people
in the company aren't wasting much time in meetings? I think it's mostly about mindset.
So you sort of have to have that mindset that meetings are actually something that holds you
back from getting things done rather than being the thing that helps to propel things forward.
And that's trainable, but for some people, that's very counterintuitive to some of the
places that they've worked before. In annual planning, it's something that I actively talk
about and performance reviews. It comes up, you know, how have we gone, trying to make sure
that your calendar is representative of what we want it to look like. So you're role modelling
for the rest of the company on what good looks like. That's a really good idea and a really good
way of doing it. Look at someone's calendar and see how much time is taken up by meetings and
challenge them on it. Now, Simon, that is the end of the Chatterbox section. I have one more question
for you. And that is if you had 12 months unencumbered, you could do anything you liked,
what would you do? I would love to go and work in another high performing company and learn what
they do. I think there's nothing like seeing how someone else does it to teach you things that you
could do better yourself. So if you were to go and use that time to work at another highly successful
company, where do you think you'd go? Someone I catch up with pretty regularly is one of the
Bellroy founders, Lina Calabria. I'd love to see inside their company. I think that'd be fascinating
to- Bellroy. Bellroy, yeah. Started with wallets, phone cases, but everything you carry is kind of
their space. They're great operators. I'd love to see what they do in Australia. Of course,
you know, it'd be fascinating to see inside some of Australia's kind of high profile tech companies
like Canva and Atlassian who have built incredible teams over the years. And with that comes amazing
kind of systems and processes and ways of motivating the team. So I think being a fly on
the wall of organizations like that, I think would be amazing to see what you can learn and
take back to apply to how you run things as well. And on that note, our time's up. Simon, I really
love the way you prioritize sleep and try to get at least nine hours in bed. And I love the fact
that you drink a quarter of a cup of coffee in the morning. That must be quite hard to measure,
but clearly you do it and clearly it gives you enough of a boost for the day. And I hate meetings
too. So I really like the fact that you don't like meetings and that you encourage your staff
to find ways of not having to have as many meetings. And I also really like the way you
divide the population into those who have got ideas and those who are executors. And then you
create teams where everybody's strengths play into each other. So thank you so much, Simon,
for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss. Thank you, Sally. Yeah, really enjoyed it. Thanks
for inviting me on. And thank you to everyone for listening. If you like the podcast and would like
to hear more, please consider sharing the podcast or writing a review as it helps us to reach more
people and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. At The Financial Review, we investigate the big
stories about markets, business and power. For more, go to afr.com and you can subscribe to The
Financial Review, The Daily Habit of Successful People at afr.com slash subscribe. This podcast
was hosted by me, Sally Patton and produced and edited by Lapfan. Video and audio assistance
and our music theme is by Alex Gao and our executive producer is Fiona Buffini.