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F Geyrhalter: Welcome to the show, Lesley.

L Eccles: Hi Fabian, it’s great to be here.

F Geyrhalter: Oh, absolutely. Thanks for being here. It goes without saying that it is a huge honor for me to have you on this very brand-centric show and since this episode is airing right after New Year’s it is also very fitting for some of our listeners who want to improve their relationships this year. But for some background, you built FanDuel together with your husband into the first billion dollar sports startup since ESPN. You were the co-founder and you led marketing and at some point FanDuel was the biggest ad spender in the world. But today we’ll talk about Relish, a couple’s therapy app, your new startup that is in a very different sector. Now, it would seem like a strange departure but FanDuel was not only a perfect unicorn, it also had huge issues, right? We’re talking all the way to widely-publicized FBI investigations, right? I mean, this must have been living hell for an entrepreneur but coupled with you running the company together with your husband, I am sure that the relationship was also put to a test during that time. Was that the inspiration, the driving force behind, and potentially the beginning of Relish?

L Eccles: Yeah, absolutely. Fabian. We spent almost 10 years building FanDuel from the ground up, and as you rightly said, we went through a lot of ups and downs as any startup does, but come 2015 it became a bit of a legal situation where we’d gotten into a competitive battle with DraftKings, our number one competitor, and between us we spent over a half a billion dollars on advertising over just a few months. And there’s actually a book been written about the whole story. I don’t know if you’ve read it.

F Geyrhalter: Oh, I have not, but now I will.

L Eccles: Oh, okay. It’s called The Billion Dollar Fantasy. It’s on Amazon if you want to download it. It was written by a guy from Sports Illustrated, a journalist from Sports Illustrated. And it does a good job at telling that whole story of the ups and downs that we faced while we built FanDuel. And you’re really spot-on with your observation that it was a tough 10 years, followed by all the founders left the company at the end of 2017. And when we came out of the business it gave us all time to reflect on what had just happened. It had been 10 years of running almost like a marathon every day, and that’s really what it felt like, this gigantic effort over a long period of time. And it gave us a moment to reflect the fall, winter of 2017 on what is success and what does it mean for us, and what have we taken away from those 10 years of building FanDuel. And for me the big thing that that period of reflection taught me was the reason that we did this was not to make money. It was not to be a successful entrepreneur in inverted commas. It was really about the journey, the making something that changed the world. That was really what drove us every day. If the only reason you were building a company was to be rich someday, that’s not enough to get you out of bed every morning. You need to really believe in what you’re doing and want to serve your customers day in and day out. And that was what really drove us. But what you find when you’re going through a battle like we did, and by battle I mean every day turning up and trying to figure out how to build this business, what you discover is that you build these relationships with your co-founders, with your employees, with your team members, with your suppliers, the agencies you’re working with. And those relationships are for life. And that was when kept us all sane as we went through all those ups and downs. And it’s interesting you mentioned building it with my husband. A lot of people have said to me, “Wow, I could never work with my husband and certainly couldn’t do a startup like FanDuel. How did that work? And how come you’re not divorced?” And it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t all a walk in the park. We had our ups and downs. We’re a normal couple. We’ve been together for a long time. We’ve read a lot of self-help books over the years, and what I found was oftentimes they would sit on my bedside table and I just never found the time to wade through all of these books. And whenever I did eventually manage to pick them up, what I would find is there may be one or two chapters that were relevant to me in my particular situation. And I wondered if there was a way that we could use technology to almost replicate the experience that you would have if you went to a relationship coach, or if you went to a therapist, where they ask you questions about yourself and you tell the coach who you are, you talk about your insecurities or your personality, the challenges that you’re facing, what you like to do, what you don’t like to do, and that coach develops a really deep understanding of who you are and can help you work through whatever the issues are that you’re dealing with at that point in time. That was the inspiration behind the start of Relish.

F Geyrhalter: And you also carried the gamification aspect over from FanDuel, right, for Relish? That’s something that seems to be similar.

L Eccles: Yeah. Well, I mean, gamification is a funny beast. I think relationships are such an important thing, and I’m very conscious of how precious they are. I’m using a little gamification, but you have to be really careful with it, because even the best relationships are fragile. It doesn’t take much to put you off kilter. So we’re taking this very responsible approach to relationships, which I’m not sure has been really done before in the technology space. And obviously with my background in FanDuel and gaming, I have a good understanding of what those mechanics can do, but we have to use it responsibly.

F Geyrhalter: Right. That makes a lot of sense. And given the time that you had at FanDuel, like building this ginormous company and then basically losing it all overnight in a way, what are some other marketing and branding lessons that you learned over these times that have helped you in building this new much leaner brand?

L Eccles: I don’t really think of that way, to be honest with you, Fabian. When we started building Relish about a year and a half ago, my first thought was I want this brand to be universal. So with FanDuel it was very much a US product, it was all about, you know, fantasy sports doesn’t really work outside the US. And it was for men, 95% of our users were men, 25 to 45, and those were the parameters that we were working in for FanDuel. With Relish, it’s so much more universally applicable because relationships are everywhere, and when we first started I thought, do you know what, the key to this is the female. And the female will sell into her partner. But what I very quickly discovered was that that’s not true at all. We have 40% of our subscribers are men, and these are not men whose partner has asked them to sign up. These are men who have signed up themselves proactively. So when we started, it was very important to us to be as inclusive as possible with our brand. And that was one of the reasons behind the name Relish. It’s non-gender-specific, it’s non-relationship-specific, it’s really about embracing life and making the most of the life that you have, because it’s very short.

F Geyrhalter: Really like that. Yeah, and I really like the name. And I’m wondering, it sounds like you were adjusting the brand narrative a little bit, right, after realizing who actually really is signing up. And that must have been a time of brand discovery, really, for you.

L Eccles: Yes.

F Geyrhalter: Yeah. How long did this take? Or was it a lot of like trial, or how did you find out?

L Eccles: We found out very, very quickly, to be honest with you, Fabian. Within a month of starting we realized this is not about the female. This is about all couples. We have a good percentage of non-binary users, we have LGBTQI users. That was really important from us. So we’re very careful with when you sign up for Relish you are given the opportunity to say what pronoun you want to use for your partner. We offer he, she, they, whatever you want. So it’s all personalized to the relationship that you’re in. We make no judgments on stereotypical heteronormative couples. That was really, really important for us from a branding perspective as well.

F Geyrhalter: And with this brand, when did you start to actively invest in branding? Obviously you’ve done it before, but it seems to me that Relish is all about gaining trust, right? And branding must have been crucial in achieving that. And not branding as in the logo and the colors, I mean, that too, but really like the language that you use and all of that. Like, when did you start to invest in that, and how did you do it? I mean, was it more bootstrapped internally or-

L Eccles: Yeah, we did everything internally. We were bootstrapped for the first six to nine months. And I think for me it’s very easy to overthink branding. It’s really about what emotional response do you want to elicit from not just your users but also people who come across your brand or come across your product. And it really comes down to being authentic. And really thinking about what is your customer feeling before they come across your product, what is the experience when they find your product, and how do they feel after they’ve used it? And thinking about when we started, it was relatively easy for me to understand that because I’m a potential customer of Relish. When I think back to FanDuel I wasn’t a potential customer of FanDuel at all. So it was a lot harder to understand the consumer angle with FanDuel, so that involved a lot more customer interviews and building that up from scratch, whereas this time around it was a lot faster and we were able to get that off the ground very quickly.

F Geyrhalter: So I really like what you just said, and branding can absolutely be a process of overthinking, something that often very much in front of you, right? Which is the customer or the client or the member or whoever it is, right. But really, putting yourself in… and there’s this word that is so overused right now in marketing and branding, but it’s empathy, right? And in a way it is all about empathy. It’s you putting yourself in the shoes of that person. And like you so perfectly said, it’s like the before, in the middle and the after, right, of that interaction with your brand. And that is a fantastic way of putting branding, because it really is the customer journey. Because I mean that experience is your brand. I mean, we can do everything to create, to add to that beautiful experience, through colors and through language, but there’s so much more to it that creates that. I really like that. And on the Relish website, you state, and I’m going to quote, “Life isn’t about money, or career or the number of likes we get. Relationships, that’s what really matters, with our partner, our kids, our parents, friends and colleagues.” How does this brand language and theme affect your company culture? I think it’s really interesting, right, because we might have all heard the story of the luggage startup darling, Away, who I also cited in my latest book, and it turned out that they have a company culture that was an extreme opposite of the actual brand values in the story that they promoted to the outside world, and that was a big story in business. How are you crafting a culture based on that brand mantra of positive relationships?

L Eccles: Yeah, that’s a great question. And when we kicked off with our very small team this time last year, we sat down as a company and there were a half a dozen of us. And we said, “Okay, what are our values?” And the number one value on our list was do the right thing. And for me, the most important thing is that we trust each other. I have seen what happens when trust breaks down, and it’s not pleasant. So number one, for all of us within Relish is we trust each other that we’re going to do the right thing, for the company, for each other, for our customers, for our investors, and that becomes even more important when you’re working remotely. So my product and engineering team is based in Scotland which is where I’m originally from and where we built FanDuel from. And the rest of us are here in New York. So when you’re working remotely like that, trusting… like something can go wrong. Suddenly, I don’t know, there’s a release that you’ve done and something’s broken or users are complaining about something, you have to trust that everyone is working as hard as they can and putting their best effort into things. If you don’t, then as we saw in Away trouble starts to appear. And that trust has to come from the very top, from the investors all the way down. And I really believe that we’re building a culture that’s reflective of our product. Being kind to each other is really what it comes down to. And I’m quite proud of what we’re doing, so far. You know, it’s one of these things you can’t become complacent. You have to keep nurturing it, day in and day out.

F Geyrhalter: And talking about branding and culture, I mean, to me, branding is so secondary to company culture. If the company culture is not perfect, then all the branding, as we again saw with that story with Away, all the branding doesn’t do anything. And it’s a challenge that I run into when I work with my clients where we identify the values together as a team, meaning the VP team of the company and myself, and then to make sure that those are actually then intrinsically being lived up to by everyone.

L Eccles: Lived up to, yes.

F Geyrhalter: And it’s very, very difficult to ensure that because I’m the consultant that comes in, right, and I do my thing, and then I trust that the founders will then actually proactively infuse those values. But what are some ways that you learned over your unbelievably amazing entrepreneurial journey so far, that you feel you can actually instill values, rather than just define them? Because what you just said is fantastic, right, and it’s all about trust and it’s about doing the right thing. But how do you make sure that people really live up to that?

L Eccles: It’s really about what you do day in and day out, and what you see around you. As a CEO if people see me not living up to our values, they’ll think, well, that’s fine, I don’t need to live up to them either. So, that’s number one. And number two is if there are people who are clearly not living up to the values, then you have that conversation and you have it early and you try to understand why. And if there is a reason for it, then you try to reset the course that’s happening. But if it’s impossible for this person to live up to the values of the company, then you have to have that conversation as well. And you have to have it early and give them a chance to change, reset course. And if it’s not possible then we have to figure that out, and move on. And it doesn’t take much, particularly when you’re relatively small. You know, it is one bad apple ruins the whole barrel, it’s the true saying. So just being cognizant of that culture as being really important to the health of your overall business is a huge thing for me.

F Geyrhalter: Absolutely. I could not agree more. And I mean, it’s been proven over and over and over again. And when I work on values with my clients I always say, “This is not just for your internal culture. This is to advise potential employees of what you really stand for, so that they can say, ‘Yes, I totally believe in these values and I think that I can actually showcase them.'” Or if they feel not confident in some of those, then maybe it is not the right fit, right? And this is so important to find out sooner rather than later, like you mentioned.

L Eccles: I think with this startup, for people who haven’t worked in one before, working in a startup is really a journey of discovery about yourself, and of about the people that you’re working with. And Relish is pretty similar to that as well. I feel like our brand is really about holding your hand and taking you on this journey where you’re going to discover a lot about yourself and you’re going to discover a lot about your partner, and we’re going to be there to support you. And that’s what I feel our startup journey with Relish has been so far. It’s, okay, a lot of my team have never worked for an early, early stage startup before, and that’s an experience that doesn’t necessarily come along often, and it’s quite a unique experience. So helping them understand what’s normal and reflecting back to the early days of FanDuel and how difficult it was in the early days and how much harder that was than what we’re doing today, has been an important learning experience for all of us as well.

F Geyrhalter: Oh absolutely. And I really like that parallel of this journey of emotional ups and downs that everyone within a startup goes through, not just the entrepreneur and the founder and co-founder, and how this is really so symmetrical to what people go through when they sign up for Relish, because they are in this journey of emotional ups and downs. So it is kind of interesting how there’s this energy between the company’s journey and the journey of those who actually sign up.

L Eccles: Yep, yep.

F Geyrhalter: Did you ever go against any of your early customer data? Because I know you must be a big believer in data, given your background with FanDuel. And did you do a gutsy move where you basically just, you know, you looked at the data and you said, okay, the data says we should go this way, but you did a totally different move, solely based on your instinct, especially since this is a very emotional business that you’re in right now.

L Eccles: Well, it’s funny. This is not exactly what you’re asking, but I’ll tell you a funny story. We had data about our customers and their level of education. And what we discovered was that our data was telling us our users are mainly, that we had a lot of high school dropouts in our user set here. And they’ve done some college, they’re not overly educated. And so I was talking with my content team and I was saying, “We need to really use very simple language, keep everything as simple as we can, and if there’s an opportunity to say obtain then we should swap in get.”

F Geyrhalter: How interesting.

L Eccles: You know, just keep it as simple as we can, to make sure that this is as broadly appealing as possible. And then, I did a lot of… I’m always talking to customers, and I don’t know, a year ago or so I was on the phone with a professor from a university who was one of our users, and I suddenly thought, hang on, let me just check her profile. And I looked, and sure enough, she was a high school dropout in our database.

F Geyrhalter: Oh my god! That’s hilarious.

L Eccles: So I got on the phone with my lead engineer and I said, “Can you just check that we have this data right?”

F Geyrhalter: There might be a problem.

L Eccles: And he looked, he said, “Oh, flip everything on its head.”

F Geyrhalter: Oh my god. Yeah, talking about data, right? Unbelievable.

L Eccles: So yeah, what it turned out is our users are actually really well-educated, and they also appreciate having very simple activities to do, and they enjoy that. So we’ve been able to add in a few more difficult concepts to grasp, but on the whole, our users liked what we’d done, and so in the whole we’ve kept it as simple as we can, and just by our data being upside down for that particular metric we ended up in a good place.

F Geyrhalter: No, absolutely, because simplicity is so important for everything, right? So it’s kind of great that you had to on the parenthesis dumb it down from the beginning and then now you can add a layer of sophistication to at least the brand language. And that’s a great story. So when you say that you connect a lot with your users, how do you usually go about that? I mean, a lot of startup founders have that same problem, where they’re separated from the audience, just like you were when you were running FanDuel, right? Because you are not the audience. But now it seems like it’s so much easier because it’s emotional and you can be the nurturing CEO. How do you do that, though? Do you just reach out to random clients and say, “Hey, I’m here for you and if you want to chat?”

L Eccles: Yeah. Well, we do it every month or so, we as a company decide what it is we’ll be talking to customers about. But I also do customer support. I’m constantly exchanging emails or text messages with users, and it means that I have my finger on the pulse of what they’re saying. And I think the experience that we had at FanDuel was a really strong grounding for that discipline. We were forced to talk to users. I couldn’t just go to my brother or my father or my uncle or cousin or whatever. I had to reach out to people who played fantasy football. I was in Scotland. I’m Scottish. All of my co-founders were from Britain as well, and so we had to take that approach where we advertised on Craigslist or Facebook for people who were into fantasy football, and “Can I chat to you on the phone for 15 or 20 minutes to try and understand what your pain points are?” So that was a good grounding for just constantly talking to users and understanding what they need and how we can improve our product.

F Geyrhalter: It is so important, and I hope that a lot of founders learn from that. I work a lot, or I mentor a lot of early stage startups, and especially in Silicon Valley everyone is product, product, feature, feature, and I’m like, “Look, if you’re developing an app, you have to be where these people are. You can’t just sit here adding another feature and you think that’s important.” If you’re developing an app for toddlers, you have to be with toddlers. You have to be with their moms and you have to understand that, right? So it’s so crucial, and I love that you actually do customer support. I know that’s not scalable, but that idea that if it’s ingrained now, that you keep doing this every now and then, I think it is something that every Fortune 500 CEO should be forced to doing once a month.

L Eccles: And I think besides anything else, it’s important for the team to see that you’ve rolled your sleeves up and you’re getting on with it.

F Geyrhalter: Oh, absolutely. It works 360, yeah.

L Eccles: There are no crutches.

F Geyrhalter: No, absolutely.

L Eccles: And we’re growing pretty quickly at the moment so we’re always stretched, from a customer support angle, and so I’m the first one, I’m on the front line just saying, “Don’t worry, I’m going to step in and help out to make sure that we keep up with demand here.”

F Geyrhalter: And we talked a lot about branding and the deeper meaning of it, which really is the narrative and what you stand for and the feeling. I always like to ask my guests, and funny enough you talked about simplification and bringing everything to that point as clear and as simply as possible. If you could describe your brand, or if you could use one word to that would be kind of like that overarching word that really describes the DNA of the brand, what would it be? I give examples like Coca-Cola wants to stand for happiness, and Everlane, it’s all about radical transparency. What’s a word for Relish that you feel would really describe it nicely from the inside and out?

L Eccles: That’s a great question. I think-

F Geyrhalter: And it may be too early.

L Eccles: No. I actually said something that was part of the process behind building Relish was this idea of empowerment. So if you think about our users before they find Relish, they are feeling perhaps lost, perhaps a little dissatisfied, perhaps a little flat, perhaps just not content with what they have. And often what will happen in those situations is that feeling of discontentment or dissatisfaction will grow over time. And by the time people get to the point where they’re willing and able to go to therapy, they’ve left it too late. So the idea behind Relish is really about an early intervention where we’re empowering you as an individual. You don’t have to rely on bringing your partner along with you if you feel like they’re not ready for it. We’re empowering you as an individual to take this relationship into your own hands and through making changes to the way you show up in the relationship, the way you perceive things, the way you relate to your partner, the way you react to your partner, you can make an impact on the relationship. So it’s that sense of I’m feeling a loss, here is a product and a brand that will empower me to impact change, without needing anyone else to be involved if they’re unwilling.

F Geyrhalter: I really like that. And it’s great to understand that pre or instead of therapy kind of intervention, and I love how empowerment works so well for everyone within the team, right? Talking about building culture, that you work for an organization and that goes back to what you said in the beginning, you wanted to now build a brand that actually has deeper meaning, where you can actually really change people’s lives, and having empowerment be that kind of overarching brand DNA, that even for the customer is exactly what they need in their life to be empowered again, to make a change, to be who they want to be, or to change accordingly. I think it’s wonderful. As a site note, I was just in Geneva a couple of weeks ago and I worked with a client there, and at the very end of our one-day session, I have these grueling eight-hour sessions, and at the very end of that session we identified that their brand DNA is also empowerment. And they were so excited about it. And then a couple days later they’re like, “So how do we translate that into German and in French?” And it is so interesting, Lesley, that you cannot. Empowerment is this strange word that works so well in the English language, and it’s just impossible to translate into so many other languages. And it’s kind of amazing, right, because it feels like it is such an important word, that we were just completely stunned by that. But no, it’s a great brand DNA to have. When FanDuel was acquired for I believe $465 million, you and your husband left empty handed which is unbelievable, to me less than to you I’m sure, but you have experienced pretty much the highest highs and the lowest imaginable lows that an entrepreneur can experience. What is an important piece of brand advice that you have for founders as a final takeaway as we slowly come into the end of this today? You must have so much knowledge but what is something that is maybe more brand-related that you would like to share with my listeners?

L Eccles: Well, I think it’s interesting you talk about the highest highs and the lowest lows. That’s certainly been the case. And there’s a lawsuit pending on all of this so I can’t really go into a lot of detail around it. But for us, when we started the company that became FanDuel, FanDuel was the result of a pivot from a previous company, we wanted to build something impactful. This wasn’t some kind of get rich quick scheme, this wasn’t something we were going to build and flip. This was, let’s do something that’s really going to change the world. And that’s what we did. That’s why we focused on the American market, that’s why we focused on fantasy sports. It was an area where there’d been very little disruption to date. We saw a lot of potential for it. And the potential came from creating an entirely new industry that hadn’t been there before. And it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s like that old adage which is sales overnight, brand over time. I think people can get themselves tied in knots thinking about brand, and worrying about it and investing thousands of dollars in consultants or creative agencies or whatever it might be, as a young startup. It’s a dangerous approach. I think the best advice that I could give is create something that you feel good about in the early days and that you’re happy to hang your hat on, and build those sales, and build that business. And your brand may very well evolve as you discover more about your customers. But really focus on being authentic and driving sales and figure out the brand as you go along. I think that would be my one piece of advice around branding for startups. And not everybody will agree with me, but that’s certainly been my experience to date.

F Geyrhalter: Absolutely. And it’s about creating value, first and foremost, right? And then once you create value, you can build the brand around it. And it again depends on how you define branding. So I am one of those consultants that comes in, very early on. But for me I don’t build the brand solely from the visual aspect, because like you said, things are going to pivot, right, and if you give it a name a certain way, and then suddenly, like you realized, it’s a totally different market. And it doesn’t speak to them anymore. But branding more from a strategic point of views very often it actually helps early stage founders to really define the why behind the brand deeper and to create these values and to create all these. If I see that as part of branding, which I do, I do think it is extremely important for founders to actually give that brand thinking some time. But I absolutely agree with you that there’s a lot of money that should be saved when you actually really have some market knowledge and you have sales and you know that this is actually going to happen for real. And at that point pull the trigger and say, okay, now let’s really create that brand image around it because we’re certain we have something good going on.

L Eccles: Right, yes. And it comes back to that feeling of authenticity. And like you said, if you understand why you’re doing it and you understand the value that you’re creating for your users, that will help you get that thinking right.

F Geyrhalter: And the interesting thing, Lesley, is that obviously entrepreneurs know it in their heart of why they’re doing what they’re doing but they never spell it out. So it’s interesting for me to come in and say, “I am talking about therapy. I’m a therapist. I’m literally the brand therapist coming in and taking it all out from you so that your customers actually know what you’re so passionate about. Because you’re so deep in your product you can’t even think about what drives you anymore.” So, that’s…

L Eccles: Great analogy. I love it.

F Geyrhalter: So I notice, as we’re recording this, really a couple of days before the holidays, before Christmas, and I so appreciate the time. And because of that I also don’t want to have this go on for too long, because I know that you have things to do. But I do want to ask you, listeners who would like to benefit from this brand, from Relish, what are the first steps that you’d like them to take? And who would be that perfect user of Relish? Like where would they currently be in in their relationship?

L Eccles: Yeah, typically what we see is that you, as the sort of ideal Relish user, you’re at the point in your life where you know this is the person that you are invested in for the longterm, whether you’ve been together for a year, five years, 10 years. We even have users who have been together for more than 20 years, which is quite unbelievable.

F Geyrhalter: It’s amazing, yeah. Yeah. And it’s wonderful in a way, too, right?

L Eccles: It’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. And I think the common thread that we’ve found, we’ve done a lot of analysis on this, and the common thread that we found is these are people who value their relationship. They want to invest in their relationship. They know how important it is and they’re ready to commit to making that investment. And it’s a time investment, it’s an effort investment. I was talking to somebody yesterday who said, “My fiancé,” they’re engaged, “My fiancé was annoyed with me because the restaurant that I booked for our date night was the same one as we’d been to last month, and I hadn’t put in any effort.” And he realized that he should have booked it on Tuesday and not the day of. And it’s really about knowing how important intentionality is to a successful relationship over the longterm. So Relish is not for people who are just casually dating or have maybe been together for a month or so. I mean, this is people who are serious about, “I want this relationship to last for the longterm. This is the one. This is the one I want to build my life with.” And whether you have just got engaged or you have four children, it doesn’t really matter what stage of life you’re at. It’s about that knowledge of how important this relationship is to you and being willing to commit to being intentional about it.

F Geyrhalter: So people can go to the App Store, they can download Relish there. I think there’s a seven day free trial. You can go to hellorelish.com as well to find out more, and to study a little bit of the really whimsical but also refined brand design and brand language of your company, which I very much enjoy. Lesley, thank you so much for making this time, again, pre-holidays, in all this craze that we have going on in all of our lives right now. I really appreciate your time and all of your insights that you shared with me and our listeners.

L Eccles: Thanks, Fabian. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.

F Geyrhalter: Thank you.