#212 Kate Reid: What Formula 1 Taught Me About Building a Bakery Empire

Kate Reid built her career as an aerodynamicist at Williams Formula 1, before stepping out into the world of pastry making.

In this episode, she opens about obsession, burnout, mental illness, and finding a new purpose, realising that her dream job wasn’t the dream life. She talks about rebuilding her life through baking and creating Lune Crossainterie, applying the same engineering mindset to mastering the croissant.

Purchase Kate’s new book here: https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Destination-Moon/Kate-Reid/9781761632464

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, read welcome, straight Talk.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Thank you so much for having me, Thank.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You for wearing your ballgan today.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Hey, straight talk, I'm no angel, but.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I like it. I love it. It's awesome. Don't worry.
They can't sue me. They're can only sue me from
and you from here up. But we'll flash it you later,
so don't worry.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Having fun.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Already, engineer here an error. You're an aerospace engineer, correct,
but probably better known, well, probably maybe not better known,
but soon to be better known. As a word is
patissier batisseri. What was the French word for.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, I think it's chef petissier, chef bertissier. But I
wouldn't exactly call myself that. I spent a month in
a bou lingerie in Paris, which is certainly not long
enough from a training perspective to be formally classified as
that I learned just enough to give myself the confidence
to come back and open a business that specialized in
only croissants, which was also so not nearly enough. But yeah,

(01:01):
I think some people call me a pastry chef, but
I would not call myself that. You're definitely a founder, Yes,
definitely a founder.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
You're a founder of a well known business, which I
don't tell me you've never had my mark. I am right.
I heard you because I've been down the other room
and I just heard you trying to sort something out
for cast Race Street. My building is right across the
road from there.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
Perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
So my main office, our head office where all our
staff are not for this for another business, is in Chiffley. Okay, wow, yeah,
So we had a floora chiefly there so and of
course everyone in my building was extraordinarily excited when I hope,
hopefully I pronounce a word right because I only know
what to look at it from spelling.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
But it's luna loon loon, so luna is the Italian
pronunciation and lone is the French pronunciation of the word moon.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Right, Okay, the word moon, since the word we'll come
back to that a moment. Like but it's a cross
crosshant shop, if I could say, and as plain as
Aussie language, I think that's perfect cross on shop. That's
actually what I call it.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Like I'm going down to the croissant shops.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
And it's just around the but it's pretty bloody good.
I've had them and they're very good and I've taken
them home and I've actually lined up.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
You've actually lined up, actually lined up impressed.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Not at the beginning. So when you first opened, there
was like mental lines going right up into the new
railway station there. I waited to start over. Time has
dropped off a little bit, but if you get at
a busy time, you still get on a decent line.
But I've worked out at the times of the day
when it's not as busy and there might only be
four or five people on the line, and then I

(02:39):
can just jump in.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I think for your sake, I would not mention those
times because they might not be so quiet after you
about them.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I'm not going to tell them. I'm not going to
reveal my secrets. But I do really enjoy your exotic
cross once amazing. Thank you Exotic. But we'll talk about
a bit later, because at first I want to talk
to you about is Kate Reid, the aeronautical engineer you
know in my business, I have to if I just
might explain this to you, I have a young guy

(03:07):
when he's young, he's probably forty something, just had.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
A kid young. I like that.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
We'll go with that as relative. It's age a relative things.
So I found out about three years ago that he
was formerly an aeronautical engineer okay, and he's from South Astralia,
and that he would be my number one most successful
mortgage broker Australia by numbers of transactions by because you know,

(03:34):
he's lending into Soustralia. People borrow less moon in so Australia.
Therefore he doesn't lead as much into the toddle volume,
but interns of the numbers of transactions he does more.
And I once went to his office in Southstralia, should say,
and I said to him, Andy, can you explain to
me why he wrote so much business? I just wanted
to know. He's all he'sed to be an aeronautical engineer.

(03:56):
And he said to me, when I was doing that job,
he said, to look around the people in the room
with me, they're all much older to me. And he said,
I thought to myself, I don't want to be doing
this when I'm sixty or seventy or whatever. He said.
I couldn't think of anything worse. So I decided to
go on a mortge broke and said what I've done?
He said, I've broken up the process and remapped it

(04:17):
from the moment summarrings the phone to make an inquiry
about them all, which the moment the mortgage settles. And
so I've broken up into every single part and I've
now automated ninety percent of every one of those parts
and only ten percent of it does it require a

(04:37):
human And as a result of that, I've been able
to do I can process a greater percentage of my
inquiries because I've just got more hours to work with.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
And I imagine also that small component that still requires
the human element, he can put more effort into that
one so that people still feel like they're getting that
human connection part does That's very smart. That's my next
career done.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
So we then borrowed that. I said, can I borrow
your process? My point being is this aeronautical engineers engineers generally,
but aeronautical engineers are very good at steps in a process.
And I want to I would I want to talk
to you a moment about have you employed that engineering

(05:22):
learning process skill into your business to make your business successful?
Because your business is not just about cool, sexy looking
cross on Twitter are exotic looking and having all the
very good on photos and some of that, but it's
also about execution, about delivery. You've got to get the
shit out and getting but you've got to get these
things out. You've got to get a manufactured made vart
off a customer to buy. And I noticed your whole

(05:44):
shop is a process. It's a process going on. I
can see it from the back. I'm intrigued about that.
I will talk about that. But is the fact that
you were an error a autical engineer. Did that affect
you like it affected him? Like he got bored off
his head, had to do something different? Why did you
go from meronautical engineering into being founder of across On business.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
It's so funny. No one's ever put it to me
quite like that. Did you get bored off your head?
I think you've maybe just gotten right to the heart
of it. When I was younger, my father loves cars.
He loves motorsport in particular, loves Formula one and F one.
For me, was this perfect opportunity to get to spend

(06:26):
time with my dad, you know, one on one time,
us hanging out, bonding over fast cars. But then I think,
as a little girl, as like you know, from my
earliest memories, I can remember sitting watching F one races
with him, you know the ones that travel around the
world with video them when I was really young, and
then we'd wait till the Monday night and watch them together.
And then when I got old enough, I was allowed
to stay up late on a Sunday night. And then

(06:48):
in nineteen ninety six, the Grand Prix moved from Adelaide
to Melbourne and for the first time I got to
witness it in person, and it was that defining moment
that made me think, I actually want my entire life
to be about these cars.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
How old were you there?

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Thirteen?

Speaker 1 (07:03):
No, so I just stop there.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Okay, I can't imagine a third year old girl.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
I can't imagine a ten year old girl, six year
old girl watching these cars race around the joint, especially
if you watch you on television. Then at thirteen saying
this is where I want to be. That's amazing. It's
pretty crazy.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
I think I've always been someone that when I find
the thing that like I'm obsessed about or passionate about,
I just lock onto it and then everything in my
life becomes about how to work towards that thing and
achieve the goal. And experiencing the cars in person for
the first time, I mean I'm sure you've been to
an F one race before.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
I've been to Monte Color Grand Prix four times, You've been.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
To Monaco four times.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
In may Nico is.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
My favorite, and I've been three times, so it's it's
unlike anything else, and especially Monaco. I mean, the cars
really shouldn't be allowed to race around that circuit. It's
by today's modern circuit standards. It's dangerou, especially.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
When it comes up the hill, pass the the casino there.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Exactly, and then through the tunnel, Like, have an accident
in that tunnel, you're done. But I mean, it's it's
a spectacle. It feels like a feat of human engineering
that is beyond what we could have ever imagined. These
cars traveling so quickly on circuits that are narrow, I
mean three hundred kilometers an hour. It's wild. And when
you experience one in person, And when I was thirteen,

(08:24):
it was the V ten still and like that's the
sound of that car just rips through you. It's like
and I remember it. I could put myself back on
Brocki's Hill on that May that March day in nineteen
ninety six, and I can remember what it was like
to still witness that, and for me, I thought that
engineering Formula one cars would be the most exciting thing

(08:46):
on the planet. Like, yeah, maybe working as an engineer
at an automotive company like Ford or Holden back in
the day, that wasn't for me. I knew that that
wasn't going to move at the pace that I wanted.
But working in F one sounded like you were working
at the edge of technology, creating things that might one
day cascade down into the automotive industry. Like I think

(09:06):
Williams created active suspension and now that's on every car
that you buy these days, but that's started in Formula one.
And I think because the turnover of the design is
so fast, I imagined these groups of like brilliant engineers
working in a really collaborative environment with a lot of resource,
a lot of money, the best equipment, wind tunnels, everything,

(09:27):
The whole thing sounded just fabulous, glamorous.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Is it glamorous or is it more intellectually exciting?

Speaker 2 (09:36):
So the only experience I'd had with Formula one was
trackside as a little girl, because you know, you can't
get work experience in a Formula one team, So the
only interaction I'd had was the glamorous side. I knew
that engineering wasn't going to be trackside. I knew I
was going to be based in a factory, but I
imagined that being based in the factory would be some

(09:57):
sort of extrapolation of what you saw on the track.
I think, not glamorous, but definitely highly engaging from a
technical perspective, because.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
The drivers are glamorous. That they are, I mean, they
really are. I was there in eighty six when I
met in Santa One in Monica.

Speaker 2 (10:13):
Oh my god, you saw ed and winning.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
Actually, I tell you something. I had a bed on him.
So I went to a Calcutta and as my first
Calcutter i'd ever been to. I didn't go to the Calcutta,
but I invested in a group of guys who went
to the calcuttter in Monte Carlo. They're older guys. I
didn't get invited because I was pretty young, and but
they asked me would I like to put a thousand
bucks into the Calcutter. I didn't even know what a
Calcutta was, but they explained what it was to me.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 (10:39):
You go, you go along to a night. It's like
a big event. And syndicates of people can buy the driver.
So you you don't buy the driver, you can say,
well we'll we as Cindy will bid for that drive.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
You bid on his success.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you bid for the person who's
going to win the win the So it's not like
under the chair. I've been putting one thousand bucks onedon
Center where everyone could do that. You actually buy it,
and so you are the highest bit of buys iton Center.
And I was part of the syndica that they all
had more money than me, but I was part of
the part of it. I put a thousand bucks on it,

(11:15):
and I've got a very good return.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
One thousand bucks in nineteen eighty six was of money
as well.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
It was a lot of money. Yeah. And by the way,
you have to put it up front, which is great.
I was punding that. I was hoping you'd win or
second or third, Lise, I get some money back and
then I wouldn't have to pay. But we and he
did win. But I never forget it. I'll never forget
the glamour and excitement. And I was like eighty six,
so we're talking twenty forty years ago. I was thirty.

(11:43):
I was twenty nine, so I mean it was really
exciting for me, Like.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
It was eating center like he is, he is not human,
He was a legend. He was he was a god
amongst men at that time in motor racing.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
I think.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
I think he was a very spiritual man as well.
And you like the way he's spoke about being in
the car. It was almost like he levitated out of
his body. And it's to watch him win a race
in Monaco would have been my all time dream.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
It was. It was amazing. Was it was hot, it
was hot, the noise.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
It's all the senses. You still remember senses.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
I mean I could smell, I could smell the fuel
and rubber, and you're right, the speed which they got
around this kind of like you were, it was amazing,
Like you would think to yourself, that's not possible. How
could anyone sit monastering will and do that? Exactly crazy?
So you're right, all the senses a sort of going crazy.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well, I love hearing you describe it now, like almost
forty years later and you're remembering the smelling, sound and everything.
It's yeah, And that's how I feel about my first
nineteen ninety six Grand Prix.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, So that's and you're saying, as a young girl,
that was enough to sort of form in your mind
at least an academic career or a career in terms
of academia. So what you're going to study towards it
end up going to do couniversity.

Speaker 2 (13:08):
It was done and dusted that day. So I was
a huge fan of Damon Hill, who raced for the
Williams F one team, and that year he won the
World championship and for Christmas, Mum and Dad bought me
a coffee table book celebrating his championship winning year. And
years later, when I was moving to the UK to
work for Williams, I pulled the book out of the
shelf and a note fell out of the front, and

(13:30):
I'd written a pledge to myself at that age saying
that by the age of twenty five I would be
offered a job by the Williams F one team. And
I got it when I was twenty three, So like
literally that moment I experienced it, I was dead set
that that was going to be my thing, and I
went along to the ri MIT career day. I thought
I'd study automotive engineering, but as you said earlier, it

(13:51):
really is. Aerospace is the pinnacle. You know, if you
can figure out how to get a rocket into space
and landed on the Moon, that's one of the most
technically difficult things to a problem to solve. So e
lecturer at THET day said to me, look, how about
you consider studying aerospace engineering because what you want to
get into is one of the hardest jobs in the world.

(14:11):
Because there are so few jobs, you need to give
yourself the best chance. So that's what set me down.
The trajectory of aerospace and.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
When you went and did this at university and what
was the process of getting a job at Williams.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Huh, that's such a good question. I think a lot
of people out there, especially with the new interest in
F one ju to drive to survive. I get asked
so often, so how should I get a job in
Formula one? Literally you just have to do everything in
your power to make you stand out more than the
other thousands and thousands of people that want that job.

(14:47):
I mean, if you think about it, in F one,
there was maybe fifteen aerodynamicists at Williams, and there are
at the moment ten teams on the grid. So you're
looking at one hundred and fifty jobs in the world
to be an aerodynamicist F one team, and there are
hundreds of thousands of aerospace engineers out there and many
of them probably who have that dream. So you need

(15:08):
to be loud. You need to get experience wherever you can.
Like I during university, I volunteered at a Formula three
team based in Melbourne, and that was tough. Like I'd
come from an all girls school, an all girls private
school in Melbourne, and then when I started studying aerospace engineering,
I was one of I think one of eight girls

(15:29):
in a course of one hundred and twenty guys. So
I went from all girls to all guys. And then
when I showed up at this F three team asking
to volunteer, these mechanics were they were like old school,
rough as guts, and they just saw this like wet
behind the years, private school educated girls studying aerospace engineering,
and like they literally ate me.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Alive, get the box of hammers and all that sort
of stuff. Oh, like they box sparks.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Like I think, like they bullied me and they teased
me and ribbed me, but I didn't care because I
knew that being around them, and I think that This
made me a bit more thick skinned as well. I
knew that being around them simply by osmosis. If I
just watched what they did and listened to their conversation,
I would learn. And years later, when I got the

(16:16):
job at Williams, I was living with one of the
race mechanics and one night I was speaking to.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Him about WIMS or yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
Yeah, he was my housemate, and I was telling him
about this time that I volunteered with the F three team,
and he said, you don't know how invaluable even just
being around those mechanics would be. Because if you design
a a component of a car theoretically as an engineer,
but in F one it takes you half an hour
to change the part, it's completely useless from a practical perspective,

(16:45):
Like in a race engineering moment, you have to be
able to change that part in ten seconds or you've
lost the race. And he said, like, they taught me
how to break down a gearbox and change suspension components,
and I learned so much practical hands on stuff from
them that I then took into my engineering Korea. But yeah,
I think that was one of the examples of me

(17:05):
maybe trying to set myself apart from everyone else who wanted.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Them and telling everyone about it though because you have
to talk about it, doesn't have to talk about it
and be prepared to prosecute it.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Yeah, absolutely, But how does a Philly daunting?

Speaker 1 (17:18):
So Williams is in the UK. I don't know which
part of the UK, but London.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
I was somewhere, I don't know where, southwest of London,
just near Oxford, Okay, so I think it's called the
Motorsport Valley. There's a lot of F one team's base there.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
So you're here applying for the job.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yeah, so you're I'm writing off to every single F
one team And then I started to go down the list, like, Okay,
if I can't get a job in F one, maybe
I'll start in F two or F three or A
one was big at the time. I wrote to Lemon's
team's rally teams. I just wanted to get my foot
in the door. I mean, if you owned a motorsport
team back in the mid two thousands, you probably got

(17:57):
a letter from me. And I got a lot of
silence and a couple of rejection letters. But then one
day I got an email from Williams from the team
that was my dream team to work for. And I mean,
I think this goes against my scientific engineering brain, but
I am a bit of a believer in fate and

(18:17):
like for the one team to actually reply to me
to be the one that i'd written that note about
saying you're going to get a job with them.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Did you tell them that, yeah again in your application?

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Actually no, not in my application, but maybe that would
have been.

Speaker 1 (18:30):
A good idea there.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Well, they sent me an email saying we're actually recruiting
for junior aerodynamicists and we'd like to interview you. So
that was like, that's all I needed. I'm I think
I'm pretty compelling in an interview perspective, Like, once you
get your foot in the door, you can really let
your personality and your passion shine. And I knew that
if I could just get my foot in the door

(18:54):
and be interviewed by a team. I mean, I had
the aerospace engineering degree like everyone else. I'm sure other
people had experience working in volunteering with other teams. I'd
done my thesis on the study of the rear wing
of an F one car. I'd tried to do all
the right things, but once they talked to me. I
was pretty sure I could convince them to hire me,
and they did.

Speaker 1 (19:14):
Have you always been like that though? In terms of personality, yes,
you're Is that a confidencing or is that a learned behavior?
I thin give your success and reward.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh, it's definitely not a confidence thing. I think I
would probably say that I've lived most of my life
feeling not confident. Maybe it's I feel like I have
have something to prove.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Is it a performance? Then you turn it on?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
I think, so, Oh gosh, these are good questions to
backtrack right to when I was an infant. I was
diagnosed with very severe asthma when I was eighteen months old.
And you know, I've spoken to many psychologists over the years,
and there's some belief that as a very young child,

(20:07):
not understanding why you're so unwell and having to fight
for your life, that builds a level of resilience and
determination in a kid from an early age. So I
think maybe that had something to do with me feeling
like I kind of had to fight for my life
all the time. I think I'm going to think about that.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
More, Yeah, because I mean, I mean, some people think that,
for example, someone like me they think, oh, with make's
natial interviewer. But I am actually this a performance for me, Like,
but I know how to perform. Yeah, but it's something
I've learned. I've learned how to do it. It's not
natural for me. This is not natural for me. Really,
you know, I'm socially awkward. I'm hopeless.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Okay, so I would not have guessed that.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Put me in the room, the cameras and the lights
and you can turn it on. I've learned how to
turn it on. Yeah, over time and know I've done
two hundred episodes. So but in the beginning was a bit,
was a bit that wasn't anywhere you perhaps as.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Good someone sat here twelve hundred times opposite you. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, wow, Yeah, that's what we do a lot of
We do a lot of podcasts in this joint. So
you're i'd imagine then once you get the as you said,
you got your foot in the door, you're going to
nail it. You'll convince them. Whether it's a performance or
if it's learned behavior or it's natural, it doesn't really matter.
And I can sense that. And what what do you

(21:23):
think though, is the element that gets you over line?
Is that your knowledge of the topic, is your passion
for the topic, is your sort of sense of I
take passion. I don't believe in passion. I believe in obsession.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Yeah, there's no point being passionate.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Lots a bit of passionate about things, but it doesn't
need to success. You'd obsessedly I agree with that. Yeah,
it's because of bullshit. Otherwise, Yeah, oh really passionate.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
You're passionate. It's a word that's thrown around a lot.
But if you're obsessed with something, it's almost like you're
admitting that you get consumed by it. It's got a
slight negative connotation, but like if you say you're obsessed
with something, it's like I'm admitting I'm all in for this.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
I'm all in. That's the word all in. All the
words all in? And is it that? Do you think
it's convinced them? Do they read that? Do you think
did they read that in you? When the Williams people interviewed.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
You, I thought about this moment a lot. I was
told when I started at Williams that every week, three
thousand cvs land on the.

Speaker 1 (22:26):
Desk well, which is huge.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
So what made first of all mine stand out, And
I think being a girl would have made me stand
out because I was the only female in the entire
company working in a technical capacity, and it was a company.
At a company of five hundred people. There were women
working in marketing, hospitality, human resources, more of the support

(22:51):
type roles, but from a technical perspective, I was the
only female, and I was the only female in the
entire aerodynamics facility the building. So maybe being a girl
made me stand out from the three thousand other people
that had sent their resumes in I in the interview,
and knowing that I'd get to this point, I can
be charismatic. I can show my obsession and my dedication

(23:15):
to something. And I had the I guess, the backup
to speak to, like the volunteering and everything else that
I'd done. But it was interesting when I got into
the office. The one thing that was immediately obvious to
me was I was the loudest person in the office.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
And I don't mean to volume sense, no, I.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Mean as in a communication sense. Almost everybody else in
that office was a pretty much a head down, work quietly,
stare at your computer for sixteen yeah, tell.

Speaker 1 (23:44):
Me, okay, why is it? Engineers across the world like
that doesn't mean it was aeronautical or medical engineering or
any other typ of engineering. I like that, what is that? Well,
and what's your observation. I'm not an engine but I've
certainly seen it.

Speaker 2 (23:59):
I think it's they don't become that when they become
an engineer. I think that personality trait is attracted to
engineering because it requires very quiet, focused work, long hours
in front of a computer without much human interaction. And
that was essentially my undoing.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
I'm just say they're not collegiate. Ah, but you know,
not naturally collegiate. They just opened a little cell and
they're in there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
Actually, yeah, it's And it's funny that you say that
because I worked for two Formula One teams. In the end,
I moved from Williams to what's now the Aston Martin team,
but it was called Spiker when I worked for them,
and my observation was, instead of working together as a
team because both both the teams weren't performing well at

(24:43):
the time.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
They were themselves teams.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Yeah, ironically, because they weren't performing well at the time.
There was a lot of pressure on all of us
to make the car better for it to perform and
it became kind of a like a competition for could
prove that they were the most dedicated to the company.
So instead of us all coming together and really collectively
solving this problem, you'd look around the office and you'd

(25:09):
be like, if I wait longer than him, and him
and him all look like I'm more dedicated to solving
this problem. And we became competitive amongst ourselves rather than
competitive together against the other teams. And no one in
a leadership role ever really swooped that up and dealt
with it and acknowledged that it was creating a negative

(25:29):
culture in the office.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
Because I am going to be going to talk about
lunars in a moment. I like the Italian version, but anyway,
but like, I'm just wondering if you've taken any of
those experiences out and put it into your own business.
So I'm apart from coming up with a great idea,

(25:51):
Execution is what you're talking about. When it comes to teams.
You know, executing it to be the best, but that
does take teamwork and everyone but he's going to be
on the same page. You've got to have the same
architecture and sure everyone have a different part or a
different role, but you've got to be collegiate to make
it happen.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
I think also an experience that I had in both
teams was that I came in at an entry level.
I mean, even though I was I was one of
fifteen aerodynamicists at Williams. I was classified as a junior aerodynamicist,
and I had ideas. I mean, I was obviously brand
new to that level of the industry. But no matter

(26:32):
how old we are or what experience we have, if
we've got an idea, if that's not heard, that might
be shockingly the one idea that makes the car perform better.
But as a junior aerodynamicist, I wasn't allowed to have ideas.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
Did you then? Notwithstanding that, did you bug you know,
your direct report and say, look, I just thought I
worked on this the other night and I don't know what.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
But I didn't have time to It got so flat
out like all you were. My role was modeling, like
three D computer ator design, modeling components that my senior
aerodynamatist believed we should be testing, and that probably came
down from the chief aerodynamicist, and maybe that was from
the technical director, but whatever, that cascade of level of

(27:16):
management was I would spend up to sixteen hours a
day just trying to keep up with modeling the components
that someone had told me I should model. There was
only one person when I was working at Williams, a
guy called Frank Deerney, who almost started at Williams at
the same time that Sir Frank founded the team, so
it was the two francs. Frank Deerney is a mastermind

(27:40):
in like he's a legend in Formula one from a
technical perspective, like he was one of the people that
introduced wind tunnel testing to Formula one. But by the
time I was working at Williams, he'd been reintroduced into
the team more as a role model and someone that
would walk around the offices and maybe he was the
only person that was trying to make the team more collegiate.
And I'd love it when he came into the office

(28:02):
because he actually wanted to have a qualitative chat about
what was going on, and he'd come into our little
cubicle and he believed and I actually think that I
think it's the Renault team of committed to or sorry
Alpine have done it this year, which is bold and
it'd be challenging from a financial perspective. But Frank Derney

(28:23):
believed that in two thousand and six Williams should just
scrap the entire season because we weren't going to get
enough better to be like cham to be competitive. He
thought we should scrap the entire season and then put
all the team's effort on designing the two thousand and
seven car to have a championship winning car. And that

(28:44):
probably would have worked. But how do you explain that
to all the sponsors on the two thousand and six.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
I would give their name on the car, So, yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
They don't want to be at the back of the grid,
knowing that everyone at Williams has absolutely given up on
the car that their name is on for it to
sit at the back of the grid. But yeah, Frank
Deurney had maybe more of a a nebulous view on
we need to improve this car and the way that
we're doing it right now, not operating together as a

(29:13):
team and just chipping away at little things that may
or may not help, it's not really getting us anywhere.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
If you look back on that period in your let's
call it your career period or growth period, what are
some of the things you learned from that that you've
taken into your new business so much.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
I think we haven't really gotten into it. But staying
in Formula one became incredibly bad from my mental health
and then my health. Ah, I do really want to
come back to your question about how I've employed my
learnings from F one in.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Lauckon when we talk about a learning a bit more.
Just just talk about what was happening though.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yeah. Perfect. So I was at Williams for about a
year and pretty early on twenty three. Yeah, pretty early
on I acknowledged that, to quote you, I was bort
out of my mind. It was so unstimulating in a

(30:15):
way that I was so shocked that, like I assumed
that it was going to be, as I said this,
like brilliant collaborative group of minds solving big problems in
an exciting way with a big budget, and like that
could have been really exciting. And maybe the teams that
were winning Renout was winning that year, and because they
were the leading team with all the exciting ideas, it
might have been a different experience if I'd ended up

(30:37):
in that team, but I didn't, and that, like Williams
wasn't a bad company to work for I just arrived
at the team at a time where it really didn't
suit my personality and I needed something that stimulated me more.
And I was sitting at a computer without engagement with
my brilliant teammates solving big problems in a really fun

(30:58):
and exciting way. I was staring at computer screen for
sixteen hours a day designing ideas that weren't my ideas.
And another team approached me and tried to head hunt me,
and I ended up confiding in of one of my
teammates and at Williams. Yes, he'd worked for this other
team at the start of his career, and he said,

(31:20):
look the experience I had there as a junior aerodynamicist.
They're a smaller team with lesser budgets, so you're more responsible.
You're responsible for a bigger area of things, and it
might be good for you from a learning perspective, But
by the time I got to that team, they were
performing even worse than Williams, and the culture in the
office was shocking. And it was really at that point

(31:43):
where you know, something that I've been working toward at
least since thirteen, if not having that obsession for earlier
than that, I'd defined myself by Formula one, like that
was my identity, and it was going I wanted to
be the first female technical director of an F one team,
and I'd planned out my entire career and my retirement
and I was going to be this incredible person to

(32:06):
change Formula one and it wasn't working out. Like do
you serve yourself for disappointment one hundred percent? That sums
it up. So I've defined myself. I've moved myself to
the other side of the world, away from the country.
I love the city, I love my family, my friends,
and I'm in a job sacrifice. Yeah, and I'm in

(32:26):
a job that ultimately I start to hate. But letting
go of that means letting go of the thing that
defines me and letting go of my purpose for.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Living full conflict, full conflict.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
So I stick it out, and I stick it out,
and then I end up moving into a Formula one
marketing role, which was kind of like my last gasp,
like my last hope in this And by then depression
had already sunk in an anxiety. I was having panic attacks,
but neither of them were diagnosed, and I just carried on.

(33:00):
And then eventually I like, and I think this goes
back to obsession rather than passion, which is another example
of how I'm an obsessive person. Having all of these
big things out of control in my life. Automatically, I
started to grab for the things that I could control
in my life, and that's what I ate and how

(33:20):
much exercise I did. And so the depression and anxiety
morphed into anorexia and I became incredibly unwell so and.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
In terms of food and training, yeah, overtrain, overrate, overtrain, underate.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
Like you're talking to an aerospace engineer. I had crazy spreadsheets.
I would weigh every morsel of food that I ate.
I had websites that i'd access to then calculate how
many calories I'd record that. I'd then record, you know,
how much exercise I'd done. I'd calculate, if I'm running
at this pace, how many calories will that burn. I
made sure that every day I had a deficit, like

(33:56):
I was essentially tracking my body like you would look
at the data on a Formula one car and I
was getting results because calorie.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Debta rewards well, results rewards you, so you got so
I got something good out of that without even knowing
about it, yeap.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
And like a result is my goal for today is
to be lighter on the scales tomorrow, and so if
I do X, Y and Z, that should happen. The
thing about anorexia is, and I guess our bodies like
you can't account for things like water retention or a
whole lot like you know, with females, you cycle like
a whole lot of stuff. And so sometimes you do

(34:36):
exactly what you did the day before, and you'd stand
on the scales and you were a bit heavier. But
because I descended below a weight where really you can
think rationally, and also I had depression and anxiety. Seeing
that number higher, to my engineering mind made no sense
and it would send me into a tail spin of
like panic and it was. It was terrible.

Speaker 1 (35:01):
I understand. I don't understand to that extent, but I
do understand obsession. You're talking to a person who's still
plots on a spreadsheet. What time the sun? The sun
doesn't rise, but let's call it sunrise, you know, whereas
on the horizon halfway between half below you know what

(35:23):
what I still does that I still do it. I
don't do sunrise and sunset anymore, I just do sunrise.
I love that, but but a I can do it
for me. But so I have to tell you I
used to spreadsheet that stuff.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
So in my brand new memoir Destination Moon, I write
when I'm in Paris about the light in Paris being unbeloved, different.
And because I was by this stage pursuing my baking career,
I was working at a bou lingerie and I would
walk to work as the sun was rising, and as
I was writing Destination, which is that day.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
Every day changed by the way, yes, thirty thirty five
second change each day, but it doesn't matter. Go on.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
So I wanted to know the eggs like it's something
like eighteen degrees when the sun reaches like eighteen degrees
above the horizon is classified exact sunrise.

Speaker 1 (36:15):
As opposed to the first light. There's a big difference.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Because yeah, yeah, yeah, So I actually remember I was
sitting in my little village in Tuscany writing the book.
I'm like, I want to know what the exact degree
of sunrise is. So I love the fact that you
PLoP that.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
I love that, but I use AI now, okay, because
it's much easier than it was. Just I don't have
to go and actually put it on a spreadsheet, but
and I actually do things to that, to that to
that rhythm. What do you do to that rhythm, Well, exercise, wake,
wake and exercise. So like dallat size, darlote saving foks

(36:47):
me up a bite. So this week I'm a little
bit all over the shop. But because we're recording this
during the daylight saving, we first week saving. But I
tried to expose myself to the first light because I
you know, I quite like the fact that the distribution
of light, particularly one particular part of the light which
is not visible to the eye, but it's six hundred

(37:10):
and fifty nanometers, which is the back part of your eyes.
The retina actually converts that light energy of those photons
into a certain chemical in your body, and it gives
you a certain feeling and it's very good for your
health mental health. Especially.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
I've been to Gwinana on the Gold Coast and every
morning you go out in time for sunrise, so your
eyes can look unfiltered at the sun. Because they never
described that to me. But it's a lovely feelings.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
About the distribution of light. So the ultra violet rays
which sit down the other end of the spectrum, compared
to the red rays which are down the shorter, the
shorter end.

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Of the spectrum, so these a longer race, so they're shorter.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
So there's six fifty meters, which is six and fifty
billionths of a meter. It's not very big. But the
ultra vile rays are much longer. They're twelve hundred there,
and they're more They're much more distributed at that time
of day because of the because of the axis of
the Earth, and it's a bit like if I shine

(38:15):
a torch on a on water, it spreads quite broadly.
And that's what happens at first, not a first light
at sunrise. I actually all sunrise because sun never rises,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
But I have the most random thing to tell you,
But I think you'll be interested in this. But this obsession,
by the way, yeah, another obsession. Another thing that I
write about is for three years in a row, I
was part of the World Solar Challenge and it wasn't
with the Australian team. The Dutch team from tu Delft
reached out to ask me to be on their support
crew and the first year that I was on the

(38:49):
support crew, they won, so it's a race that traverses
Australia from Darwin to Adelaide, and they smashed the record.
But they had read designed solar cells. So classically solar
cells are pyramid shaped and to get the maximum energy
from the sun, the sun had to be hitting it
perpendicular to the surface of the pyramid, and they designed

(39:12):
curved solar cells, so no matter what angle the ray
of light.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Was endicular, there was always eight parts of this perpendicular.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Very clever.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Yeah, that's interesting. Why did they think about doing one
that elevated or changed Maybe maybe because it's used power
to do that, but anyway, so that it's just move beyond. Sorry,
that was such a deviation obsessed Yeah, right, and the
obsession with your weight and was it about look or
just or was it just was it just about the measurements?

Speaker 2 (39:43):
It was about the number the measurements.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
Yeah, And it's very much an engineering trait by the way,
you know, because engineering is very much about measurement and geometry.
But measurement and geometry.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
They sort of go together, but it's about measurable progress,
which is one of my favorite things, like the idea
of getting even one percent better every day. If you're
like edging towards perfection. While you'll never get there, it's
it's still measurable progress, and an eating disorder tracks measurable progress.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Yeah, and so how did you get out of that disorder?
So what did you do?

Speaker 2 (40:18):
So I came home Mum, Dad, No, I I got
so sick in the UK.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
What's a sickness? Like, well, what happens? I mean, obviously
you lose a lot of weight, but what what is
the sickness? What are the symptoms?

Speaker 2 (40:32):
So, first of all, anorexia has the highest mortality rate
of any mental illness. It's not only like as you're
starving your body, you're obviously restricting nutrients to all your
internal main organs. But then the flip side of that
is suicide and it's a less like it's a lesser

(40:53):
known thing that anorexia is the worst of the mental illnesses.
From that perspective, symptoms are.

Speaker 1 (41:00):
Really feel sick and no energy.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
No energy, very sleepy, irritable mood like huge mood swings
forgetfull foggy. From a physical perspective, like it was the
winter in the UK when it all started, and I
just like stopped having feeling in my extremities my hands
and feet. My blood pressure went very low, my pulse
went very low, my hair started to thin out. When

(41:28):
I got really really bad, my skin got bad. And
I spoke to my doctor about that, and she said,
the only job your skin needs to do right now
is to hold everything together. It doesn't need to look good.
So it's just using the nutrients to like actually stay together.
It's an is it insiduous? Is that the right way?
It's an insidious disease. And all of this started to

(41:52):
happen to me when I was in the UK.

Speaker 1 (41:55):
How are you now? Ah? Thirty?

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Then No, I'd been in the UK for about three years,
so twenty six twenty seven. It got to the point
where my dad actually flew to the UK and brought
me home. And I first thought, I think we all
first thought that, you know, get me home. Feed I
didn't think this, I have to be clear. I think

(42:18):
everyone thought we'd get home, feeder up, feeder up, and
then she'll be okay. But food is only a symptom
that the issue is why did you start doing this?
And I think I understood that, like if one had
occupied this area of my brain that requires obsession, and
then When I let go of that, I just it

(42:41):
allowed the eating to disorder to just take over my brain.
And until I found another obsession to take its place,
I was probably going to die. I made this realization yesterday, actually,
that it was a ticking time bomb like I needed
to find I was going to keep losing weight, and
you know, either, I mean I did have moments where

(43:02):
I had suicidal thoughts. I've obviously never acted on it,
but and you know, by bone density wasn't very good.
Something was going to go wrong, so I needed to
find something before anorexiaor one. But the ironic thing, you
knew that I knew that, well, maybe subconsciously, I knew

(43:23):
that I was desperately seeking a new passion because it's
not a good feeling to be caught up in an
eating disorder. It's you know, it felt good to be
working towards this thing with Formula one. And although I
was trapped in the eating disorder and controlled by it,
it didn't make me feel happy or good. But the
ironic thing about an eating disorder is that all you

(43:44):
can think about all days food because you're starving your body,
and so every part of your body is sending signals
to your brain telling you to fuel it. And you
don't dream about boring food or like healthy food. You
dream about the thing that you really really love eating.
And my whole life, I've really loved baked goods.

Speaker 1 (44:02):
So as in bread and cross ons and.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
As in all of it, cakes, scones, biscuits. Like Mum
was a great baker when I was growing up, and
we'd come home from school and she'd always make something
beautiful for afternoon.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
At the moment I'm actually pretty hungry. You just have
to get a cart race not far from you.

Speaker 2 (44:21):
So yeah, Anyway, I think it sort of started this
obsession with baking myself when I was still living in
the UK, desperately unhappy at work, and I'd come home
from a really long day at work and I would,
you know, bake a brownie or a cake. And it's
when you think about baking compared to cooking, Baking is
very scientific. You know, you bring you have to weigh

(44:43):
out your ingredients perfectly, and then you have to follow
a method to the letter about how you incorporate the
ingredients and it relies on you know, temperature in an
oven and airflow exactly, and so for me, I'd get
home and I could live vicariously through the process of
bay without eating it. And then I'd take it into
work the following day and we'd know pause mid morning,

(45:05):
and everyone would gather around and we'd cut it up
and I wouldn't eat it, but I would live vicariously
through seeing how happy it made everyone else. And So
I came back to Australia like a twig, but with
this dream that maybe I wanted to pursue baking as
a career.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
You already had that thought.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, So the day I landed back in Australia at
like so unwell, I had an interview with a bakery
in Melbourne to just work as a counterhand. Like I'd
gone from being an aerospace engineer at a Formula One
team to like serving people at a local bakery in Melbourne.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
And how long did it take you before you worked out?
You started thinking to yourself, I can change this process.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
I can change the anorexia.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
No, no, I can change the process of the bakery.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Oh with croissants.

Speaker 1 (45:52):
Well, whatever you were doing working in this bakery, did
you I know people like similar to yourself.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Mark, I'm going to send you a copy of my
book after you cannot wait to change the process and
improve it.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, okay, faster, more efficient, more output, more productivity, better
take whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
So I was forty kilos at this point, I'm assuming
you understand bm my bam, I was like thirteen. Wow,
I for such an intelligent person, like I would cross
roads and like not even look left or right. I
would just Dad said there were several times where you

(46:29):
nearly just got cleaned up by a car. It would
terrify him when I'd go out for a walk. I
don't think I was thinking about improving the process at
this stage yet. This was like ground zero recovery.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
So the bottom about as low as you can.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Get, yeap, And it, honestly, it got a bit worse
before it started to get better. I think full recovery
back to a healthy weight where I could operate in
life again was probably about five years.

Speaker 1 (46:56):
When you say your mean function.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, and functioning like a high performing way because for me,
there's no other there's no other way. So I'm going
to tell you a quick story to explain to the
point where I started to see opportunity for improvement in
an existing industry. I'd borrowed this book from the library
about Paris potisseries.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
Got at home, White Parises.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Well, I was baking. I talked myself into a job
at this beautiful local cafe to do their baking every morning.
But we were doing pretty simple stuff like biscuits and cakes,
and while it was fun, I knew that my brain
needed something more challenging to feel really fulfilled with what
I was doing. And I was starting to research French

(47:43):
pastry a bit more because it's highly technical. So I
borrowed this book about French partisseries. Got at home, sat
on the floor, flipped the book open randomly, and there's
this beautiful, zoomed in double page photo of Panoshchokola stacked
up on a counter. And I was so wowed and
enamored by this photo that I walked back up to

(48:04):
the shops where the library was, but into the flight
center and I booked myself a ticket to Paris.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
It sounds like you're going to the next version of Williams.
I was formula one it literally and in terms of yeah,
that's exactly what it was.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
So I went to Paris, and on my last day
in Paris, I went to the boul Lingerie where the
photo had been taken and it's like it's a pastry wonderland.
It's one of the most beautiful places in Paris, definitely
one of the best croissants. I was hypnotized by the experience,
and the following day I sent an email. Like I

(48:37):
did with the F one teams, I sent an email
to the owner of the Boull Lingerie asking if he
would take me on as an apprentice, just so bold
now thinking about it like this like your hand, yeah chance,
Like if you don't ask, you don't get So he
replied to me within an hour and said, well, yeah,
he's like I wouldn't normally because you don't speak French,

(48:59):
you have no experience, like I don't even know if
you've got a visa everything. But he said, for some reason,
I can see the same passion and motivation in you
that drives me. So yes, when would you like to start?
So I get this like I get the Williams F
one version of the bakery offer. And a few months
later I moved back to Paris and we initially agreed
to do a one month stars which would I guess

(49:21):
assess my level of viability longer term in the business.
And suddenly I find myself in the Formula one kitchen
of the baking world. Like this bakery was so highly technical.
They had this huge marble bench on the first floor
that was like chilled from beneath with the fridges, so

(49:42):
the bench was already cool. When you roll out the pastry.
It had blast chillers and this like laminator that looked
like the Ferrari of the Laminador world. And it was amazing.
And I get to work in this place and suddenly
I'm making pastry that's so highly technical. It's three days
to make it from start to finish. And now my

(50:02):
weight's starting to come up a little bit. I'm starting
to regain the ability of like rational and critical thought.
And again, kind of like those mechanics with the Formula
three team, I wasn't allowed to do a lot, but
I was allowed to observe, and I watched Sebastian, the
head chef, and I was thinking, like, why did you
do it like that? Because I think it could be
better or more perfect, or more accurate or faster if

(50:26):
you did it like that. So this is where the
critical thinking really starts to come to think. Yeah, so
I came back to Australia. My money was running out.
A stage is an unpaid internship, and you can't really
live in Paris with no money. And I came back
to Melbourne with the view to maybe carrying on my
education in croissants in a bakery in Melbourne. And so
I started this obsessive tour around Melbourne's bakeries to try

(50:49):
and find a croissant that was anywhere near as good
as what we'd been making in Paris. And it just
didn't exist. And so then I had this light bulb moment, Well,
I know everything there is to know about croissants after
my one month in Paris, so maybe I'll start the business.
So lun was born.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
So what what? Just what is it about? Like you
see all sorts of I've seen all sorts of cross ons,
and I do love cross ons when I've had them
in France, but I ordinarily wouldn't buy him here, but
I have bought your ones. What is it? What? What
is what is the what is it? The MESA cross
on really good?

Speaker 2 (51:26):
I love that you asked that because I'm really onto
my hot topic now. I feel like the first time
I had a cross on in Paris, I had this experience,
and it formed the blueprint for me of what a
truly exceptional croissant should be.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
This is this is just a playing cross on.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
This is just a traditional croissant.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Nothing on top like you guys do no, but like.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
The traditional loon croissant is my favorite anyway, I think
it's also the foundation of every product on our council
g Og.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
So this first cross on I had in Paris, which
wasn't actually from the place that I did the Stars at,
it was relatively fresh out of the oven, like when
I picked up the bag and they gave it to me,
the bag was still warm, and then when I opened
the bag there was just this overwhelming scent of beautiful
cultured butter, like butter like I'd never experienced with a

(52:19):
croissant before. So the products was literally a celebration of
the butter that it had been made with. And it
was quite big, but it was the bag was really light.
I'm like, this is a big pastry, but it feels
quite light and you take a bite into it and
the outer layer shatters and it doesn't It's not tiny
little flakes. It's like beautiful, big curved shards of like

(52:41):
crunchy buttery pastry. But then the internals of it are
so light that it's like butter air as well as layers.
It's like more air than it is dough. And it's
just this thing of beauty that like you finish it
and you don't feel full, but you feel so perfectly
satisfied by this perfect thing that you've eaten. That to

(53:03):
me is a perfect cross on.

Speaker 1 (53:05):
And when you say butter, because it's funny people talk
to me. You were talking. You just mentioned then the
experience you had eating this cross on and I immediately
were all the same in terms of memory, especially when
it comes to food. I remember once my family's Greek.
Once I was in Greece is like a lot, like

(53:25):
a million years ago. I was twenty five, so that's
how long ago it was. Was it was forty five
years ago. So I was in and they had a
little bakery. It didn't make crossants, but they make it.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
But Greek bakery's amazing.

Speaker 1 (53:36):
And it's on the island of Idra, which is very
close to the mainland, and it's not there any that.
The heart is there, but the baker's not there anymore
because I tried it out. But I have the same memory.
It was six in the morning going down to this
thing that've been baking since probably two am. And the

(53:56):
thing was warm. What was it? It was a boogatza,
which is it's a It was a savory buogutza. The
booguts can be sweet or savory. And it's only the
only in those days, only bacon at a certain time
of year, which is to celebrate the the festival, our lady.

(54:17):
It's in August, generally in August, and and the boogutza
was a I got a savory one.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
It was.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
It's sort of like a cheese, but a sweet cheese inside.
I don't know what it's made from, but I have
this memory, and and it's about the taste, the smell
of the bakery, the smell of the thing I bought,
the weight of it also, and it was also the crunch.
And it's interesting you took me back to a time.
I can remember the morning that I first tasted and

(54:46):
therefore when every single morning was was on that island and.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Only one of these things. Now, this sounds amazing.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Booboo guts and you don't get them, you don't see it,
but a lot of people make them now all year round,
but they're they're not made. It'd been some old artist
and the guys will be dead by now. But it
was my ardors and go. It was making these things
that imprinted something on my mom. Did imprint something on
your mind?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (55:06):
To such an extent that I must try to reproduce
my version of this. Yes.

Speaker 2 (55:11):
And so I get back to Australia. I signed the
lease on a tiny shop already. Well no, no, no,
So I mean I'm carrying on from the story earlier.
Where come back? And I've done my tour around Melbourne.
Can't find a bakery, find a shop, sign the lease,
think about a business name?

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Loon? What was the fascination with moon?

Speaker 2 (55:31):
Oh? Well, obviously my book's called Destination Moon. The first
chapter details how even from a very very young age,
I've been obsessed with the moon. And when I was
very bad with asthma when I was young. To get
me to go to bed, the only way I would
do it is if Mum and Dad took me outside
to say good night to the moon. And like still

(55:52):
to this day, if I'm out and I can see
the moon at night, or like say good night to him,
I think it's a hymn, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
And what'd you call lune?

Speaker 2 (56:00):
So that's the friend that Okay. So when I was
working in Formula one, my boyfriend, who was also an aerodynamicist,
we went for our one year anniversary to Bruges, which
is the.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Home of Tintin. As in Belgium, Ye, the comic Tintin.
It was a very famous as a German TV show, Tintin.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
No, it's Belgian, Belgian, is it ye? So they had
this beautiful, very.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Famous, very famous star on television. But it was a dog, yeah,
Snowy Snowy. But then Tintin was Snowy's owner, and I
think it was a bit of a I don't know.
I didn't fully follow it, but we went into the
Tintin shop and right in the window there was a
poster and it was a poster of a rocket about
to take off from the desert, and all the scaffolding

(56:43):
was around it, and Tintin and Snowy were in this
jeep bouncing towards it, and the title of the poster
was objective Loon, which in French translates to destination Moon.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
And I was so captivated. Sorry, I was so captivated
by this poster that my boyfriend bought it for me
and brought it home to England and had it framed.
And by this stage I'm already coming home from work
and baking at night. And he'd been joking that I
should open a cafe and he said to me, if
you ever opened a cafe, you should call it objective loon. Now,
objective loon is not particularly catchy, but loon is. And

(57:17):
then when I started to think about it, like loon
means moon in French and croissants are crescent moon shaped. Yeah,
and I studied aerospace engineering and fell in love with
the early space race during my university years. And then
thinking all the way back, for my whole life, I've
had to say good night to the moon every night
and for me, and also croissants are French and loon

(57:39):
is a French word, and for me, it just felt
like the business couldn't be called anything else.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
It sounds comforting, Yeah, it's also a nice way to say,
it's quite comforting that the story sits around it.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
Yeah, I think I'm someone and I'm only realizing this now.
I really love a full circle moment. And for me
that like in that where you describe comforting, it feels
like it ties back to everything. So yeah, for me,
maybe it was that opportunity to bring all of these
important things in my life together in one little business,

(58:11):
the important emotions.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
And it's quite interesting for someone who's an engineer and
who probably thinks in a engineering process, there's there's a
lot of emotion around you. It may well have actually
been responsible for you getting unwell, and may but also

(58:34):
maybe where you are, where you land it today may
be responsible responsible for getting you well.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Yeah, I think I think you've actually just summed up
the core theme of my book, Well done, don't read it.
That's that's actually it. It's this idea that perfectionism and obsession,
when applied for good can have very powerful positive impact.
But then on the flip side, when used in a

(59:01):
negative way, you can have a very detrimental, very detrimentally.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
But that's quite binary. So it's it's not maybe this
or maybe.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
That is No, it's not that or that. Yes, it's
one or the other.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
It's good or bad. It's it's like, how have you
applied It's not it's not you know, there's nothing gray
in there.

Speaker 2 (59:22):
No, it's probably not a gray area.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Very mathematical, you know, like it's zero or one.

Speaker 2 (59:30):
Yeah, yeah, you're right, Yeah, very mathematical.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
So least, okay, I'm done to know about how do
you design? I can only tell you what I've seen.
So the crosslands you have in your store probably most
people center, but they're all beautifully designed and sort of

(59:55):
quite exotic looking, apart from the OG the original one,
the rest of us sort of and they just make
you want to eat them. I'll buy one of those,
and I buy one of those. A bit of trama
of those, because I don't know what any of them
tastes like, but I can just look at him. I'm thinking, well,
that looks interesting. That looks interesting, that looks interesting. Where
did the design process come from? What was that idea?

(01:00:17):
What's that thinking?

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
The design process? I'm going to use an analogy I think.
I don't know if you've been to our now what
I would call the flagship store in Melbourne. It wasn't
where I originally started Loon, but then to bring you
up to speed quickly, after about a year and a half,
my brother joined me in the business and he's been

(01:00:40):
instrumental in helping me grow it. So we outgrew the
initial space very quickly, and then we moved into this
four hundred square meter turn of the century warehouse and
we built a bakery that it was unlike any bakery
on earth. We put a huge glass cube right in
the center of it, and we climb it, controlled it,
and became the raw Pastry kitchen where we made the

(01:01:02):
raw croissant pastry, which meant that chefs working in the
kitchen could be in the heart of the customer area
and enjoy the customers eating eating the pastries and enjoying them.
And it also meant that the customers could watch how
much care and attention and detail was being put into
the pastries. Like, you know, when I first started Loon,
some people would say to me, oh, so do you
just get up in the morning and whip up a

(01:01:23):
batch of croissants. I'm like, no, I started them three
days ago. But for me and for Cam designing Loan,
like this was the opportunity to showcase just how difficult
it is to make a croissant. Well, so when we
ll probably properly, yeah, thank you. So when we were
presented with this empty, you know, one hundred year old factory,

(01:01:45):
we could have thought about it from a beautiful design perspective,
or we could have thought about it from like, how
can we make this how can we engineer this space
to best serve the people in it, to make the
croissants the best that they can.

Speaker 1 (01:02:00):
Also showcased at the same time, well did you showcase it?

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Yeah, But we weren't really thinking about it like that.
We were thinking about like Cam and I were the
ones making the croissants at the time, and we didn't
want to be stuck in a room with out windows
out the back. We kind of wanted to be in
the thick of it, and so for us, we kind
of designed the room that the glass climate controlled room
for ourselves and then had this moment a little bit

(01:02:23):
later being like, that's going to be really cool for
people to be able.

Speaker 1 (01:02:26):
To watch it hily immersive.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
But then when we thought about the layout of this space,
I mean, we didn't need four hundred square meters to
make croissants. We went from twenty square meters to four hundred,
So it was excessive, but it gave us this open
plan to design the perfect flow for making croissant pastry.
So we thought about every single step in that three
day process engineered. Yeah, and how the journey that the

(01:02:50):
pastry moves from from the dough being made to the
croissants finally being pulled out of the oven, and like
what is that perfect journey for the pastry and also
the people that work with it. And you know, we
didn't have a huge amount of money, so we were like, Okay,
we've got this beautiful old warehouse. We need to maximize
our spend on bakery equipment. So we really designed that
space for perfect function. But when you watch people working

(01:03:15):
in a space that was designed with them in mind
and their ease of work and their efficiency, suddenly the
space becomes very beautiful in its form. And to go
back to talking about the croissants, Yeah, I mean some
of our garnishes are maybe elaborate and for design, but really,

(01:03:36):
when we think about designing a new pastry, we think
about the eating experience and when someone takes a bite,
are they going to get a little bit of each element?
How do they work with each other, what's the flavor?
What's the experience?

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
So it's really so it's not about it's not about
the physical or like they of it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
No, it's about the whole experience. Of eating it, and
I think, I mean, you know, I've got a team
now at Loon of nearly three hundred people. We've got
an executive team of fifteen people, and we all every
day come to work thinking is there something that we
can be doing better, really applying that engineering mindset and

(01:04:18):
giving everyone in the organization the agency to impact positively
the business if they have an idea. And I think
this is a nice full circle moment that's coming back
to the opposite of my experience of working in Formula one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Teamwork, proper team work.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Yeah, if a kitchen hand comes up to us and says,
this job that you've had me doing for the past
three weeks, I actually think there's a more efficient way
we can do it, or a better way, or a
cheaper way without affecting the product quality. We allow them
to present to us, tell us how you're going to
test it, what you're going to look for, and if
you can prove that it is better, then that will
become the new process.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
Give an opportunity. Do you do coilabs with people like
Messine or etc. We do. Yeah, if you're doing a nick.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
We haven't done a Massina one yet, but now he's
got shadow baking. I'm sure the idea of him. I
love shadow baking as well. They also Flow, who's one
of the owners, did a couple of years with us
and he's an incredible pastry chef, so to have him
at the Helm.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Is But there's a different type of pastry what they
do a shadow No, they do croissant pastry as well.
Cross to recall, they've got breads and like yours. Really
just no.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
I think we might be the only business in the
world that I know of that every product on our
counter is made from croissant pastry. You know, we don't
have a donut or a briar sure cookie. It's all croissants.
And that was very That was very thought out and
specific on my behalf, because when I came back from
France and I did my obsessive bakery tour, I learned

(01:05:49):
that there were three types of bakeries. Pastries were good
and bread was average, or bread was good and pastries
were average, or everything was average. And if I was
going to start a business, I only wanted everything to
be the best that it could possibly be on the counter,
and bread and croissants require very different environments for them.
To be made the best way possible. And I had

(01:06:10):
like a twenty square meter kitchen, and I'd fallen in
love with the Corossant in Paris. Anyway, I already knew
that that was the one that I wanted to innovate
and to try and perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
I love bread. Can you fall in love with bread
and make really good bread? Because I'm not. I really
love bread. I just love bread.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
I mean I love bread and butter, bread and olive oil.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
All of me. But I like olive oil. Yeah, not
from Greece, but I actually if it's from Greece. I
got one particular olive oil I love from Greece. It's
called wild olive and it actually comes from wild olive
trees in Greece. And I know that Evan Caravens, who
imports or he produce it. He's Australian from Melbourne actually,

(01:06:51):
but I do think Australian olive oil is some some
of the best olive oil in the world. In fact,
we're just about to do a testing process of olive.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Oils around sometime next week. I'm willing to help out
good bread and olive oil.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
You must just on things like bad. Would you consider
going into other areas outside of crossponse. That's a request.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
It's actually not a question, it's a request. I there
are some things that I've come across in the last
few years. Actually I've already done it. Not bread. But
I went to New York for the first time in
twenty seventeen, a year after The New York Times had
written the article that really made Lune globally.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
Fa gradulation because that's pretty hard to get.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Yes, it was really like a mop me up from
the floor from my puddle that I've just melted because
the New York Times have written about Lune. And I
had dinner with the journalists who wrote the article, and
he said, if you eat anything in New York, you
have to go to Daily Provisions and have a crueler
crueler or a craller. I'm not one hundred percent sure
of a disronunciation. It's shoe pastry, like normally what a

(01:07:55):
profiterole or a claire would be. But it's piped with
a star nozzle in a ring a donut and it's
deep fried. And honestly, I went to Daily Provisions the
next day and I ordered a maple glazed cruler and
my life was changed, similar to that moment of having
a croissant for the first time in Paris.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Well, we can see another business.

Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Yeah, it's it's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
It's for you. Yeah, you're doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:19):
So No. In twenty twenty one, Cam and I, you're
doing it already, we opened Moon.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
So it's like Lune's little sister.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
I've seen Loon, but I haven't seen Moon.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
So Moon only operates on a Saturday and Sunday out
of out where our office is in Melbourne at the moment,
but we're getting ready to open its first ever permanent
store in the city. And I also haven't really seen
a business that just specializes in crulers and.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
A lot of Bella cruel. I've never heard of.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
A cereubl Ei.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Okay, I'm gonna be looking out for that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
If you come to Melbourne, meet me or meet you
at Moon, It's they're like one fresh out of the
fryer with the vanilla glaze on. It is. It's like
childhood levels of excitement happiness.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
It's pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:09:04):
I love that. So just at less around it all off,
if talk about full circle right off, full circle, has
anyone ever reached out to you and said, Hey, Kate,
I'm a patry chef and I'm dying to many nineteen
years of age, and I live in London and I'd
love to come and work for your great business loan.

(01:09:26):
Have you had that experience yet?

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Yeah? Countless times?

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Oh really.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
And there have been several people that we've welcomed into
loun and they've done stags And there have been some
people that have come and done a few weeks and
they've loved it so much that they've stayed on and
worked for us. It does feel like a pay it forward.
Maybe it's pay it back for Yeah, I think I am.
I'm incredibly grateful to the opportunity that Christoph gave me

(01:09:52):
because that month in Paris really defined for me that
turning point in my illness where I got that new
thing to latch onto and obsession that pulled me out
of the anorexia and gave me something very hopeful to
work towards again.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
And you're well, completely well now or do you have
to still manage this?

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Yeah? I think eating disorders are kind of like maybe alcoholism,
where you reach a point of sobriety, but then you're
constantly required to manage that. There have been moments in
the last fifteen years where I dip into a very
stressful period and I start to go down that path
of using eating an exercise to control. But I can

(01:10:32):
catch myself and like now, I know it. I know
I can sense when it's coming, and I just have
to put mechanisms in place to look after myself. But yeah,
it's a there's Once you've had an eating disorder, you'll
never not have an eating disorder. But I do enjoy
food again.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
And I'd love you to comment on this if you
wouldn't mind. But everyone sort of freaks out about obsession
or having obsessive characteristic, but maybe you could just give
a commentary on this one last thing. If you understand,
this is obsession approaching me now, and I'm going to

(01:11:13):
use obsession to get this outcome. But when I've got there,
I've got When I've got that outcome, I'm going to
put it in a box and just park it over
there and grab it again when I need it. In
other words, using the emotion to your benefit. Is that
something that you feel as though you're able to do,
and if so, how important is that for you to

(01:11:35):
be successful because you've been successful in everything you've done,
including overcoming obsession.

Speaker 2 (01:11:40):
It is it is crucial to me. I think, ah,
I think it's my superpower. And from having the eating disorder,
I can now spot when I use obsession in a
negative way, and as I said, I can catch it
in and that can be in multiple forms. But I

(01:12:04):
don't think I would have had success without that very
strong personality trait. It's been one hundred percent crucial to
making me who I am.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
Therefore, people who worry about it having obsessive it's only
disorder when you can't control it. So therefore, if you
can recognize that trait within yourself and harness its.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Actually there's this one perfect way I can sum it up.
Based on being very vulnerable about the eating disorder. I
have a lot of people, whether it be parents or
people who are suffering from one themselves, reaching out. And
I learned when I was going through it that it's
very important not to say the wrong person to someone

(01:12:53):
suffering from an eating disorder, because it can set them
back significantly. And now the one thing that I say,
which I one hundred percent believe, if we are stubborn
and determined and strong enough and obsessive enough to get
us that sick to like restrict like daily human need

(01:13:17):
of food, then we are strong enough to get ourselves
out of it and do anything else, and do anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:13:23):
So, in other words, and I think it's a good
place to finish this off, Kate, is that that thing
that got you into the hole is actually superpower if
you know how to manage it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
And it's probably the thing that got me out of
the hole again and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Got you and got you to where you are now
in terms of your success.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Yes, absolutely, k Read.

Speaker 1 (01:13:43):
Thanks very much. That was awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):
Thank you