Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me Elliot Moss, good morning, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Maya Moufarek, founding COO of Pharmacy2U; the NHS approved online pharmacy and founder of her own growth consultancy called Marketing Cube. Multi-cultural and multi-lingual, with her father French Lebanese and her mother Russian, Maya refers to her time working with fast-growing companies, Cisco, Google and Not on the High Street and with American Express, as a learning playground – that’s nice isn’t it – managing partnerships, marketing and product development and as the founding CMO of Pharmacy2U, Maya digitised the UK healthcare industry, bringing repeat prescription management online – very important to me and many others, I know. Under her leadership they delivered a 15% saving to the NHS in medication costs and became the largest online pharmacy with half a million subscribers. And in 2019 she did it, she founded her own thing called Marketing Cube, a growth consultancy for innovative start-ups – we hope they were innovative – and scale-ups and Maya has since guided hundreds of tech founders to build their brands towards profitable, scalable growth. Sounds good. Hello.
Maya Moufarek
Hi, thanks for having me.
Elliot Moss
It’s an absolute pleasure. 2019 was when you set this business up. I’m amazed you waited that long to do your own thing completely, why?
Maya Moufarek
I mean Pharmacy2U was my own thing, I think, we, we didn’t start from scratch but it definitely felt like my thing.
Elliot Moss
Did it?
Maya Moufarek
With my partner, yeah, absolutely, with my partner’s Mark and Gary, it was just a, it was my very first baby is the way I feel about this and so it’s really great to see it go out in the world and be the third largest pharmacy in this country and doing so well and doing so, so much good in the tech, health tech kind of world in the UK. But 2019, erm, I had my daughter, I wanted to kind of start doing other things and really I wish I was, had a grand plan that was ‘I will start my own thing and it will be a growth consultancy’. It didn’t really pan out this way, it was very much went back, you know speaking to founders, seeing what’s going on, figuring out whether my next move might be, what other business I might be working with, starting, and I was faced by the stark realisation and like firsthand experience of why CMOs are the, you know, the shortest tenure and the C-Suite.
Elliot Moss
Chief Marketing Officer.
Maya Moufarek
Chief Marketing Officer, yeah.
Elliot Moss
For those that don’t know.
Maya Moufarek
Which is a year plus or something is the average tenure of a, of Chief Marketing Officers in businesses. Because founders don’t really properly value it, understand it but also if they don’t understand the, the growth paths in front of them, they’re not hiring the right CMOs and so if you’re a mismatch, it’s just never going to work. And so the moral with having those, those conversations with founders, the more basically we would agree to the fact that why don’t I figure out what that growth path might look like for you, what foundations you need to put in place, let’s do that together and then I’ll help you hire the right CMO. I think my kind of most successful case study from day one was with a business called YU Life, a life ventures company that as Sammy the Founder says, “We want to celebrate life”, not what life insurance is supposed to protect you from. And so I did that, that bit with them, loved it, helped them hire Lauren who is leading brilliantly their marketing organisation today and so that just became my first path into what pre, that was pre-pandemic, the world fractional was not exactly a word that was heavily used but that was my first starting point of having a bit of this fractional career, I guess, in building my growth consultancy and then with my Pharmacy2U exit I was very keen to put back into the ecosystem in the UK and so I started angel investing, knew nothing about that, learned about that and then eventually board roles and other roles came through and so I have a ‘portfolio career’ as they call it apparently now so, that’s my mix.
Elliot Moss
Lots of stuff going on, let’s just talk, I mention, I mentioned the accent. Where were you born?
Maya Moufarek
I was born in Russia in the ‘80s. My Lebanese dad was running a French business under the umbrella of the French Embassy overseas and that was Communist Russia back then, and I went to the French Embassy school there, that was kind of my, I was a bilingual kid, Russian-French was my beginning. And then with the Perestroika my dad started feeling not completely safe for us.
Elliot Moss
This is late ‘80s now, ’88, ’89 Perestroika.
Maya Moufarek
Yeah, ’90, early ‘90s, yeah and so he asked to be, to move to France with the business he was running that had a headquarters in France.
Elliot Moss
And you were hold at that point?
Maya Moufarek
I was ten. I was ten. It was kind of first cultural shock it’s weird to say but to some extent you know you’re going to French school, you’re fully fluent, you have been hanging out with French kids but it’s a very different life to be an ex-pat versus being kind of back into I think even just a, the national educational system in the country to be honest and also I remember vividly my first day, it was also my first day in high school and they were like where are you from, like what school were you in? I was like I was in Moscow and it was like where’s that, like, because they were expecting like this cool name from the neighbourhood but yeah, so it was, it was not the easiest transition but definitely one that kind of was formative in resilience.
Elliot Moss
You know, I studied Russian politics as part of my, my degree which I have always been fascinated with it and Perestroika and glasnost were, if you know, will be restructuring and openness and all those other things. As a ten year old, were you aware that these were ‘good things’ to be happening in Russia and I know that’s a lot to ask of you now but was there a sense of whilst it may have changed for your family, there were things happening which were beneficial? Because I think about you and your career and you’re often looking at good stuff, you’re often looking at, you know you seem to be someone who sees the bigger, the bigger patterns, I wonder if even if looking back you can go ‘hmm’.
Maya Moufarek
Yeah, I mean, you know as a ten year old what I remember is, you know neighbours getting stuff ready to go support people who were basically pitching the White House in Russia and so very much supportive of that change, but similarly you know I also could see within my Russian family and just generally what’s happening in the streets for people that life wasn’t particularly easy and so I think it’s just this balancing of you know change comes with hardship at the end of the day and I think absolutely, I think it was an understanding that things needed to change and I could see the stark contrast from our travels in other countries versus what was happening in Russia and you know, a few years later when my cousins who are ten years younger than me, you know would land jobs with PWC and you know really make a great living and travel like, for me that was just the closest to home of how different their life is now than what it would have been if that change hadn’t happened so, you know I, yeah, absolutely I think that was, it wasn’t particularly, you know there was massive debates in the household that I participated in but that’s the, my memories from that time.
Elliot Moss
And being an immigrant, having that movement around the world and being kind of always feeling like a little bit of an outsider maybe, has that been good for you? Is that one of your, if you were a brand Maya, and I will come onto ask you to define what your brand stands for, where does the outsider, immigrant bit fit into your brand model?
Maya Moufarek
You know, really, I think my multi-cultural background had taught me that really your difference is your superpower and once I managed to embrace that, I think everything becomes much easier. Yes, I’m different, you know take it or leave it kind of thing.
Elliot Moss
I love that.
Maya Moufarek
Honestly, because like at some point like I’m not going to spend my life convincing people of the value of that and so, and I know the value that it gives me I think it’s just a, and even beyond what I was you know luckily provided with by life and where I was born, I always sought additional exposure, I wanted to see more things, I wanted to be exposed to more topics and I think realistically that’s why I so enjoy what I’m doing today because no day is the same and constantly different and there’s no, you know monotony and you always need to kind of fit the, think on your feet so I do think that that’s kind of what really contributed a lot to the rest of my experience and people are like ‘oh it’s great, you speak so many languages’ but it’s not really about the languages, it’s about your ability to understand many different perspective, you can agree with them or not but at least have some kind of empathy to why those people might feel this way or believe such things and that, and then I think it’s invaluable and you know, without going to philosophic about this, I think peace in the world will only come once we start connecting better, so.
Elliot Moss
Vote for Maya Moufarek, she is my Business Shaper today and you’re right. Much more coming up from her in a couple of minutes. Right now, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing – you know I think that’s a great idea. In this clip we hear from Tariq Rauf, architect and founder and CEO – that’s a lot of titles isn’t it – of Qatalog, a digital work hub aiming to give people a radically simpler way to co-ordinate work.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is Maya Moufarek – it’s a great sounding name by the way, I sound like Donald Trump, ‘great sounding name’ – founding CMO of Pharmacy2U – I really don’t sound like him – the NHS approved online pharmacy and founder of the growth consultancy, Marketing Cube. He is an incredible marketeer, whether you like him or not, I mean the power of communication, the power of persuasion, it’s your thing. How did it become your thing?
Maya Moufarek
It became my thing because I think I was always really interested in psychology and I never did a degree in psychology and I then suddenly realised that as I started to study marketing and be very interested and you know, how you convince people to do something or how do you support a change, I guess, with communication that it was, at the end of the day, it all came back to people psychologically and if you don’t understand it, then you can’t make that work and so that’s very much I think how, how I realised that that was my thing.
Elliot Moss
Do you think it was also your thing because you were in so many different cultures? Like you talked about perspectives before, was it that sense of having to work out the lay of the land because, ‘Okay Maya, you’re in a new situation here, what’s cooking?’. Was it that as well?
Maya Moufarek
It was, I think what, what I tend to say is you know, to be a good marketer you have to have empathy. If you don’t have empathy, you can’t understand your audience, you can’t, you know, engage with them and so you know, I tend to say in my angel investing even, I invest with empathy to the audience that they’re serving or the problem they’re trying to solve. I think empathy is where it’s coming from and yes, I think the, the more you see and the more you try to connect with the world, the more you develop that muscle.
Elliot Moss
My title is ‘Chief Brand Officer’ so, and remarkably I’ve been with Mishcon de Reya for fifteen and a half years and I keep going, we keep reinventing, we keep saying ‘this is what brand is’. What, how would you define ‘brand’? Because I’m not going to give you my definition, unless it’s just the same as yours.
Maya Moufarek
Well, for me, brand is really what they say when you’re not in the room, what your customers say to their friends, their family, it’s not what you say your brand is, that’s very much what it is and so, often when I speak to people who are not very familiar with a brand, I tend to say like you have to start small fires and let those fire kind of build up on their own and they build up by what people say about you and eventually you kind of end up at Nike level, right, but it doesn’t, it’s, it’s not an infinite amount of marketing or media or anything like that, it’s very much building that community and I think it’s, where social media has become more of an understanding that it does start with a community and people talking to each other because now you have kind of a digital space where that can happen but it had always worked like that even before social media existed.
Elliot Moss
So, if I’m a founder of a business, and you work with many of them, and I’ve got this incredible widget and then I say to you “but I, it just kind of works, Maya, I mean really, what’s this rubbish called brand, just, it’s a good product, it sells at the right price”. What’s the general gist of the conversations you have with people and I imagine a lot just come and say, “but I’ve done my product market fit, I know it works, why do I need this thing called brand?” What’s your response?
Maya Moufarek
So, first of all, the great news is, if their product work, that’s already a great starting point.
Elliot Moss
Good start, yeah.
Maya Moufarek
Because no amount of marketing will fix a bad product, right, like, so that’s the you know first check, foundation in place, product is working. The next one really, you know, build it and they’ll come, like a lot of Silicon Valley used to say, it’s not really a strategy, no amount of extraordinary innovation or quality product is worth anything if no one knows about it, right, and that doesn’t mean that you have immediately to go on TV or do billboards, what it really means is, how do you facilitate that, you know, being shared but most importantly, beyond even thinking of who is it for, it’s like at what moment does someone really need that? And so, for example, at Pharmacy2U, you know it was all about like these frustrations of patients having basically to do their own health concierging, right, like call and this is you know 2010, right, so you’re like call your GP, ask for a repeat, then go and wait at the, you know, wait for that appointment, go and get the paper, go to the pharmacy, they don’t have what you need etc, and but the reality, the stark moment where they’re sitting at this GP practice, waiting for an appointment that they don’t want just to pick up a piece of paper, is really where the frustration is and they’re like there must be a better way but they’re convinced there’s not, right, and so we started basically realising that GP surgeries do sell this space in there in these GP surgeries because they are businesses at the end of the day and they need to make money with everything they have available and so that’s where we started putting some communication, you know, a billboard with a little leaflet about like, ‘you don’t need to be here, sign up here, we’ll take care of it’.
Elliot Moss
So in one word, what was the brand for Pharmacy2U, if you would define?
Maya Moufarek
Oh, it was your prescription taken care of, like that’s, that was really because the problem is people were being some kind of health concierge to themselves, with no value add whatsoever.
Elliot Moss
Yeah. And yours? One word.
Maya Moufarek
My personal?
Elliot Moss
Your personal brand, Maya.
Maya Moufarek
Um, interesting.
Elliot Moss
Here in the hot seat. It’s Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. What’s going to happen next?
Maya Moufarek
Um, well, my, my personal is very much around empathy, resilience and innovation.
Elliot Moss
She took three there, but you can.
Maya Moufarek
Oh sorry. That’s okay, well.
Elliot Moss
No, that’s good. Empathy, resilience…
Maya Moufarek
…and innovation.
Elliot Moss
There you go. Stay with me for much more from my empathetic, resilient and persuasive Business Shaper, it’s Maya Moufarek and she’s the founder of Marketing Cube and she also, before doing the whole Pharmacy2U thing, which was a reinvention of the category as it were, you were a Google person and there are many Google alumnus that come out and do amazing things in the world. Why is that true?
Maya Moufarek
I mean I, I’ve started referring to my Google days as really the best MBA I could have ever had. When I left Google, there was a consideration of doing an MBA because I, you know, I thought that was the right thing to do as kind of this you know, good first experience to do that and then very quickly realised that Google was my MBA and my network because I only knew the Googlers who were in because I was so early on and then very quickly we all kind of started spreading around and that became my network. I mean, Google is a different place now obviously, it’s you know a much bigger engine, I joined, there was maybe 4000 of us and left when there was 25,000 of us.
Elliot Moss
2005, you joined, 2011, you left.
Maya Moufarek
That’s right, yeah, yeah, and it was just…
Elliot Moss
Twenty years ago.
Maya Moufarek
I know.
Elliot Moss
That’s ridiculous. Where did that go?
Maya Moufarek
I know.
Elliot Moss
But it was the frontier wasn’t it.
Maya Moufarek
It was the frontier, it was, it was very much you know, there was more work than we had people to do, so you always could you know work on what you really were excited about. For me, it was very special because it was a very diverse crowd and so I, you know for the first time it felt like I was actually not the odd one out, I was just one of many odd ones out, which was really great. A lot of international people, a lot of different backgrounds. A very energising place so, I, I have the best memories from, from that time, you know, it was really the, the frontier of, or consumer marketing, of digital…
Elliot Moss
But the energy, the energy is what I’m interested in, that sense of you know you work and invest in lots of start-ups, you, that’s what you do, how did they create the culture that worked that drove Google for so many years? And what was it about the culture that was special that you take away and you go, ‘look I know things are different, I know that was the time then but here’s some things I learned from Google that we absolutely should be doing?’.
Maya Moufarek
I mean the default was you know, default to action. Like, it wasn’t about talking about things or planning for things, it was just getting it done and getting it done well obviously, but there was a constant default to action, you were as good as your last project, your last delivery and so everything was moving fast and everyone was going in the same direction though, there was very, clarity on, I call it must win battles now, like corporate must win battles, what are we working on, what are we focussed on, you know from corporate all the way down and most of us, especially in that time, maybe it’s different now, could really refer to the what they work you’re doing right now, how does it refer to the overall company objective for this year and so some of my projects included you know, international expansion in EMEA and that so that was…
Elliot Moss
Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Maya Moufarek
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
All these lovely acronyms that come from your world.
Maya Moufarek
I’m sorry.
Elliot Moss
No, not at all, not at all, I mean unfortunately I’ve been, I’ve been indoctrinated as well, many years of working with Proctor & Gamble, wonderful company, and all those other places. All wonderful, through their acronyms, you need them all.
Maya Moufarek
Yeah, and so, so you know expanding in Europe and, and you know you could see how that was the next frontier for Google as well, like they had only really covered Europe up to Germany or so right and things like that, then you know with the advent of, of I guess protecting their search empire, Chrome and, and, and better web browsers.
Elliot Moss
But action, what I’m hearing, what I’m hearing is action. And, and just as a thought, I, you know I watch, I look at the work you do, incredibly structured, you have to be programmatic and on the other side of the, the balance sheet for you Maya is, is this empathy so, on the one hand you need all the, you give people structure and you are structured and on the other hand you’re empathetic and you’re listening. How do you square the two because sometimes they can be in conflict?
Maya Moufarek
Yeah. You know at the end of the day, a partner with a lot of wonderful product visionary founders and what’s interesting is they’re so much into detail and so much in the passion of what they’re trying change but they often can’t actually articulate it with, with passion and empathy, they’re very much like you know how this innovation is going to change the world but not really in a way that everyone can relate in a very kind of technology, innovation angle of it. And that’s really most of my work is about saying but do you realise how you’re net positive in the world if you really articulate it at the grander scale of the impact and that’s what we did at Pharmacy2U at the end of the day, it’s that not only it’s a category transforming you know proposition and game-changer for, for patients and their ability to manage their health but it’s really a game-changer for the health industry in the UK and proven by the numbers of, I did a lot of work to be able to you know qualify that, that impact. So that’s really the balance, is that just being able to get all the nitty-gritty from those founders that this formulaic and then really elevate it to something we can all empathise with.
Elliot Moss
Well that sounds good. Final chat coming up with my guest today, it’s Maya Moufarek, just in case you hadn’t noticed. And we’ve got some music from Sister Sledge non other, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
I’m Elliot Moss, this is Jazz Shapers and my Business Shaper is Maya Moufarek just for a few more minute. You do tons of stuff, I started and we started, we started talking and I started saying you’re this multi-hyphenated person, there’s the marketing side, there’s the board memberships, there’s the investor piece, you invest in a lot of start-ups, what’s the biggest buzz for you? I know you’re going to say, “I love it all” but if I had to focus on one thing, if you were to commit to one area or you go, ‘I love it when…’, is that investment piece when they come through? Is it the, where is it?
Maya Moufarek
No, I’m so much more an operator at heart, it’s actually when, you know, you’ve been grinding with founders to try to find that product market fit and now suddenly things start just moving.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Maya Moufarek
And that, that’s really the magic of innovation and start-ups, it’s when like it clicks. Now, it might click for a while and then unclick again and so you constantly need to adapt and I think that’s, that’s really important but it’s, it’s just so rewarding to sort of see those founders that require so, so many personal sacrifices and resilience to get through that bit and so in any way I can help and contribute to that stage, I, I love it.
Elliot Moss
And you mentioned the ecosystem earlier in terms of giving stuff back to it, what is your sense of the, the health of the UK tech ecosystem right now? Where are we in the, in the cycle? Are we doing okay? Have we got work to do? What’s the mark?
Maya Moufarek
I mean I’m, I’m hoping we’re coming to the end of the hard cycle obviously, you know high interest rate etc, a lot of you know smaller VCs folding, there’s not much cash in the market right now so, I think hopefully we’re coming to the other end of that.
Elliot Moss
And women within that? Is there, is it getting better?
Maya Moufarek
Um.
Elliot Moss
Because a lot of people, I’ve had Debbie Wosskow on the programme a few times and many other brilliant female entrepreneurs and they often bemoan the state of fundraising opportunities and the like.
Maya Moufarek
I mean the stark reality is still that only 2% of VC capital is going into women founded businesses and that’s dramatically bad. I do think that you know the, the, at least the awareness is there, we’re bringing more you know men and other diverse allies around the table to contribute to that difference and to change things. I definitely am very passionate of bringing more women in tech, I mean I have been the only kind of woman at, around the table for many years and so, but I love this industry and I think that’s really important. Heavily invest in fem-tech as well and other kind of places where men just can’t have this empathy to understand the problem, so there’s still a very long road but I think the more we, you know it, just like with brands, we need to start with small fires, right, you get a Whitney at Bumble who exit, you get you know a Debbie Wosskow and many others, right, that just, you just need to have that reference in front of you and I know I was very lucky at Google because we had a bunch of VP of marketing ladies, and others, and so I could like see what future me could be like if I wanted those jobs because I could see them having it and so I think so for me it’s still a long road but you know, we just need more representation and we kind of, the one thing that really gets on my nerves is like we need to empower women, like women don’t need empowerment, we are self-empowered thank you very much, you know we just need, you know, access and capital, like that’s what we really need and so that’s what I’m trying to facilitate as well, I can through introductions, through just even you know talking to the younger generations about you know some things to look at. Then I’m, I you know sometimes I’m like I was so damn lucky because I was oblivious to that status of women in tech, I was just like I’m different anyway, like my difference was in so many other than just my gender that I became, I was oblivious to the gender difference and other representation in tech and so I somehow just it never, I mean it most probably affected me without me knowing it but I just, you know I just powered through and never paid any attention to it and now I realise how much harder it is for many people so, really keen to change that.
Elliot Moss
Keep powering through. It’s been great talking to you, Maya. Thank you for your time. Just before I let you sail off and fix problems and define brands and all the rest of it, let me know what your song choice is and why you’ve chosen it.
Maya Moufarek
Yeah, my song choice is Beirut by Ibrahim Maalouf. Unbeknown to me, he is the nephew of Amin Maalouf, whose book, The Identity that Kills, I think is the translation in English.
Elliot Moss
In the Name of Identity?
Maya Moufarek
In the Name of Identity is the name of this book.
Elliot Moss
Which I have down here as your favourite book.
Maya Moufarek
Yes, absolutely. Good research.
Elliot Moss
Very good researchers. It takes a team to deliver the stupidity that I come out with, yes.
Maya Moufarek
That’s right. Yeah, his book is very, you know, talks about multiculturalism and the value of that, of that exposure which in my twenties I think would allow me to embrace that, that diversity.
Elliot Moss
Well it’s you, isn’t it.
Maya Moufarek
Exactly.
Elliot Moss
It is you.
Maya Moufarek
And so Ibrahim Maalouf was a Lebanese French musician, recorded this very melancholic song about Beirut in the ‘90s when he first, as a teenager, got to roam around the city and was a bit, you know, I guess sad about the state of it and you know, I spent luckily in peaceful Beirut, a lot of summer in my teens and I love it dearly and so that was my choice.
Elliot Moss
Ibrahim Maalouf with the thoughtful, Beirut, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Maya Moufarek. She said, “Your difference is your superpower” and I know we’ve heard that before, but just remember how important it is, it really is the thing that makes you stand out. “I always sought out additional exposure”, she said, that sense of being open to perspectives, to being open to cultures, it’s where the good stuff happens. And finally, and really importantly, you have to have empathy. If you’re going to create a strong business and a strong brand, you have to always put yourselves in the shoes of your customers. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.