When she was preparing for a marathon in January 2013, Pippa Murray struggled to find a natural, palm-oil-free nut butter to fuel her training. Rather than settle for a product that didn’t meet her standards, she decided to make her own. By the end of the year she was selling her nut butters at London’s Maltby Street Market. Two years later, she was selling them in Selfridge’s.
Today, Pip & Nut is the UK’s fastest-growing nut butter brand and is stocked in over 3,000 stores. Murray has been listed in Forbes’ 30 under 30 and was named Start-up Entrepreneur of the Year at the NatWest Great British Entrepreneur Awards. But her greatest achievement to date, she says, was winning B Corp certification for her company in 2019. Since then, she has become an even stauncher advocate for sustainability by joining the board of trustees at B Lab, the nonprofit network behind the B Corp movement.
Here, Murray explains why achieving B Corp status was so important to her, and shares some tips on leadership, guiding a business through challenging times and preserving the startup magic even as your business grows.
Did you always want to be a CEO?
No, that’s probably the short answer! It wasn’t really something on my radar – I started life as a theatre producer, which shows you just how far away from a CEO I was. And, I wasn’t particularly business-minded when I was going through university and my early career.
But it’s funny how there are things in your personality that lead you into the role – and things that make you enjoy it. It’s been an evolution. I’ve had to learn the job as I’ve grown the business.
What do you think makes a good leader?
An openness to keep learning and acknowledging that you’re not always the person who knows exactly the right answer. The ability to lean on other people who are experts, condense the information that they give you and make good decisions based on it – that’s a skill, it requires you to be open. One thing I’ve always loved about this job is that you learn something different every day.
When it comes to leadership, being empathetic and in tune with people is key, but you also must be able to flex your style. I love the firefighting parts of running a business. It’s hard for me when things are too quiet, when it’s all going too well. I quite enjoy sitting in chaos and trying to make sense of it. I find the challenge exciting. Those are the traits I think you need and, fortunately, they’re also the things I enjoy about the job.
What do you think your staff think of you?
I think they’d say I’m competitive. Hopefully not too competitive! Probably tenacious and determined as well. They have said that I’m down to earth and quite self-deprecating by nature. And, I’d like to think that I’m supportive. I hope that they’d say that about me.
What do you look for when you’re hiring for your leadership team?
It’s all about hunger – are they hungry for success? Have they demonstrated that they’ve really challenged themselves and stepped out of their comfort zone?
When you’re in a smaller business, particularly in retail, you’re fighting much bigger brands with bigger budgets. At most startups you’ve got to be willing to run through walls for the brand.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
You should always prioritise the things that you can do. As your business grows, the scope of your role changes. Either the business is bigger and you’re handling more complexity, or you hire somebody to delegate to, which leaves a gap in your role. Sometimes you’re left thinking: What should I be working on? What’s the most impactful thing that I could do as a leader of this business? There’s a myriad of things on the to-do list, so what do you start with?
I think about that piece of advice all the time when I’m trying to work out where to focus my time and energy. You can get pulled in all sorts of different directions, but there are certain things that, as the CEO, you’ll be able to do better than anyone else. That could be talking to the press and being the brand advocate – as the leader of the business, you’re the best person to do that. Or, in my case, product is where my heart is. I love that creative part of the business.
What do you consider to be the biggest challenge in business right now?
Managing inflation, but the bigger picture is the volatile world that we are living in. We’ve had Covid, Brexit, the Ukraine war; I think it’s a sign of things to come. Add climate change and things are generally going to get more unstable.
You need to build resilience into your business so that you can face these challenges within an economic context marked by high inflation. And, we must not forget that these challenges include delivering on sustainability. We need a greater emphasis on sustainability within our businesses, but it comes at a cost, so there is this constant tension.
What’s the main driver of change in your business?
The consumer. We’re a consumer-driven brand – every product is there to serve a need or meet a desire. That’s what drives our business and helps us to constantly improve. We try as much as possible to listen to what people want, because you can create things in isolation and quickly find out that nobody actually wanted the thing that you made.
And, you really have to look at the difference between the generations. For example, the difference in how millennials and gen Z consume products and media. All that changes the way that you market your products. We’re nearly 10 years old and the consumers who bought us when they were in their mid-20s are now in their mid-30s. So we’re now appealing to more of a family market. As your brand matures so does your audience and that changes the way that you operate.
What’s been your proudest achievement in your current role?
One of the landmark ones was becoming a B Corp in 2019. Back then there were only about 250 B Corps in the UK. Now there are more than 1,000. It felt like a really exciting time to join that fledgling movement. A lot of work went into it, but I think it helped set the brand on the right course and made sure that we were doing the right things.
I was handed our B Corp plaque on stage at a conference by one of my business heroes, Douglas Lamont, who ran Innocent Drinks and is now CEO of Tony’s Chocolonely. It was a proud moment for me because he is such an inspirational person in his own career. So that was lovely.
Which book do you think every business leader should read at least once?
It’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz. There are loads of chapters that can apply to any business, but the one that has always resonated with me is around how to let someone go compassionately. I love it because it’s a no-bullshit guide. It talks about the lonely nights and the surreal challenges. It really helped me at particular points in my journey.
What is one piece of advice you would give to your successor?
Make sure this business stays small as it gets bigger. By that I mean keep that entrepreneurial spirit in the team and keep that creativity. Fight excess bureaucracy and politics at all costs as the business grows. Because it can happen really easily, you get layers of complexity that just stop you from being as brilliant as you were when you first started. Keep the heart of the brand.
