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 bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Renee Elliot, Founder of Planet Organic, the UK’s first organic supermarket and one of my favourites. Inspired by the life changing book, Diet for a Small Planet, about the environmental toll of meat production and spotting a gap in the UK market for the kind of organic food culture that was emerging in the US, Renee founded Planet Organic in 1995 – I remember it well – believing supermarkets could be ethical, stylish and forward thinking. Having expanded to multiple stores across London, Renee initially retaining a stake in the company was actually pushed out of the company and then went to raise her family in Tuscany and launched a coaching and training organisation as well, focussed on women entrepreneurs and leaders. But in 2023 with Planet Organic sales down 50% from where they’d been, Renee returned to rescue them from administration, restoring the brands values and mission and describing it as – and I quote – ‘the hardest I’ve ever worked but the most fun I’ve ever had’.
Renee Elliot the, my Business Shaper, the Founder of Planet Organic. But it’s drama from the moment we get going. You were pushed out.
Renee Elliot
Mm.
Elliot Moss
I want to start there, it’s not the beginning in 1995, you were pushed out. What does it feel like to be pushed out as the founder of a business?
Renee Elliot
I described it at the time, it felt like, because Planet is me and I am Planet, it’s a part of me I birthed it in a different way than you birth children. I created every nuance of it so it felt like my right arm was ripped off without anaesthesia.
Elliot Moss
How do you come back from that?
Renee Elliot
(laughs) It took a long time and we left the country because (a) I couldn’t talk about it, I had a gag order and people may have thought that was because I got a huge pay out. It wasn’t, I got a years’ salary but I needed that because they pushed my husband I out so it was our only income and I had three young children; seven, four and one so we needed to take a years’ salary and then I said, I can’t even be here you know, with someone else running the company and not a part of it. So we left and went to Italy for a year which turned into three and a half years. But I did a lot of like my husband hadn’t ever not worked so we got there and he said, what do I do?
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Renee Elliot
And I said, chop wood, carry water and I said, and build me a really big vegetable garden. And we had a tiny farm with an olive grove and an orchard and some grapes and he grew vegetables. But what I was saying was slow down, breathe you know, meditate because it had been a very difficult and intense ten years and he had taken the brunt of the difficulty from the shareholders so I said, just slow it down and I slowed down and was a mum and cooked and baked and did all those lovely things and we were literally in the land you know, it was get in the dirt, go for walks, pick the olives and over time I got over it, forgave the horror of what had happened and moved on but, and I believe that in life, I believe that it’s gripping anything, thoughts, emotion, the past that caused pain for people and when you can let go, when you can drop you’re free.
Elliot Moss
But anger and trauma are things aren’t they?
Renee Elliot
They are but under anger is sadness.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Renee Elliot
And if you can get to the sadness and let that go and trust that, and this is, we’re heading right into spirituality but for me it’s a very spiritual framing that if you trust that your life is unfolding as it should and everything that happens are lessons that you need to learn and move on then there is no, oh poor me, woe is me.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
And that’s been my MO forever. I, I never, I never throw a pity party, not then or right at the beginning when my partner tried to take Planet from me.
Elliot Moss
Had you ever experienced that kind of pain in your life before?
Renee Elliot
I had because I actually say the worst thing that ever happened to me was two years after Planet started, my business partner who I had been very close to wanted Planet for himself and we ended up in a fourteen month trial, uh sorry, fourteen month litigation and an eleven day trial in the High Courts and that was incredibly difficult, that was sustained amygdala of fight, fight, freeze, didn’t know what was going to happen. If I had lost I would have been bankrupted because my legal bill was enormous and I don’t come from privilege. I am a small town American girl.
Elliot Moss
We’ve talked about immediately pain and trauma and you, you know, as you said, it’s like the universe doing its thing, it’s like you, you’re very philosophical about it. Have you experienced that pain and trauma, you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but I hope you do, in personal life? And if so, how did that compare?
Renee Elliot
Hum.
Elliot Moss
Because I am just interested in how you dealt with different things because I see you and I see a very strong, or I see a person who has dealt with stuff and I just wonder where that strength comes from?
Renee Elliot
Interesting, of course nobody has asked that question before and I don’t think so. I mean we have relationship you know, we all have relationship issues, family, marriage, children but I am very blessed and I think the answer to that being no is because when I was 19 I had this epiphany about, about not wanting what I saw around me in terms of convention. I wanted better. I didn’t want um, non organic meat, I didn’t, you referenced the book, I didn’t want to eat that so I became a vegetarian. I wanted a better relationship than I saw on Hollywood films and in the relationships around me as a kid looking at adults. I wanted a better schooling system. So I started on an alternative path at 19 and I kind of framed what I now call your circle of wellbeing and it has six spheres of wellbeing and I teach that now so you have transformational development but the point of that is that I started on an alternative journey to find what better was because what I saw around me was not better for me.
Elliot Moss
What was the trigger, what was the trigger?
Renee Elliot
It was the book.
Elliot Moss
It was the book, really?
Renee Elliot
It was the book, it was Diet for a Small Planet. I read that book and it felt to me like the end of innocence. I was a, had a beautiful childhood, very innocent in the countryside. You know, you grow up thinking that life is beautiful and people are kind and then you realise that isn’t necessarily the case and for me it was that. I read that book and thought, oh my god. No one is looking after my health, not the government when you look at the way meat is farmed in America, not the government, not the farmer, not the supermarket and it was like being slapped in the face and I thought, I don’t want this, I want different and I want better and better isn’t what the masses are doing.
Elliot Moss
Incredibly young to have that epiphany because often people read, even I go, I cast my mind back to when I was 19. I read stuff that was important but I don’t know if it changed my life.
Renee Elliot
Oh it shook me and I, I actually believe that’s where when I started working on Planet Organic.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Renee Elliot
After I read that book. So that led me on an alternative path and what that led me to was personal development. Do, do you frame that when I say that, personal development, self-awareness?
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
Understanding yourself. The discovery of self and the learning, the learning in your life, so there’s the doing line and the being line and it’s that discovery of self and who you are and really importantly within that like who are you? Then you can be yourself but then really importantly manage yourself and that’s learning how to break negative patterns of behaviour and thinking and um, that inner critic and so I started working on that really young and that’s been a parallel journey for me and I’ve woven that into Planet and the work I do as a coach.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Renee Elliot
So any personal mishap I’ve had along the way.
Elliot Moss
Has been harnessed.
Renee Elliot
It has and my husband, Brian, we took that journey together and we’ve been together for (laughs) 40 years.
Elliot Moss
(laughs). Yes and you still are together.
Renee Elliot
And we are better than ever.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
It’s magic and that is because we’ve taken that journey together which is about taking responsibility for yourself, your actions, your reactions and seeking better you know, striving for harmony and understanding.
Elliot Moss
And somewhere in that bridge between the personal and the business is this thought which is yours which is, never bend your truth?
Renee Elliot
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Is that right? Do you think that’s what links the two?
Renee Elliot
Yes I think that’s a beautiful way to frame that. I’m going to steal that (laughs).
Elliot Moss
Well it’s yours.
Renee Elliot
But you put it together.
Elliot Moss
I did.
Renee Elliot
So beautifully.
Elliot Moss
(laughs).
Renee Elliot
Yes I believe in the truth. I think truth is really important and there have been times in my life when I haven’t been able to tell the truth and that’s crushing for me and you know, you know when people lie, someone will say, oh my god he’s a pathological liar. My best friend says, I am pathologically honest, it’s like a disease. And that’s just so important to me and I believe that in life that is incredibly important.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more pathological honesty from my Business Shaper, it’s Renee Elliot, she’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Right now we are 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 practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing. In this clip we hear from Bianca Rangecroft, Founder and CEO of Whering, a fashion app on a mission to upend buy, use, dispose model.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can catch this very programme again if you pop Jazz and Shapers – that’s complicated wasn’t it - into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is the pathologically honest Renee, it’s what we’re going to call you now, Renee Elliot, Founder of Planet Organic, the UK’s first organic supermarket. I think we should go to 1995. So this is, you are a woman at 19 who has begun her journey to self and self-awareness and this sense of hold on a minute, the world ain’t a great place and then you are able to open your first new version of life, new version of how we should sell food, how we should eat food and all that and it is called Planet Organic. What was going on when you opened the doors for the first time? What was happening in 1995 for you?
Renee Elliot
So I had come to, so I was 30 years old when I started working on Planet and I had come to England to date a guy I’d met on holiday. I’d been here the year before on holiday so I’d moved over in 1986 and I, I had other jobs first which were great and fun but I knew very quickly it wasn’t what I was going to do for the rest of my life. I knew I had a vision and it just took me a little while to find it. So in England at the time, so I got married to Brian.
Elliot Moss
The guy you came over to, to hang out with?
Renee Elliot
Yeah the guy I met on the bus.
Elliot Moss
On the bus, yeah.
Renee Elliot
And we um…
Elliot Moss
Lucky your due diligence wasn’t important there right? I mean we could be, we could be in a whole world of pain but no, 40 years of marriage that’s okay.
Renee Elliot
It’s okay.
Elliot Moss
It worked out.
Renee Elliot
So in England there were really great little health food stores.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
But there wasn’t a supermarket. There wasn’t a one stop shop and they were not, they were appealing to a very specific say hippy customer and I wanted to take organic from that niche and health food because it is the best food and it’s what everyone should be eating and it baffles me why people aren’t. It doesn’t really but it’s just insane and take that food into the mainstream and put it in a beautiful setting with excellent service and music and plants and displays and all that great stuff that I’d seen in America which nobody had done. The other thing that was brewing around that time was genetic modification obviously had been happening for a long time and was brewing in the states and when that came to England early 2000, that impacted us but at the time that wasn’t a thing and nobody really knew what organic was so when I opened. When we were trying to raise money for the business, people really had no idea what the concept was.
Elliot Moss
Where was the first store?
Renee Elliot
Westbourne Grove. That’s the flagship.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
It was number 42.
Elliot Moss
Hm, the answer to life the universe and everything.
Renee Elliot
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Yes. Just for you, she’s looking, going Elliot it’s okay it’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. You know because you’re a man of a certain age. I am, you are absolutely right. It was number 42.
Renee Elliot
Number 42.
Elliot Moss
And that moment the doors opened, that moment your vision comes to life. What did that feel like?
Renee Elliot
So we turned 30 years old on November 4th, so it was around this time and I was actually talking about that story this morning. I was so excited and so, I had such a vision for changing. I said, I’m going to change food retailing in the UK, I’m going to bring organic into the mainstream. I had big statements and I had no idea what I was doing you know, like all first time entrepreneurs. I, I wasn’t a Harvard MBA, I um, I knew how to write a business plan that was about it. I had worked in a health food store but I believe in the power of the individual and I believe that you can do anything you set your mind to, that determination is the most important thing in entrepreneurship because you can learn anything and my dad had told me that when I was a kid and I believe that. So I felt, well I’ll figure it out and my business partner at the time was similar, he had never run a business so we were going to find our way together. And it started off slowly, we nearly went under in the first couple of months because nobody knew what we were doing or what it meant and we didn’t advertise because I didn’t believe in advertising and this was pre the internet. Yes my children say, I started it in the olden days before the internet was just starting in 1995.
Elliot Moss
(laughs) Mm.
Renee Elliot
So getting the word out without advertising was tricky but then there was a BSE scare in February so we opened in November, Christmas I thought we’re going down and then in February a BSE scare hit and it just gave what we needed, people to suddenly think about the food they were eating, be jolted out of their complacency around untrusting the government and the farmers and whoever to give me food that is good for me and the environment and suddenly it was, well actually no this is not and when Gummer – I don’t know if you remember this?
Elliot Moss
John Gummer.
Renee Elliot
He has said his daughter that hamburger on TV in 1988 it, that was for me I was like oh my gosh I’m so on the right path but so this road is hit again in ’96 and we took off and we did 1.2 million our first year out of one store.
Elliot Moss
I’m going to go across time for a moment but I am going to talk about your style as a, as a leader. There was a conversation you had with your mum about what kind of you know, the femininity piece and that it’s important to feminine and who you are. I can’t imagine you would have been anything other than exactly who you are. But what are your observations now with more experience and looking back on feminine traits in business and how well those have been received over time?
Renee Elliot
Not well (laughs). Very nice question thank you for that. Um, yes my mum asked me if I was afraid of heading into an industry that was very male dominated, very powerful personalities and I, I hadn’t been until she said that and I thought, okay well maybe. And she said, interestingly she wasn’t a business person, she said, Renee use your femininity as your strength. Don’t think you have to act differently. Be yourself really which is everything, to be yourself in life. So I took that and it was as if it was okay because my mum said it was okay to do that and I then created Planet exactly the way I wanted to which was as a caring business, you know, I started Planet because I care deeply about everything about people, about planet and I wanted to channel that into a business that would do good in the world so that my life on this earth had made a positive difference, that was my motivator and so I made a feminine business which is a caring, nurturing business and I led with values and I wove values through the business in three very distinct ways which I won’t go into. Two ways in terms of our doing and one in terms of our being and that informed not only what we were doing but who we were while we were doing all the doing.
Elliot Moss
Just humour me though, just really quickly because you’ve said it and I’m intrigued?
Renee Elliot
I call it the secret triangle of relationships.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Renee Elliot
And that triangle is trust and respect, underpinned by good communication. And I use that, I teach that, I have raised my children with that and it’s been a game changer. I’ve done a million things differently from my parents who did a great job and I love them forever but the sacred triangle of relationships was the key difference in my parenting.
Elliot Moss
And, and the way you ran the business?
Renee Elliot
And the way I ran the business and that meant I care about people, I was looking after their wellbeing. It was that whole wellbeing thing that I’d framed when I was 19.
Elliot Moss
And what were those six, just to remind me because I’ve read and I’ve…
Renee Elliot
So it’s physical, occupational, psychological, economic, social and spiritual. And because people think wellbeing they think mental and physical.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Renee Elliot
Wellbeing is anything that affects anything in your world. So it’s everything in your world and that’s everything. So I led with values, it was a very caring, nurturing company and for me business and my life has been the weaving of those two things, that wellbeing plan and that business plan and within that, personal development and self-awareness. So you’re in awareness about who you are and what you do, it’s know yourself, be yourself, manage yourself and take care of people because why would you not and I knew that conventional business didn’t run that way but I wasn’t interested in that, I never want to do what anyone else is doing. It didn’t go down well with shareholders and other people in life.
Elliot Moss
No, well also the journey would say it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster right?
Renee Elliot
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
I mean the…
Renee Elliot
That’s the word I’d use absolutely.
Elliot Moss
…bus, yeah the rollercoaster it’s up and it’s down and in a way I guess the answer to the question about the femininity piece is, if only the world understood.
Renee Elliot
Yes and now I talk about vulnerability because that is for men and women and I went in, in my vulnerability and femininity and then my partner came at me for Planet as I said and I picked up my sword and shield and I fought a good fight and I read Sun Tzu’s, The Art of War and I read the Bhagavad Gita which is about the righteous war and I fought because I can do that too. And then over the years I thought, yeah I really don’t to now and when I went back into Planet two years ago I thought, I have to go in in my softness, in my vulnerability and in where I am now which is no stress.
Elliot Moss
And I was thinking that I want to ask you as we have our final chat in a minute about yeah, what’s more fun um, vulnerability and no stress or conflict. Final chat as I promise will come up shortly with Renee and we’ve also got some music from Candi Staton, that’s in just a moment don’t go anywhere.
Candi Staton with the brilliant Nights on Broadway, if you could see us we were dancing here on Jazz Shapers. It’s Renee Elliot she is my Business Shaper, she’s the Founder of Planet Organic. You broke the rules, you, you smashed convention. It’s exactly why we created this programme to have people like you talk about what they’ve done. There’s a cost to that right, I mean you talk about meditation and you talk about all these fabulous which are frameworks for thinking and for managing emotions. But if you were, if we went back to a Hobbesian time when the spirit was let loose and you were just this wild creature, the wild creature has a lot going on and it, my sense is that the meditation and the management is to harness that because otherwise you know, who knows what would happen. Do you feel like you’re managing the hurricane the whole time in your own head?
Renee Elliot
(laughs) I, I feel like a force of nature and the meditation creates the stillness that is necessary in that high activity, high desire to do good in the world and creates and it’s in that stillness that you’re in touch with your true self, that’s where you hear your small, still voice or your intuition, whatever you call that and you’re in touch I believe with the flow of the universe. But you can only get that in stillness so that stillness is where I tap into knowing and peace.
Elliot Moss
Mm, you’re…
Renee Elliot
And then I take that to the world.
Elliot Moss
You’re like a moth to the flame Renee, because you are drawn to this thing called changing the world and you’re doing it through a commercial endeavour which is to get people to eat healthily and to have part of their, their wellbeing sustained. That’s really hard and, and, and the journey of ups and downs of Planet Organic in a way are a, a manifestation of exactly that which is you’re buttressing up against the world that says, this, don’t be silly, sell it cheap, make it cheaply, have chickens living in little cages, forget all this organic stuff. The business went away from organic, I meant that is…
Renee Elliot
Yes.
Elliot Moss
…the ultimate insult to you, the person who is Planet Organic. How do you find your peace now with where you are at with everything that’s happened?
Renee Elliot
Well going back in, so the previous management team put Planet into administration at the end of April 2023 and I was very happily being a coach and a mentor doing my thing and I got a phone call saying, thirty minutes and it’s all over and I thought okay, we’ll rescue Planet. I, I had no intention of going back in. My husband, I put the phone down and he said, do you want it back and I said, absolutely not. Which I now can’t believe I couldn’t see but I was like nope, been in that pain, done that, moved on, healed. Long story short, we realised we were probably the only people who had the understanding, knowledge, connections to pull Planet out of the mud that it was in – as you said, sales were down 50%. So we had a tiny pot of money, we led a bid. We put the deal together, it was accepted by the administrator, we bought Planet out of administration and going back in for me was glorious because I said, I’m going back in my femininity, I’m going back without stress. I now have to live what I’ve been learning and teaching all these decades.
Elliot Moss
The hurricane has to now be calm.
Renee Elliot
Yes, yes and lead an amazing team who stayed to feeling loved and cared for again because it was awful for them, to lift the business out of the mud, to gain customer’s trust again, to go back to organic and bring us back in our lane of organic and healthy food and to rebrand in a way that reflected Planet as a haven in the world. So for me, professionally, personally, spiritually, it’s been such a gift and such a success.
Elliot Moss
And the going back, people often say it, that Cinema Paradiso thing, Never Come Back.
Renee Elliot
(laughs).
Elliot Moss
You know the bit at the end…
Renee Elliot
I had to.
Elliot Moss
…I loved it, I mean that’s one of my favourite films. You had to.
Renee Elliot
I had to, my husband said, he was just saying this morning, he said, you stood up, he said, you went back in and you rescued it even though you were really happy where you were and it was a huge risk because I couldn’t let it die.
Elliot Moss
You don’t look stressed.
Renee Elliot
No, no I am not stressed. It’s the meditation.
Elliot Moss
(laughs).
Renee Elliot
It’s the, it’s everything. It’s self-awareness and wanting joy and peace and living a beautiful life.
Elliot Moss
It’s been fabulous talking to you, fabulous meeting you. Thank you for your time. Just before I let you go and lead your beautiful life with of course the apprentice is saying, sometimes it gets a bit bumpy. Apart from the bumps, go have fun but before you go, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Renee Elliot
Oh well Harry Connick Junior was, was my Frank Sinatra who was my mum’s favourite singer and Harry was gorgeous and love that voice and the lyrics of this song really are me. This is my life and my belief system wrapped up in a song that is fabulous to listen to and dance to.
Elliot Moss
With Imagination I’ll Get There from Harry Connick Junior, the song choice of my Business Shaper today Renee Elliot. With determination you can do anything, she said. Trust and respect underpinned by communication, the holy trinity of building strong relationships and a strong business. I want better and better is not what the masses are doing and therein lies the opportunity for businesses like hers and like yours potentially. And finally, I feel like a force of nature and indeed she was. Great stuff. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that addition 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.