With a career that started on Broadway, Lauren quickly found her calling in marketing, driving growth through innovative campaigns from Fortune magazine's global conferences to global advertising for The Wall Street Journal.

At YuLife, she's built a high-performance marketing team from the ground up, fuelling growth through data-driven strategies and creative storytelling.

Join us as Lauren shares her journey and insights into building a marketing engine that drives substantial commercial impact.

Thank you for coming down and joining us today. Lauren, you've had a very interesting career journey. Can you take us back and tell us what’s led to your journey, which has brought you to YuLife?

So I think early on I learned fundamental principles from my parents around entrepreneurialism. They're both entrepreneurs and started their own businesses in architecture and design.

Right.

And growing up, our dinner table talks were less about “How was your day?” and more about business ideas. Even at a young age, I think they really valued my opinion, and it probably gave me the confidence to think a bit differently about my career path.

I always wanted to do something entrepreneurial, from small projects as a kid, like selling jewellery, to thinking about what you want to do during summers when you're at university. I was always looking for something unconventional.

Probably one of the most unconventional jobs that I had — and I still talk about it to this day — was selling Yellow Pages ads door to door.

Wow.

That's a tough gig.

And this was in college. For the younger audience out there, I don't even think Yellow Pages exist anymore.

But I don't think they do.

They were heavy.

What was interesting was there was a company called University Directories. They took 300 college students and placed them across 90 different universities and gave you a territory. You were given the task of selling ads within these Yellow Pages.

Your target audience was students, and essentially the idea was that if you drove more visibility for your business within the Yellow Pages, you would get more sales.

It was a total boot camp. We all went to UNC Chapel Hill. I was based at Northwestern University, which is a university in Chicago, for the summer. We trained for two weeks in the methodology of selling.

I had a briefcase and an entirely new territory. I learned early on about new business. I didn't end up becoming a salesperson, although I probably could have. But the way it worked was full commission. If you got new business, you got 20% commission. If you got renewal business, you got 10% commission.

We literally picked our territories out of a hat, and the territory I got was a brand-new, never-been-touched territory.

Early on I figured out — and I think I applied this to my marketing later — that I approached it as building a community.

The pocket I was targeting for Yellow Pages ads was a small community called Wilmette, which was a couple of miles outside Northwestern University. I befriended the president of the Chamber of Commerce and got to know the whole network within that community.

Then I was drawing ads and getting Howie the pizza guy to buy an ad.

I think the rigour of that challenge really inspired me on this marketing journey, but this was at a very young age.

Yeah.

And along every journey you pick up little tips, you evolve, and you build off that.

So I had this very entrepreneurial experience, and I thought that the values and the way I approached the job market after school would be to treat it as a challenge, but not do it in the conventional way.

Right.

And this brought me to Broadway. I remember there was a moment when I had had a couple of internship stints at Time Inc., and another internship at InStyle magazine.

After the Yellow Pages experience and then doing a traditional internship, I was at the breakfast table — where we always had our business discussions — with my parents, looking at the New York Times.

At the time, they had a subscription.

Right.

And the New York Times — this was around 2002 — used to have classified ads where people looked for jobs. There was no LinkedIn.

Right.

You had to hunt.

Yeah.

And I saw a job in the classified section that said, “Co-producer of a comedy variety show — startup.”

I thought, you know what? I know how to run events. This sounds cool.

There was also a marketing angle to it.

It took me on a very wild journey helping a producer build a very Cirque-du-Soleil-style show from the ground up at a very young age of twenty-one or twenty-two.

We raised investment.

I had an office overlooking Times Square.

It was a very surreal but very rigorous experience.

I think the adrenaline — and I say this even when I've written bios — there is so much adrenaline in event production. When every week you're responsible for packing a house of a thousand people and creating that experience at scale, you learn a lot.

I also tapped into community development by bringing on interns from universities and thinking about how you use others to help drive awareness.

It taught me many valuable skills and gave me a deep respect and appreciation for the entertainment industry.

But it also sparked something for me — it was like a crash MBA.

I love the fact that you mentioned adrenaline. One of my first jobs was working in a live sports studio.

Yeah.

The feeling of adrenaline when you go live on air and when you come off at the end of a show — you just have it coursing through you.

Exactly.

It was every Saturday. You're prepping and working hard, and then the show happens.

It's a cycle.

And you improve it each week.

But with entertainment or television, things happen at such a rapid pace that it can distort your perspective of reality because suddenly you're used to everything happening very fast.

Yes.

Which the real world definitely doesn't.

Right.

So after Broadway, where did your path lead you next?

So then I took a step back and thought, okay, I really like this events thing. I did a stint at Fortune magazine because I had built a strong network within Time Inc.

But I realised quite quickly that I didn't love feeling restricted in a role.

When you're young and ambitious and you've had experiences like selling door to door and producing a show on Broadway, your expectations of what a job should be at twenty-three or twenty-four can be a bit unrealistic compared to the reality of most jobs at that age.

Yeah.

I realised that I loved startup environments.

I did about a year at Fortune and learned a lot, but then I found a new startup magazine in the design world.

It was Western Interiors & Design magazine.

I started working for the CEO there.

It was an incredible experience building something with a small team from the ground up.

Interior design was a passion of mine because that was the industry my parents were in.

Right.

But I could also apply my media and marketing experience.

I had a really good experience there. I learned a lot about culture and the importance of working as a team to build something alongside a great CEO.

Was this the first time that you built your own team?

I would say with the comedy show I built a network — a community of people passionate about entertainment.

But with Western Interiors & Design it was more of a startup environment where we were all in it together with a very small team.

Then I went on a new adventure with Metro.

Right.

At the time, Metro — which you're familiar with as the daily newspaper here in the UK — existed in over twenty countries.

It was quite a challenger brand.

Metro originally started in Sweden in 1996 as a way to reach metropolitan audiences — the “hard to reach.”

There was no Instagram or Facebook then.

Right.

So the idea was to create a snackable daily newspaper that gave you everything you needed in a twenty-minute read.

For free.

On your commute.

On your commute.

And because there were no mobile phones competing for attention, you had a highly engaged audience.

Exactly.

From an advertising perspective, that's liquid gold.

The business model grew internationally, and I had the opportunity to run marketing across the US.

Wow.

Which was a lot of fun.

Because you're not only building a B2B marketing engine with advertising programmes and activations across cities, but you're collaborating with a global network of marketing leaders across those countries.

Metro's global headquarters in Sweden and London brought marketing leaders together every year so we could share ideas.

I learned a lot from that experience.

We were in our late twenties and had a lot of autonomy and freedom to test ideas and take risks.

That really shaped my creative edge and my appreciation for guerrilla marketing.

I talk a lot with my team about guerrilla marketing.

To me it means being resourceful with what you have and thinking differently about channels.

Interestingly, I used the term guerrilla marketing yesterday in a conversation.

Really?

Yes.

For example, in New York during Fashion Week it's very expensive to sponsor events.

Mercedes-Benz always sponsors it.

Right.

So instead I hired models, partnered with a fashion brand like Kenneth Cole, wrapped Metro newspapers with the brand, and had the models walk around the perimeter of Fashion Week distributing them.

It became a walking billboard.

That's guerrilla marketing.

Absolutely.

And I still apply that mentality today.

For example, I was at an HR innovation conference called Unleash in Paris yesterday, and I was essentially doing guerrilla marketing for YuLife — finding creative ways to communicate the brand.

It's gritty.

So after Metro, what happened next?

I had a life change.

My partner, who I met in New York, was transferred back to London.

Right.

It was one of those sliding-door moments — do I stay in New York, where I had a great life, or start a new chapter in the UK?

I had studied abroad in the UK for six months at university, so I had some familiarity.

And by that point Mark and I had been together six years.

So I started exploring opportunities.

Through a friend of a friend I was introduced to Andrew Langhoff, the Managing Director of Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal in Europe.

He was looking for marketing leadership.

We met, and afterwards I went home and wrote my own job description for what the role could be.

That conversation ultimately led to creating a new role.

It brought me to the UK and started my journey with The Wall Street Journal and News Corp, where I spent nearly five years.

So after that, we're moving closer to my time now.

No.

It's fascinating.

This is the journey.

We might need a couple of hours now.

We're here.

Yeah.

How do we go from The Wall Street Journal to YuLife? And there's a key step in between.

A couple of things happen when you land in an industry that at one point was probably the coolest industry in the world, which is publishing.

Yeah.

And I even remember when I worked one summer at InStyle magazine, and everyone thought it was the coolest job.

No one cared what you actually did.

It was just like, “That is so cool. The Wall Street Journal, that's so cool.”

But the reality is these are industries where I started to feel like there was a cap for me.

Right.

Why?

Why is that?

I think because print wasn't growing.

The magazine and print industry had been declining.

Yeah.

We were pivoting more toward digital content, digital subscriptions, and digital growth, but I felt like it was time to try something new and be challenged by something new.

We all go through this.

Because I've learned about you, and I'm wondering whether the cap was also related to adrenaline.

Like, maybe it wasn't giving you the same level anymore.

Yeah.

And I think even at The Wall Street Journal my role changed every year.

During the time I was there, there were four CEOs.

It's quite interesting.

If you talk to my friends — and even the founders now at YuLife — I do love a bit of variety.

In a good, measured way.

And I enjoy unpredictability.

That drive naturally pulled me toward startups, scale-ups, and growth businesses.

I recognised that my time in media had been entrepreneurial in my own way, but I started thinking maybe I wanted to do something that was properly entrepreneurial.

So I went on a journey.

You know, we all have those moments where we ask ourselves what kind of business we might want to start.

At the same time as I was thinking about this, baby number one arrived.

When that happens, you suddenly realise you've been in a bit of a rat race.

New York is quite a rat race.

You've been working incredibly hard, growing your career, proving yourself.

And then suddenly you're like, wow, I have a year.

What am I going to do with that time?

And it’s empowering.

You embrace it.

You find every activity you can possibly do with a child.

You build new friendships.

But it also gives you time to think.

I'd always been very interested in wellness.

I was an athlete growing up.

I've always been passionate about health.

So I channelled that interest and became certified as a health coach.

I also did personal training certification.

I was doing this when my daughter Catherine was about eight months old.

So I explored those different avenues.

Then when I was coming back from maternity leave, I decided to do something of a hybrid.

I met an incredible woman who at the time was CEO of Future.

Right.

Zillow.

And I thought, I had been planning to move away from media, but this might actually be a great experience.

Because as a marketer, you need to be passionate about the product you’re working on.

But you also need to believe in the values and approach of the leader at the top.

Otherwise it's just not going to be fun.

Right.

So I joined Zillow and had a good experience there.

It ended up being a shorter period than expected because baby number two arrived.

And with that, I started thinking seriously about the next move.

During that time, I spent more than fourteen hours with a career coach.

I wanted to work on how I packaged my skills and experience so that I wasn't just seen as “the publishing marketing person.”

It's very easy for companies like Time Inc., News Corp, or The Telegraph to reach out because they see that background.

Right.

But I wanted to broaden the story.

Almost avoid stereotyping yourself.

Exactly.

What a career coach can do — whether it's a coach, mentor, or someone close to you — is help you see patterns in your experience that you may not have recognised yourself.

For example, when Metro was acquired by a private equity company.

I hadn't thought of that as “private equity experience,” but it was.

We went through an acquisition and then a cultural and strategic transition.

Those are valuable experiences.

Another example was how we disrupted advertising models.

I was used to thinking about the creative side, but the coach helped me articulate the strategic and commercial impact.

Another important realisation was that advertising is one of the hardest things in the world to sell.

It's gritty.

Budgets are small.

Margins are thin.

You have to be incredibly resourceful.

Throughout my time in media, I had learned how to do a lot with very little.

At Metro, for example, I bartered constantly.

I traded advertising space for events.

I traded media inventory for partnerships.

I used the reach of Metro to create value instead of spending money.

So we created huge visibility without large budgets.

Those experiences shaped the way I think about marketing.

It's not just about the sector you worked in.

It's about how you approached that sector and the creativity you applied to overcome constraints.

That thinking eventually led me to a company called LifeWorks.

At that time I met Jamie True, a serial entrepreneur and CEO.

He was building a business focused on mental health in the employee benefits space.

Right.

Jamie had built successful consumer apps before — including large banking apps — and he was a proven entrepreneur.

But now he wanted to use his experience as a force for good and change how mental health support was delivered to employees.

This was around 2016.

Mental health wasn't as widely discussed then as it is today.

He saw the grit in my background.

Right.

And he thought, this is someone who can hustle and make things happen.

She can build things.

And I think one of the key things he recognised was that I was very commercial.

For marketers, especially in B2B, it's critical that you understand how the business grows.

You need to understand the levers of growth and work closely with sales.

But it's about parity between sales and marketing.

That dynamic is incredibly important.

So I think he loved the hustle, and he said, you know, she can really help me drive this business. And we went on a really meaningful journey.

Great team in the UK. I ended up overseeing a whole global team with LifeWorks.

It was all about employee duty of care, but also how you actually deploy innovation and technology in a way that helps people and engages with people, and really gives them the support they need when they need it most. But also, is there support along the way?

So a lot of learnings from that journey too.

It's really interesting hearing you talk about what he recognized in you and — sorry — that here’s a lady that can hustle, but also how you describe your understanding of how a business makes money and the role of marketing. Nowadays people perhaps refer to that as a Chief Revenue Officer.

Yeah.

And I think in many places within financial services marketing, the roles of marketing and sales are still very split.

Yeah.

And there's often no appreciation of one or the other. You don't subscribe to that mentality at all, do you? It seems that you feel actually the responsibility of marketing is sales as well.

Yeah.

I do. I think that's very distinct.

Yeah. I genuinely do.

I think it takes time when you go into organizations and sales leaders aren't used to that.

Yeah.

It takes time to educate them.

Sure.

And the way you do it is you prove it.

Yeah.

And you get in there, because I think you also can flex different muscles. You could sell. You could get on the field and sell. I feel like I've just spent the last forty-eight hours selling at this conference.

But so much of it is conditioning, and so much of it is legacy and how you operated in your career.

So I operated over a substantial amount of time with that mentality.

Where I was a real business partner to sales. I have always been a very strong business partner to sales, and also not been afraid to be foundational to the growth of the business.

And I was actually talking to my team about this — sometimes marketing can be seen as a bit of an add-on, where I've had it very much foundational to the growth of the business.

And when there is not an understanding of that, that's where you need to be very clear about what metrics matter and how you are representing the story.

Because it's as much about building the story of your impact internally.

Yes.

Otherwise it can be seen as just too fluffy.

Because people decide to remember what they feel they contributed to.

Yeah.

And the story is always biased.

So I think it's up to marketers to help that narrative and bring that commercial connection to the organization, or else it's not intuitive for people.

You can trace this thread back to your kitchen table when you were having these discussions with your mother and father talking about business ideas.

Yeah.

About that sense of commerciality.

And you can trace that thread all the way back.

I was keen to get onto LifeWorks.

Yeah. I know. We're not there yet.

I don't want to let that story lie. What happened with LifeWorks?

What was the journey you went on?

Yeah.

I mean, that was like an accelerator.

This was my first experience of a company acquiring another company. Metro had been acquired by a PE house, but that's very different.

LifeWorks had a rapid growth journey, and we were developing quite a strong reputation as being forward-thinking from a tech and innovation perspective.

And we got the attention of a traditional HR tech company in Canada called Morneau Shepell.

Right.

Based in Toronto.

Which took me a while to pronounce properly.

I'm not even going to attempt to.

Probably one of the leading HR techs.

So when I say HR tech, they had an established employee assistance program. They had absence management capability. Very embedded into the Canadian market and the North American market, but not at high scale globally.

Some global reach as well.

And they caught onto LifeWorks and reached out to the CEO, Jamie.

We went on this journey — which I was part of — about a six-month “let's get to know each other” process.

How could these businesses work together?

At the time, LifeWorks had about seven thousand customers globally.

Products were very complementary.

Morneau Shepell was looking for the technology to enable the services they were delivering, and that fit nicely into their strategic objectives.

So what was really enlightening about that was not only product complementarity, but also a very complementary customer base.

So there was real value in getting those additional customers on board.

But it was very critical from the beginning that the acquirer — Morneau Shepell and Stephen Liptrap — felt the values were aligned.

Yeah.

We spent a lot of time with their team to make sure we wanted to work together and build something purpose-driven.

So when the “dating letter” arrived —

A dating letter?

Yeah, the first date.

What was your role between the CEO and the acquiring company?

I'm interested from a marketing perspective.

What did you do once it looked like the sale might happen?

Yeah.

Naturally, I would say I'm chief packaging officer.

So how are you packaging up this whole proposition and this whole business in a way that makes it as enticing as possible?

So there were two things happening.

I played a large role in the positioning and the structure of the story of LifeWorks.

The growth story — what we built.

Because it's not just about the product.

It's about the growth engine that fuels that product.

We had driven new demand in the market that hadn't been seen before.

Traditional businesses — and this goes for insurance too — are steady businesses, great businesses, but they grow at a slow rate.

So there was enticing energy around the fact that LifeWorks could help accelerate the growth of a traditional business.

So there was positioning work early on.

And then a lot of relationship building.

Spending time, going to dinners, getting to know each other.

Meeting with banks through the due diligence process.

Being able to quantify and qualify the capabilities we had built.

Making it clear that this was more than just an app.

This was about business transformation.

And when you go through those journeys, from first date and beyond, it's all about building blocks of confidence.

You're selling the dream.

You're still selling at that point.

Exactly.

Enjoy that process?

Yeah. That's fun.

Any marketer loves bringing new energy and perspective into an environment.

And I loved that we could infuse this new capability and be underdogs in their environment.

At the time LifeWorks had grown to about five hundred people.

Morneau Shepell had six thousand.

So it was quite exhilarating.

Seeing a strong foundational business recognize there was more they could do and that we could guide them into a new frontier.

That's always exciting.

So then you chose YuLife.

Yeah.

Once the acquisition happened, I realized where my sweet spot is.

Through time and experience you recognize what gives you the most joy.

For me, that is building from the ground up.

And I felt like I had achieved that at LifeWorks.

So I started thinking about the next step.

Was there a break between the two?

No.

Break for Christmas, maybe.

But no real break.

I wanted the transition to be smooth because when you help build something you want to leave it in good standing.

You want your legacy to transition well.

But then there was a moment of serendipity.

Sammy, our CEO, talks a lot about serendipity.

I found a YuLife business card in my pocket.

People don’t even use business cards anymore.

I was about to put my jeans in the laundry and thought, what is this?

And it said YuLife.

I remembered meeting Jonathan at a conference.

They had a tiny booth with a giraffe and bright colors.

He was a great guy.

Then the same day I saw a LinkedIn post.

Branding.

Yeah.

All roads point to you.

So I reached out to Jonathan.

Most of my jobs have come from cold outreach.

Just reaching out directly.

Straight to the CEO.

Exactly.

I said I'd love to learn more. Let's get coffee.

He said, come meet our CEO.

So I met Sammy.

And I spent a lot of time at what they call the Universe — YuLife’s office on Old Street.

I just thought these guys were onto something.

They hadn't found full product-market fit yet.

There wasn’t marketing yet.

But it was a great product.

The team at that point was about twenty-five people.

The whole business.

Today the business is about two hundred and fifteen people.

My marketing team is twenty-three.

So it was a small team finding their way.

But incredible technology.

When you're going to jump onto a new ship, you have to ask:

Does the product work?

Does it solve a need that isn't met today?

At LifeWorks, the need we solved was that employee assistance programs had about two percent utilization.

Similarly, insurance — especially group benefits — has very little engagement.

It's bought but not used.

The innovation was asking: what if you changed the value it delivers?

What if life insurance was about life, not death?

What if technology gamified healthy behavior?

That was the dream.

And that's what I believed when I walked into that office of twenty people in December 2019.

Insurance is a trillion-dollar market.

So if you can disrupt it properly, it's a huge growth opportunity.

Then you ask:

Do I like these founders?

Do I trust them?

Sammy had been the founding CEO of VitalityLife.

He deeply understood insurance and believed it could be a force for good.

Sam Fromson, the COO and co-founder, is an incredible business mind.

And Josh Hart built the tech.

He came from gaming and app development.

The product uses gamification to encourage small daily healthy behaviors — walking, meditation, brain games.

Employees earn YuCoin and redeem rewards like Amazon vouchers or planting trees.

The result is healthier employees, lower absence, and higher engagement with health services.

We partner with insurers like MetLife and Bupa.

They handle the claims.

We deliver the digital experience and engagement layer.

That’s the ecosystem.

Yeah.

So let’s thank you for giving us that overview.

Oh, it’s a bit of a long one. I’m delighted we’ve got to you guys.

Yeah. So let’s go back then to when you went to the Universe in Old Street. Twenty-five people in the business at that point. Two hundred now, did you say?

So what was the marketing role that took you from twenty-five to two or three hundred people? And can you give us the curvature?

Yeah, I’d like to understand what your marketing mission was when you got in there at that point.

We’ll hear about that, but I’m also keen to hear where you are now and what the next part looks like.

So first off the bat, when I got hired, I said if I’m going to join this business, I’m going to say something of a wildcard at the time — which is OK. I mean, I tell the guys that this is me taking a chance.

Yeah.

On the underdog in, I don’t even think it’s an eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I think it’s whatever the biggest gorilla that’s ever existed in the world is — that’s the industry we’re operating in.

And I said I need to bring this one individual with me right away.

Right.

And this is Shay. So I brought on Shay, who was my marketing ops leader for LifeWorks.

Right.

Incredible data mind, very complementary to me, and I brought him with me.

From the very first task, it was getting what is now revenue operations within YuLife — the foundation of the CRM operating, which we use HubSpot for — our data and segmentation.

Like, where are we fishing? Who are these customers?

Let’s look at what we have. I think at the time there were maybe forty customers. We’re now at twelve hundred customers.

So it’s…

Yeah.

And just really building that foundation. That was critical first. It was the data capabilities, the tracking, and just getting our house in order.

Yeah.

With that, you start to then…

So for me, what was very important early on was to establish credibility as a group life insurance provider.

OK.

Yeah — meaning people need to take it seriously.

Yeah. And when you say establish credibility, credibility in whose eyes?

In the industry.

Yeah.

So we’re in a market where we’re selling directly to HR directors, but also to advisers.

Yeah. OK.

There had been very few new entrants to the group life industry, which we call group risk in the benefits space.

And so there would be natural skepticism.

Yeah.

So there was a real education moment — becoming, or conveying ourselves as — building a reputation as a trusted and credible insurance provider with the backing of these great carriers.

Yeah.

But also thinking about insurance differently. And that’s a big education piece.

But it sounds like you’re trying to educate the market as well, because you’re coming in…

Yeah, you have to educate the market.

In what is quite a traditional — shall we say —

Industry.

Doesn’t want to change.

Doesn’t want to change.

And you’re saying we’re going to shift the way people actually think about insurance.

Yes. It’s hard.

Yeah.

This is not an easy task.

No.

OK.

So what you start to do is — it’s a multiplier effect.

You essentially become an aspirational startup in everything that you do.

So everything from your PR strategy — it’s two-pronged, because you have an investor PR strategy. You have a “let’s build this” narrative.

We had just been post-Series A.

You’re still building the dream.

Yeah.

So let’s be this aspirational startup that everyone wants to work with.

Right.

So best-in-class energy.

So when you’re thinking about your HR tech stack, you’re like, I want to go for the HiBobs, the YuLifes, the Pleos — this kind of thing.

But you simultaneously need to convey that you’re a safe pair of hands and that you know what the heck you’re talking about.

And so there’s a couple of things — whether that was through research, whether that was through education — a lot of education in the market, leveraging loads of social proof.

Right.

Because we’re developing a relationship with the employer and the employee through this experience, you can get a lot of great social proof.

Right.

That is incredible marketing currency to then be amplified and used to ultimately drive demand.

Yeah.

So what we found was that there are actually a lot of people, shockingly, in the market searching “death in service” — meaning they’re looking for life insurance benefits.

Right.

But then what we were doing was, from an SME perspective, we were able to service a lot of different needs from a wellness, all-in-one benefits perspective.

So we were driving a lot of new demand in the market, which started to build up good credibility.

Advisers love that because they love driving new sales.

So I would say the trajectory and traction we were able to get from a direct marketing perspective has been much faster than on a partner level.

Because we’ve been able to control that message and that narrative.

And part of me is thinking that once advisers cottoned onto it, it actually helps them and makes them look good.

Yeah.

The idea of working with you guys to innovate in the space as well.

So that social proof — it’s almost like going back to your guerrilla marketing style — it amplifies the trajectory.

And that’s really the win.

When we talk about the win-win, it’s also the win for the partners.

Yeah.

You have to be able to educate them and prove that there’s what we call the cost of doing nothing.

If they feel they don’t really need you, they’re not going to work with you.

But if they feel you’re going to help them be more successful — of course.

Yeah.

But what I also say — and this goes to ICP and where you go fishing — not everyone is going to be ripe.

Not everyone is going to be our friend.

No.

And that’s OK.

There are other businesses for that.

If you just want a transactional, black-and-white insurance product, go for it.

Yeah.

But I would say about twenty-five percent of HR leaders out there will want to be our friend.

And that’s a lot of people.

Yeah.

And I’d say the same applies for advisers.

So we really lean into the change agents — the people willing to take a chance.

I talked about this today because I had an incredible experience yesterday where I met the whole global team of Sodexo.

Sodexo — about 466,000 employees across the world.

And the same month that I started at YuLife in early 2020, Sodexo took a chance on us.

Right.

And Sodexo also took YuLife on as their group life insurance provider.

Interestingly, yesterday I was able to meet the wider team, which was very exciting, because the UK leader, Mark, showcased YuLife as a moment of pride for the whole global team.

And that could ultimately lead to more opportunities, which is great.

But Mark took a chance.

While working in a big business like Sodexo, he saw us as a lever to help his people and took a chance on us.

As I did.

You know?

That surely goes back to the values of the business from the founders — which made you back them and also made Sodexo back them.

Yeah.

And values are only as good as how they’re executed, delivered, talked about, conveyed, and practiced.

That’s been really critical through our whole growth journey.

Even now, in our weekly all-hands, we reinforce the values.

They’re threaded through everything we do — how we work with customers, the interaction everyone has with YuLife internally and externally.

It’s very consistent, and that’s played very well for our brand.

Yeah.

And that’s not something you have to buy as a brand campaign.

That happens organically.

If you get your founders, your team, your customers — everyone pushing in the same direction — the social cloud and the value of that elevates you incredibly high.

Yeah.

That’s really powerful.

Once that momentum starts, it’s like a snowball.

Yeah.

The flywheel effect.

Where are you now with YuLife?

The momentum has built. You’ve been there four years?

Close to five.

Yeah — end of February.

So what have you been working on this year? What does next year look like?

I think the biggest change now — so I talked about Shay and RevOps — but then you need to bring in talent across the different disciplines.

You bring in these specialists — demand generation, design, proposition, partner marketing — and cultivate the team.

Set your OKRs, your metrics, your goalposts, your North Star, and get them collaborating.

There’s a lot that’s gone into that.

Now where we are — we’ve gone from startup, fast growth — just cooking.

And now we’re in that “grow-up” stage where we need to be more methodical.

Still taking risks, but evolving how we look at the data and how we spend our time.

Continuing to hone in on what the market needs and how we grow.

There’s also been evolution in what we sell.

There was simplicity when we were just selling life insurance.

Now we’ve evolved — we’re selling health insurance too.

Health insurance is much more competitive.

You have to flex different muscles to drive demand and growth.

I lean into Bupa a lot, which is our partner, because of their brand heritage and legacy.

As you get bigger, you just become more sophisticated in the way you target and attack the market.

We now have much more data, stronger CRM capabilities, and more tools.

So it’s about keeping up with those tools, staying personalized, and remaining proactive.

Also, when you build a team with specialists, you have to ensure everyone understands the North Star.

So it’s not just about looking at lead numbers — designers might say, “I don’t care.”

But designers should understand how what they create contributes to the bigger picture.

That empowers everyone.

So I spend more time now not just on proposition and packaging, but on telling a cohesive marketing story so everyone feels empowered together rather than operating in silos.

How do you find it on a personal level?

You came into YuLife as the marketing department.

Now you have a team of twenty-three people.

You were the doer before — now you’re the leader managing people.

How have you found that personally?

And where does the adrenaline come from now?

I’ve had a lot of joy building the team — hiring, finding talent, empowering them.

But I’ll always be someone who wants to get into the weeds.

I’ve learned to let go more and empower people.

That’s a skill in itself.

Oh man — and trust.

I’d say I still get adrenaline through new initiatives and experimentation.

For example, this conference in Paris — the organizers had always asked us to sponsor, and I’d always sent someone from the team.

This year I said, you know what, I’m going to go myself.

And I hustled in the crowd.

I deployed some sales energy.

But I learned a lot being on the field.

And I still think being on the field is really important.

But I trust my team to do a great job.

What I encourage is collaboration earlier in the process — asking questions, getting feedback in an agile way.

I don’t love the big reveal.

I’d rather be on the journey with you and help along the way.

That’s where teamwork and the most effective results happen.

So where is YuLife going?

What are you focused on now?

What do the next twelve months look like?

There’s a big focus on international growth.

The UK is in “grow-up.”

Japan and the US are in “zero to one.”

We’ve just built a small team in Japan with our partner there, Dai-ichi Life.

We’re really excited about that.

Interestingly, the app experience has gone down unbelievably well with Japanese culture.

The gamification, the design — it’s really resonated.

And we have wonderful supporters with Dai-ichi, who is also a key investor in YuLife.

In the US, we’re now in some great conversations.

The path there is building deep carrier partnerships.

We believe we’ve earned the right to show the impact we can make with insurance carriers, and that will enable us to scale.

In the UK it was more about standing on our own two feet and driving demand.

Now it’s about taking those learnings and working with the right partners in the US to scale impact there.

When you look back on this journey — you’ve had a phenomenal career.

If you think back to yourself in the Yellow Pages days, is there anything you would tell yourself to do differently?

I operate very much as an eternal optimizer.

I learn constantly.

Of course there are mistakes — things I’d do differently.

For example, I recently worked on a long potential partnership that we didn’t win.

But it was important for me to reflect with the team on what I would have done differently.

Those are learning moments.

Sometimes you hire someone you think will be great and it doesn’t work out.

You learn from that too.

It’s all building blocks.

I’ve taken so much from all those experiences.

When the moment comes where I feel a chapter has run its course, I move to the next one.

I’ve been quite consistent in my approach to my roles and my career, but I’ve always wanted to evolve and grow.

Insurance is a tough industry.

You seem to like choosing tough industries.

There’s a pattern there.

What’s an easy industry?

I don’t know.

Maybe Formula One driver.

That sounds fun.

Lauren, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been really great hearing your story and the journey you’ve been on.

I wish you every success with YuLife and its global expansion.

Thank you.

We’ll be introducing YuLife to our HR director immediately.

Nice — we can get you a good deal.

Thanks so much.

I think we don’t often take the time to reflect on our journeys, so thank you for giving me the platform to do that.

My pleasure.

Thank you for listening to The Growth Engine.

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