Why Olipop's Co-Founder Dynamic WORKS

0:03As the founder or leader of a scaling challenger brand, finding the right people to join your growing business can be much harder than you think. That's why we've teamed up with FMCG specialist recruitment consultancy, MKJ Ignite, to bring you the best people and recruitment insights from some of the most successful founders out there. Tell everybody how Olipop came to life and grew to the half a billion dollar revenue that you're expecting this year, right? Yeah. I mean, Ben, my co-founder, is an insane person. He's the kind of guy that wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering what the meaning of life is, and then gets up the next day and is like, okay, we got to change some stuff here.

0:45And then he calls me and away we go. So our motivations are slightly different. It's interesting with co-founding teams. I think it's a very challenging relationship and you know Ben and I have had to work through a lot of stuff, we did not work well together on our first venture but we didn't kill each other either so and I think we shared kind of a similar value system so but we have very different ways of working so we kind of had to meld those a bit, it's taken a while, we're still working on it today, you know it's never super easy but for Ben you know and his backstory um yeah he's really patient zero of this thing he he grew up food insecure um in the u.s just south of san francisco challenging childhood he talks about that on podcast a little bit he's quite candid about that um and in his sort of mid-teens he made a decision to uh change his life he was like you know overweight eating the standard american diet and he was out for a hike and he was like, I don't think my life's going to end up in a great place.

1:53I've got to change something. So he got himself a job. He started eating better food and he lost weight, but he also noticed his mental clarity improved. So he became very interested in gut-brain connection, so much so, and I'm going to fast forward through a lot of, dropped out of college, taught himself microbiology, got himself a mentor who independently won himself Supreme Court's case by himself. It's a reason you have to, police have to ask for ID in the US now and start a kombucha company. So for Ben, it's not, I think I saw a market opportunity here to launch a gap in the market. This is like, I mean, you talk about mission driven, like I've never met anyone more mission driven.

2:39And for me, it was about venture. And so I was like, this is not a guy who's going to pivot to do the boring thing when stuff gets hard, he's single-minded about this stuff. So we've done some very interesting things that people told us not to do. I'm delighted to be partnering with MKJ Ignite, an FMCG recruitment specialist who supports challenger brands just like yours. MKJ Ignite has worked with some of the fastest growing brands in the industry, including the likes of Real Superfoods, Purdy & Fig, Hunter & Gather, Lucky Saint and Untamed. Recently, I asked co-founder Billy Maddock to explain the real value that a specialist recruiter like MKJ Ignite can offer founders.

3:22Let's be honest here, hiring is incredibly time consuming. And founders and business leaders, they've already got so much on their plate as it is. A specialist recruiter such as us, we can take care of most things. So whether it's writing job descriptions, building candidate packs, looking at the positioning of the role, into the interview process, offer negotiation, we can take care of all of that. Now at MKJ Ignite, we have worked alongside some of the fastest scaling brands in the industry. You know, Hunter & Gather, Lucky Saint, True Start Coffee, some pet food brands like Untamed and Marlabones.

3:55We've helped these brands not just, you know, not just to hire and fill roles, but to build high performing teams that drive real business growth. So our job really is to make the process seamless, structured and more importantly, stress free.

4:10Honestly, besides the obvious value of having a deep network and tons of experience in recruitment, so much more time and effort goes into finding the right people than you might think. No matter what stage of the journey you're at, MKJ Ignite can help you find the right people for your marketing, e-commerce, sales or operations teams, whether that be at middle management or senior leadership roles. They have an extensive network of deep personal relationships in the space. And I think that's because they are really lovely, genuine people. So if you want to chat to Immy, Paul or Billy about all things recruitment, or indeed, if you just need a piece of advice, then please do reach out to them.

4:47There's a link in the show notes to book a no obligation chat, or you can email them at info at mkj-ignite.co.uk. Thanks to MKJ Ignite for bringing us this nugget of brand growth value today. Don't forget to hit follow so you won't miss the next one. Bye.