Grenade CEO Exposes The Brutal Truth About UK Taxes & Building a Billion-Dollar Company | Al Barratt

0:00As of last year it was just shy of a billion dollars. How much tax did you pay? You had to go there didn't you? Yeah so we paid.

0:07Al Barratt:Alan Barrett, the CEO of Grenade. One of the UK's fastest growing brands. We're disrupting chocolate and we just need to stop punishing people for taking risks. Do they even want to support entrepreneurship? Why aren't they? This just has to change. What's your biggest fuck up? There's been a lot of personal sacrifice over the years and I had to choose them between my wife or my business. And I kind of chose what. What is the biggest scam in the fitness and lobby industry? The biggest scam?

0:35Al, are you allowed to disclose how much you sold Grenade for? Yes, yeah. So we've sold it in various increments over the years. We've done two rounds of private equity, two rounds of trade. So I've done four Grenade deals in total, starting off with£35 million in 2014 to growth point capital, then 72 million in 2017 to lion capital and each of these events i kind of cash shares roll shares and kind of kept going in some instances i i hit targets and earned shares back um but then we did a uh the most lucrative then for me in terms of the shares at the time uh we did 2021 for 200 million and that was to monderleys who have only ever bought two businesses in the uk grenade and Cadbury um that was 2021 and then 2024 we'd taken the business to 611 million at that point and then that was it then I was kind of out of shares and then they um they said uh would you like to stay I said no the reward for good work is more work um basically so um I said no I just don't need to work behind a desk but actually Mondelez um have been uh and actually are the best partners we could ever have.

1:51And, you know, 300 billion market cap. They own Philadelphia and Belvita and Cadbury and Oreo and whatever, so been really helpful. They moved our offices then from Solihull, where at the time we moved up to Bourneville to go into Cadbury HQ. And then we came up, we actually spent a year, I stepped down as CEO last year after my earn out, But we came up with a year figuring out, before the earn out, figuring out actually what the future would look like for me. Because they're very smart in acquisitions they've done. They know that if founders tend to leave, you know, that fundamentally alters businesses and brands, mostly negatively.

2:34Because brands are extensions of their founders. And actually, I didn't want to leave either. But I also didn't want to work behind a desk. I didn't want a job. so we came up with this deal in this where I'm in this this founder role and I kind of go where I'm needed and it's actually it's brilliant absolutely brilliant so I had a few conditions I didn't want to see any spreadsheets ever I think I've said I haven't seen a spreadsheet in a year no board meetings I've not been a board meeting for a year I don't want a boss I've got no boss I've got no deliverables as well which is actually gets better and better doesn't it um so uh and i wanted my uh my best friend who's had worked at grenade with me tom murphy i wanted him to be ceo he was number two at the time and which he didn't want that job but i said if you want me to kind of do this founder role i think tom should be ceo and he's an any and he did accept and he's an incredible ceo so i get to work with my best friend every day on the brand that i built and i can help and add value and sort of go around the world uh and it's actually really enjoyable because i've got so many of their investments as well that uh we can just kind of combine them all so as long as i don't do anything that competes with with grenade um it works really well so actually everything i'm doing at the moment now is um is actually very beneficial to grenade even in different um businesses and stuff as well so it's actually working really well so i'm a year in um probably do another couple of years as a consultancy role it's actually quite good because for me and my mental health as well, I've been 15 years at Grenade.

4:05So to suddenly not be there and then, you know, sell your business, sell your brand, it's a real shock. It's like sort of, it's like, I don't have kids, but I imagine it's like selling a child, which is probably quite tempting. But, you know, a bit like, just one minute it's there, the next it's not. So it's actually working really well. So, yeah, so we basically, we started Grenade with a 500 pound passport to export UKTI startup loan. and then as of last year it was just shy of a billion dollars um so i think there's just so few people who've done that in the in the uk as well i probably know most of them it's a short list um and i'm 49 so hopefully still young enough that i'm i've got got some years left um as well but it's tricky balance isn't it because you know you don't want to be in a business or a brand potentially too long because I've got no kids.

4:59There's no point in me sitting there when I'm 70 and people are cleaning up around me and stuff. So the timing all seemed to work well, so it's been good so far. Wow, what a journey. So maybe we can talk through that journey a bit. So each time you sold a percentage of the company and then you had a growth plan to go again and again, was that always the plan? Yeah, pretty much. Don't you think it's having three or increments? Because, I mean, the world is so changeable, especially now and you know businesses are risky everything is is you know is fraught with risk and i know plenty of people who've built bigger businesses than grenade who've got a lot less out of it especially american sports nutrition companies because only ever a lawsuit away from potentially you know losing your brand and where you are trading in the us you've always got three or four lawsuits on the go um and even ones where you're completely in the right you can still lose You can still win and yet it bankrupts you.

5:56And I'm not sure that's a win, but technically you've won in court, but you've lost your brand. So you're always worried about that. There's a lot of brands out there who've got a lot of money as well who just sort of throw money at lawsuits and just kind of distract you and drain your time. It's unbelievably hard work, as you can imagine. And you like every business. You have these peaks and troughs where you just think, oh, God, is it worth it? So you never know what's around the corner. And some friends of mine, again, have built big businesses in the U.S., had offers to sell them of over a billion, turned it down, and that subsequently got nothing as well.

6:30So it's, with us, I mean, we did our first deal in sports nutrition, actually, before we even invented that bar. So at the time, had we not invented that bar, and we did it on our£35 million deal, you know, we'd have a business now still, we'd have a brand now, but we'd probably sell half the sports nutrition now that we were selling 10 years ago. So if we hadn't invented that bar, that itself was just an unbelievable deal. As it was, the brand got bigger and it adapted and evolved and we pivoted into food and protein bars. And now we do, you know, well over 100 million bars a year just in the UK.

7:07And we're selling bars in 80 countries. And that's the opportunity that, you know, Mondelez can see because obviously we've been disrupting chocolate quite a bit. So, you know, you are where you are. And whenever there was an opportunity on the table to take real money off the table, you have to think about it really seriously. Because a lot of... I.e. cashing your shares when you can. I mean, yeah, there are definitely, you know, there are brands out at the moment that are, you know, valued in the billions. They've sold, you know, small percentages of shares and, you know, and got enormous EV for the brand, which is great.

7:46And they might continue to grow and they might not. but I think we've actually managed to crystallise the full value of Grenade. It's like I said, over 600 million last year. So whenever we had money on the table, you think we could have made a lot more, we could have also made a lot less, and you think actually this is real money, we can de-risk a bit, we can get a helpful partner, we can hit the reset button and go again. And that's quite powerful. There are deals again I probably wish I hadn't done, potentially with hindsight. but you know we are where we are and actually everything touchwood's worked out pretty well so you know can't complain yeah well some of those deals that didn't work I'd like to talk about those a bit later we personally have always been because Mark and I we haven't taken any money off the table we haven't sold any shares and we have been scared we know like you many successful entrepreneurs who have had bad experiences and you know VCs private equity come in and they can And also ruin a business, can't they?

8:49Absolutely. How did you manage for that not to happen? Yeah, I mean, how I've managed to get through four big deals and still end up where they want me running the companies, I mean, you know me, so how I've not been fired over the years is a miracle, to be honest. Because I've always had this entrepreneurial flair where entrepreneurs are a nightmare to work with. There's good and there's bad. And when I first came up with the idea for this protein bar in 2014, and GrowthPoint Capital come along and they just invested 35 million based on the sort of what I wanted to do the previous week, which was selling sports nutrition.

9:25So, but you know, the ink was barely dry. I'm like, oh, we could do this. And they were all ex-Investec and they've kind of like got this three or four year plan. And I've never really had a plan in my life. I kind of make it up as I go along. So I said, we're going to do these protein bars. And they were absolutely horrified and they told me not to do it. And I just did it anyway. And on the, so I've always got, And to be fair, luckily, it's always paid off. So I did say if these bars don't sell, I'll buy them all myself. And that was 50 ,000 bars back in 2014. So I'd still be eating them, to be honest, if that was the case.

9:57But actually, yeah, but one of the guys there did say, look, you know, we kind of, part of this is you've just got your gut feeling, which was really good, actually. So they did give you some autonomy. Yeah, it wasn't a yes, but it was as close to a yes I was going to get. And again, ultimately, we don't know some of these things. You have to try. You're going to fail, which is fine. Fail really quickly. Learn and go again. That's absolutely fine. And I think people are so scared of failure. If you don't do it, you've already failed. So I think you've just got to fail quickly and just take the learnings from it.

10:36Because, you know, I'm not the oracle. And I could make great products. I can't make people buy them. I can't make retailers list them. so um there's you you have to be very very uh flexible and adaptable and you know you're right i mean i know the experiences i've had with sort of private equity and trade um and i've probably got about the best experiences of anyone i know if i'm honest and it's still been fairly shit so i can't i can't imagine you know anyone would perhaps had a better experience but You're right, you know, you're getting married when you do these deals and, you know, they kind of own a part of you.

11:20And, you know, it is what it is. And it's a it's a distraction, you know. And we did a deal with in 2017 with Lion Capital after Grove Point. We kind of outgrew Grove Point, I guess, a bit. And then Lion came along who were experts in brands. And at the time, you know, they've done deals with Jimmy Choo and GHD and Kettle, the potato chip brand. All Saints, Weetabix, really understood branded stuff. And again, I think we got a little bit unlucky. And again, I'm great with Lyndon, who's the founder. But I think I've only met Lyndon about three times. I think on the last deal, he made 108 million.

11:58So, you know, he didn't do badly, bearing in mind that was three. To endure me for three meetings, it wasn't a bad return, was it, really? It was 108 million. But I think we got a little bit unlucky in where they were on their investment cycle because they invested at 72, they tapped out at 108, at 200. So they had an incredible return, as everyone has who's backed me and the team and Grenade. They've all done really well, which is brilliant. But I think we had at Lion, they were going through some stuff at the time. And I think we had about five brand managers in sort of three years. So you'd kind of start off on one plan and then they'd leave.

12:33And then someone else comes along and they've got a different plan. So you just end up kind of doing this all the time. And as an entrepreneur, you know i can do that i can zigzag on my own i don't need some sex like him for me so um yeah the the you know so i've always gotten well with whoever we've worked with but but it is a real distraction and again they will sometimes come in and say oh we should do this as the brand and you don't want to disappoint them so you kind of then you end up going down a route that you don't really want to go down and that's probably been good for you and mark because you've always done what you to have wanted to do yeah whereas like i you know one of the people that looked after us at um at lion capital you know veganism was kind of becoming big at the time this was kind of 2017 2018 um and he's really wanted to make vegan products i just didn't want to do it so we did do it and it didn't sell you know and i sort of lost two years of r &d time i'd have just been doing something else it was my fault because i shouldn't have done it but also they kind of planted the seed and because they're your partner at the time you kind of it's easy to get sucked into these things and they grow arms and legs.

13:34So you can definitely get distracted with these deals for sure. If you don't need the money or the help, just don't do it. Because then you need money, help, or potentially sort of de-risk. And like I said, this stuff's really risky. So if you can get cash off the table sometimes, that's valuable. Yeah, thank you. And obviously Grenada is most famous for these protein bars and they've been amazing for you. do you actually know how many protein bars you've sold in your entire life i'd stopped counting over 500 million a few years ago we'd be knocking on for a billion bars easy billion billion bars the protein bars obviously we're disrupting chocolate so you know are protein bars the healthiest thing you can eat no are they as good as having a you know just a plain chicken breast salad no are they better for you than confectionery bars yes so we just provide an alternative where we know people are going to make a bad decision on nutrition and i was actually saying to you like in a petrol station because people are going to pick up a red bull and a pasty um or they're going to pick up you know crisps or chocolate bar and you are just better off just having one of our bars and just not having the sugar having the protein your body recognizes it as food you feel full because the thing when you have a chocolate bar you want another chocolate bar whereas actually when you eat a protein bar you don't you want another protein bar because it does fill you up so we probably haven't given ourselves enough credit as to all the people we've helped over the years um who've lost a lot of weight just through through grenade just by making a better choice um and actually just being more organized with what they eat and and when um and you know not demonizing so because there's no such thing where it's good and bad food you know i eat whatever i want but we have to do it sort of in moderation and in the uk we've kind of got a real snacking problem um which just leads to you know overeating and we're just trying to help people to make better choices and everyone's busy and where you're in a situation like a petrol station where you're going to probably make a you know a bad choice just try and help them make a better one and you know and to get protein bars into petrol stations sounds really easy but it was so hard we had to sell shares in our business to do that we had to sell shares to rontech to get listed in their stores because if you imagine a petrol station where you've got you know the best selling products in the UK.

15:49Or the chocolate bars. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, just, you know, just confectionery chocolate, crisp snacks, you know, milk, bread, tea, coffee, Coca-Cola, you know, all this stuff's in there. You know, these, they're just the biggest brands in the UK. They don't have elastic shelves. So for us to go in, something's coming out, you know, what are you taking out? So, yeah, we did the deal with Grovepoint and Rontek. I think Rontek ended up with like a 1 % share or something of Grenade to get the listing. And he gave us, he gave us one site so that's the kind of deal Mark would do but you know what it was actually fab we learnt loads I went and met the entrepreneurs just get on with entrepreneurs don't they and I went and met Gerald who owns Ron Tech who's just a real character anyway and got on well and he just he liked me and just gave me a shot and he said where do you want to be in the store and I said I want to be at the till point and he said no he said you don't want to be at the till point because everything sells at the till point He said, so you won't learn anything.

16:47So it was actually really good advice. I'm going to put you at the back of the store. So he put us at the back of the store, and we were out selling Mars bars 10 to 1 at the back of the store. Wow. So that gave us then, I love a path as an entrepreneur. I love a journey. And we had one petrol station, and then he'd got 500, I think, at the time. Either 350 or 500, it was a lot. And he gave us one, and we got 10, and we got 50, and we got the whole estate. And now we're in every petrol station in the UK. There's 10 ,000 of them. and it just gave us the hand-to-hand combat so once then we proved that we could do this we could disrupt confectionery um from the back of the store and there's nothing wrong with mars bars by the way but again if you're a petrol station uh forecourt owner they make nothing on fuel they make money on what they sell in the store and every time they were selling one of our bars they were making 150 and every time they were selling a mars bar they were making 13p so you can kind of do the maths to what they'd rather sell so we were out selling them in in rate of sale and cash margin uh and the the the petrol um the um the garage operators just loved us absolutely loved us um so every time somebody went into uh buy petrol where they say do you want to buy a grenade bar which is actually quite good so you know if you can just get thousands and thousands of you know mini me's kind of doing stuff for you it's really powerful the power of compounding rob as you were saying about yesterday on your social media.

18:10Yes. Yes. So are you saying you launched a protein bar and you weren't competing with protein bars, you were competing with chocolate? Yeah. Was that the plan? Yeah, not really, no. We didn't realise what we were doing, to be fair. It wasn't, I'll be honest with you, it wasn't a master plan. So like I know, let's go and fuck up chocolate. Just to be a pain. We were a sports nutrition brand just making product that people would get benefit from and as products started to get quite expensive and quite technical all they can only be sold in certain places so all the places that you could buy our fat burners and our pre-workout products we were already in we were number one on amazon we were in tesco nutricenter we were number one in holland and barrett we were two percent of gnc's entire turnover um and we'd sort of run out of places to go and a couple of things were happening we'd run out of kind of retail space and we had a you know a nice lifestyle business this is my 2014 sort of 35 million valuation lifestyle business you know felt like it could just be more and a couple of things were happening we had run out of retail space and consumers are kind of running out of money um because a lot of our stuff was quite expensive so we were selling products that were you know between 50 and 80 pounds so they weren't going to be in a petrol station and it was quite a considered purchase and I wanted something I wanted to take what we'd learnt and to put it into a product that we could put in more places and more people could afford, that was the original plan and we'd been working on protein bars for a couple of years because I just couldn't find a good one, so the art of this really was just disruption it was just actually, people are buying protein bars and I don't think they're that good, I can make a better one of these Do you mean in terms of the way it tastes?

20:01Yeah, the way it tastes, I mean they were just like Dog chews, really. You know, they were just really unpleasant to eat, very chalky, very chewy. They hadn't really changed in 30 years. And it's interesting, so they hadn't changed in 30 years because nobody was buying them, but no one was buying them because they hadn't changed in 30 years. So at some point, someone, whatever it is, if someone can just come along and just do something better, it's surprising how many people you can actually bring with you on that journey. So the first thing was making a really good protein bar that I felt I would eat and I would enjoy.

20:33put it you know make it affordable so um two pounds fifty as opposed to you know fifty pounds for our complicated pre-workout product um it wasn't a considered purchase so you didn't have to go into holland and barrett and we sold the product for the benefits of it for 30 minutes to to part with your money um and we just thought then if we could we'd have all this white space ahead of us where we could put protein bars and you know hopefully and people would buy us instead of chocolate. I mean, I never dreamed that we could, we'd basically overtake Cadbury, which is basically what happened. You know, I became obsessed with the data.

21:10I mean, we were very quickly the number one selling protein bar in the UK because that wasn't difficult because they weren't selling. But then when we got into the top 20 of confectionery and, you know, like we overtook Twix and stuff. And I've, you know, I've got like, you know, no idea how many Twix's were selling, but I was surprised that we were selling more than they were and then we quickly got into the top 10 um and i think the top 10 at the time was like you know it was for the top five was like for uh ferrero like kinder um it was mars bar snickers dairy milk you know just the best-selling chocolate bars in the country none of which had been um none of which were new they'd you know they'd all been around for a long time i think the new kid on the block for confectionery was like whisper and that was like the 80s basically so we hadn't realized it hadn't been disrupted but you know we didn't sort of uh wake up like some sort of evil mastermind plan you know to kind of go and overtake uh ferrero and that but that's actually what happened so and then you know as we ended up with our 2021 deal we had giovanni ferrero on the phone and cadbury on the other and they both wanted it because we'd overtaken both of them and nobody likes to be number two so we ended up in a in a good situation there so you played them off against each other absolutely yeah absolutely and then one of them pulled out and we couldn't let the other one know that they pulled out it was a one horse race so it was and then they came back in again but um yeah that was actually that was um that was really i mean it was with hindsight now it was a great position to be in to have two people really want it but it was very very stressful i flip-flopped a lot between who we'd do the deal with um you know to be honest and then actually and should we do the deal at all because as i said it was kind of my baby um and we were very happy just to keep on going but you know you could keep on going and i know regs could change laws could change consumer habits can change lots of things can change you know um we already had obviously a scare through covid where retail had been really disrupted so you know anything could happen and um i was i remember chatting to linden from line capital about whether we should do this deal and we're a lot of 200 million and i'm like we can get more for this and and he actually said um he said uh i think he said yeah pigs get fat hogs get slaughtered or something like that and uh basically just don't be greedy let's do the deal there's you know there's there's a good deal to be had here and i'm really glad we did it to be fair Yeah, great story so far.

23:41Thank you, Al. I want to come back to the business side of it, but this is nagging in my mind. How much tax did you pay? Yes, yeah. Sorry to kill the fucking mood, but... No, you had to go there, didn't you? Yeah, so we paid 20 % on our shares. This actually, it's a really good point to pay because there's a good point to be had here. When we did our first deal, we had entrepreneurs relief for the first 10 it was 10 million at the time is it one now? yeah it's one yeah so our first 10 million we paid a million of tax yeah 10 % which is incredible it is 10 % yeah you're right so we did that yeah just double check yep yep it's 10 % so we did the deal there ladies and gentlemen that was our bar I'm never coming back I'm never coming back keeps inviting me to do these yeah Not anymore.

24:39I'm just saying it for the benefit of everyone. I know, yeah, no, it's a good point. And then for the rest, we paid 20%. It was, you know, we've never set anything up in a clever way to not pay tax. But when we, I wish we had, but when we were. And was that capital gains tax? Yes. That's what that was? Because that's 28 now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this was the point we had back in 2021 where, you know, we just sort of coming out of COVID. We knew that COVID was going to have to be paid for somewhere. There were rumours of CGT and whatever going up. And we thought we're better off doing a£200 million deal at 20 % tax than doing a£300 million deal at 40 % tax.

25:24Because at the time, there was a rumour that CGT was going to match income tax. Do you remember? Yes, I do, yeah. Well, imagine then just kind of doing the deal for more money and being worse off. so it kind of you know pushed us into doing the deal when it was there because we probably would have carried on to be honest but it's amazing isn't it then how just those changes can really fundamentally change what you do in a business and yeah for the first time in my life it was actually how much tax we pay that was dictating whether or not we do a deal and again I mean you know it's only going one way isn't it thanks to Rachel from accounts so I really feel sorry for anyone now that's kind of up against this with the tax and stuff that we're paying it's pretty criminal really we were chatting earlier, I've got absolutely no issue at all paying tax and I know some extremely globally wealthy people I've had this conversation with all of them and they've all said the same thing they've got no problem paying tax they've all gone offshore because of the amount of tax that gets wasted they'd rather have a choice where their tax money actually goes into charities or whatever it's not about tax avoidance it's about actually spending it well because governments no matter which government it is they just don't spend money well um so that's you know that's why i think a lot of rich people probably get a bad rap it's not about it's not about them keeping the money for themselves it's about the waste or not having waste rather so you know what two or three things do you think or could the the government do to support entrepreneurship um do they even want to support entrepreneurship Why aren't they?

27:01It's a great question. I think because like most governments, they've never generated any money for payroll. They've never had to find payroll on the end of the month. They've never created something from nothing. I know they've inherited a mess, but most governments probably inherit a mess. They're just not business minded. I think you need, you know, I'm not really a fan of Trump, but I do like that US style cabinet he's got where he has got business people coming in. just offering perspectives on business and advice but i do think that um you know the corporation tax rates uh should should be lowered they've got to stop um punishing general you know pay just hard working average families where i think was it 45 grand a year now you if you're over 45 grand a year you're uh you're not a working person or something it's like it's it's bonkers i've got these definitions about what a working person is um and how low the thresholds are um i'd bring entrepreneurs relief back i'd make the uk an absolute hub for startups entrepreneurialism uh you know cheap financing um and just attract the best brightest people here to build these incredible businesses i mean you know it's it's what it's what dubai are doing um so you know i We don't need zero tax, but we just need lower tax.

28:23And we just need to stop punishing people for taking risk. Because, you know, if I think now, like the risks that we took, you know, at one stage, we were down to 27 quid in the bank. It was never about the money and building a big brand. You know, we were trying to do something consumers got benefit from and, you know, run this business. But I think if we'd have thought there was just nothing at the end of it, I don't know why we'd bother. I said to you earlier, actually, and I've got I've got a family that, you know, work hard and work shifts in the NHS and whatever, and their alarm must go off.

28:55I don't know how they get out of bed. I just don't know how they do it with at the end of the month. They've got nothing to show for it or less than how the previous month. So this just has to change, you know, and ultimately as well. And it's it's unpopular, but they've got to cut welfare. They've got to cut welfare. There's just too much waste. You know, one in four people now in the UK is disabled. I just don't believe that can possibly be true. Um, and it's just too easy for people to say, oh, I've got anxiety or, you know, there's just too many reasons not to work. And there's too many people addicted to benefits after COVID, which, you know, I get if there's no incentive to go to work, of course, people claim benefits.

29:33I don't blame them. You know, we'd all probably do it. Um, so there's just, there's just, we've got to start to help people, I think, to help themselves. You know, the Brits are hardworking entrepreneurial race. Yeah. you know it's a nation of shopkeepers isn't it as uh you know maggie thatcher used to say um but i think they've got to stop getting getting beaten up and as i was saying you know earlier i pay huge amounts of tax in the uk i just can't see what i get for it you know the roads are pretty shit i've got no kids i've got no kids in school there's no street lights where i live there's no regular rubbish collection where i live um if i i don't use the nhs luckily because i'm healthy but if i needed it i'd probably just go private um there's you know and again i'm probably paying for, I've never done the maths, probably hundreds of thousands of people to not work.

30:20It's got to be. So, you know, do I think this is going to continue? It just can't. It's just not sustainable. Right now we have a banking crisis, a potential global recession. If you'd like to learn how to cash in on the crash and not just survive, but thrive in challenging times, I invite you to join us at the Moneymaker Summit live. The link is robmore.live forward slash money. I'm subsidizing a small number of tickets from my Rob Moore Foundation. Or for a very small upgrade fee, you can get special VIP tickets where you meet me personally. You'll get your book signed. There's VIP dinner with six multimillionaires and bonus money mindset sessions, as well as the special three days on getting your tax bill down, your income streams up, My eight stages of building wealth, my formula for riches, and much more content at robmore.live forward slash money.

31:15The agenda, the details, the dates and the speakers are all at the link robmore.live forward slash money. Many people might not know what you did before Grenade. Yeah, so I had a distribution business prior to Grenade, so... And was that your first business? What did you have on before that? Yeah, I had one before that. I think I was, yeah, personal training. So I'll give you a quick rundown. And so I dropped out of school when I was 15. So I absolutely hated school. So I did well at school, but again, we can spend hours ranting about the education system, but it just wasn't really for me. I've got a really good memory.

31:49They teach you something. I'd regurgitate it back. And that meant I was clever. I never really understood how that worked. So I got a bit frustrated with school and I left when I was 15 and I went to do work experience in my local gym. And I ended up working in this gym then for 70 quid a week for a full week. So less than two pounds an hour. And that was in the 90s. So well below minimum wage even then. And I absolutely loved it. I just loved working in the gym and I just learned a lot. I had a personal training business and my first client, that personal training business. I still speak to every week.

32:26He's 83 now. And I made friends for life and just learned a lot about business, especially by some of the gyms I worked at where they weren't the best business people so I learned how not to run a business as well most of it was common sense like you'd know if you'd lost the takings on the way home um from the gym that probably wasn't good business but the owner used to do it on a regular basis he'd lose and he couldn't pay me that week he'd lost the takings um so yeah I learned how to not treat your stuff um and I ended up then uh setting up a distribution business importing supplements into the UK mostly from America um and I went around gyms who didn't want to buy my supplements so I had to put the supplements in on sale or return and I'd go back the next week and if they'd sold they I'd replace it and they'd pay me and if they hadn't I got nothing and I drove around for a lot of weeks and got absolutely nothing um and um I just persevered with it and uh i remember the yeah the one gym i think it took me three weeks to get i think i yeah i sold him a box of i put a box of flapjacks in this gym that would cost me 10 pounds i put them at 15 there were 24 in there he was selling them for a pound each and um three weeks on the trot i went back to see how many if he'd sold these flapjacks and i think it took three weeks for him to pay me and i made a fiver even though i'd probably done 60 miles uh in my in my car but it just felt like I was making money.

33:55And I actually, I just learned how to scale that. And yeah, that was my distribution business. And I fell out of love with that business. I got sick of being a middleman back in 2007, 2008. And actually, we were having this chat earlier. I actually had a tax investigation with that business where they mistook me for someone else. It was the worst six months of my life. And the tax man, even though I'd done nothing wrong, beat me up to the point. The day after this tax investigation, and I was completely exonerated, even though it cost me 100 grand in accountancy fees, I sold my business the next day.

34:32And it almost feels like we're getting back to that situation again, doesn't it, in the UK, where, you know, this was 20 years ago, where they just took all the wind out of my sails. I sold that business. How did they mistake you for someone else? They got my VAT number mixed up with someone else. So they were, and it took a while to kind of flush out. So they couldn't work out where there were these sort of mismatches. and again I was banking a lot of cash perfectly legitimately but they just don't like cash do they so I got a tax investigation and like everywhere they and again I was out I was 26 I was doing well I was doing really well and when you do really well the reward is kind of being punished and beaten up for it so it kind of feels like we're back in that situation again unfortunately but so you sold the business because you'd had enough I'd had yes and i was going to go and live in america i sold that business to my best friend at the time i worked for him for a year for free because i genuinely cared about that business and the customers and the suppliers so i wanted to make sure the business thrived which it still does and sold that business and then set up grenade with it yeah with a 500 pound loan so you obviously weren't that pissed off about it was about what it was but in i think in the year handover of working with my friends um i just i then didn't go to the um it didn't go to the us and uh yeah probably had a change of heart and then set up yeah set up grenade but we did set it up as a hobby um initially so it was a hobby that turned into an obsession so it's probably not many people have flicked the hobby into a billion dollar brand um but yeah it was just something to do to just because i love the industry i like helping people i'd learned a lot from the distribution business and I wanted to change that model of just going around Jim's salary return and I wanted to build something bigger that could go into retailers and supermarkets and I wanted to have a go at a branded business that was mine that was just purely weight loss as opposed to all the other stuff that we've done in sports nutrition.

36:29So yeah, that's what led me to Grenade. So although Grenade was a startup, I'd been in the sports nutrition industry for 20 years when I started Grenade. So I didn't know exactly what to do, but I knew what not to do as well. So, yeah, I'm 49 now. So I've been in this industry for 35, 36 years next year. So it's all I've done. You know, really. So I know all the suppliers, I know everyone well. I know what consumers want. And I'm still passionate about health and fitness and longevity. Yeah. So if you've been in this industry for like 35 years, what is the biggest scam in the fitness and health industry, do you think?

37:00The biggest scam? I mean, there are definitely products out there that you get. actually you get a few types of products actually you and this is why i set up grenade there are definitely products out there that are just um not effective and well marketed you get products then um that are really effective and badly marketed and then my idea was to have something that was well marketed and really effective it sounds stupid but until we came along with grenade we kind of had the idea that it was easier to keep existing consumers happy than keep looking for new ones and i say that because a lot of the brands i sold in sports nutrition their model was kind of say now ripping off consumers they were making product for sort of two pounds selling them for 40 a consumer wasn't going to get much benefit from it they'd take the margin they made and they'd use that margin to go and find another sucker and that was kind of the american model and that's the thing i fell out with um i fell out of love with with my distribution business because with my distribution business going around gyms and putting stuff on sale or return that model doesn't work for me because I need repeat custom because I'm going to those gyms every week and I need stuff selling over and over again and actually we got the idea from grenade really from like red bull and pepsi where we thought we actually don't need many products you need one that's really good that people buy over and over again that's protectable and memorable so a lot of the things that we solved kind of formed the brand not the other way around right so when you say protectable you mean the intellectual yeah so that the name it's a very very copycat industry right so again you know you're asked in terms of scams in sort of sports nutrition i mean anything where there's kind of like multi-level marketing where you've been sold something by someone who's been sold it by someone anywhere where there's levels of margin i'd be super super careful um but ultimately sports nutrition certainly and it started off really just with athletes and sports people you know hence the name but we knew lots and lots of people could get benefit from um from from sports nutrition if they knew what they were doing and if they knew a bit about diet and training and if they could sort of get off their ass um so um yeah we we we made sure that we could build something that was just very easy to remember and you know the name uh grenade i'm really interested in military i got lots of friends in um special forces and stuff and um you know combine my two passions of military stuff and and supplements, you know, to come up with grenade.