Why This City Trader Quit Her Six-Figure Job to Sell Nuts (And Made Millions Going Viral)

0:00And I went along for the interview a couple of times and got the job. And I started on the trading floor when I was just 16. It was mental because there was like about 300, 400 people down there, about two women, me being one of them. Black and said I was going to leave and they were like, yeah, okay, well, where are you going? As in like, you know, another bank. I was like, no, I'm going to go and start a snack business. How many views did it like in total like engagement and stuff did it actually get? Over all platforms is on about 32 million. That's mad. There's 32 million eyeballs on your packaging.

0:36So in the early days, what was your like biggest, first big listing? First listing was Whole Foods. Yeah. Literally. And I kissed the buyer. I think, well, for me, definitely some of the big challenges was I didn't understand anything about the category. So I didn't understand what a palette was and SRP was. So I didn't understand palette configurations, the logistic costs. I didn't understand the rest. So that in itself was huge. And I was on like the biggest learning curve of all time. Before we get into today's episode, I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor, Sam Lawrence Recruitment.

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2:16We're all about creating delicious, dairy-free, plant-based treats that do not compromise on taste. from our creamy yogurts to our indulgent desserts everything's made with coconuts and a whole lot of care if you're looking for something naturally good but seriously tasty and my favorite is just our natural coconut yogurt i have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey trust me you're going to absolutely love it hello hi kathy welcome to getting to grow thank you very much i'm really excited to be here thank you so much for coming all the way up from bath as well that's so kind oh no it's lovely love a little trip on the train yeah do you know what i actually like a trip on the train as well where you're just like you're in your own head you can just like get your notes done sit there especially like when it's first thing in the morning because like at the moment on a friday this is friday today yeah um not many people get on the train true it's great it's actually really quiet so i think i've got like the 7 30 train and um yeah it was bloody lovely perfect yeah what a gorgeous day as well yeah i'm excited to get on that later so kathy welcome to the show um you are the founder of boundless the gut puppy snack and i can't wait to get into everything about all you and what you're doing before and how it led to this so talk to me a bit about you when you were younger were you kind of always entrepreneurial i don't know really um I think when I was younger, I grew up in the East End of London.

3:42Okay. I grew up in Bethlehem and Green. So I think we were kind of entrepreneurial in a sense because we didn't really have a lot. So you kind of like always had to like, kind of like make sure you can make ends meet and kind of be alternative thinking. And I think entrepreneurship is about alternative thinking. It's about not feeling too scared about something that lands in your lap. Kind of like to be able to like push forward and take a leap. So I think so maybe. Maybe a little bit entrepreneurial. I think I've always like always had something to say so probably should have always worked for myself okay even though it isn't how I started out do you know I mean that is I didn't really start out working for myself but um I love it now yeah so what were you like when you were younger what were you doing where did you go to school and then kind of how did it lead on to the university or did you study yeah no so I didn't go uni um I um left school at 16 um but I did my GCSEs and I did my maths and English a year early so I did like half an AS yeah at the time sort of thing and um I went and there used to be like the evening standard yeah so the evening standard used to come out like twice a day used to come out lunchtime and used to come out in the evening hence the evening standard probably anyway but at lunchtime I used to like put jobs in there and um in there there was a job for in the city because I kind of thought like I always wanted to work in the city because um I was really good with numbers and stuff and I just thought and I saw it it was like not far from where I lived and I just thought it'd be really anyway there was a job in an advert that said like um come and be a clerk on the LME which worked out to be the London Metal Exchange but I didn't even know what that meant and I went along for the interview and a couple of times and uh got the job and I started on the trading floor when I was just 16 wow 17 sort of thing so yeah it was it was mental because there's like about 300 300 400 people down there about all two women me being one of them so yeah it was kind of like you pretty much stood out yeah but just remember it going down there like remembering like it was absolutely crazy like people shouting at each other pulling each other kind of like it's mental i just thought oh yeah i love a bit of that yeah it sounds good just well for me i just felt like it's like being down a market store yeah do you know if you're selling apples or pears or if you like trading stocks or metals as it was i didn't think it could be that much different but obviously like that came from within you because a lot of people wouldn't be able to handle that or like go into an environment where it is quite heavily male dominated and then yeah stuff's thrown at you so were your parents quite entrepreneurial were they kind of like take no shit basically yeah take no shit do you mean definitely like my dad's an accountant my mum worked for unilever but um Yeah, they were very, it was, I think, like, I had this, like, real upbringing of, like, this fight to survive sort of thing.

6:35And therefore, you've got to stand up for yourself. Yeah. Kind of, like, you've got to push back, you know, and that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. I mean, I was really lucky. Like, I got to go to a grammar school. And that was, that really helped me out of where the situation I came in. Because, like, you know, the local comp was, like, pretty tough. and um so i was lucky that i got to go to grammar school and i think going to a grammar school for me but you know this is obviously back in the 80s like going to grammar school for me was a real opportunity in terms of the fact that they you know that attitude that you could do anything do you know i mean that kind of stuff and that was really pushed into me but like yeah my parents were very much um yeah take no shit yeah sets you up well yeah and i kind of always felt like quite confident like my mom said i went to school with a soapbox like i always had say yeah i mean i like that always at school reports kathy could do so well if she just shut up yeah you know i had such similar experience i was always like too distracting at school and i remember now thinking i i was meant to be distracting like i meant i've got a podcast i'm supposed to be getting people's attention right do you know i mean you know because you are distracted your mind is something else your mind is racing yeah thinking like you know you can sit on the loo and you could be thinking about a thousand things you know and i think that's is the entrepreneurial spirit and i think sometimes like we go through this or certainly when i went to school you go through like an education that's kind of quite like formulaic and i don't necessarily think that it actually breeds like that kind of entrepreneurial spirit or encourages it as much as it should do because i realize obviously you need this formula that people have got past xyz exam but entrepreneurial you don't it's different you don't you don't think that way no you're kind of like thinking like well just because you say i've got to do a to b yeah do you know i mean why can't i get to z in a different way yeah do you know what i mean i think there's something wrong potentially with like the schooling system and how they do put kids in such like i guess they have to cast the net why they understand but yeah like i wasn't very academic um i mean i wasn't like non-academic but i wouldn't say i was in the top sets at all but actually like that wasn't my strength like i was fantastic at drama like i'm a stars drama every like every time and then science like complete c's but that was deemed bad yeah drama getting an a was like okay but because it was a drama it was a bit like it's almost like okay drama's like yeah well what does that mean literally and i was like well actually it means so much thank you i mean for me therefore drama would be about the fact that you can communicate you can read people you've got people skills i mean people and that is absolutely one of the most fantastic skills to have yeah i mean to understand the room yeah to read the room yeah i mean so yeah i agree i think we do lay a lot of stuff sitting on um like academia and i think you know with ai now it'll be interesting to see how much academia that future we rely on absolutely it's really interesting to do it for you yeah do you know what i mean it is really interesting to see where it's all going to like where it's all going to leave us ai it's a funny world i'm interested to like see it unfold but where were you then when you had the idea for boundless was it a light bulb yeah it was i suppose well it was a bit of a light bulb moment but i suppose it'd been coming on for a while instead so i was working in the city i'd worked in the city for like 25 years at that stage and i um basically sat on my butt all day long but i was really quite conscious about what i was trying to eat but you never seem to eat anything that kind of like was fueling me just kind of like fueling me in terms of getting me through but not actually doing anything better and I really did start to feel quite unwell like brain foggy and stuff like that and um I just thought there must be a better way of like snacking because I snacked a lot because you're just sitting at the desk like 14 hours you're like oh and um I thought there must be a better way and started to kind of look into kind of your overall well-being and I went on holiday to australia and um was in australia and they just seemed so much more aligned to gut and kind of like how it's like better for your brain how you work all this sort of stuff and i kind of then thought okay well what about like snacking that was like gut related you know kind of that sort of stuff and um i suddenly thought that's i'm gonna do this i like hated my job by the end i really fucking hated it yeah you're ready to go yeah i was like soul destroying kind of like yeah just like didn't align with my values or principles at any stage probably didn't align with it from get-go do you know what I mean but you know I was lucky it done me well and all this stuff and I just thought I came back and um I said because I was like um senior director I was head of trading at the time and uh big role yeah yeah it was a big role do you know what I mean worked with a load of idiots you know you know a lot of testosterone a lot of testosterone yeah and uh and i came back and said i was gonna leave and they were like yeah okay well where are you going as in like you know another bank i was like no i'm gonna go and start a snack business they literally thought i'd had a lobotomy do you know what i mean like what do you know what i mean what yeah literally like could not fathom it you're going to leave what this amazing role money job what i was like yeah and i'll never forget like leaving and i've got in a cab to go home i don't even know why i thought i'd get in the cab right because clearly i should have been thinking like i've got no money anymore do you know what i mean i'm in a cab do you know what i mean i've got an easy one i've got in a cab and i met this cabbie and he's going all right love you know you're off early i mean yeah i've like resigned it's like when they leave the apprentice and they get in the taxi oh my god yeah i forgot about that it was right and um he said um he goes like you know you're off early i was like yeah i've resigned he goes uh yeah where you going then love i went i'm not i'm leaving the city he went ah you've got to look at summer i don't know i'm gonna i'm gonna bust stacking business oh my god i didn't know like what it was called how it was gonna be formatted i didn't know anything i just knew that i was gonna try and change what it meant to snack and i just felt like everything out there was like i you know it was like really unhealthy for you but really boring or really worthy do you know what i mean and the fact that there was there was actually nothing that was actually fulfilling function with taste and i just thought yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna give it well i hadn't even like really made it in my kitchen yet or even found a manufacturer or anything and you didn't know it was going to be crisps and nuts and seeds you didn't like you just knew it was a snack yeah i started with the nuts and seeds i started with the nuts and seeds because i made them in my kitchen and that's where i kind of came up with like i felt like like the chef off of the muppets like yeah all this sort of stuff and um i made those so the nuts and seeds were natural because in the sense that it was naturally easy for me to do it in my kitchen whereas obviously the crisps chips were going to be like way hard that came like further in my mind when we were in lockdown yeah crisps chips but yeah and then like try to find a manufacturer it took bloody ages really yeah because no one wants to bet on you a lot of the founders that come on the podcast say it's really hard and they want the cash up front and that's the one thing you can't do do you know they want volume they want you to set like a certain amount of volume you're going to do with them well you know it you know okay well we've got to make a minimum of like 25 000 bags well oh my god i haven't even sold one yeah do you know i mean i've got a shelf life i've got you know that's the stuff so it's really hard to find a manufacturer and i i find it a lot with other like founders from startups going you know certainly in f and b do you know i mean in terms of like okay well where did you find your manufacturer, that sort of stuff.

14:41And I think the bottom line is sometimes, obviously it's lots of hard work, I'm not going to lie, do you know what I mean, to put everything and set it up. But there is a bit of fucking luck. Massive, yeah. Do you know what I mean, like stars align, you know, and you just think, like, okay, and I had a little bit of luck to find mine, to be honest with you. Yeah, amazing. So what makes boundless, boundless? What makes us boundless? Well, do you know what I mean? Obviously I'm a little bit nuts myself. I like that. I have this energy. do you know what I mean but no okay for us our USP is that we deliver taste with function we are all about looking after your gut so we're on a mission to get the nation gut happy we're talking about like good mood food you know for us it's about empowering better choices in snacking we're not here to preach to you do you know what I mean we're not here to teach you do I mean like you know you should be living your life in this way it's not we're a snack it's about enjoyment it's about having fun yeah it's about delivering function and for me it's all about gut yes of course we have to deliver taste so that's our number one driver but without having function there isn't anything anymore do you know what I mean so for us that's what we're here to do and how do you put the functionality in the product so for us in terms of facts is it's about sprouting and activating our grains so that's a kind of really ancient tribal method really big in australia okay where i kind of like got inspiration from and obviously the states but originally kind of like aztec incas so in terms of our nuts and seeds we activate so they are like soaked in kind of like a salt water to draw out phytic acid which is where here comes the science okay we love it draws out phytic acids which is a anti-nutrient which binds the good nutrients in your gut so by drawing that out it allows kind of those nutrients to work much more be much more bioavailable interesting and for your gut to be able to absorb them and then with our chips we sprout our grain so that kind of kit starts mother's nature and that allows your gut to absorb the fiber way way quicker than it would do if you didn't have a sprouted grain because in actual fact your body can't actually absorb grain sorry you can't absolutely absorb fiber what it does is it needs your microbiome to actually work on an active way in order to absorb the fiber so what we do is we allow that fiber to be much more bioavailable to your gut so therefore it can absorb into your microbiome far quicker it's so interesting is it because gut health is everywhere at the moment like it's kind of like gone on a massive but especially since like the rise of zoe obviously tim specter like in talking about gut health so these are basically what people need to be having at their desk absolutely because if you've got a gut you should need to look after it well most of us do i think exactly and you don't can you can't live without one can you no no i mean it's not like a liver where you know exactly it doesn't regrow it right do you know you can get out with one kidney i mean not not magnificating for one kidney in any shape or form but you can't but the bottom line is our gut is our second brain yeah and without our gut our brain doesn't function our whole body doesn't function yeah it is absolutely fundamental to who we are i mean you are born with your microbiome you know it's in your dna and the point is we we start to manipulate our microbiome the minute we start to breathe do you know the minute we start to take in any kind of food or you know breast milk whatever it may be we are already playing with our microbiome and it is fundamental that we look after ourselves in that way because you know all your serotonin 90 of your serotonin sits in your that makes you feel good yeah it makes you feel happy yeah that makes you so linked your gut to your mental health yeah i mean your energy levels are so you know it's why when you eat crap food you feel sluggish yeah so because it's kind of like everyone used to think like it's because i've just taken on too much carb or i've kind of like it's refined sugar or anything it's because your microbiome then goes yeah and it can't digest it and then it can't give you all those great amazing nutrients that we need in order to get ourselves up and go so yeah i mean for me like I say they talk about it being our second brain I'm sure within the next few years you're going to find it's very much like it's the focus in actual fact it'll be much more do you mean investigated and because they're learning so much every single day about your gut that you'll find that with your gut will be the primary organ definitely you know and it's it's fundamental it's so important I mean literally I mean in the UK we don't eat enough fiber it's unbelievable and we need to be eating more fibre and i think probably what we've got at the moment the biggest relatable factor in terms of gut is people linking fibre to gut and i think for me that's great if you just want to know about fibre you think you need to up your fibre just to make your gut better then that is a major start and it really is going to change our overall well-being in this country it's so interesting because you've seen like the likes of so many gut fibre drinks pop up now and it is confusing out there because it's like i i a relatively balanced quite healthy diet so i get all my veggies in the one thing i don't eat is i hate fruit so i don't eat fruit we all have a nemesis it's weird everyone i meet is like what and you've got to be you've got to be in your real world yeah it might be fake fruit's just not for me i can't get on board with it i don't mind a blueberry on my porridge i can sort of stomach that just you know two at a push but other than No, I'm not interested in fruit.

20:12But fibro... What do you eat? Would you drink a smoothie? Peanut butter, dates, chocolate protein powder any day. A green one or like strawberries and bits. Oh, I'm over everything green. It's getting on my nerves now. I never liked it. Never was into it. And also like Pimm's in the summer. I know everyone's like, how do you not like Pimm's? But I don't because it's got floating fruit. Well. So like get all the fruit out. Tequila. Aren't we just in the corner? Like straight tequila. Absolutely. that's probably not good for it yeah exactly it's friday start early um but with the rise of all these kind of like drinks and other other kind of i guess loads of brands within the space have you seen the competition like really step on in the last probably 18 months or a year yeah okay i think so for me the more brands that talk about gut and deliver gut the better because gut isn't a fad this is a major you know kind of attitude change so there are going to be more people selling gut products and I actually champion that because I really do believe in gut so I don't want to be the only one because that's not really going to change people's kind of like overall well-being so for me I think it's great I think there is a like anything there is the fact that obviously just jumping on the bandwagon does slightly worry me yeah because are people just bringing i mean there's a big brand at the moment that have bought out a kombucha not naming any names love kombucha obviously um big brand and in it yes i saw it the other day and they're gonna have loads of money obviously they're gonna push kombucha which is great which is a category brilliant but until i see that at the back of their packaging they've got multidextrin and multidextrin is an absolute terrible gut inhibitor it's awful for the gut so you're making a gut product that actually is completely juxtapositioned to itself with the fact that she's multidextrin so i think there is a little bit of that that's a worry but ultimately i think it's great if i think it's great space and And I'm loving all the prebiotic sodas that are coming out.

22:24Like Living Things, I absolutely love their brand. I love their product. Yeah. Hip-hop. Yeah. I love them. Fixate, you know, Five. You know, all of these guys. I love all those. So what I can see in terms of where we are in functionality and category, if we look at drinks, it's really accelerating. And if you look in terms of dairy, so you're looking at the likes of caffeine, yogurts, again, really accelerating. what's been slower has been snacking and i think that's several reasons why i mean obviously you've got the gut stuff bars which of course i love those guys the gut stuff i love those girls they're brilliant um i think snacking has been slightly slower and i think that's because snacking has gone through this kind of like low fat low sugar kind of period and a little bit of protein kind of thing and now that's kind of like kind of come to its end because low fat low sugar I mean, what does that mean?

23:19Less salt, it's bullshit. Yeah. Less than what? And protein's a little bit overdone in terms of the snacking area. So much in protein, isn't it? And actually, we were just having this conversation earlier, but there's a lot of stuff in protein that's not very good for you. Yeah. Like, protein bars are full of crap. Yeah, absolutely. Other than the natural ones that are out there now. Well, of course, but when Mars bar sell you a protein bar, you know, it's like over. It's like my nan getting into Bitcoin. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's over. literally the daily mirror told her it's a good idea to buy bitcoin yeah we're done we're done we're done it's over so yeah i think yeah i mean like i said about green stuff i'm over matcha and uh pistachio yeah do you know what i mean yeah a lot of green out there a lot of green but yeah so i champion any other brands getting into um gut health because in the end it just changes accelerates the movement yeah of course and in the early days when you were kind of refining your manufacturing and you said you had a bit of luck what what were some like really big challenges you had to overcome especially for someone that didn't have their own business before yeah I think well for me um definitely some of the big challenges was I didn't understand anything about the category so I didn't understand what a pallet was an SRP was so I didn't understand pallet configurations the logistic costs I didn't understand all this so that in itself was huge and I was on like the biggest learning curve of all time so um you know again like I said finding a manufacturer understanding what that is understanding the levy of cogs that go in at your cost of goods that go you know you just think well I'll make it and I'll sell it you know and I don't think I was financially unsavvy given the fact where I came from but I think you know when you're changing kind of direction you're getting into a different field I think there's a whole mindful of stuff i think there's also the fact of understanding how long it takes you actually get on shelf you know you just think well i'll just go to a trade show and i'll sell it and i'll be on shelf next week these are these are stores i want to be i want to be in the whole foods want to be on cardo that'll only take a little while so i think it's a reality check and in terms i think it's a reality reality check about how much it's going to cost you was that tough at the start did you was it all personally funded yeah i personally funded it at the start and i was lucky in the sense like i said because i'd worked in the city do you mean i had a good job in terms of financially um so i was able to fund it but it was way more expensive than i thought it was going to be it took way longer than i thought it was like building a house yeah i always feel like like oatley always said like that 10 night 10 year overnight success yeah and you know and certainly for me when i started and i was talking about gut health seven years ago they thought i was crackers I mean, gut health, snacking, what?

26:06Oh my God, disgusting. Yeah. You know, so it was, I was kind of up against it about that. But I think some of the things I learned that I was like up, you know, like those challenges of not really understanding, you know, the category at all. Do you know what I mean? Those financial stuff was that I really got on board with people that did know that. and um i went down the route of you know come and join me i can't pay you but i'll give you some shares and you know and selling your story you know selling the journey selling the the belief selling the vision is so important because no one is going to speak up for you or your brand like you are because you are the dream you don't mean you've got it all in your head do you mean and you can make people come along to that you know the energy and the vision that you have is inspiring to other people it should be because i tell you what if it isn't you shouldn't be doing it yeah it's not inspiring you're going to find it really hard to get some investment i was going to say the minute you stop loving what you're doing it's like game over because you have to be so passionate because it is long hours you know you are you're up against so many people saying no this is never going to work and all this stuff that yeah if you aren't like the number one and actually it was interesting i spoke to um josh the founder of cano water this week and he was saying no yeah such a good i mean what a story wow um and he said like nobody gives a shit about your business other than you and it is true when you think about like the clucks of it like you are well you're yeah you are you are what everybody else feeds off you know and it's also the reality check of the fact that you know there's 60 000 cute skews sitting in the supermarket it and you've got to convince them to take yours yeah i mean if i look up our category do you know in terms of snacking 47 of it's owned by pepsico which is like walkers and everything else i mean like and you've got to go up against them yeah and if not it's unilever or inter snack and stuff like that but i think like determination i think what's really important with all of that is you've got to have a usp yeah right there's no point convincing yourself that you've got a usp because you've just copied somebody else's idea you gotta have a real us yeah you need to be an innovator yeah you gotta be innovate you know innovation or die do you know what I mean but I think it's really important is to innovate not just because you think you need to just to create and say you've got to make sure your innovation is and what you're creating is needed you know you can't make people need what you've got you can make their life simpler by delivering what you've got yeah they didn't realize they needed it but they were waiting for it yeah sure but it's really hard to kind of like convince someone they need something if you can't say it in three yeah i mean you know make it simple yeah make yeah make people yeah totally simply like understand what you're selling and like also like find a little bit of that whole kind of like find the problem and sell them the solution thing but it's more than that it's like you really have to genuinely believe it's going to as well of course yeah because because why start something yeah if you don't believe in it absolutely like for me i believed in gut health i felt the way i did i felt sluggish and everything else and i sat in an office and i knew what that felt like yeah so and i was a massive snacker i was really solving my problem yeah really with the view that i thought that that would help others could be bigger but yeah there's no point trying to like sell to anybody if you're not trying to sell to yourself yeah you know you've got to go in there on a dragon's den and talk about it yeah people buy people and people buy my favorite sentence well yeah well they do don't they right okay and the thing is people do buy why you do something do you know i mean not what you do so the what comes after they buy why you're doing it do you know i mean you know and that is really important yeah yeah and you see people at trade shows and stuff like that i see people chasing i think so get from behind that stand yeah yeah jump a bit i have been known to rugby tackle buyers which one go on which or which like brand which like kind of yeah the guy from actually years ago is the guy from virgin atlantic yeah right and he walked past and i didn't see him he was so busy i didn't see him and um somebody obviously go oh kathy that's like that's the buyer from virgin i literally like he literally started stampeding like running down the aisle literally almost like was airborne take it down like a serious rugby tackle and like he's so shocked he's like i mean you're right you just stop yeah just absolutely stop you have just missed the best snack the best snack ever and i got him to come back to stand i didn't get him to take the snack but i got him to come back to the stand and that's the point you've got you've got to be because all you're ever going to hear is now for a very long time so you've got to get you've got to get armadillo you've got to be really hard on the outside you know so resilient also like you you cannot care what people think like you absolutely have to just go for it and go right i'm gonna get oh the stuff that we've done i mean the coconut club obviously is my day job and like the stuff we've done i love your products it's so good right i love it too that i literally have a pot a day but the stuff we've done i'm like we're nuts we are bat shit when it comes to getting people's attention but yeah we're up against so many people out there and you know dairy is a gigantic category it's like a commodity that we've kind of entered so it is genuinely like how do we set ourselves apart so yeah you're right um it is like it's very interesting and like it's really good fun at the same time yeah and i think that's really key you've got to make it fun because like you say you're going to take a load of knockbacks and if you're the sort of person that's going to feel like oh i don't know if I should be doing this kind of thing then you're not you're not on the right trajectory you've got to believe yeah do you know what I mean and you've got to be able to take those no's and think well it's fine and we have a big saying at Bambis it's not no it's when oh yeah do you know yeah it's just yes at some point yeah exactly and I know do you know what that's fine for now but it won't be soon yeah exactly you'll need me yeah I'll be here that's a bloody load yeah I'll wait it's okay outside your door in a canva hi in a little stalkery way Oh, I've done, yeah.

32:33Yeah. The LinkedIn stalking. It's a whole lot. Oh, my God, yeah. We've done some crazy things. But it does work. You do find out who's in charge of what, and it's terrifying what you can find out online, especially now with AI. Yeah, I hate LinkedIn. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? I find it, like, the most stressful, inducing app all the time. Yeah, it is. It's so funny. Like, where has it, like, it has, it's always been there, but it has, like, been there so much recently. Oh, my God. You can't get... It's like the dial's been turned up volume. I mean, I think it's very different to when LinkedIn first started.

33:07Now it's very, I call it quite personal. Yeah, people put their engagements on it and they've had a baby, which I personally wouldn't do. My personal life is, you follow me on my private Instagram, that's okay. I live a lot of my life with the podcast and my day job online anyway. It's a lot of exposure, right? I mean, mind me very much, if I want to tell you I'm going on holiday, I'll tell you as my friend. I don't need to post it. but I realise we live in this kind of life but yeah I feel like it's kind of changed but I find it really stressful because like I feel like you've got to be on it and in it all the time when I feel like I actually have way better things to do in terms of like for the business I've got more to do yet it is like this kind of sounding platform but I find it stressful inducing because it's like the biggest FOMO creator of all time in terms of like why aren't we selling in there I know I know and it makes you think that every brand is so amazing and they're like getting listings left right and center yeah and mostly most of the time i just read it and i'm just gonna think like ranker yeah do you know what i mean have i got in there yeah i feel like that it is like cortisol rising yeah and then you're kind of like going oh well done yeah congratulations give me the name of the buyer yeah literally yeah yeah so agree so in the early days what was your like biggest um what can your first your first big listing first listing was Whole Foods yeah literally and I kissed the buyer when she said when she Alex oh god it might have been Alex Alex can't remember it might have been Alex this is back in oh 2018 yeah it would have been Alex yeah bless her she had the whole category I kissed her yeah sorry not the whole category she was in the store did she she was in charge of every single product I didn't know that yeah I was just like oh my god you kissed her I love that I was like shout out to alex she's great actually awesome awesome person yeah wonderful and um yeah that was that was like just epic because that was like my dream do you know what I mean to get into whole foods so yeah and um soon realized that you had to work really hard to stay into whole foods sort of thing so yeah that was like my first listing and that yeah and I remember like taking my mum into whole foods stores we were up in town and I was taking my I sound really used to end up up in town up in town up in town and um and i said to my mom come come in come in come and come and see this and she's like what what we're doing in here she's got a bloody fortune yeah so i was like yeah come on let's go in and i was like look oh my god that's your company i was like i know mom do you know what i mean it was just like yeah it was a really it's all awesome moment I tell you what, I mean, in terms of, like, for me, and I'm about any founder in F &B, the most amazing thing is to see your product on shelf.

36:01And it doesn't have to be Whole Foods. It could be your local farm shop. It could be wherever. Do you know what I mean? It could be Tesco's, whatever it may be. Just getting it on shelf. It's awesome. It's the most amazing thing. That's like, yeah, I've done that. Yeah. It's like your baby in the wild. Bloody awesome. and um how was the process of like whole foods and getting the listing did how did you how did you find alex i met her at trade show i went to so when i launched found this i went to speciality fine food yeah didn't have a listing didn't have a distributor didn't actually really understand it that much got myself a stand made the in the startup zone which is the cheapest thing to do obviously you've got to look for anything they can do really cheaply made a bit of a stand out of some wood decking from b &q which looked great but absolutely weighed a ton i realized that was not very practical yeah but nonetheless had to do that and uh went for it and uh yeah met her there and i couldn't believe it and it was just yeah euphoric money and trade shows are fantastic aren't they at the start because they do also even if you don't meet a buyer which would be so sad because you've had that money but the people that try your products and feedback you get in such a confined space like you need that person like you need that connection especially in startup because you can get the startup zone you can get way way cheaper and obviously you can negotiate and stuff like that but the bottom line is it is the way to get out there in front of so many people so quickly but you've got to be alive on that stand yeah you've got to be literally hounding people and really making your product stand out yeah but yeah i'd really recommend um going to a show for sure yeah starting and team so team comes up a lot on my podcast people really find it hard to recruit and like get have basically really really good people stay in the business so we have someone in the scenes behind us here will he's come to watch the pod today he's unbelievable so i want to i'm gonna come back and ask a question because i do see this being scanned and getting on trains and coming through when we went and i want to ask about that even though we know that marketing so you might have to get yourself on the sofa in a minute but before that team i want to touch base on because how do how have you gone out and like and made sure that you have the most successful team around you because you are like so personable you're so outgoing like i can see you in front of them like the sales like you know you must just smash those meetings because like how can you not love you oh but how do you get people that aren't maybe like i you know you need people that are amazing at supply chain that you might not be as good at because you need that so how have you managed to right yeah you need good people in all areas so yeah for me team is everything and we talk a lot about this at families um for me we are a family about this we are all in this together so we ride the highs together we ride the lows together we support each other 100 and i always talk about that very much so that we are a family and we very much act and um respect each other in the way of being a family so that in itself creates a way of working and that in itself i think makes it clear about for two reasons for for me what I look for in somebody when we employ someone is one can you do the job so have you got the CV that facilitates that area that we need or whatever it is okay and two do you fit with family do you fit within this team because if you do your job great but you don't fit in team well you can't stay do you know what I mean if you do great routine but you can't do the job then you also can't stay because you're not going to stay long well respective of the team if you can't do your job because as you all know in a startup or an sme you can't hide no you can either do it or you can't it's going to be pretty exposed pretty quickly if you can't so in terms of um how you for me how i look for somebody i think it's very much depends in terms of what the sector is so like and harrid we have he works with us in operations she's our operations manager right she is the most calmest person you've ever met I mean she's the proper swan okay she's on it she's literally like an underneath the pole because operations in a startup SME is about as smooth as the Himalayas right okay it's like all over it goes tits up every other moment yeah right it is all over the place so obviously she's got the credentials and had the background but her you know just how she came across that she's very very calming and we need somebody in that position so you know and obviously fits with team I am very not calm I am like all over the place okay I am literally like you know bang bangs trying to swap it down I mean I'm like up here one second I'm down here the next well I don't stay down there yeah I'm very kind of like up here sort of thing I'm like well we've had a meeting with so-and-so right right we're in there then they're like well Kathy might say no no so we're getting in there you know so I think you need yin and yang in the team and I think it's really important to know your strengths and your weaknesses to know what is going to be needed within the team also so obviously we've used recruiters have suffered for but at this point we've kind of really gone down the fact that people want to work at boundless which has been really great you know and stuff like that but I think team culture is everything and for me if you don't have that solidarity if you don't have that respect if you're not authentic if you're not living by your core values you know loyalty all of these things then you won't develop a team that will run as we've got each other's back you know we talk about having our customers back and we always say that about us we've got your back and we have each other's backing our team and i'm really super proud of my team yeah they're epic they're everything i'll boundless wouldn't be where it was without them yeah not one second i 100 i owe it all to them and i think actually like that says so much about you and the company but even saying that because i think clearly there's so much respect as well internally and i think that's another thing like if you don't respect the person that you're reporting into or whatever the situation is it's just so hard to like work hard yeah it is I think you know like you say it's hard to work hard for anybody if you feel like you're just a number I think personally yeah I think it's hard to work hard if if someone treats you without the respect that you deserve and I think what goes around comes around absolutely yeah and I think if that isn't kind of like core within the company the team then I don't think people stick around very long and what's really lovely is most people with us have stayed a very very long time yeah which i think says so much as well like especially in this kind of yeah where it's really like easy to move have you ever had a situation where you maybe haven't had the right fit and you've had to kind of like yeah yeah what was that like yeah interesting yeah um made i made the mistake it was my fault um yeah hired somebody that um thought what we needed was probably a little bit of corporate structure in terms of kind of like we were growing had we missed something as a start SME you know and employed them and quickly learned that oh no we don't need that yeah that's actually what makes you guys so special yeah exactly and um wrong fit so yeah and it's never nice to let somebody go you know um but I always think this is it's better to let someone go because if they're not right for your business you are actually hampering them too yeah it's not fair yeah it's not fair to the rest of the team that you're working with about this it's not fair to people that have invested in you because you're not doing right by you know what you're saying your growth and stuff like that and it's not fair to that person that you've got in situ that doesn't fit because i don't know how they can be happy and you're stopping them from getting on do you know i mean being in a place that they're more suited to so not easy to do but in the end it's better to do it yeah it is really difficult and i yeah i've experienced working with so many different people and i think you have to that that right fit thing is really key like you do definitely need people in your in your area that you need and that you want that is like the most important thing absolutely absolutely so we're going to be joined by will come on get comfy get involved get involved i'm just gonna go move the mic so right so you made a packet of crisps go very viral that that happened how how i mean it is the golden question in this time how do you do it there's just something special about this barcode so right i want to know did it actually let you through well because what did the video say yes because if it did that's phenomenal what we have seen is a lot of people try it um and it was really funny because obviously that's i think the dream of sort of any marketer for like to start a trend rather than to copy one and ultimately you want to be the innovators but a lot of people tried a lot of people failed okay let's just say that's that's the i'm not surprised because that would be quite shocking throw security yeah you'd like to think that really we had quite a few cease and desist you'd like to think that yeah the probably the height of security would um not let a packet of crisps or chips sorry through security but um but you know unless you have a decent a decent assist yeah absolutely you need we're disruptive yeah you need a few um yeah we because then we replicated it um kind of going through other places as well so it was really cool it was it was just i mean the marketing side of things i think it's like we had a journey and it's kind of breaking down every element of how we maybe can incorporate balance into that journey rather than just kind of oh here's like an idea it's like actually these are all the stages we're gonna do like how can we sort of naturally incorporate and that one was the first sort of video of the trip and i was like me and my colleague were like went to bed and then we woke up and i was like how many views did it like in total like engagement and stuff did it actually get over all platforms the the airport one is on about 32 million that's mad it's 32 million eyeballs on your packaging and then yeah then it got reshared on quite a lot of other places with a million on them so yeah but actually off channels and then the um tube video got another couple of million so yeah and did you see an uplift in sales yes really definitely wow across like all retail that d2c or really hard to say across retail yeah um because you you just don't know do you know i mean i think that's that's in that's fair yes we can say on like you know d2c or something like that we can definitely say that but in terms of like retail i'd say it's harder right yeah i think it's it's what it does do is then for someone to go in a store they recognize the brand and be like oh wait that's much more familiar they might not know why they've seen it because ultimately people consume so much content but getting the awareness and people being like oh that seems more familiar they're more likely to pick it up so yes you get the instant sort of benefits of a of a viral moment but it's almost like the brand awareness and growth kind of going forward that's the i think the thing we want but that's well that's that's the thing we're trying to focus isn't it like any startup sma you're trying to get more brand aware yeah so that kind Kind of like, you know, that classic of being someone's eye line three times a day in order for it to register.

48:04You know, we're a snack. We've got seconds of your time for you to pick us off shelf. You know, we just want, you know, and let's face it, we can't do big out of home campaigns like the big guys. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And all this sort of stuff. So, you know, and we've got to think outside the box or barcoding, whatever you want to call it. but you know it's it's yeah we are on that kind of like just trying to get your brand awareness really yeah and it's really tough isn't it getting brand awareness so what is your is your kind of strategy heavily socially based or is it more um you know like the kind of stuff in supermarkets i would say ultimately kind of brand stretches community-led like if we can rather than specifically on socials etc if we can build a community that will buy into what we're trying to achieve then then they're going to want to engage you're more likely to see follows or shares for your products and so I think almost less focus on like going viral because if you jump on a trend it might do really well but there's no sort of brand loyalty because no one knows anything about your product so ultimately how can we kind of people buy into the narrative buy into Cathy and then want to follow on the journey I think definitely so what's next for found us ooh you can stay you can go up to you um okay so we okay sorry a little interlude this is a little interlude okay so I think obviously for us world domination of course of course wouldn't expect anything less we're working really hard on that yeah we'll be coming out later this year okay exactly exactly I heard Tom Hanks was the star yeah yeah exactly that's the way I did see that thank you exactly great Hollywood here we come yeah I think for us obviously it's to continue with that brand awareness and that growth in terms of kind of obviously make more make more listings make sure we've got more listings across the UK we already export I think we're going to push further into doing that as well but we obviously have some innovation coming this way over the last part of the year which obviously we'll be excited to kind of reveal obviously I could tell you now but I'm about to kill you yeah of course kind of don't want to die yet yeah exactly but I think for us overall it's like really pushing like where gut health is going kind of like you know we are the UK's number one gut health bag snack and we intend to remain that I think what we'd like to do is see that function category grow we obviously are growing that category we want to show that we can grow even further and yeah I guess the sky's the limit that's our hope and our wish we're going to do this you are totally going to do it I mean, I don't doubt it for one second.

50:46Well, thank you, Cathy, so much for coming on Getting to Grow It. It's been so fab hearing all about it. And everybody, I don't want you eating a normal packet of crisps ever again. You are having the boundless gut healthy snacks.