13 Simple Strategies to Quickly Raise Money for BONKERS Ideas, Win Insane PR for FREE and 10x Creativity on 10x Less Budget - Leo Taylor YUMBUG

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2:01hello hello hello um i just want to say a huge thank you honestly i'm so grateful that you listened to this and i'd be so grateful you could please share share the podcast leave a five-star review we've got some epic guests in the mixer that we're so close to getting um and the bigger the show gets we're going to land some of these big whoppers the bigger the potty gets the bigger the guests get the bigger your brand gets everyone wins um this episode with leo taylor from yumbug is mind-blowingly banging um i love people who are doing bonkers wild shit and turning crickets into meat is bonkers wild shit and i know we had all that vegan alt meat stuff that kind of ballooned and bubbled and burst a couple of years ago but this i really think he's onto something It tastes unreal, but his mindset just gave me confidence to do crazy things.

2:56We go so much into this episode. Why James Watt, founder of Brewdog, told him to build a restaurant and how we need to create a deep, meaningful connection with our diehard fans. It's not about brand awareness. It's about first experience and education. We go into the strategy about how they're making crickets and bugs supermarket ready. um leo's mindset is super he's super super bright like he talks all about these founders mindsets of uh having intellectual agility and emotional agility as a leader which is something i've learned loads and implemented we go into kind of the hard days which we all go through that grit just to crunch through pardon the pun um crunch through those dark days there's loads in how to raise money i mean he literally gives us a like a cheat sheet of how to raise serious dough for bonkers ideas rapido that was like it blew my mind and i've actually started using some of this to get guests on the podcast as well which is sick um really really really enjoyed this one and i think you're gonna love it too enjoy this man at sea right now mate um but yeah look so i i've obviously ollie lloyd who's been on this podcast um who i love he's amazing um he's an investor in you guys he put me on to you guys i really wanted to talk to you i think anyone who's doing something bold and brave where there's a lot of naysayers tick uh really want to speak to someone who's doing that i think for me i remember back in 27 2016 at my first trade show um bug in crickets are not a new thing like there are people trying to flog cricket bars as as healthy bars i think the way and it kind of fell on deaf ears in the uk i think the way you guys have stolen the cues and semiotics and authority of chefs um who have that authority the menu you've created you know if you took out the bugs very much looks like a uh you know something you'd get in jolene down the road for example and i think that's really interesting um and mate yeah i'm just excited to kind of to chat to you thanks for having me oh absolutely thanks for having me on um what's what's a bit of a full circle event for us is we listen to hungry podcast so actually being on it is is sort of a bit meta right now but it's okay what does what do people mean when they say meta just like uh you know you're almost like looking down on well it's a good question it's almost like an order of magnitude difference so right yeah it's like i'm in the podcast that like we listen to on a weekly basis yes if you see what i mean yeah it's going to get very like that especially as we're eating bugs that are kind of the as you say this is what the future tastes like on the um the the the poster behind us but so yeah as i said i love people are doing the mission impossible right and i said what what teed me up quite nicely is this morning i recorded with josh from can of water seven years ago basically and i remember seeing a can of water in bailey and sage in wimbledon and i thought fucking oh good luck with that mate this is a can of water like who's going to want that yeah and i told him this i'm not slagging him off i said this and then he checked you out um seven years late eight years later well guess what it's everywhere it's formula one loads of people using it i think it's quite a nice way to start our conversation is we're we're almost what's what does that sounds like a really wanky way of saying this but like what if i could say to you right in eight years time we're gonna have this conversation in uh 2032 that's right geez that's scary yeah 2032 and you've you've done a lot of the job you set out to achieve what what would that look like for you bugs are mainstream would be the answer uh you know and that's the mission that's that that's the goal for us is how do we take this stuff and and get it everywhere you know we want to see bugs wherever you can buy meat you know whether that's in supermarkets whether that's in mainstream restaurant chains um you know wherever there's a touch point and you're like i'm hungry and i want some food we want insects to be an option um and and that's sort of what we're laser focused on is how can we you know change perceptions to to get this stuff mainstream and what has been the biggest mental block in terms of consumer perceptions not not just with with specifically young bug but you but as i say this is this bug thing's been going since 2016 what what have been those blocks that you think you're gonna have to batter down with this restaurant to like overcome them yeah well it's it's all perception I think right now uh that that's the big barrier is how are we going to convince people that this is just delicious tasty food um we've got something that we call uh our theory for stages to becoming a bugger-terian right there's a whole mouthful but really all it all it describes is how do you get someone from being like actively against insects a bit squeamish um have no idea about the benefits all the way through to someone who's like actually i'm gonna have crickets for tea um crickets for tea crickets for tea i'm actually getting up north it's gonna be the hardest place to go but you know what i mean 100 yeah crickets for tea crickets for tea yeah i love that yeah I'll have it on the crumpets.

8:13Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember once I went up to, I was doing a signing session for Mani Life up in Booth. Right, yeah. And I was like, what, peanut butter, apple? You're fucking crazy. Yeah, I know. But it is that perception, yeah, yeah, yeah. So how do you take that guy and make them a bug fan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously it doesn't start with this person, you know, because, you know, people who are actively against it right now are just exponentially hard at work. you know so we're starting with the people who are most likely to be into insects um but really what what the stages to becoming a bugetarian describes is um as first step is education they've got to be educated um because that creates a curiosity it gets them to think oh i wonder what insects taste like you know here are all the benefits sounds interesting i wonder what they taste like and that's really important to priming them for when they get the access they get the opportunity to be like, I've heard about this.

9:09I want to give it a go. Um, then it's about creating a good experience. You know, once they give it a go, the experience has got to be perfect. Um, got to be great. Um, otherwise no one's going to come back, you know, uh, and, and especially the first experience is so, so key. Um, if we can do that, if we can do these like four steps, then you get someone who's, who's thinking this is just gorgeous food. Uh, and I'm more than happy to have a chili con cricket or whatever for dinner um and that's what we're trying to do so everything that we're focused on right now is either educating people um or creating a good first experience um and one leads to the other so education creating good experience so these that's almost like step one on the on the adoption curve right that's step one step two that's right and then let's say so the original question was like in say in eight years so you're relentlessly focusing on that now to get kind of the early adopters on board um or the neophytes whatever maybe i've said that wrong the early adopters is how we talk about it yeah yeah yeah i'm just trying to be clever um and and then as you go up like how how or is it just those two things what step three step four i don't know we're a long way off but if you're trying to be like prudent and i know i know ollie's very good at like these long-term kind of plans he sees these things Yeah.

10:30So how are we going to get into supermarkets? So that's the end goal. That's the end goal. It starts, as I say, with these good first experiences and building our own restaurant is sort of the most control almost you can get in creating that first experience. But, you know, we're now partnering with other restaurants. So selling our crickets into Oaxaca, you know, and several other restaurant chains that we're talking to, to create that experience there. So we're starting to scale it. And that creates another level of awareness, right? Because you can reach more people than you can in a Finsbury Park single sort of young bug restaurant.

11:10Once we do that, so that's the gear shift that we're sort of about to go into. Once we do that, then supermarkets make a lot more sense. But the phase that we're in now, and we've got something called a phase state. we've got something called a mission bush right which sounds a bit that sounds dodgy yeah it started as like purpose statement and it became sort of more and more innuendo so it's so jokes show me a mission bush so that i have to do that after the show dan um but uh no no okay so it starts with um the mission statement which is uh to create a more sustainable food system by integrating insects into everyday meals so we exist the never-ending purpose of this company is to create a more sustainable food system by integrating insects into meals um which which immediately you know gives us some clarity because now we're not you know necessarily a snack you know it's all about getting red meat off the table and how we're going to replace that below that is the phase so what phase are we below that's the vision which is you know we want to see insects available wherever meets an option we want to see our ingredients in the supermarkets yeah um how do we get there so that's the phase part the phase that we're in now is um to prime the market for retail by educating and creating great first experiences because retail is the hardest thing to to not just win a listing but how do you stay listed because if you don't have that repeat purchase you're delisted in a second and you know you're saying like insects been around for ages yes they have um over 10 years um but they get to delisted in a second why um because no one knows about it like no one knows about no one's had these good first experiences the education isn't out there um so we're priming the market by tackling those two things first educating people and creating good first experience um and as i say that doesn't have to be us delivering the experience um which we are in the restaurant but uh you know using others using you know cool brands like pizza pilgrims or honest burgers or you know all of these guys to say like oh here's a cricket burger or here's a cricket pizza um and and that you know as a way to introduce people to to you know the fact that oh actually this cricket pizza is just as good as the meat feast or whatever um breaks down these barriers so that when we list in supermarkets people are like oh actually i had that once and that was delicious so i'm going to pick it up we've got some food arriving now which I can't wait to try actually mate but I think it's the leveraging I can't remember who told me this someone was saying it's the power of leveraging brand partnerships shall I grab those?

13:56yeah go for it do you want a hand? yeah

14:05well the bugs are on the way

14:17yeah perfect so so just quickly yeah what is so you've got this product for retail what is the actual product is is the product a a kind of a burger like a cricket burger like or cricket mints or what is the product so the retail product is still uh unanswered um it could be a whole load of things and we've got some ideas as to what that could look like uh what we do though is turn insects into meat ingredients that people already recognize so like mints like a patty that you can shape into a burger or meatballs um like a brisket that you can pull apart into strips um and and these are all you know crickets um so that that's sort of the starting point is um how do you show people that it you know it in a format that they recognize because it when it looks like a bug you know people are a lot more squeamish about it um so what we do in this restaurant and what we sell into other restaurants are just these ingredients so we give the chefs like here's some cricket mints go you know like come on some ideas yeah so you've got so when you so when you're saying these restaurants like a pizza pilgrims you've got like it's mints basically what you're selling what you're selling 100 yeah okay cool because i think one of the thing in terms i think your strategy is really um interesting in terms of how these how you're doing it differently versus these guys that fell at the wayside which is people don't want a healthy cricket bar like a bar but like having it as a meat alternative it's it's something um it's almost like re always rephrase the question you know how do we make crickets mainstream it's what you guys have asked is like um what people didn't ask is like you say like how do we every time there's a meat option how do we uh how can we be there yeah that's a much better question than how do we sell fold people insects yes essentially and i think it's really the smart answer lies in the dumb question not in the dumb question but in the the question the answer lies in the question right i think that reframes reframe of like let's go every occasion there could be meat we'll be there because suddenly this reframes everything in terms of right we're going to get the right chefs on board you've got tim mollimer from um nando's i tried to get hold of him a gazillion times to um when i was at money life i really never got back to me he is the most decent guy ever yeah he's head of food nando's isn't he he is yeah oh man i love nando's and And he's got his own pizza joint.

16:53Yeah, I worked there quite a lot when I was living in Fulham. It's really sick. Really? Yeah, so good. It's really, really good. So he did a cricket pizza, which absolutely banged. Really? Yeah. Oh, banging. And so I think it's really, really smart. And also I think this leveraging of brand partnerships as a small challenger brand is really clever. It's what Trip did with Calm, the meditation app. It's like, oh, CBD and Trip. but they go together like bugs, pizza, bugs, burgers. It's really smart. Should we tuck into some of this? Let's do it. So what have we got? What have we got here? So you've got the sourdough with the cricket brown butter.

17:32So there's crickets in the butter and a cricket crumb on top. Cricket crumb on top, yeah. What I like about it is it feels... Are you going to dig them as well? Yeah, 100%. Of course I'm going to say like a fat fuck to stop it in my face. Well, neither of us had lunch. so here we go

17:54don't worry but we'll take the noise out that's delicious it could be like half an hour for ASMR

18:05we'll save it for afterwards you'll create mix into the butter so a whole roast of crickets and a whole roast of crickets crumbed on top so good where's your bread from um it's a good question last week it was gales because that's just down the road but um yeah well i don't know oh fair enough should we go on this one yeah so you got the uh cricket kebab um it's a cricket kebab yeah so this is what you're saying to the the um i'll just cut that in half uh so yeah it's a yumbug patty um again you can shape it however you like you can do the kofta meat or you could do um you know meatballs burger that kind of thing because this is like the full cricket experience right it is yeah so 50 more protein than beef uh for 15 times less carbon that's unreal sick oh yeah i'm gonna go until like january it's a messy one this i'm gonna cut all this noise out i'm not right chefs know what they're doing yeah is this your first cricket this is your first time well what an honour down I mean that just tastes like meat but it's not full of shit like some of those vegan meat brands you know what I mean yeah well that's a big part of the opportunity here is you know as you say this is cricket so it's three ingredients it's crickets whole wheat flour and salt so that's a cricket mints that's crazy mate that's fucking crazy tastes like mince and I think something that people are surprised by is like we don't have to do too much to it because it's because crickets are meat so we're literally for the mince just mincing it down roasting it with some whole wheat flour and salt if you season it and that's it so like you know as you say the processing is like negligible it's almost like as much as you would do to beef mince you're just mincing the beef down um that's so banging i'm gonna say one more go and let's get crack on yeah there's more coming out isn't there well um because otherwise i'm just gonna stuff my face but we'll go back to that because that's fucking banging so um were you a bit nervous about trying crickets no no no not really yeah some of the food in columbia was probably oh right yeah i was thinking that's some of the sausages over there i was thinking what is that about you know what i mean what's the worst one it was once we were like quite hung over on a beach and we got to this typical um middle class moron going to uh Columbia so basically I just thought they'd take cash everywhere sorry take card everywhere so I got to this beach and I'm really hung over and it's like a long journey to get to this beach and um I couldn't they didn't take it they wouldn't take cards so they only had cash I was so hung over I was expecting to drink loads of water I'm not drinking those water just like be able to buy some water and refreshments so I was parched on this beach I mean it's not that bad but I felt like something out of that film with Leonardo DiCaprio the beach I was like I'm so thirsty right now and they bought this fish the only thing like you paid for this meal and it was this fish and the coconut rice is just fucking rank and like a little tepid salad but I remember eating that and I didn't have any water to wash it down what what crazy but when i got back to the hotel i had like um i think i i think i went to the not corner shop they don't have corner shops over there but like uh the little uh supermarket i got like a whole bevy of beverages nice like gatorade co-zero full shebang it was it was delicious um but no that is really really good the so so what you're so what you're saying is so you you turn it into this it's basically mint that tastes i can't tell the difference between that mint genuinely what I'd like to go back into and we're going to go into this where we're at now which is the chef route partnering with these chefs I think that's really smart they have in terms of like influence a la Robert Cialdini have you ever read that book really good he has like three, six rules of influence he has social proof which is you get more people in here eating it social proof, authority people have authorities, that's why people love influencers so chefs that suddenly gives you way more authority than some health person yeah um consistency um i can't remember some of the others but i think those three things are really interesting but let's go back to like right to the beginning you said you were cooking bugs on the weekend like where where did this curiosity for bugs come from like what's the why in your soul the why my soul oh gosh yeah

23:09so I mean I went on actually before I was about to talk about uni but before that so about 2012 2013 the UN started talking about insects and they came out with a report in 2013 that was the most that is the most downloaded report in UN history and a whole bunch of documentaries sort of fell out of that the BBC did one with Stefan Gates um and I watched that documentary and it was you know Stefan was asking like why aren't we eating bugs in the west and he was going around all these countries that eat insects um and being like this perfectly good food um why aren't we and we're more than happy to rip a head off a prawn and suck its brains out and call it gourmet but we're not happy to munch a cricket when like 80 of the countries around the world do yes so that's really sorry so that's really clever because i didn't i read somewhere that it's like you eat prawns don't you yeah that's that's one of your marketing messages isn't it exactly it's actually prawns are sea bugs yeah yeah yeah yeah interesting they were so so much so that they're related so if you're allergic to or that or rather they share common ancestry so if you're allergic to shellfish or prawns you'd also be allergic to crickets that's crazy yeah so this report comes out you're how old are you at this point in 2013 like 18 18 yeah so you read this thing what were some of the one or two shocking things about this that you read and that well well part of it and um sort of going even further back so i grew up all over southeast asia my mom's thai um you know lived in cambodia lived in thailand china um you know born in sri lanka um uh lived in a couple a couple of countries in Africa as well.

24:51So growing up, it was just the thing that, you know, you'd see in the market, you know, it's just a thing that people did. But I had no idea about the potential of this food, of this ingredient that was just being completely overlooked for no good reason, you know, other than it was just culture. And I was, I think because I've, you know, as a kid moved around so much, just built this fascination up around culture as a truth. So what I mean by that is - Culture as a truth. that's beautiful. Go in. Yeah. Tell me more about that. So, um, and I think food is a really good example. Um, uh, and I'll, I'll tell a story of, um, my flatmate, like even a couple of weeks ago, I'd like fry it, fry an egg and like stick it on rice.

25:34And they'll be like, you fucking what? Like you don't put fried egg on rice. You know, but if you go to like any country in Southeast Asia, it's, it's classic, right? People have like almost like fixed truths about what is right and what isn't right. like oh you can't listen you can't pair this wine with this cheese it's just not you just can't do it um but you go to another country and they'll pair they'll do it and that is like the thing to do um so I think as a kid I was just fascinated going from school to school and seeing all of these traditions and cultures um what were some of the things that like if you could compare country to country that were like the stark kind of because say culture is truth yeah what are two truths from different cultures that you were like that made that the that stark reality real does that make sense yeah totally um well I think food was often a big one often a big one um but if I were to go sort of one level in um I don't know if it's a culture is truth thing but it's just the way people did things so um growing up in southeast asia i'm in international schools surrounded by americans so it's a very americanized environment and it's all very open and you know questioning um but then i get plonked into school in the uk and i start and i'm the same you know i'm a bit more american um and you know asking tons of questions and people didn't really like that you know it's like you don't really sort of put your head above the parapet or like or like scratch too hard or you know ask too many questions um uh so that was maybe one of the more major ones and and actually i only realized that probably sort of towards the end of secondary school and um you know at uni when you know i'd ask those a question that people like no you like just don't don't push people it's interesting because i think one of the reasons america is it's their greatest strength and their greatest weakness i think i really believe your greatest strength is simultaneously your greatest weakness yeah their greatest strength is that they're so curious and that's that curiosity leads to silicon valley leads to apple leads to um i know he's not american but like elon musk it leads to creativity yeah curiosity curiosity is the birthplace of creativity the negative side of that is fucking paranoia they're so paranoid yes like the quick when you're questioning everything positively it's curiosity when you're questioning everything negative it's paranoia like paranoia about the politics paranoia about i'm not going to get into politics because i'm not i'm here to eat bugs do you mean but but it's fascinating that and then you come to the uk and it's like you see that stark uh that stark difference what were some of the um countries that really kind of i just think it's fascinating you've lived in so many different countries what are some of those countries that you're like you've taken lessons from that you kind of still live by because the reason i'm saying this right because on linking this to young bug is you've you've most people have looked at this problem like this and i'm like straightforwardly yeah you've basically said you're asking loads of questions you've got you've had inherently because you've moved around so many different countries you've had different experiences we go on a really deep level here you've looked at this this bug problem like that with the chefs with the restaurant every other this is not a new thing we're going doing a partnership with pizza pilgrims or whatever but like if we're going to go back what are some of these countries that kind of made you change the way you see the world it's really hard to pinpoint a moment um and i don't know if the answer is a particular country i i mean the way i look at it is the experience as as a whole right you know having gone through all of these you know the through all of these different countries has created a sense in me that, you know, back to like culture as a truth, that there isn't a single way to do things.

29:39And, you know, oftentimes, and Tim Ferriss talks about this, we were talking about Tim Ferriss earlier, but, you know, people often say like, you can't do it this way, or it has to be done this way. And, you know, all you need to look for are the cases in which, Is there one case in which it was done that way? Or is there one case in which, you know, it just breaks the mould? Because then it stops becoming an absolute truth, right? And I think just as a whole experience going to these different countries, that was just constantly happening. So that was obviously very helpful. Absolute truth. So, yeah, so we've talked about, like, asking a different question can sometimes get you to the absolute truth.

30:23Yeah. So as I think with this, it's like, instead of saying, how do we get people to buy insects or see insects as healthy? It's like, how can we be there every time there's a meat option? Different question. Yes. And that, I think, is going to get to the truth where others have potentially failed. Because I think this is what this all espouses. And also the truth that this is just food. You know, like people get riled up, you know, to their eyeballs. The fact that, you know, you're presenting a cricket in front of them as food, because to them, that's a challenge on what is reality to them. Reality to them is beans on toast or whatever, you know, pizza, a margarita pizza, fish and chips.

31:09Like that is what food is. And as soon as you say, no, this is food. it's like fucking hell like fuck you you know like like they get so angry about it yeah because you're challenging their underlying assumptions of what what is and what isn't um and they're not thinking about that at the time but i think that's why there's such an emotional reaction in the extreme um and obviously we're not targeting these guys uh i mean like there is a way to chat to them and like to calm them down a bit and just be friendly right which is a lot of customer service but um uh i think just having this understanding that things are done differently elsewhere you know not everyone eats uh you know beans on toast for dinner you know um just allows you to look at life in a different way but also i think you're you're stealing the kind of the semiotics of like high-end restaurants at the minute and i think that um helps break down that big oh it's crickets do you know i mean or whatever however you say it right so it's like in front of the menu it says small plates so small plates is all the vogue right now you go to any restaurant in um uh shoreditch or fill in the blank soho it's all small plates this is a menu banging um it seems like i'm at a trend i'm not saying this is a trendy restaurant but like um well even the word trendy that's naff um i feel like my granddad's saying that it's a very trendy mate but um you know so we we've got here roasted garlic sardo sherry and cricket i can never pronounce things but when it's yeah hummus with spiced mint smoked almond ducca and trevido i would get that in caravan restaurants you know caravan a lot of these things are onion bhaji's wild garlic and kint sauce um uh pool cricket tacos like tacos all the rage right now so I think what's really clever is yes you've got these people like ah but you're like you're slowly bringing them in saying this is you know what a good restaurant is totally you know what this is and I think this is the best thing I've seen because everyone puts on their menu uh the sausages are from Suffolk from Greg and Suffolk maybe not Greg and Suffolk but they say from Suffolk and I just because I think the way you bring humor into this is amazing thank you made from Cambridgeshire farm crickets like the provenance of the crickets is absolute genius I think it's so smart thank you what was the thinking behind this like take me back a few steps because this is menu now we've got the restaurant open like what was the thinking behind it we've got some more dishes here oh yeah so you've got the bargees maybe we tuck into those because they're they're going to be hot yeah yeah absolutely absolutely boy um I'm going to make sure I don't thanks Ollie do you want to keep going on those I will probably eat those afterwards yeah alright thank you you've got the pulled cricket taco pulled pork i love it oh sorry a little freudian slip well there you go that's that says a lot isn't it if i think it's a pulled um cricket so this is a cricket brisket that we sort of uh pull apart so you get these uh meaty chunks yeah um and then this is a um uh onion bhaji with a cricket mints inside sick we'll go with the taco is it which one's a dipping sauce um i don't think there is one so this i mean you're welcome to use this but that one's for the bhaji and yeah that's banging would you know that it wasn't crickets it was crickets no for this bhaji i love bhajis like just in general onion bhaji is so good so good that's serious gear mate I think the poetry's bang what were you talking about?

34:54I've been forgotten take us a few steps back how do we get to the menu? how do we get to this? everything that we've been talking about these people get riled up aren't the people walking in the people who are walking in are curious so it's important to say that these early adopters are ready on this journey to becoming a buggeritarian. They're not at step one. They might have been educated somewhere else or maybe a mate's told them about it or they've read an article or seen a video or something. But what we're trying to do here is as I say, to show people that insects are just food. Like you said, the pulled pork taco.

35:43Is that an insect? Yeah, that's a whole cricket there. yeah you know it is it is all about you know just having a great time in a restaurant um and you know what's really cool for us to see and what makes me super happy is seeing a table that's just having a laugh you know ordering some drinks they're not even like no like introspecting it you know like inspecting it sorry they're not going in and being like oh and like doing a hakuna matata like dangling a piece of cricket in front of them in front of their mouth they're just having dinner um and you know what this is what the future tastes like this is what the future looks like the future looks like people sitting across the table ordering a plate of cricket tacos and just having fun um and and this is what we're trying to do here yeah so i i totally get that and i know james what was the guy who told you to do a restaurant but what i want to go back to is from what i've read online is it was quite a squirrely route oh yeah you were making it in people always want to know like that I know you're still early days but there's always that testing and iterating but you tried to go into retail so I've seen videos on YouTube of you cooking up like a cricket thing in 2019 so we start with content so the story in a nutshell well maybe not too much of a nutshell but we started creating content because we were just, Aaron and I were experimenting with insects in our free time so we converted my mom and dad's garage into like a insect cooking space which is shocking because there wasn't a sink um but was this just for fun at the beginning just fun yeah because we were intrigued i was i was still so i was coming out of architecture that's my background uh aaron's background in insect science and entomology um and we would we so he was cooking bugs already um because he's you know entomology insect science he's always around insects and so he was turning them into burgers and sausages and that sort of thing um posted about it on instagram and we met up through bugs it was like oh like i'm interested can i like come and try some of the stuff um and we got together started cooking with them for fun um and we're like okay let's get a camera out and like video this um because it because maybe it's interesting and i started posting it online so this was 20 early 2018 is when we first met up and for the next sort of couple of years it was just you know every other evening and weekend or whatever we would be at my mum's garage and just cooking this stuff and he was in Norwich at the time I was in London so that was it was like in midpoint because she's in Cambridge until lockdown so it was literally just a hobby until lockdown so what sort of stuff were you cooking like what was the craziest stuff you tried to make craziest not crazy it's just like some stuff well I would say like the craziest bugs i mean we ate all sorts of things like we were properly you know going in so we would get like centipedes from thailand june beetles that taste rank they taste almost like it tastes super fish mealy um yeah it just wasn't good um and these were all like dried insects so we were just like having them out the bag um like unseasoned just like raw like all dry but raw um and no we're like fuck this is this disgusting but we had um and we have still a cricket farmer just down the road from my parents house so we used to um and then we got some of his stuff and we were cooking with it and it tasted great this guy's just got a cricket farm randomly quick farm yeah 60 acres of of of space why does he have um so he sells to pet owners so people have like reptiles or um fish or something that that need to be fed like crickets or grasshoppers so we used to come in like pick up the uh the frozen crickets take them back to the garage which is just down the road he used to drive us actually from from the farm to the uh to the garage um and we're like right what are we making today we're gonna do like a burrito or we're gonna do like some pasta or something yeah um or buddha bowl um and we just like just have some fun with yeah that's banging so so did you so how would you get the crickets and how would you turn them into what i'm trying to work out is how you turn them into to me yeah so like initially like how many how many iterations did it take like we would 100 % whole crickets 100 % of our dishes started with the whole insect right um so we did like falafels and things but that would be blitzed down it was never never like the meat you see here right um what that took um was so in lockdown down um we're like right we've got a bit more time you know we were both obviously everyone was home so you know we just had a bit more time on our hands um like why don't we sell this every man and his dog has a recipe box going why don't we do like a bug box um so that was the inception that was like the first time we sold crickets to anyone um also because people on the content were like oh well like where can i get this oh yes i and like it was clearly not very thought through because we're doing all these recipe videos and no one could buy insects anywhere like it was just like unheard of um but people like oh yeah i would love to make this like how i'm like okay well we'll package it package these recipes up into a box um so we ordered a bunch of like boxes off amazon um you know just threw packets of crickets together like sealing them in my bedroom um it was all very hands like hands-on hairnet in the bedroom you know the bedroom the bedroom became literally everything it was like the living room where we ate where we were like working and stuff um obviously so where we slept but uh uh these rest so we sold maybe like uh just over a thousand meals um in lockdown and like very little money right because uh we just had no money um and that was enough to tell a story to investors um so we did our first round in 2021 like look people are liking the bugs and at this point it wasn't the meat alternative whole crickets oh yeah how's it going?

41:55do you need a signature? no no it's alright I spelled my name wrong but I'm sure that's fine quick squiggle in the box there you go definitely looks like you cheers thank you okay yeah so you have this proof of concept you get almost that a thousand true fans we were talking about earlier not necessarily true fans but you have this story to tell to investors yes what is the story you tell them because i think it's easy raising money for i'm not eating nothing there's never there's no such thing as easy raising money it's nothing but it's slightly easier if the concept's proven or there's a trodden path i.e.

42:33chocolate like yeah yeah you can bench that mark that against green and blacks or a drink you can benchmark against yeah a beer brand you could benchmark against cams and town brewery like bugs in a slimy bedroom in cambridge if i don't in a seedy way out of the pun and i'm not seedy that's the wrong thing um uh what is the story you're telling to investors that this is going to be huge and this can be huge um and i i mean get get loads of early stage start like earlier than us startup founders asking like how do you raise money um essentially that that first raise is um and sometimes still is like this is going to be a massive category you know we want this to be taking massive market share from meat right um and that's a massive market um if we become the next beyond me or the next this isn't chicken or the next corn um which is the opportunity um then we're all doing really well um then it's about convincing them that you're the team to do it um so those are the two things that we were playing on so okay so just just because this will help a lot of people listening to this so showing them the opportunity yeah showing them that you're the team to do it how do you how do you demonstrate that well other than like just being yourself right like yeah and actually like a lot of it was just getting in front of investors and you know telling a good story and showing up you know as if you meant business you know like every touch point mattered and almost an invest treat an investor like a customer if you're trying to raise money what are some of those touch points that you think got your big clients sorry not big clients big investors maybe an example how are you writing an email um you know how would you do that um uh well several ways and it depends on on you know who you're going after and how but you know I want to say two things that are completely the opposite but they both work you know don't spray and pray you know like targeted email they really love what you're doing and this is all classic stuff right if you're trying to sell anything to anyone it's got to be you know bespoke it's got to make sense you've got to know why it makes sense so you've got to know what the victory speech is for them like how are they going to their sort of investment committee and pitching you and just having that in the back of your mind, like this relationship makes sense and this is why, just allows you to craft an email.

45:08I would say don't be too wordy. So our emails were really short. It might have been like three sentences sometimes. Especially, so this is the flip side, where we did spray and pray. We used a thing called Linked Helper, which is just automating LinkedIn messages. so you can scrape LinkedIn for anyone with like investor or VC or sustainability, you know, in their, in their name. It pulls together a list of people and our, our message was just super short. It was, hey, brackets, first name, um, we're an edible insect startup looking to raise X amount. um uh uh this the space is projected so then the opportunity this space projects to grow 16x this decade 16x growth like massive um and we are on a mission to take bugs mainstream so it's just setting that you that you'd get them thinking immediately about the opportunity so it's fascinating so a couple of things on that um is think about their victory speech and i think um This is true with retail buyers as well.

46:19So someone, I think it was Lucy from Nice Wine, she said, I think it can be so easy to think about what you want as a founder. Think about how do we make our buyer famous? Yeah. So how do we make our buyer, when they're doing the Tesco Awards, oh, this is the buyer who brought in Yumbug. This is the buyer who brought in Nice Wines. This is the buyer who brought in Kombucha. How do you make them famous? I think that's really valuable. um i like the whole spray and pray thing is interesting it sounds like something dodgy but the uh completely it works and like obviously as as a founder you've got no time so i would say the best roi was linked helper standardized message that that works and the mission that's that's the other thing amelia from bold bean co who's also raised a lot of money she would just to get buyers and to get investors you would just say this is our mission mission is the bridge between your is is kind of like the umbilical cord between you and the investors it's the language you both understand they've obviously had a mission if they've sold you've got a mission it's like if you can put the word mission and like who doesn't want to hear about a mission it's often a sentence um often it's a mission bush yeah well not quite the mission bush yeah yeah yeah yeah because then there'll be like a thousand word essay yes sure sure um that's fascinating so then so you get the money on board and then what are the the what are the real painful steps when you're like i just want to give up like on the on the on the kind of tumultuous treacherous road to creating this alt meat essentially because i think so far it's been all like up and up and up and up and now I've got this restaurant in Finchley and we're doing Pizza Pilgrim.

48:07Like what are the real dark days where it's just been like, why am I fucking doing this? To be honest, fundraising is like, I think the toughest because I mean, the very need to go out to fundraise says that you haven't got cashflow, right? So when you're going out to fundraise, you know, you're the boat sinking. Do you know what I mean? So I think any time having to do a fundraise is never fun. particularly because you're not focused on the business. You are, but you're not. You're not focused on creating value for customers. You're not focused on finding product market fit. You're focused on finding story investor fit.

48:50And I think those, for me, are the hardest periods because it feels more stagnant than when I can pull my time and put it into creating really great food for people, educating people or creating great first experiences. Because that's where I think I need to be spending my time, on podcasts like this, educating people. And there's been a couple of fundraisers. So going through those peaks and troughs, dealing with investors can be tough sometimes. People several times have committed money, and are like, great, we're over the line, and then they retract some for whatever reason. How do you deal with that?

49:32Maybe not give names, but is there a particular poignant or potent moment where that bubbles up, a feeling of being stung? it's a it's a really good question and i think initially um early on you know it hit me harder when this when this happens um but i feel very fortunate in having the mindset that um it's always it's all progress if that makes sense so um the fact that this particular investor is still investing is still fucking amazing. If you asked me six months before if I were to get X person on, this investment firm or individual, for five grand versus the X amount that they committed, I would have been freaking ecstatic.

50:26And I think a lot of... Hi there. Hi, how are you? no worries how are you sure yeah yeah yeah feel free to leave it on the side yes yes wine and duck well for eat and dine and yes lovely yeah i'm wanting to the food thank you so much yeah cheers cheers thank you um should i lock the door that's good i actually think these bits are the bits that are important all right okay um we were talking about oh yeah how do we deal with difficult situations like yes so investors or just just the hard days how do you keep going when it gets rough perspective right uh and i think it's really important and that's so easy to say so easy to say when you're in it but i think it really is what's kept me going um is looking at this entire picture and saying because because ultimately well you can tell yourself a myriad of different stories right you can look at your day of investor meetings and not having much money in the bank and say fuck me right like this looks horrific right um and you might get to the end of that day and it might be all knows but you could tell yourself the story that this is what it takes to do something amazing this is what it takes to build change in the world and how fortunate am I to be in these trenches?

51:58And we have a saying at Yumbug, another day in paradise, even when everything's on fire, which it has been, right? Examples like the buckets eventually didn't work, which is why we're now sitting in a restaurant. It's like the whole strategy was on fire. We weren't executing DTC properly. We had to pivot. Not enough people were into whole crickets and that was the product. what are we going to do um and having the perspective of like oh well actually kind of this is what it takes you know this this was always going to be what happens and like self-expectation management i think can only happen when you have that perspective um when you feel lucky to be in the trenches um and this is something that we really try to hire for you know um like you're not joining a cruise ship no one's sipping a pina colada you're in a freaking dinghy with holes in it you know and you and you like you got to turn up in this dinghy and think it's another day in paradise if we're going to move forward um and i think aaron and i are very lucky and i use the word lucky intentionally um because we've just been exposed to this way of thinking and and we've just been able to adopt it and it's helped us deal with really really difficult things it's so such a good mindset i think um yeah it's it's it's benchmarking it like looking down to what josh was saying to me this morning he's just like every time things things got hard i just realized that like basically every founder i've set opposite there's a common they're very different everyone is single very different if i could link like a golden thread through each it's the best one of the superpowers is this ability just to change perspective but do it like vehemently quickly like super quickly so it's like we're not on a dinghy drowning we're on paradise like bang the what the other the the common one i think mine if stew from minor figures told me this i think freya from um fixate is not i have to i get to yeah like it's like mate we could be in like one of my editors is in ukraine i spoke to him on my phone the other day yeah on zoom yeah and i was coming i came back from costa rica and i was complaining about being a bit gray outside yeah it's like you fucking idiot like i'm speaking to this guy his dad's got an ak-47 hasn't seen him in six months gone to the front line he can't leave the country it's like we've got it so easy like and that but but the thing is i'm very like oh my god it's so wayne was making me sad well i wasn't speaking like that but like you know what I mean I think it's so valuable there's there's a and and just to quickly touch on where I think this comes from um there's a story that that I love to tell on this and all of this I think touches on emotional agility if you've if you've heard of that as a concept what's that um there's a book out there I forget the name of the author really sorry to the author but just Google emotional agility.

55:04It's really this idea that you are showing up in the world with your emotions intentionally. A lot of people hear the word emotional agility and think like, oh, that's not being angry. That's not feeling. You know, you become more robot, but actually it's the idea that you are feeling. So you experience the anger, but you show up in a way that you want to show up. So if you are feeling angry, let's say you know member staff have done something shit um are you shouting at them and barking at them or are you uh and is that helpful is ultimately the question or are you showing up in a way that you want to be showing up uh what would be more helpful you know actually just having a chat and being all calm and cool-headed um and i think that that mentality is so helpful and so important and so necessary to not go insane because you can start to be intentional about how you want to be.

56:05And the weather is such a classic example of how people's emotions are reactive, right? So shit day today, mate, it's raining. Amazing day today, we've got sunshine. Like why can't you have the most amazing day and it be raining? um how do you detach sort of things that are happening to you from actually how you feel and therefore how you show up in the world uh and and which obviously affects how how able you are to get things done um so all of these things have been you know super super is there an example or like maybe a poignant moment when you have had to turn on that emotional agility because i think emotional agility is the answer to emotional fragility right where like you can be so emotionally fragile like as you say to the weather to things going wrong like how is there an example where you've because i get it in principle but like if i'm fucking angry i'm fucking angry yeah so it's like how do you yeah i'm not saying it's airy-fairy i'm not saying that at all but i'm saying it could be kind of like oh my god you know is there any specific example of how you've been malleable with your mind yeah no totally get the question um all the time when there's a disagreement right about around something um you know you're trying to get your point across i think what it really speaks to is the practice of understanding what you want it it comes down to being clear about what your goals are um because when you are angry and experiencing anger, you might be, you know, doing something that you don't intend to do, really.

57:54You know, if you thought about it, actually the way I'm showing up angry isn't helpful and is actually not the kind of person I want to be.

58:07So practicing, just being aware of actually what you want in the world, and this could be any level. So you asked for an example. I mean, it's tricky for me to, you know, because we're such a small team, it's tricky, you know, to talk about specific instances. But you can imagine, like, in a disagreement, just asking yourself, like, what's the goal here? Like, it's not about me winning. It's about us making the right decision. And Steve Jobs, you know, was, like, I think the master of this. really great we're talking about emotional agility but like intellectual agility you know in the sense that you know the best reason wins so you might be wrong but we're in this what are we doing here we're trying to make the best decision possible in this argument we're not here because we want our egos to win we're not here because any anything other than we need to make the best decision we can now um and the awareness of that goal allows you to to move towards it in a more sort of intentional way um whereas if it was an all-out war like that's fucking stupid you know like you know you might get to an answer um but it's really inefficient yeah and it's really inefficient because people are walking away from that situation feeling hurt you know feeling unheard um so i've talked no not specifically to an example but i get it i get it yeah i get it it's just yeah it's it's asking yourself the question where are we trying to get to rory southern's new book is let's we need to solve arguments not um sorry we need to solve problems not arguments that title is just genius because most of what people try and do is is it's like ego i mean i've been there myself like in uh in working in teams where my ego overtakes and i like to be right like i'm that's just what i'm like yeah i'm like i'm right about everything and i'm often i'm fucking wrong and i have to hold my hands up yeah but if i get into the it's not that i'm actually i don't it's my ego's kicking in saying no no no you're wrong and it's like just stop that because stop that's what problem you're trying to solve really interesting i love it and just to touch on that um i think that mindset allows you to look at a piece of criticism a piece of feedback um a moment of being wrong um in an excited way you know rather than seeing like fuck i'm wrong right it's like oh shit like now i can be better yes you know yes um like this is an opportunity uh and and that's been really important for us as a team to to cultivate a growth mindset.

1:01:09Criticism is not about, I don't know if you read the book, Radical Candor. So there's in essence of these two spectrums, these two sort of gradients, there's caring personally, so not caring about a person, caring about them. And then you've got challenging them directly. You're challenging them or not challenging them. Radical candor is about caring about the person and being able to challenge them directly. But there's these three other quadrants. You've got a quadrant where you care about them, but you're not challenging them. They call that ruinous empathy. There's some like weird terms here, but that's when it's like, oh yeah, great, great job.

1:01:54You know, like fantastic work, but it's not, right? And that's creating a problem for the organization because you're not able to improve. You're not able to make better decisions um you've got um you know uh obnoxious aggression which is where you don't care about them um and you're not you know giving them direct feedback and that might be like backstabbing like so and so is like absolute shocking you're not you're not saying anything to them you're just damaging their sort of image in front of other people um or you know backstabby things are um and then you've and then you've got uh and i forget the term but where you are challenging them directly um but you don't care about them and that would be like the gordon ramsay approach you fucking idiot you know that's fucking shit you idiot sandwich you idiot sandwich that's so jokes yeah well it's not jokes but it's just the idiot sandwich piece it's funny um i would love if gordon ramsay calls me an idiot sandwich you should get try and get him in here mate try yeah um so so the growth mindset i think it's so i was so interesting kind of understanding the texture of your mind and how it works to think when you're trying to kind of do something that no one's done before in a different way you need to understand how someone's thinking about it and if you have this you know everything's an opportunity everything's an opportunity to learn uh i get to do this i don't have to do this so that's the mindset piece that's so that's almost i always believe that's the foundation if you get the mindset right the rest kind of falls into that's upstream i always feel about upstream downstream totally great but i think loads of people try and figure figure things out here it's actually go upstream yeah so then you said you'd burnt the house down well not burnt the house down fucking put a punch in the dinghy or whatever with the original product which was whole crickets that happens so you're at the bottom of the pit and talk to me about the ideation and thinking and kind of crisis management like almost imagine that's like churchill's war bunker right but you're thinking right this has gone wrong we've got investment we need to make this work talk to me about that couple of weeks that epoch if I sound like a knob but like that moment in time right yeah so we had to tell things around quickly I think we had maybe like five months of runway left or something and in that time we needed to tell build a credible story and sorry to interrupt I should have asked this first but what actually went wrong with the bugs the whole bugs well those things went wrong right um first off we have no no idea what we're doing you know especially then um like we didn't know how to hire we didn't know how to like manage people um you know we literally were just selling bugs from our bedroom and suddenly we got this investment and we're like right let's plow 100k into making all of these kits um you know we didn't have enough traction um it was clear like doing market stalls that whole crickets aren't going to be mainstream right now um eventually but not right now um so all of these sort of all of these things hit us as we were burning cash you know um and i was like right we need to do something because we've got five six months and we're gonna hit the ground if we don't if you don't change trajectory um and it really started and this is what everyone says um because we're a lockdown baby we didn't get a chance to do this until like way later but just get a market stall up you know talk to people you know like get rid of your laptop and stop being behind a screen and we were used to that because you know we started in lockdown we're either you know packing kits or like on the computer um but as soon as we got that marker stall up it and we started to iterate so this was week one after being like actually maybe these kits aren't aren't the right thing um we started selling um whole cricket bows um bowels bows like a bow bun oh i think it's like the bowels bow no no bowels of a cricket i was thinking christ bow buns yeah bow buns yeah like sticky teriyaki crickets in a bao bun that was this was week one and this so this was in at a stall uh brick lane market cool brick lane market what year is this 2021 22 okay yeah um and uh and we were looking around and like our store was doing like fine like i think i think we we almost broke even maybe on on that first week but you look around and like every other store's like rammed um and we're like okay like can what are the stalls that are doing exceptionally well here the chicken nugget stall like that had the biggest cue so like we went back in and we're like okay um next week what are we going to show up with cricket nuggets because the chicken nuggets were doing really well um so we had a few days i i think it was like we had we had a debrief so we We were live Saturday, Sunday, debrief on the Monday morning of what we're going to do that week.

1:07:06And we have like three days to develop a cricket nugget to then start making them to go back out on the next weekend. But somehow we made it and it tasted great. And actually you can go on our Instagram and see us tasting the cricket nuggets for the first time. Was the meat white? Yeah. How did you do that? it um it was a slightly different species of cricket um and i can't remember what the exact mixture was it's not what you know what it is now uh we probably threw in some like binders and some other stuff in there um can't remember what i wasn't actually the cook yeah sure sure yeah yeah um but uh um yeah so uh we had these cricket nuggets like and they flew off like the next week and we're like oh wow like that's cool you know so that gave us a bit of confidence um we had a couple of jars you know like the innocent smoothie story where they had you know bins like quit your job keep your job um we're like i did we're gonna have put a couple jars on the table saying like bugs aren't for me or i'd eat i'd eat this again um and like thousands of people would cut like over a thousand every day um and this like jar of I'd Eat This Again was rammed and like hardly any under 20 in the, you know, bugs aren't for me.