13 Unshakeable Laws To Get Your Brand Ready for a Multi-Million Exit (£) - Piper - PROPER CORN, Mindful Chef, Orlebar Brown, Hickory’s, Monica Vinader, Forthglade

0:28Hello there people and listeners of The Hungry Podcast because I think, as I said before we recorded, before we started recording, is tons of people listen to this podcast. They start a brand. They get it from their kitchen to waitress. I don't think they've ever actually asked, in fact, I know they haven't asked, is how do we even begin to exit this business? And you've just had so much experience in this. You've built Pitcher and Piano, so super grateful. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Nice to be here. so i think what i'd like to start with um as i said to you like i text perry saying what should i be asking uh libby and before we hit record we were talking about how you know all brands go on this journey and i think i think you've said in the research i've done like you've walked in founder shoes before and from that road from say brand to brand legend which is what you specialize in um there's there's there's hurdles along the way as you scale and perry said to me talk to about or ask to be about the 7 17 and 70 let's start with that as kind of the opening gambit and then we'll we'll just go with the flow yeah so really this is born out of our experience of you know watching brands grow mature and recognizing that brands have inflection points and typically that might be 7 million 17 million 70 million of sales or it might be seven people 17 people 70 or it might be sites but what we see happen is that brands get to a certain point where they have to really have a great big jump up to the next step and that's usually about professionalizing the team investing in infrastructure processes systems and i think when people start a brand they don't really think about that they just as you say they start on their kitchen table it's fun it's it's exciting and then they get into waitress and that feels like a huge step or sainsbury's or wherever else um but really what happens is you build a team around you.

2:41There are lots of willing enthusiasts. They do everything and you can't really afford a professional. And then you get to a point where the business starts to outgrow some of the people. And that is a difficult point for a lot of founders actually, because these people have served them really well. They've been absolutely there 24-7, building the brand with them but what I think we see is that there comes a point where you need to upscale the team and investing what we call it investing ahead of the growth curve better to have people who know what they're doing who know how to deal with a national retailer who know what the norms are people who know how to manage people and so we see these inflection points happen as I say 7 17 70 and for us a brand legend people always say what is a brand legend and I think for us a brand legend is where a business is a household name people can talk about it and it resonates with them they have a connection with it they feel emotionally engaged with it.

3:59And typically, you know, we see brand legends, in our minds, it's sort of once you get to 100 million plus, you're definitely a brand legend. Where we invest at the AEE sort of between seven and 17 or 70 stage, actually, we can do anything along that journey. They're becoming a brand legend, they're growing up, they have challenges of succession. So that's something we should talk about is the challenge of founder succession because that's a big part of the journey the i think what you said there initially about like the business outgrows the team and obviously just kind of from first-hand experience is i think you can become disgruntled when you realize the business has to professionalize and as you say grow up i always i always think the the analogy i use is a bit when a founder starts they're almost like a two-year-old or a toddler super curious that you know my friend's got a two-year-old you just watch him or him play with things it's like try things try different sales tactics distribution tactics and it is that kind of wonderful curiosity two-year-olds have and you can get mobilize people with you on that journey but then it's a bit like a kid has to go to university kid has to do a levels sorry gcse's a levels and it's that kind of professionalization um one thing i would like to kind of understand is how do businesses, not necessarily just the founder, how do they keep that kind of twinkle in their eye and that curiosity, but still professionalised?

5:33Because I think that, what's David Hyatt from Hyatt Denim? I don't even know. He says scale kills magic. And it's like along the sevens, 17, 70, how do you, in your experience, how do you keep that twinkle in your eye? And I think that's really important to do because it's very dangerous. You can bring in very professional people and they're used to big budgets and they want to spend lots of money on marketing. And you should never lose that curiosity, that guerrilla marketing that got you where you wanted to be in the first place. And I think when we think about it, one of the things that's really important is codifying the DNA of the business quite early on.

6:16So as you scale, that DNA stays true throughout the business. So knowing what your values are, knowing what the business really mission purpose, why it exists. A lot of founders don't codify that. It lives in their brain and it lives in them. But as you grow a business and you have more remote workers and you have more clients or more customers, it's super important that you codify that and communicate it and actually work at living and breathing it. it's so easy to let it drift and think that everybody knows but they don't they you know somebody who joins a business seven years in how do they know what really was the sort of founding story why this business is so important what its purpose is its reason to exist so i think you have to invest time and money in that and often that gets overlooked hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative end of whatever i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls let's talk about the 7 to 17 mark and then we can get on to the 70 but most of our listeners are at that stage so when you say professionalize um how do you or how do how do founders bring people in um i was speaking to the guys honest burger about this because they had the same thing where they brought in loads of um high level execs it's basically they call it the fallacy of high level execs so it's people coming in um and he was he had they had a really interesting point which is sometimes high level execs are quite actually insecure because they're the high salary they're almost like bringing in the the high paying footballer to a football club they feel like they have to put their mark down and i know my friends have had businesses where that happens so how do you how do you manage that with getting someone who in who is super professional but not letting them come in and kind of dismantle the thing you've the beauty of the thing you've created?

9:00So I think often it's about finding somebody who's first in role in a particular, you know, they may have been a finance manager, they're moving to a finance director. So they're not coming with a load of baggage and I must do it my way or no way. And I think it's also about cultural fit and chemistry, you know, all the skill in the world, you can still have somebody who just comes in, they just don't fit that organisation. They're not culturally aligned. You have to make sure they're prepared to roll up their sleeves. You're still a small business. So I think it's about finding somebody who's hungry for that first opportunity.

9:42So they've got the skill. They haven't actually done the CFO or they haven't done the CEO role or they haven't been the commercial director. And quite often what we find is if you bring those people in in that way, they've got a chance to prove themselves. It's not risking the business, but they're bringing knowledge and skillset. And so it really is about finding the right level and about the right cultural fit. And you'd be amazed at how many people, how many people don't actually invest time in knowing about that brand. And so they come to the interview and they're all about their skillset, but they've not really immersed themselves in the world of the brand.

10:24And that tells you a story. Yes, it does. so that's so that's what you mean but that's really that's uh kind of delicious bit of nuance there Libby in terms of like hiring ahead of the curve because I think um as you say all the bells and whistles of I've worked at not lambasting people who work at Mars and whatnot but you can founders can get blinded by that as that is a panacea to all our problems and it's like I think that of hiring that person who's been a who's looking to take the step up to the FD yeah that's so interesting and then um in terms of what do you and i go it's all of this is case by case but maybe we could talk about i mean there's so many brands that let's maybe talk about uh proper calm i think that's that's one of the darling examples of the brand that's been on that journey and i know you work closely with cassandra um what when they had to professionalize or like grow up what were some of the hires you specifically put in place ahead of the curve so i think um finance function ops supply chain um commercial and they don't all have to come at once i think sometimes people think oh we're gonna hire a whole team right no they don't have to all come at once i think it's about picking the battles you know the most important ones and what happens as businesses grow is they they get terribly we have to do everything now all at once and actually far better to step back and say okay what's the most important win here what do we really really need and it may be you need a really great finance director because you just don't have the data to run the business very efficiently or to understand where you can improve your profit margin or whatever.

12:10So I think it's about picking and choosing the timing of what you do and making sure that you don't overload the business with new people, because that will change the dynamic of the business. And actually looking for rising stars, I'm not saying that people in the business can't move up the business. I'm just saying in certain situations, you know, knowing how to deal with a Tesco is very different to having grown your independent out of home trade it's just qualitatively different you know you need to know how Tesco work you need to know what a great Tesco presentation is you need to know how they think about margin how they think about promotion so that knowledge generally you don't have in people who haven't done it before yeah it's and then again this is all kind of a feeling thing but how do you you create the air of um kind of professionalism yet twinkle in your eye if that makes sense like that that those two opposing things well i think having culture at the heart of what you do the way you do things the way you talk to your people the way you get the staff together to think about to include them in building this living breathing thing because it is a living breathing thing that is going to change and grow up and develop um so not sort of isolating it and saying you know there's this thing called brand over here and you people go and do the other stuff yeah they are the brand Everybody has to feel it.

13:51Everybody has to know what they contribute to that brand and why they're coming to work every day to make that brand bigger and better. And so I think it's about really inclusive culture. And often I just sort of see founders or people who started businesses, they get further and further away from the customer as well, the end user. and that's quite an interesting dynamic that happens in this 7-17-70 journey is that they think they know the customer and they start sort of talking about I know my customer really really well and you go but you started this six seven years ago the customer may have changed the market's changed embedding customer in thinking is another way of keeping that magic being close to customer has always been super important to piper is there an example of a like specifically a food brand that's done that really well whether that's with with one of the fan brands you've taken on that 717 journey yeah I mean I think um you mentioned flat iron you know they're quite obsessive I love flat iron so delicious and so do lots of people and it has great fandom yeah and they really love their customers and they know their customers so they know that i think in the i can't remember exactly the age group there's 25 to 35 year olds you know 60 of them being six plus times you know some people have been 20 plus times and it's knowing what's important to them why do they keep coming back how do we get them to refer more people how do we build that tribe that are the super fans that are going to you know they spend hardly anything on marketing and they don't need to because the fans do it for them people bring people to a flat and people post about it we've you know when you get the meat cleaver uh at the end of the meal you can trade for an ice cream um you know we've had super fans building pictures and framing them and posting them it's that sort of i don't understand because i've been to flat quite a few times but this is like i'm talking about four or five years ago what's the cleaver So at the end of a meal, you should be given a little silver meat cleaver.

16:10And if you take that, most of the units have this. You take it, you hand it in, and you get a free ice cream on the way out. And so, as I say, this superfan had collected goodness knows how many. I mean, you know, 50, 100 meat cleavers, and they've created a piece of art out of it. And they framed it, and they put it up on Instagram. So you get that sort of level of fandom that enables you to amplify the brand. And that's a really great example of how you keep those moments of magic. Yeah. But that little meat cleaver is the twinkle. It is. Absolutely. And so then, so then in terms of what, yeah, I'd love to kind of try and reverse engineer the genius of Flatiron.

16:55because i remember when it came on the scene because it's the the actual cut of the meat is um is a flat iron yeah flat iron steak it's one so they obviously get the economy to scale with what they're buying in like what would you why did why did uh flat iron you know you've probably got a radar on loads of different food businesses why what was that about that at that time so i think it was um it's great value for money yeah it's uh very simple it you look at the queues around the block and it says something you know it just tells you that this is a brand people love uh we always research when we're looking at investments we look into how often do people visit how far do they come how much word of mouth referral do brands get and those measures are quite useful in sort of indicating that this is connected with people it's people love it you know they have that emotional uh love which you know plenty of brands don't so if you go to a Aberdeen Angus steakhouse not sure many people have a great love of that brand it's a fuel brand rather than Flatiron which is a love brand and that's the distinction so we spend a lot of time thinking about and researching into the customer the audience why they're coming what the motivation is and then you know how many can you have and how far could this go is it just uk could it be international um but yes it's it's getting at the essence and so so that's kind of the customer piece and then so flat iron was that on your 7 17 70 yeah where were they on that kind of so they were on the seven when we invested so then how it was like i'm trying to understand how your brains work in this wonderful build building so you you look at this brand you see that they've got customers around the the queuing outside there's fandom um great metrics great metrics you know you see you see that and we're going to get into kind of the kpis because a lot of listeners want to know that shortly but um from from when you're looking at it and you're analyzing it say in this room what how are you looking at it to the path to to 70 do you see that's what i'm trying to get to do you so we quite often talk here about back from the future so when we look at a brand we'll go five years out what would this brand look like where would it be what should the team be um what do we need to have in place so that it's attractive for the next buyer for the business and so you know we as i say we talk about back from the future and we map it and we think about so you know by year three we should be here and by year five there and that's through everything you know what would supply chain need to do have is there enough beef where are we going to get you know all of those things is is vegetarianism going to be so big that people don't want to have flat iron steaks anymore you have to look at all the different aspects that go into the brand and take a judgment call on you know whether you believe you've got all of these things can be put in place will there be a buyer at exit what would the team need to look like where would the founder want to be at that point what skill sets doesn't the team have that it will need to have if it's going to be 70 sites so how do we build that in and how do we do that sustainably so lots of businesses put in lots of infrastructure lots people and they start losing money and so you've got to think about how do we do this sustainably so that we're still profitable and and the market has changed significantly used to be just grow grow grow didn't matter profits will come i'd say the market now is much more focused on profit and growth and you know it's tougher you've got to do both um rather than just growth uh-oh i have just discovered a secret weapon please please please don't tell anyone this secret weapon helps you get listed stay listed and most importantly grow this secret weapon is being used by absolutely banging brands like bold bean co perfect head neat trip and cheeky panda no wonder they're absolutely smashing it but look are you ready to get your mitts on this secret weapon absolutely smash it too i am thrilled so thrilled to announce our brand new podcast partner north star what is north star I hear you thinking.

21:30Northstar is a monthly subscription to an online platform giving you access to category data, category insights, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It's basically the Netflix for challenger brands. It levels the playing field. Why do you need category data? Well, the first thing is making your pitch speak of the buyers and retail language is so, so important. It's going to help you unlock more listings, unlock deeper distribution with existing clients, back the right MPD, and actually understand how your competition is performing. But the even better news, are you ready to rock and roll at your next range of view you no longer need to hire a full-time guarantee manager instead just parachute in north star when your next waitrose sainsbury's or tesco range reviews coming up they're your outsourced in-house partner save money their team will come in they'll help you prep plan and smash your next range of view i'm so excited to be partnering with north star check them out in the episode description below what are your thoughts on trends and and following trends because i think um i interviewed rory southern on um do you know rory southern is the guy at ogilvy on um on monday and he was saying it you can't like short um short term you can't really see what a trend is because even though if something is five years in the grand scheme of things that's bugger all yeah um what are your thoughts on on founders building trend-led brands is that yeah uh yeah i think that's a big risk area that we tend to avoid um so at the moment for example you'll see a lot of brands growing incredibly fast on tiktok and that's great you know they're doing a brilliant job they're growing very well but you know we've all seen what happens you know it was facebook and it was instagram TikTok what's next and so putting all your eggs in one basket whether it's a channel or a geography or a trend can be risky and so we think about what are the macro long-term trends we can see for example that health and wellness it's been an ongoing rising trend for people to think about their preventative health NHS is overstretched we've had COVID undoubtedly people are thinking about how can I do more to look after myself because you know all the safety things that used to be there are creaking at the seams so now I've got to take control of my own well-being and so that's a macro trend that will follow and it means we think about so if that's the trend what are the pockets of demand that we're going to see growing you know mental health is one for example where we all know this is an ever-growing problem that people have so you know are there opportunities there look at our investments in ancient and brave and world nutrition that's because we see people wanting to supplement themselves but not just with any old supplement you know people have become more savvy we have ways to research we didn't used to have 20 years ago you just had the shelf and boots or holland and barrett now you can look up and research the brand and what's behind it and what's in it and why is this one better and different and premiumization is a trend in itself so you know we're looking at the longer macro trends definitely not you know you you can see a lot of clothing brands for example that are here today gone tomorrow and so how do you differentiate the difference between a fad and a trend because That's the thing I find interesting.

25:04So I remember, I'll tell you I did cheese, right? But before, for a very small moment in time, I actually sell juice in Wales, of all places. And then we were trying to sell it in Liverpool Street Station, was character assassination because everyone walking out would have, you go past Starbucks, Pratt, Boots. So they'd have their coffee and their juice, and I'm trying to flog it for, you know, seven quid. But that was the juice trend when everyone was going into juice. and then obviously now that kind of fat fad slash trend whatever you want to call it has kind of dissipated but there's still there's moji still kicking around and press but there were a lot more people back then in that yeah how do you kind of what's the art of that i suppose so i suppose for us is um understanding why a particular brand is better and different we talk about better and different all of the time here so what makes it better and different if it's just a juice that anybody can produce put a label on and sell you're probably going to find it quite hard and you're going to find your value engineering it down and you're not going to make the money but if value engineering it down well what i mean by your um inevitably it becomes price competitive because it's a commodity with okay that's what i really mean yeah and uh but if you are doing something unique a particular process or you're adding a particular formulation to that juice that nobody else has worked out how to get that molecular structure into the juice then suddenly you've got something better and different and so for us that better and different is what distinguishes a brand from being something that you know is riding a crest of a wave to something that has longevity and can i suppose can um address the trend but it's not trendy faddy it's yes it's got legs so say for example gut health all the rage yeah yeah um whether that's i don't we in this in five years time we could do another podcast yes and it's all these you know these drinks everyone's doing these pre-biotic pipe high biotic i'm not sure yeah it's convoluted um so say you were to look at that as a category specifically what would you with this better and i like this whole better and different kind of um axis almost what would it take for a brand like that to kind of pique your interest so i think um does it have any clinical evidence is there any proof that this is better and different that is not just i've put some stuff in a box and it's gut health product it's it needs some science behind it so um you know i i think there are lots of gut health things out there kefirs kombuchas they're all growing probably not all going to win because there isn't enough shelf space because they're not different enough so who are the ones who've got something unique is and again it's just about proof data consumer perception how can you say this one really works um in wild nutrition for example we're doing clinical studies um so we've just done one on magnesium one on vitamin d looking at the levels of absorption and retention um of a food grown material versus standard high street um spray oral spray or pill and we have the evidence now that it stays in the body longer and it is more easily absorbed And that, for us, is building a moat around the better and different.

28:59You can really see it. Yes. In, I was thinking about clothing and all of our brown, you know, why did we think that had longevity? It's because when Adam started that business, he really thought about a tailored swim. All of our brown. Yeah, the swimwear brown. and men's swim well resort wear now all year round wear but which we sold to chanel and you know chanel don't buy a lot of businesses it clearly had a very clear longevity in their minds um but it started with adam thinking about a tailored nine piece i can't remember if it was nine or 14 piece tailored swim short yeah nobody else had thought about that when you say nine piece tailored so it was it was tailored cut as if a tailor had designed it so it's got whether it's nine or 14 different elements yeah it's not just somebody sewing up the seams and putting a waist band on it that's elasticated and putting pretty print on it and then selling it for x it's somebody who's really deconstructed how do you make the most comfortable swim short how do you make the most quick drying how do you make it make people look good in it how do you put a print on it that's really unique and distinctive and that's what we mean by better and different and you've got a hero product there that you can then build a business around um rather than just another swim short there's lots of swim shorts out there what about what was the better and different with proper corn because yep that's a good question because it's popcorn yeah yeah of the day but I think it came yeah you'll have heard Cass tell the story of the cement mixer the car spray paint gun as a way of flavoring the popcorn and that was about how do you get that spread of flavor around the corn as it pops and so I think the better and different was in the way they produced it the quality of the corn then I think it was a lot about the marketing just you know addressing a millennial audience who were looking for a better healthier tasting snack that wasn't salty crispy fill you up full of rubbish um so you know it can be as much about the product as it can be the way you market it yeah yeah yeah because that's interesting so so uh yeah so the better and different can be product led but also the kind of story telling aspect as well the um so how how did kind of going back to the 717 70 how did um did proper corn go from sort of the 17 to 70 like that journey because of that again i've sat opposite lots of i've sat opposite you know perry i've sat opposite william chase like I know a lot about going to that 7 to 17.

32:08I kind of, not that I've never done it right, but I've spoken to enough people, but the kind of the knowledge gap I've got is how a brand goes on to that 70 stage. So again, I think it's about being rigorous about your priorities as you grow and thinking about if we want to get to that 70, you know a lot of people just say more skews let's just have more skews actually with proper it was more about okay we've got popcorn there's still lots we can innovate in popcorn so you know whether it's a collaboration with i think they just did one with kfc which was a really interesting limited edition so there's a lot still to do in the core category but then they moved into lentil chips because they could see the market was demanding you know chris marcus is huge but there wasn't a healthy alternative so let's move into lentils let's just start with two or three flavors uh we'll give them exclusively to a retailer we'll build that traction we'll build consumer demand and they do that bit really well they thought really hard about why do we have a right to win in this category against the big players you know there's deep pockets there's plenty of money in the category.

33:29So they were really thoughtful about the right to win, what gives us a right to play, and it was on taste, and it was on flavor, and it was on meeting a particular customer need at a particular time in the day. It was, you know, thinking about how does we make the pack attractive for the consumer. And all of that needs different skill sets you know so some in-house some outsourced and it's about what can we do well in-house and really if we're really honest with ourselves what can't we do well in-house um they did a lot in-house actually did all design work in-house you know they had a great commercial director um they they work their relationship with the retailer very very well and and over invested in just building that relationship top to bottom in a retailer you know you because people move so fast in retail you've got to have irons in every part of the of the organization when you say top to bottom by that you mean so is that like having director level weight down to you know store level how do you build relationships how do you how do you get them to want to put you on the shelf you know they've got thousands and thousands of products but you want them so it was down to little i think it's all often about the detail they had thought about the carton the outer box that goes on the shelf and how to make that colorful and bright and interesting so that the staff in the warehouse would think oh yeah I'm gonna pull that out that looks fun as opposed to a boring brown box so I think all those it's it's focusing on the detail but knowing what the big prize is and making sure the two are working to the same end game you know work from the detail up to the big know what the big is and what the important things are to deliver but don't get distracted on the way don't try and do too much a lot of people try and do too much yeah the what you said there about the top the building the relationship with the retailer from all the way to the top all the way to the bottom i think's um so interesting it's not easy to do not easy yeah i couldn't say because i obviously with the it's when you're like a team of say seven it's like where say say you are someone listening to this is a team of seven and they don't have the they may not have the investment yet they may not have the resource like and as you said you can't do too many things like what are some of those kind of again it's all case by case right but some of the things they should be focusing on and what do you see most founders kind of maybe get a little bit new shiny toy getting distracted with yeah the uh so new new i mean founders entrepreneurs love making new stuff so that so the worst thing they do is go oh well you know i've got this great idea i'm gonna go and do i'm gonna add this and then i'm gonna do that and actually you leave behind this sort of orphan child that you've bred and you're not nurturing it and feeding it and loving it and growing it um so i think often it's that sort of um excitement of the new trying to pull people back just say no look listen we've got to we've got to make this kid grow up and it's got to learn how to walk it's got to sort of crawl walk run is the way we think about it so how can it do all of that and then when it can run yes maybe you can have the shiny new toy um but i think just even if your relationship is with one buyer it's just thinking about what can i do to make that buyer's life easy you know they've got hundreds of brands they're trying to manage they're really time poor they you know are away they're out they're traveling they're doing all this so how do i make their life easier how do i find category data consumer data how do i make their life more fun i mean again proper work really good at just making it fun to work with proper so the buyers would always remember the proper day because it was a fun day and so i think it's those little moments those little thoughtful details that can just help you build a better relationship yeah i i've got a quote here from cassandra actually which is um i'm talking about yourself she says it's the pushing and the probing which is so important for us the power of questions are so important libby she does that in the right way um libby she always seems to ask the pertinent questions um and libby is an incredibly impressive lady with a wealth of experience i've really believed the smart answer lies in the dumb question or actually the question it's people often think about answers but it's actually if you cannot start asking interesting questions you'll that's the way to frame it what are some of those questions you were asking them at board meetings or in meetings if you can remember um sometimes you just be asking you know why are we trying to do this when we haven't sorted that out you know shall we should we just put that on hold now i know it's business critical you go well you're not going to do both things well so shall we just actually focus on getting this done before we do that is there an example with proper corn i'd say it's a while back or any other businesses um i mean you see it across the portfolio where as i say people are always trying to launch the next thing and you go yeah yeah you know we've got a our consumers i think that's the thing people forget you live and breathe when you're building a brand the range of products so you think everybody knows all your products what actually is the truth is they might know one or two and you go but you've got all these hidden gems here that people still don't know about so how how about we sell those first rather than invent something new and you need newness because the retailers and the consumers demand it but knowing that doing two things a year is fine don't worry about having 10 new things just due to you haven't got the airtime to persuade the consumer that they've got to buy this new shiny thing they don't even know about product three and four delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful billion pull from mckenzie jones but even more exciting they have just launched a brand new brand as part of mckenzie jones called mkj ignite mkj ignite is a recruitment firm which specializes full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work with some incredible brands lucky saint good race purdy and fig hunt and gather and real superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry-level jobs all the way through and up to md and ceo level so if you're looking for a field a sales wizard, an ops guru, a supply chain sensei, you name it, MKJ Ignite can help you out.

40:43And look, if you're looking to wet your whistle, ignite your curiosity, then check out the poddy we recorded with them back in July. Laden with wisdom, all about like do's and don'ts of hiring and like how to create the perfect job description. You will love it. There's a David Ogilvie quote, which I love, but I'm going to kind of butcher it. but it's like you you're never forget you're advertising to um a marching band not a standing army i the consumer's moving yeah um so like i think people get so bored of saying the same message it's like the best marketing i think is the one you're bored of yep and then again david hyatt's got he kind of sums up what you're saying so deliciously which is your old gold is someone's new gold yeah so the the the skew that you you're just bored shitless of it's the one that like someone needs to know about yeah or somebody else is going to come in and say oh they're they're not really loving that bit of gold over there i think i'll have that pitch yes and so i think you're constantly trying to say uh consumers are moving i can't remember what the stats are but it used to be something like you'd see 5 000 different brand uh brand images in your daily life yeah well that's a lot for the brain to process and to remember and so how do you make sure that you are the one that people remember and tell them and tell them and tell them again so often in mpd process you'll see you know we're going to launch this in may and then we'll launch something in september and you know the may one gets forgotten by june and then we're on to the shiny new one for september and you go but you only told them once about that that new product and they might have blinked and missed it you know now we have this constant feed on our socials you know you just as you say consumers are running they're not marching they've they've got so much new stuff that they can access what are some of the other questions other than like is this the right thing to do now like do we need to do this what are some other questions you have we got the right people you know that's a big question have we got the skill set to deliver what we need to deliver do we believe this person can grow into that role or do we believe that person um will be able to execute what we need them to execute well and so often it's about the people it's you know challenging them to think about it and sometimes it's challenging and again we'll come on to succession challenging the founder to think are you the right person to be doing this role now and because they've done every role okay let's talk about the let's talk about that now because that is this is it's the most uncomfortable yeah conversation pandora's box so so because i think there's numerous things in this i think i actually kind of i really believe you do need kind of an ego in business to a point to get the thing going absolutely absolutely and i think especially in uk we kind of tall poppy syndrome we kind of as i say lambast ego but i think that everyone's got an ego and i think you need it to run through walls yeah because no one else is gonna when cassandra's making her popcorn in her dad's um kitchen uh cement mixer like you need an ego to get that into same space right but then it becomes a point where um giles brooke calls it found an itis founderitis which i thought was really nice expression yeah nice expression which is you know the founder wants to still thinks they're the founder it's almost like the the three-year-old still not saying we found a three year old but like they still want to play with the toys and it's like actually it may not be then it may not be your toys to play with so what are the um talk yeah describe the succession plan like you you've like it's not your first rodeo like you've done this numerous times like what are some of the kind of watch outs with that yeah so if i go again to back from the future you probably start we would probably start by saying to the founder look you know if we're going to build this business to this level do you still really want to be running it when we exit and more often not they you know they might not have an answer they might say oh I think so or I don't know or no but we start with that conversation so that at least we get the question of succession on the table and because you don't want to put people off you know you don't want to say oh no you've done a great job now bye that that's not going to work um and they have their magic so it But it is about just starting to get them thinking about what does their future look like?

45:33What do they want to be doing? And how can we enable that? So if a founder says, I don't really see myself running a 50, 100 million pound business, I don't really want to do that, then our job is to help them recruit in and build a team around them that means they have the option to either stay or go. And that means defining a role for them. And usually that role is a brand guardian, brand champion role, brand ambassador role, whatever you like to call it. And it means that they still bring their magic to the brand, but they allow the people who are frankly probably better at being a COO or a CFO or a CEO.

46:18Most founders are bored by the day-to-day running of a business. Not all, but most. and say they don't want to deal with HR issues every day. They don't want to have to worry about the numbers every day in minute detail. They don't really want to think about the strategy. They just want to do what they do really, really well. And you'll have founders who are very self-aware and already know that they're not the people for the long term. And you'll have other founders who, as you say, they can't let go. It's really hard. It's their baby. They know everything about this business, but they don't actually know everything about the business because it's got too big for them to have their arms around it.

47:01And so they're making decisions without all the information about a certain function or area. And that's where it becomes dangerous, I think. They want control, but they don't know everything. And somebody else probably knows more than them. And that, you know, it's uncomfortable. comfortable it is you are you know you're bringing a child raising it and then you're having to let it go and that's that's hard completely and how do you navigate those conversations with founders with delicacy i would say but is there an art to that because i think there's a lot i think there is i think you have to have a very trusted relationship so you know when we invest we've typically been talking to a brand for three to four years and the founder and we've built a trusting relationship where they value what we can bring and it means you can have a conversation about it but you're not going to go day one by the way you're not going to be here in five years time but you might be saying you know this is our job is to get you what you want loads of money if that's what you want no job if that's what you want a role if that's what you want but if we don't have the conversation it becomes a very uncomfortable relationship because things will crack at the seams and you know the job of um being a founder and as you say busting through walls and i'm so full of admiration for people who start businesses i i just it's extraordinary what they do um but when it's seven million you probably have to bust through walls in a different way than you did at 1 million and again at 17 because it's not about busting through a wall actually it's about a very professionalized process driven structured way of doing things that has some magic rather than just busting through a wall yes there's a difference yeah yeah a lot of people said to me like would you ever um uh because that's when i saw things get more professional i didn't particularly like but what i like doing is just basically running through walls or like like making things happen and lots of people are really good at that and that's great but that's what basically a podcast is is constantly so it means it never has to really mature but it's just constantly you're trying to get hold of people it's like constantly new business is what it is which i get a buzz from which is yeah but it is i think it is having the self-awareness to know where how that thing that all your baby you've created to change changes you is going to change you in in many respects the so we talked before we kind of hit the uh record button nibby is so now with the kind of uh linkedin and um the brands are becoming um personal brands are becoming more synonymous with brands yeah i think more so than ever before like if you compare the brands of today with the brands of say the inner innocent tyrol's goo back in the day it's the influencer influence exactly yeah exactly so now you've got brands where the actual founders names on the product um i think we've talked about um you know brands kind of having the founders posting on on linkedin um when that how does that affect the succession plan because you know the founder um may not be able to be kicking around yep so it's again it's a conversation you need to have so thinking about um because some founders want to build their personal brand for a future life you know i'm the authority on and i'll be which is fine but it's not fine if you're strategic buyer then the founder says oh by the way i'm not going to be there and you've built this whole profile around the founder, that's not going to work.

50:57So it is about growing more faces of the brand and disseminating that sort of face of brand so that there is not that dependency on the founder. And, you know, they might well want to still be the face of the brand, and that's great. But if they don't want to be, we have to start, you know, really three years before exit thinking about How do we find other faces for this brand, other influencers, other people who talk to camera and make it feel very personal so that it's not just them? Because otherwise it's a risk at exit. So, you know, this world of influencer brands, I would say to people, just be quite thoughtful about, do you always want to be associated with that brand?

51:51do you want to be the person who always has to front the brand um and if you do great but you know quite often people don't you you get you know having to do things to camera every day being the person that's on the social all the time you know you your life is changing you've got kids you've got home you've got other things that you want to do so i just say to people think about it yeah a common theme i'm getting from you is that this like calm kind of prudence and the ability to look into the future the um what i wanted to ask you about and then we'll get into kind of the 101 of how to actually go and sell a sell your brand get in contact with you guys let's talk about pitching the piano and your kind of personal journey and some of the um kind of insights and uh you you took from that journey that because obviously informed what you're doing now because i think that's really interesting kind of yeah i mean it's a long time ago but it's still relevant i think and that's so tell me so your first store was in fulham talk to me yeah i'll just i'll start about where the idea came from because um at that time Piper was a consulting business that worked with big corporate brands to try and reinvent themselves very customer obsessive where was the market going what do consumers want to need how do you make that relevant to the big corporate brand and Pitcher and Piano came out of us looking at the pub market essentially and going you know that's not really anything I mean I was quite young then seems a lifetime ago but there's not really anything for young people that isn't spit and sawdust pub or buttoned up wine bar and nothing in between and so um crispin and i on a we were doing some work for a brewing client we sort of developed this idea about well where would you like to go what would it feel like how you know what's the purpose and the purpose was you're going to meet friends you don't really want to queue at the bar you want to feel homely as a warm and you want to feel safe and you want to have a really nice experience so why don't the drinks come to you rather than you have to go and queue at the bar for the drinks why don't we have sofas why don't we have some tinkling music in the background because then you've got something to talk about if you're on a date or if you're with you know just waiting there sort of feeling a bit uncomfortable so how could we make this feel home from home and that was the genesis of picture and piano it was you know as a picture of jug and piano and music and everything else besides and um so the first one was in Fulham Road where about I used to live in Fulham actually yeah it was sort of down the far end of Fulham Road towards Putney just Monster Road around there yeah and it was an old pizza restaurant and you know it was a pretty unloved site and we I think we were you know like entrepreneurs we were very naive we'd never been in this market we didn't know how to operate a business like that but we thought we had a great idea and so we opened the first one and it was you know it was a huge success you see to open think is anybody going to turn up and they did and they came in their droves and it was very successful very quickly and I think um that was great and then we opened two and then we opened three and sorry just quickly so so did piper proceed so you and crispin so i i thought you'd set up and this is where my uh research may have escaped me so i thought you'd sold picture and then set up piper was what was the chronology so piper existed before as this brand strategy consultancy and then we started picture and piano and that really led us to thinking about investing in brands okay and uh the consultancy sort of died away as we did more and more brand investing i think that's the way i would describe it so um and it was the sailor pitch and piano that gave us the sort of capital to then really focus just on investing so we we opened sites two and three they were going really really well sites four and five is fine going really well but suddenly we're learning that we're not operators we don't really know how to operate a bar we don't know about the fact that people are going to come and steal urinals from the basement carry them out through the top of the which they did um we didn't know about the fact that people often put their hands in the till or you know all these operating things have hygiene health cleanliness you know we were doing a good job for the market but so that's when we thought we need to bring in a an operator somebody who knows how to run bars so we bought in an operator to help run the business and then we got to I think probably site sort of five six and we'd basically sort of done all of our own personal money to try and get this thing going and that's where we started to go to the market and say we need to raise some money we want to grow this brand and found it's I suppose we're just a bit underwhelmed by the market at that point which was you know very male dominated men in suits monitoring and measuring not talking about brand not understanding consumer not feeling oh I can see why this market's really growing and what they're doing is really great so because we were a bit underwhelmed we thought well let's raise our own fund you know it can't be that difficult entrepreneurs again naive again and we did and we raised a little fund and that helped grow Pitch and Piano and some other brands.

57:45And then, you know, as I say, we sold Pitch and Piano in 97, I think it was. And that enabled us then to just focus on, you know, fund investing, finding consumer. And people were asking us, how do you do this? How do you do that? What did you learn? And we wanted to be able to provide both the money and the expertise to other entrepreneurs based on our own experience. Oh my god, I am so so so excited It feels like Hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues I can't believe this, it's absolutely mental But delighted to announce that Big Fish Yes Big Fish are part of the podcast Perry's been on the podcast three times Listeners absolutely love it Some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time But Big Fish are behind literally so many brands In your cupboard, in your weekly shop Charlie Bigham, Leo Valley, Tyrells Clippity, Goo, Rana I mean make the list longer than the River Nile But they also Share risk and invest In brands that they really Believe are a force for good Brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing Like Howda, the snack That gives back But the even more exciting news Big fish want to speak to the next wave Of small challenger food and drink brands That are destined for big things The raconteurs, the movers, shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fish bowl uh last week chatting to perry freddie and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to the different and better thing it's kind of it's kind of interesting starting at this point and then going into kind of how you've come up with these things yeah and i think what you've said there is you kind of had spit and sawdust boozer but there's no where's the middle ground the actual better and different in that sweet spot um because people forget there was no all-bar one or there wasn't there was there was nothing it literally was you go into a stuck-up wine bar or you go into an old boozer with sticky carpets and and slightly sticky floor and not very nice bit right so we because it all sound like it was all hunky-dory but there must have been a few challenges along that because so what's how long was the pitch from piano thing going till you sold it probably about eight years i think eight years okay cool so so what was some of the um the question i ask a lot of guests is there's a book i love called the obstacle is the way and uh i always believe we've got our own personal or business obstacle but retrospectively it paves the way forward i'd love to know what your kind of obstacle was the way on that on that um that pitch and piano journey was well i think definitely the whole um recognizing that we weren't operators you know just admitting to ourselves that somebody could do this better than we could yeah that was one i think uh opening the first one out of london always a big thing for hospitality because where was that um i'm trying remember where the first one out of London was, I think.

1:01:03it was Newcastle but yes you know I'm old and it's a long time ago and I can't remember but um you know for for a lot of hospitality brands that is a big step because you're known in a small market you know people chat about pitch and piano and oh they've got one in william the street oh they've got one in king's road or whatever but then you're in newcastle and you're a whole new you know who's this brand never heard of them so that's always a challenge because you're remote managing staff you're unknown so you've got to think about marketing to a new audience pricing might be a bit different competition is different so always that first step out of your home territory whether it's actually you started out of london you're coming into london uh or the other way around it doesn't really matter so um that was a challenge and then um pretty soon what we discovered is people burn out in bars you're working very long hours you are as in you personally staff no the staff in this as the people running the bars yeah they they run out of steam because you know you're working all day all night it's high energy of smile on the face or you're in the kitchen at the back sweating over something and so um we thought we we can't just sort of hope that people carry on we should address it face on so we started something called the patron piano academy and the idea was drawn i think probably from the military it was sort of a short service commission come three years with us we will train you to be able to run your own business you could choose to stay after that but some people might want want to or might have burnt out so we felt that far better to have three great years of somebody where we invest in them and they invest in us than, you know, a year or so.

1:03:04And then they go, I'm exhausted and I want to move on. So Pitch and Piano Academy, it was designed to have different modules to teach you finance, to teach you marketing, to teach you how to think about profit, teach you how to think about staff management, appraisals, all sorts of things. And so it became a way of us being able to firstly retain people, which is an ever increasing problem today for all brands. But secondly, when we came to sell the business, we had a roster of upcoming managers that meant the acquiring company could grow this business and there would be managers ready to go. So they felt they had a ready pot pipeline of managers so they could.

1:03:55was that intentional yeah oh that's so smart it was that's so smart because i there's again the you hear these stories of teams founding teams as they get bigger kind of just um cataclysmic kind of thing happens and they all just go i interviewed um uh and i also think there's this mentality of founders wanting to work their teams to the bone because they work to the bone yeah i think i'm that's very true yeah it's like found it and actually because just because someone's got options or shares in the business doesn't mean it's your bit their business but i think that's an interesting you could talk about that's the whole conversation in itself but i interviewed um george cruz who's um he was a england rugby player uh got to the world cup final played for saracens won literally everything you can in club rugby and um he was i was asking him about how he's building his team and he was like well in rugby you know pretty much every rugby player does a burnout because it's a thousand percent yeah um we want you working this this this this this and he said one of his learnings was that when he's now got his his cbd brand called four five is he's like okay so one of the questions he asked again the answer lies in the question is like okay so how do we keep keep talent i don't think the founders asked that talent uh that question enough um and how do we avoid burnout so he's got this 80 rule which basically means we we never want you to be going to 100 so the team finish at 4 p.m every day um they um so there's like this never burnout mentality i think that's really interesting and you're right i think it's not talked about enough i mean and and retaining talent in particularly in hospitality now for example it's really difficult so finding ways of making this the best place to work hickories were particularly good at this um so hickories for listeners that's like a smokehouse yes barbecue smokehouse restaurant chain which um had three when three hickories when we invested had about 14 15 when we divested sold to green king i think they'll probably have 40 odd next year and and it'll be heading to being a brand legend 100 million run rate i think so next year and um again for them it was about we've got a lot of young people how do we make them feel safe how do we make the parents feel that their young people are safe working in this environment how do we look after the chefs chefs are you know it's a real skill to keep chefs um how do we make people have very clear progression through the organization how do we celebrate success so the founders of that business and they still do it today they do a road show they go to every hickories every site once a year and they'll sit down with every team member individually and talk to them about how they're feeling what are the issues where can we make things better it's that kind of attention to your staff that's so important to make them feel valued you know because it's a tough game out there for everyone.

1:07:08So I think that retention point, and even if you're a, I don't know, fourth grade brand, it's pet food. So of course people are gonna want to bring their dogs into the world. How do we make that manageable? So you haven't got 10 dogs running around the office distracting everybody, but you don't say to it, no, you can't bring your dog. You've got to work with your people, help them have the experience, help them live and breathe we talk about living and breathing the brand um we try and do that here so if we're looking at any brand we all go and eat it consume it test it um whatever it is i mean i've eaten cat food i've eaten dog food i've eaten everything because you want to feel as close to that brand as you possibly can and that's important to make your staff feel that they are building we think we talked about this at the beginning yeah the so we've talked and i think what's really interesting is the what i think is super insightful is the fact that you've got this retention program but actually it's not just about keeping talent now it's like when you actually do exit like this it's that ability to look into stuff back to the future back from the future back from the future and actually that's important even at a board level so you'll often um when we're thinking about the exit we'll be thinking well we've got the board we just need to make sure this next layer down could step into the board shoes because some people might choose to leave so you've always you're always thinking about the next level the next people yeah let's let's um swim down think always thinking about the exit so let's just pick a brand like um i don't know i'm just trying to think of a brand um let's just say x brand is in waitrose sainsbury's tesco whole foods um planet organic maybe doing a bit of distribution island i mean this is kind of maybe probably the easy way to say is a kind of five to six million mark yeah right a lot of brands a lot of people i've spoken to say that that's kind of a sticking point that's your seven right yeah when you say they come to piper like what are you looking for what are the things you're looking for not in terms of the brand and the better different and the founder and all that stuff what are you looking for in terms of kind of the numbers like what's the growth yeah what would look what would basically be like right we want to get this brand in here today to have a chat so normally we think about we've got triple sales and then whoever buys the business probably needs to at least double or triple sales again so you're always you're you're thinking even beyond the five years you're thinking okay the next person they've got to know that there's growth so you're you're pitching your growth well out in advance you're going okay could this business get to 50 100 million um it may be at 7 or 17 now but can it get there or where can it get to is there enough headroom for us and for the next buyer of the business that could be uk could be uk and international um a lot of people sort of go yeah i've got international we service 35 international markets and you go yeah but you're doing tiny little bit in every market that doesn't count for anything far better to do a million in one market and prove a market has potential than lots of little markets but often founders think it's great to talk about i've got i distribute to 40 different countries It kind of doesn't count for anything.

1:10:43That's the status signalling thing. It's something you want to talk about at networking events. Say I'm in Costa Rica, but it's like, come on. Yeah. So we're always thinking about the headroom for growth. Yeah. And is there the headroom for growth? So you've got to believe the market opportunity is there, that you've got a great tailwind and that, you know, the market's growing or you're growing your share of the market. and if you're fully distributed that could be a bit of a problem for us and it's very rare that they are seven fully distributed across all the multiples in all the product categories they want to be in so it's usually not a problem at that stage where we would probably go oh is if someone says oh yeah yeah i know i'm the uk's done now i'm going to europe and you go well i haven't got any proof that it's going to work in Europe so um maybe not just now for us because we like to have some proof that it is going to get traction um so I think those sort of exit considerations and investment considerations as well um and just have we got is people I can't I don't think I can emphasize enough how important the people are it's just so important is the founder backable can we work with them do they want to grow this business are they really hungry but are they also self-aware have they built a good team around them can i see signs that they're ready to let go a bit and build a team around them um it's because you don't want to just back one person you know that's quite risky they might swan off into the sunset they might they might decide they're bored they might whatever so um people is a very key part of both investment and divestment can i do i think this team can sit up in front of a nestle or mars or whoever it is and sell this business to those people such that they want to buy it and be a credible team and for the big corporate to go yeah i want this team i want to back this team i can see they've got what it's going to take bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollies ollies been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using boemy to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff is coming to podcast in a couple of weeks weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using boemy look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super a quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called islands chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at load of wholesalers we've got milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting my boy Harry Clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute G they do brand strategy, new business business and account management but why I really love working with Harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is Harry was actually the founder of the boozy, isolated brand Pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off, he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil, he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if your brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode so again it's because i'm someone who thinks very short term lives in the now kind of just pretty i'm not prudent at all i've never had a plan which is kind of that's why i do a podcast and not try to build a brand basically you don't need to plan too far ahead but what i find wild is how you guys can think in terms of like tripling and then tripling again so the tripling again what are some of the sort of macro factors that come into that i know we talked about um uh international as one kind of variable so are you are you and say chrispens you're sat in this meeting there's things on the thing like i'm trying to get into that mindset of thinking it's quite datery i mean you know yeah you know your um you can find the data you can look at the market size or the what's called the total addressable market or the sam or the tam and sam will tam sam will tam yeah tam is really total addressable what's what's the market opportunity that we have here yeah yeah and and um so you're looking at quite a lot of data I mean if you're a hospitality business you know how many of these sites do we really think we can have before we start cannibalizing before you know if I've got a flat iron I can't remember how many in London I feel we've got a long way to go in London still but we want to prove out of London because that's going to be important to be able to say yes you could have a national chain um so you're always sort of looking at how big's the market how big's the audience how penetrated am I if you're in pet food and you've got your fourth grade customer profile you can say we know there are x million of these customers in the UK who would have a dog be prepared to spend this sort of money buy wet food buy dry food therefore there are you know this is the size of the prize here in the UK alone that's plenty to go for and then when you add in treats you know in that market is bigger than the food market so suddenly you've got another big audience to satisfy so it's thinking about you know if we layer in where we are now the distribution the geography the market opportunity the product opportunity you know how much more have we got to go for and then so i'm gonna ask some dumb questions out because i'm just totally curious so so then how does a brand actually begin to work with you like how does how does a deal get done Like, I know, again, it's each their own case by case.

1:17:34So we spend a lot of time going out there to meet brands. I mean, you know, we're proactively out there trying to meet brands who could be the next brand legends, building relationships with them. We'll host a lot of events. So we do something called Geek Meet, which is our digital event. So that's all e-commerce and digitally led brands. they come together sometimes it's 18 people in here sometimes it's 70 people hosted in monica vinida's offices or bloom wild's offices we've done cross um we've done an american uk collaboration so brands from over there and brands from here want to go over there so we have our geek meets we have our founders collectives where we invite brands to come and in a particular category or segment or with a particular issue to come and talk about it this afternoon there's a whole thing going on about tiktok you know what's everybody learned how does tiktok and these are all brands who might not be ready for us just yet some might be some might not be but they might be in the future so for us it's about being having this amazing network i think we've got i think it's three and a half four thousand brands on our on our database who we are you know to different degrees keeping in touch with but we really want to build a relationship so that we know enough about them they know enough about us because first and foremost as i say it's trust and chemistry do they want to work with us do they believe we can help them will we enjoy working with them will they enjoy working with us and that's so important it's a marriage you're you're you're going down the aisle for five six years it's a marriage so you don't want a one-night stand you you want to have really built a relationship so so that that's how it starts and we get to know them they may some brands go to a corporate finance advisor and say I want to raise some money and can you help me do that and there'll be a process and that's all fine some brands don't want to use an advisor will come direct to us and others and say you know I'm raising money do you want to invest then there's a sort of courtship that happens where we try and make sure what's called the it's funny we do our commercial due diligence early normally that happens when you've agreed terms but we do it early because we want to work with the brand understand their consumers who will do a lot of consumer research with them we'll do surveys for them we will talk to buyers about them we'll we'll try and be in their world and understand the brand first and then the more sort of legal financial ip due diligence comes later but you know you're basically trying to get to a point where you feel good about the brand good about the team you know what their rough growth plan is doesn't have to be perfect then if you can agree a deal then you start the more sort of boring diligence necessary but boring diligence yeah um let go we don't have to go here but like in just because people ask me to ask this right so the like the actual money money how the money works with it so um one thing i've been asked to kind of um like ask you libby is how the multiples work of of like say you're at x revenue because i think a lot of founders and um i interviewed william kendall who did green and blacks and he was basically saying to me he sees every investment deck and it's like boom boom boom boom boom and then this hockey stick yeah right and he was just like what what again just realistically like every founder will probably have a deck that has that hockey stick growth curve in it yeah you've know like as you say this is not gonna happen not gonna happen what are the pragmatic multiples you'd like to see so so you can't give fixed multiple because every sector has a different way of valuing businesses sometimes it's a multiple of sales sometimes multiple of EBITDA and actually more and more it's a it's a blend of sales and EBITDA what in food what's the usual kind of food is often sales multiple yeah but increasingly people are looking at EBITDA sure beauty more so sales but still now EBITDA I mean as I say the market has changed and EBITDA has become at least showing a path to profitability that is credible if not being profitable is really important now what about in like something like a tech is a whole different world yeah yeah so that's another question someone's asked my mate asked me to ask you again go on to that but the say something like a hickories or a flat iron how does that work so sometimes you'll look at site EBITDA overall company EBITDA because you know often you're building a head office that's bigger than the number of sites you've got because you're building for the future so as I say every sector has its own little nuance.

1:22:55The way we think about it, yes, you get lots of these marvellous pictures that show you're going to suddenly grow hockey stick your EBITDA, hockey stick your sales. And you just have to be pragmatic and go, based on what we know about the market, the category, you know, we've done 50 odd investments across a number of categories. You kind of know what feels real and what doesn't you don't want to dampen ambition so you know you applaud the ambition but you also have to just take people on a journey and say do you know if we had slightly more sustainable growth we might get more bottom line profit so you get more multiple at the end if you exited with this EBITDA run that EBITDA so you you are trying to help people see sustainable business growth rather than and i don't mean that in the esg sense i mean just how do we make this not a risky roller coaster venture we're not venture investors and so there's a big difference between venture investors and us you know venture investing is make 10 investments hope what works we're two to three investments they've all got to work so we really care about how we make them work and it's just a very different mindset both are fine because you have to have this to feed this sure sure um but yes i think the valuation what often happens is someone's friend tells them their business is going to be worth x and and they'll have that x in their mind and they can't get rid of it they just think oh yeah my business is going to be worth 100 million that you go well probably not just yet yes so we do lose deals i mean you know there are deals we can't do because valuation is we're just not going to make the money for our investors we don't believe that the business can grow as fast as it says it can and we have to walk away we have to be grown up about what yeah what i was good at what are some of the deals that have like i'm not going to tell you that i'm not going to tell you that the so i understand that so you have the hockey stick growth and you can you can say kind of the inflated um growth curve but at the same time you still need to use still 3x and then have to 3x again so even though it may not be hockey stick it still at some point has to go like that so that's why those two are kind of a not opposing things but those how do you calculate that that in your head well well that's that's why you can't overpay at the beginning because then you can never get your 3x return because if you pay too much up front you're going to have to sell it for 250 million and that might not be realistic so you you know it's very important that you pay a fair price and we're not chippers we don't undercut when you know we'd rather walk away we we don't like um saying oh yes we'll pay you this and then coming in saying oh actually we didn't mean that we mean this that's just it's not in our nature it's not the way we do business um if we say a price with fair price reflective of all the hard work that's gone on but sometimes you're looking at things and you're thinking yeah it's not as polished a diamond as the founder thinks it is sure how am i going to price that in and you might say well i think we could grow it a bit faster or i think actually our added value could make a difference or you might go i just can't justify that valuation i just can't get there sad but so we we do but we don't go very far down the track i think we've um learned you can spend a lot of time kissing a lot of frogs it's far better to come to a view early and cut your losses and not try and play the game hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me.

1:26:52Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favour. I have pitched to some massive guests, humongous guests, and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough. Please, please, please just hit the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or follow. Ultimately, it helps all of us. Bigger guests equals better conversations, equals hopefully better insights for you, which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well. so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode so then you offer x brand money so say i've done it's dan's i'm not diet coke but yeah dan's whatever right uh dan's donuts so you offer dan i'm sat here opposite you like i've got the i've got the better the different i've got a great team um i'm self-aware from this is all an example right um you've thought okay three how we 3x this yeah and then how we 3x again what what two to three x is the next one after us but yes okay two to three x so then do you you would um you would buy the business or did you buy a percentage or how does it usually work so so um different you know again venture is different and big p is different but we big private equity as opposed to like p as in money big private equity versus us in sort of mid small to mid market um so the really we are quite flexible each deal is bespoke sure and some people just want money into the business some people want money into the business and money out sort of insurance policy some people feel like i've spent five years my blood sweat and tears you say money out money and money out so money into the business or money out to the individual okay the founder yes or founders where they go i quite like to just pay off a mortgage i've got school kids if i just bank a bit now i've still got a important share of the business but i bank a bit now um probably it's going to make me less risk averse it's probably going to free me up to go again and so some people want to do that yeah um we are our i think in the portfolio most of our investments are minority investments which is why the relationship is so important we don't have a majority mainly because if it's a really good business people don't want to sell a majority of their good business so but you know sometimes we can be majority but um minority or majority and it's about making sure we're all on the same page about where we're trying to get to what they want and and what they want there now and what they want in the future and so for a lot of people it feels uncomfortable to begin with to say i'm going to sell down some of my equity but actually if you're going to have a smaller slice of a much bigger pie because you've got the investment to grow that's going to be worth more than a big slice of a small pie so you know it's trading off things yeah make makes complete sense and then when you want to go on to say sell uh hickories to green green king who did uh who did put who did you sell proper on to that went to a local warp uh yeah hickories well i'll give you two examples actually good examples um if we take fourth glade pet food business uh kind of know there are a certain key number of players in the marketplace who are you know in the pet food space likely to acquire want a brand like fourth glade so um back from the future we about two years into the invest i mean we know when we invest we'll have a list of people we think might want to buy this business about two years into the investment we'll start having conversations with those potential buyers just to hear what they're looking for so that we can inform our strategy make sure we're thinking about the right things what's important to different groups of buyers and start educating them about the brand because often these brands are not on their radar because they're 7 million or 10 million not 100 million yeah and then we'll start educating them about why this brand's really good and why they should be interested not for sale now but just warming them up and then sort of year four five is when you more formally start to think about okay should we appoint an advisor to help us sell the business and go through a process and so with with fourth glade there was trade people who wanted to buy it there was private equity that wanted to buy it private equity who already had investments in pet so there was quite a good pool of people who wanted to buy it um and so you know we were able to to find a right home for it and finding the right home for the brand's important too i think you know you you become very attached hickories you know they're such a great team i couldn't have worked with a nice group of people you're sad to see it go but um in the sort of pub market there were two or three obvious buyers for this business and um it just so happened that green king were the ones who were keenest and had the portfolio to help the next leg of the journey and then from the perspective of the buyer yeah so the one so we've all met we're all kind of putting this from all the angles but i think it's good to get full rounded knowledge basically for people listening talk about everything going up three to three from their perspective from green king's perspective what's what's in their head when so i think what they saw um you know they have a huge estate i can't remember it's near 2000 just live a cheese to it yeah yeah so they have an enormous estate properties they have multiple brands and some of the brands are a bit tired a bit old you know legacy brands and so what what they saw the strategic value for them was that they could put those hickories in hundreds of locations lots of locations um and so and you know we talk about some of the sort of brands that they might be operating in that site you know so there's a capital investment because they got to convert to a hickories but for them to have these brands that are iconic attract consumers bring much greater revenue better profitability it just sort of fitted for them so that's why it was an important acquisition for them because they could see how to roll it out across the estate they could see there was a team ready to do it with all the foundations in place who could do you know we were doing a sort of between rolling out three to five hickories a year when we were involved they'd be doing eight to ten a year yeah so you suddenly can you can multiply that very efficiently what are the on on that road from when you're when you're so you take the brand on say proper or hickories you you invest you come on as and you value add which we'll talk about shortly but what are the what have been some of the real painful kind of troughs you've had to kind of covid for one you know yeah you know the whole hospitality industry shuts down that that was just a completely unusual situation nobody had any experience of how to navigate through that what you do what you do with all the head office stuff just how do you keep people engaged for a year and a half while everything i mean it was that was a nightmare what do you do if say say so on that three uh when you're trying to 3x say a brand do you ever see brands kind of plateau and how do you because i've seen founders i know founders when a brand plateaus they panic yeah like what how do you navigate through that through that um because i've never talked about that yeah i mean we don't if i'm really honest we haven't had yeah actually we have plateauing i think you have to just look in and go you have to lean into it and say why what are we doing wrong has the market gone away from us um is the product still fit for purpose uh is there a competitor who's eating our lunch uh are we just not communicating the brand very well what why why is this not growing and so you have to lean into it and you have to fight really hard because when you hit that plateau is hard to get back into growth just is there like so i didn't feed you know dash water yeah so they'd kind of um they'd uh jack and alex lovely guys they'd been um prudent and had looked into this where they they thought oh we can kind of see a plateau coming back from the future i keep thinking back to the future in my head that film um and so they tried to go into an adjacent category with the i don't even remember the big yep they basically wanted it to be like a sparkling water you get restaurant where they the mishap they had there which he was detailing on the potty was that when you when you're going for business lunch most people don't trying to get a whole table to agree to a raspberry dash is tricky so they tried to kind of foresee this plateau and actually end up getting pulled into that distraction and then the plateau got even worse.

1:36:45And so when you say, can you foresee it or is it just something that's kind of out of your control really? You should be able to foresee it. You should see it in the numbers. You know, your metrics should be telling you either the consumer engagement's falling off or the numbers are falling off or your distribution points are diminishing or it should be visible, but sometimes you're so busy doing the doing you don't. And I think it's often the way that people think, well, I'll just, I'll go somewhere else. I'll invent this other thing that's going to make up for the shortfall. And that's why I say you have to lean into the problem and look at the problem with the core, because otherwise you have your orphan child again who's been yes sort of um and it often happens when people go international actually that's a big um international if they're moving into international markets in into nationals into other territories other markets it becomes very distracting it becomes a very hungry machine because you're learning on the job you don't know that market it's different the language is different you've got to change the website you've got to distribution's different and that becomes the very hungry child that sometimes means the core child in the uk gets left behind so again going international is a it's a really big step for a brand uh if you're going to do it properly do you think international is even worth it for super small brands no yeah because i mean i spoke to a lot of like a lot of my mates are like they're they're who've got amazing brands are like yeah we've got something going on with the us yeah it's like but i'm not i always sort of and it's like maybe one palette for yeah and it's a big but are we going to get into the us i was sort of as as you say it's delicate conversation i might make that's a bit of a distraction i think but yeah it's kind of because i think until you get bigger it's not it is and you know the people make assumptions it's just going to be the same over there they speak english so it's all going to be the same and it's not you know and the third party logistics are different the language they speak is different the distribution network is different and trying to be national in that market is just impossible when you're tiny and so you know far better just say I'm just going to go to New York I'll cede it in New York I'll just do quietly not make a big song dance about it test and learn test and learn test and learn not big bang hey we've arrived and then oh nobody knows me oh hello yes yeah because in costa rica rude health was everywhere was it yeah it's literally everywhere and um uh my friend l doesn't matter anymore used to work there and my my very good friend lou used to be a sales director and they were saying that what rude health did really well is they'd pick two markets i think across rica may have been i'm this is um not me making stuff up but this may be wrong but um i know that was a big focus but then so was portugal yeah and portugal they'd managed to get like almost trying to turn the international taps on just one or two versus dilute being much better and and if you take fever tree it was spain it was you know they they recognize that you know spain was full of people who drank a lot of gin And so it was a very obvious and it became a very big and important market for them.

1:40:20But, you know, it is very hard to stay disciplined to that. And a lot of people lose a lot of money by going to the US or Asia or whatever. So we do cancel that thing off. Pick one, maybe two. Really know them. Really understand them. and don't don't do the big launch just don't just do the i'm going to test and learn i'm going to learn how this market works i'm going to find out who the important people are i'm going to work out if it's the same audience and then you can start to invest behind that but you've just a lot of learning what i found crazy is when i went to ireland and how like i'd never been to ireland as a country in itself and i was like i couldn't believe how um kind of european dublin is if you've never been to dublin before like you're like oh my god like this is so close but so wildly different yeah obviously the makeup of ireland in terms of the the the kind of the mechanics of the grocery over there is is crazy because you're going through a wholesaler so it's just suddenly it's a whole new it's a whole different thing and you know for example with world nutrition um actually in ireland supplements are very much a pharmacy item rather than a holland and barrett or d2c item so it's a different channel you've got to learn a different channel um and neom who've gone into the states um you know i think they would be the first to admit you know they went into the states hoping everything would be equal and it wasn't and now we've got a much better system you know we're just doing n nyc la seeding the brand doing what they did when they first started the brand here which is start start small get known then amplify tell me about me and my mom was probably like this is a is a die-hard evangelist literally everywhere in our house but um what was how did that like because i know i like hearing about other categories because i think you can learn a lot from other categories and that cross section so what was the when what was the two fat was it of two founders two founders ollie and nick yeah yeah what was their journey with neom then then to you guys so uh i first saw neom so many years ago i can't remember right they were a tiny brand they were in a store opposite peter jones called the general trading company and i just remember thinking oh that's really i've written they they've nailed fragrance aromatherapeutic fragrance and i really liked it and i wrote to them and sort of said you know well you know and they said no thanks but not now they were just in like a little um they were just in a few independents you know building their brand um but i we stayed close and we talked and i'd meet up with them often have a coffee and chat about stuff and see if i could help them so i think that courtship was probably seven years you know long time and then they were ready for investment and you know i think they felt good about us and what we could bring and how we could work together we'd built a great relationship and they were beginning to scale through the john lewis's direct consumer was taking off they're moving into new categories so it was the right time and um it's been it's been a brilliant journey with them they they they've i think they're ahead of their market you know well-being was not something people talked about five years ago they were talking about it so they've been thought leaders in a category and now you know it's a big business um how big is the business it'll be 50 million plus wow yeah and is that because that's what i understand with health i understand food because that's what i'm most privy to but with um like fragrances and stuff and even supplements does that is does the bulk of that 50 million is that is that split d to c or like so they have a very strong uh direct to uh consumer channel yeah so uh it's sort of uh i won't give numbers but it's it's a big it's a big part of the business but the john lewises the fenix the selfridges they're all very important um and amazon you know we can't we can't not play on Amazon that's very important and a lot of the other e-commerce platforms the Huck Group and all that sort of stuff so they have a very nice balanced portfolio I would say of distribution which means you're not dependent they had a phenomenal Covid you know because everybody was at home they wanted a nice well-being candle or some nice bath or something so that which made it quite difficult we saw this in our portfolio you have a lot of brands that you know there were brands where they couldn't trade and that was difficult and there were the brands that could trade and did phenomenally well so travel you couldn't travel so that was difficult but and you couldn't go to a restaurant but you could buy a scented candle and a bath oil or you could buy jewelry or you could buy flowers from bloom and wild so you you know you had brands who over exceeded their budgets and then you had the come down because you know it was inflated it wasn't real sales so so you have to get everyone yes talk about your you know plateau it wasn't a plateau it was actually oh we're actually on our normal trajectory of growth but we've had this silly spike and and so lots of thinking about oh gosh how does that feel that makes brands feel awful because they think oh it's just you know why isn't it going to carry on like that well it's not going to because we're not all at home sitting inhaling candles or putting jewelry on or whatever so um that whole uh covid boom bust thing was that has been you know hard for it's a cross consumer everyone's had the same experience it was hard to navigate um the bounce back for travel was huge the bounce back for hospitality was huge but then you've got to sort of say okay it's huge but it's not real because there's pent-up demand so what really is our normal trading trajectory let's not get carried away and think we can hire a load more people because actually this is artificially sort of inflated by pent-up demand what as i say i want to kind of compare some founders not comparing founders but like the whole portfolio um the whole paper portfolio so what would you say are some of the um all the founders you work with are kind of they're doing something right right and it could be whether it's from swimwear to dog food to phone cases to hickory you know there's a whole smorgasbord or different brands if you could thread the needle between um each founder like what would you say are some of the traits that you think make them that why are they working with piper why are they being becoming brand legends uh i think first and foremost they're passionate about their product you know that is what gets them off in the morning they're the ones who sort of will storm into the office and say this isn't good enough you know we've got to do better than this So they're very passionate about the product, why it's better and different.

1:48:01I'd say often there are people who've got a point to prove. It could be, you know, have very successful parents, want to prove myself worth. It could be had a very tough upbringing, want to prove myself. It could be I'm a team sports player and I'm an elite athlete and I just need something that is going to give me that same buzz. so you there's a trait of competitiveness in them self-worth yeah yeah interesting which is which is important you know but you can get very humble founders too you can get ones who you think gosh you know do they really want to make money but they're passionate about their product so you know provided that stays at their core they're happy you know they're not really doing it for the money they're doing it because they love seeing the smile on the guest's face or whatever it is um then you've got the resilience i think it's so important you've got to have huge resilience because the knotbacks are it is a roller coaster it's never straight forward it's never easy and so you've got to be resilient and you've got to be able to pit yourself up and dust yourself down and go that wasn't great but i'm gonna go again um and you'll so i think that core character of you know rock of steel inside that they're not going to be beaten they're gonna they're gonna get through this um that's important what else would i say um i suppose um sort of people wise i think surrounding themselves with people who they trust is important but i think often it takes a long time for that trust to build you know because you do everything yourself you know it better than everybody else can everybody do it as good as you but they they the good ones are the ones who learn how to trust somebody else to do the job better than they can yeah so that's interesting similarities is the resilience the kind of uh the passion the team is there any specific founder as an example who just approach things i'm obsessed with people who look at the world like that like that just excites me that's why pretty much most founders i speak to have that worldview and is there like a founder who just came with you guys and just did things so differently like that you can think of i think they all do things differently which is why they win you know interesting you know they so you know the guys at fourth clay they they did the hard yards they did all the shows what brand sorry fourthly the pet food dog food brand yeah you know they went around all the shows they they shoe the leather their way around the country eating dog food in front of consumers putting it on toast and saying if we can eat it it's great for your dog you know it's that good that takes a lot of resilience and commitment and you know away from family and you're you're doing all that sort of hard stuff so they they really believed in what they were doing they believed dogs deserve to have better food it was a passion project but they worked it hard um and you know i don't think we'd come across many brands who'd done as many consumer shows as they did and that was their thing that was how they did it i remember adam at all above brown talking about when he produced his first i can't remember 200 500 swim shorts he hand wrote a note with every single pair of shorts to all to send them out to whoever he was sending them out to very personal touch and people loved it and then you go well how do i replicate that you know how am i going to do that time and time again but you know really thinking about doing things a bit differently um i think monica vinada for example they were very early adopters of customers as brand ambassadors it was you know yes there's influences but your customers are your best brand ambassadors why don't we use them so they did a very good job of that so everybody has then hickories you know just um having a way of guest happiness that their whole mission was guest happiness so surprise and delight they you know you would go there and suddenly they could see some a couple looking sad and they go over that everybody had license to go over and say oh you're talking a bit you know can i help and give them something give them a free meal or help that person get the car out of the snow and give them a hot chocolate when um they had a one of the first new hickories we did after we invested burnt down to the ground really just finished it spent an absolute fortune on it and there was an electrical fault the whole thing burnt down to the ground the response from the community was extraordinary because they had embedded themselves in the community they had made the community love them so when this happened where was this where was this site um it oh god now i can't remember what site it was it was i'm going to say covent just outside coventry i'll have to look that yeah around around yeah it wasn't in london there was no it wasn't no no because they had none in london but it was just this this depth of love that came and everybody was bringing food for all of them hot chocolate for the fire brigade You know, it was a sort of outpouring of love because they had made the community their friend.

1:53:55And a lot of pubs don't do that. They just sort of, you know, we're opening a pub and bad luck if it's noisy and tough if people are on the pavement. That's not their style. They go and knock on every door. They gave them free meals. They talked about what they were trying to achieve. They invited them to come and be the test panel for the first few nights. So, you know, each one has its own little way of doing things a bit differently, I think. Yeah, I love that. That is the twinkle. They keep the twinkle. I asked myself, I pushed myself to ask some hard questions, but you're on the driving seat, Libby, so we can take any of this out.

1:54:32But I'd love to know kind of the first thing is when we were meant to this interview originally, you got sadly got diagnosed with cancer. and thankfully we're sat here today so it's all positive but I'd love to know what that felt like and how that's kind of changed your worldview for the rest of your life. It's a question everybody asks you know how has it changed? What did it feel like to begin with I suppose? Well you know I had no symptoms I was well I was just going for a routine checkup I advise everybody to go have a colonoscopy it's very important at a certain certain age but um yeah it's a shock they're very good at making you feel like we've got this under control it's going to be fine little do you know how ghastly it's going to be but they make you feel in they're in control of it and i think that was quite quite an interesting lesson to learn about if you present confidence the other person receives confidence and feels confident so just thinking about brands and and when things go wrong and how you help teams i think that's super important that you present this confidence it's fine we're going to get through this we're going to do this and do that not oh my god it's all awful what are we going to do it's a disaster so i learned a bit from that um not working was you know this is the first time I hadn't worked I took four months off roughly and yeah I really missed it I love the team here I love what I do I've been doing it you know for so long and it's never dull and it's always interesting and I feel so privileged to meet so many brilliant founders great businesses yeah it's difficult sometimes but and I you know the team here is you know it's family for me it's been you know I've been part of building them so they're very important so I missed that um quite like getting back to routine um and then I think I just am very grateful I'm very grateful for the job that the surgeons do and the nurses do and until you experience that I don't think you're quite aware of the pressures and the strains and the worries and you know I just couldn't have asked for better care I suppose so I feel it was an interruption I'm not going to let it define me and that's why I say when people say how's it changed I say I don't think it has I've learned some things but I'm not sitting here going oh I don't want to work anymore or I you know I've got to go and kick the bucket list into touch i'm saying yes to a few more things that i probably could have said yes to years ago but you know just doing things where you go no actually i'm gonna do that yeah i think that the confidence i i believe you learn from every situation like the most i actually think the best things are from here and you can apply to here but the confidence breeds confidence is just so valuable with brand building with people founders trying to uh build teams and yeah there's there's tons in that so so we've talked a lot about kind of resilience um founders drive that's something i ask a lot of guests about um whether that is trying to like be competitive or be build kind of some sort of with me it's i'm a lot of this i'm trying to prove people wrong was told at school you're a fat little fuck a lot of founders have that i have that chip on my shoulder which i'm trying to kind of uh uh grapple with but it's interesting but it but it's i i believe um in your tank is i think it's quite reductionist to say i was talking to julia metcalf about this that if you just think oh every founder's only doing it to get over the school teacher or the dad who told them they weren't good enough i think there's a whole that's one lever you can pull in the in the in the arsenal of drive others are joy others are doing great things so i don't i think i think it's all about just oh my god this teacher told me that right but i'd love to know what's what drives you what drove you what was the thing that just kept the fire in um libby burning through all those uh obstacles um so i had a bit of the i'm you know I had the bit of the, oh, you're not bright enough to go to Oxford, so don't waste your parents' money doing Oxbridge and thinking, well, I think that's my decision, not your decision, school, and I'll do what I want and my parents pat me.

1:59:10So I had a bit of that. I think when I left university... Did you go to Oxford or something? Yeah. Oh, amazing, yeah. Yeah, I did. So you proved them wrong. Proved them wrong on that one. Yes, amazing. But when I left university, if you'd done Oxbridge, didn't really all been in one of those universities there was kind of a sense of you were going to get a job and you know you'd be fine the milk round would come you get a job and I didn't and actually I think it was a function of I had no idea what I wanted to do I had no plan I had I didn't know I didn't even know if I had any skills or anything so what did you do at Oxford I did history um so I came out sort of expecting the world to want me and they didn't and that was a bit of a oh okay I thought I wanted to be in advertising until somebody asked me to be a bag of peas in an interview and I said I just I don't think I can do this how would you how would you be a bag of peas how would you sell a bag of peas so I said you know that's not for me I was lucky I fell into Fitch, which was a commercial design practice that did a lot of, you know, retail, graphics, airports, et cetera, packaging, product, really interesting environment where Crispin was the MD.

2:00:31And I would say I was very lucky in having Crispin as my mentor. I think having a mentor is a really important part of finding the thing you love. And he enabled me to find the thing I love which is funnily enough i used to be told i was terrible with people and nobody everybody was scared of me and i'm not i'm scared of everybody why is everyone scared of me why do you think people were scared of you i mean this used to come back in my appraisals people thought i was scary really i don't know why that's wild yeah um but i think what i learned i loved doing was helping other people, really, even though I was scary.

2:01:15That's what I love doing. And so it was about learning how to build amazing relationships with people, how to empathize with them, how to hear their side, how to put yourself in their shoes, such that you can then make them feel safe, make them feel that they want to be with you work with you deal with you and so there was all of that I I'm not a great shopper actually it may surprise some people that I'm in this market and I'm not a great shopper but I love this psychology of what makes a great brand why why does this draw people in why why is this special why is it better and different and I and you know because we meet so many brands you I think you sort of hone your ability to see what good looks like time and time again and sometimes you get it wrong you know you might call it wrong when we have sometimes called it wrong where we thought no and actually it's been brilliant so um but you're always learning so I think for me filling the learning funnel dealing with different people entrepreneurs have a lot of common traits but they also have a lot of differences and sometimes you're dealing with a husband and wife sometimes you're dealing with four founders sometimes it's one egocentric founder sometimes it's two two best friends who fall out you know you've got a multitude of relationship issues that you're dealing with as well as being the business advisor so i get driven by i think the relationships the myriad of different things i think that the if i boil down my core it's that kind of something in me which is like why do people buy these brands i'm obsessed with it like whether it's a restaurant or just that moments of magic that that endlessly fascinates me so so you talked about crispin being your mentor if you could what was he doing what how did so he was the managing director at fitch and then he and myself and two others originally left to set up piper and um and so you know really he he's a he's a creative genius chrisman so he was you know very much the part of the pitcher and piano idea it was him and me but i'll give him a lot of more credit probably um he founded turtle bay he he's somebody who thinks differently how so he's he comes i think from this customer obsessive angle about what why why would i do this why would i go there why why can't i have this better i mean he he has his own brand which is um sheep's yogurt brand called Woodlands Dairy.