41 Ways DIRTEA Built a Die Hard Cult: The Science of Status, Habit & Storytelling

43:38There's two lines where to register because you could change if you wanted. And that was an easy, with a batter and eyelid, I was in the - But he spent most of his time, rather than lecture theatres, he was out there basically promoting these club nights. Right. Yeah. And then when he got back to London, we started promoting our own nights in London nightclubs. Well, which clubs? So China White. Yeah. China White? The original. I used to be one of those Divi promoters for Aura when I was 18. I remember Aura. Wow. It was so embarrassing, right? So I basically, because I used to get£10 a person.

44:10Oh, really? One of those little skivvies, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was a G. I was like, yeah, mate, promote for Aura. And basically, I drew, I've got everyone after A-level results to go to Aura. No way. So I was like, I'm in the fucking Kashish here, yeah? Even though it was like probably 400 quid. So I've got everyone's been like, I'm throwing this massive pie at Aura. Oh, my gosh. And so I've driven up in my Peugeot 207. We had a Peugeot 106. suited and booted and then basically we're 18 years old we're trying to get into a mayfair club sure and they've basically gone uh no like you're too young and so i've basically got 40 people looking at me like what the fuck do we do now and i was just like i was absolutely mortified so i think we ended up going to the fucking spoons or something like that but in a suits by the way there's a lot of relatability to what you just said it's like a reflection of store yes yeah so we yeah we i mean i actually used to all my friends were like when they were i was 17 at the time i was doing that and as they were turning 18 they come to me to do their 18th birthday party so i used to have like queues of people outside funky buddha and i would get it all in and i would be monetizing exploiting the shit out of all my friends it was so funny yeah but yeah so um essentially this kind of went this went on for quite a bit and that's how we sort of generated an income and that's where we began to sort of make connections build a network i think when we were doing one thing we were always looking on to the next and i think from a young age we were very so our mum used to her background is she had a an agency for models and actors she did lots of pr and she used to work a lot around causes and charities so she used to get us involved in lots of like charity events and campaigns and stuff like that so we were very inspired by her to really make it make an impact and that was really big to us and i think a big inspirational moment for both of us is where we saw Live 8.

45:59Do you remember Live 8? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. The whole Bob go doesn't rush your fucking money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a combination of that. I remember at school I wanted to collect all the bands. That was Livestrong. Yeah, it was Livestrong but they had the Live 8. History. Yeah, you're right. I've got my dad to buy one on eBay which was just... That's such a weird way of doing it. How much did you pay for it? Well, this is the thing is because it was for kids it was such high status. Yeah, I remember. The cool thing was to have about 10 down your fucking head. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

46:27And basically, I wanted to get the Make Poverty. I mean, it's so fucking nefarious, really, because, but it was, it was Make Poverty History was like the band to have. It was like Pokemon cards. I was like, Dad, I want the Make Poverty History. It was like Prime for my generation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so I mean, we were... You think there's a charity, the money? That's what I'm saying. I was a complete dick. Yeah, I second that. What a no. So, I think we, The thing for me is just like, it was like the power of entertainment to galvanize people around the world and stream into this television moment to highlight an issue that was going on in the world and then try to affect change.

47:09But doing something around that was fun and it was entertaining, engaging around these extraordinary people and bringing them all around to one platform all at once was really moved us. um the other thing that really uh you know took our heart was like the mtv back in the day we used to watch mtv and study it so the mtv video music wars the spring as musicals video music awards uh the spring break parties all this kind of stuff was just like it felt like television was always going to fall over it was just bold it was crazy it was nuts so basically those were the two sort of inspirational moments and we were like we want to create big bold things whether it's campaigns, brands, whatever it is, but build it around culture, build around entertainment to affect change.

47:55That was just like our mission in life. That's what we wanted to do. And the moment for us came when we met, I don't know if you know this story, but we basically met a lady who lost her son's testicle like answer. I don't know if you know the story at all. So basically he developed a lump in his testicle at a young age and unfortunately it took his life because he didn't say anything. We met her. She actually spoke in my school. And it wasn't the fact that her son died, even though a devastating thing to happen to such a young kid. It was actually the fact that if you catch it early, it's 100 % curable.

48:27So technically, well, our thought process is every death from testicle cancer is absolutely needless. And if guys knew how to check and they won't embarrass and they spoke up if they found something, then they could basically, you could cure it as a cause of death. That was our kind of vision. And we were like, wow, this could be our movement to do our live eight, but for the sort of digital age and bring all the craziness of like MTV and make it this really cultural moment to actually affect change. And that was the moment we were like, okay, finally, we found our purpose. We've got a cause. And that's where we really discovered how relentless and how ambitious we really were.

49:06So to cut a very long story short, um mtv um who we were inspired by ended up writing about us saying we almost broke the internet because of but what so what was this event you were putting it was called feeling nuts feeling nuts yeah and it was amazing yeah yeah it was a social movement and it basically challenged people with are you feeling nuts and what you had we've always been very good at reading social media and understanding how through content you can connect with an audience but extremely sort of timely. And that's where the momentum comes from, by the way, which we'll move on to in a bit.

49:40Yes, what is your sort of sixth sense for reading social media? I think it's really about like meeting people where they are. What do you mean people where they are? So the way that I see it is like, you know, people see social media as like trends. We get into the spot where social media is before it becomes a trend. So therefore we sound different and refreshing to everything else. and that's what connects and that's what relates. I think we see, you know, like we started building dirty in a certain way and also filling nuts in a certain way. And we started with a very like unique format. And then what you've actually seen is everyone's copied us.

50:18So like if I take feeling nuts, for example, our main thing was, it was a challenge. So you had YouTube and you had Vine and they were the biggest social media platforms and Instagram was just coming in, right? So this is 2014, right? So Instagram's just coming in. Twitter was actually quite big as well. but do you remember vine yeah the short little videos yeah it's how logan paul that's how they built their brand right yeah um so we basically are you feeling nuts was like you know double on tron like it was it was it was two meanings was like how nuts you're gonna go with this message right because these youtubers and these viners are nuts so how are you going to use comedy to get a message across about checking your nuts right yeah and the way in which you join the movement so we wanted we got i mean we got comedians creating content like stephen fry I basically taught you in a funny way how to check your balls.

51:02We turned Ant and Dec into a pair of testicles, like an animated pair of testicles to say how. B-roll. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was sending it to you. It was very funny. But yeah, the way you joined the movement is you grabbed your crotch and you said online, I'm feeling nuts, right? It's a hashtag for the I'm feeling nuts. And then you would challenge someone else with, are you feeling nuts? Yes. And that created this like chain gang where people were tagging each other. And tagging was brand new, by the way, at that point on Facebook. and on Twitter tagging people and obviously Vine as well.

51:32So we were like, that's how you create virality. And we referred to it as like a chain gang type of thing. And it's that very specific strategy with the right message, with the right content that enabled people to adopt it, own it and spread it. That led to, I mean, a billion people got behind it, by the way. It was in 157 countries, the biggest stars in the world, from Hugh Jackman to Justin Bieber to Ed Sheeran, Wrecking Gervais. I mean, it exploded and it went everywhere. um so um what sorry what was your question i want to bring it up to that no it's basically just like how i wanted to understand how you get momentum quick yeah yes like maybe so if i took bring in like what those principles are of momentum from from because i think you know from and what i'm picking up is and that's why we do these long yeah you can explore right but it's like this sense of community is much goes much further back yeah and once you've built this in the nightclubs or this filling-up-nuts movement.

52:27Like I can now be beginning to piece the puzzle together. But in terms of what those things you learned from that period, what would you say those were in terms of getting mentored? I was just thinking about this the other day. Momentum was built because you had content creators and influence in some capacity, but we went to go meet these people on the basis of something that's great and good because back then it was social currency that kind of gave them popularity. But we went with them with a life-saving message that they could be the one that kind of activates and stimulates this disciple effect.

53:01It's something they feel proud about. And we did that in the early stages. And it did build a community, by the way, Nate. And back then, it was very hard. How do you actually get these people into one space? Can I just jump in there? Yeah. I think just to sort of explain that the way we built Feeling Lutz, I'm saying we're always updating the way in which we communicate through social media. We did in the beginning try that and we were like, let's get influencers and content creators to go and talk about functional mushrooms, right? But actually what we realized is we actually wanted Dirty to be the creator.

53:35So rather than leveraging on other people's audience, we were like, let's go and build our own audience. And I think at the time there was a lot more organic reach with Instagram. There was a lot more organic reach with TikTok. I think the important thing for us in the beginning was like education is everything. like when you learn about functional mushrooms and what they can do to your mind your body is absolutely undeniable i mean every time we we do a lot of events and pop-ups every time we're there and we do all of them ourselves we have a dirty truck that we drive all around the country when we're there and we explain to people just the education they're like i need all of them like i need those brain cells in my cup essentially what we decided to do was like let's make dirty the creator so in the beginning what we would do is we would just make very short snippets and videos about like what is lion's mane or the history of fungi or like Simon says like we're more closely linked to fungi than we are to plants we show up to 54 % DNA and we'd always have like quirky stuff at the end like that makes you half a mushroom and that stuff really traveled and there was a point in time which I probably say was about a year into building the brand that every video we posted we got over a million views and the brand went absolutely viral and what we realized is we don't need influencers we don't need creators we've obviously changed that strategy now but back then it was like let's just build the most amazing social media account and we got it up to like on instagram nearly 400 000 i think we're probably one of the most followed wellness brands in the world now so i think like the the learnings we probably have from things like failing nuts was like you know you're driven by a cause how to create virality how to really tap into that sort of young generation and how to work with the platform the algorithm how it is then and I think with Dirty it was different because we were like Dirty because it represents the mushroom that's the hero that's the star does that make sense yeah yeah yeah the other part is I it's I think it's quite it's not saying it's easy to build a DTC brand but we were talking about this before it's easy to manipulate someone to buy in but if you buy if you if you're able to kind of use the word galvanize not to use it too much people based on on the why I think you start to build loyalty and that loyalty builds community and that builds trust and I think that's very hard for brands to do so while Andy's saying all of this about education the reason we're doing it because I think people yearn for knowledge.

56:01They yearn for something. You know, it's only something that's healthy, it's good, it's preventative. And by doing that, people started leaning in more. They wanted to learn more. They wanted to be part of something. It wasn't just about a transactional experience. It sometimes would take people a bit of time to kind of buy into dirty. But they're buying into this new world, this new world of prevention, this new world of nature, this new world of mushrooms. A time, and I was saying before, where mushrooms is something that you put on your toast or it's something that will get you high, it's something that will kill you.

56:32stuff you know the position in the very beginning is like if we can take the complication of the fungi industry like annie's saying pull these different facts and just find ways that they can land and then bring people in we could build a community about how we can live life where we can reclaim the power of our health and how mushrooms can almost be the staple in the for that i was talking about COVID-19 because people realize how important their health is and that you know far from the reactionary side of getting an allopathic pill and carrying on people realize they had to kind of understand truly the essence of looking after themselves I think coming out of that that helped us build that community it wasn't just about mushrooms well actually what mushrooms I did say it's the antidote to modern day stress because the moment that people started drinking consuming mushrooms they actually want to look at different other uh practical ways they can look after themselves and actually in fairness most of everything you can do is free i spoke about grounding you speak about the the idea of the extremities of heat and cold even the idea of community is a very healthy thing to do um so yeah well that's one thing i was going to wanted to go into is like i mean this will link back to this five the five book of rings yeah five book yes yeah whatever is the grounding is obviously talked about sort of the grounding of sort of the brand which is i think as sort of things we've touched upon is like the leader is and and is almost the vision is those tentacles or whatever it is going underground i also think part of the grounding is is setting the stage for momentum which is all the things we've talked about which is like the bigger cause like getting high status people who have followings getting them to be the disciple which i think is a beautiful way of putting it but the other grounding i think and this is probably again what i need help with is as i think everyone listening to this needs help with is just the the ambiguous wins of having your own business and it's like one minute you feel like everything's going sweet and you're like yeah clap batsman next minute it's like fuck me like it's just a bipolar like curve um simon like you're you're as you said i would love to go into your morning routine because apparently puts this other bloke to shame but like i think there's something to be said about how do you find grounding amidst and staying oh when centered and when anchored when everything around you is like a fucking mushroom trip like a bad mushroom maybe something like that yeah it's such a it's a great point because yes you know most of the most of the positions for from founders and building a business is putting out fires you don't always see that and it's it's it's a very tough place to be to build something out of nothing when it does become something um i'm very different i said to my brother do you agree andy am i very different in that those kind of i think my morning routines are more accessible and i will come yeah we'll go on to that i'm after what time do you wake up uh 5 30 yep um slightly early at the moment because i because the sun rises earlier yeah um do you have one of those lights in the winter the satellites they're called yeah no no that goes yeah the Sunrises.

59:34Yeah, yeah, yeah. It mirrors the sunlight. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, what I'm about to share is a personification of what people want to live if they're part of the dirty lifestyle. And actually, also, in the same breath, what I'm about to share is also kind of ignorant of me to share because I am single. I live on my own. I don't have the commitments of kids. I don't have many commitments. So what I'm about to share is on the basis of there's a period of time that I give myself to rise and almost strap my boots up on the front lines, lace up and get prepared and ready for the day. And also just another caveat, there are some of us, and it was an article written recently in GQ, and it's an interesting kind of article to understand based on this viral sensation.

1:00:17And it's based on guys, by the way, so forgive me. This is from the journalist's point of view. Many of us guys are going into a nine to five, as you called it, very dinosaur kind of idea, having no control. but it gives us the one thing and that is to kind of pay for the mortgage pay for the kids but the one control we do have is that three or four hours we have complete control to kind of be in the gym break a sweat get in the cold be stoic right do things that make us feel just a tiny bit better well and also all those things that one thing we'll all have we always have control over is perspective yeah i know you've read um you know the bloke who was in auschwitz rick defranco we are a very sad empowering beautiful yeah but when he says like you're in between stimulus and response is your ability to choose your response and that is freedom and it's like that morning routine i believe all that out those times you're like you're basically ironcladding your fucking perspective i feel and by the way and i feel i feel that i could put myself under a lot of pressure i can be self-deprecated it is a very human thing to do because I'm in my shoes every day.

1:01:21I witness everything that I do. But by the way, I do have my brother who picks me up. And by the way, I do believe that my purpose in some life is to pick my brother up because I've always passionately believed in the thing that he's able to laser-eyed focus on an idea. And I think we should come to the idea about how that relationship works. But... Yeah, it's a routine first. It's a routine. No, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. You see your fuck fest. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, fly. set the stage if i could just use that as a principle yeah everything the night before i set the stage because i don't want to go through the decision fatigue and i don't want to go on the basis of saying ah forget it so setting the stage is the idea next to my bed i have a book and that book's a journal and on that book is a golden pen so i have no excuse not to pick that why golden pen um it's it's if you if do you know intelligent change no i don't it's a wonderful guy called alex icon and um and he he created the five minute journal which tim ferris really popularized his book many years ago in the beginning of journal journal and the gold pen is what comes with it yeah thank you so much yeah yeah no reason it's gold it could be any color yeah i love the idea it's gold and when the sun blazes through it kind of shines that's my beacon so um the the most important thing to take into consideration which i've learned over the years is how vulnerable the brain can be in the morning.

1:02:38So anything you say to yourself, you almost own and believe because the brain is so vulnerable. So be sure the moment you wake up, whatever you kind of put out into the world, that it's something about living your future self with your future kind of positive outlook. Because the reality is, we can't anticipate the next corner, but if we're primed and ready, then whatever does come our way, we can just have that resilience. So the idea of journaling in the morning is a very big thing for me. the idea of the Goggins approach is mission complete so the idea of making the bed in the morning I'm single so it's easier for me to make my bed in the morning um and then um I do I do a prayer every morning what's the prayer the prayer is all based on gratitude don't worry Andy you're in it and you actually will be in it uh tomorrow because I'm really appreciative about being here oh amazing um and it's it's really the idea that the human that the mind can uh can uh skip certain things and those small things can be a very powerful component to your day like the idea that you woke up and the breath of fresh air the idea that i'm fit i'm well my heart's good like these these these things sound so stupid but when you think about it you're kind of reaffirming that i'm okay i'm safe i'm good i'm ready for the day kind of thing so my prayer is i some celestial being i'm not entirely sure who that means but it's enough for me to kind of um power my chest and prepare for the day.

1:03:56The next thing I always do is I have a mason jar next to my bed. And mason jars is water with lemon, kine pepper, ginger. I'm taking that down. And then that prepares my body before, you know, I dive into the whole dirty part of the morning. And it's not even pushing the brand. It's such an imperative thing when we talk about flow state and having the right kind of components there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then stretch. So what would you do? So what would, which would you, because there's a whole multitude of different things you could drink. What do you usually rock and roll with? I rock and roll with linesman.

1:04:26Andy articulated it so well, how good it is for the brain. And actually, if you look at some of our customer reviews, the customer experiences are undeniable. Everyone feels the same way, that over a period of time of doing it, you have this zing in the brain. It's almost a list of brain fog. You feel so focused. And I want that kind of focus because like you and I, we want that period of time where we've been pen to pad and we're writing, all the gunk down, whatever comes out comes out. And then I've always been a fan. even before it became a viral sensation i always i've always been cold has always been my friend and my enemy but the enemy becomes a comrade because the moment you get past that kind of frustration of being in the cold uh you realize that biologically what it's doing for the body is so good for you that it's almost it's again it's one more time like this is good for me it's good for me and then coming out of that um i then do stretches and these stretches have been important to me because I realize more and more as I grow older um I'm 41 now and I know and I really compliment the idea that you think I look younger than my brother um it's it's this idea of just animalistic movements the things we've kind of lost yeah all this kind of stuff is so good for the brain can you imagine walking into his apartment yeah naked unfortunately unfortunately

1:05:42You're a hobnob but a fag.

1:05:48Like Andy said, I also do a bit of breath work in the morning, but I was doing this way before, like there was a Wim Hof moment or before there was... I find this stuff endlessly fascinating. Cause I think like part of like what the Nike guy says, business is war without bullets. And I think you want to prepare yourself for war every fucking day. And it's like, and if you don't do those things, then, you know, me personally my head's a fucking circus and i can't control it but i have these sort of things in place obviously not devices i'm not jumping into like the serpentine in the morning which is definitely my morning how long does it take so where do you i should say very quickly that i i take a i take a i run to the the balcony and get the the sun in the morning even if i don't see the sun see the blue the runs to the balcony it's it's it's not that you lived near you know city house you know the BBC television center yeah yeah in the concrete jungle yeah yeah melting part of west london i'm right there okay sweet um so how long does it take to get to the surfing time so at the moment um i i'll cycle there on our vermouth bike don't mind me plugging them with those guys in it's one of the greatest investments that we have ever made it's it's it's a bike that's electric that is um a legacy kind of bike it's the bike that was it is modeled from Amsterdam as a cruiser kind of bike.

1:07:07But this bike, it can go up to like, what, 23, 24 miles an hour and it's slick. It's like the Tesla bikes. Oh, banging. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So riding down and through that, it's an amazing sensation. If I am up early enough and I cancel some of my routines and I'll run down there. So we get there about, I'm there about 6.30. And then so actually the crew, the Dirty Tribe, we all meet there. Every day, pretty much. In the cold, yes, every day. and I'll show you some videos and footages. I've seen it, but I didn't realize it was like an everyday thing. Yeah. Well, we have a whole kind of, the Dirty Tribe has a WhatsApp group.

1:07:41Yeah. And then someone put it in, I'm going, and then you've got a responsibility, not for them to be there, but go meet them. And no one really wants to do it, but that's fine. But that's a very, I kind of find the idea of doing that in the morning, a very stoic thing, like just basically what you just said, like, you know, prime yourself, preparing yourself. It sounds so masculine what I'm saying, but it's a stoic mentality of bringing in the day. So my morning routine is probably a couple of hours, I'd say, but that's why I'll make sure, damn sure, that I'm in bed at a certain time and up at a certain time.

1:08:12And I can see, I'm probably challenged. I don't know if you challenged me, but like, because there's this part where you just don't want to put the laptop down, like keep going, keep going, keep going. But you've got to be good mentally for yourself to be prepared and ready for getting on the front lines the next day and it's why I spoke about da Vinci and I spoke about this intensity that he has when he creates his piece of art but he will absolutely categorically step away from it and walk into the woods or wherever he is with his notebook and just write and just be a piece like you were talking about the Quentin Tarantino thing so I'm kind of I am fortunate enough to kind of build that capabilities to do that but every time I've done it it's it's given me a greater a sense of strength mentally and certainly physically at times when, you know, if shit does go down on the day, I don't want to be consumed.

1:09:02I never want to be in an anxious position. But anxiety in some capacity does have like a nice kick to it in some circumstances. So yeah, that's pretty much my morning. Man, that's mad. So what in terms of... Mad as in good or mad as bad, sorry. Mad as in good, as in like, just like, I need to probably do some more of those things. and they're not and then it was actually well why don't you join me at the the serpentine we'll go for a swim yeah I will but I live down in Surrey at the minute stay in mind a bit of a well yeah it's one bed but you know yeah yeah we'll make it out yeah yeah yeah the take me to the apex of the biggest storm you've been in then like and where where where it's felt like you've got no control and like how the brothers come together to sort of one I suppose the first step is finding some semblance of calm in the eye of the storm and then how do you actually go and solve it.

1:09:54Yeah, I think what's amazing about our relationship is that it doesn't matter whether it's a high and you're celebrating or you're in your darkest moments, you've still got each other. Yeah. You know, I think entrepreneurs, even if they've got business partners, it's still like a lonely place. I never feel alone. And that gives you so much confidence and reassurance, right? And I think we have such unwavering belief in each other and in our mission that we feel unstoppable even in those darkest moments. So I think that, honestly, like the lifestyle that we live now in terms of like health and wellness and consuming functional mushrooms, I think how I would respond, you know, the eye of the storm is very different.

1:10:36I am so calm. I don't know if it's an adoption of like just a healthy way of living or it's attributed to functional mushrooms, which I honestly think it is because they're adaptogenic in nature. They really help soothe stress, anxiety. I feel like under pressure, I'm a lot better. I'm calm, right? Like the worst thing can happen right now. And I go straight into like, okay, that's terrible. What's the solution? Which I think - You're an example of that. What's the worst? Yeah, I want to hear an example of this. I'll tell you what, what about the beginning? What about the - Well, I mean, there's loads of stuff that's happened to us.

1:11:08And particularly, I say like less so with this business because I don't know if you know that we've done this about seven times over. This isn't our first brand. So I think that we are a lot more grown up now, whereas I think we were like fucking children running about. I ask these things selfishly because it's like there's stuff behind the scenes with like deals and stuff. And it's like, as we were talking about before. Mate, can I say, I don't know how much we can talk about it. We won't have to say names or anything. But how did you deal with that moment when everything was going absolutely the right way you wanted and one phone call just changes it all?

1:11:43Oh, yeah. we just had we like lost a load of sponsors and we had some stuff that was like we had stuff i mean i may have to take this out we've had like some really big deal sponsorship deals and i was like this is cushy fucking get me to my beef and mate um and then just with changes again back back to the cork being bobbed down things completely out of my control like stuff getting changed around their end that that deal's on the line same spaces a lot of these a lot of these deals are on the line and i don't know to be honest by the time this goes out they'll all be solved anyway so i can talk about it but you're just like fucking hell like and then i've got this run now of pods which is sick like i've got you guys um like like my runs mental of guests which is sick but as i was saying to you mate i was like i was like i don't know if i can i can do this yesterday i was an anxious fucking wreck i was like i haven't i've literally i was like i don't have it i can't do it like i can't like almost like a mental there's an award well yeah i was like and also like i don't know like having these sort of things i was like watching the tottenham game yeah and i was like like i don't know just kind of like just fucking so anxious yeah and um and i think and it's the whole thing of like and i again there's this really weird podcast i listen to um with who interviews all these djs i love music i love sort of their listen to their creative process but there's a dj called seth troxler don't even ever listened to him fucking mate one of the best podcasts i've listened to and he's like on what uh it was on like some like i'll send it to you so uh i'll send it to you mate but he and he's interviewing this guy uh so the guy interviewing is like he goes and seth says the thing is your dream will become your nightmare at some point it's like i all i dream dreamt about was being uh a dj it's all i ever dreamt about and like and sometimes it's like this i'm doing the thing that I want to do but sometimes it feels like a fucking nightmare and what his thing and he's obviously a G like he's just he's a mad guy says chocolate he's like you've got to be the motherfucker it's like there's some people in my there's you've got to be the mother you're either the motherfucker you're not the motherfucker and I was like trying to say that to myself last night but it wasn't working you know and obviously you know someone's a good night's sleep but I'd love to know kind of how you deal with the flex of ambiguity and I appreciate mushrooms help but like there's probably more to it than just there's definitely more definitely more yeah I mean like I'll give you like a bunch of stuff like Dirty specifically around a year, I don't know, a year and a half into the brand.

1:14:11You talk about momentum. It went viral and we had unexplainable sales. It was just, it was unbelievable. It's that moment you turn Shopify notifications off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Remember when we used to have them on, we were like sale like every few minutes or whatever. And now like, you know, obviously back then we then turned it off and we were not expecting. um i mean it was it was just unbelievable and we just didn't have enough stock uh to meet that on top of that a bunch of ingredients were stuck in customs um and um we missed the production slot they wouldn't move it up like it was it was a everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong and we literally went to i mean we must have gone to zero and everything right we had nothing in our warehouses um and that was brutal i think what topped it off to be even worse was you were away doing something as in Bucharest i think at that time yeah he was away and there was we had think that time that two other employees and they were away and i was in the office on my oh and i'll tell you someone else uh an assistant i think got very ill and basically had a doctor's note to book it off for like two weeks and i was in the office on my own dealing with customer, now we have a whole team, right?

1:15:27But customer service, whilst trying to get stock out of customs, whilst trying to deal with the manufacturers to get the production done in the UK. And bro, the customers, it's the worst feeling when they message you. Well, because then - We're taking their money. Where's my product? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So from going to being like an absolute love brand to being like, this is a scam. Trust pilot, comments, everything. And there is nothing you can do. There's absolutely nothing you can apologise and say, we're going to get you a product. We're working on it. You can spin any story you want. And I was just like, I mean, it was horrendous.

1:16:02It was emotional. It was different. I think the problem that I have is like when you're, it's out of control and there's nothing you can do with it. I think when we started Dirty, we were like, we're going to start as a direct to consumer business. We're going to own the customer and we're going to own the relationship and we're going to control our destiny. I don't want to be in a situation where like, all our revenue comes from one big retailer and they turn around and they say like, we're not going to stock you anymore or they change the deal terms or anything like that it's like we we're gonna we're gonna build a massive retail business which is obviously done now but like d2c and building subscription is like it's been so important from the beginning now i know it's a lot tougher now for like dc businesses to do that and that's why it's kind of going back to retail so like to be in a situation where it's full loss of control um i was with so we have another business partner who sits as chairman and i remember he was in like our third brother by the way yeah awesome what's his name was his name's james kazai yeah yeah yeah so we we actually have other businesses with him as well we own a venture studio um so he's been in this journey with us since the beginning and i remember yeah yeah so uh and i just remember i was sitting at my desk i think one of one of our investors was in the office as well and this particular investor is absolutely nuts he's always like turned up to like fucking 110 beyond you you know which is yeah yeah yeah yeah i said to james my partner i need you to get him away from me because honestly i felt like out of body experience super dizzy i didn't know what what was i was not i lost control of the business and i lost control of me and i was like i need to get outside and i remember walking around just outside of our office um and i said to james he was like just sit down we'll get get some water for you i was like honestly i feel like if i stop i'm gonna go like my body's gonna shut down mate that's yeah i was having not not obviously the same thing that's sort of i get what you're saying yeah yeah yeah it's like you think that everything you're building is crumbling down 100 yeah it's horrible and i was in i was in i was in bookarest i actually i've never really found love you know i've always i'm 41 and i'm single now so obviously there's a success you thought you found i actually yeah and by the way she is amazing she really is lovely but i went to i said i said andy wait wait wait wait so no no so we're can you yeah and I I got to I said Andy I'll be away for like just give me two days I think this is the one just two days you're saying James Bucharest if I've never met this girl or Raya so I but the fact that he sent a photo of no context I was with her on the rooftop looking over Bucharest she set the whole thing up and I said to her then I had what he was feeling because that's my brother that's my by the way my heart could never beat without him walking this planet.

1:18:45That's how I feel. By the way, I don't think anything was happening to me. I think, I don't know if it was like anxiety or anxiousness or what, it was a feeling I've never experienced before. And that's why I got worried. But it was just at that point in time when I was like, health is so important. I don't want to ever be in this situation. And I lost control of the business and I lost control of my health. And everything dirty is about is about taking control of your health, right? Right. You know, this whole concept became came as a result of like we've lived as a generation of being super reactive and chasing down symptoms.

1:19:19Right. And looking for products that are dealing with symptoms rather than dealing with the cause. Right. Where's where things are actually coming from. And the people are now realizing the lifestyles they were living is what's contributing to the way they feel. Right. Whether that's mental health, whether that's anxiety, whether that's like cardiovascular complications. so everything we do and it's now inspired by real events is about taking control of health so like everything now is is like you know like having your personal life in order and having your business in order and nothing's more important well there's a there's a balance there and i think most people don't balance that because there's some external influences by the way i think the thing is what are the what do you say the balances are um to to create a balance in times of turmoil when there's an unknown yeah just balance in life in general in terms of like i think that you know the reason we got into this whole stuff is because we've been like we've been building for years like i said we started this journey started in 16 i the first time i had a holiday was i've just come back from mexico i was away for two weeks it's the first time i've ever shut completely disconnected shut off didn't speak to one person from the team i literally left the office and i went just to switch off and i think what's really important is is like you know like my brain like I say, I'm always on.

1:20:38I'm always thinking about dirty. I'm always thinking about mushrooms. I'm always thinking about the next thing. How can we expand? How can we grow? How can we move this mission forward? And like burnout is like a real thing. And I think unless you like your body gives you signs, right? And, you know, Simon talks about his morning routine. Yes, it's like too extreme, but like actually, you know, I realized when I was away, you know, I woke up early and I had this incredible section of the morning where i can like re i think all of this is like we've become so disconnected from our health and and who we are as humans right we are overstimulated or overwhelmed most people i'm sure most people that listen to this podcast wake up in the morning i think the first thing they do is look at their phone i guarantee my my on my newsletter that goes out every week i can see the what time spike yeah most read it's five to six a.m yeah boom there you go and everyone that list pretty much everyone um reads that newsletter is a founder food and product or fmcg founder sure which is wild yeah right it's just like i'm like i was like fucking out it's mad and i think the thing is you're doing that and then you know you said when you wake up in the morning your cortisoles are as high as you get a spot where it's actually it's a good thing they're not going to carry on on the science no carry on okay yeah so your cortisoles are spiking you're extremely vulnerable right you've been asleep and now you're waking up and you know You're already overwhelmed by just the waking eye.

1:22:03Then you move straight into the kitchen. Most people move to the kitchen and they make a coffee just to wake them up. Now you're over-caffeinating yourself. Then you get to the office. I don't know what anyone does. This is maybe part of a team, maybe they're running a business. You're moving from one meeting to the next. Your phone's got Slack notifications, social media notifications, WhatsApp. If you've got ADHD, in the first place, you've probably got it even more so because of all this and do you think this is a big question but i've been thinking about this do you think adhd was an undiagnosed thing or do you think it's a symptom of the smartphone because we're getting peppered all fucking day long like never like this in the if you zoom out and look at humanity yeah right this is like so fucking new yeah and suddenly everyone's like oh adhd was undiagnosed i'm not some sort of doctor i'm just something i I thought about.

1:22:54So everyone was like to me, oh, you've got ADHD. Yeah. I was like... So easy to brand out the thing of that. Yeah, so I mean, that's why I don't want to throw things around to those that have. But part of me thinks like, was ADHD something we didn't... Was a problem we didn't diagnose? Or is it a symptom of a problem we haven't noticed, which is this fucking shit? Yeah. I don't know. I have my thoughts on it. What are your thoughts on it? I was just going to say like... Oh, this is where the brother's kicking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. We'll go first on the left. so you've spoken a lot by the way have i really there's a breakdown percentage wise i was gonna just say yeah i was just gonna say like in i think it's in i can't even remember what the actual word is but like anyway in like japan they talk about like ups and downs like ebbs and flows almost like almost like kind of wavy yeah and i don't know we'll have to look at maybe we re-record this section so i sound like i actually know what i'm talking about but the um but here we seem to just name everything right if you've got this symptom or your life is this way then you must have this specific condition like everything is marked and it's given word and words have meaning right and they have power and i think you know even like dyslexia is the same like you know we've both got dyslexia i haven't been diagnosed with adhd but if i read the symptoms of adhd i was like yeah of course i can have it yeah but actually if i just turn down the dials on most things in my life i can be so focused right i think actually a symptom of adhd is like hyper focus yeah so maybe even more so um so yeah it's interesting i think we just we find common issues in this society and we we name it and we it's like used as an excuse right um i actually think like the concept of adhd like you say hyper focus i think you know every time you say a word my brain's going off with ideas and you know you you can't answer a question without going on to something else like it's it's like yeah it's an interesting situation but yeah sorry go on you say what you're saying no what i was going to say is i think there's this too there's too many distractions okay the i think there's a generation that's been born uh and the extension of their hand is an iphone and and there are some studies to suggest that it's in the last 10 years there's been an increase of diagnosis of 214 % of children with ADHD.

1:25:11So there is a sad part to it, but there is this overstimulation. I think someone was telling me the other day that if you will come out onto Oxford Circus and take a minute, and I can use a comparison recently, it's too much for the brain. It's too much overstimulation for the brain. There's too much noise pollution, sound pollution, colors, words. Everything is just too much, and it's too much of the brain to take on. Everything's fighting for our attention, right? You know, like if you look at, you know, social media companies, what's the goal of these businesses? Like how can we get as much attention?

1:25:43Like the brief to developers and the ones that create the algorithm, how do we keep people's attention? Content creators, brands like us, even individuals, we're all like how can we design content in a specific way that creates that thumb stop, right? And, you know, I think even Gary Vee says like his job is day trading attention. so everyone everything is fighting for attention so of course we've got a disorder around attention because everyone's trying to like fight for it but I think kind of what I was sort of getting at and I think how we sort of led here is that you know a lot of like what we're trying to create is that sort of that balance and that rhythm in people's life and I think what we're trying to do is get people to reconnect to themselves and reconnect to nature and we're being absorbed by these new shiny things and you know technology companies or notifications or you know like even even the fuel we've been using ourselves to power through the day it's not the right fuel right you said like you drink loads of caffeine you do four hours of work or whatever it is and then you crash and you get all jittery like that can't be the solution there must be something else out there and that is what kind of led to functional mushrooms is like we don't actually caffeine's a bad thing it's people over caffeinating themselves uh it's because they want a desired outcome unfortunately there are like ramifications and negative side effects that come from that and i think what's great about the way we've designed the dirty products is that you get this long sustained energy isn't this spike it isn't this crash it's just like leveled and it just means you can engage more in the moment and be more present and i think that that then becomes an influence on how you approach every other aspect of your life and i think for me was i realized back then when I was like sitting in an ambulance that I completely lost control of everything because I was going and going and going and I would consume anything to keep awake, keep engaged, anything to build this business, drive the revenue, collect the customers.

1:27:39And I lost control. And I think that's because I lost connection with the real reason we're doing this. And I lost connection with myself. And I think that's an important lesson, you know, going away for those two weeks as well, I think was really important for me because I reconnected to the reason we're doing it in the first place. And it's a lot of what we're just talking about now. And that's got me so, so both inspired, but like riled up to really go and build this brand and create the impact, that same energy that we had when we watched Live Aid and we wanted to affect the world with testic cancer awareness is that same, you know, unrivaled sort of energy that we have now for this business and this brand and this cause.

1:28:19Yeah. No, it's mad. The one thing I did find interesting was your trip to Bucharest because I've struggled to find someone yes and I think when you've got your own business it's like yeah it can get it does get in the way of it like I basically fuck off a load of dates because I'm just like I've got I've rather and sometimes I'd actually just rather do this I'm very confident in you yeah no no no it's as in that's okay it's it's um how does that rest on your mind or how when you're trying to build a brand um Well, I do find comfort in solitude. I'm okay in my own place, my own mind. Actually, someone said to me recently, I feel there's a void to be filled as we build this business.

1:29:06I think I need someone. And that same, well, I'll say it's a Bear Grylls said it to me. I said to him, I think that void I need to fill is going to be this goal. And he said, no, no, no, you've got it all wrong. I said, what do you mean? and he said, no one can fill that void apart from you. I'll Bosch one of those as well. If you want to Bosch, Bosch is two. Yeah, Bosch is big. So there you go. Another one. Yeah. Rainbows? I've seen unicorns, mate, coming up my eyes. So it's the idea that not to feel codependent, whether we keep this in or not. Andy, for the last seven and a half, eight months, is it eight months?

1:29:49Yeah. With Lily? Yeah. nine nine months sorry nine months today nine months today i've i've witnessed um what it means to have your your soul mate in the sense that you know i love my brother so much and we're so interwined with each other there's probably some similarities there's probably a lot more differences you see between both of us and how we operate in our characteristics and my brother was has always been there and and i and i love it and i saw him find i saw him find someone and the first thing i always remember is how my brother laughs differently the way he he smiles and engages and listens to a stranger that's become someone very close i've seen how he operates now in business very differently it's a different frequency it's actually a forgive me if saying like a calmer frequency but in the sense that not not taking not not not really king to stress look it's you can't hide the word it definitely exists and actually i believe that stress is also has a bad connotation there are good stresses in life but i i do i am absolutely categorically once more inspired by what my brother has and what he's found in lily because it's made him more productive it's given more sense as my opinion more sense of a purpose in building a business um so i realized the stakes are very high to find someone um but it's never really been a necessity i i think in in fairness it may it may be a maybe a bonus um yeah because funny enough one of the five rings is is void is uh like there's water ground void fire was it fires the other one we'll get onto them but yeah because i i feel like sometimes it's a void that i've because i did sort of i did find someone a void a void yeah and i'm like am i just going to build this thing and then end up just like lonely yeah lonely yeah and it's interesting because i'm about to move back into london with my brother i've got a brother both single um don't i mean he's a lawyer right we don't but but but we are incredibly incredibly close and i do i do find a lot of similar similarities between you i mean if we went into business together i'd end up ripping his fucking head off because he's a complete opposite to me like he's very like he's a lawyer right like yeah um but it is but it's interesting and it's it's just yeah it's something i'd i don't know if i i don't want to focus so much on building this to the detriment of like not finding plays on my mind yeah it plays on my mind a lot yeah by the way i think i realized um because were you single a lot before lily yeah i was yeah yeah i mean like like what we're building with dirty is like number one for me like i am there's a great book actually um the pursuit one the pursuit of the modern man is that it the way the way of the superior man the way the way of the superior man and the whole idea is like you know a man has a cause and that is the absolute priority and that's when you truly are that's when you truly are a man when you're following that mission um so and obviously the dynamics of how then you bring you know a lover into that and I think what was interesting for me is is that all I ever do is work all I ever do is think about dirty all I do is about thinking about what's the next milestone what's the next goal what's the big picture like and um i actually realized on this trip like what am i actually doing this all for like i have kind of my my my personal goal and what i want and then i have the the higher purpose right you know ultimately dirty is being built to transform people's health right so people can live a happier more purposeful life like that's ultimately the reason we're doing what we're doing and when we see that happening that's where we feel more the most emotionally connected to the brand.

1:33:30But then from a personal level, like, yeah, why am I doing it? You know, I went and just had the most amazing two week trip with my girlfriend and I was completely present with her. And I think in our entire relationship, I hadn't been once. And I think that brought us a lot closer together, a lot connected, and we didn't need anything, just needed each other. We were in the jungle, we were in nature, like where I feel like I'm meant to be. And yeah, that was like a big message to me is like it is important to find someone and share this world with and share these experiences because you know like I mean I want to be building dirty for the rest of my life and you know if you know obviously we've got investors now we have to be considering an exit and like there's been opportunities already for that and we've chosen not to take them um but you know my ultimate dream is that we go public and you know we get to you know the dirty brand becomes more than just mushrooms but it becomes like a daily ritual for for everyone right and there's all these coffee what's that comes the new comes a new coffee exactly um and replaces outdated fuel 90 million cups of coffee is poured every day in the uk drunk every day well it's mad because it's like you know have you read michael pollan's book caffeine uh no i've read house change your mind but i've seen his interview on joe rogan about him giving up coffee for 90 days but like um so what's mad about obviously like you know ensure all the insurance houses started in insurance the insurance industry started in coffee houses oh the coffee break is that the yeah and basically if you look at again we're looking at time now it's like if you zoom out it's like the industrial revolution basically happened because coffee because caffeine was because basically people could work all fucking day right if we zoom out again extrapolate this even on a bigger time rise it's like okay so we've got this coffee period then comes the social media period if we're looking at this over say 100 150 well 2 000 years yeah that's a big jump anyway anyway um then it's like oh fuck if you in time there is going to need to be something new because things i believe everything does balance yeah eventually i think halfway to meditation is going through the roof yes because all this shit yes i think everything does come into mindfulness exactly so i do think they can't that what you're saying about it being the ritual yes i genuinely do believe that especially for someone who is all those symptoms yeah drinking it um yeah it's it's uh well i think i think it takes like you know like this has been consumed like like uh tibetan and charlem monks have been consuming lion's mane for at least 1500 years so this isn't some like new ingredient right it's thousands of years old um i think that stuff exists maybe in like esoteric societies or eastern cultures and there's just a process in which it becomes like widely adopted.

1:36:22Like if you take, for example, jogging or running, right? I think in the 60s, running and jogging was considered unhealthy and unnecessary. Then around the 70s, a bunch of scientists came out and said, it's actually really good, both for your mind and for a strong heart. And then in the 80s, you start to see celebrities that were starting to run and jog. And then it became cool. And then it became validated by both scientists and culturally relevant because of celebrities running. Or maybe it was athletes. And then Nike launched Just Do It. And they had to build this incredible movement around running.

1:37:01And now you've got this multi-billion dollar industry around running. I think the same is the case with, I mean, yoga. Like yoga was like something that mainly hippies would do, right? And now there's athleisure, there's brands like Lululemon and Aloyoga and Viore, which are multi-billion dollar businesses built around something that was quite ancient. I think the same is happening now with functional mushrooms. They consumed thousands of years ago. Fast forward, probably like you'd say in the last 20 years, all this unbelievable scientific research that's been done. There's thousands of papers now on functional mushrooms.

1:37:42and it's now going to move into huge clinical studies you know 70 percent of not percent three percent of all pharmaceuticals derive from fungi so it's always been in the ether in that regard and i think what we've done is a few things is like one is like we're bringing scientists into it so we have a chief science officer at dirty dr tara schwart who was just on jay shetty and darry the ceo recently i think um and she's really helping to bring validation of the category like Like we, our whole thing is like, you know, people will say like, oh, what do you think about all these brands that have now like popped up at nowhere?

1:38:16No, not mushrooms has become a thing. Like we were a lone wolf and now mushrooms are everywhere. Right. Um, and I, I'm like, it's a great thing, right? Like we're not the only ones now like singing about functional mushrooms, which means it's just going to grow the market. Of course, the majority of brands are in the marketplace, you know, don't have the knowledge, the expertise and the access we do. so I think we think around 80 to 90 percent of products out there aren't actually real mushroom that's just powder and filler doesn't actually have the compounds in it so there's real limitation that's part of what working with Dr.

1:38:52Tara we have great people like Merlin Sheldrake we work with and you know Ferrucci the president fungi foundation we need to really bring knowledge to people so they know what they're picking and selecting otherwise they're just drinking stuff that's not going to deliver the effects. What's Tara taught you guys? What are some of the lessons? Not necessarily about mushrooms, but like... Oh, my goodness. Oh, lessons from Tara. I've got so many. Just give us, like, if we could boil it to three, four, five. Well, she's a neuroscientist. So let me just tell you one before I tell you. Her genius, which Steve Bartlett will attest to many will, even Theo Vaughn she was recently on.

1:39:28Do you know Theo Vaughn? Yeah. Insane. He's the fucking biggest G in the world. Absolutely. I love him, yeah. But then a great validation. A neuroscientist on there, a British neuroscientist on there. She takes the complication of an area of neurology and she simplifies it by storytelling. Wow. And by the way, that is one of the great art of being a scientist like Merlin Sheldrake, like many others who can take this area and use storytelling. Not statistics and not, because we don't really resonate. I think we want stories more. I think stories are so important that we can resonate to. she's taught me a lot about um brain health for obvious reasons but more about ancestral wisdom of what our ancestors were doing in order to look after i think she's also really good at taking like spiritual concepts that have got like like become quite mainstream now like things like you know manifesting um and applying science to it yes okay so let's do that let's like say i'm trying of manifest this into like unapologetic like a massive fucking podcast i believe in you anyway yeah yeah yeah but like as in and i want it to be like i want to be able to help brands all over the u.s i want to be flying on a pj like i don't know like that's i want to do all that shit eventually yeah still got a long way to go from with your wonderful wife yeah yeah yeah from uh you know me and rich are still in the ford fiesta at the minute it feels like del boy and robbie but we will get there but like how what would what are some of the things that you could say about this because again, people listen to this, but people will look up to you guys and think, fuck me, like the brand, and it is astounding what you guys have built, but like, how do you manifest and what's Tara taught you about that?

1:41:07Because I think it is a hooty footy wanky thing and it's, but there's - No, it's not, this is why science is so important. Exactly, yes. Sorry, I think many people perceive it as that. That's what I'm trying to say. I believe in it, yeah. Yeah, I think, and a lot of that is because, you know, it needs to be articulated in the right way. and it's also how you sort of apply it. I must also mention that the queen of manifest is an investor in Dirty. Her name is Roxie Nafalci. Right. And she has a whole book on seven steps to living your best life. And she's actually kind of made it a lot more accessible and modern and contemporary.

1:41:38And I think because a lot of women in particular look up to her and inspired by her. But I think like for me, I have my own view of manifesting and I think it's like, it's a mindset thing. So for me, it's like, you know, it's like having a dartboard, right? And then, and having a dart and knowing exactly where you're throwing it, right? Unless you actually have a big dream, you don't really know where the destination and where you're going. I think you have that dream and then you set yourself goals to how you get there. I think what's really big for us is like, we have a huge dream for dirty, right?

1:42:13And we've had it since the beginning. Like we know exactly where we're taking it, exactly where we want to go. And that's almost like our our compass right and everything every decision we make is based on that and a lot of that is built around our why right our purpose our passion that's the kind of the big manifesting the mission and then as a result of that we have these very clear steps and goals of how we're going to get there and what is the strategy that's going to enable it what we're actually going to do to manifest it ourselves I don't think it's a case of like let's go and cut out some pictures of some like a nice house, a nice car and all this kind of stuff.

1:42:50And then, you know, and then pulling it in the drawer. I think there's a reason to do that, you know, isn't just that, but there's a reason to that is because I think when you make something tangible and you feel it, like you believe in it a lot more, right? I think a big part of it is like having like self-belief and confidence. And it's all these like, you know, positive affirmations, all this kind of stuff is about like, how do you cultivate a mindset that's going to get you there? And unless you believe in it yourself, it's never going to happen. And I think a lot of what manifesting is, is about becoming that future person you want to be.

1:43:24For example, when we did our first ever business, right? We were nobodies, right? Absolutely nobodies. That business was the leads thing. Oh, well, yeah. I mean, I guess our first kind of big thing was that feeling nuts. Right. Yeah. But we built businesses. One of them's called Velocity Black, which just sold to Capital One for 330 million. We've had some incredible stories. When you say that number, don't dance around that number. That's a big number. Yeah, so that's a really interesting story. So what was it? Capital Black? No, so we basically used to manage... I'll double drop on those. Bosh.

1:44:02You can't overdose on mushrooms. Oh, that's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're fucking shit in the whole thing. So we, yeah, so basically we used to manage and promote david haye i don't know if you follow boxing david haye yeah heavyweight champion i was in costa rica oh yeah theresa you know he goes out there yeah yeah and um i was in a gym and um and that was when he was doing the whole fruffle thing you know when he had the two yeah yeah yeah and um like everyone was playing it cool and i've got a mate who's cam who's a scouser and he's like david mate he's like Like, David, teach me how to get in a fucking throttle.

1:44:41He's American. Because loads of Americans were in Santa Teresa. We're in Santa Teresa. They're like, who the fuck is that guy? And it was just like. Yeah, I went up to him. And then because his kids go to school, I went to St. John's. Yeah. And anyway, I was doing a gym sesh. And he was like, I was just doing one of those jungle gyms in Costa Rica. Yeah, it was fucking sick. and um yeah he was like doing in between sets with me obviously i went back to the villa i was like lads yeah just trying with david hey mate i don't think about that at all but yeah sorry yeah got you so he was um you were managing him yeah so he yeah we basically agreed to deal with him a while back uh to take over his brand and his fights promote him

1:45:29you can flick through and see you do look like a samurai in that yeah yeah yeah that's hilarious i got told moby most of the time so there you go that's jokes what year was that that was yeah 2016 was that press conference january yeah oh so he was still fighting then no we well we brought him back back yeah yeah we did the big so yeah the thing that was really why he what he's attracted to us was that's hilarious so basically back then this is proper going off topic I don't know yeah mate just go so back then and now as well no it's not off topic you just sold there's a massive exit there right yeah so yeah true so yeah so basically back then well me getting to the velocity thing is this sort of but I'll do it quick so back then like boxing was controlled for a combination of match room so do you know Eddie Hearn and Barry Hearn and Sky Sports and David has always been kind of a rebel in the world of boxing and always wanted to do things differently, right?

1:46:28So he didn't want to do a deal with Matchroom because the only way he could be on Sky Sports was you had to be promoted by Matchroom, but he wanted to promote himself. So I won't go into how we know him or why he was attracted to work with us, but he basically said that he wanted to partner up with us. He wanted us to manage him and co-promote his fights. Yeah, but maybe do tell me that because I'd learn a lot from that because it's about, I think, people listening to this and myself in terms of getting guests on. Like, I think someone says you've got to be easy to interface with. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:46:59In part of life. Like, you guys are clearly very good at that. That way, someone's listening to this going to a Sainsbury's meeting. Someone's listening to this going to get an investor. Like, I've got a mate who's raised money for a brand called Local, Local Beer. He's so fucking good at golf, right? This guy. There's three founders. They send him out on the golf course. Oh, really? All these guys love him. but he's got the gift of the gab but it's like and that's how they've got this but yeah like talk there's because there's loads in that like how are you easy to interface with no sorry that's i understand that's a good point what attracted him to want to work with us yeah like how do you get these people yeah how do you pull these people into your into your orbit yeah i think that's one of your superpowers between both of you like i think it goes back to the point i was originally making which was that in the beginning we had nothing but just this unwavering sort of ambition and belief where in our mind, I think we almost thought we were what we wanted to be.

1:47:51You know, what is that future self? So like being in front of people, I guess there's an infectiousness to the way we talk, but they actually believe we're going to pull off this. Yes. You know what I mean? Sick. Yeah. What did you say to David? What did you say to him? Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, when we pitched the idea of working with him. How do you pitch David? Like, as you say, the world of boxing is basically a duopoly. So yeah, I mean, basically like, you know, understanding culture and understanding brands and understanding also how to stand on the shoulders of giants to build is something kind of principles we've always lived by right stand on the shoulders of giants to build yeah and how does that link to david um so okay i'll tell you yeah so basically i remember so he was like i i love these guys and i don't want to work with match room i want to do something differently and I want it to be modern and contemporary he was like boxing is boring you guys are interesting you're innovative you think differently I think you could do something magical here so we basically pitched to him that we didn't want to go to sky sky sports we wanted to do something a little bit unique which was a few things so the first thing was uh national broadcasters didn't want to work with didn't want to work with boxers they kind of felt like they'd being mobbed off by them they like bbc itv they gave you a platform build up your brand as a boxer and you go off you fuck off basically to sky sports and make all the money on pay-per-view so our idea was what's the largest non-pbs broadcaster in the uk that has a boxing type audience which was dave tv right which i don't know if it's big now but back then it was after channel four it was the biggest network in the uk it's owned by uk yeah i know exactly what dave is Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:49:36Basically, most of its programming was like reruns. Yeah, that's what I would assume it's me, yeah. So we said, why don't we go to them and pitch them, let's do the first ever live sports broadcast. Perfect audience, right? And 48 hours after pitching them, I said, let's do it. And we managed to do the first ever live sports broadcast on Dave TV. The biggest viewership they ever had back then was about 500 ,000 views. We got 4 million people tuned into it. Amazing. Now, what we did is he had just fought Klitschko. He had a bad name in boxing. We were like, we need to win back credibility. We need to gift this fight back to the people.

1:50:14So we're going to make it free, which is unheard of, like of a prized fighter, former heavyweight champion. So we put it on Dave TV. And then we were like, right, how are we going to get people to Dave TV? So we did a variety of different things. So back then, Lab Bible was mainly a Facebook page, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we went to Lab Bible. and all they would do is like meme content, right? They'd take memes, you send them in and they would repurpose them, send them out and it would go viral. We basically said, we want to do original content, right? It was very rare for brands to be thinking in this way of original content.

1:50:47And we want to basically create a documentary on David coming back to the ring. The guy he was going to fight, which was some unknown Australian boxer because ultimately, and it's like the F1, right? With the thing on Netflix. Drive to survive. Once you know the story of these drivers in the background, you just want to watch the Formula One. That's our premise. You're like, if you know these guys' stories and where they come from, and it's maybe it's like good versus evil or whatever it is, you're going to want to tune in. So that's going to lead this whole audience we can capture through standing on the shoulders of giants, Lab Bible with Giant, and bring them to this live broadcasted moment.

1:51:21We then went another step when we basically, this both, this kind of backfired on us, but we basically were like, how do we get like influencers and creators and by the way like this is back in 2016 no one was thinking in this way particularly in boxing like let so we basically tried to convince ksi to fight on the undercard so this is 2016 right yeah we brought him into the ring with his man sorry brought him into david's gym we shot a whole youtube video it got millions of views and his whole audience therefore wanted to watch gun to david david tv and watch the show he didn't agree to go and fight on the undercard but then fast forward a few years later and now there's this whole thing's great so we're actually the reason that youtube is in our boxing yeah by the way that's mad um but obviously we haven't benefited off all the money they've made unfortunately but anyway i'm kind of like going way off topic so david basically introduced to us the founders of an app called velocity which basically was payment um and reservations for restaurants he introduced them to us and they were like you guys now had to like turn like nothing into something and making it relevant we want you to help us build this brand so we ended up working with the founders of velocity to create something called velocity black which became this digital concierge platform which basically was like the anything buttons what we originally called it and you could go into this app and you could organize your entire lifestyle you could be like next week i want to go um to ibiza curate the whole thing this is my budget it's got your credit card it's got your passport it will sort the lot out and you use the app then to navigate all these experiences or it'd be like you can go on the app and it's like the netflix netflix of experiences you could book like go to fly to the curvature of the earth all right book yeah yeah yeah with all this book so we ended up actually transforming that from velocity into velocity black and they actually had to shut down velocity like velocity black was the kind of the thing to promote the wider app but it became the business and it became a membership club uh and we helped launch it around the world we did parties at Coachella and we built up the database to a couple of thousand and then we came up with, this is the shoulders of giants again so we did a deal with Rolls Royce and we convinced Rolls Royce to white label the Velocity app which became Rolls Royce Whispers and it signed 10 ,000 drivers overnight, it was a 4.2 million dollar deal, that actually is what led to a new business called Velocity for Business which led to a meeting with Capital One and they said we don't want to white label it, we want to buy your business they bought it for 330 million dollars um and you guys had you guys we were in minority shareholders in it so we that's how we used to start yeah yeah yeah that's how we still that's how we used to work so we we would never start something we were brought on by like ambitious founders we had the experience in the network and we knew how to build brands they bring us on board give us a small minority minority stake we also get a retainer as well and then we would work so velocity we worked with for a couple of years and we built Velocity Black with them.

1:54:20We took it to market, we scaled, we grew it, we did the Rolls Royce deal and then we moved on to the next thing. So I don't know why we got to that. You didn't even finish the whole David Hay thing because it was really about David about how we Do you want to still stay on this topic? I'm so conscious of relevance. Don't worry about it. If you listen to the Rory one we were talking about went, went, went, went, went, went, went, went, went, went. And he goes, oh yeah, curry.

1:54:45From an interview I was like, fucking hell. So, no, no. But I just think what I would love to get to, and he can bring in fire here, right? So this way he says the three methods to forestall the enemy. Forestall by attacking. Forestall by responding to his attack. By feigning weakness than attacking. Forestall by attacking when he attacks and meeting him head on. And basically the fire's attack and strategy is what I'm taking. We've done sort of the grounding. I think we've touched on water, which is kind of how you guys flow amongst the ambiguousness of ambiguity of building a brand. And that's kind of your routine and stuff.

1:55:27But in terms of fire, I'd love to get super tactical. I want to get on to DTC, but I think to preface that, let's get into marketing. And like, what are the one to three principles of marketing? And I think let's get into dirty now and marketing strategy. because in terms of preparing for war or going into the fire like you guys are fucking ripping it up what is the secret behind it like what is your sort of samurai fucking code maybe the first principle yeah i mean i think like now like building a brand like i think content creation and creators is like the key thing um i think that we're selling a lifestyle and we're educating people about these ancient ingredients and we are building a product around that that people can easily and seamlessly fit into their lifestyle right you know for us is like we're making like if we were to you know i mean you're actually drinking how it i'm i'm you're yeah no no no no no so yeah i think what's it was important like ancestrally speaking you're drinking as a pure tea, right?

1:56:40And in powder form in hot water. What we're doing is we're building more modern rituals. So you're taking these ancient wisdom, ancient ingredients, and you bring them into modern life. Modern life cares about ease, frictionless, on the go, something that tastes good, something you look forward to actually returning to. So for example, I've been drinking our matcha and the matcha is absolutely delicious. we've added a bunch of different ingredients from like mct to moringa it's got uh b vitamins in as well and then it's got lion's mane for your focus tremella which is amazing for your skin um and we've created a drink that does all these incredible things it's just not normal matcha right because it has all these additional benefits but actually tastes good right so effectively our whole principle is like these ancient ingredients they exist let's put the right manufacturing a production process in place, the extraction process, so we can create the highest quality products.

1:57:38Like quality is everything to us. And then we create some form of modern consumable experience out of it. So you've got to return to every day and you're going to enjoy it, right? You don't want a situation where you're drinking something that's disgusting, or you don't want something like, I think capsules, I'm sure we'll do capsules on some way. Capsules are a bit boring. This isn't a supplement business. This is a ritual, right? Right. So for us is from, you know, from marketing strategy, it's like content. So content, but then also ritual in terms of trying to get into consumers' habits. Yes.

1:58:10Because then habit drives the rate of sale. Consumption goes through the roof. Yes. Because if you're drinking every day. Yeah. And you're returning each month. And you're returning each month. And then that leads into the subscription. Yes. Okay. So then you've got, so content creation, ritualistic. Content creation is about, you know. What's the art of that? For us, that's about aspiration and inspiration, right? So like from an aspirational point of view is like people want to live a certain life. They want to feel everything you're feeling now, like on it, focus, calm, present. These products enable you to feel a certain way, right?

1:58:47Right. So our content has to create the forum for you to aspire to live that life. Right. So everything we do on social media is about portraying that. So that's the lifestyle component. And then it's the education. Right. So most people think that mushrooms come in the form of soup or on your pizza or on your pasta. The idea that it can help you focus better is like something that they can never imagine. So a lot of what we have to do is like the education as well, like particularly as being the authority in the marketplace right you know we were yes there are you mentioned a couple of well one other brand that's been at it for 14 years right but because one other brand i like that yeah exactly but like we've really focused on efficacy and quality and being the authority and to the degree i think you'd agree in the uk if someone mentions the word mushroom they say name a brand it's dirty like we are that it's a home appliances as you think of.

1:59:44Yeah, your brand is the category. I would agree with that. Yeah. And I think that we've opened it up to others to come in as well, right? We've really led the way in order to maintain leadership. We need to continue to innovate and grow the category, right? We don't think any other mushroom brand that might exist out there, that's not our competition. Our competition is things like coffee, right? 90 million cups drunk every single day in the UK. How do we get a large share of those 90 million cups? so like for us it's like we just need to educate people because the more people know the more people will give it a go the content is the lifestyle and then the content is the education as well and that's basically what we try to create the other thing is partnerships right standing on the shoulders of giants that's a real big thing for us as well so you know one of the first partnerships we had is we worked with Stella McCartney right and we worked with her to launch a mushroom bag it was basically a bag made out of reishi reishi mushroom was it reishi mushroom yeah She made a thousand bags and we toured around Europe with her doing talks on how Fungi is going to change the world in terms of health and fashion.

2:00:50And suddenly we became a brand that's now featured in Tatler and Vogue. But what you're saying is so important is an authority. We're becoming slowly an authority in a space beyond just a transactional experience. And people buy into that loyalty. So do you know who Seth Godin is? Yeah. So I've had him on twice. He's coming on again. That's the last one. but i asked him a weird question and i was like what are the what are the marketing rules that were around 400 years ago that will still be around in 400 years time and he was like there's three things that create change it's like status affiliation i and or connection or fear freedom from fear so basically like if you're drowning you're gonna the the last one's kind of a bit nebulous right but like the first two are really important it's like how does your brand give someone's status and how does someone give them um uh connection affinity and it's like you guys are doing that so like the Stella McCartney thing is is status yeah the Bear Grylls thing is status the Mo thing is status but then the community and the connection the serpentine and I now I'm sort of beginning to piece together how you're kind of building this brand yeah one thing you said actually I think so important is that um the community part is absolutely fundamental it's the heartbeat almost of the of Dirty and you made a good point the other day and we're talking about the importance of community and it's it's building that loyalty but it's like almost building a moat so it doesn't really matter how many other companies try and compete in the space they're going to be loyal they're going to stay with us and that's because we've invested into them as much as they've invested to us when i say we've have invested more into them as well not more but i've invested into them education understanding the importance of consistency the efficacy the trust the storytelling all of that is another underbelly of the why about why dirty plays such a pivotal role and to know that we could be a staple from your the moment you wake to the moment you rest is is a rarity um for a brand i think also you you touched on something really big there and you've highlighted something that we really thought about in the beginning and that's like status symbol and health and wellness has become a status now like it's the new luxury like it says you know people buy products mostly because it says something about who they are what their identity is what their values are i mean you just have to go to like la now and the mecca of la is um not the nightclubs it's era one you know air one has got 11 stores that do a million dollars per week so air one is essentially um i guess health and wellness grocery store that has a lot of the DTC brands that have been built up over the years are sold through this store.

2:03:31It became famous because a lot of celebrities would go there and tweet about it, such as Kanye West. But also they created shakes. They did one with Hailey Bieber. And it's basically an$18 shake with about 15 different ingredients in it. And people queue up to get the shake so that they can take pictures and pull it on. Well, there's, he's been on the pod actually, and I'm trying to get one again, a guy called Will Storr. You guys should read him. He's wrote a book called The Status Game. Okay. And he's actually just written a book. He's written another book called The Science of Storytelling.

2:04:03And his new book, A Story is a Deal. But he talks about status as like, it just, it's this. Right, nice to have. I'll send you them. Oh, I know I'm going to listen to the podcast. Yeah, yeah, listen to the podcast. Yeah, yeah. He's a fascinating author, like, but, you know, endorsed a lot by Rory and Seth. They wrote the foreword to the big G book. Absolute G. But he was like, there's a thousand different status games going on all the time. So it's like, if you're like super, if you're wealthy, wearing like a brand that says Burberry on the top is pretty low status. If you're not wealthy, like from a lower socioeconomic background, wearing Burberry is high status.

2:04:46It's like the exact same thing is different status games. Based on the hierarchy of where you are in society. Yeah, or it's like an Audi A3 or an Audi A3 in the suburbs is high status. If you go and take it to the rural countryside, it's actually a form of low status. And you'd probably want a Land Rover, you know, one of those old Land Rovers. And what he's basically saying is a thousand different status games going on all the time. And we're playing it in a multitude of different ways. Playgrounds. Yeah, playgrounds is like, well, make poverty history status game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Even though I did it in a very corrupt way of buying it, but I was only about six years old.

2:05:26But I think what you guys are doing with this brand is by latching on to the, not latching on, but partnering with these high status affiliate people is fucking so smart. Yeah. And it allows them to... But also, I must say as well that most of these inquiries come direct to us. Yes. And it's because they're already customers of the brand. I mean, like, I mean, I don't even know if you like i mean the a-listers that buy from us is like insane that we don't even know and i mean we did it we're bucking palace is a subscriber to dirty it's like that's ridiculous and like i mean even you take someone like benedict cumberbatch for example who was a subscriber to is a subscriber to dirty he's now invested in two different rounds into that charlotte tilbridge is a big that's another marketing principle then if we're doing it into the fire is product 100 i think like have you guys met Mark Palmer he did so he did the exit for green and blacks now does course and press fascinating guy but he basically and he's done a multitude of different brands he's in like kombucha he's now on the board in Nando's Australia amazing fucking random but yeah sorry he does he lives in Australia now oh I see sorry yeah yeah I need a little bit of a jump interesting that one the status symbol do you remember the black card the Nando's black card yes exactly and do you remember the black car was basically any nando's in fact david haye had one he used to take us to nando's we get free unlimited days but do you remember that ed sheeran and example example made a song yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah that's they got it right they got it okay um what was i saying again um everything is marketing yeah and what he basically says is he'll look at his course and say i'm going to spend more on this ingredient of rhubarb because that is marketing because the accountant will look at that and say, well, hang on, our cogs are going up.

2:07:17You're going, well, actually, no, that goes under the marketing bucket because if it tastes like shit, people don't want to go pick it up again. You know the course from Press Rhubarb? Yeah, yeah, yeah. From this drink. Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that approach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so clever. I mean, that's exactly how we review that as well. I mean, like, our product is extremely expensive to make because we only want the best quality because our principle is is that we're creating for the efficacy and our community, our customers are our best asset because if it works, they're going to tell the next person.

2:07:45I mean, I remember, unless you were being really nice, the message you sent me when I sent you product, I think you were blown away by how good you felt from it. So we really pride ourselves on that, on the quality of the product and the taste as well because ultimately it doesn't matter how good your marketing is, you're not going to have a good retention business. You're not going to have a customer that comes back. They're not going to speak about you. It doesn't matter if it's like get 10 pounds, if you introduce, you know, another, people don't care about that stuff. Like the principles are you've got to have a phenomenal product.

2:08:15And I think to us as well, like this mushroom appears on every product. That's like the badge of honor, right? I don't think we're right. We've both got the dirty on. It's a badge of honor, right? Like dirty is a status symbol, right? And I think by way of association, like you say, I mean, the interesting thing for us is like, every time we do a form of execution as well, the experience has to be phenomenal or in terms of when you think about marketing. Like I remember we spoke at the Business and Fashion. It's an amazing thing to read, but they have something called Voices, which is like a whole mark event they have every year.

2:08:49And the year we went, Jay Shetty spoke, Stenna McCarty, so not Stenna McCarty, Vivian Westwood, president of Balanciaga. And for some reason they wanted me and Simon to talk about mushrooms, right? So it was at Soho Farmhouse. It was over three days. And I remember no one knew who we were. We just started Dirty, that now everyone knows the brand. but no one knew who we were and then we spoke and then everyone came up to us said how can we work with you i remember one guy this french cool guy dressed really well said mans came up to me and he said i'd love to work with you and i'm like i don't want to be rude or anything i'm not in a fashion industry like can you tell me who you are and he was like i run selfridges oh sick and i was like that's amazing and at that point he said like i would love to put you in the stores and i said i'm going to be completely honest with you we only really care about building this brand right now direct to consumer like we're building a subscription base all this kind of yeah retail was never on our radar then yeah no that it's always been but it was not not priority ready for it yeah and he said um well tell me what you want to do and i'll make it happen and i said i love to see the world's first mushroom bar in selfridges and i'd love to put it in a place where in a really unexpected place and everyone comes up and they go like what is mushrooms is it going to make me high i'd love to have that situation and he said let's do it and i remember at the bar a lady he came up said oh this is seb andrew this is who i wanted to introduce you to and he went don't worry about it deal done and four months later we had the world's first mushroom bar in selfridges at the entrance or yeah so you had like lewey louis vuitton gucci and dirty in the middle status again all those things brands and also when you say status yes i do i was going to say that yeah half a million people came to that that bar whilst it was live we became the fastest growing brand in the history so food and drinks brand in the history of selfridges they think we were in the windows as well actually that's part of the display from the windows behind you um they came back to us and they said we want to do a full-time concession with you amazing so we now are the only wellness brand we actually contribute to 50 of their sales in terms of health and wellness so i think what's really important for us and that's why like the truck has become because you know we will have a physical space at some point that's definitely a real big ambition we want to bring you know a really cool place to bring the community together and you know like Do you know Purdy and Fig?

2:11:04Yeah. Yeah, he's a really good mate of mine. I listened to that podcast. It was great. But his whole thing is that, is build on D2C. And then I think he eventually wants to bypass, well, the big four grocery retail and actually have his own sort of. Oh, cool. Like an Aesop type scenario. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it's interesting how you guys have built specifically on D2C. Let's go actually go into the D2C. and kind of because I think what people liked about the episode because I went to uni with Ruben oh did you? Sorry no I didn't I went to Manchester but went to go and party and Nottingham a lot but he was with my but we used to talk about ideas the whole thing talk about like manifesting and shit like that because he had a business in terms of timing he basically set up Zap like your mate but in 2015 and it was called Pinger and it didn't work because you know all those things kicked off because of timing right timing the timing's so yeah the company was it magic not magic there's a company that basically invented every apple product but apple just oh general magic general magic have you ever seen a documentary phenomenal lees what's it saying so basically general managed magic introduced this created to the smartwatch, the smartphone, like every Apple product.

2:12:28So if you take the smartphone, for example, they launched it into the market and it was a bold innovation. But the issue that they had is that 3G hadn't launched yet. So people were using these phones and couldn't do anything with them. They couldn't really, truly connect to the internet. So I mean, just the way that Steve Jobs, and this is like not that we ever compare ourselves to him. Tremellis. So that's basically, yeah, it can hold up to 500 times its weight in water. You guys have got fucking good skin. Yeah. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It actually, it's more powerful than - It's more powerful than - Might find the love of my life.

2:13:03That's how I did it. I just gift product to girls like fancy. Yes, it's actually more powerful than the hyaluronic acid because it can penetrate the skin deeper. And it basically creates the ultimate environment inside the body uh to produce natural collagen so it's like a precursor to collagen so you know there's lots of debates on whether you should be consuming collagen it's actually better to have tremella because it produces natural collagen in the body the immune system and nice and natural energy as well um yeah so yeah so basically what steve jobs was incredible and that is like we i think for many reasons we would look up someone like him is just like understanding culture like he hung that more like he would hang with musicians he would listen to rock and roll music he would do lsd he was like he was a hippie right and you know the whole campaign around thinking different you know like that apple was all about doing things differently to these like archaic machines like dell for example and i think he really looked at artists and pop art and culture and music and that was a real inspiration to how he built these machines and these products but also how he launched it into the marketplace right and that's why he then eventually had this huge impact on the music he saved the music industry with iTunes right but what he was phenomenal at was timing so he you know like before the iPhone existed you had the iPod right and the iPod exceeded like I can't remember was it like Sony or I don't know who brought out the first mp3 player but they sold the mp3 players based on features like this is going to have five gigs or something where he says something like thousand tunes in your pocket in your pocket which is how people wanted to move about and listen to music and it was cool because people wanted it in their pocket and it was just like it appealed more culturally to people even though i think five gig was probably more than a thousand songs you know what i mean yeah yeah um so but then he that ipod is what kind of evolved into the iPhone, right?

2:15:06And the iPhone was launched at the right time because 3G was there or was it 2G or whatever it was. 3G was there. So therefore, all these apps and all these things you wanted to do on iPhone were made possible because the technology existed. So I always sort of explain it. It's like, do you surf? No. I've done boogie boarding in Portland. Neither do I. But the analogy is amazing. It's like when you go surfing, right? Some people will get up on the board too early before the wave comes and they're full off the board right some people will see the the wave coming the wave comes and they might just get like half of the wave or the end of the wave some people just got the timing perfect oh mate and they get up on the board just as the waves appearing and then they just surf it and this is what this is what um again seth's godin's book this is strategy is best book i've ever read on him really oh mate it's fucking genius like he's is is i've read it twice but he i mean he's got the and again this is where i sort of got into the ideas of nature and business because he's like he'll talk about forests and um you know you plant your seed which is your brand positioning so pick your his two things are pick your competitors pick your future pick your customers pick your future and he's basically saying you can plant the seed in a forest but you're going to struggle to get light and attention it's the way he says he's such a poetic speaker but he says good surfers pick good waves and basically by that he's saying is it's like it's based on the kind of theme is timing and it's like you're not the best surfer isn't like actually who wins a surfing competition isn't necessarily the best surfer it's because that day he or she picked the best way and i think what you're saying is it's that master the art of timing yes there's something in that yeah 100 and i think also you have you know it's not necessarily the best thing to be the first mover as well because suddenly you know if you look at i mean like actually a great example is like myspace myspace technically created social media but like where's myspace facebook is here now came with a better product way easier to use better vision better innovation i think you know like we weren't the first ever mushroom brand but we did it at the right time and we appealed to i wouldn't say mainstream yet i don't think mushrooms have gone mainstream but it's got the trajectory to get to mainstream yeah i think a How did you come up with the name Dirty?

2:17:24So yeah, good question. So I think one of the first, I remember when we told, do you know Sir John Hegarty? Yes. Do you know him? Very good, very well. Do you want an introduction? Yes, I fucking love that. His book. Yes. You know when he says, you're more creative in bad weather. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, I'd love to speak to him. Yeah, 100%. We'll connect you. 100%. He's a lovely guy and he's got some insane stories. I read all of his books. I mean, I often refer to him and I'm talking about it right now, which is, you know, the Levi ad. How did you always meet him? So when we started our venture studio, there's a lady called...

2:18:00Catherine Saxon. Who put us in front of loads of people in the media and ad industry. Because Feeling Nuts was a huge success. And everyone wanted to meet us, all the big agencies. We won a Cannes Lions and then everyone knew who we were. Yeah. Feeling Nuts. So basically she did like a round table at the Sower House. and from that they will basically try to either get us to work for them or help with clients and then one of them was like you need to meet John Hegarty so we ended up meeting John um because he's a garage yeah yeah and they actually invested in Calm as well and um uh Michael Axon-Smith's become a dear friend of us and a mentor for us as well yeah he's an absolute legend but yeah so with John Hegarty I remember so one of the things I love that he talks about is uh He talks about when everyone zigs, you should zag.

2:18:48And there is the old Levi, I think it came from the old Levi ad where you had like an image flooded with white sheep and there was one black sheep that was pointing the other way. And that's kind of how I feel about the wellness industry now because when we were out originally, I think we were kind of the first brand to really make it cool, make it lifestyle, make it aspirational. Like we wanted packaging you wouldn't put in your cabinet. You would leave it outside. Everything's designed. It's so beautiful. or you want to leave it. It's like a drill. Yeah, there's another principle that I love, again, just from speaking to people on the pod, is like steal the clothes from other categories.

2:19:24And I love that. And it's like, I know the example I always say is like, I went to - You do that a lot actually. Yeah. We look at the beauty industry a lot. Don't look where everyone else - I actually have no idea what any other wellness brand's doing. I have no idea what any other mushroom brands are doing. It's like kind of what Trip did with, I remember walking around NOPE with, it's like some, it's a waste of a journey to East London to go to that. It's like a trade show. Natural Organic Products Europe. It probably is probably quite worth a visit. But it was all like, it was either wacky, wacky ganja on all the CBD stuff.

2:20:05Or it was like, it almost looked like ingredients you'd get in the pharmacy. Yeah. And then basically Trick came and made it more of a lifestyle brand. There kind of are elements of what you guys are doing, but the way you guys have done it with this, I don't know, there's just a massive, the community around it is different. There's something, to be able to get those people to a fucking freezing cold lake, there's something special in that. There is, yeah. Let's go on to the D2C stuff though. Yeah, go on. I really want to get into that because I think it's cowboys and Indians out there with D2C.

2:20:44Okay. What, what maybe we, I wanted to ask is like, there is a bit of a survival of the fittest thing as well in terms of like, like how did you guys survive the D2C or how are you guys fitter? How are you guys adapted? What have you learned? I know it's all about testing and stuff like this. So take me through the one, two, three principles of D2C like that you guys think about that most other brands don't think about. Interesting. I think the DTC game is like completely changed even since like when we sort of started. Like, I mean, the CACs now for most of these brands are just like... Again, I'm asking dumb questions here for listeners.

2:21:24So CAC is customer acquisition. Cost, yeah, exactly. Oh, shit. Yeah, well done. Well done, my friend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's basically how much you spend on Facebook. That's what you're paying to acquire a customer. Okay. So yeah, you're going to spend a load of money on TikTok, on Meta, on YouTube, Google, whatever it is. And essentially it's like, and the interesting thing is, is like a lot of the agencies out there as well, when they measure the CAC, they would talk about like all the customers you've acquired divided by what you spent that day. And then they would provide the CAC. We actually only look at it on new customer revenue.

2:22:02So does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So we look at new customers. So we have a very honest look and view on D2C and performance marketing and growth marketing, all that kind of stuff. I have no idea how anyone's surviving out there in terms of like knowing. I've seen lots of other businesses and what the CACs are and how high they are now. Why have they gone up so much? Because Metro have increased the price of the ads or like? I think it's because so many brands are just like, you know, I think it's a pandemic. I think everyone's trying to do a startup and the quickest way to acquire customers is meta.

2:22:36Instagram has probably the most attention. It has more of a mature audience maybe than TikTok. TikTok's much younger. So I think like Gen Z moved from trend to trend. They're not particularly loyal. Whereas I think maybe Instagram followers are. I think you've got more of a female audience on Instagram. Something like YouTube. And I think women like to adopt things quicker than men, particularly in our category as well. and I think women are the ones getting men to try our products. I think we find that, you know, we've got a lot of mothers, we've got a lot of women to try our products. You've got a massive male audience, don't you?

2:23:09We do, yeah. Yeah, because that's what I did a supper club with Giles. He was saying that. Did he say that? How did he know that? You told him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're like probably 70 % female. I think it's just changing now. I mean, like, I remember all guys would talk about is like, what protein they're taking now. And now, you know, men are more into like nootropics and how can I, they're more aware of mental health, how can I make more mental performance as well? You've also got people like Andrew Huberman. Do you know Andrew Huberman? Yeah. I mean, rhetorical question, my friend. I think what's interesting is like, and I kind of call it the Joe Rogan.

2:23:45I know you're going to want to cut in it. No, let me just say, can I just say, he's had a lot of airtime now? Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, yeah. All right. And all I was going to say, because you spoke at these, when you speak about - I'll play with my crystal mushroom. When we, when we, well, I think that this is personal. This is also from data. What are you doing? Nothing. Okay. And that is a conversation we had offline. The one thing I really don't like about DTC is this concept of manipulation versus inspiration. Yes. And I say manipulation because, you know, it's a Gary V kind of S kind of approach about, you were talking about getting attention on this like clonk, clonk, like dopamine jackpot machine.

2:24:27and I think I don't I don't think it's fair sometimes and how DTC works on the idea to get that attention like push to sell push to sell using certain languages certain words to stop someone in their tracks manipulation I just said manipulation versus inspiration yeah I think we're a different time now I think there's a zeitgeist that's going to move into this revolution and wellness where people invest into storytelling people invest into long more more long-form content. If we are true to the heart of a business that's built on community and loyalty, we have to be true to the idea of the story that we tell.

2:25:00I think DTC has its place if you want a one-time purchase, but to retain that same person is very hard. I don't think it's that easy to kind of retain customers. I think what I said in the beginning, if someone's willing to subscribe to us, we have every reason in our playbook to offer you the education of the why of subscribing because remember i was saying the very beginning like over you know those days of like sometimes they may take 30 days to kind of feel the efficacy and that's based on lifestyle but if that's the case you're asking someone to um be patient wait for that wave to kind of enjoy the experience so our position is you know very simple as d2c is concerned as an opinion i'm not saying i'm not saying it's you may may think different this is where the brothers made different yeah but um the idea of bringing appointing someone like uh tara swartz our chief science officer is a status as we spoke about this authority is education and it's about um building habits so having someone that can talk beyond the idea of the dc model of why habits are so important why you need to invest into this because there's a there's a it's a marathon of an experience it almost goes back to you know what we're saying right at the beginning and what i'm picking up from you is it's like we're actually you know you said the mushrooms are this foundation in the ground yeah it's like in terms of applying this to businesses uh actually you're thinking about principles much deeper and which allows you not to go all in on d2c and be like water and be flexible so actually the cat's going through the fucking roof yeah we can still we've got these foundations with tara the authority the status of still and mccartney we can just pivot that to retail i think it's really smart like yeah but those foundations you know but i'm actually not necessarily saying that we are like we don't have an issue with things like that i'm not talking about in terms of cac and metrics like that we don't actually have that same issue um because i think that to your point is like brands are sort of chasing this growth marketing performance d2c game and they're all playing the same thing right and they've got the same levers which is like you know discounting for example whereas i think we've built something that means that we're not what's the word like um we're not imprisoned by that because we've built this brand right yeah so people don't just discover us for an ad you know like you know we have a truck that drives around we have a concession at selfridges we have some of the biggest names in the world that are just you know posting us on social media you know like bear grills who invest did you mention he invested in the business yeah how did you meet so you met bill grills at the lake yeah go on tell me tell me about that story and then actually what are the osmosis lessons you've picked up from him yeah you remind me of osmosis one more time because i think i can nail this one is like okay so bear grills says to be a leader so you've got normal lessons osmosis lessons so bear grills to be a leader is like yeah lead by example osmosis could be like a lesson that like could be like how he treats the waiter when no one's looking you know stuff that you kind of just pick up from from being around him you know there are four principles that um i personally have adopted but we've adopted in dirty yeah um via bear that i'll come to with our tribe that we you know meeting every morning um at the lake it's a wonderful experience not to repeat the kind of process of the experience i've spoken to you about just i really would love you to come down yeah yeah uh he was very curious because he just saw all these guys and girls together like we were drinking dirty we were like celebrating chest pumping there's a lot of rigged city there there's a lot of lovely women out there as well and one of the tribe members said simon come and meet bear and bear was standing next to the outdoor shower at the serpentine lakeside uh you know sporting speedos and a mustache um that guy can wear anything it's kind of effortless on him the guy is is built like just such a brilliant masculine energy about him and he knew about dirty at the time when i saw when i saw him and he was so curious about what is all this like they've got so many people here why they're here and i told him well it was because with you know dirty is built on the principle of this community and then so he joined in we went for a swim and um after the swim we exchanged details and i met him the next time and we would go back into lake again but we'd have these fascinating conversations what's one of the most interesting things you've talked to him about um i spoke to him about how about him him meeting shara his wife and and how important love is the love he has for faith the love he has for community the love he has for good food with building building resilience that everything one thing i really love about bear is what you see on the front on the cameras what you get on the back he's behind the scenes he's uh he he really lives and personifies that hero kind of character that's out there he's also in it with us right he's not a silent investor at all uh and he's bringing a lot of like the resilience he probably gets from like being out on adventures and the jungle and climbing these unbelievable mountains and he's bringing that into the culture of dirty what's he taught you about resilience that you wouldn't find elsewhere well i think his principles never give up well there's every there's speak about the the really dark moment he had when he was climbing everest um the dark you know he gave me a present at speech day in like 2006 no way yeah mental parachute like like a book, I think.

2:30:24Okay. Yeah. One of his talks or what? Sorry. No, no, I was at school. I was a little kid. At my school, they used to get for speech day. It's quite a wanky thing, but they get like a guest speaker in. So we had, one year we had Trevor McDonald. Yeah. You know, the news report. Yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is why I didn't really respond. Yeah. And then one year we had Bear Grylls and I got a little prize and he gave it to me. It's mad. Yeah. How fascinating. Well, I really need a toilet. Yeah, go for it. I could carry on absolutely or the corner behind the bush the part where people fast forward yeah let me so Bear had a wonderful relationship with his father that he lost when he was very young right how old was he?

2:31:07I think he was in his early 20s when he lost his father that's a painful time to lose someone I can imagine I've read it you know I've read many of his books and listened to his podcasts and sing with him it's amazing you know when you're in your darkest time you're like you know to pick yourself up even when you're failing he's taught me this idea of always you know picking yourself up i think for any entrepreneur listening into this idea is there's certainly going to be more failures than success but then maybe the idea is fail and fail quick fail hard then and then pick yourself up and go it's it again i think we could be too hard on ourselves i think certainly building a company like with my brother it's i certainly have the advantage of doing my brother so i can be vulnerable i think this is a personal thing being a man and being vulnerable in a business of being a CEO or a leader in some capacity can be hard to be vulnerable.

2:31:50But I have that vulnerability in my brother as much as I have that vulnerability of Bear. He's a great mentor. He's a great guide. But the principles that he has in life... Yeah, what are they? Everything I spoke about, this idea of never giving up a community, his family, it's incredible the way the love, the support there. It's like Ironclad has used that word so rightly before. He's got this amazing connection with them. And I think at one point in entertainment TV, it took him away from them. And it's the one thing that I think is like his anchor to life. And also the idea of good nutrition and that idea of faith has been a big part of him.

2:32:26You can probably see the way he kind of presents that. But you can see some people are inspired by him. So for me to kind of build that connection, I had no agenda. Actually, by all of our relationships, and he spoke about Benedict and there's a few other people that have gravitated towards us we've never really had an agenda it just it actually became bear asking that i want in i get everything you're doing let me be the spear and the shield to kind of help you find that north star so we can go global that is a status for a young brand that wants to kind of get to all these different territories around the world to have that kind of and also it's it's also a talent um who is ubiquitous it doesn't matter what territory you take that name into he's very well known from you know from india australia america middle america any any d2c brand uh it's great to have um amazing traction but to go into america which is massive land grab but to go to middle america when you're going to go into retail and all these other kind of partners i think having someone like him it really helps the conversation become uh easier and influence the decision on the basis that they have that status of someone like that so um and by the way um i don't think it's it's that easy to bring on um a celebrated artist in some capacity to a brand but what it does do it does expedite the growth because there's that sense of um trust i think yeah how because that's what like how are you guys you guys seem to have this magnetic pull to pull people into your i get it because like you're just super passionate about what what you're doing but like when you're almost at the art of the deal like what how what's your approach to doing to doing deals like you've done multiple deals again i'm asking this selfishly like i'm going through a stage now where i'm i'm at the table with some deals potentially with this like there's some really exciting stuff like i'm trying to work out you know how to skiv through what's a shite deal you know because i i believe um distractions masqueraders opportunities and like new shiny toy syndrome kicks off and i'm like is this actually gonna do it but like yeah how do you say yes or no to potential partnerships and deals like i think that's such a good situation it's such a good point to sort of bring up because i think when you build a brand like this which is quite magnetic that's exactly what i just said to your brother like you've got a magnetic pull no way before you walked in the room absolutely yeah it is it's very magnetic and people want to like firstly what we're doing is very like relevant right now it's healthy it's mushrooms about feeling good it's positive it's good for the environment it's good for humanity.

2:34:58So it ticks all the boxes of a brand that wants to like tap into that. And then obviously we have like incredible brand equity, right? And amazing reach and amazing community. So we're quite attractive to a variety of different brands. So it's quite easy for us to kind of like want to say yes to everything because everything sounds exciting and everything feels like it's going to move the brand along. But you have to start to think about like, you know, we're now in a situation where given where our ambitions are it's not about like just doubling the business it's like 10xing the business the the thing is is that you can be and i think it's also being learning not to be reactive like and it's like and and not having fomo right like oh if we don't do this partnership or this event or this deal then we're going to miss out and maybe someone else will do it instead or like yeah and and maybe it can be phenomenal and we've missed out on it so it's getting rid of that phone moment it's also going like is this is this deal going to take us to the next level are we wasting team resource money on something that might be a vanity project um and we've done a lot of vanity projects and we've done stuff we probably didn't need to do you know the other thing as well is like you know we're getting into these small like retail partners is that necessarily going to change a dial not really but but whatever one thing i do like about that is stepping away you talk about omni channel and stepping away from you know seeing yourself you know seeing us on meta for example i've always loved the idea and i know you agree on this is the idea how many times you subliminally see the brand before you make the conscious decision to buy yeah so the idea of outside advertising outside being in that small uh place on also when grove or yeah but also like there's something about saying like seeing the brand everywhere but people think not knowing like does it actually work like does it actually taste good like you're not by appearing in these places doesn't necessarily meet it's driving the brand forward you still got to like create these like immersive you know if you go to our selfridges concession there's brand ambassadors there who are permanent and it you know we've thought about like the apple store and you have the apple geniuses you know we have our little dirty geniuses and they're there they're so passionate about the product and the brand they know everything about it i mean i go and i'm like wow i didn't even know that yeah and they're there they're educating they're informing they're giving you samples you get to taste how bloody great these gummies are despite they've got no sugar in it and that that is more yeah i like that is more important than just like getting on a shelf or appearing in a store being in a minibar or being on this menu or whatever it is if that makes sense i i think now we're very very selective and I think like you know you're running in the beginning we were running 100 million miles an hour to get to where we are now now everything has got to be about intention like every time we show up it's with consideration and intention and it's got to like align with the brand I get but what I suppose but how do you say no to like I get like from your part from my perspective it's like I've got a lot of good shit on the table like not sorry that sounds really it's not arrogant one minute one minute sorry yeah yeah and i was cut back in i've got uh an array of opportunities on the table yeah and like and it's just trying to be like which and i believe you've got to go all in and i really believe like one of my principles and i think it's just all in focus on like one thing and just fucking go for it so it kind of i don't want to get pulled or distracted from keep the main thing the main thing and but then it's like but then so there's that part then equally as you know i think you're you built well you're you're a fool and you're building a house of cards if you're just in terms of i think focus in terms of what you're trying to do but in terms of a business i think having multiple revenue streams is smart right yeah yeah goes down then you've yeah 100 but it's like so i'm in this situation now i've got potential options here and i'm like is this just if i go and chase that shiny shiny toy am i getting massively distracted yeah um if i go and do that one does it take away do i lose you know so that's like how have you know because i'm sure you've had that on the table multiple times like how have you uh i was gonna say why when you say the shiny toy is there is there one that's more vanity than it is productivity or longevity or value to the company just understand the context of your point when you say shiny toy when i say shiny toy um probably all of those things like it brings in revenue it would it would bring in revenue but it's like you're trying to work out would it would i double if i double down on existing would i make more revenue yeah is this what i'm trying to say or is it like yeah i understand yeah i understand what you're saying and actually in fairness i don't think i would know the answer uh the two to that i think um i think you just have to have these guiding principles you've got to know exactly what strategy is and where you're going and you've got to like measure it on like is this going to help me get there or is this just a nice thing to do because it brings in a little bit of money in the short term and it might help the brand be perceived in a new way or access a new audience but you've got to really focus on like what is the goal at heart and it's very it's very difficult because you basically have got to say no you might have to sacrifice the short term for the long term it's like it's very hard but you just got to be so like dogged in what you believe in and following i did see um does that make sense it does it see uh there was a wonderful documentary of steve jobs was it when he went to next what's it called the company went to the computer he started next yeah sorry when he started is it called next um but he it's a wonderful documentary and for anyone listening in it you have to see it because you see the true essence of of steve jobs maybe it's important to see that part rather than the perception from others but also there's walter isaacson who really shone a great light on him but he would always do the pros and cons and everything and it sounds such a simple thing to say and i'm even saying it sounds so simple cliches are cliches for a reason yeah yeah and and everything was about problem solving and actually getting down to the core uh principles of the why and if it if it is that one it doesn't look like it's it's gonna um make the revenue you want or whatever you want in in that short period of time is it worth the risk just still taking it because it's still in spirit of the thing that you passionately believe in the principle of what you're building for example and he kept doing it i was like it's simple but it makes so much sense they at least do pros and cons and get to the point by the way i think as as solving problems i think that's something i I do but I think you do it really well as well how do you guys solve problems well we're doing it now I mean the idea of taking something that's so misunderstood yeah that's so good for you and then retelling the narrative and using different principles to kind of storytelling things again that's Will's story he says we're that we're a homo negan species which we're a base means we're a storytelling species yeah which is like that's how we learn and educate everything to be around fires that we shared stories from like what happened today to me and that's and also that's strange knowledge um the the natura guy interviewed last week we i was talking about when did restaurants start the genesis of restaurants it was about 400 years ago and restaurant means rest stop and we basically got into the and he was basically we were sort of saying that those are our little campfires yeah today you know you go to fucking and it's but it's that that the place to yeah Yeah, to tell stories.

2:42:10And I think, yeah, how do you, what's the art of telling a good brand story? Well, sitting with people like Merlin Sheldrake, who wrote the book Entangled Life. Entangled Life. Which is all about fungi. And it became a global bestseller, translated to 20 different languages. How on earth does a book about fungi become a book that's on people's bookshelf like Rick Rubin's book? Like people put it up against Rick Rubin's book because he is making the unseen scene. How does he do it? Through storytelling, through analogies, through the art of creating this fairy tale of like really allowing you to visually see the thing that he's talking about.

2:42:51Because, you know, when we open up this conversation and speaking about the fungi kingdom, it is... Sorry. Yeah, keep going. it's so the more you and i love what andy says here the more you learn the more you learn about the fungi kingdom the less it makes sense without them so but it's it's the art of him taking the complications of the biology of it and using analogies to tell stories that's exactly what he does and it's no difference to what um dr tara does in neurology she tells stories about these different like researchers and that's what saying before people lean in more to that than they do in statistics i think andrew huberman recently um did a study on the idea of of storytelling versus um yeah i mean this is i've got a quote this is i have a low list of quotes but this is from will the war of the war for mem for memory can be won with story but that's but that story must make us feel something yeah it's like i think another part of a great brand is you occupy and that's what I said like I think again the other genius is that you are the category like I mentioned my mates who's in fucking recruitment doesn't know anything about all these brands I was like I'm interviewing dirty straight away the mushrooms it's like I think association brand has to occupy that one percent of someone's brain and it's like it's how can you just fast fast fast forward your I was I was um I'm not going to self-promote myself now what I was doing last week running 100 kilometers along the Pennine Way for Dirty.

2:44:23We're doing this Dirty Trek documentary, which is all about storytelling. It's all about building a resilient spirit about going on 100 kilometers in three days. Fucking hell, mate. Thank you so much. Yeah, yeah. But I did it with someone else. And I just want to show you, there's this wonderful image here. If I can get it here. So this is the summit of one of the hills we climbed. It's called Jacob's Ladder. Wow. And it's the metaphor of climbing the ladder to heaven because you need utter strength and resilience and belief that you'll get to the top. But when you get there, it's like, it's an amazing feeling.

2:44:58I got to the top of Jacob's ladder. We'll finish in soon, Rich. Yeah. And this lady, you saw my T-shirt, she said, in a Welsh accent, I'm not going to do the Welsh accent. She said, fuck, I love dirty. I'm in the middle of fucking nowhere, right at the top. We're two and a half thousand above land. And there's only about seven or eight people there. Her, a dog and a daughter, me, the cameraman, a guy called Santiago Rodriguez, who's my comrade in this race. And the fact that someone who in the middle of nowhere from Wales in the Black Mountains, where she's from, that she passionately loves Dirty.

2:45:39That's mad. So we are, and basically she said, to me, it's cool on camera, it's on the documentary by the way, that the reason she loves Dirty so much is because you make it accessible. It is a high price point. You make it accessible because she loves the facts, she loves the stories and she says I believe in your product versus believing in other products because the whole, going back to D2C, it's like, it's this real forceful selling kind of concept and I think people want more than just being sold. Yeah, I think it's connecting. I think the thing for us is like, what is our story like you said it making accessible i think what we've done is we've we've discovered functional mushrooms ourselves eight years ago we've realized it's transformed our lives and now we want to take that experience to everyone and i think there's a real i think storytelling is about emotional connection and i think people are creating their own emotional connection with these products i mean like simon says when people respond particularly if they're a customer the way they respond to this brand like oh my god dirty you know it's changed my life i'm so much more focus i don't go a day without it like i take it everywhere with me i mean i remember even like i sat down a few months ago with like rita ora who's like a subscriber and she said all her friends laugh because she takes it to restaurants and she'll add i think she adds the dirty cacao into what does the cow cacao one do like well yeah the main thing with cacao is it has a mushroom called reishi and reishi reishi is known as so good about reishi basically it's known so basically is known as the queen of mushrooms or the mushroom of immortality is what you speak even the stories in the actual fucking mushroom yes oh my days yes brilliant yeah yeah so well we'll tell you a few stories about reishi but why people love it because it's known to sue stress and anxiety it's known to really calm the mind right um and great before bed down regulates the nervous system oh so i should be boshing that before bed oh yeah i mean from a sleep perspective it's been transformative for people i mean even like registered insomnia really oh because i can't sleep no no mate i've studied sleep wow yeah really the natural ways and what reishi can do is absolutely phenomenal and everyone i've given to even someone who used to work here who used to inject herself i don't work with what to sleep i quad drop um magnesium that's that's fine yeah no that's 400 milligrams right i don't know but i still don't sleep yeah yeah trust me the ratio you will try off this i've got some amazing tips the dirty cow the reason we designed that is because reishi as a mushroom on its own is extremely polarizing in terms of taste because we sell the powders on the extract powders on their own and reishi is so powerful but its compounds are very bitter so we created the dirty cacao as a way to give it more of a chocolatey taste but obviously cacao is super like good for you as well right it has polyphenols in it um and then we also add lion's mane in it so it's still good for your focus lion's mane is actually good for your REM so what reishi does is it improves your quality of sleep it doesn't put you to sleep it's not like melatonin you have it and 30 minutes later you're out yeah yeah yeah improves your quality so you you basically stay in all your cycles a lot longer you'll have you know longer state and deep longer in REM longer in non-REM so you know if you wear an aura ring right ever since I've been consuming reishi I get like an unbelievable even close it's close to brian johnson no no come on i like average like over 90 he's 100 um so yeah yeah it's incredible and the dirty cow's delicious there's no sugar in it i want to say but there's i was gonna tell you a story about rishi no let's keep going i was gonna say we'll wrap this up shortly you guys have got to go no no no no fine i know i'm enjoying i'm enjoying this i'm enjoying you really i am i am i think you've by the way if i could say you've got an incredible gift oh thanks you've got an incredible gift to listen i love the questions you ask i love how impassioned you are to to listen it's so nice for us to kind of have a platform to talk to anyone you know yeah about what we do but i think it's a very rare gift you have so thank you i really appreciate that yeah thank you you're an erudite no you really do um so it's just the fact that in so i won't put the date down but the there were these incredible emperors that in the chinese it was in it was in the yang tang dynasty which is 200 ad and i don't know if you know this but There's this wonderful story of this deity coming down to the earth.

2:49:53And she has two in her hand. She has reishi in the left hand and she has cannabis in the right. And she presents this to the royalty who were ruling the land at the time. And then there's wonderful, if you look in the palaces in some of these Chinese temples at the moment, reishi is carved there. And there's images of great emperors on their cloths. This is the thing. They call it the noble mushroom because it was a symbol of status. because basically like those that are noble or royal they believe that ratio is so good for you because it's so good for your organs and particularly it detoxifies the liver that it can actually they believe they used to believe they still believe it prolonged their life so and also cleared their mind so essentially when they were fighting wars they can make clear decisions and also prolong their life they can live along and this is sorry this is the ratio but the one thing back then we're just to finish absolutely is that like so it became but it was so scarce that they you know emperors would send out armies going looking for reishi and there's one story where they sent an army out and they found loads of reishi and they actually ran away they never returned they never returned to live off of it so this is the thing is is like when you talk about a status symbol is like we're taking like mushrooms are a status symbol um of the of the past and of the ancient world and we're bringing it into the modern age and that's why a mushroom appears on all our products because you know i'm just saying we're not wearing it on our tops right now the whole idea is like that represents status because it represents good health it represents longevity it represents a good healthy mindset and that's what we're trying to build as a brand at dirty and and the other thing is is i i love that two things one is that if any if any nobleman was ever seen with reishi they'd be killed instantly that's how rare it was now it's ubiquitous really the one thing yeah we'll mug you on the street with dirty now yeah so the one thing andy's made a great point by the way and i think it's a quite an important part in spirit of the disciple effect is the fact that um when do you remember insanity it was this uh this cd that you got and you went through this is way off topic no it's not yeah just keep going no no it's a six weeks program and if you completed it you got a t-shirt yeah yeah was it like a from off topic because and i'll tell you why because we used to live in la for a bit and if you wore the t-shirt it's like you you accomplished something but people would work proudly and it'd be something you acknowledge on the streets you know the jp morgan finishes have you seen those the round the oh you'll if you go and run right okay it's a finishing t-shirt it's a finishing t-shirt and it's more like it's more so that you know look at the size of my dick i work at jp morgan really yeah yeah yeah but it's a status symbol um you are you going to need to get you this will store book but like another thing he says is we need icons yeah and it's like because we find our the whole thing about stories are finding our identity in the story so it's like have you read joseph campbell's hero's journey he goes basically we need to find a hero and the hero is um this is what will store told me is he goes um we're all looking for heroes that's why in films we relate to the hero relates the hero struggles like fucking spider-man whatever his name is you know he's a bit of a gimp beforehand then he turns into spider-man we relate the underdog as well yeah we relate to that story and there's like loads of different stories but what will told me about what the role of a brand is is a brand should make your consumer the hero of the brand's story and the brand should act as the light figure so the light figure in storytelling is someone like gandalf it's someone like dumbledore someone who shows shows the hero the way so the guy the way you guys are doing this with bear or dr tara and then someone picks this up and you've got all the icons and stuff and it creates this sort of cult-like movement and um it's mad how you guys are doing that with with this and then you've got this rich architecture or tapestry of stories with um all the ancient yeah shit as well yeah that's so that's the storytelling mechanism which is so important for us to tell people really buy into that there's a sense of trust yes sorry you want to say no i'm just saying it's so true i never really thought it that way and i guess i probably would say it makes sense like the the subscriber the customer the community member is the hero and they've obviously going through struggles in their life that are health struggles and they're setting themselves on a challenge to overcome that and see the light and they go on this journey they find dirty that becomes the treasure and they bring it back home right to go and live that new way of life yeah because i think i think so many brands try and be the hero yeah actually what will was like is like no no you're the light figure yeah your consumer is the hero yeah and it's like just do it just do it we're leading by example yeah and uh but i and i'd say mushroom is the vehicle yeah mushroom is their enabler fine we need to talk about the final thing out of this five books man it's taking this fucking book yeah yeah yeah by by wind i mean old traditions present day traditions and family traditions of strategy what are some of the lessons from family from your family your mom your dad that you applied to running this massive thing so i think probably a few things i think my with my parents particularly my mom she believed in us from a very young age and i think anything we wanted to do she said just do it like go for it do it and i think never shelved it and i think yeah same my mom to be fair really yeah bless i from what you said to me i really felt that yeah yeah yeah she was like well mate one at one point before i did the podcast i was making peanut butter cups yeah what your own business oh mate i didn't sell one i was at this little shitty market and i didn't sell one thing but they were up with me making these cups all night and then basically i was driving and then um i had a massive laundry basket full of all these cups i didn't sell and i was driving to a house party so i thought fuck this i just got high on my own supply no way yeah yeah yes way what was your mom's uh part in that whole experience she was like yeah fuck it just keep going go on to the next thing and it just eventually but yeah great medicine so lucky to have that sort of yeah behind you to just like yeah to tell you what to like to guide you and yeah and i i think like you know we didn't you know we didn't come from like you know we didn't have a trust fund we didn't come from means so we've really had to work hard to get to where we are and where we're going yeah what's that where did you guys grow up was eduware eduware in northwest london yeah then thenst albans yeah yeah yeah um and um but i think any time you know our parents could they would give us the opportunity right so anything that could improve our life self-development make us more confident i mean i remember like our our mom sent us to sylvia young which is you know the theater yeah yeah well amy winehouse to do a lipper went did she go there no rita aura went there like did she did she um yeah she does yeah she loves dirty um but so does rita yeah so um yeah and i think it was interesting as kids going into central london on our own and going to this like theater school which we went to the saturday school so it's normal school during the weekend and you know like they were quite hard and you those teachers like if you walked in a room with your head down they say get out and walk back in wow if you dropped your tea when you explain you know they pick on whoever was the newest in the class they would pick on them like what did you do this weekend and in front of the whole class you don't know anyone you've got to explain if you dropped your tea you know they would have it in for you and it kind of built you how to operate in these high pressured environments and you know talk publicly and and how you know yeah we didn't become like actors or like musical stars but we took the tours we took the tours yeah we took those tours of like confidence and self-belief and being able to speak for what you believe in and and i think our parents really made sure we got those early lessons um and had all these experiences and and early on as well so that when we went out into the world you know everything felt quite familiar and i think that level of self-belief and confidence we had is the reason why you know you know we went and built feeling nuts right from such a young age right how old were you guys when you did that so we started the process probably when was about 19 years old you i was 19 no you weren't you're younger okay well younger torven's arena yeah i mean it started where we were going to do we were going to do a show in central was a little fucking local theater and it ended up happening we closed down times square and we did it at the o2 arena you're 16 channel four we did the show we started we started yeah so sick but that's that whole idea of like you know believing you are your future self and I think that comes really from what our parents gave us and also they're the kindest sweetest people in the world.

2:58:36They really are. What do they do before? So our mum was more in media and creative side so she had a model agency. I remember you saying yeah. She had a PR agency. And dad was an estate agent. Yeah. But by the way dad was always well respected. He was a traditional man and he used to look after an estate in Edgeware called Cannes Drive Estate and And there were other estate agents who wanted that estate because that's where all the top properties were, great people and stuff. But everyone came to dad. And he was just completely and utterly traditional. He never moved with the times of marketing.

2:59:11Like, if you went into his office, it still looks like it was in 1960. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything was on paper. So I interviewed Rick Stein's son, Jack Stein. Oh, yeah. And I went down to Cornwall to do it. And, like, I didn't realize that they just, like, come to this location. And they were like, oh, this is Rick's office. That's where Rick fucking sits. I was like this is mental I love my food yeah exactly the office looks like one of those things you'd see on like an advertisement from like the 19 oh yeah piles of paper 70s paper yeah yeah yeah I was like this is so sick yeah it's absolutely mad I remember like because what would happen is someone would come into the office and then he'd be like they'd be like you know what we're looking for a four-bedroom detached house this is our price range so he'd get out a card and he'd write the name their budget and then he'd probably give them some like details on paper of the property and then he'd write it down and when they come back and they say oh you know we're already registering my name is you know alex cohen or something and he'd go through to see and he'd bring alex cohen out and then he'd have literally everything written down and he kept it because he didn't i think there's one thing about like you know like sometimes people previous generations i think they sort of they prop up the past and they demonize the future and that's one like lesson that I've learned probably as a result probably what happened to my dad and his his business what happened well no just in terms of like he was commanding an entire market in northwest London and then something like the new guys came along you know the internet came along right move email google like I whatever was going on there and for me it's like constantly like you know never resting on your laurels right well that's another another thing is like you one of the things I've taken from you guys is be able to you know good surface pick good way you guys can spot the zeitgeist changing yes 100 and we already have by the way yeah like we already how like so is that like a thing how like well well i think it's you you answer afterwards but i think it's being very culturally aware like we're very attuned with culture and what's going on in the world where do you think it's going then next like not necessarily just with this but like in general but how is culture changing if i start saying that then you'll know where we're taking the brand i i will i will say is this is what this podcast is i don't want to give away the secrets you know i'd say that at the moment every single like i felt like we went out there and the way we're creating content where we're building this brand was like one of a kind and now every day i see another brand pop up i'm like are you kidding me they've stolen this from us the website looks like this the content looks like this like and i remember saying how do you deal with that like because i've had that as well where people try and copy your stuff well we're already isn't it a compliment or it's no i think that's just that's the nice putting nice bow around yeah various things but i think if i think the difference between us to be honest like for me is like like if you look at like humans like if if we didn't if if novelty didn't exist we would still be living in caves and and instead like you know we're sending rockets to the moon we're crisscrossing the skies and planes like we're constantly I mean it's unbelievable when you turn on the news and like and you see what's going on in terms of AI like they just sent Katy Perry to like I know that was very controversial but like it's unbelievable where the world's going it's because we don't like to sit still like you know we have an experience we get bored and we want the next and I think we're very much like that and we and we represent the consumer in that way and I think we're like whatever we're creating now that's different and unique and it's innovative loads of brands are going to catch up with us i think that even though they're doing it i don't think it comes from a genuine space i think most people in our category in there because they see a trend they see an opportunity and they want to make a load of money they're not necessarily building a community they're not they're not necessarily building love for their brand and i don't think they're going to keep their customer because they probably came because it was discounted or it was cheaper or they said this feature was better like people are buying into dirty because it represents something that's beyond themselves the way that they want to be and we every time we did something new we were like all right we've got a few months to do this right now and everyone's going to be doing that it's happening every single time the wellness the wellness market right now everything everyone's saying the same everyone sounds the same everyone's copying each other and we are currently building a new mountain over here everyone's kind of climbed the mountain we feel like we built and now we're going to build another mountain and i think what we're creating is going to it's going to be what is it i won't i won't obviously it's offline i love that like my biggest inspiration of the beatles i love the beatles and like if you listen to their first album they did it in nine nine years which is crazy but if you go ironically to when they were like doing a lot of shrooms and stuff in lsd but like their first was all like happy clappy fucking i mean the songs are escaping me but then you go into like revolver which is our most fucking mental album of all time but it's like as soon as you're doing one thing rip it up yes let's get the up lads because yeah we've been going way longer than i thought we thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much

3:04:56牢呑哪玉