Ben Branson (Pt.2) Seedlip Founder and Father of Alcohol Free Movement: How Seedlip ACTUALLY Exited To DIAGEO for Millions (£), Neuro Divergent Brand Building Principles, Embracing Tension, Global vs Local, Micro vs. Macro

0:00Koyako is a Japanese noodle bar located in Hackney London offering a fast paced dining experience inspired by Japan's train station eateries It specializes in freshly made udon noodles and rich dashi broths. The menu is insane. A rich variety of hot and cold udon dishes, donburi rice bowls and Japanese small plates like karas chicken. I hope I've said that right. Also some banging seasonal vegetable tempura. Koyeko brings authentic Japanese comfort food right to the heart of East London. They've got two locations, one in Hackney, one in Soho in the city. And look, if you want to get your mitts on this absolutely insane grub, use this promo code on your Uber Eats app, Koyoko40.

0:45The details are as follows. You're going to get 40 % off, up to 15 quid off, when you've got a minimum basket of£20. This offer, this wonderful offer, expires on the 28th of July. Get your mitts on Koyoko. Thank you so much. how to get your challenger brand into more supermarkets and increase your current distribution in half the time range reviews are happening right now right this millisecond sainsbury's waitrose tesco ocado co-op all looking for new banging challenger brands don't miss this range review and have to wait another six months it's long don't lose precious self-space your competitors don't let your buyer pick another brand just because you didn't have a grand slam deck.

1:27Northstar Category Management help you create banging supermarket pitch decks so good that buyers find it impossible to say no to. Challenge your brands like Perfect Ted, Trip, Bulbinko, Dash all love Northstar. Look, I am so confident in Northstar transforming your brand. We've got an exclusive hungry offer. Your first month for free. Yes, free. Plus, we're going to give you a free 30-minute consultancy session to see how your brand is currently performing in category. Click the link in the show notes to book your consultancy session and thank me later.

2:01Hello, hello. This is a part of the Ben Brunson Megapod. So this is me interviewing Ben. Ben is an absolute legend and someone I've respected for a long time. He single-handedly pioneered the alcohol-free, no-to-low movement. Many moons go with Seedlip and has, yeah, basically been an inspiration for so many i think what he's going to do with mental health um neurodivergency um adhd and autism with this podcast in 20 it's going to be absolutely wonderful i think he's going to take real big leaps and bounds with that he's got season which is a bitters cocktail seasoning brand which is amazing um he's got pollen projects he's just such an inspirational guy and his way of thinking is is insane and he has this ability to hold two opposing things two tensions as he says all at once so he talks about the micro and macro of brand building so you can literally build a macro global brand by micro lee that's the right way of saying it focusing on a thousand true fans in the right cities around the world you don't that you just do that and the adoption curves are going to go boom um he has the ability to hold the tension of narrow and deep so go really deep and narrow in one home market but then actually lighting fires and small little embers and stuff in other markets.

3:19We talk about how he built the distribution, how he actually sold the business to Diageo, what that felt like when the money landed in a bank account. There's loads in this episode. You're going to absolutely love it. And yeah, please, as always, share it, ping it to someone who you may think finds it interesting and hope you enjoy. I've now got quite a bit of pressure where we start in terms of saying it's in a sense when I said the starting point is really important but I think and you so rightly talked about it on our last podcast albeit 15 minutes ago is of the different chapters of life whether it's season or um or uh seed lip or whatever before whatever after I would love to know if imagine Seedlip that journey was a film yeah what would be the closing scene let's pick a moment and what would the what song would you pick to go with that opening scene closing scene so the closing scene happens uh Yeah, like probably the first week of August 2019.

4:43And we are in the acquisition process with Diageo, which is nearly coming to the end. and then a family friend who was a shareholder in Seedlip died

5:03and yeah that was you know dreadful and stressful and suddenly needing to learn was it sudden death? yeah it was pretty sudden right and her husband Jono was also a shareholder so you had this sort of crazy scenario where um i'm on my knees literally because i'm i'm stressed i'm fucking scared i didn't know whether the deal was going to go through i didn't know what that meant i'm upset that karen's died you know her two best mates her husband and my dad who are business partners in Perlfisher the design agency are three of my shareholders and I've got no fucking idea what that means from a deal shareholding like how do you broach that subject with Jono when his wife has just died so sorry Jono was just just yet so Jono was an investor as well yeah so so seedlit began with me putting my own money in yep and then uh i had three shareholders my dad jonno and karen with you yep and they are the founders of pearl fisher the design agency uh karen and jonno were married karen died um and this is like you know the week two weeks before we were meant to complete the acquisition my wife was also pretty much nine months pregnant um and we were trying to buy a house and so all of this was happening yeah in this last scene of the movie um and fuck it it sort of gives me shivers to think back to it of just being like so terrified so out my depth all such grown up stuff whole mixture of things going on and we did the acquisition and Jono was amazing and Diageo were amazing and our lawyers were amazing and that process all got sorted out and yeah we did that deal on August the 6th and announced it on August the 7th.

7:38And ten days, nine days later, my daughter River was born and we completed on the house. So it was like this, I don't know, Seed Lippers of Film was kind of this, yeah, just very naive sort of, bit like a sort of the film that's coming to my mind is Coyote Ugly for some reason of like country girl no worldliness, no real kind of idea what's going on but passionate and maybe a bit of raw talent there something there diamond in the rough all that kind of stuff and then this whirlwind rollercoaster are happening onto the big stage and and then and i can't remember a coyote ugly film or how it ends but i imagine there's a there's a this is all going amazing and then there's the holy shit moment uh where things crash or crumble or you know will they won't they that kind of trepidation um And not that it's then all been happily ever after, but, yeah, a moment at the end where the dust settles and sort of the chaos kind of clears and there's a bit of calm and clarity.

9:16Yeah, that's how it... And what song would you pick to go with that? Did you ask me that when you asked me the question? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, the first thing was the film. Yeah, the song.

9:32The one that immediately springs to mind is Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve. That's when he's walking through the walls, isn't it? Yeah. That's a beautiful thing to pick as it's... That is what has come to my brain. Yeah, and bittersweet, the bittersweet feeling of selling a business, selling a brand. And then I think what we've talked a lot about today is this grit. your hope needs grit grit needs hope whatever way of saying it um yeah that's super vivid so karen passed away what would you say to karen if you was sat next to her today she didn't get to see the things she'd invested in what would you say to her karen was a force and a incredible lady and a non-conformist and a challenger.

10:23And she had a big passion for challenger brands and creating her own brands and doing things differently. And so I think now with launching, I'm going back to the beginning and I'm launching another startup. um that's designed by pearl fisher um and yeah challenges the sort of status quo and looks to modernize and disrupt i think i hope she'd be yeah i think she'd be really proud and and i kind of feel like she'd be sort of there going yeah that's what the fuck can do you know how do you it's sort of everyone listens a lot of people listen to this business this business this podcast because they want to exit a business right but a lot of people don't know what the fuck to do where to start how it happens what like how does did they actually come to you do you go to them how much revenue and sorry like we can always edit out but i'd rather really want to go into the gory details because i get asked to go into the gory details yeah what revenue are you at how do you make the valuation was it there's a lot i'm sort of barraging you fucking things here mate but um maybe start with like did you approach the agio did they approach you when did they approach you so i think um it starts even before that with just being really really clear it's not it i don't think it's as simple to go into a you know starting a food and drink brand thinking binary do i want to sell this or do i not want to sell this for me it It was kind of, it was, why is that even a choice?

12:15And I am really aware that, I'm really aware of what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. And I'm really aware of where I get my energy and where I just don't get my energy. And I'm really good at the beginning. And I'm really good when it's risky and it's scrappy and it's chaos and it's stress and it's fast and it's frantic. And I'm really good at like setting the course. I'm not bad at course correcting, but what I'm not built for is scaling things. I'm not built for like, yeah, I'm just not built like that. And so that self-awareness was one half of the puzzle of like, okay, I'm really good at this first bit or I think that's where I am best suited.

13:11The second bit is kind of the sort of loftier fast forward the tape longer term thinking of just I want to make a big impact. and I want to kind of, I want to change things and I believe what I'm doing is more than a product and there's some debate and conversation and, you know, just societal norms to break down and, like, there's just something more here that's sort of a bit more, like, legacy and longer lasting change involved. It was probably about as sort of scrappy as that sort of thinking. And, you know, my great grandfather, he was an entrepreneur and he was knighted for his services to philanthropy and agriculture.

14:10And I've always sort of, you know, he invented stuff. Like I've always kind of held that in. What did he invent? uh the irony is that he invented at the time his invention kept people alive during the war now it's one of the cruelest inventions that probably was ever invented battery chicken farming so he invented a way to mass produce eggs and chicken at scale owning and creating the whole supply chain and the the kind of specifics of the actual batteries in cages that chickens are kept him so i'm sort of like and yeah he could he could produce a million eggs a week right during the war uh at a time when it was rations and all the rest of it so you know i talk about bittersweet symphony you're kind of like hey guys thank you so much for watching this video honestly means the absolute world to me um i'd be so grateful for a small fame please it is so hard on the youtube channel is so bloody hard um if you please enjoy these videos just click the subscribe button um more subscribers equals bigger guests bigger guests equals better conversations and hopefully you can learn more as you build your food drink brand thank you so so much well mate it's it's looking right in front of me right now dark and light and i think all a lot of everything like there's good and bad and everything i know we're quite philosophical today i've had my fucking diet coke but the there's good and there's there's darkness leads to light lightness leads to dark it's a it's a circular thing and it's like the the the creation that's that basically allowed us to be set opposite each other today is now further down the line something that's you know ravaging the supply chain but i think there's something in that and i think with you know not I know this both the drinks but what you said is there's a darkness and a light to things which is which is super interesting but so you're saying your grandfather you looked up to your grandfather yeah I did you did you ever have a your old man's Pearl Fisher that's was there ever a chip on your shoulder around that or like uh I just think everybody in my family worked themselves and And that didn't mean, that doesn't, and still doesn't mean everybody's entrepreneurs.

16:50And I kind of, I personally don't, I personally don't like connect with that word. I don't know. What founder entrepreneur? Yeah, I don't, I know like it's a job title and yes, I am the founder of Seedlip and I am the founder of Season and I'm the founder of Pollen Projects, our venture studio, and I'm the founder. of prism which is our charity like i'm lots of founders of lots of things um because i started them because i created them but i i don't yeah i don't know i don't necessarily associate with the kind of word entrepreneur and maybe that's partly because everyone in my family works themselves but no one would describe themselves as an entrepreneur you know my dad wouldn't describe himself as an entrepreneur um he might describe himself as a business owner um my my you know my dad's dad um uh was involved in you know building and creating and repairing and selling typewriters and stationery and he had his own shops this is as well as the chicken stuff no this is my grandfather not my great-grandfather so yes my dad's my dad's dad okay sorry we're bouncing around the family tree here Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all good.

18:14I've got, basically, I've got one side of my family in agriculture and farming. Yep. That's my mum's side. And my dad's side has been in, like, the rag trade, stationary design, brands advertising. And I, you know, it's no surprise that I kind of put plants in a bottle and create a brand, whether it's seed lip or season. I just put my upbringing together and out into the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the investment, I rewind back to the investment thing because I can't Diageo shoot me if I tell you anything financial. What I can tell you, though, is I didn't. I wanted to work with Diageo because they are the number one global premium spirits business in the world.

19:03and I it was really important to me that seedlet was grounded in that um credibility and the premium spirit space even though I didn't have any alcohol in it so that was really important I was like Diageo build amazing brands at scale in 180 countries I want to loftily and deludedly change the way the world drinks so i'm not going to do that on my own i need someone to help me do that and someone that's really good at that and i need to do the bit that they're not really good at so that was sort of my own way of doing the bargain and we went through their uh their accelerator program so distill ventures it's called um and that's basically a in very simple terms money from Diageo supports mentoring from the Distill Ventures team and then a sort of funding cycle that means you go back and you pitch for more money so you only need one investor in Diageo and Distill Ventures help get you ready for you know those funding cycles and preparing kind of investment pitches um and as part of that deal there is a exit if you hit certain triggers so can you say what those numbers were no i can't say what those numbers were um but we we did it in about half the time than you're kind of meant to so they They averaged sort of six, seven years for an exit.

20:49We did it in three and a half. And nearly twice as big as their usual exits. So it was, I remember presenting a slide to all these kind of really amazing senior people at Diageo where we were pitching for more money. And I was presenting this slide that basically said, we are growing far. This was maybe 18 months, two years in. we are growing faster than these brands who were at that same stage. What were those brands? Brewdog. Yep. Hendrix, Fevertree, Innocent. Name me any other brands and we were growing faster. It was kind of just, it was like fucking holding onto a rocket. And so I kept it, it gave us a North Star to aim for.

21:42And the irony was that it wasn't, hey guys, come and join this business. seed lip employees because we're going to sell it um it was hey guys if you buy into this vision and you buy into the this kind of scary dream as David Hyatt would call it um then everyone's getting shares so every you know 20 of my business went to the team whether you joined three months before acquisition or you joined you know employee number two um and that was really an open conversation so that helped give us an absolute north star of there's two steps on this journey first step is we need to get to this so that this big company are going to get hold of this brand and make it even bigger because we want to have a really big impact on socializing and the way people drink.

22:37So that was the sort of theory, I guess, behind it. And it all went, yeah, it all went very, very quickly. I had really good lawyers. I was the only person that liaised and dealt with Distill Ventures and Diageo. So I was the one point of contact on raising money. I was the one point of contact on performance i was the one point of contact on the legals and the deal and the rest of my team we got to 85 in our own sort of year three year four across guys people in six countries and three offices and emma who's now my sort of ceo on on season was my coo on seed lip so she was amazing at my we i protected everybody from all of that process so i'm i'm saying that kind of i guess to people listening watching if there's you know uh corporates involved big investors institutions uh exits um yeah i i i didn't want my team getting distracted at all by diageo or the deal process or the investment process so yeah totally protected everybody from that did they know there was going to be they must have known that kind of the exit it was lingering though yeah everybody everybody okay it was it was i kept kept nothing kind of uh yeah nothing was happening sort of behind closed doors and then sprung on people um what so that week sixth ballpark sixth of august 2019 karen's sadly passed away rivers almost born yep about to sell the business do sell the business bittersweet sympathy is kind of playing in the background yep what does it feel like when a seismic amount of money lands in your bank account again i ask this because some founders juliet from grenade will chase from tyrols said it was the worst day of their life it was a massive anticlimax i'll definitely say that it was uh i felt pretty broken really i felt so empty um yeah i'm saying all this thinking why the fuck am i launching a new fucking startup and we're gonna get onto that i felt i felt i I felt bruised and I felt battered and I, my focus was my family and my wife and our daughters.

25:28And, uh, you know, I went on, on paternity leave straight away. So I had seven months on paternity leave to like, you know, I'm not sort of dramatizing it to like, to heal. And cause I know, you've had plenty of people, you know, the rhetoric goes in the sort of world of food and drink and being a founder, like it's fucking brutal. It is brutal. It is like going to war. And I needed, you know, I'd done 600 days out of the UK in three years, you know, traveling, launching in 40 markets. Brutal, like brutal and doing it, doing trips that were just, you know ridiculous of like doing the nuts trip was was through london to amsterdam amsterdam to taiwan uh like you know two nights in taiwan then over to macau sorry where's macau macau near hong kong hong kong um you know two nights in the most ridiculous kind of crazy hotel you've ever seen world's 50 best restaurant awards um lots of activations account visits press uh then i went to singapore we did world's 50 best bar awards you know it's like two two nights there ride whiz with the distributor getting on a plane literally putting my hand luggage through security in absolute fucking bits crying because we just fucking realized we had like a million quid working capital hole that we discovered um but needing to get on a plane being on a conference call crying needing to get on a plane and needing to put you know being told to put my phone down and get on the plane and then going to Australia to go and do like a launch event in Melbourne and a trip to Sydney, then to Auckland, you know, one night down in Christchurch for a big event that we did, then back up to Auckland, then Auckland to LA.

27:49I mean, I'm exhausted fucking saying this, right? Why do you think it was... Because you drove that category forward. because you you drove that category forward but i've never heard of an example where it has that global ubiquitousness and that kind of just to the point where you're jetting around or not jetting around that's that's a romantic way of saying it is exhausting yourself like fucking crazy gallivanting around the world what i'm trying to get to why that it was with seed lip and that category on global so quick as you said you were at that point in the journey you were zonk's head of innocent zonk's head of brew dog zonk's head of um uh hendrix yeah one really simple reason uh social media and the community of top bars and restaurants and chefs and bartenders which is a community of let's say a thousand people right globally so in my head only a thousand people mattered oh oh you like that yeah well yeah i'm really like that getting a bit horny for that mate podcast is changing to horny not hungry yeah yeah have you read about a thousand true fans by kevin kelly no but i know the concept of a thousand true fans that's what i applied to this as well i'm do apply to this yeah yeah but that's so yeah because actually global global and local yep you know there's a thousand thousand people mattered and they weren't they weren't consumers and you know you gotta go rewind back to like when when seedlip launched there was bex blue on the shelf and that was about fucking it right yeah um and now there are over a thousand new non-alcoholic brands across beer wine spirits and kind of functional um and 80 of those have launched in the last three years right so it's like an explosion kind of territory and this is happening all over the world so um i we we wanted to sort of we wanted to hold this tension between between first move advantage, pace, and, you know, the kind of tastemakers, trendsetters, whatever you want to call them, that are in all the major capital cities and all around the world, right?

30:20And you've got, you know, things like the Michelin Guide and the World's Best Bar Awards and stuff like that as reference points. And you've got social media as this kind of congregation place where it used to be the case where, you know, you launch something in the UK or you launch something in the US and then five years later, someone in another country hears about it. And that is just not the case now. You know, that means you can have this sort of, you can, you know, I look at it with podcasts, right? people can listen to it from anywhere in the world so you can have this sort of if you've got something good that's that's got relevance there are amazing chefs and amazing bartenders in every city you know in the world and so then you're like okay so how where do they go to find stuff where do they talk where do they access information fuck and instagram is an amazing place where it's a news feed for no one wants to read trend reports and wait for a yearly fucking rundown this can happen instantly that's a bit close to me and so you want to find this yeah you want to find this this hold this tension between going narrow and deep and focused in a market and being first and lighting fires and and i think we held that tension um really really well and it's a it's a tension that we're gonna hold with season as well um because the best bars the best chefs they don't want to wait five years you know look at the way that the world can change what's mental is the fact and this is why this is just sick is is the fact you're building a global brand but thinking of a thousand people a thousand true fans and actually this is delicious for our listeners and we're going to talk about season of course shortly um is you only need to find the right people across in the right cities and you suddenly have global reach because those are the early adopters or the um uh you know the early adopters they'll share about it on social and actually i've thought about this with this podcast right because there's 8 127 sme food drink brands in in the in the uk we get more than that downloaded per month now okay so not that i've reached the market cap i was like okay i need to go and find the food drink brands in new york the food drink brands in america and that's and actually you can have a pretty global reach yeah but you do that in 10 cities for example yeah that's but what so what advice with this this holding two opposing things the global local yep uh first mover kind of depth and depth um is it you know smashing it in the uk but global like what kind of um amid that tension what are some of the wisdom or lessons you'd pass on to new brands i think the one of the big ones was we didn't launch in Hong Kong, Singapore.

33:36I'm trying to think of another example. Yeah, I mean, let's just take Hong Kong and Singapore. We didn't launch in those markets because we thought they were going to be huge, right? We launched it from a volume perspective. We launched in those markets because in Hong Kong, there's a high concentration of Michelin star restaurants, a high concentration of five star hotels, a high concentration of people going out and hospitality not being at home, but being out. And Singapore, you've got some of the best cocktail bars in the world. An amazing bar scene that's concentrated that the rest of much of the rest of the world looks to from a food and a drink perspective.

34:28And so all of our markets played a role. And some of those and the trick was understanding where where do we really invest in to go deep, to learn that is good for our P &L, that drives the business forward? UK, for example. Where do we want to light a fire that we only need to be a spark because actually being in those great places in that market will help drive the UK, for example. And then where do we want the slow? I'm using a kind of fire analogy here it seems which is what it is yeah yeah but which is what it is but then where do we want to pour gassing on growth there you go there you go and then where do we want to light light a fire that we know is going to take longer to properly fucking gather steam and momentum and that was the US for example so I think my advice would be and this is I guess our learning was being absolutely crystal clear on the role of a new market and it is okay that it's not the big volume driver you know I think that some of the received wisdom of kind of hey don't go to export too quickly and don't spread yourself too thin and don't go until you've like really proven what you know in one market and then go to another market and build it up that way in our case we slightly flied in the face of that with the real realistic understanding that we were launching in a market not because we wanted it to be big the it goes the narrative is you know get it going in the uk maybe another market that's when you're built to sell it and what you're actually saying there is go to where that thousand people are a thousand say 300 of them save argument's sake 500 are in London that doesn't necessarily mean that 250 are going to be in Manchester and 250 are going to be in Leeds in fact they probably aren't there so actually why try and build a brand in the UK if it's going to take you longer to get those customers around you're not going to buy uh alcoholic free gin like they'll be like i don't listen to a sparaging way but we're like what the fuck man yeah yeah actually they probably are in new york they probably are in tokyo they probably are in japan and actually this a thousand true fans thousand people small bonfires lead to big fires that's a really interesting reframe i remember i interviewed um adam wills founder of crosstown donuts and they actually have done this because of the this is pre-pandemic pre-pandemic um uh and it wasn't even interview i was just chatting to him but he was like we would rather open across town donuts in new york versus manchester versus brighton and i think it's a really interesting yeah go breaking against the grain like why back to what we're talking about my podcast if the curriculum's like you need two markets yeah why yes and you guys have broken that broken that rule in terms of what you can't do is is do that um a expecting every market to be big be uh every market costing a lot of money and having to really invest time money and people in lots of those markets because it's just not realistically going to happen and see you you have got to have the fundamentals in place of your core market you know you've got to kind of have you've got to have some of that foundation but all we've done is go seedlip gets into uh selfridges uh the fat duck the savoy um and rinds bar at the time dandelion so it's in the top cocktail bar the top restaurant the top hotel the top luxury retailer copycat that in any city in the world yeah i get i get it where like is it the new i was gonna say

38:50neanderthals neanderthals neophils like they're sort of first movers that the adopters i get that they're hanging out in these bars the fat duck i get that's where the nascent flames are beginning to kind of dance how again it got across the globe on the adoption curve what happens for it to then spread do you see what i'm saying i get i get completely get being in the right places where those neofils hang out what happens you know i mean i mean then you then you need you know you've got to have the right distributor in the market that understands that journey yep um that knows that you know self-just leads to the a smaller group and you know a nice hotel leads to oh they've got four other hotels and you know you you kind of you start broadening those distribution shoulders and then as is the case in the UK you're kind of like oh now we're in Waitrose and you know you sort of gradually brought and that's the pathway although maybe slightly different in different markets um and the US is its own kind of thing um but yeah that that pathway is sort of tried and tested right yeah and proven and distributors understand that i think that the the only thing i would say is you know because this is not the you know hey we we we can only start in these really top end niche places um is was very specific to seed lip because was no one was talking about non-al, no one was talking about moderation, no one had a fucking clue what a non-alcoholic spirit was, no one knew what distilling really was in a non-alcoholic context, and there was Bex Blue as a reference point, right, on the supermarket shelves.

40:50And I was nobody. Nobody knew who I was. I had no clue what I was doing. So the slightly more emotional aspect of this was, I am never going to say that Seedlip was amazing. I need everybody else to say that it's amazing. And then other people will think it's amazing. So I needed non-alc to be taken seriously. Yep. I needed there to be absolute credibility. And I was like, it doesn't matter how many times I tell people Seedlip's amazing and it's delicious with tonic. People don't have to listen. but you try and tell me that something's not delicious if I tell you that the fucking fat duck and Selfridges food buyer and this five-star hotel and this journalist you try and say that they're not right you know you you kind of tell me that you don't think that they know what they're talking about and again that that is the same in every market in the world you know I think I think what's bubbling to my brain now is the quote by Stephen Bartlett who told the guys at Perfect Ted, which is when you meet someone, you meet everyone they know.

42:05And by that, it means when it's based in a it's a clever, wanky way of saying word of mouth. But like, yes, but when you meet someone and they say, right, season is sick. I've put it on my cocktails, my drinks. They taste something better. You're going to go and tell that person, providing that that is. so going to those bars when you meet someone they tell everyone they know they get 500 people providing the product's good, providing the story's good it can spread I want to talk about your few things is your wife's role we did the season launch event on her birthday which was amazing don't do a launch event on your wife's birthday but what role I've never explored this what role has she played in helping you build both these businesses?

42:56So I first met my wife, Sam, like 20 years ago. Where about? In Newcastle. And I was friends with a friend of hers and she was at university in Southampton and came up to Newcastle. and I was in Newcastle. I was meant to be at university, but I wasn't at university. I was just sort of having a bit of a jolly. And I met her and, yeah, I thought she was amazing. And so we went out for a bit and then we lost touch and she went and kind of went and started a fashion brand in China and we just reconnected then 15 years later because of seed lip she reached out to me friend of hers was doing an event at some members club and wanted to know if they could get some free stock of seed lip for it and i was just like oh fuck hello you know um and then we met up and And yeah, and now we're married.

44:13Pretty kid, it's amazing. Exactly.

44:18She's, yeah, Sam is incredibly patient and tolerant and she doesn't understand in the nice possible way, you know, the madness of how stressful this is and why it's, what it means and why you've got to be deluded to do it and why it's risky and ridiculous and just that unique niche of people who are stupid enough to do, you know, start a food and drink brand. But she's, yeah, she's great support. You know, we got her hand modeling for season, which was good. And, you know, you've got to be a wonderful person to kind of go, hold on a minute, my husband wants to do a launch event and it's my 40th birthday um okay not wild about that but let's let's do it you know um and but then how does the how does the brands affect the relationship or does it or is that like in that it can be so all-encompassing is what you're saying or how do you create the space to see your kids and how does how does how does your baby seed lip or season affect you but you're the father of those brands how does it affect you as the father of your babies as well yeah good question so seed lip i am still a shareholder of you know it was a majority acquisition from diageo i'm still the founder i'm still involved but not as much and i am not carrying the weight of it around on my shoulders anymore which is immensely liberating um so that obviously frees up some space uh having children um i am now i'm pretty ruthless with my time um and how i prioritize and i like i love my dad um mike he's a wonderful man and uh he's super bright and i learned a lot from him and he runs an amazing business which i'm really proud of him for but he wasn't there much when I was growing up you know because he was working and uh I guess I I don't want to do that with my kids and so I am I will put a or two daughters to bed you know nine out of ten nights right and I don't leave for work nine out of ten times before they're up and you know had breakfast and ready and that's really important to me to be as present as possible in my kids lives yeah so I and so then it's about working smart and it's about in my case I'm best when I work in kind of sprints and you know i i don't work long days it's not like i'm like oh my god i've got to work you know loads of hours i just need to be absolutely ruthless with the impact of the work that i do um being the biggest impact possible for the least amount of time um yeah and so and then the season uh and then you know and then we've launched charity so what no no and i'm the same it's just graft i reckon you can do your day in five hours i really believe that yeah like after this i'll probably well i'm gonna go meet those chaps from local beer i want to talk about you've been diagnosed with autism and as autistic as or as autistic yeah i can't have autism i can't have not a disease oh sorry yeah bad sorry um and this was quite recently wasn't it yeah so september 2022 2022 now having being dies diagnosed as autistic sorry not having or having autism sorry this is this is exactly why i've set up this charity and launched and we're going to talk about this podcast because it's sick i think what you're doing um how does that diagnosis change does that does that help you understand that period better do you know what i mean oh i mean it it ultimately you know being this psychiatrist you know saying to me as she did literally congratulations ben you're autistic um and i felt i genuinely believed her and i and i genuinely felt a sense of relief and like someone had just handed me a pair of keys and I was like I know where the fucking lock is I know where to put those keys finally and then I can open the door and you you psychiatrist and that diagnosis and assessment all I've got is a is is these keys and now it's up to me that that that kind of process that time has been, yeah, it's been pretty game changing in terms of making sense of myself, answering lots of questions that I've had.

49:52Such as? Such as why, oh, how long you got? Time. For example, why did I berate my wife for me thinking that her hearing was so bad and asking her to get her hearing tested. And it turns out my wife's hearing is absolutely normal. I have incredibly good hearing. And my senses are highly acute. I can't wear wool and I didn't know why, like literally my skin would hurt wearing wool and it's like okay i'm starting to make sense some of these sensory things you know i've got mega smell really good taste um so from a sensory perspective it started to kind of make sense of uh some of those sort of quirks um why am i as equally comfortable in excel you know we have this this sort of theory that oh you're either like really good at maths and science or you're really good at like art and painting and creative stuff whereas I'm like I didn't realize I could draw until I was like 26 and I can draw really well but I was never encouraged to do art at school and I couldn't I couldn't do equations and algebra and so I didn't think I was good at maths and now I'm like well I'm equally at home in Excel and financial models as I am in Photoshop and drawing.

51:37You know, I'm kind of like, oh, okay, that's why I can, I know that, you know, I've got a kind of high IQ, but I'm really gullible. I'm really bad on understanding people's body language. I'm really bad on understanding people's intentions. I don't have any friends, but I'm totally okay with that. and I really like my own company in that sense and I don't get my energy from being around other people. I've just kind of had, you know, I've got some crazy collections of things and high topics that are like high obsession, high interest. Such as? At the moment, what are my, let me think about what my high interest topics are um wood and wood carving and woodwork is a kind of quite a big yeah big obsession so we're trying to build this cabin at home um and doing it traditionally and learning about all the techniques and some of the right equipment and uh legos a pretty deep obsession of mine and yeah I've built like Harry Potter fucking Hogwarts Express trains and Hogwarts itself so yeah Lego I mean cocktail glassware is another kind of dangerous habit I've probably got over 500 different individual cocktail glasses we talked about the Penguin books last time I've got over 4 ,000 1970s early kind of penguin classic books.

53:321940s, sorry, not 1970s. I love, yeah, I'm quite big into like Deadliest Catch, the TV series about fishing. I don't know. I've got, I want to get to the bottom of the barrel on things. And they're not a wide array. They're kind of quite specific things at a specific time. And then, you know, whether it's social communication or it's how I get my energy or it's routines and structure and plans. Just I knew lots of things, but I didn't understand why. and I was very good at masking them. I was very good at sport at school and I was very clever. I was quite popular with the girls. And so I got away with seeming to be really popular and have loads of friends when actually I'm not friends with anyone that I went to school with.

54:44And you don't have friends now? No. I have people that I know and people that I like and colleagues. But no, I have no social life. So I mean, take Emma. I've worked with Emma, Emma Wikes. I've worked with her since, for seven years now. Yep. She's never been to my house. I've never done anything socially with her I've never met her husband I've met her daughter once and this is a lady that you know is on that phone call when I'm in tears in Singapore figuring out how we get through a million quid cash deficit or is at that acquisition event you know is like like you know with me throughout the whole of that but i don't see her socially i don't in the really nicest possible way um obviously i i care about her but i don't care what she did the weekend don't care what she's doing for christmas i want her to be happy and as long as she's happy and okay then then that's fine but yeah i don't really care what you did for the at the weekend or where you're going for Christmas or where you're going on holiday.

56:17Yeah, I just, I don't know. No, but it's this mad how you've got this understanding now of, of, of your way of being in the world. And how even, even just speaking to you from this, from this time around versus the second, first, sorry, second time around versus first time interview we did, first conversation we did, is I can it makes me piece things together more in terms of you know like at the event when you were before you did which which in terms of the masking piece which is mental it's like your launch event in uh Nessa the other week it's like you're you come across as as super gregarious super um uh very eloquent very good good communicator thank you but what's so interesting is is and i think you said this literally before you went on to me like before you're like i don't like this what you told me you're autistic and you're like i don't like these events yeah and i wouldn't have noticed any of that so that launch event give you a perspective what was hard about that that i am still getting over that right and that was what two weeks ago yeah so um that was i mean a yeah it was a it was a deadline it was a launch it was you know a big thing um but you know that was a four-hour event um standing on my feet uh talking to lots of people getting attention wanting people to have a good time totally anxiety filled wearing clothes that I hadn't worn all of them before and just really out my depth I couldn't wait to leave and I was really happy I really wanted the event to go well and the launch to go well but I said to my wife before we went there is only one thing that I'm thinking about right now and it's the moment we are back in this hotel room because it will be done and I will be so fucking happy and I was so fucking happy uh and yeah it's this weird you know i've been out in the trade and you know we're getting listed you know hand and flowers lucre rosewood hotel these amazing bars restaurants hotels um and i and i i can do a i can do a tasting right because it has a beginning a middle and an end it's structured and it's work and there's an outcome and there's a reason for doing it I can't just go and meet up with someone.

59:16I don't know how to do that when it doesn't have a reason and a structure and an outcome and an agenda of sorts. I don't know why you do that. It doesn't make any sense to me. it's like a waste of time in in the weirdest way my brain is built for efficiency and optimization you know i heard chris chris packham say this amazing thing he's autistic and he said if you give me like a brush and ask me to sweep a room then holy shit i will do it the fucking i will figure out the best way to clean that room with that brush. And that's exactly what I would do. It's like not just sweep the room. It's like you set me a challenge.

1:00:22I'm going to figure it out. Rather than just execute it, I'm going to figure out the process to do this the best and the most efficiently. And that's incredibly, that's why we brought a design team in-house at Seedlip. That's why we brought a PR team in-house at Seedlip, because they've done the calculations and the analysis and the payback and the return on investment. Yeah, to make that happen, because it was more efficient with a better return and just an optimal way to do it. so it's it's yeah it is really useful it's why you know we have everything's on slack we don't have a company whatsapp group we don't do internal email you know it's all these things are all about efficiency five sentences for an email they're all these little things that add up to it's mad seeing your other side of going a little bit further upstream with ben branson is probably the best way of saying it and i think it's just mad seeing the way the way you work i think i want to talk about let's start let's go to this to your podcast yes what what one sentence of wisdom would you pass to someone who is listening to this who is really struggling with something, what would you say to them?

1:01:51I said this to you before of like it's just a bundle of energy inside me and I can either do something with it to make myself feel worse or make myself feel better or help myself or help myself or help myself or help myself or help myself or help myself or help yourself or help or help yourself. and that's just one small action and that could be could be anything could be having a shower could be having a cup of tea could be calling someone could be reading a book uh could be having a sleep could be yeah just one thing that isn't gonna hurt you and you're now that leads as nicely to the podcast because your podcast is going to help lots of people with neurodivergent yeah talk to me about the podcast yeah the mission if you've yeah yeah down and some of the people you've interviewed yeah so september 2022 diagnosed autistic um my view of autism previous to that was the rain man or images of like weird little boys on buses licking the windows and i can say that kind of stuff now because i am autistic so not that i sit on the buses and lick windows but you know i can i can just have a cheeky poke poke at it uh i had no idea i'd never heard the word neurodivergence i'd never heard the word dyscalculia i'd never heard dyspraxia i'd never heard these conditions um dyscalculia is a bit like dyslexia but with numbers and it's not just again dyslexia is not just thick people Tourette's is not just people who shout bomb inappropriately ADHD is not just the kid whizzing around who's hyperactive autism is not you know the rain man dyspraxia people not really heard of either either and that's about space and coordination they're not just clumsy people I learned so much then of about neurodivergence which as we categorize it is autism adhd dyslexia dyscalculia dyspraxia and Tourette's those conditions are the ones that we're focused on um it's it's different brains and i want to i learn oh my god there's so many myths there's so many people misdiagnosed the waiting lists for diagnosis for some of these conditions are now up to 10 fucking years which is that's fucked just fucked yeah um there's lots of exclusion going on there's high correlation with things like suicide depression anxiety divorce bankruptcy i think something like only 10 to 15 percent of autistic people are in full-time employment and we as a society have got loads of stigma ignorance prejudice and just a whole lack of awareness and understanding really about two things three things one what these conditions actually are because they're not those simplistic you're thick you're clumsy you say inappropriate things you're really good at maths you know they're not that simplistic number two there are loads and loads of truths skills hope and brilliance that comes as well as the challenges with all of these conditions so you know i'm really fucking good at hearing and i'm really good at tasting and i'm really amazing at smelling and i'm really good at doing spreadsheets and i'm really good at devising kind of blueprint type sort of global business model plans and i'm really good at you know i'm really good at lots of things but i struggle with lots of things as well and then number three and this is the biggest one for me without neurodivergence without people who think differently we would not have lots and lots of the things that we see every day hold dear in our hearts or take absolutely for granted so the screen that you're probably listening to this or watching this from whether it was bill gates or steve jobs it doesn't really matter both of them when you're a divergent the invention of electricity the invention of the fucking parachute et mickey mouse the ugly duckling uh the inventor of pokemon i mean uh spielberg and jaws and all the kind of stuff that he's contributed to society muhammad ali mozart marilyn monroe Justin Bieber you fucking know Simone Biles like Agatha Christie you I haven't got long enough to like list the incredible contributions that neurodivergent's made so rather than join the grassroots kind of uh charity sector we wanted to create a charity and our first act because we want to kind of, I guess, shine a light on 20 % of the population that are believed to be neurodivergent.

1:07:39And in a modern way, we wanted to, our first act, be a podcast. So we wanted to sit down with creatives, entrepreneurs, famous people, influencers who are neurodivergent and talk to them about the truth, the skills the challenges the hope um you know from experts to kind of famous actors and the response has been amazing we're we've probably just launched by the time this has come out um but we've had everyone on there from you know uh dr carrie grant with a wonderful red hair to kit harrington game of thrones actor to adele tracy who's like in the olympics this summer uh break smashing 815 hundred records left right and center joe black who was on rupaul's drag race who's just a wonderful like dark cabaret tourette's legend um hester granger who's like an adhd expert uh we got people like holly tucker uh founder of not on the high street coming up we got some other kind of surprises coming up we're fully booked for series one um it's called the hidden 20 uh i'm the host and yeah we just want to put a bit of a ding i guess into sort of the mainstream conscious around hey look people who think differently are kind of incredible and we shouldn't be excluding them and um yeah it's it's a good it's a good okay thing and let's be a bit more informed about it and uh break down some of the stigma and realize that to businesses and schools and relationships like different thinking is exactly what's needed what's mental is that list it is mental yeah sorry sorry yes i didn't even mean to do that but but the the list of all those amazing people muhammad ali maran and monroe electricity the person and created electricity um justin bieber what is alarmingly scary is the amount of things that haven't been came alive or haven't been invented or talents has been squelched like my mate's name um because of this fucking stigma around it because of this blanket and i was talking about my little cousin earlier who's got autism yep oh he's autistic sorry mate you know um well this this that sums it up no no but it that is like a horrible words to say people don't want to say the wrong thing but it's like no it needs to be discussed and yeah you know i i feel a bit bad sometimes correct trying to correct people but i'm but how else i mean i'll do it but but my my my negligence just there just just shows the cultural conditioning it's like oh you've got yeah got autism that's fine let's just fucking start with that do you know what i mean break that down and i think your podcast and as i said and i think that's why i appreciate you being so open is in terms of i think your next wave post seed lip is like be you were the sort of the driving force with loads low to know and kind of alcohol free like seed it was very much the kind of at the frontier of that i think this podcast and this um this is this is going to be so powerful for so many people like my auntie listens to this my friend who's got a kid who's autistic like the the um the the narrative is is this kind of you go to a different school i hope so i like i like you know common to seed lip to season and to the hidden 20 is i i like you know know disrupting or flipping or challenging or saying hold a minute we season our food like every day why aren't we seasoning our drinks and you can transform your drink with like something that's delicious and concentrated and really really simple and why are we not you know we this this phrase gets peddled around right you know great minds don't think alike uh and it's like well yeah but great minds think differently actually you know what are some of the most oh sorry great sorry let me say that again i got it so wrong we have the phrase great minds think alike and ironically as i'm learning great minds do not think alike and that is a good thing for for sure that's the perfect kind of uh setting for this next question of great minds you know don't think alike and that's good what are some of the lessons from interviewing people on your podcast that have been like wow like that's meant like I keep saying mental so but like sorry mate um in terms of that's like insanely interesting that you just didn't expect to learn who was that person oh just I mean i'm probably it's a bit like you i guess and having just sort of interviewed you i'm doing this because i want to learn more sure you know and i want to i want to i'm very curious about although i don't like socializing in people i'm very curious about people right i i'd like to know how people tick and you know i'm i see someone on the tv i want to know about them on my phone you know i just want to yeah yeah i don't i don't retain any of that information because it's it's useless information once i once i've learned it but um i want to know i want to understand and so yeah having you know having different you know for example it's like oh my god i've got a professional athlete adele tracy she's young and brilliant and i'm like what do i want to ask a professional athlete you know and yes i want to talk about dyslexia and dyscalculia because no one's heard about that um absolutely but also i do want to ask like what's it like before the race and when you're on the start line what are you thinking about you know these these kinds of things that i'm just like oh they've they've like when i watch someone racing that's the kind of question that i have in my brain of like i wonder what they're fucking what what do you think they're thinking about when they're like i'm not that's exactly what i'm like you know so i get to i get to ask them and because i can be quite blunt i i you know someone's like oh and then some difficult things happen I'm like oh yeah what were the difficult things so yeah not I'm not interrogating people but we get an opportunity to hear the the real side and really it all boils down to yes there's a list let people listen to people that they can hopefully relate to that are not too dissimilar from them and that might give someone cause to be like holy shit that's like me I wonder why I was struggling with that or wow I know my friend a bit better because I heard it sounds like them or I'm gonna go and get a diagnosis or I want to learn more about that or that makes me a better boss or a better friend partner whatever and hey I didn't know that thanks you know for that information but there's also something in just like hearing about how people think right and getting inside their brain for a bit.