Espresso: Innocent Founder ONE HARSH TRUTH to Become a Household Brand... Be Different + Better

0:00So almost the better is the product angle and the difference the culture and the branding. yeah obviously if they're yeah yes exactly so um you know if you are better if you're better you are different to some extent but um but you need more than just being sort of tasting better if we would just tasted better but had exactly the same packaging exactly the same look tone and feel as everyone else i don't think the business would have worked you kind of need to do both at the same time um what would you say is more important different or better i think you've got to do both I think you've got to do both.

0:35I think that's the point. You've just got to do both. Because you otherwise just don't, you know, if you're better but the same, no one notices you. You grow very slowly if at all. If you're different but not better, you get noticed and no one then uses you and comes back again. So you kind of need both. And that's the thing with business. Business is hard, right? Starting the business is hard. You need to get everything lined up. You can get nine out of ten things right. And if that tenth thing is a key thing, business may not work. So that's why it's a rare thing for businesses to work. And anyone who's doing it, it's a bloody hard work and a challenge, right?

1:14But the rewards are great when you get it right. I want to go into this. I think I talked about you, this is a call, mate, which was this five whys framework. And I find it really interesting. We're kind of combining the be different and better with the five whys. basically five wires as you get deeper and deeper and deeper into like the root cause of things and almost think we've almost people listen to this you've got level one brands yeah which would be something at like a uh you know the food market in barns yeah that's level one level two would be a whole food planet organic level three would be someone like in a in a sainsbury's um or a co-op store level four level five would be an innocent with tony's vita cocoa yeah fill in the urban legend fill in the bank i'd love to know and giles giles i asked giles this question and he i was like what how did you find that extra gear yeah to almost go down into that you know and you've seen some work with some of your brands how do you go from like a level three which would probably be that four million mark yeah four to five million mark where people get stuck yeah how what's the extra things you've got to do to kick on to build an innocent to build a vita cocoa I think there's an obsessiveness that you need to really want to improve everything all the time.

2:31And I think that obsessiveness was definitely there at Innocent. Be it make the packaging slightly more eco, make the packaging slightly funnier, make it slightly cheaper, make it slightly more appealing. Same with the product. Same with the deals we do with our distributors. the constant you know john always talked about kaizen the japanese um self self continual self-improvement on manufacturing and that was definitely a sort of a culture that we we we imbued throughout innocent which is not being uh happy with the status quo always trying restlessly trying to improve things um and that's difficult because you know you've pulled in constant different directions as a business but actually you just can't stand still you can't say i've got the product right I'm going to go out and sell it now it's like that product will get caught up other people do it and it won't you know it won't be different or better um if you don't move forward in in six months so so you know I think that that's one of the things we did really well actually is constantly restlessly wanted to make things better so that's that's almost like a kind of a top line uh yeah almost like a cultural thing really yeah like a country yeah yeah yeah relentless pursuit of betterness yeah yeah myriad of different ways to say it and then I suppose and again this is all case by case yeah but what would you say are some of the hires you need to go from say a four million level three brand to like a we're going to start building into a into a real big household brand yeah um I think one of the things that we realized early on was actually uh we hired a people person well before businesses of our size would normally hire a people person because actually we realized that people was the heart of what the business was about um so uh and that actually was a really important hire so that often the people side sort of gets left behind and you talk about the revenue the gross margin the profit and oh yeah we've got to make sure people are happy and that that was not the way we thought about it was like if you've got a really highly functioning team with great people in that are um stretched and motivated and uh well trained that will then deliver the results And so it was turning it the other way around, really putting the people side first.

4:39And I think that was one of the lasting legacies of the business. And then was there anything you did? I know. I'm sorry, sorry. Just to finish off on that, because you sort of asked about hires. I think at first we sort of hired generally sort of bright generalists to do the job. And that's kind of right, because we didn't really know what the jobs were. and you sort of needed to do that. But then there needed to be a change at some point where we needed to get some expertise in. And I was sort of running the commercial sales bit and I'd never really done it. And I remember hiring the first key account manager who really knew her stuff in terms of supermarkets.

5:19And it was like, oh my gosh, right, that's how you do it. And it was like, oh, okay, real expertise, that's gonna improve our business. And so it was then blending proper deep expertise with sort of general smarts. And that made for a powerful combination, not just saying hiring from outside, not just hiring internally, but actually blending the two made the business really well. And we've talked a lot about that. And we're going to get on to the Illumina almost. Specifically in the interview process, what were you doing to sort of what were you specifically not necessarily? What were you specifically asking to be like, this is the right person, both in terms of like attitude and aptitude?

6:02I think you said something which I thought was amazing, which is I'd rather have a hole than an arsehole. I think we can nick that from Apple or something. But still, we'll explore that. But yeah, what were you doing in the interview process to make sure you weren't getting arseholes in? Yeah. So I think early on, we codified what the values of innocent were. And sort of everyone does this now, and it's not that groundbreaking. But I think at the time it was relatively uncommon. And we put those values up on the backs of the toilet doors and the start of every presentation and, you know, in the induction and up in the kitchen above the toaster.

6:45And so it was just it was inculcated into the business. And the first interview with anyone was around those values. And it was always making sure that someone was on values before worrying about the skill levels that they had and whether they could do the job. and that was really important to making sure tonally and culturally the people that brought in fitted and you know weren't assholes and were quite the opposite were people who who added to the the the great genetic mix of innocent and I think that was um that was probably the most important thing to do and then of course you need to check that someone can do the job so you've got to know what the job is and that was a bit of discipline about writing it down and saying okay okay, these are the responsibilities.

7:27And then testing people, you know, doing case studies and not being a bit lazy in the interview of just sort of, oh, I'll get on with them, let's hire them. It was actually, let's check they can do the job they say they can do. And that takes time and effort. You know, if you're hiring for a salesperson, giving them a load of data, maybe in a situation that you're trying to sell into a customer with and, you know, giving them enough to get their teeth stuck into so that they can actually show what they can do with the information and the sell that you've given them. And that takes them a lot of energy and takes you a lot of energy to put it together, but it means you start hiring really great people.

8:05Because I know what you said, as you say, it's kind of like commonplace now. A lot of times brands codify values, put it on the wall. One thing that kind of fascinates me, and I've seen it happen, and I've interviewed people, they've said this, like you put the values on the wall but it doesn't necessarily translate to the actual behaviors day to day yeah from again everyone venerates their time at innocent they genuinely said like this the culture is what you say outside and inside it's like there's the they link together yeah because i think sometimes what you can see on a company website or on a toilet wall is like well hang on mate this doesn't line up yeah yeah we used to talk about the sticker rock test so like a sticker rock just has that word all the way through and it's consistent and so wherever you cut it stick of rock like literally the old candy that you get uh you know it's kind of had the words written in like you know yes yes i love blackpool or something like that and it said i love blackpool consistently all the way through wherever you cut it and that was exactly the sort of thinking it's like wherever you cut innocent you you should feel and touch the same culture so wherever you interact with us whether it's you know being a supermarket buyer or a consumer at shelf or you know uh someone cleaning out the bins and you know it basically feels innocent all the way through.

9:17Yeah, so maybe, how would you do that? How would you treat the cleaner in the office? Not you specifically, but I think that could be an interesting lens to explore this. Yeah. I mean, I think you're really clear on the values and then the bit I suppose I didn't say and you alluded to is on behaviours. It's like, okay, so what does that mean? If you're living up to the values, these are the sorts of ways you behave and so making it actually sort of obvious for people what the values mean in behaviour terms and I think calling out people who've lived by the values. And there was, I think, there was a sort of, I don't know, I can't remember what we called it at the time, but it was essentially employee of the month.

9:56And that was sort of voted on by other people, people who've gone above and beyond and really demonstrated the values. And so every month we'd call that out and it was a bit of fun. Someone got, you know, 100 quid to go and eat in a restaurant or something. And it was just, with anything, you've just got to keep communicating the same thing, the same thing, the same thing, the same thing. and then it gets through. And we were really consistent on that, on the values we wrote four years into the business, three or four years in, were the values that are still up on the toilet doors now. So they haven't changed, the behaviours underpinning them haven't changed and I think everyone knew what was expected of them and I think that's really important.