FATSO Chocolate Founder: Reinventing Chocolate, Staying Bold in a Blandemic, Pregnancy and Brand Building, Finding Unseen Slipstream Channels

0:00Hello, hello, hello. This week's episode is a banger. Ella is amazing. Ella from Fatso. I remember, I think it was at lunch trade show last year and my friend came up to me and go to go and see this brand Fats. and the name fatso is like oh my god this is sick um i went over tried it amazing product amazing branding amazing mission one of my values is more is more and they've got a value that is more matters um so we are totally aligned on that there's so much in this so ella is heavily pregnant i think she might have had the bubba by the time this episode goes out because we talk about all about how to like be a female founder how to build your baby and build your brand and is your brand your baby there's so much in that we talk about how to stand out like how to be brave in a world that is kind of timid and people are scared to say what they really think and there is a bit of a kind of a blandemic going on in brand building and I think that's so kind of cut and push against that we talk a little about how to kind of enjoy the journey and actually like I know it sounds so wanky but like how do you do more of what matters versus getting distracted things that are all important both in business and life talk about some old school field sales like the fatso field sales fundamentals like how to go and actually win indie listings which i can talk about all day and much much more there's loads in this you're in for a treat um as always i'd be so grateful if you could please share one of the podcasts you've enjoyed with a friend like it all really really helps grow this bad boy and yeah thank you so much enjoy this episode Ella, thank you so much for doing this.

1:37I'm incredibly excited and grateful to be stuffing my face with chocolate pre... I do bring the goods. Pre... what is it? Pre 11am. Yeah. But yeah, thank you for doing this. I saw Fatso at one of the trade shows. Was it lunch? Last April. Last April wasn't lunch. No, it must have been lunch. Yeah. Yeah, so it was actually 18 months ago, yeah, when we first, that was when we first launched. Was that 18 months? Did you, have you lunched twice then? No, we just did it that once and that was our, hello, we're here. Was that 18 months ago? Well, yeah, September, September 22. Is there another one in the Excel?

2:22Is there another, did you do another trade show? It may have been lunch, but I just feel like that could have been so fucking long ago. It was that long ago. I mean, you might have seen us. We haven't exhibited at another trade show since, but we do lurk around them. Anyway, so... You'll see Hannah with her bars flashing them. So my friend Lou, who was my boss at Manning Life, was like, oh my God, you've got to go and check this brand out called Fatso. And I was like, as soon as I heard the name Fatso Chocolate, I was like, because I think one of my things is people being bold and courageous and standing for something.

2:56I interviewed Seth Godin last, two weeks ago, and he was saying everyone creates something for everyone and actually it takes balls and guts and courage to say right we're going to take a step back and this is what we stand for um this is who we're for we're not for you and by doing that and telling great stories which i think we're going to come all onto the gorgeous packaging and the names then that idea begins to spread and obviously obviously it is because we i wanted to as soon as i saw the name and the packaging i was like i need I need you to be changed in the podcast. So there's so much to talk about today.

3:32But I think what I want to start with is you're sat in front of me. You're pregnant. The first person that's sat in front of me that's pregnant. Oh, I think it would debut. And I'd love to know what it's like running a challenger brand whilst being pregnant. Because I know that comes with a myriad of different challenges. Sure does. I mean I always it's it's difficult because I suppose when you're employed and obviously I've not been pregnant as a employee in another company before this is our first baby

4:09and obviously the business can't stop and and I always say and you know the team around me are so wonderful they're like hello it's okay you know you've got to take time for yourself you're growing a human it's a big deal um and i think actually as women in society we don't you don't realize that it how big a deal it is growing a human and how the toll it takes on your body and i'm very i'm quite in tune with my body i kind of you know i i exercise a lot and i nourish it in the right ways with good good chocolate predominantly um and um it's it's this you're suddenly you're sharing your body and um but i think society is and you know women wanting to have it all and have careers and all that sort of stuff it's you don't really give yourself the time to go i need to i need to change a bit of pace here in order to allow my body to do the thing that is most natural to it um but without but but you know we don't allow ourselves that time because it's like yeah but I've still gotta still gotta do all these other things so um it's not it's been tough because to be honest I talk yeah so when my team are saying to me slow down it's okay I'm like well this is my other baby you know I say that this is my first but actually it's my second because facto is our is my genuine i know it's a cliche but it it is a it is my absolute pride and joy yeah everyone says that you know i think josh from mama kombucha so we we've got two kids three kids two are humans the third's mama kombucha something like that yeah and i think what's interesting um as i say like we're just very much going going with the flow today but i think when your your head is wanting to move at the pace of challenge a brand but your body is you know maternally trying to slow down i think that can cause a lot of friction for loads of women who work for challenge brands are going to go through that period of time where they want to go and have a have a kid but then they've still got that high octane fucking moving at the speed of thunder or lightning i should say um how how are you coming to terms with those two kind of opposing forces um uh well probably not really coming to terms with it just kind of gonna take it as it comes i think i'm not um for us and this is very personal but for me i and and people might be screaming down the podcast like you're saying you you say this now but for me a baby is a wonderful thing but I don't want to my life isn't I don't want and my partners are saying we don't want to change our whole lives to fit around the baby you know for us it's it's an addition to our family and it won't stop us being the people and the individuals that we are pre-baby I'm sure will change as an individual will be parents it's very different the anxieties will be added to and all of that stuff but um i i have no desire to to change my ambitions and the collective ambitions we have here at fatso because i've had a baby you know um and if i have to bring the baby into management meetings and everyone else is just going to have to accept that I might just have to duck out for a breastfeed if I'm if I do breastfeed or or anything like you know soothe the baby then then that's how we'll work it you know we'll we'll make it work and that is the beauty of running your own business is that you can kind of make the rules and I think it was um you know Renee from Planet Organic who had on the podcast she's amazing and she was talking about how when she had her first she would literally be in boardrooms with a group with a bunch of men um breastfeeding with the kid yeah and um i just and i was pregnant when i listened to that i only just found out and i think i was in bed because i was so sick because i've had quite a very morning sickness heavy pregnancy and um i was just like yes you know this can be done and my mum did it you know she was a single mum um she was a lawyer at the time she's not anymore she's she's now doing lots of other things and running her own businesses and whatever but she was working for a law firm she was telling me the other night actually she was working on cases till like 11 12 at night pregnant and I was thinking my god you know I don't have to do that you know I'm not I'm not doing that but you know when it's in your blood to when it's in your blood to really want to achieve something and when you're really passionate about what it is that your your ambition and and passionate about the purpose of whatever you're doing it doesn't have to be products brands whatever um I think that drive is really powerful and I think it can be the thing that gives you the adrenaline and the support and gives your body the ability to actually do that and to do both.

9:46I mean, maybe ask me again in six months' time. So how I'm coming to terms with it, I think also you have to be open to anything. You know, I'm not, I'm very aware that I might make a plan in my mind, but it could turn out very differently. lots of things can happen hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls you know i'm obsessed with this slow productivity thing yeah so it's a book by cal newport and he basically goes through so cal newport's the guy who did deep work you know deep work which is basically you don't have social media you just have your coffee and you two three hours in the morning you just blitz it out and you're in this kind of deep flow state and bliss i i get there every morning with coffee tech and i'm just fucking writing i i get into that state so i'm a big uh big fan of his and it's about you're doing maybe three hours a day deep work versus nine ten hours shallow work but his other thing is this uh idea of slow productivity which is folk really focusing on uh there's a massive difference between efficiency and effectiveness so efficiency is just doing something is how you do something really really quickly and well effectiveness is actually taking a step back we're like what am i actually what do i need to do to move forward and i think a lot of people don't um and i'm the worst at this don't step back and actually ask that question so as i was saying to you um uh earlier is is how the you know before i was doing podcasts i was just like on to the next one on to the next one as soon as I'm finishing fucking like getting WhatsApp up, blah, blah, blah.

12:01And I was like, what the fuck am I doing? I need to, I need, it's forced me to slow down. So what I'm trying to get to is how do you have to balance? I'm asking this selfishly. So I haven't, I mean, let's smash all that fucking chocolate. I'm not going to be pregnant, right? But you never know. But as in like your, if your, your body is forcing you to slow down, but still have that kind of hyper ambition of the founder. And I suppose I'm asking it selfishly. is like how do you uh how do i still have my massive ambition which isn't going to be squelched but how do i actually slow down so after this is like go on a walk and i think what you're saying there you've said some really interesting points is is being open and actually going with with with things and that's what renee says is i think renee says it the best she says um you can either hold up hold them to the roller coaster like this like like stealth fucking shitting yourself or you can put your arms on the air and i think that's the way that is an interesting way to do it what when you say your ambitions what is your ambition with uh with with this like we talked about kind of the slowing down and being open but what's the other end of the spectrum what's the what's the goal we want to build a global brand that you know has been built on the principles that um chocolate is inherently designed to be fun and playful and delicious and nothing more nothing less um but to do so with absolute integrity and make sure that we never falter on um never falter or compromise on any of the ethics or efforts that we could be making to make it better both in taste and quality but also from the people that sit behind it and the people at every step of that supply chain um you know it doesn't it's it's not other it's not other detriment of them um and but i think you said it in a podcast i listen to it's like and and so many brands forget this like the product is king i mean you can't we need to we need to try this because yeah yeah um so i also i just think the names of king ransom i'm gonna go we're gonna go explore i mean i'm gonna get probably far too excited over the packaging uh nan stash fucking sick morning glory um i'm actually probably sort of at home run so so this was interesting i asked the founder of innocent yesterday adam what's you know i asked that question what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on you asked that to him and he weirdly said is innocent everyone believes innocent we're known for the but for the packaging and the fun and the playfulness but it actually if you boil it really down on this really must be my surprise surprise he was like we're just we relentlessly focused on making the best product because everyone knows us for you know the the vans wrapped in grass or whatever ash return yeah everyone knows us for the the little sock on the thing the playful tone voice it was all product i think you're so right um so let's jump in i would love to try the um do you want to have to morning glory given it's breakfast time.

15:26Yeah. Although I say this, I haven't quite remembered that...

15:35I think that one of those pieces... This is morning jewelry, yeah? Yeah.

15:44Yeah.

15:52We'll take out the... The chewing. They're chewing into the microphone. That's authentic. Mm. That's kind of the whole point. Mm-hmm.

16:04Okay, so... Get the orange, get the marmalade. Corn flake toast and marmalade. Wait a minute. Tell me about the process of, like, creating that. That's what I'm saying. I've never heard. So... The flavours you've got are sorted pretzel, whole almond, honeycomb. Cornflake toast and marmalade. Peanut toffee, digested biscuit. That sounds so fucking banging. Which one's that? That's, that's, I think, I think that,

16:43go for that one. We've got like a cent, six cents for chocolate. Yeah.

16:52So that's a different kind of chocolate. so the way we so the premise was obviously um dark chocolate is getting left behind it's actually it's a thing it's a it's a beautiful thing it's one of the purest types of chocolate um but the quality was really hard to find that good quality dark chocolate is really tough to find and also it took itself so fucking seriously. It was like, you know, chef's hat with whisks, very boring, lots of black packaging with gold flecks and it kind of just basically made you think of, oh, that's for an old pair. Yeah, yeah, go for it. Which one's that? Is that a home run?

17:43It might be a home run. What's that home run? Okay, we'll find out. Find out. Mint.

17:51no it's a moment one again that's delicious

17:56so it was like well all the attention's been on milk for you know a century more than um and our palates have all become very accustomed basically to almost diluted chocolate that's kind of how I see milk especially now you know if you go and look at how much cacao content is in a bar of milk chocolate or you know a kind of a big fmcg bar of milk chocolate you'd be very surprised how little chocolate you're actually eating which is changing our palates which is kind of devastating because you're taking out all of the natural endorphins that cacao and chocolate that cocoa creates for you and you eat it.

18:42But anyway, milk chocolate was having all this fun and they were being really brave and innovative and playful and quite, you know, whatever. People just would do anything with milk chocolate. And I genuinely believe it's because it was like, well, it's higher in sugar, so it can take it. But no one was like, well, have we ever tried to do that with dark chocolate? Have we ever stressed tests? can dark chocolate take some like fun exciting flavors so we knew it had to be about the added extra flavor stuff and a lot of that came also from talking about how when we were eating dark chocolate it was only ever really on as an enhancer on ice cream um you know adding extra nuts and granola and whatever to your ice cream with dark chocolate but you'd never have you'd never choose to pick up a bar of dark chocolate because it was just so boring and underwhelming and it felt a little bit healthy you know everyone was telling oh dark chocolate's the healthy choice it's like if i'm having chocolate i ain't going in there for the healthy choice i'm going in there because i want to i want some chocolate i'm not gonna do it you know every day although turns out when you uh do run a dark chocolate business you do eat chocolate every day So we knew fun flavours and we knew we wanted to tell stories and we wanted it to be kind of cheeky and witty and adult.

20:13You know, we didn't want it to be juvenile. So when you say juvenile. Like we didn't want it to be kiddy. we didn't want it to be um you know we knew it would be a product for grown-ups you know um but just because you're a grown-up doesn't mean you have to be serious and boring um so the flavors kind of so the morning glory is actually the first flavor we came up with because we were like what if you had breakfast in a bar you know um most important meal of the day and I think I actually from memory morning glory was our first was we had the name before we had the flavor because we were like morning glory come on like it's what it said it is what it is right it's uh it says it all um it's definitely adult and it's playful uh and then it's like well what do you have for breakfast and what kind of goes in chocolate well orange chocolate is obviously something you know that flavor of orange and chocolate is is very popular and really yummy how do we get the crunch in well you know cider toast and a bit of cider toast and some cornflakes or cornflakes toast and orange juice or whatever so so um that's where that one came from it tastes yeah well i'm just looking at the full array of them morning glory home run nan's stash king's ransom but then the flavors are just so as i said as soon as i saw them i was like shit i this is really exciting me and kind of unleashing my curiosity yeah so your so talk me through the iterations of actually creating the products we've said product is everything that tastes delicious how many rounds are you going through to create these four flavors well we actually when we started i think we had about eight flavors that we tried and what were the other four i don't remember I don't remember them all because some of them were so not right um we did have one well I don't know if I should say because some of them are some of them might still wear them rear their heads there is a very intense I won't tell you all the flows but there is a very intense coffee flavor that is absolutely in plan but we just haven't found the right coffee partner anyone listening you want to um but uh yeah a coffee with some other things which is um a very rich very dark beautiful flavor but won't be for everyone it kind of gives you like a crazy high you can't really focus that would not be good for your slow productivity kind of days um i mean but i mean it's hilarious i'm a coffee fiend at the same time yeah so i'm not talking about slow productivity whilst i'm pretty gonna smash through this whole thing right now um that's good as monmouth that's nice i love it um so uh but the other thing that was really important is to make sure that the chocolate like the cacao the type of chocolate that we were sourcing from luca um and the way that had been blended matched the flavors so for every so say we were like we want to do a kind of baseball you know american sports style snack flavor pretzels almonds honeycomb beautiful sounds amazing that's this one uh i think that's this one i'll say yeah um and did you get an end piece there did you yeah um and salted pretzel almond honeycomb but but then it was like well what's the best chocolate to match that is it a 60 percent macondo which that which is actually where we landed or is it a 70 which is kind of got refined sugar but in the blend is it a 70 percent palenque which has got unrefined sugar in it so it's a bit richer but and a bit more intense but because of the honeycomb does that go better um there there was there's like an 80 so we tried every every flavor idea we had we tried in maybe four or five or six different types of chocolate all from luca our partners that we'd chosen and just tasted everything unlike just in rooms and chopping boards and it was very it was a lot and we just had to keep coming back to it because obviously as you can imagine everything sort of starts to blend but it's a little bit like i guess wine in a way you know you've got to it's not just yeah it's a constant iteration process the um so how long has the brand been going since so 18 so yeah since that september 2022 so then how do you what were the other names on the drawing board that weren't fatso and how did you get to fatso um if you can remember well i don't know if i can remember the other names but i can remember why fatso came out and to be honest it was a very quick decision so um when we talked about the when we sort of created the brand knowing that it was going to be about big chunky big chunky bars with big fun flavors with a lot of character we had like a concept that was we talked a lot about extra with everything and more more matters which is kind of a bit of a strap line that we use um that it wasn't about being restrained and serious and and you know withholding it was about going all in you know life is full of hold back modesty trying you know try and be less you know less is more you know we kind of all live by this sort of notion these days and and and in many aspects it's totally agree but when it comes to chocolate like let's go all in you don't have to have it all the time but when you do don't fucking don't be don't be like oh i'll just have this tiny little square oh god i don't know i've got i've got a mate who's uh he's a big boozer like it's crazy like he um he slivered him and for them and he's like my best mate but he's will go out on the weekend and get absolutely sloshed yeah but then he i don't know how he does it and he used to warm me up he'd be so disciplined with his diet and i mean and i'd be like i'd be like what's the point yeah yeah yeah i'd be like mate like you're hung over you're not gonna like get a mcdonald's and he'd be like having one square i mean it's very blasphemous that lint fucking chocolate and i'd be like there before fat so this is like stuff in my face with um cabbies you know i just love giant buttons out the fridge chocolate out the fridge to me is just yeah insane um like he he i don't know how he like drinks and smokes you know that he ran a marathon three five three oh five we were sat there being like and he'd be on a stag dude the weekend before we call him steamer because he's a he would like a steam train but he's like on a different level but yeah he's he's a case from point of just having that that one like poultry square of chocolate that's just like that's not the way i i think i think what you're saying there of more matters is uh more matters of the right thing in life is a really good mantra so like doing more of the things that like give you energy versus take energy uh oh i have just discovered a secret weapon please please please don't tell anyone this secret weapon helps you get listed stay listed and most importantly grow this secret weapon is being used by absolutely banging brands like bold bean co perfect head neat trip and cheeky panda the ones that are absolutely smashing it But look, are you ready to get your mitts on this secret weapon?

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They're your outsourced in-house partner. save money their team will come in they'll help you prep plan and smash the next range of you i'm so excited to be partnering with north star check them out in the episode description below how do you apply apply the more matters to your life and so more matters actually is and more matters is a really lovely uh we love saying it because it's not just about when you're at the pub yeah yeah exactly more matters ladies like come on um i say ladies because a group of ladies um but um you know it expands actually you can apply it to anything because you can apply it's like more ethics which is what we apply like more love more care more time more anything you know actually we talk about all less is more but in reality we actually all want more of the things that we love and enjoy and we should take the time to spend more time doing that so more matters for us it's like making something you know less is more feels a bit doing more of the things that matter is basically more of the things that matter exactly including eating chocolate and including the size of the chocolate that you're eating or the size of the bar that you pick up and um fatso basically was this so we had like this more matters and and also um this principle of extra with everything you know not in an extra way but in literally extra stuff um what do you mean what do you mean by that sorry like extra ingredients you know more it's the same principle as more matters but um it was a concept of uh just well extra meaning more basically you know an extra cider gravy an extra potato with your roast whatever that might be i'm i love extras yeah i don't know what it is the sides at restaurants yeah so there's such the unsung hero yeah any any pub that doesn't do extra gravy or tries to charge for extra gravy i'm like you are yeah i've sometimes thought about like i was thinking about this the other day of creating restaurants called sides yeah great because sometimes the sides are actually better than the event i'm trying to think like yeah well with a roast roast york's pudding the sauce pigs and blankets stuffing stuffing fuck roasties what else am I really partial to in a roast I mean I love a roast I'm not a fan of cauliflower cheese oh well I was gonna I was just gonna say that on really cheesy cauliflower cheese yeah but I don't actually like cheese that much oh well right well then that's not the audience but yeah but I think there is something in like the sides I'm just trying to think like sometimes starters and sides yeah like you know sometimes you want like i love starters as much as i love the main course yeah um yeah so so the extras so it was like extra more and then fat so it was just and i remember um we'd like had a long list and we'd all kind of scribbled down different words that fell out of this concept of extra with everything or more matters and as soon as we thought thought facto is like done all of us we were like that's it and we kind of that's what i don't it was so we were so single-minded because we were like it's brave it's a true you know we wanted this to be a challenger brand we wanted this to be bold so and if you're going out and you're saying we're gonna make a super chunky um provocative challenger brand to what else is out there you can't do that by heart you can't go half-hearted on that it would have just flopped and i think so many brands i think a lot of brands do do that they kind of get nervous at the last minute or um trying to be all things for people trying to be and we knew we were like we are going to get pushback and i remember weirdly we've had less pushback than i thought well that's what i was going to say is is with all the fat shaming i'm not good let's not turn into some sort of political podcast because i i'm not qualified to say any of those things but with all this fat shaming stuff going on um you know i think ultimately it's a net positive like these plus size models all that stuff i think is is really positive net but then i think you'll as you see you'll get some pushback be like oh my god you can't call it fat so like the wealthy living thing you can't call it fucking fat so so what pushback did you get well but what I find so sad about that is like well actually we're not fat shaming this isn't about this isn't about gluttony this is about more more of what matters and almost flipping that horrible the fact that we've created such a negative connotation around the word fatso um that's something that we've created that's not that's been created in the playground right or or whatever but actually what if you flip it on its head and it becomes a positive thing it's like to be a fatso means you're living life to your absolute fullest your you know live life more fatso great i also think there's that like you know that moment after a um a roast or not other meals are available it can be a curry it could be a chinese but you know when you like kind of you're just like you've been a bit of i know it's not about gluttony but there's that moment of just like kind of um just kicking back on the thing having a glass of wine having to unbutton your unbutton you unbutton some either shirt or it happens a lot to me at the moment yeah or it's either happened for you that's happened to me before yeah she came out of billy's office i like i don't know what happened like my buttons came undone anyway i'm not outside richmond station not like that yeah yeah yeah um they've got a popeye's chicken by richmond station i've really wanted to try that for ages but i need to wait till at least thursday but anyway the um the there's something about that moment and i always believe like a brand they talk about occasions of like what's the occasion you know quite literally in terms of the supermarkets and the grocery what what occasion are you they talk about that yeah but i also think it works on a brand level is that what is the moment you want to like there's a gazillion moments in life what do you want to hang your hat on as as as a brand and i think there's um there's there's so much you can kind of tease out with this extras and this fatso of being of doing more of the of the things that matter i think there's there's what we're talking about the slow productivity is basically that do things that give you energy yeah and where you can really create quality yeah and fuck everything else off yeah and where you feel you can finish the day and be like yeah i really i had a really great day you know and i i didn't dwell on the things that don't ultimately matter yeah i mean everyone has to sort of sense check themselves i think sometimes go you know it's it's quite It takes a lot of brain power to always be thinking, is this the right thing to be focusing on?

36:09Or is this, what value does this bring? Or what value does this bring to me or to my business or whatever? I think that's quite exhausting to always have that as your guiding principle. But if you do remember to check in with yourself, I suppose it comes more and more naturally and you'll stop doing the things that don't matter. you'll have that so what's been the kickback on the um oh sorry yeah yeah i i completely went tangent yeah i like those are my favorite ones don't worry um well the kickback is you know i remember um one lady in fact what was quite interesting is i went into this um sort of cafe deli um who have lots of different lovely things including quite a bit of chocolate but they were selling like green and blacks and I think maybe just green and blacks they had at the time but then they had all these it was like a small independence I was like well you know it was kind of local to us as well so I was thinking oh you know nice local brands supporting nice local business kind of thing or vice versa so I'd gone in and I said oh we've just launched this brand and you know I gave them the story these were the the people that were serving and they were like oh god it looks amazing I love it took it tried it and I went in a couple of days later and I said oh did you what did you think oh we loved it we've given it to the owner um you know we we take we all tasted it and think it's fab and then um I said okay well this is you know here's my number and my details and I then sent a follow-up email didn't hear back so I went in again and I was like oh it's the owner here just to um I wanted to follow up on on the chocolate and they they said oh yeah oh we did give it to her you can go and chat chat she's she's in the back so I went in I said oh I'm just coming because you know I know that your team shared this and I just wanted to introduce myself blah blah blah um and she was like it she just said I'm just it's so it's I'm just surfing it's just so offensive so offensive um and I tried to and then and I tried to sort of was she slightly bigger um yes okay um which I didn't know obviously at the time it wasn't I wasn't sort of so you know I wasn't like she may and felt sort of targeted in some way, but I genuinely didn't know what she looked like.

38:44Anyway, it's, I mean, it was what it was. It's not like you were calling her fat, so, you know what I mean? No, and that's sort of what I explained, and I sort of said, you know, the story behind it isn't there, and, you know, she just couldn't get past it. She was like, well, I know that my customers will, you know, they won't like it, and I was thinking, I don't think it's the customers that won't like it, that this is a you thing. And I think that's the thing that's frustrating, which I find quite frustrating about selling is there's so much subjectivity that goes into decision making and buying regardless of how big or small your business I get it with a small business especially as an owner because I know like that they are an extension of you you know your your small business is you in a in a business form so i can understand if you fundamentally disagree with something or you have a kind of visceral reaction against something that obviously isn't right for your store but it really surprises me when you're targeting some of these bigger ones that you know the bigger retailers and buyers that work within a bigger company how little kind of customer considerate or consumer consideration goes into the decision making process versus just their own feelings and opinions and agenda really and agendas and yeah i was saying i wrote a thing of be in my newsletter this week and i was basically saying why can we not find the new innocent guess how many innocent stores sorry innocent guess how many waitrose stores innocent started with oh don't know a lot i've thought quite a lot 10 10 they got they got 10 stores were allowed to prove themselves in 10 waitrose stores and then went to 50 whereas what i'm basically saying is how the fuck are we going to find the next innocent if we're putting small imagine they don't mean this in a derogatory way if they were to put this in 400 sainsbury stores it's going to sink it's not ready it's not ready yet it needs to go into it needs to go into 15 stores build yeah yeah brand slowly then you go up and then you go up and i just think it's um it's crazy like kind of again we're sidestepping into something different here but i think it's crazy how these retailers are trying to find the next innocent and be the person that found them first but the ultimate way we're doing is this roulette we're like right we'll take 100 brands 300 stores spin the wheel see what happens and then you just end up with founder's dream shattered consumer doesn't get to try the product because they don't hasn't been on shelf for or has gone out within six months the poor buyers are stressed up to their heads because they've got from the pressure on the top is we need to find the next brand we need to find be part of the um this policy this trend you know the trends at the minute of this you know gut health you need to be so it's like we're just hopping with trends roulette wheel uh buying and um but kind of behind the curb as well behind the curve yeah like it's like that trend's already massive and probably on the way out yeah because they'll be the next thing and no one you know these are like the pioneers of retail or should be and yet all they're doing is following they're not actually setting any trends it's not this is not this is not this is not the buyer's fault at all this is coming from the top the uh this is a much deeper kind of bigger strategic yeah cultural macro macro macro macro macro macro factor who was interview and i couldn't i was doing a podcast with someone quite uh quite scary when i was really nervous and i kept saying mackerel instead of macros i was going the mackerel factors mate i was like you fucking told me um you re-record that bit i think i may have got to do it i was like yes the mackerel factors i had it the other day you know a starch is like when a chef goes to another restaurant.

43:00So basically, say you're trying to, we'll talk about running Zeppi in a sec, but a star is when like, you know, say you're working at Petersham Nurseries, they'll send you to the laundry room. What's it called? French laundry. The French laundry in LA and you'll learn for a week. But anyway, I was interviewing Jack Stein last week, Rick Stein's son. And I kept saying Sarge instead of Starge. I felt like Sarge, I was like, I'm on the fucking bill. Hello, Sarge. How are you doing, officer? um the bill i haven't had that one in a while yeah still on no i don't think so but yes so i think the the buyer thing is is is really interesting and actually that's why you're getting so many not so many brands i think this is like an i think this is just so it's happening is there is brands are trying to they want the listing the distribution so bad that they're creating products to almost like instead of consumer product market fit it's grocery uh market fit do you know what to me so just okay this this works for us because it gets us into the meal deal or this works for us because it's yeah and i think there's a map there is a little bit of a disparity there delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful billion pull from mckenzie jones but even more exciting they have just launched a brand new brand as part of mckenzie jones called mkj ignite mkj ignite is a recruitment firm which specializes full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work with some incredible brands lucky saint good race purdy and fig hunt and gather and real superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry level jobs all the way through and up to md and co level so if you're looking for a field sales stomper a sales whizzer an ops guru a supply chain sensei uh you name it mkj ignite can help you out and look if you're looking to wet your whistle ignite your curiosity then check out the poddy we recorded with them back in july laden with wisdom all about like do's and don'ts of hiring and like how to create the perfect job description you will love it what are some of the other pushbacks you've had on on this because i think also you know the early days of selling it's something um i haven't really talked about much on the pod you know yeah well we it's all right we um we consciously wanted because so much for us you know we didn't we didn't have the money to test this or you know we didn't do any ipsos testing or people like this you know ipsos testing oh it's like um it's a big research you know whenever the big fmcg brands are about to launch a new product or launch a new a rebrand they'll test it in an ipsos tracking so it's big market research kind of stuff so we didn't have any um uh we didn't have resources to properly test this we had like our friends and our family and instinctively going into like our local coffee shops and saying what do you think of this and would you you know and that was all we had before we launched here we put it was a big risk it was like right well let's produce however many bars the minimum we could but without making it cost prohibitive and let's just see so it was really important to us that we spent time building relationships with every with the retailers that we were pitching to and getting the feedback and understanding what their customers and their customers were saying um whereas i think when you go through or when you sort of put a huge focus on things like wholesalers or even if we tried which we didn't but you know if you'd gone straight into trying to win a big grocery account you're immediately disconnecting yourself from really how people are responding so we just focused flat out on independence and actually in the first year we we had won over like a good over 150 independent stores that we'd won direct every single individual one every order went out you know and how are you doing that because i think there's there's this hustle period that every brand goes through innocent case in point i know that i talk about them a lot because i did the podcast yesterday but you know innocent um kind of we did a money life like you're on the road knocking on doors yeah detail that period of time there'll be people listening to this it may literally be on the road with a backpack full of juice or crisps or snacks and they're about to walk into a deli like what is in your opinion the art of of a good indie selling first question second question like how do you manage all that i think the art is in um is in the story but kind of not just going in and only talking about you know just sort of going this is my brand and please you know look at it it's actually like who's who makes the decisions about who makes the decisions about what goes in and making observations about what they're already stocking and what's your customer like do you have more tourists or do you have a regular customer base i think it you know it is that kind of classic ask them the questions and build a rapport and and a relationship to understand what they are and then show them how your brand might fit their needs and why it would work you know it's not just about scattergunning and saying look at my amazing brand new brand and it's all it's delicious you know look you can try it and oh it's ethical you know yes you want to get those things in but it's how you get those things in and I think it's about taking time to really and you know I suppose as you get bigger you don't have necessarily that luxury of time always to spend that amount of time with the super small ones but the beginning it doesn't matter you know even if your orders like 100 quid you know it doesn't it's actually well i've got my bars in that that shop um so i think it's the art is in uh is in listening to what they want or what they're looking for and what their guests and their customers want and then understanding how your brand or your story fits theirs i also think just on to wrap close this off is the um i did loads of that and the easiest way to sell like to sell to any independent deli is you is you you do basically to de-risk it for them and someone said to me once there's like a supermarket buyer that's right so an independent buyer is thinking do i spend this 60 quid on a case of fatso or do i take my daughter ice skating on the weekend the opportunity cost is much greater for an independent store store person versus like you know a big supermarket you're just a sell e5 do you know what i mean and so what i think when i i can't remember who told me that but i was like oh shit so what we need to do is just absolutely de-risk the hell out of it because they've got finite shelf space so you take your two best skews your two best selling skews and just say right i'll give you these three don't give them a full case because a full case uh will create the let's say you've got a case of 12 it's going to take ages to get through a case of 12 or not ages if you give them a case of if you guys i'll give you these three three uh i'll give you one mixed case yeah one mixed case put them on the shelf they're free if they sell if they sell by tuesday um let's do a listing and then and then also just say i'll come in they will sell so then straight away the person's thinking oh fuck that fatso does sell then book in a sampling session so you can activate it like that those two things will literally i genuinely and like providing you're not a weirdo like you're not weirdo but like going in and just being a bit like um what's the word like trying to sell it too hard yeah we're not in the business of car salesmen exactly you know yeah then i think you can get most indies of the line and then how so so then you do so you get them in and then how do you get them moving either through the sell through to the exactly that sampling sessions um obviously talking to them about getting good um you know positioning in in uh store supporting with like if there's an occasion we do bundles and things like that so they can you know do gift packs and stuff I mean it totally depends on the store really um often it is about where you're positioned in store we have found that when you know most of our indies if they put us on the shelf when it's seen it goes um and I appreciate that you know every brand wants to be seen but something as provocative and quite visually impactful.

52:24It does a lot of... The bars do a lot of hard work. Oh, God, yeah. You know, it's not difficult to... Also, I think the packaging's just like... It looks like a book. Well, exactly. It's different. It stands out. It's not the same. What was the... Well, we just wanted it to be... We didn't want it to look like everything else. We wanted it to feel like a bit of an experience. We wanted it to be part of the eating, right? um and uh we wanted it to feel we wanted it to feel premium but not stuffy and boring which i i think that we've achieved um so yeah the the packaging itself does a lot of hard work for us um and sampling sessions i mean when people taste it they i mean we have we see so much when we do sampling sessions we always say to them by the way you might want to do a little order before we come because yeah well that's a really good interesting point as well yeah yeah and and you know most of the time they do because they're like well yeah and you do you sell it through for them you know they don't they often or if they don't you're you're for sure doing a a reorder at the end of that sampling session because who doesn't want to taste bar chocolate when they you know a little bit of chocolate when they go in and oh god yeah so um snaffle that up snaffle yeah exactly what was your second question you said what's the art on how do you manage it i mean yeah it's a lot of the time what's the stage of the business because there'll be a lot of people who are about to go on this journey who are listening to this uh what's how do you manage all that because i know there can be it can be a head fuck with a like if you're not with a wholesaler the just doing all the admin with the invoices if you're going direct like how do you um get through that you just have to do it right and it's it's yeah i mean it's it is a lot of admin what we try and do because we we've um one of the things i was saying to you before is one of the things that we have sort of put a lot of our investment in too is um people you know so we've hired we've hired a sales person um hannah who's you know shithole what she does she's worked in lots of startups um not in this category but she's a real hustler um and you know she's always got a bar it doesn't matter whether it's the week or the weekend doesn't matter where she's going and where she is she's always got a bar to whip out and have a conversation with someone um and so there's that focus and then we've also got you know we've got fine we've got some like finance support um another hannah uh apparently we only hire hannahs um and you know she does all the admin and processing so we've been really lucky or that was a very it was a choice we made to allow us to really focus on the sales to have you know things like finance support to make sure that we're not also then having to do all of that in the back end and then just running out of time because also as any business owner will also attest to listening to this is that cash is king so if you're not sending out those invoices or you're not getting those um sales in it it's well it dies yeah yeah yeah yeah one of the platforms that we found really good though for independence as well as fair fair marketplace um they're like a they're a marketplace for independent businesses but quite a lot of lifestyle gifty companies that they're at they've been amazing and you know brand you can do sort of decent six-figure sales just through them and it's independent shops all who can discover brands like ours and buy direct but they have i think they maybe pay a small subscription or something and they get free shipping but the brand doesn't pay the shipping fair pays the shipping oh that's clever and they and they generate all the labels so you literally just have to pack the order sit the label on and they collect it and enough off it goes and they have and the in they do 30 day payment terms for the brand but 60 day payment terms for the retailer yeah that's smart and it's uk us so you can do us from here and we don't pay for that canada australia it's great oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like Hungary is finally swimming in the big leagues I can't believe this it's absolutely mental but delighted to announce that Big Fish yes Big Fish are partnering with the podcast Perry's been on the podcast three times listeners absolutely love it some of my most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time but Big Fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard in your weekly shop Charlie Bigham, Year Valley Tyrells, Clippity Goo, Rana I mean make the list longer than the River Nile but they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good, they're brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing like Howda, the snack that gives back but even more exciting news Big Fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenge of food and drink brands that are destined for big things the raconteurs, the movers, shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fish and just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fish bowl uh last week chatting to perry freddie and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to them are there any other like really lucrative uh unseen opportunities that you've stumbled across that could really help people um trying to think i mean it's early days ceases to exist now we when farm drop we did a lot of volume through them early yeah i've worked with farm job not with fatso but another business um did yeah any other like interesting places you've got the products that you didn't are you in garden centers yeah we're in um quite a few of the bigger blue diamond ones um is blue diamond uh they're like a premium garden center chain but they they're not all branded blue diamond but they're like a bigger yeah um so they've been good but yeah i mean i think channel strategy is really interesting and i think we become it's very easy to go independent retailer i'm a food brand delis farm shops and then i'll want to go to grocery and then that's it i've talked about this a lot on the podcast but i think every brand has a slipstream channel so a slipstream is um perry was telling me about this it's like the surfing uh you can find a thing that will pull you out you can swim against the waves like this to get your fucking board out there or you can find the slipstream and go pull you straight up um and i think every brand if you do enough testing will find the slipstream so um seed lip for like selling for them garden centers were kind of retrospectively it makes sense as well obviously you're a nature brand but selling alcohol free booze in a garden in a garden center you're probably thinking well let's go for the bars first let's go to the boozers let's go to the pubs fucking garden centers like that's the slipstream channel um i'm trying to think of other examples in Innocent much further up the line was

1:00:00Wilkinson's Giles Brooks just talked about this in the podcast Wilkinson's which now ceases to exist and McDonald's so that Cardinals name was Seadlips example of a Bubba brand obviously Innocent and like well selling juice, healthy juice in McDonald's that's an oxymoron That was a big part of McDonald's's strategy but I think so every brand big small um simply roasted crisps yep they so you know you look at food services as a as or out of home as people say which i still think it's my stupid name i just think of big billboards yeah i'm just like what if i get a sarni and then take it back home yeah exactly am i not allowed to do that because but their slipstream channel is like well look so everyone's going into bni business and industry i think it is with the corporate with the crisps they found this weird little sub niche channel which is schools because schools want healthier crisps giving the kids walkers even though prom cocktail crisps are the best crisps on planet earth yeah just the og but there's a slipstream channel so i think i'd love to kind of tease this out with you like is there any we've got some yeah what are some of the channels you're you're playing playing in with this delicious brand um so uh speaking of education one of the things that we're seeing some really good traction is like universities um what in the uh like in their like yeah and i mean if you think of a university campus how many foodie type outlets that they've got and if you think about when you're a student how rubbish you were actually saving i mean i didn't say i mean i I just ate.

1:01:46Also, I was talking about this the other day. When I was revising every single day, I'd go, I don't know if you remember them, they used to do Cadbury's buttons. Yeah, so they'd have normal button, white chocolate button, they'd have little mini Oreos. Oh, delicious. And they'd have these little, like their equivalent of a Smarties. Yeah. So I'd get those, two bags of those, 20 cigarettes and Diet Cokes, and just sit there and revise and eat them all day and smoke. The day before the exam. The day before the exam. but yeah but i think that's that's a slipstream channel is it's like yeah oh yeah i've got i've got to do a fucking dissertation well let me have some fatso yeah that's beautiful yes so that's a really interesting one i think food service is also um a space so we've been talking to like quite a big a couple of bigger businesses i think i'm kind of i'm very curious how it plays out with this whole back to the office thing in that more corporate office culture.

1:02:45When you say back to the office. You know, because more of the big players are now saying, no, you've all got to come back in now, you know, at least three days a week. They're sort of putting more guardrails around hybrid working. I think there's probably quite a lot of resistance coming from employees around that. But obviously if everybody's, if everyone starts doing it, then people aren't going to have a choice. uh whether a bar of chocolate will compel you know free bar of chocolate in the snack drawer will compel i don't know but i like to think it might it's true so the uh the budgets we had this with islands with the hot chocolate because they suddenly all these kind of sites had more budget to spend on food because they're like well we can get people to the office if they've got a bang in free lunch and free so so i think that's that's another example of stitching channel but again yeah pre-covid islands couldn't get edgeways into these um hot chocolate hot chocolate places cafes hot chocolate places i was just saying that is this a hot chocolate place fucking two-year-old let me do a really good job it's a good it's called a cafe yeah this is a hot chocolate place well there's canoops that's a hot chocolate they would call them Yeah, these places do exist.

1:04:01But yeah, and I think it's what we were saying right at the beginning when we were talking about the pregnancy thing is about being open. I think if you can be open as a founder to the movement or literally within you here, but also the movement of how things are changing is interesting. I think as well, it's almost playing in a space, you know, we're in a saturated, we're playing, we've gone into one of the most saturated categories you could possibly think of doing. Oh, sorry. And. if you're going into a saturated category then you kind of need to find those slip streams as you call them that are inherently less saturated so you know when we go so farm shops and delis is an interesting one because you think well yeah because it's food you know it's food and it's more niche artisan food that's kind of how you would but actually the place we see most um a huge amount of sell-through are actually in things like butchers bakers gift shops lifestyle shops where actually they haven't got three or four five other chocolate brands they've just got one or two you being one of them so you're you're you're giving them the consumer a lot less choice because their primary reason is to go and buy a gift or to go and buy a shoulder of pork or whatever but then it's just a basket add-on um so we see a lot more success in the less obvious places which is why i think food service in unis um hotels like we've got some really fab hotel listings um and there and hotels and more and more as you talk about like increasing their budgets to create those added value moments so rather than it just being about minibar which is a very slow you know minibars are a slow burner because, I mean, I don't think I've ever really bought anything from a mini bar.

1:06:01I mean, except maybe when I'm really drunk. Yeah, when I'm drunk, I'll smash one of those. You know, they always have those mini toad rounds. Yeah, exactly. I can nail one of them. Fine. But then you'll wake up in the morning and be like, oh, I just spent a ten hour on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I could have gone to that little newsagent over the road and bought the same thing for a pound. but um but more and more hotels are now doing like um you know give gifting things um so like one hotel that is um we've got um that's just i think it must well it's definitely opening next week it's going to the launch there's this amazing new hotel in oxford called the store um and they are giving every guest that comes a big bar of morning glory do you um because that's because there's like there's a place called the newt in somerset yeah which is i'm trying to get them on the pod actually but what's the wheels into them or are you just doing it direct direct those ones i mean they're more indie yep ones um but even to be honest most even like your bigger chains your hilton's and stuff most of their buying is done within because because more hotel chains now they're not being they're not doing that continuity premium ones anyway you know Hilton own quite a lot of hotels but quite a lot of hotels you wouldn't know are owned by Hilton they'll be the kind of cool short itchy ones and whatever so that's all been direct so far and we haven't yet come across a wholesaler that kind of exclusively works Boe and Me our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out You need your first indie stockist, your first hundred stockists to wholesale.

1:07:47Boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up. But if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger, Boemi are also insane. They make field sales marble smooth, silky slick. They're just epic. Ollie's, Ollie's been on this podcast twice actually. They saw a 29 % uplift in sales when using Boemi to check major malt listings availability. Insane. 29 % uplift by downloading an app. Insane. Lucky Saint, my boy Aaron Duff who's come on this podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've unlocked 500 draft listings by using Bowie Me you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life, it's just the sickest platform I use it all the time at Ireland Hi guys, super super quick one, so so excited look, for years I've been badgering on about Hungary the podcast, you're probably bored to death, thanks for putting up with me but Hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called islands chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at a load of wholesalers we've got milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of uh the boozy isolate brand pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if your brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode the macro lesson or the macro lesson the macro lesson is is you know back to finding these being open finding the channels and doing more of what matters so if if you know if you do find a slipstream channel really push on that door um i want to talk about i said single mum uh in camden like the beginning my mom yeah yeah your mum um sorry not you I'm glad I'm not um but I mean I do sound a bit like Stephen Bartlett here but like tell me about your kind of childhood growing up like how did you get from there to Suffolk to here in Richmond like tell me about that story what was that like growing up in Camden um I mean I suppose it's very different so you don't massively spend a lot of time reflecting but I have to say the biggest thing for me moving from proper urban city life to Suffolk and we didn't just sort of go to Suffolk we went to proper rural like we they bought so I had a step my mum had remarried by then and I should say bit of a shout out to my dad my dad was very present and very much part of my life and upbringing and still is today I'm very excited about being a grandpa but my mum was on her own um you know they weren't together from when I was a baby but that's a story for another day um but they that contrast from going like the biggest thing for me was I was almost ignorant to any kind of prejudice having grown up in the city you know when I went from a school you know with plenty of diversity and you know I I had gay godparents and you know whatever I just I had absolutely no idea that there were people out there that had had prejudicisms against people because of the color of their skin and i'm half indian by the way so really yeah so um so my dad's on my dad's side so i you know and i was always really proud of that heritage i am really proud of that and um and i just yeah and and as i say and then the homophobia so going then to a school it was very rural very white middle class kind of you know these kids hadn't some of them you know they hadn't seen then they hadn't been taught or seen or been exposed to anything like i had you know and even just just a street wiseness you know there was just none of it and i i found that really tough because i just couldn't i guess i'd got guiding principles and values and this sort of openness to people all people from all walks of life it's bad there's a common theme here openness yeah a real openness to um to people yeah to to every kind of iteration of a human being i'd never i hadn't realized when we then moved to suffolk like oh no there's people that are really isolated in their thinking and not necessarily because of their fault i mean that's why i call it ignorance it's not it's not necessarily born out of a prejudice it's it's just that they didn't they don't know they've not had that exposure so so that was really um weird and I think maybe has kind of fed into some of my determination to do things with a with a with an open mind and to um and to kind of treat everybody equally and to make sure that everything is equal in our even down to our supply chain right to make sure that there's a real fairness and uh and an equilibrium to everyone and to everything that we do does that make sense yeah for sure no it's interesting connecting the dots i think you can only connect the dots looking back i was writing about this the other day so so then so you go so that's so that's the that's the move and then i'd say growing up with you know uh you know me and my mum against the world in a way with the a lot of love and support from godparents and obviously my dad as i say and my um grandma and my aunt and you know there was a huge amount of family you know we were a very close family unit the extended family but my um my mum was a working mum you know i went to nursery full-time when i were from the age of probably about nine ten months which made me very sociable little kid I wouldn't shut up I'll never forget I'll never forget when I was at my aunt's we were at my auntie's for for dinner and I must have been about six and they gave me the challenge that could I not speak until the clock got to the five past I don't know if they would probably encourage that in parenting now but you know it was like I was this um very massive extrovert as a kid but you know I was also um inspired by this mum that had had a big career and was bringing me up um and she's also gone on she she didn't she she quit the law um when i was about maybe 12 13 and has become a very successful film producer i see what films or like what kind of stuff does she produce like uh british indie stuff so she's did um good luck to you leo grand which is an amazing film with um about uh it was like a sex positive film so it's about uh a widow who'd never had an orgasm and so she hired and her and she so she hired a sex worker to her hotel room and it's with emma thompson plays the widow and she was absolutely outstanding in that and yeah lots of brilliant british films um so yeah so she runs her own business and you know she's sick how does she get like what so she sounds seems like there's a massive creative element um yeah coming from your mom yeah and then what role did your dad have in in the manifestation of everything you do my dad's a sort of more classic businessman he you know he's not run his own businesses he's always worked in big corporate businesses which is really fascinating because we often talk about you know the challenges that he might have in a big corporate and i'm like oh god we'll can't what why is it you know that that must be so frustrating because you're being sort of you know all these layers and politics and the bureaucracy which obviously i don't have i mean i have worked in corporate so i know what he's dealing with um but he's just a bit more i guess he's just gone a slightly more classical route um but you know they weren't together so i suppose he has but I guess my dad represents a sort of stability and a a safeness in a lovely way um and I think there's a bit of me that does do that you know I am I think I'm not risk averse at all but there's always going to be a side of me that sense checks the risk whereas mum might be a little bit more fast and loose yeah so I might sit somewhere a little bit yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah um so then so then you grow up in suffolk what's the i suppose we're kind of working back here but you then you go to uni like what's the yeah i went to went to uni studied business and marketing yeah same so if that's a i've got no fucking idea what i'm doing yeah kind of although i also i started that's for me at least yeah no no i i i started the process doing oh i'm gonna do english literature you know because it felt but then I was like actually do I like do I like reading that much I mean I do like reading but do I want to do that full time for the next three years and then this course I think we did the did you were you at Brooks no oh okay well I went to Bournemouth dropped out I went to Manchester oh right yeah oh yeah of course you're at Manchester who was I seeing the other day anyway did you go to Brooks yeah I went to my basement there yeah maybe that's why I've probably connected with people for a year.

1:18:37Yeah, what was it? Is it Fowley Road? Cowley Road. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, lived on the Cowley Road. Yeah, that's good fun. It was great fun. Good fun, but probably unlike Manchester, everything closed down at like two. I mean, you were always in bed by three. You know the, what's the halls? Chaney. Chaney. The Bacon Sarnies in that place. They have, I still remember, I'd go out there and they'd have this, almost like a posh subway. In the sports bar. In the sports bar. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'd just sit there and they do like this chicken avocado bacon mayo lettuce sounds bad everyone's in jack wills and signet rings yeah yeah it's definitely one of those um yeah speaking of diversity bunch of rich kids no um but uh yeah and i absolutely loved it i loved university i um i've got you know some of my well my you know best friends out of that and i'd actually have the course was good like I still use some of the I definitely use some of the things that I learned there on a in a matter of principle I mean nothing you know you can sit in a lecture hall all you like nothing really prepares you until you actually go out into the world and also those principles might apply in big corporate but often don't apply in challenger brand world or you know the reality is if you don't have a budget you can't do all of those you can't do you know all the things that you might have been taught that make up a marketing mix for example but um yeah I you know uni was great and then yeah came to London worked at GSK for as a sort of assistant brand manager um then moved on to Sky so as in Sky television but working in their online team so that's when I started to I sort of came out of that more classic brand management and into more e-commerce digital space which at the time was very uh novel and forward-thinking and now is just yeah um and then i moved to canada oh fuck wherever i was in canada francouver oh nice what's that place saying i just met a load in costa rica like every say you know oh yeah they love costa rica we're basically saying that we and my friend was saying that the media in america present canadians as like the kind of the subpar kind of super nice canadian guys you know yeah whereas actually i was like these are all they're all jokes like everyone we met was canadians an absolute joker and they're good fun yeah and um but they were saying vanc they're they're from halifax uh-huh kenzie and logan who i kept calling lawkin uh no i kept calling them kelly and lawkin but yeah so what was what what did tell me about vancouver what was that like oh awesome like it's a it's a really entrepreneurial city so you get a lot of startups um businesses a lot of creative people is that is that their kind of san francisco exactly it's like it's like a slightly yeah it's a it's a it's not san francisco because it's not it's not kind of it's not as techy as san francisco either we used to but it's sort of more forward thinking but it's forward thinking it's very very creative it's kind of you know be also there's a real kind of spirit around creativity there it's not there's no kind of corporate it feels very what did how what did your time what were you doing in uh vancouver so i worked in advertising so someone very early on i think it was at gsk someone said to me um the kind of the a great way to think about your career is and it kind of goes again back to the openness thing is to find um is to get the best breadth of experience you can early especially early on so thinking about cross-functional experience so whether that's you know brand management e-commerce client servicing sales whatever um uh cross-market experience and cross-category experience so like if you're hitting those three things you'll go further in principle because obviously you're kind of understanding brand management so no so cross-functional experience or the function in which you're working in get experience in different facets different try and get different experience in different functions yeah cross-category experience i.e i worked on toothpaste now i work in chocolate um and uh cross-market experience so go and work in a different market hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode i need a really big big big big favor i have pitched us some massive guests humongous guests and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough please please please just hit the subscribe button on apple or spotify or follow ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode if you could boil down your whole the whole spirit of vancouver uh what how what is that kind of into one sentence what would that be do you think for me i would yeah for you like what did that give you as as as a place and maybe whilst you think of that maybe a slightly easier lift would be like is there a specific uh story or or experience when you were in vancouver that kind of encapsulates the spirit before the sentence um maybe but i just think the whole thing for me was i i suppose it gave me a beautiful this beautiful independence i mean and it sounds a bit wanky but um because it was it was only mine right you know my move to Vancouver I didn't go with anybody else I went and actually moved in with a really close friend of mine who wasn't a super close friend at the time but we became really close when I moved in with her she was British too um but like moving abroad even though it was the same you know it wasn't like I was moving into a different language you know I wasn't speaking a different language or anything like that you know you you have to like taking that leap of faith to move your whole life and I did I properly moved how were you there for three years um but it wasn't like oh I'm moving and I'll just I mean you have to take these things by as it comes but you know I I didn't know anybody I didn't know anything I didn't have a job so I had to start again you know I didn't even have I mean a friend of a friend very kindly lent me a mattress but that was you know and I had the clothes and clothes but we had to sort of build our lives and I think when you're I mean I was in I was in my early 20s so it's a big it was a big

1:25:56adventure um and whilst it wasn't a massive industry market in so far as i mean i worked really hard and i did some really cool stuff with work but work wasn't the only thing and maybe this comes back to a question about how am i going to manage this baby and you know becoming a mum and and work and and then running a business the two things i know because i proved it don't have to live separately they can all encompass you know I have amazing friends that I worked with but work never felt like a a chore like work was just part of my lifestyle um and it was just a it was an amazing a place where you could just where life where it kind of felt like a place where you could really have it all in a way but I was also of an age where i didn't have any responsibilities i had no mortgage i had no you know i just had to pay my rent and my food and and and get on with it but yeah it was just this sort of it was just it was just mine it was this place it was mine yeah it's interesting um and i never felt you don't feel like that about places i don't feel like that about places here yeah yeah i know what you mean the i think there is something definitely in that's why i'm going to lisbon for a couple well about a month and maybe a bit more longer um next week just to like back back to that slow productivity thing so at the minute i'm not drinking well like obviously i've got five podcasts this week work really fucking smash it but then from next week it's like work three four hours a day cruise relax go to the beach and then come back can go again isn't your supper club next week i so you go just afterwards i go the next step the next morning it's jokes because simona simona from nojo is lives in lisbon oh yeah so uh she flies back the next day and then paul from mckenzie jones has his mate who owns loads of brands in lisbon coming over so the next day and he's going back the next day so the next day there be three of us going to lisbon on the same flight or that's right yeah i know who knows tbc yeah yeah yeah i'll uh meet you in the red line at spoons yeah and um and have a have a have a sharpener a final thing i want to kind of just uh talk about is renny redzepi i found this book uh in your wasn't like i was here before you arrived rummaging around so so renny for um for people listening he owned or created gnome which was the best restaurant in the world like five six seven years on the in on the bounce yeah it's mad it's mad it's closed now yeah but this book is called a work in progress a journal um how did you get that book why did you talk to me about that book it was gifted to me actually i was on a podcast with um it was the um is that how to play leandra um and it was about uh i think it was called how to play sorry that's terrible of me um forgetting the full name of the podcast but the principle of podcast is was um all the the series that i was interviewed on was all about how you bring play into work you know and so often do we um do we forget that being playful actually leads to creativity which can lead to great ideas which can lead to great business ideas which can lead to great brands it can lead to great success you know in in principle so um and and she gifted me this book as a kind of i suppose marker of nothing's ever done you know you're never finished um when it comes to building something and that doesn't just that isn't just isolated to businesses or brands that's isolated probably to raising a child you know you're never done raising so how do you find play how do i well like how does he why why does this book signify play because it's called a work in progress well i mean that was kind of like you know it's it's it's about creativity and um is this actually like his journal yeah this is but obviously no you know the whole thing about having a shadow you know his whole business was a work in progress of creativity you know you never never stopped refining changing testing boundaries and that's really what that's really what Fatso's about testing

1:30:41I had a guy on last week Will Storr who's an author three really interesting books, The Status Game Selfie, How the West Became Self-Obsessed and Science of Storytelling, fucking interesting guy and he doesn't drink but he he talked about the role of status in architecture so we were talking about the blandemic and how all architecture looks the same now and it's very boring and he basically says that the uh the reason that that is is because architects are not creating something for the consumer they're creating something to impress other architects thereby gaining status within that group right does that make sense so it's like instead of thinking like oh what does what does the public want now i want to win the architecture award yeah so i'll create something that makes that looks good in the in the small high esteemed spheres of architects so that's why all the buildings look the same and what will was saying is he was saying the same thing to happen with chefs so the three-star chefs are now creating food not for the consumer they're creating something that will show off their fucking veloute thingy-majig yeah they would never call it that but anyway but but he was saying um and he actually said he went he went to he went to Noma and he couldn't stand it it was his his opinion um but it goes back to what we kind of wraps things up nicely is it great art should divide yeah so you know will store's interpretation of it maybe i don't like that the person at that shop may not like fatso but that's you need you need that tension you need that tension and divide how are you a um a work in progress would you say what are you trying to work on oh god we're always trying to work on something um i mean new new lots of new ideas i think something that's kind of quite interesting and i think did you say it the other day as well about um entrepreneurs boredom is that what is that what's that coin of that phrase where it's like battle versus boredom no but like when you're doing you know not not kind of over not kind of scattergunning look not getting bored basically of what you're doing because you're on to the next thing you know it's like i think so maybe it wasn't you but i think well maybe in a writer but it was about mpd it was about mpd like just because you know you're not just because you feel like that flavor has been launched for a year and therefore it's boring and you need something new doesn't mean that it's still not new to lots of other people oh fuck yeah yeah yeah yeah there's loads of this but yeah it's it's it's founders get libby from piper told me this is it's founders think oh my god no one like we need to push the marmalade the morning glory we need to we need a new version of that it's like well yeah you could but most people don't even know about your digestive biscuit yet yeah exactly exactly so so i think it's about um making sure more and more people know about it without having to necessarily always do other stuff but um what was the question again sorry how are you working on yourself well like how are you a work in progress like what's some of the things you're trying to like work on as you build the brand because i think focusing on things that matter as i said i think there's it's a very much a guiding principle of our brand and our business but it's not easy to live by always it can be very easy to get stuck in the detail or you know and it's it's it's it's a nerve-wracking thing running a business because as i say you know cash flow if you don't have the cash flow for example you know you're you're buggered or you know you've got the you've got issues of stock you can get very locked into the business running of things and then that can very quickly become a distraction to focusing on the creativity and the forward thinking and the setting the direction of what you want to do next whether that be a product or whether that be a piece of communications or whatever um so i'm working on that i'm you know i'm always working on myself to be honest to be to be a better mentor leader to empower the team to know when to step back and when to step in and all that sort of stuff is there anything that you've learned in the last 18 months that have really kind of step changed that in terms of i think you've learned recently that you think fuck me that was really useful i think whilst you think on that like there's i just think the first thing about status sorry state he basically says this thing with dealing with with like if you're ever feeling dealing with the issues and stuff is a state story strategy it works in that order and so basically what happens is if you're in a bad state you'll tell yourself a bad story and this could be about like like going through a breakup or going through a a bad business meeting or you know the person saying facts was a shit name if you're in a bad state um bad state equals bad story equals bad strategy and so what most people try and do is they they're they try and focus on the strategy and the story and then actually what you need to do is just focus on the state so what he says i mean it's quite strong is going before you're making a decision about something go and do a half an hour run or go and dump in a cold plunge it's great and then you change your state that changes the story that changes the strategy it's something i've been thinking of a lot especially with the slow productivity stuff um which is kind of one of my obsessions at the minute like even today before i'm going to rush into a um massive block of work this afternoon so i'm gonna go on a walk probably gonna go to a fucking bookshop there's a water so in richmond there is yeah yeah mooch about there get a coffee change my state and then go into the thing so i'm lot of stressed yeah so that's that's something i've been really thinking about a lot recently is this story strategy sorry state story strategy that's great advice is there anything that's been really yeah in that you've learned that could really benefit me and listeners i suppose

1:37:08um i think i i'm a very values driven person so uh i think staying true to those values and and always reminding yourself of those values is just so important um because i think otherwise you can lose your way and you can get distracted by the things i think um

1:37:32i think also it's it's kind of it's a little it goes really beautifully into your um is it slow progress that's what it's called slow productivity slow productivity sorry not slow progress yeah yeah um slow productivity is you know uh it's a bit like the tortoise and the hare it's not a race yeah and i think to your point about not taking if you and i talk to the team a lot about this it's very easy to become reactive especially when you're busy yeah you know oh that's come up or that that problem's happened i'm gonna react i'm gonna be cross about it and then i'm and like write this email because I'm you know I'm annoyed or um no we're gonna have to change that and you know making snap decisions on the basis of one event that can to your point kind of change your state of mind which then changes your whole response to the whole thing yeah yeah changes your story changes your strategy yeah yeah and I I don't think I realized how um easy i don't know if it's in everybody but it's so easy to be reactive it's so easy for me i mean it's so easy to get into that state of just hamster wheeling um and that often comes with volume of work is that example of that oh well i suppose it's like it's like anything thing it's a little bit like um i don't know oh we've we've not thought about what we're i mean this is a very small example but we've not thought about what we're gonna put how our social media is gonna look for the next week or the next month or whatever and um oh we've now got to like force ourselves to think of something and you might create a kind of series of yes random i'm the worse than that like random stuff and then and you haven't necessarily thought about it and in relation to your to brand your brand or what you want to say there's nothing there's nothing really underpinning it so you're just kind of reacting because you forgot it's a bit like you were saying you know if you're kind of a bit disorganized and frenetic and then you just end up doing something because you think that you should um whereas actually it's like okay well what's going to really happen if we take a minute and we don't you know we don't post for a couple of days but actually we think about what it is that we want to say and what we want to do and we do something cool and fun and because it's our point of the brand you know doing things so so so i think i mean i don't know how it's a slow slow linking to all this together is like slow is smooth smooth is fast yes that's the tim ferris thing i've talked i've been listening to them loads recently but this Cal Newport thing I think to wrap this all up is it's like if you take a step back you do more what matters more than it's not it's not about doing less work it's about doing more of more of the things that are important so that's the first kind of thing second thing what Cal Newport says in slow productivity is folk ask yourself the questions like what do I really want to be the highest quality of things I do when you do that you'll that that question alone will blow away all the all the fucking superfluous bollocks that's on our to-do list essentially um and i think and then that's doing those two things like the slowest smooth smoothest fast the what where do i want to focus on quality that takes you someone is there's no kind of utopia or sort of panacea with this but there's into that state of um less reactivity because i think ultimately what what reactivity comes from is is by trying to do more without the matters more without the matters is fucking chaos yeah more of not as you say it's not yeah yeah it's not it's not productive it's not productive um so i yeah i think taking those moments whether it's a walk or a run i mean i you know i always like doing like one-to-one meetings and stuff on a walk you know we don't just sort of sit and stare at each other and go through a to-do list well that's one thing i'm thinking of doing which i'm now being is doing podcasts on the walk love it not like with this but um but yeah also like i'd um my natural thing is the high octane so this is like next week i may be back to that but i've absolutely loved this um it's been yeah just so nice to kind of i think what you've created is fucking sick i really think it's actually it's genuinely different the name's bold it's courageous it's a brand i'm incredibly excited about but also i think there is um within all of this like a deeper kind of meaning in terms of doing more than more of what matters um it's quite profound it's very profound in fact um so yeah thanks for a lovely start to a sunny morning appreciate it thank you good to be here thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked 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