Gary Lavin, VITHIT - “I was SKINT…” from Broke to £80 Million Global Drinks Brand

46:50So it went from... That's something actually what you've touched on is really interesting. The amount of founders who would never say that on a podcast but like the amount of founders who do that who I know are friends who say, oh, we've got this going on and they think, what, do you have to do something? Sometimes you have to do these things to get your foot through the door and once you're in, It's slightly different now because it's so statistic led. Certainly the UK is very, very highly stat led. Yeah. So, you know, we are now the best selling vitamin drink by miles. We're two and a half times bigger than the next vitamin drink brand.

47:19And we drove the category by 83 % on our own last year. And so when you have stats like that, then retailers will finally listen. But you've got to get to that stage. Yeah. Right. So, you know, a couple of little white lies along the way. aren't it's certainly not gonna as long as you can't be found out by statistics so then you get into the Red Bull distributor and that's getting your rate that the rate of sales going up they sort out the distribution lag so say the thousand stores that were declining by 30 % they bring that up you then described it as a shit fight like unpack that a little bit more like once you're in that shit fight bit what's that?

47:59well in Ireland you know I'm a small guy fighting with shelf space for Coca-Cola and Britvik and all those guys. So they have money, I don't. And so I've got to fight my way onto the shelf. So, yeah. So when I left my distributor at the time and went to this new distributor, Richmond, which is still with today, the distributor copied my brand. So talk about a shit fight. So I actually went into a store one day and they had my exact product bar, a couple of little changes. no I had to sue them and I ended up winning but I didn't have the money to sue them so that was kind of brand protection so I got to know all the retailers as well so this is back in let's say I think 2012 when the brand was copied and when I saw it was copied I actually phoned up all the buyers and which you couldn't do this in the UK it's just thinking about it now it's bizarre but what I did it was like defending your family you know it's like someone calling your child ugly So what I ended up doing was I phoned about all the retailers and I basically said, you know, that I've created this category and I started this in the year 2000 and you've supported me and I've supported you the whole way through.

49:12And now we have a product. I said, I don't mind competition, but when they completely copy my brand, I said, I don't want you to support them. And none of the retailers listed. So you've touched on a beautiful point here. So Ryan and I were talking beforehand about the way Irish do business. and I think your brother is a lecturer as well Yes, in Trinity which is the big university over there and one thing we were saying is one, it's super direct it's direct and friendly when we were working with Dunn you get on the phone if you want to negotiate or you go and meet them whereas in the UK it's all done on email there's the famous book by Phil Knight who's the founder of Shoe Dog sorry a fan of nike called shudog and in that book i don't know if you've read it but there's a bit when he talks about going to japan doing business with japan he reads the small little book of doing business with the japanese yeah and you know one of the things in the japanese always say yes but they they could say yes yes yes you walk out the door you think you've got a listing and it means no i'd love to know like if you could maybe like if we were to create a little book of irish business yeah what are some of the real strengths like if you say say on one pages like this these are the three real great strengths of doing business with the irish and then what would you say are some of the like the real negatives maybe start well yeah well i one thing that surprised me when i came to the uk is that you know the best-selling product doesn't always get on the shelves here and to this day it surprises me um because there's all sorts of long-term agreements with larger conglomerates and that kind of stuff and it's one of the things that always really strikes me.

50:55In Ireland, we are the best-selling vitamin drink. We are on the shelves. The end. It's really simple. Over here, it's a lot more nuanced and complicated. You know, you've got to have long-term agreements and all that kind of stuff. So I would say that's a real positive. I mean... And then, I suppose, that's the positive in that, like, the best... It's a bit more meritocracy. If you've got the best rate of sale, you're on the shelf. The end. Yeah. But then how do you protect that? Is there a way to protect that because you know what you said when you build them up i'm like look fuck this there's another guy yeah mate he's great picture the same thing it feels like there's that kind of handshake trust there more well that's the way it was i think it's look uk retail saying that uk retail is our is probably the like i go to australia where we sell and uae and whatever and all of the best buyers were all trained in the uk so the uk is the model with which all the world works when it comes to retail well so so this australian um georgie who came over she was saying because one of the things that fucks me off is when people say this is the hardest time to build a food and drink brand so it's always hard yeah it's always hard it's always been hard it's always been hard but also it's like i always think it's like i was reading a book called the rational optimist and i was right it was like well hang on a sec 25 years ago when you were in new york there's no linkedin to reach out to buyers and access them like that there's no um field sales rep like apps there's no face no funding no funding yeah no vc so new in the grand scheme of things uh no um we'll talk about that how you haven't raised but like it's never been easy of course there's harder the cost of living crisis like if you look at myopically in the short term but if you zoom out over 50 60 years it's never been easier to put a food drink brand but what We were talking about that, but what she was saying, she's worked with in Australia, which is obviously a duopoly with Coles and Woolworths.

52:45She was basically saying, if you can't get into those, there's no point in trying to build a brand in Australia because there's not a big enough market in the Indies. Ireland is obviously incredibly complicated. Well, not as complicated, but complicated. America, from what I've heard, is a shit show. Because America is like, one, for example, you could get one Whole Foods listing, and that's 250 stores, which is mega. but then each individual state is wildly different wildly nuanced and distributed to those places yeah it's like i interviewed the founders of athletic brewing it's like lucky saint they put into all 52 states and they they would tell me the story of how they did that and i was like that is just a headache the uk is weird in that we have we have a supermarket that really represents our class system as well which is kind of kind of kind of weird like that you know a fish doesn't know it's in water so when i spoke when i'm speaking to you now mate and speaking to georgie other week i'm like actually we've got it kind of piss easy like and also what she was saying is if you don't get sainsbury's well you can knock on the door of tesco's if you don't get tesco's you knock on the door of an asda or morrison's there's enough it's very easy in the people have always said it's hard and it is i mean i remember i i gave a chat 15 years ago and people were kind of saying so actually was in it was yeah it was around whatever 13 years ago it was around the time of the recession in 07.

54:04Yeah. And they were saying, you know, it's really hard to get a job now. And I said, but there's full employment in Ireland. Yes, you know, it's really hard to get a job. And if it's hard, go to England or go somewhere else. Or, you know, if you can't buy a house here, buy one in Sri Lanka. There's always ways. And I just think when I heard that back then, I said, hang on a second. I said, guys, I left school in 1989 and I couldn't get a job. It was proper unemployment. I think there was like 12 % unemployment. That's actual unemployment. And I did a job. So I went and did a job interview for a combine harvester salesman.

54:39I haven't a bog about engines or whatever. And I just lied my way through and go, oh, I can sell whatever. And then he said, well, can you describe an engine? And I was like, no, this isn't working. So, you know, now people, it was full employment here in Ireland. So now people can pick and choose jobs. And it's, the strength is now with the employee as opposed to the employer. so things have really changed so things yes things are way more expensive and it's harder to buy a house no doubt but you can build your way up a little bit easier than you could back then he also there's there's a book i've literally finished reading called the psychology of money um so i'm trying to get but i've spent way too much money but anyway reading a lot yeah but the but he the the he says that pessimism is intellectual versus like everyone's always saying there's doomsday is coming something bad's coming whereas if if there's a if something's optimistic it's people are like laughing at the room and he basically says the reason we like pessimism is one because it um on a deeper level one because it kind of right back in the neanderthals whatever days like we're trying we're not looking at like oh my god we've got food we're thinking fucking hell there's a tiger on there one two the second thing he says is it's like um if we're pessimistic we kind of lower expectations which means we're always going to be kind of happier yeah never going to disappoint never going to disappoint but he says he talks about this example of of this article that was written after um the 2008 crash and it's in this book and it's like it's actually crazy what this is so negative and then he goes on to write an example saying imagine if the japanese wrote this after world war ii and it was like and bear in mind their country was fucked like bombed to shit yeah hiroshima absolutely zonked but then they've in over the 20 years they've through optimism they've become like the one of the fastest growing um countries in the world it's created like kind of the manufacturing but all this optimism can't be seen i think one thing i'm picking up from you mate is which that's like the macro level which things are always getting better like long term zoomed out things are getting better short term zoom in it's it's negative i think one of your superpowers is no matter how bad things are getting short term intense, whether it's losing all your money, going out on the road, you losing your houses, you've got this ability to kind of zoom out and see the bigger optimism.

56:58And I think that's a real superpower of yours. Yeah, I thank you. I do think that failures are little steps on a ladder to success. Yep. And failure can really take you down. I mean, it took me down many, many times. But all of these little failures along the way teach you to get to a part, you only need to win once and my wife said to me one day I remember we had we had a significant monetary loss about and I don't even know how much it was but it was back back three years ago it was a big hit it was like hundreds of thousands yeah it was it was probably like it was probably like 200 ,000 and I got a phone call is that to do with the business yeah it was to do with the business and it was about three years ago and it was a Friday and I got a phone call it was a Friday isn't it yeah these calls are always on a fucking Friday live through it on the weekend.

57:46So I got this phone call and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. It could have been 180 grand, something like that. And I put the phone down and I told my wife and we went out for dinner. And about two hours later, she said, I don't fucking believe you. And I'm like, what? And she said, you've just completely forgotten about that bad news, haven't you? And I'm like, oh yeah, I have. And I think that's a skill. I don't know where it came from, but because in business, you get told so many bad stories every day and you've got to forget about the bad times and just focus on the good times. Nobody wants to lose that kind of money and it hurt.

58:22The money hurt. But as this is like, there's nothing I can do about it. I'll deal with it on Monday. Money is gone, but we're still profitable. Like had that been, you know, a couple of million and we were in, it pulled us down. I'm sure I mightn't have swallowed the food as easily. Genuine optimism and there's a difference between genuine optimism, which I think is what you think when you go to bed at night when no one else is around and when you wake up in the morning and have the shower. Genuine optimism versus like perceived optimism, which is all like, sorry, not perceived, but like masked optimism, which is when you're like, everything's going to be all right.

58:55Like that, what I think you've got is genuine optimism. It's like, this is going to be fine. And because I think a lot of people and founders have to do this. Loads of people I've spoken to is like put on face. It's like the world's crumbling around, around them, but they've got to put on face thinking, you know, guys, everything's going to be all right. Some just do that as face, but internally they're thinking, fuck this. I think you've got to feel those things, but if you have right in the core of your soul like a thumping optimism of genuinely... Well, I mean, look, it's a bit of both because sometimes you need to see the points of a buyer...

59:27Yeah, whenever you put the mask on, whenever you had to put the mask on in front of the team and be like, look, things are going to be all right, mate, but I'm feeling a bit like touching cloth here. From the time when I had to let go of the reps back in 06 or 07, you know I wasn't telling them it was going to be okay because I was really in the shit and I finally knew it um from but from that point onwards is all we've we've grown in the last 10 years we have a CAGR growth of 25-26 % every year for the last 10 odd years so things are great you know they're getting better um and And... So there hasn't been any of those moments where I go shit.

1:00:03Now, my brother, on the other hand, who is a way more linear thinker, not as optimistic as me, and he's our CEO, I'll give you an example of the way we think differently. So I launched in Australia in 2018, had a distributor, wasn't working. So then in around 2020, I got this top sales guy, paid good dollars for him, and he's still with us today. He got us into Woolworths and 7-Eleven and Coles Express, and we're selling about 3 million units there a year. but we were up until about a year ago well about nine months ago we were losing five dollars a case for every case we sold in australia sorry sorry so that gets five we were losing every case we sold because it was being produced in europe and because freight had quadrupled in price from something that we had started the business with prop which was profitable was suddenly losing us for every case we were selling so my brother's head is on fire because he's kind of a accountant based thought processor and I'm the entrepreneur who's going to go, it's going to be fine.

1:01:01So he's literally saying, this is how much money we lost this year. This is how much money we're losing this year. You know, this is screwing our profitability. And I was in the background, along with the guy in Australia, was trying to get it manufactured in Australia. And while we were losing all that money, I was saying, well, hang on. I said, I have never entered a country in the history of 25 years where the people in the country have embraced our brand as quickly as they had in Australia. So I said, look, I'm just putting this down as brand building. And we ended up losing a huge amount of money over a two-year period, but we fixed it.

1:01:39And now we have that debt in Australia, which is now profitable and we're now eating away at that debt. So my brother's hair was on fire for a year and a half with that. But for me, I was said, look, this is a place we can really expand and we can build a brand so I consider that to be brand building a lot of companies will go in and they'll throw a million quid at advertising and the product won't work we weren't advertising but we were losing a shit ton of money but we were growing in that country and I knew if we could get our bottom line right that we'd be able to solve it and how did you get the bottom line right?

1:02:11we produced locally in Australia we changed our ingredients manufacturers to local ingredient manufacturers and we produced in Australia so no more of this freight shit oh god yeah but it was it was a headache and at the end of fiscal year one it was a year and a half we were losing huge money my brother sat down he said that's what you've lost and I was like oh yeah that's not great he said you need to fix this immediately so you know he was constantly phoning me up going just dump Australia just dump Australia because he thinks like an accountant and in many ways he was right but we didn't dump Australia we're now profitable and we're going to eat away at that loss and the product will be fine so again the reason you can do these things is because you have full if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasum crossing el rubicon to grocery retail is not easy It's the Champions League of FMCG.

1:03:17It's super hard. It means playing at a higher level. And that's where some of your amazing brands sadly stumble. Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck. And let's be real, supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. And that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. they are the team that's helping purpose-led fmcg brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers northstar i'm not like another data company that force feed you data like foie gras that act like a nasa space mission it's super super simple to use their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset north star are your shortcut to smarter decisions stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later um you haven't raised money there's no board and i'm going to get onto that but um and i think i like this the the reframe you had gary of like this is marketing spend which is really shrewd but you can get away with that but the amount of um so similar i interviewed the founder of innocent um well one of the founders in it's in adam and he was saying the same thing happened to him in but they had a board right yeah and he was like france is gonna work i know it's gonna work and he was apparently getting a fucking shitload of pressure from the board saying the numbers don't add up the accountancies and you almost need that left brain of like the numbers with the right brain i think it's that way around the right brain of like the vision and like this is good i can see where we're going with this i don't have the numbers part of my brain at all.

1:05:06Yeah. And then how did you, you got Australia moving so you got the sales guy in so you started manufacturing there then what the margin, because you weren't affected by the freight costs. Yeah, so suddenly the$5 we were losing in freight was gone. Yeah. So now we're break even and then producing locally we got to produce cheaper and ingredients cheaper so suddenly now we're making, I mean the margins should always be, I know Giles was on with you from Vitacoco and Giles said margins should always be 40 % and they are for us but over in Australia it's not quite that it's like maybe 29, 30 which isn't so bad but we got it to 29, 30 and now it's profitable and now it's eating away at the loss that we've made yeah but you know had that been years ago when we weren't profitable I wouldn't have been able to do that yeah but that's a loss now that we are getting back yeah so we'll be we'll have broken even there now and probably two and a half years we'll have eaten away at that and then it'll be break even yeah okay so then so i want to go back to this irish we break go for it mate yeah yeah excellent so i want to talk about the uh yeah back to this kind of irish book for business as you said your brother professor at trinity uh now co-seo of your business uh i think the first thing you said is like you know we can get on the blower to the the retailer and say look someone's copying our brand don't list them that's one positive what's like maybe two more of being in Ireland yeah just the way the Irish do business because I think it's I think it's really interesting as a culture and a country yeah it's it's very it's very direct now I don't my distributors now deal with all the retailers but I could you know if I really needed to I could probably phone up the retailers I think as well the people who are in the positions in Ireland have been there for 15 years.

1:07:04The buyer in Spar is still the same buyer that's been there for like 14, 15 years. Whereas in the UK, they'll spin them out very fast because they don't want you building a relationship with them because they want them to be purely money people and focused on the top line. So that's a slight difference. I think, I think the direct, with people, it's directness. You can basically say what you think. Whereas here, it's a little bit more nuanced. and so I could go into stores I go into a buyer and basically say we're the best selling product on the shelf why are we not listed and that's a conversation you can actually have whereas you can't really have that in most other countries and then the way the system is you could effectively start a business in Ireland by just having a car and with stock you probably couldn't do that here yeah what so you could literally just go to an Indy and say yeah Right, here we go.

1:08:03Yeah. What are some of the drawbacks of the way Irish do business, if there are any?

1:08:11I don't know. I'd be very pro-Irish way of communicating. So I don't see any drawbacks, really. I mean, no Irish person is, you know, there'll be, I think there is a certain intellect in Ireland that they can kind of test the mood and be able to work their way around a room like the Irish. have obviously we're a very small economy we're only five million people but we punch way above our weight all across the world like i live in dubai and the irish are heads of dubai judy free they're heads of jumeirah hotels they're heads everywhere that's what i'm trying to get to yeah okay almost zooming out of food and drink now obviously it's a food and drink podcast but like i love just talking about things get my curiosity because it's like there's a population of storytellers so i said osh from from from uh the devonshire yeah so my opening gambit to them is like okay so you've got the best writers in of all time oscar wilde james joyce that um uh like there's a there's a lot that irish and storytelling are kind of yeah intricately intertwined and he was like he was like i want this pub to tell stories and it's like it's because we're all having crack, you know.

1:09:20Yeah. But how do you think, I understand that in a pub, like storytelling is like, yeah, it's got to have a pint, mate. Let's chat shit, you know, whatever. But in a business setting, as you say, you punch so, five million punch, so above your weight. Like, if we could get into that. Well, it's breeding. It's like you get a gundog and they instantly know when a gun goes off, they're not gun shy. And you shoot the pheasant, they'll run towards the pheasant, whereas another dog would run the other way. so it's it's breeding over hundreds of years that you know it's a so we're born with two fears where um children are born with the fear of fire and a fear of um falling off a ledge so a kid will never go to a ledge and jump off right so there are two fears you're born with and all of the other fears you you learn so what is that what is that that's all humans oh yeah yeah and then irish are probably born with storytelling but but my point is is that we're all born with certain traits and I don't know the origin of it of why the Irish are storytellers but it's probably it could have something to do with bad weather you know because we're kind of inside if you think about why the Irish pubs are as popular as they are so you know people have often tried to get to the bottom of it and the reason why the pubs aren't that successful in sunny countries like Dubai in the US it's all a different kind of thing it's because the weather you want to be outside If sun's shining, you want to be outside.

1:10:42Sun never shines in Ireland, right? It's always cloudy. I came back last year for five weeks and it rained every day. So what are you going to do? You're either going to, there was no Netflix years ago, but you want to go and hang out with people. So you'd go and sit down and, you know, to 150 years ago and you might have a pint of Guinness or a whiskey and you're sitting there and you chat to your mates and it's literally just face on face. You are stuck in a room talking to people and maybe it's a weather thing. So John Hegarty, who's got the Saatchi and Saatchi, he's got a gorgeous you can literally a gorgeous book on creativity but two things he says if you want to get creative and obviously it's coming this guy's it's actually going to every country in the world he goes go to cities where the weather's crap he goes i don't know what and he goes i don't know why but he goes if i want to get creative i go to london new york in winter anywhere that's a really harsh climate yeah because basically i think it is it forces you no distraction yeah no distraction but forces you in and i think i suppose what you're saying as we go back to 150 years ago if the irish the weather's crap you're having to literally die do you think it gives you so if the weather's crap you're in pubs you're speaking obviously there's no phones then you're more direct yeah so that when you say 150 years down the line today do you think the irish are more um so when they go into a room that they can tell stories yeah steve jobs the storyteller's the most important person in the world so that that also gives you immediate unfair advantage for a small population two i think actually um the uh on the ear this is quite weird but like um on the ear the accent's really um rhythmic comparatively to say i don't mean it's in a domestic managing way but say someone from like and i've spoke like that it just is like rory southern was talking about this on um he went on stephen bartler's podcast and he's Welsh but his accent goes he's very like that and that and he says that could be something.

1:12:39Is there anything else you'd think is like how you palpably punch above your weight as a nation? Even in rugby, like rugby's fucking amazing. Yeah. I don't know, I suppose as well there's a bit of a revolutionary in a lot of Irish people because we've always kind of been the younger brother, the upstart right, kind of like the second city kind of thing or even the fifth city back in the day so we've always got this you know punching up as opposed to punching down you know you always punch harder with the the bigger guy rather than a fella who's smaller than you so we were always the small guys maybe maybe small man mentality or something like that that we have a bit of a revolutionist about us um that we want to go over to different the other very important thing is that ireland has always up until let's say 2003 the economy in ireland was always fucked right so my mom's generation my dad's generation generation before them grandparents great-grandparents they all left they all disappeared out of ireland and the bones were left in ireland like why was why well the economy was just we weren't part of part of europe um uh we were alone a tiny little island off the coast of the UK.

1:13:52We just didn't have, we didn't have anything. You know, we had nothing in the country. So it was like when I grew up in the 70s and 80s, like Ireland was a very dark and great place and anyone who had anything about them would leave. So if you have an economy where people are transient and they're leaving the whole time, they're leaving to make their lives better because you can't make it at home. So there's not a lot of comforts from a place like that so you go off and you work really hard and you come back with your success that was kind of generations and the first generation to not leave are actually the generation now from let's say 03 onwards that they can actually get a good job in Ireland with Google and all the tech companies that are there and stay there so I suppose it's kind of a little brother thing that you have to try harder second second child is always the one with the personality because they always need to shout louder right then then the kid is born first so I think we're probably a nation of second children yeah and but also i think there's the the irish ironically uh if you talk about immigrant mindset so high agency people people who get shit done who feel like they're the master of their own destiny one in that camp is immigrants and you often think of immigrants as people coming in from say india or eastern europe um who've because they've gone through that treacherous thing yeah like then they they've got that immigrant mentality you've no you've no conference but with Ireland as you say most people don't think of Irish Irish as kind of immigrants but as you say most of them are coming getting out of Ireland oh we've been a nation of immigrants our whole life yeah and then and then I suppose you've got the whole thing with um like in New York there's loads of Irish but because don't you ever you have a pact don't you like a there's a thing in Ireland because I remember I was there with Jasper and Lorcan and I was like I stay in hotels I can't fucking believe how many Americans are in these hotels as in a hotel and he's like yeah they're all looking for their fucking grandad so many went to went to America yeah well no one in America is actually American you talk to an American no as you talk to American they're Irish I'm American Irish I'm American Polish I'm American Austrian they're never actually American yes you know whereas we're proud of our heritage English are proud of their heritage I often I never understood that with the Americans.

1:16:10Linking this together then, so when was the moment that you, that kind of little brother immigrant mindset punching above your weight like what's the moment when you've been other than being on the ground with when you had to go out in the car and sell the stuff when you've got to a slightly bigger size you know you've kind of crossed that same 5 million mark I find that interest, that pace you playing as a brand really interesting um what's been the moment when you've been knocked down by a retailer or by someone fucking you over where you've lent on that bigger kind of well i'm i'm gonna show you my crack son do you know what i mean yeah well there's there's one retailer in the uk that to this day doesn't really get behind us and they haven't listed us and uh so what we decided to do is just forget about it and just circle them so we have all the other retailers in the UK around those guys.

1:17:10You can never, I never take no, you know, you just don't, as a business owner, you can never just take no for an answer. So I wasn't taking no for a couple of years and eventually I just backed off and we've kind of encircled that retail and we hope to finally eventually get them. I just think you have to, you can't give up. You just have to keep on going. It's a never ending fight as an entrepreneur. and when you said you've encircled them how because i think this is an art of the how to be persistent versus pissing off yeah that's a really how do you navigate that you know i often say this in relationships bad relationships if you focus so much on a closed door you're not going to see the open door right beside you so we were we were focusing on this major retailer for so long and it was stressing me out i was getting upset by it because i'm like we're the best selling product in this category you know why are you not listing us and it just wasn't coming across to the buyer and this was going on for two years and eventually i just said you know what i'm gonna we're gonna get so big around you that eventually you're going to have to take us on and that's my hope and I mean we're now two and a half times the size of the number two player in the country so I'm hoping that eventually the dam will break there and I think it is, communication is getting a lot better.

1:18:37Why were they saying no? To this day I still don't know Yeah, sometimes it is that it's the but again that goes back to the genuine optimism piece it's like you can either focus on what you can control build like quite like a literal um moat around you and then sorry moats around them that they're kind of like having to having to say no but you can you can make a success if you so if you look at europe for instance um the way we look at it is if we're successful in the uk that's going to lead to a lot of other things you know this retailer it would have been amazing to get them but we're not getting them but we can still be highly profitable in the uk by getting everything else around them if you just focus too much i mean we're now going into France, we're in Belgium, Holland we're going to Spain we're going to Germany so then people say to me then you take it on a larger global scale and say oh you know when are you going into America and I'm like well we're probably not Why would you not go into America because I've heard so many When you look at the populations in here right so I'm from Ireland with 5 million people UK is what 60 million people Germany's got like 90 France has got I don't know 60, 70, 80 like the world is big enough outside outside America.

1:19:52You don't need America. Yeah. You know, like we would be phenomenally successful if we do what we've done in Ireland, just in the UK. So in Ireland, we'll sell 15 million bottles this year in a population of 5 million people. So if you extrapolate that out to the UK, 60 million by three, you're talking a lot of bottles. So, you know, then you do it in France, Germany, Austria. The world's very big outside America. It doesn't always have to be America. You don't have to break America to be a successful brand. What's been the hardest country? Because you're in a fuckload of countries. What's been the hardest to kind of activate, as they say?

1:20:31Well, I'll tell you one place we got wrong. It was actually where I live in Dubai. Oh, interesting. Yeah, we got it wrong. So what we did was I got a distributor who was just in retail. So we're in like the Tesco's, the Sainsbury's, the Shell garages. Sorry, just to set the scene. What's the market like? so you've got two because you've got Spinneys which is yeah so you've got Spinneys and Waitrose and you've got then you've got a lot of service stations Adnock, Epco then you have a lot of secondary retailers down below it but you know Dubai is a country that has a name that's much stronger than its actual population there's only 5 million people in Dubai how big is it?

1:21:07apparently it's like the size of Guildford well actually maybe I don't know if you've ever been to Guildford but like apparently it's not as big as no it's not it's not as big as it punches now they're tripling the size of the economy over the next 25 years which is incredible. But the UAE is 10 million people. So you can, you know, you're distributing in the UAE as opposed to Dubai. So it's actually not that big. But the problem we did was, the problem we had was, is we went into retail at the top end, but we never actually serviced it through cafes and, you know, created a culture of a bit down below it.

1:21:39And I didn't realize at the time, but that's what we had done in Ireland. And that's what we have done in the UK. Like we're in gyms here, we're in colleges, we're in food service, we're in office blocks, were everywhere across the UK and in Ireland. And in Dubai, because our distributor wasn't able to service those cafes, except we just went to retail. And I thought it would work. And it hasn't really. Like, it still sells, but it's not to the rate that we sell in other countries. So now we've gone to a new distributor and we're now going through food service. It's about that bottom up. Yeah.

1:22:08The bottom up thing's interesting because Ryan and I were saying, because we both, he lives near me. We didn't realise we both go to the same David Lloyd. It's fucking random. so MD of Corson Press goes there there's about four tantrum drink brands who all go to that gym I was literally, yeah, not with him he was with his kids in this room the other day that'd be a bit weird, but he was there but we were saying that this bottom up piece of David Lloyd's for example is a really interesting place we're in David Lloyd's but he was saying that, Ryan was saying that he went to a Costco event and loads of shoppers there were like I've discovered you and David Lloyd.

1:22:47Now people think David Lloyd, and this is what I've learned from going there, is like this super premium gym. And the reason it's so amazing is anyone who goes there, you get the whole smorgasable of different shoppers because you'll get Waitrose and Sainte-Ve shoppers who are going there and that's their gym. Then you get sort of the little nowty shoppers who go there and that's their kind of, their luxury is the David Lloyd gym and that's where they'll go and take their kids and stuff like that. So from that one kind of occasion, you can target a gazillion different you can basically target every single customer in uk retail all from that that david lloyd yeah and we kind of said what we were saying is if you can find these little places like these gyms or so for example if you were if you were to go to um equinox you know the gym equinox or we're in there too yeah yeah but like what i'm saying is you're not going to be able to you're not going to get a costco shopper there yeah but david lloyd is a gorgeous like little sweet spot where you get the the whole spectrum of shoppers yeah i think business for me comes back to really basic things is where can you catch the shopper on their journey so in the morning they're going to a coffee shop you don't really drink vittit in the morning which you might buy it then you're going to the gym at lunchtime then you're going to your shop at home so you got to catch them in all those places and and actually when i started changing or adding skews and and adding new products i was over in dubai and i said to myself um i don't buy vittit in the mornings and nobody does.

1:24:12So what can I do to create vitit in the morning? So I create an effervescent product, which you just rip a pack and put it into a glass and then you take that in the morning. So that's another occasion. Like a vitamin? Yeah, it's a vitamin effervescent pack, yeah. Okay, so like a... Yeah. Much fancier than that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, if you take things down to real basic forms And someone said to me then the other day, you know, why did you create the can, for instance? And I said, well, on the shopper journey around my local Tesco, you walk in and you've got the products here on the left-hand side.

1:24:52And then there's cans up on the right and I want to be in the can space. So then you catch them twice. Then you go back down the store and you do a whole leg and you don't catch them. Wait, sorry, sorry, sorry. Say that again. So the bit about the cans twice? So in my local Tesco, they have bottles in one side and they have cans on the other side. We're in Tesco. So you get the shopper twice in their journey. And then at the end, you get the four pack. So they're seeing Vitted three times across the journey. Yes, yes, yes. So it's kind of like I think of occasions in a day and a shopper journey.

1:25:24You know, how many times can you see Vitted on your walk through a store? That's what Rude Health have done so well. like my old mentor who I'm saying actually today she was the sales director at Rude Health and she was basically saying all their volume came from from almond milk and maybe another skew but what Rude Health have done is they've gone to every single category so you basically walk down every single fucking aisle and you'll see it in a cafe you'll see Rude Health yeah that's got to be expansive though creating all those skews well yeah but I think they must clearly get well assuming it works so they get enough apparently their MPD strategy this is what the founder Camilla said to me in the early days, just throw it at the wall, see what works.

1:26:03Obviously now as they've become a bit of a bigger business. Yeah, we can't do that because we're not funded. Yeah, talk to me about that. So I like people who, again, this is the Oswald Wilde quote, which is everything popular is wrong. Lovely quote. And I think the popular thing at the minute with the VC money is raise it, go gangbusters, fuck it, let's have it. You haven't done that. No. Talk to me about that path. So it was just as simple as back in the day, had somebody given me money, I probably would have taken it. But there wasn't that route back in 2005. So where does it go to a bank? Yeah, and a bank's not going to believe in a vitamin drink, especially Irish conservative banks.

1:26:48There was no chance with that. so what I did was I'd sold an apartment and I made a few quid and I created my first products and stuck them in a car and kind of did that So you got the money to buy these houses from rugby Yeah well I mean you know back in the day when you had a wage which I did through rugby you could get a mortgage off the back of the wage right you can steal it that but you want to be making a hell of a lot of money so I got a mortgage the value of the property rose I sold that property got I think it was like 90 grand or 50 grand or something like that and I put it into the brand created it and then just started selling it but then along the way we've had approaches from multiple different people um and let's say like I say we have a CAGR growth rate of 25 percent a year over the last 10 years CAGR don't ask me the technicalities of it but it's basically but it's basically just it's a growth rate it's a growth rate so this year you're doing 100 next year you're you're 125 that's the basis of it right so when you have that growth rate if today you're going to sell some of the company next year you can sell over 25 more so if you can hold the line all the way through that process way through that journey you you're you're like think of the compounding that i have had in my business since i started you know we're first year we're doing let's say 20 grand worth of business the next year we're doing 40 next year you're doing 100 grand 500 grand, million, blah, blah, blah.

1:28:16It just keeps going up. So because I haven't sold, I've been investing in myself the whole way up. And every point across that journey in the last 10 years, the investment in myself has gone up 25%. Where do you get a 25 % return? You don't get any. And you say investing in yourself as in... Well, not selling the brand. So, you know, I own 76 % of the brand. My father who invested in owns 20 and my brother owns 10. And we are all making 25 % on our money every year because we're growing and we're not selling the company to anybody. Yes, okay. And we're just, here's another really important point.

1:28:52Because it's available, doesn't necessarily make sure, it doesn't necessarily mean that you should take it. So the money, so VCs. So it wasn't available to me. Had it been available, I may have taken the money, right? So I may have been, but nobody wanted Vithead back in the day. Whereas now you create some cool, sexy brand and you go and you sell off 40 % of it. 40 % is gone. Then you run out of money, which they all do. Another 20 % is gone. Suddenly you're down to 40 % yourself. Then you need a marketing budget. You sell another 10%. Next thing you're looking, you've got 20, 30 % left in your company.

1:29:26You've no interest anymore. You're done and you walk away. I didn't have that option. I had to be profitable from day one. And when you're profitable, it's very hard. It's not sexy to be profitable. But we've become profitable over multiple years and we grow at a certain stage of steady growth, not crazy growth, that we're going to run out of money. So how does crazy growth equal run out of money? Well, let's say you have a pot of cash of half a million. You grow, and let's say your turnover is 10 million. You grow every year and you're producing products. The pot of cash is what you've raised, is what you're saying.

1:30:02No, no, let's say you have profits over the years and you've got half a million left. And as you grow to manufacture more products, you might need 300 grand. So 300 grand is your own flow. So now you've got 200 grand left in profit sitting there. If you grow at a faster rate and suddenly you have to produce half a million worth, you're taking your cash, you're putting it in there. And then if there's an unforeseen circumstance like COVID or a big marketing spend that you have to do, suddenly your cash flow is gone. And then you're going to have to go raise money. And there's nothing that a VC likes more than desperate sellers because then they can undercut you.

1:30:39And instead of selling 10 % of the company, you've got to sell 30, 40%. So you've got to watch the figures. Now, I'm not the good guy watching the figures. My brother Troy is. He's the guy who does all that. But I've certainly learned that, you know, steady growth for a company that isn't funded like us. I'm like, we're probably the only non-funded challenger brand that I know of. Certainly, you know, we're the seventh best-selling soft drink in the whole of Ireland. And I think the top 40 are all owned by conglomerates. And how, because you could have taken money, like once you've got the business going.

1:31:11you could have taken a basically a rocket ship up the arsehole that's what I'm saying but you could have taken some money on at any point and gone let's do it go gangbusters sell the brand for shit loads go to Dubai spend loads of time with your kids why haven't you done that? Well it's a very different approach and so this year we'll sell 50 million units we want to get to 100 million units there's always these targets and I often find people who do sell are people that have to sell I don't need to sell we're profitable i have a great life um i make a very healthy wage we take um started taking small bonuses um at the end of years um and the hard times i hopefully are behind me so i'm kind of enjoying the journey and we're growing we want to get to 100 million units that's kind of our our focus and how do you um because the other thing which i so this this is something i like one of the things i love is what some some things are both right and wrong so for example don't give up in business or never give in is both right and wrong right so it's it's it's so for example if i'm i'm five foot seven right if i've got dreams of being a basketball player or swimmer yeah if someone's saying to me don't give don't give up mate that is so stupid because this is never going to happen yeah so it's actually sometimes you need to know when to quit and i think so i think it's both right saying never give in is both right because that's yeah if you keep going you're going to get there but actually it's wrong because if you'd never give in and i think i'm going to be a basketball player it's just never going to happen son so i think that's both right and wrong but i'd love to know like how do you motivate um another thing that i think is both right and wrong is share options so i think share options are great because you can get loyal loyal members of the team locked in but then it's which is and if you sell that's right because they're going to make a load of money i think so the innocent adam said that i think one of the the core team made a couple million quid great but if you're not going to sell the business how do you how are you galvanizing that team to stick on the journey because you know ryan's been there for 10 years yeah it's genius what you've done i'm just trying to understand how you've done that because yeah well i didn't say i was never going to sell right it's you know the right partner has never really we've had a lot of approaches and I will always have a chat with somebody but to be honest I don't think we were big enough yet like I have a certain level in my head at which we want to get to and the team are aligned with that and I mean Ryan I can't speak for him but I think he'd probably be similar enough to me that if his share options are growing at 25 % a year.

1:34:00He's a young guy. He knows that in three, four, five years time that he's going to make a lot more then than he would now. So he's, I think we're on a similar mindset then and we probably have to ask him. Yeah, but it's just interesting to see how it works because some businesses, some people, a lot of people have said to me, it's golden handcuffs. And I think what you've done is you've got the perfect example of like, you're both aligned on the vision of where it's going. I didn't build it to sell it. And I think that is a huge difference. were probably what I would guess 90 % of companies today.

1:34:31People are building them to sell them. I didn't build this to sell it. I built it because I wanted a product that I had never seen before, that no one had before. And it seems weird now because there's a lot of vitamin drinks out there and a lot of health drinks out there. But back in the day, there was none. And I wanted to, basically my original mindset was I want to kill off sugar. And it still is today. Like if you drink a bottle of VidHit, that's about 70 to 90 % less sugar than your average counterpart. And, you know, sugar is just doing so much damage to people with diabetes and brain health and everything else, brain fog, you name it.

1:35:06Sugar is an absolute killer. So we've been trying to kill sugar day to day. And that was my original mission. And obviously I wanted to be profitable. I wanted to build a big company. But I didn't build it to sell it. Yes. William Kendall, the Green Blacks, has got a quote that I just think everyone should adhere to or just like appreciate is because I have no plans to sell my business, but I'm ready to sell it tomorrow if the right buyer comes along. I think it's just such a glorious way of looking. And that's happened with green and blacks. Yeah, that would be similar to me, I guess. Want to ask some hard questions?

1:35:44I ask hard questions, but like you can tell me to fuck off, we can take this out, whatever. So who's someone in your life or career you wish you forgave earlier?

1:35:59is it okay to say that I don't hold grudges? I don't, and I don't really have any regrets. Like if you were to say to me, what would I do differently? I would do nothing differently. Like I had a really hard time, but I think you need to have hard times to enjoy the current times. So there's nothing I would go back and say, oh, I would have done that differently. I don't have regrets. And I'm not a person to really, come down hard on people so i'm not kind of like i don't have that violent streak in me where i like cut somebody down by the legs and you know you'll never work in this place again that's not me at all in fact if anything i regret not being tough enough genuinely i have been taken advantage of on about three occasions from not being tough enough when were those if you don't mind me asking um for legal reasons i probably can't say too much as you know you can say i can take this out yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah as i say it's like me and you talk yeah yeah um i got i'll explain that later when the camera's off but i got i got screwed around on about three different occasions by three people we won't talk about the specifics people get screwed around in business i've had it happen with this podcast where i've had people promise me like a quite significant chunk of money for to help grow it hasn't come in yeah i'm like for fuck's sake what's the mindset to deal with being screwed around no that's an interesting podcast in itself and i i probably can't talk about specifics but i will never punch first ever i never have i don't know what it is um i think it's because i expect the best in everybody and then if someone actually tries to fuck you over and actually tries to kick your children out in the street you have to take out a hatchet metaphorically to just chop them down and I'll always chase somebody down if they try and do something bad to me because I always think of the best in people and if somebody tries to take me down and put my children out in the street I'll make sure to get them back and it probably doesn't sound like all bubbly and friendly which is the type of person that I am and I almost feel bad but it's the truth oh but you both like think human beings they're like you know if you cut me in half like there's I have positives, I have negatives, I have fears, I have anxieties, I have insecurities.

1:38:18It's like that is what the human being is. And in business, you leave yourself open to five or six different areas where you can be screwed over. It could be your distributor, it could be your manufacturer, it could be someone, you know, a business partner, it could be someone who works for you. There's lots of areas where you can get screwed over. And if it happens, it's very hurtful when it does happen. because you know inherently I'm I am and that's I don't my father is not a trusting person and I don't know where I've got this uber trust I just trust everybody until and most of the time I'm right 95 % of the time people are genuinely good natured and they're not trying to screw you over but the 5 % that's what you've got to watch out for is the 1 % which is like they're the black they're the black swan events I know really crippled but I'm not going to change at this stage yeah no no it's just interesting because I'm again it's part of an optimism thing with me I expect business to work out and I expect people to work out.

1:39:09I asked this, like, yeah, I asked this, I asked a lot of questions selfishly because I'm kind of going through that because I've got, I'm at a place where I want this to kick on to a next level. But like, it's like, and it's almost becoming more like, again, I need to be careful what I say here. But the, like the financial side of it. and it's like I've had people say they're going to pay me and they're not paying, I'm going to take this out. People pay me and they're not fucking paying me. I'm kind of going to do it now. So I suppose what I'm asking, and I'll just clap so I can take that out, is how you've been in this game for 24 years or 25 years, whatever.

1:39:50Like you've been on, we're not going to go into the specifics, but you've been on multiple occasions screwed over three times. What is the things you now put in place to try and make sure you're not screwed over? and like how are you vigilant towards that happening? Because I think it's the whole... Your best revenge is to be successful. That's the first thing, right? So that's a driver in itself. So if someone tries to screw you over along the way and you go, do you know what? If my business turns out to be a lottery win, that guy's going to be pissed off that he didn't stick the run with me.

1:40:22So that's the first thing. I think that's a really important way to live. And every success you get, you can be spurred on by various different things. Every success you get, you know, you can kind of look back and go, you're gonna you're gonna regret this you know that's i think that's a great motivator um but specifically your question is how can just don't i wouldn't leave yourself open to so of course money is a thing you know and so i'd say to you i'd come back and i'd say to those guys who i put up my phone and i go how many retailers do you have 200 well why don't you go out and get 400 and then your more cash is coming in and when that cash actually comes in then you don't need to sell your product.

1:40:58If I'd have sold my business 10 years ago, compared to what I'm doing now, I'm up probably 1 ,000 % in seven years. So had I sold it back then, it's completely different to what I'd sold now. So you've just got to find a way to kind of hustle and get more ears without actually selling it off. Like bootstrap it as long as you possibly can. Because if you're getting bigger, the price you sell today is nothing compared to the price you're going to sell tomorrow. by that you mean like if you sell the business yeah let's say you're about to get you're about to get sell 10 % of your company to somebody today and you're turning over 300 grand and then next year you're turning over 500 grand you know you'll be damn happy that you didn't sell it back then when you thought you needed it and there's always a way to find more I think one of the I have that revenge mentality and like insecurity.

1:41:58And I think drives a multitude of different things. I think it's very reductionist to say, right, oh my God, you're driven solely by insecurity or driven solely by, if you're just driven by all the happy clappy times, when it gets hard, you need something to click in to say, I'm fucking digging in. When it's you driving around, you know. I would love to know, what are some of the insecurities that you have that drive you, that help you click on through those tricky times? yeah I I don't think it's insecurities I've never I've never even asked myself do I have any insecurities so maybe I don't but if I was to search them I'm sure I'd find them like I'm a 70s guy you just kind of get the fuck on with it you know like when you ask me and no disrespect but when you ask me do I have insecurities that's a bit of a modern day question yeah let's explore that because so if you you know So, and look, everybody has had, most people have had, no people who have mental health issues.

1:42:59I'm not talking about mental health issues, but I'm talking about, if you start asking yourself, what's wrong with me? You'll find something. I'm not asking myself what's wrong with me. And when you say, do you have any insecurities? Fuck no. I don't think I do. I'm just going out and selling products and meeting people and having a good time with it. Now, back then, if you were to say, okay, when I was going through a really hard time, did I have any insecurities? You could say, well, I was insecure about losing my house and my car and losing all my business and losing my money. Maybe that was insecurity.

1:43:31I'm not sure because I felt insecure because of that. But as far as that kind of mental side. It's so interesting what you say about being a modern day question. Yeah. Because it's a modern day issue. Yeah. I think the beautiful answer, Gary, in that, yeah, you said you're a child of the 70s. like without i think the whole reason insecure insecurity and everyone's fucking meditating now is because of social media yeah whereas now everyone there's this perfectionism culture whereby people think you know like like for example i'm having this amazing conversation with you now i can then go and look on my phone and i can see four people like for example glastonbury's just been yeah i've asked for recording glastonbury's room so oh they're off their tits at glastonbury like it's straight away you're comparing yourself as soon as i got this what wall that could happen you know i mean i'd love to i'd love to give one message right which i call the internet lie right so the instagram lie so if i was to tell people between 20 and 30 what you should do it's not fucking go to bali right don't go why stay in your country work 10 years hard shift become the best in your business of what you do and then you can take a year off and go to Bali if you want.

1:44:50Because the people who are in Bali who have given up those hard years of leg day, right? Skipping basically the hard years of your life. Everybody has hard years. You're never going to love your boss. This whole thing of, oh, I have a toxic work environment. Yes, if your boss is an absolute bastard, by all means leave. But nobody loves their boss. No one walks in and goes, I really want to hang out with Gary today and sell products or whatever. Maybe my family do. I crack one of those actually. Yeah, sure. But put your head down for 10 years. And by the time you're 30 and you look back you'll thank me for telling you to do that because you'll have a career you'll be at the top of your pile if you're any good and after 10 years of hard work that 10 000 hours then you can take a trip to bally and actually enjoy the fruits of your labor if you go to bally from 20 to 30 you're going to look back at 30 go shit i'm broke i've got to go back to reality and i have to go back and all my friends and all my peers who have worked hard are now able to go to bally and i went with nothing and now i'm still got nothing i just think this internet lie of you know screw your boss leave your life you know change your job all that kind of stuff we have people in our business who come in and they stay for two years they're really good at what they do and then they go off and go to a different industry and i'm like what are you doing you could get to the top of your tree and then hop from the top of the vitted tree to wherever you want to go in life and i just think this thing of skip out and leave if it's not comfortable i think it's just a terrible terrible message i think yeah i agree with that and i but i think what you've said there i think if you if you look for problems if you think you've got problems you look for problems and this is okay like there are people going through a lot of shit listening to this i'm not saying that but i'm thinking i think on a if you zoom right out on a much macro level basis is looking for problems you're going to create problems then you add that social media on top you're going to see people as you say in bali you know you see these people who basically have rented a fucking lambo and in dubai funnily enough yeah there's a dubai thing yeah but the amount of people i see maybe it's because out there i'm harking to go out there secretly but like the um you're like yeah follow me i'll share to do drop shipping fuck off to dubai you know get a rollie and stuff like that but there's there is it's a big internet lie like there's a lot of people they're making money off telling you how successful they are so you'll buy into their dream but actually it's all a front there's nothing behind it so comparing yourself with and it's very hard because we you know as humans we compare ourselves with our peers so when i was growing up all of my friends were successful way before i was i hang out with top lawyers top oil traders guys from my peers and they were an ocean that rose way before me and that's what's happening with me now yeah and i was surrounding but eventually eventually i caught up to them so when you caught up roughly oh wasn't that jeez maybe only i mean i'm it was only about 10 years ago it took like and so i'm 53 now so it was probably 43 before maybe odd 40 so that whole 20 to 40 20 years i was behind all of my peers so if your peers are now instagram you your mind is going to be melted oh it's fucked it's it's it's so it's and i believe everything go balances out so it's like the reason the reason there's meditation apps is because everyone's so fucked up from doing Instagram.

1:48:05And I think one of the, you know, running is now having its thing, it's having its moment more so than before. But I think there's a great irony to it. Because you can't check your phone when you're running. Well, yeah, yeah, but this is it. The biggest irony is people are running because they don't want to be on their phone. Like for example, because it's the only moment in time where you're like kind of plodding along and you're not on your phone. Great, everyone starts running. Now what's happening is everyone's putting onto Instagram that, you know, they're doing the runs like that. They're putting their Strava time on Instagram, which means running the thing they did to escape.

1:48:34They're now comparing something and oh, fuck me. He did a 5k in 20 minutes. I need to do a 5k. And so it just that really shows the problem. The thing you're trying to escape is to run. You're then going looking on Instagram. Other people are fucking running and they're in like better kit than you and they're going faster than you. Makes you feel shit. So the thing that you've done to avoid and that is the problem. Yeah, I think I think tunnel vision is really important. You just have to cut out all the shit. And if it's upsetting you And if you are comparing yourself With anybody And I'm talking about From Will Smith To Barack Obama If you're comparing yourself With anybody And saying oh my life's not Where it should be Just get off it It's such a distraction Like I'm I love Instagram But I'll pop on it You know In the evening For 20 minutes or whatever And I genuinely don't believe I compare myself to anybody Because I've done that hard journey When that was not a distraction You've done like day You've done like day But that wasn't a distraction You know Back then I was comparing myself To my peers and that was a distraction for me, but it was a healthy distraction because all my peers were doing really well and I'm like, I've got to get up there with them.

1:49:34And I think that was a really positive thing. But if you've got these charlatans on yachts in Ibiza saying, you know, popping bottles of champagne, you'll suddenly think, well, I'm not on a yacht. God, I must be a loser. So I don't know, I think. Yeah, but I think to your point, the insecurity where we've swam with this is the modern day problem. I think it's totally right. And let's link this back to everything popular is wrong, Oscar Wilde. I think one thing you said barley and the internet lie. Love that. What are other things that most people believe that you think is kind of inherently wrong or disagree with?

1:50:06Well everything popular is wrong should come back down to brands. So if I was starting my business today I wouldn't get into vitamin drinks. Because I'm in it. Vitamin water are in it. Pepsi are trying to get into it. Wait so when you say sorry just is vitamin water the one that 50 Cent was involved Correct. So it's big in America. It failed here. Why did it fail here? Because of you guys? Pretty much, yeah. I'm glad you asked. So we went into Boots in 2014 and Vitamin Water had 73 % of the market. And by the time, 18 months later, when I got to Stats and Boots, we had 73 % of the market and they got delisted.

1:50:48So we just completely took them over. And look, I'm not here to bash any of their brands. They are highly successful. They sold out for four or five billion. and they've done really well in America. But I don't know, maybe our flavors were a bit more tweaked towards European palate. They're not watery. Our flavors, our taste stars were kind of juice-based as opposed to watery. So I suppose they were kind of almost the first seltzer. And I'm not a fan of seltzers personally. But to take it back to what we were saying is, you know, why would I not get involved in the vitamin drink business? Because there's lots of companies in there.

1:51:21I got involved in an area where there was nobody else swimming. so if I was to go in today would I start a kombucha brand no way because there's hundreds of people in it would I start a vitamin drink brand no because there's tons of people in it you know I would walk around a store and I would find the most boring category that nobody else wants to be in and that's probably what I would do I want to be in a place where nobody else is like so it's like you know the Rolling Stones were one of the biggest bands in the world there's a million bands back now but there was only a few bands back when they were making it big so we managed to swim up to get to a stage before all the other guys started swimming after us and i think we're doing something right because obviously our our mission was to kill off sugar but now there's lots of other brands trying to challenge us and trying to challenge the big glass of mineral vitamin water so i i wouldn't go back in so what did you say everything that's popular is wrong yeah so so that actually 100 comes back to what you do in this podcast you interview people who are you know making their way in in the business world whiskey i wouldn't touch whiskey there's so many whiskey brands out there you know and the only the small amount are going to win so i i the advice i would give is don't get involved in a business where everybody else is yeah i wrote about this in my newsletter saying why unique selling points are a waste of time uh you look for you ucps unique category plays if you look at all the brands that are smashing it now bold Beanco yeah beans who the fuck's going down the beans aisle she's smashing it all things butter who the fuck's going into butter who's interested in butter yeah great you reinvent that and trying to think of some other examples um proper proper corn back in the day yeah as people people have gone into detergents and boring things you know ecover years ago went into detergents and took on the big brass they sold out for a couple hundred million but yeah there's always um so who gives a crap um then the bamboo there's some bamboo thing you did Cheeky Panda Cheeky Panda you've interviewed them as well no I've done Hugh Gives of Crap yeah yeah but I think that's a really that's a really solid piece of advice I mean toilet paper is very unsexy yes and they've made it sexy it's been it's amazing I think also what's bollocks I think you can polish a turd a lot of people say that you can't I think I actually think you yeah if it's when turd by that I mean I don't mean the product has to be good I'm not saying you can make a shit product But an unsexy area.

1:53:49Yeah, absolutely. That's sexy. Like I would sell toilet seats if it was making me money. And that's the other thing. You know, when it comes to Instagram, people are kind of like, oh, you know, you want to be in this cool, sexy business. No, I want to make money first. And it just so happens that I am interested in this business. And I was an athlete back in the day. So that drew me towards this. But back then, if you'd have told me I want to sell combine harvesters, which I tried to sell, or if you want to sell jackets or headphones. Tell me about saying, what was that like? What was some of the lessons you took?

1:54:17I never got the job in Combine Harvester salesman. I was like, have you got a Combine Harvester to meet? Yeah, that's a joke song. But I would have backed myself to sell a Combine Harvester because I was desperate. I couldn't get a job. Yeah, I think you've touched on another thing, which I think is a modern day, I don't think it's a modern day problem. It's just in the modern zeitgeist, which is, and I kind of do agree with this, is purpose-driven brands.

1:54:49and I think we're potentially losing, some people are getting so bogged down in the purpose that they're forgetting that they're building a business where you actually have to make some money. Yeah, which is something that people actually want. The purpose on the side is a really strong byproduct of something that people actually want. So if you look at Tony's Chocolonely, their product tastes great and the packaging is super and the byproduct of that is really strong that they're stopping slavery, it's amazing. But if their product wasn't really nice, didn't look really good and didn't taste really good, it really wouldn't matter because they wouldn't sell anything, you know, so the byproduct of.

1:55:26So you're right, some people are now saying, okay, I'm going to pick a charity, I'm going to go with that and then I'm going to build a product around that. I think you're right. I think the best thing to do is find something that people actually want and then by all means help out with your profits and your CSR on the side of that. yeah I think if you heard of Alex Smith who's the guy who writes a lot about strategy on LinkedIn really interesting guy yeah he basically has been on this loads of times actually and he was saying that you know you have to start the whole think different with Apple was say this is the stream so they created the Mac here and it's like you know this is the thing created here think different is and I'm doing an arrow with my fingers is the think different was up here it's like a bow you put on top it's a storytelling's a vehicle and i think what is happening now um is people are wanting to start here create the vision the purpose and then create the product which basically means you've got the nice fucking fairy terry marketing stuff but then the product's got no legs to it and which basically means that's why you could raise money but it's going to fall through and then when a product has legs nothing's easier it is but you've you've got to be able to know when your product looks great as well so it comes back to those three things i was saying it's It's got to look great, taste great and be great.

1:56:44If you're one of those three things are off. What's the be great? Well, so looks great. Take vidage. You look at it, nice bright colors. You drink it. So that's stage one. Stage two is you're drinking a taste great. That's stage two. But then on the third purchase, you're sitting having your lunch and you read the back when you look at the ingredients. And if there's lots of poisons in here, you're never going to drink it again. But the fact that we're really clean ingredients, it has become great. Right. So they're the three things. and to get those three things together is really, really difficult.

1:57:12So come back to packaging, which is the most important thing to start with. So it's your front. It's when you're walking onto a dance floor when you're younger and you want to get noticed, you've got to look your best, right? You're not going in with, you know, unshaving and stinking. So the product has to look great when you go in there in order to get people to try it. And there's so many products that look great and actually don't taste great and you'll never get your second purchase off the back of that. But I remember when I was really young, it was kind of naturally inbuilt in me through my mum, through going on those fashion buying and stuff.

1:57:46There used to be a big Irish brand called Erin Foods. And even when I was 10 years of age, I used to take the piss out of their packaging. And I used to say, my God, that's so Erin Foodie. I was only a young kid. Erin Foodie? So it was called Erin Foods. It was a big multinational company in Ireland. And they used to do soups and milks and all that kind of stuff. and I thought their packaging was so appalling when I was 10 that I used to say oh my god that's so Aaron Foody so when I I had this inbuilt thing that when I was creating my brand because back in let's say the year 2000 there weren't any sexy Irish brands you can't tell that this is Irish from looking at it and the amount of the amount of Irish people who have said that to me when they first saw it they were like oh my god I thought you were like American or Spanish or French or something like that I never knew you were Irish back in the day I designed it specifically like that because Irish brands were so crap.

1:58:40They looked awful. And to be associated with an Irish brand was not actually a good thing. Now it has become full circle because there's a lot of cool Irish brands now. I think, yeah. But back then, like when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s in that grey, you know, non-inspirational place that Ireland used to be, it's a completely different place now. But this brand, Vitted, is completely the opposite of where I grew up and what I grew up through. That kind of ugly 70s, 80s kind of grey, dark atmosphere with no colours. And I used to always slag Irish brands. So I suppose I've always been born into having a brand eye, I think is probably the message that I'd be given.

1:59:20Yeah, and also I think, again, I've worked with White Malsu, but there's definitely an Irish feel to brands now. It's totally changed now. You've got Harry's Nut Butter, you've got White Malsu who's smashing it, You've got Blanco Nino. You've got Strong Roots. Who's the other one that's really good? There's like a caramel sriracha sauce. And they've got a restaurant in Dublin as well. I don't know what it is. Oh, I know those guys. They've got a very... And then there's Full Fill. But if you think about when all those guys came through, and it's probably the reason for my grey hair. So when we started in 2000, all of those brands are probably only about five or six years old.

2:00:00I know Strong Roots is probably only seven years old. So I used to go to these European trade shows. Wait, sorry, say that again. The brands. Yeah. So all of those cool Irish brands have only come along the last seven to eight years. Oh, yeah. But like White Mouses and stuff, they're like, they are learning about this. Yeah. So pre that, so I was basically doing international trade shows from 2000 up to 2015 on my own. There was nothing else. So I'd go and do Anuga and Seattle, the two biggest international food trade shows every year. And I would be the only Irish brand for 15 years. Nobody ever came.

2:00:34There was no other Irish. And so when I say brands, so our Irish export board would have meat and dairy. So they'd have all those big kind of, you know, Kerrygold and those kind of things. They have big stands. And then there'd be me on my own around. And by the way, never got a penny from any Irish export board or branding or anything like that. This is completely self-funded. So we never got any help from the government, which I think actually is madness because it was set up back in the day where you wanted to create Irish jobs. And the only way to create Irish jobs is actually manufacturing, right?

2:01:07Now creating Irish jobs could be, you know, accountancy, sales, online marketing. So we hire 12 people in Ireland and we've never had any grants ever, but we're actually creating 12 jobs. We're taking 12 people and taking them off the national grid, it's effectively, they're not costing the country anything. So I think it's madness that it was so stuck. But anyway, that's kind of a sidebar. But yeah, we were the only ones going out for, I say, 14, 15 years, year in and year out. And I don't know why it just wasn't sexy to, you know, to create a brand back then. And then maybe Strong Roots popped up.

2:01:40Sam popped up probably 2014, maybe 2015. And he was kind of the first. And Fulfill were there around the same time, the Protein Bar. But yeah, we were kind of on our own for years. And I never understood why. I just didn't get it. yeah i think i yeah is this i think we're in a we're in a gold rush now for brands it's never been especially this conversation i had with this georgie girl who was um saying that they were looking out of out of what's coming out of what she was saying london specifically but i think yeah it's very creative here now very creative and it's like if there's all these communities now like as part of this podcast is we do these supper clubs and piss ups basically and people you get there you're thinking fuck there's like it's like one room that that's only those available it's a little bit frightening it's almost too creative that there are people now doing niches on niche and and i think it might come a little bit tricky give me an example of that like you have to say brand names but like well i mean like come take kombucha right so there's probably i would say there's probably 15 kombucha brands in the uk maybe maybe 10 um that is a niche within a niche So if you've got the mainstay of drinks and then you've got, look at Tesco and you've got energy, juice, water, health drinks, etc.

2:02:59So it might be five subsectors, six subsectors. Now there's two or three subsectors coming off health. So in health, there'd be us and then there's the chill out drinks like Trip and then there might be kombucha for fiber and there might be four beneath a health drink. So they're just keep disseminating and getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And eventually the subsector is going to be so small that there won't actually be a market for it. So, you know, I think there's probably room maybe for one or two people who will make it in kombucha, but all the rest of them, I fear, are going to fall to the wayside.

2:03:33That's Libby from Piper Investments. You know, Piper Investments? She was saying, I think people forget that there's X number of spaces on the shelf. And the other point on this is it's like, do you want to build, I think a lot of food and drink brands should should actually potentially because of that truism there's literally x there's 20 brands there's only one two shelf space like that is just as much as you can read these entrepreneur books like there's that is just the truism there's two's gonna win the other 15 should maybe look at like building a lifestyle business which is what white mouse would have done they absolutely love love their job they work for they make seriously good money it's never raised a penny in their life they can take the kids fuck off to kenya for the first two months of the year but they get to do what they love whereas i think that again another modern problem with challenge brands you go on linkedin everyone's raising money the guy interviewed the week don dalton said now it's become a badge of modern of how much money you've raised he's like that's only step you haven't even done anything but now it's like your series a b c fucking z and it's like you haven't that's what that's another modern problem i think so i always look i i i get the odd deck from brands trying to raise money and uh my first question is what's the rate of sale if i was in venture capital and I got a deck and I was going to invest in something, I would go down to the local spire.

2:04:59I'd see it on the shelf and I would talk to the manager and say, what's the rate of sale of that product? Because if it's not good, don't touch it. So a lot of brands will come and say, oh, you know, we've got this concept and we've got this, that and the other. And I'd say, okay, that's great. How much are you selling per store? I don't want to know how big the market is. It's 10 billion. If we only get a half percent and then you get X amount, that isn't bullshit to me. It's your rate of sale within store is the most important thing. And if it's not right, go away, change your packaging, change your flavor, change whatever it is you're doing and get your rate of sale to be profitable.

2:05:31Get it to a certain level. So you talked about the three things you need to be great, be look good. Look great. Look great. Taste great. Be great. So you get those three things right. That is you get the product on shelf. Yeah. That's almost like getting someone dressed up for the disco, as you said. they still need to get on the dance floor and dance and do the okey pokey and you know attract the the person they're interested in i what i'm basically saying is drive rate of sale yeah in a convoluted way yeah peacocking how did you actually get you got those three things right be great taste great look great how did you get vit hit dancing on the dance floor how did you get the rate of sale moving what's from the time well we didn't have social media at the start so so now we're very strong on social media we get really good engagement and the reason why we went big and social media probably nine years ago, 10 years ago when it wasn't that cool when it was just starting was because we couldn't afford to do outdoor campaigns because we never sold part of the company.

2:06:31So we got to find a different way. So we became really good at engaging people. Now everybody is good at engaging people. So I suppose, you know, the one I like is, oh, you know, those guys who started a running club, they've got the protein bars and they run up the top of mountains. Tribe. Tribe. Yeah. So that is really nice. Then there's another product in America, which I don't think I'm going to remember. and they basically started from zero, and they have catalogued everything on starting going into meetings, and they're building this brand around their whole journey of failing and losing, and that's really interesting.

2:07:05It's not like a TV show on YouTube. So you've got to find something else a little bit different that you can do. But I always just take it back to rate a sale. If you've got a product that looks great, there's no amount of YouTube commercials and Instagram ads if your product doesn't look like something that people actually want. That's really, really important, and it's so hard to get. Like I will see 100 brands a year and 99 % of them I will know instantly that they're going to fail because they just don't look great. And it could be the most amazing product inside it but you've just got to look great and it's really, really hard.

2:07:35Like Blanco Nino you mentioned. Like that's the best packaging and I haven't even met that guy. I must introduce it. I know he's Irish. I saw that on the shelf probably four or five years ago and I was like that's it. The packaging is incredible and he hasn't put it into your normal crisp package or, you know, to look like Lay's or whatever. You've got to be something different. You've got to put yourself in a completely different pack and look, and then obviously, and catch someone's eye like that product has done and then it's got to taste great and it does. But also I think, you know, you said at the beginning, I've got like a middle of the road taste palette and you're like, if I like it and I get the taste, then the rest of the country will like it.

2:08:14I think some brands build for the finer palette, as in they build the product for the finer palette, they build the packaging for the finer palette which basically gives you access to the top one percent but that's not a mass market brand you need you need a niche idea that mass market like yeah because i was going to say and i think this packaging is gorgeous but it is it's save i was comparing this to like a really air like artsy one percent um floral like i know there's not any comparison this is not a great example but for example like you know if there's a there's a massive difference between a tony's chocolate bar versus a eight pound bar of chocolate with like covering gold leaf and all that bollocks yeah whole foods i think what you've done here is you've another thing you've touched upon is you've built looks good great looks good tastes great be great but that's but but it does that to the mass market not just the top one percent and i think that's another thing where brands can get stuck yeah you've got to think forward i mean if you're 20 something um what's going to feed you today is not going to feed you and your kids in 10 years time so you've got to be able to look forward and go is this something that the masses will like and don't kid yourself don't be like oh you know i really want a gold covered chocolate or whatever that's fine it might taste great and look great but if it's if it's too expensive for the masses and you're not going to feed your kids and and your family in 10 years time don't go into the business just because you think it looks cool because also this this this branding would work in in every retailer in the uk where some brands are like quite clearly a whole foods a waitrose so that's why i think that's really genius because it works across everything yeah so when i started i failed for about seven years nobody bought the product i kept sticking on the shelf and it was just dying dying dying so it was it was called vitz v-i-t-z yeah and I had about 20 messages on the front saying low calorie, low sugar, flavors, vitamins, minerals, green teas, whatever it had.

2:10:16And eventually then I was losing a lot of money. I'd lost all my investment and I couldn't afford to get a product taste testing done. So I went to a college, I went to a marketing department in a college, said, look, would you taste test this and let me know what you like? So anyway, they blind taste tested, it tasted amazing. And when they lifted it to look at it they said oh weitz must be a german brand and i was like jesus i thought it meant vitamins that's what i thought so i was completely kidding myself so i panicked for three weeks uh i went to bed every night had a notepad beside my bed and i'd wake up and i'd write things and then during the day i'd write things i had about 100 names and eventually at night i woke up and i thought of the name vithit and i woke up and i said i must have heard it somewhere went online to register.com it was available registered vithit.com and from that point onwards sales went up about 100 % because instantly when you see the name Vithit you know if you've never seen it before you know it's going to be a hit of vitamins the end right that's all you need to know if I was to take this product here and kill off all the other messaging around here and just had Vithit no flavor no nothing no water for juices it would still probably sell just as well so you've got to have a real clarity in in what you want get rid of five messages bring it to three and make sure that your most important message is number one and it might not be your logo it might your logo might be the secondary message you know if you have a kombucha brand maybe you want to say kombucha first and your logo might be second so you've got to have primary secondary and tertiary message and leave them in that in that's in that level yeah i love that what are your thoughts on the whole plastic thing with like because i know the be good be great look great tastes great but that's now becoming um the consumer's mindset is kind of it's ever changing of like what's going to be great look great and this whole eco thing is getting bigger like what's your thoughts just your two cents on it yeah well now we are getting to a stage where we you can 100 recycle everything in these machines in the walls um that have come into ireland they're coming into the uk and you basically put them in so these bottles will all be 100 recycled and they are 50 % recycled material and they're 100 % recyclable.

2:12:24So yes, it was becoming an issue up until they put all these machines in the walls in Ireland. And now basically every time you drink a bottle of Wittich, you'll put that back in a machine, it'll give you back 15 cents. So, and that happens in Germany and it's going to happen here and it's going to happen everywhere. So this will not be an issue in about, you know, two or three years time. And also, you know, we are currently 50 recycled material and we'll be moving to 100 recycled material in the next next one um mate i think let's wrap that up there um i've absolutely loved that nice long beautiful conversation i think it was just so good understanding yeah just i think what you said about the irish we take a step back the irish of like this ability to punch up the the kind of the little brother yeah that is really blended into your story of parents and the entrepreneurs and then seeing this with just dogged brazilians like not giving in changing things tweaking things um doing things your way like not raising money and what you've built and it's yeah i've absolutely loved that mate so thank you yeah and the other thing last thing i would say is that team sports we haven't stopped recording yet have you no so i have kids and i'm actually interested now to see what makes kids tick and what creates an entrepreneur and obviously the positive family thing or whatever.

2:13:50But I was coming home in a taxi one day and the taxi driver said to me, oh, you know, do you have any kids? And I said, yeah, I have a daughter. And he said, oh, I have a daughter. And he said, did you ever read the Forbes article about girl entrepreneurs and girls atop a business? I said, no, I haven't. And he said, team sports. He said, 78 % of women that they interviewed in top C-suite positions across America and there's about a thousand of them 78 % of them all played collegiate level sports so effectively I thought that was a mind-blowing stat and I looked at it and it is in a Forbes article from about 2016 and basically what it tells me is that is this founders or CEOs of businesses CEOs of businesses and so basically what it says to me is that when you step out of sports and girls step out at a very young age they step out maybe 10, 11 when it doesn't look so cool anymore to be getting sweaty and falling in and blokes, you know, and it's wrong in our society that blokes just keep playing sports and girls, stop.

2:14:47But what we're saying is basically stop competing. You know, it's no longer cool to compete. You're now 10 or 11 or 12. Now you can just go off and do something else. If you are competing every day in a team sport, not only do you get that camaraderie, you get the different personalities you can deal with people, but you learn to lose every day. Like you don't lose every, Roger Federer only won 54 % of his points. so he is used to losing all the time and in sports team sports you're used to losing all the time I would highly recommend that every kid if you possibly can go do some team sports it's the best thing for learning a way of being able to take a failure and I think that's another reason why I was able to because I was dropped I was kicked in the face I was punched in the face Who were you playing for then?

2:15:32Well I played for St Mary's in Dublin then I played for Leinster in Ireland then I came over here and I got a contract with Harlequins and lost my contract with Harlequins so what year were you playing for Queensland? 1995 I played pre-season with them and I got injured pre-season and that was when from that point. So who was playing in 95 was that Jason Leonard playing then? Yeah Jason Leonard, Will Carling was there so it was a real kind of a star studded side and I never actually got to play, I was pre-season I never got to play a full season because I did in my knee and then I got transferred from there up to Bedford and I just lost my interest from that point onwards And that was around the point when I said, you know, I don't want to be at the end of someone else's opinion.

2:16:14I always want to control my own destiny and I don't want to have to work for anybody else again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think when I asked that insecurity question, that's what I was trying to get to. Not like an actual personal insecurity. It's like, what was the, I should have said, what's the setback that was, Gordon Ramsay's got a quote, which is the velocity of jeopardy. I love that. It's like, when did you get something? Here's getting dropped from Rangers as a footballer. Fuck me, if that hadn't happened, he would not be Gordon Ramsay. Yeah, no, so losing my contract with Harlequins was the complete kick in the arse.

2:16:47I was living my dream. I was making like 500 pounds a week. It was a lottery win for me. I was 23 years of age and I was like, you know, I'm going this way and I'm going to do this. I'm going to play rugby for Ireland. That was my dream. And that just ended abruptly one day, bang. And I remember walking from Harlequins across the flyover into the depths of Twickenham. And I remember sitting in freezing cold and I remember sitting there going, this is never happening to me again. From this point onwards, I'm going to ruin my own life. Why did you sit in Twickenham? That's why I go there a lot, actually.

2:17:13In the bowels of Twickenham. I don't even know if it's still open, if you can walk in underneath the bowl of it. As you took one of the stadium? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I walked from the flyover. I was just in a bit of a daze because I'd just lost my job and my future. Yeah. And I walked across the flyover and I just kind of sat there and I just said to myself, this can never happen to me again. Rugby's fucked. Well, it's been on... Do you know Adam Thompson who played for Leicester? he never played for England but he's going out with my family friends just being on holiday with them he was like he was a player who got I think he might have been one of Leicester's highest try scorers played consistently for the whole whole season sorry every season he always had that shirt you know there's always a player like that the day his contract ended they didn't even give him like a shirt it's like alright mate see you later bon voyage fuck off like the rugby thing oh it's terrible of them just literally just, they literally take someone's dream and just piss all over it.

2:18:08And your identity. Like if you are, I was Gary the rugby player. I wasn't Gary the businessman. I wasn't Gary the this, that and the other. I was Gary the rugby player. And when you lose that identity, you're basically got to restart again. And I feel sorry for guys who are going through professional sports and at the age of 32, they're like, okay, now I have to start my career and everybody else started their career at 20. That's tough. Well, that's what he's going through now. So he got a law degree and then, but now he doesn't want to realise he didn't want to do that so he's now doing like removal stuff because he wants to be in control of things but yeah he's in that kind of that wilderness but anyway let's let's wrap this up yeah i've um yeah but i've absolutely loved that mate thank you so much thanks for having me thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much