Giles Brook: How innocent, Vita Coco and BEAR Snacks Scaled to +£100 Million Household Brands

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with a toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started. Hello there people and listeners of the Hungry Podcast. Today I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome back Giles Brook onto the podcast. Giles is very much a food and drink titan, has worked with so many, so many brands. innocent uh vitacoco bear uh snacks an investor in a myriad of brands uh buy with me pipa nut um i think surreal the list is longer than my arm i can't even my brain's just kind of escaping me um but yeah we did we did an interview at bread and jam it was i loved it there was so many things that my brain was thinking oh my god i wish we had longer um so super grateful you're back for a part two i'm very excited for this thanks for having me i'm excited about it actually um so what i want to start with is we talked a lot last time about like the bigger um like kind of the exits the big exits you've done what you're looking for with from with the investors cap on yeah um you know you said a few things which were just amazing like be the hero of your category does the category have legs to kick on yeah what i want to start with is actually going back to those early days super early days when you almost put the hustle hat on right when you've got a graft your bollocks off and there's a quote which i want to kind of use to open this up and it's by a guy called alex hormosey um who's this kind of entrepreneur in the states and he says my biggest regret from my younger years not taking enough pictures of the shitty times take them be proud of them they'll be part of the story you tell someday i'd love to know we can either go into bear or vitacoco and innocent what are some of the looking back now some of the moments and those dark days which you wish you could have taken pictures of to look back at now and be like wow i got through that yeah gosh all right that's good opening uh so just i'll give you a few examples i think innocent was a good example as a business so i as part of kind of the senior leadership team stroke board and perception versus reality for a couple of years at Innocent were quite starkly different.

2:37And everybody who looked at Innocent went, oh my God, what a brand, amazing, must be on a trajectory like this, gosh, incredible, blah, blah, blah. But we had a couple of year period whereby literally the whole thing almost imploded. Sugar became a big agenda, Janet Street Pulsar, if you remember that name, she was pretty vocal about it we had commodity prices going significantly um against us and there was also some general softening of demand in the marketplace and actually it really impacted the business more than you than you realize and you know it threw us out for a long period of time um and you also this was a world where you also had all the competition coming in and doing you know we had brands coming in and doing like 46 weeks of buy one get one free to try and take out the brand innocent.

3:24And that was a really tough period, right? Because, and it was tough for a number of reasons. I think one, the business expected success the whole time and actually not succeeding was not an option. And I think particularly for the senior management team there, because of the caliber of the three founders and Richard, Adam and John, you almost, and let's also be fair to them, they didn't personally put any more pressure on. And if anything, I would say they were brilliant. But just because you're working for and with such three intellectual and capable powerhouses, it almost upped the ante. And it took us a long, long time to kind of work through what was the right strategy to get through a very, very difficult period, of which Innocent came a bit very well.

4:14But that was probably one of the most toughest periods in my career. I can remember for 18 months I was running on vapor just to give a time sound gosh um I'm trying to think how long I was only there for around about five years I'm so bad on timescales people even ask me when I went to university and I can draw a blank on those those dates but it was probably the best way for me to say it was probably about three years before the coke the first coke deal came in that's probably when obviously when coke bought the first part of innocent so 2005 could have been yeah it must have been because I can't I can't remember the dates I was there I can't terrible i can't remember what i did yesterday let alone yeah yeah yeah yeah but yeah i think that was a really difficult time for us because you know it took us a long time to get it right because we tried a few things and couldn't and in the end and actually we also there were a couple of people outside of the senior leadership team who actually stepped up and played a role so some people looked at the pricing architecture and what we needed to do and did a great role and there's a guy there called giles giles namesake actually giles carter he played an incredible role at really helping us kind of turn around that business.

5:15I think that was one. I think at Vitacoco, you've got, I mean, look, I'll be honest with you, I didn't have many dark days at Vitacoco. What an amazing journey. What an amazing business to be part of. What a great set of founders with Mike and Ira who were there. The dark days probably would have been the following, which were then the first one's gonna be weird being a subsidiary which effectively i was of a massive u.s parent company um it was great because it meant it wasn't as much in the spotlight and also we ran the business that might let me get on and run it as if i'm as if it was my own business and actually that's the only way it would have worked but it was also problematic because we had a period for about the first two three years where there was more demand than supply and what that meant was that actually we couldn't get hold of enough product now you and i know that if i have to go and tell tesco's as to sayings with waitrose we can't fulfill your orders it kicks off in the u.s they're like no no you tell them we've only got this stock they're getting that and they're lucky to have that so they need to deal with that and that was really difficult time because i was having to literally scrap and fight every day to try and get more stock release for the european business and that that was that was that was tough because you know equally and importantly Obviously, the US domestic market always tends to take priority.

6:40But, you know, I guess back in those days when some of the debit notes started flowing through from some of the retailers where there was obviously, they were, you know, they were, legally it was questionable. Obviously, today it wouldn't happen today. But at one point, they were obviously charging us per case for most sales. And when the US guys saw that, then a few more cases came flowing. So I think that was one particular dark period with Vitacoco. I think another one which I was involved on the periphery of is that when you're in the US when you're a massive massive brand unfortunately the US market is very litigious quite a lot of lawsuits and consumer lawsuits so for example we would say like sticking a straw in a coconut um because we flash pasteurized and because we put it down a production line a whole lot of uh lawyers in the US went well actually you're misleading consumers and published on the website right if you've had of iacocca in the last five years you can claim because they've been misleading you multi-million pound lawsuit i mean fright i can't if you knew the figures involved ridiculous and you know that was that was really challenging and i you know i occasionally would get invited into the board meetings in the u.s and i was at that particular board meeting and you know we look at these telephone numbers of what it was going to cost us but we actually settled it even though we knew we could win it and actually we know we had well our own defense attorney and they were like you can win this hands down but it was going to take two or three years and our main investor early invests were absolutely fantastic they were just like look we'll get through this tell us how much money we need and we'll get through it but we settled it because even though pride and principle would have told you to do otherwise it would have been a massive distraction for the business to have that going on we swallowed it just took the hit on the money and meant we could just then focus 100 on building that building that business um and then probably darkest day for me actually my darkest day of my whole career is the following which you'll probably laugh at this one is that um it's probably the day i left fire cocoa stroke the day i couldn't go when we ipo'd it in on the nasdaq so there was a selected group of i think six or seven of us who've been there since inception stroke with a kind of main senior team in the US and the whole idea was I was supposed to fly over um and be there at the kind of the um the opening morning of on the Nasdaq and the bell ringing and stuff and you know when you've put in you know decade 12 years into a business that's been your whole life um there was one issue and that was COVID and I wasn't allowed to fly and unfortunately you could go across most uh countries by then but unfortunately the US I still couldn't get into the US I actually managed to get an exemption but unfortunately it arrived at 11 p.m and it was about five hours too late for me to get on a flight so I missed that and when you put in that much effort and also when you want to be there to celebrate with the guys you've kind of been through everything within the 12 years that's probably one of the darkest moments for me and you know leaving leaving you know I think I think you know I was obviously involved with Hayley and Andrew who who ran Bear and who founded Bear and obviously I helped support them grow that and you know obviously we sold that business to lotus and that that was a tough day but vitacoco because of the way the mic let me run it always felt like my own thing and actually when i left that business that was a big hole that was that the mentally it was quite challenging i was i felt very lost for for quite a few months actually after leaving that business when you say very lost what what the thoughts in your head was when you're out on the bike you know i threw myself into that more right i think that's when you that's on those long bike rides or runs or those moments of solidarity solidarity kind of thing um that can actually make you feel more lost but you need to feel lost to feel found is what i believe yeah it was a tumble dryer things right it was everything from um that's been my baby for 12 years I'm now no longer with that business and there was a sense of loss you know like that you know and there was a there was a there was a big cavity that that was I was struggling obviously I was already investing in other businesses and you know doing a couple of bits of non-exec but it's not the same as kind of running your own ship now at the same time I also got to place for that business where you know for example if you look at certain roles so obviously I was CEO and I was running it but we brought in that a managing director a lovely guy called tim reese tim has just taken that business to a level hand on heart i couldn't have taken that business to today and you know bringing in somebody like that who has such an impact but also to a certain extent displaced me right um that was quite difficult as well but you know tim is still there today still absolutely smashing out the park and done an amazing job for the business i'm not just european business but the overall parent company as well um but you know it It was just that real, you know, slight loss of identity.

11:36It wasn't about, just to be clear as well, Dan, it wasn't about egos or like, you know, I need to be seen as the guy who's heading on this sort of thing. It was just, I absolutely thrived and loved doing that day in, day out. Because it was like, you know, building a category from, it's not just building a brand, but building a category from nothing, coconut water, and making it one of the biggest success stories of, you know, the last two decades was just so much fun and so amazing thing to do and then to suddenly not have that anymore but i kind of went on the journey after that say right actually do i do something like that again and actually i realized i didn't have the energy or the appetite to do that hence why now i've put on my own portfolio getting involved in a lot of businesses but equally i couldn't jump back in and be a kind of startup founder again because i just don't i don't have the energy or actually all the patience to do it anymore because it does require a lot of patience That's what you've said there is going to be so valuable for people listening is energy and patience.

12:29Yeah. I think everyone, so many people listening to this will be thinking, I want to build the next Vice Cocoa, but I don't want to play the, they won't see the 12 year game. They'll see the, I want it in three years. And you know what I mean? But I think having one preserving energy, which is what we talked about a lot last time at Bread and Jam when you were like, I'm going to say to my board, like if I need three hours on that, on the bike or to chill, I'm going to do it to preserve my energy. And actually patience. And I'm the worst. I've got zero patience. it's something i'm having to learn with trying to grow this but it's it's it's kind of that going going slowly i want to talk about so just to go back to the vitacoco um situation because i've i've never understood how it actually worked so so mike's the founder in the us did you call him up did he call you how do these things yeah so the way it actually worked was that so um verlin invests guy called eric millery who heads up for invest fund and still does today he got in church and said oh um got this thing called coconut water via cocoa i've got the innocent guys blessing because i hear you're heading out you're going to be launching a stacking business called bear but also but this only got some capacity can we have a chat about it and i said well funny enough because i've been looking on bevnet which is u.s big it's the big beverage website that everybody looks at in the US when you look at anything drinks alcoholic non-alcoholic BevNet is literally the gospel in the US and I just seen all the time popping up this coconut water that coconut so I said oh I've seen it yeah I see I've seen exactly what it is it also was in a couple of the health stores over here so I tried it unlike everybody else wasn't quite sure about the taste of it anyway I met up with Eric and then Mike Kirban who's the founder one of the two founders obviously Ira Lurin is the other and Mike and I had an afternoon in London and we struck up a deal so he gave me the opportunity to kind of run europe um as you know effectively as a surgery of you know the main parent company um so how does that work so you've got you have complete ownership of the company and give them a percentage like a royalty no so we actually all we because because we talked about different business models at one point in time i was like look actually give me the rights let me set it up let me raise my own money but fundamentally if at some point in time you want to sell or float the business that's quite complicated and also you know with a backer like verlinvest what they very kindly did is i said look let's set it up as a subsidiary you run the subsidiary for us i had a very small initial stakeholding but if i hit various milestones over i think the original was over six years so so you know i had different over each year of a milestone release more equity or more shares you know from for myself but they also uh funded it for me as well so men rather than me taking the risk um and also to be fair as well to me i i had no money left at all because i'd also put a lot of money and guarantees into bear bear as well so my wife and i always joke she kind of knows how much we were literally on the bread line but and it's all relative obviously but literally every single chip went on to bear and viticoco that that you know that i had and we set it up that way uh and that also worked that's always worked and actually do you know what and to be fair to mike and Eric and the rest of the senior team is that, you know, we got to year six because of the job that being done, we then overlaid with, you know, opportunity for me to earn more equity and stuff like that.

15:50And, you know, luckily I managed to hit all those numbers as well. And then flow to the business on the US stock exchange on the NASDAQ. And my shares were on there. And, you know, that's been incredible because whilst you've watched some pretty high profile brands and other drinks not just uk sorry not just global or us brands but you've seen a lot of flotations where you know yeah you've seen alternative you know alternative meat and all that sort of stuff you've seen some horrific share price performances you know touch wood vitacoco so far has done incredibly well i think it i won't remember these numbers but it launched around about 15 16 dollars it's hit 30 today so for an individual investor you know they've almost doubled their money right which if you look at the rest of the performance and you know other well-known drinks bands i mean it's literally the highest performing beverage stock in the whole of the u.s stock exchange at the moment what does it take against i'm asking dumb questions no such thing is there yeah yeah yeah there's no such thing as dumb questions so how does a brand actually like float yeah like what actually it sounds so yeah so i i wasn't i wasn't heavily involved in that part but i do I have a couple of businesses I've been through, looked at it.

17:04I've looked at a couple of businesses on AIM. I mean, fundamentally, it's generally a public offering, right? You are giving people an opportunity to buy shares in your brand. It goes on the stock market. You will do what you call a pre-sale, where you will go and speak to various different bankers, investment houses about the business, and everybody will come up with a valuation and basically a guide price for what the initial share offering should be i.e. what the initial share price should be there's always some shenanigans with that and it goes back and forward and effectively you say look this is how many shares you're going to put up for the IPO and then it goes live um there's obviously quite a few have been pre-sold um to the invest in the institutional investors and the banks and then it goes live and then you are then in the lap of the uh well i guess you're on the lap of your own own goals your own performance so i think you probably know but um typically most businesses have to give a quarterly earnings update and you have to nail your performance every quarter because you know one by one by quarter and you can see you can see numbers you know numbers you know your share price can tumble pretty quickly and we've seen that on quite a few businesses and it's not just you know the bit my own view and again everybody has a view about ipo businesses but you know it it's you've just got to make sure that every quarter you're consistent you've got to be completely transparent with your shareholder base but also if you know for me it's about earnings you've got to continually delivering the profit numbers got if you start missing your earning numbers people get very wobbly about listed businesses that's the big thing for me and you talked about being almost and again relative almost on the bread line right you said to your wife like we're all in on this yeah but with bear and vitacoco and i think there's something happened and the guys i was interviewing this morning um toby and tom from all things butter is like yeah they call it pulling the trigger right so when you're actually all in i think you manifest this force around you this has to work and i think it's really powerful there'll be a lot of people listening to this who have done that they're all in they're not you know not necessarily on the bread line per se but like what so when i get asked this to ask guests about like the actual money part of the situation so was was vitacoco when you when was the first significant chunk of money you made um like how does that change you do you know what i mean yeah let me um let me just reverse because i'm gonna reverse i'll tell you one thing which is quite you guys this is going to be what listeners know are going to not going to want to hear the beauty of what i've been part of or been able to do is if you actually look in terms of the european vitacoco business and the bear business we grew that to relatively similar size so let's just say 40 40 to 50 million rsb sales right both of those businesses the bear and the vitacoco europe but what's amazing is is that with vitacoco we we were lucky that we had a big investment vehicle behind us well two or three we had people like verlinvest and some other investors and therefore we had more cash to deploy to you know grow the brand of the business but with bear basically you know i put a load of money in the founders put a load of money in but fundamentally we never ever raised cash on bear we basically built bear to that level purely by managing our creditors and debtors very effectively and our cash flow very effectively we never raise any external funds to get bear to that level you try explaining to somebody that today and they'll just go that's impossible you're the last it and you know and everybody played their role in doing that you know back then we had a lot of the you know a lot of customers obviously you know gave good uh payment you know gave it were paying us you know admittedly we took advantage of some early settlement you know fees and stuff like that to do that and we did an incredible job with our both because we we basically we outsource all the um the co-manufacturing but we actually sourced all the fruits and stuff ourselves and then somebody um prepared them all for us which is obviously softly baked rather than than dry but andrew did an amazing job with those guys with getting us very good again payment terms and stuff like that and we just managed to there were also back then there were a couple of things that we did with the most people when you go to a bank they give you all their here's how we can help you your money work harder for you and all that sort of stuff and there's this beauty parade of their first tier products but always ask what's in the second draw below because in the second draw below there's normally some things where you can actually you know so for example one of the things that we did was that um we ship products over from south africa and what happened was bear yeah yeah yeah bear ship product from south africa as soon as that product shipped over from south africa the bank took title of that product they immediately paid the invoice and put the money into our account so it meant that we got we got cash straight away on a product that was coming over they obviously held the rights of it clearly we paid it back once obviously we went through again just clever tools and products like that which aren't necessarily always available in that first tier of products just helped us fund the business really well but i think that you know the thing to say on this though dan and this also comes down to people listening to this is it also depends about what business you want to grow right and vitacoco had aspirations to be a billion dollar business right today it's sitting at a 1.58 million sorry 1.58 billion market cap it probably hopefully will go towards 2 billion market cap right because it's growing and growing and doing a fantastic job but bear you know andrew and hayley were the founders of bear they would never have ever wanted to take the business on that journey and actually kind of not raising a huge amount of money not having a whole load of um investors and doing it on their own terms was their preferential way of doing it and that worked for them and i think one of the big things is is always always kind of if you've got aspirations to start up a business start it up and make sure that both in terms of yourself but also with investors you bring on board you're aligned with how you want to grow the business it's like today i'm happy to get in business involved with businesses that go up to 50 100 million but somebody said to me right giles come on let's we're going to really get this one about this the next billion dollar brand that's not me i've got to be honest i just that doesn't excite me some people love you know making businesses as big as they can mine's the exciting bit which is getting off the ground yeah and then suddenly coming in you know like bear and vitacoco are both uk favorite household brands that's enough for me let's zoom in on bear i think that's this is the best example because i didn't realize that you hadn't actually raised money right and i think it's getting that zero to one zero to ones um not in terms of one million revenue but that zero to one and then you as you said with vitacoco you moved on to someone else the guys i think was mike or the guy's name the other the other md you came in yeah tim yeah tim sorry yeah mike's founder then you kick it on so it seems like you're good at this you you love this stage am i right in saying yeah yeah um and that's from everyone i've spoken to i interviewed william kendall last week and he said that is the hardest stage and that's what most of our listeners are going to on what was the first what are the first kind of the route to your first kind of millionaire or even 500 grand at bear that like how did you take that what was the deals that kind of made that happen yeah um yeah the evolution was interesting for us so early on waitrose and sainsbury's backed us very heavily early on and that's what really jettisoned very quickly we also had some really nice listings with the likes of holland barrett are very supportive back in the day and you know unfortunately wilkinson's as well wilkinson's did it because we also we also because we also gotta be careful i'll say this but i always used to smile because that's so you know what it's like when you're building a brand and a business and you've always got people who've got an opinion on it right yeah and i used to laugh and a little bit because we were absolutely one of the uk favorite fruit snack and we're absolutely clear that doesn't matter what the brand name was above the door if we knew putting the brand in that particular customer was the right thing to do to do to giving you know mums and dads or families access to kind of you know nutritionally dense products like you know like like like bear that's the right thing to do but you know you have people come in because i think we you know we went into coming what i would call some retailers such as wilkinson's in in very early on people like oh that's not really strategic why are you putting his brand in there for so early and it's like what do you mean by that well it's a bit bit down market sure it's not going to damage the brand i'm like i don't care whether it's break trailers or it's wilkinson's it's the right decision to put that brand in there and actually i had to say and again it was gosh my gosh i could have mentioned actually earlier on as a dark moment we had exactly the same conversation around putting innocent into mcdonald's i mean oh my god when we did a trial with with innocent in mcdonald's which you know i went and brokered that with with with um adam who's the founder and we always wanted to be transparent so we actually told our innocent consumers that we were going to trial mcdonald's i mean richard reed had death threats right did you yeah i mean some of the things some of the things that came through in terms of hoping that he died and stuff like that and then because people were so passionate about the brand and putting into mcdonald's they could not get their head around at the time and you know for me that was again where somebody said to me today so sorry just to what's what were you saying to your customers at innocent because i think it's really interesting to our consumers right to the consumers we were saying look guys we wanted to be open with you we're all about helping the nation you know get healthier healthier i think you know obviously two your five a day as it was back there is really important they've got the kids meal deal right now there's not a lot in there that really helps fulfill that that kind of that way of thinking we've got an opportunity to do a trial so we're going to trial mcdonald's we want to let you know because you might see it in your local mcdonald's and just we send that out to what you know the innocent family which is that you know the email database that went out and it kicked off big style and you know a load of us spent hours and hours fielding calls from you know and and fair play to the three boys and also jamie mitchell who was kind of md at the time you know spent loads of time on the phone all over weekends and stuff like that and to some consumers they were not going to move off it that was it you've sold your soul if you're putting in mcdonald's and there was there was a number of things which was people's perception in mcdonald's but also innocent as an independent business going into a corporate you know entity and an ugly entity that's apparently can do you know he's done lots of bad things to the to the world on the planet like McDonald's they just couldn't see why that would ever be relationship that should should ever happen and I have to I have to be honest and I think I don't know I'd be interesting it'd be somebody should ask Richard and John Adam the same question really if somebody said to me today if you're knowing what I know now would I still do that trial I absolutely would because because I'm you know I'm very big on moral and ethics ahead of sometimes business performance and even though it might it might have damaged the business a little bit if it gives if it gives people more opportunity to get portions of fruit that's the right decision for me i don't know you're going to upset some people doing that but i still think it's the right decision i don't think there's any place in today's world for you know i think and if and if any product that does good to a person or to the planet whatever it is making that as ubiquitous and as available as possible is good whatever and i you know i know people have different news on this but yeah it's interesting i'll be honest i know i i love this why i like doing these conversations right because you you can test and see oh am i wrong because i've always been on along along the kind of the mantra of your distribution is your marketing kind of things you know the obvious one of like if you're a waitress brand don't go into say an aldi or a little or an asda like work your way up like you know but then i suppose what you're saying if if that's a way to put it in the consumers um where the consumer is it depends what your purpose is right yeah so going back to yeah innocent innocent about being the uk's for you know uk uk and then europe's favorite smoothie company right bear was about being the uk's favorite fruit snack how can you be that if you're not prepared to go to those sort of sites given the size of the audience that goes in there there's a disconnect i believe between your vision and that and don't get me wrong you know i'm sure a lot of consultants who are a lot brighter than me and a lot more strategic than me and also you know financiers who are much more business um numeracy um salient than me will probably say yeah but it could be detrimental to the business but i don't always make decisions based just on that how do you navigate how do you tell like the waitress because i always find it interesting is how do you say to waitress oh by the way um we're also going into an audi or um innocent is the you know like started as kind of the the guys from oxbridge you know and then goes right we're gonna go into mcdonald's how do you i think they're slightly different right because i think that traditional bricks and mortar supermarket going into audi is going to be friction right because audi little you know whether we like or not if you look at the cross shop purchase all their steel is all their consumers are coming from Waitrose Sains vs.

30:19Tesco. So if you're going to go into Audi or Lidl, which you're completely entitled to, there is a potential that Tesco Sains vs. Azzurra, etc. won't see you in the same light again because it gives them a lot of problems and headaches. Brands need to make their own decisions about that. My own view on it is I think you've got to make a decision based on the image of your brand. When it comes to going into a, you know, into a retailer who might be more contentious for different reasons such as mcdonald's or you know we know that for example there's another example a lot of people or suppliers are criticized working with primark for example because if you know how they're they were procuring their clothes and all that sort of stuff i think that's a different matter and what you have to do is i mean you have to look at the business you're concerned with and make a judgment call that either you know damn for me i think there's the the bottom line on this is i don't think there's a wrong or right answer there's a judgment call right and you've got to make that judgment call but you know for me when it came to you know on bear particularly with you know fruit snacks and the fact it was all predominantly around kids fruit snacks and you know based on what we knew kids were eating impact lunches every day wherever we could get available if they were going to switch in for bear that was a win for everybody all the way around yeah it's i like finding the nuance in things and it's because even i've seen on linkedin these these little um or aldi like when it's when it's gone it's gone i'm thinking why are you doing that but then it's like well actually your mission is to feel like these many mouths then it's worth doing i think there's a brand who did like an own label for um i probably can't say it's an own label for aldi yeah um but if it fulfills they've got a big purpose behind that mission where they give snacks back to exactly people in in uh like third world countries and so i think if that fills your mission then it's worth doing so yeah i think i think it's fascinating we've talked a lot about innocent and and vitacoco when when we spoke last time um at bread and jam and you said something that was really really interesting and you said kind of innocent was very data driven whereas the vitacoco founder mike said bollocks data which i think was hilarious yeah i am very much the bollocks of data kind of guy and i'd love to know why i'm wrong on that and why why what innocent we're looking at uh i don't think again there's an honor right i think it's just based on the individual put it this way when you've when you've got a business like innocent and two of the founders have come out two of the top business consultancies and been top of the game in that industry not surprising they're going to be insights driven right mike was much more of a fly by your seat your pants intuition guy you know mike also had other business interests which he'd done off a hunch that were also incredibly successful as successful as such as oh so he created that whole hotel um hotel room booking system globally that's one of the most used systems around the world still today so he's him he's mike's an incredible guy but things also evolve over time so if you look at something like mike today mike will be more 50 50 today but that's also because the stakes have changed right because you know back then it was him and area him and era and the buck stopped with them and actually they were prepared to make decisions you know mike was rollerblading up and down streets in new york delivering stock that's literally how it was but you know when you've got investors in board and other some and other people in board and more importantly when you get to get to a stage where it becomes more difficult to get kind of get your next set of growth and your next set of consumers you want to bring on board you're going to use data as well alongside you know along alongside intuition but i'm still a big believer today that i will always i'll always tend to favor intuition ahead of insights and i think i told you that that the um you know when when we launched bear all of the quoll and quants said we shouldn't launch bear it won't work what does it tell you it basically said it wouldn't work so that it's too gimmicky they won't like it the market doesn't need it there's already um um things like fruit winders and stuff like that out there they won't get the fact it's just pulped fruit and it's all softly baked and stuff like that and also the format in the reel won't work and cards are so yesterday you know people don't you know panini and all that and actually the cars became one of the most successful things i mean you know it was the biggest challenge we had was that i i'd love to know what the figure was but you know schools around the whole country were banning bear cars because they were being traded so much at breaks and lunch times it was just distracting everybody you know at school which was a lovely thing to happen from our perspective albeit you know it's uh it gave us some challenges as well but i don't i don't think there's a wrong or right i think over time you're you're you know you're you're you're you're you're use a mix of intuition and insights but i don't know i'm it's we all have head versus heart decisions and i i'll look at both but ultimately i'll always my heart will always try and lead leaders yeah again it's more it's more more nuance i think i always thought of intuition or heart versus data as head as these two kind of opposing beasts of mind of like okay one's got to win and actually it's like how do you how do you bring them both to the to the same side of the table and actually think and almost make make data and and intuition into like a partnership yeah best thing going forward the best thing in the world is when both the intuition and the insights guys are both right yeah if they're both right everything works right so what with innocent and and any any of the brands you've worked with what do you think a brand should from the data perspective really be looking at and then what do you think's a bit superfluous and a bit of a waste of time because data can you can get bogged down in data and it can lost up your own backside on it right exactly but also there's another big thing which is data is so expensive and you know a particular boat bear of mine and even though today there are some a new platform such as you might have heard about elm for example but yeah um oh my god category data you know biome which is you know is one of my one of my involvements where i'm lead investor um you know we operate in cereal and yogurts oh my god the cost the six figure number to buy data in cereal when you're a startup brand it's just so prohibitive it's ridiculous um so i think look there's a number of ways to answer that which is the number one thing for me when i'm looking at data and actually something i learned again key referencing by innocent was that any ball meeting the first thing the first agenda item was what's our fat what are our consumers saying so you know most people will start with the p &l and go right let's how's the how's how's variance versus budget events last year what's the balance sheet and everything like that innocent was like right now what are our consumers told us this month and actually i think that's the number one data and by the way it's not expensive right because you create everybody creates their own family right so all you know all of my businesses i'm in now have a between a thousand to you know 50 ,000 consumers that are on their database who they interact with regularly that they have built up they communicate with whether it's weekly newsletter or you know buying directly off the website or you know maybe entered a competition or whatever that is the most powerful tool you can have because you then have direct access to ask your consumers you know why do they buy your product what do they like about your product what don't they like about it what should we do next right and that is the cheapest and most effective way so anybody's setting a business up today don't lose sight with that but more importantly bloody listen to what they're saying because yeah i've seen i've been in businesses and i've spoken i've seen things when i can see some complaints coming through which don't look as if it's many per million right but i can see a trend be like oh that's fine no it's not fine we need to address that now we need to look at that yeah but it's only that number i know but it's been for the last five months in a row and you know and things like that so i think then the next set of data for me after that is and again it depends on what you're trying to do but if you let's just talk with a lot of your audience are people are trying to launch brands in food and drink right um as of when you can afford it category data is critical because everybody can go and sell on emotion or say oh i'm you know in this independent store this chain of eight stores i'm selling at 20 units per store per week right if you can use data and show look actually look we're now in the top 20 skus in this category look who are selling by the way you've got all that space here they're all below me so i think we can we should have that space there that's a classic where you know using facts ahead of emotion will give you a better chance of being successful in pitching into new customers but also extending distribution wider in existing customers i think shopper data then is the next important thing sorry just for listeners the difference between category data and category data is basically scan store sales right yeah so that's how many units you're selling per week um what the app what what you're what the revenue you're achieving is so it will spit out things like your average price so you know if you're like at two pounds but you promote down to one pound it may say your average price is one pound 66 based on how much has been sold on deal versus how much full price it'll give you your distribution but what's also so clever quite quite clever as well it'll give you what's something called weighted uh rate of sale and weighted distribution and that what that does is that takes brands that are all in the same stores and will give comparative reads for how you're performing because if you're not careful let's just say uh biome is in 500 stores but jordan's cereal is in 2 000 stores we can't compare the like-for-like sales and that but what it does is it will take the 500 stores that biome are in and look at how jordan's performing those same find the stores so you're looking at like for like sales performance okay yeah so that's the category and then obviously shopper data will then look at and typically it will be where it's either through a panel which is done or else obviously the likes of well virtually all the supermarket now have loyalty cards but that where you'll be able to look at your you know your frequency of purchase your weight of purchase your penetration how many people are buying you um what you call your affinity index what else are people buying so what's in what's in my basket it so i'll tell you you know so for example on bear we quickly found out that actually unsurprisingly one of the best cross promotions we could do was in fresh with with like fresh fruit you know we uh you know we kind of we used to uh whenever anybody bought blueberries a deal would pop on bear and people would buy us and stuff so just it again the shopping metrics and then i think the last one to buy and the reason why i say it's the last one to buy is more consumer data which is things like um you know your kind of your loyalty rates your brand awareness prompted and unprompted and all that sort of stuff um that's probably the last one to buy because it's expensive but also you have to be of a certain size for the data to be valid on that sort of stuff and and if if you're not a certain scale of brand you're best at conducting your own qualitative or quantitative research on trying to understand your consumer a bit more but like i said and i flip back to what i said originally don't dismiss building up your own database of consumers and speaking to those and more importantly rewarding them regularly as well do you think you can use say you've got an email list of 2 000 shoppers or sorry customers consumers who you've almost built that i know it's quite vogue and very american say tribe tribe man um but is it possible to to use that data to then speak to the retailers if you're a smaller brand how would you use that yeah you can definitely use that data to you know if depends the way i answer that is that what is the barrier or what is the challenge that when given about why somebody doesn't want to support you or else what's the message you want to run home find the data point that best represents that yeah and so for example let's just say okay let's just i want cereal which is one of obviously um my other brands which is kind of a little bit of like a keto you know keto cereal plate right which is absolutely flying as well but it tastes delicious yeah great product amazing product right um you know those guys there are obviously it's a slight slightly higher average price than the typical cereals or corn or you know or premiums premium cereals there you know in that example there they need to be able to demonstrate that actually there is people are looking for that kind of hyper hyper high protein low stroke zero carbs and sugar stuff use the data point to demonstrate that and they for example have generated so many sales in d2c or through other channels such as linkedin and stuff like that and they can show how strong the demand is but importantly they can see the customer profile of who's buying it and they can take that customer profile and say look that's the profile the person buying us by the way that's your average customer have you seen the crossover um and you can you can just pick your data points to try and you know marry it with the story you want to try and tell pick your data points and marry it with a story you're trying to tell i love that and i suppose stories are intuition usually you know in cultures stories are very much heart intuition but what you said there is amazing like use the data to to put almost wind in this in your in your story um i want to talk about kind of going back i i jump around i meander around but we were talking about going from you know bear going on that journey and i think what we've talked there about using data and intuition or which order really helps with that journey but i'd love to talk about negotiation and brands and even myself you just feel when you're a minnow that you've got no legs to stand on and one negotiation can completely part of my french fuck you right yeah what are some of the principle you must have been in some really tough negotiations what are your principles of negotiation you think for small brands

44:12right now i'd say this is probably the number one area that i think is fundamental to being successful not successful today and it's really interesting because i just i'm not really a big user of social media stroke things like linkedin but have been on linkedin a bit the last two weeks and it's amazing because there seems to be a bit of a conversational confessional conversational thing with various founders saying do you know what if i knew that now i would do this and fundamentally for me is that when you're a minnow you're trying to get a listing and there are unfortunately some harsh realities if you are a startup challenger brand and you want to get into one of the big guys you are going to have to give more margin than the category average unless there is a completely incredible unique dynamic and a couple examples maybe like that were like little moons or a fever tree who had so much brown swell and power because they were doing so well a retailer's oh i'll give you another example prime right so take prime as an example yeah there could be examples where they actually haven't had to give the category average margin or else haven't had to give the other margin of the challenger brands because you know they were so on trend and so hot and that you know the supermarkets were desperately to get them in but typically for the majority of brands you just got to accept you're going to have to give more margin right than the category average because you know all every single category is having its space reduce every single category is having ranges rationalized and also importantly every single new product that goes into a fixture is having less and less time to prove itself used to be about a year i've known brands come out after 10 weeks now if they're not performing right you've got to go and you've got to perform but the the one message that i want to land and i'm seeing more and more and people talking about it is that be really clear from day one you have to operate a business with a certain level of gross margin and i i think i mentioned to you we talked about this last time yeah and obviously gross margin just for anybody listening it's just very simply the invoice price you charge a customer less your promotional discounts less what it costs you to both produce it and deliver it to that customer So just keep it as simple as that.

46:23There are slightly different definitions, but typically in food and drink, you want that to be minimum 30%. Ideally, you'd want that to be 40%. Gold standards, 50 % and above, right? Because if you're not generating good gross margin, you're continually chasing your tail because either one, you're running out of cash the whole time or else you just haven't got any money to invest in people, in marketing, in infrastructure and things like that. and that's the number one thing i see where you know i pick up some some pnls and some businesses obviously i get quite a few investment memorandums where people are obviously fundraising and stuff and i'm seeing some gross margins in like i mean i hate to say it but like i see quite a few in like the 15 20 20 25 i'm like you're just not you can't there's no sustainable business there you've got to make gross margin and i hate to say it but you know the meat alternatives you know i've seen these businesses with like single digit gross margins oh we think we can get it to 15 in the long term i'm like still nowhere enough because it's not a viable business because you've got no money you're not generating any money to then kind of build a business underneath it um and that's my number one thing which is you know there may be an amazing listing for you but just make sure you You can go in in a way where you know you can, you know, let's just say, for example, give an example without.

47:50Let's just say, right, I would generally say, look, try and make an average of 35 percent. But let's be honest. Let's just say one of the top four supermarkets offered you a listing. You are going to make 25 percent. Do it. Right. If you go to all three negotiation, you can't get a better deal. Do it. but if that's more like 20 15 10 don't do it because that sort of size volumetric customer and the percentage of the mix means you're always going to be chasing your tail on margin and i know some people go oh yeah if i get it in now don't worry because i can go back because hopefully you know i could buy bigger packaging runs i can get cost of goods up and all stuff like that and do that analysis but typically you can't make it up enough and the and the scary thing is and this is the this is the elephant in the corner of the room is that you're gonna have to invest more every year because you'll have to increase your promotional spend rate cards go up for things like shelf ticketing or whether you want a gondola end or whatever and the cost of doing business will keep going up um and then there's also one of the big harsh reality and it's something i've been fairly vocal about in the press recently is that multinationals over the last few years have been able to put through some pretty big cost price inflation increases multiple double digit ones startups and challenger brands have either had to only pass on partial or have had to shell them because they haven't had the balance of power to push those through so again what that's essentially meant is that gross margins have been even further suppressed and i've really struggled with that one because you know yeah the big corporate suppliers can push through the price increases there's obviously been some fallouts which has obviously been well documented in the press with certain products being taken off until it's been sorted out but when you're a small brand and you go in there and don't get me wrong i completely understand the the buyers are on in the supermarkets and stuff but you know when i know there's guys who are trying to put single digit price increases through which is only a fraction of what they need to put through but it's still being told if you put that through then you're probably going to lose listings but we're not gonna have the same relationship and you need to basically you know forgo it that's tough because i think business moral and ethics i don't think that's right and what's even worse by the way is us and again because i was i'm in portfolio i speak to a lot of people on a weekly basis because they're always like people always happy people want to talk to me and just kind of confidentially chat with me on stuff and what's even worse is it's quite a few well there's at least five brands i've spoken to in the last two weeks who are saying can you give me some advice i said well i'll try and they basically swallowed all the inflation because they're told wasn't going to be allowed to put any more through and then they've done that so they're not moving the cost price and as we know and i'll be really clear on this install pricing is a hundred percent the decision of a retailer yeah but you imagine being a startup business where you're making less and less and you've been told you can't put any inflation through and then even though they've not changed their cost price they're now seeing that that retailer is now change their shelf ticket price up by 10 20 30 percent because as a business they're either not making as much money so they're going well just bang that up or else they're using that money then to try and price fight on the bigger you know kind of kvi on the big items to you know fight kvi so uh key key key volume or key value item so you know that will be typically you know or you you know like the the grocer does a top 33 baskets all those sort of products that go into that basket where they have to be price match everybody else and obviously there's the you know the big supermarkets are always against discounters on trying to be as you know as competitive against that that takes a lot of money and of course that money's got to come from somewhere so hence why you start seeing some other challenger brands and stuff their numbers have been you know they're they're on they're on shelf prices going up even though they haven't moved their cost their cost price and even though they haven't you know and they've swallowed the impression and i get it from a buyer's perspective but god from a business ethics and values point of view i struggle with that how do we solve that problem i know it's it's it's again there's probably a lot of nuance and no right or wrong in this but i think if you zoom out it's like i think the brands are going to lose because they're either going to go bust yeah the retailers are going to lose because they're going to lose the zest in the life of the challenger brands if we look at it over a 20 year period but like how do you how do you think brands solve that how do you think i think at the moment And it's something I've been talking about.

52:13I think there's almost like, there's a perfect storm and I've called it like, you call it either the three Cs or the four Cs, which you've had, you know, you've had COVID. Yeah. You've had, you know, crisis with Ukraine. You've had a cost of living crisis, generally. And then also you've had climate volatility, which has caused a lot of issues, you know, both in terms of just general demand as well as quality prices and that sort of stuff. And that cocktail there has been an absolute nightmare for everybody, but particularly for startups and you know if you look at today if you're a startup and i talk about this i think it's a lot of entrepreneurs who i knew were going to set up businesses some of them challenging whether they actually are today because the risks are so high relative to the diminishing returns or diminishing rewards that they're really challenging what they're worth doing and you know i talk about things like you know they can't pass inflation on which is pretty difficult i've been in this business now doing what i'm doing now for 25 years i cannot think of a more challenging time to raise money and try to get funds is so difficult and if you can get funds you're having to really really drop your valuations and they're also coming with anemic terms i you know what the conditions that come around it aren't you know i'm good and then also then if you just step back and think well you've then got the government who have changed the rules around things like r &d research and design and design um credits so they're more difficult to get that support entrepreneurs relief you know rishi sunak back in 2020 drops it by 90 obviously it used to be the first 10 million that's the first 1 million you sat there with all these dynamics and you're like as an entrepreneur or as a budding entrepreneur you're like i'm not sure i want to do this anymore and it's tough and it's tough and i i very vocal i think the government needs to step in and support more heavily there's a few pockets of things happening but not nowhere near enough you know i don't think they can necessarily get involved with the inflation conversation we just had albeit i think over time i hope the supermarket leaders and stuff will make sure that small suppliers treated fairly in in in discussions like that because i think they should be um i definitely feel there needs to be more government back funding assistance you've got a few things like the fsc loan and a few other loan schemes but most brands can't get onto it so we've got to find a way that people can get more more access to funds um and then i think there's a bigger thing which is i think the government needs to look at creating much bigger support infrastructure network to support startup and entrepreneur brands so centers of excellence so whether you want support and just how you start up a business you know finding the financial side of things how you build a brand from a marketing perspective um you know um how how you how you set up the best procurement manufacturing creating regional centers of election that's really important so for example you may not be aware of it but in the northeast of scotland because i'm speaking at something called the the times future of food summit the end of november and one of the things i'm really really excited about finding out there is that there's a 27 million pound uh backed which i think the government's put about 15 of the 25 or 27 million in something called the one seed pod up there which is amazing because it's a whole center for entrepreneurs that includes giving them manufacturing and production support that basically a whole center up there that basically for budding entrepreneurs to go in there and basically get as much support and as advice and mentoring as you can as part of that so you know so i just think you know the headline is for me at the moment is that the UK has been globally I believe the leading country for entrepreneurism and startups I think today that is challenged more so than ever in the whole of my career and I think if we're not careful we're going to lose a load of very capable and very amazing entrepreneurs who should be the next kind of Richard Branson's Joe Malone's in this world etc because they're just not going to go on the journey because like I said to you the risks are too high relative to the kind of you know ever reducing rewards what's fascinating is how on social media the desire to be an entrepreneur and a founder is so 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 chasm Crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

56:51It's the Champions League of FMCG. It'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.

57:28Northstar are not like another data company that force feeds you data like Fuagua 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. Northstar 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 has been it's never been bigger in my eyes but the reality on the ground is so different and i was talking to simon from who gives a crap you know that yeah yeah and we were talking i was saying at uni it was cool to go in ironically we're in the city right now but it was like go and be the investment bank wolf of all street it was like i want to go and be a slick rick in the city yeah and i left uni in 2016 so and over now and that last whatever how many years now it's like oh my god you're going to go into the city to sell sell your soul yeah go and be an entrepreneur go and be a founder so found found food founder specifically is very in vogue um and i know which is amazing it's like helps this podcast but then the reality is it's is it's stark yeah that's the thing which is the aspirations are all there yeah but the pressures the challenges as i said the ever reducing risks while somebody actually starts people get into detail they start do a bit head scratching go i really want to do this but you know what can i actually do this and should i do this and that's a bit for me which is i really really feel that you know there needs to be government intervention because i think you know i've always said this but entrepreneurs are the heartbeat of the at the uk for me it's a phenomenal success stories and i also say within every single market and category the category is always better off and the consumer is always better off if there's a challenge a brand breaks through and does well in it and i just think we've got to create an environment which inspires and supports entrepreneurs to kind of continue to do what they've been doing so over the last few years and i think that's really important with getting the uk out of the current economic slump as well so for founders who are feeling a bit more morbid but morbidly paranoid which is probably a good thing it's like this is this is the situation what would you say to them is it goes slower is it as in say they're listening to this podcast is it goes slower is it hanging there what what's the the antidote to this weird kind of epoch within all this right there is so much opportunity and upside still right yeah i mean look we know brands such as biome lucky saying you know pippa nut which is another one of mine those brands you know are very resilient and doing incredibly well and going to be household you know already are and will be even more so like household favorites right so there's still huge opportunity there i think the big thing is is that i think you just got to think a little bit differently about how you do it right i think you've got to be leaner you know yeah one of the things i talk about as well is that everybody thinks to be really successful i've got to put the office in london i've got to build it all in london true yeah right yeah my biggest advice is don't biome is up in chester right yes it's cost base is a fraction of majority of startups because they're up in chester you know incredible culture amazing office um really high capable people up there and it all works brilliantly right and they also chester and the local community and the council and stuff give them massive support because guess what they are doing so much good for that part of the part part you know that region the country yeah um yeah and john and me are running that business you know are getting really applauded for that which which is great so i think look challenge whether you need to be in this always be in london because everybody goes well you know all the market agencies are there they used to say loads of customers are there actually aren't that many as many customers as you used to be down here right and you know and and lawyers and etc are down there so i don't think that's true anymore but just create a lean operation would be my my my advice i think the second thing as well would be family.

1:01:37if you're going to go with what I call high octane model which and what I mean by high octime model is that if you're going to literally raise a lot of money and you're going to go really go gangbusters for this. um just be mindful that that is very high risk at the moment because you're gonna valuations aren't anywhere near like they used to be if you run out cash and you raise again it's probably going to mean massive dilution very quickly um and i think also you'll be under pressure to make numbers work really well and you know it's the world is changing it's just the whole thing it's similarly you know i can kind of go on about it for hours and hours but i'm talking about that from starting something today but also like if if i'm if i'm a business that's let's say i'm between i'm on two year two to year four of my journey and let's just say i'm between two and five million turnover but i'm still got 15 to 30 losses one of the biggest things i'll be saying to me say get yourself to break even and get your gross margin to a to a good level get your cash burned down because also the world's changed because like you know i spend a lot of time raising money at the moment across my different businesses and you know the the sentiment of the majority not all but sentiment majority of institutions i like private equity and stuff has changed they're just you know beforehand if your gross margin is fine but you're making losses it's fine they're all like going right tell me how quickly you can start making money when you're gonna when you're gonna break even the world's changing the way we're thinking but similarly these guys as well because of the cost of borrowing they might have said look historically we need to make two to three times return over the period of our fund they're now saying you've got to make three we need to basically we need to make three to four times what we put in over that same entire period so people just got to be wise to that and think differently in the business it's still massive opportunistic and i always believe in in tougher times that you can be even more successful in tougher times because you you know you kind of you learn you've got to operate and work in a certain way and you know for me as well i don't actually want just to slightly rewind on that i don't actually think there's any such thing as good or bad times the best businesses just ride cycles right we live in a cyclical world right there will always be troughs and peaks right create a business model that gets through those as best as possible that's what it's all about the not being in london thing is fascinating and it goes back to you i was saying at uni and i was really cool to be a founder is it's is i was speaking to my mate about this is it's like do people actually want to have a brand or and be a business owner and create something that they're going to sell or do they want to say they're a founder on their tinder profile and have the shawditch office office and go to sell a house and say they're a founder and it's like i actually it would be fascinating when i talked to william chase about this is if you were to rebrand the word founder to builder builder's not sexy but it probably is more builder the amount of people who put their hand up in the and the uni university auditorium be like i want to be a founder if you said right you've got to be a builder i think a lot of hands would go down and i think the whole thing of not being in london is fascinating we're doing an event actually next week with co-op up in manchester because i was saying to the kelly who's at the april is like it's unfair that everything's pulled down to london and brands feel that they have to be in london and then you talked about a lean team what do you think and again i know a lot of this is all case specific right but what do you think of some of the the absolute must-have hires because i think what can happen and john taught me this on the podcast is oh just because we've got more distribution doesn't mean we're getting more account managers yeah because i think what can happen is you get more distribution right let's let's raise more you know not raise more get more people in to fund that so i think what it fundamentally again it'll be circumstantial and brand specific but the crazy thing is dan i can basically give you an example of a brand that's turning over 40 million who have potentially got a team of 60 but i've got another brand that's doing 40 million and there's eight of them in the office right it depends on the model you got clearly if you've got in-house production and manufacturing by the nature of the beast you're gonna have more people right sure so but you know at the end of the day it comes down to all you've got to think about every time it's right i look at the way i look at it is that so i've got various different ways i look at i look at you know revenue and profit per head or per pound of employment income or whatever it is you know i look at all various different indicators and stuff like that but it's quite simple for me which is if you're making as i say you're making a 30 or 40 gross margin right Right.

1:06:16And long term, you want to make 20, you know, 10 % EBITDA as a minimum. So let's just say 40 % gross margin and 10 % EBITDA. You've got 30 margin points to deploy between your marketing, between your people and between your overheads. Right. And you've got to think it that way to say, right, how much money can I afford to spend on all three of those? And how would I want to rent the money? Because it's all I was, I could say to you, like, you can justify putting in eight or 10 headcounts. but of that example there where you've got that 30 to play with that represents 22 of the 30 you've only got 8 left across your office your overheads and you're actually marketing right so i'm just a big believer is that every single role that you hire that individual person on the sale on that if we're talking about sales role particularly has to basically pay back so if i'm yeah let's say i'm bringing somebody on the 30 000 pound salary as a minimum i would be saying that person there needs to generate as an absolute minimum a hundred thousand pounds worth of revenue because obviously 30 percent of a hundred thousand let's say 30 yeah yeah but but i actually go one step further and say actually look if i assume a 10 ebitda model right yeah that person actually needs to generate 300 000 pounds worth of sale because if we're going to make 10 percent of the time that's all flow down to bottom line they then pay back at least now that's only them breaking even on that role right so what may or may not be a useful number for for listeners is that and the figures i speak with my own my own portfolio guys about is that i normally talk contract i keep simple we're saying look if i'm a business it's like naught to five million i'm thinking you need to have about 100k to 200k per head if i'm like five to 15 million i normally try and go you're gonna normally go between a quarter of a million to half a million pounds revenue per head and then anything that i think is like 15 20 million above you should be at 750 000 pounds a million pounds per head so for example in my world let's just say you've got 40 million turnover i would try and get i'd say you don't know more team of 40 in that which is a million pounds per head it's quite a crude way of doing it but it's just so valuable so what you were talking about just then which was super fascinating is the the revenue per head yeah does that make does that make sense yeah so that per stage i'm relatively speaking around so how do you work that out so very crude no no it's very crude which is like you know so let's just say if you've got five million turnover and you've got 10 people in the office that's half a million per head right right so that's fine a thousand per head yeah so that is just again it's just it's a very crude way of way of looking at it but that's what i've i've looked at because again when i typically when you look at the whole shape of the pnl and stuff but like i said you have to be careful here because certain businesses require you know different models and are more people intensive and stuff like that ultimately what it comes down to is what's your business strategy and you build the team around the business strategy but all i would say is that and okay if i put my investor hat on and just to see what i'm it scares the life out of me when i look at businesses which are still quite early but i see they've got a battalion of people already sitting in the office and they've built the team before the revenues come in because invariably in nine out of ten that ends in tears because they've just got way too much cost base and the revenues don't quite materialize and then they've got a problem and you'll be amazed how many people you see it and obviously the difficult thing as well as this then you know there's two issues as well which is the the emotional side of having to go through redundancy letting people go is big but also it can often have a very significant financial cost also having to you know let a lot of people go as well again it kind of we've talked a lot about ego and heart versus head in this conversation which is a fascinating kind of thing to dance between but i think it does go back i wrote about this in one of my newsletters like do you actually but i think some people want a big team because it's a bit like a swinging dick contest at lunch trade show.

1:10:19It's like, oh yeah, my team's 15 people. I mean, you can see it in the face. You can see different founders' characters and you can see it, right? Yeah. I can meet a character and I can almost say, bet they've got a battalion of people behind them and lo and behold somebody sells me, yeah, they've got 40, 60, 70 people there. I'm like, but you know, it's I'm never going to criticise anybody. I'm answering this in terms of the way I look at it. Yeah, sure. And the model the business models that I like to get involved with whether I've liked to have built or I now invest in today, typically I much prefer staying lean.

1:10:50And, you know, all I will say is that the majority of founders who I've worked with, who I've either curtailed how many people I want to bring in or else take them on the journey about why that's the right thing to do, the lion's share those and come back and go, thank God you told me that. That was one of the best bits of advice I've ever had because staying lean has just been brilliant because I can now spend loads more money on marketing. I don't feel as pressured because I've suddenly not got a huge amount of overhead and people costs that I thought was going to be there. And, you know, invariably.

1:11:18But equally, you don't want to under-resource a business if it's really growing quickly. It's on a high growth trajectory because you might miss the boat. What are the most underrated hires you think that founders don't think about? Very good question.

1:11:37So I think it depends on who the founder is, right? but if you've got a founder who is very commercial or ops led not hiring an exceptional marketeer i think is quite often a big achilles heel you really want somebody who can build your brand to an incredible level from an early stage now the good news is a lot of farm a lot of a lot of founders are marketing brand led so let's take for example pippa murray right pippa nut which is which is obviously one of mine great example there but even she realizes because you know she shares the the marketing and the brand and the innovation um you know she now she now has a marketing director in you know in in that business right so at islands one of the brands i do some consulting with we've gone the world's gone through like a lot of marketing hires and i think this can be quite a conflict of the founder versus the marketeer hat again back a lot of this is balance how do you what do you think is a superstar marketeer like what are the credentials is it what you're talking about there is founderitis right and the founder founderitis they can't they can't let go of it right yeah or else they're just they're you know so my the fundamental for me is there is no point in bringing somebody in unless you're going to give them an opportunity to kind of look after run or run the brand so for example if you look at that pippin up situation jack who's she's amazing person she came in from ella's kitchen so she knows you know what she's doing her and pip complement themselves really really well there will be times where Pip, you know, will just put her hand up and go as a overall brand custodian.

1:13:10Actually, I'm not quite sure I agree with that. And actually, can we look at it a little different way? And I think she always reserves to do that. But I think it's about doing that right. But other businesses I've seen where the founder is literally spoon feeding the marketing director who's looked after brands, you know, substantial size, yet will not let go of it. And it just doesn't work. and I call that founder I think the bottom line is that if your founder is going to bring in somebody who's going to be your ops director your finance director or head of finance call them whatever you want or your head of marketing or whatever if you bring in a senior person there give them give them the bandwidth to show what they're capable of and bring them in they're obviously being paid normally pretty well let them demonstrate how you brought them in I think the only caveat though is that what i do love and how i always love doing it i love it nothing better than when particularly in the earlier stages some of my founders founders have brought in some junior or middle level commercial marketing ops people and over three five years they suddenly become the ops commercial marketing director of the business because they've learned from that founder or learned through other mentorships and stuff like that and they've just grown with the business and there's nothing better than seeing those sort of situations where rather having to bring somebody in externally and plong at the top if somebody's come through organization and literally you know now now it's kind of that kind of ops director or marketing director title that's great yeah i think i interviewed mark palmer quite a few times on this podcast and he talked about you don't always need a harry kane in terms of football you can sometimes get put the youngsters on the pitch and let them get three or four youngsters on say 30k a year yeah get them working they've got the hunger the hustle that can sometimes work well and then get make them you know go up in terms of using this football analogy that's basically how harry kane did it in terms of the marketing role um i think brands can get confused between that sort of brand founder and marketing because that could be that can get all muddled what do you what are you looking for in terms of the marketing hire delivering is it driving the rate of sale is it because again that's so well i think first of all the scope of the role is completely dependent on what brand business you're looking at and also what the founder is about so for example you know taking that pippin example pip retains a lot of the innovation because that's what her sweet spot is and that's what she loves to do interesting jacks does a lot of the brand building and takes the core business and really develops that very well and that that as far as i'm concerned works works works very well um so i think i think you've got to scope the rollout based on what is right for you know the different brand or you know or you know or business um but i think you've highlighted earlier i think bringing the right level high though as well because it's just depends on what stage the business is at but i'm what mark palmer says rings true with me because i always love bringing in junior middle people and letting them really cut the teeth and letting them run with it because i think that's part of being entrepreneurial right and just giving people opportunities to prove themselves want to go back to innocent um it feels i think that's i reckon that's 15 years ago for me now it's quite a while right scary isn't it it's yeah but innocent i can't the names i think emma here was at innocent there's yeah there's something in the water innocent right that is that is fucking so excuse my language has created these entrepreneurs or founders or mds who have loads of them i can rack them off yeah who are they yeah sorry my brain's going a bit that mush but who are some of the founders oh you've got i mean henk yan who obviously did tony's choccoloni ben greensmith who's at tony's yeah he's there you know i i'm involved with urban legend you know the donut brand which is yeah the donut brand which that's obviously anthony fletcher also peter ford is there um james who's done tales.com james davidson has done you know tales.com Emma Hill at Lucky Saint danger of this is I'm going to miss somebody out it's going to be really upset there are a few examples I'll give you another 20 people have done that I think it's the business attracted that the three boys attracted that sort of person but they also put in a phenomenal learning and development program which basically help people become more entrepreneurial and help people absolutely excel in their role any business I've been at the training and development you got at Innocent was unbelievable but also what was great about it we obviously did use a lot of external stuff so Karen Callahan who now runs her own business today who is an exceptional um kind of strategic level um kind of HR people and kind of culture development person you know she helped orchestrate all of this but you know what was the one of the best things about Innocent was and it was partly cost but also it wasn't just cost it's because you know innocent one is doing things a certain way 60 70 % of the training programs were developed internally and deliver people internally so as well as doing your job so for example i used to take the negotiations training and i wasn't just it wasn't just a sales team guess what procurement team the guys in finance and stuff because these guys speak with people the whole time so you know other companies were only training training up sales team in negotiation you're like well hang a minute your ops team are spending millions on fruit every year you know well they're just thinking like that and it's um yeah innocent was a great ground for just creating that entrepreneurial kind of spirit and just you know that that endeavor and yeah for me for a lot of people innocent was a platform that is a stepping stone for people to go and do their own thing a lot of people have and what's what's also a massive um positive indictment it's on a positive reflection of the business is there are so many people who i worked with 15 years ago still in there so you know it's absolutely crazy and you know the coo who was fd at the time james he's a job james davenport is a great guy he's still there 15 years later i know we talked about it previously but you would teach teaching the negotiation course on or training at black black my way through it yeah don't worry what would you say again and this is i asked this you know um i'm such a people pleaser that when it comes to negotiating i just want i kind of want the deal done do you know what i mean and it's something i'm having to work chip away at but what would you say are your kind of big principles i know we talked kind of talked about it earlier of negotiation that you think and this is i think everything can life's negotiation this isn't just about selling your brand to a supermarket this is about getting off a parking ticket you know what i mean like it could be anything yeah i mean there's loads there's loads of principles right the most important thing for me is ask questions to understand what the other side truly wants that's the most important thing because if unless and it's the quality of those questions you want to ask the questions that get you to the bottom understanding about what that person really needs because only then do you truly know how you can then fulfill those needs and try and secure your negotiation and i think the other really important thing as well is just be really clear about the nature of negotiation because it's like if you're speaking with the buyer at boots or you're buying a car from a local dealership you've got two different things going on there right the dealership you can afford to walk away right and that's it and it's more transactional whether you like it or not you know you'll try and sell you have extra possible on the car or whatever you'll end up with this ridiculous spoiler that you don't can't believe it's cost that much but you've got to have it but fundamentally with boots you're probably most startup businesses and brands probably have to have three to five successes three to five failures on negotiations before they then get in there right or else three to five pitches before they can get then get in there and you just got to do everything you can because a negotiation isn't necessarily just trying to agree a listing or price it's about how you approach it and you know I even remember one and the guys at Innocent remember this we had a buyer at boots and she was ferocious and she just hated us and we weren't sure why on the end we just sent her some flowers and just said look we think we've upset you we don't know why or how but i'm really sorry within an hour oh sorry i don't really can you come in tomorrow i didn't want to come across in that way and it just changed the dynamic of the relationship straight away right and i think you know knowing that other side of the fence but the other thing as well is when you are in a negotiation it's just being really clear on your parameters and what you're true is what you call like you're you know what is that walk away and i gave you an example earlier about the gross margins and stuff like that you know don't be the person in the meeting who just gets over excited and i've just got the tesco's listing but actually i wasn't prepared or i hadn't really really understood the numbers shit we're only making 10 on that you know that let's just say as i said to you before 20 gross margin minimum and that could equate to a five pound 20 case price if that buyer says it's got to be five quid or nothing be prepared to walk away because it's not the 520 walk away position you're trying to get away 550 but you know that's not going to happen 520 is your walk away the buyer says five don't do it hi there guys thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me before we jump into this episode i need a really big big big big favor i have pitched to some massive guests humongous guests and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough please please please just hit the subscribe button on apple or spotify or follow ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode a lot of this is kind of this and again this dichotomy of like the heart and the head and the ego yeah and i think you're so right and to be honest if someone with our south across the test goes by and they're like right i probably would just do it because you know um but it but it's what you're saying giles is amazing in terms of the pricing of do you think brands should say that i mean let's just say for argument's sake that they're the cost price they want to sell in in that is 150 because i've had it before where you sell in at the price yeah and then they whittle you down back to the gm and then you get so blinded by the listing like you want the listing so you just kind of do it i've done this and then you actually go in you're like right i've got promotes i'm lost making on promotion do you think brand should give himself a bit of wiggle room or how do you think i know that's again the scenario you just played there the biggest advice i give is don't commit in that meeting i would be saying right tell me what you can give me so be really clear to say right so look we've established what your needs are i think I can fill these needs through here.

1:23:51Because it's like somebody saying, oh, they're going to give me three lines, but they want 45 % margin. I'm like, right, okay, what does that three lines mean? Where's it being merchandise? More importantly, how many stores is it going in? Because if it's three lines in 200 stores versus three lines in 1 ,000 stores, that's going to, should result in a different case price, right? So get all the information together before you start, because the classic is, let's just say you've got, you know, a scenario you just played out there. or whatever so somebody says all right three lines yeah going to go in um we've got 500 stores and it's 45 margin i need a five pound case price yeah okay we'll agree to that brilliant cool just so you know as well i need six promotions each of those got three thousand pound shelf ticket fee oh and also um i need a twenty thousand pound marketing oh no hang on sorry i can't work all our money's in the five pound case price i can't give you any well no sorry i need that as well now so it's really important get all the information and get know exactly what everything that person wants first and then go back never been you know it's very unusual but some you know very few buyers will make you say in a room right i need an answer here now it's more a case of you know going back get one in facts clarify what you need to know get the commitments as you can that you can from the buyer and then put on all-inclusive and it's that classic you know if you if you know i always start with if you can give me x y and z then i I can give you this.

1:25:17Yeah. Start with what you need first and then tell them what you give. Cause if you start with, I can give you this great. That's fine. Oh no, no, I haven't told you what I need first. Do you know what I mean? There's just some subtleties in how you do it. What are the other subtleties, subtleties or nuances? I think in negotiation, because I love, I love going down that nuanced path. What other subtleties would I say? I mean, look, I mean, how you act, how you act and how you behave is important, right? I mean, there's everything from hostile, which we've all been before. You know, I've also, you had the classics where you've had the kind of bad cop, good cop combo coming in.

1:25:51You had some, I had such a funny couple at Asda when we used to deal with fresh produce. We had the buyer and the senior buyer. And those two were just comedy going in and seeing those guys. And it was like Laurel and Hardy. So funny how that used to work. What other subtleties would I say? I don't know. I think the biggest thing for me is just think about longevity relationships. Oh, yeah. I love that. longevity relationships is important thing because and yeah and then probably one of the biggest messages i give everybody is because i often hear i get quite angry about it um is that i'll hear people like slagging off certain retailers or customers going nightmare to deal with got so hard they don't understand i said the the real reality is in virtually all of these fmcg startups i know most of those guys wouldn't have a business without a supermarket right and those guys supermarkets i know they're difficult to deal with but also they've got a job to do right and so those supermarkets aren't doing that well either so they are under a huge amount of pressure under the pump yeah but don't be so derogatory and rude about them or the buyers because they're trying to do the best job for their own company but also without them most of you wouldn't have a business so i get quite when i when people end up you know making kind of strong statements you know about about supermarkets or against the buyers or not a supermarket for the national retails how they behave i think you gotta be a bit careful because a lot of people are indebted to them in terms of innocent you talked about on our last podcast john wright would make any footsie 100 ceo look average which i thought was was brilliant um and maybe this goes back into the innocent water and we what you've said about the negotiation by the way was is amazing will help so many people what was different about um john wright like why why why would he make every footsie 100 ceo look average yeah uh so i also had the pleasure of sitting next to john as well right oh my god that was intimidating how big how big was the team at this point or we were gosh well that's another story we went way too big way too big innocent when later came a bit weird that i've got to go down that path so and then we can come back to john but so why did it go too big because you know i did i just say about coco we we got ahead of ourselves like you know we thought we could take on the world we thought we could grow to this size and stuff like that still for long but like any brand does business you had a correction period the trouble is when you've already put all the overheads and the cost in and have a correction period suddenly we'll start to wobble so and also as a culture because you're such a want to please want to do more more more you start just to find jobs there's then more meetings in the diary and stuff like that and one of the best things you get one of the best things i'll find and give anybody is that anybody feels their business is starting to get out of control or like look around and suddenly there's like where the hell's everybody come from i just go stop i literally cancel every meeting every diary and i start again and say right boom right stop your meetings right what meetings do we need to have as a business both as a senior leadership team within your teams and stuff and start again because you know it's like people just pile layer on layer nothing drops out the funnel at the bottom yeah yeah yeah yeah so you know i think that's that's the first that's the first thing to say but going back to your specific question around what made john different was well a few things john richard and adam complemented themselves incredibly well John operationally and strategically so bright all three were strategically very bright Richard was a very good marketeer Adam very commercial so they knew their own roles and their own and what they did and they complement each other really well the beauty of someone like John was that John was a phenomenal listener an even better question asker annoyingly he already knew what the answer was but he was still ask other people right but the biggest beauty with John was that He had the ability to make complex issues, questions, dilemmas.

1:29:52He was able to break them down and make everything so simple. That is the biggest trait. We could have the most complex problem that could have done with somebody who knew how to do quadratic equations or algorithms beyond belief. And John would just cut through it all. An example of that. Don't get me wrong. I mean, it's just, it's everything. is you know the best that one of the best things was it's also about how it's how he talked and how he communicated and like we would talk about the issues we got let's just take for example we we had we had issues in our what we call our pricing elasticity so we had real issues trying to work out what was the right price for our one-meter smoothies to be at both at full price on promotion that got us to an average price that meant we could hit the numbers we need to hit while still hit the profit and stuff like that and the rest of us were creating these really complicated ways of looking at it and complication john would just walk in and don't get me wrong i couldn't even do the equations he's done on the special seat behind it you just drop in a one pager can i just talk through that and you'd be like that's really annoying because that's exactly what we need to do and that's exactly what i meant but that's just such a better way of saying it and that just that clarity of communication and that simplicity is the biggest trait in leadership you can keep you know i think everybody including me you know every so often over complicated business keep business simple the more simple it is the easier people understand it the easier it is to engage with the consumers the easier it is that people know their roles and stuff like that and that that was john's ability he was highly strategic but also just so clear and so simple what he did the i talked about this with straker and toby this morning and we were talking about and this is a common theme across a lot of guests I've interviewed is this ability to find simplicity and complexity and actually what we were saying is simple is work simple is hard you know that the whole thing is odd it'll be easy it's so simple it's easy mate it's so easy it's simple like you know I mean no it's simple and reduction is is one of the hardest things you can do can you teach that do you think or how how would you teach that with some of your brands to to reduce complexity down uh we've done it loads and it's it's been quite an emotional journey right it's quite a few businesses i've gone in and i said look i want to give you some advice but the thing is i come from a place where a lot of what i'm trying to articulate and try and educate is based on the mistakes i made myself right it's not because i'm a know-it-all and i'm you know i'm bright than other people i've learned as much the hard way as as as i have done from kind of getting it right first time as well and you know there's a number of businesses i've got in and you know we've talked about keeping the business lean we've talked about you know how we work with certain retailers what margin uh margins are willing to work with and stuff like that and you know also it's just amazing because i think the other big thing as well is that if you're in it day in day out and you're under the pump day in day out you just lose so much ability to kind of step back and see what's going on in the bigger picture i'm now very lucky these days where and it maybe it's a skill or trait i've got but one of the things that people continually tell me is i could sit in a room with somebody for an hour and i've got everything i don't know everything and i'll just come out with what i think and people are like how the frigger do you yeah yeah if you're not in a business if you if you work if i work on or with a business it's much different than working in a business right yeah and i can see these things and it's just that's the other thing as well is that particularly for seeing leadership team you've got to sometimes plot them out and just almost like hose them down and just give them smelling salts to say right stop right i'm going to put you on the side of the road because at the moment you're in the traffic going up and down up and down you're sitting on the side of the road wait till everything calms down right now let's look at that busy road that that's where you were stuff like that right what do we think okay how do we how do we how do we bring it back down again how do we make life easier doing 100 things we're not doing them as well as we could do what five thing let's talk about doing five things and doing five things very well and that's one of the things that innocent always preached about was that rather than everybody trying to conquer everything doing a few things exceptionally well was always going to be the best strategy for the business and it always was i wanted to go now i was listening to a high performance podcast with gordon ramsey and let's and he was talking about kind of one star to three star restaurant restaurant restaurants and the jake the presenter asked a really good question so what's the difference between a one-star restaurant and a three-star because three-star is so, so hard.

1:34:26And Gordon said, chefs, when they get to that three-star level, have to go into it, they have to find a gear that they didn't even know was possible. Yeah. I kind of think that's a bit like brands. So brands, if you were to say like, one star is that five million point. And I know you kind of, everyone of you said, get into the one million is fucking hard. Then to five, which you've got the kind of retails, but to kick on, to go to that three-star where you're, where you're in, you know, selling Bear to Lotus or seeing Innocent grow or Vice Coco, what are the extra gears the founder has to find to kick on?

1:35:02Because so many brands get stuck at that point. Yeah. Again, I think it'll be very much slightly different across different businesses. But in the main, I think the founder who surrounds himself with exceptional people and with a complementary senior leadership team, that is one of the key things and not having founderitis. Because So typically bringing in expertise to compliment you is how you unlock that next stage of growth. I think the other big thing is you've got to really understand about, I'm trying to avoid using horrible marketing terms, but for me, it's all about how your brand stands out and how actually, even though you're a small brand, how your brand punches above its weight.

1:35:46and how does it you know how do you create those brand moments suddenly you get that kind of pester power you get everybody's talking about you because you know there's some amazing examples of brands where they actually haven't spent a lot of money but you know everybody's talking about them right and it's you know it's incredible we and we had that we had that bear right and you know admittedly one of the big assets was was the cards and the cards did a big job for us on that but what did the cards do sorry so we did a whole lot of collector cards and they're all fact cards fact as in so basically all different things you might have like you know about the countries of the world or you might have you know mythical creatures or crater like that so we did i don't know how many they've got today they probably had about 70 100 different collector cards as in like editions of collector cards where there's like 50 70 characters or do it but they were always informative and educational and of course kids wanted to collect them all and they were trying to get them all and importantly also if people were missing card four nine and twelve they didn't have to spend a fortune they just write into us and we do swaps and stuff and we swap them in with the ones that i wanted right yeah yeah yeah um but you've got to really look at your products and say what is the difference and what is the usp that state takes you on to that next level and what makes you exceptional versus everybody else that's out there um and i think you know we work very hard at that uh vitacoco because it was all about owning the coconut and being we want to be seen as the experts in coconut because that's what we knew because standards because particularly when you've got you know innocent came into coconut water um you know tropicana naked which is obviously pepsico brands they came into into coconut water stuff like that but we fundamentally knew that we were all we ever obsessed and worried and loved was coconut and therefore consumers actually bought into that as well they kind of said you you guys are the go-to coconut guys and we spent a lot of time marketing that and doing that and And, you know, things like beach executions, big mangroves, the guys have just had down in London all summer, not obviously at the moment, current weather, but down there they've just had the Coconut Grove, which, you know, great bar and stuff, which is literally, you know, a real cool cocktail bar that could have been, you know, off the beaches, you know, in Brazil and stuff like that.

1:37:54So creating those brand moments and touch points, I think is, you know, really important. But I think as a founder, you've got to set the vision and you've got to be really clear about where the business wants to go, but also you've got to be prepared to roll your sleeves up and do it and i always remember it you know bearing by a cocoa and some of the guys might argue otherwise but you know it's if you think you know if you think you've got to be at various different consumer or trade festivals weekend weekend out weekend now as a founder be there you've got to be there you've got to muck in you've got to you've got to play your part and stuff like that if you really want to go to the brand and business to the next level you've got to show that you're committed to that next level and you're still prepared to put the hard work in yourself because i have been quite a few businesses where i've seen some founders step back and say all right i've got a certain stage let's let everybody else do the hard work i think as a founder you've got to double down and go even harder because if you don't set the pace and the expectations you can't expect people to follow you this is what the honest guy said literally in the one in the room over there the other last week it's like as the founder you set the tone yeah and i think it's like almost the pacemaker um um you're super driven Giles and as you said this is you look like the you said to Alex a food and drink lifer you've got so much drive you do these triathlons um what Gordon Ramsey was saying is is he was saying that under underneath his success and his um is an underlying jeopardy and he says for uh the velocity of jeopardy and it's almost like that that that chip on your shoulder for me you know growing up was a bit of a porker always like always i don't know i was a porker yeah always always felt um slightly on the periphery of things was never predicted good grades got good growth i've always had this kind of fuck you syndrome um went to bournemouth uni i was like i should have got into russell group university left that went to manchester so i've always had this like and i've got it now right and it's propelling me it's my it's my velocity but what what would you say is your jeopardy that's given you this huge amount of drive?

1:40:02Hmm. I don't know. It's... What would I say? I mean, yeah, if I go back to home life, we were brought up very strictly, my sister and I. Oh, you were brought up? So, but I just brought up in Leicestershire. But we just brought up very strictly and also with very high expectations. So that's probably a little bit the driver long, you know, that's the long-term driver. I guess it's I'm just a big believer in like kind of I hate saying this like trying to be the best version of yourself or like self-improvement and just for me which is you want to go to bed every night and be proud of what you've done the day you want to wake up the next day and go right how do I you know it's that kind of 1 % better each day sort of thing and I think I don't know I just I just don't accept averageness and also you know look at what I do in food and drink it annoys me that some of the big you know it's got the health agenda or some of the big you know environmental agendas it annoys me that a lot of the big companies just have been dragging the hills the last few years something's got to be done about it because you know if we don't the planet's screwed the health and wealth the health of the nation's screwed and it's just you know somebody's got to do something about it and that buck starts with you and that's that's a big thing for me and then i think probably later in life right i want to talk about later in life i'm talking about the last probably 15 years because I've got a 9 and a 12 year old it's also about it's how you want your kids to see you and how you know the biggest driver I have today now is my two boys I want my two boys to kind of see that you know daddy works hard daddy is always trying to do the best and without necessarily being patronising or else give them a whole lot of cliches that just the actions and what they see me doing is enough to inspire them to do themselves and you know i can see and to be fair i can see that rubbing off a little bit on on how they behave and what they do now already which is great and my eldest is just in the process of setting up a t-shirt business is a little branded business and stuff like that and um you know the big thing for me and i just it's just all of this though is you can only do this if you find what you're passionate about and what you enjoy doing and that's the big thing both within career and outside of outside of career i only use something you thoroughly enjoy because what's the point otherwise and i have to be careful because i help out quite a few local schools and universities and go and do lectures to like international business students stuff like that and i have to be a bit careful sometimes but i hate it when i see somebody who's phenomenally entrepreneurial and i tell them what do you want to do and i can see that they'll just sink a little bit i'm going to probably be a lawyer accountant or something like that and by the way there is nothing wrong with being a lawyer accountant why are you going to do that it's because what that's what my mom and dad want me to do and i look at that person and i'm like and sometimes i go is that what you want to do no and i'll just go not for me to say it but so i have to be careful sometimes the question is right just you know just find something that inspires you and just you're really you know you're really really passionate about and it's just it works for different people but mine mine funny enough mine's not a mine's not a competitiveness or a got to be the best or anything like that it's just for me about trying to be the best version of yourself and just trying to do the best possible job because i don't know i just set standards and to be fair you know parents set high standards and stuff like that you said that you said the upbringing was strict like which is very yeah very strict as in like you know no it's all relative right so let's be really clear it's all relative but you know never allowed to sit around at home you know any as soon as I was of an age I worked every single holiday what did your parents do?

1:43:45my dad was in textiles I owned his own business in Leicester and I used to work a little bit for him and you know that was a tough industry you know picked up loads of bad debts we'd have to break into factories to try and get our the material like the yarn or the cotton that you'd sold we'd have to break into factories to get that back because otherwise these guys weren't going to these were going bust but they set up in the old day you'd just set up for you'd basically buy all the assets of the business for a pound and set up the next day we're like no no so we go in there and get back what was ours so it was amazing to do that but just strict but also there were quite high expectations but it's not, I don't think that's been the main driver for me, the main driver for me is just within myself is just that I don't know, I feel if I don't push myself or do the best job that I think I can do then there's a void in me and that's what drives me I just want to try and do the best job Do you have a strong inner critic?

1:44:39um i used to have quite a big monkey or chip but um i've just read a book recently called you probably know have you seen the one about not to give a fuck that book to start up and getting a fuck yeah i've read it but hasn't exactly seeped into my soul i have on that because you know you can't be everything's everably right and there was a there was a there was a time earlier in my career where it used to really worry me what other people thought and it won't say people pleaser but just you know there was a there was a time where i was intimidated by other people and i had to try and you know prove myself but that disappeared quite a while ago and i don't give a crap today and you know it's like the job i do today i'm primarily an investor but actually most investors invest to make money i invest because i enjoy doing what i'm doing and there's a massive difference and some people go oh of course you say that that's genuinely the truth i i do what i do because i love doing it it doesn't bother me because if i was about money i'd be doing another bear or vitica or something like that i'd be flipping and doing that again and going full tilt and that's not what drives me how did you temper and mellow out the inner critic because mine's a little mendacious thug that can kind of bounce around like you know i'll do a podcast sometimes i'll be like i'll listen back to back to it because i've got to edit it yeah i'm like that was shit that was you need you should have done that like and it's other than i was speaking to my therapist about he's like mate just just a bit like what you're saying about almost being too many it's like step back like but i think it's so it's needed for drive to a point but it's what you got to do is got to understand whether it's healthy and when it's not healthy right yeah and that's the big thing but the key thing for me and this is the same with absolutely all of us is that we have all have learned behaviors right and you know i used to you know as a kid actually i was as a kid and also in my early 20s i used to have i used to have panic attacks right because and people who know me today like yeah i would not assume that yeah yeah you seem super confident i used to be quite used quite anxious and that was probably my expectations from other people and stuff like that but it's it's bloody difficult to do it but you can rewire because at the end of day you weren't like that at some point doesn't matter whether you're still in the crib or whenever it was right so there's a learned behavior that's changed or developed the way you are

1:47:01there is always a way to rewire a learned behavior it might take a long time but you just got to keep working and working and working and it won't and it doesn't matter whether it's anxiety or it's somebody who's um you know um high energy or whether it's somebody who's depressor or whatever it is there's all these things and obviously you know there's people spending thousands and thousands of pounds on on these sort of things but for me it's just i'm just very content with where i'm at who i am and also know what's very important to me so for example right now penny and the kids i know you know it's a horrible thing today but penny and the kids are that's that's where everything stops now i've got my sister i've got my me and my dad still around other bits pieces that don't mean are very important but right now no matter what happens plenty of the kids that's where everything starts with that first and everything else fits around that yeah and i think you've got to you've got to reset your rules and stuff like that and there's also been some life lifestyle thing changes so like a lot of people you know i've got i bet you've had so many people on the podcast talk about this you know i used to drink a lot right and actually in my early 20s that's what i think was the main drive of the panic attacks because i i get really bad anxiety from alcohol so i'm two months sober now yeah um well when we did our first one our first interview i was so anxious and nervous i was vaping beforehand like that week pounding pounding the fucking pints after the of that went to that booze where you've probably just been in today just and just and then now two months down the line i'm just like whoa yeah so i i'm not wrong to say i'm teetotal but i don't drink hardly at all now because unfortunately whatever it is the chemicals or whatever's in it it just makes me anxious um And I do, you know, annoyingly I had a 50th at the weekend and I had far too much gin.

1:48:49And I felt dreadful Sunday, Monday, and that's enough to make me realize why I don't drink much these days. And I much prefer the person I am today as well. I've changed significantly since, you know, the days when I used to be a heavy drinker and stuff like that. And, you know, it's just, it's part and parcel of it. But also I'm not, all these are done as subtle changes or else just things I just embrace. Because, you know, some people can give themselves a real hard time. I'm like, I've got to really change this or I'll do this. It's like, no, no. I think if you try and do, all these things for me is if you live in a world of extremes, it's an impossible place to do.

1:49:23The whole thing for me is life in the middle is a lot easier. Whatever nuances, whatever traits you've got, whatever situation you try to do, right? Just try and nudge from the extremes into the middle because it's a lot more comfortable in the middle. And don't get me wrong. It is very difficult for a lot of people to do it. But everybody, something has changed or something developed in everybody that they're wired or they're a certain way and you can rewire yourself just what did you have to rewire was it was it the anxiety uh yeah it was what i rewired was i rewired them things it's anxiety it's also the rules i was setting myself the the rules i was setting myself which were they had to do this i've got to be like this i've got to do this i've got to be everything to everybody like you know in the old day i was trying to please everybody right now i let people down every day and i don't care i know what's important to me i know what's important to the people around me and that's all that matters right um and i think it's just reset the rules for yourself and the rules of engagement and it's you know the scary thing is dan is most people you know don't do this until far too late in their life and it's like you know i i started i started really challenging the way i was kind of conducting my life and how i was thinking of stuff in my 30s and you know made a massive difference to me and you know don't be wrong i still have days where i'm anxious and bits and pieces and stuff like that and that's just part and parceling you know and going with it but i think it's um just being able to just extract yourself out of the melee and just be able to say right what for me and obviously in my case with my family with penny oscar and arthur my two boys how do i make put everything together that it's the best and i think for us as a family arthur's my granddad's name the um what's advice you'd give Oscar and Arthur?

1:51:09How old are they? Because I saw, I think I saw... Nine and twelve. Yes, nine and twelve. Do you know, I'm trying not to be overbearing or, you know, the parent who tries to overly coach. For the boys and me, it's just really simple, which is, so I'm more important on life skills or on academia. The boys don't need, you know, I think I'm not very bright, if I'm honest with you. I'm street wise and I'm commercial and I'm Oscar's my oldest is really like me actually he's quite smart but he's not going to be really academic um so I've just said to him look you know life skills will trump academia day in day out to think about what life skills are like you know wait to be confident but importantly you know never cocky and never you know never overconfident you know be very charismatic be very humble and bits and pieces um you know we talk also I mean you've got to be careful the nine and 12 right but you know but it's scary right because some parents are literally already at the kind of school gates i just yeah i said that i want you know be happy do the best at everything you do you know whenever you do do stuff that makes you passionate if you don't if you don't enjoy doing something come and talk to you about it and you know if it's right you don't you stop doing it and you know i've had that conversation with my eldest about a couple of couple of sports he doesn't like doing i'm like well don't do oh yeah but daddy you'll be I'll say if I don't do that.

1:52:30No, you won't. I won't. We just do what you enjoy doing. There's a quote by Oscar Wilde called Everything Popular Is Wrong, which I love. What do you think is common advice given to food and drink founders that's popular but wrong? You need loads of money to be successful. You need to raise loads of money to be successful. Still think that's wrong.