How Allora Spritz is Wiping Out Aperol, 12 Totally Unique Brand Building Principles You’ve Probably Never Heard Before

1:00:07A bit like what you've done here is most people think about adding, adding, adding. You're inverting, saying, okay, what can you take away? And then he goes on to say, I think I've written something about this, but the three, the way to live a miserable life, if you basically, if you know what to avoid, you'll then get to what's good. So if you know how to not live a miserable life, you'll lead a good life. So I think he says, he says, jealousy, jealousy and envy, being unreliable. if you're envious and you're unreliable and you drink and inhale toxins or some shit like that which I'm not adhering to have another sip

1:00:48you'll lead a miserable life basically and I think it's a really interesting way of looking at things the inversion rule what out of you've said you've learnt a few things from the brands you've been at what are the big mistakes all the big things that you thought fuck you know i'm not wisdom is prevention i'm avoiding that um whether it's a uh uh yeah across across all your brands pick a couple examples that you're not going to allow to happen at allura yeah so that the one i just mentioned is definitely one which is basically keep the main thing the main thing like focus on what we want to do which for us is really clear make allura spritz like the drink so it's like it's a super clear vision it's like in the same way that everyone knows what Aperol Spritz is we want Allura Spritz to be that and we won't get distracted um the other thing it's not necessarily learned from mistakes but I think learned from experience where for me and anybody that has worked with me or kind of worked in my teams knows that this is something I'm really passionate about it's like thinking about the people side from day one so we've written already a and we had before we had any full-time employees other than me a culture manifesto like a two-page this is what allura stands for from a like people and culture perspective so these are our values this is what we value at work we want people to relax every day regardless of the stresses we're not doctors or nurses we're making like a lemon aperitivo like put things in perspective perspective we respect you know work time personal time we want people to have lives outside of work like basically a number of things that we've put in place from day one before we even had a team that's like this is what Allura from a people perspective stands for and that works for us it doesn't like every brand has their own and every team has their own way of doing things but I think what's what we're really intentional about is doing that from day one versus what I think a lot of brands do which is grow so fast that they get to 20 people and then they're like shit we better put an away day in to go and write our values down and to make it really clear to people what we want and by that time you've hired people that maybe didn't know what they were signing up for or so for me i've been really clear like i said i made the time to do it before we had any team so i basically writing it for like myself to be like these are the things we stand for and we're showing it to you know had a big meeting with you know potentially big investor a couple of weeks ago and we showed it to them.

1:03:15We're like, look, this is who we are. We don't answer emails at weekends. We don't work in the evenings unless we have to. Like we're being really open with all of our investors. Like this is the culture we're creating. And if you do that from day one, then no one can complain because the only reason that becomes a problem is like if you sell to investors that you're not that and then suddenly you try and create this like culture that's different to what people thought. So where was the mistake on that? And you don't - No, there's no mistakes as such. It's just every business has its own culture.

1:03:44but I think I have always been super passionate about the people side. And so for me, I've always felt that if you put the people, it sounds a bit cheesy, but if you put people first, everything else will follow. Because ultimately a business is people, right? Like most of, in our industry, it's very people heavy and it's people, like people make a great business. So if you do the people things right, you'll get good results. If you set really clear objectives, and that's kind of, you mentioned the stuff we've done, you know I've done with other kind of leaders in food and drink from a like people side a lot of that was around okay how do we create engaging workforces because you should focus your time on that not on doing all the like nitty-gritty stuff and then having the people on the side and that's I think a bit of an inversion of the way people tend to think of it is they don't think of right I'm gonna sit down as a leader and think about how to manage my people they sit down and go how do I grow my business and then they think about people that's one of the consistent sort of cataclysmic nightmares that every every a lot of the founders i've sat opposite which is build the business you know when when sainsbury's are coming in with a massive purchase order or they're thinking of ordering three more listing three more skews you're not thinking about oh i'm going to sit down and write down the culture then you you know you kind of it's like trying to put a plaster over cancer you go and do an away day in the fucking cotswolds yeah exactly sit around a campfire happy clappy you know yeah make necklaces out of acorns and shit like that and then suddenly you think you've got a culture but it's not it's it's um it's much further upstream it's so easy to forget that stuff as well that's the thing because so little little tiny things like one-to-ones so when you manage people most people will have one-to-ones right monthly or weekly or whatever with their direct reports how many people actually put time in their calendars to prep for a one-to-one what as a manager so what is the art so i've sat in some really good one-to-ones and i've said some really yeah rough one-to-ones um sometimes they feel like the manager actually gives really cares yeah other times i feel like they're trying to coerce you into doing something um that there is an art to the one-to-one yeah there is and again this is this is where we apply the the operations ying to the the art of people yang and there are two because ultimately if you're too much on the yang of like and you know the companies i've worked for it was very much like it's like super chill it's like what have you got to do yeah we'll get it done and if the culture's amazing that just works yeah but then but on the other heart on the other side of this yeah the yang the ying or the yang whatever um so i'm having my thingy twisted here in the other side of that is if it's so mechanical and it's like that you know we're gonna have a Yeah.

1:06:32Yeah. We had one guy in my career go around doing the sales meeting. Won't say what company it was at. And he'd be like, it was just like, it was so rote and mechanical. It was like, so tell us one fun fact about your weekend. I was just like, mate, shut the fuck up. Life is so cringe. And it's like, it's absurd. So there's, I would love to know the operation when operations meets, um, the nuance of people. Yeah. What is the way to smash a one-to-one, like, from everything you've learned? Yeah, like, obviously, don't claim to be, I'm sure there's people that have worked for me. Yeah, of course, of course.

1:07:08What's he talking about? I don't claim to be the Oracle. But for me, like, the things I've learned are, and I learned this quite early because I was given kind of people management experience quite early on and got loads of great training. And it's back to what we were saying earlier about big business. Actually, one of the things that I found Nestle was amazing for is training you as to how to manage people. And that doesn't happen in the startup world, which is one of the reasons I started that kind of engaged network. because it's like we make people managers in startups with zero training yeah like literally it's seen as like a almost like a promotion like oh you've done really well in your job therefore you can manage somebody with no with no like here's how to manage somebody so like the basics of actually understanding what it takes to be a good manager is the starting point and then which are what are those things i mean there's low we could go into loads but it's like little things for example about you know one-to-one specifically preparation is like for me really important so how many times and i've been guilty of it in the past but how many times do managers go and you see in calendars you'd see like one-to-one nine to ten one-to-one ten to eleven one-to-one eleven to twelve well you know that person's not put any prep time unless they've done it the day before and i always equate it to like a customer meeting you'd never go to a customer meeting without prepping like you wouldn't turn up at sainsbury's for a meeting with your buyer without a deck and without having prepped.

1:08:26So why would you turn up for a one-to-one with your key team members without having at least thought for 15 minutes? Okay, what questions am I going to ask? What are their objectives? How can I coach them to get a good outcome from this one-to-one? How can I ask them for feedback so that they actually tell me whether I'm doing a good job or not? And actually just 10 minutes of prepping for a one-to-one can solve a lot of those problems. But nobody does. Nobody preps for one-to-ones. Everyone just has one-to-one in next to trading meeting and they just fit it in and they sit down and it's kind of like a chat.

1:09:01And that's basic 101. And then just - When you say the prep, and this is going even more deeper, I suppose,

1:09:15but again, going upstream, it's almost like the John Dewar OKRs thing. Yeah. Like he's the guy, So OKRs were the thing that kind of took Google from this, was the yang to Yingles. Was the yang to Google's Ying in that, you know, Larry Page will have this huge idea for Google. John Doerr comes in, applies these management operational principles. The actual thing gets moving, right? Yeah. So when you're prepping for this one-to-one, are you looking through OKRs? How are you setting OKRs? Obviously, every business manages it differently. So for me, I'd be like objectives. So it's like, okay, if you've got your objectives and you've got your measures of success and you've set clear objectives for the team, then obviously looking at those is one part of a one-to-one.

1:09:56But like that your team, your direct report should be doing that. Like you should make it clear to them. It's like, okay, I want you to come to the one-to-one with just a brief update on your objectives. And we're kind of going into specifics here, but like the objectives is another one where it's like I have a thing with, and we've started to do it now, we're building a team at Laura and I've had this with my teams in the past. We're nowhere near as focused as we should be in businesses on objectives. And I'll give you an example. So what's the first thing most people open in the morning when they get the laptop out?

1:10:28Email. Yeah, email. So everybody gets to that. And I do this as well. And I preach it, but then I'm also fall into the trap of it. But you open your laptop, you open your email. What's email? Okay, email is, and I can't claim credit for this. It was on a podcast I listened to a long time ago, but it's like email is a list of other people's priorities pushed onto you so you go in you go right i've got a email from my label supplier or my buyer or team member or whatever so i'm going to reply to that and you spend an hour or two on emails i would say to my team first thing you should open even if it's just for half an hour or an hour is your objectives like who literally sits there every day and the first thing they open is their objectives which are the pre-agreed key priorities that they've agreed with their manager are the most important thing.

1:11:14No, most people look at them every like three months when they've got like a review and they're like, shit, I didn't even, I forgot I even had that in my objectives. I was bad for that. I was really bad. So it's a shift of mindset, right? It's like you need to work and that's where, you know, no matter how sort of businesses, whether it's OKRs or objectives or like whatever you call it, it's like you agree your key priorities and then those become your priorities. And yes, you have to manage emails and stuff, but you do that after you've done the things that you've agreed are the most important.

1:11:41what's your um your kind of the dom dalton amalgamation of different experience reading books and podcasts what's your system uh for for kind of creating objectives because i'll be honest so i don't i know i don't check email first things i my i'm pretty militant my routine i like i read and then i write but there's no checking emails but when i actually do turn up turn on the app laptop it's just it's like kamikaze right i'm trying to do potentially more things i know you kind of disagree with this i'm trying to do this course yeah but like even then this is a simple example where i need objectives because i'm like like i'll tell you exactly what i did i was like right so i wrote the course it's like fuck i'm just gonna write it um i'm then gonna like hustle and just what's up every founder i know try and sell it to them then i need to do a landing page then i'm like i need to find i mean this is literally the innards of my brain right I need to do that.

1:12:36So then he's got the train. I'm simply going to see you. What is your, would you say kind of? Process. Process, yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of it, a lot of times people don't actually, it's just a sheet in the paper under the thing. No one gives a shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think that's where like the, and again, this isn't me, but this is the way I try to do it. I've kind of been taught is you start with the vision or what you're trying to achieve. so like the vision could be okay i want to be bigger than aperol or you know and you talk about i know i've heard you talk about jim collins but like you know there's that kind of that uh concept of b-hag where it's like big hairy audacious goal where it's like hey what's your one thing that might be 20 years down the line but that's what you're aiming for yep and so your vision or your b-hag or you're like really you know far in the future objective and then you work backwards from that in the same way i'm saying work backwards from the perfect spritz to create the product it's like work backwards from that you understand okay how am i going to get there so like if my goal is to be bigger than aperol or you know the number one aperitivo brand in the world like what are the steps to get to there for you if your goal is to be i don't know whatever the number one food and beverage consultant like whatever your long-term goal work backwards understand the steps you need to take be really specific about those steps it's Like, okay, in order to do that, I need to create a website.

1:14:01And then, you know, list those objectives out. Keep them simple. So, like, less than five, ideally. Because, I mean, I can't remember who it is that coined the phrase, but it's like, if you've got more than five priorities, then they're not a priority, basically. I can imagine someone just walking out with, like, 20 priorities. Yeah, yeah. It's like, well, that's not a priority then. That's basically what a to-do list is. That's a to-do list. That is a to-do list. Yeah, which is different to objectives. So, it's like your priorities and then your measures of success. And that's often where people don't put enough time in as well.

1:14:28It's like when you're managing people, yes, you set them objectives. But if you don't have a clear way of measuring success, then it's all a bit woolly. So it's like when new accounts like doesn't really you can't measure. OK, when really specific, when 50 gold accounts in East London by the end of March. And it's like, well, there's no ambiguity then when you sit down in April to review how the first three months has gone. It's like, well, you didn't win 51. You won 42 or you won 58. therefore great. East London. So like really specific. Yeah. That's where smart, I mean, smart objectives. So it's specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time balance.

1:15:06So it's like those things. Yeah. And that's a good objective basically. And I guess you, you know, you're doing it for yourself, right? But you can do that still applies to yourself. Yeah. It's like, okay, if I'm going to create a landing page, it's not just create landing page. It's create landing page to incorporate these things by this date. Because you could create a landing page, but you might do in two years and it's like is that success like no i need to do it by this date in order to hit this next milestone what are your objectives now with the with the laura like you've got this um cooler with you as you said before we hit record like buzzing around on the line bike hanging up the on trade going to an event after this like what are your goals to take on apra the vision that we talked about the vision yeah paint the town yellow replace whatever it is yeah yellow is the new orange yeah goodbye orange hello yellow we got there we got there that's the vision uh let's boil it back down to where are we now we're mid-feb yeah 2023 yeah 2024 2024 um have another have another allura yeah yeah basically for us it's quite it's quite simple it's focused on on trade so we're focusing really heavily now on on trade accounts sort of split into kind of three premium pubs bars so we're launching a lot of really cool pubs and bars we're launching don't know when this gets aired but like by the time this gets aired we should be out in all young's pubs so that's like 217 pubs um amazing pubs like beer gardens perfect spritzing pubs yeah um so cubit house which is another like it's got they've got eight pubs It's got like the Grazing Goat in Marlebone and Princess Royal in Notting Hill.

1:16:48Really, really cool pubs. Those types of places. Focus on those. Focus on Italian venues. So Italian restaurants, aperitivo bars. Because for us, you know, our brand is a love letter to Italy. So it's like we should be, to build authenticity, we should be in all Italian restaurants, all Italian bars. There's a thousand Italian restaurants in London. Are you doing anything with pastor evangelists? We're not yet, actually. No, we're not. but we're in conversations with pretty much all the big Italian, all the small Italian sites, larger chains, and then like equity accounts basically. So it's like, okay, places like the Ivy or So House or places that you really want, you need your brand to be seen.

1:17:31And so for us, it's like focusing on those three kind of sub channels within on trade, not focusing really at all on off trade. So we're not talking to grocery or we're not looking at supermarkets or any of that. our off-trade presence will be digital basically so d2c via laura drinks kind of a little bit like we did a trip by really building that community through d2c and then you know we're on go we launched on go puff last week so rapid grocery is a big sort of sub channel for booze because it's like 30 minute delivery if you're at home and you've got people around and you need some booze you can order on go puff um and then yeah eventually kind of amazon so for us it's like nailing that and then for you know international is important for us so we've already you know we're selling in Procida which is obviously where we made and in is we'll be selling in Ischia Capri like Amalfi Coast so Italy's important and then strategic international markets are important for us because obviously a lot of people had their first Aperol on holiday and we need to be the same we need to be in Ibiza and Mykonos and Mallorca and Australia and South Africa so it's like that's kind of wouldn't mind being the uh the head of international yeah exactly yeah and even just from a basic level like we're stretching your own itch quite literally yeah exactly yeah it's quite fun like australia and south africa are really interesting markets because their winter is our summer and obviously it is a relatively seasonal product because most people drink a spritz in the summer so if we can have a business that's big in australia and south africa when it's winter here and it's summer there it has a really nice like balance to season again Yeah, and that's you thinking operationally, applying it to a sales problem, which is super interesting.

1:19:06I hadn't even thought of that. What talks to me, there's names, I still can't get it. I'm really bad with saying names. Prashida. Talk to me, you land in this gorgeous place in Italy, you fly into Naples, you get the ferry across. What's the feeling in your soul as you're walking around there? Because I think, as you said, it's a love letter to Italy. like i really genuinely believe i kind of just i know i've just come back from costa rica but these things can have a change in the way you view the world like what was yeah what was the feeling in your soul walking around that yeah so like it is proched as a time capsule so it's basically like being back in the 50s in the best possible way so it's like you know vespers hardly any cars 10 000 people you can walk from one end to the other of the island in like less than an hour there's no hospital so if you know if women that have a baby have to get the 40 minute ferry to naples there's one school it's like a time capsule in the best possible way and so for us and for me and jamie and holly and jen like when we go it reminds you what's important like we were i was there last week with jen my wife and like kind of you know lemon sourcing trip we sort of joke it's like she's in supply chain as well and it's like all those years of visiting factories in like Bradford and Leicester.

1:20:27And now finally I've landed on like a brand where my factory visit is Procheter. So we were there last week. And, um, and it honestly, it makes you realize what's important. It's like, why are we running around like headless chickens in London when the important things of life are relaxing with friends, having a drink, reading a book, like, so it's the simple life in the best possible way, like off screens. Yeah. So that, that's the feeling you get you approach it like it's visually beautiful you know it's like much more relaxed it's kind of yeah they call it la dolce in the end it's like the sweetness of doing nothing basically so it's that kind of and for us we're trying to bottle that in allura so it's like the idea is the escapism you're drinking an allura spritz on a whatever day in a beer garden or a bar in london and you kind of a little bit of you feels like you're in progetta basically we've talked a lot about today and as this all just bubbles up but kind of these juxtapositions and these kind of paradoxes and like the the yin and the yang the operation the sales now obviously kind of the the kind of the conflicting and the the interesting thing of when almost slow pace the sweetness of doing nothing meets fast moving consumer goods obviously in costa rica that's what i've realized is um and what was scary and i was saying this to my mate james hickson i don't know if you know him yeah well i don't know him but i listened to the pod with him which is really interesting yeah yeah really really nice he's a g he's one of my really good mates went to school with him he was like way older than me oh oh far if you listen to this um but like 10 years above um but he we he was he'd done a sabbatical in vietnam and we were both saying uh what was crazy is how quickly uh and almost scarily that's if that's even a word yeah the the pace of london and fmcg startup pulls you because the first two days i felt like i've been hit around this like the head with the spades like fuck me like it's just the relentless pace of it and i think um the the ability to kind of again meet sales putting this from operations lenses there's like this quote I don't adhere to, but I say it a lot on the podcast is, is slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

1:22:40And there's, there's a beauty in terms of slowing down because it allows you to appreciate, um, what's important. How are you, um, going to like evolve the brands, you know, evolve the brand in terms of you get these unique distribution points, but how do you kind of think what trip have done a really good job of, um, um is like that's what i was speaking to do like liquid death about this i think there's a difference between a brand and a lifestyle brand the example i think trip i don't know you some of the source there they've built a lifestyle brand yeah like how do you turn this into this lifestyle brand where people have a a sip of a laura sorry a drink of a laura to have the moment of procedure yeah yeah it's a great question because that's exactly what we want to be and we and we talk a lot about not being a drinks brand like being a lifestyle brand that has a drink that everybody loves but like the and it's about being intentional and like really thinking about the brand at all steps of the way and like jamie jamie and holly in particular like i said he's they're both creative like geniuses and our brand already has so much more depth to it than a lot of other brands that have been around for 10 years because we're really thinking about like how do we want to show up in the world whether that be clothing you know obviously you've got like t-shirts caps the usual totes but then for us you know there's other things in the pipeline like italian playing cards for example you've got particular in italy they have like regional playing cards so they have like yes like it's not just this one standard stack of you know playing cards they've got like scoppa and like different playing cards so we've got you know branded allura playing cards or branded or matches or you know things that we can do that show up in the world and like show our brand and basically make it really cool without it being okay let's slap the logo on a t-shirt or on a cap because that's what most brands do so thinking about that think about how we show up in the on trade as well through like activations obviously like a more practical level so how because I think I was speaking to your friend who knows Jamie at Big Fish the other day, and Sarah is the account manager there.

1:24:58She's just come to Big Fish, but she had a background in big booze brands, and I think it was Aperol, but she was basically saying like, even when you're that size, you have to really think about these on-trade activations, and there's a lot of nuance in that, and you can actually kind of, if you get that wrong, you can lose even if you're a brand like um i'm just putting this out my ass here but like guinness yeah how do you make people feel like they're in protrude protrudo yeah uh if if if they you know how how do you how do you add that it's hard basically that that's obviously one of the things that we're figuring out and that will kind of hopefully show up this summer um at a most basic level obviously you know pub gardens like really interesting activations that are kind of subtle so you know in a young's beer garden for example not this kind of okay again we sort of talk about a lot but it's like it's very kind of can be very in your face it's like for us it's more subtle it's more probably like lemon areas of beer gardens versus just like slapping a laura logo above like a pop-up bar um it's really thinking about like in the on trade how we can talk to our consumers in the right way and i think learning learning from trip to be honest in using digital cleverly it's one of the things that you know i know liv talked about it with you when she was on the podcast and we've talked about before is tripper one of the first brands i think to nail that like on true omni-channel approach huels the other one where it's like the guys at trip this is you know pre-me so i can't take the credit like really built an amazing brand on D2C at the same time as in like physical retail.

1:26:38As Huell have kind of done D2C first and then physical retail, but they're obviously grown so quickly that they're big in physical retail now. And there's not many brands out there that have been able to do that. But what it's enabled the likes of Trip and Huell to do is invest really smartly and at times quite heavily in like digital marketing and like acquiring customers on D2C. So I'm sure you'll get Instagram ads for Trip relatively regularly. and even if you don't buy it on D2C, it embeds the brand in your head. So when you're in a Sainsbury's or you're in a solo house or whatever, you're like, oh, I saw an advert that told me that that was the best drink for Dry January.

1:27:14I said to Liv, it's like, I feel in good. Like I won't sing for everyone, but I'm like, I should. You know that song? And I was like, that song is synonymous with trip. I was like, every time that comes on, I see the Vespa going around Notting Hill. So this is interesting, this kind of omnichannel, brand um kind of omnichannel channel we're swimming down now i suppose mate um

1:27:41and as i said i think i think trip were kind of one of the first real omnichannel brands operationally but like visually uh like a lifestyle brand as well what are some of the boiling boiling down some of the key learnings from your time there like what are you taking from there that you're going to apply to a laura or like just going into that a bit more detail yeah no that focus on brand first like it's not necessarily just trip that i've learned that but like those guys are neurotic about the brand as a lot of like brand owners are and i think you need to have an example of that i mean you'll have this i'm sure with any brand you work like behind the scenes like nothing at trip gets signed off unless like Liv James like agree with and I think that's often the success behind brands like that it's the same thing with us with Jamie and Holly it's like they're obsessive over this brand and if it was me I'd probably a bit fast and loose I'd probably make compromises and stuff and the brand wouldn't be as amazing so I think you need that like brand guardian and that's where you're kind of maybe obsessive founder comes in a bit because often brands are like founders children and so you do sometimes need I think that like level of obsession not necessarily in terms of everything you do in the business but more like with the brand and with the brand aesthetic so yeah definitely those guys did an amazing job with that and like I said the cross-channel omni-channel like D2C helping fuel retail that kind of like virtuous circle where you've got like okay you can invest in advertising on Instagram you can then drive people sort of to buy on your d2c platform that has more than just say in trips case a soft drink and you can also then build brand awareness and for us obviously that's part of the benefit of having like i said a higher value bottle is this rrp in like on go puffer on our website is 25 pounds because obviously you don't need the prosecco and it's higher abv so you pay more spirits duty on this than you do which is like 16 pounds so there's a higher price point bottle even though the the spritz cost the consumer the same therefore it lends itself more to direct consumer because if you're selling something for 25 pounds on d2c and you can get people to buy other things on your website you're more likely to have a d2c business that flourishes and that's obviously one of the reasons why with trip with the oils it's like if trip was just drinks then it wouldn't work as well on d2c because obviously you've got your higher price point oils and your merch and stuff that allows you to increase average order value so like that way of thinking about building a brand And partly using digital and direct to consumer is definitely something that I think the guys are tricking.

1:30:16So you're going to have these other things on the website which kind of bring that love letter to Italy alive. So the cards, interesting merch to increase that order value. Yeah, and like, you know, building, you know, excitement and hype around, okay, exclusive drops and all this kind of stuff. So like really engaging with consumers through the website and through the kind of brand world, I think is going to be a big part of our strategy over summer. where i want to go now and and look you're in the driving seat so i try and push myself to ask some hard questions i think it's it helps helps us in this but i'd love to know on the lemons note like when is life giving you lemons right like like what's been the hardest day in your life or your career um and like how did you get over that uh good question i mean career wise like no doubt my early so when i think i mentioned you before but i was at nestle i was there nearly six years i got given a pretty sort of challenging job which was amazing it's probably still the like most enjoyable job i've ever had which is running their warehouse up in york so it's 33 000 pallet high bay warehouse um six million budget um 82 people 81 men one woman um so big team all from i don't know if they listen to this part they probably don't but like all northern all from york average length of length of service 32 35 years and they sent me when i was 24 as like a southerner to go and like run the warehouse um yeah so it was basically sink or swim and it was amazing it was definitely like the biggest learning in my career and i loved it and I think it's kind of made me who I am today in terms of work but probably the worst day I was talking to this about a trip with some of the guys actually we were talking about Liv and I was like yeah hands down any day I've had since this day has been quite easy and it almost you know it's like everything's relative right if you have a horrendous day at work then and the next day's not great the next day feels okay if you've had a horrendous day the day before so I remember once I I came in on like, it was about the 20th of December.

1:32:25It's a warehouse that kind of obviously my team. Sorry, how old are you at this point? 24. 24, year 20? So yeah, I was just 20... 11, 12. 12, yeah, about then. Cool, cool, cool. Came in and basically was confronted by like 10 angry Yorkshiremen, like warehouse operators, all shouting at me because basically they hadn't got this bonus that they were supposed to get for Christmas, which was basically a bonus that you get for working at height that like 12 people in the warehouse were supposed to get every year that had been negotiated by the union and nobody I'd never had a handover because I took over from nobody basically somebody had left and I kind of took on this job and so no one had told me that I was the one that was supposed to send this bonus through to like HR to get paid and I was just literally stood there with everybody shouting at me going you've ruined Christmas like my kids aren't going to get presents and like um that kind of environment is one of the things i love about factories warehouses it's like no nonsense basically it's like people will not sugarcoat things with you and they will you know a lot of people say like give me constructive feedback you want to get constructive feedback go work in like a warehouse or a factory um so yeah that was tough like i got absolutely torn a new one by like all these people that were like 30 years older than me that worked for me um what does that so like so what's so you're in this you go into this warehouse it's just before christmas that you're surrounded by 15 gruff hard-nosed northerners what's what's the feeling in here that causes that pain oh yeah like i nearly cried like it's probably the closest i've been to crying at work because you're just like when people are shouting at you like oh jesus christ um but yeah then i kind of ended up fixing it and basically how did you fix it well i got i managed to get them paid not before Christmas because it was impossible but um before New Year so I managed to get them paid in the like period in between yeah uh felt terrible I mean that they were making me feel worse than they should have you know I mean it wasn't as bad it was a few hundred quid it wasn't like they couldn't eat but it was it was definitely like the most confrontational or one of the most confrontational experiences I've had at work because it's like with my team as well who obviously all worked for me so you kind of have that level of if a supplier or a customer shouts at you, it's kind of like you can detach yourself from it because you don't see them the next day or you can hang the phone up or when it's your team, it's a bit like your family shouting at you, isn't it?

1:34:45So it's like, work-wise, that's definitely one of the toughest. And what you said that day changed your career kind of for the better. And Naval Ravikant has got a quote, which I love, which is pain equals wisdom. Like what were the one or two principles you took from that 20th of December 2012 that have then kind of played out in the rest of your life? I think it just gives you perspective on things. So it means that the next time something not great happens, you've got perspective of like, it could be worse. It's the same with anything like that. It's like, to be honest, we were talking before we started recording about having kids.

1:35:27Like I've got, you know, an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, so I had kids at 27. So kind of relatively young for like, you know modern times modern times in london and once you've got kids it's a bit cliche but it's like you know my eldest son basically nearly died when he was born like wasn't breathing and it was you know supposed to be the best day of your life but it's like the worst day because you're like god i honestly thought like son's gonna die after that you're like well if we're out of stock of a skew because the factory's broken down or like you know a retailer shouts you like nothing really is that important off the back of that.

1:36:03And I think that's one of the things we were talking about earlier around people. It's like, we've got to remember that, yes, we want people in the industry that are passionate and that give their all when they're at work, but we're not doctors, nurses, even teachers. Like, you know, my mum worked in a hospital. I know loads of people that, you know, literally like save lives or teach kids for a living. It's like, we're making drinks. Like we're not, we're not, it's not life or death. A lot of people think it is, but it's not life or death and i think if you have like a healthy perspective like yes you want to be ambitious but actually you realize you know what it's just work at the end of the day what's you said we talked about work what's been the worst day in your in your life yeah probably that that i just mentioned so yeah when my eldest son was born what's your son um teddy um so he's eight now but like that was you know obviously first kid you don't really know what's happening and um like basically complications of birth was born and which wasn't breathing so you're supposed to they're supposed to you know come into the world and cry straight away because they like immediately start crying it was just dead silence and it was like oh god this is this is terrible he just basically had an issue with his breathing when he was born and they like had to do cpr on him so you're like watching this tiny little baby get like you know resuscitated um and he was fine he was fine after sort of 20 seconds 30 seconds thank god and very lucky like he's totally fine but that experience was definitely like the worst day of my personal life which is ironic because it's supposed to be the best day right obviously eventually it's great and he's eight now and like but it's yeah that's stress that is serious stress what um like what's one this is a question i ask a lot of guests i think it's just interesting what's one truth you really staunchly believe on believe believe but most people would disagree with you on interesting okay I don't know if it's the one but definitely one that I think comes up quite a lot I actually listened to one of your pods recently where it came up and I have a bit of a different view to a lot of people on this is around like working with and for friends so I think a lot of people feel like you shouldn't have too many friends in your team or you should have like more of a kind of professional I think it was um was Ed from Candy Kittens was talking about it with you and he was talking about the whole Netflix thing around it was Netflix that came up with it but it was like a lot of people used to talk about work as family but actually it should be more like a football team because it's like yep you don't fire your family basically is the is the kind of common and that's become quite popular thing where it's like actually you should be much more kind of you don't you know they're not your family but for me i i get the they're not your family but i also don't buy that it's just like a football team for me it's more like they should be like i want to work with friends so like when i hire people obviously they're not exclusively my friends originally although everyone that we've got currently in the team or are basically people i already knew that i'm friends with but they're people i want to be friends with or that i could see myself being friends with and I and I think the the football team analogy doesn't work because a football team plays for like 90 minutes and you can sub people on and off without having to go down to 10 men or nine men and so if a business is like a football team then you would be able to sub people in and out immediately and it's not like that like you spend eight hours or more a day with people that you work with and if you lose them you have to replace them and it often takes six months by the time they've left you've hired somebody they've joined they've worked their three months notice so your gap of have not having that person the cost of not having that person is huge so for me it's like i want to work with friends i want people that also with inherently in sport is there's your con there's constant ego because you're trying to as much as you're in the same team in say rugby or football in rugby it's easy just because the numbers but like there's one 15 spot right there's one uh sales director spot like there's maybe challenger brand slightly different but there is there's kind of ego involved yeah i don't know where i sit on the spectrum so if you've got family on the left far left if you've got football team i went to um uh to interview with uh athletic brewing in oh yeah yeah and they were like everyone's going around going these are my teammates they're like calling it teammates i was like fuck me like they're like we're teammates and i was like okay um that's interesting um so i think you've got and it's almost there's where i sit in this because i think you're right like if if you're at manny life there was a golden period for about two years whilst i was there where like i was working with my best friends yeah like and it was sick like it was the time hands down probably the best two years of my life absolutely loved it and everything was flying we then things changed slightly but everything ended up working out alright but I kind of agree with you I do agree with you on that I also think another one on this is how people say co-founders should be different skill sets i agree with that but that that point's there i think what people don't do is go further upstream and say yes you you have to be slightly different but do do you align on the same values a bit like your your sheets you know your culture sheets like people i get messages a lot going i need to find a i don't know i said northern accent i need to find a co-founder but it's like it's like you're looking for a co-founder it's like that is important but actually you need someone who aligned with you on the values on the vision and then i'd rather have two people who are quite similar but doing different things yeah but i think that's not that's where i kind of agree on that nuance it's like yes have different skill sets but do you agree on the same values so how are you and that's where just on that so yeah that's where i'm really lucky because my co-founder is like my oldest mate yeah so we wouldn't have stayed friends if we didn't have like the same values and we're actually so different like i said very different personalities Where's he from?

1:42:18So he, we went to school together. So both from Bedford and then he's gone into like, he went into PR originally and then advertising and creative. So, and he's very much more, you know, very different to me in a lot of ways, but also at core value level, the same. Yeah. But I think back to the point we were talking about, the other thing with, which is probably to answer your question about where I'm different here, possibly your glass, where I'm different to a lot of others is I would actually say that that whole you know mindset of okay you shouldn't necessarily be like looking to work with your friends or you shouldn't be too friendly with the people in your team it should be so no way super ruthless is based on a proviso that the most important thing is like growth at all costs so business growth so i would rather i don't know about you and this is maybe controversial and this is where I think being open with people like investors is really important.

1:43:13I would rather have a business that was, if you just say revenue, a business that was 50 million revenue and worked with my friends versus a hundred million revenue and worked with people I didn't like. Like ultimately I would, even if I don't agree that working with people you don't, you aren't friends with, I don't agree that that's like needed to get the best out of a business, but the whole like, okay, business first, you know, like blah, blah, blah, that's assuming that your priority in life and in business is just like business success in inverted commas. And I would actually rather have a business that wasn't quite as big or successful in inverted commas from external metrics, but with a team that were just amazing, that everybody loved, that meant you went to work every day and you just had a great time.

1:44:04And that's where like being a founder is quite liberating because you're like, well, I'm in control of that. Like if we want to grow this brand slightly slower, but have an amazing time while we do it and build a team of friends where everyone's loving it. And like you were saying, like your manning life days, like my days were better, sort of a bear, very similar. I'd rather that than basically just go after like, okay, we want to get 110 % out of everyone all the time because we have to grow this fast. For me, growth is one goal, but it's not like the be all and end all. The be all and end all is, am I happy?

1:44:39Am I enjoying it? Are my team happy? Are they enjoying it? And I actually think, like I said earlier, if you focus on all those things, then the success follows because you've got an engaged team. I think there's this fetishisation and kind of masturbation overgrowth over the last, say, pre-COVID and pre the bubble of the kind of alt meats and the drying up of cash. I think kind of in the zeitgeist of challenger brands, there was this kind of like, you can build a brand in five years, flip it and sell it. I've now realized that it's become a stark reality and people have now, this is from people I've spoken to and just generally kind of talking about it.

1:45:21People are now realizing, okay, well that doesn't just happen. You don't build it in five years. I've got an analogy of like, it happens in tech where you've got these fucking unicorns and your Airbnbs, your Instagrams, food and drink is not tech. it's you got to be a donkey right and the reason being is you know as much as you can get my mom it take me to take my mom providing she's not had a drink which she often has bless her and has got sunglasses on nothing wrong with that and to get on to you know um to become a user of paypal would probably take her 10 minutes yeah yeah she's got an ipad fired up for her to go and buy a bottle of this, Elora, the cycle's much longer.

1:46:00So comparing tech to food is like apples and lemons. Also, though, even in tech, and you hear, I mean, I know you listen to a lot of the same podcasts and stuff as I do. Even if you do make a massive success of it and sell it and make a load of money in five years, most people that you listen to say that the minute they sell it, it's like the worst day of their life. Because what do you do then? So if we make Elora like a billion dollar brand and selling like well before what do you do with the rest of your life like okay yeah it's fun for a while and you make a load of money potentially but i would much rather just have a great time whilst doing the stuff you enjoy and hopefully then you have a really successful business because obviously you've got a balance here right you've got investors you want to make your investors a return but i think you're completely right i think the growth obsession is a bit crazy and and you see it now only over the last couple of years i don't know if you've noticed this more and more in LinkedIn I saw another one earlier today people are shouting about raising money as if it's like a success so it's like we've just completed a two million funding round and it's like this huge celebration and everyone comments like well done well done when it's like since when did raising money become a success obviously it's a hard job as a founder and it is important you should celebrate that in my opinion internally but it's almost like that's the like we've we've we've nailed it because we've raised like five million the hard job is after you've raised the five million because like yeah yeah i i always say there's this linkedin so house uh bubble right which and i go my mate's got membership at so house i go and i have a good time in there but it's but then there's like you see this microcosm echo chamber versus the reality and I think what it took to your point about going up to Yorkshire, you see the reality of the rest of the country, you see the reality of the world.

1:47:55And it's like, yeah, raising your two million quid, series A, B, C, Z, whatever you want to call it, is great for telling your mates it's our house and a fedora hat and, you know, you're sat there. But it's like, it's still not reality. And back to our point is I think what you said there about kind of we're going right back to the beginning of our point of like teammates teammates on this side on the right is is facilitating that fast growth narrative uh family is probably like this very slow way so yeah which is interesting because the manufacturers who do you candy kittens are a german family and they've they they build for longevity and i think if we look at this spectrum what you're saying is it's not as extreme as family where it's like okay it doesn't matter if the lazy crackhead cousin doesn't come up for work we're friends and I think friends is a really nice balance between that because friends care for each other have the same values and want to work and I think I think it's getting interesting is this bubble kind of changes with the people realizing that you're not gonna flip it in five years because I think all those brands that started so you had a few inflection points I've um i wrote about my newsletter last week you kind of had your your your tyrell's um innocent and uh goo yeah early 2000s who did flip pretty quickly then you had like the next wave which was kind of 2011 which was pippa nut uh jimmy's iced coffee i know he's just sold but that's taken them 10 to 12 years yeah and i think now the brands that kind of start at the same time as money life is you know that um moju they've been at it for like nine years it takes much much longer and when you have that long time frame i think it allows you to enjoy the day day to day more yeah what um with with your friends like how how do you um the other side of this conversation right is like how do you remain friends yeah and not have bust ups because i know for a fact if i went into business I mean, I went traveling with my best mate and at one point I wanted to strangle him and he probably wanted to strangle me.

1:50:08Do you know what I mean? So how do you navigate that? Yeah. And I think you're right. Like there's probably some friends I wouldn't go into business with. Interesting. Yeah. So I think you need to choose the right. I think if you're close enough. So like I said, me and Jamie kind of oldest, oldest mates, like I said, godfather to my eldest kid, like one of the ushers of my wedding. So the bond there is more like brothers. like it's more like I'm closer to my three or four best mates than most of my family and he's one of those so it's like actually even if you have a bust like you know it's like with your brother or your family or whatever you can have a bust up and most people are then still fine so I think you've got to choose the right friend to go into business with and then I think with friends that you manage you know like if you hire people like we have and I have in the past who either are friends when you hire them or become good friends when you work with them or manage them it's just about being like honest and transparent and so it's like yeah you have to sometimes have difficult conversations if you manage somebody who is a friend but they're not necessarily performing like you've got to just have an honest conversation but that's where people I think just you know appreciate openness and honesty and it's like almost easier than to manage them because there's like the level of they don't want to let you down like you know I mean it's like if you're having a conversation with your manager and you're actually friends with your manager it's probably more of an incentive for you to like sort it out if there's a problem than there is if you like hate your man and you know the one you're talking about in the past one of your previous companies if you're like you're like behind the door close doors you're like this guy's a dickhead like the incentive to listen to their constructive feedback is probably a lot lower whereas if it's one of your like friends telling you look that's why i've always hired either friends or people that i think you know i could be friends with that share the same How do you...

1:51:50Hi, guys. Super, super quick one. So, so excited. Look, for years, I've been badgering on about Hungary, the podcast. You're probably bored to death. Thanks for putting up with me. But Hungary is also an agency. And we look after one amazing brand called Ireland's Chocolate. We've had a great time over the year. We've won listings at a load of wholesalers. We've won Milk and More. We've got our first grocery listing coming very soon, which is very, very sick. But what I'm thrilled to announce is Hungary's merging with HC Consulting. my boy Harry Clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute G they do brand strategy, new business business and account management but why I really love working with Harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is Harry was actually the founder of the boozy, isolated brand Pops he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off, he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil, he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips, the gut stuff, several drinks Thanks, Remy Ogilato.

1:52:48So if you're a brand and you're stuck, you're looking for new business help, you're looking to scale, drop us a message. We'd love to chat. Thank you so much. Back to the old episode. How do you ascertain that? In a recruitment process. Yeah, because there's a guy we hired, Ollie, who's now at Lucky Saint, who's like absolute G. Like he's an Australian guy. You can probably see the smile on my face. I was thinking back those times. like it was so much fun like i'm still very very close with him um so there's but how but like because i think there's in terms of this hiring thing like um yeah you've been around the blog there's there's i mean this is one of the things i mean this is an innocent thing like a bear there was a lot of ex-innocent people i obviously didn't work for innocent but like you kind of inherit a lot of those great processes and emma who's a good friend of mine who was our marketing director at bear um told me once you know they had this innocent test that they used in recruitment where it was like i don't know exactly what they called it but it was basically like the car test it was like whilst you're recruiting someone while you're interviewing them obviously you're interviewing them for like capability as well you don't just hire people that have no clue what's like going on in the role but you ask yourself would i be happy would i want to sit on a four hour car journey to a customer or a supplier with this person because we've all been on those work trips where you're like on a train or in a car with somebody who you and after 20 minutes you kind of look like oh I wish I was like on my own and I could like put a podcast in do some work and there's other people who you like your mate lucky saint guy like you you'd be like great I've got a four-hour train journey with so-and-so amazing like I'm going to chat to him the whole time so that that's like a nice for me always been like a nice test that really stuck with me like I said I learned from Emma and the guys at Innocent was like actually you shouldn't just hire for that obviously like you you want to hire people that are good but you should also consider i think like okay would i want to sit in a car for four hours with this person or would after 20 minutes i'd be like well get me out of here um yeah i think it's uh it's an interesting lens because i mean we've again i've seen it firsthand it's like that way i can't really say stories but like the i've had it where you know what i mean um well the other thing as well is you can teach experience you can't teach personality so for me you know i remember one at soul fresh like becky who was marketing manager she was amazing but got to a point where you know she worked her way up pepsico you know joined us as marketing manager so you know next role would have been probably like head of marketing marketing director she just got to the point where she's like i'm not sure marketing's for me like she was in uh early 30s and we were like all right we had an opening in supply chain and she was like really logical for a marketer we were like why don't you what about operations you ended up being our supply chain manager and operations manager which moved from marketing to operations because most people would be like well no you can't you like you're not going to move someone from marketing into operations but if they're good you know you went to cambridge super smarts but well you can teach like how to learn about supply planning or like you can teach a lot of experience what you can't teach is personality values so that's why i think a lot of hiring now puts too much weight on experience and like has somebody done what you're trying to do versus is that the kind of person that will learn quick be just a genuine like good person to have around and like is the right type of person for your business in terms of this so we talked about like the love letter to Italy, the feeling of, um, uh, Laura, like, uh, for consumers.

1:56:29Yeah. I think the piece you said at the beginning was super valuable, which is kind of take care of the people first and the kind of, that's the first domino and the rest will kind of fall into place. Yeah. How have you thought about as you hire, like some of the things I really believe if, if, um, uh, if, if you treat, uh, your employees right and they feel have that kind of slowness or not to see slowness i'll tell you where i'm going with this in a sec but how do you get them to feel um that kind of allure of feeling and one thing i was talking to george cruise about i know you're gonna do it tomorrow which was wildly interesting like because we talked all about the saracens and like yeah stuff he'd learn and this was this is kind of one of the biggest problems i've seen consistently is how do you keep great talent how do you keep great talent for the long period and one of the things he said is we i want people at 80 percent yeah never want people 110 so funny because and it's almost like that we're talking about the slow meets the fast pace of challenger brands what happens seeing this happen heard it happen is the sales director gets works the fucking bone yeah so does the ops director three years in they want to leave and it's like then then the brand has to go through this period again where everything it starts again culture gets fucked yeah i was it's so funny you said i was literally writing notes on that exact thing yesterday and i had the 80 versus 110 yes literally i was thinking about it so it's we're really weird you say that like that is exactly how i feel is that you should be and i i was on a course when i was at trip we went a few of us went on like the mental health first aiders course i think all of lucky saint did it we did it after them and um one of the things they talk about is this like curve uh and it's like pressure and stress basically so it's a curve essentially and it goes from sort of zero to a hundred and say ten percent and it goes basically i can't remember what they call the first bit but it's like when you're just too chilled if you're at like 40 it's just boring basically yeah you just everyone even if you're really hard working if you're only at 40 you just don't operate well like nobody operates well at 40 and you've got the sweet spot which is like pressure and that's kind of your 70 to 90 percent which is where you're like under pressure but at a good pressure and it's kind of like you really like you feel like you're you've got the energy and you're churning out good work and then the really dangerous bit is like when does pressure turn into stress turn into burnout and quite often I think it gets neglected when people move from pressure to stress to burnout it's trying to get that like balance of putting your team under pressure but not too much pressure so that they burn out and they get to stress and also there's a there's there's an obsession with uh kind of this kind of links to this teammates thing right and this kind of business as support is the analogy is this you've got to grind you've got to get that 110 percent especially all this stuff you see now on social media which is i mean i swear i swear i swear i see literally everyone running now and they do like that you know what i mean i'm like this is so cringe um telling me about your 10k or whatever your hybrid training yeah but it's like this this mentality mentality and i think if you're a founder and you're working like i think there's this mindset if you take the foot off the gas you suddenly lose your ambition and uh i listened to a podcast the other day and the guy was saying that i think it's on joe rogan actually um chris williams yeah yeah yeah you know when he's talking about like i think he says you've got like a nuclear bomb of ambition like slowing it down ever so slightly isn't going to stop that and i had this i kind of i know it kind of burn out it's like a kind of a badge of honor now like you know what i mean it's It's like, oh my God, I'd burn out in 2013 or whatever.

2:00:15And I definitely did because I was going so fucking hard. I was pushing, pushing, pushing, relentless. Whereas now back to that inversion rule, I'm actually asking myself now, like, okay, instead of like saying, how can I achieve all my goals and grow this? It's like, how can I not burn out? Like, how can I not burn out? So if that means me working four hours a day. And then, so I basically now don't work Friday afternoon. Like, you know, I just don't. um and i think that's a really interesting thing about this 80 percent and i think i think that's another change in the zeitgeist as well post covid is founders and brands realize that you can't push 110 because it's just going to lead to this well and even if you do it's counterproductive because and that's the thing that it's it's easy to measure time at desk and even internally so if you like you if you kind of work for yourself or like me you know for the last however many months just pretty much working on my own, measuring success as I'm working really hard because I've sent loads of emails is basically the easiest way of convincing yourself you're working really hard.

2:01:21And it's almost satisfies the internal like need to be seen to be working hard or feel to be working hard versus actually measuring performance and output. And so if you, you can probably achieve, and I had this in the summer, so I left trip at the end of July and I deliberately left the day the kids broke up for summer so 21st of july finished the trip had five weeks where kids of five and eight perfect age to just spend all they want to do is spend time with me which in three or four years they won't want to do like there'll be teenagers they'll want to spend it with their mates so we went lived in norfolk in a little caravan by the beach like could walk to the beach with no shoes on like spent five weeks with the kids and i did about an hour and a half a day of work for Allura when so my wife Jen works for Oatly and she works till two o 'clock so she would work kind of nine till two or maybe three o 'clock I would then like sorry so she works nine till two yeah so her permanent hours are Monday to Friday kind of nine till two three o 'clock so she can pick the kids up from school basically so she's got a contract that allows her to work part-time so she and Oatly are great like fully remote so she can work remotely so she worked from Norfolk and, you know, basically a cafe while I was with the kids all summer.

2:02:33And then I would go at like three o 'clock, we'd swap for a couple of hours. I would work three till five, send a load of emails, get all the stuff I needed to get done. And I genuinely achieved more in those two hours for those five weeks than I think I did doing 12 hour days at trip because I was sat in meetings. And, and so it was like, and actually I was way more productive because I was mentally in a good space because I'd been with the kids and I'd exercised and I'd had time. So it's like, what I achieved in those five weeks was way more than probably I've achieved in my career when I've been working 12 hours a day but the guilt that can come with that as you were saying if you're working four hours a day you kind of almost have this internal guilt if you're not moving fast enough you're like is it because I'm not working hard enough yes and I think I've not spoken to George about this but I'll chat to him about it tomorrow but I imagine where George George is coming from from a kind of rugby perspective and a high performance like England Saracens is there's been a massive shift in professional sport in the last 10-15 years because of things like data because they can see performance stats and they know that actually a lot of the time now the teams train less than they used to like they used to get flogged and just train non-stop and now it's more about quality of training and like being ready for the 80 minutes or the 90 minutes on on saturday or a match day um and so it's like they had a shift of like okay elite sport now is more about how you perform for the 80 minutes.

2:03:57And if you, it doesn't mean that training for 50 hours in the week is the best way of getting the best performance out of you. It's actually about being smarter. And it's kind of the same logic, right? The, I think one thing he said is, I was like, so why have you come up with this? And he was like, because we were being pushed 110 % at Saracens, which was great. Like it does get you short-term success, but rugby is a five, he was a five, is a short career anyway. You know, brand building actually is not this five, this run thing, sorry, sprint. It's just, you know, to take the quote, the marathon.

2:04:37Also, if you calculate the cost, so if you push people to 110 % to get 10 % extra or even 30 % extra versus the 80%, if that means that 20 % of those people then leave, the cost of replacing those people is way higher than the extra 10 or 30 percent that you get out of them because the cost of replacing a person earned employee is supposed to be their annual salary um so i think it's so um so you have this time with your kids also i was saying about this five-hour work day thing is uh i was speaking to a guy when i got back from uh from traveling and we were kind of breaking down the day because with the time zone is that you don't have to work that hard because it's like working hard intensity versus um don't be a simmering six josh wateskin yeah yeah yeah he's been on um the art of learning yeah he says every every fuck is that simmering six yeah they had zero or a 10 and basically what i was doing i was being away because when i when it was they we were six hours behind so basically by the time it was 11am it was 5 o 'clock so you're not getting much in so then basically I could only really work from I was working from 6am well I like waking up early I just think it's fine 6am to 11pm then I was saying to my mate who does this remote thing as well he's like you actually boil the day down in an office right so say you've got 9 to 5 8 hours hour lunch ballpark even though that's I know some that's the hilarious that when these teams say we don't take lunch break although I would say some of the brands said that to me but I might get it yourself, of course you do.

2:06:17Is the first thing. But then also there's a load of waffle about meetings. You actually take the amount of meetings you don't need. Well in our culture kind of manifesto, one of the things that we have in there is we actively discourage meetings. I've always said this to our teams. The default for a meeting in Outlook or Google now is 30 minutes. So everybody puts a minimum of 30 minutes in your calendar. we I always try and encourage 15 minute meetings because most conversations don't need to take 30 minutes but people put 30 minutes in and once 30 minutes is in a it takes or an hour it takes up that time in your calendar and then you fill it basically because if you've got meeting in for half an hour an hour you'll fill that meeting like you'll chat and so if you end up putting in a lot of people put in an hour as the default right like a lot of people just put a meeting in it's an hour so if you put 15 minute meetings in you get four times as many meetings in an hour as you would if you've got an hour in and then trying to discourage meetings in certain times of the day as well and this is another one from might even be josh wait skin but it's like we try and say okay let's only have meetings after say midday so that because if you have a half nine meeting and then a half eleven meeting that's your morning gone basically because you have half nine till ten or after you then go to the loo you make a coffee you do a few emails half eleven and then the whole morning's going you've had two meetings you've done a few scrappy emails that's what i loved about you saying you know about reading first thing in the morning it's like actually use the morning for like unbroken time where you can actually get shit done and then if you've got to have meetings use you know a two or three hour block you read the war of art i haven't read it actually but oh mate that i like obviously rogan talks about a lot like that for jenny i've i've i have that book next to me because i just i my morning routine is 30 to 35 minutes reading yeah hour writing I have to like don't turn my phone on which is like super hard but I genuinely if I do that one hour yeah yeah like that one hour is worth 10 hours of simmering six and then it's banked yeah the other analogy I don't know if you listen to Derek Sivers on Tim Ferriss anything you want is what he read yeah so he's written a couple of books but check out his podcast years and years ago with Tim Ferriss like one of the best Tim Ferriss episodes he's amazing but he this back to this kind of 80 % and he built CDJ yeah CD Baby yeah he sold it and gave all the money to charity he's amazing but his analogy which I was actually talking to someone about the other day is kind of the 80 % thing we were just saying he was talking about he used to live on the beach in Venice Beach in LA and every day he'd do like a cycle along the beach and it was kind of this amazing route but he would go hell for leather for like an hour so whatever however many k 20km or whatever he was cycling hell for leather like red in the face like you know get it down to 46 minutes 45 30 like shaving off these seconds and he kind of after a you know a few months he's like you know i'm a bit sick like just scared the sick of this that's too much effort like he's and so he was like i'm gonna just take it easy like i'm just gonna watch the scenery like enjoy i'm on venice beach like i'm gonna go quite cycle quite easy quite chilled had a great time loved it cycle the same distance He said normally it took him 46 minutes and it took him like 48 minutes.

2:09:35And he was like, he's joking. Like this whole time I was busting my ass, missing the view, like not enjoying it for two minutes, like for the sake of being two minutes faster. And I think it's the same analogy. It's like you can go at a slightly slower pace, enjoy it way more, achieve probably as much if not more, because you're not just running around like a headless chicken. So the other thing I've been thinking about is you said at the beginning like our product is kind of defensible. So we're talking about like any founder can come in and say, I've got Kim Kardashian's or Prime for example.

2:10:20You're going to win not on product, you're going to win on brand. What is, how are you stopping, what's the kind of the intellectual property that makes, why can't Diageo come and create something like that? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, obviously there's the recipe that is ours and the process that is ours. So there's elements to the recipe and the process that is proprietary to us. But ultimately, in any product and any brand, a lot of very smart product technologists they're going to be able to get very close. So a lot of people have and will create replicas of almost every product and get them pretty close.

2:11:00So from a pure product perspective, there's an amount you can do. We've probably done more than a lot of others with the heritage, the provenance, the leaves. There's a lot that we do that is quite unique to us. But ultimately, you can only do so much. And that's where brand comes in for me. So that's where the Aperol example of I could create a brand that was exactly the same liquid as Aperol. But I mean, I'm going to launch it. What am I going to call it? Like, is anyone going to, you know, bitter orange spritz? I'm going to, like, so that's where if we create, you know, Alora spritz becomes synonymous with drink in the way that Guinness is synonymous with Guinness.

2:11:39And Aperol is synonymous with that. And one of our investors, Lizzie Massey, who's trading director at M &S, a good friend of mine for my Nestle days, one of the reasons she invested in Alora, she was like, Aperol is one of the only brands we have to stock at M &S. M &S obviously massively not, you know, own label against brands in general, move away from brands, but like no one's going to buy an M &S bitter orange aperitif because everyone wants Aperol. So for us creating a brand and a world and a provenance story and a link to project, all of that is building a kind of moat around the brand.

2:12:16and yeah I mean people could try and copy it but ultimately I think a lot of the big guys the Diageos of the world they'd rather just then buy your brand basically in that you do the hard work sorry

2:12:31so true what you said brands and moats I've heard that a gazillion times I think Perry taught me it from I think it was the guy at Bowdoin he taught him to Perry and I said yeah brand is moat but tone of voice is a 10 foot brick wall with barbed wires and sniper rifles. It takes it to that next step. I was feeding to Jack from Dash about this. They've got a fucking banging brand. Yeah, they do, yeah. But they're like, what thing, and this is, it was really interesting getting into his mindset. He was like, yeah, but we need to make it even more defensible because, you know, ultimately it's fruit and water, which he'd make no bones about.

2:13:07Have you thought much about the tone of voice of the lore? Like how do you get the elements of prosciutto? So if I said it right, it's become like a meat, like prosciutto. Prosciutto. Prosciutto into, yeah, we have, like, we've got a very clear tone of voice and a very clear kind of like brand identity that, you know, you will see come out in our comms. And it's about, you know, our brand is about not being, you know, we're not fashionable. We're stylish. We're not, you know, we're not kind of trying to be this new cool kid on the block. We're trying to basically be super authentic and bring people back, like I said, to golden era Italy.

2:13:46So we have a very clear kind of set of brand guidelines, brand identity. And you'll see - What are some of those just to like, just out of interest? So again, like you've been on the block like three, four times with some amazing brands. Yeah. Trip, as I say, like fucking unreal. Like I think those guidelines could help a lot of people who are kind of trying to get that edge. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. There's probably not too much I can share now, but hopefully as you see us pop up everywhere, it'll become evident, basically. So we'll have a very clear, we'll show up in the world in a very specific way.

2:14:27And we won't compromise on that. So that kind of feeds through into everything that we'll do as a brand. So yeah, hopefully you'll see more of that. Well, that's what we'll get to part two in, mate. final thing I want to talk about is you talked about some really interesting people that were kind of like Josh Waitzkin, Derek Sivers and whoever liked some of these whether you've heard them on different podcasts or I'm asking for my own curiosity yeah but like who else has been someone who's been really I know you talked about I think at level five leaders yeah Jim Collins yeah like let's talk about Jim Collins yeah uh good to great I'm not I've actually read it but I've I've just you feel like you've read it because you've heard so much yeah good to great like when did that book come into your life and like what's he taught you yeah like absolutely love he's probably like number one in terms of like i guess business icons or you know people i feel like i've learned a lot what was his background um so he's a professor basically so he was a i think a stanford professor in entrepreneurship and he was like young so he sort of talks you know if you listen to again his two podcasts with tim ferris are amazing and he talks about basically he was a professor that ended up just like writing books and being really successful as a professor but had never actually done his own thing and so he was kind of teaching entrepreneurship but his really smart Stanford students were like yeah but teaching us all this stuff but like why are you still here teaching and he took his big kind of leap he calls it Thelma and Louise moment where he basically left being a professor and went into like what he does now which is you know consulting writing books and but yeah the level five leaders thing is just one part of good to great that I love but it is like for me it's again maybe linked to some of the stuff we're talking about earlier but it's probably one of the things that gets overlooked the most in kind of business and in work is that and the difference between level four and level five is your level four leaders are your more kind of maybe traditional kind of extroverted like to be honest people like me that are quite like like to talk like to be front and center confident or naturally confident speak in front of audiences that's your kind of level four and then what takes you to your level five which is a much much smaller pool of people is like true humility, like true authenticity, true like believing in the cause and the vision and the team.

2:16:39And he measures that by looking back through like CEOs, letters to shareholders. And he's like, he looks at things like the amount of times they say, I versus we. And he's like, you know, level five leaders never talk about I. They always talk about we. And there's been a few people I call them out in my LinkedIn posts that I've worked with that are like have taught me a lot as a kind of maybe more like natural kind of extroverted leader. I used to think I was like the dog's bollocks because I was this 24-year-old leading big team at Nesta and I had so much to learn. And you work with people that are slightly different from a personality perspective but actually teach you loads from humility, authenticity, no bullshit, think about the team first.

2:17:23Everything Jim Collins has written is like gold basically. His books and any podcast, you want the shortcuts like his two the podcasts he did with Tim Ferriss like the two amazing both from a like work and life perspective the final thing I want to wrap up with because I've loved this mate it's been so much fun is Liv and Dan from Trip actually again I'll just follow this conversation takes me but you work so closely with them I'd love to know like I always I think I made a joke that they're like the Brad Pitt and Angelini of FMCG they're so personal like both fucking stunningly good looking made a business pretty gorgeous kids the full shebang but what is what's so unique about them like you know what's different about those two individuals you can almost boil down their kind of essence but their uniqueness that you think is responsible for Tripp's kind of massive yeah I would say I'm sure they would degree, the team there is amazing as well.

2:18:31And it kind of gets lost, I think, with a lot of startups. Obviously, founders, you know, hopefully if we make a success of the law, obviously a lot of the time the founders get a lot of the credit. And rightly so, because often the founders are the ones that, you know, don't take a salary and put their life and soul on the line. But ultimately, you have an amazing founder. And if the team aren't amazing, you're probably not going to get to where you get to. So that team at Trip that are still there now and that were there when I was there and even, you know, the people there before I was there are like world class like really really good so there's definitely an element of that I'm sure Liv and Dan would agree James as well who kind of you know probably I mean he's got a lot better looking than me we used to call ourselves the four musketeers because we kind of the four of us would work together as a leadership team and like those three are definitely the better looking front of house ones but Liv and Dan are obviously even more celebrity like good looking front of house they James is amazing as well like one of the most switched on guys I've worked with um and they're like ironically considering the brand which is all about calm in the chaos they are like relentless like they have a relentless desire to make trip like a global phenomenon and that was one of the things actually that really are you know I learned a lot from them joining because it was I was sort of from food and drink and they're not and I think that's it's really good you know working with people we see it's great working people like Giles we talked about who a bit like me is like food and drink FMCG lifer you learn a lot from those people living down from you know Dan's kind of you know trading background live as a lawyer and they think about things on a different like stratosphere so when they were turning over you know less than 100 grand a month when I joined they were talking about being a billion dollar brand but they were like gonna be as big as coke and I'm without like not joking about it whereas I was kind of like you know take us 10 years to get to and I you know was used to the sort of bare success of oh we got to 35 million revenue after 10 years and that was amazing and so they're on like a different stratosphere in terms of their ambition and i think that's definitely one of the reasons why trip has grown as fast as it as it has to back to jim collins it's big heredacious goals exactly with with when you say they're relentless is that their relentless work ethic like as in are they are they doing the 14 hour days kind of thing oh yeah you know won't mind me saying like i don't know now they've got a kid so is it obviously interesting because they had their son was born Leo was born like not long after I left so I was always sort of whining Dan off I was like I'm going to be interested to see how you guys cope with like having your original baby which is Trip and then having an actual baby but yeah they were obsessed like Trip's their life like Trip all their friends and their investors like they would sort of joke we would laugh because they'd go away for the weekend to Ibiza well yeah yeah they'd go away they'd be like oh you great Dan live off for like they've got Friday and Monday off so everyone's going to kind of you know have an easy inbox and then they come back and it'll just be like they're like they've just been talking about trip for the whole weekend so you just come back to like I want to do this want to do this there's definitely an element of like that is in a lot of successful founders the same with Andrew and Haley at Bear married couple no kids when they had Bear there's that kind of obsession which isn't necessarily my approach like I said I'm a bit different but it is definitely a reason for certain brand successes.

2:21:49Yeah, I think it's, yeah, to wrap this up, I think it's like, I think what we've talked about today, and honestly, it's been one of my favorite we've done, honestly, I think it's been so much fun, mate. But it's this kind of balance of moving between kind of two opposing states, like ops, sales, kind of being relentless, but then not burning out. And it's kind of this, how you find the nuance in between. I think it's about that as well. It's about being authentic. So what works for Tripp might not work for Allura. What works for Allura might not work for Manning Life. And that's where I think founder-led businesses that are authentic are really successful because you can appreciate that Stu is very different to me and Dan and Liv are very different to me and every founder is very different.

2:22:36And so you're going to get differences in the way people run their businesses, and that's totally fine. And I think we've got to accept that that's the norm. and we shouldn't like we should all follow like a cookie cutter like this is how to scale a brand and that's probably where like ironically podcasts where you listen to people go this is how i scaled it and you're like i should do it that way because trip have done it that way or candy kittens have done it that way or and it's like no actually do it the way you think you should do it obviously taking all those insights and taking like all those bits of advice and experience but like don't try and copy what other people have done because you won't be able to do it the way they've done it um so if that was hit authenticity piece of like we'll always be authentic to the way we want to do things and it might not be the same as what trip do or what would have taken maybe hopefully the best of what trip do or what bear do or you know all the things we've learned over our careers and it's like we're going to get shit wrong and we're probably we will fail loads of times but it's like as long as we're authentic and we do it the way that we believe we should do it then I don't think people will have a problem basically mate um so such a pleasure having you on that was a lot of fun mate um I know you've got an event to run too but thank you so so much same mate thanks for having me like loved it enjoyed it cheers buddy thank you so so much listening to the podcast I really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much