How Purdy & Figg Made £1 Million D2C in One Day by Ignoring Marketing

50:52So I need to cut this tree down in four hours. Do you know what I mean? I think that's the kind of nuance there. Yeah. Very interesting. But judgment, the thing, so back to the judgment conversation. Yeah. I think judgment does require both rationality and intuition. because you need to, sorry, that keeps going on. Yeah, it's fine. We'll figure it out. Because you need to, well, because some decisions are not just, well,

51:25yeah, sometimes you do need to do a leap of faith. I mean, starting Purdy and Fig was a leap of faith. It was a rational judgment because I thought there was an opportunity there and I saw some data and attended the workshops as my mum ran and saw certain things that I liked that were rational, but there was a feeling I had that this was the right thing to do that I followed as well. So it's hard. Let's talk about Pinger because I remember like, this is yonks ago, it must have been at least 10 years ago when we met up for that tapas lunch in Broadway Market. And I don't know if you vaguely remember that, but that's when Pingo was sort of bubbling and you had the office you work at.

52:10I think you were living with Macca and stuff and tooting. And yeah, we were going around the stores where you were sort of... Oh, yeah, yeah, in Tooting Broadway. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In that market. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry.

52:26And I remember I saw the thing like everything you learned from the failures of Pingo set you up for success with Purdy and Fig. Like, what were some of those lessons you took from that period that have been... I suppose almost, I think when you said judgment comes from experience, like, how did your judgment get better from that? Yeah, it's interesting.

52:53So, the big thing with Pinger... Actually, yeah, just for context. Yeah, what was Pinger? What was Pinger, yeah. So Pinger was a, it started as a peer-to-peer tasking app. So the idea was you could send out a request for something, like I need a can opener, a tin can opener, or I need some salt and pepper or whatever. And someone within a certain radius, like a mile, could bring it to you and you could pay them to do that. So it wasn't gig economy. It was peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer helping and tasking, but with some financial incentive. Gig economy is like Uber, right? more like Uber, it's more like paid drivers, like people who, it was more community driven as an idea.

53:32The vision was kind of a community app that had an element of incentives built in. Sure. But yeah, that was like the vision for Pinger.

53:45What happened over, we launched it, God, I can't remember when this was, probably 2017. And it did really well. But what we were seeing was that all the requests were coming for groceries. So this is before the big grocery delivery boom. So we saw, you know, 90 % of the requests were literally, I need a lemon, or I need chopped tomatoes or something, whatever. And people were picking up the jobs, going to the supermarket, getting the thing and bringing it to people's houses. The problem was, it wasn't that reliable. so we were seeing you know 50 percent of requests were picked up or something like that and so basically as a customer experience it was like i'm not going to keep using this because uh only half the time imagine if only half the time you got an uber or half the time you got to do it so but we were but we were stuck on the vision and we were obsessed with the vision but what we should have done is looked at the data and realized that the data was telling us something which was people wanted groceries in 15 minutes and it was very obvious when you look back at the data that that was what the market was telling us um but we were we were emotional about the vision and so we didn't we didn't pursue the rational thing to do which was hire gig economy workers set up a task force to to get 100 completion rates and um grow and we would have probably grown the first 15 minute grocery delivery app and those companies raised hundreds and hundreds of millions and they they didn't end up working because the unit economics don't work but nonetheless we would have done better than we did and um we would have at least followed the demand and it was just so funny after after after that seeing what happened in that space and i remember the thoughts i actually remember the thoughts of i remember looking at the data i remember thinking about whether to follow it or not um so my big lesson there was um follow the data well that's the whole point back to the judgment thing it's a mix of emotion a mix of data, too much emotion, too much belief in the peer community thing.

56:12Whereas now you apply that you let them two things meld together. Yeah. How else did you polish your judgment from that experience? Even like closing the business, like from the, maybe some of the darker days, like I think some of your judgment polishing comes from dark days. Yeah. I mean, knowing when to quit, um, knowing when to throw in the towel.

56:35because there's a kind of there's a inconsistency around persistence and quitting isn't there what do you mean by that well like a lot of people say you need to be persistent to be successful but then also you need to know when to throw in the towel so how do those two things play together society the sort of hero's journey when his story is the whole thing of like just don't quit bro exactly I've got the thing it's also being self-awareness as much as I'd love to be an NBA basketball player mate I'm 5 foot 7 and a bit of a podger they ain't going to fucking happen I think so many people in society tells us everyone can be basketball players well actually are you 6 foot 7 to begin with I think we have a lot of you know kind of analogous in terms of business a lot of small people thinking they can be basketball players and it's like well actually you could be really good at bobslave if you're actually, do you know what I'm trying to say?

57:31Like, it's knowing when to quit, but society doesn't reward quitting. No. So you have so many people persisting on things that just aren't working. Exactly. It's really tricky, that. Yeah. So, for instance, no one really knows this, but Pardee and Fig was a hand sand company originally. So we, well, we always had the vision for counter clean and that was like the original aim of the company. But when COVID hit, we couldn't make counter clean for various reasons. So we tried to make the simplest product we could, which was hand sand at the time. and we built a seven figure hand sand business um but we shut that down we shut down a multi-million pound business um we just took off the skews ended them and pivoted was it was it under a brand under purley and fig yeah yeah yeah 2020 to 20 end of 21 we were selling hand sand and we built a multi million pound business selling hand sanitizer i didn't know that yeah and and um but we but we shut it down what was the mental process or thinking behind shutting it down we just didn't think well we always originally wanted to build the counter clean business where we thought the real potential was what the brand was about and um and it came back to focus and doing and placing our bets in the right place in the right area and we just we didn't think the hand sand proposition had enough had enough in it um and if we're going to pivot to the counter clean proposition we had to do it properly tell me uh the difference between business and brand i think when we're talking i think i know you've written somewhere that it was a big the biggest learning was actually building a brand versus a business what what would you how do you what would you define those two things as first again like i know it's kind of a two-year-old question right well and then what what have you learned about building Perlian Fig out as a brand?

59:24Because I feel like a lot of people build a brand first and then try and build a business. Yeah. I feel like you built a real solid operational thing and then have done the brand, if I'm right. Yeah, yeah. I suppose business is like the commercial entity, isn't it? Yeah. And. And yeah, it's just a corporation essentially. And then I think a brand is what people think about you. The sum total of what everyone thinks about your products and your services. Advertising can influence that. But probably the most important thing is the products themselves and the customer experience. what is what have you learned about building building the purdy and fig brand like those moments and basically the the product's the most important thing um product dictates before we had any fancy branding and we had any tv advertising we had a great brand so we had a great brand from the beginning we just didn't we just didn't have the kind of gloss and the polish over the top of it but it didn't actually matter because customers kept coming back they referred other customers they love the products um so i think what people get wrong is they spend a lot a lot of time up front on branding and not a lot of time on how we're going to make our product incredible for customers and then you know they they build they they you can do pretty well with like a polished brand because it looks different it feels different but ultimately if the product quality isn't there or the differentiation isn't there it's going to eventually either tap out or fall over whereas if you start with the product or the experience you you build off that you know you've got something real real product market fit you can always add then you add the kind of glossiness after yeah i mean this is i wrote about this in a newsletter it's heinously crass but it's like i always say it's like the brand versus product thing it's like you're meeting someone a fit person at a bar they look amazing and you go home and you know you get jiggy right and it's fucking awful you don't go back for more whereas i feel like so many people have actually spent time focusing on the product making it good you get the repeat then you can gloss it up late later i think so i think that's a better way to go um what so i know the this is already southern thing which is the best books and advertising actually nothing to do with advertising i know we've got a kind of a shared love of literature and I actually think you learn more from these weird books about marketing and business than others.

1:02:05You read War and Peace. Yes. Leo Tolstoy. I've been reading Dositesky. I'm really bad at pronouncing things so that's a fucking... Fair enough, they're Russian names. Yeah, they're Russian names. But really interesting insights. What did you learn from War and Peace that you applied to brand building Perlian Fig also what's it about yeah I mean War and Peace is basically about aristocratic society in 19th century Russia during the wars early 19th century Russia during the wars between Tsar Alexander who's like the Tsar there and Napoleon and Napoleon's invading Europe and invading Russia wait so did that actually happen Napoleon was invading Russia yeah I didn't realise I read a book about Napoleon I didn't finish it at the point yeah he invaded Russia yeah invaded Moscow took Moscow fucking hell I didn't realize that yeah yes he's the OG challenger brand so that's what the book's about and it's and I mean there were there are I could bore you to death with the insights in the book the core the core philosophy though the core takeaway from the book is that you think you're in control of events but you're not so the the The core thing is there's a kind of a great man of history theory, which is that figures like Napoleon and Churchill, et cetera, shaped, and Hitler to an extent, shape history.

1:03:31And they influence everyone else. But Tolstoy's view is that those figures are more an amalgamation of everyone under them than they are shapers of history themselves. so napoleon and all of his decisions and all of his victories and losses was more about um the combined will of all the soldiers than it was about him he was just he was just a figurehead in a way and a and a uh and an easy an easy kind of mental model for understanding why certain things happen because you can put it all in one person and he writes a very convincing argument about this incredibly convincing about how there are so many factors that go into a victory or defeat in a war let's say um hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things could have gone one way or another and the result would have been different and the hero or the antagonist could have been the opposites if you know what i mean yeah yeah yeah um so so his idea basically is that um you are not in control as much control as you think you are there is a there is a there is a kind of determinism to an event to events over time um that are the combined will of all of of all the people and the idea would be like purdy and fig is as much about the combined will of all of our customers um over the last five years that happen it's kind of happenstance than it is like me or my brother or or purdy and charlotte we are almost just um we are almost just kind of uh the yeah i guess the show puppies for for what everyone wants and and so what taking back to brand and marketing is like it really helps you zoom out so basically um you think all your decisions and all these things that you're doing every day matter so much uh and you think you can control everything but you can't control nearly as much as you think you can most the things that happen are going to happen anyway um and so when it comes to business building and brand building um as much as you can zoom out don't sweat about all the micro decisions and all the small things and try and get the big things right try and basically ride the wave um of of the combined will of let's say millions of people the that's the idea that i love that but it's also this is more certainly a cultural thing but um and it's so true but we love heroes the hero's journey like we idolize heroes as part of human nature and david ogilvy's got the quote which is kind of it's an inter counterpoint to that which is you never see there was never a statue made of a committee i in all the parks there's never a statue as you say you see churchill you know you go around trafalgar square or trafalgar square what's the parliament square you have all those icons but actually below that is this big movement yeah i mean and you can't put 200 000 soldiers in the square yes exactly that's the best his whole but but that i think it's a really interesting thing thing to think about is and it's also that what i love this is one thing i was going to ask you is like how did you get lucky you know it's that yeah happenstance is well that's the thing it's it's that's that's the big thing it's like it's a lot of luck yeah yeah it's a lot of luck and realizing that it keeps you humble and it helps you zoom out more and just understand the wider context of what you're doing.

1:07:19I know you should bore me to death with insights that will excite me to death. What are some of the insights from that book? Well, that's the big insight. Yep. I think because what I love fiction is it's a safe place to play, to explore emotion. that you can't explore in really any other sort of setting. Like if you watch a film, you can't think – when you watch a film, you can't actually get inside the character's head. Whereas like in fiction, you've got that space to actually think what the antagonist is thinking. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's just a safer place and there's depth to literature.

1:08:01If a film's an hour and a half, you'll be with a book for a month. There's these layers of depth. Yeah, I mean there's – the thing about Russian literature, it's all about the meaning of life. So, I mean, most of the insights are more about what really, yeah, it's probably not great for this podcast, but it's, it's, it's, it's, it's what's, well, I guess the relation to the relationship to business is, um, is knowing what you want. Yeah. And why you want it. Yeah. Um, because you know, most of the main character called Pierre and most of his struggle in one piece is about, um, is about like the meaning of his life and what, what he's an aristocrat being given all this money by a dead uncle.

1:08:39and he's just at pains to understand what he's here to do. And most of his struggle is about that and he eventually understands the meaning of his life at the end of the book based on almost dying basically and living in a cell for a few months when he got taken prisoner by the French. And he realizes the meaning of life is in the most simple things, which is very Russian farmer kind of thing. but it's not doesn't matter his meaning life is irrelevant it's it's more about understanding your own meaning and then i i find that really i i personally think about that a lot because if you can have a meaning and a constant um and you're able to apply that for your whole life i think um you'll you'll do you'll do much better yeah yeah yeah because you're not chopping and changing what you're doing all the time but this links to focus it links to focus it links to focus i wanted to thread that that weave and the the as i was saying to you i was i've read dossi tesky whatever crime and punishment it's a mouth like it was big and i was like reading notes from the underground um which is the it's two almost two books it's like notes from the underground one other thing the first book's this guy and it's his his absolute desire for status right in the world i've forgotten what the protagonist's name is it's like and he's belittling everyone going i'm cleverer than you and just and it but then the first part of the book is just this kind of just flow of all his thoughts and what that taught me about sort of brand building business is one brands need to give their or help their consumers garner status so with your you know counter counter the um what's it uh counter counter clean sorry counter clean that gives someone's status versus like um vanish yeah on someone's dirty and you know dirty um the brand dirty yeah that's that gives people consumer status i'm really obsessed with brands that give people status then the other point i learned is that oh my god like we are so when you walk along the street everyone is just so stuck in your own in their own head so like from a marketing or brand perspective like it's the whole thing tell them want tell them tell them again tell them again kind of thing it's just that constant no one cares yeah and i think that's kind of really reassuring yeah even with the podcast I'm like oh yeah everyone cares about it no one gives a fuck mate like they think about it for about five seconds what other books have been really influential for you um there's a book called Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand yeah um which I recommend everyone in the world reads fiction fiction it's it's Ayn Rand's who we spoke about earlier Rationality yes um she the culmination of all of her philosophy was this book called Atlas Shrugged right and it's about what year was that?

1:11:26what year was it written? yeah as in like are we talking based in like based in the industrialist age in America and it's and yeah I mean basically god that's so annoying yeah it's fine we'll fuck it yeah basically all of the book is about all these industrialists who are basically inventing new forms of metal inventing building railway lines, doing amazing things with electricity. And they are the heroes. They are highly rational business people. They are innovators and they're industrialists. And the world gets taken over. It's a dystopian world by bureaucrats. And the bureaucrats have a view that money is evil, that progress needs to be balanced fairly between all peoples.

1:12:20and they start essentially redistributing the industrialist wealth but also creating all these rules and regulations around if they invent a new metal so the main character called reardon he invents a thing called reardon metal which is cheaper and better than steel and they've introduced a law for instance that he can't produce more of it than than the current steel because it will be unfair on the steel producers etc etc but what happens is society completely breaks down all the industrialists disappear and um and the book the book is a the book basically is um it explains what happens when you lose rationality in society because rationality is the only thing that we can all agree on it's the only way to be objective um emotion you can feel a certain way about inequality or certain things but it's an emotional view you can change that any point it's it's not based in anything yeah whereas whereas you know the industrialists the the the rational industrialists they they they care about facts and they care about science and they care about um things that are objective and um yeah it's it's an amazing book and it it basically um yeah highlights the importance of of what we talked about earlier with with yeah logic yeah yeah yeah no i do think that reading fiction is just but the other thing i think about fiction i was actually thinking about you the other day mate is one it's like the big lessons hide within fiction but two from a like if you you know your whole thing of like reading the other day for 20 minutes in the middle of a working day from the office i think reading gives you altitude yeah Do you know what we were talking about earlier?

1:14:07When you're on Slack, when you're on your blower, and it's just like, I mean, I hate turning this thing on. It's like this fucking, if you read a book for 20 minutes, it's not about reading the book. That's like one part of it. But it's that it gives you altitude to see the bigger picture. And then when you go back to your actual work, it's the whole efficiency versus effective thing. Yeah, totally. Which I think, which you're really good at is like, is, yeah, I suppose the efficiency versus effective thing is the Abraham Lincoln thing. It's the sort of thing. no totally agree I mean it's like this morning I went to the gym and then read for 45 minutes at the gym and then came here and it's what are you currently reading oh Alex Shrugged oh sick sick what we'll get back to DC in a sec I just I just go over this conversation it seems to be working so I'm just going to keep doing it but I know what sort of periods of history because I'm reading a really good book called The Cultural Tutor he's amazing you should listen to his podcast and like reading that book, he talks all about the different architecture and stuff.

1:15:10Honestly, when you walk around London, it will make, anyone who reads that book will make you fall in love with London a million times over. It's the most, you understand all the different architecture, different architecture. And he says, architecture is the soul to how people were thinking at that time. Yeah. It's just glorious. Like, you know, you take it for granted. There's just fucking these old churches and then you have the Gothic and the kind of the classical stuff. It's beautiful. Yeah, that's awesome. The reason I'm reading it is ultimately because I want to understand more about culture because I believe Buran shaped culture.

1:15:41Nothing to do with that, but it's really, really interesting. But I'd love to know, what was I going to say? Oh yeah, sorry. So the periods of history. Yeah. What periods of history do you find really fascinating that you think is, because history helps us under, you know, the future lives in the past. I'd really believe that. Oh, I'll tell you a really good story about that. So Napoleon, When Napoleon invaded Britain, Nelson, you know, the Nelson column. Yes. So Nelson defeated him. Didn't he die there in that battle? Yes, he did. Yeah. And he stood at the front of the ship wearing a massive purple thing to be like, come and get me, motherfuckers, to basically inspire his men.

1:16:25Yeah.

1:16:28But I was reading into how did that battle culminate? Like, how did Britain defeat Napoleon in that battle? And what was all the context around it? And it's a fascinating story because British Empire, they made a decision in the late 18th century. William the Pitt made the decision to, he looked at Britain. Who was William the Pitt? He was the prime minister at the time. It's called William the Pitt. Yeah. like as in that's the pits his surname yeah william the pit yeah i just thought in my head it's like he's in a pit or something i think it's william yeah yeah no no i'm sorry that's now maybe doubt that it's but i think it is the prime minister at the time yeah yeah william the younger is it william the pit anyway yeah um he made he made a fascinating decision so he looked at britain and this is um this is uh and he said um what is britain's natural strength And he said, well, we don't have a lot of land.

1:17:39We're not connected to continental Europe. So we're never going to have a great land army. So he basically took all the budget that was going into the land army. And he also, by the way, believed that land armies were, that led to authoritarianism and partly, mostly because of what happened on continental Europe at the time. What do you mean by that? Well, basically because you can invade other countries with them and you can take other countries. It leads to that kind of aggression. So he also had a thing about that. Yeah. But what he did is he said, what's our great strengths? We're an island.

1:18:19And he said, what we can become the best at, more than any other developed nation in the world at the time, is our navy. and so he started to invest insane levels of gdp in the navy i think it was something like 40 of gdp wow was going into the british navy um and uh and that investment meant the britain you know britannia ruled the waves essentially led to us um start you know creating the empire um being able to control all these different um regions not in an authoritarian sense by the way but in a in the way Britain did it then. And also, and then we controlled all the trade routes, then we had all the commercial benefits from that, and eventually it worked out, obviously.

1:19:06And the British Empire was so successful. And eventually we defeated Napoleon in that battle because we had the best navy. I mean, we were so focused on our navy that the cannons on our ships were firing at five times the pace of Napoleon's cannons. And there was a whole, and all of our British, all of our British slang comes from naval terms. If you look up on ChatGPT, what words come from the Navy now in British language, like phrases, there's literally a list of 100 you're like, oh my God, that's insane. Which ones? Oh, I can't remember. Look at people listening. So it kind of made our whole country.

1:19:48And what I loved about that story is that it all came from exactly where we got started of the conversation which was prioritization and focus he looked at he looked at our setup versus other people and he and he he worked out what our natural strength was and he worked out where to invest all the resources and he cut he cut everything all the other spends he cut the infantry he cut everything else and he was just like we're going to put everything into the navy I'm going to become the best Navy in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just found that to be an inspirational story of kind of focus.

1:20:27And I remember, again, our first conversation, that developed a real thieverish cult-like following that first one. I'm fucking loving this as well, mate. But I think the thing, and I think so many people in business get, even myself, you get insecure at some stage. And it's like actually looking at what you've done well or what you've got. One, it's about prioritization, but focusing where your actual strengths are. Yeah, exactly. So I feel like in business, and it's like, look, don't look outward at what your competitors are doing, which so many people do. So you suddenly say, you see suddenly, oh, they're doing an oat milk brand.

1:20:57We'll do an oat milk brand. It's like, actually look inwards and be like, what made you different? And actually just do more of that for longer. And it's like, say with this, like sometimes I'm like, oh, I should just do 45 minute episodes. And like, that could help the YouTube retention. That could help like, it go viral and all this shit. But I'm like, no, the reason people are listening because it's this, everyone says it's because it's just a,

1:21:20focus on your navy. Focus on your counter clean. What are you best at? Yes, exactly. What are you best at? You're probably best at conversations. The longer form, yeah. Like it's not a Q &A. Yeah, so it's mad. The other thing is the, Tom Brown, the chef. What restaurants do you do? He had Cornerstone and Hackney. Okay, yeah, I've been there. Then he's got Ireland in King's Cross, which is... I haven't been. Oh, mate. It's like basically two mission chefs, surf and turf fucking quality that's where we did a supper club but he's got all the tattoos of Homer's Odyssey all over him oh yeah and you know like the sirens and he's like the guy straps or the girl whoever straps themselves to the mast and the mermaid's like and I was like it's the whole that links in business to signal versus noise and I think like we have all this this distraction and noise it's like we have to almost like to your point of focus strap ourselves to the mast and just you know keep on keep on doing the main thing the how's the DTC landscape changed since 23 when we last spoke?

1:22:27I think it's getting stronger. I think there were kind of those early, so you had like different waves of DTC, right? The early wave was Dollar Shave Club and that kind of thing. And they got really great exits, but I'm not sure the actual business fundamentals were there. and I think a lot of the strategics who bought them weren't too happy. What do you mean by that? They weren't happy with the investment, basically. No, but the business fundamentals were. Oh, basically they were just loss-making companies and they didn't have strong commercials. It was a lot of marketing growth, but not a lot of commercials.

1:23:04And they were VC-funded. That was like wave one of DTC, probably in mid-2000s. Well, I guess early 2010s, mid-2010s. And Wave 2, which I put like Allbirds and like the glasses company, I can't remember what to say, Harry's for instance, and some other brands like that. A lot of them went public and have really struggled on the public markets. What happens when you go public? Again, I don't really understand this. Well, you just become open for investment to the public and then you have a stock price and a ticket price. Yeah, I understand that. but why would they struggle when they go public? Well, because they just, investors, public market investors basically don't rate them.

1:23:51Okay, okay. And that's how they generate revenue. Yeah, well, that's how their stock price is determined and they've basically all gone to close to zero. And then, so that's date wave two. So it's been a bit of a disaster for DTC. Wave three is very different though. Wave three is post-COVID and there are now a lot of nine, eight and nine figure, multi nine figure brands that are big and profitable, very profitable. And they're getting bought for a lot of money. What are some of those? Well, Touchland got bought by Church and Dwight. What's Touchland? It was like a fragrance sanitizer business in the US for like 800 million pounds.

1:24:31Fucking hell. You had Dr. Squatch recently bought by Unilever for one and a half billion. You had Pet Lab Co recently bought by BC Partners for like 350 million. Yeah. Like these brands are getting bought because they're big and they're profitable. And since 21, basically, DTC has not been able to get any funding. So it's become all about the unit economics, the commercials of the business. And so there's this wave of incredibly strong brands with really, really good financials. I think there's going to be a big wave of consumer activity because of that in DTC. over the next five years. The other interesting thing that's happening is DTC brands are increasingly proving their ability to go into retail when the time's right.

1:25:22It just needs to be thought through and done well. And that massively improves their value because a big strategic can buy them and put them into retail with a bit more confidence. So as that continues, I think valuations are going to increase. And then the final thing that's happening is AI. And I think for consumer more broadly, you know what one has to think about with ai is what are the things that aren't gonna change and i think the things that aren't going to change with with ai are people want great product great physical products so i think consumer is one of the few industries that's going to see a lot of inflow of capital as basically all other industries are getting decimated services sass software all that money needs to go somewhere and it's going to go into things that i think that are permanent um so it doesn't matter if there's robots and ai you're still going to want physical the physical world and like physical things that you like we could probably want it more you'll probably want it more yeah yeah yeah so i think there's going to be a huge inflow of capital so i'm seeing i'm seeing us going into a golden age for consumer which really excites me yeah because i'm i love consumer and um i think over the next well and my other view on this by the way is that I think great brands are built over decades, not years.

1:26:35So I think, you know, a lot of people talk about exits and that kind of thing, but really, really big, great, profitable, long-term brands, the oldest consumer brands in the world, the best consumer brands in the world are 100 years old, Coke and Louis Vuitton and all these things. It takes decades. So do not start a brand and think it's a three or four-year flip job. I mean we're coming up to six years at Purdy and Fig I think it's going to be at least a decade maybe a decade and a half, maybe two decades and you've got to be in for the ride Does that, expanding your time frame I'm assuming that helps taking the emotional It's very powerful Yeah, extending the time frame takes the emotional it almost kind of helps the judgement would you say Yeah, I mean one of the other principles Jeff Bezos talks about a lot is taking the long view and long term decision making because it becomes a real competitive advantage because basically everyone else is thinking on one or two year cycles because they're impatient.

1:27:42So if you can get into a place where you're thinking in five or seven or eight year cycles, you've just got massive advances. So what does 20 years look like for Purdy and Fig just playing a game here? Well, if you think about what really matters over 20 years for Purdy and Fig, you wouldn't be launching like hundreds of products would you you wouldn't be expanding into 50 markets yeah yeah you're doing one thing at a time you're doing it really well you'd be thinking about the brand you think about quality of product tabasco yeah like you think about customer the customer experience you think about the things that matter the things that really matter over because you're not that's what i think all the errors they come from that rush that like oh we need to be here in one or two years and so it's proliferation and panic and chaos um but as soon as you start thinking in 20 a chunk she's like yeah sorry why would you launch in 20 markets next year or a lot of people do that they open up all the markets and they open up all the products and it's like if you were thinking in two decades you just wouldn't do that obviously you you and the other thing sorry on that yeah is growth rate so the other big thing that i've changed my mind on um uh if i was redoing per dine fig i would grow way slower than we've grown um because we've grown at like 300 compound right So it's been insane.

1:29:01Because over the 20 years, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether you grow. If you grow 20 % to 30 % a year, every three years you're doubling your size. So even if you're growing 10 % a year, every seven years you're doubling your size. So over 50 years, if you're doubling your size every seven years, which is a 10 % growth rate, you grow 126 times. so if you're if you're a five million pound business now if in 50 years all you have to do is grow 10 a year and you'll be 126 times five which is 700 million pound business or something like that 600 million pound business yeah yeah so it's like yeah grow much slower you don't need to grow at 100 to 300 a year um that's just chasing a lot of status chasing a lot of like hype and we're high growth with this or that um my mission over the next decade is if we can grow perdy and fig 20 to 30 percent a year for a decade we will 5x our business over a decade which will be unbelievable will be worth billions and billions of pounds which is one of the best outcomes ever in consumer so what why do you need to go why do you need to go bigger than that yeah yeah yeah mate it's just the long-term view the long-term views is the simple rational view yeah yeah the napoleon's got a quote which is chaos is a ladder which i love a view because you know the guy who wrote um oh god really like he's most british bloke ever historian he wrote churchill's oh uh montfury yeah whatever um and no andrew names escape me oh the one yeah the one that wrote what the Thatcher stuff or the Churchill stuff the Churchill stuff Andrew something he's like he's like the most British player he drinks red wine and writes fucking about Churchill but he's got a quote called Chaos is a Ladder with Napoleon and it's like I suppose so kind of not playing devil's advocate but counterpoint is all this rationality all this long term thinking this simplicity all that stuff in business chaos comes whether you like it or not setbacks come how when has chaos been injected into your sort of rational simple ecosystem how have you then used that to built to as a ladder to to move up

1:31:26um yeah i mean we've had anyone who's been in purdy and fig will say it's been chaotic yeah that's what that's very very chaotic um because even within a focused business there exactly that's my point yeah yeah there's a lot of chaos um but partly that's down to i'm trying to reduce the chaos for sure because i don't think it's necessarily that healthy um i'm trying to think about your question which is how can chaos be a ladder well maybe first i think it'll be refreshing for listeners to understand what some of that chaos is just because everywhere i mean look we've we've we had a 40 000 order backlog in november do you know how chaotic that was we had we had a seven day wait time on our customer service on our customer service tickets yeah and when that happens you've got a backlog and a backlog on customer service what happens is your contact rate spikes because any new order that comes you have no customer service for so your contact rate goes from 15 to like 50 so for every 10 000 orders a day you're doing you're getting another 5 ,000 tickets and you can't answer them.

1:32:32I mean, that is chaos. That is real chaos. The factory was probably almost burnt down like three times. We once had an IBC. I'll probably... What's an IBC? Be the next Prince Andrew soon if I continue this story. But we had an IBC which is 1 ,000 litres of ethanol and we had nowhere to put it. So I called my parents. I was like, guys can we just send you this ethanol yeah sure um a thousand liters ethanol is really explosive um very illegal to store not in proper conditions and we just had it on our parents drive for a few weeks um and one day we were at home and the police came driving down the lane and they came into our drive and we're like you've been reported like literally go to jail and um and they walked up and they were like oh hi excuse me and we're like yeah hi they were like oh uh there's been a disturbance down there is anyone do you know where this road is or whatever and we're like oh yeah yeah just down there and they just drove off fucking yeah it's just like yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah could have gone one of two ways there so the whole like first three or four years of the business we were scrappy as hell we built our first factory on a farm there was oil running through the gravel that was on our feet all the time.

1:33:55We used to, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole thing was just scrappy and chaotic, yeah. Yeah. And then how, what I'm trying to, because this is like, that's basically my monos operandi. Like everything I've ever done is being scrappy. Yeah. What I'm trying to understand, I think a lot of people listening to this will be in that scrappy mode. Yeah. Right? Do you know the brand Salt? Yes. Yeah. Well, I've, yeah, yeah. So that case in point, using these guys as an example, their pod goes live on Monday. They're fucking genius. Probably the most natural storytellers I've ever sat with. Really? Mate, I was like, I'm going off piece here, but I was like, the way they create hooks and stuff, Millie, she's got a big following and Henry's amazing in it.

1:34:32They were literally rifting like you'd get Paul McCartney to play like a rift. Oh, really? She was like, okay, I was like, say your cat got nicked, so your opening hook would be like, ah, I was crossing the road to find it. It's like the curiosity gap. But they were just rifting on that. But this was, sorry. But they're really kind of, they're in this scrappy mode. A lot of people be in scrappy mode because it's just nature of the beast. How would you apply some of the rational thinking and rationality to scrappy mode to make it less chaotic? I think the scrappiness comes from... The scrappiness is good.

1:35:04And it comes... Have you ever done like an insights wheel on like different personality types? Have you looked at that? What, like the Myers-Briggs? Yeah, that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, so red, the color red on the insights wheel is like bias direction, directive, get stuff done, whatever. entrepreneurs tend to be very red um and blue is more the rationality on the insights wheel um and i guess you need for the strategy you want blue so like what are we prioritizing what are we doing you want as much blue as possible and you know maybe a bit of yellow which is like vision visionary stuff but then for actually getting shit done in the business you want it all to be red so it's just bias to action solving problems improving things um I like finding any solution and that is chaotic that's fine there's nothing wrong with that yeah yeah yeah how do you plan your week like as in what's a typical week in terms of meeting structure because I know we were going to do this on a Monday and you're like listen bro I need like headspace to do this like energy sorry like because I think that's really intentional yeah so my week is very structured that's sick so I wish I had a bit of that so my early week basically Monday Tuesday is all information gathering so I spend basically two days speaking to all my executives going to the trading meetings executive meeting trading meeting trading meetings like reviewing all the numbers for the previous week's trading etc and doing one to ones with all my reports and it's pure listening mode so all I'm doing is I'm information gathering about the business that week what everyone's concerns and problems i basically do that for a couple of days you have like a specific questions to unlock that information just one-to-ones you know high trust environments one-to-ones listening a lot but like do you log that information yeah i take notes yeah lots of notes okay and uh so that's that's the first part of the week so i don't take any action on monday because i'm thinking i just need to learn what's going on um and then i split my next two days into two different areas of business which i won't detail right now for various reasons but basically that one day is is solving problems on one part of the business the next day is solving problems the next another side of the business but but using the insights from the first two days so i'm like identifying where are the biggest problems what are the biggest issues and then going and solving problems for two days and then my final day is bring it all together reflection and normally longer term strategic stuff writing like any to-dos and actions and papers i need to write um and that's the week what's talking about the reflection stuff like how do you how do you wrap up the week well just thinking i mean just basically um looking at like everything that's happened that week and just and then thinking about the longer term uh any like changes of mind i might have had or any important issues that have come up that I just need to mull over.

1:38:05So I normally, like Fridays like today, I'm blocked out just thinking time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I won't really do anything. That's another really insight I love from you and I think more people could apply it is kind of the value of do nothing. Have you had Charles Bukowski? Oh, mate, you should read him. like he wrote the post office um kind of like a cult american writer but he didn't become famous he was like you know his books every book was failed but just to make like really interesting insight into american uh american like the 1950s 60s um this is like alcoholic chain smoking postman but really interesting and his one of his big quotes is just don't try right and the reason I love that is it's because we put we want to put more meetings we want to fill the day it's that inputs us output it's actually the value of just doing fuck all yeah yeah and just as you say mulling mulling is such a great like it's such an underrated thing to do mulling definitely definitely it's really good but yeah I mean and I sound like super structured and that I'm like this um kind of bot but the thing about me is I'm actually I'm an entrepreneur I'm I'm incredibly also chaotic and um disorganized in many ways and um like a lot of people my team will say you know god don't give jack any admin to do i'm not very detail orientated so a lot of things that wouldn't may match with with a lot of stuff i've said today but i think i use what blue i do have which i call you know the rational side and the thinking side i try and use what i do have because I think it helps so much with the red in terms of the drive to action.

1:39:54So almost like macro focus, micro scatty. Yes. Yeah. That's good. I like that. Yeah. Interesting. When you get those problems from those first two days, again, back to the prioritization piece, say like six or seven, how do you work out which one to focus on? Would you go after one or is it like, right, I'm just going to do this one problem? like because i feel like if i for example with me if i was if i was to spend my first two days of the week right thinking about like all the things up problems in my head i've already got lists of a hundred fucking things so i mean and like what and then i'm like mate what the fuck am i doing like how do you work out that part um that is partly judgment that's kind of the judgment side i think i would you write a list like i mean this and it sounds yeah i do write to list yeah i basically write my three priorities whatever for that week after those after those two days or day and a half basically um because the training meetings and exec meetings finish about midday on tuesday um uh basically line up the issues against the goals what's the limiting factors what's the biggest limiting factor to achieving our goals and then focus on that so it's it's pretty it's relatively simple in terms of what's going to move the dial on things that matter the I want to talk about the creative and behavioural science of D2C because I know we talked about that last time what's the time oh shit we've got seven minutes yeah you've got dead pause twelve yeah yeah that's fine let's wrap up with that then this has been fucking amazing mate has it?

1:41:36oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah oh I did not I think so. I don't know. Oh, mate, no, no. This is better than our first one, hands down, bro. Okay, good. And the first one was, because I was a bit apprehensive, like that first one was fucking fire. Like is this one, yeah, this is amazing. We'll cut that bit out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the, so you just get behavioral science, D to C, testing creatives, the small things really matter. You know, citizens of soil, right? Lovely, delicious example of this. they change from you know get your okay what they change a few words to join the olive oil club overnight i think it was like buy your olive oil like delicious olive oil join the olive oil club three word four four word changes changes everything their business like doubled like literally doubled over that week what are some of the things you've learned about that like behavioral science words framing context um

1:42:41yeah i mean it's i think it's all the basic direct response principles are really important so direct response principles around urgency social proof problem solution action you know getting those into your funnel will drive enormous results say that again sorry so the Okay, so problem, solution, social proof, what action you need to take is the fundamental idea. Yeah. So that's how, it's like sales, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sales. So building that into your funnel properly will probably double your business, yeah, if you haven't done it yet. So that's fun when I say funnel. When you say build it into your funnel properly.

1:43:26Yeah. it needs to run well it needs to be well done so you need to start with the right problem think through the solution make it compelling have really strong social proof etc a great offer for the action so that's like the thinking side and you want to come up with three or four different versions of that to test and then you want to implement it in your funnel which is your ad creative your landing pages you know your crm whatever it might be um and test them test complete always innovate on new ones and i think you'll build a you'll build a good uh you'll build a good funnel what and have you seen any of like what have been some of the best creatives that have had the join or join olive oil club is a offer yeah it's a form of an offer they use language to actually to make the offer more compelling yeah uh which is amazing because it's free for them so that's that's like one of the most ingenious ways to improve your efficiency.

1:44:25No cost, but you drive up the response rate. What have some of those you guys have put in place? Well, I even noticed on the website, some of the language has changed a lot. Yeah. Which is interesting. Yeah, yeah, we're always constantly testing. I'll, I'm not, to be honest, I'm not as close to some of that now as I used to be. So I'm not sure on the most recent changes, but. Final question, because I know you've got to run. what's one truth you believe most people disagree with you on

1:45:02um

1:45:07i think in this country probably that i think i think in this country basically that money is a money is a moral and objectively good thing to strive for as a thing a thing in and of itself um so money is good to go after money is a good and moral objective because it is the is the ultimate explanation it's the ultimate rational way to judge your personal contribution to the world because basically it's the only way money is a is a tool to trade productivity goods and services that are productive for the world um in a in a fair way so without money what are you left with you're left with basically guns force aggression to control things whereas trade trade trading your goods for a for money or trading your services for money is a fair exchange of value and it's objective and it's rational um and and to get it you therefore to get it in a non-corrupt way you have to be productive in the world because you are essentially producing something to get money in return.

1:46:44And it's the best method we have of deciding how your contribution in a non-emotional, irrational way. And so I therefore think it's a really good North Star. But most people would say it's a really shallow North Star. Mate, you're a fucking legend. Always a joy. That was sick. Lovely, mate. Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door, but one, cat, dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me.

1:47:29And 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