innocent Drinks Founder: 17 Timeless Brand Building Laws to Scale a £310 Million Brand (…You’ve Never Heard Before)

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2:01Hello, hello. I hope you are wonderful wherever you are in the world listening to this. So grateful you're tuning in. This episode is so special. When I started the podcast about four years ago in the grips of lockdown, I wrote a list on a piece of paper of all the brands I'd love to interview. At the top of that list, Innocent has been stuck there and I've always wanted to speak to Innocent like Innocent are the OG challenger brand they are the the dons of challenger food and drink and they've inspired so many people I've listened to um and I got introduced to Adam uh it was kind of a funny story actually like got introduced to him on email then he was like I'll give you 10 minutes on kind of FaceTime to kind of pitch me the podcast so I spent hours and hours kind of prepping the questions was absolutely cacking my pants got on to FaceTime with adam kind of gave him the rundown this what i would love to talk about um i was a bit cheeky asked for two hours of his time uh he said don't have that don't have that so then i went for 90 minutes but we got an hour and i'm so grateful for just an hour of this absolute legend and he taught me so much 17 principles about brand building how innocent became the og brand we go into kind of nascent lebs anti-fragile brands how do you build brands that come out of stress and become post-traumatic growth brands so good um we talk about how things went wrong like everyone sees the glory days of innocent in 2008 things were tanking a monster was attacking fruit towers and it was going pete tong um different and better the whole people always say be different not better i've done that i didn't fucking talk about that uh he goes into how you have to be different and better and we go right into that we go into the five levels of how to be a household brand um how innocent hired along the curve as you come from from small niche to house our brand he's got a beautiful way of culture um this kind of blackpool candy stick philosophy which is amazing and hilarious but so pithy and succinct and it just like made total sense the internal versus external he's got a quote i love i'd rather have a hole than an asshole so good so so good um we talk about how brands get sunk by actually saying yes to supermarkets why you just got to avoid that the golden question i mean i never even thought of this he has literally four words a golden question which is like mitch basically makes every brand work yeah if you answer this question correctly your brand works uh how innocent finally cracked europe like that was a headache wrapped in a flu cuddled in an enigma it was an absolute nightmare but adam managed to get it work how to get your board on side with your brand so many people have investors and and board members but how do you actually get them brought into the journey with you um there's just so much in this uh culture is finding me and we i absolutely loved it i hope you're going to love it too i'd be so grateful if you could please leave a five-star review preferably obviously um and yeah share the podcast on linkedin share it wherever you can it really really helps uh and yeah i hope you enjoy this episode with the og challenger brand innocent Thank you.

5:09Thank you for doing this. We're incredibly grateful. Pleasure. No, it's a pleasure to be here. And yeah, I think that's one of the things we did best at Innocent was actually hiring some amazing people. And they've gone on to do some incredible things, Giles, Emma and many others besides. So, you know, I think that's one of the legacies I feel most proud of. We're definitely going to get on to that. I think what I'd like to start with is I was doing like a jumble of research online and I found a book on the Jamjar Instagram, which was The Black Swan. Oh, yeah. By Nassim Taleb. And I want to kind of use that as our kind of opening gambit.

5:44Sure. And he's got two books. He's got Black Swan and Anti-Fragile. So Anti-Fragile is the whole premise of that book is things gain from disorder. So it's like post-traumatic growth versus post-traumatic stress. Yeah. And I think people, I always saw the innocent journey as this kind of going upwards that you kind of built the rocket ship. It was soaring upwards. And I'd love to kind of parachute into 2007, 2008. And kind of the Black Swan event or the Black Swan was the financial crash. It was almost like a monstrous beast that was kind of attacking three towers, if you want to put it in those terms.

6:24and I'd love to go into what was the yeah as you say you've built this rocket ship it's going it begins to tank what was the the hardest day in that period what were the sleepless nights what was the the feelings yeah um I think probably so just to set the context the business has grown you know from nothing to about a hundred million nine years sort of broadly everything had been going right. Tailwinds had been with us. The trends were with us. The economy was good. And I think we wrote the budget for 2008, which was to do, I think, 140 million of turnover, which would 30 % growth and make, I can't remember what it was, but 10, 15 million bottom line, expand across Europe.

7:12Everything was going well. And we wrote this thing. And the first signs that things were going wrong was to beginning of 2008 January um we normally have a big January the big January wasn't quite as big as as um it normally was and as we expected and then things started to you know February didn't get much better and then March got a bit worse and then by the time we got to the summer things were really tanking and we were actually you know losing losing sales losing money and we went from a fast-growing profitable business to one that was um losing money and actually running out of cash. And I remember all of us sat around and said, OK, so we need a new plan here.

7:54And the thing that we'd said was, we're not going to take any external money. We will do this independently. And let's write the plan that gets us through. And we wrote that plan. And it was the most depressing plan you've ever seen. And I remember sitting in the room where we sort of shared it. And it was just like, we're going to have to close all the international offices, fire a load of people, step back from our ambition of being Europe's favourite little juice company. and we sort of looked at each other and we're just like oh god that's so depressing that's just not what we're not what we're about um so we thought well look the constraint here was about raising money so if we raise that you know loosen that constraint and say we will raise money what could the plan look like and from that low point actually things started to get better um not not directly but that decision was a really good one it was like you know what let's raise some money and let's continue our mission to be Europe's favourite juice company.

8:42And whilst we did have to trim and cut back, it wasn't the wholesale complete about turn that we would have had to do if we were unfunded. And so that was probably the most depressing day when we looked at that plan and just went, oh, God. What was on the plan specifically? Because I think this could help. We're going through, so many people say to me that this is one of the hardest times right now. And what I suppose I'm trying to get from is Black Swan to building anti-fragile brands for today. What was on that plan back then? and what do you think people should be putting on their plans to survive kind of this tumultuous well I suppose but just pulling back a bit I think we what happened in 2008 was sort of everything that could go wrong went wrong at the same time and I think that's you know that's sometimes life is like that actually in black swan events actually are a bit more frequent than you sort of realize because there was that and then obviously the pandemic and so so actually that's you know thinking forward it's realizing actually when things go wrong often they go wrong in twos threes fours fives um and that's exactly what happened for us in 08 so um obviously the recession hit people stopped spending on on what they saw as needless luxuries and innocent for some people was seen as that um Tropicana launched a smoothie and started getting really aggressive on price um Sterling collapsed because the recession and all our input prices are in euros so um you know iron prices went up um the mango crop the apple crop the banana crop were all bad normally they balanced each other out one was good one was bad that year for some reason they were all bad so we were hit by this sort of massive like bang bang bang bang and we just started on a big international expansion which meant we had put in loads of cost into the business opening up offices and hiring people abroad and so suddenly it went from being massively profitable to to losing money really quickly it was you know in the space of three or four months um so that was the context and I suppose to answer your question on the plan the plan that we didn't follow was basically a slash and burn cut everything right back you know basically we've closed all the offices outside of London you know we had to would have had to let a load of people go cut all MPD all marketing and it was just like oh that's too depressing and we're fortunate we hadn't diluted much we hadn't raised a lot of money beforehand so we had the capacity to to to raise money um which is what we went and did and that that allowed us to basically invest through the tough time the recession where many other people didn't and that helped actually form the foundation of the next growth of the business and what would you say in in that period of time this as you say this this stress stress period and you guys have come out you know post-traumatic growth is what you were saying yeah how do you personally like when you go back to home to notting hill how do you deal with that pressure because i'm kind of asking this selfishly as well because i feel a lot yeah and i think look i think i think actually it was always from the setup of the business with three of us running it and three of us equal partners that made sharing the burden so much easier because you didn't have to carry around in your own head i'm in awe of people who set up businesses on their own or even with just two of you actually three allows you to share the burden much much more and that was hugely useful but then by the by the 2007-8 we actually had a you know a great top team so it was the whole the whole board team and we were just very transparent so there was so whilst we all felt it personally we we could at least sort of share the feelings between us and i think that was hugely important and one of the things we learned was not only share it with the top team but actually share it with everybody in the business because the rumors were starting to fly around the business it was like some people like oh there's no problem at all we're absolutely fine other people's like we're going bust tomorrow and every attitude you know every belief in between so we had to share very clearly what was happening with this what the numbers were what this meant um and by being transparent it meant that really killed the rumors and basically get people sort of focus on the day job oh my days i've been working on something very special introducing the hungry sales secrets workshop 14 unshakable challenger brand sales secrets that you'll never find on a Mars training program taught by Ian in Bay's Chinas.

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13:50And then you, with Jam Jar, you work and invest in so many amazing brands. I think Lucky Saint have been on this podcast. Who Gives a Crap have been on this podcast. What would you say are the principles and like the absolute bare minimum requirements for brands to have, whether that's like, yeah, for brands to have to remain anti-fragile in today's climate? Yeah, I think that brands have got to stand for something that consumers care about and I suppose always deliver on that trust. And I think that's the sort of outward bit, but the inward bit is just as important. They've got to be built on a foundation and culture of people who share a common mission and give a damn about what they're doing and will work really hard for each other and so it's the combination of the consumer sort of pull and that internal sort of belief that I think gets brands through and that's certainly what got innocent through the tough times.

14:52Yeah because I've heard you talk and Libby talks about this this better versus different proposition as kind of a kind of a common thread through most of the brands you you invest in i'd love to kind of tease that out and then we can talk about this internal versus external yeah so i think first um because there's a lot of people i've spoken to it's like the and i even did like a little talk about this which is be different not better yeah and it's almost like everyone says they're better yeah we're more prebiotic we're more probiotic yeah blah blah blah blah yeah be different and you kind of create a category of one right yeah but what you've said is the be the be different and better so i think just setting the the scene like what is Define different and then define better, please.

15:34So in terms of different, you've got to stand out. You've got to actually find a way of not only not doing exactly what everyone else does, but communicating that as well. And for Innocent, it was really clear. It was like everyone was all about multicolors, really garish and bright branding. and with Innocent we went completely pared back, very simple, and that was just different. It just looked different. And, you know, different can be on the aesthetics like that, it can be in the taste, it can be on the tone and attitude, it can be on many different things. But I think being different has to be across a number of different sort of directions or parameters, basically.

16:21So I think being different is important to sort of be different across the board, across everything that matters to consumers, be it the design, the look of the feel, the taste, the tone, and what you stand for. And I think that's what we managed to do well at Innocent. We were really quite distinctive versus all the other drinks competition. And then being better, well, for us actually, we tasted a lot better than what was out there. And that's objective obviously but actually that's what people fundamentally care about in a food product and all the stuff around the way we talk the pictures we drew the silly jokes that was all secondary to the fact the products were great um and obviously better didn't mean everybody found them delicious but on average people would definitely prefer ours to pretty much anything else out there and and we spent all our efforts on doing that and then the funny little sort of marketing bits were were the add-ons so it was absolute focus on the product that was the heart of all the marketing that we ever did so almost the best is the product angle and the difference the culture the would you yeah and the branding yeah obviously if they're yeah yes exactly so um you know if you are better if you're better you are different to some extent but um but you need more than just being sort of tasting better if we would just tasted better but had exactly the same packaging exactly the same look tone and feel as everyone else i don't think the business would have worked you kind of need to do both at the same time um what would you say is more important different or better i think you've got to do both i think you've got to do both i don't i think that's the i think that's the point you've just got to do you've got to do both um because you otherwise just don't you know if you're better but it's the same no one notices you it's very different you grow very slowly if at all if you're different but not better you get notice and no one then uses you comes back so you kind of need both and that's that's the thing with business business is hard right starting the business is hard you need to get everything lined up you can get nine out of ten things right and if that tenth thing is a key thing business may not work so that's why it's it's it's a rare thing for businesses to work and um and anyone who's doing it is is it's it's a bloody hard work and a challenge right but the rewards are great when you get it right um i want to i want to go into this i think i talked about you this on the call mate which was this this five wise um like framework and i find it really interesting it's we're kind of combining the be uh be different and better with the five five wise basically five wise as you get deeper and deeper and deeper it's like the root cause of things and almost think we've almost people listen to this you've got level one brands yeah which would be something at like a uh you know the food market in barns yeah that's level one level two would be a whole food planet organic level three would be someone like in a in a sainsbury's um or a co-op store level four level five would be an innocent a tony's vita cocoa yeah fill in the urban legend fill in the bank i'd love to know and giles giles i asked giles this question and he i was like what how did you find that extra gear yeah to almost go down into that you know and you've seen some work with so many brands how do you go from like a level three which would probably be that four million mark yeah four to five million mark where people get stuck yeah how what's the extra things you've got to do to kick on to build an innocent to build a vita coco i think i think there's an obsessiveness that you you need to really want to improve everything all the time and I think that that obsessiveness was definitely there at Innocent be it make the packaging slightly more eco make the packaging slightly funnier make it slightly cheaper make it slightly more appealing same with the product same with the deals we do with our distributors the constant you know John always talks about Kaizen the Japanese self self and continual self-improvement on manufacturing and that was definitely a sort of a culture that we we we imbued throughout Innocent, which is not being happy with the status quo, always trying, restlessly trying to improve things.

20:31And that's difficult because, you know, you've pulled in constant different directions as a business, but actually you just can't stand still. You can't say, I've got a product, right, I'm going to go out and sell it now. It's like that product will get caught up, other people do it and it won't, you know, it won't be different or better if you don't move forward in six months. So, you know, I think that that's one of the things we did really well actually is constantly restlessly wanted to make things better so that's that's almost like a kind of a top line uh yeah almost like a cultural thing really yeah like a relentless pursuit of better yeah yeah myriad of different ways to say it and then i suppose and again this is all case by case yeah but what would you say are some of the hires you need to go from say a four million level three brand to like a we're going to start building into a into a real big household brand Yeah.

21:22I think one of the things that we realized early on was actually we hired a people person well before businesses of our size would normally hire a people person because actually we realized that people was the heart of what the business was about. so that actually was a really important hire so that often the people side sort of gets left behind and you talk about the revenue the gross margin the profit and oh yeah we've got to make sure people are happy and that was not the way we thought about it was like if you've got a really highly functioning team with great people in that are stretched and motivated and well trained that will then deliver the results and so it was turning it the other way around really putting the people side first and I think that that was one of the lasting legacies of the business and then was there anything you did I know um I'm sorry sorry just just to finish off on that because you sort of asked about high about hires I think at first we sort of hired generally sort of bright generalists who to do the job and that's kind of right because we didn't really know what the jobs were and you sort of needed to do that but then there needed to be a change at some point where we needed to get some expertise in.

22:37And I was sort of running the commercial sales bit and I'd never really done it. And I remember hiring the first key account manager who really knew her stuff in terms of, you know, supermarkets. And it was like, oh my gosh, right, that's how you do it. And it was like, oh, okay, real expertise, that's going to improve our business. And so it was then blending proper deep expertise with sort of general smarts. And that made for a powerful combination, not just saying how I'm from outside, not just hiring internally but actually blending the two and made you know made the business really work and we've talked a lot about the and we're going to get on to the illumini almost how it specifically in the interview process like what were you doing to sort of what were you specifically not necessarily you but what were you specifically asking to be like um this is the right person both in terms of like attitude and aptitude because i think um i think you said something which i thought was amazing which is a rather have a hole than an arsehole right i think that's just i think we can nick that from apple or something yeah yeah but still like we'll extol that but yeah what were you what were you doing in the interview process to like make sure you weren't getting arseholes in yeah so i think early on we codified what the values of innocent were um and sort of everyone does this now and it's not that groundbreaking but i think at the time it was relatively uncommon and and we put those values up on the backs of the toilet doors and the start of every presentation and you know in the induction and up on in the kitchen above the toaster and so it was just it was inculcated into the business and the first interview with anyone was around those values and it was always making sure that someone was on values before worrying about the skill levels that they had and whether they could do the job and that was really important to making sure tonally and culturally the people that brought in fitted and you know weren't assholes and were quite the opposite were people who who added to the the the great genetic mix of innocent and i think that was um that was probably the most important thing to do and then of course you need to check that someone can do the job so you've got to know what the job is and that was a bit of discipline about writing it down and saying okay these are these are the responsibilities and then testing people, you know, doing case studies and, you know, not being, you know, not being a bit lazy in the interview of just sort of, oh, I'll get on with them.

25:02Let's hire them. It was actually, let's check they can do the job they say they can do. And that takes time and effort. You know, if you're hiring for a salesperson, giving them a load of data, or maybe in a situation that you're trying to sell into a customer with and, you know, giving them enough to get their teeth stuck into so that they can actually show what they can do with the information and the cell that you've given them. And that takes them a lot of energy and takes you a lot of energy to put it together, but it means you start hiring really great people. Because I know what you said, as you say, it's kind of like commonplace now.

25:35A lot of times, brands codify values, put it on the wall. One thing that kind of fascinates me, and I've seen it happen, and I've interviewed people, they've said this, it's like you put the values on the wall, but it doesn't necessarily translate to the actual behaviors day to day yeah from again everyone venerates their time at innocent they genuinely said like this the culture is what you say outside and inside it's like there's the they link together yeah because i think sometimes what you can see on a company website or on a toilet wall is like well hang on mate this doesn't line up yeah yeah we used to talk about a stick of rock test so like a stick of rock just has that words all the way through and it's consistent and so wherever you cut it stick of rock like literally the old candy that you get uh you know it was kind of had the words written in like you know yes yes i love blackpool or something like that and it said i love blackpool consistently all the way through wherever you cut it and that was exactly the sort of thinking it's like wherever you cut innocent you you should feel and touch the same culture so wherever you interact with us whether it's you know being a supermarket buyer or a consumer at shelf or you know uh someone cleaning out the bins and you know it basically feels innocent all the way through yeah so maybe how would you do that like how would you treat the the cleaner in the office not you specifically like that i think that could be an interesting lens to explore this yeah i mean i i you know i think i think you really clear on the values and then the bit i suppose i didn't say and you alluded to is on behaviors it's like okay so what does that mean if you're living up to the values these are the these are the sorts of ways you behave and so making it actually sort of obvious for people what the values that views mean in behavior terms and I think um uh calling out people who've lived by the values and there was I think um there was a sort of I don't know what I can't remember what we called it at the time but it was essentially employee of the month and that was sort of voted on by other people people who've gone over above and beyond and really demonstrated the values and so every month we'd call that out and it was a bit of fun someone got you know 100 quid to go and eat in a restaurant or something and it was it was just with with anything you've just got to keep communicating the same thing the same thing the same thing the same thing and then then it gets through and that and and we were really consistent on that you know on the values the values we wrote four years into the business three or four years in were the values that are still still up on the toilet doors now so you know they haven't changed the behaviors underpinning them haven't changed and I think everyone knew what was expected of them And I think that's really important.

28:00How do you spot, like, an arsehole when people are, like, wearing masks? It's part of life's dance is people wear masks. And I think, and obviously you don't have to go into specifics about, like, a arsehole, but you've worked with so many businesses, you must kind of understand, like, how do you spot that? I mean, I suppose you get it. say you've got to have a proper conversation you you've got to be looking for it looking for the inconsistencies um and of course you're going to get it wrong sometimes and the trick is once you realize you've got it wrong and you've hired the wrong person you've got to get them out of the business really quite quickly and no one ever if if you find there isn't a fit there's always a sort of like oh i'll just give it a couple more months because it's a bit tough to go you know it's a bit awkward conversation and i don't really want to start the whole hiring process again and you can make up all these excuses to yourself and i've done it many times of like oh no i won't do it now and it's always the wrong decision and it's all for you and for the individual because if they don't fit they don't fit and you're doing no one any favors by keeping them in the business so actually being being honest to yourself your values and what the business stands for by actually having the awkward conversation saying it's not working out uh let's let's go our separate ways as quickly as possible is is something i learned over time got better at over time um uh but is really important otherwise you just store up problems and how do you is any advice you give for people who are going through that problem now they've got they've brought in the sales director they've brought in the finance director they know it's not working that it's just bubbling away in them like what's the art of the conversation as quickly as possible be be honest be transparent be you know uh you know generous in terms of severance all those sorts of things but don't don't find excuses for keeping people that don't fit in the business in the business and then when you say you'd rather have a hole how do you survive not survive yeah how do you from the leadership perspective like bring people together when there's that hole in and and keep trudging forward do you know yeah yeah well I think I think that's where um once again you go back to the values of yeah one of the values was generosity and they're being generous with your time so everyone's got to give a bit more time to help fill in the hole until we find someone and there's you know and and i think that's you know you're pulling for each other you're you're you're helping each other out because there's a gap and there's work that needs doing so so i think it was it sort of goes back back to the values um again um and you know there's also leading by example if you're asking more of your team but you're scooching out the office at four o 'clock all the time it's kind of like you know uh that's gonna at some point come unstuck right and you know we worked our nuts off it and so and people saw that so that that sets the tone yeah that's exactly what giles said so i one of the questions i asked him is how do you you know going down like that level three yeah to level six he's like the fountain of sets the pace yeah of the brand and i think i i uh i find that yeah what you what you've said there but we were we you know we also we we made a decision between us that we're saying look we're going to work incredibly hard during the week um and we're going to basically take weekends off we're really going to do our absolute utmost now sometimes there are necessities you basically had to do a bit of work at the weekends but but i think you've also got to be careful not to burn out because actually it's a it's it's not a sprint all right starting business it's going to be 10 years it's going to be 15 years you know before you get to a scale that's um that makes it really interesting and so so the reality is you've got to find a pace of life and work that that you can keep up and you know working every weekend is not that and so you know we took holidays we we but we worked bloody hard and we didn't try not to work weekends and that made a big difference actually i think that there's definitely this hustle kind of culture thing i want to talk i've found some like kind of random things i like to uh link on to i found i want to talk about like your ski trips with heston blumenthal um i find him in terms of whether we talked kind of before you record the food thing yeah i think what he's done is just insane yeah like just as as a human being for food i interviewed oisin rogers who's the founder of the devonshire okay yeah and so obviously ashley palmer walters who was the head chef of the fat duck is there yeah and um we were talking about his like suet pie that he made and i've been to the hinds head and i think it's one of the most insane kind of uh restaurants and just the way they've done it is amazing but you talked i think I don't know the article, but you talked about these ski trips you had with him and these rabbit holes he takes you down.

32:42What's one of the kind of craziest rabbit holes he's maybe taken you down? And what did you maybe learn down there, if you can remember? I mean, to be honest, specifics, I can't remember. But just he is the absolute sort of crazy genius inventor. You know, he is absolutely, he's sort of totally brilliant, but completely nuts. And I love it. And I think it comes across in his public persona because he just, he gets really passionate about something and will just follow it. And I think the last thing I talked to him about was, you know, he was talking about the gut biome like 10, 15 years ago before, you know, people were really clonking onto it.

33:20And he was saying it's so important for mental well-being, all this. And, you know, he'd go off on one on this. What's he going on about? And lo and behold, he's completely right. It's like everyone has caught up. he's well ahead of the curve on these things and always has been and was like that with his food. So it's just, it's great being around people like that because you just sort of, you're trying to catch up, you're just trying to understand really what it is they're saying and often you don't realise until five years later, it's like, oh, that's what he was talking about, I see. And also it's almost like his relentless obsession with improving everything.

33:56Absolutely, completely relentless. Is there anything else you think he may have just by kind of osmosis and being privy to him hanging out that you think has changed the way you view things? Because some of the stuff he's, I remember watching the programs as a kid when he's like going back in time and doing those, you know, like the feasts of the podcast. I remember that program and I was like, this is just, I must have been 14 when I was watching that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, like is there anything else he's kind of like maybe changed the way you've seen things or? I mean, you know, Heston's sort of, I think it's that sort of restless desire to just make things completely better and just improve them the whole time.

34:40And he just, you know, we said we did that at Innocent. Boy, he did that in spades with the fat duck and anything he touches, right? And so it was kind of inspirational to be around him and just go, okay, we need to stick with this. We're maybe never going to do it quite to the extent that he does. but you know what it's worth doing because only there do you start doing extraordinary things like he's achieved what would you say about again in is was there any like one or two improvements that at innocent that you when you kind of pushed on that door kind of was um i've there's i don't know if you perry hayden taylor did a lot of big he did big fish he's been on the podcast and he talks about this slipstream thing sometimes you press on a lot of doors yeah like this continuous improvement and nothing's really happening there.

35:24Boom, you open that door and you just go, was there anything like that? Well, I think one of the big changes, for instance, we'd made it innocent was, you know, when we first started, we were, we never owned our own factories and we were working with manufacturers to help us make smoothies and they were buying all the fruit. And we, you know, we respect what we wanted and they blended up and you'd end up with, you know, a good product. But we sort of realized that actually the thing that really matters is the quality of the fruit and what we're putting in. And so if we really want to get great at this, we need to own that bit.

36:02So we built the whole fruit sourcing, the man from Del Monte sort of function, which is literally going out to the farmers, working out what it is we wanted and buying stuff ourselves and then getting that delivered to the manufacturers. And that was like a huge undertaking because there was a whole new leg of the business that we'd never had before. You know, it was quite, you know, we were doing pretty well without it. And there wasn't a pressing reason to do it. But if we wanted to make the very best movies, we needed to really understand the fruit much more deeply than we did by buying through other people.

36:36And by doing that, I think actually that completely changed the business. because actually you ended up with much better quality at lower prices, more consistently, with more knowledge of what was going on and ability to swap into different supplies when problems happen. So it fundamentally transformed the supply chain of the business and then the products that people were drinking. And so that was difficult. That was a whole new thing to do. And none of us knew really anything about growing fruit or the way strawberries are pressed and bananas appeal, All that stuff we had to learn, but it transformed the business.

37:15You said it was difficult. And one thing in the kind of prep I've done for this is, I want to get only talked up at the beginning, but between you, yourself, Richard, and John, there's three of us in the room. But what I find fascinating is how, I think, I can't remember where you said it, it was on a podcast or on an article, you said, same problem, three different angles. i want to explore kind of the symphony of your problem solving abilities yeah um because i think it could help people in co-founder partnerships what how are you guys similar and different yeah and then first question second question is like is there an example where you faced a really insurmountable problem and then i'd love to get into kind of the the zing and zang of how you solve that so um i think going back to the theme of this we're really similar on values we care about the same thing we had the same vision for where we wanted to take the business and that similarity was really important um because there was never any debate about sort of the direction to take the business in how we get there definitely vary depending on our personalities skills and experience and that was where i think we always got to better answers i suppose you know the roles that we did so people richard did people and uh people and brand uh john did manufacturing and systems and I did commercial and deals and expansion so it's sort of those three those three things sort of define the way we looked at problems um you know John was super logical very um very uh very sort of uh process the wrong word but just is super super logical I suppose is the easiest way of saying it Richard very instinctive very uh good at cutting through what's not important and what really matters, both to consumers and to the team.

39:04And I was always trying to find a way to make sure actually commercially it all made sense. We made some money from it. Customers made some money from it. And actually it was sustainable sort of on a financial basis. And so those and that's that archetype wasn't always the way we argued, but that broadly sort of was the angles that we came from. and I think that synthesis helped us get to much better answers it sometimes meant the it took longer you know people have to wait for an answer but it meant that actually I think on balance we got more decisions right than we would have done certainly in making those individually interesting again Oshin Rogers said this the other day he goes I'm the chaos Ashley's the perfection and Charlie Carroll who did um Flatiron is the um what did he say chaos he's all chaos order perfection yeah and i think your symphony is really interesting as well yeah is there an example that kind of like brings that to life of where you were facing like at the time an insurmountable obstacle and yeah i'm trying to get into the art of how you those three things dance together i'm trying to i'd have to uh let me have a little thing to come back to it maybe um yeah i had to go to specifics i need to we'll go on a bit a bit easier but i read some of that you like racing cars yes yes what is do you do you race cars yeah yeah yeah describe the parallels of racing cars and uh and and running a building i love i love finding things at the cross-section of different yeah i think you learn the most there yeah so i mean motor racing is sort of you know there's a sort of ball zap bravery that everyone associates with it but then there's the real detail analysis of data and understanding exactly what you're doing at each point you're in the corner which which is really which i sort of love the combination of the the two things so because you get a huge amount of so you're doing the ones that is the is it like rally racing no no no it's track racing track racing yeah okay yeah yeah so track racing so so these days in cars you've got a huge amount of data so you've got your video video videoing everything you do you've got all your pedal inputs your g-force um lateral longitudinal you've got you know what the suspension is doing so so your driver coach can absolutely see what you've done going into a corner and can trace versus what you've done versus what they as a pro have done and you know so you can be deluding yourself that you're braking late enough or or that you're you know you're getting on the accelerator nice and early whereas actually the data says something quite different because in in the sort of the the sort of intensity and speed your brain starts playing tricks on you and you think you're doing something and you're not and the data really shows you that and so i love the sort of the the sort of combination of the sort of data side and the just the sort of the balls out bravery bit that you need um yeah and i never i've never put i because I just think right fuck it just go around the track as fast as you can and I would never have thought there's data in there I suppose there is there's an art of art of you know data and ball bust courage in Brandville yeah yeah yeah and I think if you're too much this way you lack the courage to go right let's actually just make it and go for it but then if you're two gangbusters going around the track without any data you're just you're going to hit the thing you're going to hit the ball exactly so I think it is there is a parallel I'd never really thought about it myself either, but it's that yin and yang combination that I really like.

42:40And then, of course, there's the camaraderie, the relationship you build with the team and your pro, all that stuff, which is very teamwork. So I've done various different things. I started with Caterham's little open things, did sort of quite a few years racing those. They're all identical. They're not that fast. So it's not that risky in comparison to some of the bigger stuff, but it's unbelievably close racing and and it's just great fun what's the um what's the feat like to describe the feelings i mean i've only done bloody go-kart yeah yeah yeah yeah like what's well i don't think i've ever been as scared as the first the sitting on the grid for my very first race so i just got my license i it was like but went in for my first race it was brand hatch um in a catering and i'm somewhere you know 20th on a grid of 24 or something like that and waiting for the lights to go green and it's like i mean my heart must have been doing 150 like i was just just sat there doing nothing but waiting the anticipation and then and then you go and then it's the melee the first corner and it's and it's just great fun your brain you realize actually you start running out of mental capacity to to do stuff um because you're so focused in the moment then you make a mistake you miss a gear or something like that and it's and it's there's nothing quite as intense in that in the in in the workplace environment i've found um that kind of absolute mental and physical overload all at the same time yeah i think you can and this i was not planning for this link together but it is yeah but i think you can get that kind not known as intense right yeah as that three to one you can get a real buzz and intensity on an intense negotiation definitely yeah i'd love to know and i said on the i think it was on the jam drum website they called you know mystic commercials your title i'd love to go almost parachute into what's the kind of the most intense negotiation or one of that felt like you're at brown's hat you've got the green light three two one zoom because because you know i think everyone has got to negotiate yes um and that's you know that's negotiating getting your kids off swimming class you know there's there's i'd love to know and i think yeah i'd really love to understand the way you approach um negotiations but yeah i'd love to i think the best way to kind of jump into this is yeah is to parachute into what was the one of the most intense negotiations that you felt like you're at brown's hatch let me think let me think what was it i mean actually it was pretty um i think probably some of the most intense stuff was our first trying to get our first listing at Tesco you know we'd got listings at Waitrose and Sainsbury's um they were really pro the brand the brand did when we did really well there but Tesco was still uh holdouts not really believing in the brand or the category actually because they'd had a slightly bad experience with the previous brand and it hadn't worked that well and they didn't really believe uh Innocent was going to change things that much um and but they were critical you know 30 % of the market they're critical to getting the business to really work um and i remember them being very very fixed on okay if the only way we're going to do this is um by you promising to do a half price promotion around launch time and we'd never done anything like that we couldn't make money at half price it was it was like no way that's not the way we do it it's devaluing the brand all this sort of thing um and and that's just to set the context how big was the business at this size so we were probably about 10 million turnover so we were decent scale yeah um but we hadn't gone everywhere and we were still mostly little bottles uh rather than the cartons and um the cartons as they were there and um we i think it was a sort of it was interesting because we were like no we're not doing that we're really principled we're not going to do the half price we're not going to do this and tesco were very like no well you're not you're not getting the listing then sort of thing and it was trying to work out whether there was a way through that or whether we had to take what they were saying and try and turn it into a positive and I think actually that was the realisation that actually they may be right that really the way to get noticed was to do those half price promotions but at the same, if we were going to do that we then needed to make sure that we were building brand at the same time so actually we needed to be advertising at the same time and we looked at what other sort of FMGG brands had done And I think Actimel had done very similar sort of strategies.

47:17We looked at what Danone did. And that was half-price promotions with TV. And this is going back 20 years, so it might not be relevant now. But we were like, well, okay, maybe we can go, you know, accept their demands on that if we do the TV and build the brand at the same time. And actually, that strategy then completely worked. And we rolled that out through other people. And by changing our ingoing thought based on what they were demanding, actually, it made it better. We ended up, that was the strategy that really grew the business for the next three or four years by getting noticed on price, but also getting the brand story out there.

47:57And, you know, that was pretty intense because, you know, we went from a position where it was like, God, we're not going to get this listing. It's not going to happen through to actually, yeah, we've got a deal that we're not sure is going to work. and then when it actually started working, it's like, oh God, this strategy's working. It's great. And so it was definitely a journey that we went on. I am absolutely over the bloody moon that Big Fish, yes, Big Fish, the big dons of Challenger Food and Drink brand design. I mean, Perry is an absolute legend. He's designed every Challenger brand in your cupboard.

48:29Charlie Biggums, Goo, Tyrrells, Rana, Clipper T. The list is endless. and big fish are looking to speak to the next wave of challenger food and drink brands who are a force for good they're looking to invest in brands and we've got this sick thing coming next year that you do not want to miss out on if you want to speak to big fish if you want to go to the fish bowl drop me a dm and i can make it happen north star get listed say listed and grow do you actually know your shopper if you don't know your shop you're literally pissing and spunking money up the wall knowing your shopper is the secret weapon to unlock more grocery listings and more stores but not knowing a shopper is literally like driving in the dark hung over without a sat nav in a thunderstorm in february with five miles of petrol in the tank but knowing a shopper is like having a sat nav a full tank of petrol it's a glorious sunny day you're listening to the sugar babes and you've got a fresh hot pumpkin spice latte by your side north star illuminator is the shopper map to the promised land of growth and success it does three wonderful things for your brand one make your marketing budget sweat when you've got lucid crystal clarity on exactly where each precious penny is going you know how to drive loyalty with existing customers or even bring new shoppers into your brand numero dos what's actually driving performance do you actually know why your sales are going up and down you need to know like are you bringing new shoppers into the category is that driving growth are loyal customers buying more of your brand are shoppers switching in and out of your brand versus other brands i mean perfect heads of glorious example they are bringing new shoppers in to sports and energy they are so incremental versus say chocolate bars where people just switch in and out of brands all the time the more you know this the more oomph you've got with your buyer when you go to do a marketing plan a joint business plan with retailers the buyers want to know how incremental you are to the category that is your passport to success north star is your passport um and what you can do is you can literally see it by channel by a retailer gets so specific if you're looking to go to the next level honestly get in touch with Northstar and go to the promised land and how do you for people who are going into negotiations with either retailers or investors what would you say is some of the kind of with every negotiation you've sat in what are some of the one to three principles um that you you think could really help people listening to this so I think I think you need to be very clear about what you're trying to achieve and in that example previously we sort of had to change what we were trying to achieve from the new information that came in that actually that the promotional strategy was the right way to go um but be very clear because i think it's quite easy to go into things um without that clarity be very clear what you're prepared to trade away um so there's there's plenty of courses on how you negotiate and that was one of the key things that we did at innocent and was taught everyone negotiation techniques.

51:22And I think, so do your preparation. Yeah. I think that's key. Be flexible in the moment because sometimes there's a deal to be done at the time and rather than going away and kind of analysing it or actually say yes, that can be hugely useful. Just sort of seize the day. But also the flip side is like be prepared to walk away and say, you know what, this isn't going to happen because sometimes things will change on the other side and they'll come back to you. So it's that reading the room. And is that the bit you said there about the flexibility of being able to actually accept a deal? Is there an example where you've, I suppose Tesco is the example, but I suppose maybe the other side of that is when you've had to walk away.

52:15because so one of the things I write about my newsletter is early stage founders get blinded by the listing lights whereby they're like, oh my God, the deal may not work. They're like, I just want the 320 Holland Barrett stores or Tesco stores and then suddenly they've done a deal. They're not making money when they promote. Absolutely. It's just a nightmare. And then suddenly if you've said yes to that, trying to unpick it, it's just a nightmare. is there is i completely agree i guess more businesses get sunk on getting listings with the wrong terms or the wrong people or the wrong distribution than they do because they haven't got the listings yes um so it is and because for all those reasons you say it's it's it's exciting oh i've got a startup business i'm getting a huge listing i'm going to go to all these stores it's like you just sort of end up not not analyzing whether it's really the right thing to do and You can easily get carried away with yourself and say, yeah, I'll make it work.

53:17Because actually you can't make it work. And it's the wrong thing to go to too many stores sometimes. We'll get on to what you think are the requirements for kind of building an anti-fragile brand in grocery as well. But first, like, you guys went into 10 Waitrose stores. Yeah, two Waitrose stores at the very beginning, actually. This is the other thing. I don't understand why retailers put brands in way too many stores. so it's like i say i always say it's like analogous to throwing a toddler into a deep end without swimming bands they need to go in slowly a challenge a brand to a toddler needs to learn how to put the armbands on like give them 10 stores like why do you think that how did you get 10 stores or did it was that because there wasn't really challenge a brands then or they i mean it was a different it was definitely a different retail environment so i think they're probably tougher these days but i think it was we we did literally direct to store distribution for two waitrose stores because they couldn't really believe whether it was going to they were like they sort of thought this might work but didn't really believe it would so weren't prepared to give us a listing and but we were like well look we really believe it will work so we'll we'll show you and we'll go to all the hassle of doing direct store distribution for those two stores and and it flew you know the richmond store i think it was just absolutely you know there was a whole end and it was just like stacked and the manager loved it he was like no honestly this is flying this is flying and of course that then builds the confidence to get the 50 store listing and then we had to work hard to make that listing work and then it was like then you roll out to 100 stores and it was very very incremental we never it was it was hugely helpful in a way that we had a short shelf life because it was completely obvious you can't go to too many stores because if you've got short shelf life and you're too many stores you're waste right so we it was just a fun it was a function of our it was completely the right strategy irrespective whether you've a long shelf life or a short shelf life to to go to the right number of stores and support them and then move to the next long it's far too easy to try and roll out to a thousand stores and then not be able to get the rate of sale the rotation um our short shelf life meant we we didn't really have an option that strategy it wasn't us being particularly smart it was like it was would have been evident madness to go into a thousand stores not that we'd have got that listing at the beginning but um but it is it's it's so important what really matters is whether you're selling fast your rate of sale and whether you're adding to the category you know if you're doing those two things the supermarket's going to be happy right yeah um and so and so you just and just a bit of patience to make sure that each step of the distribution is working really well is is key and that's what we we look for in the brands we work with at jam jar it's what we what we did at innocent and i just think it's the way you build a brand the it's only the big multinationals who've already got huge established relationships can go right let's bang it out to every store see what happens and if it doesn't work we'll launch something else yeah it's kind of it's yeah putting too many brands in too many stores too early as i say it's like throwing a toddler it's the death knell of too many brands or it makes life so much harder than it would otherwise be you said something that really kind of um set my curiosity going adam in terms of more brands uh kind of sync i think was the word you used with with uh listings that are going um with the wrong terms.

56:30Yes, the wrong terms. What are the absolute right terms in terms of like to build an anti-fragile brand in grocery specifically? Like what are the one to three things that... Look, there's one thing, fundamentally you've got to be able to make money. You know, there's no point in doing a deal that where you look at it and once you've got all your costs in, including your promotional costs, your support costs, you know, all the logistics bits, you're just not making enough money. and it's there's no point in doing it frankly um unless you're very clear that this is this is a loss leading listing because this will get me all the other things i can do those those deals in a different way then you a listing that's fundamentally loss making is pointless and it's too easy to say yes to because it oh things will change things will be different in the next one but often And people go, well, I want the same terms.

57:21I need the same terms. And you end up doing the same thing. And that's, yeah, if you've got a good product and you believe in it, make sure the price you charge is the price that allows you to have a sustainable business. It's, you know, both the price to make sure the profit's there, but also in cash terms. You know, these days there's less room for negotiation on cash terms. you end up you know uh doing whatever the supermarkets say we we pushed very hard at the very beginning to get very short terms and that was hugely helpful in terms of allowing the business to to self-fund um i want to talk about um france and germany because again the and jiles talked about you uh in great terms but he said that there was a um a lot of pressure to get that right and you apparently you were incredibly stoic in terms of like saying this is this is the way the brand's gonna go yeah could you just um like kind of add some color to that period in the business and how what the pressures were and how you remain stoic and then and then how you got got it going I suppose yeah so we decided um we did a big bit of strategy work and say, how do we expand Innocent?