PerfectTed founders: 11 Totally New Brand Building Principles - from Garage to Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Tesco, ASDA in 18 months

0:00Buongiorno, buongiorno, buongiorno, buongiorno. hey guys super excited for this perfect head on my days what an amazing brand and business they've built, Teddy and Marissa are on it, the whole team's on it went to their office on a Wednesday night to record it, the whole team's there at the end, these lot are grafting so hard there's so much in this episode there's a whole new approach to brand building, a kind of bottom up naive intelligence, a beauty of like the same things differently and they have you know this one percent friday team lunch that we get into we get into the hardest geezer partnership and how that drove loads of shoppers to the meal deal um we talk about roy sutherland's framing perceived value um why you must increase your surface area of luck there's just so much in this go beyond the rate of sales absolute fucking gold so yeah look this podcast is beginning to grow but we grow one recommendation at a time please we'd be so grateful love you so much if you could share it maybe leave a review all the usual jazz but anyway perfect ted you're in for a treat thank you where have you got to go i'm saying girl so i'll get um you'll get a robot a rollicking she'll be there at the restaurant and i won't be there where are you going kiln and sir is it good yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's quite interesting is what i want to open with is i just said quite a british word walking i want to explore i don't even know what that means is it like it's like a bollocking but more uh british but what um sounds more painful main more painful yeah i think i'll sit here what so i'm going to jump in if yeah let's do it so well as i was saying to you teddy um there's this there's this book i'm reading now um well disney's autobiography super interesting and um it's done i think what yeah it's fucking dense you can tell me a while to get through but what we said there about the British word rollicking versus American words I think your accent's super interesting it's quite weird when it's to start a podcast it's weird but your accent kind of crosses the bridge from from America and the UK you've kind of it's a delicious melting pot your accent and I want to where I'm going with this is I want to explore one of my fascinations is the difference between British um british people dreaming and their ability to think they can do something with themselves versus americans and i think it's a really interesting lens i think obviously people most people into this podcast are super kind of go-getters this chapter is called go-getters but i'd love to explore kind of yeah america versus the uk but i want to open with this chapter nick because he of talks about where what happened post the war and how um how america got this resurgence for kind of the american dream entrepreneurship and he says as one historian put it of the country's good fortune america at the close of the great war was a cinderella uh magically clothed in the most stunning dress at the ball a ball to which cinderella had not even been invited immense gains with no visible price tag seemed to be the american destiny this was not only a mood it translated into a national ethos of hope a hopefulness not hopefulness uh heedless heedlessness that gave rise in turn to a new national type who seemed to embody post-war hopefulness the go-getter the go-getter perhaps epitomized and characterized uh by the 1920s comedian and Harold's Herb, blah, blah, blah, blah.

3:38And he talks about brash can do obliviousness. And I think, and what does he say here? He says, the power of his will to realise his dreams, guts and goodness in tandem. And I think that page sums up the American culture. But then also, as I've walked in here today or this evening, and I've spoken to Rom, there is this kind of guts and goodness and this go-getter attitude, this energy. I suppose the first question, we'll start with you, Teddy, and then we'll get your perspective. But what is the edge you get being an American or living in America, say a brand on British oil? It's kind of ironic because you called it an edge, I think.

4:21Was that what we use? The word we use is hunger. And I think the biggest thing... Hungry puckles. That's why it's ironic. And I think what's really interesting is when buyers or retailers mean us for the first time they're like what are you guys on like where is that energy from and you know yes it's it's from the product but i think it's also for a passion for entrepreneurship and a lot of people listening to this podcast will get it um and will share that same passion so for us when we think about america entrepreneurship there is very much celebrated when you say you're starting a business your friends support you they buy the product they want you to win and i think the market more generally also do when vcs invest there they have a more um i think i think visionary approach to investing whereas the vcs that we've spoken to in the uk are way more focused on the downside so i think it's a very much very much a cultural difference and we're dreamers we like to think you know please god we're even visionaries um but yeah we celebrate entrepreneurship when you said when you said visionary the vcs are more visionary i think that paints the picture perfectly whereas the british are more downside go into that a little bit more maybe you want to say that marissa well i was going to say actually something a little different because that said we both worked in america following our graduation from college and decided that that wasn't for us that kind of culture and um i think that it would be irresponsible to not discuss the costs of that whole of that hustle culture because I know for myself, I was the most depressed that I've ever felt in my life working in finance in New York.

6:07And I was just on this nonstop hamster wheel of stress, showing up to work, not liking who I was working with and feeling like I was trying to achieve a goal that was so far away that I could never achieve. i think though that might just be more of a corporate thing than anything and entrepreneur entrepreneurship is definitely more celebrated in america but what you said there is there's when you're in finance there's a goal you have to achieve yeah the goal is as in when you're the corporate finance route but then what you said there about dreams i think there's a very big difference between when you've got your own dream it gives you dreams give you life someone said that on a podcast i love that quote dreams give you life and uh whereas a goal in finance i've gotta get to fucking time that out to get here then yeah then here hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative endeavor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls let's go back into um in to that period in new york and like talk me through i think a lot of brands are started with you need to kind of hit rock bottom to sprue back up we're already when we're doing this podcast like the rocket ship is is very much in orbit right i'd love to go back into kind of these the nascent periods of the brand you both in new york what's the no so teddy's a brit yeah so i went to university in philadelphia then moved to los angeles worked in management consulting there moved back to the uk um still working management consulting but have always been a dreamer you know i was a kid at university that was always like i'd love to start my own business and so for me i was a kid who had also seen every episode of dragon's den so for me it wasn't a case as to whether i was going on dragon's den it was with what business and when like that was that was part of the dream that was part of the plan i have a question did you think he was american i i knew there was a link a link because i haven't even talked i was speaking to your mom in in I was when you guys launched at London Coim Festival like I was you know in old Truman Brewery it's like a fucking raven there you can't breathe yeah and I was speaking to your mum for like literally about an hour and a half chewing her ear off about all things match it and then obviously now this is the brand and she was saying to me that yeah your sons her sons had lived in america but i thought yeah you were kind of half yeah well that's why i wanted university and work yeah yeah interesting yeah i'm the i'm the american here i'm the new yorker yeah yeah yeah but i think i think what's interesting though on the point of like the difference between america and the uk specifically with entrepreneurship is and i put this out on linkedin i've had a few comments recently which were like um oh nice to see you teddy haven't seen you in a while you think like are you too good for us or uh oh you're an entrepreneur please give me some tips but in a in a bit of a sarky kind of like um i don't know not nice way um whereas in america people celebrate that entrepreneurship i feel like in the uk there is a certain amount of excitement around a brand when it's very much at the beginning and people feel like they haven't really had much success but then when you do start to have a little bit of success a little bit of growth it's almost like well fuck i don't want them to be i find it endlessly fascinating how it's the brits are so self-deprecating yeah um and like you know we call it taking the fucking piss right like but we're so self-deprecating but then when uh and we have tall poppy syndrome you know tall poppy syndrome the tall poppy gets cut off says i don't get too big for your boots is the obvious expression i've never heard that yeah don't get too big for your boots but then and you're so right they'll support you they'll support you support you support you and then as soon as you're at the top they'll rip you down and i interviewed a chef last week um that happened to be got a huge following on social amazing restaurant in west london got ripped ripped down yeah what does i feel in america it's the opposite you know it's interesting as well so we launched the brand on kickstarter um are you you're familiar with kickstarter i probably should know that so kickstarter is an amazing platform for people who are kind of testing out concepts right basically you can throw out an idea you obviously have to have somewhat of a plan and maybe like a prototype available but you can test out a concept and get people to buy it before it's actually produced and then use the pre-sales to make the product so that's actually what we did And we launched in April of 2021 on Kickstarter for this concept.

11:25And I remember when we first launched, for whatever reason, we were able to ship to America. We had more American friends purchasing our products before launch than we did Brits. And I thought that was so telling of the level of support that people would get in the UK for pursuing something entrepreneurial. because I was like the fact that their friends aren't even buying is shocking to me I mean even last week something we put out on LinkedIn about having a videographer to capture the moment and showcase the journey someone commented that's not vision that's narcissism and I'm just like why are you sitting there at your desk um and just putting out such like negative people love our content people watch our content people get enjoyment from our content you know we have cancer survivors that drink our product as an energy boost we have people that suffer from ptsd and can't drink other energy products and drink the product um as an aid and it's just like there's so much there's enough negativity in the world so as a brand what we stand for is spreading positive energy so whether you like our product or not whether you um you know like marissa and i or not hopefully you walk away having listened to this podcast at least feeling the passion and energy that comes out of us and hopefully that's inspiring to you on your own journey.

12:41And you know, it's interesting in this industry, I think it is one of the most welcoming, positive, friendly industries that you could possibly be in. However, I do think that sometimes you get brands that are a bit competitive and they, they get a little annoyed when they see something positive celebrated on LinkedIn or something. I think that, you know, all challenger brands who make it help pave the way for future challenger brands. Right. And so we celebrate success of other brands in our space, even if they're in the energy drink space, because it's just growing the market. It's helping show that challenger brands actually have a chance at making it like the big dogs.

13:23It's the positive energy, positive some game, right? The bigger the category grows, the bigger you grow. Everyone wins. I think, again, that's very much a feast mindset. And it's like there's enough to go around for everyone. whereas i think in the in the uk and again i think you're so right marissa not in our little weird microcosm of challenge of food and drink 99.9 percent of people are really positive i'm talking more as a one on bigger macro level but i think on a bigger macro level people are way more fucking in the uk famine mindset do you know what i mean it's like there's not enough to go around and i think you're so right like trying to pull people down i suppose the flip side of this is what do you think the the british kind of sardonicness and like kind of piss taking how did how do you think that can benefit uh american founders like what how what do you think american us could get from that i think there's something very powerful to sarcasm and taking kind of i guess the piss out of yourself yeah because it it just makes things less serious I think that there is a very serious nature to work and to entrepreneurship in America because maybe it's because there's more money on the line.

14:43I'm not quite sure. And it just feels very it feels probably maybe a little less fun. I think maybe in the more entrepreneurial landscape in the UK, people are happy to be a bit more goofy, try things, experiment. Whereas in the US, maybe there's a bit more at stake given that a lot of the time, a lot of the, especially in food and beverage, a lot of the businesses, the startups are funded by VCs and by PE. So I think maybe they have less room to experiment and try things out, be goofy. Yeah, because one of my, as I said right at the beginning, one of my endless fascinations is the American, the relationship between the Brits and the Americans.

15:27And, you know, in everything, we benefit each other so well. Yeah, that's true. In music, when Bob Dylan met John Lennon, the Beatles met John Lennon, is they're both their music by two different cultures, but similar colliding, made both their music better. learn i think you can learn i think you want the big dreamer but you want the taking the piss that's a delicious little alchemy right there what um how do you guys dream because i think um there's a big difference between founder's dream here here in the soul to getting people upstairs like rom who's clearly has been infused with that dream like how do you how do you do that i kind of just comment on that i think um it's very frustrating to have an idea and a dream and for that to only live on paper or to live in your head it's a very safe way to have a dream because the dream is alive for as long as you don't fail right and as soon as you start to act on that dream and execute execute against that plan and that dream then that's where the risk in is in in that dream dying so for example for me i always wanted to be a professional footballer and the day that i got an injury that meant I couldn't play football anymore was a day that my dream of becoming a professional footballer died.

16:45The way that I think we inspire dreaming at Perfect Ted at least is through action and execution. It's like if you go to the gym. If you go to the gym and you don't see any results, you don't see yourself getting a little bit fitter or you start running and you don't see your time getting a little bit better on the 5k, it's a little bit demoralizing. I think as humans we're inspired by seeing positive results against a positive action. And look, having said that you send out 100 emails to buyers and retailers maybe you don't get any responses but i guarantee you if you refine that process and you keep going you're persistent you'll at least get a response and you'll improve and until you test and learn test and learn and improve against you know so the the plan that you'd originally drawn up to execute against that dream sorry this is a long wind winded way winded way of saying just fucking execute and and the team upstairs know that you know there are collabs or giveaways or social content there are products that we will launch that don't work but unless you try we'll never know and if we don't try someone else will try yeah and that's a missed opportunity we really believe in those one percent gains so actually every week what we do at the end of the week is me as a team and we all discuss the one percent gain that we achieved that week and one percent that we're trying to achieve next week and it's it's a way that we can hold ourselves accountable but keep each other accountable as well what was last week's what was last week's i can go for mine yeah um i see so this is on an individual basis weekly and does that filter into like as a macro team basis or is it no it's individual goal so it's what one percent thing did you do better last week and what one percent thing you're focusing on for next week for me it's um there is a clear correlation between you know if you're trying to grow a community between the amount of good quality content you put in and how fast that community grows i will be posting on linkedin five days a week for the next 52 weeks i think it's mine as well and you will not see five days a week you will see a post from marissa and i and it's that relentless consistency and it encourages you it forces you to be creative it forces you to keep in touch with what's going on in the market um and and testing out different marketing messages so that's my focus i have to say i've actually been consistently writing now for two weeks and i feel more educated more eloquent i feel like i've been challenging my brain to think outside of the box and and you know look for different vocabulary than i than i would usually have in my vernacular i feel like i just feel all around more educated better the so obviously i write every week i have a newsletter and i've been writing the same as you guys and it's interesting why i love doing these sorts going completely able with these conversations is we've kind of got to where we started is is that uh writing is a way to dream yeah writing is i love rick rubin's got a quote which is you've got to submerge and when you write like you can't i mean i do it with loads of like blasting techno going because i need my brain to shut up like that's weirdly shuts up my brain what artists do you like um marco carolla uh jamie jones some sort Ibiza mix will shut down that noise and then my leaves my left brain just to go dancing quite literally and all these beautiful ideas comes charging in but that that moment and I do it first thing I would love to know what your kind of creative process is allows you to dream and there's a there's a founder from a jeans brand who's been on podcast called Hyatt Denim yeah who's super interesting guy amazing yeah he's next yeah so David Hyatt absolutely G and he writes every day and he says every founder should write because it allows you to just there's no new line forms when you're submerged there's no you know i also think that um someone else said this on another podcast which i really resonated with it's like some people can be amazing orators and it can sound amazing when you speak about something but i think until you write it down or when you write it down it's really easy to see where the gaps in your in your reasoning and your logic are and if you know there are some times where i'll write an amazing hook for a linkedin post and i'll start to beef that out with you know a different message or kind of beef that story out and i'll realize that actually you know this doesn't make sense and that may have been an amazing hook or amazing thought in my mind but until i tried to flesh it out i couldn't understand why it wouldn't make sense so back to your point about dreaming um in addition to writing i think another another kind of tool that i implemented my dreaming toolkit is manifestation and not in the woo sense of manifestation i think so i mean this is a perfect example of the word manifestation to british people was like it's like what you want about mate yeah exactly but it's like you know my initial reaction was that but anyway yes but it's it's combining manifestation with action And I really do believe that by putting things out into the world, whether it's actually like saying it or even just having physical signs of it, you're holding yourself accountable as well to make that happen.

21:58And so I can give you an example. I remember before we went on the den, there was an episode that Stephen Bartlett did with Matt Hancock and they had they had another drinks brand. I won't mention the name on the table and I photoshopped it to have perfect head on the table instead and we went on and we gave it our all we got five offers from all the dragons accepted an offer from Stephen and fast forward almost a year later Stephen had perfect head on his podcast drinking it with Aubrey Marcus and so that for me felt like such validation that this tactic works it's the same way that when i was applying to um grad school in the uk i was so desperate to get my full job um and i really wanted to get in and i literally i sound silly but i went out to a local shop got myself a raincoat and it was like it's going to be rainy in london you know so i'm going to need this one day and um for me those signs help uh oh i have just discovered a secret weapon please please please don't tell anyone this secret weapon and helps you get listed, stay listed, and most importantly, grow.

23:11This secret weapon is being used by absolutely banging brands like Bold Bean Co., Perfect Head, Neat, Trip, and Cheeky Panda. No wonder they're absolutely smashing it. But look, are you ready to get your mitts on this secret weapon? Absolutely smash it too. I am thrilled, so thrilled to announce our brand new podcast partner, Northstar. What is Northstar, I hear you thinking? Northstar is a monthly subscription to an online platform giving you access to category data, category insights, anytime, anyplace, anywhere. It's basically the Netflix for challenger brands. It levels the playing field. Why do you need category data?

23:45Well, the first thing is making your pitch speak of the buyers and retail language is so, so important. It's going to help you unlock more listings, unlock deeper distribution with existing clients, back the right MPD, and actually understand how your competition is performing. But the even better news, are you ready to rock and roll at your next range of view? you no longer need to hire a full-time Gary manager, instead just parachute in Northstar with your next Waitrose, Sainsbury's or Tesco range reviews coming up, they're your outsourced in-house partner, save money their team will come in, they'll help you prep plan and smash the next range review I'm so excited to be partnering with Northstar check them out in the episode description below what would you because you've had such a fast rocket ship trajectory, what advice would you give to someone who may be listening to this who is trying to link manifestation to execution because i think that's a gorgeous link up i think if you do one or the other you do one without the other you're going in the wrong direction it's like trying to steer the ship without knowing where you're going but what would you what would you say to someone who's listening to this who is putting the effort in isn't necessarily getting the results maybe in like a category and not this isn't to be disparaging against Catherine this maybe can't be like hard seltzer which isn't the rage anymore yeah what would you say to them how do they link manifestation to action execution well this might be an unpopular opinion but I would before you can even get to that stage I would do some reflection and think, okay, if this isn't working, why isn't it working?

25:27Are you in a category or are you trying to do something in a category that's in decline? Do you have a product that isn't innovative? Is something up with your branding? I would think first, is there anything that is like glaring me in the face that is so obvious to other people that isn't working for me that I, that is kind of a sign that I shouldn't be pursuing this idea. And whether that's you doing some deep reflection or asking people who are close to you and actually want to see you succeed, like your family, your close friends, I would first suggest doing that. But if all, because I think when we apply manifestation to action, we are confident that whatever we're trying to apply ourselves to will work.

26:15And because we've done the research and we have the evidence that it has worked before. So the reason why I felt like I could buy that raincoat and I, and it would help for whatever reason, get myself into the right mentality of, of getting myself to London and getting into school was because I had previously successfully applied to a university and gotten in. And that for me was enough evidence and gave me the confidence that I could manifest my way into this new situation. And I think equally, we felt like we were going to go onto the den and nail it. And I think having that confidence that we were going to do that, it just made me that much more like dedicated to making sure that that was going to happen by making that picture.

27:08I know that sounds kind of silly, but I think you need to know deep down that you are onto something and that you have the capability of doing it. I'm also going to offer an unpopular opinion. I don't think it's mind-blowing to think that, and this is the way that I think about growth, or at least success, is it's 5 % idea, 5 % luck, and 90 % execution, or somewhere along those lines. and the way I think about that is about is around increasing the surface area of getting lucky you know there's a lot of people that talk about this I truly believe that if you are in the game long enough you will get opportunities you will get lucky and if you're constantly innovating say for example you've launched a product and you're not having the success you wanted if you pivot and you follow the data you follow the research you follow the the advice you're getting from good quality people and you pivot and you keep moving forward you will get opportunities you will get buyers that respond it they may not respond on the third email you know i think one of the challenging things about the content we put out is people think that buyers just respond to our emails they do not even after we've had seven million eyeballs on our product and brand following dragon's den you know i won't say who but there is a retailer that did not respond i think i counted for like 35 emails and you know those weren't 35 emails over 35 weeks those were over two years so I wasn't spamming their inbox and there's a right and wrong way to do it.

28:35But I think we do not want to give the illusion that any of this has, has been easy just because it's happened relatively quickly and that we don't want to give the illusion that it continues to be easy because it's not. And you know that better than anyone. Yeah. So it's really interesting because it's, I was talking to someone the other day about how the brand, because your directory has gone so quick, right? Like, you know, some brands will wait 10 years for a Tesco 16. We've heard 14 times from year one to year two. What have been the, I believe, a founder, just like the brand has to scale, the founder has to scale in terms of weaknesses, skill sets, learning.

29:19When I last saw you, Marissa, was that blood and jam before, just after you'd been on the den, there's still three of you. Now office 10 people. what have been the hardest bits about your personal growth and development that have had to match the speed of perfect head growing yeah um i can talk to some of that i think that i constantly go through periods of getting lost like it probably happens every couple of months getting lost feeling lost um feeling very lost um and not knowing what my role is which is great in some ways because it means you're making yourself redundant by hiring a great team but also the challenges become different and so because we're not facing the same challenges you almost feel like you're that founder who's in their bedroom starting starting the brand again because you're facing a new challenge that you've never seen before another great example that i don't know why i feel comfortable sharing this but i cried last week in the office i can't remember the last time I cried right here right here on this sofa because because of a there is so much pressure that I think we put on ourselves pressure that by the way there's been amazing things that happened since we went on tv but at the same time you know we cycled to a meeting today someone comes up in the street goes oh perfect ted and that's great and it's amazing for the brand but it also means there is a lot of pressure because if things don't go well then you know that's a reflection on you and there's no hiding but i also think on the flip side that's our biggest superpower because now that we're out there now that people know about my dating life they've seen us on tv they know we're the founders of the brand it's like there's no hiding and so that kind of fires you up in a way and so going back to our previous conversation about how do you execute against that dream for me it's like putting yourself out there because i think that's the best way to hold yourself accountable building in public yes that's so we're good there's a whole delta of curiosity to go down there especially as we've got we're getting this recorded but i think um what you've said there about there's a quote i love and i've heard on a podcast by chris williamson i don't even know his modern wisdom he's amazing yes i'm trying to get him on speaking to his team he just launched um i was going to say neurotic he said a quote which i can love which is pressure is a privilege and i've done that with myself is is with this podcast is like monday friday monday friday monday friday that's podcast monday newsletter friday but i'm not missing that beat that that cadence and as as you say it forces creativity comes from constraint i think by having that militant schedule and actually this links to manifestation because if you're constantly putting out in the world it's creating more pressure which means you kind of got to do it and there's a self i'm trying to get to this dreaming things it feels like you guys got such big dreams but then linking it to the execution and it is building public for sure i also think it's the rules that we set ourselves so we're really good as humans at following rules that other people set but like why don't we leverage rules to um to to lead our own life so a great example of this is if you go out and you say i don't think i want to drink tonight and you say you're not drinking your friends like come on have a drink go on you know you want to drink yeah You're more likely to have a drink than if you say, I categorically do not drink.

32:39And so, for example, me, I'm training for a marathon. I do not drink. And so I've had times where people are like, oh, go on, have a drink. And I'm like, I have a rule. I do not drink. With LinkedIn, I have a rule. I post every single day. I have a rule. I go to the gym X times a week. And some people may say that's a very rigid way to live your life. But I actually think there's so much satisfaction and discipline. um and when things don't go wrong you you know sorry when things go wrong it's not a case of oh maybe i didn't put in the work it's just a case of okay maybe i need to refine those rules maybe i need to refine that strategy rather than stressing about oh i didn't put in enough work there are so many founders that i guarantee you are listening to this podcast thinking i could work harder i could work harder and i don't think that's always a solution i don't always think it's you can work harder just maybe you need to work differently and well just set rules personal rules yeah i think it's not about i know this so sounds so cliche not working harder and smarter it's not even that it's like um it's it's the personal discipline i've probably been a bore listeners to death but i'm three months off booze now and smoking vaping the full shebang like getting way too into it i'm gonna go back so i'm like i'm excited i'm excited for a guinness especially as it's getting cold yeah um but yeah in terms of just that there's a quote i love which is moderation by montague um which is moderation is harder than absence by actually just saying no you just take take it off the table take it off fucking table it's so much easier what the um what would you say some of your personal rules because what i'm finding fascinating is how you've got this fun bubbly um brand but internally and like in the founder's soul is this ruthless discipline what would you say some of your rules are work related or personal i think they're too intertwined yeah i guess i mean my work is personal isn't it um i would say doing something for me every single day is is a non-negotiable and that could either be calling a friend and having a really nice conversation going to the gym this all sounds very very you know basic and somewhat cliche but i think that if i don't do something for me i don't feel like i can put myself my best self forward it's the same way that people say you can't love someone else until you love yourself so showing myself self-love i guess and and ensuring that every single day even if i if i miss the gym i'll i'll call a girlfriend and have a really great chat um or i will make myself a really wholesome meal so whether it's just spending a little bit of time either by myself or with a loved one um working out cooking whatever it is that is non-negotiable for me and i must do that otherwise i will go crazy and there have been times when i have not done that and my mental health has gone i kind of alluded to some of the rules i have the one that i'm trying to figure out that i'd love from any listeners or from you is the reason that i was crying last week is because of the pressure that i put on myself we're really fortunate in that we don't have external investors other than stephen bartlett from dragon's den so the pressure that we put on ourselves is very much self-inflicted talk talk to me about that pressure like what are the voices in your head when you're down here about to cry so i think it'll be very cathartic for myself yeah i think um before we started the brand if someone told me they had anxiety i would have been like nah you're just nervous come on but until you wake up in the morning and feel like you have a brick on your chest like that to me was the first manifestation of anxiety um and so when I was sitting here in this chair it was a culmination of so many different things and actually nothing to do with business performance more just like I don't know why something had happened and the thought of something being ripped out from beneath my feet business related that we'd fought so hard for was just like i mean as an example every time and people will relate to this every time you get a new buyer scares the shit out of me not because i'm worried that the buyer won't won't like us or whatever but you just never know and we've worked so hard to earn that space on shelf we've worked so hard to build a brand where you know people respond to our emails for example shiny was saying the other day anyone who works at perfect ted is going to get a massive shock when they go and work in another food and beverage brand because we've invested so hard in creating a brand whereby when you sign off with the perfect email you will get a higher response rate fortunately than than you know when we started originally because we'd spent that time investing in a brand that that people want to support or that people like or that people hopefully respect um and so i guess what i'm saying is is the the crying came from the pressure and the pressure came from anxiety and the anxiety came from the feeling of not wanting to lose what we've built and i don't know if that will ever go away but i can definitely find ways to deal with that better what are some of those ways that's a good question going on dates and kiln yeah exactly i know that that's actually part of it i think i've under-invested massively on things outside of work for the past two three years everything from like things like dating to I go to the gym but the biggest thing I felt like I'd lost is a sense of community you know I don't play on any sports teams and I think that also is what drives Marissa and I to build our own community yes to make other people feel like they have a community but honestly probably selfishly to feel like we have a community too when you and so for me it was like I'd lost my sense of otherness beyond the brand and I think it's very dangerous when you start defining yourself by the brand i saw what happened with football when i had to stop playing and i actually met with a sports psychologist who who the university provided and he said stop thinking of yourself as teddy the soccer player you're teddy who plays soccer and i need to start i need to stop thinking of myself as teddy of perfect ted and Teddy who, I don't know, who works for Perfect Ted or works.

39:00Do you know what I mean? It's like separating yourself from. Yeah. I mean, my self-worth is directly, which is fucked, related to this podcast. Yeah. I mean, which is like, and so I've stopped in terms of rules, stopped looking at views. I just don't even, I don't even look at it. I don't. Because also then it dictates the conversation. Yeah. You know, I've always wanted to be present, curious. those two things happen whereas before all that episode to do i'm gonna ask those questions and it's like you're going away from from this do you know i mean i think there's having that separation between you and your brand is always the hardest thing it's really hard because we all have an ego right and so you want to feed that ego and views will feed your ego likes on a linkedin post will feed your ego right um i think what i have tried to do personally um is look at certain activities that would usually be more ego led as business enhancing and brand building.

39:57And so if my LinkedIn post doesn't slap, if it gets like 20 likes, right, maybe a year ago, that would have hit me differently. I would have felt self conscious. Oh, I'm a bad writer. That was a bad idea. I shouldn't have shared that all these feelings of self doubt would come flooding in. But today I'm like, hey, I did it again. I was consistent. I posted. Who cares if I got 20 likes? At least I did it. It's going to add up eventually, you know, these gains. And also you never know. I did one post which got like five likes. But that one like. Yeah. The quality. Well, the guy today commented on it was heads up the do lectures for David Hyatt.

40:40He got three videos, three likes just post. But I think that works. delighted to announce the extension of our partnership with the wonderful billion pool from mckenzie jones but even more exciting they have just launched a brand new brand as part of mckenzie jones called mkj ignite mkj ignite is a recruitment firm which specializes full shebang focus entirely on challenge brand space they work with some incredible brands lucky saint good race purdy and fig hunt and gather and real superfoods they can support with your hiring needs across all levels top to bottom junior entry level jobs all the way through and up to md ceo level so if you're looking for a field sales stomper a sales wizard an ops guru a supply chain sensei uh you name it mkj ignite can help you out and look if you're looking to wet your whistle ignite your curiosity then check out the poddy we recorded with them back in july laden with wisdom all about like do's and don'ts of hiring and like how to create the perfect job description you will love it i'd love to go back to like the the evening or the day that you guys first met like where was that paint the picture so the scene can i paint it yeah sure oh because i think we have different perspectives of this so actually we may have met when we were 10 there it's unconfirmed but we go into that so i'm american i'm from new york teddy's british She's from London and his family would frequent this place in Florida every year for holiday.

42:18And I happen to go to the same place every year with my family. And I would say that there were probably only like 200 people who consistently went to this place. So out of everyone in the world for us to both end up at this place is a bit odd, right? I'm not a religious person, but I do believe that the universe works in odd ways. And I think the fact that we're now in this situation is telling of of that. But we actually met the first day of university at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. And I I would say it was really different back then. 18 years old, straight out of high school.

43:01I guess I had a bit of an ego. I think you did as well, probably. And I thought I was being funny. I was wearing athleisure. i remember and teddy was on the athleisure athleisure like athletic leisure lululemon i don't know and so people don't want to look like they work out but yeah yeah athleisure i like that and i may have had headphones in or something i don't remember but um teddy was playing on the football team at penn the soccer team in america and he came up to me and was like oh are you going into the gym and i said no i just want people to think i'm sporty as a joke right and he was like this girl is so obnoxious and then yeah that's kind of how it started yeah what was your gut feeling about each other when you first met i was i honestly was just like who is this obnoxious person she started dating my brother and we became friends and the rest is so so how did you meet is it it's levi yeah yeah such a good name what um i'm not saying that's what but what um how did you meet levi what was the uh a frat party marissa and levi met and then sorry is that in fraternity fraternity party what is that it's like greek life sorority fraternity it's like if you've seen animal house it's i know i know what a frat frat what is a frat though is it like you don't have a 20k it's a brotherhood no yeah it's just like um school life and also yeah it's like a club it's like it just seems so weird yeah it's weird stuff that we probably it's a great way to meet people but i saw levi from across the room and i thought he was really cute and so i approached him and i said hey do you want to go shotgun a beer had never shotgun a beer in my life had no idea how to do it i just thought i sounded cool again probably i don't know what this is are we in your athesia doing this but i had some weird one-liners back then like whoa if you don't know what shotgunny a beer is google it it's where you yeah yeah yeah yeah um and that's kind of that's it eight years now and then at what point so you become kind of great mates well obviously you're you're well now you're married yet no we're getting married next month amazing congratulations um what are the steps to you thinking right the world needs a match to drink let's create perfect ted talk me through those three months three steps so glad that you asked that so um actually it's around this time when i'm 18 and meeting teddy and levi for the first time that i am this is 2015 2016 um but this was probably in 2016 so university was was hard it was definitely a shock to the system because it was much harder than high school was for me and you're kind of like you go from being a big fish in a small pond to a little fish in a freaking massive pond right you are nothing um that you used to be or so you think and so i was relying heavily on caffeine to keep me going and to like basically fuel my 12-hour study sessions in the library but it turns out that the coffee and the energy drinks that i was consuming were actually making me feel like shit and actually causing me to be less productive than i would be had i not even been drinking them and i think this was definitely exacerbated by the fact that I have anxiety and ADHD and caffeine is terrible for anxiety, um, specifically coffee.

46:46And, um, ADHD is also, you know, it's really hard to deal with if you are too jittery. Um, you can't focus if you're like shaking out of your chair. So a friend one day approached me in the library and she was like, you can't keep doing this to yourself. Like you need, you need to try this. Um, and she recommended matcha. I'd never heard of it she told me it was a kind of green tea that um gave you energy but a different type of energy that made you feel a bit more calm leveled um no jitters no crashes and i was like all right i'll give it a try and wasn't expecting much and genuinely again sounds cliche but it had the most profound impact on my life because i was like i rely on caffeine and actually um so adhd there's a lot of research that shows that there's um something related to like a dopamine deficiency when you have adhd and um caffeine indirectly um helps to activate the dopamine dopaminergic system in your brain but it also um l-theanine which is in matcha um also does as well but again it counter it counteracts the stimulatory effects of caffeine so i can kind of get into that in a second.

48:01But anyways, switch to this amazing source of caffeine. And when I moved to the UK, I was really surprised by how few matcha options that there were on the market, because in America, it was so prevalent. I could find it at my local cafe. I could find it at the supermarket. I could find it everywhere. And I could find it in RTDs as well, ready to drink beverages. And so I kind of looked around and Teddy actually got pretty hooked on matcha as well when he was living in LA because again it's a big thing in America and we all moved into a house together um fast forward five years from the time I was 18 so when I was 23 and we started making matcha in the house every day and we were like damn this is good stuff because I we would bring we would buy our own from like Japan and um and then we were like wow why can't we find these in cafes?

48:55Why can't we get this in the supermarket here locally? And then I was like, okay, well, you know, I also kind of want another option, looked around at the natural energy space, thinking that there must be some sort of drink that offers a different type of caffeine that I can tolerate. And there wasn't, there were natural options that use natural ingredients, but there was no type of caffeine that I myself could tolerate. And so we were like, this feels like a really ripe opportunity i was in grad school looking for some sort of idea and um teddy was at his previous job not the happiest i would say and we we kind of just were like should we do this and i think like haphazardly we were like yeah let's try it let's do it and incorporated a business really easy to incorporate a business by the way i did not realize how easy that was and went on this journey and it's kind of it's mad it's just fascinating seeing you know we were talking about dreaming at the beginning and um how teddy you said that you know you were at want to be a footballer that failed not failed but just didn't work out on to the next thing but you said i always knew i was going to find be the founder of a business i was going to go on dragon's den it was i didn't know what the idea was and that you know that eventually happened so you're making it home when when does the actual birth of perfect head happen because i always find that that month or two three months super interesting yeah i think this is where also some of the listeners hopefully can and ultimately like what we want is for this podcast to to drive value for whoever's listening so i'll probably give like a high level but it was very much like had the kitchen recipe then worked with the recipe developer we worked with sh foodie who were fantastic um still work with them still work some refinements yeah still work with them and then we did a small production run tested the product out at a trade show got some really good feedback and very early on got interest from holland and barrett who actually reached out to us through instagram so that was our first proper listing and that was probably the moment where we were like okay wow we really have created something quite innovative and probably are on track to creating a brand that that stands out given the fact that we had no outbound sales team we hadn't emailed holland and barrett they'd actually found us i think a really important part of our journey though has been um when when we have to pivot actually um because the idea that we initially had for perfect ted is not the product that we have here today talk to me about that yeah so So when we were doing our kitchen recipes, we were like, we need to can a matcha latte and a matcha tea.

51:37Realize that it would be a bit more difficult to can. So we switched to a Tetra Pak, which is what Vita Coco is in. And went down this process for about six months doing R &D on a matcha latte and a tea in a Tetra Pak. and i remember it got we launched on kickstarter with this product i've seen this yeah yeah yeah and pre-sold 10 000 pounds worth of product in 23 hours which was pretty cool um pre-sold a bit more after that but then we got a call from the manufacturer about a month later and they were like we're really sorry we had to push out your your uh production date to 2023 or something like that and we were just like what the heck you know like we we need to put something out we just pre-sold all this product um and we can't deliver on it what are we going to do and so we thought about it and we're like well really the intention was to create like a caffeine alternative the most logical format for that is actually an energy drink because that's what we're trying to do and by pairing it with fruity flavors we were making it really accessible for non-matcha drinkers to try and i think i think yeah i think one of the lessons there is that when things go really really really wrong there often is a silver lining you just have to look close enough for us that product at that time would not have worked so the fact that the manufacturer pulled out and the fact that we'd lost a bit of money on that recipe was the best thing that ever happened to us and I also think there's another I normally have a notepad but I want to say this before I forget because I think there are a couple other things that I think hopefully listeners will get value out of is one I think there's a difference between real innovation and fake innovation fake innovation is doing something different that no one cares about or that people won't pay a premium before if you're charging if you're creating a more premium product that offers a slight difference in benefit so for example for us you know if there's something else in the market that delivers on the functionality that we were going after, then what we were creating wouldn't have been truly different.

53:44And I think there are a lot of challenger brands that are like, we've, for example, if I took peanut butter, I don't really know peanut butter well, but imagine there was Manilife that was no added sugars, all natural, just peanuts. I'm going to screw the pitch, whatever. And then, but they were using peanuts from the, I'm going to absolutely just kill this. But where do peanuts come from? I mean, multiple places. China we had ours from Argentina okay cool and they were like you know what I only want to use peanuts that are homegrown homegrown or single origin or pooped out the bum of a monkey yeah that's great that you can then charge a premium and maybe that's innovation because it's a different kind of peanut but the consumers really care um and so for us as we think about product development and as your brand listening and hearing our journey the way that we think about bringing product to market is is there real innovation there because I think it's really hard to get a buyer's attention if there isn't true innovation oh my god i am so so so excited it feels like hungry is finally swimming in the big leagues i can't believe this is absolutely mental but delighted to announce that big fish yes big fish are part of the podcast perry's been on the podcast three times listeners absolutely love it some of our most downloaded and cherished episodes of all time but big fish are behind literally so many brands in your cupboard in your weekly shop Charlie Biggum, Year Valley, Tyrells, Clippity, Goo, Rana, I mean, make the list longer than the River Nile.

55:17But they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good. They're brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing, like Howda, the snack that gives back. But the even more exciting news, Big Fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink brands that are destined for big things. the raconteurs the movies shakers buccaneering visionaries so look if you want to speak to big fishing just have a chat get your brand in front of them then drop me a message my mate louis from local beer amazing beer was in their office aka la fish bowl uh last week chatting to perry freddie and the big fish crew so drop me a message if you would like to speak to them give me another example of fake you don't have to say the brand names but fake innovation versus real innovation because i find that i think it's oh i love doing this you strike on gold i think we've hit gold yeah but what yeah give me more sure a great example for us is when we first created the product we were only using um fruit juices not from concentrate that and that was making the recipe so expensive that there was no way we would have been able to be in a tesco meal deal and what we quickly realized is okay we will have to compromise here and we'll have to use fruit juices not from concentrate but if our goal is to get healthy energy in the hands of as many people as possible we need to be in a tesco meal deal if that's where one in every eight pounds in uk retail goes through we need to play in that retailer and so if that means using fruit juices from concentrate it turns out we did a consumer study consumers didn't really know the difference especially in a sparkling beverage they almost expected it to come from concentrate so you're actually paying more for an ingredient that no one cared about over engineering a product so fake innovation can also be over engineering You know, if many life decide that they are going to only use jars from the UK, great.

57:10But if it increases the price of the product by a pound and people aren't wanting to pay that premium, you know, you're actually hurting what your original mission was, which was to get great tasting healthy peanut butter. So real innovation links to the overall mission is what you're saying. Overall mission, but also what consumers want. Don't try and tell consumers what they want. Ask them. And if they don't want what you're trying to give them, don't try and force it down their throats. it's Matt so I agree with you but I kind of will push back on that as well because I think with you guys which is such a good example is everyone in the UK said match was too niche I bet you got loads of that yeah I mean in fact a million people yeah a million people said I'm niche you may have said that too yeah I think I may have said that yeah I actually think you did say that the who did you say that to to too niche yeah I think you may have said that you said that did I say that you said that to someone and it got back to me not in like a mean one yeah no no I was like okay I may have written about it in my newsletter I think as it was I said match was too niche but for us and that's where the distinction is match is the input the output or the benefit is not too niche energy energy is the number one functional benefit as to why people purchase food and beverage products I said it was too niche I think a lot of people thought it was too niche what you said there is don't just create something and then give people what they want right right you've got it but then i think it's the whole thing of um henry ford of if people asked if you know it wasn't a car people have asked for a half faster horse right whereas i think with energy drinks is people you know you have other brands who were um creating other versions of energy drinks but it wasn't matcha people until you guys came along i don't think in in rtd people thought matcha no do you see what i'm saying no i i i agree with that and i think one thing to go back for a second is even though we we had to pivot and put matcha into a different format the mission was always the same to bring that jitter crash-free anxiety-free energy to the public through by by means of matcha it's about the framing so if you think about an energy drink it's just the trojan horse for us delivering the benefit that matchup provides which is longer lasting chitter-free crash-free energy i think rory sutherland is probably you know rory sutherland yeah yeah yeah he's done twice oh on this podcast yeah yeah he talks a lot about creating perceived value i think it's amazing everything from uber maps to creating a you know putting a mirror in an elevator so people think that it's moving quicker than it really is to red bull tasting like medicine because people perceive that medicine medicinal taste to actually have an impact from an energy perspective so for us it's like how do we package this product in a way that is digestible for people and at the beginning you're totally right we were way too focused on the matcha messaging and people didn't get it but as soon as you tell people it's like oh it's like a healthy energy drink they're like okay great and how's it healthy well it uses matcha rather than synthetic caffeine and it delivers on a different type of energy than what you've previously experienced yeah i think i think with brands um i was talking about this with freya yesterday and with kombucha and how i think what founders and brand not founders but brands and categories can get so bogged down in the features that it takes someone a flight of imagination this is very rory sutherland to start pushing the benefits yeah what trip did so well i remember going to know back in you know the trade show nrpa cbd was ironically that trade show was all green it was everyone it looked medicinal everyone said we've got 25 grams of this 25 grams of that it looked it looked like a chemistry lab right trip came along they stole the queues from other categories repackaged it in terms of perceived value that they led with a benefit obviously the name trip but calm and everyday chaos people are buying calm they've packaged it at calm i think what you guys have done is as is so interesting playing with this it's like the matches were the features you were as you said like so focused on that when you changed it to the we're energy and then you bring this energy alive there's like a cheat code and and actually it's been such a journey i don't want it to think like we you know in the middle of the night i was like oh eureka like amazing we should pivot and actually someone had told us this uh right when we first started they were like why are you focusing on input focus on the output focus on the output you're an energy product you're an energy product that's what people want and i hold my hands up i think that it having match a front and center was the reason we gained listing so quickly because it was so clear to buyers what the innovation was it was on the ingredient and had we led with the healthy energy messaging initially they would have been like oh well it's just like a natural energy drink no but having said that putting matcha front and center made the education piece with consumers that much more difficult so now that we've gained retail listings we very much are focusing on the energy messaging rather than the input messaging of matcha and um is it okay to drop a little bomb uh give you give your listeners some inside information um we are actually going to be kind of redesigning our can and uh launching a refined version in hopefully around feb amazing and this it'll look very much like this can it'll just have somewhat of a different messaging hierarchy as in different can or different packet packaging like brand slightly different messaging slightly different messaging and we're switching to a printed can and um and we're we're no longer going to be leading with the matcha message whilst matcha will still maintain a fixture on the front of pack we will be pushing harder on the healthy energy messaging when when people are um when you're in sort of like a whole foods or planet organic it's a very different type of consumer than those that shop meal deal um drinks so planet organic customers will pick up a product they'll look at the ingredients they'll try to understand the benefits they'll try to understand why you created that product in a meal deal situation it's a split second decision and you know most people will already be reaching for that diet coke so unless you scream another reason as to why they should pick your product over a diet coke you're not going to win that customer over let's talk about the meal deal and let's talk about the hardest geezer uh activation or partnership because i thought that was such a clever way to drive rate of sale drive shop hit cap duck coisin thing yeah so clever can we plug that quickly yeah yeah yeah so what dan's mentioning is the hardest geezer meal deal if you don't know the hardest geezer look him up he's the ginger guy running the length of africa i don't know if you're allowed to say ginger am i redhead redhead sorry shawnee is a redhead and she she said it was okay so i will i apologize um but we are running a competition whereby if you take crazy photos um of your meal deal or do something wild like run a marathon and every mile eat an entire meal deal um which someone has done someone actually even brought one to everest base camp which is wild um you and post it on socials you will enter a competition which will potentially give you access to come to tunisia to see russ cross the finish line so and you can have the opportunity to run with him so the meal deal is a duck hoisin wrap, Kit Kat Chunky, and a perfect 10?

1:04:41So the idea behind the Hardest Giza partnership is our customer base is 65-70 % female, which is great because when we talk to retailers, we're bringing a new type of customer into the energy category, which is a very male-dominated category. But with Hardest Giza specifically, it's an opportunity to access a more male demographic, but also we've been very much focused on the early days around messaging to working professionals around productivity and focus. And what Hardest Giza allows us to do is tap into more of a fitness demographic and if the man running the entire length of africa is using our product to fuel him and is getting his personal best drinking our product then i think it's great social proof that you should also be picking it up too yeah and it's perfect in this context for like ultra marathon runners if you're doing something that requires energy for an extended period of time this is the perfect drink because matcha offers longer lasting energy than a typical energy drink or coffee if you're a challenger brand and you look at the likes of red ball and monster and the type of sports or athletes are sponsoring we just don't have the budget and so but what we can do is get super creative and so part of our partnership strategy is to back underdogs and to back people that are change makers and doing really cool things but aren't necessarily front and center of the news so for example we work with a rubik's cube world champion and it's a great way of showing the cognitive benefits of the product we work with hard iskiza showing the uh the energy benefits of the product so it's about getting creative with our marketing specifically what how what so is this kitkat the hoist and his favorite meal yeah yeah and teddy brought one all the way to angola when he went out there that's amazing so how are you tracking because i always find how do you how do you drive the rate sale it's it's the panacea yeah yeah it's a million question how are you tracking that how are you being able to know what how that's moving the needle do you know well shout out to north star which is basically a great service for challenger brands that can get access to data that was previously too expensive so we invest in data so we can see on a weekly basis how our tesco sales are tracking but also tesco provide that for you and we can also see how we're tracking against competitors and it was really interesting the data that we want to see is how has that impacted sales of hoisin duck wrap and kitkat chonkies because we've you know the the inbound that we get from people sending in their photos of picking up the hardest skis and meal deal is frightening yeah so creative as well and i also think for challenger brands as well it's and we were speaking i mean you walked in on us having a meeting with holland and barrett is what is the value that you can bring to the retailer beyond rate of sale.

1:07:22And I think what we've done super well is build a platform that allows us to be ambassadors for different retailers for different things. So for example, Tesco is really championing innovation and we're super grateful to have such an amazing partner in them and to be able to provide a platform for showcasing the innovation that they're supporting specifically within energy. Holland and Barrett as well have been, you know, of loyalty to them in showcasing how amazing they've been for supporting us and other challenger brands and they maybe haven't had the best reputation in the past but i can promise you they have invested a ton into our brand and the people that are amazing to work with so boimi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first hundred stockist to wholesale boimi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using bohemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff who's coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using bowie me look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland hi guys super super quick one so so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called ireland's chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at a load of wholesalers we've won milk and more We've got our first grocery listing coming very soon, which is very, very sick.

1:09:18But what I'm thrilled to announce is Hungary's merging with HC Consulting. My boy Harry Clark and his wonderful team, he's an absolute G. They do brand strategy, new business, business and account management. But why I really love working with Harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is Harry was actually the founder of the boozy, isolate brand Pops. He's been in the trenches. He's grafted his face off. He's had the sleepless nights. he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff savile drinks remio gelato so if you're a brand and you're you're stuck you're looking for like new business help you're looking to scale drop us a message we'd love to chat thank you so much back to the old episode that's fascinating as well as how you again when you get so many listings so quick is how you spread the unique love by customer and how you target um i'll introduce you to this guy he actually lived in america um um who i interviewed the other week and he does he does a lot of work with a brand called fern and rosie yeah which is a yeah she's amazing and he was talking about specifically in america actually he lived in 34 states and how the retailer he was working for um unilever okay and how the the each retailer has a different agenda a different type of consumer and it's like how your brand needs to to rock up to that retailer and and as you said do the stuff beyond rate of sale which i love yeah and what we the analogy we were basically saying is it's like you don't change who you are yeah it's a bit like if your grandma asked you how your trip was to ibiza right the way you talk about that trip to your grandma versus your co-workers versus your mates at the pub versus your girlfriends five different responses but you're still the same person and as a brand you may have five different retailers but they each get you know you need these each one different things well i think it's got to be genuine a great example is uh shout out fifi i won't say her last name so you guys don't inbound her but um i'll just say she works at matthew clark which is a distributor mostly does like wine spruce yeah yeah yeah and she's awesome i reached out to her for advice because food service isn't something we've done particularly well and I think there's a great opportunity there for us and I got on a call with her and I was just asking her advice and she's the buyer there and we got to the end of the call and she was like anything else I was like nope that's it thank you so much anyway call ended we then met up again when she was in London we've developed a friendship since and when we were last together she said can I tell you something and said sure what she said I really thought you were shit at your job I said what do you mean she said well you're kind of the sales function of perfect ted i said yeah she said you never asked me for a listing i said but we weren't ready for a listing like we weren't we didn't have accounts lined up i couldn't really bring much to the table from that front i just wanted your advice she goes you know i walked away from that meeting thinking you just weren't good at your job because you hadn't asked to send me samples you hadn't asked for a listing you hadn't asked for introductions but i actually think there's a lot of value in building relationships and not asking for something if you take a celebrity for example they probably spend their whole life being being surrounded by people that want something from them and buyers are the same thing they are constantly getting amounted by brands that want listings existing brands that want more distribution uh their managers that want them to put to the managers that want them to perform better from like a um a pnl perspective and so there's a lot of value in just having honest conversations and not asking for anything that is i think a very powerful sentiment yeah i think the less yeah i again it's kind of like the opposite of a good idea is a good idea rory sutherland you know we talked about that do the opposite whenever everyone's asking the buyer for more distribution here's my jvp can i have 20 minutes like just ask her advice i think amelia at bold bean did that really well she asked waitress for advice before she was even ready to launch and then when went back to the how you spread the perfect head energy or love whatever you want to kind of define it as versus different retailers so what we can pick a retailer as an example but how do you get the ideas in this office and then okay this is how the retailers we're going to show the love to this retailer or spread the energy this retailer how do you actually bring that from manifestation into execution do you mean like what's the steps yeah that's an interesting question um firstly to go back a second just about splitting the love between retailers and i think that this could be potentially helpful for anyone who's pitching a retailer i think it's so important to look at um any kind of public information available about that retailer and what their annual plans are um before going into a meeting with them so understand what their objectives are Right.

1:14:12If, for instance, Holland and Barrett is putting focus on this food transformation, think about how your product can potentially add to that range and how you can be bringing them value and you can be bringing incremental sales and you could be bringing them a new customer. So think about that perspective. And I think that's what we try to do in in showing buyers that we're actually not cannibalizing sales of Red Bull. We're bringing in a totally new customer who's never previously shopped energy. um or tea actually as well um do you know what i find so disappointing is when we'll interview a potential candidate for a role and they'll be like uh i'll ask them why do you like the brand they're like xyz and i actually can't wait to try the product and i'm like can't wait to try the product we're on most high streets in the uk like you you could have made the effort to try the product that's the same way i think about buyers when i go into a meeting i know everything about that buyer i know if if if it's public i know what music they like i know what posts they've posted i know what interests they have you know what their mom was doing two years ago on this exact date not in a creepy way but i think there's a level of respect and if you don't do your diligence like how can you know how to support a retailer without knowing what their plans or goals are and so whenever we go into a meeting before we give the pitch and sit down and show our deck which we often don't even show decks is we ask them so what are your plans for the category what are you trying to work on where are areas that you maybe have an opportunity and then you know what there are actually times where we're like and this happened with fifi matthew clark i don't think we can support you know right now but that conversation may open up down the line so i think it's about being honest and if you just try and sell the same thing to the same person uh sorry you're trying to sell the same thing in the same way to different people it won't land have you heard of infinite versus finite games no simon cynic super interesting it's like finite games it's like a game of soccer you play it for for one person to win and one person to lose yeah um whereas infinite games the game is just to keep playing so you're writing five days a week that's an infinite game it's like it could one post may do well one may do not so well you're playing the yeah you just you just keep showing up and you can apply that with with buyers as well and that that was a big reframe for me is it's like instead of um it's constantly sending like can we have a meeting we just used to send a little newsletter it's very personalized to a buyer no ask no ask you're playing the long game you're playing instead of how can i get this listing in two years what does this relationship look like in 20 years is a much different conversation i think it's just fascinating seeing how you guys have have kind of played with that i want to talk about stephen bartlett um can i mention one one last thing on the point about um rate of sale i think another another kind of tactic that we try to employ is engaging store staff um and obviously that's easier said than done when you when you're in 1200 tesco stores alone um but you know if it means going into a store and maybe you come with product or you buy a can and you gift it to one of the store staff and you explain a little bit about the brand one that person will be so grateful that you thought about them and they'll probably go out of their way if a customer approaches them and asks for some recommendation to suggest your brand and so i think that it's such a small thing but it's so overlooked by by brands sometimes because they think it's impossible to do on like a macro level but even doing it on a micro level is so effective and then you'll see the gains in that store because then they'll be suggesting it and and maybe they'll give you a few more placements and you're also i read a post by the guy who did jubel today you know jubel and he said um walk the floor which is quote by sam walton who's the walmart guy yeah founder and he was and i think um jesse's post was all about how they'd been in this store in in tesco's but the rate of sale was zero because basically the stock was in the store but it's out the back yeah i think you can never under look if you're not on shelf oh yeah of course your rate of sales is getting pillaged i think the waitrose ceo said it's like availability is like scoring an own goal i think it's the best way of way of tracking it um so yeah let's go on stephen bartlett um obviously off the back of dragon's den um he's a super i mean his podcast and his learning he's got a whole ocean of wild learnings what are some of the principles he's taught you that you didn't expect to learn from him uh that's a good question i think i think there are some things from a marketing perspective that he's taught us in the sense of we record everything so right now we have a full-time videographer that comes to every single video cameras on right now and part of that is because we're moving into the age of entrepreneurship in the sense of entertainment it's the reason why shows like selling sunset on netflix if you've seen them or buying beverly i'm obsessed with them i love them people love reality tv and i think we're almost moving away from love island style things into value add content like like um sort of showcasing the entertainment around entrepreneurship things that people can really learn from and so the one thing that he's taught us i think has been super valuable is as a brand in terms of content and marketing think about what the value is that you're bringing to your community because it's really hard to you know when i was first posting on linkedin i was posting about a new listing we got or things that weren't that were relatable but weren't necessarily driving value and now my strategy on linkedin very much is about if the post is shouty about us or comes across or it doesn't add value to our community in any way, then I wouldn't put it out there.

1:20:11On that point as well, when it comes to content, one thing that I really have taken away from Stephen is bring people into an experience or a place that they cannot access themselves. And so whether that's bringing someone into a meeting with Stephen, you know, like he actually posted on his blog and we've shared that cliff on linkedin um most people wouldn't be able to get into the room with steven to have a business meeting and so filming that and bringing the audience there is such a unique experience that most other people would never would never have and it's another reason why why shows like selling sunset do so well is because they bring people into you know 20 million dollar homes that they probably would never go into if they weren't on this show and so it's about bringing them places you cannot yourself access yeah that's mad yeah i kind of just wish i'd like recorded more of the podcast behind the scenes now because i like some of the places i've been to have rogue as fuck do you know what i mean like um but but yeah we'll also have moments where for example when i was crying the other day i could feel myself getting really emotional and i said marissa get mark and so mark our videographer came down and he recorded me crying and marissa was like are you okay okay and and it's really hard because you've got a camera in your face but if we just if we just glamorize the process then we're not adding value to our community and that's why every single podcast or speaking engagement we will do we will make a point of saying that it is no illusion how hard this is both emotionally but also the amount of time and effort that we put in and the sacrifice another lesson that i've really taken away from steven and while this might feel intuitive it really wasn't landing with me until he said it for whatever reason is just consistency like if you do something enough times consistently you will you will absolutely see a benefit someday someday like he said he he was like i remember starting the podcast and i was like you know recording it under my comforter in my bedroom and i posted it it was shit all my friends made fun of me but i kept doing it every single week and it took years to building it up and eventually it's paid off and so that's the same mentality that we've applied to writing on LinkedIn.

1:22:44And I think eventually, if you do enough reps, you'll build that muscle and it'll be strong enough to really take you to places that you probably thought you couldn't get to. Hi there, guys. Thank you so much for listening as always means the absolute world to me. Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favor. I have pitched to some massive guests, humongous guests. And unfortunately, they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough please please please just hit the subscribe button on apple or spotify or follow ultimately it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well so please hit that subscribe button and yeah enjoy this episode i think chris williams has the williamson has the consistency compounds which is something i really like love um what else down that down that kind of path i always feel like some you when i meet people you pick up stuff from osmosis like not directly so when i walked in here today like speaking to rom for an hour i got a vibe of like how this company operates through kind of obviously speaking to it but just osmosis does Does that make sense?

1:24:02What would you say you've learned from hanging out with the diary of a CEO team and Stephen, like through osmosis, not like a tangible, he said this, do you know what I mean? They're like machines. I mean, in the best possible way, they work their butts off. And it's so motivating to see because they all care so deeply about the work that they're doing and take it very seriously. and they absolutely put in the work to see those gains and they consistently do it over and over and over again. And I think that to me is so motivating and something that I personally take a lot away from, but also try to instill that kind of work ethic in the team.

1:24:46I mean, I don't need to, they already come with it, but really that hard work mentality and graft. And just off of that, like this again, potential to sound arrogant and controversial. and i'd love for anyone else who thinks they top this to to comment or let us know or drop us an email or let you know and you can let me know i think we are the hungriest team and again ironic hungry podcast we are the hungriest team in food and bev and i don't mean hungry in terms of growth and top line hunger in terms of growth from like a personal level if you look at our team every single person and you can see my eyes okay i mean every single person in our team wants to be the best in the world not the best in the uk not the best in food and beverage the best in the world at whatever they do mark our videographer wants to be the best in the world at creating content that goes viral shining our head of sales wants to be the best in the world at driving uh rate of sale in in a retail environment rami wants to be the best mercateer we we genuinely want to be the best in the world and if you don't like perfect head isn't the right place for you and that is potentially a lot of pressure but i think the potential reward or ambition or upside is huge and if perfect head doesn't work then that just falls on us how do you hire and find that hunger it's not and this is just personal experience and sorry for any agency people are listening it's not through recruiters it's not through linkedin ads it's through people that reach out to us if you build it they will come every single hire we've had has been people that um have come to us and actually a lot of the people that we have in our team today turned down the job when we first offered yes tell talk to me about that because because it's a reciprocal thing right it's a reciprocal thing because as much as you're looking for hungry people yeah again using the puns going to go quite far here but like you need to as founders demonstrate hunger because i think was it three of the team is what i'd heard from having a chat with ron um said no yeah yeah what i'll tell you why each of them said no yeah go for it yeah yeah sure interesting shani ahead of sales said no because a she was new to another company and wanted to see that out which is amazing in terms of loyalty and she also said no because she thought the financial burden of her salary in the company could be potentially debilitating if we didn't continue to grow which again is is an incredibly empathetic reason um she just had so much integrity as well throughout the process and you could really see her values and it actually made us want to work with her even more um but i but in that process i adopted the mentality of it'll work out one day i just know it will it'll work out and i said that to her and fast forward a few months and she was on the team?

1:27:35James, our operations manager said no, because he felt like the opportunity was a little bit too risky, which is true. Early stage food and beverage is a ruthless game and incredibly competitive. And if you're not well funded, it can be a short game too. So that's why he initially turned it down. But yeah. And then Mark said no, because I think his work was more aligned with longer format videography documentary style um videos and he as part of the job would also be doing more like short form social media clips for reels and tiktoks and whatever and i think um when it was positioned more as a social media role he was less interested and then he reneged and was like i want a challenge and i want to learn a new skill set and i think this would be good for me and so i think that that curiosity that hunger the the desire to continually challenge oneself and improve um is is something that we all have and if you don't have it you you're not on the perfect team how do you feed that team's hunger and make sure your team's hunger and make sure it stays insatiable it comes from the top like it comes from the top i think part of it is the example that you show um first in the office last to leave kind of thing i got a lot of this from from my last experience working at bayern company which was i was inspired by leaders that made me want to think that i wanted to be like them one day and it's almost like parenting right there are so many kids that say i want to grow up and be like my mom or my dad or my older sibling and we want our team to feel like that and the way that we can get them to feel like that is by inspiring them through acting and leading for instance so when we first started the business it was just us right full-time and this basically forced me to learn all adobe apps premiere pro photoshop illustrator i i essentially had to become an expert in something I had absolutely zero experience in previously.