The £100m Brand Man: 17 Unknown Ways To ACTUALLY Secure a HUGE Exit + “the EXIT world has COMPLETELY changed… Multiples of revenue is DEAD”

53:25Yeah, hustler. I think hustle gets a bad name. Hustle, go-getter, relentlessly resourceful. And then that golden mean, which I'll keep going back to, is make it happen. Yeah. And I think you can get people who are either too hustly and too go-getter and they're just like, i'm i'm more like this just like running like a fucking headless chicken around um but i've but you do get people who've got a sweet some people have very have got can do both right yeah plucking out examples like you talked about tim reese at vitacoco my god he's one of the best examples of strategic but also being able to deliver and operate right yeah i'd say james mcmaster at hugh another good example will bowler um you know so will will's done a great job did big did pop chips and then gone to do other stuff um such as charles farm etc and then and post that he's another example of guys actually very strategic but can also can deliver as well um and i think this is what i came back to earlier which is you've got to look at the dynamics within whichever business you're looking at and be able to do it but i think the one thing i'd say on here which is probably the most difficult thing for me is and we you've mentioned the word before is that i have had in my portfolio but also i can see in other businesses where investors must be kicking themselves because you've got founders who are suffering from that founderitis they always know best they won't let go of the baby because it's theirs and stuff like that and you can just see potential just draining out that business every day and you just want to go look actually look just try it just go with me for a bit because you're going to see this business absolutely thrive but you've got to let you know you've got to got to let it through you know let other people help you understand what that needs to happen to make that change let's go into sort of the the trenches in the coconut wars yeah i think this is a great landscape to kind of explore this this founder operator mode so yeah you're in the trenches and um as you say you've kind of got missiles coming in from vibe from from pepsico innocent did their own thing i remember this because this one it's like 2016 sort of time yeah that's where i started at manning life so i remember this vividly um and yeah like like what was say say you're kind of in in the war bunker or the or the war room and you're trying to plot out this this this strategy to win to win the coconut wars like yeah just describe what was going on with the competitive landscape and describe like your decision making process to say right ben we're gonna fucking do this we're not gonna do this we're gonna do this and this is gonna help us win i'd love to really get deep into that yeah yeah no totally so that's probably the most exciting challenging uh scary time my career that that that kind of about a four-year period when we'd literally grown coconut water we'd start the whole category in europe um the guy's done a similar job in the u.s and i'll talk more about the european piece because actually the u.s did exactly the same but against a different competitive set yeah and did he came through equally well but let me talk about the european bit because i think i'm better placed just to talk specifically about that that's probably the most rewarding time of my whole career if everybody says what you're most proud of it's building the coconut water and then again i want to be careful i say this because it's not in an arrogant way but wrong to say seeing off but but you can say that yeah temporary temporarily or for the time being seeing off coke and pepsico and denone brands to the extent we did is probably my kind of my most proud moment and testimony to the kind of people in the team that were built at vitacoco there were a number of things when i look back how did how did we help what made it so resilient one is we knew understand how we were going to market coconut water to the consumer so it's always about why coconut water and then why vitacoco is a brand of choice and we basically there's too many businesses will go right first start any sort of meeting strategic meeting going right okay how do we grow a household penetration how do we get that next set of consumer how do we do that our number one thing at vitacoco was that right let's talk about our existing consumers how do we make sure that they stay with us they are spending a large part of the exposed income on our drink we should never ever fatigue from being grateful for that and understanding what else we can do to thank that consumer that's what obsessed about and the scary thing is what people don't so a lot of businesses don't realize this, but I'd always say this is virtually the same in all consumer good businesses, is that 20 % of our consumers was 70 % of our business.

57:51So if you can get that 20 % right and you can give them a thousand reasons to stay with you and why VitaCoker cares about you as a consumer, you've got a good chance of winning a battle, right? So that's one of the first things I'd say. Just on that, just quickly tease that out. One of the questions I asked Julian was, he goes, the only time on this, with Pret, Itzu, and Metcalf's, the only time I've ever gone wrong and things have gone, it started with this and it's just this whole sort of cascading effect of things going beat-tongue is when I took my eyes off of the product and the consumer, product-consumer.

58:24And that's why I love linking all these different conversations together because you have this sort of interweb of different knowledge. And so, yeah, so when you were trying to do more for that consumer, and this is almost like the first play in this Coconut Wars, it's like, what were you doing specifically? So we were looking, so we basically got to, So we knew what we, obviously we had a lot of, we had like the coconut newsletter that went out. So we had a load of consumers we spoke to directly. We got in touch with them the whole time. We gave them extra discounts, do that. New products coming in.

58:50They got like our top X, I can't remember how it was now, but let's say our top 250 or top 500 customers. When we launched Pressed, they got a gift box with that. Didn't have to pay for it. Just got to say, look, you've been a really, you know, important consumer as part of our journey. Thank you. We wanted to give you our new product before it comes in market. So just all those touches, we, you know, we, you know, we could find them. We had different events going on. they got invited to the VIP area, some of those consumers, because look, you've been with us, you know, for this long period of time, you've always engaged with us, come along and, you know, come and see us at this festival or this event.

59:20So we did that, we went through that. And we did that through both our direct data, but also our retailers, obviously, a lot of the retailers have their loyalty cards and stuff. And you can see who's your highest spenders. Again, we target them through our retailers. And then it's called shopper marketing. So, you know, so, you know, we did that um the second thing we did was that and that's slightly associated that was we said and this is where actually this is where we got it wrong by the way so and you laugh about this but people will say well jars jars seems to know what he's doing but i always laugh because whenever i'm speaking with you know to people in the industry you have to remember probably somewhere between half to 70 percent of the advice i give is based on mistakes i've made not what i've got right right so this is one thing that and we made this decision as a board right and we got our metric wrong you know you talked we talked earlier about key metrics in a business so our number one thing when innocent naked and you know other brands all came into market and there were a lot of them was because the number one thing was protect our number one market share that was the most important thing for us we will always no matter what we will stay number one market share so one One of the issues we had.

1:00:33And that was your goal. And that's right. Yeah. It was a mistake using that one. But let me explain the backdrop, right? Sure, yeah. So Innocent, seven years before coming into Coconut Water, had launched an orange juice, which they started off in a Tetra, failed dismally. Everybody in the business was going to kill it. But John Wright was like, no, we're sticking with this. It's going to work. We're sticking with it. We're going to, it's going to work. We just got to work out what we need to do because we have to go after orange juice because we can make, you know, we don't need to just be a smoothie brand.

1:01:02we can be a juice and smoothie brand and i can remember some pretty heated conversations in the business about it you know john with his co-founders etc um coke deal came in yeah innocent then relaunched the orange juice into what used to be the minute made plastic craft i don't remember the pt craft that great this identity all of a sudden you could see this beautiful orange juice sat in this packaging whereas you know tropicana was hidden in this tetra within three years if not four years innocent toppled tropicana in europe as i understand it virtually all the tropicana pepsico team lost their jobs on the back of it because they got absolutely decimated it's links back to that you can just in in format is innovation exactly so the reason i mentioned that story is yeah given what innocent had just done with to kind of pepsico and tropicana they're then launching to coconut water so as a board so there was me there It was Mike Kerbin, my founders and also Eric Milieu, who was from Verlinvest, one of our main investors.

1:02:00We sat there and we're going, look, they've just killed Tropicana. We have to really think very carefully what we're doing here. So what we did was we said, look, whatever they do, we're going to go toe for toe with them. When you say they, that's PepsiCo. That's innocent and naked. Okay. So the problem we had, and this is where... Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is the problem we had was that we didn't realise... And again, if I had the same information today, I'm not sure I'd do it any differently. And maybe I'd probably back the brand a bit more. But the bit we got wrong was, is that the Coke and Innocent strategy and the PepsiCo strategy was come into a market.

1:02:36We've got really deep pockets. We're just going to literally discount, discount, discount. So at one time, I think there was something like nine of 12 weeks of buy on, get on free or half price in a row, right? So just literally bludgeon the market, drive as much trial and penetration as you can and then over time because obviously we'll then take all the market share away from the leaders then over time we can build that back up so we were getting absolutely smashed on what you call average price and so back then we sold one litre except the one litre was the real price fight on here we were selling one litre at 349 clearly the retailers decided the pricing not us but the recommended was 349 and that typically what was market our average price was about two pounds seventy two pounds well two i can tell you this is how sad i am it's two pounds 62 two pounds 62 was our the scars of war jars was our average right it went down as low as 192 and was hovering around the early two pounds while Innocent and Naked were just bludgeoning promos because we were going toe for toe.

1:03:45We were putting the same thing. And all we did was we just crashed the market. And actually, we kept that market shift. That was ruining your gross margin as well, right? It was killing our gross margin. Also, the retailers were going, hang on a minute. There's loads of volume growth. But actually, suddenly, what was my most successful category in juice and smoothies, because they all loved us because coconut water was leading every growth. so even today that one liter pure skew is the fourth biggest skew in the whole of that juice and smoothies fixture even today it's any private label orange juice or anything like that it's fourth biggest skew it's a power skew people don't realize but they were like guys whoa you know and of course retailers at one point do like obviously if they can give consumers more value or shoppers more value great but it was touched to such a point it was just devaluing the whole category so the bit we got wrong is that we actually realized we didn't need to go toe for toe so we then still gave the consumer amazing value but we put about 10 20 average price back on we just changed the mechanics on promotion stuff stopped doing half prices because they weren't creating any value for us or for that because the trouble is as well if you're at half price why is there anything in the bottom you know if you're at half price talk talk why are people going to pay the money at full price why should i i'd be the same as a you know yeah this is what makes me laugh sometimes i sit there in that meetings i sit there where i hit people getting on that pedestal and start being principled as a founder or business owner.

1:05:05But if you ask them the same question as a consumer, they give you a different answer. As a consumer, I wouldn't buy that because it's been on this. You're saying something very different as a founder or business owner here, right? That's such a delicious nuance there, Giles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, so we got, so we, it took us about two years. I mean, our share went down as one of 50, low as 51%. I don't know exactly today, but I think Tim's done a great job at getting the business. I think market share's back up 70 75 percent in in in in in the uk and i think it's very similar in europe because we've got very big markets in france and germany now but we've slowly built the belly back into the category and actually coconut water is now still like i mean again juice has had a particularly turbulent time over the last you know decades particularly around quality prices and obviously consume you know consumers dropping in and out so looking for other functional drinks coconut water has been pretty resilient all the way through but you know the thing i got wrong and the bit i'm trying to say is that we didn't back our brand enough i still today we probably would have done the same thing because we were paranoid because we're always respectful right of competitors but we actually went going toe-to-toe was the wrong strategy we should have gone down to about 70 % of what they were doing because we just took too much value out the category and it was a it was a really tough tough time but what was amazing for me was that and don't get me wrong there's a lot of pressure on me and the senior team and the european team but at no point in time i think Mike is the founder or Eric, who was the other main board, because we're quite a small European board, because we're also a group board.

1:06:31At no point in time were any of the behaviours inappropriate or was there any pressure that was saying, you know, nor was the time where they were telling us, you're wrong, we're taking over here, you're the right thing to do. And, you know, surrounding yourself with people who, you know, take a collective and collaborative approach. And it was our decision. And we, you know, we came out of it really well, but it took a long while. So from that, going back to the war bunker, right? So you need the, you know, kind of sending Napoleon here a food and drink. But, you know, so it's like, right, let's go toe-to-toe with them.

1:07:04Actually, let's reverse back, focus on brand. What are the other things you did? Because as you say, I think, I don't know if those skews still exist now, but like in innocence, I don't know if they still do. They still are, much less distribution, but still are around. And I think coconut water is not, it's not a key strategy for them anymore. they've got other areas which are doing incredibly well as you say you said the highlight of your career is taking not yeah decimating i think it's good to be competitive i'm competitive but you know decimating some of those big boys what else were you doing what else were you talking about the other big the other big things we did in the wall bunker was that i don't know if you remember back then but literally the demand for coconut water was insane yeah um the biggest thing that we had the weapon we had in our armory was that we basically had built a supply chain that meant that around about 80 to 90 percent of global coconut water was basically owned by the vitacoco production network right so but you know you know at one point in time we had we had strategic calls to make it as a business because we could effectively sell liquid to coke or pepsi and make good money on it because they couldn't get a hold of any but we were like do we sell it or do it and actually we didn't we did we sold a bit but we matching then we we created more volume elsewhere we decided actually we would increase our demand plans elsewhere and we'd actually find more volume so you know in the u.s they do like run you know i don't know if you know but costco is massive in the u.s right and like an mvm i mean it's crazy like an mvm which is mvm mvm is it's the members value something yeah it's the costco promotion but like a three-week american costco promotion would do about a third to 40 percent of the total volume i did in europe in the whole year i mean that is just crazy you have like you know 80 trucks loads going into one costco thing so we've we decided to utilize all the liquor we had by giving the consumers more deals and across more customers and therefore we increased our revenue because we didn't obviously yeah we didn't want we didn't want obviously the water to go to waste we obviously obviously so i think i think um our supply chain was unrivaled that is that is the bottom line and i think the big thing is our supply chain when there was a period where demand exceeded supply that gave us a big competitive advantage that we meant that we we came through that that war war war really well i think the other things we did as well which again to be clear as well this was about you know doing things in the right way we also created value add categories which made complete sense for us so we did as well as vitacoco obviously as in the beverage and liquid we did vitacoco oil right which was was used for cooking oil and skins whether that was launched so that was launched into all the cooking aisles that was the whole in with the lucy b j wicks exactly that I remember that vividly.

1:09:45That was massive. And that was like, I mean, that was like seven to nine, well, actually seven to 12 % of European turnover, about five to 6 % of global turnover on coconut oil. And again, it was great for us because it was, it was synergistic because clearly, you know, what you drink and what you eat, obviously, you know, using coconut oil in, in, in, in cooking and health and beauty and stuff like that. And hydrating your skin, et cetera, work with obviously hydrating in terms of the liquid that you were taking in. So it strategically worked really, really, really well for us. but what it also enabled us to do was a load of consumers came into the brand through you know skincare and stuff in the boots or in the cooking aisle we then managed to get those consumers then to come across and start drinking it as well within within the beverage part back to your point earlier of like innovating close to the core is that is that is that innovating close to the core for me it is because this is all very nuanced isn't it yeah because because the reason being right you know back then we decided we weren't just a beverage company we're a coconut company we were going to use the natural incredible you know nature's best kept secret which is the coconut has so many different qualities we were going to bring that to the consumer in the best way now we could have done it in so many different ways you know loads of bits but actually we just where we focus on we stay predominantly in beverages but we saw coconut oil as a big opportunity for us and therefore we just work with those now we could have gone into other categories as well we could have done an ice cream and stuff like we didn't this is the whole point of it this this this yeah that innovation thing is nuanced the pendulum does swing yeah as you say like as well as um they showed me when i went to do the tour because it's like that that is in the coconut oil is close to the thing but um is close to the core but then i think there's a whole there's like a smorgasbord of like cbd coconut oil and it's like that's going out a little bit let me give you another example similar to that today it's like so i have a lovely business well i say lovely lovely founders um ed and jess on a brand called freya which is bone broth i don't know you've seen bone broth but bone broth's going absolutely mad it's this whole kind of collagen trend that's really gathering momentum honestly unbelievable i mean i can't if you see the um the predictions and the forecast of how big bone broth is going to become is amazing but if you look at that it's another great example where you're going to two categories which are slightly different which are completely different but actually it's hugely synergistic it makes sense so we have all the liquid bone broths where we either have the you know we've got the cartons where obviously people then add it into stock or whatever it is we also have the instant bone broths where it's like a sachet and you have it like a hot drink and stuff so if you go to america at the moment what's really trending you go into starbucks in the u.s people go have a um you know they'll have a can have a flat white or can have a latte i'm gonna have a bone broth to go please so all the coffee shops in new york are now doing bone broth to go because that's your that's your health kick right go inside it so but what we also have is we We also have powdered bone broth because it's absolutely crammed with amino acids.

1:12:33It's very high protein, and it's obviously got collagen with it. So, you know, a good slug, you know, like a third of the business is actually the powders alongside the liquids. And people are like, so if you think we've got the food division, which is the liquids, but then we've got the supplements division. And actually, if you look at something like Perfect Ted, it's not that different. They've got obviously the product and the energy drink in the can. They then got the matcha powder. and people are like using the powder to put it in a smoothie or you know or whatever you know taking it as a supplement and you're bringing in a completely different consumer set but you know very similar need states but providing the product or the natural ingredient in the you know in a format that works for the consumer and that's working incredibly well so you know there are times in a business where yes there are closer categories to go to because supplements versus food you might argue could be slightly further away than me going between um you know i'm going to go into like as gave me earlier we've got a cereal and then we're going to cereal bars because they're obviously closer yeah but still are exactly the right thing to do and that freya's a great example of that business is flying let's in terms of that that this war period i think it's just it's i just find it's such an it because retrospectively it makes so much so much sense what was the hardest part of that period like almost like where you're in pain sleepless nights and like would would you want your kids to go through that period um i mean look

1:13:59through what i did with bear and via coco i had 12 years when nobody saw me right i was six and a half days a week um i remember you know i remember going on holiday with penny and penny and the kids and penny'd be like every three in the afternoon you're going to come out the hotel room right and it was a necessary evil uh because that's what it took to be successful on those brands. What I did know though, is that there was a period of time where that was acceptable and not acceptable. So it was brutal, but I loved doing it. I know it needed doing, but I also knew that, you know, my kids were very young back in those days.

1:14:36But what it also enabled me to do is like, if you look now today, you know, Dan, is that I have a platform whereby, yeah, I still, I'm never going to retire, right? You probably see my sort of person and the energy I've got and stuff like that. I love what I do. But I, my life works in the following way which is the number one thing is family so the first thing to go in the diary is when all the kids have got sports pictures and stuff so i am the dad who's quietly sitting on the touchline every wednesday or every saturday watching my boys whether they're playing you know rugby cricket hockey whatever it is just love doing that because i want to see i want to see them um so that comes in secondly fitness as you know with me that's that comes that's the second thing in the diary so all my training and stuff so no ball meetings on a wednesday why because that's when i go biking with all the guys i train with can you not change it no because that's important and the third thing that work goes in and i now work about three three and a half days a week right so you go hard on those days yeah and i actually you know my boys are 10 and 13 and for the last three four years you know i'm very lucky that i probably spend more time with my kids than any other parent does but you want them to go through that that period of time sorry that's what you actually asked me wasn't it so i think because that's that's where the character building is it's like that's where the pain teaches the lessons right yeah i mean so if you ask me the number one thing that keeps me awake at night right is you know i've been very fortunate in in life um you do need a lot of luck along the way there's a lot of skill and hard graph right but all things unless penny and i go to vegas and lose the lot there's a chance there'll be a decent amount of money left for the boys the number one thing keeps me awake at night night is that how does that money get passed onto the boys where it doesn't ruin them but more importantly the boys have got to learn what graph is in life so yes I do want my boys to go through it I'm not one of the for example we've kept we had a house in Southfield we've kept that kids trying to get on the property ladder these days I'm not home at the minute it's a joke, it's an absolute joke and something has to be done about it by the way but that's for another time but you know we've kept a small place down in Wimbledon because I think that's what I want for the boys to have so they'll get help on that sort of stuff but that way you were living in yeah okay yeah but they'll have to pay a rent for it they'll have to pay the bills and importantly I want them to go on a career I think I think the big thing I you know and again it may sound funny but you know I even talked to them now as 10 and 13 year olds I talked to them today about what is your passion in life what do you enjoy doing right because the number one thing i'm going to say to them is like i want them to take a career path that they love doing and they're passionate about me getting to food and drink or really i should say consumer goods because it's more consumer goods rather than food and drink i'm very lucky because i've done something i absolutely love something that you know inspires me invigorates me every single day um i do expect my kids though to have to go through a really tough time because you just don't you don't learn your life lessons if not and i'm you know i think it sounds weird but you know we see it in what i do now with them and stuff like that we do we do a lot of stuff with them even at 10 and 13 and you know i definitely want you know there's times when i can see they're not comfortable but i'm happy with that because they've got to go through some of the pain on life experiences this is the you can tell me to fuck off on this question but like how much what was the biggest exit you you did like how much money did you make and how did that change you because i feel like it's it's something like people as you say it's this exit el dorado this gold that they think what happens and you actually get the fucking gold.

1:18:03Do you know what I mean? You don't have to give specifics. Yeah, so I think I've said this before on a number of podcasts, which is, and people are like, oh yeah, it's very easy if you say that, Giles, sat here. But, you know, the first exit I had was Bear, right? Yeah. And that was several million, right? That was a good exit. Seven million. Several, several. Yeah, I don't, do you know, I don't talk money. I don't talk money. And the reason being is that it's actually not that important to me. And also, I don't know, I just think, wrong to say vulgar, but I just think sometimes I just feel like money's great, but it's not everything, right?

1:18:41And it's more importantly, it's not what motivates me personally. But I got a big thud, right, in the bank account. And I genuinely didn't know what to do with myself. And I did the most stupid thing I've ever done, right? Vegas. No, we're not stupid, but this was the thing. So we spend a lot of time in Mallorca and I have a house in Mallorca. So again, don't get me wrong, what's happened has facilitated that. And that's as much home for us as the UK now. But I remember I went to Parma, the main city, and I've never had a nice watch. So I went and bought myself an Omega watch. You know, it's a dark side of the moon, lovely watch.

1:19:15It's not on, I've got a Garmin on by now. It's all I wear. This is a good example, right? Because I haven't worn this watch for three years. And I literally had a panic attack coming out of the shop. I was like, why am I buying a watch? I don't need a watch. How can I spend a few thousand on a watch? I don't need that. And that was a big thing for me. It suddenly got a big, like, thud in the bank account. And I didn't really, it was like, don't need it. That's not what motivates me. Kind of building brands, enjoying the journey, being a thorn in the corporate side, creating positive change, you know, particularly like positive change in the environment and sustainability side, obviously, you know, 65 % of my portfolio, sorry, 80 % of my portfolio of B Corp certified, you know, 6 % female founded now.

1:19:55They're the things that excite me and what I enjoy. and that's I get more out of life you know that side and I think so I've I mean I've had I mean that's that's the other thing as well for me Dan is that people do what I do so you again I hate terminology but people classify me like a angel investor or a high net worth or whatever and they'll say oh typically what you'll do is that you know you normally do 10 investments and if one come off it's all good I don't agree with that so of my 18 today I've had five successful exits I would hope I can get at least 10 if not 12 of those 18 to get to exit because I think if you're if you're prepared to put time in so I don't I get my hands dirty and I'm as a as a in a non-exec capacity I really jump in and do everything I can to help the businesses if you pick carefully and picking carefully is about first of all with the founder but then getting the right category in the right brand I think you can really change those percentages that people say like the one and 10 i think you can get you know a much higher probability and that's what motivates me and excites me it's not the cash that the cash is the cash is great but that's that's not the motivation it's will chase has got the best line for this and he's obviously exited a couple of times with tyrols and then chase is there he goes when you're in the winner's enclosure you realize that all the fun was in the race and it's like that's that's what throws him i want to talk about like kind of addiction and obsession because i mean i've got i've got a huge addictive personality right so like who hasn't is a founder right this is what i'm just what i'm trying to work out right so i remember i went like in my 20s i was fucking partying loads like staying up all weekend like just sending it and it was like obviously just loads of insecurities that i was basically blank blanketing with booze and drugs and partying and stuff and it was and you're one of many right yeah one of many and it was anyway so i went to go and see a therapist to see what was going up up in the box right and he was like mate within 17 seconds of meeting i knew you were an you're an addict i was like okay well like you've got to kind of work with what you've got right so then I stopped all the sort of the party I still do drink but like it's it's it's way less than what it was like I've probably done six months off this year total but my addiction has just gone straight into this yeah I'm like addicted to it and I channel it right it's how I channel it and it's but I love that's why I'm sort of you saying that you're in a hotel in New York and it's like the gorgeous vistas in the sunshine you're just grafting grafting yourself to the bone like how have you got better at dealing with that addiction I think you say I'm a triathlon an addict like i think and i also think in business it's great to say you're obsessed obsessed is great in business but if you say you're an addict in business you know obsession addiction are kind of two sides of the same coin if i was an addict in business i'd be doing another beer of vitacoco i'd just be going on to the next gig next gig next gig how did you ease off that i think there's a few bits to it yeah i think one is what's sustainable because you know i've you You know, Innocent, I burnt myself out.

1:22:49I had some panic attacks at Innocent. I was just, I was just, I was similar to you. What were the panic attacks? Just, I basically, Innocent was a great business, very high pressure to work in though. I was also in a nightclub at 3am, three nights a week. Yeah, yeah. I was also training six days a week. Can't do it. Somebody just gives you a tap on the shoulder and goes, nah, enough. So I burnt myself that bit. How did that manifest in your... Just suddenly had a panic attack. I was just like, what's going on here? And for a controlled freak like me, that was a big problem back then. But it's the best thing that can happen because, you know, going back to what you were saying earlier about, you know, you said you're an addictive person.

1:23:24I think there's no such thing as a normal person, right? We've all got a certain bit of control-ness or addictiveness or attention deficit bit. It's just where we sit on the spectrum. Everyone's on the specky on some of the gods. I think normal should be actually banned out in the English dictionary. I think it's the worst word in the world. There's no such thing as normal, right? um but you know as you get i guess i've mellowed as i've got older right um but probably one of the biggest level is for me as kids right so for example if you look at my triathlon racing yes i still train a lot but i don't race anywhere near as much as i used to because i enjoy racing abroad because i love going to see different places stuff like that i race about 30 what i used to why because i don't want to be away from my kids and actually i'm no longer the priority my boys are the priority and Penny my wife's the priority and that's and we always talk about my immediate family nucleus is the priority right and I think that's that's the big thing for me which is both in business and to get where I got to in triathlon which let's be honest wasn't an amazing standard but for me was quite a good standard I had to be really selfish because if I wasn't selfish the business wouldn't have succeeded or whatever but it's now not my time anymore it's actually more about the people around me and and that's not just my family it's also the founders and the other businesses i work with you know some of the founders i mentioned to you earlier you know i don't give a crap if i take any money out i just want to see those guys succeed because some of those guys just the the people and the characters they are or the monumental shift they're putting in i need and want them to be successful for themselves because they you know they deserve to be take me to that because i'm 31 now so take me to when you were 31 like I think it's great you've got this but you also put you've got to graft your fucking tits off as well like how what was your day like your brain like in that period when you were just at the cold face like slamming it every day like um yeah my challenge was I've always struggled to switch off right yeah same and that's the big thing and my biggest issue is quality of sleep and even today it's yeah it's quite an issue because I'm just I'm a thinker and I'm just you know I will always get more done in a day than most people get done in a week but that's just me right but I've just you know I've dialed it down I've found different ways to do it you know it's like you know I don't I don't hardly drink at all I the only time you'll get me to drink these days is like I've got a good friend's 50th coming up in a few weeks time in London and we're all back well he's put on a big effort of a party I'll probably come out of drink retirement for there and have one good night so I wouldn't call myself tea total but equally you know I don't drink much uh these days you know I don't have caffeine in my diet but be clear I'm not living a monk existence I'm happier the person than I am today and what I do today.

1:26:04Because I think I've got the, it's about balance, right? And all I've done is that - Barbells. Yeah, exactly. Exactly like, I've just shifted more towards the middle, right? Or else I've taken the really silly weights off the end and just put some smaller weights on the end, right? Whichever way you want to look at it, whichever analogy, whichever analogy, because sometimes it's actually, the reason I give that analogy is sometimes it's very difficult for people to shift away from the ends. But what you, you know, taking your barbell analogy, it might be easy for them to drop the weight on the ends So stay on the extremes but just drop the weight on the end, right?

1:26:35Because if you're not, you know. Yes, that's what I've said. For example, on Friday, so I've done these T total periods and then I'll go to Ibiza and it's just like I'm going to spend all my fucking money and it's stupid. Yeah, and I'm just like. You are 31. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And enjoy it, right? Yeah, I know. But then I was like, I was like, why, and it's back to taking the things off, the weights off ever so slightly. So it's like, went out Friday, got very drunk but then didn't drink Saturday and Sunday. Yeah. Whereas before it'd be like, start Wednesday. And then you just, if I start on Wednesday, I'm losing Wednesday to Sunday.

1:27:05If I start on Thursday, you know, and it's, and it's, what I'm trying to do is I've done the extreme. I've done the, you know, on, off, on, off. It's like, it's interesting, isn't it? Founders or endurance athletes, et cetera, they're all type A, right? They're all do everything to extremes, right? And that's the thing. The whole thing to say is, I don't think you can be successful unless you are that type of person or it's more difficult to be successful unless you're that type of person but you've got to understand about on a ratchet of naught to 10 at different periods of time what's the right level to be at different periods of time that's what it's about doing and you know i am i know in the last five seven years i've completely changed a lot of the dials on the different aspects of my life across personal time work time fitness and stuff not got the balance completely right yet but i'm pretty happy where everything is at the moment and also i'll be honest with you i much prefer the person i am today than i was 10 20 years ago when everything was high octane was just full tilt and stuff like that and i prefer i prefer the person you know there will be some people that will say oh giles isn't as much fun as he used to be or you know just you know god he just you know i think he just needs to chill out a bit and not do all these triathlon stuff but that's my passion that's what i love doing and actually i've got a huge friend network through through through all that we go racing you know we go abroad and like you know i have so many friends through that um and you know do that and or equally wherever possible now i'm going to take my family to wherever i'm racing and guess what my kids now do the triathlons as well their choice not me pushing i'm not i'm not i'm not pushy dad who's going get on that start line jump in some ocean and get swam over by another 20 you know 20 20 kids or whatever it is but i think i think what i'd say on this podcast is that everybody's got to do a bit soul searching forget what everybody else is telling you you know forget trying to be everything to everybody work out for whatever period of life you're at what's going to make you happiest right right happiness does not necessarily equal success or equal money or stuff like that and it might do for some people right and you know some of the megalomaniacs and we've seen them in these big massive corporate companies it's just it's all about the coin and about about the money for them right but you know whether it's talking about me or talking about you dan you know it's that kind of going on that journey to say right what do i want out my life and what what what you know what are my passions what do i want to do what i want to enjoy and just going after that and you know it's just i think it's where people get it so wrong because i spend all their time looking at everybody else and all the whole situations and it just it's just nuts yeah the coin the coin is such a such a um sort of vista and and um illusory thing in the distance i want to go back to kind of what we were that that when everything was hanging by a thread with one of those exits and kind of just we'll wrap up that yeah yeah because we've started as a start yeah i always go around like this is part of the the value of the yeah i like to go all over the place but i'd love to go back to that and then we can begin to wrap this up but yeah that moment when it's all hanging by a thread you say you don't sleep at night like what the thoughts going through why is it hanging by a thread like take us into that into your bedroom at night like what's going on in your soul you know yeah i mean i think first why was it hanging by a thread actually to give yeah i mean in the early days right so no yeah actually let me ask that slightly differently so what used to make what used to make me lose sleep at night was i was always worried about what other people were thinking about the job i was doing and what yep you know i was doing and And I quickly realized, screw everybody else.

1:30:47This is about me. And actually, it's about my immediate family. And then everything else. Once I got that rule sorted out, life was then great, right? Because I was always worried about trying to call it people, please, whatever, trying to do the best job for everybody else. But I'm like, no, actually, I'm going to start doing it for me and the family, right? So I think that was the first thing. I think hanging by a thread, I mean, look, the bear deal went through. We were quite lucky, actually. But even then, when you think you've got an incredible business, watching people drop out of process is pretty scary.

1:31:17And again, one of the biggest advice I say to founders is to say, look, everybody say, I'll give you a classic example here today. People will go, I'm not selling to private equity or venture capitalists. I'm definitely doing it. Again, three-year-old, back to three-year-old. What's the difference between private equity, venture capitalists, M &A? Because, you know, Tim from Rothschild threw this out for me the other day. It's not as, it is quite nebulous unless you're in that world. As I say, it's a different sort of universe. Yeah, so institutional capital, which is basically people who have funds, some are family offices, some they just raise money off different sources.

1:31:50Again, I don't know the exact definitions, but just call it private equity and venture capital. They are funds where they've got money that they invest into businesses. Well, typically, so private equity is more about three years, looking to return the money in three years and look to basically try and treble their money in three years. But the trouble is with cost of borrowing, they're even now talking about four times in their money in three years because that's the sort of return that they need for investors, right? So you've got... So if you think about private equity or venture capitalists, you'll sell a business to them, but typically you or the management team stay on as part of that journey, but they'll want to flip it for the next...

1:32:25That's venture capitalists. Yeah, and private equity. Typically, they'll come in, they'll buy the business or a significant minority or a majority stake, and then they'll flip it again in three years. Again, it's not 100 % that rule, but a lot of funds and actually some of the financial regulations mean that they have to operate in certain ways so again i'm no massive expert in that but but typically what that means though is that you are on the under the pump a lot because they have they have investors that they have got to return the money for they'll have somebody who sits on the board they normally have some really bright young kid who's normally sat there asking 100 questions a week the date with the laptop yeah and i understand why because the stakes are high for them so you know when you look for an exit there's various things so you've got obviously an institutional exit which is private equity or venture capital but that typically means that you are exiting or realizing some value but you're actually most the management team or you as founder are more likely to have to play a journey on the next part or next stage of the journey because it will then get flipped again and that's when they keep the founder on yeah not always but most of the time yeah more often it's interesting you know you talked earlier about sometimes you'll have a founder and md comes in yeah if an md is doing an outstanding job and actually the founders got to a stage where they can't take the business any further that's where you'll typically see a founder exit in that scenario yeah sometimes you know they'll keep them on just because they'll take a view that actually it's important they're still associated with the business but it's very magic isn't it yeah it's very much circumstantial so you've got an institutional exit which is probably to venture capital and again that can't doesn't have to be 100 that can be staged as well it could be like an earn out over x years and that's another thing to say is that these days virtually all exits on a stage basis so you'll typically sell the business or sell a part of the business for initial consideration or initial amounts but then you have targets to hit over one two three four five year period then unlocks the rest of your earn out or goes to 100 sales so again i could talk about it because it's been public domain is look at someone like sir tom mercer again lovely guy sold uh mama to uh ag bar first stage and then three years later it was then in the papers that he they fight and then they've bought the rest of the shares of mama and now is a complete exit so that would be example there right so you've got institutional money you've then got trade sale right so that's what like example i just gave you a mama there where you've got a big corporate or a big food and drink or a big consumer goods company um or consortium will buy you and then you've got an exit there but also there's the third exit which is one that we took on vitacoco where um we floated it we ipo the business on the nasdaq in the us that's quite rare right um it is but it's like it's rare but again if you talk about hanging by a thread it's very interesting because when you look at the vitacoco journey and again i want to be careful here because i don't i don't want to talk out of turn here because you know i headed up europe and played a big role but equally mike and era and others were the founders so they're probably better to talk to me about this but we came very close to selling that business on a number of occasions but what's really interesting is is that i'm a big believer in fate right and i also think good things happen to good people and you know mike and era you know and also a lot of i mean the one of the beautiful things about buy a cocoa it's just full of great people right and that's what the fun fun in business is important right that's the number one mantra you've got to have fun in business and i'm a big believer in fate and i i you know even though that they were at the time you know i can remember being with mike we had also another problem in london we came over and we always did another transaction and it there's a big fallout and it fell apart in there and i remember having to you know sat there having a beer with mike afterwards and just like head in the hands going what are we doing wrong are we just are we jinxed here i think that's another thing i've no no one really talks about enough is how many deals don't go through like we've just got our family friends who's just about we literally went for drinks to celebrate the exit then that's what one Piper Sander have done, Harvey and Brockless, the guys I used to do these for.

1:36:20We were like, clap the batsman, pass me the fucking oranges, let's have some tequila. And then the next thing gets to Monday and the deal's off. And it's just like, and then it's back to square one. It's like, how many deals do you think, what's the capacity to deal with deals? I would say 95 % of deals fall through. Wow. What happens? Is there anything brands can do to protect themselves of that? or is it kind of probably do a whole podcast on that right I mean it's so circumstantial yeah it can be different reasons it can be characters in the business suddenly it just doesn't click for them all the deal's done but then they're going to take it to the group board no we don't like that but this division the food and drink division want to buy it but they go to the group board no don't want it to happen or else they announce the city latest results they aren't quite good enough actually we're pulling we're pulling the acquisition because we need to we're going to redirect the funds elsewhere there's so many different nuances of what can happen.

1:37:16But just going back to that Vita Coco story is that the IPOs are rare, but a lot of people do it, right? It is very expensive to IPO a business, particularly in America. But the reason I believe in fate is if you now look at Vita Coco, so we floated at$16. Today, Vita Coco is the highest leading performing beverage stock on the whole of the American Stock Exchange, right? it's continually hitting results it's at a record high at the moment so it's more than so for shareholders and investors who've come in since the launch it was at 16 dollars it's nothing it closed last last night at 36 dollars 28 or something like that uh and its highs been 37 dollars on which was which was two weeks ago so it's it's done an incredible job you know so everybody says it's a good idea to float business yes it is but again again if i was to talk to like a fever tree or an oatly or a beyond meat all who floated but their share prices are all down you know fever tree not as much these days but if you look at like an oatly or a a beyond meat they're down i think people have lost like 97 percent of their value because they're down at like three percent of the original share price so it's not you know the bottom line is if you're going to float a business this is in my mind if you're going to float a business you have to know that every single quarter you can hit your numbers you have to hit your earnings right which is obviously that your bottom line your profit as soon as you have one wobbly quarter share price just plummets so you've got to have what i mean about that is you've got to have a stable going go on to an onto the stock market but know that you've got a stable enough business that you can pretty much know your numbers the whole time because if you're if you've got a really volatile business the market doesn't tolerate the ups and downs as much as a private a private owner would do when you get to that exit el dorado which i call it like where the gold lies what are some of the things founders can or not even founders just like operators or anyone in the business like what are the things that they probably you they don't think about but should be thinking about you know and because you've gone through many of these processes like what are the you know he talked about earlier about how to kill off a brand which would be like the gross margin the number one thing is one is be able to demonstrate how strong your brand is the number one thing yeah yeah two is make sure you've got both good growth which i call the compounded annual growth rate yep and ebitda so have the balance between between the two between now three make sure you're if you've got a portfolio you know make sure you've got absolute heroes in certain categories it's like if you're selling a business if you came to me and said right i've got a business that's worth that's turning over 30 million across six categories where I've got businesses turning over 20, 25 million in two categories, I almost guarantee you the business that's doing 20, 25 million in two categories is worth more than that one doing 30 million in six categories.

1:40:09Yeah. Or 35 million or 40 million. Yeah. So, you know, being a hero and being a lead brand, and when I say lead, by the way, it doesn't have to mean you're the biggest, right? If you are leading growth or winning on consumer surveys, and I'll give you a good example of this. Take Pippa Nut, for example. for me I think that's the leading brand in nut butters at the moment just overtaken meridian but not quite as big as whole earth and you may have seen whole earth got bought bought the other week but so you know it's about you're on that trajectory and actually you can get to being you know you're the fastest growing you've got the scale you might not be at number one but somebody's excited because they feel it's about whatever if you think about if anybody's going to buy you they have you know particularly the corporates right taking you from like again I'm just plucking numbers here take even 20 to 50 million is it enough for these guys most of these guys need to have 100 150 200 million brand in their portfolio so when they're buying you they have to have a view so when jan boone um jan and isabel from lotus bought bear or jan so we had this alphabites we had uh paul's and stuff and baby and we're really excited about alphabites and serials and yander said look don't be too rude can you just talk to me about yo-yos how do i make yo-yos which is you know you're telling me it's number one kid's snack and it's the number one lunchbox item in the uk how do i make you're doing 20 million on that at the moment how do i make that 100 million in the uk can that's can we just talk about that's nothing else and he's done this exactly the same because you know biscoff and speculu which is all that whole thing and again talk about how you innovate brilliantly with any i mean lotus is a great case study for people to use you know he has i don't know 30 brands in the lotus family but i can tell you how 90 of the focus goes on the biscoff brand right that's all they worry about is the biscoff brand because it's so powerful and strong and that's what i mean so you have to have a brand be able to demonstrate that your brand has the potential to go to that level other other things to look at is show the brand can travel so if you're only in one category and you've gone into a second category and it's doing really well so for example on bio me we've gone into so i went into those stuffed bars yeah exactly that yeah that's innovating close to the core but also in a different yeah or bio me has gone into bio me has gone into cereal but also gone into into into yogurts and drinks great example there and people are saying well aren't they quite different categories yes and no but but gut health obviously we've got in cereals but actually the heritage of gut health is in is in dairy right because if you go back to the years do you remember everybody every fridge originally no every fridge had a yakult or an actamil in it do you remember in the 80s 90s and 2000s yeah literally that's i remember as a kid boom i'd be giving them all days every morning and particularly when you go to continental europe like in france for every for every one meter of the uk we had a have a yogurt space they have three meters they have three times more space than the average supermarket so if you can get things like the dairy side right in those continental european markets huge upside but also there's a lot of players like you take a denone or something like that they'd be very excited in that in you know in that sort of business so so that's so that's the other thing is how important is it to think reverse engineer of who you're going to sell to totally yeah so who so say so can i give you the best example of that one right let me go back to my innocent days and i think i think i think the boys would be okay me saying this but which is so this is sometimes where i think i mentioned this with you before you and i sat down chat you might have at some point a conflict between what's right for the consumer and what's right to get your successful exit and let me explain that right so at innocent we depending on which day of the week you're looking at and which whether we're fighting it with with uh the government and and hmrc a smoothie gave you one or two or five a day right for the portions of fruit.

1:43:47So let's just say we were two of the five a day and we spent a lot of money fighting that. Somebody at Innocent came up genius because you remember, particularly the government backing, remember the fight, you know, get your five a day. We're going to create veg pots and we're going to create veg pots and we're going to do three portions of veg in there. So how good is this as a consumer

1:44:08that you get two of your five a day on your fruit through a smoothie and you get the veg pot three of your five a day, you got five of you five a day through innocent so you just buy a veg pot and a smoothie and there's your five a day high fives everybody's going genius absolute brilliant so we launched veg pots slight challenging short shelf life similar blah blah blah absolutely brilliant so i can't remember these exact numbers but let's just say back then we were turning over 120 million of which veg pots was i don't know eight ten million brilliant however when it came to looking to sell that business okay there were some exceptions but 90 of people are interested and innocent were going to be a beverage operator so when coke came in and did the deal they valued the business but they virtually put a line through veg pots and said that's our strategy for us we're a beverage company so actually the eight ten million didn't really get any value it might have got a one times revenue i don't even think it got that and what happened with that was veg pots got retired and paul brown got it for free and launched bowl yeah right so that's an example there i'm just using that example there to say look consumer well that's great happened with um well my actually i won't talk about it i'll cut this out but they basically exited for fuck all you've done all that work and actually when you've and this is why it's about being master of a category and doing exactly that um and this is a big thing for me which is you will sometimes come against that it doesn't mean actually because it depends on you know if you're actually thinking well actually i might still sell that business to vc or private equity or else actually my kids might take that business over or whatever but if you're looking for a clean trade exit you've got to think very carefully about those dynamics so you know i said i was speaking to amelia is this amelia at bulby yeah and you know they're they're fucking flying they're actually doing amazing job you've said that they're doing all of that and but i was like to her and it's good it sounds like the dumb three of us she was like you know who do i is it like it's like fucking selling a house for you calling an estate agent do you how do you do you do you have to court these people do they court you like when you say we're speaking with the end of mind we know where the ex-el dorado is it's like like how do like how do brands begin to know who to go for who's going to buy it you know that's so nebulous in the grand scheme of things so my my three bits of advice or four bits of advice i'd give on that would be so first of all you know if you're doing a great job and if you're powering on you should find that some people come to you and just introduce themselves and say okay i'm knocking right so i think that's the first thing build a great brand and build a great business alongside that brand and you should find that people start courting you anyway other thing i'd advise as well is that um there are a number of m &a and m &a obviously merged and acquisitions stroke corporate financiers who whether they represent on the buy or sell side are continually representing people to buy or sell consumer goods brands so you know you and i spoke about some of the names earlier you know you've got the banks um with you know rothschilds and you've got people like piper sandler then you've got others such as more like boutique corporates such as hula and loki or spain lindsey or atlantra for example you should go and engage with those guys and say look just want to put put us on the map just talk about where the business is at this is what we're doing a little bit about what we're trying to do because those guys day in day out are speaking to all of the ceos board non-execs mna um head of mnas in those sort of companies about okay what are you looking at in market are you looking at acquisitions because sometimes they're given a mandate to say look okay bad example right okay but let's say like we've got a mandate to spend up to a mandate is a they will put in a request to say it's like me going to an estate agent and saying right I go to an estate agent and say right can you find me a million pound three bed house in postcode SW18 needs to have these five things can you go away and find that for me so the estate agent will go away and try and find something and match that that it's not uncommon it's very very common that the big corporates will say look we've done a whole strategic review of our business we believe in our within our own brands we've got this capability but there's two or three key consumer macro trends coming up or else categories that are exploding we want to get into or we have exposure on can you find me you know a protein brand or can you find me whatever brand it is yeah and if you've if you've got to introduce yourself and have these conversations then you they can you can they can tee up those conversations for you and sometimes don't forget it's like you might not be ready to sell but you can also have a conversation but also you can bring somebody on a cap table as a minority investor because a lot of these businesses have incubators now yes there are some pros and cons some people say well yeah but if i bring them on does that mean that if i want to sell it eventually i won't get as good a multiple because maybe they've got something in the in the in the legals that says that they get the right to buy a certain price or actually if you know if i've got nestle coming in putting like a minority on she's staking does that mean someone like unilever will never ever buy me because they're never going to buy a business that's got somebody like nestle on as a minority thing so there's all those things to think about but surround yourself by the advisors and people who you know who've been through these sort of processes will help you make right decisions um but you know fundamentally if you know take that example you're saying with amelia keep doing what she's doing because she's building an incredible brand um everybody's talking about that business um it's also an area what I love about what she's doing.

1:49:44And this is why, this is what, this is what inspires this. What I love doing is that, you know, she's done it in a really unsexy area, right? Canned and packaged grocery. Like people say, well, you know, I have this mantra that every brand, every, actually every category needs a challenger brand, right? Yep. Okay. There was nobody's disrupting pulses and grains and stuff in there. She's gone in there and done an incredible job on a commodity, on a commoditized private label. When I talk about private label, me like retailer branded why do you need a challenger branding there look what she's done to that category she's like revolutionized it i wrote a newsletter that was all about this and i was basically saying like why usps unique selling points are kind of dead and and actually what is what is a better move is unique category play so instead of trying to be so say for example like um super busy category at the minute is those sort of gut health drinks everyone's fighting fighting fighting it's like the other way which you can do and there will be some winners the other way is to say pick a category that hasn't been innovated in for yonks and just go there and be the first so amelia's doing it with bold bean oatly did it with oat milk yeah you know jim khan is now doing with curry sauces like you know you know like curry sauces like that that was such a commoditized market for ages it's like oh and i completely agree like there's a challenge of brand in every category do you know what this all comes back to and i think i think adam said adam adam ballon who you've um had on the podcast before he said it as well and it's my number i I talked about number one things on the P &L and the building your brand, right?

1:51:10The number one thing that this comes down to, if you want to build a brand, but also if you want to successfully exit, the number one advice or the number one thing I look at in any investment I look at is the consumer, why is he strong enough? That's the big enough. And let me explain that, right? Yeah, go for it. For your brand or business or the category you're in, in terms of what you're doing and the brand you're doing, your product or service you're providing, why is that going to be so desirable for a consumer in terms of better needing an existing sorry for a better meeting an existing need state or meeting an untapped need state and let me give an example recently so obviously i'm in gut health already and a number of brands so obviously we talked about freya earlier obviously got biomee dolcens we've also got carb soda but if i look at gut health i reckon i've had 14 gut health sodas come to me in the last three months with i'm launching this gut health soda this gut health soda and i look at them all or most of them and i can't actually give you a reason why the consumer should pick it up because consumer why isn't strong enough and it's no different than when i was on coconut water and somebody said to me i'm launching birch water i'm launching melon water i'm launching um um okay rosemary water whatever they all came yeah but why oh it's great tasting why well it does this does this there wasn't a real you know it's like coconut water why coconut water it's got twice the potassium of a banana it's all about electrolytes it's electrolyte so when you look at a proposition or your brand, what is the why?

1:52:51Is the why strong enough for the consumer? How are you going to tell them about it? Why are you going to convert to purchase? And that's the number one Achilles heel I see the whole time, which is your why is not strong enough. That's the biggest thing. Yeah, this is fascinating because Seth Godin is the marketing sort of… You read a lot more than me, I can tell you that. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, he came on the podcast, which was like a fucking dream come true. because he's the most he's the most he's basically inspired me to everything really which was just like a full circle moment but i was talking about trends and he was saying and he you know this guy is like i think he's 60 65 so he's seen it and worked in marketing his whole life and he was saying with food and drink you see moments of inspiration followed by long tales of commodity which is exactly with the fight to cocoa as it's like race the bottom so it's like you have the moment with coconut water race the bottom yeah i think you know gut health with these sodas race race then eventually it's going to happen as you say you've seen 15 pitch decks it's going to eventually go to get to a thing where it's a race to the bottom how can brands and we'll wrap this up because i've just realized you've got to go soon but how can brands really um like make their why ironclad for the consumer like what's some of the things they can do and how do you do that vitacoco well it's also the why is what again when you talk about proudest thing and i think mike would say the same right i will again have careful because i'm never ever we're never complacent and you literally obsess every day to make sure you stay where you are but the amount of people that told us that coconut water wouldn't last it was a fad whereas we knew it's been drunk across the globe particularly in hot climates daily ritual everywhere and it was just about bringing that particularly to the western world and where that looked and coming up you know i you know obviously i stepped out after 12 13 years but i think mike's coming up to they'll become it's a 20 year anniversary they're based in new york yeah but the number one word i'm trying to explain there is longevity right everybody said it'd be a fad the number one thing you need to provide is why there is a longevity for the brand or category of what you're doing because it's been so resilient and it's kept going and it kept growing and growing and growing and growing and you know you know mike's mike's well over half a billion sales now the market cap of viticoco is over two billion today right on the socket shade and it's got this brilliant ability to show that more and more consumers are coming into the brand every day but importantly existing consumers are buying more and drinking more each day as well so i think in terms of do you think brands can drive can turn fat um can drive fads to trends to like if the if the why is strong enough brands can lead it and clear enough then yes there's a reason why i think you're about to see a big one of the things i think about to see a big danger on at the moment is that when you talk about future trends i think you're about to see a world where do you know at the moment if you're not careful i think everybody's sat there in the morning a lot of people are particularly people are into like you know kind of fitness putting good stuff in the body sat there there's i know i know people including myself i'm sat there and i've only got 20 supplements right i've take this do this do this madness and i actually think you know there's a brand like heights at the moment it's going look forget all the noise you just need one thing this is it and i think you're going to see there's a global trend around personalization but also i think there's a global trend around simplification as well in that people just want to know that if i drink or eat this it does this but importantly the wider that it does but importantly to the level you acquire I think that's what's going to happen because it's like it's like me at the moment I'm now rattle on what I take because I'm taking turmeric and all bits and pieces because I'm told you know bits and pieces for my training or just general lifestyle and stuff like that but I think you're going to see a lot of more simplification coming people who can just make consumers lives easier are going to do really really well but going back I suppose that's what Huell's basically done isn't it Huell's a great example like it's I mean and I like the Rory Southern talks about Complete meal solution there and then.

1:56:41Boom, that does it. But also, I think the fact that it doesn't taste as good as a Yazoo, that's genius. But what you have to think about there is Huel have marketed themselves in such a good way. So it's no different than saying, well, yeah, but surely then everybody's still just having a multivitamin. You just need your age is their multivitamin. Everything's okay. No, because that's not enough for a lot of people. They're now trying to take excess. Huel have done really well because they've communicated exactly what is in their product, why that's all they need, and the buck stops there. and everybody's and they've got the consumer saying yeah that's all i need to do i'm happy i've nailed that what do you think are some of the trends that will melt into fads and what do you think are some of the fads but potentially like will be will be the vitacoco will be the innocence so i think i think just generally speaking i think you know macro trends we talked we talked about personalization so i think it's not gonna be long between between you know whatever you've got on your watch or on your wrist or on your phone we'll just tell you straight away here's your recommended order or i've got all these things and you know we talked about on bio me that we think we can do something where people get answer 10 questions and we can personalize exactly what they need from us um so i think personalization is a big one i've talked about that simplification bit i think in terms of macro trends i think collagen and gut health is just going to be huge i think gut health probably will be the same size if not bigger than protein as a macro trend what you're now seeing though it's really interesting because people think proteins gone to its level and it's still going to be there but the protein is about to go again so you're now what makes you think that like as in have a look at the us it's absolutely juggernauting again um because beforehand it was just particularly the fitness and active lifestyle people getting into it but now people are realizing that a high protein diet can benefit so many more range of consumers particularly anything from kids females females with pregnant pregnancy menopause all that sort of stuff and protein is now being um integrated into so many different diet requirements that suddenly people are realizing that protein is incredibly hot as general lifestyle so the address for the audience has probably gone up 40 percent and when you look at globally the billion you know amount of people now being advised to take more protein it's quite frightening so i think protein you know and gut health are going to be absolutely huge and then obviously the other big area in consumer goods and food i mean i'm not going to we won't talk about the whole sustainability bit because anything that you know i think every single product or service unless people pick that up and know that they're doing something that is less detrimental and more importantly has a positive impact on on on on the planet unless i think that's going to become a prerequisite for products if you don't if you aren't having a positive impact as a brand as a brand whether you're a product or service on the environment people are going to stop stop shopping you so i think you've got to do that but i think going back to consumer goods and food and drink i think this whole new tropics adaptogens another big area there which is obviously a lot of this stuff is kind of positively influencing the mind and again putting stuff into your body that has functional benefits that are akin to that sort of product so i think again mushroom is going to be a massive growth area and you're seeing some good brands you know you've seen space goods you've seen dirty you know there's um days and co there's loads of nice brands doing that that's a big space in terms of like the consumer pieces of getting a massive addict to coffee as well but that space goes really does work what libby from piper investments says that there'll only ever be one winner in a category like what are your thoughts on that um All right.

2:00:14do i i don't agree with that um um, is she talking from a challenger brand perspective? Um, you know, you know, Piper investment as in, yeah. Yeah. I think it's, um, I think I do agree with that, but then there are always some categories that will challenge that. And that is, for example, let's take energy drinks. I think both Red Bull and Monster have been very successful alongside each other because I almost argue slightly differently. And I'm not, not by the way, I know Libby and she's she's an incredible operator right um and very very smart the only thing I would say is that quite often you need multiple good challenger brands to build the category to its potential so for example on coconut water I don't think we'd have got coconut water as a total category to the size we got it to unless we had the likes of innocent naked harmless harvest all spending money helping us drive awareness and then building the category to the level yes I would say we're the lead brand out there today but there are still some other brands out there and I'm sure somebody else will come again and you have to be a little bit careful on this because it's like take smoothies as an example today Innocent is the number one smoothie right but everybody would say don't go to Innocent smoothies again but then have a look at what something like Mockingbird's now doing so Mockingbird is actually a reincarnation of Savzi right so they bought the assets of Savzi and Mockingbird.

2:01:40Mockingbird is absolutely smashing it in there and actually, you know, is a good second player to Innocent. And I suspect Innocent are happy about that because I think Mockingbird are bringing new consumers or lapsed consumers back into the category. And then it's Innocent's job then to say, well, how do we then, you know, convert them back or bring them into Innocent as a brand? What are your thoughts on other brands? Because that category piece is interesting. It's actually, you can compete. I think people are by default competitive, founders are. So they look at their other challenger brand as a competitor set.

2:02:08And this is what Mark Parber told me. He goes, actually, you can do that, but fuck me. You're going to be quite paranoid, miserable, like all those things. Slightly different with Vice Coca, because you guys were much bigger then. But he was actually saying, you know, so say it was Peanut Butter, Manny Life versus Pippa Nuts. Like, we could compete with each other, or we could both just try and knock off Sun Pat, both try and knock off. And he was basically saying, go after the big incumbent. Like, how do you think on... Yeah, you basically, I think what you do is

2:02:40slight barriers because you can go after the big incumbent, but if your consumer demographic is completely different, it doesn't help, right? But if you've got a lot of... Consumer Y, right? Yeah, exactly that, right? And I think you can do that. And I think, you know, good examples. I've got, again, Ember, which is the meat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those guys are doing a really, really good job because, you know, we've looked at, you know, you've got brands such as kings and and other brands in the category who are well-established meat snacking brands but they said look how do we win and they've basically said look we can actually we think we can do we can win on product better than those guys deliver a much more tasty higher moisture so less dry you know built on etc but also in a more sustainable way through they talk very heavily about regenerative farming with a really nice strong brand that has a really nice premium edge to it and ember's just now absolutely flying because if the why is strong so strong in that category suddenly the retailer's gone actually we see the role you play actually because there's this premiumization happening in that category and people want the quality of meat and they want the high protein source and they've you know against the two or three competitors in that space ember have done a really good job on that so i think again i i'd answer that slightly different to to and again i'm not trying to become controversial here a huge a huge respect respect both i mean mark and i have worked together he's on ember as well isn't he exactly but i think what it comes down to is that i think you can have multiple challenger brands in a category if each brand's why is big enough if you have a positioning and you're strong enough and you can you know you can be you know if you can be successful you know i think multiple brands can operate but ultimately because the brand that has the strongest why to the consumer and continues to evolve and reinvent itself has when you grow with your consumer and doesn't fatigue that's the one that ultimately will come out on top that's the bottom line you can't stand still you've got to evolve and stuff like that you've got to you've got to do it differently and again one brand i think i know they're only two and a half three years old but you know people said to me originally with oh surreal you know i love them surreal marketing and stuff like that but you know it's going to fatigue a bit but you just watch how they've taken it on already what do you think unbelievable yeah what do you because jack's got a knee he's had a kid he's got a knee operation hasn't he or something so i'm trying to trying to pin them down kit kit's got two kids now yeah yeah so i've literally been emailing them and back and forth for like ages and we're like which we're going to make it happen hopefully in jan but yeah final thing like what what's going to make them successful do you think because as you say a lot of people write wrote wrote off rate wrote off write it off i don't know how to say it off written off that category that category saying oh you know like what how do you think they're gonna what's their that brand i can't i mean again they are the numbers of in two and a half years they're a scale most brands haven't got to in four or five years absolutely flying there's a number of things you've got there you've got two incredibly complementary founders who are both top of their game who's which is what jack Jack is more commercial supply chain.

2:05:45Kit, he's the brand and the marketeer. And he's doing both and complement each other really well. They've also got an ex-innocent guy who does a lot of the copy and stuff in there. Guy Goodjohn, who does an incredible job. So I think you've got a winning team there. I think you've also then got a product that is bang on trend with consumer needs states and will continue to be. High protein. You've then got obviously zero sugar and low carbs. That trend is a very big trend for consumers not going away. You've got a great tasting product. You bring in innovative, relevant flavors, exciting flavors.

2:06:21I mean, look at the partnership they did with Gymshark. So good. And you've got Gymshark logoed cereal pieces. People are going absolutely mad for it. I don't know if you saw a week ago, they just launched their limited edition honeycomb, which is unbelievably tasting. It's brilliant. And I'm just sat there absolutely wetting myself on the whole Winnie the Pooh versus Paddington Bear off for having. I lost some jokes. And do you know what I mean? It's just, people need this in their life every day, particularly with the rubbish we've got going on around us and all the austerity. I don't know what they're talking about not returning to austerity.

2:06:53The government, we are going back to austerity whether we like it or not. You need brands that bring a moment of sunshine to your day and that's what something like Surreal's doing. Outstanding. Mate, I know you've got a grunt, he's got another meeting I've absolutely fucking loved that it was it was banging and there's just yeah mind is bubbling with wisdom it was it was absolute gold thank you for having me again mate it's been great I'm always happy to do it it doesn't have to be annual it could be biannual and if there's anything you know you ever need or you want me to talk about I'm always happy to talk about it but mate thank you and mate it's great to see the podcast grow so much because you're doing really really well with it so it's great I appreciate that good people deserve to do well and you're one of them oh thank you so much mate um right that was sick

2:07:37thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much