The Art of Hustle: How Harry Clarke won POPS listings at Ocado, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, TESCO

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brand looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with the toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started.

0:25Hello there people and listeners of Hugly Podcast. Today I'm absolutely thrilled and excited to welcome my very good friend Harry Clark onto the podcast. um harry uh is well was the founder of pops uh ice lollies which were an alcohol alcohol-based kind of cocktail caliper probably you're probably gonna kill me for saying that mate which which which took the scene it took to this well yeah it took to our wonderful industry in 2014 won a whole host of listings with tesco ocado uh waitrose did amazing brand partnerships with Diageo and some of their huge, huge, huge brands. Harry then, unfortunately, in 2019, had to, well, parted ways with his business, decided to kind of shut up shop, was ravaged.

1:16Well, this was pre-lockdown and then has gone on to found HC Consulting. They've done some amazing work with some amazing brands that you'll know, Remy O 'Gilato, Savile Drinks, Holy Moly Dips. Gaz has actually been on this podcast, I think one of the first early three or episode three or five, I think. Good man. And now as, as, as of, well, this week, the day of recording this, our partnership has gone live. Harry and I have, have joined forces. So Hungary and HT Consulting are very much partners. We've now got into the proverbial bed together and I'm very excited for what we can do, but mate, I'm thrilled to have you on mate and super excited.

2:00Yeah. Well, thanks for having me and um yeah really looking forward to forward to chatting i've been listening um listening for years so um and uh stoked to get the partnership off the ground so um so yeah the place i want to start and this is never it's never in chronological order i kind of jump around which i'm sure you'll know but you sent me something which was titled knowing when to stop and I think the narrative in food and drink and entrepreneurship is you know just keep going just keep going never give in never give in never give in and by and large I agree with that to a point like that's that that's the mindset I'm I'm adopting but they're actually also and I don't think it's it's not sexy and it's not cool but knowing how and when to quit is really important and I think quit needs to be rebranded into when to pivot or essentially or when to restart so let's talk about that moment like what how did you know it was time to stop stop pops so I think with all these things is there's never sort of one moment it's there's a bit of a there's always a there's always a big build-up and I think think obviously what you see um in the industry is sort of you see um when things do fold or people do decide to move on people just see that one announcement or that article in the grocer or whatever that event might be but people don't really sort of sort of think about that especially as a founder you you might have known this this moment was coming for quite a while so you know you've known this might have been coming for so in everyone's case they're going to be different right so um maybe three months or six months even a little bit longer um so i think for us um you know quite a lot of it was you know we we had some underlying probably um challenges within within the business um you know we our product that we had which was predominantly an ice lolly product was was extremely seasonal um so we had massive sort of seasonality we basically probably sold um 80 percent of our revenue was probably within a sort of 12 to 16 week period um which made cash flow sort of extremely sort of lumpy and we had we'd never sort of although in those moments in the summer um everything looked like it was amazing and was kicking off and and it was um you know we never sort of managed to sort of have a product or a skew or something else in the mix that would sort of even our sort of um even our sort of revenues out and you know and that makes it very difficult when you're trying to grow a team um or when you're trying to grow staff trying to lay the sort of foundations of your business down um so we sort of we sort of struggled very much in terms of from a cash flow perspective um which which essentially meant that we had to keep on raising um so we raised had to keep on raising pretty much at the end of every summer um as you know especially in a seasonal business as lots of founders will know you have to you know if you're if you so for instance if you've got a very sort of summer skewed sort of product um you essentially so let's say you know like an ice cream now you sell off you sell a shitload of stuff in the summer and then you come to sort of august september your sales sort of naturally sort of subside um and then essentially go through a quiet period you hope you don't have um a lot of stock at that point um and and then you've then then once you get at the end of your basically your period where you've had the slimmest sales throughout the winter you've then got to build up all your stock for next summer so becomes the cash flow becomes extremely lumpy and that for us was very sort of difficult to manage um so so from a sort of business perspective we've diluted ourselves quite a lot um which i think is a sort of natural thing that lots of founders find um dilution and you've got to sort of take um you've got to take a longer term approach and go okay so how much cash do i actually need to make this business um into something that we feel is sort of scalable or exitable and and essentially we sort of got to a position where we thought um it's probably the cash that was required to keep going um was going to be too much and would mean that we need to dilute ourselves and um in in such a way that it probably wouldn't be there wouldn't be enough in in the business we wouldn't have enough skin in the game um and and there's probably another point but you know we had some underlying probably um issues in terms of rate to sale in our grocers and our and on in our sort of retail channels so combining those sort of rate to sell and performance um sort of cash flow and needing for cash all the time and then also us not necessarily having as much skin in the game as we wanted you sort of put all those points together even though we had a very exciting cool brand that was doing lots in the market it becomes quite a difficult proposition to sort of keep going with yeah we're definitely going to talk about the seasonality i think it would be good to double click on the the cash flow so so how much sort of how much cash were you making in a summer and then how much because because i'm i'm having this issue well we have this issue with islands right because yeah from october from october to march potentially april because this country's shit with the weather we call it hot chocolate season so so we've had issues whereby i mean we went into some retailers in april and it's like yeah for fuck's sake like it's not it's no one's fault but because of the ranging windows we're up shit creek without paddle because we're trying to sell hot chocolate season in the middle of the summer.

7:56So we're experiencing this battle now. And one of the ways we're trying to mitigate it is like, okay, let's make sure when we're going into new retailers that we're aiming for that September, October ranging window. There's no point in us. I'd rather wait six months. But in terms of the cash flow for you guys, how much cash were you making in the summer? and how long were you trying to make that work for the remainder of the year? Yeah, so we'd be selling upwards of one to one and a half million lollies per summer. So that was in totality at our peak, which again means that you've got to build your stock level in January, February, March.

8:45so so so in terms of from what is the sort of cash required you'd have to basically build in all of your stock your stock there so we're basically um producing before the summer kicks off um then at that point you're also relying on obviously in our case and a little bit like with islands the winter's more consistent than than the summer um but we're then we're sort of forecasting off the back of um you know are we going to have a strong summer are we not going to have a strong summer and i think going back to your point about the retailers which is um sort of really interesting you know we we did we had a lot of sort of interesting deals which which people what they call wigging so when it goes it goes or sort of fixed term purchases so retailers would buy a whole load of stock in the summer period so for us one of the issues we also sort of had was we didn't necessarily get the commitment from the from the buyers until quite late on so you know in some scenarios i remember you know getting a phone call from tesco's and would get a call in april saying we want x amount of hundred thousand um ice lollies for wimbledon in july in 600 stores and you know the frustrating thing that we had was you know you know i was trying to speak to the buyers about that in january saying please you know are we going to do this again next summer uh if we are please let us know can you send us some forecast can we prepare for that um and that again made things very challenging just um with some of the seasonality and and the cash flow a lot of it was very sort of last minute um which is why i think brands you know if you have a every every business is skewed seasonally but um it's a lot easier if you have a slightly more sort of um fluid um sort of um sales across the year hi there guys super super quick one um I write a weekly newsletter called Hungry Friday Feast.

10:43It goes live at 8am every Friday. I'm pouring my soul into this bad boy. It's probably my favourite 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 1 ,200 subscribers. Come and join the party. I'm going to put a link in the show notes. It's right at the top. 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 if you were to go back to that period of time or you just go back to the pop's journey safe tomorrow like what would you do differently and why um i think obviously hindsight's a beautiful thing i think i didn't have a huge amount of regrets because i think you know like like lots of founders who are listening to this is you know we launched a business very young i launched business when i was 23 you know i had absolutely no fmcg sort of experience um and i think you know there weren't also you know back in 2013 14 when we launched it there weren't all these sort of um amazing sort of platforms and tools you didn't exist um um other you know the likes of young foodies like some bread and jam you know some of these other sort of which are which are great tools for people to leverage they just didn't exist then um so we we really felt like we were sort of um learning on our feet um every single day what i think i think i think you know creating a new category is always an incredibly challenging thing um so you know no one had ever done a champagne ice laundry before that was just never that never done before um in a sort of sold to a retailer.

12:35I think people, there was some sort of, you can make champagne ice lollies at home or alcoholic ice lollies at home recipes on BBC Good Food, but no one had ever done this. And then when you chuck that in that, you know, a 23 and 24 year old are trying to do it with no FMCG experience, with no sort of path as well. And that's the thing that totally new products into new categories have such a, why it can be such a challenge is because there is no, there's no sort of pathway you know if it's a peanut butter brand you know people know how to consume a peanut butter where to find peanut butter um or the likes of other sort of products and other categories um whereas if you're doing something that has never been done before there's there's those challenges so i probably i think i would have probably chosen something that probably had a slightly more um a slightly more sort of clear path in terms of where it can be distributed how it can be consumed um but obviously within all of that you've got to find some element of innovation um within that we can't just be doing the same old stuff so i'd probably find a slightly more established category um product range and probably put my sort of twist and innovation on that um which which is probably what i've and looking back sort of eight nine years ago there's lots of opportunities to do that it's so fascinating because i i interviewed rory Sutherland and he talked about the restaurant graveyard uh like this theory about the restaurant graveyard it's like you you always hear about all the great restaurants that make it but you never hear about the thousands of restaurants that didn't make it so you're like oh I'm gonna launch burrito business or I'm gonna launch the next Franco Manca you hear about all these businesses that like the Franco Mancas that have taken off but you don't hear about the fucking graveyard of businesses that that didn't make it and actually it's it's the same in FMCG and I've interviewed a lot of brands that have said great and i'm to honest i've been uh shouting about this as well about create a category of one create a category of one create a category where there's no competition for example moju shots is a great example of that moth uh rtd drinks great example of that and i'm like and it can be a beautiful blessing in that there's no path you kind of have carte blanche on how you pitch it to the retailers but and that there's a huge opportunity for huge white swan growth but at the same time there's there's brands like yourself where it's like oh my god i wish there was some sort of of trodden path and i think this is why i love doing these conversations is you learn so much live it's like yeah well yeah you can create a category of one but actually it's quite good having a steer of of how things are done what yeah yeah i love the idea like pitching to these retailers what was the pitch to say right you haven't got a champagne isolate a pims isolate but you need one like how did you show them they needed something that they didn't know they needed i love that i always love asking that well well funnily enough i think there's there's an interesting point here which is the the sort of weird and wacky and innovation like we sort of had in some ways that was a really easy way to get a meeting because we were sort of so out there on at that point there wasn't something like that in the market so we actually never we didn't have a huge issue getting meetings because people saw it it wasn't just another another of something you know um something that um you know had a slightly different ingredient profile or slightly different um makeup of some sort so so in terms of unlocking some initial sort of meetings we were um we were pretty good at that actually um i think i think naturally and you know this is where you know sort of work with brands now i think i think once we got into that room we probably bogged it up um quite quite sort of aggressively um not bogged it up i think we did the same thing that every up what does that mean so bogged it up like you know messed it up you know so sort of um when we got in the room our pitch wasn't probably amazing um and and i think i think what we did which i see so many founders do at the moment or lots is a sort of common sort of founder mistake is they get that meeting the Tescos and they go in there and we just talked about the brand for an hour so we just walked in there and talked about how lovely our brand was how lovely our packaging was look at all the events we've attended um look at some of these influencers we've worked with all that stuff and you know you know we you know that that whole thing sort of needs to be reframed which is sort of in my view you're spending probably about 10-15 minutes on the brand and a lot more time on the category opportunity and how you can help them grow the category and and all those bits um so we sort of um but the one bit where we always did perk up the interest was on the point of incrementality because you know you know there really wasn't anything like us in the freezer um at that point um we were sort of significant we at the beginning we were quite considerably more expensive than anything else in the freezer so you know we had a quite good story to tell which is therefore if we can get people to trade up from something like so we sat in um the adult refreshment category so other brands and that would have been the likes of sort of solero probably being some of a mainstream sort of player in that space of the sort of adult money so we could trade people up by a couple of pounds um to buy something with sort of an alcohol based to it um and we as a sort of a new occasion for consumers we had quite a compelling pitch to sell into the retailers and and actually after we launched our brands you know um we were able to secure listings in supermarkets um they they weren't always plain sailing um you know one of the you know one of the challenges that we had was around positioning so the alcohol lollies that we had um were all between four and four and a half percent so from from a from a legal perspective you have to be 18 and over to consume a product like ours and although there's no sort of clear-cut um hard and fast rule in terms of from a positioning perspective um some of the retailers were um um they they they were they were wary of putting our products next to near in the same freezer as where a kid might consume their product so we we often had challenges in terms of positioning and just sort of would they be comfortable putting something with alcohol in the same sort of freezer bay as something like a clipper.

19:08And that was often a challenge that we sort of got back. It wasn't necessarily something that all the retailers, because we work with lots of retailers and lots of retailers ended up doing own-label versions of our products and did it. But it was a common sort of feedback that we got. we'll get onto that and i want to unpack and i always fucking say that word but like i want to unpack that because that's a whole uh wild delicious kind of territory to explore is is once you're actually in the supermarket there's a whole game of chess into into into where you actually put position yourself in store um because that that can make or break a listing and you know i see so many of these drinks brands that go in but it's like a four pack in the back of the store and it's like it's never gonna fucking work do you know what i mean um but but what you said is you said i bogged it bogged it up um got the meeting bogged it up there'll be a lot of people listening to this who will have a meeting with a sainsbury's a waitrose a j j s um an ocado next week say say they're gonna go in there and they're gonna just slather on the brand which everyone's great at what are the things they must land to to demonstrate the category opportunity and i know it's category specific and brand specific but what are some of the three to four things they should have in their deck so that so they don't fuck it up so i so i think and i just want to sort of reassure you know that the brand is super powerful and you know it's in a way to emotionally you know to emotionally connect also with the buyer and i think at an early stage sort of connecting with buyers and and people emotionally is a sort of superpower um that bigger brands don't have so i just want to sort of caveat that point that you know don't just walk in there and don't talk about your brand just just manage that carefully because it's it's a very sort of easy thing for people just to keep going on about because it's quite personal um Going back to your question about the three sort of four things, I think you've obviously, you know, lots of people talk about data and insight.

21:22And I think that is really, that is useful to have, you need to have an understanding of what's performing well in the category and what is the tail of a category. So the tail being sort of the bottom of the category that's not performing, that's not adding growth to the category. um you know so i think you know one of the challenges for brands is some of that data is quite expensive um so they might think okay so where where do we sort of get that data from um so um i think if you can afford to get data data's always got to be in there and you've got to have an understanding of what's performing what's not performing because that's what the buyer when they're sitting on the other side often on their laptop that's sort of what they're looking at they're going to be looking at the percentage of growth and decline and what's in that category that's in growth and that's in in decline i think i think also what what i always like to do when speaking to the buyers is really you know again looking at like you know i often go in and i very much like i like to i like to you know really know what's on the shelf so i know what's if i've got a meeting with co-op i pretty much know top to bottom what's on that shelf um and actually i'd always go in there and take a picture of it and i'd also then even if it's in in a little bit of drawings, I'll start to map out everything in that category.

22:37So what sort of subcategory does everything sort of fall into in that category? And then when you can do that, you can even quickly, even if you're a challenger brand, see whether over-indexing and under-indexing on things. Hey guys, absolutely puzzling that Mackenzie Jones were extending their partnership with Hungary. So gassed. Mackenzie, I've been living under a rock. Who are Mackenzie Jones? they are fmcg recruitment specialists they work with some amazing brands lucky saint real super foods hunter and gather and purdy and fig also with some of the big poppers the big boys the big g's pepsico unilever campari i've known billy for yonks paul for the last year he's a top bro they're just super kind and lovely and they're just dedicated to our wonderful space our wonderful industry of buccaneering challenge brands and that there's so much more than recruitment business check out the podcast it's epic I've even introduced Mackenzie Jones some amazing brands and they've really helped them scale if you're looking to hire just reach out to them have a chin wear get in touch do yourself a favour thank you guys are you ready there is gonna be some absolutely totally brilliantly bonkers next level madness coming your way today are you ready to take your brand to a whole new stratosphere for free imagine connecting your product to a digital world through a simple smartphone scan you know the drill scan it bish bash bosh you're away that ladies and gentlemen is the magic of the new gs1 powered qr codes these next generation barcodes act as a gateway to a world of endless possibilities they connect your product's unique identity to multiple online sources of enriched real-time content why why on planet earth should you be getting your mitts on these gs1 powered qr codes well look very very simple mate gs1 will help you drive revenue upsell and cross-sell your amazing products boost your bottom line boost your bottom line yes please where do i sign enhance customer engagement look delight your customers with dynamic content that captivates and keeps them coming back for more more more please sir can have some more yes you can comply with regulations look you want to be building your brand you don't want to be knee deep wading through a deep river of legislation agrovation these barcodes allow you to stay ahead of the curve look don't allow this beautiful boat of boundless opportunity to sail away into the malting sunset be on that boat join gs1s uk's free pilot program today yes it's completely free there will be a link in the show notes thank you so much what do you mean by over indexing and under indexing and the subcategories i don't maybe yeah i'll let you pick a category maybe ice cream or whatever yeah okay fine so so if we're sitting in in the ice cream category for instance um you're we're going to be looking at the bay of the ice cream category um so that if we sort of um look at sort of the sort of tub 500 um so the 500 gram sort of tub sort of area um you know within that range they will have some of their core products so you're always going to have your ben and jerry's you're going to sort of have your in sort of 500 mil tubs then then you're also at the bottom you're probably going to have some of your one and two liters like kelly's ice cream some of the bigger formats in there then you're probably going to have some of your your sort of lower calorie and vegan products so they as a sort of planogram so the planogram being how they position everything in the freezer or fridge or the fixture just by looking at that fixture you can you'll be able to see what they've got a lot of in that fixture so when i say over index i mean what what have they got in that fixture um that is taking up perhaps the majority of that bay um so in the ice cream um scenario you know it might be a brand but it also might be a flavor so for instance you know they might have you know two three bays and shelves of ben and jerry's but then they might have a lot of hagen darts but then across that they probably got loads of vanillas in there so you can take take quite as a key argument them as they say fine vanilla is a core flavor within the ice cream category but do you really need six different vanilla skews in there would tell me how that is gonna then be driving that increment out of incrementality when you've got you know you've got six vanilla flavors um you know some of them might be from big well-known established brands um and some of them might be from smaller brands and that can help but you know and just being open and honest with those bars and asking them those questions can you explain to me why you need six vanilla ice cream variants in your category and i'm bringing you something new and different um and trying to push those sorts of questions over to them in a sort of clearly visual perspective i think always helps love that and just for listeners why is incrementality so important and like what's your definition of it because i even asked chris d that's the founder of well not the founder of he's the founder of um maltzac which is a whiskey company but he was the old ceo of booths and he was the director of food at harrods yeah but like in your opinion mate like why do you think why do buyers actually give a fuck about why do they care about incrementality so much well because you know unless it's an online retailer they're not getting any more space right there's the shelf isn't getting bigger so you know they need everything in that in the fixture and space that they've got they need everything to be performing at its absolute maximum so if someone can go into that category and but not let's use ice cream because we're talking about it now someone goes in and buys a vanilla ice cream a tub of vanilla ice cream but they also end up coming out of that purchasing um that purchasing moment and they've got a pack of pops you know that is just that's just adding more top line and there's no other equivalent within that category so all it's it's just adding that two three four pounds on top of that purchase above um and and and that's not what they that they need they just can't have any sort of they're having any element of trading off, it's just not going to grow the basket spend or grow the spend in the category.

29:08And I suppose if retailers are so competitive against other retailers, so if they can be the retailer that's got the new brand, they want that small 1 % difference when the volumes are so massive. It's huge. I think the way you've detailed that is beautiful, mate. And I think that's the roaring success of Little Moons. back to the point of you know such little moons is the perfect example of they were so so different they were 90 different but there was still a 10 trodden path and that they were ice cream whereas i think you guys were so different but you may have only had that one percent of trodden path one and two you were so young you were like 23 whereas i know live and howard like this when they went into retail they would they'd already built a massive business in uh food service uh so they they had that kind of safety net so i think there's there's real interest in that it's like be different but not so different and that's one thing that uh one thing that juliet barrett said is be different but not so fucking different than no one knows who you are i think it's it's a it's an art not science um and then to your point about to your point about like showing the category opportunity when you're in the meeting that is fascinating and that's something i toy with all the time because james bailey the ceo of waitress came on the podcast and said go for the hearts not the heads and i genuinely believe people make decisions with their hearts and justify with their heads so i think what what teasing this out and you know pulling at the weed series is like if you could maybe get to 60 to 70 percent hearts which is brand, brand, brand, slather on that brand.

30:58But if you get that 30 % of this is like, okay, this is what's in it for you. This is the opportunity for the retailer. Then it's like, well, not game, set, match, pass me the oranges, but you're well on your way. And I think there's so much in that. So I want to talk about... Yeah, go on, mate. Yeah, I also think, you know, I think we've also just got to be, you know, the sort of buying landscape, I think, has changed massively over the last sort of, certainly like the last two, three years in terms of, we don't need to go into all the details, but everything that's happening in the sort of the wider market.

31:33So I think these, and I'm not disagreeing with the point that you made in terms of getting the percentages right, but I just think buyers are being so much more calculated in terms of the decisions that they're making. So I think it's just sort of those necessary, very like if they were going to potentially make something a punt and we say a punt which is more sort of um you know the heart side i just think those decisions are sort of more considered at the moment so um they're just trying to find that right right balance well yeah you're you're you're closer to meet than me mate you're selling for way more brands so so when you say the buyers the landscape slightly changed yeah over the last two three years which you kind of well it objectively has yeah why when you say buyers are being more calculated calculated to whatever what do you mean by that so you know again at the moment you know it depends it looks at you know let's think about um you know in terms of where we are from an economic economic perspective um You know, we've got inflation repressures through the market.

32:47They're dealing with, you know, they're dealing with a lot of price increases that are being sort of put through, especially from some of the bigger players. So, you know, lots of the sort of the Procter & Gamble, the Unilevers, the Diageos, you know, there's price increases going through the market. So there's then also naturally lots of sort of ongoing sort of joint business plan conversations that I believe are taking sort of longer. which I just think these sort of negotiation processes, or more I should frame it in terms of the opportunity that challenges I think brands have in terms of getting the attention of the buyers is getting a bit smaller because they're preoccupied by some of the larger multinationals that are delivering significantly the larger bulk of their spend.

33:37They're putting through price increases. They're sort of having pressures. So that's where the focus is going to. And of course, there's lots of noise about challenger brands and through the work that we're all doing. But in terms of great things like future brands, the appery and co-op, there's lots of good accelerators, but that is sort of helping. But I still think these are pressures the buyers didn't have necessarily, or they had these pressures were less three, four years ago. And I'm, by the way, looking at that from a brand, someone who works with lots of challenger brands and is sort of on the cold face of those conversations from a brand side.

34:21So I just want to be careful that, you know, I'm not coming from it from a bar's retail perspective. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And as I say, mate, you're way more privy to it than me, mate. um so you shut down you pour your life and your soul into this business from 2014 to 2019 yeah what i want to talk about kind of ego and shame and like how how you how you dealt with that we talked about the external forces for why you shut the business how did it feel if we lifted the bonnet up on on harry clark what what did that feel like what was the darkest day in that period for you when you when your baby pops is um it's dying to put his bluntness at me yeah sure um you know you know for me you know we you know one thing i was most proud of is the sort of team that we developed we had a we had a you know not a massive team we had a team of you know five six of us full time most people had been there pretty much since the beginning or very you know for at sort of three years of that sort of five-year journey um so you know that's always tough um you know yeah that natural you know we worked in a warehouse in Wandsworth you know it was lots of great times um you know sort of professionally and socially that's always super tough right um um especially when we tried to you know if there weren't necessarily obvious hugely obvious external sort of um from the outside even within the team i think it still came as a shock to them when we decided to say look you know we're going to sort of wind things down um so i i think i think that's sort of tough i think um i some people have a different view on this but i really found i also found having conversations with i sort of almost put me last i sort of i would put myself last and And so, you know, I sort of dealt with myself at the end, really.

36:28You know, I found the bit with investors tricky. I found that really tricky. We did a sort of very much sort of typical sort of challenger brand sort of way where we did friends and family to sort of begin with. um then we sort of opened that up a little bit more and then we had sort of um slightly more sophisticated angels um and then we did a crowd crowdfunding round as well um so you know having an investor pool of 400 people probably within that um with quite a lot of family friends and sort of people you sort of built up and sort of um relationships with i found that found that like excruciating honestly that was super super hard um um well and and i know everyone goes you know oh you know no you know they're investing in a challenger brand why why excruciating i found it very difficult to tell people you know they'd put money you know feel when someone sort of put their money gave us money they put the sort of i took that very much as they're putting their trust in me um and then i just felt like you know i was just i just let a whole load of people down um and it was all sort of all my all our fault you know that's sort of how i sort of sort of took that um so you know that was that that was sort of pretty tough i'd say um um that and delivering uncomfortable messages to to the team is something that everyone listening to this is going to have to do weekly it's never easy how did you deliver the message to the team and could you speak to how to how to deliver hard news to people or all your team um yeah i think I think be direct um you know kind but direct um I think um I've suddenly done this in the past where you sort of you try and sort of make a big fluffy comfy pillow and then sort of you know make it nice and then you land the punch afterwards um that sort of isn't isn't the right way I think I think you've got to be quite direct um explain the situation but then you've got to you've got to be then really open and honest with them about the reasons why you're doing it and and I think so So my advice would be is probably deliver the news maybe first or if you're delivering something, be very clear on what that is.

39:12Then afterwards, you've got to, especially if people have worked for you and given their time and blood, sweat and tears, you need to give them all the sort of rationales of why you've chosen to do this and what we think it's right for the business or us or going forward. So, yeah. And how do you feel about it now? Like, was there, like, how do you feel about it now? Yeah, I think, look, I've actually never spoken publicly about it ever until today. I speak to, I'm never, you know, I'm very open and honest when I speak to people, you know, down in the pub or to my clients I work with now, but sort of in an open podcast forum.

40:02But I think I'm super, you know, there's quite a few people who might not be aware of the brand. But, you know, I'm super proud of what we created. I think that's the first bit. And there was certainly enough success, you know, and across the years from, you know, working with all the retailers, the global licensing deals with Diageo, lots of the sort of partnerships that we did, all that cool stuff. There's a lot to be proud of within that. And there's a huge amount that we sort of learned. So at the moment, you know, it's part of the journey. I'm super proud of it. I talk about it with sort of, you know, with, you know, you know i look back on it with probably 80 great times and 20 sort of not so great times and i think over sort of a five six year period um and me and my co-founder who are still sort of great mates we went to school together and we still see each other all the time so you know relationships that you know within the sort of founding team have maintained super strong sort of three years later So, you know, all of that is for me is, you know, I'm happy with.

41:17Oh my God. I am so, so, so excited. It feels like Hungary 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 my 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 Biggan, Year Valley, Tyrells, Clipper T, Goo, Rana, I mean, make the list longer than the River Nile. But they also share risk and invest in brands that they really believe are a force for good, that are brands that they believe are going to be the next big thing, like Howda, the snack that gives back.

42:00But even more exciting news, big fish want to speak to the next wave of small challenger food and drink badgers that are destined for big things, the raconteurs, the movers, shakers, buccaneering visionaries, so look if you want to speak to big fish and 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 it's interesting what we were saying about the heart and the head of when you're speaking to a retailer speaking to a picture to a buyer you've also got this heart versus head situation as a founder where your heart is in the x brand whether it's a chili sauce in coconut oil whatever but then your head is saying look the market's a shit show cpi is going through the roof we can't really keep the lights on how would what advice would you give people having to navigate that my heart's saying i want to keep doing this but my head is saying we can't do this like how do you navigate that because i think that's a really hard thing to navigate yeah a million percent and i think some of it's obviously super personal with founders and that sort of probably situation that sort of personal situation but i think i think probably the way that you describe it is is how i would describe it you've sort of in that scenario you've got to disattach the heart and the head and you probably you've got to go with the head um you know So also, you know, I do think, you know, if you, you know, I think, you know, it can be really, you know, to people's sort of mental health and sort of their work, personal relationships, you know, there's lots of stuff, you know, if you keep grinding, grinding, grinding for too long and it's not working, you probably have bigger detrimental effects that, you know, you should probably think about as well.

43:58So obviously I can't say that for everyone, but, but, but yeah, I think, I think you've got to think with your head in that point, as difficult as it might be. Well, so the last reason I really rate you, mate, is that you describe Pops as a sequence in the journey, as in not the eternal, like the whole journey. This is like a step. HE Consulting could be a step. Like there's steps. But I want to go back to the beginning of the story. So I know you talked about you were in Ibiza hustling. I think it was the first time we went for those beers in Wandsworth like at the beginning of the summer. And I love, mate, the bit of the story that I just love is that gestation, hustle, grind, like that.

44:45You've got no fucking idea what you're doing, but you're just, basically what I'm doing now, this podcast, that's what I love doing. I've got no real idea what I'm doing, but I'm doing. Yeah. So what were you doing in the six months leading up to Pops? First question. Second question. Where did the idea come from? What was the spark or the twinkle that means you think, right, the world needs a boozy ice lolly? Yeah, so there's a pretty good story here. So to give you a little bit of context, I went to uni for a year and dropped out. um i sort of got myself absorbed in the world of sort of nightclubs um i was basically a glorified club promoter in london um for which number of just uh just oh god miki whiskey miss very sort of like slightly sort of schweffy premium ones um but i've been i've been to before yeah but but what that actually did what well there's a couple things that actually happened was um you know it was it was a melting pot for making contacts i made a lot of relationships within sort of being involved in that environment um and the nightclub world is a sort of funny world it's sort of there's two things that happen that people work in nightclubs at a young age they there's either in my experience there's been some phenomenal entrepreneurial stories that come out of people that have been involved in nightclubs you know who have basically harnessed this this amazing sort of environment where you've got all these incredible in the place that i worked lots of very interesting people came so you've got this environment where you can make a lot of contacts um and if you're smart you can sort of use them you know in terms of what what you do next um so there's quite a lot of people who have done very exciting things off the back of being involved in nightclubs there's other people um who um sort of drink too much and have too much fun and um they sort of have to leave that whole environment and they go do something complete completely different um i i did that for four or five years and you know i decided i didn't want to stay in the nightclub industry for various reasons um uh but most of it i didn't want to be out all night all the time so um i was actually we were on i was on holiday um with a friend of mine uh on a summer holiday and we were actually lying in a pool um this is my co-founder and um it was really actually his idea and he said to he we're lying poor he said wouldn't it be nice to have a sort of frozen alcoholic sort of treat whilst we're lying on lino's in the pool in biorca um and we said yeah i said yeah that's quite a good idea um um you know that would be you know didn't think that much of it and then then we sort of came with the idea that we sort of got the idea that a verve cliquot the color of a verve cliquot this is sort of brings together some of the nightclub stuff this is why i sort of bring bring the nightclubs into it and my business partner worked in sort of pr as well um so essentially um we then looked at the colors of a Verve Clicquot bottle, which is that sort of like iconic sort of orange sort of color, sort of yellow-orange color.

48:06We then looked at a Calippo, which is exactly the same color. And we thought, wouldn't this be a good idea to do a champagne ice lolly? But what we're going to do is we're going to develop a concept. We're going to take it to Moet Hennessy, who own Verve Clicquot, and we're going to try and sell them this concept of a champagne ice lolly with Verve Clicquot's logo on. That's basically how the sort of, that was the original idea. We had no idea how to make it. We then, we then, so we're battling on, we then basically came and we basically had no idea how to do it. So we walked around Soho into all the gelaterias and we asked everyone if they did a champagne sorbet.

48:51And we basically ended up on a, that's how it started. we then went on about a sort of eight month journey in terms of how to sort of develop sort of this sort of champagne ice lolly but the the actual concept was that we were going to do a partnership with merve hennessy for verve kiko and we got a meeting with verve kiko and we went and sat down with them and um and said to him look this is our idea and we want to go to all of your events and we want to do some sort of deal i can't even remember how we're going to structure the deal um and then basically um they sort of faffed around we had a couple of meetings with them they thought it was a cool idea they took us to their offices we went out for lunch with a couple of people um but we we then got an opportunity to do this event which come up i think it came through one of my sort of nightclub contacts which was um it was someone it was miley cyrus's after party and they asked that they could get 200 champagne ice lollies from us um and we had we were due to our first production run um the following week um so we literally hand poured them in this in this gelateria in so um where where we were sort of doing this sort of small batches um and then we walked them over to this club madam jojo's which is in so about 100 meters they're barely even frozen in in the um in the sort of calipo stick and then essentially we went to that event and And Miley Cyrus took one, took a picture and put it on Twitter.

50:20And everything overnight sort of blew up. We sort of, I can't remember what it is. We're in E! News in the US and it was in the Daily Mail article. There's a Daily Mail article saying Miley Cyrus getting drunk on boozy ice lollies. And then we got Selfridges calling us. And then we got other retailers calling us. And we got all these guys. And Selfridges loved it because the colors weren't the same. um that the yellow of our color was similar to their logo color so that we had them phone everything can we can we list it can we list it so we this happened overnight um and then when that happened we basically said screw it screw it we're not gonna do anything with moe hennessy or verplico or anything um we've got selfishers calling us and other retailers we're just gonna we're just gonna launch this business um pops and we're just gonna go for ourselves and then literally from that day we we never really never really looked back but but we where sort of i come from that we didn't really have this sort of fmcg sort of vision at that point um our vision was taking it to festivals and taking it to events and doing these sorts of sort of partnership deals that was sort of our vision because i'd come from an events background and my business partner had been in sort of the more sort of pr world so we we weren't even at that point even thinking really about fmcg or sort of um sort of taking it down some traditional route we sort of thought of it as this whole sort of events festival proposition but it quickly landed into um selfridges and portland mesas and stuff 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 what was the business model that you presented to moe hennessy when you bagged that verve clico meeting because i understand because in my head i'm if i'm thinking if and i don't mean this in a i mean this in a really affectionate way it's like if two young promoters come to me and like they've got this sick idea if i'm verv clico about right let's just fucking nab that idea and go off and do it ourselves do you see what i mean like what how how are you making money in that original business model so so i'd love to see the deck um what we pulled together but basically basically we knew that you know Fervity Co are never going to go through the eight-month journey of finding out how to freeze an alcoholic ice long their business probably just isn't set up their business isn't set up they don't do frozen they're not going to do that right um so how we positioned it and this again comes from the background that we had which was we we often you know in the nightclubs did deals with likes of Diageo and Siroc and Moe so we sort of understood how to structure those sorts of deals, or we thought we did, we probably didn't.

53:31Our idea was saying that Verve Tico, I think we said, would buy, we would produce, let's say 10 ,000 units for them. They would buy them off us. So we had made money off that. And then we would go around to all of their events. So they did all those polar events and all that sort of stuff. And then they would pay us an activation fee to go around and activate for those events so it was a combination of them purchasing the stock and then treating us as sort of an activations partner and then they would pay us for us to go around all of their events that was the proposition of that sort of time um so so so yeah sort of a slightly different lens we came into the space with i i love that and i think i look what i love the hustle and it's it's like people think you need this magical eureka moment it's like just once you've got that idea go and walk around every single single um single gelateria gelato gaff whatever it's called in soho and just to see like do you do a frozen strawberry yes or no i think it's just about building momentum and what you've done there is action leads to momentum.

54:46I did a talk at Corson Press last week and what they wanted was like, how do you stay like an entrepreneur as you get bigger? And one of the things we were talking about and it's one of the, I've basically lived my life by it is ready, fire, aim, which so many people want to make the decision of ready, aim, fire, get everything perfect, get all your ducks in a row, then go to market. And everyone I've interviewed, that never happens. And I think what you've done there is ready, fire, aim, like, fuck it, we're going to launch this, we're going to see what happens and then you build momentum and then Miley Cyrus happens so it just kicks off and and you're off to the races yeah what I what I want to understand is how you ended up in Ibiza like what was the game plan there why why were you in Ibiza again this all okay so we our vision was that you know it would it would help us build our brand to be again we've got to think of the product we've got we've got a champagne ice lolly here yeah that we were charging in beach clubs eight nine euros for yeah that was you know that was the proposition in 2015 when i when i went over there right um i love the story yeah um yeah

56:05we drove a van yeah go on got some stock out and um and you know our idea was you know that's where we're gonna you know we were trying to build this sort of sort of you know within this sort of premium sort of luxury brand and and which had never sort of been done before in that sort of way and um for us ibiza was a look at the same time i was 25 and it would be quite fun to have I was taking the business really seriously, but there was an element of it would be, this would also be quite fun. But I'd honestly say that was probably this hardest, one of the hardest I've ever worked because it was just so intense in terms of the sort of labor of it.

56:43But yeah, again, we just thought, you know, in terms of, you know, having a brand in Ibiza, you know, as I suppose a bit of kudos in terms of the people that we're trying to attract at that time. um you know they were sort of holidaying there it gave us great you know our content at the time the sort of you know instagram you know obviously about instagram was sort of present but um you know we we got amazing content of people consuming the product um what environment people might want to have an ice lolly the events that we went to you know it it created a great backdrop to the brand um and sort of complemented sort of what we're doing in in the uk what was it strategically the right thing for me to spend a summer over there and i remember james not being there um no um would i advise a brand to probably do it now maybe depending on their resource but i probably wouldn't advise one of the co-founders to go spend the summer there um but you know that that's like that's difficult to say um it sounds it sounds like you drew the long straw though mate so so what what clubs what clubs did you which beach clubs did you uh did you did you get the isolates in and how how were you getting hold of them because i what you said they're the backdrop to the brand and it's like that's so valuable and i think people don't necessarily think about that and it doesn't necessarily have to be what's the what's the like physical backdrop but actually thinking of of the brand like where does this sit in a bigger context is so valuable because i think there's some brands i won't give the name there's a there's a brand who does an amazing chocolate and the product is 10 out of 10 the branding's okay but there's i think they should have branding with like fields of of like the dairy and the cream and adding all this this beautiful backdrop to the brand i think it would just elevate it so much um but i think what you've done there is is you have done that and it really worked like you know like the amount of because we did we also did a lot of events and corporate events and we have this whole sort of like events festival thing you know we you know that definitely sort of elevated our brand from a positioning perspective and actually why you then think about how some of the retailers responded to it you know when we got into waitress and ocada you know ocada was one of our first listings of selfridges you know selfridges and these types of read they loved that we were this sort of champagne isolate brand running around ibiza doing all these cool events it gave us a complete distinct difference to anything else that was happening from if you think of how a retailer looks at it they're looking their category there's these guys running around ibiza doing all this alcoholic stuff you know that's really you know that's different that's interesting and we're cementing our position as this sort of premium sort of challenger but in this maybe more luxury sort of space um so so actually what i would say without some sort of big sort of marketing mood board i think you know you know that was our natural instincts of where we took the brand was actually what sort of made it what it was during that sort of time um so so yeah i think it it was great in terms of where we where we took it probably um yes i went on diversion there but yeah no no no no i know it's so valuable i also think back to this brand backdrop is i i i love doing these conversations as you learn so much that you'd never even think about, that would ever bubble up but actually if you'd launch Pops with the backdrop of going around and divvying out Isleleys on Clapham Common or Hyde Park yeah it would be cool but it wouldn't have the gravitas of Ibiza and I think it's something to think about and what you said there is you probably couldn't justify that decision on a on a pnl um but not every as rory sutherland says not everything can be justified on a pnl and i think the the razzle dazzle and the the authority and the premiumization you get of just being in ibiza elevates that brand i i i love that so so what clubs were you working at in ibiza what butch beach bars yeah we we did a lot with the likes of gosh el cheringuito beach house um ocean beach club um oh pikes god um god i don't have you know quite a few of them but you know it was it was hustle talking about hustle mentality you know no one replies to emails no no emails isn't a thing in ibiza like it's what is whatsapp you call or you turn up you know that's that's it you know so yeah so what were you doing like talk what was the hardest pitch you did out of all those clubs because i i love ibiza i think there's something it is it is i know it so sounds so corny it's like oh my god it's magical it's magical it really fucking is like it's like disneyland but but like but so what's what's the what's the what was the hardest pitch the thing is though it wasn't necessarily like like wasn't like hard in terms of like it wasn't it wasn't hard in terms of like we would think about it in terms of you know you're going and you know you didn't have meetings in offices you you know you met people people would say come down to my restaurant or beach club between two and four and you sit there between two and four hoping the lollies don't melt in your freezer bag you need to wait the guy turns up and then you get the hardest thing was getting their attention you know that was the hardest thing once you sort of got their attention and you told them about the products and you know we had all these sort of ice we call them our popsicles we there's our ice cream bikes we had like a whole load of them on the island so we would we and we would have a team in ibiza so we'd say we can put a popsicle outside the front of your beach club we can have two people serving them we can sell them all afternoon or you can put them on the menu or so we had sort of two sort of scenarios but i i think it was a i think you know the selling was you know i think what i learned from that it was just it was it was pure pure hustle um uh in terms of um you know just just relentlessness um and and and dealing probably with you know no disrespect to ibiza sort of you know it wasn't necessarily that straightforward in terms of some of the the sort of dealings we were having um you know nothing like you know untoward but just you know it was all very sort of casual so you know you know you've got it you're rocking up with a suitcase of cash i can imagine you bowling into el tringuito with like something out of fucking uh what what's that what's that what's that program um is it with um oh my god the names escaped me but like i can imagine you walking in with like a hawaiian shirt on suitcase full of dosh and loads of ice leaves that's so joked me boe me 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 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1:04:44Hi guys, super super quick one, so so excited. Look, for years I've been badgering on about Hungary the podcast, you're probably bored to death, thanks for putting up with me, but Hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called Ireland's Chocolate, we've had a great time over the year, we've won listings at a load of wholesalers, we've won Milk and More, we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick, but what I'm thrilled to announce is Hungary's merging with HC Consulting. My boy Harry Clark and his wonderful team, he's an absolute G. They do brand strategy, new business, business and account management.

1:05:18But why I really love working with Harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is Harry was actually the founder of the boozy, isolated brand Pops. He's been in the trenches. He's grafted his face off. He's had the sleepless nights. He's had the turmoil. He's had the triumph. He knows what it is to be a founder. He is a founder. And Andy's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home. Holy moly dips, the gut stuff, Savile drinks, Romeo gelato. So if you're a brand and you're stuck, you're looking for new business help, you're looking to scale, drop us a message. We'd love to chat.

1:05:49Thank you so much. Back to the old episode. What I love, and I wanted to get some context, is if you can hustle an Ibiza with these beach clubs, which are notoriously difficult to work with, then it makes going and getting a Sainsbury's assisting not necessarily easier but it gives you that that backbone of like okay i know this is going to be hard when you said it was relentless hustle i i i know people like don't hustle i think hustle is the most important word i i hustle to me is is not working 16 hours a day that's bullshit that's dumb um hustle to me is like having a really good network and knowing that the like who's the right person to speak to at the right time and how to get your foot in the door that to me is hustle and actually like hustle shouldn't be like obviously it can be long hours but a lot of it's actually just being putting yourself in the right place at the right time yeah what advice could you give to people who have to hustle like how did you hustle gosh i think i think i think the whole sort of brand story is is all about hustle hustle really i think and and you know you know i know it's me on the podcast but you know my business partner is definitely was great to this but you know we we were literally like you know apart you know we wouldn't do you know apart from going to people's dropping on people's house you know we would it would be phone it would be whatsapp it would be you know we would try and find every sort of avenue that we could find people sort of in and around and i think using our sort of personal contacts as well so i think what we were quite good at in these scenarios is we didn't just look at the buyer or the owner we looked we and we still i still continue to do that um um well you know in terms of some of the work we do that you know is there's examples of this obviously in in sort of more like traditional grocery but you know what pr company do they use you know you know in terms of in terms of in terms of like the stuff in ibiza who's the dj that's let's dm the dj on on on instagram you know let's you know just try and find there's many sort of things around the thing until you get that sort of impacts whether it be the PR company the marketing company sort of any sort of other partnerships that they do and we were that's as a brand we were we were we were very good at sort of getting in the back door whether that be you know rather than writing an email to you want to do a partnership with wilderness right you know music festival or whatever you know never ever email wilderness yeah so yeah you get your checkbook you find out you know who are the third party catering managers who are the third party um events caterers who is doing all the freestanding drinks bars around there yeah you find every single person around it and that's the way that you go and that's how you hustle your way in so you know from our perspective we'd see all these you know we'd see glastonbury for instance yeah because we did lots of glastonbury we never paid a cent to glastonbury you know we would find who's got who's got their restaurant there you know with I can't remember their name, but they had this amazing little beach restaurant in Dorset.

1:08:55We find out, you know, they've got, they're taking their restaurant down there, you know, and they've got some amazing position and behind the pyramids stage. We would then speak to that restaurant and try and get on their menu and then get in that way. You know, that was always our, you know, we didn't really pay for a huge amount when we did these sorts of, all of these sorts of event partnerships and collaborations and stuff in sort of Ibiza. We just sort of mapped out puzzles around it and then got in that way. And we always did that. And that is sort of a bit of that hustle mentality. That's why I was so excited to partner with you, mate, because I love people who are high agency, people who believe that you create the reality.

1:09:38Like you literally, you've got the human being has the ability to create their own reality. And that's why I'm so excited for our partnership. but I think in terms of in terms of what you said there is building the puzzle around it I love that such that I think that literally describes what hustle is it's building the puzzle it's not working 16 hours a day you could be you could be working 16 hours a day and not putting the pieces of puzzle of the puzzle together it's just pointless like hustle to me as I said is that like okay what are the moving pieces and how do I pull this together it's like a it's it's ultimately a game it's a little bit like what's the wildest thing okay okay go on me yeah no it's a little bit sorry i'll shut my mouth i'll shut my mouth it's a little bit like a crime scene in a movie right where you've got you know uh you've got the sort of suspect and everything's linking in right or the or whoever's the who they think it's going to kill and he literally it's all of those pieces of the puzzle all these little connecting the dots and that's just i'll say and i by the way that's that's quite fun i think that's super fun for brands to try and work it out for sure what's the what's the wildest thing you've done to get to get a brand partnership or or and or any deal really well um that you can say say on the podcast i'm gonna call you harry harry escobar mate

1:11:06um i think in terms of oh gosh in terms of like the most like you know we did some of this stuff you know i i remember you know we did quite a lot you know but this is all quite quite sort of well-trodden path now so you know sending buyers lots of some interesting we sent buyers lots of interesting i didn't remember we got some very bad feedback because we sent a saying to his buyer i think i think our sales guy did it saying something like roses are red violets are blue all we want is a meeting with you and sent her some some um flowers on valentine's day and then she sent in this email saying a boyfriend broke up with her or something like that and we gave her flowers and you know sort of a full stop and nothing after that so that was probably an ill calculated move um thinking she's sort of got you should have said did you try the ice cream now um get pops down you and i'll sort everything out um but i think i think i think what we and i think one lesson that i always will stand by is you know never ever be afraid to go to the top that is the one thing so for instance you know we we did you know we had we did all these diageo licensing deals right and we sent our proposal to the ceo of diageo no one else we started at the ceo and we were like we're going to start there that's we're not we're not going to go to the brand manager of pimps we're like let's get the ceo and let's start there you know um and it then got and it got forward on we never got a response from the deal um ceo of diageo but it went to the global head of innovation or something like that next person down yeah and she was like great idea really love to explore this i'm going to take this on um another example of that is um just another good one is the way when i look back when we got our tesco's listing the first email i sent was to john allen the chairman of tesco's 100 up because we met him at an event and i got his email address in an event and then it went to the CEO of Tesco's Europe and then it went all the way down those are like two like pivotal points in our journey when we've just thought you know no that's gonna you know we went to I went to an event where John Allen was speaking um which I was very kindly invited to by one of our investors um a woman called Rita Clifton and he's an amazing woman who said you know John Allen's gonna be there you guys should come we got our 30 seconds with him we got our business card he said send me an email you know and so you know it's i'd always you know i i think founders can be afraid to go to the top and there's no harm in doing it if it's if it's if it's done in the right way um you know what's the worst that's going to happen you put your brand in front of them they haven't seen it or they have and they're unsponded but a lot as long as you've done it respectfully i think respectfully is probably a nice word here um you know i i'm always an advocate for doing that love it so so yeah go go straight to the top and you said do it in the right way and do it respectfully again at my at the talk at course in press one of one of these points was because one of the questions i get is like how do you land guests like how do you get big guests it's like you've got yeah i've got 883 instagram followers for fuck's sake but it's but it's like got one i'd do the same thing as you make go straight to the top and the way i ask it i'm i'm very respectful and well the point was it's not what you ask but it's how you ask and how is the operative operative word that's how you say it but how did you do it like what was the email you wrote to john um or what was the actual actually what was the email you wrote to to the diageo ceo like what did you specifically put in that because that will help lots of listens i think yeah to to to be to be fair we we had a vision um which is we wanted to do a pims ice lolly that was that was sort of a sort of you know one of the day one goals for our brand was we wanted to do this so um you know we and we had done quite a few partnership deals before so we before that we'd done a big collab with um done a done a fortna mason um lolly we'd done a fever tree one as well so we had a few in our we so this is just for context for everyone this is basically when we would put the pops logo and also like the fever tree logo and we'd make a fever tree cocktail and it would be a co-branded deal um and with the fauna masons it would be a a lolly but it had all the fauna masons like branding on so for us it was sort of these sort of partnership deals so we had quite a few sort of case studies that we could show them we also showed them what it could look like as well.

1:15:53So when we did that, because we didn't just send them an email, we did a full-on, I can't remember how many pages it was, there was a proposal saying, this is how it can look, this is what it means to us, this is what it means to you, and this is what we want to discuss. And we had even mocked up designs of how we thought the PIMS isolate could look like. We had all those rendered images. So I think the answer to that is you've got to go, you know if you're gonna go to the you're gonna go to the top you've got to go and super prepared um you know it's sort of you know um because you're probably probably not going to get that it depends who you're going with um so that was sort of in the case of the diage example we we really sort of we were like this email is the moment um sort of thing and and let's put those let's put all of our resource and time behind to make it look at look amazing and um yeah seeing what we wanted to say i love that it's it's the it's it's doing the heavy lifting and there's a book i don't know why this has come to me now uh by malcolm gladwell called the bomber mafia and he talks about in in the world war where we were putting our resources in terms of killing the germans and we were putting all our resources on loads of different things or we were trying to attack here attack there and actually we realized if we just bombed and we spent our resources on bombing the ball bearing factory we would wipe out the germans because the ball ball bearing factory is what produced everything it was what produced the tanks it's what produced the everything all stemmed from this i'm not saying and i'm drawing the parallel to what you're doing it's like okay we could spend we could spread 100 of our resource across 15 different buyers at different stages of of the hierarchy which may work or we could put all our resources into this one email to this one person and do so much heavy lifting do the rendering do the mock-up show the opportunity that it all that person has to say is is yes and i think there's so much in that front list is it's like can you go you can go to the top but if you're going to go to the top do all the heavy lifting so that person has to just say it's make it make it so hard for them to say no to it Do you know what I mean?

1:18:06Yeah. And I think, and by the way, you know, to sort of, you know, round this all off, you know, we were going to buyers at, you know, the normal level and getting no responses like everyone else, right? But if I actually look back on where some of the step change moments happened in the business, it was when we sort of took it maybe out of that, the home it should have been in, which is sort of with the bar within your category or within the sort of brand manager, if you're doing something, trying to collaborate with a brand, we took it to another area. and that is often in our case where we saw we saw success and and and as you say sort of getting back to that sort of hustle mentality you know trying to understand you know where are these people hanging out what events are they going to there's there's obviously a big sort of speaker sort of circuit you know trying to you know which some people go oh it's a lot of time to drag yourself out of that event at 7 p.m at night you know have the five percent chance of speaking to that one person you know so you know but you know those are often the moments where you know it can happen but you know there's probably there's probably 20 occasions where that doesn't happen there's one occasion when it does but you know you start working off those numbers with the right with the sort of sort of bigger bigger um sort of game change sort of moments and you know you'll get some some level of success out of it and what was how did you make money with when your partner partnering with say a Diageo, say, so you're making a PIMS isolate for the retailers.

1:19:39What, what does the, the commercial model look like for that? So, so, so, okay. So, so, so context as a, you know, as everyone knows Diageo, multi-billion pound business, um, pops tiny little business in, you know, in, in the grand schemes of things versus Diageo, right? So they're not in it. And this is, we sort of went they're not in it for the money right you know they're not in it to make you know you know even even if they were even they took 50 percent of all of the profit or revenue off it's still not even going to move the needle you know it's going to do nothing it's not gonna so so so you've got to look at it from okay what can we add value when we're doing these partnerships where can we add value to um pins for instance so for instance okay alcohol generally is a difficult product to sample right yeah because of the nature of it like you're not gonna you know give a small gin bottle out you can but people aren't just gonna start well some people might start necking a tiny bottle of gin on the street right um yeah yeah um so so you know you've got to think of it from the lens of the case so what are they going to get out of it right so for instance and the likes of what we were doing if we get it listed in the supermarket it's now got a fixture and a home in the frozen aisle wow when 600 tescos we've just moved ourselves directly from bws beer wines and spirits into frozen amazing fixture space yeah now people are enjoying a pims it's a complete it's a different consumption occasion or it's similar but you know they're consuming it as an alternative to having a clipper or a salario or a magnum or whatever so you need suddenly opening up a new consumption occasion for them um it's a new way for people to trial the product so go back to the sampling bit right you know they've got this mechanism that they can now sort of sample um you know it was amazing for you know we we we did this thing where we had like the press pack for our pims pops and then there was a press pack for the PIMS and ours was bigger than PIMS we had generated more PR and I don't I don't want to be exactly quoted on this but you know in terms of like the amount of organic PR we were able to because it's not that exciting for the Daily Mail to write about it's the summer everyone go to the pub and have a PIMS everyone's like yeah whatever yeah but you know it's exciting for them when it's 25 degrees and everyone's going oh it's you know first day of summer to go have you seen these new pins ice lollies you know now available on ocado whatever you know that creates a buzz because it becomes a moment um and that's what they're looking for they're looking to create that moment um so that's what's in it for them not you know how the deal was structured you know it wasn't structured in the way that they were ever going to make um you know vast amounts of money or even if we were to sell 20 50 million of the you know it's never still going to you know well it might but you know yeah they're going to be a massive massive game changer also by the way we by the way we were buying the pims liquid off them and we had a deal on it right but so you know they were getting they also getting they were actually getting quite significant volume in terms of us being a pims customer because we were buying actually a lot of pims to fill out the ice lollies as well so you know they were sort of getting volume that we would sort of that you know we'd have a sort of friendly deal on that but um yeah so i think there's a lot in it for for brands and you know the power of partnerships um it's something that we don't focus on as much anymore but it is it is something i love partnership rory sutherland says this i think it's from mark ritson which is like and i i do believe this i think partnerships is probably the seventh wonder or an eighth wonder of the world mate like in terms it's just win win win win win win win win win um the one i reference all the time is is car is calm and trip i mean that is just yeah again live live founder of trip met the founder of calm at some so house which i know is is you can take take from that what you will but like either way they met at that went right to the top and next to each other next thing you know the biggest meditation uh app in the world is partnering with this new up-and-coming buccaneering challenger brand it's like everyone wins the big business wins because they want to be seen to be cool the cool business wins because they could leverage the big brand sorry the small cool business wins because they leverage the big brand so did you bake into that deal like they would share it on because I'm just trying to think there'll be brands listening to this who can anyone can leverage a bigger brand partnership but it's just like how's it go about it so I think going to the top is one did you bake into the deal like you're gonna share share pops on your socials you're gonna do xyz like what were some of the things you put in in the deal to make sure you're not just getting their logo on your product i know that's still pretty big but yeah yeah i think i i think going back to the lens of like really thinking about their business and what they're you know going back to like there's some of the bits i discussed before like what they're gonna get out of it right If you're thinking about going to a bigger brand, the first bit I'd probably say is it's probably not a revenue driver for them.