The Genius Behind The Alcohol Free Movement: Applying Behavioural Economics “Thinking Fast & Slow” to Change Culture FOREVER

0:10sweet i think everyone's has everyone got a drink everyone's good for a drink amazing well as i said thank you so much for coming incredibly grateful um i think to start with you've all got this yeah wonderful wonderful drink in front of you i think ben i'd love you to kind of introduce season as soon as i kind of heard saw it it's intrigued me fast and like intrigued endlessly what is it um why have you decided to create it and then yeah people can put it in their drink and see how it see how it works yeah so a thanks so much for coming down i would never go to an event like this so i'm massively appreciative thank you secondly you've got unseasoned spritzes um so i think you've got campari blood-honored soda uh wedge of orange and importantly a straw so you can season your own drinks because again i'm really fucking lazy so you've got balls of season on the table i would recommend season dark um which is the black one uh and that'll give you that's smoked cherry wood and cola nut and star anise and black pepper red chili porcini mushrooms cocoa orange super aromatic good heat good bitterness give it three dashes into that try it before and try after it's quite nice to do and I can tell you why you're doing that a bit more about it I would love to know because I think you created it in 2017 you had the gestation period of 2017 you created it in your well not your shed my kitchen your kitchen I'd love to know what the next steps were so I started let's wait for people to have their drink and then wake people to slurp it up.

2:12And please let me know what you think. These? How many dashes do you use that? Three. Yeah, no drops. Proper dashes.

2:27Don't be shy. And season 0.0, vegan. No allergens. yeah it kind of my kids hate it but they can drink it

2:55everyone's seasoned all good try try me if you haven't got any spoons but try them on their own. They're super intense and I think pretty yummy. Your man here has got the right idea on a knife. Straight off a knife. Great idea. Yeah, so tell me about the gestation period. So it's 2017. 2017. You've got this idea for what is it? I know it's a bit like bitters. Tell me exactly what it is. So how did the idea come around? Yeah, so 5 ,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians started making these things called medicinal bitters. And it was basically using lots of different ingredients that had medicinal properties that could obviously stop you feeling ill.

3:50About 200 years ago, this little company called Angostura that you might have heard of launched. and it was launched actually by a German doctor who was based in Venezuela and trying to help his soldiers or the soldiers not be ill. And so he developed this kind of medicinal bitter that then suddenly started appearing in cocktail recipes and then became adopted into things that you guys will know like the old-fashioned. And so the first ever mention of a cocktail recipe was 1806 and it called for spirits of any kind sugar water and bitters and so you've got this kind of very old category of cocktail bitters that are used to accentuate flavor to balance drinks to add complexity to bring depth and they're really cool little like very concentrated liquids and historically they've always contained alcohol as their base because that was the best preservation kind of base solvent to extract ingredients in but also mean that things didn't go off but they don't actually need alcohol in them to do their job so 2017 we launched seed lip and that was going really well and i just was like i learned that there are 47 000 edible plants on this planet and I thought that was fucking amazing.

5:24And so I went on to this website called GE Baldwin's, which is a really old apothecary kind of website where you can lose a lot of money ordering lots of really weird dried ingredients. And so I ended up buying about 80 different ingredients, nothing that you'd be massively maybe, apart from maybe Sam, wherever he is, familiar with. there he is um but like bog bean and fever few and weird seaweeds like bladder rack and these things tasted fucking disgusting um but i started to make blends of these these these bitters and i was making like a marmalade bitters or a chai tea bitters and they were cool we could use them in seedlip events uh and then i kind of put the put the idea on the shelf really i sort of put it on the shelf and then picked it up about two and a half years ago and got excited about it again and started properly looking into the category and this is the weirdest category in the world right it's about a hundred million dollar category globally 92 percent of it is run by one brand angostura 92 percent like you guys are all in the world of food and drink i don't know another category that has that kind of majority.

6:47And they have that kind of majority and they don't have to do anything. So they're owned by a run business. They're just pulled along. No one in the trade in the UK knows even how much they pay for a bottle. They've got this weird label, Royal Warrant. They don't pay duty, which is incredible considering they're like 44.7 % ABV. They don't pay VAT. and no one knows how much a bottle is. It's kind of mad. So yeah, US is the biggest cocktail bitters market in the world and we launched there in two weeks' time. So we launched, we're like a few months old. I'm right back at the beginning. We're babies, but we've had a really good start and we've got some really amazing chefs that really love what we're doing, which is great.

7:37and we kind of want people to season their drinks you know we we spend all this time hearing about chefs and seasoning and food and i don't know about you guys but salt and pepper are really amazing amazing things um but we don't really season our drinks and so i kind of was keen to like make it really simple and only have two products a light one for your light drinks and a dark one for your dark drinks and they are 0.0 but as you have just done you put it in alcohol they are for alcoholic drinks non-alcoholic drinks food i kind of don't really care what people do with them um as long as they use them uh and it's been yeah it's fun we get i get to work with like about 30 different ingredients which is great i get to work with my favorite ingredient which we use in season light which is the ingredient most people have never heard of which is called cis-3 hexanol what fuck is that yeah it sounds it sounds dreadful doesn't it when when you extract menthol from mint after you've extracted the menthol from mint and by the way i could talk about all this stuff all day so do shut me up but you can extract another compound from mint and the other compound you can extract is cis-3 hexanol so if you grab the bottle of season life um and you smell and i tell you that cis3 hexanol gives you fresh cut grass like you wouldn't believe you'll kind of see what i see what i mean they only make two tons of this of cis3 hexanol globally every year um it's incredibly expensive and rare but is the magic in uh in season life and how did you find that like how do you go and find you go into a weird little lap by a monastery and finally he's thinking we did a we did a it's chelsea flower show coming up and we did a seedlet we had garden at chelsea flower show all about the the pea family that's another thing that i could talk to you till the cows come home about but um as part of that we served a drink to all the press um and i made an extract with grass and it was really hard to do um and then a scientist that a food scientist that i know said why have you gone to all that effort there's a compound that does that that's isolated that you could have used and then he introduced me as cis3 hexanol so cis3 hexanol has been in migraines for like yeah six years as well it's um it's mad what i want to start with um is and we're going to run for about half hour and then we'll we'll jump into some questions at the end um but we've so obviously i think when we recorded our second podcast um it hasn't gone out yet we'll be out soon um we talked about your diagnosis with autism and an adhd yeah and one of the things you said to me is that you have this ability to almost create this blueprint and this prudent path to see the future you did it with seed lip no alcohol well loads though no so i was going wrong which was wrong no to low same thing you could see into the future the first guy to you know to do that the same with the podcast the same with um the seasoned drink you've got this ability to um yeah to see into the future and there's a quote which may may resonate with some of you guys but it's basically saying that building a business or being a founder is like jumping off a cliff and building a plane on the way down and uh i think you've you kind of as you jump off and you jump into these whether it's sea lip or season you already know what the fucking plane looks like do you know what i mean so what i'm suppose i'm trying to kind of tap into is how do you how do you how do you kind of have this blueprint into seeing things in the future because i think you know tons of people are starting with new business ideas um i mean briefly touched on it just them like looking into the category data and stuff like that but yeah how do you see into the future maybe we can use seed lip or season as a as an example yeah so i i i think i'm only learning now that that's how my brain works I don't I think I I don't I was diagnosed autistic and ADHD in 2022 uh and I didn't even really know what those things were before I was diagnosed so I've kind of I've probably been guilty of like hating my brain historically and not fully appreciating the way that it works and so now I can recognize that there are certain aspects of the way that my brain works and whether that's like I found you know I have a photographic memory in that and now using rather than just sort of having if that makes sense I'm kind of like putting it to actual use and the seeing the blueprint of joining lots of different dots and connecting yeah connecting and seeing patterns both figuratively and literally um i think when it comes to trying to do something new or something that feels like it goes a bit against the grain or is not the norm um it can be immensely helpful but that doesn't mean it's always right you know like i can see a blueprint of how season uh can grow what what is that blueprint in your anyway and again it could be wrong it's like it's plain something the blueprint what the blueprint with seed lip was nobody this is a weird new thing and nobody knows what the hell a non-alcoholic spirit is and lots of people think thought that i was a fucking idiot and it was the worst idea ever but lots of other people thought it was great and brilliant um so at least there was strength of feelings like on one on either side but the blueprint was chase credibility uh yeah it was basically chase credibility when you say chase credibility i.e i never said see that was any good but people listened to top chefs or bartenders or the trade or buyers or whatever so it was trying to find any way to make sure that i never had to say that seedlib was any good and then so i get that bit you get the kind of the people with the authority so that sorry just to follow through that that then spits out into a distribution strategy it spits out into a marketing strategy um it spits out into a hiring strategy it spits out into a SKU strategy, yeah, and a network and how to focus on getting the right relationships and then going, I just, it was really simplistic in some ways of find the 500 best accounts in London, in the UK and understand that those amazing accounts are happening in loads of other cities around the world.

15:04So instead of going and trying, conquering Liverpool and Manchester and Birmingham and York, etc. It was like, no, we're going to New York and we're going to Copenhagen and we're going to Barcelona because that's where these people all operate at the same level. We talked about previously, you only need 1 ,000 fans, actually, and there are 1 ,000 bartenders and chefs and drinks writers, and we got to all of them. and that's and that's they gave us the keys to unlock city so yeah it was it was trying to think macro and micro to get into the detail yeah well that's kind of what i was trying to yeah is the is the i think that's genius how you can think on a macro scale but then so i go and hit the you don't need every single because i think the common sense is like right we'll get London going then go and get Manchester going and then go and get Liverpool going as well actually and this is the blueprint is like oh fuck if we go to Copenhagen there's more of the same the thousand true fans are there yes um obviously your air miles are probably through the truth but that makes no actually sense and for these guys who are building brands um new ideas interesting ideas how is there anything you could speak to of how they can kind of they've done the jump it right they've jumped off yeah and they're trying to build this plane there's like a gazillion of things that they can you know pull their attention i think focus is a thing that every guest on the pod system is like fucking focus behind your thing that you've got to focus on um yes anything you could speak to about that kind of prudent path to to i mean i feel like i've you know i will have one of the smallest brands in this room right so i'm right back in the beginning with a baby and a startup that we are building the plane as we're flying it we're not on the way down which is good like unfortunately we're on the way up but um i am i'm so happy to be back at the beginning because that's the for me anyway the messy fun stressful kind of quite fucking ridiculous bit that some of you are smiling so you will you all kind of know what I mean um and we're trying I'm trying to do everything to sort of not just replicate what we did with seed it how are you what are some of the lessons you you want to like what the failures or hard lessons you made at seed lip but you're not going to allow to spill into season yeah so for example I launched seed lip on my own I didn't launch season on my own so we have a small team I'm not doing everything myself that's number one um number two we're going to the u.s even earlier than we did with seed lip um you know six months in we'll be nationwide available and focused on new york city um that's kind of different because there's a you know it's the biggest drinks market in the world and we're going to go and get started um talk to me about the u.s because that is a uh yeah everyone says to me that's dangerous like how do you actually so you go and you go to new york so i spoke to aaron uh from non-wine yes amazing guy amazing founder similarly uh has adhd and autism so his way his brain is very similar to you you know and he was he'd been in london was um as he said i think he was like saying turning it on like he was in london barcelona i'd just been to tokyo i think of jesus christ like how you go to you you say that the blueprint is right let's go to where these people are yep get that yep how do you actually get in do you know i mean like what's the not the wheels in but like it's there's so many different uh kind of nuances to each market do you know what i mean so that's yeah there are you and i guess cocktail bitters as said biggest market is the us so um in the uk we don't really make cocktails at home in the us they absolutely do and it's really normal too so we're kind of going yeah we you know we can do some stuff in london but actually it's the u.s that's the big the big opportunity so let's go faster so that we can learn faster so we're not going with all the answers um but i think the way that the way that we grew seedlet you know up to like 2019 now the way that brands are grown is completely different like the world has actually changed you know i know covid is responsible for a lot of that but so it's just the way that people buy and shop and socialize and yeah so we're trying to adapt season into that to kind of go let's not go and try and race to the supermarkets for example because that is the most ridiculous this thing about this market uh is that the destination is having five relationships and being at the mercy of these big fucking grocers and that is like you guys are either agreeing or violently disagreeing with me there but um that doesn't it doesn't make any business sense to me the uk from the like so what's the other option if you want to get that volume where did you pull that from you can pull it from another market that's what i'm trying to work out yeah so i don't subscribe to the like stay in one market go really deep um and then a few years later go to another market obviously it depends on on your business and your audience um but for us it doesn't make any sense that like we're in all these michelin-style restaurants with season it doesn't make any sense to go right we're going to stay in the uk and go all the way down to my local pub in lincolnshire and then we're going to go and talk to these amazing mission style restaurants with top chefs in another market it doesn't make any sense they they all all these guys at the top of their kind of game uh they're all now because of the world of social media everything's happening at the same time everything's happening at the same time in Copenhagen and Sydney and New York and Chicago and LA and Madrid amongst the kind of I guess the people at the forefront of food and drink um it's no longer the case that something has to wait 10 years to come over to the UK or vice versa go to the US um so yeah taking a and it's never been easier i think to actually export a business um what are the watchouts with export like just because i know that again loads of people say to me like that is a like riddle wrapped in enigma as they say it's like what are some of the watchouts with because it's not just like right here's a paddock mate no in new york like no it's really not it's really not um yeah if you don't find the right if you don't find the right partners and the right distributors then it's difficult i think that and i know this because we had it early days of seed lip we heard from 100 countries in the first three months and there were people who were clearly sharks going oh yeah i'll take five pallets and you're like well i don't have five pallets but also like whoa somebody wants five pallets that's pretty fucking cool and so i think there's a lot of a lot of time that can be wasted when yeah it's just a lot of diligence which you can now do because you can ask other people you can look at other people's portfolios and see what other kind of brands that they have and now it's it's easier than ever to get in contact with people you can you can interrupt you can dm people you can find them on linkedin there's no excuses now actually for not being able to do easy, quick diligence, especially on distributors.

23:21And you can see a lot by the kind of company that they keep in terms of the portfolios that they have. And then we've learned to do this, but asking them to pitch to you, I think, is really important. So it's the best way of getting... You do it with a brand agency, you do it with a social agency, you do it with a PR agency. Why wouldn't you do it with a distributor to really understand whether they get your business and have a plan and can, yeah, ultimately, they can pitch your business. And if they win the pitch, they've already done the plan, which is great. It saves a lot of time. Wait, if they win the pitch, they've done the plan.

24:00They've already had to think through how they would launch it and plan it. Yeah, yeah. So you're already a step ahead. Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about a book called The Art of Simple Thought. I don't know that one. Daniel? Brutal simplicity of thought. Brutal simplicity of thought. Fucking hell. I had it written down. I was like, the art of simple thought. That's the book he gives everyone. It's basically... That's quite complex thought. But that's the same premise. Yeah, let's talk about that. So there was two books you gave to every employee at Seedlip. Three. Three, which were the... What of simple thought?

24:36Nothing of simple thought. Brutal simplicity of thought. Yeah. uh by by Saatchi predatory thinking by Dave Trott um and fucking hell I can't remember the third one let me see it Dan Barber third play there we go so the brutal simplicity of thought yeah bingo why that book and I suppose where I'm where I'm going with this is there's when we're kind of talking about this blueprint thing is there's so much complexity like I think Julian Metcalf said to me, he goes, complexity is easy, simplicity is hard. So easy to get correct. Just, you know, discombobulated with all sorts of things, putting left and right.

25:19So the brutal simplicity of thought, what is the one lesson from that book that you kind of, when people join see that you're like, well, this is the way we want to do things around here. It's really simple.

25:35And it builds on what Julian has said. It's really hard to make things simple. And so 99 % of people or brands or businesses don't. And it's really, really amazing when you get something made simple. You have to make it simple. You can't just simplify it. You've got to go through the process of making something, of distilling something down. So case in point, the unwritten rule within cocktail bitters is to have a massive range. You've got some brands that have 130 SKUs. And so the habit is lavender bitters, lemon bitters, orange bitters, fucking chocolate mole bitters, whatever, all these individual flavors.

26:35and actually that is so unhelpful for the consumer because no one wants 130 bottles of one brand at their house and no one has a need for all these individual components so we made it really simple by just having light and dark and building more complexity into our liquids but more simplicity in our in our kind of in the actual range um and i guess we set ourselves a rule right we kind of go on you only need two products we don't we're not gonna we can't have massive range so i if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe You're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies.

27:29But my friends, making the leap, crossing El Chasum, crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy. It's the Champions League of FMCG. It's super hard. It means playing at a higher level. And that's where some of your amazing brands sadly stumble. Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck. And let's be real. Supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. something's got to go for you to get in for you to get on shelf and that is why i've got to tell you about north star they are the team that's helping purpose-led fmcg brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers north star i'm not like another data company that force feed you data like foie gras that act like a nasa space mission it's super super simple to use their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset north star are your shortcut to smarter decisions stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later message with seedlit was um everything had to boil back to Seed It and Tonic.

28:53That's it. That was it. Everything. Didn't matter whether it was... Go and have Design Gardens at Chelsea Flower Show. Go and do events at all these fancy places. Go and be in other markets. Go and be at World's 50 Best Awards. All this stuff, everything still boiled back to it's got to be about Seed It and Tonic. And so, yeah, it was trying to keep the focus of that simplicity but we just need to introduce people to seal it and tonic that's it that's all we have to do we've got to find clever interesting ways to do that I think you said you I think I don't know if I I think you said you can't simplify you have to like before you have to do the you have to make it make it simple yeah exactly what you said yeah unpack that a little bit yeah it's so interesting because I think everyone in the room and we've talked about this before is my kind of modus operandi is fucking chaos and complexity yeah someone are asking this selfishly yeah is is how do you make it simple versus like simplifying like what's the difference like i am actually a really slow thinker i'm i can be incredibly impatient but if you think that on the face of it i thought of doing non-alcoholic cocktail bitters in 2017 and it actually took me six years to fucking launch it and it took me four years to get to light and dark which sounds so obvious but it's taken a really long time to get there what is the like i don't know stuff needs time i don't have the process i don't have yeah i just things have to like marinate and they have to I work in sprints is the only process I know and so I get very excited I get fully into it get to the bottom of the barrel learn everything there is to learn figure everything out that I need to figure out and then it needs to be left for a while there's I don't know who was telling me about uh john cleese who did monty python he was basically he's got a little book really short book on creativity he basically says when he locked in this is before computers and shit right yes he would lose his uh script sometimes he's his script and he'd come back and at when he'd go back to it straight off the cuff he'd let it marinate for a bit and he'd go back to it and it was like a gazillion times better yeah i think there's something in like starting ideas and then just um almost i think what was it uh rick rubin says not um distraction is not procrastination so he just goes on a drive i mean that's day to day but actually having a step back from like hey we may do this npd yep we may launch in this market and then easing off and just kind of letting it sort of get lesser in the uh and so the in the batting hands of your mind is having enough of those things happening at various different times so it to me being farming boy it's like crop rotation and it's like planting things that some things will grow really fast and need a lot of attention and it's all quick and it happens and other things grow really slow like trees you know and and so it's important to have a mixture of those things we're you know we're building a laboratory that starts next week for another brand and that's a project that i've been thinking about for 12 years and we're gonna make 2 000 bottles of it later this year and that's fucking it and that's 12 years this is by monastery isn't it yeah this is talk to me out why it's by like what's the monastery vibe it's we've got this this place where this guy used to have a car museum and a function room um and it's 50 feet away from the ruins of this benedictine monastery from the 1100s uh there's 10 000 bodies buried like in there um but it just i don't know it just works we're like just around forests and fields and rivers and in the right setting for this next project um but it's like 12 years that sounds ridiculous to then only make 2000 bottles and i've got no idea if it's going to work but no one's ever done it before so i'm kind of excited to try it um and give it a go yeah it seems like part of the day i want it to kind of get into the way your your brain works yeah we're definitely in there i want to talk about your your podcast Hidden 20 % yep which is amazing you've had Kit Harington yeah Game of Thrones Blake yeah who else there's loads yeah Cary Grant and Lottie Moss and clever expert psychologists so I'd love to know what's one conversation that kind of because I did a lot of podcasts right sometimes you have a conversation and you're not expecting you're like that was insane the thing I had did Rick Stein some of the other week he was telling me about this vanilla trout thing vanilla trout he basically said the curse of one percent improvement so if you're making everything better better better better suddenly you can actually go go from like this is what we wanted to create and you end up over here and i thought that's so interesting i wasn't expecting to learn that and apparently rick stein came in was like what the fuck happens with a little trout basically and he's like it's the curse the hidden curse of improvement i'd love to know what's been one yeah conversation you sat down you're like you learn something that has been like wow oh i mean we've done 16 episodes and we just paused because we're now recording series two but the the premise is you know 20 of the world in neurodivergent um so that's everything from adhd dyslexia dyscalculia tourette that's 1.6 billion people and yet 85 % of people in our prison system are neurodivergent and less than 40 % of neurodivergent adults who are in full-time employment and 85 % of kids who are diagnosed dyslexic are still incredibly ashamed about that.

35:22And I could go on. There's low suicide rates, etc. There's loads of problems. There's loads of myths. There's a medication shortage for ADHD medication and there's a 10-year waiting list for assessments. and so there's like all this shit that we're in 2024 and there's all this stigma and stereotype and myth and just nonsense and yet so much of you know we wouldn't have these fucking light bulbs if it wasn't for people who thought differently like edison or i'm sure you've all got iphones we owe so so much from like being able to shop at ikea for example to electricity to einstein newton maricuri muhammad ali monroe i could go on like so many people that we all know and who contribute so much actually to our daily lives now when you're a divergent um and so i'm kind of like how is there all this amazingness and then all this shit and so we're trying to join the dots and accelerate society's understanding of neurodiversity because it's basically just different not a problem just different and we've had this incredibly diverse array of guests that have come on from you know people a-list you know hollywood actors um to like incredible psychologists to reality tv stars to you know um who else we had authors or like a whole spectrum of people which is which is amazing uh i think i've i think the the big learning that my wife my wife came on as well which was incredibly brave of her uh to come chat about what a nightmare i am so yeah um the the main thing i've learned is we've done a 12-week test and we're a charity so we've not spent really any money on it um and we've had millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people seeing our stuff and listening to these episodes and And the one big learning is not from one particular episode.

37:42It's probably just the learning that what we're doing has a place in the world. And then the slightly terrifying bit of like, fuck, I don't want to let it down. And so, and this was saying this season, I'm always coming from a place of, if it's a good idea, I don't want to let it down. What do you mean by let it down? I want to do it justice. I don't want to do it a disservice as an idea. And so that's right where we are literally today, having conversations about how do we not let this down and go bigger and better and older and do more activity as a charity. So we've got a big research project we're commissioning, documentary that goes into treatment end of this year, fundraiser that's planned for the end of next year um yeah it's like let's just fucking go for it how did your um because you had you had kids before you got diagnosed right how did that change your relationship with your kids i know you've had had it um your wife on the podcast and yep that was quite emotional and cathartic and all those things but how did it change your relationship you've got three kids three kids yeah three girls three girls yeah very conducive to like startups I tell you what I thought having kids was going to be really bad for business and actually for balance and they've been amazing they are the best stop kind of focus on the kids yeah they are the best balancer they're amazing at that they you know my 11 year old she doesn't have any of the kind of rain match you know what rain man is the connotations of kind of what autism might have been or that it's just like weird little boys licking the windows on buses what is the rain man i know it's a film yeah the rain man is a film it does some hockey yeah um that portrays actually not an autistic man but became the stereotypical image of you're so young mate of became the stereotypical image of autism, which is a weird mass genie.

40:10And they're not all like that. So my kids kind of take it for what it is. And it's like, Daddy thinks differently. And we have these green badges, and you all have these in your goodie bags. And they're just a symbol of support, really, and solidarity they don't say i am autistic on them um they can be worn by anybody um but my you know my kids stole a load of my badges without me knowing and took them in and gave them to their class and yeah that's my five-year-old and my 11-year-old uh and you're like hey we sell these for fucking 10 pounds they go to the charity gods like um but then i asked my five-year-old well she's four and a half but she'll tell you she's five um i was like river why you know what did you say to like your class and your teacher when you took these in it's just like i just said that we wear these badges because some people think differently and that's good and it's like yeah that is all it is um instead of it being a negative problematic thing because that's what you said you said you've got all this like brilliance like the light bulb all the all those amazing creations the iphone but then you've got all this this kind of trough of shit on the other side so it's the final thing to wrap up with and then we'll open this up it's like how do you you can't let a good idea down yeah like how what is i suppose like this back to the blueprint what is the blueprint to kind of close that that gap don't mean close the gap between you've got these brilliant amazing ideas that come from neurodivergency yep but then you've got this as i say trough of shit with people thinking it's like the rain man effect etc how do you what's the way you're going to try and like chip away at that yeah so i'm firstly being being diagnosed i has been so liberating because i now have answers as to why i my brain works the way it works and so I'm only kind of really starting to appreciate the good bits and the blueprint bits and the photographic bits and try and harness those and make them even better so I'm like I'm suddenly kind of going my brain's a tool I've never I've never thought about my brain like we just don't think about our brains a lot we think about our thoughts or our feelings or our actions or of behaviors but not actually about our brain um and it's responsible for everything and so i'm kind of like and you can improve your brain so i'm like amazing i've got some of these good things and i've got some really difficult things how can i how can i improve my brain so that the good things are even better and i can sort of smooth off some of the bad things it's almost like the brutal simplism simplicity simplicity yeah uh you're applying that to your to your own brain and kind of just almost doubling down on the bits that work yes and that's really interesting which is what we should be doing for kids it's what we need to do in business you find something that works keep fucking doing it don't don't just rinse and repeat what works that's the name of the game um and so rather than it's very simple in the sense of instead of trying to be good at everything like they try and school you to be at school and then you feel shit because you're not good at everything because no one can be good at everything just like double down on the positives and it's learning when to lean in on the wins and spot the patterns and then like take the risk and go that worked i think it's worked a couple of other times actually let's fucking do more of that And if you do it on the individual level, enough individuals, that's how you close that gap.

44:10Yeah. Mate, wicked. Well, look, let's open this up to the floor, if anyone's got any questions. Perry, have you got the little Mikey thing? Yeah. Has anyone got any questions for Ben?

44:28Great.

44:32Yeah, just here, mate.

44:38it's funny i did a talk at a school recently and they got to any questions bit and fucking loads of them put their hand up and it was amazing but as adults we we went don't we wait till the end do you know what i mean how does this work this way it's not gonna it's not gonna um we're on a bit of a budget mate so it's not gonna it on it will just pick it when we do the episode and uh yeah one day mate so you're i guess your creative process right you come up with an idea something like this and you're speaking about you know alcohol-free spirits back in the day is something on in hindsight you know it was quite a clear insight that it already actually made a lot of sense you know the younger demographic were drinking less but they still wanted to go out and have these connections and this and that stuff like that so how much of that did you figure out in hindsight and like ah there's actually a narrative to this versus how much of your creative direction came from some of that external research how much of it comes from the outside in inside that like it's a very interesting insect out there and i'm interested in it i'm going to go pursue it versus how much of it's like you're just obsessed with something that you love and sounds bananas and then it turns out there's a narrative around a really good question so nothing i've done whether it's been the charity or season or the other projects or seed lip has come because i wanted to create a business and none of them have come as business ideas uh seed lip was because i like growing herbs and stuff at home and in the same way that I learned how to do taxidermy and I like making stuff and how things work learning that you could distill stuff at home and you didn't need alcohol and you didn't need a license to begin with you just needed plants and water which is how I started yeah it started from that and actually it was really gradual of it was nothing to do with drinks for probably the first good six months of playing around and so it's then another sort of sponge process of i think just being open to kind of being curious and going oh fuck i've had this horrible pink fruity shitty drink because i'm driving and i'm not drinking alcohol okay that's shit maybe there's something i'm doing at home and maybe i could work with the farm and and then and then it's the point of going like okay i need to look into this now i actually need to get on google now i need to go look at menus now i need to contact 500 of the best bars restaurants hotels in the uk to almost look at finding the most efficient and effective way to validate the idea so yeah it's for me anyway it doesn't come from a business perspective first any other questions?

47:54just want to move a little bit across how's this work? mic check one two we've heard a lot about you but how do you find like-minded people to work with to build business what do you look for really good question but it um

48:15the only like the it comes from what part of it comes from what am i not good at and what am i not best at spending my time on and therefore finding the gaps that way I am interested and I've got the proof now that and I really hope I don't offend anyone in here but I do offend people sometimes so let's have a go I know now categorically because it's happened five times and I know loads of you in drinks so hopefully this is helpful that when I hire a CV and a middle aged man who's got the fucking most incredible CV but has maybe never worked in a startup I have five times done that and five times it's gone to shit and five times I've had to let people go and five times it's lasted less than six months so but I intellectually know that in terms of like hiring on culture and hiring but I've second guessed myself from going oh things are getting a bit bigger a bit scarier, need a bit more expertise, get a person that knows about big business.

49:34And so I really, a part of me is saying this out loud, so I really don't fucking do it again. So if you do work for a big corporate, don't come and fucking talk to me. So what about, I think we talked about this in our first podcast, in terms of finding the cultural fit, I think we talked about those seven seed up questions? Yeah, we had seven questions. Seven questions, and you made, not made, but you were kind of looking for that simplicity of thought what were some of those questions i think that could help people i think one was like if you're an animal what would you be yeah so so random david hire sure you guys have heard of him founder of do lectures and hire denim he basically said that um i totally stole this from him um he said i hire denim we're an ideas company that make jeans and so i was like great see lips and nature company that makes drinks and we're going to put all the focus on not drinks but actually nature from a culture and hiring perspective that opened so much gave us so much freedom a to kind of do things like chelsea flower show and garden centers and all that kind of good stuff but also to close the business for a week every august and make people pay people to go on holiday but ask them to go and spend it in nature or hire a guy who had a phd in cacao to be on our marketing team so that part of those questions that we asked people were all nature focused one hand and then secondly they were all can people make things simple so asking someone not what their next five years look like and you get an essay asking them to do it in 140 characters so it was all like if they were an animal what kind of animal would they be and why we were trying to find these ways of teasing out even the dinner party who would you invite to your dinner party choose six guests were all ways to design i guess different techniques to understand how someone thought and how bothered they could be because if they all if they you know they're like i like elvis and you know but they couldn't give any a reason um and kind of to test i guess how how much they love nature um so yeah i don't think it was there wasn't one way we tested whether someone was a good fit um but attitude and work ethic um and being accountable and taking responsibility and being able to be brave they were all kind of things that we would definitely look for or ask questions that could help unpick those kind of stories if they had examples where they'd been really fearless because you've got to be a fucking maniac to work for a startup and a founder or not founder you do you have to be an idiot to do it and so you're looking for really special people that like will get will get in the trenches and will get go through the shit and learn to be uncomfortable and yeah that's a really special kind of person um because it's not for everyone probably got time for two more questions yeah go Tim and then Ella actually just No, no, I should just be working all day.

53:06It's really around actually sort of ideas and doing justice. And are there any ideas that you did have that you didn't do justice or you wished you'd followed through on? That's a really good question. I had loads of ideas before Seedlip and I never did anything with them and I never followed through. one of them one of them was like you know the white company why haven't we got any other colours? why isn't there a black company or a green company? I never did anything with that idea but I thought that was quite a good idea after C-Dip launched we launched another brand called Acorn and that is a business that i did let down i feel um because i couldn't give it my full attention but i sold it three months after it launched and actually you know the aperitif campari look at you guys i could have had it here and i could have shown you it but um yeah that that's probably one that sort of niggles a bit of i didn't actually have to sell it when it was three months old and the opportunity in that aperitif space has not gone anywhere.

54:32So yeah, maybe that's sort of reminding me, maybe I should buy it back from the app. Because that was, yeah, that was a really good one. Why did you set that up? Because I was selling the majority of seedlet and so it felt neat because, you know, my wife was about to give birth to our second daughter.

54:54yeah literally 10 days after we sold the majority of cedar so it all felt neat to kind of do it all in one um yeah but i didn't i don't think i necessarily needed to so yeah that would be that one hello around um when you were talking about export um and an internet going international and you were talking about um building credibility and finding those thousand people in that area and then yep did you find and build that credibility before you then went out to distribution partners and got them to start pitching i did you have some of those key people backing you before you then went to those distributors yeah it was a bit of a mixture um A, I guess, you know, with the world of sort of social, people can find and see you more easily than, okay, we're in a shop in England.

55:53Well, I'm never in England, so I can't see it. So that helped. Then being some of the chefs, bartenders that have an international presence in the UK, word started to travel. So that was really good. and then ultimately I would do a lot of traveling so I would go to a market when we had the nibbles and enough people that I could kind of go oh yeah I'm actually coming to your city let's meet up we can taste seed lip and then I would I could contact or respond to a distributor and go I'm going to be in your city because I'm meeting X, Y and Z who are all really fucking cool why don't we have a meeting too and so sort of dovetailing the both because there was no point in just going and having nice meetings with bartenders if there then wasn't a route to market but there also wasn't any point in just going and having a meeting with a distributor when there wasn't any demand so yeah it was sort of taking quite a grey area approach to it.

57:08You said from the beginning that was always your approach or is that something you figured out when you were adjourning? Oh, it definitely would have been a figuring out job. Definitely a figuring out job. And to be honest it was partly reactive, partly listening to what came in. But I remember walking into the American bar at the Savoy that was the world's best bar at the time and the head bartender who I'd never met who I'd been introduced to and I had a meeting with and this was before we launched um said I've just come back for Greek I've just come back from Greece and they're talking about Seedlipping Greece and I was like but we haven't even launched yet and he's like yeah but look bartenders go and do guest shifts in all these different places and they all talk.

57:57So word gets around quite quickly. And that can be amazingly powerful. It can be really bad if they don't like it as well. So yeah, it was a bit of both. Sweet. Let's wrap that up there. Okay. Thank you so much, Vince.

58:20So you've got like bottles of Seasons Take Home, so you're welcome to nick the ones on the table but you all can't got balls of season there's some mixers in there there's some fire degradable stirrers and there's green badges one green badge per bag and there's big fucking tote bags that say I season my drinks so enjoy yeah have a great dinner I don't have any children with me tonight so I'm going to leave I go and get some sleep nice mate thank you so much thanks for sick

59:10thank 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 5 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