The journey from free school meals to high flying banker to feeling soulless, escaping and founding Boundless, winning listings at ASDA, Holland & Barratt, Whole Foods Market, Ocado

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

0:25Hi there guys, thank you so much for listening as always, it means the absolute world to me. Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favour. 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.

1:00hey there guys quick one i want to reintroduce you to our beautiful wonderful sponsors mckenzie jones they are fmcg recruitment specialists um and i think oh god yes recruiter it's recruiter um they're less recruiter more growth partner they understand founders dna they understand what it takes to build a challenger brand they get the founder's mindset and dna they've worked with so many buccaneering brands lucky saint real superfoods hunter and gather in proserbrew but They've also worked with some of the big puppets, the big boys, Unilever, PepsiCo, Campari, and Lucas A. Red Bean and Suntory.

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3:22Thank you so much. Hello there, people and listeners of the Hungry podcast. Today, I'm absolutely thrilled and very excited to welcome my very good friend, Cathy Mosley, onto the podcast. Cathy is the founder of Boundless, who make gut, happy snacking, banging product, unreal packaging, won listings at... Well... it's a bit late in the afternoon i haven't had my coffee yet oh god i can't even remember myself right okay yeah it's um we're in about two and a half thousand stores now three thousand stores across the uk which and that that goes up from like independence to like the malts you know online where amazon's number one got house snack and all that kind of stuff but um you know there seems to be enough yeah your distribution is quite literally boundless but so so just to give a bit of context uh kathy very and kindly kindly invited me down um to one of the most interesting nice offices i've been to it's like some sort of farmyard in when i was i went for a piss on the way down right and it was like um i went for a leak i should say and i went for a walk and i put my car up you know up there yeah yeah and um I was like this is like saying a fucking brave heart he's like Dr.

4:44Julia he had all the animals around him and stuff like that I mean with my accent I totally fit it welcome to the cotswolds

4:54so Cathy's very kind of inviting me down to do a talk to the team all about kind of everything I've learned from the podcast we kind of boiled it down into this hours presentation called Be Different Not Better and now we're recording the podcast and I'm just so grateful for having me down here allowing me to do the talk and yeah, let's crack on We're really pleased to have you, Dan Last spending time, maybe you were just hanging out the back of the bar Actually, having you to the hand today has been really brilliant So where I wanted to start Like, as I've said, like, I'm born with a silver spoon on my jack seat, right?

5:40I got very lucky. Yeah, I got very lucky. I got very lucky. And, you know, our industry is, for good or bad, it just is. It's not bad. I think it's bad. I think it's good. It just is. It is predominantly private school kids. I think it's because they've got more resource. They can found brands. They've got more of a backup. um and that just it is what it is you go to a trade show and it's like hey me what's your distribution saying but if you're wagging on the old linky yeah yeah should we whack on the old linky d and they're gonna have a few beers at sarah house mate um but i know i know people um listen to this who are not from that background and you're not from that background and you are from Bethnal Green before it became full of fucking hipsters.

6:36Yeah, Bethnal Green when you couldn't find people to live there rather than the fact that people can't afford to live there anymore. It's full of like sort of sanctimonious organochistas now, Bethnal Green. That and Stokey. Yeah. And that's when like, you know, Stoke Newton and Hoxton, I mean, that used to be even worse than Bethnal Green, which is like, you know. It's so funny how like all these people, like they talk about even their bloody you know sort of dungarees are organic and that's part of their nose rings organic do you know what i mean dungarees when i need to get like your workman's clothes do you know what i mean you'd be lucky but but but i suppose let's let's go back to the start then and and what did it feel like growing up in in the east end because i want to get i want to get into like what it feels like being in a in a kind of an industry that is predominantly West London or Cotswolds but what like talk me through what was maybe the hardest day growing up in your childhood what did that actually feel like for you well yeah my my background was tough East End was tough I mean predominantly you know people working do you know what I mean but probably in low paid jobs and stuff like that not really that much education at a certain level sort of thing I mean I'm you know my parents didn't have education from that kind of point of view and their their parents didn't but they were obviously trained people you know which is really skillful and all that kind of stuff but probably back in like 70s and 80s probably quite undervalued you know in that kind of thing but i think yeah tough i mean i grew up on free school meals you know my parents worked really hard and that's certainly then and i i'd like to think it's less so now but i still think there's still that environment is it felt quite shameful you know in that kind of environment kind of having to get you and they used to make you at free school meals where I used to have to like stand in a separate queue like at school sort of thing and it's just like a highlight of kind of like your difference so I think that was probably quite difficult but you know in terms of like where I grew up I would say that the one thing that it definitely had which isn't a real positive was real sense of community and I think I probably learned that quite a lot and that's really important to me in terms of like kind of like sharing you know kind of like making sure that you realize it's not just you it's about spreading that throughout you know the people you're with friendships are really bonded I think sometimes your friendships are really bonded in really tough times and there's obviously a lot of that in that in that period I think you know I grew up in flats so you know there's no such thing as like having a nice little ballpark to kick your ball around and they used to like you know in the same states just to put up these signs going no ball games you know which is like absolutely like okay so the kids in flats aren't allowed to actually eat doing the exercise or kind of that kind of thing i think you know in terms of food i think like you know food is when you're obviously working on a really tight budget and i think that's probably even relative right now when we see what's going on with cost of living and how people are trying to make ends meet really tough is um luxuries like snacking were like really limited like you know you used to get like a can of pop not naming any names because it couldn't my mum couldn't afford Coca-Cola so it'd be like a can of pop do you know whatever once a week and you get like a bag of crisps and you might get 10p mix-up something that was a massive treat to have so I suppose like for me snacking was always seemed like a kind of real sense of enjoyment but a real sense of luxury kind of thing like you know that it wasn't an everyday occurrence and those kind of things and I think that it's really difficult to grow up in an environment where you watch your parents struggle for money where you spend a lot of time in the house talking about money discussing money knowing that money's tight knowing everything i think that probably made me the way i am in the sense of not wanting to feel that position which i mean not wanting to feel that kind of feeling as you get older but also the fact that it makes you quite savvy with money you know you really learn a lot so i suppose in that way you learn a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit i mean you learn how to rob peter to paul pay paul you know you're kind of like you're constantly thinking that kind of way which is probably a good thing being in a startup it's probably a great thing to know how to do not that always get it right but um yeah definitely i think my my fondest memories then are definitely the community in terms of your your friends that live you know obviously you have a lot of family live by and all that kind of things and i think probably the hardest bit is being poor is tough it's it's you know i know that no one should have not be proud no one should be ashamed but i think there's a real you know oh the best times are when you're poor they're not it's it's tough it's linking this together you said two words that really are kind of paradoxical but it they also link to snacking you said the word shame of being in the in the queue and being almost ostracized having to get the free lunch dinners but then kind of a juxtaposite to that is the is the community piece and actually snacking a lot of people's snack is comforting they snack to escape shame on the first point well not maybe that's like it's not if you have a kitkat you fucking change but like maybe that's a bit too strong but like have a break yeah have a break yeah get rid of your shape for 20 minutes mate and then uh once you've put that eating your full finger bubble back in do what i mean but what i mean is you know there's i mean oh oh i will steam train through a malteser's little pack you know like the share bag it's like a fucking hurricane um when when i'm hungry but then that's to escape some sort of either stress or pain but then also snacking is sharing and it's community yeah snacking is even though i don't share a share bag i probably should but there's there's it's quite interesting going right into the foundations of your childhood to now there's boundless snacking and almost you know boundless to me is the word that is like almost you were in depthitude not depth truth when you were growing up but this this environment having of having nothing yeah of of having no community whereas boundless is almost like the anesthetist to that word do you know yeah i mean it's in constant isn't it it's everybody is yeah yeah yeah energy it's kind of like feel good about you isn't it you're bound this i mean you know if someone said to you i can give you boundless energy who wouldn't want that you know it makes you feel alive it makes you feel like good about you and i think you know for me i have got a lot of energy i'm like you know probably like you know totally nuts which is quite apt probably because i sell nuts but yeah the but energy is is people feed off energy and i think you know if you're around someone who's really uplifting you want to be with them a little bit more don't you because it makes you feel a bit better makes you feel energized and i think you know in terms of where that relates into like snacking and things like that is snacking is an enjoyment piece you know otherwise you go and eat an apple you know whatever it may be or a kiwi or a kiwi or alcohol or diet you could have all those now you can have a tomato and I'll show you some fruit or tomato mate I think yeah I think like it is it is about that it's it's about kind of getting together isn't it do you mean like you know let's face it when do we when do we snack okay we snacking we snack in like silo like you say when we're feeling a little bit low you want to feel better and you kind of think i'm gonna have something that's gonna make me feel really good enjoy it don't be tasty you know delicious anxious all of those things right but also it's about that big bit of community because you know what's the first thing you do when your mates come around you're cracking over a few beers or glass of wine or whatever it may be you get snacks out and it's all about then coming together i mean that's why for me like um i love kind of that that european or middle eastern way of eating which i feel that we lack quite a lot in this country but i think a little bit more so now but we certainly we're not traditionally do that is the fact that they sit around big tables but you know massive big sharing bowls of food and get everybody in and everyone's shouting at each other no one's really listening but it's great fun and it's enjoyment and i you know we're very bad at that in my family we talk over each other all the time you know you're gonna have to shout to get heard and that kind of stuff but i actually think that's buzzy i think that's great it's not rude it's not people being rude it's about people kind of like just so energetic about what they want to say and i will comment on that and i want to say this sort of thing but i think that community-led eating is is really important for society and i think it's really important for us individually because most people want to feel part of something which means you don't want to feel isolated it goes back to like this i don't i'd never expect as i said we're kind of just shooting off the hip here usually i have loads of like questions prepared but this is kind of yeah literally off the hip but what you've said there is is it is almost this you had this this painful shame when you were younger of being poor and then now you're building this brand that is this whole kind of as you said it's about fit not being part of something it's almost the anaesthetist to that you you i listened to a podcast you did and you said you developed rhino skin yeah um now building a brand people who are listening to this you need rhino skin times 100 to just keep on keeping on what where did that rhino skin or how how this is better we're saying it from from from kathy who was in the school cube for free school meals feeling ashamed how did you go about building that rhino skin because people say sometimes say to me like is is a thick skin like innate is a thick skin innate well i don't think i don't think really necessarily it is innate it's like you can you can build it and there'll be people listening to this who need to build it but how did you go about building it well i i think there's all those you know we can go back to some psychology kind of thing and obviously i'm not a psychologist in any shape or form definitely not um that is the fact that i think there's don't worry i am

17:10but i think i think things that happen to you create that and i think there's also but there's also determination in life and I think when you're determined I think you find it easier to shake things off okay and I think that is built up with the fact that if you've got a vision and you've got a mission then you're going to get to it do you know what I mean and you're going to push yourself to do that and I think you know my mission was obviously I didn't want to stand in that queue originally do you know what I mean and obviously that from boundaries came but for me I went into the city so I went to work in the city when I was like 16 and I had GCSEs do you know what I mean lucky you know and um I decided that I was thought about going to college to do A-levels and I kind of missed the boat to do that by the time I kind of like stayed where I was so my dad said to me I had to get a job that I couldn't wait for a year to go to college to do A-levels I had to get a job in the meantime as in you know you need to get yourself kind of like on your feet you're not going to sit around for a year which I suppose is kind of probably my background you know in the sense that no one ever just did nothing you worked or you did something else don't sort of thing so so I went to work in the city and I was 16 and I went to work on a trading floor a pit open pit trading floor the london metal exchange and there's 450 people down on the exchange and i was the youngest person on the exchange and i was also one of the only women on the exchange so i learned by baptism of fire of like you cannot sweat the small shit and not be taken in by what other people are saying to you i mean you're gonna have to get tough and you're gonna have to get quickly tough to survive i suppose maybe it's like and this is gonna sound really weird but i don't know maybe you if you're on a sinking ship right okay and then you know you can either sit with the ship and sink okay or you're gonna think to yourself right i'm gonna do everything i can to get off this ship to survive and i think most people most people will do what they can to get off the ship to survive and i think sometimes not everyone's put in those situations so they think they're not capable but in actual fact when you put yourself in those situations you'll be much more resilient than you think you are bohemi our beloved sponsor are helping build the fastest growing challenge of food drink brands look if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist your first 100 stockists to wholesale boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger boemi are also insane they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using boemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an Insane Lucky Saint My boy Aaron Duff Who's come on this podcast In a couple of weeks He uses it To manage a team Of 30 people And they've Lucky Saint Have unlocked 500 draft listings By using Boemi Look you've got to Get involved with this stuff It's absolutely insane And it will Categorically change your life It's just the sickest platform I use it all the time At Ireland So there's a book By Nassim Taleb Which I like I mean That sounds fancy Yeah may as well get it Yeah This is me I really am the private school boy here no no no no no no i do sorry but but it's what you're saying is he has this thing i've talked about it with quite a few guests is this it's this like three things you've got you've got fragile robust in the middle and then on the right hand side anti-fragile and basically there's there's not a word for stronger than robust in the dictionary and so he's created this anti-fragile thing and what he basically says and it's you going into the trading floor is the only way to become anti-fragile is to is to just take a fuck load of stresses a fuck load of stresses or in your word like your terms of the only way to realize what you're capable of is to get on the sinking ship and that's great for people listening to this but let's go back to what it felt like when you walked through that door because you're 16 you're a female it's a male-dominated environment let's go back to when you were fragile before you came back to anti-fragile before sorry before you became anti-fragile yeah well okay so first thing walking in that door fuck so what's that like we talked to get absent color like what day was it was it was it cold was it wet so okay so it was in like i say based in the city or fenchurch street okay and so that was really in the height of the city in terms of like in that square mile and sorry sorry to interrupt was this like the um the like sort of rip-roaring 80s 90s this is the 90s yeah 1991 right and um yes in 91 and it was during like the gulf war so um commodities obviously london metal exchange was really mentally busy i mean always i was going to say mentally busy there oh my god mentally busy yeah it was really mentally busy and i had to get the bus i had to get the number six bus right which used to take me like from well actually you could have to get the number right you get number six they reroute differently now but anyway let's get numbers i've got number six bus right and i was coming down thread needle street kind of thing and i've done that bus route a million times but i remember thinking i had like you know a suit on which by the way i got from next not trying to pump next there but literally like my god i cannot tell you what a treat like to have bought a suit from next was i mean that was just like that was basically like four months money i hadn't even got any money by that stage do you know i mean anyway and it's coming down like on the bus and so i've done that trip a million times and um just been like okay got get off the bus here got off the bus and then i was trying to like this is obviously no google maps in those days do you know i mean or anything like that no like kind of like helped you out from the phone um so like trying to find my way into this building sort of thing do you know i mean i've kind of been to before for an interview but you know couldn't really remember it that well anyway go in there got in there in the reception it's probably a bit of a funny story anyway got quite a reception i mean i'm here to start my first day yeah yeah okay sent me up to um the fourth floor and they they was like right literally got into this office like in dean room which is small it's a small dean room at that time they went which we've got to leave we've got to go down to the exchange so i literally like left to go to the exchange do you know what i mean so went off to the exchange so i literally only met the team for about two or three minutes and they're all blokes obviously all kind of quiet you know loud all that kind of stuff which i can do with loud because i'm loud kind of thing and they were like right here's here's this pad here's this pen right what you're gonna do we're gonna get there just follow what we do you're going to write down everything we do i was like right okay thinking well i can't even spell right because i'm going to be dyslexic so i was thinking oh my god fuck who the hell what am i going to write down do you know i mean like i'm getting they don't know what i can't even spell aluminium do you know what i mean so how the hell am i going to write aluminium or zinc down i'm gonna fuck this right up i'm probably gonna last a day and i get into then we go into this exchange which in this big building there's like massive big metal doors that you kind of go into and it's i cannot explain to you like how overwhelming it was in the sense of kind of probably like i don't know 100 meters by 200 meters just this massive massive room like auditorium with like all these booths around the outside and this big circled pit with like these red seats in the middle and just this sea of people just shouting at each other right and it was like literally this is our booth this is where we're gonna go right okay right get this lean over this right bend over this ring do you know what I mean and like start writing down dude I'm buying this I'm selling this I was like didn't have a fucking clue and I was terrified I was terrified absolutely terrified what were the voices in your head during that?

25:55you better get enough money to get your bus fare out my dad's going to go shit a brick if I've just bought this next suit and now I'm not going to be able to pay for it that kind of stuff I'll never get this I'll never I'll understand what we're doing here I don't even know what, you know, buy, sell Buy, sell what, do you know what I mean, what's this What's a free month contract What's this, what's that, I mean I don't even know what they're talking about You know, go over to Barclays Box and check with them Who the fuck's Barclays, do you know what I mean All of that, just really overwhelming But I think What I did on the first day I was absolute shit I definitely thought I was going to get fired Definitely unbelievably thought they're going to be you're crap okay that didn't happen at the end of the day so i guess that was a positive for me because i was thinking that but i left got back on that number six that evening i think about seven o 'clock and um i thought to myself i'm gonna do this i'm i'm i'm gonna do this do i mean do what i'm gonna make this happen i'm gonna make this work i'm gonna learn how to do this can't be that hard do you know what I mean I'm yeah I'm I'm gonna give it everything I've got and then if it doesn't work at least I knew I gave it everything I've got because to me it felt like an opportunity and it was an opportunity you know I imagine there are probably even people back in the 90s that went to uni or did degrees in finance economics business and they knew they always wanted to be a trader that's what they wanted to work in that financial environment i didn't even know that so i just got the job at the evening standard went to a few interviews and got it so bearing in mind but why sorry to interrupt but why why so so you've talked about being internally fragile you're thinking that your exact word was fuck as you walk through you must have not shown that in the interview because if they saw this little girl from best of the game was petrified you wouldn't have got the job so what what would what were they asking you in the interview or what would they what was i'm confident i've always been confident do you know what i mean externally externally exterminate yeah exactly that was well done i'm confident i've always been confident and i mean that sincerely and that's not because i'm trying to blow my own trumpet i am confident i i don't believe in no i always think there's a way to find to get what you want and i don't mean that in the sense of cheat somebody or be disingenuous or any of that sort of stuff that i don't believe in at all i think confidence there's a difference between confidence and arrogance you know in the sense that i've worked with a lot of people in that environment and really arrogant but confidence is is a is a sense for me it's your attitude it's about you're willing to go yeah okay i'll do that yeah i'll give that a go yeah all right okay all right yeah okay i'll learn that yeah i can do that you know and i think having conversation with people i think that's really important like how you hold yourself you know in the sense of kind of never being frightened to go up to anyone do you know i mean why why should you worry whether they're the chairman of ici do you know i mean or the head of unilever or they you know they're they're doing you know they run the local garbage service or whatever it may be, should never be worried about talking to anyone because what's the worst that can happen?

29:35Yeah, I think it's interesting because you were terrified when you walked through the doors, right? Yeah, of course. So I think it's like how can you be confident and terrified at the same time is what I'm trying to get into, I suppose. I think you can. And I think you can be. I think it's, you know, like even so next week, the brain jones thing is i want to be fucking shitting myself touching cloth mate from blown right sorry but um like it's yeah but it's like but there's 50 pence five pence yeah so i so i think there's there's that and it's so there's the confidence piece but then there's also i think self-esteem is not the same as confidence because self-esteem you know i'm super confident but myself my like my relationship with myself can be really um what's the word like incredibly harsh on myself which is part of the drive but it's like like sometimes out of you know david hyatt who we were talking about when i was doing the talk right is is he had a quote and i was just like i need to get this just like drummed in drummed in like put on my fucking steering wheel or something it was like don't turn your imagination into worry like yeah and that's what i can do is is it's it's super creative when it's great i've got a huge imagination really confident about that but then the dark side of that is like it can be like okay this is going to go wrong that's going to go wrong you're good enough do you know i mean the thing is you can't worry about what you don't know and if you spend your life worrying about what you don't know then you're gonna miss out on the moment and the moment could be the best moment you ever had and you wouldn't have known it you've let it go by because you're worrying about what you don't worry so i suppose maybe that comes back to in all fairness growing up because i probably spent most of my childhood worrying about the worries that my parents were worrying about and money do you know i mean and that kind of stuff and that brings obviously lots of worry in the home and all that kind of stuff because you're constantly worrying so like what are some of those worries um in terms of childhood worry because i just sound as i said i sound like a like my my worry is well will i get fifa for 23 i feel like such a twat saying that but it's like worry okay so worry would be like how are we going to eat this week you know worry would be like okay you've got massive holding your school shoes but we can't afford a pair how are we going to fix them because we we can't afford a new pair of shoes or you know you've got a holy school jumper you're going to do you know i mean you know it wasn't worries about like how are we going to you know how are we going to get on holiday this year i mean didn't go i didn't go abroad until i was 12 didn't go out of the country till i was 12 and it wasn't like we went on holidays prior to that we didn't do you know what i mean it because you know money was really tight and i think you know please don't get me wrong like i don't want to give people an impression i've had this worst childhood because i think there are lots of people that have a really tough time and you know i came from an environment that i was loved and that's really amazing and that's probably one of the most valuable things you can ever have do you know i mean to be loved by the people you're that you know look after you kind of thing but i think i'm so used to worry um that i can segregate worry in in a in a probably a little bit of a strange way and i then got used to i mean of course you know i'm founder of a startup and if i weren't worrying then that would be complacency and if i was complacent then we wouldn't be here you know but i think you can measure your worry in a different way what's what's really what you should be worrying about and what you shouldn't be worrying about stuff and you cannot think well what if this doesn't happen what if that does if that doesn't happen then something else will happen and something else will come your way that you'll need to put in do you know what i mean in terms of like okay what if we don't get that listing okay well that's in our forecast what we're going to do if we don't get that listing well then we have you know you have other plans don't you because anything can happen you mean look let's look at what's happening food and drink over the last year in terms of cost of living is you know so many companies have faltered and it's not because they've not been great because you know the world's just thrown us stuff that you know any business in this environment in any kind of category is going to have had a really hard time covid cost of living logistics nightmare costs going up i mean you can't foresee that if not you know and you wouldn't have been worrying about that three years because we wouldn't know that was going to happen so there's a point of not worrying about what you cannot see and i think i'm not saying i don't worry of course i do i wouldn't be human if i didn't worry but i i think i my environment of where i grew up and then what led into maybe into trading which is a little bit instant well it's not it's seconds it's all instant you're not worrying about you're not going to worry what's going to happen in the next hour you're not even going to worry about what's happening next you certainly happen tomorrow or next week or next month hence probably the financial crisis but you're in the moment and And you've got to deal with that moment now.

34:57And you haven't got time or capacity to be thinking about what's going to happen in the next hour. Because if you don't deal with the moment, you're fucked by the next hour anyway. So I suppose that's kind of like taught me rhino skin. Those years of just being like that has kind of developed me in that way. It's fascinating. It's almost like you had so much worry when you were growing up. and well when you before you hit 16 you walk through those doors and the word fuck is is less as you said the word like fuck as i walk through the door it's less worry it's less like oh is this gonna work it's like fuck it's almost fuck in that sense that you're super present you're just like right i've got to make this work um my old housemate when i was living in london he was a he wasn't a trader he was a broker yeah so he worked for oh fuck knows but anyway um but he was you sort of in at five back at eight and it's like as you say they've got those boxes that they speak into and it's just like you're you're in and then they you'll have a sandwich or whatever a kfc yeah or beers on thursday about like that's the go to the pub early doors um but there's almost and i think there's something in that for people listening to this um who you know you they could be a founder who doesn't come from a good background who's trying to get a listing and that feeling of overwhelm i remember going to the first buyers meeting in like one of the supermarkets and it was that feeling of well i'm just so not prepared for this and i think i'd love to know how how this rhino skin how this building of confidence has set you up for like in good stead for boundless yeah well i think first of all i think i've said it a bit earlier is i don't believe in no and i think because you're going to get no's and no's in this in this you know um environment you see these industries that we're in you get no's and no's okay but it doesn't necessarily mean no does it it can mean no at that second it can mean no that day it doesn't necessarily mean it's no next week doesn't mean it's necessarily no in a few months time at the end of the day i think what's really important is having belief in what you do so whether it's you know doing stacks like us or you're making drinks or whatever it is you're doing in the food and beverage industry is the fact that you believe in what you're gonna you're gonna do and people do by people people buy i mean what's the classic people buy you know why you do something not what you do do i mean kind of thing and i think it's really important for you to kind of make sure that you hold on it and you constantly you let other people know that's what you're doing and why kind of thing and i think that if you're gonna if you're gonna be um worried by no then you're probably gonna come up against so many problems no matter what you do in life whether it's food and beverage you know what it is because you're and get low lots and i think it's about your ability to go round no and i think that's your determination and i think anybody that starts any startup you're already determined because my god you know you're putting your balls on the line you've gone out there you know you've taken an idea and you believe in it you know and to do that is so brave it is so brave whether you're whether you're coming from my kind of background or whether you're coming from a background that might be more financially stable that the risk probably seems less it's still you it's your life it's your time you know we're not here for a long time we're for a good time and i think that it's a massive leap and it's a massive brave step to do that and i think that should tell you something about you already so the fact if you think no he's going to beat you down i don't actually think that is something that you should be kind of letting that get under your skin because you're gonna actually have to get really on top of that i mean i can tell you now like my first ever um when launched boundless back in 2018 launched a speciality fine food and um i made stands out of some decking out of b &q for like 40 quid what i forgot was decking is really fucking heavy so trying to move this table through especially was just like a nightmare managed to get someone to make me some part of our branding and all this kind of stuff right didn't have a listing didn't have anything right all i had was a few packets and the idea and i just saw i'm going for it do you know what i mean and then like people come out but where can you know where can we get i didn't even know what a palette was right i didn't have a clue like how distribution works or even the commissions or the numbers or all this kind of stuff but what i was doing was going to figure out whether this was going to work as in can i get people interested this can i get a buyer to walk past my stand and think what's that what are you doing kind of thing and i i think that's the kind of that's the kind of attitude you need because i could have got loads of no's of course i did but i didn't get all no's which was obviously it was a real buzz but i can tell you probably if i've got all no's i still would have gone back fuck it i'm gonna do it again do you know i mean i'm gonna try it i'm gonna try again um but i think you know i even rugby tackled a um buyer once literally he was like walked past me and someone said you need to talk to this guy you need to talk to this guy and he's like about 200 yards i literally took a run and leap and almost took into the floor i mean the all blacks would have been super proud of me you know there's i mean it's an insane story so imagine there's a female founder from bethnal green she's 24 yeah she doesn't have as much confidence as you yeah she's at stand b 15 in the top hand corner at Special LA in September there's people going past her there's buyers going past her if you could like almost either WhatsApp her or just send her one sentence of wisdom or like a little phrase like what would it be I'd probably say you've got this you've already done it you've made the first step now step out in front of your stand you've done it do you know what i mean you've got it you know you you've you've already got yourself there you've made something you've got yourself a stand you've gone there do you know what i mean you might be in the corner whatever it is get out in front because that is what people want see there's nothing worse i'm sure everyone listens to this or one person listening to me not you dan um obviously but okay what is worse we've all done it we've been to so many trade shows and consumer shows okay well it's nothing worse than walking past the stand and someone just standing there looking down on the floor do you know what i mean because if you're a founder you've already made i mean hiring people that do that well obviously they should jog on do you mean they are not good for you don't want to hire people that do that kind of stuff but you you are already so out you're always so brave you've already so got so much courage to have actually put your head above the parapet you've already done that do you know what I mean and that in itself the confidence that you should have in you because you've been able to do that should be euphoric you know and I always think it's like it's always easier to believe the bad stuff generally people don't believe the good stuff about themselves you know and I don't think lots of people take compliment well do you know i mean it's not because they don't think the compliments genuinely probably just brussels do you know i mean a bit in that kind of way and it's always easier to believe the bad stuff and i would say certainly if you're female as well in the sense that you know we do work still in a really male dominated environment and i think you know there is that time now where there's much more empowerment to women in all shapes and forms of business and I think you know just think about those people that trod those steps before you and like you know do it for you do it for you do it for you for the fact that you have had the energy and the mindset and the gumption and the balls to get that far you you're doing this it's almost you going back to your trading floor linking it to the to the kathy at 16 it's the parallel feeling of fuck right but you step out what you step out into the into the into this sea of buyers you know kind of gallivanting past but back to this anti-fragile piece you have to have a significant stressor i.e that feeling of fuck to build confidence yeah so it's almost you've got to just lean into that fear i think there's there's so much in that just going back to back to the trading days so um sorry this is a bit personal i like to ask personal questions we can really cut this out you can ask what you like but what is your so you didn't have much money growing up what's your relationship with money like now well okay i think that's really interesting um question well done down thank you i need to go straight 50 minutes um okay so um did you make a lot of money in the city yes right yeah I'm not gonna lie what was the biggest paycheck you raised you really want me to say that yeah yeah yeah okay alright the biggest amount I made in one annual year 725 grand my G come on girl come on give us a sound and debt of 850 yeah okay look um I think um okay my relationship with money so my relationship with money from a kid was like um never had any debt in our house because my dad was really big about the fact of not having anything he could call it on tick so my dad never even have credit card and stuff right so we did because obviously he came from a background where you just don't get obviously you haven't got any money but you certainly don't borrow any money right so probably why we didn't also do other things because my dad will get us into debt so i think that's probably something that really sticks really stuck really sticks every now i think it stuck with me at that point i think um the city breeds not the greatest environment for your attitude to money and several reasons is i think you earn a lot of money when you're young please don't get me wrong not everyone in the city i think it's a real fallacy everyone thinks everyone in the city earns loads of money they don't do i mean that's not true there are lots of people within massive conglomerate banks that are just not earning lots and lots of money in fact they're probably under a lot of money a lot of people in the food and beverage already earn more than them do you know what i mean but what it does breed is a attitude to be flippant with money and i definitely think at one stage i was definitely was i'd like to think i wasn't an arsehole i certainly work with a lot of arseholes because money i think felt what it did bought them power it bought them an ability so i can just get what i want and that attitude is not a very nice one to be around to be to be fair do i think i had um a flippant attitude to money at certain so when you're saying flippant like any examples yeah like not giving a shit just okay i want to have something to eat get that cab it can go over there other side of west london pick me up my lunch and drive it back to me i mean ridiculous yeah yeah ridiculous yeah because everything's relative isn't it do you know i mean in the terms of kind of like hello let's let's pull out the bag you earn 30 grand a year okay and i know your your treat a week say for instance is you get a takeaway or whatever it is but you get a sushi takeaway and you know not it's a but you get something really nice like hand roll sushi whatever it is and it's cost you 50 quid right you're not having that every day do you know i mean because you're 30k but it's still a treat right it's it's a splash if you think about what you owe 30k what you'll take home probably what your rent is what would be like 85 percent of your earnings do you know i mean all of this kind of stuff is this tree right now relative that do you know what i mean now 10 times that salary or do you know i mean 20 times that salary what becomes relative is that 500 quid do you know i mean a thousand pounds just spent on something that seems quite but i think probably went through that period in may for maybe about a year 18 months because it didn't always how old were you then um so i wasn't a trader so i was 21 do you know i mean so when i was first at 16 do you know me in terms of like you're what they call a clerked you're a pit do you mean you're kind of like you've taken down all the traders details you can't be a trader till you're 21 which certainly couldn't be then and natural facts when i joined the exchange women weren't even allowed on the exchange until the mid 80s do you know i mean so it's kind of a massive it's mad yeah mental environment but you know so i think probably at the age of about 23 maybe to 25 maybe that kind of period do you mean was a time for definite like this massive growth in earning not that kind of level of earning that I was not later that massive growth in earning and I think that kind of yeah I think I went through a stage where I've just been oh don't worry about it I'll pay do you know what I mean you know that kind of thing but I certainly corrected that as I got got past that stage and I think probably what the one thing that really helped me and that might be individuals for everybody else was that i stayed friends with all of my original friends and like my core friends that still come from bethnal green and they did real jobs you know working in cities you know i would say it's not a real job you know you buy and sell something it doesn't mean anything doesn't really have an impact to people but you know it's just numbers you're trading in billions a day it's just a number i don't really mean anything unfortunately it does to lots of people in terms of their interest rates and stuff like that.

49:49My friends were like nurses, you know, kind of like, you know, worked in offices and different, you know, drivers, you know, van drivers. What I would call core, honest, fundamental, like, the keep the world going jobs, you know, and stuff like that. Don't necessarily earn a lot of money, but where would we be without those people? And I soon realised that I wanted to hang out with them. Were they jealous of you at all? no I don't I don't think so because I think it's interesting because you could play that situation out 50 times and then maybe 48 where jealousy seeps in there I'd like to think that I was generous with my friends that's probably one thing they would say that I have seen like I say you know that slip of being stupidly generous was something I definitely went through and once I rang that in which I did quite quickly well in that span of doing 25 years in the city already in that you know that 18 months two-year period but I don't necessarily think they were jealous I'm sure there were moments but then do you know what there was there were probably moments when I was jealous of them um because you know I went to work at like 5 36 in the morning and left at like eight like you know they all did long hours too and obviously got money but i used to go out to dinner a lot with clients so i know some of the most fanciest places in the country and stuff like that but you are sitting around with people that you would rather not be so it's not like hanging out with your mates going to like you know gordon ramsay's hospital road and stuff like that not that i'd probably hang out with my mates and i'd much rather just be in the local pub do you mean having a bowl chips and obviously snacks you know that but i just um i just think that yeah i i think i was probably jealous of them and and you know if we're being really personal dan as you like to be you know i had to make a choice in my in my role and i i really i'm this is why i'm really big about being female founded and being female empowered in terms of business and making sure that people have women and and of course but mainly women at this point because it's been skewed the other way have the ability to have flexible working and all that kind of stuff because I really I had to make a decision not to have children because my career at that point wouldn't allow me to have children because there was no way I worked in that environment they were going to accept that and so I suppose in that way maybe in my 30s in my mid to late 30s I probably I was probably more jealous of my friends necessarily than they were with me do you regret not having kids so i asked that to jules at um uh grenade you know grenade the founder she she was almost like graze my baby essentially but then i asked her that was a bit you know just interested to see where you let where you fall on that well i suppose the only answer is i don't know i mean because how do you know what you've missed if you've never had it so what you said earlier why worry about something you don't know yeah exactly i don't i don't know what i've missed i mean i'm really lucky that lots of my friends have given me their kids so i've got parents to loads of loads of children i think that's because i worked in the city and they probably thought i'd look after them they probably don't want to do that anymore now you'll get them sushi from hammersmith and ping it across to Bethnal Green.

53:27Now it's just like, yeah, gentlemen, you can have some free snacks. But, yeah, and I've got nephews and nieces and stuff. So I don't know if I regret it. I don't regret it because I don't know what I've missed. And I think probably to what you're saying about Jules from Gnade is Bambis is my baby and I love it. and I don't know in all fairness if I could do both. I'm not saying there aren't women out there that do and I admire them, do you know what I mean, in full admiration. I don't know if I could, do you know what I mean? I'm quite like driven in one. I want to do it well, do you know what I mean?

54:13That's me personally and I don't know how I would feel if I were trying to do everything well, do you know what I mean, in that way and whether I feel that I was failing in doing everything well and then that would put pressure on me you know in that way sort of thing so it was a decision so I'm not saying that I was forced to do it but I do know that I was an environment that that decision was weighted because of that with you yeah yeah it makes sense it's it's I was listening to a podcast was it on yesterday with spence matthews and he was doing the wasn't doing he was interviewing the girl who's got the pocket elizabeth day yes uh he does how to fail yeah and you know and it's interesting so she was like 39 i'm still single i want to fight that my biggest thing is i've got everything going bar that sort of anchor and relationship yeah sure and i go on i go on um you know social media i look at that shit and i'm seeing my mates um are getting married like they're it feels like they've got everything in line right i'm in my that's the height of that social yeah but then everyone comes up to me goes oh you must be smashing it like you've just been on ibiza and actually um you know but but i'm looking at like i'm in my parents room doing this no i'm not in my parents room that'd be that music that's how it works in your family yeah yeah it's very weird in this private school world um but you know but i'm i'm just kind of drawing the parallels because it's like i'm almost jealous of jealous of that but then but and they all work in the city they all work in the city and and i i mean you know i know for like you know doing this feels sometimes incredibly lonely like i've gone from being in a team as i was saying to you this morning where you get on the phone to see your best mate you work with at 9am chew the fat whereas now it's like i'm on this on my own and it can be quite discombobulating at times but i mean i think like jealousy though doesn't it i mean that thank you but i'm like i could i'm you know i do enough Fucking meditation So I can see That jealous thought And I'm just like That is not That really doesn't serve me Yeah I mean for me I think like Jealousy There's a difference Between jealousy and envy And I think that Like a lot of people Are jealous And I think that's actually Can be jealous And I think we can all Be jealous at the start Social media makes you jealous Yeah but I think Jealousy is actually A natural human trait Envy is different Envy is obviously When you wish That other person Not to have what they've got and you want it instead whereas i think jealousy is quite normal and i think jealousy i mean i talk about linkedin right and i find that the most stressful inducing app of all fucking time do you know i mean i'm on that thing and i think to myself why are we doing that why don't we do that when you know this good you know and the bottom line is one it's all night out of that it's all made up do you know what I mean or whatever it is but also it's a distractor do you know what I mean in the sense that yes you want to use LinkedIn of course we do we want to be on there more and all this kind of stuff of course because we want to be shouting about what we're doing so we want to be proud of it you know I remember this but I think it's it's important not just to be following people on linkedin to be critical in the way of just saying to yourself like oh we don't do enough we're not doing enough i mean i think it's important to get information from linkedin to help you better but not to make it feel like we're shit it's actually you know they're amazing it's messed up and that's why i've um this sounds like a shameless plug it's well it is but that's why i've started doing the newsletter yeah because there's no like button i have to write it from what's in my soul not what i know is going to get likes or what's going to get views i still do that of course but like the writing the newsletter is like the most it's kind of unshackled all those jealous um you know i don't want to pop a selfie i don't i don't like doing that like oh all right yeah this is me having a cup of tea just strategizing do you know what I mean I just bought myself a standing desk I've got standing desk it's called two boxes SR pennies but that's just not me because so if anyone watches the newsletter actually I'll put a link in the older show notes but it's so it's so fascinating and drop the most drawing the parallels between my life and your life and that I you know my all my mates work in the city like a bulk of them lovely blokes i've known them for years like they're my best mates right but they um i'm only i'm only wanting food and drinking the only one doing something like kind of a bit random and weird but you know i'll go to like leading hall market yeah on a thursday and it's really interesting like you'll cut you'll come from like shoreditch because you need to just walk down from shoreditch leading hall market and i don't know like not even though I get there And it's like The conversation is just so Fucking two dimensional It's like What They're literally looking at watches I mean I love cars I want like a banging car I like money And I want to make shit loads of it I'll be very open Yeah I guess there'll be wrong with that But watches I just don't get the watches thing Oh yeah So I just kind of talk about watches What like Yeah what I don't know But then But then But then That's on the Thursday Like if you go out On the Lidl market Then I see them In south west London on the weekend and it's like they're just my mates again but there is this kind of um washing in the city and i can't it's it's so weird i think i think also i mean i think you're right to say that and i it definitely it definitely is like that because it's bravado it's kind of like and i think it happens in probably lots of kind of environments so like i think that it happens a lot in like lawyers it's the bravado it's the robin room tactics it's the kind of like my case is better than your kind of case like i'm you know making someone doubt what they're about to say thinking oh god have i got my point as strong as that point you know it's that kind of thing and i think that and i think the city is money it's about money's religion yeah exactly i mean it's kind of like look what i've got i would have got this it's kind of like it's the worst kind of show-off kind of environment but i think i think it happens in food and drink as well and i think it happens in food and drink in the same kind of way and I think there's that kind of like it's the listing it's this or it's the kind of like you know I talked oh I know some so do you know some so oh yeah I know them and I mean not time I mean I'll be like I've got a clue you're talking about which I don't know them do you mean don't think they know me either and it's kind of like I think Well done.

1:01:20our industry and probably those others but look that I work in those other industry I think our industry could we could learn a lot from just being a little bit more kind of like honest and going do you know what i'd love to speak to that but i i i don't even know who that is oh my god can you give me the contact or whatever it is i think you've you've always been really good at that and you're great at sharing knowledge which is awesome because when you're at a startup you you know you're constantly just trying to suck in as much knowledge that you can get because you know you don't know what you don't know and therefore you know i always talk about when you You know, people might say to you, like, you know, what mistakes have you made?

1:01:55Well, probably the worst mistakes we've made are the ones we don't know about yet. Do you know what I mean? And then the ones that are coming around the corner we just don't realise we've made. And that's because we haven't had knowledge. You know, knowledge is obviously really powerful. But I think if we were a little bit more open in our industry, I think it would be a lot more helpful. And I think, let's face it, from a challenger brand point of view, what are we trying to do? We're trying to challenge the status quo. we're trying to challenge those big brands that have been pumping out food and drink that has been shit for years and not really looking after the consumer because that's the main way that most people are going is to do something better isn't it do you know what I mean do it differently you know me you know not just be better but do it differently but that's in the end is to give the consumer a better experience that's so true yeah so be don't be the market doesn't reward reward reward yeah reward and there's a reward today uh better rewards different and i think i completely agree it's almost it's almost and i i do like how trite this is saying this but people think of supermarket listings almost like pokemon in our industry right say it's like i've got this one this one this one i'll get the next one and it's it's i kind of do agree with you it's almost like that is the the that's the i've got this watch that's the i've got this thing or that's i've got that and you know ultimately i'd much rather be in this industry than that but it's me too i mean it and i'm much but so so are you money and purpose are two two almost kind of potentially polar opposites yeah so you had a lot of money yeah you must have had some kind of purpose to stick it out for x number of years yeah but what happened to the point when you you must have had all this money but then you didn't have the purpose piece i.e and so what was the what was the change inside kathy where it's like okay i've got all this money maybe 2016 yeah what was the bit that was missing in my life my life was soulless my life was soulless now it's called boundless that's crazy yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it was of my life of Silas um talk me through that last year I suppose I met my husband it wasn't it's because of that I love him bless him that was in 20 I met my husband in uh 2005 2006 so I carried on for quite a while after that um and you know we uh my husband's not in the city do you know what I mean or in food and beverage something completely different and I suppose I saw my life differently like in a different form of joy this is in 2005 yeah and past it and then kind of like we had a really you know kind of embarked on a great life together doing lots of things and which was wonderful because that money could afford us to do and I suppose I I was doing different things with him than I'd done before just being single with that money and stuff like that my main purpose in terms of getting that money for that was to look after my parents and my family so you know making sure my parents had a home that was really important to me that's probably the first thing i ever did i bought my parents a home before i bought myself anything um in bethnal green no god no no no no i'm going to live there then yeah yeah where did you move to they um they live in um well my parents are divorced so one lives in kent my dad lives in Kent and my mum is in Gloucestershire so yeah making sure they were all right so they wouldn't have to worry stuff like that um they can ask my brother my brother's really my brother and I are really close um because my parents divorced and um then um we came on our own we were about when I was about 18 19 and my brother was 16 yeah 19 I was 16 um we lived on our own sort of thing so that was always really important for me so you stay where did you go when you first bought your own gaff where did you go london do you know i mean when i first know but whereabouts in london uh clarkhamwell oh very nice of course yeah i mean clarkhamwell yeah yeah i didn't buy my first home right i didn't buy my first home until 2003 right they were my first time until 2003 because it was more important for me to look after those those guys first now i'm not saying that for i'll well well done Kathy it wasn't that was that was just a real but you had a you but you had a really strong purpose then yeah yeah yeah yeah right yeah I did yeah so that's for the money and then it took to do that with the money and then and then like I say with my husband and then like changed and then I would say probably the last three years of working in the city I wasn't a very nice person and that doesn't mean I wasn't a nice person monetary that was that was far I wasn't you know wasn't like that in any shape or form but I wasn't because I was so unhappy in the sense that I went in every day I did my job and I did it well and all the stuff but I was sick and tired of listening to bullshit um that was kind of bullshit bullshit in the sense of kind of um not doing good by people to remain the end result by people um the high-fiving of just you know basically robbing someone we've made money but someone's lost a lot of money just in sit well and i think i think he'd been coming on for quite a few years but the last three years were was really bad and I probably gave my husband a really hard time and luckily he saw the better side of me and everything else and I just don't think I was very nice to be around.

1:07:57I was, I probably drunk too much and not that I'm saying I was an alcoholic or anything like that, I mean because that would be unfair to somebody who was an alcoholic, I certainly wasn't an alcoholic but i'd drunk too much um i didn't really care about me i think i wasn't really looking after me um i was really quick short-tempered i wasn't i just wasn't fun to be around and i think if you ask people my friends about me like one of the best compliments i've ever got someone said to me with you kathy none was ever going to need tv do you know what i mean because I am really lively and I'll chat all night to anybody and I love I love people I love people I love their stories I don't care where they come from I don't care if you live in a mansion or a teepee I think you're interesting do you mean because I don't know you and I've never met me so I want to hear what you got to say do you know I mean I love people I find them fascinating you know and I think you're a better person the more people you surround yourself with Do you know what I mean Not that you've got to be liked It's not about that It's about you getting Listening to them Their stories And stuff like that I find it fascinating But I just don't think I just didn't have the energy For that anymore And it was I was soulless And I knew That in order to be me Do you know what I mean And to save my life As I wanted to get out of there It's almost like you go from this glib malaise that's kind of just like a rainy shadow following you around feeling soulless as soon as you have purpose you feel boundless oh yeah and i think a lot of people will be in this situation where they're in this job that's just there yeah yes the brother my brother's in that like he's in the big corporate job lawyer um and obviously yesterday we were at home and uh home home and he was dead in his exams i was thinking fucking hell but like he wants the money right now so it's fine but but so so this this light bulb switch happens well there's probably this the light bulb may in fact go out whereby you feel soulless you you go hunting for purpose to feel boundless what are the steps you take yeah okay so i think first and foremost I think you've got to be really true to yourself if you're unhappy do you know what I mean the only person that's going to make it happen is you do you know what I mean now I know that says easier said than done because vast majority of reasons why people work is to pay their bills and sometimes it seems like yeah okay but I'd love to do all that but yeah I've got to pay my case why is it right so that's more understandable for me I've got a cab to work in the morning and I used to get this cab driver used to pick me up so this from cloaking well yeah exactly do you know what i mean because it was raining that day do you know what i mean and i'd get a cab of him every morning but sometimes he he used to come and look for me because i'd be getting a cab like about half five or six and he i'd be his first journey in sort of thing anyway picked him up and i didn't see him every day like i say but it's both close to coming and um goes to me usual went yeah yeah I goes to him, and I hadn't even said this to my husband, and I went to him, and I was chatting away.

1:11:22He goes, oh, how are you getting on? Yeah, yeah, not bad, bad, blah, blah, blah. He goes, what do you have to say? I said, it's going to be my last day today. And he said to me... Had you had any notice then? No. No, no, no. No, I did it that day. And he said to me, oh, where are you going then? Are you going somewhere else, like a different company? I went, no. He goes, you're not going to really design, are you? I went, yeah, I am. I said, I'm going to go in there in a minute. and I'm going to tell him I'm leaving. He goes, oh, but you're going to have to work somewhere. I went, yeah, I know I am.

1:11:52I said, but I'm going to do something different. Do you know what I mean? And I went into the office, went straight into my CEO. I was in quite a fortunate position in terms of where I was in the company. I went straight in, and I said, I'll resign. And he went, are you sure I'll buy in and like that? And accepted my resignation. and I think that at that moment when accepted by resignation which I think is actually really important to the point of like getting on and doing stuff with your life if you're unhappy okay was after about 10 minutes of to-ing and fro-ing of you don't really want to do that Kathy what can we do to keep you do that I mean all that kind of stuff he accepted it and off I went didn't turn the lights out in the building when I left because that's how relevant I was irrelevant I was irrelevant I wasn't relevant to them I was irrelevant there was somebody that was going to fill my seat within an hour of no doubt and to do that to give everything all the energy you had to feel soulless to be that unhappy, you were replaced within an hour.

1:13:12And I think that puts things into perspective, do you know what I mean? In the sense that you've got to do what you want to do because you are replaceable, do you know what I mean, in those kind of environments. And you're probably replaceable in everything, but that's why you must, you must do what you do. And that probably rob a stamp tip for me. I was like, oh, my God, I cannot believe I've been worrying about this. You know, what the hell? so I'm around here and then I went to my phone my husband and I said I resigned you know you didn't tell me you were gonna like go so I'm not I'm excited he's like okay Kathy like what are you gonna do I'm gonna think about it and um I'll go back and then I literally within two weeks felt like this mass amount of relief all this kind of stuff like a new person and then like like your brain can work and for me that is obviously you know where stacking came in for me because i spent all day in an office where you spend all day on your butt do you mean and you're constantly trying to fuel your energy do you mean to get through the day and generally back then all they're serving you is like sweets coke for crisps do i mean all this stuff and of course you don't get anything from that do you know me you know you're kind of like you try to have it so at lunch time then you're eating 40 bags of walkers in the afternoon sounds like my zero you know and it just for me then i just thought there's got to be a better way don't make and then that's how snacking came out because i understood that working environment and i felt like how time poor we are do you know i mean but realistically how people if you think about in days like you're talking like prep you know you're talking about it so you know you're talking about all those kind of like eat do you know what i mean all this which were meant to be you know chopped you know all those kind of places that i was surrounded by at lunchtime were really predominantly about people being in an office trying to eat healthier kind of thing but inside your office as in the add-ons which we all have you know your mars bar you kind of you know your walkers all of that stuff you drink was all really shitty and if you're stressed you know oh you're plough through you're plough through yeah it's fascinating so i read somewhere or listen somewhere so it's okay so you that's great for people listening so you you solve your own malaise by taking action going from soulless to purpose to boundless you then what did you have like a street stall or something yeah so how did you actually get into like the actual right so So what I kind of, in terms of, I also, at that time, like I said, you know, felt so all this had been, and I'd been kind of like physically unwell for probably, probably longer than I realised.

1:16:11Do you know what I mean? So it's, but, and obviously what I then realised is I had an intolerance to gluten, do you know what I mean? And an intolerance to dairy. And that was a real gutter because I absolutely loved pasta. Hashtag gut health. Do you know what I mean? Gut health. And I absolutely loved dairy. Do you know what I mean? So, you know, and obviously not anything that was obviously making me bedridden, but clearly obviously not giving me lots of brain fog, not making me feel very well, really uncomfortable. So I started obviously to look into myself, do you know what I mean? Things that I could eat, they'd be better for me.

1:16:42And that obviously was maraging between, obviously, snacking. But then what I did in the meantime, because I thought, right, okay, what i could do is like why i figure out how this works on a day-to-day basis i'm so used to being with people back to your point i i literally had spent you know my entire life surrounded by people if it weren't going to school it was going into a working environment 16 with hundreds and hundreds thousands of people you know noise is just where i thrive on same year yeah suddenly sit at home with a blank screen and go right what i'm going to do and not be able to go what did you think that was that you know i mean it was driving me insane so i thought to myself this street food obviously was going on a lot of the time just street food um movement and i love cooking it's a real passion and i i found that quite therapeutic for me like some people find like cooking really stressful for me i find it really liberating i don't just like to follow recipes i like to think oh how how can you tweak what sort of stuff do you cook um i really love uh middle eastern food Like Otolenghi Yeah, really love Otolenghi That stuff is not simple No His book's called fucking Simple Yeah, but you know what?

1:17:55Okay, and that's kind of like the big thing Is the fact that it's complex layers of flavour But in actual fact, the real kind of bulk of what you're putting with it is simple It's like, you know, I grew up in like, you know, 70s and 80s And that kind of children's day Obviously, I'm not 100, by the way, I just want to make that noted i am still under 50 but just on the skin of my teeth um but you know a salad was some iceberg lettuce a bit of chopped up spring onion like a bit of sliced tomato and you'll be lucky if you've got a bit of cucumber i mean that's so now it's so unopinion it's so unappetizing whereas kind of like you know much more in europe and kind of like that kind of like you know middle eastern kind of you know north north africa is is so much salad is like your main event but it's not like some limp thing it's like it's got kind of loads of flavor running through it and dressing and i think for me obviously that related back to the gut as well because i was going to therefore put a lot more things in my gut that were going to be better for me in terms of kind of like fermented or anything like you know activated which you know talk about i'm sure at one point but is the fact that it's just layers of things and i think also it's experimental you know i'm not very big about like it must be like a milligram of chili powder or it must be that i mean cooking's like yeah let you let you let your hair hang down no let's go free let's go that's something so i find it i found it away and i i used to cook a lot even when i worked in the city as a way of coming home in distress do you know i mean and obviously again luckily i could afford to buy all these weird and wonderful ingredients down at borough market which when i grew up as a kid was again another lovely shithole but now obviously like the food mecca for any tourist visit in london but you know so i think i think probably that lends itself to me about also about this because i like to be experimental you know i liked playing around with flavors and stuff like So for me, I started this like Middle Eastern street food.

1:20:08Whereabouts? So by this stage, when I leave the city, I've now left London. I moved to Bristol. So I did it in Bristol when I started street food. What made you want to get out of London? Oh, I needed to change a scene. Right, OK. I mean, I know, like, what is it? I think it's Austin Wilder says when you're tired of London, you're tired of life. But I think I needed, I mean, born and bred in London and everything, but I needed to change a scene. I lived right by the city. Do you know what I mean? I lived in Carcum, which is EC1. I worked in the city. That's too coprophobic. Yeah, I needed to get out.

1:20:43And I felt that I wouldn't really escape the city if I didn't really move away. Do you know what I mean? That kind of thing. Otherwise, I didn't think I was really going to give it a go outside of it because it would have been too tempting to go back. I mean, we all revert to what we know, don't we? It's really hard to break what we know. So, yeah, that's what I did. so bristol and i got i taught myself to make flatbreads on a sach so i don't even know what a sach is right so sach is like an upside upside down sky dish okay which is what they use in the middle of it uh cena yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah literally i have no fingerprints left so obviously if bound his fowls literally being a thief is definitely going to be my way forward yeah yeah because having no fingerprints yeah yeah literally burnt off my fingerprints like learning to make this stash and my god i'm in full respect to anyone doing food or restaurant because i'm telling you that is hard work yeah lugging all your kind of gas and you popping up your gazebo all weathers do you know what i mean kind of thing but this is where really i suppose stacking came to its forefront for me was i was so busy making food for everyone else i didn't have time to eat myself so what were you actually making so this so i was making like flatbreads with kinds of like 48 hour merges lamb and kind of like moho verde and butterbeam rosemary hummus that sounds so banging right now chicken fesa jam and like these walnuts and pomegranate seeds and all this kind of stuff i mean i loved it and it went really well but my god there's not a lot of money to be made in that environment it's really hard it might i turned my house into a kind of like kitchen permanent kitchen my husband doesn't eat lamb now ever again because obviously 18 months of me cooking lamb in our house it's like banned due to that but um yeah and um and so i started making myself nuts and seeds and that is actually the god's honest truth it's not even a made-up story you sound like a rabbit because i could make it because obviously i was getting you know more involved like i said to you plus i could use it in the salads yeah and things like that i was making but and then i was playing around with the flavors and that's obviously and i was just like powering my way through the day eating these nuts and seeds and then i was speaking to someone i was going you know i've really i wanted to get like into ambient i definitely want to make snacks but i'm not really sure how i'm going to do it and then like kathy what the fuck is these nuts and seeds you're making they're like really good i said oh yeah like you know it's like right in front of your nose, trying right in front, do you know what I mean, yet you can't see it, and then that's where I got to That's what we were talking about during the talk earlier, is ready, fire, aim sometimes the biggest ideas will be hidden right in front of you you just can't see it, whereas if you adopt the ready, fire, aim strategy, which is take action before you're ready and you'll perfect later so that's really interesting, so then people are like, right these nuts are, these nerds, have you seen that?

1:23:46Have you seen that video? These nerds? um these are banging yeah yeah yeah yeah yes they say they're like i don't know but one of my old colleagues used to always go to each other like these nerds i just can't look at that in my head uh but the uh yes so they're like oh these are banging you then obviously ready for our aim and you're just like fuck it let's go to market yeah talk me through that bit okay so that is where i'll be really on this one is i did loads of research right that is when i did as much research as humanly possible where where were you getting so i was going going to supermarkets seeing what's on shelf going into all the stores googling do you know what i mean okay what does you know what does things sell for kind of like what's his idea you know where's where's health and well-being going you know kind of like you know and i'm talking at a time when no one was really talking about gut you know they were only talking about gut in maybe yogurt form or in drink before they certainly weren't talking about gut in terms of like snacking or in mainstream and it's still kind of like i would say like beardy weirdy do you know i mean i've always thought like you know when i first started talking about saying about gut and food oh my god what a bloody oxymoron you know i remember going like at the time again trying to come up with like strapline or whatever it's on you can't say gut and food it's like horrible no one's gonna be like i think that's appetising well you're thinking it's like some fat blow because of my belly sort of thing I don't mean not to wear a full fat shaming or whatever no but it's true it doesn't sound appetizing it just sounds guttural doesn't it it just sounds so medical it doesn't sound kind of like it was certainly not then yeah so true it didn't create happy motions or it didn't then it's different now so there's kind of all that but as much research as I could do I went in to like kind of like obviously not allowed to do this but he didn't hear it from me but I went into stores and I just stalked like shoppers with a basket walking around the Sainsbury's going why are you picking that up the shelf then why do you like that what is it that makes you joke like I still do that now do you know what I mean and they'll go oh you're really interested I'll go yeah but I can't decide between pop chips and Bambliss and they go oh yeah I'll go yeah I really like this brand oh yeah I'll give it a go one for the small guy come on pop chit your own way into snack come on buy boundless yeah yeah yeah i think you can never ever get enough of that i did lots of that i did lots of that i did obviously i did like the trips around whole foods you know which i obviously you know it's the mecca of like shopping if you can afford to shopping whole foods on a weekly basis you probably never got worried this into this podcast me talking no no it's definitely still working yeah yeah but that kind of stuff but i just think it's um i think like your research is really going to be really important and you must do your research because otherwise you're going to have so much money and so what were the biggest insights from that research and what should say someone's listening to this okay so the biggest insights for me i'm looking for what were the signposts yeah is what someone's willing to pay what someone's willing to pay right because ultimately do you know what i mean if you're selling something for a fiver and a snack okay there are only so many people that are going to be willing to pay that and personally in the category i'm in that we're sitting is volume do you know i mean in terms of where you need to get to to own market share which of course is the strategy you know and i think volume is denoted by affordability and accessible and i wanted to make a snack that was affordable and accessible because that links back to being on free school meals do you know i mean i wanted to make a snack that was going to be that for somebody or most people the majority the nation you know and i think that's really important you may not be able to get to that price point to start and i couldn't but i definitely think that's got to be your aim if that's what you want to do in if you want to be in that category and it certainly was for me I think the other thing is Is Brand How you appeal to you If you've got seconds of someone's time You'll never get it right at first We didn't get it right at first We've kind of gone through brand reposition Or an update in how our brand looks We very much look like how we started But we've definitely evolved Maybe that's because It's evolved because Guts more talked about So we can evolve in that way but i think that's really really important do you know i mean kind of getting your message across in a really simple format ours was really difficult at first you know because we activate and it was what the fuck is activation oh well we soak nuts and season we sprout them remove the phytic acid which is a gut inhibitor that means you can nutrient you know blah blah blah you know you switched off you know it's like what i was saying at the workshop it's like that's activated prebiotic probiotic it's all factual language exactly factual language is for the head to move people you need to go to their heart you need you need picture language exactly boundless is picture language isn't it right yeah yeah yeah you know so this that's the stuff i think i think one thing i learned in terms of starting was you'll be surprised how many of your friends have skills that you can borrow for free don't be afraid to ask for anything for free the worst someone can say no and then you can say you come around to my house for a beer getting pissed and then they get them to say yes do you know me ask anybody for anything everything do i mean if it's a free lift somewhere do you know what i mean oh you're going like okay right can i jump in with you then if you don't mind do you know like you know can i you know i'll cook you dinner next week if you can help me do you know what i mean that kind of stuff you know you do finance can you help me on this i haven't got a clue what this means can you help me do i mean i think you'll be surprised how many people are actually willing to help to give you their free time and help you because i think the vast majority of people admire people that start their own business do you mean and are happy to lend an ear i think that's really really important i think one of the things i've also learned is as much money as you've got is as much money as you'll spend you know so setting a budget is actually really important not just because it's because of what you've got i think you can you can have a hundred million and spend it all in marketing up and you're going to be successful of course you might have a really good chance at it but it doesn't assume you'll be successful so i think it's kind of like you know it's like your budget in your monthly budget at home do you know i mean you've got a budget and i think that's really important and don't be don't be swayed by like what all the big guys do because you're not going to be able to do that that's what i was going to say because because impulse is a category and snacking as a category is like that's just so so who's who are your competitors quote-unquote so in terms of where our chips were set do you know i mean in terms of so it's that tick box better for you snacking which i hate by the way because that's so bloody boring isn't it better for you snacking our five exactly it's like yeah yeah ding dong clear up better for you snacking we've got a few pounds over best you've got to come up with a better cack we know that it's just crap um but that is also you'll see what deters the consumer but in terms of like in terms of direct uh it'll definitely be proper and pop chips right and data chips and in terms of where our nuts and seeds that would definitely be great okay yeah yeah yeah so it's not so then how does it like so so going a little bit further along the path of boundless you get your first what's your first malt listing or your first did you go straight into the indies we went we went into independence first well like whole foods yeah yeah those kind of guys and then i suppose our first kind of high street was holland and barrett do you know i mean in terms of how are you driving the rate of flow if you could give some tactics or like how are you driving the rate of sale with holland and barrett as much salping as we could do yeah possible sofa surfing on everybody that we getting to know the people in the store and knowing when those stores are really good what are the key stores that are good let's make sure we sample there if we can push the rate of sale up in there then we'll see the ones that don't do so well we'll ban will balance that's such a good point actually which i have talked about before but it's leaning into your but i think people think they need to sample the whole country no you can't you can't you just need to apply the 80 20 rule yeah 20 of sorry 80 of your rate of sale have come from your top 20 stores so just find them and just be there all the time and i think that's also really important about market penetration because i think so yes so market penetration i don't even know what that fucking what it means well do you like that i've probably just made that up do you know what i mean but no okay and this is this is something that someone taught me and i think it's really important okay is everyone thinks that just being listed everywhere is the key do you mean i've got two thousand three thousand i've got five thousand bigger state of grocery baby okay it means nothing if your rate of sale in those stores is one a week when it needs to be do you know what I mean what is the rate of seller expectations in terms of in terms of chips you're looking at more like kind of like anywhere between 14 20 bags a week for a smaller brand obviously walkers sell millions so I mean you know let's get in the real world um but in terms of like nuts and seeds that'll always be smaller because we obviously the category isn't as big we're not you know if we are a chip eating nation do you know I mean you know as opposed to not and seeds and i think if you look at like the value of nuts and seeds is way way less in terms of what you know chips are with you know multi-billions in chips whereas kind of like nuts and seeds is sitting at like you know a tenth of that kind of thing um but in terms of nuts and seeds will probably mean depends on where you are if you're kind of like in that steak aisle which is kind of like high volume you've been looking at it maybe between seven and eight bags per skew per store per week do you mean the big bigger guys do you mean if you're sitting and sharing it'll be less than that but obviously you're selling more in terms of volume because you're selling the sharing back and i think it really also changes depending on what store you are so you know one malt might over index on chips whereas they under index on nuts and seeds whereas the other one flips the other way well so i think their expectations so say if If it's, you know, one store is over-indexing on nuts and seeds, and then they're going to expect you to sell more nuts and seeds in there because that's what their consumer comes in there to look for.

1:34:39Do you know what I mean? Whereas if they don't sell as many chips, then they're going to let you, that rate of sale is going to be less than. So the market penetration is about the fact that it is better to be in 1 ,000 stores and outsell your rate of sale, your expectation to be their number one, okay then it is to try and be in 4 000 stores and be no one's number one and hit no one's rate of sale because if you by penetrating the market into you know kind of like and as they say about penetration obviously take this the way you like it it should be hard and deep do you know what i mean easy now you play that as often as you want yeah that'll be a little bite-sized clip exactly you can use that on your next uh cardo buyer's day is but is it's it's a way of one understanding your consumer and what they obviously are looking for i mean it's also understanding your forecasting so much better because you know you may have one or two predominant skews that do the best so if you're doing fantastically on two skews and you're number one in one malt on that skew and most skews then you want to be offering it to the other malt don't you you don't want them to take the risk on the other you want to be able to say no this is my rate of sale this is what i can do do i mean and then it allows you to use other other flavors or other skews in order to kind of like bring on mpd with people and try that out i mean people want less risk now and that includes molts that includes high street chains it's even tougher for um challenger brands now to break through because we are you know shelf space is is absolutely worth a lot of money do you know i mean we're in a cost of living crisis that even you know all the months are trying to find out ways to retain their consumer you know you know everyone's losing out to the to what would have been the audi and the lidl or audi's number top four now you know and i think everyone's fighting for to retain their consumer that also means therefore certainly in snacking you you know you're ambien you're going to be on shelf and off shelf they want to see a good rate of return because that is what that aisle does that is what that category does so you need to be there for putting things on shelf that are going to get on shelf and come off shelf because you know if you look at like you know i mean people do this quite a lot and i think it's also quite from from a startup point of view it can also be really expensive and it can really fuck you is having multiple SKUs in multiple ways multiple packaging multiple FS you know multiple SRPs multiple production holding shit loads of stock that you can't you've got a cash flow you can't get rid of okay where it's far better to maybe have that as an offering but you're not necessarily producing it until someone takes it but literally selling one or two skews at such a high rate do you know that you know when you're going in production it's coming off you're going to make it you're going to carry your cash flow you're going to have to sell it and it shows a retailer that you've got more than proof in the pudding we're not just better do you know i mean we're doing something different but only are we doing it different but i've got proof of different works and i think yeah i think it's yeah as we were saying it's like everyone every man and his dog says we're better yeah they go to the buyer i've got a better product give me more give me more shelf space i've got a better product give me more distribution i've got better sales deck give me more money and it's like every man and his dog is literally saying i am better i am better i am better i'm better Michael doesn't fuck about better Michael Rawd's different How would you guys Because obviously the packaging is so like Bold I love the eyes It's almost like coming It's almost like coming It's almost menacing eyes All like coming Pick me off of the shelf I love it It's quite like sadistically endearing But Yeah what were you putting in that initial deck to say you're different well i think um okay see we can we can link back to the packaging in a minute because that is actually part of what we do our usp is and i think i think we've never had a problem about why we're different because we are different and that is categorically because we've created a space in snacking that no one else has climb to the forefront in terms of looking after your gut do you mean getting your gut happy and um i think therefore that's we've always been able to say we're different even within a growing better for you category and now obviously with the switch with hfss and all of that kind of stuff that's only speeding up which is great i actually really believe in that in terms of i think we should be looking after people's health in a much much better way we have a responsibility in the food and drinking industry to do that choice to the consumer but informed you know so um i think we've never had a problem with that we are different i think what we definitely had a problem with from get from the beginning was explaining why we were different at a time when no one spoke about gut you know and that was that has been that was harder for us pre-covid covid unfortunately for us in some ways was beyond difficult being on the go stack when no one's on the go and a small brand that you know let's face it everyone's writing down their list getting in the store getting out no one's looking for a small brand in that time um was the fact that what really came out of it was obviously the link to people's health but also that facts of kind of gut and their understanding of kind of like you know your serotonin's in your gut and it's linked to our mood and who we are and all of that kind of well-being so i think for us we've never had a problem with being different what we've had is a problem explaining different in a time when people didn't really necessarily think that gut was going to be important you know in our category and now well now as we were talking about earlier now every man's dog is talking about gut health yeah so now you actually need to position what we're doing earlier it's like the position yourself is everyone's saying we're better for your gut health because it's so now in the rage and vogue and yeah you know everyone's saying thank you for gut health it's like okay well now everyone's saying we're better better better how can you be different and it's like yeah it's fascinating how brands go on this journey right where something's too niche and no one knows what the fuck it is right yeah and then something suddenly it becomes much bigger mainstream and then everyone piles in saying we're just better than that company we're better than that company we're that about that company and it's like your brand almost has to be like water the messaging and the communication needs to be like water because uh it when it's something so new it's different when something becomes saturated yes it becomes we're just better right do you know i mean it's like you know alternative milks yeah of course situation yeah yeah yeah it's like so everything looks looks the same i think i think the thing is i think i mean for me i embrace more people doing gut because i believe in gut health do you know i really do believe that we should be changing the way people eat and or less giving them the option to you know i don't want to judge anyone i'm not about that i mean that's not what i'm I want to do about this I want like I say to get the nation got happy one stack at a time if they want to do it you know but ultimately you know taste is where it's at because if it doesn't taste great then you know no one wants to buy anything I think taste is going to be the silver like the way for these health brands in the future to win because everyone's going down this it's a bit like how calm sorry I keep this is trip everyone was going on about all this you remember that nope it was like as i was talking about it's like back in the day it was back in the day it was like three years ago but it was back in the day back in the day of fucking nope mate pete tom's been changed yeah yeah yeah back in the day i used to be on i'd be for 99 either way i've been there boy and uh but anyway three years ago uh it does feel like back in the day because of the fucking pandemic but you know everyone was like i remember going around nope everyone's like we're better we're better cbd we've got more milligrams we've got more we've got more like quasi marijuana leaves on the packaging better better better better trip comes in we're different we're going to own the word calm keep give you calm everyday chaos push benefits not features and look at their success yeah the same thing i think is going to happen with health where everyone's going to be like we're more prebiotic we're more probiotic we're more activated we're more gut health yeah no not just i mean it's just general and the brands that are going to potentially win or is taste yeah because because we want that right yeah it's certainly certainly well in drink and food i mean we're selling snacking yeah it's like you go back to the point we were talking at the beginning it's enjoyment oh god okay there's nothing worse and i think i'm gonna smash like both those bags i'm gonna turn into like a smoky bacon but the um i think the thing is also is that i think there's always been and and this is this is i think a really important point is big brands the conglomerates have always spun that healthy doesn't taste good okay and when healthy started to try and when healthier snacking started to come around it was again that kind of niche part do you know what i mean and it kind of like sat at the back of the shop you know kind of like almost like in the medicine cabinet you know kind of like have a bar of this but it you know it's chocolate but it doesn't taste like chocolate but it tastes awful do you know what i mean or have a crisp that just tastes like a rice cake that just tastes like a bit cardboard they've got this sorry no go on uh i was gonna say they've got this whole healthy delicious kind of category but it's still leading with healthy i know it's yeah but i actually think it needs to be delicious healthy as as in we're delicious and we're healthy versus we're healthy yeah yeah happy yeah yeah yes you're in a bit but gut happy taste gut happy taste you know you you cannot be talking about food and it not being tasty do you mean because i mean would you go to a restaurant if it said to you okay this is going to be the most healthy salad you've ever had what's it taste like i'll taste like shit right well i don't want it then yeah yeah i'm not gonna go and pay my money you know and i think the thing is unless you live in bethel green these days yeah i thought my god so my best food ever which obviously stay in this podcast is like pie mash and liquor right and also i can't have it anymore because it's full of gluten and i literally could cry going past a pie shop thinking oh love a bit so i've never done one of those pie shops oh i need to sort out there's one in um there's one in there's one in clapham though i think the best ones down like the road you're better than great yeah yeah yeah if there's that simply fresh from roman rose yeah there is yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i used to like just basically He'd be hanging around that store all the time.

1:46:38That's amazing. We could chat for fucking, obviously, we know we can chat for Britain. But I want to kind of, we'll have to do a part two, three, four, which could be this Monday. It's not always happened to me. I've had to chat. I mean, you can talk for yonks. But there's one question I love to wrap up with. And I think everything you said is just beautiful on this whole piece of going from soulless to purpose to boundless. um is beautiful i think will help so many people really really do believe that but on your journey i'd love to know what has been i asked this to a lot of guests who are listening to podcasts but what has been one at the time seemingly insurmountable obstacle that retrospectively paved the way forward so this moment you were like i i know you found your purpose and you're buzzing your tits off or i shouldn't say that but yeah sorry Yeah, you know You're going around buzzing And And Everything's That's you Is that your phone, Dan?

1:47:39Sorry And Yes And you're going around buzzing But there must have been Some really fucking hard days On this journey When Oh my god What's been the hardest When you But actually Looking back You're like Oh my god That was the way forward Okay The hardest day There's been loads Right honestly like so many troughs um like you think like how much more shit can we take today this week cut us a break cut some slack but i actually think this was and i don't think it was possibly the worst day but i think it was the worst day of feeling defeated but it taught me a lot and when we first started and we'd only been up and going about must have been four months five months don't mean like i say from going to that speciality fine food to like going and we got listed in a cardo and i remember thinking oh my god i'm in a cardo i'm gonna be in a cardo yeah i mean i've only been going three four months i mean four months whatever it was four five months oh my god we're going to cardo this is brilliant this is brilliant and they were like yeah we want you but you've got to do this price you've got to do that you've got to do this yeah yeah yeah we'll do that we'll do it we'll do anything there is to get in there do you know what i mean and we absolutely positively fucking bombed right and i don't know if we sold back it do you know what i mean and um i've so was that because you didn't have the experience like push the product up the thing so so this is what i learned multiple things was the fact i was so shell-shocked because i never thought we wouldn't i mean a card of course we're getting working in card you know we're a small brand you know we kind of like got right price point at the time for cardo you know all this kind of stuff we're definitely gonna work there i mean i i ordered from a card at the time because they're gonna shop it because everyone's gonna love us in the day and the naivety do you know what i mean and the punch it felt like the gut gutting punch to be delisted do you know what i mean was absolutely one of the most awful things to to have to say to yourself or to other people like your friends going hey getting on a card i've you know got listed do you know i mean just that kind of like awful feeling and the reason being was we didn't have a clue what we were doing do you mean we were dealing with an online grocer that we didn't even have a website do you know i mean we didn't even know about we didn't know how to work social media do you mean we didn't know we didn't understand about promotion we didn't understand like you know being in someone's basket or a linkedin a link deal or any of this kind of stuff or like how you're going to get people to search term you didn't even understand about google ads or facebook ads or any of those things um the fact that it was a moment of realization is there are thousands millions of products out there and nobody needs yours you've got to make them want yours and that is probably the worst moment in because i felt it i mean we've had probably worse knocks in different ways now but i don't feel it in the same way i felt it at that at that time and demoralizing do you know what i mean you know all this kind of stuff you feel like you're going for people so massively back you know financially really difficult because you know made production that you think is going to work and then it doesn't do you know i mean there you go oh my god we've never got a shitload of product what we're going to do do you know i mean all of that we've cash flow that and that's really tight it's always tight cash flow but now you've got cash flow at a really small really small point you know all of those things but it taught me so much it taught me that getting a listing's great but you've got to be ready for it what's your plan of action you know product will get you on shelf marketing pulls you off and that doesn't necessarily mean to be like you've got to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds of marketing we don't abound this now we don't spend anywhere near that kind of money or marketing you got to be smart about how you market you got to understand who that who that retailer is you know about what shape form even it's like the local guy down the road or it's a big conglomerate like you know a cardo online or whatever it may be or asda smiths whatever they otherwise may be and i think it's it taught me that you can fail if you don't get your ducks in a row and you don't kind of get the information that you need and don't be afraid to turn something down and that goes back to penetration now i know that much more but i should have turned a card i should have told him no it's really great thank you i'd be so interested but we're not ready we won't be able to support it give us a year and you can't yeah that's that's with some of the stuff with islands we are back in our car dome now just for wasn't it yeah yeah available uh available yeah you take us back a bit yeah um but i've just said that with islands is is they wanted to go into a few well i actually say we wanted to go in and be super quick with it but i was just thinking well one hot chocolate is going to be shite in the summer so we've only really got six months to prove ourselves so what's the point in going in and say like a month month march for example yeah then you're gonna go straight into april then who's drinking hot chocolate then so we're fucked yeah september's probably better but have we proved it in the indies no have we proved in the whole foods no obviously we've just gone into mercado in september but like um there's something in that about just taking your time with it slowing down and enjoying it Yes.

1:53:49I think that also comes from the fact that, and I think we talked about this earlier, Dan, is the fact that, you know, we are tech startups. You know, the fact that, you know, you think you're going to exit in two or three years, it's really, really rare in terms of food and drink. And it's much more a growth channel. And, you know, and it's also like, you know, what's possible to be profitable or self-sustaining versus market share. they're all big conjuries in food and food and drink industry i mean i think about snacking well you know basically 97 of snacking is between huge conglomerates and own brand and then there's a few of us that sit within within that smaller bit you know i think i think push yourself in the right way but remember that this isn't just a two second thing to exit it's it's not you know and you've got to think more strategic and be ballsy enough to say no because it takes balls to say no and i made a mistake i'm lucky we survived we learned a lot from it you know and thank you ricardo taking us back and all those kind of things but um yeah don't be afraid to say no come about to conference you're a wonderful human kathy and yeah i fucking love that it's been so much fun oh you dad thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much