84. How to grow your business without losing control | David Palmer

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. What does it take to build a business from scratch and turn early momentum into something that lasts? Today on All About Business, I'm joined by David Palmer, founder of Life of Fish, a modern fishmonger that has grown from a lockdown pop-up into a multi-site retail business focused on quality, sustainability, and community.

0:50In this episode, we discuss building a business with limited resources, why failure can be an advantage, and how to create a brand in one of the most traditional industries in the UK.

1:06Well, today on All About Business, I'm really, really delighted to welcome David Palmer. David is the founder and director of Life of Fish, a modern sustainability-focused fishmonger based here in London. and David, your life of fish began, I believe, at the age of 15, if not earlier. You've been in the fish business all your sort of adult life. Yeah. So you're the right person for us to be talking to, to learn about this subject. And I'm really looking forward to the conversation because I love fish. I love eating fish. I like fishing. I like the sea. And I like looking after fish as well. So we can cover all of those aspects.

1:46um as i understand that you started the business you know coming out of the pandemic or during the pandemic but before that you worked for many years at selfridges um in london in the fish counter yeah and so um could you just give me a little introduction to yourself in terms of how you got into this this business and and what your early sort of lessons and learnings were yeah sure yeah so I um I left school at a really young age um I never really got along with school to be honest and then um I think I left around year seven which um which is yet the first year of secondary school obviously um that's that man how old is that that is a really young age I think it's like 11 or 12 or something isn't it you're not allowed to leave no you're not you're certainly not allowed to no we got many visits um oh right but you you just left I left yeah I didn't I didn't like it and there was no way I was going back.

2:41But my mum started homeschooling me for the first few years. And we did that until I was around 14. And having five older brothers, I think their plan was... Hang on, you have five older brothers? Five older brothers, yeah. Were they even homeschooled as well? No, no, no. They sort of all did a similar thing. I think only one of us barely finished school, to be honest. Right. So none of you liked school? No, we grew up on a council estate in Robberhive in Bermondsey. It was kind of the trend. It was the 90s then, you know, sort of, kind of like forgotten kids and just sort of kids roaming around on bikes, really.

3:21So it wasn't the most amazing upbringing, I must say. No, but you had the solidarity of your family. Yeah, we had the solidarity of the family, and we've all always worked. So I saw all of my older brothers work from a young age, and weirdly it was kind of normal then about 15 16 just to go straight to work i don't know if it was just the area i grew up in but there wasn't there wasn't many other things to do you know university and stuff like that wasn't wasn't really you didn't see anybody go off to uni or anything like that if you weren't going to university you went to work i suppose yeah exactly yeah so so i think i think their aim was to make me go back to school because obviously they didn't so they wanted the best for me and i think it was more like a scare tactic well if you're not going to go to school then you got to come to work with us at two o 'clock in the morning at billingsgate market oh so they were working at billings yeah they were working at billings mom and dad oh no no your brothers your brothers yeah so so i said i'm being a bit cocky all right fine i will then like anything's better than school well so you better say what billingsgate is in case people listening don't know i mean i know if there's a londoner but what yes billingsgate I think it's the largest fish market in Europe.

4:33And it's a big fish market based in London, basically. Now in the Docklands, isn't it? Yeah, it used to be in the city. Right next to Canary Wharf. It used to be located just across London Bridge, basically, which is a very central location. It would make things a lot easier for me now. But yeah, so they were basically working through the night prepping fish for fine dining restaurants. that was that was their job so they took me in i think hoping that they would i would see by age 15 age age 14 14 nearly 15 i don't want to do this oh my god yeah i don't want to do this i better run back to school right but it didn't work but it didn't work so what you i wouldn't say i loved it but i didn't dislike it right you didn't dislike it yeah you got into it yeah or another yeah and the um the owner of the company basically said to me all right if you're serious and want to work full-time come back when you're 15 so i did because it was lawful to start employing yeah 15 yeah yeah yeah um so i did and my first job at billingsgate was to climb into these they've got these huge um containers where all the polystyrene boxes are stored and obviously this is this is back what 25 2005 i guess around then so there wasn't you know amazon where you could just order nice boxes so my first job was to climb in and out of bins right to get polystyrene boxes to then jet wash them nice and clean to then be used to pack fish in again right so 2am 15 years old crawling in and out of these bins looking for boxes that weren't damaged basically is how i got into fish right um and then what happened after that then i graduated sounds like something have a charles dickens book i know it's bizarre isn't it well i mean you but you made a life and career out of it yeah successfully so why how did you do that what happened next i don't know i guess i guess there was just this determination to sort of keep going back and not necessarily to find the boxes but you know there was a lot of other things going on there um like filleting fish and seeing these huge fish come in that were being filleted for you know like gordon ramsay restaurants in his in his prime and so these were tuna fish were they mainly like a lot of salmon and a lot of cod um so it was kind of exciting and traumatized at the same time you know because it was like early hours of the morning freezing cold did you feel sorry for the fish when you said traumatizing i was wondering what no it was more it was more just the the elements of like it being January and it being snowing outside yeah it was very it was it still is a very tough job but then I sort of I think they saw that I was going to stick around and then they started getting me more involved in um prepping and cleaning squid and things like that which is kind of like the entry level to being a fishmonger and then sort of fast forward a bit did that for a while and then I started helping to pick all of the orders for these fine dining restaurants right um and i didn't really know it i did it didn't really sink in like the experience i was actually gaining but what i was learning is about grading fish understanding sizes and understanding you know quality control and you know how to look after fish with regards to like packing it away and things like that so i was actually learning a lot more than i thought i was i think at the time you didn't realize yeah i didn't realize um and then i started learning how to fillet fish as well did you do a formal apprenticeship or you just sort of no it wasn't it wasn't structured in that no it wasn't structured and i think that was the kind of when i say traumatizing it was kind of you know i was one week i was playing playstation at home nice cozy in my room and then all of a sudden i was i was off to work and two o 'clock in the morning six days a week about 12 hours a day um with a load of men that were I always describe it as like, imagine having like four Gordon Ramseys just screaming and shouting at you all day.

8:44You're not selling this to me. I'm not selling it, am I? Yeah, sorry. But I mean, it does sort of lead to how I run my business these days. Go on. But before we talk about your business in which you started in this decade, you worked at Selfridges. So you learned to become a fishmonger. yeah and then i mean selfridges you were at the fish counter is that right yes i was the manager there so i i'd sort of learned learned enough about fish in wholesale and and i went into retail just because i'm more of a people person and i have a passion for food um before around the same sort of time i was also enrolled into the jamie oliver 15 foundation which i completed the first section of that of cooking and learning how to be a chef um okay and then yeah so i discovered that i you know i really like working with people um and the hours for the wholesale side of things at buildings gate weren't suiting me so much so that's when i'm i moved i actually started working in a small independent fishmongers before selfridges which is where i i learned how to sell and price fish and um and deal with customers really and and i was able to sort of show my passion more for fish there whereas in wholesale it's more about just throwing the fish into a box getting the order ready getting it shit um yeah and then the director of the company that ended up taking over the concession in selfridges was on the hunt for a manager went around all of the good independent fishmongers and that's how he found me and offered me the job to be the manager in uh in selfridges which so you were you were headhunted yeah caught on a hook i was trying to think of a funny fish analogy but you were but that so that was an interesting process of recruitment which makes a lot of sense to me yeah and it was the first time that i'd really been able to see that you know maybe there is a bit of a career path in in fish and fishmongering it's a lot different today fishmongers are great today but then it was kind of everybody was in it because it was all they could do if you like kind of like how i was in it yeah um so yeah moving on to selfridges was was a massive career change did you know that there are nearly 1 million 18 to 24 four-year-olds who are currently not in education, employment, or training in the UK.

11:09This is simply not good enough, and I want to do something about it. That's why REED is launching a new initiative giving£20 ,000 to young entrepreneurs to help them grow their small business. Visit reed.com forward slash entrepreneurs to find out more. We want to support and encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs and you stayed there for how long i was there for i think nearly nine years right um and i learned going there moving to selfridges i just i learned more about um pricing fish and margins and obviously more dealing with a luxury service and providing a luxury service to to a different clientele really um so so over this period you'd you'd accumulated a lot of knowledge and experience yeah from billingsgate and up until the time you were at selfridges clearly and you'd learned about cooking and and yeah and obviously service as well so this gave you gave you a lot of sort of resources with which to start your own business in a way yeah definitely and i don't think i realized that at the time i think i was just kind of plodding along um but it wasn't until i did go to selfridges that i sort of i started seeing we were getting training for certain things and i was kind of like well i already know this right um and then i started to piece the puzzle um as the manager there um and i learned about all all sorts of different things like food safety procedures and all that sort of stuff some of the best food safety training out there obviously selfridges and that's something that we apply to our shops today really important so what so what was the moment that made you decide to go out on your own i mean this is a key moment for entrepreneurs isn't it yeah i'm gonna take the plunge and and start my business how did that happen what what was your journey i started a little street food business um there were it was at the time there was this movement of um lots of different street food vendors that were buying high quality produce that you would get in a restaurant but they were cooking it in a street as you're cooking it as well yeah yeah so so i started that and the first week i took 100 tuna steaks to cook and didn't sell a single one where was this this was a brick lane um market you didn't sell a single single one there was about 300 people walking around it did yeah and then 100 tuners audible yeah i know my freezer was packed so what happened there so how did you proceed from there and then i don't know i just i went home and i was a bit down i was a bit like oh i really had my heart set on this because i'd seen other people do it and thought why like but there was something in me that was kind of i was more trying to find solutions as to why it didn't work right rather than giving up and i think that was really the first time that i saw something different in myself and i went back the following week and this is the part where you probably expect me to say i sold a thousand and i didn't sell a single one i wasn't sure what you're gonna say and i was like oh so then what happens and then i went back and then i did end up selling a few and that so that was the third week and that gave me a bit of a buzz to to you know keep moving but what it taught me is that i i was in the wrong area and then i moved to a different market got there could barely set up where did you go so i went to malpy street market which is near borough market right so um different clientele really south of the river west a bit yeah yeah closer to home maybe and i sold i think i sold 100 or 70 tuna steaks in an hour so the location was critical yeah so that's what i learned but i I always think to myself, if I didn't keep going back to make those mistakes or whatever it may have been, I may never have gone to Mortby Street.

15:15And I made£700 profit in an hour on my day off. And honestly, if you would have seen me, it was like I was a millionaire walking down the street. So there was no looking back? No, after that, it just filled me with this feeling that I knew that I would never be able to get from working for somebody else. and that was apparent when I went back to work the following week and I was didn't like being told what to do no I had a really good job on a good wage and and whatever else um but yeah there was something inside me that just I think I unlocked this entrepreneurial spirit I think so so you had this this concession in Malby Street market yeah well then you started a fishmonger is that well so I did that for a few months and then logistically it just wasn't working out which is another learning curve because i didn't have a driving license so i was i was getting everything that's expensive it was just yeah it was just so i went back to work and then started over the next few years kind of formulating a plan in my head right and it i was just held on to this idea that you wanted to work for yourself i knew that i wanted to do something and I knew I also knew that street food wasn't it because it wasn't sustainable I was never going to be able to sustain an income right people do but me personally I don't think I could have done that um so I but yeah I always knew that I wanted to do something for myself um and then I think I was just frustrated with fishmongers in London especially or the UK I just I felt like it was quite a boring and people were referring to it as like a dying trade which obviously is my trade i've been doing it my whole life and at this point i was about i'm 36 now i was about 30 then and i just suddenly thought butchers had this sort of resurgence where they had like the cool aprons and everything they were more explaining about where the meat comes from and people were taking a bit more pride and wanting to understand more about where their food comes from and I was kind of there with all the information so but nobody had really ever done that in fish in a fishmongers anyway for customers to be able to come in.

17:36So your concept then is to sort of share much more about the produce? Yeah definitely I think it can be quite intimidating when going into a fishmonger's and seeing a load of whole fish and having to you know how do you help people yeah i understand that because you don't know what they are or no which ones are fresh or how to cook them necessarily so how do you help people with that we just we focus more on um customer service rather than say your filleting skills because that can be taught but what we've found is that you know education around fish and where the fish comes from and how to cook fish and how to make it easy is probably more important than that because after all we want the customers to buy the fish yeah um and i think i witnessed i've just witnessed so many different um scenarios in fishmongers where they're just not been helpful to customers and in my head i'm like you're you're losing customers right yeah so we so you've brought a real customer focus to this yeah customer focused um and then also just made it a bit more appealing by selling different things other than just fish so you can come into any of our stores and and buy non-fish related things you know so if we want to find you life of fish you say come into how do people find you if they want to come and enjoy your service and buy fish from you so we've got two shops uh one is based in peckham and one's based in abbeville road in clapham um a lovely little street in southwest london yeah opposite the famous uh butcher's ginger pig um and then friends yeah and then obviously in selfridges food hall we've got a big concession there selfridges food hall as well so yeah so you maintain that relationship successfully so david as i understand it you started selling fish outside of a cafe how did you build the business and the brand from there yeah so i um there was a cafe at the end of my street and i knew the owner uh jimmy it's called cut the mustard cafe um they bake all their own bread and all that sort of stuff and it was just it was just in the in the first stages of covid and nobody really knew what was going to be happening and we had a brief chat and I jokingly said if it gets any worse I may have to start selling fish out the front and he's a proper entrepreneur you know he started his business similar to how we did and he said well why don't you and I think I said yes with a bit of fear and then he sort of called me the following week and said so are you gonna are you gonna sell fish outside tomorrow because i'll put something on instagram if you are and yeah and something in me was like this is the moment i've been waiting for so who was this man what's his name his name's jimmy jimmy yeah what's his cafe called shout out for jimmy cut the mustard cut the mustard so that was where you started yeah he encouraged you yeah yeah he's yeah he's really encouraging actually the whole time um so yeah i i uh the next i think that was on the thursday and and then on the friday i i ordered some fish and it turned up in a load of polystyrene boxes i took cake weighing scales like for flour to weigh the fish a calculator a little change box and a single knife thinking obviously nobody knew what covid was at this point but the supermarket shelves were pretty empty so everybody was at home and looking for something um you know decent to eat um and he put this post out on instagram and i set everything up there was nobody there and then i think i bent down to pick up the bucket of water and looked and there was about 70 people queuing for my fish 70 about 70 people it's quite around the corner on instagram and i was like oh my god um so there i was just fill it in and prepping all of the fish and people absolutely loved it and then the same thing happened the following week right and more people turned up um and then gradually from there everybody i don't know if you remember but everybody would start creating whatsapp groups for the areas and the streets and things in in lockdown and we would all go out and clap which seems like forever ago and my instagram started getting passed around as the guy who can deliver fish at this point i wasn't delivering anything right um and i started getting loads of messages and that then moved on to WhatsApp messages, people sending me their orders of fish.

22:12So in a way, the pandemic made your business possible. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't. Yeah, definitely. So that's a positive out of it. Yeah, and I was prepping fish, prepping orders for people, the fish orders in my kitchen at home. Right. Um, and then I just, I, I think we got one weekend, we got a hundred orders of fish at this point, no driving license, nothing. And I attempted to deliver a, well, I did, I had delivered a hundred orders on a push bike. Wow. Um, so I'd been up at whatever time and I realized I couldn't do it on my own and woke my partner roof up, um, and said, you're going to have to help me with this.

22:57bear in mind Ruth hates fish funnily um and yeah and yeah Ruth Ruth's my partner in the business and my partner and uh that's how it began really and then we just grew and grew and one thing we've always done in the business is we never knew that we would get this far so I think I always save I was very careful with the profits and I always saved any profit I think the first weekend we we made like a thousand pound profit and then the following week and then it was and then we just kept saving it and it just grew it was growing so fast and we were doing about two three hundred deliveries in a weekend at this point i got a delivery driver by the way um and the the natural progression for that would be to just open a shop and people could come to the shop rather than because it's a lot of work prepping and delivering and then we opened then a shop became available next to cut the mustard at the end of the road and it was just yeah so that worked brilliant yeah worked brilliantly our first day that we opened honestly about 150 people showed up the queue was down the end of the road around the corner and it was like that for probably for about a year right um but i was always cautious in in terms of like knowing that it kind of wasn't real it was the pandemic you know everybody was at home and not at work that's why we were so busy yeah so um that was one of the reasons for to expand as well yeah but that's how that's a great story thank you for sharing that and then the other question on my mind when you described starting work very young is there any advice looking back now that you'd give your younger self you know that 15 year old david um maybe don't be so hard on yourself and make sure um make sure to listen really well and um and just go for it you know because this even now you know the smallest things can really grow and turn into something really special you know but you'll you'll never get to that special place unless you start small and and um and most importantly you know hone your skills and and make sure that you treat everything as as important as it can be because you don't you you know i spoke about cleaning those boxes when we first opened the shop we didn't like i say we didn't have any money really and and there was a time you know where we were sort of making do with all sorts of things and if i hadn't gone through that experience that i said i disliked then we maybe i wouldn't have had you know the experience to to get where we are today so you never know when you're going to need certain types of experience um and i think sometimes people in jobs sometimes don't like doing certain things but but but you also said that you didn't realize how much you'd learn yeah exactly so when you say you know don't be hard on yourself and really listen you're learning all the time aren't you yeah yeah yeah and that that's very valuable i think early in people's careers you know there's a huge amount to learn yeah and to sort of go out and try and learn as much as possible yeah and i think that's yeah and i think that you know it's it can be really beneficial starting from the bottom yes um because you learn you learn all sorts of things that you may you may not have you know getting all different situations at work um you may be asked to help this person do that you know i used i used to help all different people at one point actually it's a good story if i can share yeah um i'd been i'd been fillet and fish and everything for about two years and and the owner came into the warehouse and said that the person who does the invoicing has left just walked out we've got no nobody doing the invoices for all of these fine dining restaurants and he sort of shouted does anybody know how to use a computer and nobody put their hand up and i was like i did so i did and i instantly went from cleaning squid outside into a nice comfy office inputting all of the data and the fish weights and charging all of these restaurants and printing out all of these invoices and you know putting them in the correct piles for where they would deliver to way to learn about the business but you know if i if i didn't stick it out through cleaning those boxes and things like that i would never would have got that opportunity so yeah it's all just as important as each other i would say so okay so what are the what are the most popular fish well what do you sell the most of what we sell a lot of salmon right a lot of Salmon is kind of people's go-to, I think, for midweek meals.

27:57And then it'll be another whitefish, I would say, along the lines of cod, hake, things like that. We generally try to keep people onto British coastal fish rather than wild British coastal fish rather than farmed fish, which, yeah, I mean, people love salmon. and I don't think you could ever turn them away from that. But that would be farmed, aren't they? That would be farmed, yeah. But the other fish would tend to be wild. Yeah, they tend to be wild. So the moment there's concern about the mackerel stocks around the UK, and they've been graded five, I think, on the risk list. So some stores are not taking mackerel anymore.

28:41What's your view on that, and how do you deal with that? I mean, I'm all for it. obviously we need the fishermen to be able to sustain our business and sell fish um and i know personally just because we do use a majority of our fish comes from small day boats which are small day boats yeah what are they so so they only go out for short periods of time whereas they're not big trawlers they're not big trawlers they have low impact on the ocean basically and it's the most sustainable way of fishing and where do they go from these guys um so a lot of these go out of all different places in cornwall um and in devon we i drive three times a week to hastings where they've got a driving license yeah i got a driving license now thank god to hastings um yeah i drive to hastings and basically there's two fishermen there that i buy everything that they catch right a lot super fresh and it's sourced locally yeah so it's it's so you buy the whole catch i buy the whole catch yet whereas i must love you yeah i mean well it was it was my way of getting them to sell sell to me just because a lot of the bigger companies they want to sort through and find the the perfect size for chefs and restaurants whereas us we're selling to the public so what do they have typically in their catch so they can have anything a lot of place um occasionally a turbot and occasionally mackerel um but they've already caught the man Yeah, exactly.

30:10So I try to, you know, we concentrate a lot on the Marine Conservation Society on their website and what they recommend is a fish, a good fish to eat or a fish to avoid. And we tend to follow that like almost religiously, especially for Selfridges. yeah um but then there's the other side of it where i'm actually physically dealing with the fishermen and i can see that you know they they say to me we're not actively looking for mackerel but we've caught them and once they're there you know at me as an operator what i'm and what am i meant to do am i meant to see them throw these dead fish back in the water or am i meant to buy them um so you can can sort of um be stuck in between sometimes but but generally we do buy the whole catch of everything they've caught yeah and you're doing that on the understanding they're not actively looking for things no i mean if there were three three huge crates of mackerel i'll probably turn them and turn them away because then that suggests they've been out fishing for back exactly yeah whereas if there's three to five fish or something like that then then we'll take them but and then that's when it becomes important in our shops as i mentioned before is that we then educate our staff and they will then so this matters to your customers you find yeah definitely yeah yeah especially with social media and stuff like that everybody is kind of um educated around things like this now yeah which which i remember a lot of people almost seeing that as a negative whereas i always thought that was a positive because then that opens the doors for us now to be able to show all of our hard work and experience with regards to how we source our fish yeah um have you seen people's sort of eating habits change are people eating more or less fish is that i mean definitely more are eating more fish yeah definitely more why is that do you think because we're around now because because there's a great well if you don't have the good fortune of living near one of your outlets yeah we do deliveries as well we've got an online shop so you've got an online shop you didn't tell me about that so how do people find your online shop yeah so on our website my partner roof what's your what's your website called uh it's www.lifeof.fish life of no.com we thought we'd be uh oh you're a dot fish yeah dot life of dot fish okay roof my partner who is um a brilliant graphic designer and web developer she she comes up with she's created creative so you can order online yeah so you can order online I think we are the only fishmonger that has got physical stores as well as online stores.

32:52So how long does it stay fresh? How do you get it? Because what you've been describing, going to Hastings, getting it fresh, is quite appealing. But how do you get it to people quickly enough through the online ordering? Everything is next day delivery. So that's like getting it from Cornwall. Yeah, exactly. So you'll order with us. we've we've always got we've designed the website to have obviously our stock items in and if something isn't available it's not available um but normally we know i i we have we tend to have regular customers online so life of dot fish i'm gonna go and have a look at that yeah you should yeah yeah that sounds and it's often me who still does the deliveries really so you come in person so that's good too yeah i always yeah i always just find that well one thing that i found with running the business is um you have to also find what you like to do in the business as well as all the boring stuff and doing the deliveries and being out and about in the van and stuff is yeah i enjoy it so you like as you said earlier dealing with people so you like dealing with customers you like dealing with the yeah i tend suppliers yeah i mean i'm awake from 4 a.m pretty much four times a week so my day can look like anything but you actually get up at 4 a.m unlike me i just wake up at 4am oh really oh god no but you're using the time more productively yeah somewhat sometimes um so you get up at 4am yeah yeah about that um and yeah i'll go into each shop um see their displays make sure the displays look nice make sure that they're you know what one big times the shops open they open at 9 30 okay yeah so so not but before then you've got to get everything into the shop before then i would have been to collect the fish and back again and then distribute the fish where do you collect it from so we do we do buy a bit from billingsgate right so you're either getting it from hastings yeah hastings and then we buy a lot from newlin in cornwall and brixham in devon a lot of our flat fish come from brixham in devon um but there's if you if you can order a bulk amount then cornwall transport will deliver directly to the shop so everything that was caught yesterday tends to be delivered today um so it's a pretty good service if that's really important if if you can if you can sell enough fish because so is it true you shouldn't buy fish on a monday not so much anymore no no just because i've always been told that well we've we've i have to say this now anyway because we've um we're actually a seven day operation now in all of our shops yeah we're sort of trying to get rid of that stigma around not buying fish on a monday um the the traditionally that was in that was a thing because everybody bought their fish from billingsgate and billingsgate is closed on a monday but because we buy so much fish obviously to be able to sell throughout our shops it means that we do buy directly from the coast which we do get deliveries nearly every day yeah um also fish shelf life you know you tend you you can have fish that last two days comfortably um so it might be a a less selection say to a saturday but but yeah it's i think i'll tell you some a good fishmonger opening on a monday is is fine it shouldn't be a problem yeah so so you said you also learned from jamie oliver a bit of a bit of a chef yeah what's your favorite fish and how how would you suggest it be prepared weirdly i always go for all the cheaper fish yeah go on that's that's encouraging i love things like gurnard to make fish and chips out of gurnard is really nice because it's quite it tends to have quite a meaty texture yeah but my sort of speciality is turning fish into what you would normally use meat for so i cook i've cooked twice now at one of the largest barbecue festivals around called meatopia right and the proof is kind of in the name i think when i contacted them and asked if i could cook there they were like well we're called meatopia not fish top and where's meatopia occur where uh it's a um tobacco dock in london yeah yeah so it's every summer and september i think so so so anyone going to meatopia who doesn't fancy a steak can find you find me the tuna steak yeah so so what we cooked this year is there's a lot of british bluefin tuna now in the uk they've been migrating here yeah for the last 10 years i think it is but is that because the sea is getting warmer yeah all different things apparently it's that there's a lot of mixed opinions but a lot to do with it is they just migrate i think um bluefin tuna around the uk yeah yeah loads of bluefin tuna but one thing i learned from my wholesale days is that a lot of fish just gets filleted and the bones get thrown away full of meat so for me topia i created a double cheeseburger by using all of the carcasses that would have normally been wasted with full of meat minced it how you would normal normally do a burger and turned it into what looked like a double cheeseburger but it was fish but it was fish and so what did you call it a blue a blue thin double i think it was called and people went nuts and we we had a queue of about 500 people really wow so it seems quite original yeah this is all that this is all the sort of left yeah yeah i mean they're big chunks of meat left on the carcass so right i always just saw an opportunity not to waste it yeah it was yeah it was partly can you sell that do you sell those through your your fish we were selling them last summer yeah after i did meet op we had loads of people come in saying where can i buy these which are i didn't going to do that again this year i think so yeah every year you have to cook something different um but obviously it has to reflect kind of like a meat dish to fit in with meatopia i would say right right so how are you hoping to sort of grow and develop your business from here i think one thing that we've learned is to really concentrate on what we've got at the moment i think in the early days i was maybe a bit too eager to grow which resulted in us having to close our first shop um just because i'm i'm just one person you know i can't i can only get around as many shops as i can and and staff there's there's always something going wrong all the time basically a friend of mine just basically describes it as putting out fires well on the people side of on the on the mainly on the people side of things um so yeah i would say that we we probably grew too quick in the early days right closed one of the shops really focused on what we have and that's what we tend to be doing now is focusing and um so you're really in what we already have really doubling down on your operation as it is as difficult as it is yeah because i think we're we're quite a pretty looking fishmongers that that fits nicely into streets so i mean we get contact we're kind of saying when you come into our development or whatever yeah we get so many landlords all the time i mean uh this this will they offer it to you for free we got offered a shop in dullage village um free for two years and help with fit out costs you didn't fancy it and i really fancied it so why didn't you do that's part of the problem um so you're worried about overreaching it yeah yeah somewhat and that's because you've had experience of that before yeah had experienced that before and so what how does that happen i mean because this is interesting for entrepreneurs listening about pacing yourself and yeah trying to structure your business in a way that's sustainable and doesn't overreach i think what was your experience i think with us it's um we've not got any bank loans is we're all funded by our profit we use our profits to reinvest into the business we've still still still not got any bank loans or any investment so it's all you want to keep control of it we want to keep control of it um and i've i've kind of hit a point now where if we do want to grow the those things may need to come into place to be able to do things properly um but yeah i would say that you know if if you spread yourself too thin then customers will noticed and that's kind of what happened uh i always i always feel that our bit like businesses are like a living thing they kind of especially for me this is how i get it anyway you know they take on a mind of their own they take on a path of their own and they will every shop's different and they a lot of the time you know the business would be screaming at you to change something and in the early days i didn't know i didn't know that because i hadn't run a business before really you you didn't know that it would be screaming at you yeah i didn't i didn't like to change something you know it just wasn't working but i've i thought that i could continue and you know change it and it probably and you've done that successfully yeah i mean well well change by change it i mean closing the store which we did which is a difficult decision which is a difficult decision um and yeah but it probably should have happened probably two years prior to that right Right.

42:03But you've still got two successful partners. Yeah, so we really took a look at what is successful and where the area will tell you if they want it. And we don't apply any different methods to different stores. So if it's not working there, then it's not really us that needs to change so much. I think it's a really interesting subject because if you've built a business that's quite dependent on you and your service and your personality and your good name and reputation and you're there a lot. What's the next step? How do you grow it? Because if you have two shops, you can't possibly be in both of them at the same time.

42:45So you need to find people you can trust to delegate to, I suppose. Exactly, yeah, which is the hardest part. You find that, yeah. Why is that so hard? I really don't know. I'll be honest, we've had some really awful people come through our shops that we've and we've had a massive on your payroll yeah massive struggles with with with certain people in the business and and yeah that i think that in itself is is what holds me back but like you say you need to find these people if you want to go they're out there somewhere i'm sure they are do you know what we're doing really i don't want to jinx it but we're doing really well at the moment yeah well maybe that's part of the journey just getting better at finding people and judging people deciding who to hire and who not to yeah because a good hire makes a huge difference yeah definitely and i i've definitely got a bit of a sixth sense for it now and i know exactly what to look for and what do you look for i just think it's a personality is worth more than any skill right um i mean i can speak for our business um because you can teach the skill because you can teach the skill but you can't teach people to have a really good personality or you can't teach people to be engaged so someone said you can't teach someone to smile no exactly yeah and our job is all about smiling yeah so that's it so you so the sort of mindset trumps the skill set which is definitely yeah so you've got to identify that when you're talking to or meeting them yeah definitely yeah what do you ask them to identify i almost just i ask them really basic questions because i i start the interview normally by by um explaining to them that I understand that they have no fish experience or very little because I want to put them at ease because I feel like they might be going into the union.

44:28I don't want them... Most people will not have fish experience. No, exactly. And then why they want to work with fish and what are their expectations around fish. And then I'm also really honest about what the job is. It's not glamorous. It can be sometimes when you get, you know, celebrities coming into shop review or whatever. But in a nutshell, it's, you know, shovel in ice and you know a lot of heavy lifting and it can be really rewarding to the right person because you're constantly learning you know there's there's a lot of fish out there that you need to learn about and to fill it and and yeah if you if you get the right person who has an interest in wanting to learn a new skill um yeah who wants to become a i suppose who wants to become a fishmonger in the full sense of yeah definitely i mean we we had a guy come and work for us who um worked in advertising for years and was on a really good salary and just decided that he didn't want to do that anymore and wanted to work with fish and obviously took a massive pay cut um and but he could love every minute he would be yeah he convinced me and i was really hard on him if i'm honest because i was like well advertising surely not yeah yeah i can imagine i'm jealous of your old job and you want to come and work for me so that's interesting so this person really was looking for a career change something yeah definitely yeah and he did amazing you know and worked for us for about a year and a half and has gone off to do his own thing and and yeah well a lot of people are saying now that jobs that involve working with your hands are going to be the jobs of the future yeah yeah and you're offering that to people yeah definitely fishmongers do work with their hands yeah and we've we've modernized it a bit you know um in terms of we want we want people to feel comfortable and and we provide all of the right equipment and and things like that that make people feel comfortable and the right training because like I mentioned already when I started they opened the door and went go over there and do this whereas I know what not to do now right so you said something interesting earlier you said that for customers it can be a bit intimidating going into a fishmongers yeah and and I sort of identified with that because it you know there's a lot of information that you may be so how do you how do you make it more sort of user-friendly in that sense so that people can come and have a chat yeah how do you do that one thing with how is how we design our shops so we've got we're called life of fish fishmongers and pantry so we have a huge pantry section that is just based up based of all all different kind of like a dry goods section that is based so what do you sell out of there so we sell loads of olives and we sell truffle crisps and so it's like a sort of deli yeah like a deli side of it and that will sit right in the window right and the fish side of things is a bit pushed a bit further down with all the soaking wet taps and the guys in the aprons and things like that it's a bit further but there's a bit of theater involved as well yeah i mean you said the guys in the aprons yeah for the right person you want to well yeah i like a bit of theater in my shopping experience it makes it more fun yeah but yeah one thing we wanted to concentrate on is that if we are going to be a neighborhood if we're going to be in neighborhoods then you know people might may not want to eat fish every single day but we need to figure out a way to get them to shop with us every single day so that was kind of how we we came up with the idea of having a pantry section that you know people are going to a dinner party or something like that they can come in we sell these lovely portuguese um tinned fish and they've all got their own design on the front of the box and we get so many people coming in to buy things like that for gifts and all right things um so you have to be pretty clever in what the sort of accessories yeah i think the days of just putting fish out and people coming to buy it is it's kind of shrinking a bit i would say we have to make it a bit more exciting right we sell sell things like dumplings and things like that like Asian and then all of the smoked salmon and things right so I've just been very fortunate in that I've just been to Japan and I was told in Japan by someone who runs a cookery school that there are 55 different species of fish around Japan and they've become very accomplished at catching and eating them it seems because apparently the Japanese eat something like 20 % of the world's fish but the interesting point he made is that and I'm not sure if it's true but is there only five species of fish around the coast of Norway or northern the North Atlantic is that in any way plausible I'm not sure I've never heard that before to be honest can you think of many fish that we I mean I've been to Norway a lot and they tend to only have around five or six species of fish displayed.

49:25There's a lot of cod going on. Yeah, so it's a lot of cod. It's a lot of haddock. Pretty sure they get a lot of mackerel there. Something called Arctic char as well they have there. Yeah. But I would say that it's probably more a desire of just what's more desirable to the customer is probably what they focus on. I think this might be something to do with the water or the sea. Yeah, I mean... Because that's obviously... Japan's obviously in the Pacific. It's different, totally... Yes, I mean, obviously it's a tough climate in Norway. It's freezing, and I would imagine they've got a lot of deep-sea fish there that they probably don't catch.

50:03But, yeah, definitely loads of halibut comes from Norway. So that would be the other one. But that does have a bearing on the sort of business, doesn't it, I suppose? Yeah. Those sort of options. Yeah, they're probably well-known for halibut, cod, haddock, and everything. So what's happening with, I mean, this big concern around climate change, sea temperatures, how's that affecting fish stocks? I mean, I hope I'm asking the right person. It's probably unfair asking. No, no, I mean, I know a little bit about it. Yeah, I thought you might. So what can you share on this? At Selfridges, I worked alongside probably one of the most amazing people I've met along my career.

50:45His name's Matt Couchman. He was a sales manager, but he was also a fishery scientist. And we still speak quite often now. And he just knows everything. So he's always there. Yeah, so he's always there if I ever want to speak to anybody about things like this. So what's his latest sort of take on things? I've not actually asked him that. But, I mean, my take on things is that it's just constantly changing, you know. For example, mackerel has now been rated five. um whereas growing up i mean hearing stories of people go to corn or used to be able to just drop a hook in and a mackerel would jump on the end so it is this ever-changing thing around fish and sustainability um it's important we get that right though isn't it yeah definitely and no one wants the stocks to be depleted no no and that's why we we pay a lot of attention to what the mcs are are saying on their website and it's the mcs is what the marine conservation society right um so people should look at their website yeah they definitely they've even got a really good app a portal and you can just check you can literally type in any fish and it will tell you the rating that's good yeah as a customer yeah oh we should all do that yeah definitely and these are the things that you know fishmongers are not telling their customers or educating them in that kind of way um i guess they don't want to have the conversation right which is why they come to life for fish fish yeah i was thinking that you're a responsible supplier yeah i mean fish is protein ultimately isn't it and protein is good for the brain yeah definitely especially the omega-3 fish and yeah um so which ones are those uh so that'll be like mac macron macron tuna do you sell fish oil in your shop we don't know maybe you should yeah I mean, we have got a gift in section, actually, which we saw which sort of started off as a joke.

52:44But we sell sort of cards, the place to be or something like that. It's got a picture of a place. So, yeah, people people are interested in all sorts of things. So maybe. Yeah. No, so good. So in the future, it sounds to me like you're really focusing on making sure your your fishmongers are fabulous. Yeah. But do you see potential in building the online offer? I think so, yeah. You said you delivered yourself. I mean, you'd have to get some other people to help you, I imagine. Yeah, yeah. Is that an upside that you see? That's part of it. I mean, we've got a three-year-old daughter. So any plans that I make now are kind of have to be quite solid and a bit more thought out.

53:25You feel you have to be more responsible now, do you? Well, that's probably right. Yeah, and I've taken a lot of risks in the last six years. Right. so you want to consolidate would be your thing i do yeah but it depends what day it is so yeah i mean we a couple of years we recently we got off of the shop in marlebone and it was just the most perfect location right um so i definitely think there is scope there to to maybe expand in that way as marley buns are very um popular shopping destination yeah yeah definitely and we've sort of built a bit of a reputation around there by being in Selfridges.

54:03So someone should give you a good offer for a location. Yeah, anybody listening there. Yeah, that'd be good. Well, I sincerely hope that they do.

54:16Thank you so much for coming in to talk to me, David. Thank you. I always ask two questions at the end for my guests. They're the same questions. The first question you see on the wall here, because at Reed we love Mondays, is what is it that gets you up on a Monday morning? Very early, I think. Well, I absolutely love Mondays because it's my only day off. It's your only day off? Oh, it's still true. But as I mentioned, my daughter Pixie, she makes sure that I'm awake normally around six or half six. Oh, that's a lie in for you. Yeah, exactly, yeah. But yeah, Monday is kind of my sort of rebuilding day, getting ready for the for the week so i love walking and i tend to take my daughter for like a four-hour walk um and while i'm on that walk i'll listen to a podcast or be be with her while she's in the park and and sort of recoup you have good family time yeah yeah that monday is sort of dedicated to that i'm assuming she's in a buggy no no she walks for four hours as well oh no she is in a buggy yeah yeah sorry i was gonna say that's we did have the conversation about her You're going to be an elite athlete.

55:27Yeah, yeah. That's good. So yeah. Let's have time together. Yeah, yeah, it's a lovely time. And I'll be honest, I spend the whole time just sort of reflecting on the week before. And I really do have this almost an obsession with, I wouldn't say I'm a perfectionist, but I really like to get things to a certain level of where I'm happy. And I think that's what I've worked out rather than looking outside of what everyone else is doing. if I'm happy with how things have run the previous week I'll have a I'll have a good because no one cares about it more than you yeah exactly yeah and um yeah so sometimes I can spend too much time on that walk thinking about that yeah um but it's a good time to yeah reflect and and think about the things that say we've spoken about today about maybe expanding or focusing on the website thinking about the future so yeah it's a really good try and just put my phone in my pocket and not not look at it and think about yeah what's important there's a lot of a lot of evidence that suggests that we shouldn't look at phones for the first hour of the day yeah because our brain works differently for the whole day if we do that in a more creative way yeah yeah yeah so i try and do that too yeah i definitely try and do it before bed um yeah it's funny you say that actually because a few years ago i have for years i slept with my phone under my pillow and it just seems like such a strange thing to do now.

56:52I try and keep the phone. I don't bring the phone into the bedroom anymore. Yeah, because even if you can see it, yeah. But then I have a fear of being like that guy who runs Heathrow Airport and someone, and they try and ring you in the middle of the night because of an emergency and you sleep through it. This is it, yeah. It can create more of a... Yeah, so there's a new anxiety around that. But I think it's good to try and create a bit of distance with it so you can think creatively. Yeah, definitely. And then my last question for you, David, is from my interview book why you 101 interview questions you'll never fear again is where do you see yourself in five years time um i think doing the same thing like i said refining a lot um there is there is part of me that you know wants to continue growing different areas of the business the shop run the shops run themselves now and sometimes i can have three days off a week um which i don't know what to do with myself but yeah um so i do think there is you ever go out with a fisherman i have been a couple of times yeah but i get terrible seasick which i don't like that's a shame yeah it's quite interesting i was in sicily on a boat and i had to make him turn around and get me off because i felt terrible yeah right but um but yeah we're doing a lot of wholesale now we're careful about what we do in wholesale um so we supply a chain of sushi restaurants um we also we also uh supply once a month for every other month um 500 lobsters 500 pieces for an online meal kit company that was recently bought by waitress okay so so yeah it's so so you're doing retail wholesale and also online yeah so you've got quite a lot going on yeah a lot i need a few more vans and a few more people we can help you but that yeah but that's that's the thing i think we're sort of obviously i'm very driven and um i'm careful about the risks that I take.

58:45But I think that in answer to your question, yeah, the next five years either looks like what it looks like now or getting some investment and really, really going for it. So that would be a big decision for you? Big decision, yeah. I just want to be careful about what happened before diluting too much or something like that. Yeah. Well, I wish you every success. Thanks so much for coming in to talk to me. I'm going to have a look at lifeof.fish. Yeah, you know where to buy the fish now. And I've learned a lot this morning. Thank you very much. Cheers. Thanks very much.

59:20Thank you, David, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reid, Chairman and CEO of Reid, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Life of Fish or Reid, you'll find all the links in the show notes. Thank you for listening and see you next time.

59:42Thank you.