DIRTEA Co-Founder Andrew Salter on how to make a brand go VIRAL

0:00You guys are getting so much more mental right now. The future is mushroom. I think a stigma really existed. The real behaviour change was required. You know, our generation cares about the science and they care about the research and they want to know if the stuff actually worked. We wanted anyone who thinks of mushrooms or functional mushrooms to think of dirty, right? Why just sit on the shelves unless we do something that's exciting and interesting? Why don't we create the first ever mushroom bar in Selfridges? Brand went viral and we were gaining thousands of followers every single day. Blew up on social media.

0:31We sold out. We want to build one of the biggest health and wellness brands in the world. Dirty has the chance to really inspire a generation. And hey, how are you doing, Matt? How's it, sir? Thank you for joining us. Pleasure. I'm excited to get into all things Dirty and for you to share the story. But give us a sense of where it all started for you. We've known each other a long time. And I always remind you guys from afar have done some phenomenal things. Give us a sense of where it started. Yeah, I mean, to go back all the way to the boathouse, So essentially, I'd probably start with a place I used to go to every Saturday, which was Sylvia Young.

1:06I think that was always for me about the road to stardom and fame and entertainment. But actually, it ended up giving me some of the most fundamental skills I required in life as an entrepreneur. You know, this is the place I learned from a young age confidence, you know, how to communicate, how to sell, how to convince people of an idea. Right. Which essentially is an entrepreneur, you really do need. right um so my my story always starts with sylvia young um but i guess my first ever success uh was creating the social movement feeling nuts uh and this was all about getting guys to check their balls uh for lumps and bumps and any signs and early signs of testicular cancer yeah um and uh i think my brother and i who have always worked with who's uh my partner in business and in life um you know we saw this incredible opportunity to not raise money for a cause you know you catch testicular cancer early it's 100 % curable but I teach to drive awareness and I think I've always seen social media building community and using the forces of entertainment to really lure an audience and land a message so that was a huge success um I think we got over a billion people to participate in that movement ended up uh with a show on channel four called the filling nuts comedy night which was hosted by jack whitehall and james corden uh and that really got us started right and then from then we got so many people approaching us wanting to work with us yeah what age were you because we went to school together that's right i remember after leaving school following what you were doing and some level you know picking on these huge events as you say you know a huge cultural moment but how old were you and you know how did you have that confidence at that time maybe it all goes back to Sylvia Young giving you that confidence yeah that's a huge thing to do at a young age it was you know I think I was wildly ambitious and probably quite naive from a young age you know I always got inspired by these like huge cultural movement movements but really stuff that really would affect change you know I remember watching a documentary on the creation of Live Aid with Bob Geldof and thinking like I'd love to do something like that but like for our generation you know and looking you know when I was growing up he had platforms like youtube and vine and uh and yeah instagram was sort of emerging and i was like how can i use social media entertainment as a force for good yeah i think i was 24 at the time uh that feeling that's ended up happening it took quite a few years to get started and even me getting kicked out of america in the process um but yeah that's really got what got me started um and then i sort of realized you know my brother and i have um quite you know unique talents um you know we were really ambitious from a young age being an entrepreneur was something I always became attached to um you know being creative coming up with ideas and like I say you know affecting positive change and I guess that's what led to all these amazing other ventures that we got involved in yeah yeah so that leads us nicely to dirty which I think we met in 2019 and having done all this amazing stuff in live and entertainment you suddenly told me you're going to start a functional mushroom business and i was like okay and you've created a incredible business you've created a culture around mushrooms that people didn't previously have an awareness of potentially uh so let's go back to the beginning like where did dirty start where did the actual idea come from yeah no absolutely i mean i started to look at you know the world of hell uh around 2017 and starting to realize the way that i was brought up was not about getting in front of health or staying in check or being the CEO of your body um you know my parents and my parents generation always took a conventional approach to health right and medicine um you know if you were feeling down uh you know anxious you take an anxiety pill right you know if you were struggling with sleep you have a sleeping pill there was always medication to fix anything even if you're feeling ill you know you go to your doctor and they prescribe you with um you know conventional medicine like antibiotics right um i think my issue with that is always like you know not being front not being in control of health and also you know these medicines are all about quick fixes right and and unfortunately come with a series of side effects um you know when we think about today's generation you know we are so much more aware you know we give attention to our health even before there's anything wrong right um and we leave this sort of healthy lifestyle you know people used to go out and get drunk and go to the club and wake up with these terrible hangovers right that was the call but the new call is about going to bed early you know waking up getting in a nice bath drinking mushroom coffee you know meeting with your friend for a juice and maybe doing a yoga class right that is the new call and and health and wellness is the new luxury right um and this became an interest of my brother and i you know we built our worlds around wellness right and it became a way of life through this process I became exposed to functional mushrooms I think I probably read an article around 2019 on the future is mushrooms and they're going to change the world I think it was in Time magazine I became really inspired right and I wanted to be a part of it you know I've been drinking at that point functional mushrooms for probably about two and a half three years and a lot of the issues that I used to face such as fatigue you know burnout uh brain fog uh you know really like a low immune system were quickly resolved by functional mushrooms and i'd actually say and i attribute to this day the way i feel every day that sort of mindset yeah is because i drink functional mushrooms every day um and i felt you know if i can feel like this if my brother can feel like this why can't everyone yeah um so that's when i started with my brother our new mission which can we get everyone to drink mushrooms every day yeah it's fantastic it probably feels like a long time ago now but give a sense of those first few weeks a month when you're starting a business because for so many entrepreneurs they have an idea but it's the getting started bit they struggle with um and it was just you and your brother in the early days so they give a sense of you know how you build the product to market and how you thought that brand and packaging and finding partners and logistics and all of this stuff that often stops entrepreneurs from starting like give a sense of that that period yeah i mean I think, first of all, we looked at the landscape and who was out there, who was already in the space of functional foods and functional medicines and obviously functional mushrooms.

7:36I think we had sort of recognized it was quite a sterile sector. You looked at the shells, everything was quite boring, the tone of voice, the language, the brand, just very sort of uninspiring. Coming from a background of creating consumer brands, always sort of leading with entertainment. and um i felt i felt that this industry really deserved the disruption right so you know first of all there was no sort of aspiration lifestyle brand um there was no sort of um sort of consumer led brand no one was really building it correctly on social media and then also there was a real poor quality of ingredients right yeah um you know our generation cares about the science and they care about the research and they want to know if the stuff actually works um and also there's a lot of stigma that exists around mushrooms right and functional mushrooms you know when i remember we did our first ever pop-up for selfridges we had people coming up saying is this going to make me high and like why were we selling drugs in selfridges right so i think a stigma really existed um and i think a real behavior change is required around the perception of like mushrooms um and i really felt like we were up for the challenge and we had the skill set yeah you know the vision and the network to really get started so yeah so um you know first and foremost you know we wanted to focus on the product right and the ingredients and making sure that we were educated about functional mushrooms we wanted to be an authority right in the marketplace you know when you think of home appliances you think of dyson yeah you think of electric cars you think of Tesla, you think of home computing, you think of Apple, right?

9:17You know, we wanted anyone thinks of mushrooms or functional mushrooms to think of dirty, right? And that all came from wanting to really educate the marketplace, because once people got the education, they knew about functional mushrooms, in our view, they're going to want to drink it, right? And then the other part was taste, you know, really thinking about like experience, right? You know, something that people are going to want to return to essentially we're creating a new behavior right a new habit so you've got to make it enjoyable i kind of felt like when we looked at the competitive landscape no one covered off these fundamental bases yeah um so yeah and um you know we really started there with the product you know we built a real network of mycologists so these are scientists that specifically study functional mushrooms uh they actually invested in the brand they helped us find and source these incredible farms all around the world mainly in in the south province of china which is the kathor mushroom cultivation um so yeah so once we got the product sort of there you know we started to think about brand right um and my view is if you're gonna create a brand you've got to come up with a great name right and you want a name that's going to make people smile as a little bit provocative it's going to get people's attention to start a conversation right get people to ask what and why uh so that's where it does he came from it's fantastic it's such a good story and it's um it's an example i think where it's real creative entrepreneurship where you're making a brave decision to go and educate a market like educating market takes time takes a lot of money like it's actually um you know it's fairly uh well full three like it's there's many easier ways to start a business but doing something that um haven't been done before always takes risk it takes more energy, I would say.

11:00And you guys, you and your brother in particular, really brought that to this industry. I think what I've always been so impressed by watching you guys operate is how much you're prepared to grow the brand in person. I think that's probably the nature of the product. You know, it's great when people actually try and they have a dirty aha moment. And they're like, oh, it doesn't taste like mushrooms. Oh, and it tastes great. Oh, and it, you know, elevates my coffee and it becomes a ritual. Like showing up in person, not just for samplings, but like generally how you build a brand in the 21st century where everyone's on the phone and everyone's on social media like how do you think about the brand showing up in person and building a community building the brand in real life it's a really great question i think from the outset you know this really is a mission with purpose right uh the best champions of the brand are always going to be the founders right you know we are the living breathing consumer of functional mushrooms right um and we live the lifestyle right you know we both wake up early in the morning uh we really want to bring in the day i think kind of having that foundation in the morning really sets you up for everything you know for example you know i try to go to bed as early as possible because the next day starts on how good a night of sleep you have right i think i mentioned i had a bad night of sleep yesterday which is probably why i'm not quite in flow at the moment um but yeah starting your morning with dirty has always been the idea we wanted to create right um and the best way is to lead by example right um and in this day and age with social media you know we get to do that you know create our own personal brands you know be the mouthpiece of a brand i mean if you look at um you know probably the best example is richard branson right you know how many people follow the virgin uh brand account versus the rich branson account right um and he is an inspiration you know not just to entrepreneurs but to you know consumers out there so i think that's a journey we've really wanted to take i think community is fundamental particularly in a world that's becoming even more lonely right um and you know people want to live this healthy lifestyle they want to connect with people that have the same values um dirty is a brand where people believe if they're buying dirty they're buying quality right we have this incredible credibility and trust so anything we create people want to follow you know i've always been of the mind you know if you win people's hearts you get their minds once you get their minds you can take them anywhere right so there's a real opportunity to build community in that respect and i think when you're into those examples of how you've done that like i see videos of your brother at 6am jumping jumping into the certain time and he's fueled by dirty and there he is like freezing cold water he's energized and ready to go like those showing up in person is just such a unique thing that you guys do you've done breathwork classes all the stuff give us a sense of that yeah i mean i guess where it all really starts is a couple of places like when we started this brand we used to gather people around yeah and introduce them to functional mushrooms right and really tell that story and tell that narrative um i think a lot of brands are purely built on digital today with now no real sort of tangible experiences um and you really want to kind of create that emotional connection between you and the brand and everyone around yeah so you know it starts the places where you know my brother you say jumps into the serpent time with the dirty tribe almost every morning in the winter um but then also utilizing these partners you know when we started dirty we wanted to build this aspirational premium lifestyle brand right so we were very selective in who we worked with you know as the the brand went viral and we were gaining thousands of followers every single day you know lots of different retailers and hospitality brands reach out they want to work with us but we were very selective from the beginning you know our first two partners one was Selfridges and another one was Sohouse you know I remember when I met with this the head of Selfridges business of fashion when we when we spoke there he said you know I'd love to stalk you guys and I said I don't just want to sit on shelves you know we have a community we have a relationship with our audience why just sit on the shelves unless we do something that's exciting and interesting and he said like what i said well why don't we create the first ever mushroom bar in selfridges and he said sure bill done while sipping on a dirty martini uh made with lion's mane at the soho farmhouse um and what we really have done there is um we created a platform and arguably the number one retail platform in the world um i think i remember you coming we made sure with all their vip clients we did a breath work um and where we sort of drank different functional mushrooms that will help down regulate the nervous system help with things like breathing you know cordycepsis amazing increasing lung capacity ratio is great for um regulating the nervous system so you connect the product to sort of this holistic kind of activity yeah um so those kind of events and those community elements, you know, in real sort of tangible environments is what really has helped create this emotional connection with the brand.

16:07I mean, I know I was on a shoot the other week and there was three of the crew who were like, I've been drinking dirty for now two years. I was like, that's amazing. I was like, how did you discover it? And it was literally either through our personal Instagrams or these community events. They're like, I didn't go a day without drinking dirty. I think when you really build a brand around community, you almost build this sort of moat. and people will stick by you the whole range, which is really important, right? And what's been the key to success online? Because maybe it's the fact that you've invested so much in building that community in person and in the real world, but online, again, you've actuated a huge audience and fantastic content.

16:47Just last week, you jumped out of a plane with Bear Grylls. You guys put yourself out there to create the content. You mentioned Richard Branson as a kind of inspiration for that. But give a sense of what content works, how you're getting the brand to fly online but also maybe give a sense of those content creative honorships as well those people in the world that people have heard of that you know giving some social proof to the brand giving that credibility yeah absolutely i mean you know when it comes to social media you've really got to understand what's the content that people want right yeah uh you know people tune in because they either want to be educated they want to be informed or they want to be entertained right and they like familiarity right you know if you look at you know go on tiktok you've always got that guy that goes up to you and saying hey what do you do for a living right or like how much you pay for rent in new york can i see your sort of apartment and the the really interesting thing is is there's something that you'd see that guy pop up with the same intro you just want to hear what he's going to say right um and we started that quite early on you know i think our first ever thing we did was my favorite mushroom fact right and this was a way to blow people's mind about this incredible uh kingdom of life right um you know for example we share up to 54 dna with mushrooms that makes you half a mushroom by the way um so you know we try to create these sort of formats that both educate the consumer yeah um whilst also trying to also sort of plug the brand and the product in that process and that's kind of what manifested this huge social media following i mean we've got over 700 000 followers now between tiktok and instagram yeah fantastic um yeah and and d2c and uh retail and i've been uh you mentioned that the partnerships with self-redubators and so house were kind of really pivotal in the early days but you really got to know your audience by investing in direct consumer but increasingly retail is becoming a bigger part of the business can you give a sense how you think about d2c versus a retail in 2024?

18:46Yeah, I mean, I think the landscape's completely changed. I think a single channel focus is no longer the right move, right? It's a lot more expensive to acquire a customer online and through social media. We're not in a pandemic anymore. People aren't sitting behind the computer all day long and doing their shopping and buying things for the home. So the days of just being a DTC business have gone. yeah they've eroded uh however it's a great way to build a brand in the beginning right you know you get that customer data build that email database yeah um and get products out to consumers super quick but that isn't the business that's just really the start um i think what's really good is really building the brand up via d2c on social media so that when you start to see it in stores you're like oh that's the brand i've seen and i've learned about online right Right.

19:39So we were very specific in the beginning when it came to retail of working with sort of partners who were speaking directly to our consumer, but also building it around. I don't think anyone in our space has really built a premium lifestyle brand. I'd say a lot of the brands are out there, what I probably refer to as like growth hacking. Right. Yeah. No real like brand strategy. They'll say anything possible to really sell the product and acquire the customer. they're entirely concerned about like cacks and ltvs which are all important factors but that's all they really think about uh whereas we've really thought about more of a holistic well-rounded sort of omni-channel strategy um you know really following our consumer around you know where they live right you know for example if you're in west london you can go to white city house and get your your dirty coffee you can go and buy it and plan it organic uh you know you can go to a range of different like hotels like the barclay hotel uh you can go to yoga studios uh yeah there's not many places where you won't find us around our sort of community but you know i also look at amazon as well right you know maybe gone are the days where you know if you went on amazon you were considered a low valued brand right uh you know classic azor for example which is one of the best premium tequilas that's the best place to buy people have got used to this whole idea of a prime getting things in it instant getting it next day um you know even things like a cardo right uh you know we have a lot of mothers that are consumers right and really care about their health you know showing up for themselves so they can shop for their families um and they want to be able to throw it in the cart when they're shopping on a cardo um so it's about really being present where the consumer is and it's not just about d2c and given you have that relationship with so many customers over the years give us a sense of the feedback give us a sense of like what you hear from customers and how it's helped them but also how where you've had negative feedback and how you've dealt with that or how you know how you respond in almost real time to any of that feedback you get because i think you know it's always the mark of an entrepreneur yeah i think probably one of the hardest but also combined most exciting times was probably about a year and a half ago uh where we absolutely blew up on social media and we went viral um and we sold out of um i think about three or four of our SKUs by the way this is at the time we only had five SKUs yeah yeah uh which was amazing right uh we had a quite a small team um and suddenly all these people that were buying like our dirty linesman or dirty coffee that were having every single day i think it read on our website that you wouldn't get it for four weeks maybe even five weeks at the time um i think we probably killing maybe about 400 emails a day terrible reviews on trust pilot i mean there's probably about four or five of us in the office at the time really really stressful time um god it's a good problem to have right when you're so much in demand yeah but when people can't get the product particularly when it's a health product you know people have our lines being because they suffer with issues like you know adhd so we got terrible terrible feedback um and from that moment on um you know we managed to recover it i don't think we lost many customers at all we managed to recover it but from that uh time on we've also we've always made the rule like no stock outs yeah ever right you know it's really cool when you've got a sneaker brand and you can do these cool sneaker drops but when you've got this new sort of uh habit and behavior you're trying to create and also people that are depending of their health can't go out of stock um they'll go and find the competition as well yeah i don't think anyone really competes to our quality and brand experience but that might happen yeah how do you think about motivation what keeps you motivated you know you're five years into this journey now the brand's doing fantastic one of the fastest growing in europe you are uh you've really created a whole new category but like what keeps you going you mentioned you want to create lifestyle brand but like how does the vision for the business and how does your own personal appetite uh to continue to grow as an entrepreneur how do they link and how do you think about that what keeps you motivated in the morning when maybe drinking those mushrooms keeps those energies high energy high like what really gets you out of bed in the morning continues to do it even during some of those tough times yeah no it's a great question i think there's a lot that keeps me going um i think first and foremost this brand and this business comes from a very very genuine in place uh my brother and i want to affect change um i think i've seen a lot of people around me who have not looked after themselves yeah um they don't realize that actually what you consume and the way you live your life has direct ramifications the way you feel every day and also can help you to live longer yeah can also prevent illness uh i think a lot of people I grew up with uh you know family members never really understood that and that's been quite hard to deal with uh particularly when you feel it's a loss of control over health yeah I've never wanted to end up like that and that's probably what's motivated me to live this sort of like health orientated lifestyle yeah and probably why a lot of people want to do that now um I think dirty has the chance to really inspire a generation and give them the education and the tools to enable people to really take charge of their health and i see it every single day my dms my emails are full of people who want to share their experience with dirty um and it's both emotional and breathtaking you're like wow this stuff actually works right um and even with kids right you know going through things like adhd or going through things like anxiety i mean I don't know about you but I never heard the word anxiety when we were growing up I think kids are so much more aware of it now because of social media and it's less of a taboo and the fact that we have these natural powerful ingredients you know functional mushrooms are some of the most nutrient dense most powerful most research foods on the planet and within a day of drinking dirty you can see change to these really fundamental things that can help you be happier be more productive every day you know if i'm ever feeling down or a lack of motivation you know i just open up my emails or look at my dms and go like wow we have something serious here you know we've got hundreds of thousands of people now that drink dirty yeah well what if we had like tens of millions or hundreds of millions like wow that that's incredible that's what keeps me going yeah um it's it's a serious serious mission with a serious product um so i'm never ever lacking any motivation yeah well great motivator essentially you're in service of your your customer base and people around the world drinking it let's talk about the role of others in your world and how they've inspired you and the role of mentors i know you surrounded yourself with some fantastic people great investors great advisors um great business partners as well not just your brother but others around you as well um how do you think about the journey of doing this for people that you want to learn from and you want to that will inspire you and then you can um ultimately build something great together like how much is that important to you i mean i'd say it's one of the most uh important aspects of being an entrepreneur um is i mean being an entrepreneur is quite a lonely space right you're on your own most of the time obviously I don't have that with my brother um but most entrepreneurs do right um I think the wisdom of people who've gone out there and done it before uh is immensely valuable and I think my brother and I from a very young age I mean probably since I was in school really sort of put ourselves out there to meet and connect with people we've always been very good at that and as you know we've got a crazy network uh with a lot of um hugely successful people that sit on our cat table for example helped with dirty um i think it's always been quite useful to sit with those with wisdom and experience and talk about issues and problems or ideas and as a sort of a sounding board because ultimately when you're on your own and you don't have someone above you giving you direction you're not always completely sure your instincts are correct yeah so we've had some incredible people that have been there for for us since you know probably the age of 16 um even in like really tough times where we need some serious help and i'll never ever forget that um what does the future hold for you for dirty i think you guys are getting so much momentum right now i love seeing the new appointments i love seeing the partnership with bear grills i know so much more to come but how do you think about the future of dirty and how much do you think about the future for you as an entrepreneur what does that look like yeah i mean we've got off to a great start um dirty is really a way of life right it's a commitment to health it's the best way to start your day right um i think like kellogg's so in the morning with cereal we want to in the morning with um functional foods right yeah functional mushrooms um we've got so many more products we're going to be bringing out um to be honest uh you know we are a globally renowned brand but ultimately we're a london brand right most of our customers and the success we've gained has really been from the uk and and more so london um i mean you know as an investor how well we're doing um taking dirty around the world is really sort of key and it's going to be the biggest focus over the next sort of like 18 months yeah um we're really kind of looking at kind of luxury brands and lifestyle brands and sort of inspiration around doing things like product drops um different retail partnerships uh very cool sort of pop-ups um you know we're not just growth hacker brands like others um so i think what you're going to see from dirty is uh global expansion yeah i think you're going to see some amazing partnerships that will come to life which are going to be groundbreaking you know i look at inspiration from brands not in our sector because i don't think there is stuff inspiring me but i look at brands like loeve and on running and what they're doing you know on running's doing incredible in terms of uh footwear and now athleisure and what they've just done with you know zendaya in fact they did a partnership with the collaboration with loeve uh it's really expanding the reach of the brand right which ultimately helps grow revenue it helps acquire new customers so yeah I'm trying not to give away too much you know obviously we just launched the the gummy brand yeah which has been quite transformative I think people love to make their dirty in the morning but if you're in a rush and you're on the go it's so much easier to sort of pop these gummies I think with the gummies we've also made sure that we've kept to those original values I spoke about in the beginning you know quality zero grams of sugar high sort of potency 3000 milligrams of mushroom but also the experience right they taste great yeah um that's our kind of newest uh milestone in the journey fantastic i can't wait to see what comes next final question andrew if you weren't an entrepreneur if you weren't building dirty what would you be doing probably one of two things i'd probably be a tennis player.

31:20I've learned them to play you a tennis player. Yeah, exactly. Confidence in the way you said that. I know I should never play you a tennis player. That's brilliant. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing the story. I've thought we'd continue to sit there. Thanks so much. Pleasure.