Better Sundays - Tarek Moursi

0:03Hello there and welcome to episode 133 of People Doing Things. Today we're exploring a new kind of middle ground with Tarek Moursi, the founder of Better Sundays, the hard kombucha brand proving that you don't have to choose between a good time and a good gut. We've spent the last decade watching the low and no category take off and while it's great for a Tuesday night, sometimes you still want a drink. You just don't want the beer bloat and sugar laden cider crash that comes with it. Enter the healthy hedonist, reflecting on the cultural shift that's happening where drinks are moving from the all-or-nothing mentality and looking for what Tarek calls sessionable alternatives that fit a more modern lifestyle.

0:42This is a category on fire. While the general UK kombucha market is growing at a healthy clip, the hard kombucha segment is projected to rocket a staggering kaga of 18.7 % through to 2033. people are waking up to the fact that you can have your live cultures and your 3 % ABV too now Tarek didn't come from a drinks background he spent his 20s in the high pressure worlds of fintech and asset management making 200 calls a day and leaving jobs before he was asked to better Sundays was worn out of a personal need traditional booze was making him feel gross and the alternatives weren't hitting the market either from brewing in his kitchen to a 50 store waitress launched this November, Tarek has built Better Sundays with a brutal speed that most founders can only dream of.

1:30In this episode we delve into the bloody awful reality of bootstrapping, why being an industry outsider is actually a superpower and the 3am cash flow worries that come with an opportunity that's outstripping your balance sheet. Pop a can, enjoy the cultures and listen up. Hey Tarek, how's it going? Yeah good thanks, how are you doing? Good, great to have you on people doing things. Good to be here. I thought we could start by jumping into the origin story. How did you come up with the idea for Better Sundays? Was there a eureka moment or was it a sort of series of moments, series of insights, series of ponderings?

2:11Tarek Moursi:I think it was a series of eureka moments. I spent my 20s working pretty hard but also partying equally as hard and sort of burning the candles at both ends. I was actually like reminded of something earlier this week that there was one particular job that I had where I had a boss who loved to go out at five o 'clock, like, but then go back to the office afterwards. And I was really pushing it at both ends. And I got home and I sort of thought I was having a heart attack and my wife just sort of laughed at me and kicked me to the bedroom. And so going there, and I went to the hospital and he said, do you drink a lot?

2:45Tarek Moursi:Do you have a stressful job? Do you not exercise? and I was like yes all of those he literally said I think it was esophageal spasms he said I was having gave me some morphine sent me home and at that point I started to look after all the other parts of my life I started to exercise I signed up for a marathon I started to read the pack of ingredients and see what I was putting into my body lost the weight that I'd gained through those early 20s and mid 20s but the one thing that I kept doing was I kept tripping off on on alcohol and I sort of went through this journey where I drink beer and then I got such bad acid reflux I stopped drinking beer and I went to cider and then it was so like cloying and saccharine and furry exactly I felt like my teeth were falling off by the end of the night and then I started drinking just like vodka sodas and I was like blathered by 10 p.m and there's nothing out there that sort of fit those other two lifestyle shifts that I've had whilst also continuing to want to drink and I sort of went and had a search around what was in the market and I think there was some like mid-strength spirits there was some lower strength beers but there was nothing that sort of fit that sessionable ability and it had that mid-strength and there was no nasties in it as well so I sort of looked to the markets that tend to be ahead of us and saw that in the US and in Oz there was this sort of explosion of hard kombuchas and I was already quite a big fan of kombucha i'd already sort of made that journey into functional and those types of drinks so i was i was already mentally there on that side and i saw there was nothing here and that's really where the first idea came from and then i i started brewing it in my kitchen really yeah started brewing it in my kitchen i bought a scoby online it's like this looks like an alien i've still got it in my fridge at home and the funny thing about scoby is every time you brew it it makes another one yeah yeah yeah they look gross and that's like the icon because there was that now huge at home kombucha trend where everyone was having a crack yeah and buying scoobies online exactly and i did that and then i started playing around and bringing up the abv and playing around with that lots of like explosions lots of mishaps lots of iterations yeah we were like that remember the first one i did i went to my mate's house and i was like oh i've done it like i've done this thing that i wanted to do and i took the lid off and just straight through this guy and i was like oh maybe we need to go back to drawing board but I guess that was like the genesis of it and the real need for it from my side.

5:11How did you start exploring things from like a taste perspective what was the sweet spot you were looking for because I've had quite a few kombuchas and they can really range from something that's like quite delicious and got a range of flavors to it and and stuff that's like quite acidic and a bit farmyardy yeah i would say like it's a real

5:34Tarek Moursi:spectrum you've got like you said the ones that literally taste like they're made on the farm and you can get the hay in your mouth and then you've got this other genesis of kombuchas which are sort of basically a seltzer and there's really nothing to them and we wanted to sit somewhere in the middle and i was really obsessive of sitting in the middle because i wanted the body and a bit of the funk of that initial one and I think body something that I always talk about like mouthfeel and body and and how it is in your mouth because we're not a seltzer and we don't want to be a seltzer there was lots of iterations and I think that came in the development process when we moved from the kitchen to the lab through working with liquid developers that was where a lot of the iterations came from and and that's why ultimately we changed things quite a lot in those early days We didn't have long to do it, but we did change things.

6:25Tarek Moursi:Funnily enough, for me, it's always been less about flavour and more about mouthfeel. And when you drink it, is it satiating? Those are the key things that I was focused on. I felt like the flavour could come after that, as long as you get that initial... I've struggled to find a word to describe exactly what it is, but that it has to feel satisfying in your mouth. If not, you don't want more of it. We always get a lot of comments that ours is really more-ish. yeah i mean we spoke about this last time but i think the three percent abv is really interesting and definitely seems to be where a lot of the market's trying to innovate around because they want something that is sessionable they want something that's kind of sweeter for you know younger palettes and you very kindly sent me some a few weeks ago and they're really delicious they're very moorish you feel a little bit relaxed but you definitely don't feel like pissed i think if you have two or three pints you're like you know that can that's you know we were saying it last time that can quickly lead to a full night out right and and hung over the next day but if you have a couple of better sundays you're definitely not feeling it how did you land on three percent why do you think it's important and then i want to talk about where the alcohol comes from yeah so we had a lot of pushback on three percent a lot of people said it's a nothing here it's you sit in this middle land and no one gets it you know i think no one low is really established now you know there's so many interesting opportunities there and then you had this what people you know four and a half percent above for lagers i did a lot of tweaking on it i did a lot of of thinking on it and we tried different variations we went up to 3.4 percent which puts us I guess at what you'd call like a session nail or something like that which is I guess more of a mental makes sense but I it just like coming back to what you said I kept going to this point of I want to be able to have these during the day and make the decision if I go out or not yeah and that felt like a nice percentage to land on I think if you start to creep into twos you do really feel like a nothing and if you creep up beyond the three 3.3 3.4 then you just feel like you're having a light beer exactly so it felt good as in we did a lot of drinking on it and i think from a positioning standpoint there's a real story and message behind it as well and a differentiation piece what's the story aspect of it i mean great if you were three percent and had three ingredients that would that that would be really interesting i think the story is that if as soon as you creep up into 3.4 and we had this early on well people say we're not mid-strength you just you're lumped in with the with the normal category yeah it's not differentiating enough exactly and even in the nine months we've been in market I remember like I pitched a like a low no and mid specialist early doors and at the time I've seen this particular place they now do a lot more on mid strength but they were already trying to lump us in with full strength and I think that's where the differentiation piece came in because like there is a clear differentiator between three and three and a half percent in how it makes you feel but yeah we had a lot of pushback on it we really did have a lot of pushback i guess that comes back to this discussion are you and i've spent a lot of time on it working with quarter proof yeah and they really hit part of this strategy work i did with them kind of coincided with the sort of mid-strength moment and that feeling like a thing my thought around it was always that's coming from a place where someone is wanting to drink less whereas actually what you've done is lean into sessionability which is a different occasion yeah i think as well what was really interesting is i try not spend too much time talking about the abv i try to make it as simple as possible for the consumer and i think i feel like industry heads like talking about abv but actually consumers they don't really care yeah i mean like we've just gone on tap in a place today we didn't talk about abv once we talk about it being lighter that was it and realistically it's a more fun conversation it's a much more conversation and we're not really like rewriting things like three percent beers or you know midi baby shams whatever it is have been around for a long time yeah um i think we sometimes have this habit of speaking in like buyer talk or speaking in brand talk and actually if you just simplify it it's like i want something that i can drink all day i want something that tastes good i want something that's refreshing that doesn't make me feel gross afterwards.

10:59Tarek Moursi:And if you communicate that to the consumer, if you get your barman that you're working with to communicate that as well, and they buy into it, and there's a wider moment around it, I think it's a really compelling piece. Where does the alcohol come from? Because I think there's a misconception with seltzers that it's a spirit and a soda, which is not the case. Whereas is your alcohol coming from things in a similar way to seltzers? So there's two broad ways that you can make hard kombucha one is where you naturally ferment it so you make the kombucha and then you why at home initially was you introduce the champagne yeast and then it becomes a very different thing to what a kombucha tastes like it tastes more like a champagne or a wine is the flavor profile that you end on the way that we do it and what we ended up on was introducing a neutral grain spirit because I loved that initial taste interesting exactly so I love the taste of kombucha i found that when we introduced a champagne yeast and took it a bit more of a sparkling wine and i think for the market that we're exactly in the market that we're going after you know the flavor profile fits better with the neutral grain spirit because that brings up the abv but you keep that initial flavor profile that we wanted basically oh interesting is that the same as some of the hard kombuchas you came across in the states and oz or was that different way of making it there was a couple uh i can't remember the names actually but a lot of them in the states do use like a natural fermentation process yeah the us is also made for it in the sense that they have a bit much better cold chain logistics yeah um network yeah so most of them out there were did use that natural fermentation process but i just found it took us too far away from what i went to build which was like i remember like one of the first ones that i tried i was like that wasn't what i was expecting yeah and it migrated too far from what i was trying to build yeah you've obviously got hard kombucha that feels like a really innovative category where do you think it really fits like where do you think it's like born to be and why is it important now i sometimes battle with this because i think there's this it can really sit in high-end spaces it can sit in nice restaurants and it can sit like that and there is a space for it there but the how can I word it like the delivery method matters so much and the delivery method that we've chosen lean closer to what we've gone after which is I think beer gardens fun pubs picnics home drinking table and that's where I think everything's moving now I think people don't want to go out and feel something feel stuffy they want to go and have fun they want to go to an environment they're comfortable in and I think it really lends to that yeah I think there's so much more at home drinking my drinking habits are pretty much pub back to someone's house or dinner at someone's house and i think people are much more comfortable in those spaces yeah i kind of wanted it to feel lived in already if that makes sense and i feel kind of feel like it is a brand that does feel lived in and so those are like the markets we've gone after a lot of home drinking and a lot of casual pub beer garden that's the exact occasions that we want to own you know you've got so many beer brands now non-alc beer brands, fruity ciders, they're all kind of competing against each other for a spot on a lineup, whereas there aren't that many, if any, hard kombuchas, which is why I think it's quite exciting, especially for a younger generation who kind of see it as fun, exciting, they know kombucha, they're aware of the benefits, and they're going to be curious to try it, and I think once they try it they're then gonna enjoy it and drink it more what was the inspiration for some of the flavors obviously yuzu's like absolutely going mental at the moment yeah the original flavor that we did was a pomegranate hibiscus another classic another classic but i've always been obsessed with hibiscus so i was born in egypt yeah i'm part egyptian my family still lives over there and we have this drink over there called it's called kakadeh and it's like this sugary like hibiscus almost like drink it it's so so good so i've always like leaned into hibiscus and loved hibiscus and that was where that flavor originally came out of and there was lots of iteration on that and different types of hibiscus and different flavorings so that was what that one was born after and then the next one so the ginger and yuzu was a lot of what was in stock because that was the one that we developed in the space for about 10 days yeah so that one was more of an impulse decision but yuzu is everywhere everyone's buying into ginger beers and all that so it was an easy decision to make and then once you try that flavoring on the yuzu it's i think that's what gives it that like real moorish taste and that's how we sort of landed on that one and i also wanted to delve into like it sounds from your journey there's been a lot of like crazy sprints whether it's been in development or you know creating the brand in three weeks how come they've been so crazy and do you enjoy it or do you sometimes feel like it's you know you're rushing things i think when i decided that i was going to start this business when i do something i have to go full-time i knew i couldn't do it alongside something else and then because we're bootstrapping i knew that we had a window to get everything done in so that's probably why I've moved on things quite quickly like and why we moved from ideation to going to market so quickly is because I really felt like if we don't do this now we're going to be playing catch up and I think I stay true to my gut on that I think we made the right decision on that I'm also a big pressure person I need to be under pressure to deliver need a deadline I need a deadline absolutely that's how I made it through my life I wrote my dissertation in 24 hours.

16:51Tarek Moursi:It's like, that should give you a snapshot into what I did. And I was diagnosed with ADHD like three years ago. And it was like, oh, it all makes sense now. It's all clicking into place. I make a lot of decisions based on gut. And I'm not afraid to change things. A large part of that is because of my background and what I did in my career. I worked in like a lot of quite cutthroat environments where one place I worked, this guy came in who was sacked by Thursday and literally said to him she's a bit weird and I mean let's not go that far but I think you know it's this idea if something's not working don't be wed to it don't be afraid to pull from it and I think that's the same instance and if you have to do something in a short period of time like trust your gut move quick on things because I think sometimes you can spend too much time on things and there's a real danger of that and if I spend too much time on something I'll start to spiral start to get into this analysis paralysis then you start asking everyone for feedback and before you know it you're ideating on this same thing for so long maybe i'd like to find somewhere in between yeah but i mean a lot of it which literally was just by necessity as in that was a time frame that we had yeah to get things turned around was it hard to make the drink was it difficult to do the brand what were those processes like well they worked in tandem okay um i don't have a branding background right but i feel like maybe i have an idea of what looks fun and what looks cool and i had a real clear idea of what we wanted like i said i worked with like a freelancer early on on the initial brand and we spun it around pretty quickly it was a lot of like back and forth which i think is important for me i need to be able to bounce off someone and i feel like we kind of got to a place pretty quickly that i was comfortable with and then it was just a matter of iterations and getting everything in place yeah um making the drink the first time around and this is something to be said about the drinks industry is depending on who you develop your liquid with depends on what experience we have and that's typically broken down by how much you pay and who you find and how bought in they are there is an industry out there of churning out drinks there's some liquid developers that you work with that are doing hundreds of drinks a year literally it's essentially a white label solution you want to do another another functional soda do you literally literally i mean it's Literally like that.

19:10Tarek Moursi:And you go in there. And I remember when we did ours, our initial development. You see. We got that. We went with, I think at the time we had budget for one flavor. Yeah. And at the time, there was like different ways that you could look at it. And they asked, like, we had to get it in one shot. Yeah. One day, my wife took the day off work. Yeah. We jumped in the car. We drove down there. I remember like, I was so naive. I was so naive. I remember him asking me like, what carbohydrate do you want to use? And I said, what do you mean? What do you mean what carbohydrate? I couldn't understand what he meant like what sugar did you want like I couldn't get my head around it I was so naive I was like well I've done this thing in my kitchen I think it's a good idea I've spoken to a few people what carbohydrate do you think that's what I said yeah I said what would you suggest he was like I'm open that's your job but you kind of get there and from the moment you get there you're really conscious that I've got like four hours before I'm leaving here with what I paid for.

20:07Tarek Moursi:Like you say, like I sort of went in naive and I knew what I wanted to do. And then very quickly, I was like, this isn't what I want. So I was like, can I step away? We drove to Waitrose. I bought like all the kombucha in there. And I was like, okay, let's try to play around and actually try and communicate exactly what it is that I'm looking for. And then we left from that experience and I still wasn't happy with it. And that's what sort of led us to keep tinkering from there. The way I see product development, and especially on drinks that I don't feel like I'm done with it and I don't think I ever will be done with it there'll always be iterations as long as you're not ripping up and rewriting and losing a customer base there's always more that you can get out of the liquid so yeah they're both quite challenging you've obviously worn quite a lot of different hats from a career perspective and you now wear lots of different hats as a kind of solo founder what are some of the experiences that you had in the past and which ones do you think add the most value to what you're doing now you're right I did wear lots of hats especially early on like I fully kept moving career quite a lot so from that I pulled a lot of being able to constantly adapt to who I'm in front of which I think you have to do as a founder like you're moving from talking to an accountant to talking to an investor to a buyer and being able to change how you are and mirror them and work from that so I think that's one thing.

21:30Tarek Moursi:But I think the most important thing that I've carried through my career, and which is why I'm so glad I did what I did, was I was always in sales, apart from the first couple of years, always in sales. And for the most part of it, pretty punchy environments. I've done a lot of cold calling. I've done a lot of, yeah. You said you did 200 a day at one point. I remember there was one job I was getting towards the end of like, there was hints that maybe I wasn't going to last in this job. and I did 215 calls and booked a meeting on the final call that I'd done. When you work in sales environments, everything's very transactional.

22:08Imagine you build up quite a thick skin as well.

22:10Tarek Moursi:A hundred percent. And it's so translatable into being a founder because anything that you're doing, you're selling. Whoever you're talking to as a founder, you're selling. Whether it's an agency that you want to work with because they know that you might not have huge budgets and you're trying to sell them on the project or a buyer or a bar manager. and I think that's the the main thing that I've taken from that from my career into this is nothing's going to come to you you have to go out there and hunt for it I do that in every aspect of the business especially on like winning new clients the first first three months like four days a week I was running around London like a madman with a backpack full of beers but yeah that's the biggest thing so you always have to be selling always do you have any sort of like tips or tricks from what you've learned so far yeah for sure when i was used to a lot of cold calling it was always pitch and die so as soon as you're pitching you're dead yeah you want to find a problem you want to find a problem with what the your the prospects having you want to dig into that problem and then you want to make them realize that the solution that you have is so obvious why wouldn't they work with you yeah and i think so many people go in and just say i'm doing this and this is so cool and blah blah blah and actually a lot of like the wins that i've had so far is by asking a buyer, can you give me some advice?

23:27Tarek Moursi:Are you exploring this? Are you seeing that these trends are applying? And that's how they've, that's opened the conversation for me. I think people are so inundated now with whether it's cold calls, LinkedIn emails, or automated email sequences. There's so much noise out there that actually just being human is the most important thing. Actually, I'd say that's the biggest piece of advice. Don't sell. After I've just said that sales is the most important thing, I'm not telling you not sell. But I think we had a really good piece of advice from one of our angels for the agency. He was saying asking for advice is one of the best ways to start having a conversation because people want to lend your expertise and they become kind of a bit more open to it and it's not like i've got five or six different people reaching out today trying to sell you something on linkedin and you're just like the only one that i looked at was the most human one and it was like by the way here's some of my work yeah love what you're doing and that was like the one you clicked on But all the other ones where you're like, everything about you screams that you've like automated the fuck out of this.

24:45And it's, you know, even some of the comments in like LinkedIn posts just feel so mechanical to the point that no one would ever write them. It's so see-through. Like, who gets back to you on this? Because if I actually said, you know what? I would love to chat to you about how you can deliver me 30x. Numbers game, though.

25:09Tarek Moursi:They're playing a numbers game. I know, yeah. But then, like, would anyone convert on that? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I've worked with some salespeople that you're like, God, how are you still here? Like, how have you done this? But then on the other hand, I worked with salespeople that I was like, how can I do what you're doing? We used to do a lot of pitch practice before we'd start speaking to clients and getting out there. And they just kept saying to me, I remember at one point I was doing this practice and he just kept saying, would you say that to me in the pub? No, so why are you saying it to me now?

25:40Tarek Moursi:Why all of a sudden there's a client or there's someone that you start to speak like a robot? So there is this human element to it of the more human you are, the more people are receptive to you. But I think also how many times have you typed into Claudio ChatGVT, like be more human be more yeah it's funny isn't it that we keep trying to make ourselves more human it's yeah and if we were to role play it how would you do it to a pub or a consumer like what are the type of questions that you would be curious to ask them i've got my anxiety i felt like i was back in pitch practice back in the sales job i think with pubs and bars you have to get them on a human level straight away you have to make them feel like they're not being pitched to instantly and if they get pitched to all the time not just that like they're really busy people it's quite a manual job like they're they're stomping around a pub all day or the whatever it is usually you're walking in around service starting time or there is something going on at that point and they don't definitely don't want to talk to you so don't start talking about your products unless they're listening they're so pointless i've i've had so many people do it where they just say can i have five minutes of time the guy's not listening and they're talking at them he takes products it goes in the fridge they never see him again so make sure they're they're listening and if you can like the public we just won i did lock in with the with the until like two o 'clock in the morning yeah but it was good fun yeah but also you know you you you start to build relationships like that and i think a lot of these it's the on trade as well it's a very relationship game and when i started and even now you feel like you're on the outside looking in because I didn't know the industry.

27:19Tarek Moursi:So you kind of have to break those walls down and make people human. And then with the buyer, it's about, let's say with retail, they're very calendar driven people, right? They have windows at which you can go into things. I'm still figuring this out. I mean, I didn't know this nine months ago. I was like, why can't I be stocked in Waitrose in December this year? It doesn't make sense. But you sort of have to understand how they work and I'm still trying to figure that out now yeah where have been the bits where outlier advantage has been beneficial and where like a naivety has really screwed you over I think maybe the pace that we've done things because I'm on a clock because I'm bootstrapping first of all we have to move quickly but because also like I want to go out and win the business as opposed to I think a lot of brands sort of think they'll build and then they'll do bits and pieces and buyers come to them i was always so jealous of those people like what do you mean the buyer came to you um yeah they sort of build it and they will come philosophy exactly that's where it probably played into my strength is that i went out i hunted we found opportunities that maybe would have taken us a bit longer to do where were mishaps there's so many mishaps there's honestly so many mishaps that i can talk about i'm trying to think about like what one is what one can There's so many operational mishaps.

28:38Tarek Moursi:There's early doors. I had no idea what I was doing. And I was just like pitching with nothing. We had no budget for nice boxes. We were trying to talk to like high-end places. Remember I got an in to Otolenghi, which is like my dream client. I always wanted to get into Otolenghi. And I managed to get an in through my wife's old housemate's uni friend commented. And I remember like waiting to the point. And I was like, okay, perfect. Now's the time to do it. And I was such an idiot that I sent two cans in a box with tape from the post office, like the green tape. And I remember she sent me this, it was friendly because she was a friend of a friend, she sent me this long thing back.

29:22Tarek Moursi:And it was like, hey, if you're pitching someone like us, just be mindful how it arrives. Also, you sent us two cans. How do you think we're going to make a decision with that? and it's like so many small things like that early on that because I was so transactional so like rushing to get rushing exactly that rather than build the relationship 100 % and a bit of patience and a bit of thinking and and working through things probably would have would have helped me in that space yeah that's really interesting one of the things that we spoke about in our last conversation was this dichotomy between bootstrapping and then needing money to put behind good ideas where do you think bootstrapping is good and then at what level do you think okay actually we need to take the step up since we've actually been thinking a lot about this because i actually have i took time to step back and think okay maybe bootstrapping isn't all as awful as I made it sound.

30:24Tarek Moursi:But it puts you in positions where you have to learn things, first of all. It would be so much easier if I could have just brought in a fractional CFO who just ran all of our numbers and did everything like that for me. Or if when I wanted to do those fancy send outs early on, I could just go and pay and do it. But it forces you to learn new things and to really think about how you deploy the small amounts of capital that you do. I think it also, So it protects you in a certain sense of there's a lot of people out there that are willing to help you. And if I had the money, would I have onboarded these advisors and all of these things that probably wouldn't have turned the needle?

31:03Tarek Moursi:To a certain extent, as an early stage consumer founder, people want to see a founder. They don't want to see a team of advisors or brokers that sit around you. They want to know that you're doing this and that you've got skin in the game. So I think that's where it's super beneficial. I think where it's difficult is I think consumer beverage is inherently expensive. It's not a business whereby, I mean, some people can, and I'm sure there's ways you can scale over a longer period of time. But opportunities cost. Every new opportunity that we have comes with a big cost. You know, distributor, they want listing fees.

31:40Tarek Moursi:They want sales fees. if you get a new retail listing, marketing fees, positioning fees, listing fees, the list goes on, even on the on-trades, glassware, tap lend, it all adds up, right? And I now find myself losing sleep over trying to really, really understand what turns the needle and what doesn't turn the needle. And I think we're missing some things because of it. There's also just like the absolute cash flow stress that you have about how you're going to make things work and the moment I stop thinking a year ahead is the moment of you might as well stop the business like if you don't sign that office lease for a year if you don't do those things I think it's dangerous because you're already sort of thinking of your demise but when you do those things you know it all adds up and it's really stressful like every night before I go to bed it's the last thing in my mind I now listen to every variation of podcasts so i'm now on to one about vikings that is really helping me sleep sounds good it's brilliant what's it what is it called real vikings it's a spin-off of real dictators okay which got me through the first yeah um yeah i think that from some of my experience with the honey project in the early days a lot of people are trying to sell you things a market store a food for a bit of press in a magazine people are trying to pitch you to work on your content or or your brand like me you know there's lots of people that want something for you at that time you don't really have the money and unless it's conscious and strategic and it's being mapped off I kind of feel like you're just firing a pea shooter into thin air yeah you know you do it and then you look at it and you go well that hasn't done anything that was a waste of time yeah but it's because it's not none of it's stacked with anything else so like obviously it's just going to be firing a pea shooter in the air 100 you're basically doing these things in isolation there's a really good book that i've been reading by ag lafly who was the png founder and took it to like 100 billion or whatever it was he was saying strategy is simple it's working out like where to play and how to win i think it's really a useful like heuristic tool for people starting out because often it's like tommy gun just try everything do it shit and like just spray everything at the wall and see what sticks the problem with that is you never do anything well in there your resources are limited you don't have the money to pay for anything if you do 10 things poorly then it's not really a fair test yeah if you're completely honest it's better i think to go okay where do we have the best chance of winning which arena is that let's focus our like energy there become experts in a channel for example and build up some relationships so that that can keep running and then gradually move on to other places because otherwise it's just a bunch of crap i agree with you and it's something that i've tussled with quite a lot because i think in drinks you sort of i guess it's broadly broken into like d2c like on trade and off trade so like you retail and then you're at your pubs bars that sort of stuff and you sort of feel like you always have to be doing it all and you have to be capturing people everywhere they are.

35:24Tarek Moursi:And I found myself so many times being like, oh, we're doing really well in this channel. But oh, I need this channel because they feed into each other. And that's how we get to the end goal. It's really tricky as a founder, I think that you get so much information that's fed down to you, especially someone who's so green, like who didn't really understand how it worked before I came in. And if you look at our initial like go to market strategy, it's like we're doing everything all the time for everyone with no money and especially in beverage there is this feeling that you need both of them to move along at the same pace because they sort of feed each other I think there's what do they say like retails for volume on trades for discovery and I think that's something that I'm still battling with like if I'm having success in one channel do I just double down or do we need these two to feed into each other yeah and I'm still figuring out to be honest I think from a sales perspective you probably do need to keep both of them spinning at the similar time to get enough evidence to know like where is this really working yeah you've also got to think like how are you going to get the thing that does move the dial the big sale but then the problem is like how do you do you have enough marketing budget to support that because the worst thing is to go in not have enough marketing spend to drive demand and then get delisted and then you're fucked exactly and I think sometimes you like you trick yourself you're like no no we are interesting enough that if we're on shelf people are going to buy it it's like no they won't yeah they won't doesn't matter how green the can is people are going to walk past it and you need that awareness around that yeah um I still think the um you know the lucky saint tastemaker strategy yeah I mean it was well timed and and uh what's it seed lip did something very similar but they picked they were like who were the coolest places yeah for lucky saying it was people like coolest restaurants like getting into like honest burger at the time was like creme de la creme amongst others for seed lip it was sort of getting to high-end hotels but once you got you'd have to spend quite a lot of time and effort probably you know lock-ins a lot of plenty of them yeah to get in to become friendly with a tastemaker once you're in there you know other people would see it and then you could name drop and social proof and that would then like grow that and make it a lot easier so it was like spend a hard bit of time getting into the sexy space that will make that job easier and once that's growing then lucky saying was okay we can we're now sort of cool enough that we can start exploring the other channels i think there's a sales strategy that probably does have to be like integrated at some level for sure but picking lanes within that i think is important i think final question like what are you most excited about for the future of better sundays what gets you out of bed and and you're really looking forward to as we go into like the rest of summer and the rest of the year so we've just made the pivot to going on draft i've actually just done today like done training with a pub that we're launching into um and that whole side of the business is something that really really excites me this it's a different type of sale it's you can really touch and feel the clients you work with i was like incentivizing the bar staff today and i think that's what's really exciting we get to shape and own these like third spaces and a big part of our of our business is around getting people to connect and getting people back into third spaces getting people out there that's something that really really really excites me yeah um and then beyond that different formats that we're going to launch into i we really want to own this better for you category yeah hard kombucha is what we're launching with we have so many things that sit outside of that um that we we're really excited to launch amazing well hopefully it'll be uh sunny this summer lots of people will be drinking hard kombucha and um we might even do all right in the world car that would be very very nice i pray for some yeah pray for some amazing well thanks so much for coming on people doing things it was a pleasure thanks for having me that was tarik morsey founder of better sundays on people doing things as always i've been your host ed little and if you are feeling particularly generous of spirit reviews go a long way to helping this podcast grow so please head over to spotify or apple and leave one people doing things on a mission to celebrate and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow