How DIRTEA Went Viral: Community, Content and Culture with Andrew Salter

0:00I learned quite early on by way of a lot of the entrepreneurs and brands that I was inspired by that the ones that were successful weren't just selling a product, but they were building brands by creating movements, leveraging culture. As an entrepreneur, you're a storyteller, right? And you've got to convince investors, partners, you've got to convince the consumer that you are the next bigger thing and you have to convince people to believe in it. I honestly believe that from the outset. Did I think that it would get traction as quick as it did? It was really off the bat. I was shocked and I was surprised.

0:37Andrew Salter, a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur and one of the creative minds behind Dirty, the functional mushroom brand making waves in the wellness space. It was the summer of 2020 when Dirty was in development, but to use your phrase, screw it. I want to go 100 % into Dirty. This is our mission. This is what I care about. And we did it. And I'm so happy we made that decision. I'd love to know where were you both mentally and emotionally when you and your brother decided to launch Dirty, what was the screw it, just do it moment? Yeah, I guess it was a really interesting time. It was 2020. So in the heart of the pandemic, at that point, we had a venture studio and we were working across eight different brands that we had incubated and taken into market.

1:23And a higher percentage of those brands got immensely disrupted by obviously all the conditions that were going on. And I kind of started to realize that a lot of stuff was out of my control. We were fundamental to the growth of these portfolio brands. We had minority stakes in them, but we didn't own any of these businesses. We didn't control the decisions at the end of the day. They weren't our babies. They were just exciting ventures to be involved in. I think the pandemic was a shock for a lot of people uh it was hugely disruptive um and some people use that as their advantage um and as an opportunity and we did that um and i think it was the summer of uh 2020 when dirty was in development uh but to use your phrase screw it i was like i want 100 i want to go 100 into dirty um this is our mission this is what i care about this is our purpose this is our life's work um and we did it and i'm so happy we made that decision i bet you are and as you say this now is your baby um and you you came from the creative services what was the initially maybe like the biggest fear into jumping into a into a consumer product um i from i biggest fit it's interesting it's interesting you say fear because i have so much confidence when it comes to consumer brands just because i feel that that is my my passion but also my expertise I really understand the consumer and I can always see where consumer market is going which is probably why Dirty's been you know a leader in the UK market why we've been so innovative why the brand and the marketing is often like rewarded or recognized so in terms of fear I think you know I try not to have too much fear in regards to these types of things but I'd say that like being an ultra player is quite fearful because you're putting your entire reputation on the line um you're putting money on the line you're putting time on the line you know i don't know what the statistics are you probably know better than me helix but i think most uh startups do fail um and they are extremely risky uh no matter your experience um we're obviously right the other side of that now um so fear of failure is obviously something that's always going to exist but I have an insane amount of belief in the decisions we make uh and and the strategy and vision we follow I prefer that the the belief and the confidence versus the fear side of things I don't think we should have too much too much fear in our lives um but did you ever think that this is this is too niche we're too early or were you rewarded relatively early on with um with confidence from the market from the consumer yeah it's a great question I mean I've always seen working with niche categories products as our strength.

4:19My brother and I are kind of known for our ability to take something niche and make it mainstream. Typically, that's through culture, brand building and marketing. I could see where the market was going. The pandemic was an accelerator of something that was already in existence. And that is people were more connected and in touch with their health. I think when I was growing up the way that I was raised is you only give attention to your health when there is a chronic symptom and the the point of reference is always that GP that doctor and they have a little book that they go into and they prescribe you with some kind of medication usually it's antibiotics and I've always looked at things in a very difficult different way you know I've always wanted to be in front of health sort of like truly taking control yeah so I never I saw niche as an advantage because I saw where the market was going and I felt like we were a first mover.

5:16I guess there was like proof of concept because there were brands already in existence. One particular brand, you know, back then had probably been going for almost 10 years and they were doing serious money and they proved the mark, they proven the market what they got wrong as well as some other competitors in the marketplace. They weren't product obsessed. um you know as you probably know i love marketing i love brand building it's what i know best but that means nothing unless you have a great product um a lot of our competitors have proven particularly in the u.s that there and a lot of wellness brands that there is massive appetite for things like this now um and what i call that as an acquisition market people will buy your products but will they come back is another thing.

6:06And we've always been about building that ritual. So I think in answer to your question is like niche was an advantage for us because it allowed us to move quickly on something that was proven that there was a market there. And we've got the, we had the foresight where the market was going. And also we have the expertise of knowing how to take something niche and make it mainstream. And we've done that like eight times over. That is where we shine. And given your experience and your confidence, how did you go about getting that first wave of customers, getting people kind of turned on to the product?

6:43Was it brand? Was it distribution? Or was it storytelling? Or maybe, I don't know, a combination of all of those that made things just click in the mind of the consumer? I think the consumer was ready for a product like this, which is a really important thing. Timing was key. um culture was ready uh for us um most people had never heard of functional mushrooms which is at the heart of our products um mushrooms at that time and still to this day just not as bad uh was surrounded with misconceptions uh when you talk about consuming mushrooms people think that you're either going to get them high uh or they have an issue with the taste because mushrooms are polarizing you either love them or you hate them so we had these immediate barriers that existed so for us education was key and leveraging content to get that information across was fundamental so we kind of leveraged social media and content to kind of build awareness around what functional mushrooms are because the more you learn about functional mushrooms the more you realize you need them in your life.

7:54And that's kind of sort of how we started. You know, obviously, growth, marketing and things like that are essential today. And you can reach so many people. It's becoming very expensive now. So brand building is essential. And that means like showing up in person, events, pop ups, strategic partnerships. And when we've really done it all. And we were doing that quite early on as well, really building ourselves as a lifestyle brand, showing up in places people wouldn't expect a wellness brand as well um you know you expect to find a wellness brand at you know a grocery uh place like you know whole foods or planet organic um you know we were in unfamiliar locations because the way we positioned the brand you know our first partner was selfridges um but we had to be disruptive so we did the world's first mushroom bar uh which uh simon and i were at every single day for a month working at selfridges were you wow yeah meeting self-reduce consumers i think self-reduce is such a cool you know uh sort of like platform for retail right and you can be edgy you can be cool you can be creative and you're amongst the best right you know we were fortunate enough to be at the entrance we were around like louis vuitton loeve gucci and then there was this dirty bar in the middle so it was like in a sense out of place but we had we were very design focused um as as a brand so like we kind of built it as a sort of luxury product that it wouldn't look out of place at a place like selfridges but also kind of elevating the aesthetics of the kitchen as well um so that's kind of really how we started the brand which is like education because the misconception um we are an authority in the marketplace because of how much we know about the space and mycology we're backed by mycologists as well which are um biologists that study mushrooms um showing up in person having a design-led brand being lifestyle orientated um those are all the key things that we started with yeah and i think you've answered my next question which was you know functional mushrooms it could be crowded space could be misunderstood how did you educate the market without losing cool but i think the selfridges story clearly ticks that box.

10:12But when did you think in those early stages that you were onto something that you literally like, you know, holy shit, this could really be something? Yeah. Honestly, I believe that from the beginning, because I think as an entrepreneur, you're a storyteller, right? And you've got to convince investors, you've got to convince partners, you've got to convince the consumer that you are the next bigger thing and you have to convince people to believe in it. I honestly believe that from the outset. Did I think that it would get traction as quick as it did? It was really off the bat. I was shocked and I was surprised.

10:54I think a lot of, you know, some people may protest the idea that they had a very specific plan in place. We did that, but we also test and we learned so much very quickly. I think probably a key moment for me, I don't know why I'm using Selfridges as a reference. Again, they're getting a lot of airtime, but we did that bar 12 months into the brand. And when we did that, I think this is just like a really good way of understanding culturally where the brand was at. And I think half a million people either walked past or came to that bar in the space of 30 days, 99 % of people hadn't heard of the brand, hadn't heard of Functional Mushrooms, and they wanted to understand how we were selling drugs in Selfridges, which was really interesting.

11:44It was really successful, though, as an activation. That, by the way, now every single luxury brand, including Loewe, is now doing bars at the front of Selfridges. But three months later, in July of 2022, two, Selfridges actually invited us back to do the activation again for a sleep and sex corner shop pop-up they were doing. So we came back and we did it and all our products were around sex and sleep. And I remember I wasn't in Selfridges every day for that activation, but I would pop in. The first time I popped in, I said, how's it doing? And again, everyone's coming in asking for dirty is by in the pop-up is by far our number one seller and i was like wow it was amazing um and if i was to explain why that had happened it's because the brand had gone viral we were viral on instagram we were viral on tiktok and i think in that space of three months we'd gone viral the brand had a lot of awareness um and i think for me that was a moment like okay I think we've cracked it.

12:51Interesting. Um, and can you pinpoint why and how, um, different pieces of content went viral then? Uh, yeah, I think, um, someone asked me, um, a few weeks ago, if I could have any expertise, uh, today, what would it be? And I was like, I would love to just fully understand the algorithm because it's like always changing. And there are particular levers when you understand it really well, you can pull. And if you know how to pull them right, and you know how to execute, you can make something viral. And I hired a content creator, and I work with them extremely closely. And the blend of them as a creator who built up a YouTube channel from a young age, and now was looking for something new to do, actually wine and dined him for like two months to get him on board.

13:45I had a real clear vision of what would make brand viral online. I just didn't have the tools or the time to execute it. So I basically worked with them for about six weeks and six weeks later, the brand had gone viral. What we did to achieve that, if you did that today, it wouldn't even work because the algorithm is just constantly changing. I think there's some key things that brands are doing now that you're seeing startups going viral pretty quickly um the content that we were making was um we sort of decided he actually proposed to me he said let's go to loads of content creators and influencers and get them to talk about dirty um i actually said that i i'm up for my brother and i being the content creators as the founders of the brand and the leaders of a movement that's what we've created a movement and um basically we plotted a plan together and we just started shooting loads and loads of content um and after a few weeks this started to get traction we went from getting 5 000 views to 100 views to a million views to four million views and literally every time we posted a video if it was under 100 000 we were like we failed um and um yeah so i'm just constantly trying to look clearly at the algorithm and understand how to really kind of hack it is is that um is that content creator um still working with you out of interest or they do their own thing they're doing their own thing now yeah they've got about they've got about two million followers themselves now so how much do you think because i know a little bit about you but your brother simon as well what how much have has your personal stories played in the brand like have you ever doubted how much to share for example uh yeah i think it's made uh the brand are really relatable and human.

15:38I think that we obviously went through our own personal experience, which was, I kind of feel like everyone, not everyone, a lot of people in our generation go through, which is expecting our minds and our bodies to be able to be invincible. And I think for us, we were taking on so much work because we've always been ambitious and we love what we do and we love to travel the world building brands and we took on too much and we weren't sleeping enough uh and we didn't have the right diet we didn't understand the importance of nutrition we just were like you know i guess the stuff we were fueling our bodies with to like over caffeinated cells sugary drinks feeding ourselves just to fill us up what we thought was giving us fuel was actually just breaking us down um and i think that it was like almost a bit of a breakdown that unveiled a breakthrough.

16:36And it was when, you know, Simon turned around to me and said, we've got to stop chasing these quick fixes and look into nature and find things that are going to help us to be healthier and function better. And obviously that we discovered lots of things and functional mushrooms is what stood out for us, hence this sort of personal journey. And I think people have, and we probably don't talk about it enough, maybe forums like this is where it comes out the most because it's more long form. and I think maybe we don't talk about it enough is because we turned that you know breakdown well it's not breakdown it's burnout but probably the same thing we found something that transformed us we studied it we turned that passion into expertise and now we're translating what we learned and experienced into others in the form of content experiences and our product as well but I think it's made it really relatable I think what we're really trying to do as a brand now is just go deeper into the science and the efficacy.

17:34Because I kind of think when we started this brand, which is over four years ago now, we kind of were like the only wellness brand that was appealing to a mainstream audience. I think as wellness has become somewhat of a lifestyle for all of us now, it's how we live our lives. The market has become massive. The opportunity has become massive and it feels like a goldmine. You know, it's either AI, cryptocurrencies, or wellness right now. And the barrier to entry is so low because there's limited regulations and you can get, you know, a brand life pretty quickly. You can call up a manufacturer and get stuff white labeled.

18:14But no one has the expertise. No one knows about sourcing. No one understands what's a clean product. No one understands efficacy. And when I say that, I mean the consumer and the people that are starting these brands. So our job is like, you know, a leader in our category and a leading wellness brand is to ensure that the story we tell now is yes founded for a personal experience but actually we have to tell the story about quality and efficacy because like for me as a consumer who doesn't just consume functional product functional mushrooms I consume other products as well like I will only buy the best you know what I mean I want to know the science I want to know how it was sourced where it was sourced from I want to know it's clean it's pure I want to read the back of labels like that's how I am as a consumer and you know a lot of brands in our space and other wellness brands like the majority don't have that and so that's become more of this we are very relatable because we're human but also we really do lead with sort of the science the efficacy as well.

19:21So when are you going into um ai and crypto then as a brand well ai we're already started we've been integrated a lot of our businesses sort of ai um and um yeah and looking more on the creative side as well uh i've been approached a lot about doing things around crypto uh currencies uh yeah yeah um but haven't yeah haven't given that time yet and and what was harder for you personally when it comes to like building the brand was it product or was it storytelling because storytelling clearly seems to come naturally to you but equally your background in building those other brands and and you know helping them get their product in front of a mainstream audience um yeah interested to know which which which was harder for you uh i think that product is probably i mean i think they're equally as hard as each other and equally as challenging product it is always a challenge because the standards we hold ourselves to um like like i said purity uh clean products efficacy high amounts of active compounds like that's the reason we started this to create a change in the world.

20:36We started it because it came from a personal space. And also, I think that our advantage over anyone coming to the market is our product. What comes with that is the fact that it's expensive to source high quality ingredients. To find it is near impossible. And also, I think taste is really important. And when you have high quality products, sometimes that compromises taste so we've really worked so hard to make our products taste really good I think you take some of our products including the gummies delicious yeah lemon flavor this morning so yeah I mean we've we've been able to achieve that but I'm still I'm so product obsessed I'm just unsatisfied with that and I always believe and I heard someone I think it was from the LVMH said not that long ago you've got to transform on the way up like so our coffee product for example um dirty coffee is um we're on our fourth iteration we're about to move into our fifth um and um for me who's a coffee drinker I won't be satisfied until it tastes like the coffee that you go and get in your favorite coffee shop um but it is very good like a lot of people absolutely love it and people love it because of its benefits people do love the taste but I don't want people to I just think to build a successful business in the way that we are it should feel like whatever you buy from us is better than what you're already getting in terms of like taste and also the benefits you're going to get funny enough like when I came to um the optimization summit which probably was 2022 I'm thinking you had like a pop-up there and that's the first time and I'd had like your coffee there but yeah was the cacao around then or was it since then uh yeah it probably was uh that was our second super blend product so it could be over three years now uh that we've had that um and that's a great product people love that actually in the evening uh it's got reishi mushroom in that so it has a unique properties in it that improve your non-rem and your deep sleep So it's not sedative, it doesn't put you to sleep, it improves the quality.

22:53A lot of that is around it detoxifies the liver. It can soothe stress and anxiety. It really can calm the mind. And the blending with cacao, cacao has incredible properties as well. It actually helps transport a lot of the active compounds of mushrooms to different parts of the body, the lion's mane, which is in the cacao, to the brain. so it actually helps with like the focus the recall and sort of like mental resilience question i've got was so you've you helped launch i think you said like eight eight brands that you you were working with before um and you obviously would have learned a lot a lot of lessons along the way there but those weren't your babies as you said this is your baby was there anything that surprised you when you launched dirty for the first time that you maybe weren't aware of that you'd wish you'd known?

23:46I guess with the other brands that we incubated, I wasn't operational. So a lot of what we did was go to market. So, well, actually product development, go to market, growth and scale. And essentially that is like launching new markets, adding new revenue, helping the businesses to pivot. One business we actually pivoted twice, which exited a couple of years ago, was fundamental for the business, which is something that Simon and I fully drove. Those are the sort of components we're very good at. Operationally, it was kind of new to us, but we learned really quickly. um you know sort of scenarios where we are importing ingredients fundamental to our blends um that gets stuck in customs and you can't get hold of anyone to get the product released and it gets gets stuck for three to four weeks and then you find out that someone from fedex is just being lazy and won't get up their seat and go to the customs which is literally next door to FedEx in Heathrow Airport and find the cylinders on shelves that are in there, which is what someone told me as a consultant, just tell them to go and check for the product.

25:14But situations like that, you just are never going to be prepared for. And you go out of stock, particularly for a product like ours, where people are consuming it every day as a ritual. And we're literally, we ended up running out of stock and we were offline for two weeks. And that's just a great example of something you don't prepare for. yeah um i i kind of feel like when you get to a business our size um you end up being like a firefighter um i think you your team comes to you with problems every single day that you have to navigate um and it doesn't get easier as you get bigger that's it that was a surprise um you know you know what we're you know how many subscribers customers retailers we have today i would have dreamed of a year and a half ago and I was probably in mind thinking once we get there everything's going to be amazing but actually now I've got even bigger goal in my mind and and yeah it's it's it is as challenging now as it was in the beginning so that's I guess what the journey is going to be like until we exit yeah and it funny enough it reminded me of chatted to al barrow a few times and grenade uh you know he's a friend of mine now and and i remember we we did that interview after he just exited to to mondalays for you know couple couple hundred million and i'll just you know what what's changed and he was just like i just fight bigger fires because i literally come into work and i literally just feel like a fireman just going around the building people people coming to me with with different fires to put out and he goes i'm kind of done with that now i totally get it because you've been doing it for you know over a decade at the time and get maybe there were 13 or 14 years before they exited you know yeah I think the one of the things I realized quite early on was bringing in the right expertise and hiring really well which has always been a challenge is finding the right people um and not trying to do everything yourself which I've kind of learned pretty early um and just being the visionary and being the person just to empower people and support people and allow them to do their job and that's what we're doing here is just building a great and exceptional team of people that have done it two, three times over and just learning from them and then doing what I do best.

27:30Yeah, and that is without doubt from the 600 odd interviews over the years that I've done, whether it's a, I don't know, you know, Julian Hearn from Huel or somebody like Al Barrett, everybody's answer is it's hiring and then retention is the two hardest things when it comes to building the business. So what's been the hardest day building Dirty so far? And how did you get through it, Andrew? I feel like I covered that with that stock situation. Yeah, no, that can tick that box. Yeah, no, because honestly, like I, it was really, I'll tell you what actually was also going on that day. We were either a team of four or five and everyone for some reason had booked a holiday for either a week or two weeks.

28:20And my current office manager at the time was really sick. So I was the only person in the office. So I was handling absolutely everything, including customer service. So I was responding to every single customer going like, where is the product? And no one has any sympathy. obviously when you communicate with them they start to understand things at that time being a new business whilst being on the phone to like suppliers all around the world speaking to the courier service speaking to customs it was like it was a real sort of challenging moment that i didn't see how we would sort of overcome but the backlash of that it went on for weeks and it's funny we had new people joining the business and it was like someone that was starting either in partnerships or in retail sales.

29:07And we said, okay, we know we interviewed for retail sales, but we need you to do customer service. And it went on for, it went on for a few weeks. Yeah. And yeah, that, that was crazy. Yeah. Um, I want to talk about, uh, growing, scaling, launching in the U S. Um, I read a really good article, um, in Forbes, um, where you said, we're not trying to build a wellness brand or a supplement we're building a next generation of daily rituals that are powered by mushrooms backed by science and designed for a culture running on empty talk to me a little bit about that because that's a great quote so yeah i think um i learned quite early on uh by way of a lot of the uh entrepreneurs and brands that I was inspired by, that the ones that were successful won't just selling a product, but they were building brands by creating movements and leveraging culture.

30:07And I learned that quite early on. And we did, my first learning of that was, you know, I mean, it's really interesting because if you look at something like Lululemon, they're selling stretchy pants, but they've actually reshaped identity um you know mtv is also really inspired me when i was growing up right um they changed yeah they created pop culture uh you know live aid is another great example um where they took culture and they saved lives um so i've always found these you know even like nike took running and made it a lifestyle right um so these are always been like points of inspiration for me um I I feel Simon and I found something that was transformative for our lives um but we didn't want it to be this kind of like supplement brand that was tedious and you had to take every day you know we wanted it to feel a joy a pleasure um but also we wanted to build an experience around it and and create a movement um it was a belief that we had um and we wanted to you know a lot of brands start today and they think you can build a brand on ads you can't do that it's about showing up in person it's about building within community it's allowing people to join a movement um and believe in what we're trying to create um and that's why we've been successful in the uk um and that is why you know arguably i think like dirty is one of the most recognizable brands in the UK.

31:43I'd say mostly London for that right now. That's obviously going to change very soon with some deals we've done with national retail. And that's the energy we're taking to the US. I think a lot of brands that we'll be competing with in the US already are now. They're very claim based. It's kind of like growth hacking, which is say anything you want or can um and shock people into buying your product um but where's the community where's the movement where's the culture like the biggest brands today i've spoken about a couple just now they are building movements and we learned that uh ourselves we uh created a movement called feeling nuts um which we um found out about a boy who lost his life to testicular cancer because he was too embarrassed to tell anyone he had found a lump from meeting the mother we found out if he had caught it early it was fully curable if you catch it early it's fully curable um and had he taken action early enough he would still be alive today um so we took it upon ourselves to create a movement called feeling nuts um using social media to get the message across and empowering people to spread that by going nuts and making it fun engaging entertaining using comedy as a way to engage people and then landing the education and changing that behavior a billion people got behind that 157 countries it was absolutely mad and then it culminated on the tv show hosted by james corden um and uh jet whitehall um and an amazing brand was created out of that for sort of saving lives um and that's the energy we've brought to to dirty and i genuinely believe that's been the key to the success of it without a doubt um and and when you not that you're going to compare the uk to to the us but when it comes to to building community um with a country that that vast um what kind of challenges do you foresee that you've you think you've already got the tools to kind of overcome it given what we've just talked about that you've got in your locker from before um in terms for the us um yeah i i think we've got a really clear strategy of what we're doing in the us um which is very much from a brand perspective it is community driven i think we're in a bit of a fortunate position where our brand's gone viral we have almost 800 ,000 followers on social media and a lot of them are in America.

34:2240 to 50 % of our inquiries are not about our product, they're about when are you coming to the US. So we intentionally held back the US launch and now we are gradually moving into sort of the market with an existing community that are already out there who have learned about us through social media and we engage with like regularly through email and through content as well so we've kind of been building that for quite a while now because of the way we've created our content and now we're just kind of activating it so we're going to be doing a lot of the same stuff we did in the in the US that we did in the UK.

35:12Yeah, which I can't talk about too much. But it's underway. So have you had thoughts or conversations around where you're going to be basing yourselves, like how much travel? And I only asked that because former guests on the show, two brothers had a digital transformation business, and they ended up with one of them staying in the UK, and the other one moving to the States. And he chose Denver in the Rockies, which I thought was an amazing uh place to choose um and he's still there you know years later but interested to know have you thought about anything like that i haven't made a decision yet um i've been spending a lot of time in new york um la and miami um i would say that the our type of products are now going mainstream and it's not just about those flyover states um but i'm going to be spending a lot of time in the US uh just no not settled in a particular city yet where I'll be based and um if you hadn't chosen um to launch dirty uh given your your your your previous experience where would you think you would be now and what would you be doing that is a really good question um I think um what I mentioned to you earlier on in in the podcast about that moment during the the pandemic when I was like I'm gonna go all in on dirty um I think that was one of the best decisions I ever made um so I think it would be doing our own brand but probably in the space of health and wellness um there's nothing I believe more than functional mushrooms um but there are particular there are other things that I think are really interesting I think the longevity space is really interesting um so i think it will be doing our own brand but probably another category of wellness uh but mushrooms is what i believe most in just because the transformation i've had and the science around it uh last question then i just got a very quick fire round um what would you say to somebody who's listening or watching to this who has a product idea uh sitting there and they still haven't taken action they still haven't you know said screw it just do it what would your advice be yeah i mean i'll come at this sort of two parts is like there's a component where i'm like don't like overthink you know like you can talk yourself out of any problem and your mantra screw it just do it is absolutely what they should be doing right now um having said that i think it's really important to sort of research the space and really understand where the white space exists and where the opportunity is where the market is going um so i would do a level of research and have a good strategy but just don't overthink it okay good one um quick fire rounds first thing that comes into your head uh short snappy andrew for you uh what constitutes an entrepreneur um so i think um is finding a gap in the world where you can fill it.

38:16Typically, it's problems that you've probably had yourself and you've got that solution and you think it's going to apply to a big marketplace. Even if it's a niche, go and own that niche. I think being an entrepreneur, I covered this before, is it's so bold. You've got to be fearless. You've got to be tenacious. You've got to have this self-belief because you're putting everything on the line. You're putting money. You're putting reputation. You're putting time. You're putting it all. Obviously for substantial upside and that's obviously the risk reward. But yeah, I'd say it's like a blend of like, you know, problem solution.

39:02knowing that you can execute, knowing you can believe in yourself and realising you're risking it all but for substantial upside. Given you're in this space now, aren't you? What constitutes a scale-up business for you? I think scale-up is where you've really got proof of concept, product market fit. You've got substantial customer base with good retention if that's what your business requires. I think the kind of LTV to CAC ratio is a really important metric in terms of what you're investing to acquire that customer and how much they're spending over time. Because you've got to spend a lot of capital sort of growing the business.

39:45And that particular metric is really key. I think seeing that there's real growth potential, you know, you've got to be, you know, growing your business sort of like 40, 50 percent plus each year. ideally over 100 % each year and I think you've got to be seeing yourself to be able to move into multiple verticals and I think you've got to see yourself as ability to grow out on you know just the UK market I think there's a huge opportunity in the US which is what we're obviously experiencing and realizing that now but yeah I think those are all the components components that are really important and they're having a team that can actually execute that vision.

40:26Perfect. Last couple, what does the UK need to do to get more scale ups? That's a great question. I think in the UK, I'd say entrepreneurs and investors are a lot more risk averse. I noticed that culturally when I'm in the US. And I think that is a real cultural issue is kind of easily said than done because I think the US is such a massive market. You know, you've got over 300 million people. So the prize is big. It's the biggest consumer market in the world. But I do think that, you know, that some of these, the entrepreneurs are absolutely crazy and mental. And sometimes it's an absolute, it's either a rocket ship or it's a train crash.

41:17And we've seen that event happen over and over again. But I think there's probably too much focus on like getting to profitability in the UK and not enough and like really going for that blitz scale. You could unpack that and say like that culture is really dangerous but it's the reason why you have the biggest consumer brands in the world are founded and built in the US but it can go horribly wrong right. The WeWork story is a great example of that. So I think investors have matured and entrepreneurs have matured from that. I think you've got a real culture of just looking at top line growth, which is starting to shift and starting to change.

42:02I also think that people need to be a lot more helpful and open as a community in the UK. You go to the US and people really buy into your talent or your vision, your product, and they want to see you go all the way and they really do sort of support you I think in the UK it's the exact opposite of that um I know it's that stiff upper lip sort of culture um and I think you know a lot of people who have made that move into the US from the UK um they a lot of them sort of say I should have done the the you sorry move into the US a lot of them said I should have done it a lot quicker um and i think you can get to scale a lot quicker in the u.s and you definitely there's advantages that exist out there but a lot of it is to do with i think the mindset um and a lot of it's to do with like you know access to capital i think raising money in the uk is so hard in the us it's a lot easier i reckon you could raise more money in the us quicker than you could do in the uk because we spent a whole year raising money in the uk you could probably do it in a quarter in the US so I just think being a lot less risk averse I think being a lot more open I think there should probably be more government incentives in terms of like backing UK businesses and I think everyone should just support each other a lot more in the UK I think we'll get a lot further agreed yeah I was going to ask you why the USA better at producing scale-ups in the UK but I think you answered that with regards to, you know, more help, access to funding, mindset, you know, all of those things.

43:40Last question, Andrew, and thank you again for your time, would be, and this can be somebody from your past, this could be somebody more recently, but which founder inspires you most? God, I've got quite a few. I get inspired by a lot of different people. um i'll be a bit unconventional and i'd say can i say a few i'll be a bit unconventional uh i once read uh a guy called jerry weintraub i read his book in one night when i was living in la and jerry weintraub is uh famous for um promoting elvis um there's an amazing story actually he also managed Frank Sinatra he's the man behind the oceans 11 films um he's the if you looked up um the definition of hustler in the dictionary I wouldn't be surprised if Jerry Weintraub's name is in there um but he he's just got he's just got there's some incredible stories in that book about how he uh rang um the current name the manager of uh Elvis um but he rang him every single day until he was able to convince him to promote Elvis.

44:49And he basically eventually gave him one show to promote of Elvis. He said, if you sell it out, you can have the US national tour. The night that the show was happening, it didn't sell out. So he basically got men, I think, from the military to come to the arena and remove seats. So he could take Elvis's manager into the arena and say, look, I sold it out. every seat is full um and i i just loved his book um i really enjoyed um david geffen's story as well he's a very controversial character but he made more money in the entertainment business than anyone else um i always funny enough i always loved bob geldoff because of what he did with live aid and that really inspired me when i was young uh richard branson is is is the god of all of them right in terms of building sort of personal brand and what he's done with the virgin brand is a massive inspiration for me um yeah i mean there's there's there's so many i it's it's funny you mentioned live aid twice and i was just interviewing um a couple of days ago simon woodruff from um yo sushi and yo tell and i didn't realize i knew his background was um a lot of his entertainment and and um he said he actually built this the set for for live aid and he'd like he'd done the tours for like you know everybody from rog stewart to elton john but like he was telling me about live and i said i never knew that it's such an interesting yeah i knew his brother uh years ago whose name is patrick um and he did well he still does i think he he's i think he's the number one lighting designer in the world um and he does like the rolling stones superbowl half-time show he did i think he did the lighting for live aid yeah wow interesting man very cool uh well look love the story love the brands um we wish you continued success um last question would be what what's the end goal for for you like what's the what's the vision at this point we're catching you like virtually exactly at 30 days into into launching in the us um maybe four four and a bit years into journey yeah what does that look like for you Andrew?

47:01I think the first thing is we want to be the hero mushroom brand of the category. I think for us is we want to dominate the US market and then globally. I think for us is we set ourselves a president in the beginning in terms of like standards in regards to the quality of our products and also how they fit into people's lifestyles um so i think trailblazing that goal is really key for us to be the mushroom brand globally not just in the uk we've achieved the uk um but i really do believe um that there are specific things people should be doing every single day uh functional mushrooms is right at the top but there are other things as well So I would love a scenario where we could broaden out and become like a health and wellness destination for products that make people feel great and allow them to be more productive, have better energy and live a more purposeful life because that's what I've been able to achieve.

48:07and if I can translate that and share that with our community through incredible products and experiences, then that would be the dream scenario. Obviously, we want to exit this business. My desire would be for it to go public and continue the journey and build this amazing brand that really impacts people's lives. Amazing. I've no doubt you will achieve all of those things. That's very kind. Thank you so much. Andrew Salter thank you very much indeed thanks Alex appreciate it if this conversation resonated with you don't just sit there act on it make sure you follow or subscribe for more game changing conversations and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it