How Piemonte Drinks Founders Nearly Lost Everything

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It, the podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. I was like, oh my God, is this it? Is this the role that I'm in? We met at university and after university we travelled to Mexico. When we were out there we completely fell in love with tequila, the craft, the tradition. We got approached to do a festival. It was the big festival. Realised that if we sold enough product in our 20 litre kegs, that we would be able to generate 60 to 70 ,000 pounds, which would allow us to bootstrap the business.

0:42However, in order to pitch just exist within that festival, we had to pay 20 grand. It completely wiped out our bank account. And that was our kind of this is it moment. Lead your pitch with who you are and what your story is, because.

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1:34Alex Chisnall:Okay, so Alice, Winter, welcome to the show. I want to start by you guys taking me back to Mexico. What did you see that the UK didn't understand at that time? so winter and I I guess a little background we start we met at university and after university we've traveled to Mexico and when we were out there we completely fell in love with tequila the craft the tradition the story behind it I think where we had a view on a very awful shot culture drinking cheap quality liquid that we'd shot on a night out we were suddenly taught about the craft that went behind the making of it it takes seven years to make it's grown in the most beautiful agave fields and suddenly you're kind of made to sip it enjoy it and it was a way of drinking tequila that we'd never really seen before um and all of a sudden we realized that there was this huge knowledge gap in the UK around the spirit how it should be consumed what it actually tasted like when you consumed it properly and how it should actually be mixed in cocktails and it was not only that there was a knowledge gap but there was actually a lack of really good quality options on the shelves in UK supermarkets at that time and there was no brands out there doing kind of really good pre-mixed tequila cocktail drinks as well so when we came back to the UK we were we were honestly just trying to find really good tequila on the shelves and it didn't exist and then we were often making kind of tequila cocktails on our balcony spicy margaritas which we loved and it was impossible to get even a mix or a ready mixed kind of liquid that you could just pour over ice but um that was what year are we talking as well that was 2020 was the year we started kind of realizing that and when did it go from you know fun idea to actually, I think we can, I think we can turn this into a business.

3:35It was, I remember it vividly because I have our own corporation date etched in my mind. It was September 2020 and it was in lockdown and Pimento was definitely a labor of love in lockdown. And me and Alice were very, you know, we were in the corporate jungle before Alice was at ASOS and L 'Oreal. I was IBM and working at Sky at the time. And I think we just both had this moment that when we were stripped away from the kind of glamour and the corporate culture that came with working at Sky on this kind of gorgeous campus and all of the people and it was just you and your laptop and it's really stripped back I was like oh my god is this it is this the role that I'm in it's it's very repetitive there's so much bureaucracy it's very archaic and how decisions are made and I think we were both just like we want to do something more and if we are going to do something now is the time we're not being kind of micromanaged there isn't anybody here watching over us and it all stemmed from one evening when we were sat on our balconies we were making picantes because the Soho House picante was super trendy at the time and we were 24 and 25 and we were just like why has nobody made this and that evening we went home and we've got the original whatsapp text exchange and it's absolutely hilarious and we were like why don't we make a ready to drink picante and that is how it evolved and it took us six months to go from having that idea to start finding the glass bottle, putting Instagram posts out there for someone who could help us design the label.

5:04And we were doing this all whilst we were working our full-time corporate jobs, which was super, super, which was a very interesting experience. And it took us six months to get the bottle, the Flavour House liquid development, the design for the front and the back of the label, get our 3PL sorted out and actually get stock there. so from September we launched in March 2021 and that's kind of how the journey begun but we had this idea that sounds pretty quick to me it was quick you know instead of Netflix and chilling we were once we closed the laptop for L 'Oreal and Sky we just opened it back up and we were doing all of this exciting work in the background and it was so like I just felt this like reignited with so much energy just because I think a lot of people had lost their sparkle during COVID and Everyone saw it as this time where we were trapped and caged, but we kind of saw it as this opportunity.

5:56But we were like, why don't we do something amazing?

6:00Alex Chisnall:Where were you at uni? And I guess you were a couple of years into your corporate careers. What were you both doing? What were your roles at those companies as well? I think the really refreshing thing about me and Alice is that we have completely polarizing skill set. So we both went to Leeds. I did international business. Alice did marketing and business. but when we went into our commercial grad schemes well I was on the commercial grad scheme at Sky so I was looking after propositions strategy trading and performance so my skill set very much lends itself to business casing how can you create a commercially viable proposition go to market strategy and launch and Alice I'll let you explain what you did at L 'Oreal ASOS.

6:40Yeah so I did a placement at L 'Oreal where I was doing international activation and then after university moved to ASOS where I did a grad scheme in all things brand and marketing so that was everything from consumer insights to partnerships to digital media um brand propositions so yeah that's very much my world in everything that I look after now at Pemente.

7:06Alex Chisnall:Yeah and so tell us like your roles at the moment like uh what five six years on how are they how are they structured who looks after what so I look after the commercial side of the business so that's everything from sales to operations to investment so because Pimento plays in the travel space the festival space the grocery space the trade space I look after all of those channels with relevant team members from an ops point of view growing out that side of the business and then all things investment so I've been fundraising feels like I've been consistently fundraising for five years now but um that was off the back of probably not having any experience in the investment space but my brain works quite commercially I like excel sheets and numbers that world makes sense to me and I'm the total opposite I hate numbers but I I'm very creative so um yeah I look after everything everything marketing brand design activation partnership so when you see us at all the festivals over summer that's kind of my realm and then um anything from all of our kind of content that we put out there um packaging partnership activity um and paid marketing and like anything to see as well but um i think it was yeah a big shock going from multi-million pound budgets to negative budgets if you yeah you have no money to spend yeah but you you got to make noise right until you're you're bootstrapping as you're as you go exactly but i i really think have everyone should bootstrap because I think it teaches you how to do everything with no money um and I think it also really instills that mindset even now when we do have some money you still kind of adopt the mindset of spend like you have nothing yeah and there's there's so many stories so many you know speaking to over you know 600 people on on this and you know loads more at like live events and stuff and so many stories of people you know getting a lot of money very early on and just burning through it and it's not your money right so you're just spending it as it comes in and and again I know from you know gazillion conversations that you know the the funding part of it people feel like that is a full-time job in itself and it never ends because if you're if you're growing and then you're scaling right which is what you know this this podcast is all about sharing those journeys then it doesn't really end until some point in the future where you decide to to exit the business I guess or take on outside investors who take a significant shareholding in the business so um tell me who who was it that said you know something along the lines of screw it let's do it then who was who was the one who kind of immortalized those words or was it in that whatsapp exchange that winter was just talking about it was in that whatsapp exchange and it's honestly we we posted it on um tiktok and linkedin and it's so like literally reminiscent of what I just told you and people thought that we had faked the whatsapp but it was exactly like our corporate jobs are so monotonous we're so fed up of this like you've got the marketing experience alice i've got the commercial side like why don't we just like actually put our life savings together and do it and it sounds so cliche but the back and forth whatsapp is exactly what happened and i can remember making like a checklist and it's so funny of all the things that i thought you needed to do to start a business it's so funny it's like um right a business plan and it's all of this stuff that kind of like my my number one piece of advice would just be like go and do it otherwise you kind of get caught in this loop of paralysis where it's like okay right I need to do the pitch deck I need to do this and that and it's like no no no no no get an MVP out there ASAP get it into the hands of the consumer but it was after that WhatsApp exchange that we very very very quickly started moving um I'll send it to you it's uh it's really funny yeah I think it's always that thing that done is better than perfect and also the product you start out with is never the product you end up with even the whole proposition around pimenti we started with the spicy margarita but now we are kind of the uk's only and most trusted tequila cocktail brand and that was sort of never the original plan but as you go everything makes sense and your product skews develop because you just listen to what the consumers want and it's perfect that you've got the different skill set you know one of the biggest takeaways i've got from i went from like virgin atlantic to virgin startup and um you know whatever new business that richard started and i remember like virgin sports starting up at the same time he would just get you know two people with with different skill sets and then put like a team of three around them you'd think that he'd put a team of you know 30 40 money was no object but he wanted to see how quickly that business could could fail you know or all the ones that didn't fail and just just kept going but it's it was always getting somebody with a different skill set to yourself.

11:58Alex Chisnall:And were you guys like best friends or friends who become like closer? How's that kind of panned out from a business, friend to business perspective? But we live together in our final year of university, but there was never any discussion of pimento or entrepreneurialism then. Like I feel at university, we were very much pigeonholed into going into corporate or you were not successful. So it's crazy the amount of people who just went straight onto grad schemes and had no understanding of what running a startup was and none of us were given the toolkit to be able to go and do that it's very much learn on the job which makes you really really realize how outdated our education system is because if someone asked me how transferable what I learned there was no not at all but um yeah luckily me and Alice lived together in our final year and it was only I think it was two years out of two years out of uni we then started thinking this this doesn't feel like it's it for us we're gonna we're gonna dip our toe into startup and I think at that point it was it wasn't something that everybody was doing at the time um obviously now it's a lot more rife with people wanting to start their own businesses and it's super super exciting but we were very much on the back foot at that point where you weren't seeing many young people who are at university doing it so it was a it was a blessing and a curse I guess yeah I could see that and and when did you take the moment to like quit quit your full-time jobs and go all in on this did you try you must have at the start obviously tried to keep start as a side hustle and then make the decision to actually go we're all in yeah it was it was five months after we launched pimento that we actually quit our corporate job so it was really really soon however this was based on sound thinking i promise so it's actually a really funny story we got approached to do a festival.

13:46It was the big festival and we did the kind of commercials behind it and we realized that if we sold enough product in our 20 litre kegs that we would be able to generate 60 to 70 ,000 pounds which would allow us to bootstrap the business. However in order to pitch just exist within that festival we had to pay 20 grand and we only had 10k in our bank account at that point in time so we paid them 10k up front um completely wiped out our bank account put the other 10k on the amex and that was our kind of this is it moment so we quit our corporate jobs and we were like we've never run a bar we've never run a festival we've never been to a festival with a drinks brand before um we only had one product which was our spicy margarita and we were like okay cool let's just throw the kitchen sink at this and we went there we brought seven of our university friends we camped there for five nights we drove the van there we did the full build ourselves and we ran the bar for four days we hit exactly what we thought we were going to do in revenue and that's what gave us the cash to allow us to bootstrap and it also opened our eyes to the fact that events can in fact be a profitable revenue stream and they're not just marketing

14:56Alex Chisnall:spend as everyone sees them what a cool story um and so so the big feast of all is that jamie oliver's alex james yeah yeah i went to year one of that um my because my friend was actually organizing the festival so i actually remember going to that and then it's developed into it was like really small then and it's developed it's big now yeah big big old festival and and and you like hit revenue of like for those five days so again i don't know like the numbers that that's like that's good money right but a lot of money to actually get your foot in the door i didn't realize that was the how it works either and all that yeah it's 20k to get your foot in the door you retain all of the till money that you get our cogs were obviously really low because we weren't paying our friends we weren't like paying for accommodation the only overheads we had with a 20 litre keg and this kind of really they provided us with the teepee which was great other than that we just created this really unique moment around music and creating a really sticky environment where people wanted to stay we had a glitter stand for the parents and the kids so they didn't feel like they were you know ostracized and big feastful wanted to have us back kind of every year since then um but I think it really created this moment within the festival space that you don't need to activate in a soulless clinical way you can create these beautiful moments and I think now we've seen a lot of brands doing that because it's a model that works but um yeah we realized very quickly that it was a very lucrative channel if you get it right and you have the right product and proposition that was a really like mad festival for me because I remember going there because my mate was organizing it we had like you know vip passes I met like Jeremy Clarkson and I met David Cameron, the bloody prime minister.

16:30Alex Chisnall:That's so random. And how I met him. I was actually trying to go to the toilet in like, you know, Port-A-Loo toilet. And I was stopped by his security and I looked around and there's, I just, I thought before, this is really weird. There's all these guys walking around in suits at a festival in the summer and they had these wires coming out of their ears and it looked like something out of Men in Black, right? And they literally blocked out and David Cameron goes to go in one Port-A-Loo, two guys go in the ones next to him and another guy stand outside. and it was like it was only I just remember this bit as well it was only after the festival my my mate said that he'd had a call at something ridiculously late like 11 o 'clock that that night as if you haven't got enough on your mind starting a festival to say David Cameron is coming to your festival uh don't worry about anything but we are and I can't remember the terminology we're basically sending a uh a team in to suss out the site and he said all like these I don't know if it was SAS or whatever they were but it literally you know a load of guys during that night and yeah literally checked out the whole security setup and there it was the next day living walking talking proof so i've got very fond memories that festival that's so cool that's a good story tell me then initially like when you were having those chats between you what was kind of holding you back from not starting when you kind of going back and forth and maybe like the first six months talking about it maybe you know maybe money maybe the fact that the security net of having the full-time jobs but um yeah what kind of held you back from doing it any earlier out of interest i think definitely obviously the money side of things we put all of our life savings in to start this business um and it wasn't a lot and i think there's a misconception that you need a lot more money to start a business we had I think it was about 12 000 pounds between us um and that allowed us to get to a place where we could make our first how many it was was it like 7 000 bottles um and 1 400 um and yeah I think that that's a misconception because people that's why a lot people go out and get investments straight off the bat um when actually I really don't think that you need to and I think there are people starting businesses on you know four or five thousand pounds but you just kind of can get to a place where you do the minimum um the knowledge side of things neither of us had any experience in food and drink we didn't know anything about how to create a cocktail where to get bottles how to even develop a recipe we literally had just got a liquid in our kitchen that we knew we liked and we were like right where do we take this how do we get this in a bottle and how do we put it on a shelf um but I think the more you the more you speak to people and ask people knowledge comes very quickly um and then yeah I think the full-time job thing obviously time we were probably lucky that COVID did allow us a little bit more time than we would have usually had so it was doing a nine to five and then a five till whatever hours um so you have to work really hard but if you've got some time you can do it it reminds me like when you're telling me the the story with the festival it reminds me a little bit um I remember interviewing Richard Reid from Innocent Smoothies.

19:47Alex Chisnall:And when they had like two bins there and people would throw in, yes, started as a business or no, stick with the day jobs, you know, and they were just throwing the empty two bins. And it kind of reminds me of that in a way that you, you know, you got the proof by doing that event that gave you then the confidence to actually move forward and start, you know, start growing the business. Did either of you secretly think that it wouldn't work? like especially in those early stages where there must have been doubts at some point but or did you have this did that give you like ironclad bulletproof belief that you could just go out and smash it you like both confident people I think honestly in order to launch a business you need to have blind optimism and it is something that's either ingrained into your genetic makeup or not because if you even allow your brain even for a second like in year one or where we are now year five, that there's a possibility it won't work.

20:43I think there's this cycle of like over catastrophization that can happen. And yeah, don't get me wrong. We definitely had times where we looked at the bank account and we were like, we don't have, we have to pick what we're doing this month. Are we doing production? Are we paying for this festival pitch fee? And I think there's always an element of this is so hard. It's like pushing water up a hill. But I think because we both have such a belief, one in the product and what consumers think of the product. And we've seen firsthand how brands can scale and it's not impossible I don't think it was never is this going to fail it's just like desperately how do we make this work and also just being able to lean on each other huge respect for solo founders I think it's I can see why a lot of businesses who have solo founders go through what like standard journeys look like and they kind of crumble along the way um but if I'm being totally honest I'll I'll have moments of doubt but I've never had a moment where I'm like this isn't going to work it's just how can we make it work yeah I think we when we started because we did it so quickly we didn't we almost took the pressure away in terms of right we're doing this let's see how it goes we had the 1400 bottles if it didn't work for some reason what's the worst that could happen we still have our full-time jobs we can kind of go back to that so I actually think having the full-time jobs made us take more risks because there was less to lose apart from our savings which at the end of the day we tried um and we would have learned so much so I think that removed some of the pressure um and then as we grew I think that the scary part was quitting the jobs because we couldn't pay ourselves for nearly two years so that that was a huge sacrifice um in every sense financially socially we I moved back home um you know you lose a lot but it's you both I think Winter and I were always on the same page in terms of mindset and commitment to the business um whereas I've heard horror stories of friends who have started business and one's not willing to drop out and one is and that's where it doesn't work and I think we've always had the same goal which has allowed us to

22:49Alex Chisnall:kind of get to where we are if you if you hadn't done that and taken taken the leap what would you both be doing now it makes me sad to think this I think I'd still be doing what I was conditioned to believe success looks like, which is climbing the corporate ladder, getting to managing director, because that's what I was taught, like from an optics point of view, equaled success, even though I knew the whole time that I was in my grad scheme, I was like, this can't be it. Like, I had this like a huge, overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction. Like, really? Like, really? This is it? So I think that's probably what I'd be doing.

23:24I'd love to say that I would have taken the leap and gone like, you know, to a younger business that was more risky, but I honestly don't know if I have. But looking at it from this side now, my God, I would never, ever, ever in a million years would I go back to corporate ever. I could not. The autonomy that comes with making decisions, shifting the dial, being able to grow something, cultivate your own culture. It's crazy that I ever even did it before. I look back on that version of me and I'm like, that's not me. I don't recognize that version of me anymore.

23:51Alex Chisnall:Interesting. And your energy is literally just when I asked that question, it's really interesting. Don't send me back. Through the roof, man. Yeah. How about you, Alice? um so interestingly at the time I was thinking about going to the drinks industry I think I always had a interest in it my dad was in it so that was probably where it came from but um he worked in whiskey but it would have been a Diageo or a Perno like a big corporate rather than a small brand um yeah I think I never really I didn't really have the desire at the time to go into a startup or an agency um but yeah likewise I'm not sure I could ever go back to that now so it's funny like the more I talk about the more I can think of like the drinks brands who've been on been on the show and like I've done live events with like um Ben Branson from Seedlip and then uh Jimmy Cregan from Jimmy's Ice Coffee who like exited to Britvik a couple of years ago and we did like the podcast when he exited and did that and it's just great hearing you know somebody's story and and the funny thing is like i remember asking jimmy like in front of a live audience you know and i think he's sold out after maybe 13 years i'd like to say and he's down here in dorset with with me hence the connection and and um i was like if you had to do it all again and i'm not disclosing any numbers what you get from the exit but would you do it again he was like no chance no way it's too hard i was like that's not the answer i was expecting jimmy and it's not the answer that the live audience is facing it is absolutely exhausting like even now like we're not even like we're not close to that stage but when people are like oh like what will you do after fermenter i it you know what it is it's it never gets easier you think you know when you have more money you have bigger challenges when the team grows you have more people to look after it's just different challenges at different stages and i feel like both of us in our different realms of the business go through these moments of just it's it's sometimes obviously we love it but sometimes you're like is this fun why is it so stressful um but obviously it's the highs are high and they they pull you through yeah and you've got each other right and I I with the event now the festival entrepreneurs is the first business and I started my first bit I left Virgin Atlantic 2009 and I guess I think this is like my fifth business that I've had and it's the first one that I've had co-founders and it's so nice I mean a solo you know founder for I can't even think how many years that is like you know 13 14 years and to actually you know have someone to to share stuff with and people with different skill sets again not just you having to learn stuff or outsource out and and having no idea if that person is is going to be any good or not whereas if that person is your co-founder you've got some level of confidence in them anyway because you know them to a to a certain degree so um definitely lean in on that um kind of diving into into your world a little bit um tequila in the uk um do you think it had a did you think it had a perception perception i'm not i can't even speak do you think the uk had a perception problem when it came to tequila and if so how did you guys go about reframing it absolutely i think immediately when you say tequila, people think of Sierra tequila with the red cap.

27:08They roll their eyes and they think back to a torturous evening where they had the worst hangover of their life and they associate it with tequila. Shot culture, you know, guilty as charged for going down that avenue once upon a time. But in reality, it's not that tequila is a bad liquid. It's just that the UK never had high quality tequila on shelf. You go into a Waitrose or a Tesco's or a Sainsbury's, granted now it's a different story, but you would literally either have Patron or Sierra. There was nothing in between and that was people's perception of tequila either it's something like really really expensive that is completely out of budget or it's something really really cheap that you have to show and then kind of game over blackout so what we wanted to do was really bridge that gap and showcase the complexity and the sophistication of it and something that's really interesting in terms of how we wanted to bridge this gap we used the event space because this is two million eyeballs every single year you use it as a mass sampling tool but also a mass customer acquisition tool.

28:03And one year, what was really, really interesting, it was Taste London, when we had our activation, we have this like 360 Tulum-esque activation, and we really want to celebrate Mexican culture and bring people into this IP rich, immersive brand world, you know, moments to connect. This is how we're really going to showcase what tequila is about and bring customers into our world. One year, we had the sign outside of our bar, say tequila cocktails, sales, still did great. The next year we had margarita bar sales up by 45%. And this is like the absolute crux of the issue here. People think they hate tequila, but people love margaritas, but margaritas are made out of tequila.

28:41So this is the really interesting thing about Pimento and our proposition. When we're trying to educate consumers, what we're doing is saying, we are a gatekeeper into the world of tequila. This is how you can drink it in an enjoyable way. this is how you balance it maybe you don't know how to make a margarita when you're given a tequila bottle but here's a range of beautiful margaritas that are well balanced and you can drink it it's 14.5 % ABV people drink it and go oh wait maybe I don't hate tequila which is why we always say we're speaking to the tequila haters you don't hate tequila you've just not had good quality tequila so that's what we're trying to do and that's how we pitch to retailers and things like that who are being kpi'd on growing their tequila categories because it's the fastest growing global in UK-based spirits category.

29:23But yeah, that's how we're kind of doing the education piece in the festival space and things like that, where we can actually speak to customers face-to-face.

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30:06Alex Chisnall:Plus, signing up for an account is completely free and there are no ongoing monthly fees. You've got 60 days from sign up to use them. Head to worldfirst.com forward slash screw it and get your 50 fee-free business transactions. Now back to the podcast. When was that moment that you decided margaritas instead of straight tequila then? And also to chuck something else into that, you know, the very kind of masculine associations with certain people bringing out tequila brands as well, which you've kind of seen over the last few years as well. So you've obviously leaned into the more feminine, creative side of things as well.

30:43Alex Chisnall:So yeah, talk to us a little bit about that. yeah I think on the margarita side um it was essentially coming up as the number one cocktail in the world so we knew that the demand was there and any bar or restaurant that you went into in the UK they had it on the menu so people were familiar with that um I think it was the tequila part that was putting people off and the amount of literally like Winter said but the amount of people that we kind of would have the conversation with at the bar who said they hated it and then when they tried it they were like oh I love this um it was just that disconnect where we knew that actually the volume and the data was showing that people would order a margarita so maybe that was what we just needed to push as push as the messaging and then hopefully we could get the education underneath that um and the other thing that people don't know is that tequila is like champagne it's protected so it can only come from tequila in Mexico and it's owned by the Mexican government so we have to get a certification by the Mexican government to even sell tequila in the UK yeah and and that's kind of I think that's where like the world of champagne if you said champagne everyone knows that about champagne if you said tequila nobody knows that about tequila um so there's that part of it as well but yeah the margarita piece was definitely kind of a data and customer-led decision because we just felt like there were too many people coming up saying they hate tequila and it was because of shots um so if we kind of shifted that narrative to cocktails then it opened up a whole new world for us do you also think there's an education piece there um definitely yeah definitely an education piece and also it's um one of the cleanest spirits so it's associated with a hangover and actually it's that's the complete opposite it's probably one of the cleanest things you can drink um and if you were to kind of stick with tequila all night in in a margarita form or tequila soda lime something like that you are less likely to get a hangover because um it's not mixed with i heard that on something like chris williams podcast or something like that and i was just like no way because in my brain again you know student 30s living in exactly it's just yeah death hangover yeah and it's because what they're drinking is mixed with a lot of sugars so it's actually the sugar it's the cheap liquid that isn't technically 100 blue agave tequila it that's because it's what it's mixed with so it's classed as a mix so and it's mixed with lots of sugars um but if you actually listen to people who are interested in brain health or biohacking what the one thing they will always drink is tequila because it is clean so um yeah there's a lot to educate on and I think obviously like you mentioned before there was a lot of celebrities kind of bringing out all of these brands and it was it's getting very glamorized which is a good and bad thing a good thing because it's shining a light on the category and therefore people are becoming a lot more interested in it but there's still that education gap um so where retailers are almost using it as a focus to grow the tequila category we can help be a brand that does do the education piece and gets new consumers from i don't know a gin drinker into a tequila drinker through an RTD as it's much more easy to pick up off shelf um and how did you with the first sale that you you had was that from the festival or was your your first sales before then March 28th you got tattoos for these winter on different parts of you it's a dangerous place up here I store information it was um direct to consumer um we actually had a really interesting launch that people thought was this highly expensive marketing campaign um me and alice handmade 30 influencer hampers because the market this was a place where like this was a time when influencers worked it's really beautiful i had our spicy mild bottle a glass ice mold in it not a glass ice mold an ice mold a glass a candle to upcycle the bottle just super instagrammable and we messaged loads of influencers that we had seen at soho house previously drinking picantes saying if you like picantes you'll love this because everyone was locked at home and they had um you know they didn't have a huge amount of content they were like yeah absolutely we'll take these so we hand delivered them to lots of really exciting names in the space including like Maya Jammer, Michelle Keegan, people like this all of them organically posted on launch day we sold our first one every single one of them we hand delivered them to everybody's house and whilst we were driving back home we hadn't even fully set the um d2c page like the ordering portal in the background live with our 3pl and we started seeing like shopify notifications coming through because people were posting on their stories and we were like oh my god we were in the mcdonald's drive-thru at the time and we had to pull over and set everything we hadn't slept or eaten and we were just in the queue it was crazy and uh yeah it was the first 1 400 bottles and we ended up doing I think 18 18 to 20 grand in two weeks again giving us the revenue to bootstrap pay for our next production run but yeah it was purely d2c and we were getting this incredible feedback off the back of that and then we were like we've got enough cash to produce and then do our first festival I actually remember I was at ASOS and my manager was my manager was sat next to me and because it was all going on Instagram I hadn't told my work that I was doing this and my manager saw my jammer post and she was like has anyone seen this new spicy margarita and I was literally sat there thinking oh my god do I say it's me or do I because we hadn't put ourselves anywhere on the page yet or on the website um but we just had all this traction and yeah it was pretty crazy and what did you do I eventually told them but I had to kind of sit there and be like I'm still doing my full-time job and it's fine but I think I think that's a really good example of something that worked for us then that I would never ever recommend now just because of the changing creator landscape and I was literally going to ask you about that because you said like back when influencers worked and I was like tell me about that yeah so I think um consumer behaviors have really really changed in terms of what they feel like they're being sold to and what's organic and kind of natural endorsement I think the fact that everyone has to disclose ads nowadays um it makes it really obvious when they're being paid and when they're kind of actually promoting something they just use on a daily basis and people don't like being sold to um so I think that's why also a lot of kind of creators are becoming more and more conscious about actually working with brands that are authentic to them whereas before you would never really know so you'd kind of really follow these people on your pages and they had all this this huge following and anything they posted you kind of actually thought that they were using but really they're just getting paid thousands and thousands of pounds to put it in front of you um and actually now you've kind of seen the drop off of huge influence and now it's into kind of micro content creators people who really reflect kind of lifestyles or attitudes beliefs daily habits things like that um that's sort of what people are looking for and I think if you don't have if you don't have a core message if you don't have something that's different from what's out there um or a specific content style then you're just not going to cut through and I think the the way that TikTok and the algorithm now works anyone can be an influencer overnight technically um and yeah I think the landscape's just totally changed and actually you're kind of seeing you know winter and i have this battle a little bit but if you're starting a brand you kind of need to put yourself at the front of the brand now and your brand has to almost become a micro influencer in itself whereas that was never really the case and it's hard to do because it's you know you're so busy and tired and stressed and then you've got to concentrate on also filming that and creating a narrative out of it and showing people the story and it's like how much of the story do you show do you put and we've never you know we've never grown that's not how we've grown the brand putting ourselves at the front but actually people we're in a world where entrepreneurship and starting businesses is really exciting for people and it's more accessible than ever particularly with AI developments so people actually do want to see you know how did we raise investment how did we start the business how how are we getting our products onto supermarket shelves like they actually want to know that because it's useful for them and I think they have a reason to follow and believe in the brand that's it's a really good point just to kind of segue into actually um is the personal brand side of things that how much of that do you feel compelled to share I'm sure you want you know it's same with me with stuff you you want to share stuff then how much of that becomes another layer of the job that you that you have to do because you're putting it out you know on the on the business side of things and those channels and then it's like how much of that of myself do I show how much of it is let's peel behind the layers this is Alice and Winter actually slogging the guts out um and I've seen like some really cool like photo shoots that that you guys um have done as well and it's like how much of that do you get involved with how much is that you just bring in models to do that kind of stuff and actors yeah it's a it's a good conversation to have I feel as founders listening to this I'm a firm believer in people investing in people, which is why when I'm on LinkedIn, I love to talk about the unglamorous, unsexy, like these are the 10 worst things that happened to me this week.

40:25Because I think, don't get me wrong, I think LinkedIn's absolutely fantastic for shouting about wins. And we do that every now and again. But people want to hear that like other people are going through the stresses that people are struggling with the fundraising people, you know, you can relate to people who are doing that. And I think the sooner we drop the guard and stop thinking that you having a hard time is associated with weakness, the better for everybody. Because I mean, let's not lie, like nobody likes to see somebody constantly winning. Like I can absolutely be happy for other people, but I'm only human at the end of the day.

40:56You're not going to win a race by constantly looking at what the other person's doing in the lane next to you. So if we can all like support each other in the entrepreneurial journey that we're in, I think the better. And LinkedIn is free eyeballs. And I think the more engaging and real you are as a human, the more that's going to flow through to people, if it's those people investing in your business, because they've seen and they respect your journey, whether they're going on to D2C, whether they're recommending you, you know, to a like grocery buyer that they know, the world is so small. And the community that you create on LinkedIn is so, so, so valuable.

41:26So I think the more that we can be really honest and truthful and just showcase what we're doing, the better. And if we can even inspire maybe one person to go out there and execute that idea that they thought would be so impossible because uni taught them that you need to have an accounting degree you need to be able to read a pnl from the get-go like we need to stop all of this kind of you know scaremongering and i think one of the parts of us putting our personal brand out there is showcasing two girls who went to leeds university we had an idea we executed on it

41:55Alex Chisnall:we've worked really bloody hard and here we are yeah yeah it reminds me of my friend of mine's birthday today she's 30 today and um she'd been working on these she went to extra union she's been working on these journals which was like her business idea but she's working on it for about five years now and I was like having a conversation with her last week saying you know when are you going to get it out there I know you're working on it still but you just need you know I said you know she's worked on my podcast before and I'm like screw it just do it right remember that and um this week she like shared a post and it was like the reason why she's launching the journals And it was like, I had a really tough time when I was 14, 15, crikey, 16, 17 as a teenage girl, you know, told a story.

42:37Alex Chisnall:And I was like, that's what will, you know, get people to resonate with your journey and connect with you. Exactly. It's not, here's the journal. I'm putting this on the marketplace. It's like the reason why I'm launching the journal and just, you know, kind of strip back a layer of yourself and be a little bit vulnerable, which is really difficult to do. right I find stuff like that really difficult to do but I think you're spot on with you know sharing the struggles I love that you know these are 10 10 hardest things that I've done this week instead of like my win of the week you're like yeah yeah yeah whatever you're just playing smoke up your own ass you know so yeah I think you always constantly got to get used to being uncomfortable and I think when you're uncomfortable you're you're growing and you're learning and I think that's that's kind of where we are probably with it a little bit like it's it's scary to speak to the camera or it's scary to put yourself first because there's lots of people watching you and you just got to kind of almost remove that mask a little bit um and let's let's move on to uh growing the business fundraising tell me about um yeah how you kind of take the leap from um getting your product at festivals and online to then getting into somebody like like waitrose you know super super super premium obviously probably you know like holy grail for a lot of drink food and drink brands to to get into that space um how did that come about absolutely so to date we've raised two million in capital and i don't say that with a proud hat because raising capital means giving away equity giving away equity is bad we don't want to do it but through that fundraising journey we've uh we've experienced it all so we we bootstrapped the business for 18 months we put our life savings into it um and then we did a very very small friends and family round at the beginning of our journey.

44:1618 months in, we got prospected by the Distal Ventures program. So Diashio is their sole investor. Probably the best thing that happened to us because we were mid-fundraise at the time, looking to raise 250K. And once we kind of got the approval from Distal Ventures and had some real chunky capital coming in, it was around 300K. That was the validation that we needed from the world's largest alcohol powerhouse to get anyone who was slightly warm or a little bit cold over the line because we could have that name on the literature. And it took us from having an idea to being a business that suddenly was attached to a very, very meaningful name in the industry.

44:55So after that 18-month period, we got their capital in. We had another year and a half at Runway. And this is when we started fundraising again and understanding what family office looked like, angel investors. And I very quickly realized that something that you need to avoid at the start of your journey is venture capital, just because it comes with a huge range of complexities, terms, board seats and things like that. And when you're a young business and you want to be agile and you want to grow and you want to grow your business in your own way, you do not want someone in your ear telling you this is what you have to do.

45:26These are the revenue hurdles that you have to hit, all of these kinds of things. So I think it's a misconception at the beginning that if we get VC, like we're validated, we're going to be back till the end. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Stay away from that. It's kind of quite highly administrative to get that through the line six to seven months. Whereas angels and family offices, they can move quickly. They believe in the idea. Most often the founder, if I'm being honest with you, I think it's 50 % founder, 50 % product. So we went on to kind of raise. We did, I think we've done four fundraisers today, a combination of angel, family office.

45:57We've brought on some incredible funds and VCs. We've got revenge on there, as we mentioned. We've got a mutual friend in, Nell and Andrew. And I honestly do think like my one piece of advice would be the people that you bring onto your cap table need to be a true reflection of your business and these are going to be attached to the business for such a long time and the most powerful thing that we've done throughout our journey is saying no when people are putting ridiculous terms on the table that are super unfounder friendly because when you're fundraising it feels like life or death sometimes because you've got so much to prove to all of these people who thought you couldn't do it and you're like you know what maybe we should just take the half a million pounds but you have to think bigger picture if these people are being this challenging at the beginning when they don't even know you and you're a small business imagine what's going

46:44Alex Chisnall:to happen when the business continues to scale what's a ridiculous term or condition that you can think of that that the audience might be really i could write a book on this but probably the most ridiculous one maybe i will another revenue stream um one of our investors when we were raising two years ago asked for non-diluting shares which means that everybody's shares would dilute naturally as you do when you bring on more capital the business grows you need more money everyone else gets diluted and they said well if we're going to give you half a million pounds we want ours to be the only pool of shares that never dilute which is crazy there's no such thing as a risk-free investment it's nuts and when you're that kind of this was very early into our journey we were like how do we make this work can we make this work and it's so interesting like looking back to like 27 year old me to me now if someone even comes to me with a term that doesn't fall into something standard and parity with the rest of my investors I'm just like no thank you so much for your interest move on not wasting my time so yeah it's crazy the things people ask for and as you say as um you know female founders in their 20s uh 30 now I think um how difficult was it because I've heard all sorts of stories that our listeners and viewers would have heard over the years from the likes of Laura Fullerton, who I mentioned to you before, from Monk and people like that that have just said it's how incredibly difficult it is.

48:10Alex Chisnall:And the percentage is tiny, isn't it? It's something like 4%. It's honestly hard. And we've had some, like, whether this is specifically linked to myself and Alice's founders, but an example of how difficult it is out there when you're dipping a toe into venture funding. This was a fund. It was pretty much made up of an all-male investment team. and we had a term sheet given to us for the investment sum which was significant it was a significant amount of capital and we were told that this capital was coming in because the term sheet was signed we ended up getting ghosted by them um a month or two later I was like hi guys obviously like we're going we're like preparing for national grocery launches xyz like when's the capital coming didn't hear anything from them only to find out via linkedin that they had deployed our investment ticket into a different tech business finally got the CEO of the fund onto a call and they were like yeah sorry it didn't work out we decided to deploy it elsewhere no regard for how much that would completely destabilize our business our cash flow the hires that we had made but that's just like one example of how people operate in the space like an RI's term sheet is good as is as good as done but you've got that kind of stuff happening all the time and I think it is a systemic problem you know like the deal flow you're going to get is going to be probably from people you trust more men trust men more they get more of those people coming through the pipeline when we do get into the room we've had some amazing wins and we've got amazing family office and VC there but yeah you can definitely feel the the difficulty of getting into the room for sure okay and any advice for those listening who are looking at starting getting funding into the business and growing and scaling their business any kind of top tips maybe one each or um mine would be lead lead your pitch with who you are and what your story is because people resonate with people they're investing 50 into the founders because they're going to be able to take this business where it's going so start with that and appeal to their emotions first before diving into the commercials um and always start angel's family office don't go into venture capital unless you absolutely need to and then i probably just say getting external help with numbers from there's lots of amazing kind of accountants out there who you can pay hourly or things like that but we've spoken to people like winter was at a dinner with a female founder who she was doing an amazing amount of revenue but she was kind of almost at the point of closing her business because she didn't know how to raise and she didn't she was doing it all on her own and I think you know there's people there who can build your business plans for you and with you if you're not comfortable with that and get your financials into a place where they are ready to share with investors because obviously they're going to look at them but you're you're never going to know all that to start with it's a new process for everyone and actually they're not you can get people who are relatively affordable who can really help kind of establish that into a place where it's super strong um so yeah I think just asking asking for help on that when you need it because it's a really especially you know winter's amazing at numbers and commercially I'm I'm it takes me a lot of time to learn our P &L and understand what it's telling me in numbers and um there are people that can help you if you're kind of doing it on your own exactly exactly I was literally having that conversation with a friend of mine that I was saying who doesn't you know she's like if I'd learned that then I'm sure I'd I'd be good at that because I haven't this is what I'm good at and I'm like you know we're not all good at everything and it's um it's good to it's good to delegate it's good to it to ask for help the worst thing is to not ask for help yeah especially platforms like seed legals were really great for us when you're starting out you don't need a full-time lawyer you can pay subscription fees to platforms like that that take you through the process and um so tell me tell me about your relationship then ever fallen out ever come close to like walking away from the business um obviously you know all three of us know there's there's ups and downs in in business there's there's wins there's losses um have you managed to you know stay together and um still growing the business scaling the business today we've never we've never had a fallout no we I actually think we've you know you go through so many waves of a personal journey and journey as founders together and we've we've been very very lucky that when one of us has a period of struggling or feeling down the other one kind of pulls pulls their weight and picks you up um and honestly like I couldn't have done it without winter and I think we we both have skill sets like if one of us is super stressed I can kind of provide clarity or same with like you know if winter adds some fire to me sometimes when I'm just like all over the place um so I think we've we've learned how each other work and and also coming from corporate backgrounds where you're in big teams to working with your best friend who you've never been in a business with or know how each other works you you just have to learn to adapt and communicate and I think you know we've been we've been very lucky and we've been very good at that um in that we've yeah never never ever had a stage where either of us would have walked away from this business um and also there's just full trust there like I think the person you go into business with it has to be somebody who you trust implicitly and can be honest and open with.

53:39More so than your husband or wife, I think, to some degree.

53:43Alex Chisnall:Yeah, well, it is. Our whole life is riding on the business. Yeah, exactly. I echo your kind words, Alice. Thank you. Glad I've got this on recording. Exactly. But we also have, you know, we're in our friendship group is still the same as it was at uni. So we literally have work together, then we have weekends together, then we have holidays together. So we've kind of almost had to set a few boundaries and like workers work in friendships, friendship. What about what's the hardest internal decision that you think you've had to make thus far? I was I was in South Africa and it was our first production run for a grocer.

54:25We were just launching with them and our manufacturers had made an error with the ABV of our liquid, which is obviously detrimental in the alcohol space because of drinker wear and things like that and it only came to our attention once all the product had been shipped there and I can remember I was about to board my flight coming back home from South Africa so 10 hours of no contact with anybody the worst possible time to find this out and we had to make a decision to do a recall before we had even gone live which was awful it was harrowing as soon as I'd landed back into the UK um we pretty much had to either physically go to every single store or call every single store to make sure that that stock hadn't made its way onto the shelf and you can imagine like the biggest moment of your like whole business where people are judging you based on the quality of your liquid and there was no way for us to control this many stores there were hundreds of them and we were trying to manage this internally we were like have we made the right decision and we were like yeah we have to do this it's going to be short-term pain long-term gain and we've got an amazing relationship with them now they were like this kind of thing happens it's fine but I think in our minds we were just like how the hell has this happened for this run we also didn't we didn't have recall insurance at the time because it was just something we hadn't even considered um and I think it's those tiny moments where you learn all of these things that need to be in place before something like this happens and yeah and we'd also because of timelines and they wanted to launch earlier we'd kind of moved from our normal manufacturer to another temporary manufacturer just to get the order done and actually I think you realize you can't you have power to push back and make sure everything's as it should be but I think because we were so excited by the opportunity we just did everything to kind of conform to their timelines and actually for the sake of a few weeks it would have all been stress-free and just in case any retailers are listening to this this was four years ago this is not something that has ever happened against him and we can talk about it now and laugh yeah but at the time you're like this is