I Accidentally Lost 20kg In Corporate Life | Darren O’Reilly

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, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. There's a massive issue, like there's a global pandemic and the silent pandemic is probably obesity. I ended up losing 20 kilos in weight, but the main reasons were skipping breakfast, grabbing meal deals on the go, which are cheap, convenient, but nutritionally disastrous. People were just doing what I was. So Dr. Brian Carson and myself set out to solve this problem.

0:36So we have brought all the best superfoods into one convenient plant-based powdered food. Where would you like to see holes at? Oh, we'd love to be the largest functional food company in the world.

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1:25Maybe I'll give you a little reason why we kind of started the business. It was driven out of personal need. So as you rightly pointed out, I was a professional athlete for a number of years. And unfortunately, I had to get a real job, as some people might say. So when I was transitioning into the corporate world, I ended up losing 20 kilos in weight. And trust me, that was not on purpose. it was a combination of a number of things but the main reasons were skipping breakfast grabbing meal deals on the go which are cheap convenient but nutritionally disastrous and I was looking around the office and people were doing the exact same thing as I was and I would have perceived myself to be very well educated in nutrition and diets and how to look after myself but the common theme was people were just doing what I was skipping breakfast or just having a coffee or grabbing a meal deal on the go.

2:25So Dr. Brian Carson and myself set out to solve this problem. So we have brought all the best superfoods into one convenient plant-based powdered food, which is cheap and convenient, but very nutritious and delicious, I have to say.

2:42Alex Chisnall:Yeah, and I agree with you, wholeheartedly agree with you. Interesting though then for yourself, a career as a professional rugby player, Was that a natural path for you upon leaving school? Was it something you had to work hard at? Worked extremely hard at it, to be honest with you. Lucky enough, I really enjoyed it. Hard work was kind of always kind of driven into us as a family. So I got two older brothers. Being the youngest, you kind of have to fight for survival sometimes. We were two older brothers who were big lads. But no, when we were younger, we were always ambitious. So, for example, we were selling eggs to our local butcher at the age of eight or nine.

3:27And my brother's a little older. Stephen, my eldest brother, is looking after the ledger. So there's a few complaints where that is at the moment. But we always were hardworking. We always had jobs. And then commitment was something that was kind of instilled in us through our parents. and thankfully kind of that resolved transitioned into my sporting life and now into kind of into

3:50Alex Chisnall:the kind of startup world um so did you interested or did you start formulating your whole set plans you know back then or since you transitioned out of the rugby career to the corporate life has it come from then instead like how far back did these kind of thoughts go yeah so it's such an interesting question so as i said i was always entrepreneurial but in all honesty i wasn't looking at this space until i was moved into the corporate world for probably about six years and then i kind of started looking around at my own behavioral habits of trying to so as i said whole subs plant-based so i started reducing um my meat consumption and i started thinking okay how can i balance my diet up here and then i started looking at kind of consumer behavior year and as you've probably seen yourself Alex a lot of people have moved into being flexitarian so basically just for your listeners flexitarian is somebody who predominantly eats a plant-based or vegetarian diet but occasionally eats meat or fish so I felt myself I was in that bracket and then I started looking at how can I enhance my own diet so with the movement of flexitarian and we started to look at, right, how can we formulate a product around this?

5:06And then I think, as you mentioned, some of the other founders there, they paved the way with some education. And I think that the market is now more educated than they were even when I left playing professional sport. I think people are looking for functional foods. So it's not just about how they taste, but although taste is critically important because we're all, we don't take things that we don't like to taste of. but I think they're looking for benefits that come out of the product. So when we were formulating our product, we looked at some superfoods, so super greens and super reds. And thankfully, Dr.

5:41Carson, my business partner, is the brain behind the operation in regards to the formulation. But we chose organic cherries, for example, for inflammation. So they really help reducing inflammation. And then beetroot for helping blood flow around. And we all know how good broccoli and spinach. I just chose some examples there. But we wanted to pick ingredients that are going to actually have a meaningful impact on your body and not just for putting it on the back of a label.

6:08Alex Chisnall:And the product at the moment is UK, but you've got plans to then look at Europe or look at North America or? Yeah, for sure. So at the moment, we're shipping across the UK and Ireland. So we got through the issues of customers and Brexit, thankfully. the next immediate short-term goal is to open up European shipping. And then the big goal would obviously be North America because they're, in my opinion, are far more educated marketplace. They seem to adopt these type of products a lot quicker. So definitely that would be kind of the long-term goals to get there. We're also, because our product is only in chocolate and vanilla at the moment, as you know, Alex.

6:52Alex Chisnall:but it's my last vanilla one here look at that good got it on point yeah great great great product placement thanks um but we're looking at creating new uh flavors but also uh we're in the middle of ndp so new product development to bring out additional products so our ultimate mission is to redefine the functional food category i think there's so many products that can be taken to market and the consumers are just really interested in this space. Convenient, nutritious food on the go is what people are looking for because everybody's lifestyle, even during COVID, has gotten more and more congested.

7:30People's diaries are getting packed out and now that we're commuting back to the office, it opens up another world of opportunity as well.

7:37Alex Chisnall:Yeah. And tell me a little bit about your co-founder then, Dr. Brian Carson. How did you guys meet up? Yeah, so I've kind of known Brian for a number of years, and he's a senior lecturer in performance nutrition and physiology down in University College Limerick. And when I had this idea in Inception, he was one of the first people I turned to, if I'm being honest, because of his education, his background. He's a real thought leader in Ireland, if I'm being honest in the space. He's also extremely honest and direct, which is really important as well as a co-founder. When we were going through the new product development for our first two powdered flavors, we just had a blank canvas.

8:28So I said, Brian, look, this is what I'd love to create. These are the kind of markers from protein level, vitamin level, minerals, et cetera, what we're trying to achieve, what do you think is possible? And he set himself a task and went through it, really diligently chose the best ingredients, in his opinion, that actually have meaningful levels of positive bioactives on the body, as well as looking at omega profiles from 3, 6, and 9, healthy fats, choosing novel ingredients. So red sea algae as well is in there, and making sure that we had a product before we even started looking at taste, texture or anything like that, that is unique.

9:15It's not a Me Too product. It's very unique in its formulation and it's been built from scratch, from the ground up, which we're super proud of. It did take us a very long time to get to market, which thankfully, from speaking to some other founders, is we're not alone in that process like it took us pretty much two and a half years two and a half years okay from from ideation to pilot launch yeah yeah yeah like we went through a number of additions once we found a manufacturer who was happy to support us but we also had a lot of hurdles along the way from i think this probably thankfully we're fairly resilient we are extremely resilient and extremely driven but the number of manufacturers we went to for support and we'd go down a fairly a fair bit down the road and then they just pulled the plug or we weren't big enough or they didn't have room in their in their in their lines to have a small run or even to do sampling so it certainly is a test put it that way but I'm sure to get calls like this all the time with people having an idea to try it and see how it goes you and the thing with us is we're all in on this so um we bootstrap this business from from uh the ground up which is uh which is amazing definitely um a lot of gray hairs coming up but that's uh i think that's just all part of it and thankfully we're in the middle of closing out a fundraising round which would definitely be to elevate us to the next level and continue to increase our sales.

10:53Thankfully, everything's been organic to date, being real and not being paid for and all that sort of stuff. You see a real genuine approach to it. I think that resonates with consumers as well.

11:04Alex Chisnall:Yeah, no, 100 % comes across. And look, just to finish up, take a big portion of your time. But last question would be ultimate goal where would you want to be be that 5, 10, 25 years, whatever that is Darren, where would you like to see Holes up? We'd love to be the largest functional food company in the world so we're obviously very small at the moment but we're not have large ambitions short term we're going to open up European shipping with a big focus on the UK market because there's 65 million people there, continue to develop new products. But there's no end of drive and ambition from our small and nimble team.

11:51But I think with the additional hires and the consultants we have in the business, we're certainly going in the right direction.

11:58Alex Chisnall: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.