I Gave My 30s to One Idea (Now It’s Global)

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. Oh my God, I absolutely love numbers. My family have been farming about 320 years now, which is like nine generations. So Seedlip literally is a product of my upbringing in terms of mum and the farming side and then dad and the design side. I went into design agencies and I did naming projects for clients and it's a horrible process. You know, I started working on Seedlip in 2013.

0:42So this is like year nine or something, but it still feels like this thing is only five minutes old. I mean, I'm 39 in two weeks, you know, and I've spent my 30s, I guess, in this space. and I'm definitely not done yet.

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1:35Alex Chisnall:So look, before we chat about Seedlet, I'd love to find out a little bit more about your background and how you may have ultimately helped lead you to where you are now. So tell me about your family's history of working with land. I understand that goes back quite a few hundred years. So what was childhood memories like? What was growing up like for Ben? Yeah, so my family had been farming about 320 years now, which is like nine generations of farming history, which is awesome. And really proud of that. It's not easy, agriculture and kind of arable farming these days. But it meant that childhood was kind of countryside.

2:17And I guess my brothers, two younger brothers I had growing up, all quite close in age. So it was that sort of, I don't know, whether it's building tree houses, booby traps, bows and arrows, playing around in tractors, horses. It was that sort of, you know, mum kick us out in the morning. You know, the bell rings for lunch, kick back out, come back in at tea time. And I guess what I've taken from that is I definitely, I was definitely exposed to seeing hard work, you know, from my grandfather, my uncle, especially, and just how it's hard to work with the land. So that was, that was good. I got a good grounding of, you know, you see the bag of potatoes in the kitchen, you see the chips on your plate that mum's cooked, and you kind of understand how they've got from the field to the table.

3:12that was important i didn't probably appreciate that as much you know as in the last sort of 10 15 years and then my dad is in the world of brand design yeah i didn't know okay so sealip literally is a product of my upbringing in terms of mum and the farming side and then dad and the design side and i was quite like farming growing up i was to be honest it was sort of quite uh i don't know being at school with other kids and you know parents who are I don't know lawyers or bankers or um property developers or stuff I was kind of like oh yeah we're we're a farming family that's that's quite low down the food chain you know that's it's quite humble kind of simple you know life dads and I you know sat on tractors during the school holidays and got stuck in but dad's work i always have more questions about i was always more what are you working on where are you traveling to what projects are going on you know standing in a supermarket is like an art gallery so yeah both that was all quite formative and my childhood and my memories of the farm and the land definitely informed the blends and informed um seed lip yeah in a big way and does

4:32Alex Chisnall:your mum still work the land they still farm that's our family yeah we still farm so my uncle now kind of is in charge of the farms across lincolnshire and yorkshire and you know first four years of of seedlet we were hand picking peas from the farm as a team uh 90 minute peas so field to freezer in 90 minutes um and yeah we'd pick what we needed for the year and they would then be distilled into seedlet garden and and did um did the name seedlet which i've which i've read about did that come directly from working on the land in those yeah i i remember i you know naming like is a for anyone that started a business is a really horrible fragile terrible process and i'd done naming pro you know i went into design agencies and i did naming projects for clients and it's a horrible process.

5:25So when it came to naming Seedlip, yeah, it was kind of headaches and just, but I went home and I was speaking to my gran about what it was like when we started farming, just kind of not because I wanted a name, but just because I thought I'd ask her. And she talked about these baskets that we used to use that she was told about called Seedlips. And by that time I'd become pretty obsessed with doing very random things like visiting all the botanical gardens in England and Scotland and seeing a brown sign for a farming museum you know off an A road and going and seeing it I got to know this lady who is the director of baskets at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading which I really recommend going it's a tiny little museum but they've got 12 seed lips.

6:14Alex Chisnall:okay so talk me through the process that you went then from deciding that right i'm actually gonna build a business here and sell some stuff yeah it was um i guess it was very gradual number one there was no like oh my god there's a business in this or oh my god there's a gap in the market um it kind of was a period of just me playing around and i guess gradually unbeknownst to me at the time starting to fall absolutely head over heels in love with this opportunity to express myself um in and learn about things that really sat true with me and just gave me this outlet of kind of creativity and experimentation and uh yeah from just mucking around you know evenings and weekends it was really going out for a meal in london uh you know which i don't do very often but was doing and was going to be driving home and getting served this absolute monstrosity of a pink fruity sweet horrible ah yeah yeah okay and then that kind of you know then the dots just starting to sort of slowly join of this is this is a really poor option this doesn't fit anything and i don't want another one i feel like an idiot maybe i'm not alone in that maybe there's something in what i'm doing at home maybe i could work with the farm maybe i could work with my dad you know maybe i could find a way to bring all this together but i'm running my own design agency and that's a couple that was a couple of years old that was busy um and i was enjoying it and so seed lip initially was going to be a side project it was going to be a bit of fun to be honest to like make some liquids choose you know design my own brand maybe take it to a local farmer's market um and originally i was going to do five products in two sizes we launched i was going to do five products in two sizes it was going to take six months and it was all going to be you know it's going to cost no money and it was just going to be on the side uh fast forward to kind of launching two years later in one product in one size having put my life savings in with the tattoo on my arm and uh full time on it it was just a slow uncovering of oh my god i really love this oh my god i want to at least get this onto a shelf That was the goal.

8:58Just see it through, get it on a shelf. Had lots of ideas before, never done anything with them, helped other people with their ideas, but then they go and execute them. You know, just wanted to finish something and finish was, yeah, get it on the shelf. And what did it feel like the first time you saw it on a shelf? you know driving uh packing out the back of the car getting the first invoice from selfridges packing out the back of the car driving into london and when you deliver stuff self you know you go down into the basement and i parked in the wrong place and i didn't have the right high viz jacket on and then walking through like the tunnels of selfridges you know carrying boxes and then going and putting them on the shelf was just a massive release i think it was just a you know a kind of bit of a chance to breathe but then I stood there every day for three weeks and sampled and sampled and sampled and talked to the public for the first time and learned a bit of how to talk about it and learned that people really didn't care about how clever I thought I'd been distilling something.

10:07Does it taste good or not basically? Does it taste good and oh right now you're talking to me about how rubbish orange juice is or you know a fizzy water okay like talk to me about that don't i can't care less about your clever distillation and you know i don't really care about that um does it taste nice let me try it and when do i drink it and how do i drink it um so yeah it was good selfridges were yeah they're such an incredible platform to launch new weird businesses you know um so yeah that was sort of fond memories but also yeah it was a one-man band i was doing everything and um yeah that was pretty stressful i was gonna

10:52Alex Chisnall:that was literally my next question was it still just you at this point in time it was yeah i mean i counted because i sent i made 50 postcards or 50 prints actually of the fox illustration that we have on seed lip spice um and it was my favorite one by the way great uh yeah it's the first the first one um and with these weird delusions of grandeur you know i signed every one and sent them to the 50 people that i counted had been involved in actually helping seed lip launch okay and that's the guys that made the bottles the labels the lawyers that help with the trademark You know, it really is like a village, even though I was the only one that was taking all the risk and the only one that was on it full time.

11:37So many people in the industry were helpful. You know, lady who helped me understand what the hell a value chain was, you know, finance people who helped teach me about Excel and P &L and learned that, oh, my God, I absolutely love numbers and Excel. and spreadsheets. So yeah, it was sort of a lot of people helping and then just me the only idiot that the buck stopped with.

12:10Alex 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.