Pip & Nut Founder Pip Murray on Growing a Challenger Brand

0:00I'm actually more of an intro than I am an extrovert, so getting comfortable in not being that kind of like alpha, stand on a stage, whooping and hollering and corralling the truth, like just wasn't my vibe. So figuring that out and then just actually knowing that there's strength in that, you know, you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room to have the most impactful voice in the room. So I think it's just honing what you are and then showing up in a way that is authentic.

0:25Alex Chisnall:Pip Murray, the founder of Pip & Nut, the award-winning natural nut butter brand that's disrupted supermarket shelves and redefined a category. Same way when you're running a marathon and if you've done a number of marathons, you build up your resilience, you know that, okay, you get to mile 20, this is meant to be hard, like it's hard for a reason. I think the same goes for business, that you build resilience over time and you build the kind of muscle memory of like, oh, we've had something like this happen before, you can be more calm in the moment. Welcome to Screw It, Just Do It, the show for those who decided to screw it and just did it.

0:56Alex Chisnall:I'm Alex Chisnell, host of this podcast and co-founder of the Festival of Entrepreneurs at the NEC in Birmingham this October 8th and 9th. This is the podcast that brings you face to face with the entrepreneurs and business rebels who threw caution to the wind and built something extraordinary. Quick heads up, registration is now open for this year's Festival of Entrepreneurs. Join us at the NEC in Birmingham on October the 8th and 9th for two game-changing days with 200 plus speakers and thousands of ambitious founders. Get your free limited two-day pass at festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk or click my personal link in the show notes.

1:30Alex Chisnall:Welcome to the show once again. Thank you for having me. All back. Back indeed. And I think last time, as we were saying, last time we crossed paths was we did a Virgin Startup event. I think it was like 2018, 2019. And obviously you've been on a bit of a journey since then, celebrated 10 years being in business back in January. But I'd like to go back to what was your screw it, just do it moment? What was the screw it, just do it moment when you decided to leave the job and go all in on Pippa Nutt? I often think the screw it, just do it moment sort of happens iteratively over time um it isn't always like this big light bulb watershed moment that suddenly like slams down and you suddenly change your life it is for or was for me more of a gradual convincing myself that this is something I wanted to do whether it was you know the first time I made the products um that then gave me the confidence to take them to market stalls that then gave me the confidence to throw my hat in the ring on a competition to live in a shed that then enabled me to quit my job um which we I'm sure we can dive into in a bit more detail or the first time we went into production you know that's you know so for me it was a number of things but I think the real like light bulb moment I had was around you know running and I was training for Paris Marathon back in 2013 and it was weirdly actually on some of those really long training runs where you have hours and hours to think of stuff um that I started to really like you know cogitate on the idea of like nut butter it was something I ate a lot when I was running um in particular because it's good for protein um but as a consumer back then nearly every product I picked up had palm oil in and so I kind of was thinking about it I love food so it was you know something that didn't sit well with me a product had an ingredient that I didn't think was sustainable all that good for me so yeah it got under my skin and I just found I couldn't stop thinking about it um so that was where it started I guess but iterated over time as well it's interesting isn't it do you still get those um you know those moments when you're when you're out running when you when you have thoughts and because I do and then I'm always like where's the pad and pen but it's always those moments when I'm out especially like I think out in nature and like you say it's those longer it's not the 5k necessarily because that's it's almost like a you know half a sprint isn't it but it's those longer runs when your mind just starts ruminating and going off in all sorts of directions 100 i find my best thinking time is when when i'm running i also walk to work every day it takes me 30 minutes 30 minutes there 30 minutes back i tend to find those are also the moments i can have some really good ideas when you're just sort of like again it's when you're sort of churning things that are either slightly subconscious or conscious in your mind that you'll get more of the left field ideas so yeah sure i'm pretty sure my team probably hate it when I come into the office and I send like 10 different random slack messages off because they're like sparking ideas as I'm sort of moving but movement I think is great for stimulating or even just like solving the blockers on things yeah it's often not is it instead of like people go right this is the deep thinking time block out half a day and think about the business and strategize but it's more like you say going for a 30 minute walk on the way into work that will spark those conversations in your mind.

4:55Totally.

4:57Alex Chisnall:So do tell us more about the Escape the City competition to live rent-free in a shed for three months. And what did you do when you found out that you'd won the competition? Yeah, I mean, I guess a bit of backstory here. So I had the idea for Pippin' Out in January 2013, and then I spent about two years trying to figure out how I was going to get the product to market. About one year into that journey, after kind of figuring out how to make the product, how to, you know, what I wanted to do from a brand point of view and all of that. You know, the business was coming together. But at the time I was still working at my day job, which is at the Science Museum as a theatre producer.

5:35I was 24 at the time, had, you know, already at that point, number of credit cards stacked up. I sort of self-funded the business up until that point in terms of the development of it. And I was looking for that tipping point to say like, I needed to I knew I could make the product I needed to just you know get it into production I need to raise some funding and but I was kind of stuck in that hamster wheel of like well I can't afford to leave my job because you know it's paying my salary it's paying my rent and it's sort of helping me fund the business to a level but equally I need to kind of give the business more time so I saw this random competition and it was run by a company called Escape the City and it was called Escape to the Shed and it was a PR thing where they were giving one startup the opportunity to live rent-free in London, the catch being it was in a garden shed.

6:23They also gave a desk space as well. And I thought, you know what, fuck it, I'll put my name in the ring. And I went into the competition, ended up getting voted to win it. It was sort of a Facebook competition, which feels really old school now, like everyone would vote for their favourite start-up. And Pippinart won. And it was that funny moment where you think, oh, shit, I've actually got to do this now. So I actually that morning when the founder of that business, Escape City, called me, I said, like, you've actually won it. You can you can move in in a month. I literally went to my boss that day and handed him my notice.

6:59I then moved out of my flat in North London about a month later and I moved in and it was like a three month stint, basically. And that three month stint I spent there in a really random shed in South London, which did have access to a house. so I was able to like cook and stuff and all of the and shower so but I used that time to kind of crowdfund and I did a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube to raise about 100 120 grand which I did at the end of that sort of three month period and raised the funds within seven days and that was the capital and I needed to kind of get the product into production so within seven days was it really wow yeah I mean that's the thing with crowdfunding like it either like it either tips or it doesn't um and it wasn't like a vast sum of money it felt a lot to me at the time so I think a lot of and I've done a fair bit of like pre-raising you know often you have to like load at least a third of the funding up you know pre going live so I knew it was gonna get a good

7:58Alex Chisnall:kick at the start but yeah seven days in the end wow and what's your abiding memory of um those three months of living in a living in a shed that's a great question um it was probably the most random three months of my life uh I felt very socially awkward I think partly equally also felt really excited about what the future could hold and a level of pressure if I'm honest pressure to actually follow through and commit to the brand raise the capital I knew I only had three months really and then I would need to go and get another job I really didn't want my parents are great but I didn't want to have to move home and live with them I loved London so I felt a level of like shit this is this is me like taking a leap now so it was a real mixture of feelings equally freeing like when else do you get a chance to spend like all your time working on a project that could potentially be like your future you know business work life super exciting it's like your 20s are there to do really weird and wonderful things like that is what they're for like exploration do something different like don't pressure yourself that you need to like be in the nine to five so I in lots of ways I was like this is kind it was great it was really exciting I think my advice really I often say to my team like use your 20s to figure out what you love figure out what you love doing and don't feel the pressure that you have to like get up the chain of the you know corporate ladder if actually that's not your thing um so yeah for me that's uh it was it was a fun time but but weird at the same time yeah no it's a good point i think it's a good piece of advice as well i totally agree with you i did you know did uh in my 20 24 i joined virgin atlantic as cabin crew just went from uni to the bbc where i was going to be a journalist and after six months was like do you know what see the world and get paid to actually see the world and I kind of let it go too long because I carried it on well into my 30s but in hindsight I would do it again but I just wouldn't do it for so long if you know what I mean because it became a real like cosseted environment like being a student again where everything's kind of laid out for you you know um but I agree with I think 20s is definitely the time for experimenting and doing doing stuff interesting like when you said and I guess it's going to be the same for a lot of people is that the moment you quit your job and you put yourself on that I've got this 90 day project to to work on the business you felt under pressure do you still feel under pressure now or is it a different kind of pressure it's not the same kind of pressure that you feel when you've just starting something when you first got an idea and you are storming and forming it and you're hoping to like launch it into the world a lot of people will be saying to you or maybe not directly but you feel it you feel that people's skepticism of whether or not your idea is any good or oh that's nice isn't it like you get lots of like slightly patronizing like oh that's really good of you for like giving it a go and you're trying to convince yourself that you're or remind yourself in those early days that your idea is good that you do have the ability and capability to actually do this and prove people wrong so I think there's an element of pressure that you put on yourself there as well of course like all the other natural things around financial pressure that you feel in those moments when perhaps you don't have that financial backdrop that um that means that this is really putting you know everything on the line in that moment or it feels like that at least whereas now when you're you know pippin nuts established we've gone 10 years as you said you know got a brand that works people I don't worry about the business or the brand not succeeding I do worry about the team and that is like a pressure that I fear that that's constant like you know a big part of building a brand and like the heart of the the beating heart of a business is the people within it that that is the thing that I stress most about and it's the thing that's most personal in many ways like forming and fostering a talented group of people that collaborate and work well together is like really difficult it's such an intangible thing culture but so real at the same time so that that's stressful you know making sure you keep the momentum is also stressful i think you know you want to keep you know growing and at pace you want to still deliver exciting news to consumers you want to be seen as a hot brand and keeping that over time is is challenging you know to constantly make sure that you're not becoming a dusty brand that you know is a bit past it you know you want to keep relevant so i think that that i feel the pressure on for sure to you know and there's so many amazing businesses and brands launching.

12:50You feel the pressure to kind of like constantly level up for sure. That's probably where my head sits at now.

12:56Alex Chisnall:And just to rewind a little bit again, why Nut Butter and why 2015? Obviously, personal circumstances by the sound of it as well and what you were into at the time with running. Nut Butter for me, I mean, right back in the day, it was just a product I loved. I loved it because it was delicious fundamentally. like it has one of those traits I think peanut butter nut butter is being very addictive yet you kind of feel good about it at the same time oh it's so addictive like we saw a stat actually that 40 % of our consumers eat peanut butter literally just with a spoon so I always find it really funny because people always come up to me and I'll be like oh Pip I actually just eat the product straight out the jar and I'm like so do a significant proportion of our consumers totally normal but I love that it's like a really positive form of nutrition like you know you're getting like loads of nuts it's like rich and good fats fiber protein yeah equally at the same time you're like winning it tastes incredible so that's what kind of got me kind of hooked and under the skin of it I also thought there was an opportunity to clean it up you know most peanut buses at the time um when I started the business you know the majority of the products on the shelf were made with palm oil and that I thought could be fixed like you just don't need it in the product it's a natural product and it tastes great without it so so why have it there it's it's not serving anyone well and then I saw a gap for the brand as well I'd seen in other spaces in other categories you know these challenger brands coming in that could you know bring a bit of a fresh air and a breath of fresh air to a category and I loved the fact that peanut butter was a really like overlooked very dust like spreads it's the least glamorous part of the store but and I loved the idea of bringing like life to that kind of relatively dusty category and and cut through in a much more lifestyle, playful, taste-led, foodie, you know, contemporary way, which hadn't really been done back then.

14:51So it was a real kind of combination, I guess, of all those things as to why I landed on this product range in the first instance. And 2015, honestly, was just, that's how long it took me to get. I had the idea and it took me two years to get to market. But definitely timing, I think, with any business is important. I think I launched the brand at the right moment in time in terms of all the trends like protein was in you know sugar and calories were becoming a bit more well sugar was definitely more demonized whereas fats was actually seen as something that was good in your diet so there was an overall health trend which has obviously continued that was starting to like shift like so I think it was the right time for the brand but also no one had really disrupted the space fully at that moment in time and I think we got in there at exactly the right moment to kind of bring a bit of life to that space in store?

15:40Alex Chisnall:My kids are disgusted because I use a knife, right, and I go butter and then I go peanut butter, both still in the jars like that. So it's like double on that. You shouldn't stick a knife in your mouth anyway. And I was brought up in Canada, so it was like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were like de rigueur for your entire life, you know, and it's just carried on. And I've brought them on board, obviously, you know, with me as well, but it's more like a bagel deal these days. I'm not sure about that combo but I know people that do it you're on your own there Alex I might I must be um do out of interest do you know like the sunpats of this world still have palm oil in their product so what's actually quite interesting is so when I launched the brand about in the category the brands um with that contain palm oil that was about 75 plus of the total volume in the category now today over 50 percent of um what is bought in terms of consumers buying are products or peanut butters that don't contain palm oil so there has been a huge shift in terms of behavior around people accepting a natural product but there are brands obviously that still use it that's their kind of heritage i guess um but actually the norm now is a natural product which i find hugely exciting and it is a nice case study of how consumer behavior can shift because when I started the brand I remember a few people were like Pip nobody's going to accept something that naturally separates because when you don't use Parmel um it means that the oils and the nuts sometimes do they come to the surface and you have to stir them back in and people are like it's just not going to work like people won't mainstream consumers won't want to pick that up but fast forward 10 years actually it's now a norm Pip and Nut's now the number two brand in the category although in the last 12 weeks and this is breaking news we haven't announced yet we became the number one so we have managed to massively turn the table on I guess behavior change and how and I guess the key point here is it just takes time when you're trying to shift people's behaviors can't expect to happen overnight but if you are consistent with it and still deliver a really good product you can you can do it and I read that you also at least in the early days I I'm guessing maybe you still do, but you use that as an opportunity to educate people if you actually see that separation.

18:01Alex Chisnall:That's actually a good thing. That shows it's natural and you need to mix it up. Yeah, exactly. You can kind of almost use it as positive signals as opposed to like a negative. So how can you, how can you, but it is an education to your point that you do have to explain it and that takes time. Yeah. Oh, congratulations. And I'm surprised because I walked pretty much every day in a supermarket or, you know, in a shop and I saw you know like the sun parts of this world there with yourselves and is it planet earth something like that planet and I thought those all you know the red and the blue and what I just thought they still haven't changed their branding have they their branding's like the same as it was 20 years ago almost or 15 years ago I'm just really surprised that they haven't reacted at all to what else is in the market I'm sure I'm sure if you got them on they'd say they've agitated um but and and actually the category has got more competitive over the years you know the brands have leveled up more however yeah it's it's it has broken through and it's i think down to our very distinctive brand we've got a an amazing brand to work with in terms of we recently did a campaign in january and we you know we've got a squirrel in our logo so it's an asset that we really try and like sweat as hard as possible it's like very distinctive to us and we literally got you know giant squirrels on these huge ads in London blown up and they had a slightly obsessive nature the way they were looking at our products it's like an ad and you see our jar and they're sort of staring at it in a very um sort of crazed way and it and it has a way of I guess sticking in people's minds and I think a big thing for me in brand building is how do you make sure you're being as distinctive and disruptive as possible someone once told me that there's a massive cost to being boring and dull as a brand and often as a brand if you do more conventional advertising i something that is less disruptive less distinctive in the mind of the consumer you end up having to spend 2.6 times more in advertising than you would if you were actually slightly more you know um yeah disruptive and sort of showed up in a way that really kind caught attention and i it really landed me that there's a really cost to playing it safe um so you with a from a brand point of view you have to look different you have to stand out you can't play into the conventions that exist in the category you have to do something different otherwise why would anyone see you why would anyone change any of their behavior and why would they remember you in the first place yeah and i remember you'll probably tell me exactly when that was but I remember seeing your ads on the tube um like everywhere literally for a for a period and if it was like two weeks or it was a month but I'm kind of up in London I was I was literally up like three or four days a week every week and I'd be doing my waterloo to the studio um in King's Cross and I would literally see it everywhere and it kind of you came back on my rate not that you ever went away but that definitely was like one of those moments you kind of like boom front and central i think you have to as a brand you have to invest in the short and the long term so obviously advertising like that it's more either payback is longer but it does build better connections and in in people's minds they'll start to build a more of an emotional connection to your brand and to your point around sort of being everywhere you also need to make sure you peak the peak so when you are spending money and investing you know what is still a relatively small amount in the grand landscape of like media you need to make sure you're amplifying as much as you possibly can in those peaks and being as disruptive from a creative point of view so that you actually get more cut through than what you would do if you had triple the budget so yeah it is it is a game that you've constantly got to um play you know when you talk about kind of advertising you do need to commit however it's all in the execution and how creative you can be and delivering it.

22:00Alex Chisnall:What's the difference for you between creating products and building a brand? I read you were stocked in the early years in like a lot of the London gyms, top London gyms, not necessarily doing big numbers, but it was very much more for brand building purposes. I mean, distribution and where you're placed is such a key part of brand building in the early years and still now, to be honest, because we still hold a lot of the listings that we want, you know, in those sort of what we call iconic stores like the Selfridges or the um you know the SoulCycle you know kind of cycle gyms uh you know studios and things like that they they can do just as good a job as building your brand awareness and building associations like if you're stocked in Selfridges naturally um you will be seen as a premium brand one that is on trend that sort of deserves the place on shelf and it does a huge job in terms of brand halo for for you and also helps credibility when you're selling into other retailers like i don't know cardo or you know sainsbury's tesco so it does a double whammy effect in terms of both consumables helping you then also build out your further distribution further and so even now we we make sure that we nurture the accounts that are like we call them iconic accounts like the whole foods to make sure that we still and i think a test of a really strong brand is one that can both be listed in asda day to day whilst also holding those sort of iconic accounts in in sort of whole foods or you know your your really nice sort of premium delis and things like that that that is showing that you've managed to kind of stretch and be relevant across the spectrum if you're enjoying this conversation and thinking i need to be around more people like this then i've got the perfect solution for you the festival of entrepreneurs is where five to ten thousand ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it it's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes real entrepreneurs real stories real strategies exactly like what you're hearing right now but live and in person go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone to get into Selfridges you cold emailed them to start with right and you what was what was the reply that you got from Selfridges yeah I mean actually it was initially when the buyers i was doing a market stall and when the buyers uh happened to walk by uh the stand and this is before the brand you see today it looked quite different but she was oh you know when you're ready like reach out so that's what i reached out to to do and actually the great thing about selfridges is they are very receptive to supporting sort of early nascent brands uh i mean you're nervous when you're pitching to them however it definitely is more of a nurturing environment than maybe some of the other retailers when you get into them so they were always I was very lucky in in many ways they were always very supportive it wasn't like dragon's den vibe going in there and that's the thing you've got to test the waters as you're building your brand if you're you know I was a new entrepreneur I'd never worked in FMCG I'd never worked in business before I was 26 when we launched when I launched the brand I do think it's smart to sort of try and build slowly in distribution rather than personally if I dived into Tesco got 700 stores for the brand right out the blocks not only would I just not have the experience to like enable me to keep that listing but you know you're also testing it with consumers you're learning from your supply chain you're learning what works in terms of price point so I do think how you build your brand slowly up in in you know bigger and bigger retailers you learn different things as you go so kind of doing it in a way that's sort of sustainable and not just trying to get the hockey stick gross so you uh you know by putting yourself out there you were making your own luck ultimately yes somebody walked past and had that conversation with you but if you weren't out there if you hadn't taken that chance rather than just sitting behind a you know a laptop you were out there testing your products etc 100 you only get opportunities when you're out there doing something you have to be active an idea in your head is just an idea but if you put it into something in reality it suddenly starts to live and breathe and um you you get momentum so yes I never wanted to necessarily have a market store brand I love market stores and very much respect people that do that but I always wanted to have a kind of retail brand that sold up and down the UK in stores but the testing and learning that I had at market stores and then subsequent opportunities that came off the back of it gave me some of the stepping stones in those early days so yeah I'm a I'm a doer I think like a lot of entrepreneurs like less about sort of theorizing and strategizing and frameworks this and that I love getting out there and learning and doing because you tend to learn like even now today like speaking to consumers about products that recently launched like my favorite thing when we launch a product is that me and the whole team go and sample in like the likes of Whole Foods and we stand at shelf for three hours sampling the product which you might say is a complete waste of time because you've got loads of other things to do but you sit and you hear what people say about your product right there and then and you learn so much just from like that thought process or or that that feedback that people give you or even just watching people's reaction over and over and over again either gives you a sense of like yeah there's something in this or no people don't actually like this they're just they're the same that they do but you can tell from that the way that they're speaking so market stores they're such a great way to test because you're just getting feedback live well i always say i always remember again back when I worked for Virgin Atlantic.

27:36Alex Chisnall:I remember we used to see a lot of Richard back then in like the nineties and the noughties. And when he used to come on the plane, um, and I was in my twenties, I was like, what, why is he sitting in economy? If that was me, I'd be flat out, you know, 10 hours to LA sleeping, but he would sit in economy. He would have one of the crew bags, like a normal, and it was obviously thought, thought through, right. You know, he's, he's very good at that. So he'd thought it true. He had the same bag that we had. It wasn't, you know, like a fancy LMVH bag or anything like that, whatever. It was a crew bag.

28:09Alex Chisnall:He'd sit in economy. And then after takeoff, he literally just used to walk around the plane with an old, you know, pad, a pen, and literally just ask customers on the flights questions. and it's only after I left that I kind of processed that and go wow that is a pretty cool thing to do one is great PR because you've got 300 people on the plane all going oh my god look it's Richard Benson on the flight why isn't he in upper class watching movies but instead he's down here chatting to us in economy type thing he's hustling I love that yeah and he's valuable feedback he's at the coalface isn't he in airline terms um and yes he would go up at some point and he would actually go into the where the pilots like have their bunk beds at the flight and he'd get his head down for a couple of hours.

28:51Alex Chisnall:But he would literally spend the time every flight I saw him. He did that. You know, used to see him a lot back in those days as well before he, you know, moved out to his own island and all the rest of it. But yeah, I think that just underlines your point as well. You know, no matter what market you're in, it's getting that that customer feedback is absolutely invaluable. And that was in the early days of the airline as well. Right. like in the early days of your business. There's never a better time to get that feedback. You do. Tell me about the decision, talking about branding a little bit.

29:25Alex Chisnall:So tell me a decision to create your own cookbook. How did that come about? How effective was it? Is it something more brands should be doing in your category? Gosh, that was a long time ago. We launched a cookbook in 2017. It was the first nut butter cookbook. It was really cool. And I created every single recipe, 70 recipes all with nut butter believe it or not it is possible there could have been more if I'd if I'd allowed the space on the pages for me I mean nut butter it's something that you can put in so many different things um it was always a great opportunity to kind of share a bit of the versatility of the product and give that kind of slight education to to our consumers but what was brilliant about it at the time and certainly this was epitomized our marketing tactics in the early days is that we actually got you know I got paid to write the cookbook firstly they the the the advertiser the the um publishers Hardy Grant you know they also paid for all of the photography um and obviously food styling associated with the the uh cookbook and obviously they had their own PR agency when it launched so they helped us like push it out there so we got more press in that sort of three month window than we did for like the first whole year of the brand through having all of this great content to push out into like the likes of the guardian and the times like lifestyle magazine and things like that and yeah we had pop-ups in selfridges where we did like toast bars and recipes from the cookbook it was epic and it cost us nothing effectively in fact they actually paid us to do it and we sold copies and it was listed in you know that's of a bonus right the way through to waterstones sold on amazon and it was just like the most amazing sort of example of guerrilla marketing where you know you don't have to a assume that things have to cost you money i mean particularly this is your like real like um advantage as a young fresh startup challenger brand is that you know people will treat you slightly differently differently and these sort of opportunities come your way but when they do you have to grab them with both hands but it was a fantastic opportunity to get the brand out there in a way that no one else could in our category it wasn't nobody else had the credibility or the capability to do it and that also was a huge advantage to us so could we do another cookbook again I think we could but it was particularly that early stage I think was powerful when you're really sort of fresh as a brand yeah the bang you got for your buck was oh it was insane it was absolutely amazing so I even now I mean we're obviously at a slightly different life stage as a brand but my biggest thing with my brand marketing team is how can you make one plus one equals three you can do whatever you would like as a as a team but or like from a marketing point of view it's the idea behind how you do something that is the real magic and how can you really sweat the idea as much as possible to amplify it as much as you can creativity you can't put a price on it It really is the lifeblood of your business.

32:31Alex Chisnall:And going back, you're clearly not a startup anymore. Do you think you still have the mindset of one though? Definitely. I don't think a challenger brand. I think it's more a challenger brand that I like to hold on to and harness. I think we have lost the startup in some ways. Like startup, you are firefighting, you are scrappy, you are hustling, hustling, hustling, although we still hustle a lot but it is it the energy of it is quite different to a scale up there is and it doesn't it sounds a bit boring perhaps it is but you know there is slightly more process you have to put in place when you have a team of 10 versus a team of nearly 40 you can't operate in the same way it would just be carnage and actually highly unproductive so you do have to shift your behaviors and slightly therefore um style but the approach and mindset stays the same and I think a challenger brand it doesn't really matter what size you are you can still embrace that mindset and that mindset is like rather than thinking like we can't do that it's sort of what if we could or can if you know it's much more open in the way that you might think about opportunities much more associated with a kind of growth mindset and finding solutions through in problems um so at which we still have so you know we still sweat every single penny that we have because you know recently we started to push into different categories we're now in snacking and we're sort of in you know the likes of uh we're now a small fish in a big pond again um in that world and we're chasing the likes of unilever mars general mills we can't expect the one pound that we're spending to be the same value as the one pound that mars is because they've got far more than theirs so we need to make sure that one pound is multiplied by creative ideas and that's the only way we'll win, having a better product and better kind of execution of the product and the brand overall.

34:23Alex Chisnall:And you've obviously changed, as you say, like from a startup to a scale up. How has the vision changed? What was it? What is it now? How much has that shifted? It has evolved over the years. I think I was a founder 10 years ago that had a real passion for the products that I was making. still have that now by the way still had nut butter on my breakfast this morning but it has evolved into something bigger our mission is to put the nut back into nutrition you know we want to make sure we are creating products that are both delicious tasty natural sustainable and we do that you know because nuts with through the medium of nuts because you know they're a grape ingredient they are high in fiber protein all the things i said earlier they are a real powerhouse And actually, a lot of the time, you know, we talk from a nutrition point of view about having, you know, one of your five a day and making sure you get that in your diet.

35:20But I think as equally as important as having a handful of nuts, you know, we all now know that fiber is one of the things that is most people don't get their recommended daily allowance of fiber in their diet. But we all know it's good for our gas. We know that it's overall good for your health to make sure you're incorporating in your diet. so that's the role that we play and on an even bigger picture um you know i'm a real believer in like business has to focus on the triple bottom line no longer can we just expect our businesses to succeed or society to succeed if business only focuses on profit profit profit profit so pip and art and how we do business is really thinking about how can we live and breathe that and make sure we can show there is a different way of doing business that is um really supports all

36:05Alex Chisnall:stakeholders in in in our business um talking beforehand i was at a launch for finistair last night who i know uh um or in my mind one of the first b corps that i that i knew um at what point did you decide to go down that route yourself how long ago that has that been now pip so we certified in 2019 so at that time there were about 150 b corps in the uk uh now there are over 3 000 which just shows like the journey and movement of that community has gone on so we were relatively early doors in joining the reason being it was always something that I think we spoke to me as an individual this idea that business actually has the ability to solve some of the biggest societal issues on this planet not to be the problem so I fully bought into that idea and I wanted to make sure that Pippenup you know lived and breathed it as much as possible and bcorp i always say this so no one considering it it's just the most amazing template you can have in terms of just using the what they call the standards which is sort of the framework that they use to kind of measure bcops on just give you so much inspiration for how you could thread business impact through your purpose into your business in a more impactful way so if even if you don't want to certify just use the framework that they have to to improve your business because you know businesses that actually really embed purpose into their day-to-day and embrace that triple bottom line will actually perform better so it's actually good business to do business well it's not just a nice to have sticky plaster like oh you've got to do a bit of csr otherwise it looks a bit bad it will actually make your business perform better we have 80 % engagement in our business our team are so engaged in what we're doing the number one reason or reason why people come to work at Pippinite is because we're a B crop because they want to do something that is purpose-driven day-to-day in their work so just think about it if you've got a team that are like energized focused on doing good in the world and and believing in your purpose they're they're going to run through brick walls to get that job done you know the flip side of that if it's just about profit and making the shareholders wealthy well that's not particularly motivating for anyone is it so yeah it comes from a very different place in terms of and I think you can perform better as a brand if you actually have it at the center i love it um what's been the toughest chapter in the in the journey so far for you kind of like 10 and a half years in now yeah the definitely the toughest chapter was this was the middle bit um and it was all right i mean covid years were really difficult i mean we actually performed quite well in covid because we were grocery products so and people bought loads of grocery products during covid so So our business actually grew quite fast.

38:54But I think it was back to the people point. It was a real challenge holding the culture together and feeling that sense of connection across the team and sense of pressure to lead and be a better leader for them. And I think I was going through my own challenges as a leader as well. Like, you know, I was still relatively young at the time when that all happened. I was definitely having my own kind of crisis of confidence about what kind of leader was I how do I show up was I meant to be here should I be running this business sometimes I think you know you can often talk about the the challenges in the business I like the supply chain when it falls over or losing a customer being the lowest but actually I find the loneliest parts are the bits where you lose confidence in yourself or you are going through more of an internal challenge um and those are probably like the the hardest things that I found to overcome um figuring that out for sure and that and that middle bit for me was was that that was my messy middle right and

39:56Alex Chisnall:and who did you have to talk to at that time then did you suffer in silence or did you did you share that with contemporaries your partner your closest friend yeah you can't sit on that sort of stuff you have to talk about it otherwise it just eats you up a coach she once was was transformational I had a brilliant coach called Karen still do work with her and she really helped me get comfortable in my own skin um and started to kind of identify kind of the kind of leader that I was I guess sometimes you just don't have enough examples to pull on or you I'm actually funnily enough more of a introvert than I am an extrovert so getting comfortable in not being that kind of like alpha stand on a stage whooping and hollering and corralling the troops like just wasn't my vibe and so figuring that out and then just actually knowing that there's strength in that you know you don't need to be the loudest voice in the room to have the most impactful voice in the room so I think it's just honing what you are and then showing up in a way that is authentic I think the other thing is you know there is a point of just having to lean into the uncomfortability that you are a leader and stop questioning whether you are but just accept that that is the role that you know you're in when I started the business all I cared about was the product and the brand I actually didn't really think that if this was successful then I'd end up leading a team and so it was almost like by surprise that it ended up happening and therefore I always didn't really feel like I had the right to be there and you just have to just quiet the voice down and stop giving that voice power and instead start to embrace the things that you are good at and focus on things that only you can do and know that there's strength in that um so yeah that's that's how I kind of started to overcome it but it's a constant I think journey I think you're not just done you don't just figure out leadership and you've you've uh can get off you know the learning train it's still a constant like challenge especially if you still have you know wobbles or confidence, crisis of confidence as well.

42:02Alex Chisnall:And then those voices get louder in moments of stress, don't they? And I was thinking like physically as well as mentally, like running a marathon, that voice gets louder that you can't do it, that you should stop, you know, and it's the same, I think, with running a business and it's learning to kind of quieten that voice down or take some advice that quietens that voice down. It's still there. It's still always there, isn't it? but it's um different peaks and troughs and in the journey i love that i do love that analogy because it's very true um in terms of how it gets louder and louder like why am i running this marathon it does it just gets louder as the miles tick up and yeah you've got to find and i think though you get resilience though and the same way when you're running a marathon you and if you've done a number you a number of marathons you build up your resilience you know that okay you get to mile 20 this is meant to be hard like it's hard for a reason etc etc i think the same goes for business that you build resilience over time and you build the kind of um muscle memory of like oh we've had something like this happen before you can be more calm in the in the moment so you're you don't spike in the same way in terms of stress doesn't mean that you don't experience stress you just perhaps are better at dealing with it so annoyingly like with a lot of things time is a big you know teaches you a lot you you sometimes do just have to have more years of experience to then suddenly start to feel a little bit more settled.

43:25Alex Chisnall:Coming to the end, last few questions. Tell me, you know, we're moving so fast at the moment in another, you know, industrial revolution. How are you guys using AI technology innovation in your business right now? We're still relatively early in the AI journey. We are trialing and testing lots of applications within our within our business and sort of trying to get our teams learning about it and just using it a bit more day to day i think there's going to be some really exciting things that we can do from a kind of um insights point of view really starting to understand you know and be faster at like learning and sort of um sort of analyzing insights that we have and and that therefore then informing kind of our product and innovation pipeline in a more interesting way uh we're also starting to explore um you know how can we apply it within creative so you know we've done one tv ad before it's very expensive in terms of creating it and i think there can be some potential unlockers for smaller challenger brands about having how they can create creative in a much more cost-effective way than probably it was in the past the thing that i'm always conscious of with it is that ai won't replace like brilliant ideas like you still have to be the one to generate those and so the thing I'm really making sure to for myself also my team is that like the idea still has to come from you you still have to you know stress that and still sometimes the best ideas come from a conversation across the room with your peers so like don't think you're going to get it from just typing in a load of prompts into chat gpt like so yeah it's it's I think it's How can you use it to kind of like speed you up, but to enable you more space to think creatively?

45:15I think that's going to be the superpower for it, for us, at least in our business and many other ways, I'm sure.

45:20Alex Chisnall:I'm sure. OK, before we go to quickfire around Pip, looking back, is there anything you do differently or are you very much everything happened for a reason? then the only thing I probably would do a bit differently and I don't know if this is impossible because you know hindsight's a beautiful thing isn't it but I think I would have tried to enjoy it a little bit more and document the journey a little bit more um I think I spent quite a few of the first few years just quite stressed if I'm honest and maybe that's just a part of the course you can't really avoid that but I think I could have had a little bit more fun so I think that might have and I don't know if that counts down to being a sole founder um you're after you are you are by yourself you haven't got someone to spar with um I've got some amazing friends in the industry now and I and I wonder if I should spend a bit more time fostering those in the early days so that if I didn't have that co-founder to lean on then then how can I have the people that I can go for lunch with and be like brutally honest about what's going on in in my life and my my business so that that I think I would have changed interesting it's funny when I was chatting to um mutual friends of ours again but Jamie and Ed from Candy Kittens they're like yeah we wish we'd documented the journey more and I was just like well if he hasn't documented the journey more Jesus there's no hope for any of us yeah that's the phrase I was looking for there's literally no hope for any of us it's like crikey it's like 24 7 I mean they've got a lot of content now that's for sure that's for sure that's for sure um quick fire round to finish up so whatever comes into your head um short snappy answer pit for you what is an entrepreneur anyone can be an entrepreneur is what i believe but an entrepreneur is someone who has a passion for an idea and grit grit to get it done and what is a scale-up a scale-up is a brand or business that has gone beyond those early stages where you have not necessarily got complete product market fit, but you have, so a scale up has kind of transitioned into kind of, you've certainly got product market fit and then you're on that next stage of catapulting.

47:34And there are thresholds, I think. I think when you start to tip above 20 million, at least in FMB, Food and Bev, that's when I think you start to shift away from being that startup into more of a scale up.

47:46Alex Chisnall:Okay. um what does this country need to do to get more startups invest more in women i think i'm still shocked about the you know the lack of funding that goes to women but also interesting like only 20 percent of businesses that are created are created by women there's still a massive gap so think just about all that talent all that talent that could have had an idea got it to market and so i think there's many reasons for that too too many to kind of unpick now but you know giving more confidence to women having more role models for women to learn from to encourage them to do more better access to finance you know there's definitely bias issues in in the investor world as well so tackling some of that I think would unlock um more more businesses generally and then more businesses that get to scale up great answer um why is the USA better at producing scale-ups and unicorns in the UK good question I think the size of the market has a big part to play like niches can become really big businesses um I also think culturally they have an environment where they accept failure more sort of freely and therefore it's seen as a strength and therefore people are more likely to give it another go and go again and go again until they suddenly hit on something that then just explodes.

49:00Alex Chisnall:Which founder do you admire most personally? Ed Perry from Cook Foods I don't know if you know them they're amazing frozen meal uh brands really big that you can see them up and down the high street but also in loads of stores but he they were the one of the first b corps actually in the uk their business employees ex-convicts in their um in their big kitchens their factories and they just embody what i think purpose and purpose-driven business is um so he's a he's a bit of a role model for me i don't know that at all um so that's interesting because my next question always is to finish up and you don't have to answer this now but um having been on the show a couple of times um could you recommend anyone for the show that you think might not be on my radar.

49:42Well, then him. He is an amazing speaker and their business is beautiful in every way. So get him on.

49:50Alex Chisnall:Brilliant. Thanks, Pip. Thank you very much indeed for your time. And I wish you continued success with yourself and the business. Absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me. That conversation just proved something. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge. Upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection.

50:25Alex Chisnall:Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance. It's missing the opportunity entirely. 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.