The Moment Jim Cregan Decided to Start Jimmy’s Iced Coffee

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.

0:15Jim Cregan:The first thing was just to get out of the hole of digging holes and giving myself a new purpose that I knew was going to take me into a new place. Whatever that looked like from a value perspective or how big it would be or how many employees you'd have, it doesn't really matter. It was more a case of like let's go and do something and actually prove to ourselves that we can do something amazing. What that looks like I have no idea but we're going to be proud of something that we're going to make. Seeing someone drink your product and if they liked it, that was all you needed to go to the next day.

0:42Jim Cregan:And what's so nuts is they would have gone into that Tesco Express and their drinks fixture will have 80, 120 products in there and they've chosen ours.

0:50Alex Chisnall:Was there any point you and Susie got together and said, is it working anymore?

0:54Jim Cregan:We've had like ups and downs, we've never got to the point where this isn't working anymore. There's something that we've always said which is like the moment you think it isn't gonna work is a moment you're not thinking that it is gonna work. So you always have to think it's gonna work.

1:09Alex Chisnall:Okay, so early days You ultimately founded Jimmy's O's Coffee with your sister Suze. We were just talking about that earlier. Yeah. What was childhoods like for you guys? Were you, have you always been close?

1:22Jim Cregan:Yeah, we grew up in Dubai, so we were both born and raised there. We were both there for about 18, when we both left. Sousa's three years older than me, I really like telling people that. But we actually lived in an emirate called Sharjah, which is like just outside of Dubai. And it's kind of like the poor man's Dubai, basically, because my dad had an okay job, but wasn't a massive high flyer. So that meant we didn't have any kind of expat neighbours and we didn't get to mingle with a great deal of people. So it was just really just me and my sisters tearing around the house. We used to climb over the neighbours walls and jump over the gardens and run around and all that kind of stuff.

2:00Jim Cregan:So we were really really close as kids and if we went anywhere we'd be as a family together. So we were very much like very very tight. But I think when we came back to the UK, Suze and I both went on very separate paths. Suze was very, she kind of seemed to be quite into like really materialistic things, what I thought at the time. And she would just call me a hippie freak because I was just at uni just basically just getting drunk and doing other things. So we had kind of like separate visions but there was kind of what led to us kind of working together was the fact that she's always been very determined.

2:35And I thought, I don't have that, I'm determined but I'm not like, I'm not necessarily ruthless but there's like something that Suze has this quality that I don't have.

2:43Jim Cregan:and that's when I was like, I really need you in this company because I know that you can, and I did say to her, you can just get shit done better than I can. Because I can be around the bush, like waiting for something, and Susan's like, why are you waiting? Just go and get it. And that kind of led us to working together.

2:58Alex Chisnall:And that naturally enabled you to both fall into the roles that you fell into, and you focused on the branding and more on the marketing, and she was more sales driven.

3:06Jim Cregan:Yeah, she moved more into sales a little bit later on because I remember, actually when we first created our first ever iced coffees we had to go and sell it into places and we got it into Selfridges which was fantastic but we actually even even just going to remember there's it's called Avonmouth Bakery just off Mudderford Quay and said Suzie it's your turn and she was just like I can't I can't I just can't do it so what what can't you do which bit can't you do so I can't go and give this box to someone and say it's it costs this much and I really really liked the product. She was really, really scared of it, but then she got really, really good at it.

3:41Jim Cregan:So she was really in the driving seat for sales in the last five years. So yeah, that dynamic really helped us set our paths in different ways. So I definitely ran the marketing and sales to begin with, but she was very much ops and finance. And then when she really, really got to grips with it, that's when she moved properly into more of a sales role.

4:01Alex Chisnall:And I remember your parents actually going to Waitrose and buying all the food and drink and hosting about 30 of us I think it was for the first one.

4:09Jim Cregan:Yeah.

4:09Alex Chisnall:How supportive have they been over the years for you and Suze?

4:12Jim Cregan:Yeah they've been amazing like my mum is just such a hero and she'd be the one like back in the day when we first launched we were we were getting up at like three o 'clock in the morning in Christchurch we'd be driving to Shepton Mallet to go and pick up product in a van and then we'd drive to London to go and deliver into like Primrose Hill and some top delis around there and then Selfridges and then we'd come home. We'd be home by like 10 in the morning and then we'd sit in the office and we'd work all day and then mum would be the sandwich deliverer. So you just hear this like tinfoil like creaking as they come up the stairs and like, fuck, sorry, I've got like, you can Coronation Chicken on the way, this is going to be great.

4:48Jim Cregan:So mum was like really, really good in that respect. And obviously mum and dad were like our primary investors in the company, which is, I mean, They pretty much had no money after they gave us that money. I mean, if it was my kid saying, Dad, will you invest in a company? I'd be like, no. I'll help you get, I'll help you, like a little leg up. Not everything. But not nearly everything. But I mean, it turned out to be their best thing that they've ever done. Dad has always been phenomenally supportive, but he was also a massive boot hand, so he never really knew what was going on. So that was quite genuinely quite challenging, but he would always be like, you'd say, I've got Waitrose, and he'd go, ah laddie, amazing.

5:30Jim Cregan:And then he'd be like, Jim, I really, really, really must come to one of your talks one day. And I was like, okay, well, why don't you come to The Guardian and come to one of my masterclasses? Because I used to do these three-hour, it was called Stop Procrastinating and Start Your Own Food and Drink Business. And I'd drive up on a Sunday night, I'd leave at like four in the afternoon, get to York Way in King's Cross, ferry a massive cool box over to The Guardian and do this talk for three hours. And Dad was like, I'm going to come up to one. I was like, okay, let's see how this goes. I brought him up and he sat in the back corner and I went, good evening.

6:00Jim Cregan:And I looked at the back and my dad's like this. No. I completely KO'd. And he woke up literally at the end and I kind of carried him back to the car. But, you know, the meaning was there. And, yeah, I mean, God bless him. Yeah, he passed away.

6:16Alex Chisnall:Yeah, like, good dude. I remember him. I remember him. I always just thought that was a real personal touch, you know. one very generous of you to host this, but for them to go out and do that, you know. Yeah, they were cool.

6:27Jim Cregan:Dad would always actually turn up to the office, always at the wrong time, when you're about to maybe like fire someone or something. And not that we did that regularly, but it's just like, oh God, here he is again. And my mum would always be on the phone,

6:38Alex Chisnall:like, oh, Maurice, when he just fucking leaves him alone. He'd always be there like, oh, what's going on?

6:43Jim Cregan:Just like, just as, you know, annoying parents should be.

6:46Alex Chisnall:Yeah, he did a very good job of that. He was great. And what do they think, you know, post-uni when you were working as a laborer on a building site, what were they thinking

6:56Jim Cregan:with your plans then? I guess I always hid my turmoil around the work that I was doing. You know how Robin Williams just seems like the happiest guy the entire time and then ends up committing suicide? It's funny how you see the happiest people can sometimes be the ones that are in the most amount of pain. I was really not enjoying life at a particular time, but if mum saw me, I'd be like, Mum, how you doing? Yeah, let's go have a coffee. How's life? Yeah, it's great. It's actually fucking shit. So yeah, I found that really, really hard. But I think mum kind of knew sometimes. She would just think that, you know, Jim's just, he's finding his way and he'll kind of get there.

7:34Jim Cregan:And I think I had Soph, my wife, with me to support me and she was just mega and still has been. And yeah, I think, I mean, I've always been, I've always really enjoyed the most kind of simple things and I've always got pleasure from the basics of existence really and I'm really glad that that's the way it's kind of panned out for me so I think they've always thought I was going to be okay and I actually thought I was always going to be okay at some point it just took quite a long time to get

8:03Alex Chisnall:yeah and for those who knew to the story they might have seen the stories back in July when you when you exited the business yeah tell us briefly what happened in Australia and what inspired you to come back to the UK and literally start Jimmy's Ice Coffee?

8:18Jim Cregan:It was just, it was one of those like hungover, we bought a Holden Jackaroo which is a, what would it be called over here, an Isuzu Trooper, it's like an old school like land cruiseries style thing, it's a bit bogan as they call it over there, but it was rad, we ripped the back seats out and put a bed in the back and roof rack and water tank and logs and stuff, it's the kind of thing you see on Instagram and go I wish I did that and we did that and and we did it for like five months, and it was so sick. And we basically just met really cool people, we worked in surf shops and surf schools. I remember working in surf schools as an assistant, and there was an English lady, and she was just like, and I was like, hello, and she was like, oh god, I was kinda hoping for some like, Aussie hunk to push me out in the water of getting you from Bournemouth.

9:02Jim Cregan:And I was like, sorry love, look at the draw. And she was like. So, but yeah, no, so we just had like a really properly, properly cool time, and this is without kids, which was just the best. I love my kids but my god it was so much fun. Yeah so we really hung over and we just went into a petrol station and I was like I want something cold, I need some energy, I don't want Red Bull, I don't want water, I don't want tea, that's boring. And then just stumbled across ready to drink ice coffee and this product called Farmers Union, it comes in a carton and it's the best thing to open because it's like cardboard and you can feel it on your like lips and it's just aesthetically just this most amazing thing and I was just like hooked on it immediately and then wrote to the company while I was in Oz not knowing that we're even going to go back to the UK and I was like I'm a labourer from the UK I've just found your product and I need I need to basically when I do go back to the UK in a hundred years I want to I want to license or brand your your um license or franchise your business and they were like mate you're you're mental and I was like please and they said no it's still not happening and then after doing about four or five years of business at Jimmy's, the Adelaide Times or Herald or something, got in touch with us because they'd been speaking to Farmers Union, which is the company I fell in love with, and they said, did you realize the guy who emailed you has now started off on this coffee company and is actually doing okay?

10:21Jim Cregan:So the brand manager sent me an email saying, mate, I'm so sorry we didn't listen to you. I'm like, mate, you're too late. But it was really cool to have that chat with So yeah, it's been such a wild, amazing, yeah, insanely fun journey. That's definitely one of those screw-to-just-do-it moments then. To get that. 100%, yeah. If you've got that email framed somewhere. I have it on, I think I've still got my Hotmail, because it was jimbocriegan at hotmail.com. And you know, it should have been like, I'm great at importing brands into the UK at Gmail. And yeah, it's there somewhere. There's actually the reply, so you can actually see the thread and it's literally like, oh go on, in the second email, oh come on mate, and it's just like, well if I was restructuring that email I'd be like, do not write an email like that.

11:11Jim Cregan:In fact, don't write an email, do something else to get that attention because that's just ridiculous.

11:16Alex Chisnall:Yeah, loads of fun. And when you did launch Jimmy's Eyes Coffee, between you and Sue's, did you map out a specific vision or when you look back now is it just a pipe dream that you might get there one day?

11:29Jim Cregan:I think the first thing was just to get out of the hole of literally the hole of digging holes and doing festival work and giving myself a new purpose that I knew was going to grab me by the horns and take me into a new place. Whatever that looked like from a value perspective or how big it would be or how many employees you'd have or how many gun shows you can do and your company with it, it doesn't really matter. It's more a case of like, let's go and do something and actually prove to ourselves that we can do something amazing. What that looks like, I have no idea, but we're going to be proud of something that we're going to make.

12:05Jim Cregan:And then I remember kind of by year one and two, people were like, well, where do you want it? This is quite exciting. Where do you want it to go? And I'd be like, I want to hand it down to my kids. I haven't even had a kid by then. I was like, hand it down to my kids. And then after year three, I'd be like, if I had kids and hand it down to them, they would have me killed because this is the worst business in the entire world. And then you see, you read in the grocer and you're like, oh, this tiny brand has sold to this big company. And we're like, that sounds quite cool. This is a scalable business that, you know, that's it.

12:34Jim Cregan:It's something we could do. And then come year five, six, seven, you kind of try and understand what you need to look like as a company that becomes attractive to a potential buyer. And it never really, we didn't change anything apart from, we just knew that you had to get to a turnover of about 10 million quid before a big business looks at you and goes, okay, you've been in the game for long enough, you're large enough to make an investment into, but we didn't change any tact or change our marketing or just go for sales or anything just to win that in the end. We made sure the journey was fat and juicy and fun, and then if it turned out that they liked us and we'd reached that milestone of that turnover, then that would be great, And that's essentially what happened.

13:19Alex Chisnall:So I remember like interviewing Richard Reid from Innocent Smoothies and someone like Al Barrett from Grenadine, both of them were like, never thought of an exit strategy when we were starting. I'm assuming you were more cunning than they were, but you were the same. Exactly the same.

13:37Jim Cregan:The buzz didn't wear off for literally just seeing someone drink your product. or initially you had to give someone the product for them to try and if they liked it that was all you needed to go to the next day and then you find out or you see people in the wild drinking a product and that's still honestly I froth when I see people

13:59Alex Chisnall:I remember seeing this dude

14:04Jim Cregan:pokes downhill there's a Tesco Express and this mush came out and he cracked open a mocha and he must have had it before because there was no hesitation it was just like a full gunshot. And I was like, I nearly crashed the car, because I was like, hands on the steering wheel, like, what, like, out the window, and I got it! And it's just so cool to see that you've done all this work. And what's so nuts is they'll, they would have gone into that Tesco Express, and their, like, drinks fixture will have, I don't know how many, maybe 80, 120 products in there? And they've chosen ours over someone else's.