From MTV to Canned Bloody Mary’ - Will Best’s Bloody Business Venture

0:00The list of sort of challenges is extraordinary. I mean, even we didn't know anything about allergens. We didn't know anything about anything. And then, of course, once you've got a product, it's actually persuading people to sell it. So we thought, right, we've made this. Hello, Tesco. Like, how many do you want? Yeah. That is not the way it works. Susan Galbraith was a housewife in Mayfield, Kentucky. But after a murder in town, Susan took it upon herself to find witnesses who could point to a killer. She thought she was going to be a hero. But that's not what happened. The lies, the lot of lies.

0:35What were Susan's real motives? She wasn't in it to help them find the killer. Why then did the cops take her seriously? It was known that she was getting funds from them. Susan's son is wrestling with his mother's legacy to this day. I mean, my mom was, I use the word diabolical. And perhaps the biggest question of all is, did she help convict an innocent man? I do feel like that they got the wrong people. From Sony Music Entertainment and Message Heard, this is My Mother's Lies, available now on The Binge. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes all at once, ad-free.

1:21Infamous is the gossip show that's smart. We talk about Tyra Banks and bringing down Top Model. We talk about Jenna Jameson and how she dominated the 90s. You know, she's horny and she's in charge. She just was very smart about marketing herself. We talk about celebrities who maybe shouldn't be celebrities, like the Beckham guy. Brooklyn is their first kid. He's had a little bit of the Nepo baby curse. We investigate orgasm cults. A woman's erotic power can unlock many other powers in her life. And, of course, we discuss people who have gotten into lots of trouble. My name is Molly McLaughlin.

2:00I am one of Jen Shaw's many victims. She was defrauding the elderly, and her tagline was, the only thing I'm guilty of is being Shaw-mazing. Listen to Infamous, the gossip show that's smart. The show's called Infamous. Welcome back to The Businessmen. Can I do that? That's not got any better. That's not got any better. I'm just trying to get the youngsters in. The foam fingers. Do you think that's drawing in the youngsters? I think so, absolutely. I can hear them coming. Hear them coming in there. In their trainers. Soft shoe shuffle. Yeah. So look, this is Joel Domit. This guy is the lovely Ben Shepard.

2:48And this is the podcast that is charting our journey to launch a men's skincare brand. Oh, yeah. You better believe it, people. You can catch up on everything that's happened so far just by listening wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to subscribe, Joel. Please do. It's very important to us. Have you subscribed yet? Yeah, I have, actually. That would be nice. Yeah. I don't know. I don't think I have a friend. It went very well. You know what? I even put the bell on. Did you? I don't put the bell on for much. I will only do it for myself. Remember to subscribe, guys. You can also watch us on YouTube if you fancy that.

3:23That's often an experience I've found, the YouTubing. Yes. Yeah. I'm also subscribed to that. I pop the bell on that as well. Pop the bell on the YouTube. Man, it's constant bells for me. Bells and whistles absolutely everywhere for the businessmen. If you were to say bells and whistles, who would you say is the bell of this outfit and who's the whistle? You're definitely the bell. I'm the bell. You're the bell. This guy's the whistle. I'm the whistle. Toot toot, Ben Shepard's here. Joel, have you been busy businessing? I've been busy, man. I tell you what, I did comment relief and I didn't even tell you about it.

3:51We haven't talked about it. I think one of the busiest sort of three days of my life, actually. I'll be honest. One of the busiest three days of your life? Yeah, that's a sentence. It is. I had a mad thing where... I'm just going to take you through it. Okay. Left very early from my house on, I think, whatever day it was. 5.45 in a car all the way to Manchester. to do a rehearsal with Catherine Tate and Davina McCall. Did that rehearsal for a couple of hours. And then by two o 'clock, I then had to go in a car again, all the way to King's Lynn, across the other side of the country, to do a tour show.

4:33Nice, okay. Did the tour show. Did a gig. Yeah, did a gig. Mad, that one. Was it? Shout out to Gail. Oh. She was absolutely insane. Was she? She was absolutely hammered on a Thursday. Is she following her podcast? I don't know, but she very much made her presence felt, and she could not stop saying how much she loved me. So the point where it was very disruptive. Was it too much, Joel? Was there too much, Joel, love? It was. I mean, I think she loves me more than my mum. She was arms in the air. I love you, Joel. I was like, I love you too, Gail. But if you could let me get to the punchlines, that'd be absolutely fantastic.

5:09Thank you. And then went for a second gig. Got back in the car immediately. Bash! 9.15. I crossed back to Manchester. Arrived back into Manchester about sort of 1 o 'clock, 1.30. And then woke up the next day, did Comic Relief the next day. Brilliant, by the way. Thank you, sir. Did you enjoy it? I did enjoy it. It's amazing just to be on that stage. Such legacy there, right? Yeah. You feel it too. You feel it. You're like, oh my God, I'm a part of something really special. And you did something really special. you did skit with Catherine Tate yeah I mean that's like we grew up watching Catherine Tate doing that and doing all that stuff I tell you what I over the years doing on relief something I really love about doing it is obviously raising an amazing amount of money for a great charity but I also really love because of the people that you present it with you learn so much every year from different people in the different processes and I just really love it and I learned so much from Catherine.

6:08She was so like, she knew exactly what her brand was. She knew exactly what funny was. And I love that she sort of stood up for all those things. And so then go, yeah, got that done and that was brilliant. We raised loads of money. Tens of millions. Incredible. And then got back in the car immediately. 8.30. Came back down to London and then did it, got it back into London about half, half one, two o 'clock. Nice, nice. And then I was on the radio at 7.30. That's quite a busy three days. It was very exciting. It's very exciting. What about you? How's your week been, Ben? It's been good. It's been a good week.

6:41And it was my niece's 18th birthday on the weekend. And we did a murder mystery. Oh, I love that. A murder mystery set in 1920s, something like that. I was Shady Gaines. Shady Gaines. Shady Gaines. I was a gangster with Shady Gaines. Shady Gaines, I would say, is actually a great nickname for you. Thank you. But the rest of the weekend was a bit of a write-off. No one could really remember who did it and why they did it by the end. But it doesn't really matter when you're celebrating someone's 18th. So it was good. And talking to celebrating. Yes. Our guest today could well have provided some of the drinks for my niece's 18th birthday.

7:20We are joined by a good friend of ours. Yeah. The brilliant Will Best. Yeah. He is a wonderful broadcaster on the radio and on television. I've known him for absolutely years. And just one of those good people as well. You know, you find the good people in telly. You're one of them, Ben Shepard. And you know what? Will Best is another one of them. Will Best often gets mistaken for me. Really? A young Ben Shepard, obviously, because he's a lot younger than you. But he does get mistaken. Lee Francis has always made it, thinks that we are related. Lee bangs on about it. You have the same sensibility, I think.

7:58Because you're both very soft and kind. And like, you have a lot of time for other people. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's... We need to get out more. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. We're excited to have him in the studio. So we know him as a brilliant broadcaster. What I didn't realise is he had co-founded Bloody Drinks, Joel. Yes. Which is an award-winning, ready-to-drink Bloody Mary brand. Great name as well. Really fantastic. I'm very excited to speak to him. I can't wait to hear what this wonderful man has to say, Joel. If you've just tuned in, this is a podcast called Three Straight White Men Who Look Similar.

8:36Will Best is here. Hello, chaps. This is really exciting. Three people in a room who often get confused for each other. Well. We're all here. Imagine if Rick Edwards was here. The absolute quad. Yeah. That would be crossing the stream. It would be too much. God, he's so tall. He's so tall. He wins. He's intelligent. And he was an actual model. He's the best one out of it. Yeah. Will, look, I'm so excited to get you in because I know we're going to get down to the nitty gritty of business. Yes. But we've known you for a very long time. You, I spoke very highly of you in the intro before you arrived.

9:12Well, I'm glad I wasn't here. I would have gone redder than a bloody Mary. Will, for anybody that doesn't know how you ended up doing what you do, can you just sort of talk us through where you got to... So they were, this production company wanted to book Ben Shepard and they accidentally... They couldn't afford him. Yeah, exactly. I used to work, When I finished uni, I worked in advertising and I worked for an agency that did the advertising for Nike. And I was the worst advertising account manager in certainly Britain, possibly Europe, because they did have a European office. And I was definitely the would have been the worst over there as well.

9:53And I was so bad at my I couldn't work out whether I was bad at it because I realized sort of on day one that I didn't want to work in advertising. and at that time it was very competitive it was like a real it was like they used to do these like whole kind of grad scheme things and it was really like lots of people sort of wanted that job and I sort of thought I did and then when I landed it was like you're in the army now and I was like maybe I've made a mistake so I couldn't work out whether I was really bad at it because I didn't want to do it or I didn't want to do it because I was actually really bad sure do you know what I mean so I I was like I have to do something else and I thought what am I into what are my passions and I loved and love music and comedy.

10:34I am not, nor I ever will be a musician or a comedian, but I thought if I could get a job on a show like T4 where they like interview bands and they're kind of funny and they do like little sketchy things, then that would be an amazing, fun thing to do because I was coming off the back of something I didn't enjoy. I was like, it'd be really fun and it might open doors for other things because I've always wanted to do creative stuff and I was very young and very naive and I gave myself a year from quitting my job. I immediately got a job in a bar, got a job at Abercrombie & Fitch. Nice. Because you've got to be good looking.

11:09I was very much in the back. Very much in the stock room. I was in the stock room. Don't worry about that. I did not have a topper. And then just had the right haircut for MTV and then got a job on MTV. And then that led to TV for... But there must have been an audition at some point though. There was. So I got a show reel together. I mean, this was in the days before. social media before even like i mean youtube existed there weren't youtubers do you know um mtv were launching viva which was like their freeview channel yeah and they were looking for like sort of the face of viva and i got a show reel together like interviewing random bands like outside gig venues and stuff um and use that to get an agent who sort of very much was like well I don't officially represent you.

11:59Let's just see what happens kind of thing. And then she sent me for this MTV thing. And I think back then it was like, are your jeans skinny enough? Is the V on your V-neck low enough? Oh, my God. And how long is your hair? And I ticked those boxes. Three boxes, affirmative. Exactly, yeah. Tight, low and hairy. And I got the gig. And then that was sort of the start. And then I was just very lucky to like bounce around. I mean, that was the time when youth music TV was everywhere. And I was sort of maneuvered at just the right time to host kind of all of those shows that were kind of still going.

12:36So I was doing T4, I was doing a show called The Crush, which I took over from Rick Edwards. I was doing a show called Freshly Squeezed. This was all kind of Channel 4 stuff. And it was all going great. And then there was a sort of two week period one summer where my agent got a call saying, bad news t4's going but don't worry because the crush is going to carry on and uh freshly squeezed going to carry on so i was like it's fine and then a few days later bad listen there's good news there's bad news okay the crush that's gone but freshly squeezed and then a couple of days after that do you remember that fresh squeeze thing well so it all kind of went and it all stopped very abruptly in like a week yeah channel four were kind of shuffling things around and and And that was kind of a weird, scary time.

13:21And I think that is one of the reasons why I have always wanted to do stuff outside of TV and have my little grubby little fingers in other pies, you know, irons and fires and all that.

13:40Welcome to Crime Scene, the new weekly show from The Binge, where we tell you the stories behind the world's most unforgettable crimes. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. You may know me as the host of My Fugitive Dad or Dear Franklin Jones. Watching you. I'm an executive producer of The Binge, the true crime podcast network where we bring you a new series on the first of every month. For Crime Scene, I'm joined by my producer and co-host Cooper Mall, the reporter and voice behind Fatal Beauty and the crimes of Margot Freshwater. We know there are a lot of true crime podcasts out there. I think what makes Crime Scene different is that Cooper and I have boots on the ground.

14:17We're investigative storytellers. And so many of the stories that come across our desk, we haven't been able to share with you until now. So if you're one of the millions of people who have flocked to the binge for riveting storytelling, deeply investigated true crime series, think of this as all the things that you love about those shows in a single episode. Join us every week in the Crime Scene office, wherever you listen to or watch your shows. This is Crime Scene, available now.

14:48I want to tell you guys about a podcast that is near and dear to my heart, and I cannot believe it already came out a year ago. And you can all go listen to it ad-free by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. What podcast, Corinne? Tell us. Oh, it's called Blink, Jake Handel's Story. I created it about a man named Jake, who I met, who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use, but there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements. So this is definitely an amazing story.

15:26It's very unique. You did such an incredible job telling the story and sharing it with the world. So if you have not listened to it yet, my goodness, where have you been? Because Blink is so freaking good. Thank you. Search for Blink wherever you listen and subscribers to the binge will get the entire season ad free plus you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on the binge podcast channel hit subscribe on apple podcasts or head to get the binge.com which is well i it's a really important thing right it's because i've experienced similar to you will when you're doing something from out of nowhere a decision is made beyond your control and the show that you thought you were sort of ensconced in and we're going to be there for a good while till you go off and do something else suddenly goes yeah that this world can move like that yeah so it makes perfect sense so why this necessarily tell us about your business how did it come about who's involved yeah well there's a there's sort of the origin story of this business has its roots in a previous startup that I had, which I was doing, I started doing kind of after T4, after that all happened was when I thought I wanted to start doing other things.

16:43And I was lucky, you know, I picked up other work and I was still doing TV, but I wanted to branch out and do something else. And me and a few mates set up a music-based social network and streaming service, right? So it was a streaming service with a social element baked into its core DNA, right? So the way it worked, it was called Audio Splitter. And the way it worked was we built a platform that could bring in and seamlessly play and you could playlist and send tracks from YouTube and SoundCloud, right? and that was effectively our library our music library and then people would build profiles and then we would recommend other people for them to follow based purely on their music taste overlapping music taste you could build playlists with people you'd comment on tracks and it would it was it was like a fun slightly gamified but mainly like a social listening experience right and um and we thought you know this is this is exciting right we could build yeah we could build something we could grow exponentially you're looking at the next zuckerberg you know that was that was the kind of the thought but we'll do it around something we love around music um so we raised our initial round of of funding and then we had this lead investor who um was a city guy who'd actually just by chance like my brother had gone to uni with this guy right and he'd gone on to do very very well um in in the city and he had like he had you know serious serious cash right and was a big music, big music lover.

18:16And he put in a little bit more. So we ended up raising about 400, which sounds like a lot, but in tech, like it just goes, right. But we got to a point where we were happy with the product. We knew what we needed to do to get that stickiness, get that virality, do the kind of hockey stick growth curve that everyone's looking for in business, especially tech stuff. And we were like, okay, we think we're ready now to kind of go nuclear on this. We need 1.3 million and we can properly, properly launch. So we raised the one point, we were looking to raise the 1.3 million and this lead investor that we'd had, he said, I just want to do the whole amount.

18:54He was like, I believe in it. And, you know, we went through a rigorous process with him, his fund manager and his, and all of his kind of, you know, his advisors. Yeah, exactly. And his financial director and stuff went through, went through the deck, went through the numbers and we, you know, we'd worked, we were working very, very hard on this. And we'd been going for a couple of years by this point. Anyway, so he's like, don't worry, I'm going to do the full 1.3 million. And we were like, amazing. We can really crack on, right? We can go for it. So we move into new offices, we start recruiting, you know, you've got to move quick in tech more than anything, even in, you know, in the industry you're in, you've got to move quick.

19:29But when it comes to tech, it's like, yes, breakneck speed. Exactly. And every advisor is always like, if you're going to fail, fail fast. You know, that's always the way you've got to break things so that you can fix them and move on. So we move into these new offices. We start recruiting. The money's not hitting our account, but we know he's good for it. Like, I mean, he was worth a stupendous amount of money to the point where we were like, this 1.3 million for him is like the equivalent of like, you know, it's a few grand. It's a rounding error. Yeah. We were like, it's obviously just so low down on his priorities list.

20:01But anyway, we're struggling to hear back from him and his lawyers have gone a bit quiet, but we've drawn everything up. Shareholds agreements done. He signed everything. Just waiting for that money to land in the account. It's not landing. It's not landing. And then eventually we get to the point where we've, you know, with the advice from our board and all this kind of stuff, we've grown. We've got seven full-time staff. There's three founders. We've got our new offices and we can't pay anyone on Monday. And our rent is due. And this is like, we need this money now. and we finally hear back from his lawyers and they're like oh yeah we're really sorry um we we would have told you earlier we've just been super busy um he's currently um he's left the country um because he's being um investigated for defrauding the danish government out of a billion pounds um so that was the end of that business that was just wow the end of that what happened And how did you clean it all up?

20:53So to his credit, he had, whilst he was going through this process, he had, you know, access to certain bits of money. And he gave us enough money to cover our staff notice period and get us out of the contract with the thing. I mean, as founders, we didn't get anything, but that's fine. That's the risk you take as a founder. But our worry was these people that we brought on. Yeah, but they got their notice periods, everything, you know. I mean, it was still awful, but, you know, they were young and able to move on. and weren't left in the lurch, but there was no way we would be able to raise that much money again.

21:28And so that was, that was literally the end of that. But I think it taught me some stuff. Yeah. It taught me some lessons. Um, I mean, one of the things that we always struggled with, with that business was like, what, what's your, what's your, how you're gonna make money. Right. So, you know, we never really had a great answer to that. It was like brands, you know, like it It was still around that time when it was a, if we get enough users, surely we can monetize them in some way. You know, that's kind of always the way with tech. But it made me realize that I wanted to do something where like, I make a thick, the business model is, I've made this, you want to buy it off me?

22:05And they're like, yeah, and I'll swap it for money. Like, that is nice. And so that was why I then, you know, thought for my next venture, I would like a physical product. a product of some exactly I mean yeah I mean the more sensible thing might have been to be like I'm not going to have a next adventure but I think but it's fine it's a different buzz isn't it well you had that sort of entrepreneurial spirit and you found it and then you were like and I remembered what had happened when all my telework had been taken away from me you know which happened again in COVID yes so then so then this is when the next idea comes along of you enjoying Bloody Mary what happened in its um inception where did it come what so this one um the idea was actually brought to me by my mate harry um who was the guy at like uni who always made the bloody marys because i didn't know how to make a bloody mary when i was like 18 19 um and we me and him used to go around and you know we'd always have a bloody mary in the pub day after night before kind of thing and they would never be as good as the bloody marys he would make and then one day we were in the pub and he was like I've been thinking about this we should put a Bloody Mary in a can and a friend of his had a microbrewery and he'd already spoken to his mate and his mate had said to him if you want you can like run you can put a bucket of Bloody Mary through our canning line and just see what it's like to drink a Bloody Mary out of a can so Harry was like do you want to do it with me and he'd actually already prepared a few like logos and stuff he's very creative and he'd made this little deck.

23:44And when I saw it, I thought, you know what? This could be fun. But it was always, the idea was always that this would be a side hustle, right? This would be, we'll sell them to mates. We might sell a few online. We'll do the markets, you know? We'll go down. We'll do a craft fair here and there. We'll do a craft fair. We'll go, you know, we'll do like a country event where people might want Bloody Marys. And it will be like, you know, if we can make a couple of grand a month, that would be amazing. that would be brilliant and that's then like a nice little thing and we can see what happens but then when covid hit then it was like okay we're gonna go all in and we're gonna make this bigger and is that as a sort of a reaction to again your tv work suddenly being pulled again so yeah you have no control yeah well it was a sort of double whammy because my tv stuff was had been slowly being pulled for a couple of years um and uh and then the final few bits that i was clinging on to all obviously went for for covid because i was basically i'd got i'd started i was almost exclusively doing like live events i was doing music festivals doing stuff for red bull which involved a lot of travel which was great but all of that suddenly stopped that all stopped and so then did you go again with the sort of line of investment of finding around and so when we started because we had zero drinks industry experience at all, me and Harry.

25:10And I mean, you guys, obviously, you know about moisturiser from the looks of you. Well, I didn't ask you about your skincare because you look absolutely fantastic. I've got a terrible cold sore. Have you guys noticed that? That's why I'm growing a creepy Mr. I thought it was for a roll. I thought it was for a bet. You shouldn't have told me that before you snogged me outside. Well, I didn't want to miss out on a nice smooch. So the Bloody Mary in a can. Get it out. Get it out. Here we go. This is bloody.

25:48Let me just explain. So if you're listening and not watching, that's a good point. Will has got out three boxes. They're really lovely. It's a bloody red box that's got bloody in white. And we've got six cans inside. Yeah, four cans. So this is our gift box, right? So we've got four cans of bloody. Note the two great taste stars on the label there. Oh, these are the expensive olives. We've got the Pirello, the Gordal Picante, the spicy posh olives. We've also got a bag of our bloody nuts, which are, they're not Bloody Mary flavoured. They're Bloody Mary inspired nuts. So they're kind of slightly sweet, slightly savoury, slightly spicy.

26:28Very delicious. And then we've got here a little tin of our Bloody Mary rim salt. You've got some rim salt? Yeah. Now, we won't rim the glasses today. This is very exciting. Because it requires a plate and blah, blah, blah. But we can use some of the salt as seasoning. It won't block that. So we've got three glasses. If you dislike people eating or drinking in your ears on a podcast, switch off now. Because we're about to slurpy your cerebellum, you bitches. And drinking a Bloody Mary is almost like eating soup. so it's high ball glass high ball glass yeah give that a squeeze drop it in squeezing some lemon in now there's lots of fresh lemon in these um now okay I know what we might need to do for you then right pour a little splash of the brine from those spicy olives into your I do it at the end and then give it a stir that makes it a dirty bloody mary and they are delicious so yeah so we had the idea 2017 took us three years no two years to actually thank you right really formulate it to actually really formulate it you're going to put some dirty do you want to do the dirty brain yeah just pour a splash in just pour yourself a little splash of that that's exciting we didn't bring a muddler and we haven't got we haven't got celery we haven't I don't think that's totally necessary oh interesting yeah I'm not that bothered about that and then also hang on put in a little pinch put in a pinch of that but this is the rim salt yeah this is so fun man there you go pop your brine in give yourself a muddle rim salt that's I was not expecting that to be the colour of rim salt it's more it's sort of a sand colour like a Saharan sand yes this is very nice it's almost sorry it is actually sand it's just sand yeah yeah it's very traditional it almost feels like pop some of your brine in there I'm brining it almost feels like cooking but in a drink form it is a bit well that's actually one of the main challenges and why it took us so long to have a product we were happy with was because we didn't want it to be like soup.

28:32Do you know what I mean? There's the big issue with tomato juice, full stop. This is great. Tomato juice in a Bloody Mary. If you get the wrong sort of, it's a bit too tomato and soupy. Cheers, guys. Cheers, guys. What a pleasure. So 2017, the idea. So 2017, two years to then, two years to then actually get. Shit, the bed, that's good. That is great. He's right, isn't he? I'm not being a dickhead. That's absolutely fantastic. I was not expecting it to be that good. It's got a good kick to it. But yeah, so it took us two years to actually get something we were happy with. And we still kind of tinker with the product to this day.

29:04Oh, really? So you still change it? A little bit. But we were very naive. When we first launched, one of the first things we did, not before we launched, when we first had the idea, we went to Hereford to a scrapyard that had disused brewing equipment. and we were going to just buy like a big fucking cauldron. And our plan was to just pour the ingredients in, stir them by hand and then use a hand canner. Just make bottles. People would have died. Tomatoes can give you botulism. This would have been a terrible, terrible thing to do. Oh my God. But that's how naive we were. And the reason why I said to you guys, I think you might benefit from this.

29:43We had no idea what we were doing, none. And we still don't. But if we had known how difficult it was going to be, we wouldn't have done it because it was really it was years even once we launched you know after two years of everything going wrong every problem you know having no idea how to solve it but every problem we faced we were like once once we've done this like we're ready to go like once this is we've overcome this challenge but then you get to the top of that mountain and you're like oh shit there's another one every hurdle yeah so um talk us through some of those those hurdles the big ones early doors what was the first one where you're like oh fuck this is hard so at the start at the start nobody even want no one would touch us right because tomato juice is difficult to handle right you know uh a bloody mary is full of allergens because we have we add a bit of soy sauce in ours because it brings out the umami in the in the tomatoes without just adding more salt um there is fish in Worcester, in Liam Perrins.