Matt Edmonson gives The Business Men some much needed advice

0:00The first time I did it, I was so bad at it. This makes me laugh so much. I was so bad at it. For some point, Chris Eubank went, excuse me, excuse me, and stopped the whole show. Everyone stopped. Michael was like, whoa, whoa. I went, why is that man on the show?

0:20He's so stupid. That's a bad impression. I really apologize to anyone.

0:29For years, a deranged man in Wichita known as the poet stalked Ruth Finley. He sent her letters, gifts, and poems. The Wichita police put everything they had into Ruth's case, but got nowhere. The poet was always two steps in front of us, and we just didn't know why. And the city was already living in fear under the watch of another monster who called himself BTK. And he also had a thing for poetry. Could we really have two different people? But no one could have guessed how this would end. That's one of those Hitchcock endings that we did not expect. From Sony Music Entertainment and Newmetric Media, this is The Poet.

1:13I'm Rachel Brown. Coming July 1st to The Binge. Search for The Poet wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free.

1:28Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the business class. The business class? Oh, God. How many of these have we done? I just got excited. I'm going to Australia and I'm very excited for my business class. I was out the door. You had to mention it, didn't you? Sorry, guys. They fly us out, BC. Look at you. You've changed, Joel Donner. Honestly, it is. I remember when you would have been scrapping for a premium economy seat. Now, unless it reclines fully, you're not interested. Look, I'm not going to. I'm very, I'm super tight, right? Frugal. I am the frugalest man. Frugal doogle. I'm frugal doogle.

2:10When someone is paying for a business class seat, I will happily jump on that bad boy. And when I am confronted with what the price is of that, no, thank you. You are listening to The Businessman with me, Ben Shepard, and him, Joel, business class, Domit. That is a name I want to keep. I love that. You are imminently heading out to the jungle, JD. Yes, yes. How are you going to stay on top of business when you're on the other side of the world, please? Well, I'll try my best to sort of, you know, you know, dip my toes in every now and again, And literally, I will do business whilst having my toes in the actual pool.

2:45Right. Should we get into it? Yes. Let's talk about some of the stuff because I know that you've worked hard because Russ has been brilliant. As we discussed previously, we've been mates for a very, very long time. And his background and his experience in the world of business and creativity and product launches is fantastic. He did set us some homework. He did. I know that you've been really diligent. You can tell he's feeling guilty about going away for a month because he's done his homework. Yeah, literally. This is classic me. Done homework just before I go on holiday. It's just before I'm about to be replaced.

3:22I've just done some work. And the homework from Russell in the last episode was I need to sort a brand mission statement, brand values and product principles. I kept on asking him, what are the difference between those three things? and I sort of know the difference but as I was writing those three things they all sort of meddled into one so I don't think I have those separate things but I really enjoyed making this way more than I thought I was going to make some notes if you fancy it if you don't it feels a lot of pressure I feel like I'm sort of doing a presentation

4:04have you done masterminds no i haven't actually have you no i haven't i did get asked but uh i thought like you know i actually i did get asked and the only reason i didn't do is because i don't know what my specialist subject would be they give you specialist subjects though they will turn around and go how about you do um microphones you've known and loved or i don't know something but they'll be difficult yeah i went on again sorry we're getting a tangent here um same with mcintyre's the wheel when they go yeah what did you say yeah i've done it twice comedy first so comedy had been done and so i was like okay well that's kind of all i know about really and i barely know about that and um so i was like well you know what i'll go for i said new metal about new metal i know quite a lot about sort of like late 90s early 2000s metal lincoln park you know limp biscuit that sort of stuff right i was like what if i go for that they went okay well let's make it a little bit broader let's go for heavy metal i was like okay cool heavy metal fine because I like think I know kind of a lot about metal but quite niche metal.

5:03Okay. That sort of stuff. So not the broader heavy metal. I was awful. So awful. Did you come bottom of the list? Bottom of the list. Absolute dead last. No, you didn't. The first time I did it, I was so bad at it. This makes me laugh so much. I was so bad at it. For some point, Chris Eubank went, excuse me, excuse me, and stopped the whole show. Everyone stopped. Michael was like, whoa, whoa. I went, why is that man on the show?

5:36You're so stupid. That's a bad impression. I really apologize to anyone. But, oh my God. The legend that is Chris Eubank says that you know. Why is the man on the show? Right, sorry. Here we go. I used that as a distraction technique. I did, I did. But it's calmed you down. This is nice. All right, let's see what you've got. Okay, here is my mission statement. see what you think. Skincare is too serious. Let's have some fun with it. Loads of serious studies show stress ages you. High cortisol breaks down collagen, dull skin and affects sleep. So why should your skincare routine stress you out too?

6:15I'm going to put a name in because I think it helps it, but we can replace this name with another name. Is this a name that you've already pitched? Potentially. Okay. Yes. Mug. Moog, however you want to pronounce. If it's got the umelette. Mug. Mug want to disrupt the overly serious men's skincare market with something simple, genuinely effective, and disarmingly funny. Mug makes skincare that works and smiles back. For too long, men's skincare has been all science, no soul. Grim faces, grey packaging. Words like hydration complex that sound like homework. We believe that to get great skin, you shouldn't need a laboratory degree or a midlife crisis.

7:03It just needs products that do what they say and make you feel good using them. When you feel good in your own skin, you show up differently. You talk differently. You live differently. So at Mug, we keep it simple, functional, effective. And yes, fun, because if you're going to look after your face, you might as well enjoy it. We're here to put the fun and functional for faces that work hard and laugh harder. Good skin, good mood. These are just sort of ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely. So firstly, I really think you have captured something that's very us, which is we want it to be fun. Yeah. We really, really want this to be fun.

7:45And I think you've really captured that. I love the idea, that premise that stress ages you. You know, the whole point of what we want to do Is help people feel like they can de-stress They can have fun with something So our skincare should look after them Like that It works and it smiles back as well I think it's a lovely thought I think you've really captured something really lovely It just feels I really went into Obviously I went into Space NK Had a really nice Wanderer band At a few different stores and it's really interesting sort of delving into that market into the male skincare market and also the women's too but it's um it's it's very it just feels very very serious and i think it would be disingenuous for us to release a product that is really serious when especially for the people who have been along on this journey with us on this podcast you know we're having fun and we're going on tangents we're enjoying ourselves to then to be like dusk laboratory laboratory noir yeah yeah yeah something like that you know no i agree i agree there is an element of that that we do want to rely on i think neither of us like we take our job seriously we don't take ourselves seriously i think that's what we want with the skincare we want the skincare to take itself seriously but to be able to have fun with it at the same time but i think the really really important thing that is really difficult here is if you have fun with something people will automatically think that it's it's not it's yeah that it doesn't work and so what we really if we do go down this sort of route i think you've just got to really hammer home that it works and you people have to try and there is something about you, you bring so much trust to the table.

9:41And I think, I think that's really important too. And if we can combine that fun with that trust and, and somehow when I was writing this, we'll get into this later, but I'm starting to think we need someone else

10:04who potentially is a person, or maybe it's a collection of people. Yeah. Someone who makes sure that we go down the right product route. And I know we've got people in place that are going to help us with that. But I think we need a trusted... Expert. We need an expert. We need a white coat trusted expert. Because I think, in simple terms, I'm the fun, you're the trust, and they're the expert. I think that three things is an interesting thing. The triumvirate. Yeah. That's what I was thinking when I was writing anyway. I also feel like, I quite like the idea of people having our products on the shelf in the morning, and it makes them smile when they look at it.

10:55I love that. do you mean that there is something there's an element of looking at it knowing that there there's something about that that makes them smile because immediately it changes your disposition i'm going to use this cream i'm going to use this soap i'm going to use this face wash whatever it is that we create and immediately when they pick it and it could be the name it could be the packaging but we know we've created something that starts their mood off on the day with a smile um and i think if we can i'm with you if we can get a team of of of experts that we work with some that I'm sure we've had on a makeup artist that I know or the Dean Bagot would be an amazing person because she's so embedded in that world and she she's the one that feels like she was the first person I spoke to that said I think if you can get this right Ben there's a great opportunity to create something that is there is a there's a market for and that feels exciting now we've got a very exciting guest coming into the studio onto the businessmen podcast a man that we both know very well.

11:49He's a radio broadcast, TV broadcaster, very funny guy, but has also created his own board game business. Empire, you could call it. It's extraordinary what Matt Edmondson has managed to do with a couple of simple ideas that started on a family weekend. It's unlike many people, the small business started during COVID and it's absolutely, it's a fabulous journey. It's really interesting and so I'm really excited to talk to him. Yeah, let's get him in and let's pick his brains and see if he can offer us some advice. And of course, on top as well, he's hosting a brand new podcast about money, which is absolutely fascinating.

12:29So I think I'm excited to pick his brain about money and board games. And business. And business. Matt Edmondson, thank you so much for joining us. Joel, Ben, it is a delight to be here. Thank you for having me. You're two of my favourite people. Guys, I don't know how long it's been, Matt, since I've seen you. Well, I saw you out there about two minutes ago. He's getting on, isn't he? He's getting on. Bless him. He can't remember much. I forgot what it was like being with you. I shouldn't have said for business. I've just suddenly remembered. No, no, no. It has been a while. But world domination appears to have happened since I last saw you.

13:01What from you? God, he likes to brag, doesn't he? We get it. You're doing this morning now. We get it. You tipping points on it. Series 73. We get it, Ben. Don't deflect. Why are you doing that? Don't deflect. This is about you. Hey, thanks. This is not about us. You are Your board game empire Is so extraordinarily impressive Well thank you very much Before we get to it though Can we ask about your skincare? You can Yeah What do you do? What is your routine? Oh god I should have thought about this Given that I know you guys are launching a skincare brand I'm terrible And actually I could probably do with some products When you eventually If you eventually get around to making any Can you send them my way?

13:38Yes But this is what we're hearing from a lot of people Is people are like Oh whatever it is that you do We would love to try it We would love to have it Yeah Which is a great start. I don't really do anything. Nothing? I mean nothing. Wow. I'll have a shower. Which we're very grateful for because it's quite a small studio. Absolute pleasure. Anything for you guys? It was stipulated in an email, weirdly. But yeah, besides that. We do have strict hygiene, right here, with the businessman. Good. Besides that, not much. If it's a sunny day, I will slap on Factor 50 because I hate the idea of burning.

14:10And I think I'm someone who will go like a plum very quickly. but otherwise not much. So a little bit of soap and water? I mean, barely that then. So you just, sometimes you don't even wash your face. So you wash your body in the shower? I wash my body, yeah. And my face kind of gets wet. Wow. But nothing's being applied to it. Sort of extraneous wetness. It's not you purposely go, you don't go, I just like wet cold water. No. Wet's ending. No, I like my water wet. Don't get me wrong. Okay. This is fascinating. I don't think I've met anyone like you since the war. is things is your wife rationing soap in your house that's what we're going to do most mornings I get up I thought the business was going okay I get up I neck a tin of spam and then I have an ex I go outside and my wife hoses me down this is this is great well it's amazing you've got this far I know what are you meant to be doing cleansing, toning and moisturising and I've got all the time in the world well we won't take that long that's the point but I'm glad we've established yes but the interesting thing is though you work in uh the world of entertainment and show business you have had makeup artists you have had people apply things to your face have they never said matt you need to take this seriously you need to look after your skin no no one's ever said that um generally speaking we just have small talk um and never about skincare no one's ever said anything at most when i leave and there's makeup on they'll go do you want a wipe yeah i go okay i'll take i'll take a wipe yeah and then I'll go home and I will use soap and I will use water.

15:41Post-makeup. Post-makeup, yeah. Yeah. God, you've made me feel quite self-conscious now. I'm worried that my face care routine is, you know, obsessing you. It's wanting. Yeah. Whatever you do, if it makes you happy, then you continue doing it. Whatever you don't do. Whatever you don't do. I don't think it is making me happy. Well, we are here to make you happy. That's the good news. You've come to the right place. Good. You want to make you feel more confident in whatever it is that you're doing. How long is it going to take you? When are these products coming out? Well, let's not dwell on dates right now.

16:13Let's talk about you. We're at the start of a business. This is one of the reasons we want to get you in, Matt, because you have, despite what you're trying to say, you've launched an extraordinarily successful board game business. In our family, we had some of the original board games, or games that you came up with, Obama Llama and Rainbow Rage. I was just saying how much Rainbow Rage was a huge hit in our house. Seems like it was not the biggest hit elsewhere, but I think we have... No, so Obama-Lama was like universally quite liked. Rainbow Rage, I love that game. And it's the sort of game that messes with your brain.

16:47It's a kind of like rub your tummy, pat your head game where you have to invert your thinking. It didn't work for me. No, I love those games. And actually like a lot of the European games, Germany's a really big gaming country and a lot of the games that they have there all have that thing where on the surface it looks easy and then they just add a layer on top of it, which really, you know, objectively you look at it and go, how much harder is that going to make it? But it's like a switch in your brain that you can't have one side of it on and the other side of it on at the same time. And I love that feeling, but not everyone does, which is why it wasn't as successful.

17:25I think the interesting thing is you've launched this, you launched a few games, you launched this business, which is where Joel and I are at the start of this journey. but we want to understand what you have had to do in order to get it to where it is now, which is a good few years down the line and multiple different games and multiple different countries. And then equally, some of the games that maybe were mistakes or haven't quite worked like you thought they were going to. Where did it begin? Where did it begin? So I, so obviously my day job is like mainly the radio. I also make TV shows sometimes and I pitched a show, which was basically Obama Lama the TV show to the BBC and it got pretty far but didn't get made which bearing in mind is the story of all of the literature quite a lot of most of my life didn't it get made didn't it it did eventually Len Goodman Len did it eventually I remember the wonderful Len Goodman wow yeah I do remember that yeah so that came after the game so I pitched it the first time and it didn't go anywhere and I was like oh I really love this idea but I can't get it onto TV what can I do with it and I thought, oh, maybe a board game would be good.

18:31I'd always been a fan of games and I love playing them. And the game, the Obama Lama game was basically think of a famous person doing something that rhymes with their own name. So if I said, one of the hosts of The Businessman is being chased by a big cat, you'd say... It's not the way my brain works, guys. Come on, there's only two hosts. You'd say, being chased by a big cat, Guys, come on. So think, why don't you each concentrate on your own name and it's going to rhyme with your own surname which you've had for your whole life. Ben Shepard Leopard. Yes. Very good. Oh God, this is going to be a painful chat, guys.

19:13Oh my God. I'm sweating. I know, it's so hard. Let's do another one. One of the hosts of The Businessman is enjoying a plasticine dog. Oh, Joel Domit Gromit. Yes. Yes. Joel Domit is watching Wallace and Gromit. I'm like, that's perfect. So that was like the very core bit. Do you know what I loved about this game as well, by the way? Because when we got the original copies of it, I think Sam and Jack, how long ago was it? Oh God, it was like nearly 10 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Sam would have been about 10 and Jack would have been eight. And they just got it immediately. And it was a really fabulous thing that there was this great, fun, interactive game.

19:46They were significantly better than I was, as we've just proved. But they got it and I just loved that. And also, more than ever, it's so important to have those things that bring families together. How do you come up with the ideas for these things in the first place? Most of them, I assume, come from different places. Yeah, I feel like I'm pretty open to ideas. And I don't really have a great deal of control over which ones appear. Which is why I sometimes have to go into an industry or an area that I don't really know anything about and kind of find my way because I'm like, look, the ideas come to me.

20:28It demands that it is a insert name of whatever the thing is going to be. So sometimes it comes from seeing something else or experiencing a feeling. And I'm like, oh, I liked that feeling. Sometimes I'll play a game and I'm like, oh, the feeling that gave me, I love that. What is that feeling and how can I come up with my own version of that feeling? I'm often banking 50 % of an idea somewhere in the back of my mind. And I tend to think of ideas like bubble, two bubbles that come together to make a unique bubble. So it's often that you have like, oh, that bit that made me feel like that. I like that.

21:11Okay. I don't have the other part of the bubble. And sometimes it can take like a year and then i'll suddenly the other bubble comes i'm like oh that thing and that thing now makes a new unique bubble and that's the thing that i've come up with and that's the best way i can describe it so you've always got lots of ideas on the boil essentially yeah like half like either things that are uh interesting mechanics or interesting things that make me feel a certain or I'm like, ooh, that's, you know, often I have an idea for a TV show and I think, oh, do you know what? Actually, that's not a TV show.

21:46That's like a, that's a Saturday night takeaway item. So, but at some point, something might come along and be the second bubble and suddenly that thing gets blown up and it becomes a format. It becomes a format. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's kind of like that for the games as well. So you start with a couple of ideas but what made you go, right, so you've got the TV format. Oh, yeah, it didn't work out. So I had a weekend at my in-laws and they were watching lots of sport, which I'm not interested in. No offense to you specifically. That's all right. On behalf of everybody that loves sport, I appreciate your lack of offense.

22:23Yeah, it's a sincere apology. But I just had loads of time where I was like, God, I'm bored. I thought, I wonder how many of those rhyming clues I can write. And I wrote 500 of them over the course of a weekend. And I was like, I got myself a little game here. and what I needed to work out, what I needed was that second bubble. The first bubble was like, okay, this thing, but that isn't a game. So I needed some other formatting to go with it. And I just had to wait for that bubble to appear and it eventually did. And when it did, I was like, cool, what do I do? Now I had no route into the board games world at all.

23:00What I knew was there were certain games companies that existed that made games that were nice, that I liked. and I'd also been sent a game called Bananagrams have you ever played it? of course yeah fantastic it's always come from holiday it's like Scrabble but quick when WoW gets a bit bigger you will take it on every holiday it's super quick Scrabble it's like Scrabble but without a board and it's brilliant it's great so I'd been split yeah I'd been sent a copy of it and I loved it and I tweeted about it back when that actually was a thing that people cared about yeah Twitter was used for that yeah nowadays people would be just hideously racist back What do you mean by banana?

23:37Oh, God. It goes wrong with apples. What's wrong with a regular anagram? Why do you have to bring bananas into it? He's always shouting. And he's always a bot.

23:51So I'd been sent to this PR lady, and so I messaged her. And I think it's the worst thing you can receive as a PR person or as anyone in an industry is like, hi, I've got an idea for a thing. Because you're like, oh, God. I bet you guys have it all the time at a barbecue. So I was like, oh, Tiffy Point, I've got a great idea for a quiz. And it's like, we'll ask some questions. Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much for your pitch. So I showed her the game and she was like, you know what, this is actually pretty good. Why don't you go and meet this other company called Big Potato? And they make lots of games.

24:23And I showed it to them. And at the time, it was like a really small little operation. It was three guys. They were in basically a garage in East London. I took them the game and we played it. and they did that thing of like, hmm, okay, well, thank you for coming in and showing us the game. And I left, and I was about two minutes away, and they called me, and they said, okay, we want to do a game. We've got a meeting tomorrow with John Lewis. Can you come back and drop that prototype back? We're going to show it to them tomorrow. And I was like, that's amazing. So I scooted back, gave them the game.

24:54The next day I get a call, John Lewis have taken the game. What? Yeah. This is like the easiest pitch in the world. I know, I know. So it went from like never stepping foot into the industry to this thing happening. You're a genius. And like anything, once you've done it once, you go, oh, I could do that again. That's so interesting. And I know you don't want to get into that. You probably want to get into the specifics of it. But when John Lewis did something like that, did they just then, did John Lewis just give you and Big Potato some money? Like, well, how did it work? Yeah, so you get a PO, basically, a product order.

25:27So they will say, we want X amount of units and we want them delivered by this date. So you then have to work out your manufacturing timeline. Now, at that point, I wasn't involved in any of that. It was a straight licensing deal. So I basically just dropped off the idea. With Big Potato. Big Potato. They did everything. Just box design, instructions, everything. And they did a fantastic job. And I did other games with them. And they still make some of my games now. and it was I only know the process now because I later set up format games and did it myself so I've been now do it all yeah do everything ourselves and we've been through all the kind of like various things that would that would entail but yeah if John Lewis want a game they'll say we want we think we project we're going to sell this many do you remember what the first order was for I think it was about 20 ,000 games isn't that unbelievable yeah isn't that unbelievable but this is also how did that feel it felt really surprising and lovely you know I really believed in the game and I knew it was a good game and I played it lots with friends but yeah it felt very surreal and I think like with anything I've ever put out creatively for whatever reason I feel really distanced from it once it's gone yeah it's like someone else made it even if I made it.

26:55I can't really explain why it feels like that. Do you feel the same with your children? Oh God, absolutely. Just let them go. Someone else make them. God, I hope not. I love those little guys. Yeah, like when I see things on the shelf, it feels like someone else made it. That's so interesting. I think that's quite healthy. It's really, really inspirational, I think. not just for hopefully our listeners, but for me too, because there's always that thing when you went to message that PR person and you're feeling like, oh God, it's such an embarrassing thing to do, to message someone and put myself out there and go like, I've got this game and they might laugh in my face.