Setting Goals: Will We Meet Them or Miss Them?

20:47Ben Shephard:I'm a binder. And also we can use the flip chart. It's been here all serious so far. so if we can actually, where did that come from?

20:56Joel Dommett:Before we get started though, because I know you are chomping at the bit to actually get us to do something, just can you explain to all of our podcast listeners and watchers on YouTube, your background, what it is that you've done, why you are the right person to be sitting alongside me, other than the fact that we've been at school.

21:13Ben Shephard:I'm a person, I don't know if I'm the right person, but 25 years in the ad industry, in the creative departments of advertising agencies. I don't know if you know that much about the industry, but there are four different departments. There's strategy, there's account management, there's creative, there's production, and everyone kind of works seamlessly together, not. And it's changed a lot over the years, but I was in the creative department, so coming up with the ideas and executing on the ideas with the production department. So that taught me a lot. I worked with a lot of fascinating people, lots of different diverse skill sets.

21:52Ben Shephard:We had to learn how to write for radio, for television, for print. And they're all very, very different.

21:58Joel Dommett:Big ad campaigns and things like that. That's right.

21:59Ben Shephard:Yeah. Big ad campaigns for lots of big brands. Brands including Coca-Cola, you know, lots of car brands. Skincare brands. Yeah. I worked for around two years with Nivea. Interesting. By a store. Yeah. So Nivea Mann. With all the Liverpool, that was the footballers you were working with. That's right. This is a long time ago. Advertising has changed a lot. It's a lot more digitally focused now. A lot more around performance marketing, which is the data analytics side. Anyway, cut a long story short. I moved out of that industry, took everything I learned from it and started working with startups.

22:38Ben Shephard:But my own, in fact, to begin with, set up a beverage company with Sergio Aguero.

22:44Joel Dommett:The Sergio Aguero.

22:45Ben Shephard:the legendary Sergio Aguero. And we learned a lot in that process, particularly how not to work with a celebrity when you're launching a brand, I would say. And I think that's really key, is experience in failing, experience in knowing not what to do. Right. Helps you learn what to do, clearly. We are great at failing. We're great at that. We are doing failing so well. It's one of my favorite things. Yeah. You heard of a massage I had once?

23:15Joel Dommett:Didn't get much of a massage. Was that a failure? I'm not sure. Some would consider it a success. To be honest, as I get older and older, it's becoming more of a success.

23:24Ben Shephard:Yeah, so the industry's changed. I moved out, worked with Sergio Aguero, brought a brand to life from scratch and learned a lot in that process. And what I've done more recently is move into that space for a bit longer. So I help startups from scratch start up because I always say that the idea is the easy bit. it's actually making it happen. That's the hard bit. So how do you start from scratch? How do you build that team? How do you build the team with all the right types of people in it? But the first thing that you need to do is understand what is your idea? And I think that's what we kind of need to nail a little bit.

24:03Ben Shephard:And then we can start talking about, okay, next steps, because where we need to get to is a community that's going to help you develop these products. Because ordinarily, a brand will use focus groups to develop a new product and startups now more than ever are starting to use you know real live data albeit you know in much smaller quantities than we're trying to do here because you have a profile both of you the best thing to do is actually call to your audiences and use and ask them to be part of this journey well we want them to be

24:39Joel Dommett:hopefully keen to buy the products and use the products we want them to enjoy them and use them as well so being able to get their thoughts and feelings about it would be really valuable and

24:48Ben Shephard:then once we've once we've established that community and i'm going to put a figure out in a second of the kind of community we need um to establish it's quite it's quite a chunky one um once we've we've got that then we can start to develop and bring on board our developer Angela who I'll introduce you to further down the line. So she's a product developer. She's a product developer and she and I worked on another project quite recently called Gem and Tonic with Gemma Atkinson and the wonderful thing about working with Gemma was how authentic she was with her audience and how quickly she was able to bring them into that development space.

25:28Ben Shephard:So I think by the time we launched we had 60 000 women who had been involved in that process wow with angela who is obviously a specialist in her own right um and it just made for a really good launch pad right not just for validating the products but also for launching to a market that's already there with the desire and that's key and they've helped develop this stuff so they're going to be keen to try it when eventually it comes right that's right what's the community we're going to need

25:53Joel Dommett:then, Ross?

25:54Ben Shephard:So I've set the stalls out at 50 ,000 in my mind by the time we launch, but initially, I'd love to get to 10 ,000 to start working with an audience of that size would mean a lot. 10 ,000 by when? Well, I'm hoping by the end of the year, so by Christmas. Whoa! 10 ,000 in a community that are helping develop.

26:20Joel Dommett:So we are coming in, Ross. Honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure. It's been an absolute pleasure. You know when you said you've got really good at working out how to fail? I think that we'll be able to achieve that yet again. No, wait, 10 ,000 by Christmas.

26:35Ben Shephard:So we are now currently the 21st of October as we record this podcast now.

26:40Joel Dommett:Podcast number four in the businessmen. That's right, yeah. So we've got about under two months. Yes, that's right. To try and get 10 ,000 of our listeners, 10 ,000 of the viewers on YouTube to join our Patreon and help join this community to be a part of this.

26:55Ben Shephard:Yeah, and then they'll start receiving surveys that will inform where the business goes. And why would they get involved? Do you know what I mean? Like, what's the incentive for them? Yeah, I guess to have a hand in, well, what would be the biggest skincare study in the UK? For men. For men. Sorry, yeah, for men. You're right.

27:16Joel Dommett:I think that's really it. But actually, to be fair, therein lies something really quite interesting, isn't it? that it's 2025 and potentially as part of our project and our idea, which is to launch a skincare brand, that there's never been a bigger survey of men than 10 ,000, let's say, done, which I think in itself is a fascinating thing for research purposes, right?

27:42Ben Shephard:Yeah. I mean, I think so. I mean, a lot of the bigger brands have done, they do many surveys and they do them, commission them a lot. I would say, you know, the biggest that I've seen to date, Harry's did one that involved 9 ,000, something like that, when they went to launch. But it's so essential to understand your market before you put something out there. One of the other things that's really difficult for you two is your social following is actually 70 % women. Have a look. We're fit. We are so fit. They know how easy we are. and and weirdly the other 30 also think we're fit so it's like but because of that we need to make sure that the people that we bring into the community um are actually answering as men for

28:31Joel Dommett:men so we're but okay so what but what i think we are aware of because we've been discussing this is that there's a statistic which is 80 of male skincare is bought by women so i think yeah Somewhere around that. Right, it was a high proportion, a high percentage.

28:46Ben Shephard:This was a while ago. I mean, I haven't been in the industry for a while. But it's a high percentage.

28:50Joel Dommett:So it's bought for partners, for brothers, sisters, brothers, uncles, whatever it is. Sons. Sons, yeah. So there is a value to having female input to this. But equally, if we do have a large female following, which is great, that they can maybe engage the male members of their families or whatever to sort of say, oh, Ben and Joel are doing this thing. I think you might be quite interested in doing this if you give it a go. And hopefully because of the podcast and the nature of the podcast, the podcast will have more of a male skewed listener as well.

29:21Ben Shephard:Yes. Well, we hope. And I guess that then forms the idea of a social campaign from you guys, which is get your partner involved in this. Yeah. If you want to look like this or if you want to feel like this, if you want to, you know, have skin as good as this, get your partner involved. Point more at pen than you point more at pen. It might not be enough. We have to, look, it's iterative. We have to try it and see what happens and see what sort of numbers we're getting and then go again.

29:49Joel Dommett:So the dream is 10 ,000 by Christmas. Yeah. Okay.

29:54Ben Shephard:So you guys, you can have all the, we, I should say, can have all the best ideas in the world. But if we don't have that market, that community telling us what they want, then it's worthless. Yeah. So that's why sometimes the idea, well, all the time, the idea is the easy bit. The execution. It's the execution. It's the understanding. So interesting. So they're going to be like fully, all of those people are going to be fully involved in all of the process, essentially. Yeah. I mean, you can, and you can imagine what that involves. Everything from helping you guys name the brand to what the brand is in business to do.

30:34Joel Dommett:and they'll get the chance to vote on all those things. They'll get a chance to offer up the ideas. We will put those out for them. We need all of their feedback. We need them to tell us what they want.

30:43Ben Shephard:That's right. I want to have the biggest skincare survey done for men ever. Yeah. I just want... I don't care about anything else. I want that. But if we get that, we're really onto something because we'll have so much information at our fingertips. If we can engage that many people that want

31:03Joel Dommett:and that many men particularly that are interested in men, young men, boys, teenagers, whatever it is, that are starting to use skincare products that are interested in understanding that.

31:12Ben Shephard:Yeah.

31:13Joel Dommett:That feels, I'm at 10 ,000 by Christmas.

31:15Ben Shephard:10 ,000 by Christmas. We've got to start somewhere. What happens if we don't get that? Well, like I said, statistically, if we could work from a product formulation point of view with 1 ,200, right? But we want more. But we want more because what we want as a company then off the back of that is the PR attached to it. We are doing the biggest survey. It's a great story. Yeah, it's a great story. Plus the other thing that's really important that we haven't discussed yet, we need the money. The investment. Investment. And no one's going to take this seriously unless you've got really good validation.

31:55Ben Shephard:The validation will help de-risk the venture. And that's what an investor is looking for. And I'll introduce you to Ash. We will deal with that further down the line. But we need to give him something that we can actually approach investors with. Is it too much of an early day to sort of say, Russ, if we're looking by 10 ,000, say that we make it or even if we don't quite get there, what's the timeline of this whole thing? Are we looking? When will we have a physical product to touch to be able to put in the hand of a person?

32:29Joel Dommett:Pastor Amir wanted it on Friday. We were drinking Tortellini Martinis. It wasn't great. It wasn't good. But that was exciting.

32:34Ben Shephard:I think he's a year premature, if I'm being honest. A year? Yeah.

32:38Joel Dommett:Okay.

32:38Ben Shephard:Because with the skin, well, anything you put on your body or inside your body, there's going to be a lot of regulations and hoops to jump through for obvious reasons.

32:48Joel Dommett:You've taken risks in the past and it didn't work, did it? I wish I'd taken regulations on things I put in my body in the past. That is true. That is so true. It's much better that it comes with a kite mark. Not a kite.

32:59Ben Shephard:Okay. So look, I mean, I've actually, I've written down a few of the things from a product development point of view that we can go through. And I could just to give you an idea, and this is something that Angela will take over when she jumps on board. So this is your timeline. This is what you guys have got to be working to. 10 ,000 surveys by the end of November. Whilst we're collecting those surveys, you'll be conceptualizing your range. You'll be formulating the product early next year. sorting your packaging in February, testing the product in a lab in April, get the packaging made in June, make the product in July.

33:37Ben Shephard:The pre-order is going to start around July and then we officially launch the brand in September. Okay. That's a lot. Sounds easy. Let's do it.

33:47Joel Dommett:It's a busy year, John. Easy peasy. Lemon squeezy.

33:50Ben Shephard:You know he's going to the jungle for a bit as well, don't you? Yeah, I do realise that, but he's got to work, unfortunately.

33:56Joel Dommett:God damn it. How confident are we about hitting this timeline, do you think? Look, so from my perspective, I think asking, well, I mean, it'd be amazing if we can start gathering a big enough community to really start getting the answers that we will need and that Angela needs as soon as possible. So we will work really hard at trying to do that on our socials and get everybody involved. By Christmas, 10 ,000 is a massive ask, but willing to give it a go, aren't we? Yeah, for sure. Beyond that, I think if we can get the reaction and the responses that we're after, from the initial reaction we've had from friends and people that we've talked about and the initial response we've had from the podcast, it feels like there's something quite sort of engaged by the people listening and our listeners and our viewers just to say, oh, yeah, actually, we feel like there's an opportunity here.

34:48Joel Dommett:We feel like there's something that's needed.

34:51Ben Shephard:yeah i think the men's market has been really overlooked like you said it yourself you know there hasn't been a study done at the scale that we want to be doing it you know and that's that proves it's it's kind of overlooked if you go into any um pharmacy across across the country won't name any names necessarily but boots you you go in you see all the all the women's skin care there's huge amounts and you go to the little tiny area for men and you've got so true you know you've got your regular um your regulars in there i mean and also you know you've got your newcomers and there are some really good newcomers as well we're going to be up a lot against some really stiff competition um so no we've we've got to find that gap and i don't know what it is and then at the same time bring some confidence to the male market yeah and i think you've talked about this before joel yeah you know giving men the confidence to feel confident about skincare yeah exactly i I think that's, you know, giving them that confidence to use it in the first place or giving them the confidence in knowing what that routine is, you know, giving them that education, giving them confidence in their skincare so that they then can use it and hopefully have more confidence as an output.

36:06You know, I think that's sort of the end goal, whether it happens or not, is another thing. But yeah, fascinating. This has been great, Russ, genuinely. I think we needed to sort of sit down and do this and tell the listener as well that timeline. So it feels like it's genuinely a real thing. Otherwise, you know, it can feel a little bit like a flight of fancy.

36:33Joel Dommett:We've got this really lovely question, a message. I was just looking at it from Scott on the Patreon. Thank you for this, Scott. And he's asking about super sensitive skin. He suffers from a condition that's super sensitive, dry skin, the change of weather. and he has to look after his skin and apply creams. I think starting with real clean feeling moisturiser that is naturally centred to be almost entry level, gateway into getting men interested would be helpful. But here's the line. I think this is something that we, the reaction that we've had that I think Scott has put his finger on is with you guys at the face of this, it could be the start of a bit of a revolution.

37:06Joel Dommett:Now, not beginning to say that there's a revolution, but there is a level of trust that Joel and I don't take for granted because of what we do and how we do it that we will have to harness with regards to what we're doing and if we can be the gateway for men like you say to feel confident about going in and trying something with their skin so hopefully people like Scott who clearly has to look after his skin because he has a condition where it gets very dry but people that aren't necessarily interested till now and think actually I'm thinking about trying to do something but I don't know where to start and I want it to be easy and straightforward and not fussy and effective, then that feels quite exciting.

37:45Joel Dommett:It's a responsibility as well, though. I mean, the timeline and the numbers and all that sort of stuff is responsibility. But that's what we wanted to do, isn't it, I think? Yeah, yeah. Keep things simple. And sometimes sort of a way in is someone you know and trust from television.

38:06Ben Shephard:Do you know what I mean? and I know I'm oversimplifying it but that trust you know especially that you have been I'm not saying people trust me but it's uh I think I think it's um hopefully again if this process we've gone through to to make sure that we've got a product that we really yeah de-risk it make it sure it's make sure it works make sure it's exactly what people want then hopefully like Like Scott says, let's bloody start a revolution, mate. Start a revolution. Can I just also just say, though, you do have homework to do. Okay. And you do need to get a brand mission, brand values, and product principles down and decided for us to at least go and test it.

38:54Ben Shephard:Okay. Ask that community.

38:55Joel Dommett:So brand mission. Yeah. Brand values. Yeah. Product principles. Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like we talked a lot about that over the past four episodes. But I don't feel like we've actually gone, this is what it is. It's this, this, this. And then a name sort of falls into that really, doesn't it? So it's like we need, I also don't know whether we should talk about it anymore. I think it needs to be like next episode.

39:22Ben Shephard:Go away on your own. It needs to be a thing. Focus on it. Come back with your ideas. I mean, workshops for me are always about coming back together once you've had a thought and think about it. because otherwise you end up just tossing bad ideas around.

39:38Joel Dommett:He's done enough of that. I've done a lot of that. This has been great. Thank you, Russ.

39:44Ben Shephard:No worries.

39:44Joel Dommett:Thanks for keeping us on the straight and narrow. Yeah, and we know you're in the background all the time, but it's good to get your voice and face on the podcast for people to get a sense of how we're being driven and trying to keep us honest as well and accountable.

40:00Ben Shephard:No problem. Written something down. Good. I'm ready. I'm looking forward this is just an example of what where the homework's going to take me go on essentially it's me trying to do homework so I don't have to do homework on the bus I've been doing it on the bus I don't know whether this is I don't know whether this is a brand mission brand value or a product principle but bring confidence to men to believe in their longevity does that make sense? believe in the longevity? I think bring confidence to men

40:40Joel Dommett:to trust or to believe. You just say it's shit, mate. It's absolutely fine.

40:47Ben Shephard:No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There's no such thing. It's a bad idea. Thanks very much for joining us, guys. That's been it.

40:55Joel Dommett:It's showing up to the Patreon.

40:59Joel Dommett:so he has left us the aftermath of Ross I mean 10 ,000 signatures by Christmas feels a tall order I mean I love the chat we love a challenge right yes that does feel like a huge number of people to sign up to get involved and engaged well it's an interesting thing for us like we've said before on the podcast it's like we both love doing that things of like tough mudders marathons you know of going for these challenges. I don't think I've ever sort of had something that's this sort of challenge before and it does frighten me more than, you know, the sort of thought of failure is scary. Yeah, and we're very good at failing.

41:41Joel Dommett:We're very good at failing. Which is why we need you guys more than ever. We need you to go to Patreon. We need you to go to the Patreon, which is in the link in the bio for the podcast. We need you to click on it. We need you to join the community. We absolutely understand that that's a commitment from you to this whole process. And we can't say thank you enough. We will find a way of saying thank you properly. Yeah. I'm sure. But give us your knowledge. Give us your thoughts. Give us your ideas by just going to the link in the bio and signing up to the page. Completely free, Joel. It's completely free.

42:17And like we said, further down the line, I assume there will be benefits in terms of sort of, you know, samples and products and things like that and discounts and stuff that we can offer you. I'm saying that as if I know that's a thing. I have no idea that's a thing. I'm going to hold you to it. I feel like it needs to be a thing. And if you don't have products or samples, then I will expect you to deliver your own. I will deliver them in my own little van to all of the people that need to have them. And genuinely, I really just want to have the biggest survey of men about skincare in the country ever.

42:49I just feel like that's genuinely an important thing to have going forward for us and not just for us, for other people too.

42:57Joel Dommett:For sure. And that data can then be used for all sorts of purposes, really important purposes, undoubtedly. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do it, Ben. Come on, Joel. The revolution starts here. Thank you as ever for listening. Thank you for tuning in on YouTube if you are, if you're listening on the podcast, wherever you're getting them. Massively appreciate it. Share it if you've got people you think would be interesting coming on this journey. And we'd just like to hear more about Joel's misadventures in the massage parlour somewhere around the world, wherever that may have been. Yes, or if you are that lady, get in touch.

43:28Joel Dommett:And we've got homework to do, Joel. Come on, I love a bit of homework. I love a bit of homework. Brand mission, brand values, product principles and biscuits. Oh yeah, I'll bring the biscuits. You do the other three. We'll see you next week, people. The Businessmen, sponsored by BT Business. This is a Sony Music Entertainment production. The hosts are Joel Domit and Ben Shepard. The producers are Robbie Williams, not that one, and Grace Laker. The studio manager is Josh Gibbs, and the production manager is Jen Mystery. The exec producers are Alex Lordis-Kris Skinner, Russ Schaller, and Ash Saddle.