#53 - Ben Dando - Goodrays [Managing Director]

0:00Ben Dando:Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to Young Founders. Today, I am joined by the wonderful Ben Dando, who is Managing Director at GoodRays. Now, GoodRays do functional beverages, gummies, and drops all around things like CBD, helping you find calm, and just unwinding a little bit. Their products are absolutely delicious. I'm a big fan of their drink, and they have just had a gorgeous rebrand, which you need to go and check out because it's stunning. Now, Ben's career is fantastic from the days of getting the opportunity to work with Coca-Cola and worked his way up in a leadership program, moving into places like Dannon, Edda's Kitchen.

0:31Ben Dando:He was involved with Califia Farms, with Liquid Death, moved to New Zealand with Karma Drinks. There's so many great brands I just mentioned that I'm sure you all know and love. And his experience throughout, how he's progressed, how he's evolved, how he's taken all those learnings with him to advise other brands and now be full-time in Goodrays, I think it's absolutely fantastic. And there's so much value in this. So without further ado, let's crack on with it. are you a founder of the next exciting food and drink round are you looking to scale and grow well let me introduce you to mission kitchen london's home food and drink entrepreneurs and sponsor of the unfounders mission kitchen gives you the equipment support and community to take your business to the next level with flexible access to commercial kitchens expert mentorship on site and a network of hundreds of like-minded founders this could be exactly what your business needs to level up if you want to find out more why not book a tour today at missionkitchen.org forward slash unfounders.

1:34Ben Dando:Hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Ben Dando. So Ben, can you please let everyone know where you work and what your role is there? Of course I can. Mitch, firstly, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be on here, listen to your episodes and I think what you're doing is brilliant. So thank you for having me. I'm the MD of Good Race, Managing Director of Good Race, which is a functional beverage. I'm predominantly known for being a CBD functional beverage. Amazing. And how long have you been there now? So officially two months. I've stepped into the role as Managing Director, actually after moving back from New Zealand, because I've been over there for the last five years.

2:11But I've actually been advising Owen and the board for about the last 10 months. I've sort of I guess had my one foot in the door with advisory strategic supporting them and then Owen the founder said hey look would I be interested in becoming the managing director

2:26Ben Dando:which I was like yeah absolutely would love to love that um always nice of you kind of you already you know the brand you've been advising helping and then it's kind of like a natural progression to go hey actually maybe I can do more here um so for those who don't know Good Raise or don't know Owen and the story give us the give us the backstory yeah so Good Raise started actually as a CBD beverage very originally many many years ago was called a cannabis drink which is a terrible idea terrible name for a brand as well but it's a cannabinoid that comes from the hemp plant it's derived from the hemp plant and actually you get to do a couple of different versions you get a THC and a CBD version a THC typically helps people get high which is what you see when you hear about people smoking weed and and doing recreational CBD is the opposite works with your body and actually can have a calming relaxing effect and it can help you unwind and and just be a bit more chilled which if you look at today's society what is it 76 % of people are struggling from you know an epidemic of mental health and wellness stress and anxiety so the post-pandemic world has become quite a tricky place so actually Owen who is the founder or one of the co-founders and the CEO of Good Race you know set the business up to go hey look there's this there's this problem that everybody's facing how do we potentially produce products that can fulfill that need and provide a solution to people as well so uncreated beverages oils as well as gummies which have sort of three different product categories fundamentally you know functionality trying to improve the state of people with their mental health and well-being and so the other element that Owen and the team pulled together we believe there's direct link between your mental well-being and your physical health so it's you can't do one without the other and actually it's really important so GoodRose as a brand is trying to help you find calm and clarity but it's also trying to encourage people to proactively look after themselves as well in a physical way that doesn't mean you need to go and be an ultramarathon runner it just means that actually if you are getting regular exercise regular sleep you are eating well and actually you're I guess positively encouraging the physical attributes it will help the mental side as well your mental well-being so they are both interconnected GoodRose was set up to solve that it'll help provide part of the solution to solving that as well and it helps when they're absolutely delicious so obviously that's a big part around it like the the accessibility side and and being able to find it two things so operations and logistics being in the places and then secondly the the delivery and the people going that's delicious i'm going to have that again because although cbd on its own absolutely tastes vile if you've ever had it it's very very earthy very strong like it's in these drinks you wouldn't even really know it's there so the drinks drinks have delicious flavors i'd love to know kind of your favorite flavors and where people can actually try them if they've never actually seen it or heard of good rays yeah of course well listen the thank you for saying our products taste great it's in food and beverage it's the single most important factor right if you've got great brand you've got great proposition you you know have the best story that you can tell you know ultimately if it tastes terrible people won't come back and buy again so taste is the single most important factor for any any brand out there especially within the beverage category, which is the bulk of our sales.

5:38So thank you for saying that. We think they taste great as well. Yeah, my favorite is actually blood orange and grapefruit. And I'm not actually typically a grapefruit flavored fan. So if I was going to go for a traditional margarita, it certainly, you know, it would be a margarita, it would be traditional, not a grapefruit based margarita. But it's just really delicious. It's very refreshing, nice on the palate. It tastes, you know, clean. It's not it removes the bitterness that you get with CBD. you mentioned there that actually it's quite an earthy product and doesn't always taste great i totally agree it can be quite a bitter quite a sharp tasting not great flavor so or taste sorry so actually having great um pairings and liquids that can mask that and you enjoy it is brilliant so i think our products taste great which is the single most important thing and then yeah in terms

6:23Ben Dando:of finding it i know it's definitely part of the meal deal because i've picked up there plenty of times now i've sent you photos been like yep got another one um but yeah what like what what retailers or what areas or sites can can people get hold of the products we all know that brand is important right but what if i told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 against ordinary are a brand agency who help founders marketing departments scaling teams ensure their brand is the most powerful tool for growth from brand strategy tone of voice and visual identity to helping you get retail ready with ongoing brand growth retainers they really are the full circle agency for growing your brand being the team are absolutely fantastic just imagine what they could do for your brand so what are you waiting for see how they can be your grand growth partners against ordinary.com yeah so we and thank you for your support there as well definitely seen those pictures coming through we so we're in sainsbury's in the meal deal we're in tesco waitrose cardo morrison's we're actually in quite a lot of uh on trade you know outlets and continuing to grow and expand pretty rapidly actually but i'd say and amazon as well we've just launched our own uh sort of updated and renovated our brand which we'll talk about pretty shortly um the website is also a great place to come and find us so goodrace.com uh is a yeah great place to find us so we're gaining distribution actually quite rapidly and actually growing really rapidly as well so the business has been doubling year on year we are we're definitely the premium end of the category so we're trying to be the value add uh into the category rather than take the price out of the category and go for a volume place and actually we're seeing in certain retailers we're actually outperforming sports and energy which is obviously well-established categories in those retailers with our multi-pack mixed multi-pack which is going incredibly well so yeah looking the major retailers we're not in a really really high distribution so we're still working on that working with those customers actually being incredibly supportive as we give them insight around category functionality benefits why people are looking for this as a solution and often to an alternative evening occasion or a relaxant certainly with cbd so gaining distribution growing pretty quickly and getting available in more and more places which is super exciting also very busy yeah no absolutely and yeah i wanted to touch on the rebrand because i saw the the photos and the videos recently and thought it's it's such a gorgeous refresh so yeah i'd love to know any kind of insights around that like how long has it been in the works like did you have much involvement like what what were kind of the reasons for the change and what's this refresh kind of saying as a brand for you guys yeah of course so owen our founder uh obviously it's actually two owens who are co-founders and there's a couple of other founders and they originally created that you know the kind of old looking feel of good race and actually that's that's been like that for a very long period of time now and any money is a you know new startup actually has been going into production people uh trade marketing trade spend you know all your traditional cost centers that you face without spending too much money on brand So I guess the insight that we got, you know, a slightly dated look and feel, some of the palette colors needed to be updated and refreshed.

9:26You know, we needed to pull out some of the flavor cues a bit better. We wanted functionality to come through a bit stronger and we wanted to premiumize the look and feel and we wanted to differentiate versus the category as well. You know, we were getting all these insights from our customers, consumers, you know, brand partners and went through a process actually that started quite a long time ago by Rich Philbeam, kicked off by Rich Philbeam and Owen, our founder, working with an agency called Otherway, which if people are listening to this, I'd certainly recommend Otherway and get in touch with a guy called Jono Holt.

9:56They do a fantastic job at redesigned, rebrands, positioning and things like that as well. So it kicked off that process. And it was a relatively lengthy process. you know when you're trying to take this insight and change you know the look feel manifesto what you kind of stand for and try and dial up premiumization of what you're doing it's actually

10:14Ben Dando:quite a lot of work that needs to be done all the way from obviously like packaging site comms how you communicate that the content that you create what does it look like on shelf how do you activate it all the way through to things like you know what's your linkedin banner look like in your email signature so you're kind of trying to do a whole raft of creative changes which is you know don't don't take it light-heartedly i'd sort of say to people because there's a lot that needs to be done but where we've landed we're absolutely delighted with so we launched it last week um and we've been getting quite a lot of positive feedback from our customers we've had quite a lot of positive feedback through linkedin and we've definitely been critiqued and challenged by a few different people as well and i think that's a really healthy place to be where people are asking you questions as to why you do it and providing you come back at what you're doing i think that's that's a good place to be and overall the feedback's been really positive we recently went through a capital raise um and that was very successful so what we're now trying to do is actually uh i think one of the things that the business did incredibly well was you know solving a need for a problem that we spoke about earlier but didn't necessarily invest in brand heavily so now we've got the opportunity to invest in brand and communicate brand and what we can do to help support that solution and for the audience that we're going for as well so it's really nice place to be where you've got new looking feel kind of new proposition updated renovated and now you can actually spend a bit of money behind communicating it as well um so it's been quite a lengthy process i'd say it's probably about a year it's taken to get to that place and i'd say the last three months it ramped up pretty significantly and then as ever in small businesses you're scrambling towards the end to get all those finer details done and finished and i think um you know the very last hour we had about 60 emails that we're updating with new look feel fonts designs you know so yeah it's weirdly wonderful but really pleased with where we landed no it's great yeah i saw it and straight away i was like yeah really love this like uh i think the old branding did exactly what it needed to it was really strong on shelf really kind of metallic and shiny and really bold and i think yeah the new look feel is kind of that nod towards the more calming kind of way that cbd helps you feel and i just think the the palettes and the the font and everything's just done really nicely so i'm a big fan thank you appreciate it i'll take you back to the team as well they'll be pleased to hear it Well, it'll be on record now in the podcast.

12:27Ben Dando:I'd love to know now from your perspective, obviously you came in and helped advise. And I'm assuming that's partly because you've had a great career within the drinks world and the FMCG world. So I'd love to now kind of dig back and go through some of your career journey, because it was fascinating looking at all the amazing brands you worked with from Liquid Death, Karma Drinks, Ella's Kitchen. So taking right the way back to say education, like where did you kind of think you were going to go when you were doing all your studies or whatever you were doing was it like I want to be in sales I want to be in marketing like what was your goal and how has that changed over the years?

13:01Yeah I had no idea so I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that are in the same position I had no idea what I wanted to do I was actually an athlete at the time so I was just focused at university focused on trying to be an athlete playing international sport and I went to the University of Exeter before going to the University of Bath to do a post-grad master's in business management which I'd say was my first kind of insight into the working world but I was just so driven to be an athlete at that point in time I'd know I wasn't really thinking about business at all and then my first son came along and then I was like oh actually I've got someone I need to provide for so maybe I'll take this career thing a little bit more seriously and I started started working at an agency in creative live events PR how do you generate earned reach for brand to grow awareness um and one of those brands we were working on was a brand called relentless which is a coca-cola brand at the time so we're there for a couple of years and actually the team at coca-cola said to me would i be interested in joining a leadership program that they'd recently created and i was like you know the world's biggest brand why would you not go and work for the world's biggest brand and kind of cut your teeth and learn as much as you you can do in the world's biggest brand so i think i was offered that um so about nine months out from when the program started so I went and worked very briefly at Red Bull where I was an on-premise musketeer which for those musketeers out there in the world is the most fun job you can do you're going around bars clubs restaurants you know trying to get kind of the perfect look and feel and visibility of Red Bull into these amazing outlets with great people did that for about nine months until my liver couldn't cope with it anymore so and then I was starting uh I was starting at Coke Golan I did five and a half years at Coke and did a range of different roles I had traditional brand marketing, did shopper marketing, I did traditional commercial roles in a range of different kind of business units.

14:50And then by the end of my time at Coke, I was leading a team of about 83 people and with multiple layers in the southwest of the UK. So and at quite a relatively young age, I was learning, you know, learned a lot about brand ops, commercial leadership and what my leadership style was sort of starting to become. And then the conscious kicked in and I was like, maybe maybe I ought to be working for the world's biggest brand and one of the worst polluters in the world. And actually maybe pumping people full of sugar is not a great thing, despite having variants and talking about varieties of low sugar, no sugar options.

15:21The reality is still the volume at that time was still going through traditional full fat red coke. So I wanted to start working for like sort of health, well-being, sustainability driven organizations, which has been a key driver of the decisions I've made in the businesses that I've joined. I joined Denon, which is a big French company. It's actually the world's largest B corporation, working their commercial functions, looking after about 120 million quid's worth of business. So it was like big commercial meaty role across multiple customers. Lots of negotiating with big retailers, which you either love or hate.

15:52Luckily, I love it and really enjoy it. So I did that. And then I had an opportunity to go to a smaller business called Ella's Kitchen, which is the number one premium baby food brand in the UK. Because every boy, as they grow up, dreams of selling baby food for a living. So I had an opportunity to join them. I was there actually relatively short period of time. I headed up UK and international sales. And I think the products, the brand proposition really liked. But I'd say just I think it's the first time in my career the cultural fit wasn't quite right. So I stayed there for as long as I possibly could do.

16:24but kind of I think I knew after two weeks of being there that it probably wasn't quite what I what I'd learned versus what I then went into were two quite different things so learned a lot though learned a lot how you know how to do things how not to do things and had some huge wins with Tesco's and sorry Tesco and like category insight and data and growing distribution off of category based selling and brand and all sorts of things I had a learned a lot had a great time knew it wasn't quite the place that I wanted to be so I then had an opportunity to join a business called Colour Fear Farms, which some people may or may not know, but it's a plant-based dairy alternative business, actually US company.

17:02And I was the first employee in the UK helping them, or one of the first in the UK, helping them set up that UK entity. They're about 250 million in the US and they were expanding internationally. So it was myself and two others that joined the business to grow that business in the UK. And it was my first experience of like real scrappy startup no distribution no brand plan no marketing strategy no commercial plan no operations we had literally nothing it was like right let's give this a go and i was sort of the longer my career was going on i was like okay smaller businesses autonomy quicker pace i was i was finding my feet in what i really enjoyed doing calafia was an amazing success we grew it to become sort of the third or fourth largest dairy alternative business in the uk you know in all the major retailers and it i mean it was it was phenomenal i absolutely loved my time there and it was probably the single most influential thing that i did at my career up until that point

17:58Ben Dando:well um sorry to interrupt but what time period was this because obviously i know clipper farms i've had it plenty of times like see it when you go to the supermarket yeah i'd love to know what time period this was because obviously alt milk alt meat all of this has kind of had a boom in like the 2020-21 like that kind of vibe so were you for that or during that period like it was pre yeah so i think i need to check you know because my uh my age and brain is not as strong as it used to be but i think it's 2018 2018 to 2020 or 2017 to 2020 yeah so sort of pre pre-pandemic the kind of d2c boom but definitely on the sustainability health and wellness strength that was kicking in you know and also the you know lactose intolerant dairy intolerant lots of you know lots of reasons out there as well as lots of vegans at that point in time it was it was honestly brilliant I loved it I had such a good time great team great people you know we built something brilliant and then I had an opportunity to become the CEO of Karma Drinks and I guess at that point in my career I was trying to keep sort of stretching myself and keep progressing and sort of see where where do my capabilities stop how far could I go um and what more can I learn?

19:09So one of the key drivers for me was every decision I made for different roles or different companies, it was my going there to learn something new and stretch myself more. So this was another opportunity to do that as well. So I stepped in to be the CEO of Karma Drinks as the founders then took a step out of the business and it was a car crash. So I joined the business. I'll explain that. I joined the business and six weeks later, the pandemic hit. So we were 95 % of our revenue globally was going through cafes, bars, restaurants, anywhere you eat out effectively. And what happened through COVID, they all got shut entirely.

19:44So we lost 95 % of our revenue about six weeks into being the new CEO of a company with no alternatives. And, you know, the kind of the phrase at that time was pivot. We didn't know where to pivot. We had high sugar, you know, treat products that you don't actually really need, because if you need something you firstly probably have a water not a high sugar you know fizzy drink but what we were was organic fair trade sustainability driven you know a better alternative to you know the big brands like oats it was a bit of a train wreck to start and then so you fast forward three years and it was a it was a really or three and a half years it was just shy of four years it was a really it's a really hard grind uh for those four years uh restructured the whole organization we changed all of our operational setup took cost out of the business restructures around about 40 % of the workforce we went through a capital raise when we were hemorrhaging cash you know at that point in time which was successful which I can only describe as like selling ice to Eskimos because I'm still amazed today that we managed to get some capital into the business at a point where we were losing so much money and had no revenue so for any startup out there that is struggling with capital raising stick with it you will get there you just need the right conversations and the right narrative and show what you can do and I'd say sort of I was really proud of the team and the business and what we achieved by the end of that four years you know we doubled the business in terms of revenue gone north of 20 million we've gone from negative EBITDA to significantly positive EBITDA and then we had two trade potential acquisitions on the table so my view is actually that was the right time to go through an acquisition considering all of the work that we've done over the last four years and actually the board and founders felt differently they felt like actually the value of the business they wanted more and to carry on and felt like the business could continue on that steep growth trajectory that we had created so I think it was at that point I sort of said actually I don't think strategically this is in the best interest of the investors or the founders or shareholders and you know for me it's I took an option to step away at that point in time because I just genuinely didn't think it was the right thing and then you know that's quite a scary thing I was on the other side of the world.

21:56I'd been flown over there, taking my family over there and living in New Zealand and trying to get my oldest son through school. Also trying to then get back to the UK. So that's when I had this opportunity to I started advising different businesses. So I advised a packaging company called Decent Packaging, actually went through an M &A very recently, supported them through that for sustainable refillery called Good For, a beverage brand called No Ugly Dreams. And I started picking up advisory roles for these different businesses with the 20 odd years of experience that I've got. And then one of those was Liquid Death.

22:29So they came to me and said, you know, could I advise them on their international strategy? Which I was like, yeah, I've been presenting this brand to my board of directors at the time saying this is the new way of marketing to be disruptive. That rips up the rulebook and gets you stand out on disruption. It's gone viral through social and opens up doors. you know this is this is the way to do it and i remember pitching a canned water to my board directors at the time and some of the founders and they were like absolutely not you know don't think this will take off can't see it working so i mean how wrong with that if you look at liquid death and what it achieved it was just phenomenal um not without its challenges which i can i'll chapter a few of those in a minute um but as a you know a social first brand that's disruptive that actually sustainability driven with fundamentally the healthiest product that you can put in your body at that point in a beverage just water um they did a they did a fantastic job i came in to say okay if we're gonna segment the world you know and have kind of tier one two three four markets you know where should we go why what's the category size the need where do i believe this brand could resonate and let's go and enter into those different markets i think that was september 22 and then by i think march 23 we'd launched into several markets so it's quite a rapid turnaround anyone that has done international business you know that there's packaging compliance regulatory entity setups there's tax implications that you know building a team like there's so many things that you need to do so we did it very very quickly and launched into the uk Australia we were looking at Germany at the time we realized that that market was actually going to be too difficult to infiltrate it's a really volume play low margin really low price points across the category so we opted not to do that and then we we tested a few other markets so scandinavia and a few yeah a few other markets where we had some really good success as well um then the first year we won the grocer product launch of the year so really proud of that i think our awareness went north of 20 which is great for a new brand startup and with people like rolling stone saying you know let's face it if you're a brand this year and you wanted to be found you know liquid death was the one that did the best job we achieved some incredible things But on the flip side of that, it was also quite challenging because our supply chain and infrastructure wasn't quite set up and we've grown quite rapidly, gone into 600, 700 Tesco stores.

24:51You know, we didn't always have the budget to activate that as well as you need to. Obviously, getting on the shelf is one thing, getting off the shelf is another. You can't control the pricing that retailers set. You just set recommended retail. So we were trying to premiumize the category, but also get a volume play coming through. And some of the activation wasn't always the easiest. and actually some of the content that we created was quite US centric as well. So it doesn't always resonate in the different markets that you go to. So, you know, we had some good learnings in there. We needed to update operations, update some of the content.

25:19We need to invest a bit more, you know, in customers and infrastructure. And then, you know, the world changed again. So we were on a really healthy run rate internationally in the different markets where we were growing. We were like an 8 million RSV brand in Australia. So we were delivering some really good numbers but ultimately we were not profitable like most businesses at that point and then various internal conversations and the decision strategically was made to exit which is the first time I think in my career so publicly you know you've been part of something that I mean LinkedIn was like wildfire at that point in time everybody had an opinion you know whether they were so wildly wrong or close to maybe some truths but everybody had a view you know and it was quite interesting sitting back at that point watching all the commentary come through and digesting some of the comments and trying to sort of critique you know myself first and foremost and go you know what could I have done that could have been different and then the brand and then the proposition and sort of you know which elements would I agree with and which elements do not agree with and then probably the hardest point in amongst all of that was then just not saying anything so just you know opted not to say anything as I think most people did at liquid death to be honest bar mike mike had a few comments with um the grocer at one stage which yeah i saw them yeah i'm sure everybody was there with a bit of popcorn just watching this going yeah wow watching that unfold but yeah i guess one of the learnings there you know i was out of the business at the time then they announced this exit and just the pr and the communication around it i think was pretty badly handled um and then that led to lots of i guess lots of the wildfire of LinkedIn right because uh I don't know just I think the communication could have been a could have been better and maybe that wouldn't have happened but I was I guess I was neither either here or there so uh at that point I was in this transition phase coming back from New Zealand to the UK I was advising actually Owen at Goodrays and then Owen had asked me actually a couple of times he's like would you be interested in joining I was like I really can't I'm going through some personal things I'm trying to move back from New Zealand to the UK I don't have you know you talk in life about like is your relationship stable do you have a stable home is your income stable you know some like the foundational pillars in life and I think everything was pretty wobbly at that point in time so I was like can't join right now happy to continue advising but I need to get home get a stable base you know and then and then go back into the UK and I'd say one of the one of the things that I admire so much about good raise is living and breathing what they talk about um and actually owen just incredibly patient and incredibly kind you know whilst i was going through that process and i was like look you're the you know you're the person we want to join our organization we're going to wait we'll take the time you let us know when you're ready and then i delayed the date slightly and he was amazing i was like look i just need a bit longer i need a bit more time to settle back into the uk and then joined and it has like it's been amazing we have got i feel like we've gone through about two years worth of work in two months it's been it's been a lot you know as you go through a rebrand we've had a yeah a rebrand new website new customer launches new product launches we've done a 3pl move we've gone through an investment raise yeah like all of this in the last few months so it's there's a lot that's converged all at once so we definitely need to get better as an organization at kind of phasing some of these things but what i would say is like the hunger and desire from the team to go and like really drive the business forward and live the values that we you know that we stand for has just been inspiring to be a part of, but it's also been inspiring to kind of lead some of that and lead some of that organisational change as we go through it as well.

28:56It's been a whirlwind of a career. There's some really good ups, some really bad lows, some great learnings in there and forever grateful. And it's made me passionate about the industry. Like I've loved working with brands and people and customers and creating and, you know, problem solving. And, you know, every day it's different, you know, especially in the challenger world um and some of those experiences in challenger world are so different from big corporate worlds and like i've loved it and it's given me a passion to you know carry on doing it and go again and you know again and again and again um and yeah i can't i can't speak highly enough of good race you know how they've been with me but also what they're trying to do as a brand i think it's just very inspiring sounds like uh it came at the right

29:40Ben Dando:time needing some cbd for everything else that was going on with the that moment of just like look i just need to chill for a minute like it's been a lot um but no that's amazing as you said there's so many great brands and experiences i can imagine your time at coke you would have learned some great things that i imagine you're still using to this day whether that's how to structure certain things or your approach to be building teams like was there anything from say the coca days or dan and all like any of these bigger corporations where they're very obviously like huge huge brands and hierarchy and all these things is there any particular learnings you're But yeah, that was definitely a Coke thing or something along those lines.

30:16Yeah, I think structures and processes run companies, you know, so I think that was quite an important learning. You know, as painful as some of those are, actually, if you're going through, you know, simple processes that are structured, like a supply chain operations process, so you're producing enough product to meet demand, you know, it's quite a structured process. But if you go through that process in quite a methodological way, you tend to be within a degree of variance you know correct you know you don't get well you know too much stock and then not enough stock and things like that so learned a lot about processes systems tools had good sales trainings that was that was pretty helpful and then there was like the intangible things the kind of every touch point counts so if it's an email that you're sending in the tone if it's a face-to-face conversation if it is you know a meeting and turning up on time or you know just you just let every touch point counts because customers people they you know they build a they build a view of you based on those touch points so some structured stuff and then some kind of you know non-structured informal things and I think the early part of my career I used a lot of mentors so yeah and it was great just learning from people who people's experiences and you kind of lean on them for different things and different advice at different points in time and I've just found that incredibly valuable over my career I use them less so now and it tends to be more specific for a particular reason now but certainly earlier on in my career use them a lot as well but the experiences of a liquid death versus a coca-cola couldn't be further apart yeah i'd love

31:46Ben Dando:to um as much as you're able to say like from the the liquid death side of things like as you said i remember it exploded onto the scene like everyone could see what was going on with america and it's like great it's finally comes to the uk and all of this and it just kind of came out of nowhere seemed to be everywhere i think it was georgia from the ops team i had her on a panel at ops last year um and again she was saying how every week was just a different thing she was doing like international ops so it's like literally juggling all of those different markets at the same time i think she was like yeah it's a lot there's there's loads going on um but what as much you're able to share because i've seen water in cans now you can water kind of leading the way in the uk they were the one that kind of were booming you've got brands like dash that was doing the flavored waters now you've got like a drip have come in with like big zoo so he's got his water brands trying to like break into it everyone seems to be like yeah water is the the place to be now what do you think like didn't land with liquid death or did but it just wasn't enough like what what was those kind of things internally to go you know what actually the right decision is to pull from the uk yeah well firstly isn't it great that we've got british made brands doing so well you know in dash and cano and drip now like a big advocate of that and it's great to see and i think the what's the stat nine percent of the world's plastic gets recycled or along those lines so So it's very, very, very few that gets, you know, small amounts that get recycled.

33:06And actually, what's the one of the biggest pollutants in the ocean? And I'm very passionate about the ocean. You know, it's plastic bottles. If you look at the big manufacturers, you know, the Nestle's, the Coke's. I mean, you could rattle like Pepsi. You could rattle all of them off, the PET based. So is there a need for providing other format solutions in those categories? Yeah, for sure. I think so. So it's great to see British brands doing it. And then from a US perspective, liquid death, I think that localizing content is something that we really struggle with at times. So we would obviously the content was really disruptive, incredibly funny, quite edgy.

33:40But it didn't always land because, you know, the UK humor is a bit more sarcastic, quite witty. We're quite quick in our responses and we're a bit more cynical, you know, just generally. You take the US humor, it's a bit more like brash, shouty. you know the bigger you go the bolder it is and the more wild it is everyone loves it you know so when you're creating content and the content you know you wouldn't be able to take equal content and then assume it will work the same in both markets and then even further afield actually what we found was the aussie market the content resonated better with the australian market than it did the uk market you know brands out there as they look to expand into other markets i'd be thinking about what's your localization plan format product flavor taste content operation team you know all of it you need to localize what you do and i'd say that's one of the one of the areas that the business could have done better with for sure the operational setup so you know at one stage you know shipping water over water we've coming from europe into the uk and then europe into other international markets it's just not a sustainable practice when you're trying to have a positive impact on planet and then you are obviously producing huge amounts of carbon by shipping water over water in various places.

34:51So localization of supply chain becomes really important as well, which is very hard to do when you're scaling a new brand in new markets because you're effectively trying to get proof of concept, pro-valuation of brand, get proof of concept and go, is it possible that we can scale this further within this market? And then supply chain is one of those that you need to try and get right. So we weren't actually producing in the UK at that point in time, which we're obviously fully aware of when we launched and we had a plan to change that. And I just think the strategic direction of the company changed.

35:20So at that point, it was then actually, you know, investment in resources in domestic market in the US was a higher priority than international. So when you start piecing some of those things together, you go actually strategically, it's probably the right call. But some really simple things that brands can do to make sure that, you know, you don't end up in a similar place, really.

35:39Ben Dando:Yeah, I think it was kind of a similar situation in Jura or Eura, where I worked for plant-based meat, where they dominated in Spain. and then were like well france doing really well but they tried to do france germany uk benelux like all at the same time so it was like just invest into all these areas see what happens and it was just too distracting i think like they've kind of scaled about there's still little bits in the uk but um like there's none of it really the uk team anymore like that doesn't exist and yeah i think it was trying to expand too quickly without again getting the content right in the uk or doing all these things that really does play dividends to actually if you are a uk brand you can kind of live and breathe it and if it's uk water it's like yeah great shout about that more so yeah as we've mentioned those other brands have done a great job also it's like a without saying saturated market in a water pun it is a saturated market in terms of it's very tough to then break through i know there's more like cans and i'm trying to come in and um yeah i keep seeing like the functional side obviously there's other other players in like i had katie from trip on recently and then you guys but i think your propositions and your market and your audience feel like very different like propositions and who you're appealing to but it's kind of the the mentality around i'm reaching for that instead of a coca-cola or whatever like i think it's my view is it is complementary in terms of you need these brands in the spaces so people get the concepts and then go actually i prefer this flavor or i like the the efficacy of this brand or whatever it is so from from your side now with good rays like what's your plan for world domination like what's what's next for you guys are you continue growing is it more stores Is it more distribution like you mentioned earlier?

37:12Yeah. So world domination, in short, no. So we've got a job to do domestically, I think. Actually, one of the pieces that I was advising GoodRaves on was actually don't try and go internationally too quickly, too soon when there's still so much headroom for growth in your domestic market. So we've tested the waters in a few places, but actually strategically, I think the focus for GoodRaves needs to be on the UK market, UK consumers. we've got a big enough customer base that we've got more distribution that we can go after to grow the business um we've only just gone through this rebrand and we've only just created really a really clear manifesto of what we stand for and why and we've learned more about who our actual audience buying our products are so we're now trying to update our content and appeal to those those people that are buying into good race so i feel like we've got really like a really tight focus on domestic market to start off with and actually brand brand comms and reaching the audiences and the seams that we're gonna we're aiming for so there'll be a lot of work around ambassadors events um we'll do quite a lot of work around trade marketing with our customers um we're actually just bringing a data and insights person into the company that will work across sort of three work streams one is um consumer insights so why are people buying your products when do they use them what occasions with times of day what you know how do we generate even more insight that we feel that we've already got but let's generate more insight because then actually for understanding why we can actually tailor solutions to that so I'm really excited about that role that's uh and that individual that's joining towards the back end of this month um the second work stream is around innovation so uh I think we can innovate quicker and actually invest in you know multiple categories solving some of the challenges we spoke about earlier and really good raises everything from neck up we're talking about mental well-being so all the products that we will create will have a positive impact and have a high efficacy in terms of what you can do with cognitive function sleep rest calm anxiety you know all of those things um so that that second work stream is going to be how do we accelerate innovation and do this quicker um and then third one is like category insights category vision you know category data what are we doing so if you look at the total beverage category it's in growth but very low single digit growth If you look at functionality, you know, significantly more growth.

39:30And then if you look at, you know, like Trip and ourselves as, you know, two brands in that functional category, actually growing ahead of the category, you know, and a fairly sizable share within the functional category. So I feel like we're at kind of the peak of where we should be. But actually, we can do it. We can do more of it and quicker and solve more problems for people through, you know, generating that insight, coming up with a clear category strategy and a category vision. So we've worked on that as well the last couple of months. innovate quicker and actually just really double down and focus on like consumer insights and our domestic market there's loads for us to do we're certainly not shy of things to do but i think it's quite an exciting time to be a good race right now and we're all like the team's great people are great we just yeah probably need to phase a few of our projects so they don't come all at the same time otherwise i'm gonna have quite lots of burnt out people so i just need to need to get those bits right but i think that's just the nature of startup you know some of those things Yeah, we're growing up and the redesign rebrand was part of us growing up and how we look at things strategically.

40:30We're growing up, you know, so and it's all positive signs. You know, it's a nice place to be rather than a established household brand. And you're scrapping for a bit more volume or, you know, one or two percent growth year on year. We're certainly not there. And I think it's a really exciting category to be because so many younger generations drinking less. the generation is trying to moderate a bit more what does moderation mean while it's different to different people can you provide you know a product to meet an occasion that actually acts as an alternative to alcohol you know some great brands out there that are doing a really good job you know the lucky saints of the world are doing a fantastic job um you know in that in that space as well and i feel like good raises a brand we've got an opportunity to help kind of continue blurring that lines in um providing solutions for different needs states and different times of day all from head up and it's it's exciting because we could take that in a range of different ways yeah lots lots to do um yeah lots of fun to be had as well amazing i'll watch this space then yeah definitely

41:27Ben Dando:yeah yeah yeah more to come um final couple of questions just because i'm wary of time so if if everyone's sticking around to this part thank you so much for continue listening it's fascinating i think your background as you kind of touched on there was there's so many things that you said that i was like i should jump in here and do that i think one thing that um obviously i normally ask around uh like a tough day and the the liquid death situation sounded like it was tough obviously moving the karma drink side like i've had jessamy on in the past as well it was actually her last day at karma drinks when she came on and did the podcast so i thought that was quite an interesting one yeah um yeah yeah she she's awesome um but you mentioned when you were at ella's kitchen you knew pretty soon it wasn't the kind of the right culture fit for you um i'm sure there's other people who have done that they've kind of done the move and gone hmm actually like there's something about this like without kind of i don't know if there's anything you can kind of speak to on that again i can edit this out if not but if there's anything around the kind of what that felt like or what kind of things it was versus say coca-cola or like where you are now like any of those tangible things like this this is done this way or or whatever that was that you felt enough to go it's not quite right yeah of course yeah so i can i can probably break it down to be honest so there's there's your own values personal values and beliefs on there and we we all have those we'll have slightly different ones um we have lots of similar ones as well and i think the the kind of my personal values in a business that i go into you know respect autonomy trust there's being given the opportunity to go and you know prove yourself and do something great you know there's certain things that i know my own personal value set when i go into a business i know that there's certain things that I would like in order to be the best version of me.

43:12So there was certainly that element. You want to work for great people, I think ultimately, but people often will leave businesses because it's really quite challenging working for someone. And maybe that respect has gone. Maybe they've been worked too hard. Maybe the decisions that are being made, you don't respect or agree with, or maybe there's micromanagement or there's lots of kind of negative potential behaviors that drive people to leave. There are also lots of positive things. You know, you get great leaders, inspire, you know, give people autonomy. They trust them, they challenge them and they make them work, you know, a bit harder, but come back with something even better.

43:45And I think that, you know, a lot of that is style, chip style and behaviours. So there was certainly some, you know, dynamics at play there. And then there's the personal ones like the, you know, are your, you know, your professional progression where you want it to be? Could you do more? Do you believe you could stretch yourself more? Or do you want to be stretched more? And actually, does that fit in with your own personal circumstances, supporting those professional circumstances as well? But I just certainly in that instance, I felt like there were certain things across those criteria as well.

44:17I was like, this doesn't quite feel right. But obviously, I think you should give it a shot and try your best. Really proud of the results we delivered. They were phenomenal. I just knew it wasn't quite the right place for me. um so when you when you're in that situation it's quite tricky to keep going and keep going you know and keep going um so stuck it out for a decent period of time have some great learnings from it have some great memories got some great friends from it as well and work with some of those people still today from that moment in time um you know and uh sort of the the big corporates i definitely could never go back there one uh i'd be a pr disaster two i'd get sacked three it would be so slow I'd be so bored I just couldn't you know I just couldn't do it so I think the kind of entrepreneurial you know startups that have a real purpose and efficacy behind what you're trying to do like it's my absolute sweet spot and doing it at pace with great people I found that as your career goes further on you just you learn these things you know you don't know these things and you take some time to reflect and you make mistakes and you learn from those mistakes and then you continue to you know keep keep progressing and providing you learn from those mistakes right we've all we've all made them and I'm certainly not shy of those you take that in a sporting term like Kobe Bryant or you know Michael Jordan they would always talk about they missed more points than they ever scored they weren't afraid to take the shot and it was that is that kind of athlete's mentality of well you're going to make mistakes you're going to lose you're going to miss but actually you know all of that will aid you to win and be successful at some point in time as well and I think that's the sports athlete mentality that I had for a long time I think I've just learned more over time that winning at all costs isn't winning you know you need to win together and lose together and I think that yeah winning at all costs despite anyone is not you know that's not the way to do it either again just all these things you learn as you progress through your career and some I feel very fortunate very lucky to have had the experiences that I've had I'm incredibly lucky and fortunate to be a good raising back in the UK and close to family and friends and feel yeah quite content with how things are going now which is I think quite a nice nice place to be.