#86 - Lawrence Moore - Oato [Commercial Director]

0:00Hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to your founders. Today, I'm joined by the brilliant Lawrence Moore, who is the commercial director at Oto. Now, Oto make the freshest oat milk I've ever tasted. They're using milk delivery services like Milk and More, Modern Milkman. They also have an amazing retail presence in Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury's in the cartons that you would normally buy your traditional fresh milk from. I love digging into Lawrence's background. He has so much experience and so much passion for sales, talking from early days at the tobacco industry, moving into BritVic. his time at Red Bull, and then 13 years at Beaver Farms, where he learned so much and helped scale the business from 3 million to 20 million.

0:36He's looking to do the same at Oto. I think he's going to go on to do even more incredible things with the brand. And there's so much to enjoy in this. So without further ado, let's get on with the episode. 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 at against ordinary.com

1:28Hello and welcome back to Unfounders. Today I'm joined by the brilliant Lawrence Moore. So Lawrence, can you let everyone know where you work and what your role is?

1:36Lawrence Moore:Hi Mitch, it's great to be here. My role is commercial director of the fresh oat milk brand Oto. So I'm a big fan. We've had Aidan on who previously worked at Oto's, now Fern and Rosie. But for anyone who actually doesn't know Oto has never tried your delicious milk, Can you give everyone the spiel? Like what makes O2 special? How did it start? All that good stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's a story about freshness, really. I think if we sort of dig into it, it's Carl Hopwood. He's our founder. He used to work in software sales. And he was, you know, oat milk drinker, lots of colleagues who drank oat milk.

2:13Lawrence Moore:And he'd noticed this sort of proliferation of tetrapacks building up in the office. I suppose it really came down to one question. he sort of asked himself well why why can't why can't oat milk just be like dairy milk why can't it be fresh and that was really that was the the nucleus of the idea which which you know became the brand so he started when back back in 2019 carl's started the brand but it really took off during covid i know we all like to try and forget the dark days um i don't know if part of me misses them sometimes but you know that when everyone was in lockdown and at home and milk rounds were doing really well a lot you know home delivery was just it was a crazy time for all of that and you know that was timely so um carl's background academically is as a chemist kind of his qualification as a chemist so he was well set to kind of answer the question well why can't it be fresh so he developed a process and initially got it off the off the ground sort of locally usual kitchen table stuff you know as is off the case with sort of many many entrepreneurs and then he got some um beer tanks so for brewing tanks and repurposed those and that sort of gave it the the ability to kind of do the processing from first principles which is very dear to our heart and get a scale a scalable sort of quantity of liquid which he could he could sell with you know large larger concerns and modern milkman came on board and back back then and in short order there was a number of other milk rounds came and that was the the bedrock of of the business was basically delivering fresh oat milk to doorsteps and then about two two and a bit years ago that transition moved into a retail ready product and the sort of beginnings of the grocery business and it's taken off phenomenally well i mean the consumer acceptance is absolutely super and people get it they they kind of almost they get it from our perspective which is kind of right yeah it's a fresh product because obviously even the chilled stuff in the in in the supermarket is uht it's still a UHT product so we're we're processed probably more like dairy and that's kind of that's we that's what makes it special is and we are we're the only commercially scaled fresh oat milk producer there you know there are other people what we do is not unique but what we what we do at our scale is you know there's the the other the other producers they're very kind of quite sort of back in that sort of kitchen table phase and not really scaled operate in a very local basis whereas we are you know we have an amazing facility now in fullwood in preston and you know where we can get some you know a considerable throughput in terms of both our glass bottles and our our poly bottle for um the the retail and coffee shop business as well yeah i was just gonna say from from my view like first time i tried it was through one of the milk delivery services and just having the classic milk bottle, like pint glass jars or whatever they're called with the foil.

5:22It just brought back such nostalgic memory to me. And the first sip of that milk, I was like, oh my God, I could drink this whole thing. It was unlike anything I ever tasted. And then same with your retail offering, rather than going into a Tetra Pak, you've gone into the same milk jug as you would get a dairy milk. And I think seeing that on shelf to so many people, they're like, oh, wow, this just makes sense. I'd love to know about the decision from that side going into retail. So was it anti-Tetra? Was it we want to do something to stand out? Or was it just people think fresh milk, this is the vessel?

5:50Lawrence Moore:I think there was probably in the early days, there's an element of anti-Tetra to it. I mean, as a business, culturally, we're very positive people. And we're not really about knocking other people down and standing on their shoulders to get ahead. We're just about doing the good things in the right way as often as possible in the hope that consumers will recognize that and accept it. And by and large, I think they have. I mean, the decision to go into the kind of the traditional dairy milk poly bottle was also an element of how do we communicate fresh to people and allow us to stand out on shelf?

6:31Lawrence Moore:And that form factor has done a lot of heavy lifting because as a small business, we can't go out and just say, right, you know, we're going to spend, you know, a quarter of a million quid on out of home advertising to build awareness. You know, we are genuinely bootstrapped. You know, we're not, you know, some private equity invested brand house, which has got outsourced manufacturing. We are very old school in the fact that we have our own factory. We make everything ourself. We have a team of people, the bulk of whom are engaged in making that product. And then we've got a small team of back office and commercial and marketing guys.

7:10Lawrence Moore:So, you know, it's quite an old school model. that's my background i spent 13 years at beaver fruit farms so that was like a massive appeal for me um you know that's kind of how i i almost came to the business was because there were so many parallels because i'd left beaver back in 2018 and that business was built when i arrived it was about 3.2 million when i left it about 20 and change in round numbers i had a you know a brilliant time there and learned you know so so much in that period of my career I mean I was running my own consultancy business at the time and it was almost like a chance to go I get to go again if I can do this and that was such such a huge appeal and that naturalness and first principles manufacturing and doing things in-house rather than you know having a private equity fund outsourcing packaging and co-packing and all of that because that's there's less that for me anyway there's less fun in that because you're just you're all about brand and i really like to be all about brand and product you know i think the the promise you make shoppers and consumers and fmcg but it's quite a sacred one i'm quite zealous about it you know i think you have a duty to deliver the very best you can.

8:33Lawrence Moore:And I firmly believe that the way in which you can do that is to do it yourself because you've got absolute control. It's not easy. I mean, if you want an easy way of doing it, don't get the funding to basically build your own factory and all of that sort of stuff because you want to basically, well, actually, we can outsource the manufacturing and someone can co-pack it. But also as an SME, that can compromise you because it puts you at the behest of generally a much bigger entity who's doing your co-packing. And, you know, you can be pushed to the back of the queue and a lot can go wrong and you can't control it.

9:12Lawrence Moore:I mean, there's a sense of operational control, I think, with having your own factory. I mean, but it is, it's not, you know, it's not for everyone. I think it's an acquired taste. I'm fortunate enough to have worked with a number of founders in my career who have that acquired taste and it's certainly something I really love and it's something I love deeply about the business yeah no I love that I mean there's so much we're gonna dig into in amongst that amongst Beaver Farms and all these things but for you like actually discovering Oto and the opportunity there what was it about the going again and the the Oto product offering an opportunity that you were like oh I can see myself having impact here or I want to get involved here like what what was it you went yeah this is my move yeah it's a it's a funny one that because i i was running my own management consultancy business at the time a company called ultra fmcg i'd been i'd left beaver in 2018 uh not knowing what i really wanted to do only that i'd been doing the same thing for sort of 13 years and i kind of thought i need to do something else but it's very difficult to plan out your career when you are hyper engaged with your day-to-day and back back in my beaver days that's i absolutely was i mean you could have cut me in half and it would have said beaver fruit fombs and you know it's it's a one it's a wonderful business and i you know i had some very very many happy days there and i'm still very close to pev the founder we still talk and they're still doing phenomenally well which is highly gratifying for me because I still feel like I've got a stake in that brand somehow because I was part of that build process so I think I'd gone and done the consultancy bit with a view to say I can do this for six months through a year and I can do some interesting projects and then I'll come back to you know the next big thing as it was late later on and that's just not how it worked out at all and I you know I was very fortunate in some respects that you know a fairly strong network within particularly within SME and fine food and that side of things.

11:19Lawrence Moore:And I knew the market well. And I got quite a lot of work, sort of just came in quite naturally, just kind of almost by osmosis. I didn't have to actively market myself too hard in order to keep myself busy. And I ended up doing it for seven years. And that was not the plan. It absolutely was not the plan at all. The plan was literally, I'll do it for about six months, a year, and then I'll go on to the next big thing. But what I found was I loved the freedom running my own business gave me. And also, it probably gave me a better insight into some of the people I was working with. That, you know, I found a mentality.

11:59Because I found myself, albeit, you know, I was on a services-based rather than a product-based business.

12:04Lawrence Moore:But I thought, oh, I'm a founder. I founded a business. So it was kind of, there was a real sort of attachment more so than ever, I think. Because I came into Beaver from a big corporate background. And Beaver was the first founder-led business I'd worked with. Then all of a sudden, in my consultancy space, I was working with loads of great founders doing different things. And I was very fortunate as well where I had some interim stints in some significant businesses, notably even did a stint in chilled logistics, which is a bit left field. Very helpful now with what you do. Well, yeah, it's almost you couldn't write it.

12:43Lawrence Moore:You're kind of thinking, well, wow, this is actually proving to be quite a useful addition. But I chanced upon Oto. I mean, I wasn't looking. It found me. And I say that insofar as I remember exactly where I was at the time. And I was in Costco. I was getting, I think I was buying stationery or something. I think it was. I was in. And I'd gone out into the car and I'd just flicked up on LinkedIn. And it just was sat in my feed. Jenny just sat there saying that they were looking, Carl was looking for somebody to help them lead the business to the next stage of growth. And I thought, oh, here are these guys.

13:21Lawrence Moore:You know, it was just one of those things. I just thought, I'll take a look. So you know, kind of looked at website. And I almost couldn't believe the number of parallels there were in terms of my own experience and what Carl was trying to achieve. So, you know, did what any self-respecting freelancer would do. Thought there might be a consultancy gig in this for me. and then spoke to the recruiter and it was very clear that it wasn't really that sort of thing. It was somebody who was there for the journey. And I said, well, you know, I'd love to meet Carl and the team and find out more about it.

13:52Lawrence Moore:And I thought, you know, it felt as though there was likely to be something in it. But you don't really know until you walk through the doors of somewhere. And that was probably when I met Carl for the first time. I mean, we are very different people in terms of, you know, in terms of how we go about how we process the world almost. And I love that about being in a place where you've got that dynamic, where you've got areas of strength, which complements a founder's area of maybe inexperience. And then they have strengths because they've done things that you've never done. And you kind of think, oh, together, we can absolutely, we can do a job here.

14:35Lawrence Moore:And that's when it starts to get really exciting. So when I met Garge, I kind of thought, yeah, I could see this working really, really well. Even though I was an ambient guy throughout my career, all the way up to this, I always said there were two areas that I never wanted to work in. One was chilled and one was transport. And then after having done a consultancy stint in a chilled logistics company, I kind of thought, oh, yeah, happy to do whatever. I mean, don't get me wrong, chilled is still hard. It is so, so hard. You know, short shelf life product is staggeringly difficult to manage versus, you know, managing a load of stuff and manufacturing a load of stuff, sticking to warehouse, job done.

15:19Lawrence Moore:You know, you've just got a whole extra layer of pain that you need to deal with. And it's funny, I've ended up in a chilled arena because it wasn't, again, you know, it wasn't the plan. but don't regret a moment of it. I've been in the business now since last February and we've done a lot of good things since then. So, you know, probably the big one was getting into Tesco because that's, you know, not easy. So, you know, I know from bitter experience with a number of businesses just how difficult that is. And that's big and small. And, you know, we've expanded our distribution in Waitrose. We've expanded our distribution in Sainsbury's.

16:02Lawrence Moore:We've got into Ocado. So it now feels as though we've got this sort of proper, in inverted commas, retail footprint. And that just starts to help us build momentum. And also the backdrop to all this is because we're bringing a product into retail, which has never been in retail. You know, it's that whole thing. You know, I know a lot of founders will often go to the quote unquote, we are unique statements and most of the time it's not true and i'm not i'm not a big devotee of i'm i'm i've never been you need to produce something unique you know you don't have to be if you want to be james dyson and bring out a new whole new technology and patent a million different things then great more power to you but i think in food and drink doing something truly truly unique is almost unheard of i mean i think there's you know with impulse categories snacking occasions, there's things that you can play.

16:59Lawrence Moore:And what we do, even what we do now, it is highly distinctive, but we still produce oat milk, as do a number of other people. So we're not unique. What I think makes us special is that freshness, because how we are doing it is different. And that's about being distinctive in category. And that's always what I used to talk to my consultancy clients about. So to find a business that just immediately matched my sensibilities, and then meeting Carl and the team and thinking, yeah, these are my kind of people. These are the sort of people I want to work with. The energy was just palpable. And I know you've interviewed Aidan before.

17:37Lawrence Moore:And what was great, on my final interview for this role, I brought the team in. I thought, you've got my ideals on people as well. You want people to have a say and a buy-in to what's happening in your business. It's not some autocratic piece where it's like, I make all the decisions. it's not it couldn't be further from it it was all kind of well yeah I like you we get on well but I need to make sure that everybody else likes you and they they are I feel like almost I was elected rather than hired yeah I had the same feeling with Pact like one of my final stages was come and meet the team and have a chat and it was just that moment of like I can see myself working with these people so it's nice when you kind of have that and it all aligns but I'd love to like through all your experience I'd love to kind of take things right the way back to when you were younger and growing up you were like okay this is what I want to do this is what I'm passionate about and to where you are today like what what was it you thought when you were younger I'm going to do this when I grow up because fresh oat milk wouldn't have even been a thing I'm sure and in first FMCG wasn't even on my radar and so if I I go all the way back to I mean sales and and commerciality that sort of sort of you know business in inverted commas was kind of in my DNA somewhere so when I was when I finished school at 18 I did a year before I went to uni selling system software and support contracts fairly kind of turgid dry stuff to academic institutions and research facilities and defense agencies and stuff like that and the product at all the product it wasn't really the product interested me I just thought I need you know I wanted to get some work experience under my belt before I went to uni and what what I I realized very quickly was the selling element I genuinely enjoyed but I really didn't think an awful lot more about it I went to uni I did a psychology degree in Lancaster and had a had a final time and I came out of uni and I wasn't really sure what was next um but I harbored a really deep ambition to sing so I've always enjoyed singing from the age of six um to kind of i'll still belt one out in karaoke now with a couple of beers and me and i want but i wanted to i wanted to sing properly i wanted to write songs and my best mate at the time he was a very talented pianist so we built a recording studio in his house and set about trying to become the next big thing so but we're talking you know early 90s here there's There's no X Factor, Pop Stars, Pop Idol, The Voice, Britain's Got Talent.

20:14Lawrence Moore:However, the long, long list of talent shows, it was literally you had to write, perform, produce, record, send your cassette, as it was, or mini-disc. I think we might have gone to mini-disc at one point, into A &R guys at record companies. And it was an absolute slog. We did it for a year and it was solo-struck. And it just sucked the joy out of it. So I remember having a conversation with my parents and my mum said to me, are you going to get a proper job? Because obviously I wasn't really earning any money. You know, I was just doing bits and pieces of work to kind of, you know, get by. But fundamentally, most of my time was basically spent focused on chasing a dream which was not being realised.

21:00Lawrence Moore:So I reconciled myself to the fact that I wasn't going to be the next international singing superstar. and I applied for a job at Imperial Tobacco, which was advertised in the paper. Show me age now because I'm talking about pre-X factor, advertised in the paper, all this. So it was really weird because I really didn't have much interest in the role itself. I mean, selling tobacco, I mean, in, you know, 2026 terms, you'd probably, you know, go, ooh, not sure I'm comfortable with that. But, you know, I'm going back away to sort of the early 90s where it was far more socially acceptable to smoke, for starters.

21:42Lawrence Moore:But even then, there was kind of that whole kind of, oh, you're selling cancer for a living. But the reality of the tobacco industry was they paid better than everybody else. So I used to know loads of chocolate sales reps and work for Wrigley's or Cadbury's or whatever. And I earned more than they did because of the product I was selling. but so that kind of selling bit came back into my life almost a little bit by accident but it was kind of something I kind of I don't really know an awful lot about it but I'll go and have a look and it probably it feels like something I probably can do so I got the job and it was in an assessment center of about 23 people all at the same time which was kind of quite you know I mean they're not so commonplace now I think a lot more interview processes are far more traditional but tobacco industry was super structured and I remember we had to have a group discussion around table station then these are all people who are at an entry-level job this wasn't you know a senior job but it was a it was a really grown-up recruitment process for what was effectively an entry-level sales rep job so I did that and I was given the territory of Preston and the Fylde coasts around Blackpool, Pulton La Fylde and Fleetwood and all that and so I left home because home was in the, so I probably should have mentioned, home was in the Isle of Man.

23:00Lawrence Moore:So I brought up the Isle of Man. So left home, rented a place in Preston and set about, you know, selling cigarettes for a living. Loved it. 16 calls a day, which is no mean feat. Grumpy news agents, you know, five, six o 'clock in the morning in order to get hold of them. So early starts, lots. And so flexible working was in my DNA, you know, 30 years ago. and you were afforded lots of accountability. And I loved that. That's why I just loved the fact that I felt like my own boss. I mean, I had a boss, but I saw him maybe twice a month. I just had to get on with it. And we were given brilliant blue-chip level structured training in sales and doing deals.

23:49Lawrence Moore:And I got a real appetite for doing deals. But I loved the deal. And I was seeing 16 shopkeepers a day, convenience stores, newsagents, whatever. And I've got 16 chances to do a deal. And we'd have branding centers. You've got new brands coming out and you try and get those onto shelves. And you'd have cigarette units when the product used to be on display. And you'd have to merchandise and you'd have POS and shop windows. and it was a really multifaceted role and it kind of gave me just a huge appetite to build a career in FMCG. Fascinating. Yeah, I think it's one of those, like you said, the times are very different where you could still smoke indoors and all these things are very much part of society.

24:33Whereas you said, like nowadays, if it was like, oh, like it's a role with this big tobacco brand or even like a vaping brand, for example, a lot of people are like,

24:40Lawrence Moore:oh, you sure you want to do that? Are you sure you want to be known for doing that? Whereas I think, as you said, huge at the time, they're sponsoring everything, they're everywhere. So clearly great kind of learning. And where was it you went from then? So taking all that kind of knowledge and experience in the tobacco world, how did you kind of foray into food and drink? So, yeah, this is probably the interesting one is my personal circumstances at the time. It sounds really euphemistic. It's kind of, so my now wife, Rebecca, to my personal circumstances. So Rebecca and I, we met at Imperial Tobacco and she got a role at the Nottingham facility in the Midlands.

25:23Lawrence Moore:And it was kind of a case of, well, you know, if this was going to work, it was kind of, are you coming along sort of thing? It was kind of, because I didn't really fancy a long distance relationship, but I didn't think she did either. So I said, well, I'll try and get a job over in the East Mids. I applied for a job at Britwick. Fundamentally, there were two big motivating factors. One was Rebecca was going to be in the East Midlands. That's where I wanted to be because I wanted to be with her. And two, I wanted to have an environment which had big brands, good training, all the stuff I'd experienced at Imperial Tobacco.

25:56Lawrence Moore:It wasn't necessarily because I wanted to work in drinks, but I kind of figured there were lots of big brands because, you know, I was thinking, well, I'll get a job working for Britain. Pepsi, Mango, you know, and they had an office in Tamworth. And that was fine. And also it was a step up because it was key account management rather than just independent retails. So I took a role as an account manager on Palmer and Harvey. May they rest in peace, sadly no longer with us. And, you know, they were this sort of behemoth of a wholesaler at the time. A lot of tendrils into the convenience marketplace and forecourts.

26:34Lawrence Moore:During my latter days at Imperial, I had quite a fascination with forecourts. Bizarrely, given my very, very first job after school was working in a petrol station. Palmer and Harvey, obviously a big arterial route of supply to forecourts. So it felt like a good fit. I got that job and worked on the Palmer and Harvey team and managed the northern depots, as it was. And I had a Southern counterpart. And then our boss, Ian, he managed to head office bit. So a brilliant way to get into that national account space and understand it almost from the bottom up. And you get that wonderful experience of the problems that the guys actually who are filling loads up at depot are experiencing.

27:18Lawrence Moore:And it gives you a great perspective. And I think that's something I've definitely taken with me all the way forward from my days at Britwick, is that kind of grassroots, trying to understand the cold face really well. I loved it. Met some great people at Britwick. Still in touch with a lot of them now. But it also made me fall in love with the drinks industry. I decided to work there because it suited me and then fell in love with it afterwards. And I just adored, I mean, particularly Pepsi. did some great, great things with Pepsi because, you know, budgets were pretty tidy and you got to do big events.

27:53Lawrence Moore:I mean, I did a national table football competition with Asda. I'd moved through the ranks at Britvik. I'd moved from Parliament Harvey into my forecourt account. So it was basically a forecourt now. And that was actually as far as my career plan had got to in my head. And I'm in mind, I'm probably late 20s. So it's kind of getting into that. and then um understanding what i wanted to do was very difficult because i kind of thought yeah forecourt yeah i'm here i'm like oh god what next so i kind of went from forecourt to thinking well don't know what to do so i spoke you know because brittvick was a very sort of collaborative business in terms of training in your career plans so far i've chatted to people about you know what was possibly next for me and there was an opportunity to work on asda and that was obviously getting that step into grocery and that was very clearly that was the route you took to the top you you went into grocery because without grocery you're not getting to the top of the commercial ladder so that was a massive that was a massive appeal just in terms of advancement and i was a bit nervous about it because i was really super familiar with the you know the convenience and forecourt bit and i liked it it was it was a comfortable place for me to be whereas you know All of a sudden, I'm in shops which are 85 ,000 square feet and 24 ,000 SKUs, different beast altogether.

29:17Lawrence Moore:But fell in love with grocery as well. And that was great. And then I went from Britvik over to Red Bull because I had a chance at Red Bull to initially manage Tesco and then manage the whole grocery business unit. And that was my first bit of managing people. And then I fell in love with managing people. Because if you'd have asked 25-year-old Lawrence, who said, you know, do you want to manage people? I would have gone, no, absolutely not. Not interested. Give me customers. I'll manage customers, but don't want to manage people at all. And actually, when I realized that actually managing people was, it was a real gift, you know, to be allowed to lead people and influence people.

29:58Lawrence Moore:Red Bull was crazy. I think it's probably a lot more grown up as a business now. It's a lot more corporate in terms of how it is. But back then, it was almost like a runaway train. It was just magical. And, you know, the budgets were big. It was quite a very, very kind of London-centric, very kind of social, you know, long hours, you know, lots of kind of what I would call work partying. You know, you'd be lots of customer entertaining and stuff like that. So I ended up being away from home quite a bit. I was in London a lot. I'm bearing in mind, I'm still living in East Midlands at this point.

30:37Lawrence Moore:And then Rebecca was pregnant with our first child, Thomas, who's now 22. And he was born. And I thought, I can't leave Rebecca to raise a child whilst I'm out, you know, lodging it in kind of all these top end London night spots and all of that sort of stuff going on. So I thought, I need to go back. I need to get a job back to the East Midlands. so whilst i had a great time and so that's just me swatting a fly by the ice blowing across whilst i had a great time at red but it was it was never going to be one for the long term because you know as a family man it was a different proposition to me geographically speaking it was wasn't right came back to the east midlands and that was having led the grocery team the opportunity at beaver was an absolute perfect fit for me because they built their business through wholesalers and fine food but had got into grocery but didn't really know how to how to do it I suppose in inverted commas so that was kind of a great role for me because I came in to that role as sales sales director so big you know quite a big step up um but in a much smaller company so it felt it felt manageable and the business kind of grew up I suppose with me to a certain to a certain extent and I think that's quite common in that that sort of entrepreneurial space where you're kind of you're scrappy and hungry and you you kind of do what you need to do to get by but strategically it's probably quite reactive rather than right we've got a plan over five years we're going to go from here to here and that's kind of where I came in and with the founder of Beaver we built a proper grown-up strategic plan and got the fd in with terms of kind of better financial rigor and you know return investment measures and the data started to get a lot a lot better so there was a lot less feel and a lot a lot more data i mean i'm a big believer in you need both absolutely trust your gut is a great bit of advice to any entrepreneur are doing, well, it doesn't really matter what you're doing.

32:50Lawrence Moore:Sometimes you just, you know, I haven't got the data. You know, you just think I need to make a decision, so make a decision. And that taught me the power of decision-making. I was just, I mean, it was mad the early days because I was trying to spin a million plates at once. But that gave me that sense of, I referred to at the top of the conversation, that kind of ownership of the brand and the product. That felt really special. The Red Bull, it was made by Rauch. in Austria or Germany at the time. That part of the business was very detached. And even in Britwick, you know, manufacturing was, because it was such a large entity, it wasn't something you kind of, you got involved with supply chain, but you didn't really get involved with the kind of the nuts and bolts operations in the same way.

33:39Lawrence Moore:Because as a commercial guy, you know, you had enough to deal with because you were dealing with, you know, X number of customers and a portfolio of maybe 36 SKUs at the time, something like that. So that was the shift for me. And again, I think it's one of those things, I fell in love with that. Yeah, I'm sounding as though I have many infatuations and don't settle. But actually, they all do interconnect in so many ways. And I've always tried to bring the very best from where I've been to where I am. And that's kind of, it's no different now in Oto because that beaver experience has then started to inform my Oto journey and bringing things across to that, as well as the consultancy work.

34:25Lawrence Moore:I mean, that's been the bit probably in all of it that hasn't been planned. It just kind of happened. But again, lots of opportunities to speak to lots of founders and get into that space. And I cannot really see myself going back to big corporate now in my career. I mean, hopefully we'll build Oto into something bigger and more corporate. That's certainly the plan. We've got really good ambition. We want to build like a 30 million plus brand and we want to be a major player in UK grocery. We want to be a major player out of home. And fundamentally, we'd like to be in 50 % plus of UK fridges. and I like that big sort of hairy audacious go that's great there's something really tangible and exciting exciting about that because it's not about what's going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month or in three months or are you going to hit budget at the end of the year it's that line in the horizon that you're you're moving towards and you're doing it with a bunch of people who all feel the same way and that's yeah that's fab I just I mean I love love that about Yeah, I think for us with Pact, it's like Alex, the founder's ambition is a pack of Pact in every freezer.