#90 - Harry Turipin - Imaginakery / Jungle Squad [Head of Sales]

0:00Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to Unfounders. Today I am joined by my good friend Harry Turpin and this episode is super cathartic. Harry is a ball of energy. He is so passionate, so vibrant, just an absolute great guy, knows his stuff. And it's amazing touching into his journey around his own brand, The Savorist, what life looks like before and after that with Causton Press in his early days. Now at Imaginacery doing all the amazing things they're doing for better for you children snacking. Harry's energy is unmatched. He is one of the biggest, jolliest, loudest voices in the industry. He is such a great guy.

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1:23if you are hearing this it means that we have some very exciting news as a family and we have now become a family of four so our son has just arrived and it means the unfounders will be taking a little break huge huge thank you to everyone who has supported the podcast up until now it will be coming back i just want to take this time to spend fully immersed with the family spending time as I should be. So thank you to you. There's plenty of episodes you can go back and listen to. We're at 90 plus episodes now. So thank you again for the support and I will see you all again very soon. Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to Unfounders.

1:56Today I am joined by my good friend Harry Turpin. Harry is a name and a face very recognisable in the industry, but Harry let everyone know what you are up to nowadays.

2:05Harry Turpin:Thanks Mitch. So I'm currently working as head of sales for a business called Imagine Acery. Imagine Acery, I'm sure many people will go, what's that? I don't know that. But in our household, we're big fans. Maha absolutely loves them. But for those new to the brand, give us a spiel. What's Imagine Acery? Who's the founder? All that good stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So Imagine Acery has a super interesting mission at the heart, and that is to produce better for you, healthier snacks, combine family play within that. So connecting family and kids together through interesting ways rather than just switching on screens with nutrition at the core of what we do.

2:47Harry Turpin:And it's a super interesting business. So first of all, it was founded by a guy called Mark Semester, who has had a pretty unbelievable career in big food. So he spent a good 15, 20 years at Nestle, where he built up his career and ended up running the chocolate department of that, which includes Kit Kat, etc, etc. So big, big brands. And then went on and was the marketing director of Warburton's. And then most recently, before leaving and starting Imagine Acery, was managing director at Soarin', which is owned by Samworth Brothers. So super interesting. And sort of the Imagine Acery is a holding sort of business that the view is to have different brands underneath it.

3:34Harry Turpin:And the first brand that has been launched with that is a brand called Jungle Squad, which is a lower sugar cake product, bakery product aimed at kids. And what really drew me to it, aside from the Mark piece, which I'm sure we'll come on to, was how they really do combine nutrition with fun. the wider jungle squad world for me is is the bit that is is super fascinating so there's a youtube series there's characters there's trading cards there's an app um and and then the the cakes are also shaped to the faces of the characters that are in the wider world so everything sort of clicks clicks together really nicely and the product itself is a uh is a sponge cake but it's 60 lower sugar than the than the category average so when when i say category we sit in with your mini rolls with your mr kiplings with your saurine lunchbox loaves and i think the bit that i love is having done a couple of children's products including where i started my career at cause them press in their fruit waters is well i guess it's like this for for every category right but certainly within kids there's a real balance between nutrition and fun and if you go too hard on one and not the other the kids go okay great well as soon as they know it's healthy they're like i'll eat that once and then i'm bored of it i don't really want it anymore i mean you've got you've got kids yourself um and the bit for me that was fascinating in all of this is is that piece there is the balance weighs fun way more than than anything else but the nutrition is super strong and a cool part of what we do as well you introduced me to mark at invest fest so bread jam mark did an absolutely fantastic pitch won the the gold stars and the the champagne at the on stage with his pitch and i just was like wow this is fascinating and the more i kind of learned about imagine acery jungle squad um kind of the whole ecosystem that you guys are building in this space it's so much more than just uh oh yeah we make better for you cakes or all this like the the thought the planning the the characters the investment is it's phenomenal and i think there's so much scope as you said that you could go into my daughter loves the cake she's like i need more strawberry cake, strawberry cake, like that's her absolute favourite.

5:46So for those listening going, oh, that sounds good. I've got kids. Where are some of the places you've already won listings? Because I mean, you've been there, what, a couple of months now. And it's great to see the growth of the brand in that time. So yeah, where are you guys now stock?

6:00Harry Turpin:Yeah, a lot of the hard work had already been done, right? I just come in as someone that can hopefully fan the flames and get the fire going a lot of the hard work um in creating all of it had been done uh from a sort of where you can find us piece in in tesco so we're in 650 odd tescos uh nationwide and then we just launched from ocado and then we have a couple of other interesting customers lined up over the next couple of months which is super exciting um and i think from from my side to your piece there that that's exactly what drew me to it was the way that it's really been thought out and what is fascinating coming in is you've got someone in mark that has been in big food all his all of his career taking a massive risk and huge salary drop from managing director role at a big big business to set this up with a core to to sort of improve children's lives kids lives is a amazing from a mission perspective but b therefore he's thought about it from a very strategic category play rather than sort of a lot of food and drink brands in the startup world which i love by the way but are kind of i make this recipe at home and it's great and i think we've put some packaging around it like every touch point has been thought of before even launching which is it kind of breeds a very sophisticated business even though it's like it's still very much in terms of infancy in terms of brand recognition, which has led to some really strong stings from the off and also straddles that mass market appeal very well.

7:38Harry Turpin:But when you read an article in The Grocer about what trends are coming down the line, typically it's about four or five years ahead of where consumers actually are. And if you go too far on the set of premiumization piece or too far on the health piece, and obviously Pact is a different story because it's natural raw ingredients, the the you can sort of end up having a very niche um set of consumers whereas the way that jungle squad has been thought through is is that mass market piece where you're going 600 tesco stores and and the rate of sale is is good it is a really good sort of kind of um set of foundations to have as a brand absolutely and for the kind of speaking wider business like outside of you and Mark like is there much more of a team is it still very kind of like skeleton structure like manufacturer Mark you go um what's the what's the team set up are you remote like how's your current yeah so so it is skeleton but I mean there's four of us five of us full time including uh Mark and Sarah who Sarah's Mark's partner and it's skeleton with the amount of things that we're doing so we've got creative director in James Cameron that looks after all the youtube side of things but then also creates all the assets all the decks all the um all the social media stuff and and all the cards and the artwork and the characters and the sort of here's the concept now let's come up with a with the actual ideation piece of it is is is james a creative director which is amazing to have because like all of the artwork is done in-house right so we're not briefing agencies from a branding perspective or design perspective which as a sales guy is dreamy because you get stuff turned around pretty quickly um and then we've got an operations manager and we've also got digital manager as well who looks after the sort of e-com side of the business and then and then mark and myself and sarah so skeleton but also sort of quite big for the stage of business we're at if that makes sense no i mean no one's job title is their roles and responsibility in challenger space especially as you're going up against the masses and the Mr Kiplings of the world so um it sounds like you guys are that's that's why that's why we're both in in this phase of business absolutely and in your your time so far what have been kind of either some of the things that have surprised you the most or what what's something that's really like stood out as like wow this is a really cool moment for what you're doing and the brand and everything at this stage like in basic sort of FMCG way like getting a listing in national rollout in Tesco's for the store numbers that we've had blew my mind and then the performance off the back of that as well because i'm sure you've spoken about it with people before and and it's widely documented and rightly so that brands should go in those phases in terms of which retailer you're going to first and how many stores and it sort of starts about maybe 200 300 cluster and then works its way up so it's quite it was quite bullish and i was a little bit nervous about the the store count but actually where we are from a performance in stories is really promising for what the future holds but and then from a personal level like I just love the the YouTube channel I think it's I think it's so cool having that element I've never had access to it I've always wanted to be involved in the sort of entertainment world and I think like Jungle Squad and Imagine Acery is exactly that because you're essentially selling entertainment with a nutritious or better for you healthier cake product um which is which which i love and seeing the set youtube stats and like starting i don't understand that world at all other than my little one wants to watch youtube and i know that lots of people do watch youtube but starting to see the stats and being able to use that in my as we start to unlock new business and new growth is a really great opportunity.

11:35Absolutely. I mean, my daughter alone loves YouTube. Some of the stuff she watches, I'm like, what on earth are you watching? Just someone playing with Play-Doh or cutting, chopping boards of fruit. I'm like, what? Okay, fine. Yeah, I mean, there's real weird stuff on there, right? So yeah, to have the characters and the excitement there, it's like going back to the cereal days where you would have Kellogg's and like the monkey from Cocoa Pops and all these things kind of advertising and then what you're essentially buying is a sugary cereal it's like okay take that that world and that thing but actually put a positive spin on it so it's better for you i think it's just really solid so yeah very exciting times now you touched on performance background and wanted to do entertainment now let's go right the way back to when you were a child what was it you thought like when i grow up i'm gonna do this was it getting into that space was it like i want to act i want to perform i want to do all of this or yeah what was your what was your dream when

12:24Harry Turpin:you were younger to go i'm gonna go out and do this um so i've had a very sort of weird sort of journey to that i guess like i studied musical theater at university and then realized that like i just me in tights and ballet shoes don't don't really go together um but but was sort of terrible at school like it's classics and neurodivergent mindset right not not that i was mucking around in class and blah blah blah blah blah and therefore never really had a kind of straightforward path like I I used to play drums in a band I loved the music element I loved the sort of being on stage and performing and and and kind of went through that that sort of route and I guess when I was younger it was performance related so anything kind of on stage either with the drums or or sort of singing a tune and and kind of getting stuck in would was was where I wanted to go and like it's great man because I've ended up in sales which is all performance space so it's like as you well know the jazz hands can come out in different ways so yeah man that that's it and then how did you step into the the food and drink world like what was your kind of foray into that because i mean causton press absolutely brilliant brand and i think was seems to be like a another one of these places like innocent where the people who've been there have kind of all gone on to work for other great businesses or start other great businesses yeah of course the press like take us back yeah Causedon was like world class I joined Causedon straight out of university Dan Broughton was the was was was the sales director at the time and had a coffee with him and they were recruiting for our field sales people I can't remember what they called him now but some sort of glamorous name for field sales pioneers I think sales pioneers or something like that um yeah so joined Causton straight out university my first day was given a rucksack full of cans it was when they were launching their rhubarb and sparkling apple can the first canned variant um and was given a rucksack full of cans and just told to go and sell out a patch of London away we went I'd del boring my way around and there were for those six months year while i was in that field sales role you wouldn't find me without a can of caused and press in one of my pockets um which was which was great and and such a good sort of grassroots learning of how food and drink works um and and they had a uh simon dunn who was on the board there who sadly passed away but he used to have a phrase that was like the basics of fmcgr move boxes profitably and there's no better way than understanding that phrase than getting out in the street and trying to sell to a corner shop or a health food shop or some of the coolest coffee bars in in shoreditch so to speak where you literally are selling out of booker or through a clf or or direct from from your car it like it's uh it was a really good learning and and kind of a good sort of foray into into food and drink and yeah you spent a few time sorry you spent a few years there kind of working your way up and kind of getting to international sales manager in that time like what are some of like the the lessons or learnings in that that have kind of still stuck with you to this day you're like yeah that was this was great learning well i think we had like super lucky right it was a much smaller business than what it is today um and therefore was was was in a real sort of key growth moment for the brand where both the team grew we saw new leadership come in we saw like new product development launch and fail new product development launch and work so it ended up I think it was about five six years that I was there in the end and one of one of the highlights for me was having the the senior leadership teams of IE board who were there at the time most of them still are now and you had the the William Kendall Mark Palmer Nick Bitt and all of those guys had already sort of done it a couple of times before So Nick was instrumental in Gap Kids and William Kendall and Mark Palmer were green and blacks.

16:37Harry Turpin:And the backers that they have were the people who gave the initial cash to buy the green and blacks brand from Portobello market. I'm going to butcher this and paraphrase that. I can't remember if it was Portobello or whatever market it was. But they found green and blacks in a market stand in London and turned it into what it was and ultimately sold it to Cadbury's. When you've got those sorts of people around you at board level, the mentality within that is very entrepreneurial. It's very like Mark Palmer is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met from a sort of marketing. No, marketing is unfair to bracket him, actually, just in terms of a businessman like he is.

17:20Harry Turpin:And William Kendall as well. And Nick Bitts, very shrewd in terms of sort of understanding the financial side of things. and they were an unbelievable team. And learning from them was fantastic. I mean, there was a point where I was there where Mark Palmer was marketing director of Pret-a-Manger at the same time. And we'd had access to that. So you can imagine as a kid, and I was a kid who'd just left university, going out for a beer with Mark Palmer, who was this unbelievable sort of marketing guru within food and drink was amazing. And there's so many stories of bits that go down a rabbit hole.

17:54Harry Turpin:But I think the thing that sums it up really is the ethos and mentality behind if you do the work and you can prove that you are doing a good job, you will be able to have access to multiple different roles and multiple different things. And that was the bit that made me fall in love with food and drink was in a small team. Our team meetings would literally go for every department. It wasn't at a phase where you'd have a sales team meeting or a marketing team meeting. like yes those came but our initial ones you'd hear updates from an operations director who was operations director at green and blacks and and then marketing sales finance so you'd get your bird's eye picture on a regular basis and then my director of uh sales director then at the time of joining was dan broughton who'd also come from from green and blacks and was brilliant and just learned so much was the business was at that really amazing phase where there's so much learnings to be had just from going in the office because you're sat next to the sales director or Mark Palmer's in or you go for a beer with William Kendall and Stephen Unwin who I sort of didn't mention in the initial phase but and then as that business grew Steve Cairns came on board as the managing director and then Dan left and Frank Bartlett came in as sales director again Frank was ex Metcalfs and so like they knew how to hire and the quality of people coming in was unbelievable I have no idea what I was doing there like just just sort of pre-facing that I'm not saying that I was part of that but um the access to talent was just unbelievable and many different learnings from different people throughout that time that you sort of take a learning from each person and put it in your back pocket or bits that you really resonated with as a as a younger person to take forward in the career so I think it was it was that piece really rather than the actual business and product which is obviously brilliant and the way that mica the head of taste over there creates the the products and still does to this day like is is a master class in how to bring food and drink products to life in terms of mpd and nailing flavor yeah i mean that that rhubarb drink anytime like a nice hot sunny day it just it never fails to hit the spot it's just absolutely delicious like it's mega isn't it yeah absolute class um good with gin as well yeah i can see that nice mixes um so from caustin then inspired like motivated you set off and set up savorist is that right yeah as a sort of reckless far too young and naive to be doing what i the journey that was going to come but yeah like i was lucky like we were in a cohort initially i said cohort like so four or five six of us and jack and alex the founders of dashwater were also there and we left to go on those journeys at the same time and I could see a bit of a gap or I thought at the time I could see a bit of a gap in healthier snacking and it leading towards a lot of sweet-based protein products at the time and sort of discovered a gap for a savoury variant of that which then led me to being a sort of overexcited like early 20s to jump in and start that journey of setting up my own business, of which Corson was super supportive about and think really like irritated that people left to do it, but also secretly quite proud in terms of sort of the culture that they'd created around that in those early days.

21:24Yeah, I think it seems to be, as I said, with Innocent, they've got a page where they've got these ex-employees and they've gone on to do XYZ. I mean, Barney and Phil 10K and I mean, so many great examples same of course and like a lot of those names you mentioned are working in great brands like nice or like all sorts of other places it's it's amazing to see that melting pot of talent what it then stems to go okay they're gonna go off and do this they're gonna go off and do this so for you savorists like i remember i think this is when we first started talking i was just going through the phase of kind of closing niches kitchen i'd kind of seen what was happening in the industry and at the time i think it was your podcast untold and savorist was kind of like who's Harry what's this thing and yeah kind of started to learn a bit more about you and your journey so savourous when it started it was like a savoury snack well wasn't it like that was the first kind of concept in the initial I remember like a tomatoey one and some other things yeah

22:15Harry Turpin:so we had a sun-dried tomato and herb and a black olive and nori seaweed which we went we went too healthy with it basically and it's what I was coming back to earlier with Jungle Squad about how that sort of mass market piece is bang on is we went too healthy with it we were obsessed with high protein with low sugar with sort of all natural ingredients and or trying to get to as clean a deck as possible and you end up with sort of pumpkin seeds chia seeds sun-dried tomatoes and and black olives and um and i think i'm probably a little bit harsh on the end the sort of business there because it was like we got some really good distribution with that with those early skews um jumped out again as a sort of naive whatever i was sort of early early to mid and we we got the products into sainsbury's we got a product into whole foods and all your sort of um wholesalers at the time from clf to ddc and yeah that they were our sort of initial launch launch products and then from there obviously as time evolved like in this period as well you had a dragon's den appearance looking back on all the the years with savorous there's so many things i'm Like, oh, yeah, you did this and you did this.

23:22And like, to me, Dragon's Den was one thing. I was like, I remember that. And then the whole crunch it and the rebrand and what you did from there. Yeah. I mean, there's so many angles we could go with this. But look, see what you want. I think it's fascinating.

23:34Harry Turpin:Yeah, man. I mean, like, we'll touch on Untold as well in a bit. But I think from a Dragon's Den perspective, it was, yeah, it was mega. I mean, going back to that set of like performance routes, right? When one of the producers from Dragon's Den reaches out to you and goes, we want you to apply like here's the link blah blah blah blah and i'd always thought about dragons then but hadn't sort of was like we're nowhere near ready or we don't so when then they sort reached out i was flattered like turns out they probably reach out to everyone right but it was um at the time i was flattered and quite excited so yeah we went we went through that process and hustled our way through it and then if there's anything to sort of shine a light on the fact that maybe this business needs to pivot it's going on on a recording on on bbc one out to like your entire industry not just your entire industry the entire uk is is kind of like okay shit yeah we should we should probably listen to this so it was interesting man like that whole experience i loved it i would do it again in a heartbeat i think the whole sort of process of getting in there and and giving the sort of energy and jazz hands and all that sort of stuff was was great but i think the it shone a light on that product and and we we essentially had sort of a couple of dragons there and it's funny the way that the whole thing plays out and because you're in there for a lot longer than obviously the edit and we had some some positive conversations and most of it was reflected around sort of I really like you but I can't go over the fact that I don't really like this product and and it kind of shines a light but back then it was like okay this is great and and really if I'm honest with myself and you um which I always want to be is I had kind of gone I know I want to start a business and I know I'm good at selling and create momentum and get people to follow me and getting that energy and excitement in and around what we're doing and i sort of like hadn't really paid too much attention to like obviously the most important bit in food which is that it actually needs to taste good and the fact that we got some of the listings that we did in in those early days of the bars now i look back i'm like holy shit how the hell did we do that and at the time it felt like a good idea but now like hindsight's a wonderful thing right anyway so So we went off there, went live.

25:43Harry Turpin:It was a weird moment. So I was like, this is amazing. I love this whole experience. But also like, it's a massive kick in the nuts where you're like, obviously you've thought about whether you're going to get a dragon and blah, blah, blah. And in reality, whether you get a dragon or not, whether it's going to be helpful, who knows? You've got massive differences there, right? You've got Stephen Bartlett that went and joined Perfect Ted and that is the most amazing business run by some brilliant founders that have done a fantastic job. And then you've got other brands that go on, get a deal and then it never really materializes in reality six months later.

26:14Harry Turpin:So who can say what that impact really does have from a dragon? But it wasn't necessarily about that. I think it was the first time where I really lent into the fact that something needs to change. And I say lent into because deep down, I think I did know just at the time I wasn't willing to accept it. And there was a lot of kind of maybe ego wrapped in that. There was a lot of sort of like pressure to like, my God, you've got to launch this thing and it's amazing and you're part of the cause and press and Dash have gone on and done this and you're now blah blah blah and and it gets all quite overwhelming and i think it was actually the sort of house of cards moment for me that needed to happen in order to then pivot and we did and we moved we moved across the crunchets which definitely moved the dial to the next phase of business for us and and sort of allowed me to take stock to be like right okay how do we now mix this sort of high protein health angle with flavor and make sure that it is a mass market flavor uh sort of 0.001 percent of people that like it and they shop at whole foods so then we sort of went back to the drawing board and out of that came crunches which is a sort of it was super interesting sort of launch piece because i've gone on a second we spent some money on some branding here we've had a failed two skews um from that first launch we've now had dragon's den sort of shine a light on it do i either give up or do i sort of um lick my wounds a little bit and get back on the horse and and give it another go and i think i probably would have regretted it if i hadn't given another go uh and then we launched uh crunches but crunches we did very differently so i didn't spend any money on branding initially we literally got samples for free i scoured google for a manufacturer i found one got some samples done to the spec that we wanted doing and the product that we want to create with the seasonings that we wanted to create and i remember it so clearly man at least you got a sandwich bag like small sandwich bags put a load of product in it create a little like label from a label printer that had the save rest and crunches logo on it and stuck it on and sent it to a load of customers um and like easy jet we got listing with easy jet off the back of a like clear plastic bag sample from amazon and a load of product we hadn't spent any money on it so it sort of just reframed my mindset in a way that was like okay you can you and hustle here because I've had that background in food and drink at Causton you had some set of contacts and you knew which channels to go to and you knew how margins were blah blah initially what I really needed was someone that was very focused on like chefing so either yourself for example or or someone that could come in and really look at that MPD piece to kind of keep me on the straight and narrow I think and yeah so then we launched Crunchyts into EasyJet we worked with numerous different airlines and trains and worked with Virgin American Airlines we worked with some train companies the product uh was on a cardo sainsbury's like various different sort of bits and growth levers and amazon and we did some export pieces and then yeah it sort of went from went from there really so that was that was a sort of dragon's death that was a really waffly way of being like we pivoted after dragon's death i could have done that in one sentence mitch i'm sorry no i wouldn't have expected anything less from you um but i think it's that's testament to like firstly getting back on the horse and going okay i'm taking all this on board you have that moment of do i continue do i back myself do i back what i'm doing or do i go you know what cut my losses let's walk away let's finish this now and the fact that you did come back with crunch it's like i absolutely love them i think they're delicious like the branding was great all of these things back to present day like what's what's happening with the brand and and what's your involvement there now because obviously you're doing imagine acery and yeah i have to kind of bring this to a close so we um are in the it's in the process of or has been in the process over the last sort of i don't know year or so of moving into a distributor-led um partnership the brand will continue and again this has been an amazing learning you sort of look back and you go like life is is all about the the learnings and you sort of do something and then you level up and then you do something else you level up and each phase is sort of like blocks right but um for me it was looking at it going like we've got we've got a good business here like revenue was was was a good place and we were quite reliant on travel and i sort of looked at it and went i don't think this is going to become the next dash or the next sort of 10 15 million pound business therefore i don't want to spend the next 5 10 years whatever whatever that's going to take growing it there and and sort of got to a point in the last maybe two two and a half years where well three years really probably where i started falling out of love with it a little bit and we we had a sort one last ditch attempt and rebranded for crunches, which ironically, I think is actually the best proposition we actually ever had in the saviourist business, which is what is going forward with the croc and all that sort of stuff.

30:57Harry Turpin:But I'm a very different person now. I've got two kids. And at the time, like, I remember getting an email about EasyJet Airlines, the exact date, the exact volumes, and physically reading that email whilst my wife was having a scan for my first one trial, like sat in the room looking at the screen, but also looking at my phone, like, and at the time, like that felt completely normal to me because there was never a moment where if something important needed to happen it needed to happen and and we're sort of also kind of missing out a core fundamental piece here when when you have kids and how life changes from sort of mid-20s to mid-30s where like i now have a mortgage and two kids that i need to feed but your your appetite for risk changes and therefore your love of the mission or the brand or the excitement that you first had just slowly starts to kind of disappear a little bit when you go I need to to I've been selfish in many ways here by sort of living out a long long term ambition of mine which was to run a business and be involved in business and that entrepreneur piece has always run in in in my veins from a very young age but I need to put my family first now and I like I've had a crack at it we've got it to a good level but it's not becoming this unicorn business that was innocent or dash water or or like loads of brands that we've seen Jimmy's like Coffee Moju, Pippa Nut, all of the ones that sort of started in similar-ish times, probably a little bit before, and that I'd taken loads of inspiration from.

32:19Harry Turpin:And I just decided to slowly start to assess the options. There's a really good range there for the right person with the right firepower and the right team behind it to push it forward. The flavor profiles are banging, the product's banging. The opportunity, ironically, is now with the sort of Asian fusion themes going on at the moment and trends and the partner taking it forward will be able to put that into the range and take it into retail in a very different way that I was able to at the time by sheer default of sort of cash flow versus like life challenges that were being thrown at me at the time and I now make it sound like I've sort of jumped over that quite easily like at the time man it was brutal.

33:01I was going to say I'd love to like unpack that because even for me Mitch's Kitchen was never like a massive thing but for me it was my identity my name's in the title it's something that I've spent years doing to then kind of go okay that chapter's closing and moving on I mean I'm I'm in a really good place now with PACT and what I'm doing and the last few years I think I've kind of fumbled my way into going okay this is my identity and this is what I do and like the fact that the people are even listening to this is because of what I've been doing and I look back and I'm like I wouldn't change any of that experience and all the lessons along the way but yeah it's tough when you kind of go right end of that chapter on to the next thing so for you what's that experience been like and and how are you like first off one of the best things that I

33:41Harry Turpin:think's ever happened to me and not because I didn't love the business not because it wasn't a good business not because the range won't do well moving forward I think it will but for me personally I needed to go through something like that in order to grow again and I'm a big believer in sort of energy and like sort of house of cards being pulled down in order to restack your energy and move on and I think like I look at my life now and the Imaginacery and being in a small but mighty team and the mission we're going after and that the sort of experience I can bring to that and I look at my life and I go I absolutely love Imaginacery and what I'm doing now and that is for sure my kind of future focus and but during that during that time it was brutal man I went through a bit of a breakdown at the same time that my second child was born it always seems that have come around a child right and the reality of sort of cash and where we were and versus the plan that we'd laid out and what that was going to look like etc etc kind of happened in in that window of my wife is going to give birth in about four or five months and then going into that phase and I think one of the bits that I'll always look back and and slightly regret is that I went through that when my youngest now was was born and like having that regret is almost sort of pushes me now to be a better father and a better family person because I won't let that happen again in the way that it did but yeah man I mean it's brutal like and and I say you you rebuild yourself in a way that you lose your identity you bring it back sort of but by default and you're the same we're quite loud as people in terms of sort of wanting a voice wanting to be involved in the conversations and enjoying the bread jam pieces but by default comes with that like a people do know you at an event that you go to and therefore it's sort of like you you have that bit okay i'm okay now at home and then you also have the bit of like fuck i'm now going back into the industry and sort of address all of this shit head on it's but address all of this head on as well and and and it came into sort of a wave of phases one of the bits i'm such a massive advocate for and so I've always been with Untold which was obviously pre any of this kind of happening was therapy and being able to speak to someone that um that doesn't know you but actually ironically gets to know you very well you can sort of almost the way that I describe it is like you know when you're playing on a playstation game not that I'm a gamer by the way and I haven't played playstation in I don't know how long so it's terrible analogy and you can press pause and you can kind of go to the loo and you can go and do all of those little bits that you need to do therapy for me was sort of pressing pause in my life and just giving me a bit of like birds of view on like what do I want to come next what's important to me what what values do I want to have in my career and ultimately what is my career goal and I think the biggest bit that shifted in all of that was sort of being part of a startup business and building it doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have to care and it also doesn't mean that you don't have skin in the game I don't mean physically through package equity whatever that looks like but I mean emotionally and sort of the passion that you can you can have towards that and actually sort of being in a team is a brilliant thing if you're not the one running it and it doesn't mean there's less pressure or less whatever i just need to come to that because from six years of course and then straight into maybe seven or eight years running save race you sort of then go like holy shit like i don't really know anything else like i went into causing as a as a as a graduate with cans of pot on my back selling it and left there as having got loads of experience from loads different parts of the commercial team and my nam briefcase or whatever whatever you call it and and sort of what that looks like but then from there you've then got seven years of like i don't know how other people operate so even coming out of that and i did some consultancy for for a couple of years and worked with the various different brands and you don't really know what level you're app because you've got nothing to benchmark yourself against if that makes sense and it's not until you get into that environment where you start going like oh shit yeah well of course we should do that but you don't realize that nobody else knows that because you haven't been in that environment where anybody you've had the opportunity to see it does that make sense yeah no absolutely and i think yeah the like your openness and again to be where you are now like i'll officially title you an unfounder i think there's so many great um founders who have been through this phase of closing the door like Julia who was nicks and kicks and is now CEO at Feed or you've now got like Bonnie from Me So Tasty like she's doing some amazing work in this space which I think is still all yet to be announced but Bonnie is just such a positive voice of 10 plus years doing Me So Tasty to now go on and do what she's doing next and be this support system so I think it's so important like therapy as you said as a whole is huge and something that I'm a huge advocate for I think everyone should have that moment whether you feel like you need it or not you're going to pull out things that you're like oh I didn't realize I was holding on to that or didn't know that but as you touched on with Untold your Untold podcast like when it came back what 2021 I'd just literally gone through this phase of Mitch Kitchen closed it down sold my house living back with my mom I was window cleaning your podcast was one of these things of like wow there's other people in brands talking about the tough times and actually sharing similar feelings and emotions of okay this is one of the really tough periods of business but it was in such a positive way and i think that is the beauty of what you're clearly doing right now is you've gone through all of this you've experienced all these things you've had the highs and lows but you still kind of come out fighting and energized and kind of going right this is me now and this is what we're doing so i think it's testament to to you and like what you're building what you're doing i think it's just yeah i want to like shine a light on that and just say like keep going because you're absolutely smashing it thanks man that's that's that's super kind of you and like life's life's a journey right like it's so cliche but it is and it's it's a it's a group of learnings and one of the things having been through a couple of these like pretty brutal at times certain moments or periods in life is when you then get out the the other side of it you're like i've i've leveled up in a way that i didn't even know i could i didn't know it was happening at the time and at the time it was it was horrible but then you come out and you level up in a way that you didn't know that you could and you cling on to bits there and you know that you won't do that sort of thing again and it's a i've always been a the kind of guy that that um learns by doing right and naturally there's so many learnings in doing whether it works or not and it's funny because the barrier to entry for food and drink from a market level is low and therefore what you get is a load of people that sort of launch and and and then don't launch and it becomes this sort of stigma whereas actually you're like like it like the failure is a learning and that is a mentality that in a big business if you were to launch a piece of mpd you'd want to know within six months whether it's going to work or not because then you kill it and you move on but by default with small food and drinks if you're killing a skew you kill the entire business and so it doesn't sort of work in the same way if that makes sense but it is the same sort of mentality i guess yeah no i i always say like starting a business was the best thing i ever did closing the business was the second best by far like I've learned so much in that whole period I wouldn't have fumbled my way through the business and all of that and I look back I'm like there's so many like little things that knowing what I know now the business could have been a completely different place but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing I wouldn't be speaking to you right this second like all of these things that I'm like no absolutely like things will happen you just have to kind of keep pushing forward yeah I think for anyone listening if you've made it this far hopefully you're enjoying this group therapy session I think it's yeah yeah So it's really like waffling on.

41:14No, it's great. I think it's really important. People still don't hear these conversations enough. And I think, as you've just said, like being at the Bread and Jam Startup Summit the other week, there was lots of new businesses, people still working full-time jobs, doing it as a side hustle. Like that energy in that room, it's just such a beautiful thing. Kind of go, I'm going to do this. I'm going to commit. Some people have just gone full-time into the job. And it's like, look, whatever happens, no matter whether you have like higher successes or after a few months, a few years, it comes to an end like back yourself for doing what you're doing because you're learning so much in this process and i think that's so important just to say like yeah give it a go why not 100

41:49Harry Turpin:and when you come out the other side mitch like as you well know being a pack now and and what i found in certainly in imagine acery where um i sort of kissed a couple of frogs during the the kind of um uh consultancy piece and was just looking at various different startups to see where i could get stuck in and suddenly when you find your groove and you find your your crew so to speak and you're sort of what you can see the the foreseeable future looking like it's brilliant because you go in as a startup and actually you become quite quite valuable just by default of the fact that operations you've done it packaging you've done it design you've done it product you've done it sales you've done it and my job title there is is is head of sales and it owns that commercial function in its entirety the the um to have the support of mark to have the support of a non-exec director that we've got is brilliant because I've got that sort of base level of understanding of everything and now I can take those learnings and hopefully help that team but also improve my learnings from learning from other people that got completely different experiences to me and you mix them together and you get a cocktail of really quite nice sort of stuff if that makes sense.

42:59No perfect now final kind of few questions to wrap things up I know you can't share the MPD but you've already teased there's some new listings and things come in but for imagine a career or jungle squad like for your year ahead like what are some of the exciting parts that you're like oh like what's your space i think like weirdly and and i never thought i'd

43:17Harry Turpin:be the sort of person to say this but for me one of the things i'm most excited about is just us as a team implementing more structure as we grow and really getting into the like having having been at that point of like sort of where the savers needed more structure now knowing where the structure needs to go like the new listings are coming they're exciting the growth is super exciting that the youtube stuff it like there's so much there that it's kind of going right how do we laser beam focus this and make sure that that we're focusing on the right areas for growth and and and and kind of where that we take that sort of next step and and make sure it's the right next step rather than kind of getting super excited and moving off in in lots of different directions if that makes sense yeah no absolutely i think very exciting times i'll be watching along closely for anyone who wants to get hold of you or find out more about imagine acery where's the best place to do that so imagine acery jungle squad is is is the core brand there so online jungle squad if you type in squad unite anywhere um on set of app stores and google and youtube etc etc you will see the jungle squad bits pop up um we will i'm sure we can sort a code of some sort from the website for you as well to to put out in terms of myself probably linkedin is the best the best place pretty pretty open slide into dms i can't promise i'm not full of shit but if there's anything there for for a chat i'm always up for a beer amazing no i love that i think before we wrap i need the music question it's the one i ask everyone um hopefully you've got a good tune Is it the Jungle Squad theme tune?

44:54I don't know.

44:56Harry Turpin:What's your go-to? That'd be pretty cliche, wouldn't it? Oh, man, this is actually a really difficult question. Brinestorm Arctic Monkeys, which is just a sort of sheer chaos. And I think that's probably the favourite. But then I'm also a big fan of Billy Joel in that My Life is another tune that I would go for. But I think probably leaning on the Arctic Monkeys one just for sheer, hectic, organised chaos that has been my life to date. Yeah, perfect. I think it's a great addition to the playlist. Yeah, no, I love it. I think this has been a fascinating episode. We could have gone for hours and hours.

45:28There's so much to unpack if you have made it this far. Thank you so much for listening. As I've already said, like your journey, your energy, your openness, the way you communicate, I think it's so positive. The impact you're having in the industry is huge. And I think it's just keep on going, keep on jiggling, all that good stuff. Amazing. No, it's been a pleasure. Really, really enjoyed it. So thank you for sharing with us.

45:47Harry Turpin:Mitch, thanks, man. And you're a hero as well. and I love the unfounders and listen to it regularly. I think it's brilliant. And right back at Japan. Amazing. And everyone, we will see you on the next episode. Thank you so much. Goodbye.