Leading Functional Mushroom Brand: How I Built a Multi-Million Brand from Mushrooms

0:02My PA at the time came into my office and said, Hugh Jackman's done it in a gym in New York in slow motion. About half an hour later, I was in the gym and it was on TMZ. Then by the time I got home, it was on CNBC, ABC News, Fox, and it literally went crazy. Andrew Salter is the co-founder and CMO of Dirt Tea, a functional mushroom brand, and was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30. Dirt Tea are the purest and most potent super mushroom extract powders. Teas and coffees proven to give you natural energy, strengthen your immunity, and help you feel calm and focused. There are mushrooms that can heal you there's ones that can kill you there's ones that can poison you there's ones that can take you on a psychoactive journey there are functional ones and there are six that we focus on which are the most researched most nutrient dense and they contain active compounds that when absorbed by the human body can do incredible things we have lots of teething issues like going out of stock issues with packaging yeah i mean i remember there was a point where the supply chain really messed up that was a really scary moment and i wasn't sure we were going to recover it take one take two i'd say take two all right so i just took these gummies should i feel something like within an hour or you really take time you have to tell me you could be your lowest moments and you've got someone to turn to that isn't just your brother but is in the business with you as well so it understands the entire dynamic i think trust is a big thing as well like i trust my life with my brother i don't know if many business partnerships I'm just going to use words to that level.

1:39And in business, what's the biggest lesson you've learned? The biggest lesson I've learned?

1:53Andrew, in 2021, you launched Dirty. What is Dirty? Dirty is the leading functional mushroom brand. we believe that functional mushrooms can transform your life and we're leading the movement to get everyone drinking functional mushrooms every day right so before we deep dive into mushrooms because I'm not incredibly educated about functional mushrooms but you have this idea right and I've been into a lot of different events in which some of my friends they have great ideas but then the day after probably never mention them again so how do you take this idea into our reality? So I guess it all starts with a half moment.

2:37So my brother and I have had a real interest in prevention and what we sort of refer to as health intervention. So getting in control of your health, getting in front of it, and that comes from understanding it and realizing there are tools that exist out there where you can truly take control. So eight years ago we discovered these ancient ingredients they became a massive part of our life and our lifestyle entrepreneurs at the time we were building businesses as part of our venture studio and we realized that there was a massive gap in the market as this wellness industry was growing you know it's a seven trillion dollar market so we saw the opportunity we did the research we had a real love for the vision and the product and we believe that was enough to really take something to market.

3:31Interesting right now I can confidently say that there is a common denominator at least from the entrepreneurs that came to our show between men and women so men entrepreneurs or male entrepreneurs they identify a gap in the market which is very much logic based so in your case, you analyze the wellness space and you see this gap, no one is tapping into it. You believe in exploding that gap and then you venture yourself and start a company based on the outcome of that analysis. But female entrepreneurs, they have a more emotional attachment to their companies because they arrive to that conclusion, meaning identifying the gap, because they would have been the perfect consumers for that product or service, if we're talking about consumer goods.

4:21So there are different reasons why we both arrive to the same conclusion. Now, I'm very interested to know what or how did your life look like before this? So you're not a nutritionist, you're not a biochemist. What were you doing before starting Dirty? So my brother and I have been in business together now 14 years. And the first thing we ever did is we created one of the largest social movements of our generation called Feeling Nuts. Feeling Nuts, I like the name. It was called Feeling Nuts because it was inspiring and empowering people to check their balls for testicular cancer. Okay. And why that?

5:07So essentially, if you catch testicular cancer early, it's 100 % curable. The problem becomes when it starts to spread. and there's a massive ignorance that exists particularly amongst men when it comes to testicular cancer. When you think of cancer you think of something that's going to affect you in older age. Anytime you see messaging around cancer it's always like the doom, it's always the connotation of death. We met basically a mother whose son lost his life at the age of 18 because he was unaware of how to look for symptoms. Had he caught it early enough he would still be here today so it really struck an emotional chord with us and we decided we wanted to create a movement to educate men it was in 2014 so it was a time that YouTube and Vine were like the biggest social media platforms and the influence of those days was YouTubers and Viners so we wanted to challenge them with are you feeling nuts so how nuts are you going to go with this message?

6:09And that was essentially get people to check, but also how crazy, how entertaining can you be with a message? And it got to 157 countries. A billion people got behind the movement and it ended up with a TV show on Channel 4 hosted by Jack Whitehall and James Corden called The Filling Nuts Comedy Night. But would you catalogue this as an NGO? uh it was a a campaign and a movement um it had a long-term vision to become a platform and a conduit to get people to take control of their health through awareness and education it's never about raising money okay um and um you know we took it so far and we decided we didn't want to go on that pathway uh it was mainly centered around philanthropy and we were like let's make money first before we start doing charity stuff and then to a degree we become four circle around with Dirty because the essence of what Feeling Nuts is is very similar to the ideology of Dirty.

7:05How old were you when you launched this venture? Well, we started it planning it when I was about 19 years old. It went into the market when I was 24. And right after this, you found it Dirty? No. So from Feeling Nuts, we decided not to carry it on after the first year. So huge success on social media MTV said it almost broke the internet huge stars got behind it from Hugh Jackman to The Rock to Ed Sheeran to Jay-Z it was massive in America it was on CNN it was on Fox News huge success we realized we didn't want to take it any further but it won a lot of awards so I think we won about 18 different awards including you know like Cannes Lions so all the big branding marketing awards so it created a lot of fame for us um in in that world um and we were known as the brothers that really understood social media how do you connect uh with the new generation how do you build community how do you build brands so we used to get a lot of inbounds after winning those awards um and at that point we didn't want to start our own thing uh so we decided to form a venture studio um and work with some of these entrepreneurs to help them build their businesses and it gave us the opportunity to own minority stakes in multiple businesses whilst having a fundamental role in their journey.

8:30A lot of entrepreneurs especially in the consumer space they want to get to this viral moment that everyone gets to know them and obviously ideally collaborate with with such artists. What's the biggest lesson learned from your first venture because you obviously achieved that yeah it's such a good question so i always thought that and i still believe that um you know celebrities influencers cultural influencers are the difference between something becoming a phenomena or a movement or gaining fame and that is something that exists but it's not um an overnight sensation um i remember it was a long way to go before we had a tipping point with feeling nuts and i remember a lot of celebrities were joining the movement and the way you joined by the way is you grabbed your crotch you posted a photo online you said i'm feeling nuts jesus exactly we started it by actually putting our own trousers down in oxford street and we challenged um i can't remember who it was but one of the one of the bands was five seconds of mars yeah five seconds no five seconds of summer I think they're called or something like that okay um and they actually responded to the challenge but um the amount of celebrities that got behind it and it didn't move the needle and I remember there was a moment where um my PA at the time came into my office and said Hugh Jackman's done it in a gym in New York in slow motion and I was like great like there's so many people have done it I was like it's not going to do anything and I remember about half an hour later I was in the gym and it was on TMZ then by the time I got home it was on CNBC, ABC News, Fox and it literally went crazy and it was that sensation.

10:18So I think there's no like secret, there's no tactic that specifically creates that viral moment, it's like almost throwing paint at the wall and seeing what sticks. As long as you've got a great product, a great message, a great vision and you know how to utilize those tactics you have the right strategy eventually you will get there hopefully um but it's very unexpected at the moment it happens interesting so you launched this initiative then you found your venture studio and then you found dirty you never wanted to experience the corporate world as in have a job yeah i think i've always seen myself as unemployable always always yeah yeah I've um I've always wanted to be in control of my own destiny I've been wildly ambitious since I was very young very entrepreneurial from sort of the age of 14 uh I'd started very small businesses in school selling to my school friends um made money very early on not huge amounts of money but you know more than anyone else probably at my school and that was the life I always wanted to lead you know and I when I finished school after my A-levels at 18 I took a year out to go and follow my dreams and I never ended up going to university because the business ended up being successful and I got to live my dreams.

11:49Interesting what did your parents think of this? So at first they were terrified you know my brother and sister been to university that's the conventional route you know i think my parents are particularly conventional um and in many ways and to an extent i think i'm not um but you know once they saw success a number of years later then it was validated right do you think entrepreneurs are made or born? I think born. I think the level of intensity when it comes to hard work, passion, resistance, learning how to fail. I was listening the other day to a podcast with Howard what's the name of the Starbucks founder has gone from my mind?

12:47howard schwartz we need quick answers here schwartz howard schwartz yes um and um he was talking about the moment he got offered uh when i said she's not the founder of starbucks he bought it from the original three founders um and he was saying that it took him 200 investors before he got the money to buy starbucks for like three million dollars or whatever it was and he said that if he hadn't had the coaching from i think he was working for a company where he's a door-to-door salesman and he had that coaching and rejection there's no way he would be able to go through all those rejections i mean 199 rejections before he actually raised the money so and that really struck a chord with me um you know people say no to me all the time right and less so now but in the beginning they say no i don't really listen to the nose i keep moving forward and I think it takes um a level of you know persistence and passion and hard work I mean you you make so many sacrifices with your life you know particularly your social life right um my life was very different to my school friends um and um and it's and it's and it still is right and I don't think that that is something you can teach yourself or you learn you know I grew up as an athlete as well you know I was a competitive tennis player so it's kind of ingrained in me I think to a degree you know having supportive parents helps as well you know my parents made me think I could do anything right so I guess I've got that unconscious inner chatter that believes in myself and has that self-belief and I think that's ingrained for me in the way I was raised the way I was brought up so it's all these components on all these elements that go from the the way you were nurtured, what's ingrained in you that lead to your ability to go and do something like this.

14:40You know, lots of people today want to be entrepreneurs and they go online and it's a lot more accessible. It's easier to get to an audience. It's easy to switch on a channel, right? You know, like, you know, prior to our generation, right, if you wanted to be heard and seen, you have spent a fortune advertising on TV and billboards. Now you can spend a little bit of money on Facebook and Meta and Instagram and instantly reach an audience. So it's a lot more accessible, but you still need that drive. When you were fundraising, did any investor challenge that you didn't go to university? It's never been asked.

15:19Interesting. Never been asked. I don't remember the last person asked me, did I go to university?

15:29Let's go back to mushrooms. Yeah. most people are familiar and when i mean most people uh definitely my my relatives um and some of my friends they're familiar with mushrooms as a cooking ingredient but they don't know that mushrooms can have other benefits so what's the difference in between the so-called cooking mushrooms and the functional mushrooms that you use in your blends so when i tell you about fungi it will blow your mind because it's way beyond anything we know and understand right from when we're growing up so there are over four million species of fungi right so when you start to think about mushrooms and toast and mushrooms on pizza it goes way beyond that there's four million species of fungi so to put that into perspective they outweigh plants eight to one so for every species of plant there's eight species of fungi there's 150 000 so far so about 13 percent ish that have been explained or named by scientists within this 150 000 there are mushrooms that can heal you there's ones that can kill you there's ones that can poison you there's ones that can take you on a psychoactive journey that's psilocybin there are culinary ones which you're referring to and there are functional ones um so functional mushrooms um and there are six that we focus on which are the most researched most nutrient dense and they contain active compounds that when absorbed by the human body uh can do incredible things such as soothing stress and anxiety they can regrow and regenerate brain cells they can improve your focus your recall your creativity your flow they can strengthen your immune system they can activate natural collagen in the body, hydrate the skin.

17:21They can even improve your testosterone and your sex drive. They're amazing for sleep. There's not much they can't do. But, you know, when you find the right functional mushroom and the one that's right for you, it can truly transform your health. So each mushroom is related to a different benefit. So they all contain different active compounds and similar ones. They all, I'd say, are pretty good for your immune system so modulating your immune system but what i tend to say is they all have their own individual superpower um so for example the most popular most well-known functional mushroom is lion's mane um you know we refer to that as the focus mushroom so that specifically targets the brain so it's one of the few things in nature that can pass through pass through the blood-brain barrier and feed nutrients directly to the brain.

18:13And that is the one that, yeah, is amazing for focus. It's superpower is kind of a brain functional superpower. I have a friend of mine that is a skeptic about all these so-called superfoods or new discoveries of ingredients that can help various different functions of our life. And he's basically saying that they're all big marketing campaigns and they're based on a placebo. Are there big, solid, tested studies that support the benefits that you're mentioning now? So your friend raises an amazing conversation that I think needs to happen on a big platform, right? He's kind of right and he's wrong.

19:00I think when you look at the wellness industry, which I referred to before, it's a$7 trillion industry. It's lucrative, right? So anyone that wants to make money and build a brand and access an audience, wellness is the sector to be in right now. Unfortunately, it's too accessible. So you have ingredients and products that, you take mushrooms, for example, just because lion's mane mushroom is listed on packaging doesn't mean you're going to get the the benefit it might not have the clinical dosage it might have lots of filler in it it might not have the active compounds that actually deliver the benefit so that is where the marketing and the trend aspect takes over um but the when you learn about fungi and you learn about functional mushrooms the science starts to become undeniable um what's actually happening is these are ancient ingredients and they've been consumed for thousands of years by you know mainly like eastern cultures yeah and what's happened is modern science is now catching up with it you're seeing a massive shift in in terms of government's perception scientists perception at universities on functional health and preventative health you know the way that and this is a lot of the reason why my brother and I got into the space is the way that we were raised was, you know, I referred to my parents as conventional, right?

20:30If you think of our parents' generation, they take a conventional approach to health. So they consider things like cure and treatments, which essentially is waiting for something to occur, such as chronic pain or chronic symptoms before they take action. So it's a very reactive approach. Exactly. And I'd say that dates back like 10 years ago. So very, very recent time, exactly. reactive approach there's a massive shift that's happened and that's because the access to information you know um i'd say that the pandemic accelerated this approach and that is that there is a new view that it's better to be in front of disease yeah take control of health have these morning routines ingest these incredible functional ingredients these ancient ingredients and that's where the science is moving towards that's why i say hey science is catching up with this ancient world.

21:19So it is safe to say that if I am consuming functional mushrooms, I am taking a proactive approach towards my health. Exactly, exactly. That is one way of approaching it. We have customers who come to us who have quite severe illnesses, whether it's anxiety, depression, um you know bone diseases all sorts of things adhd is another big thing um and they are using our products to reduce the symptoms they may be suffering um you know functional mushrooms are great as anti-inflammatory as well so typically when something's wrong with your body it's inflammation linked as well so we really don't focus on that area because you know um the the the evidence is not strong enough although if you went through our customer database you would find lots of incredible testimonials where that has actually helped with that level of disease we're really focused like you say on the proactive approach the the prevention aspect of it and helping people function better every day so different mushrooms have different benefits what's the dosage how much should i consume to start feeling those benefits and and at what frequency daily twice a day once a week so we really believe in creating habits and routines around functional mushrooms some people think that you take something and then overnight there's this amazing reaction and sensation to expect i think we live in this instant gratification society when you think of things like amazon prime and getting a package the next day it doesn't quite work like that with supplementation and these ancient ingredients.

23:09So I always say that, you know, take it for 30 days, and then you'll start to see the progress, you'll start to see the incremental benefits. After 90 days, you will really feel quite a significant transformation. And after about a year, you'll see your life is entirely changed. You've really got to commit to the habit. I see some people are more susceptible than others. I've given like lion's mane to people before and 20 minutes later they're like I've never felt this focus before like they and I actually had the same reaction I first time I had lion's mane I remember eight years ago when I first consumed it I was walking down the street with my brother and I said I've never felt this present in my life but do you build up a tolerance so right now if you were to take lion's mane would you get the same feeling as you had eight years ago no but I feel like since I've been taking lion's mane I I have ADHD right I get easily distracted um and I have to really focus on a task I can't multitask that's just something I've accepted right I think it goes for a lot of people as well um focus and mental sharpness and mental performance is everything to me yeah um and since drinking lion's mane I'd say that's like a superpower for me um so you know if I stopped taking it for a few days I do notice a little bit of a drop but ultimately like my body's got used to consuming this product and as a result I have this expectation that I'm just like always on it obviously things like lack of sleep can affect that as well so you know if you have lack of sleep you have a lion's mate it's not going to totally influence your mental sharpness but yeah it's it's an ally in my life now so in dirty you have powder blends and gummies let's try your favorite one i believe is is the match of labor right uh yeah matches probably actually the coffee but yeah dirty match that i have every day now mid-afternoon let's try the dirty matcha yeah sure so if if i want to have the lion's mane benefits how often should i consume this in the morning and evening um so this dirty match one or lion's mane in general uh in general so lion's mane i'll have every morning uh just because like i said it's the most important way to start the day because i want to be sharp like i did before this podcast right um so uh but i'm having lion's mane multiple times a day right so i'll have it in the morning in gummy form uh so the gummy right behind you the lion's mane gummy um yeah that one there so that's 2400 milligrams of lion's mane in two gummies.

25:50You take this in the morning? I hate to say this every morning. But what if, for example, I do intermediate fasting? Would this break my fast? It doesn't break your fast. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's also got like no sugar in it as well. Okay. You can try it and see what you think. Yeah. I'll also have a dirty coffee, which has got lion's mane in it as well, ashwagandha, maca. And then mid-afternoon, because basically there's only... Should I take one? Take two, I'd say. I'd take two.

26:18You got hot water as well. It is. It's an apple flavor, right? Zero grams of sugar. So if I take another one, I'm still not breaking my fast? No, no, no, not at all. That's one of the biggest questions we get, actually. None of our products break the fast.

26:38All right, so I just took these gummies. Should I fill something like within an hour or... You have to tell me. Some people do. Some people can take about a week or two weeks. Are there any side effects to these products? Or generally within functional mushrooms? There's zero downside. Zero downside. Can anyone take it? So if I have a child and my child is 10 years old. Yeah, so that's a really good... Here's the hot water. So shall I explain how I make it? Yes. So we actually have... So when you subscribe to Dirty, you get a welcome kit. I want to try the other. You get like, you basically get a welcome kit.

27:23So you literally get this measuring spoon. Yeah. So we recommend taking six grams of the matcha. So you measure that out, you pull it into a cup. Okay. You then use a little bit of hot water to kind of, you've had matcha before. I did, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you basically put a little bit of hot water to create a paste. so just to make sure it like that one's really good the chaga right yeah yeah so two of those uh gummies is the equivalent of consuming 900 blueberries in terms of antioxidants i just had six by the way no no that's fine it's fine um so yeah you just turn that into a paste and then i like sort of that most people like matcha as a matcha latte right so you just pour over some like steamed is this like oat milk or something regular english cow oh nice um yeah i actually usually like will put the powder in a steamer and let it steam up or it comes with it we have an electric whisk welcome kit as well so that is um probably going to be very hot so what am i having should i feel the flavor you've got so basically you've got uh organic ceremonial gray matcha so it's like the highest quality matcha you can imagine it's then blended with two and a half thousand milligrams of mushrooms you've got lion's mane in there which we just discussed incredible for focus and you've got tremella in there which is um basically holds up to 500 times its weight in water so it's amazing for like hydrating the skin and how much do you sell that package for if you uh subscribe it's 38 pounds a 38 pounds a month um and those are 30 30 servings so it's roughly 1.8 more or less pounds is adding to my morning matcha exactly um how much is if you found to have a regular matcha how much is regular matcha yeah is it is it just uh look i mean our we we're we add more ingredients so we're probably more premium as a product and they're the highest quality i mean you can spend hundreds of pounds on a really high quality matcha so it really ranges this would roughly last me for a month yeah exactly yeah the whole idea is getting you into this routine and this habit of drinking functional mushrooms every day the idea of the super blends we call them so we have coffee matcha chai cacao yeah the idea was to take drinks people already consuming every day so 90 million people oh sorry 90 million cups of coffee are drunk every single day in the uk so we've created a coffee which people love to drink every morning we've got 80 % less caffeine in a normal cup of coffee because the mushrooms give you natural energy so you don't need as much caffeine one of the things people complain about coffee they have a love and hate relationship with it is that they feel like over caffeinated so we've reduced the amount of caffeine you still get the taste and the boldness of a coffee but you've got the additional benefits of the functional mushrooms so particularly the dirty coffee you'll find that you will zone in a lot better um you won't get this like huge spike of energy and this crash you'll get this more longer tail of energy more slow releasing um i sometimes need a little bit more energy towards the end of the day so that's when i have the dirty matcha um so it's more lion's mane you get you get the matcha itself it's also got the tremellus it's great for your skin um it's got mct in there it's got moringa it's got all our products also have vitamins in so the super bend side of the business is you know where a majority of our revenue comes from does one need to follow a particular lifestyle in order to see or feel more evidently the benefits because for example if you can go to mcdonald's and you see someone having like three big macs and then a diet coke it's definitely the diet coke will make any difference whatsoever whether it's regular coke i would assume or diet coke um so if someone is not following a healthy lifestyle so they they drink regularly alcohol and perhaps they smoke and they don't eat very clean would this still make a difference in their life um yeah i mean like you know there's a component where you'd say like everything's good in moderation um i think if you're living a pretty bad lifestyle it's going to cancel out the benefit of anything you do um you know these these functional ingredients do help anyone for sure but i think people have to make a real commitment to have a healthy lifestyle right like i said lion's mane it's still going to help me but no way as much if i have a bad night of sleep right that really affects me so you know my my view is is that if you're drinking lots of sugar having sugar crashes over caffeinating yourself, you know, you're smoking, you're going out late at night, you're drinking alcohol, all these things are just going to cancel at the benefit of anything you're doing healthy.

32:21So it's all about having that lifestyle, you know, dirty really represents that ownership of health and having a healthy lifestyle. So yes, we are a product business, but also a source of inspiration and empowerment for anyone that wants to live that life. It's more of a way of life. so you mentioned that functional mushrooms have been used in usually you said i think i believe you said asia for thousands of years why did it take so long for these products to arrive to the western world yeah i mean it's a really good question i mean i think you know my view at you know dirty we're not building a trend we're building a movement um if you look at other movements that this would be your second movement then yeah exactly yeah yeah exactly yeah first one was about nuts this one's about mushrooms right uh both nuts though um yeah so um the world is sort of changing um in terms of the way we view health um you know the access to information the validation from scientists and doctors um social media everything's all these cultural tensions and shifts are playing towards the acceptance of something like this you know if you look at like in the 60s for example jogging was considered unhealthy and unnecessary imagine that right that's how they saw it in the 60s then around the 70s it was popularized you had doctors validating it that it's good for cardiovascular health for example then you started to see Olympic runners becoming celebrities and worshipped for having these incredible abilities and and how they performed on tv and winning gold medals then you had Bill Bauman you know he's he's the co-founder of Nike who really got into the technician and the technical ability to improve your running through sneakers and trainers and then you have brands like Nike who innovated the category and built incredible marketing such as like Just Do It.

34:26I see the exact same thing happening in the wellness space and I see Dirty as like the next Nike in the wellness space because ultimately you've got podcasts like Joe Rogan validating functional mushrooms. He's had people like Paul Stamets on his podcast as regular guests. Paul Stamets is the most famous mycologist that specifically studies functional mushrooms and fungi at large. You've got people going on social media talking about drinking dirty. You know, I think when we started this, the biggest challenge we had is the misconception of mushrooms. So there's something called mycophobia, which is the irrational fear of mushrooms.

35:07So humans tend to disregard or even ignore things they don't understand. And to most at that point, people didn't understand fungi. So we started at a point where there was interest and a mindset around health so people were interested in things that can improve their health but the perspective of mushrooms was like it's going to taste terrible is it going to make me high like I remember when we did our first ever pop-up in Selfridges say 90 % of people that came said is this going to make me feel funny is it going to make me high and it's no it's not psychedelics these are functional mushrooms um so I think what's happened is is that you've Gilling functional mushrooms are being validated.

35:47At large, you've got a mindset of people who want to embrace healthier living. You know, they want to wake up early in the morning, have these morning routines that are more open to things like this. And you've got a brand like us that is investing in building a brand and marketing and educating and creating this market. I'm trying to think what would be the best approach to get my friends to consume these mushrooms. So it's just like with a baby, right? A baby, you cannot offer a baby a piece of steak, right? You need to give it milk, you know, and slowly and gradually, then you introduce that baby or that child into more complex foods.

36:26If my friends are not used to consuming any functional mushrooms, and then I immediately introduce them to seven different types, lion's mane or turkey's tail, they're going to get very confused and they might not want to start because there are too many aspects to consider. if I were to choose one for a person that is a complete beginner in this journey which one would you recommend I'm going to sound like a broken record but lion's mane lion's mane yeah lion's mane um has something called nerve nerve growth factor NGF um it can actually activate um the regrowth and regeneration of brain cells and hippocampus which is the thinking part of the Yeah, exactly.

37:08It's responsible for thinking, learning, memory, creativity. It has probably the most researched. It overtook collagen in terms of searches on Google. It's by far our best-selling product. We use it in every single blend as a non-negotiable. And you see pretty quick how good it is for your brain. And yeah, I mean, the retention of that product for us is incredible. The growth of it is amazing. And, you know, if I'm going to change people's mind about functional mushrooms, then I'll literally will change their mind with Lion's Mane. And have you considered blending all the most important functional mushrooms into one product?

37:54Yeah, we have. We are looking at that. Okay. Yeah. They need to come back to the show so we can talk about it. Yeah. Hi guys, just a quick one from me. We're very proud to partner with BornBound, an innovative sports apparel brand. Exercising regularly is essential to becoming the best version of yourself. BornBound nails it. They're designed with this cutting-edge nanotechnology, making them lightweight, breathable, and quick-drying. To help you get started, we've secured an amazing offer. Use the code that we're going to leave here below for you to get 30 % off BornBound gear. I hope you take advantage of it and you unlock the best version of yourself.

38:37That's it from me. Now, we're going to get back to the episode. Thank you. So we've covered that you're not a nutritionist, you're not a biochemist.

38:51Fundraising was not an issue, in particular when it came to challenging having a university degree. I'm interested to know from a high level general perspective the profile of the initial investors were these like very rich people that were into marijuana or how did they look like so in terms of the the fundraising process in the right at the beginning yeah I guess we had a head start because we had a lot of credibility uh you know we had our first exit which was summer before last we had made a lot of people money um so there was a lot of trust uh the idea of functional mushrooms becoming something of a mainstream back then um and uh it becoming a successful consumer brand i'd say i don't know if people that invest in our business believed in that i think they believed in us um i think they we had a great track record and we were so passionate about functional mushrooms and we knew how to market it.

39:58So I think that we had a head start on that basis. So it was a struggle in the beginning. I think we actually raised the money in one week. So we raised just over half a million in one week, which enabled us to get the business started. How long did that half a million last you? It lasted us about 10 months. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Well, we started making money straight away. It worked straight away. You started making revenue straight away or being profitable straight away? No, we started making revenue, exactly. And anything we made, obviously, we put back into the business, into growing it.

40:40When we launched, it was ideal timing. It's almost like when you're surfing, right? You can be just before the wave and you can fall off your board. you can catch the end of a wave or you can just get the perfect timing when the wave comes and you get up on your board and you ride that wave that for me is the analogy that describes dirty um a wave of um functional ingredients and mushrooms which is now massive we were ahead of the curve um globally or in the uk globally mainly us uh us was a lot more advanced than the UK and still is. I'd say we built the market in the UK. I think others have built it in the US, which has given us an amazing opportunity to go there and build Dirty.

41:25We've done all the hard work in the UK and we've created the category. We're the leading brand. And now there's, I think we were essentially a lone wolf and now there's hundreds of brands. I see a new one every single day. And how is that affecting your business? in a positive way. So there's more people speaking about functional mushrooms than just us. There's more spending on advertising. I think competition is a really healthy thing. I think it drives us as a business as well. We don't sit still. I think to be the leader of a category and to maintain that leadership position, you have to constantly improve your products.

42:03You have to constantly innovate. You have to be a lot more creative. You have to outmaneuver your competition. It's like having a rocket up your ass, which is really important. It keeps you motivated, right? It's not like easy street, which is really important. And I think we'll be better for it. From a US perspective, it's a lot more easier for us because the market is a lot more educated. And therefore, we've already started our launch. You know, we're live in New York. We're in multiple stores. I think we should be in about 300 stores in the next four weeks. So it's growing very fast over there.

42:44I think the negative side of it is, I think I touched on this before, is that Mushrooms is a big market now. It's going to be huge. It's going to be massive. It's going to be a$36 billion revenue market. The unfortunate circumstances is the wider consumer market. Across multiple product ranges. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the biggest concern and worry is that it's so easy to start and it's people that want to make money and they've got really low quality products. I don't think that could be harmful, but people aren't getting the proper benefit. I was reading a study about how the CBD trend plateaued and it's exactly because of what you're mentioning at least as far as this study is concerned, but CBD was sort of introduced to the Western world between nine to 10 years ago.

43:41And there were some amazing brands. In fact, some brands that are right now quite, let's say, active, like for example, Trip CBD, which I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the founders. They're very good, very premium brands. They communicate their unique selling proposition very well to the consumer. But this study was mentioning that the consumer trust declined because when CBD became very popular, it was accessible for new aspiring entrepreneurs to build up their CBD businesses. And some of these businesses were not premium enough, or they were a little bit dodgy or shady in communicating their supply chains or production process.

44:20And the side effects were not very good, and the products were not well tested. And this had effect on the overall industry. do you think this can happen to the mushroom space? I think in a couple of years 80 % of the brands that exist today won't be in existence I think that the consumer is becoming a lot more discerning, a lot smarter and they want to understand the category in the product and make more informed decisions I think they care a lot more about the science, the credibility, the transparency currency um we put our uh you know our right foot forward in terms of um we and we're going to be doing it a lot more and that is we're going to be very very transparent about our mushroom extracts so just for example um i'd say over 90 percent of the mushroom products on the market have filler and probably around 50 to 80 percent actually some of the biggest brands in the u.s have 80 percent filler in their products so if they say they've got a thousand milligrams of uh lion's mane mushroom 800 milligrams of that is probably filler um that's just the start of it the next component is how is that legal because you don't have to put the fact that you have filler on the packaging.

45:46Just it's not regulated. It will be. And I think it's going to happen really quickly because it's such a lucrative market. So hopefully regulation will come in really soon. I think it's up to us as a leading brand to educate the market, make people aware of these things, at least so they know that we don't have any filler. I think the next thing is that just because it says it's got the ingredient in the drink or the product or the powder or whatever it is, doesn't mean it has the active compounds. So one of the key compounds to look out for is something called beta-glucans. Beta-glucans are amazing for gut health.

46:23They're great for immune modulation. We standardize our extracts to have 40 % beta-glucans, which is the highest in the industry, 40 % plus. Is that for the production process? It's the way, so when you, they're called extracts because you actually extract the active compounds from the mushroom and then you put them into the powders, into powder form. You can use a combination of different methods, hot water, cold water, ethanol. And that's how you get the compounds out from behind the cell walls. So that is the production enables the compounds to be in the powders. I'd say that, you know, people have like in some cases less than 10%, sometimes 0%.

47:08Why did you decide to go for powders rather than peels? uh for two reasons one is absorption rate is very good so you know you're getting those active compounds into the body and it's and it's working two from a lifestyle component you know we're building a lifestyle brand um when we started if you drank functional mushrooms you're either hippie or there was something wrong with you medically um we wanted to make dirty um a way to make functional mushrooms accessible to uh mass prestige mass prestige sort of consumer and we wanted to make it easily integrate into people's lifestyles so the pure powders was a way for you to add the mushroom powder into something you're already doing such as a smoothie a coffee a match or a hot chocolate the blends were a way of you replacing something you're already drinking such as your morning coffee has a better way of doing it or a match you have as your second coffee or your second caffeinated drink and the gummies were something that you didn't have to worry about measuring out the dose you just take two gummies you can have it on the go it tastes nice it's a lot more fun and a lot more uh okay it's a lot more easier than swallowing a capsule some people actually like swallowing capsules um so every product we've chosen is really intentional to be a lifestyle brand and also when i speak about lifestyle i don't talk about like having a yoga you know girl holding our product in a yoga class that's not lifestyle to me lifestyle to me is having integrated into your lifestyle and creating a brand that people see as social currency like people are proud to say they drink dirty almost lifts their spirits and their status within society and why why did you call it dirty uh so the reason we called it dirty is because uh for many reasons so one is um it's fungi the roots to everything including earth itself and dirt um okay so in order for fungi to survive uh a billion years ago when they came from the ocean to the dry land, they transformed rock into soil.

49:10So they ate the rock to survive, they turned that rock into soil, and that enabled plant life to come from the ocean to the dry land, two to 300 million years later. So if it wasn't for fungi, there'd be no such thing as dirt and soil, there'd be no such thing as plant on earth. And everything that exists in this world, including us would cease to exist. I mean, fungi are older than dinosaurs, they've outlive five extinctions and they'll outlive the next so that was one reason the second thing was to have a name that was provocative that no one would think you know i think it's really important to be bold in your marketing so you know our packaging does extremely well in retail as it does so well on social media people are intrigued what is dirty they want to learn more um and that's important because we want to educate more so it leads people into this dirty world and the third thing is is that I love this paradox of something that's bad versus something that's good and we feel like we're drawing away all these bad habits to create good habits so there's like kind of the the dirty me the old me you know maybe going out all night drinking alcohol doing drugs waking up with a hangover and then there's the new dirty me which is actually going to bed early waking up early, you know, doing an ice bath, having a mushroom coffee, doing a Pilates class, and, you know, letting those things power you through the day rather than being sluggish because of a hangover.

50:32I agree with you. I think you have a very distinctive branding and definitely name. I was last night with my girlfriend in Whole Foods and I went to the shelf where they have various different functional mushroom products. And I have to admit, and it's not because you came to the podcast, but I had a lengthy conversation with my girlfriend about it because she's launching also a consumer business.

50:56Your brand by far stands out than the others for two reasons, at least for me as a consumer. On one hand, the name, the name is very memorable. When I was leaving Whole Foods, I struggled to remember some of the other names and I knew I had this episode today. So I wanted to have a few names to talk about, but I was like, damn, I don't remember those names. Like they're called like Vital Something or Super Health or whatever, right? Like very like bland names that they could stand for anything else. But Dirty, something that at least because of dirt and so on, you're going to remember. And the color codes, I think it's risky, but I also think that you did it quite well because it could seem for like kids or, you know, like you might not take the brand seriously.

51:41but in fact it has the opposite. While it's quite colorful, the font and how everything is written in the packaging, it makes it look very professional. So it has the best of both worlds. So I made this little analysis yesterday with my girlfriend and definitely is the brand that I left Whole Foods thinking about because I also have that clear, dirty sort of logo in my head. If I think about the other brands, I swear I don't remember one of them. Where do you source your mushrooms from? Because probably a lot of people might think, well, I think this is a great business. I'm just going to ground them.

52:22Where do you source them from? All over the world. And the main source is two places. So one is Fujian, which is the south province of China. So 86 % of the world's mushrooms never leave China. you know it's been in their culture for like thousands of years as I sort of mentioned they're the most educated they've advanced the production they've advanced the science more than anyone else we have a partnership with a farm which has been through seven generations so in terms of a family the first maitake in the world was actually foraged there um i think we are one of a handful of brands that work directly with the owners of the farm network and then the extractors which is the production part which we spoke about before um the advantage of that is we get to work directly with them to advance the technology and invest in making sure that we can create the best possible extracts and that is making sure they're pure and they're clean and they have the active compounds so um that's where we get the majority and then also siberia uh the reason for siberia is the best chaga in the world um which is the one i mentioned with all these an antioxidant powerhouse it's the one that's like a great source of natural energy um something really interesting about chaga is during world war ii in finland they ran out of coffee um and they went to their birch forests and they cut down chaga which grows on it's a parasite actually that grows on birch trees they cut it down and they turned it into teas and they noticed it gave them more natural energy than caffeine but it lasted longer so chaga is actually really popular now in in Finland a lot of Finnish people mix the chaga in their coffee because it stops that crash but in Siberia they have the chaga with the most antioxidants that's why I say when you take our dirty chaga gummies it's the equivalent of consuming 900 blueberries in terms of antioxidants um but yeah so siberia has the best chaga um but we we have like sources all around the world so you have finland's one canada's another um are we we do that to diversify risk um making sure that there's never a bottleneck um and can you grow this in the uk to reduce cost uh so it would be way too expensive um yeah yeah so So you'll very unlikely get a high quality mushroom if it's grown in the UK.

54:57The extraction process is really important as well. I think people are growing them in the UK. I doubt that they have the quality that we're able to get in Fijon. Interesting. Because I went last year with my partner, with my girlfriend, to Italy to do white truffle hunting. Because we were quite curious to understand how the process is. And it's a product that is recognized right now globally. but the process of extracting it's still quite old. And it seems still today to be the best process to extract these white truffles, which are also fungi. And I asked the person that was giving us the tour if this process could be done or if you could plant these white truffles anywhere else in the world that might have similar conditions to that particular region in Italy, which is in Alba.

55:50and she said that it you can but it would take probably 40 to 50 years because while you might have the right conditions like humidity exposure to sun and so on yeah what makes the biggest difference is the quality of the soil so it is sort of like genetic so if in that soil they've been growing um white truffle for 200 years the quality of that white truffle is going to be uncomparable, this may have the taste and so on, to anything that you're going to grow, for example, here in the UK. So it's going to take you a long time to reach that quality. Would you say this is a comparable analysis with functional mushrooms?

56:28Yeah, it's exactly the same. So one of the beauties of working with the farm network in Fuzhan is that the quality of the soil, the purity of the air, the temperature hasn't changed in, I think it's a century. So the consistency of those components is what's enabled them to grow at that sort of scale. Interesting. So, okay. So that's something that I'm going to be looking for when it comes to buying these products. Anything that is not grown in China, perhaps, won't be the number one option. All right. So we covered that. Now, let's go back to Dirty as a company. You launched this in 2021. In 2024, it became one of the fastest growing wellness brands online.

57:16Now, rapid growth could be attributed to a number of things. Could be related to timings, as you said. so you're one of the first ones to enter the market and you capture a big market share it could be related to luck or it could be related of having a lot of resources to start with which from what i understood half a million other things it would be the the driving factor it could be related to strategy go to market governance execution to what do you attribute this rapid growth uh so many things um so i think having firstly a great product is the most important thing it doesn't matter how good the marketing and the branding is uh product is the most important thing because ultimately you can acquire a customer but you're going to retain them uh you're going to retain them are they going to recommend you are they going to come back every month that's the most important thing uh marketing is as important uh so being able to deliver your message being able to emotionally connect with the audience being able to provide the education so they understand you know like i said the mycophobia like people didn't understand functional mushrooms before we started marketing the product and the ingredients so providing the education is really key um i think um distribution is key as well um whilst we haven't yet gone into supermarkets um and big chains although we're in places like boots um distribution is really key So particularly in London, I think we show up wherever our community is, whether it's Soar House, the Barclay Hotel.

58:46We've got a collaboration partnership with Attis at the moment. You know Attis? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're everywhere. That's what everyone always tells me. Dirty literally shows up everywhere. So like distribution is key. So product, marketing, distribution. Then knowing how to connect with people through social media, having a good strategy, having a clear message uh being able to create content every day that people are going to find valuable um building a community um you know people live and die by our brand they're super loyal um partly because of the product but also they love the mission they love being part of our ecosystem um capital's really key uh yeah we raised half a million in the beginning but we a lot more of that sense.

59:37You have to have the capital, otherwise you can't grow. So, you know. It's interesting everything you're saying, because this brings me back to three different episodes that we discussed this particular topic. So episode one was I've interviewed the founder of one of Europe's biggest nut butter companies. Another episode was interviewing one of UK's leading CBD companies. And then the third one is the founder of a venture capital that acquires consumer brands. And they all had two common denominators, which are very similar to what you were saying. Number one, common denominators when it comes to having successful consumer products.

1:00:23Number one is the quality of the product. As simple as that. You need to be building a product that is incredibly good, better than any other product in the market. And then number two is storytelling. So in your case, you're not selling products. You're selling a lifestyle, wellness. And that's a storytelling. Also through you and through your brother, which we're going to talk about shortly. But I see those two things also happening in Dirty. So it's quite enriching to identify from various different entrepreneurs across industry that there might be some recipes to success because sometimes when you venture into a business, you're like, well, this strategy worked for company A, but this other strategy worked for company B, where do I start?

1:01:12But there are some baselines that, especially in today's day and age, if you apply them, you can be a little bit ahead on your competition. Now, you've been operating this company for four years now. Coming up, yeah. It's successful. but even the most successful high fast growing companies they face challenges what's the biggest challenge you faced we yeah biggest challenge we faced we took off very quickly um we gained traction right off the bat i think it's very rare for that to happen for a startup um almost four years ago um i think partly because we had a lot of experience already we've been in the battlefields before right we knew what to expect and there's been limited surprises if that makes sense so I'd say so I think the interesting thing is we grew really quickly faster than I ever could have imagined you know I think we were the fastest growing brand in the world in 2023 on Shopify which was like mad to see it was a hundred the top hundred we were number one I couldn't believe it there was like Sol de Janeiro was on there Skims was on there obviously Skims is growing from like 1 billion to 1.2 billion which year was this sorry 2023 okay obviously these companies are growing from we were obviously growing from zero to whatever that number is and so what ends up happening is you are you don't have time to like look at things you're just racing forward and just trying to keep up with the demand right so you know we have lots of teething issues like going out of stock uh issues with packaging um yeah i mean i remember there was a point where the supply chain really messed up and we were out of stock for six weeks um which is really painful um we got like terrible like you know trust pilot got terrible reviews on trust pilot was very worried we were gonna lose like all our subscribers uh didn't know if we were going to last it but um i remember i was we i think it was a team of four or five at the time and i remember like we were all like talking to customers on email apologizing saying we could get them their product you want to think as well people relied and impended on this right you know particularly if they had something like adhd and they can't get their lion's mane uh that was a really scary moment and i wasn't sure we were going to recover it um but we did um and since then we've made it like a mission to like make sure we never ever go out of stock um this is a hot product people love it they're going to keep wanting it so i think before we probably ordered just in enough to fulfill the demand we now like order for like six months in advance um which has uh been amazing but you couldn't have known that when you launched no exactly yeah yeah um i think um in addition to that um we had a lot of you know we were leading the business and had a lot of junior people working with us um like i know my expertise are kind of everything from like packaging to the consumer right that's kind of what I still focus on today I really understand how to like build a business build a brand and really drive that vision what I've learned from previous entrepreneurs I've worked with is that you should never let egos get in your way and you know one of my favorite quotes from Richard Branson is like hire the best people you can find and get the fuck out the way yeah um so about a year ago you know probably just under a year ago uh we started to hire expertise so people have done this before for other brands um and they came in and they tear the business apart they looked at the data and they said you're doing so much right but you're doing quite fundamental things wrong and that was quite scary to see right um you look at that bleak picture thank god it was caught then it wasn't caught in like five years or two years time or whatever and it would have been a big problem so uh that that was the business being challenged by new people coming to the company are these um more related to more junior subject matter expert roles or senior roles at the c-suite level uh like kind of executive level into the c-suite yeah lower than c-suite but just like uh like with skill sets in their particular craft and they probably got like five to six years minimum so like seasoned executives that have done it before two or three times um and they came in and they shifted the business around uh over a course of three months and it's been transformative like transformative it's very clear to understand where we're going and what the future lies and everything is very strategic and everything's very calculated rather than just like seeing what comes from the momentum now we know exactly where we're going how much money we're spending you know how much money we're making um or going to make um so i think that was kind of key that and that was probably preventing something scary from happening um so that yeah my my recommendation is as soon as you get to that that point of becoming a scale up is you've got to professionalize things yeah just because you got there as an entrepreneur you know that is the hardest part bring in those experts really quickly and listen to them continue to drive the vision because no one else can do that better than you but bring in those experts so that's been really key for us the founder of gym shark did something very similar but at the top level so he removed himself as a ceo and he onboarded someone that did something quite similar before would you consider that too no because i think we've now got um we've got a team uh we've got a great ceo now um her name's jess she was ceo of the business she really understands how to manage the team she's the ceo now she's okay so you've done this yeah yeah okay so she's the ceo now so she's very good at like managing the team she's a great operator she works really well under pressure um she's a very safe pair of hands uh she has equity in the business so were you or your brother the ceo prior to this yeah okay so um and um so the way i kind of see it is that she runs everything up to packaging and i run everything packaging to the consumer yeah so the the founders are about the vision the long term whereas the ceo is about the short term so we're about the strategy and the vision and the brand and the the relationship with the consumer and the ceo is about running that operation so now we're in a situation where there is someone that's very good at what they do that can run that business and operate it and my brother and I can go and launch a new market and not be worried about what's going on in the office in terms of like having to be there.

1:08:21It means that, you know, I can go to raise money from investors. I can go and meet with a potential brand partner that could transform the business in terms of distribution or some form of a collaboration. I can constantly move the business forward without worrying about the day-to-day, if that makes sense. It does, it does 100%. And that is about removing the ego. Like, obviously, it was a dream of me to be a founder CEO. But actually, I am much more valuable growing the business and driving the vision and thinking about packaging to consumer than thinking about supply chain and ops and the organization and managing the team.

1:08:58You've co-founded Dirty with your brother. I co-founded my business with my twin brother. What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing this? working with your brother i mean starting a business with yeah yeah i think most people would like look at us go like how the hell do you do that because you you know siblings there's a rivalry you know it's very easy to fall out um you know there's there's real blurred lines in terms of the way you probably talk to each other how you might talk to a business partner that isn't a relative very differently right um but it works really well my brother um we have very different skill sets um and i think we have so much respect for each other um we have each other's back um and um we almost work for each other like i think there's lots of business relationships that break down because money gets in the way ego gets in the way and it falls apart and those that close business partnership could turn into enemies right that's like never gonna happen with with my brother and I.

1:10:07Also, you know, you can be vulnerable, right, with your brother. You can be in your lowest moments and you've got someone to turn to that isn't just your brother but is in the business with you as well. So it understands the entire dynamic. I think trust is a big thing as well. Like, I trust my life with my brother. I don't know if many business partnerships can use words to that level. What's the age difference between both of you? Six years. Six years. So he's my older brother. Did he ever treat you as an older brother in the business? As in, I know more than you because I'm more experienced.

1:10:42I think an older brother, so I've definitely got a way of thinking and a skill set that's very different to him. So in some instances, I'll be a lot quicker and faster to get to an answer or make a decision. Whereas in other areas, he'll be a lot quicker and faster than me. so sometimes if I'm taking the lead there's a there's a level where you know old brother syndrome will kick in um and I think he's learned to like retract from that um but we've never really had an interest uh difficult in our dynamics um I think my brother is incredibly patient um which has probably been the secret gold dust to to our relationship um I think patience is really key in any relationship like uh you probably find that the same with your girlfriend as well i have that with my girlfriend we're very patient and understanding with each other um so to have that with my brother is amazing i often talk about this um how you know why have why do i have such a good relationship with my brother and how are we able to work with each other and it's entirely down to him because i was the younger brother uh um at the beginning of our relationship and he you know as an older sibling you get the options to either or the choice to either reject that younger annoying sibling or to take that sibling under your wing and mentor them and show them the world and that's exactly what my brother did with me um even six years difference if you think when he was 20 i was 14 right and he still you know i went on nights out with him and he showed me the world he introduced me to people he taught me everything um and that's the reason we have such a tight bond now how did you distribute the responsibilities so um i'm very much focused on the overall strategy of the business uh and i'm focused on the brand um so anything to do with brand marketing as entirely is uh what i focus on and then my brother's all about community so community is a huge part of what we do we think community is everything in our brand the way we connect people together the way we connect with the customer and also the way we retain them within the business the way we get them to spend more money with us the way we get them to get onto subscription for example which we're starting to refer as our members um that's everything he does so um a lot of what i do is about acquiring the customer he's all about retaining the customer um i'm not to do with emotional connection through the way we distribute content deliver marketing he's all about emotional connection in the way we have conversations with our audience engage with our audience and that was a distribution from day one yeah exactly interesting yeah if you could talk to your younger self and give yourself one advice to even have a better relationship working relationship with your brother even a better one what would you advise your younger self uh i'd probably take learnings from him and say i should be more patient um because uh i can get quite frustrated and annoyed and i move at such a quick pace that sometimes i just need to stop and listen and sometimes explain myself i i always had a sort of problem that my brain works quite quickly and I feel that having to explain everything to someone, I find it very frustrating and I find it time consuming, but actually that's where a breakdown comes in a relationship.

1:14:16So I think if I was to speak to my younger self, I'd probably say like have more patience and empower my brother more, which he does incredibly well with me. And I could be a lot better. I am a lot better today at that, but I could be a lot better than that. my brother's like an angel compared to me and in business yeah what's the biggest lesson you've learned the biggest lesson i've learned i mean there's so many what the biggest lesson i've learned if you have a child and your child wants to start a business and you need to give your child one advice just one an essential one drawn from your experience what would it be i think i've gone wrong when i've not listened to my instincts um and when my instincts have probably said this isn't a good idea we shouldn't be doing this i might i haven't i don't do this anymore but in the past i've sort of disguised that and kept moving forward and it's catched up with us or catched up with the business i've done that a few times in my career um and it's caught up and i was like fuck i should have said something um that's probably one of my the biggest lessons i've learned I don't know if that connects with you at all or makes sense but...

1:15:49It does, it does to an extent. I am very data-driven on one hand because while I'm right now an entrepreneur in the hospitality space, my background is in strategy consulting so it is very data-driven. And I found that some of the best or the best technique in this case to convince my brother for both of us to be on the same page to decide on a particular topic is to be data-driven. So come in with the data, packing your decision. If I were to go to him with a gut feeling, I would then perhaps would like to take the approach of your brother, you know, maybe having a different approach towards the relationship and empowering each other.

1:16:33I think the synergies of twins are slightly different because we are competitive by nature, which is something that can be challenging in business, something that we have improved. I definitely have to admit that, but it can be challenging. I'd probably say, because I feel like that was such a bad answer. I think the, I'd say the biggest lesson I'd probably learn is to follow your heart. Yeah. And I'd probably say to when I have kids is I will make sure that they follow their heart because firstly, I think they should do something they love and they enjoy. It doesn't matter what it is. But I'd want them to be like number one and the best at it.

1:17:11And the only one where you can become number one and the best is if you are really intensely passionate about it and you love it. I think everyone in life should follow their heart. And I think they'll be a lot happier. I think there's an amazing sort of convergence between being really curious about something, being really passionate about something, and then finding something that the world needs, like a problem solving. and if you can find a way that all those things connect up then that's where you find your purpose and that's where you sort of follow your heart i fundamentally agree with you mainly if i were to compress that into one benefit is because if you love what you do then that's going to prevent you from quitting and i fundamentally believe that quitting is the only barrier in between you and your goals being achieved.

1:18:03100%. Also, when you came this morning to record, I immediately identified you as part of the brand. So your brand is about wellness, but not only about traditional wellness, but being open-minded to try new things and innovate. And immediately, by the way that you greeted the team and the way you dress up, you know, and the way you carry around yourself, you give this feeling. I was researching some of your habits, and I was particularly interested in your morning routine. Now, I'm a very health-conscious person. I work out religiously five to six times. I work probably too much. I follow a very particular type of diet.

1:18:54I do intermediate fasting and so on. but I was still quite surprised by how intense your morning routine is. I would like for anyone that is listening to it to understand how it looks like. So walk me through the moment that you wake up all the way until you go to the lake and you swim with your team and you hold hands and yeah, walk me through it. Okay, so I want to also put it out there that the person with the extreme morning routine is my brother. he's at the lake way more than me um so he's the best one to always ask this question but i think my morning routine's a lot more accessible than his okay let's go with yours so i'll wake up at um six in the morning the first thing i do is have water with celtic salt um it's so important to get salts in your body uh celtic salt is the best salt you can have way better than sodium Himalayan salt is good as well.

1:19:51You've been asleep for seven to eight hours, your body needs a shower. That's why you have to hydrate. So I'll have anywhere between 500 milliliters and a liter of water. I will then go and take a bunch of supplements that you have on an empty stomach. Supplements I take are all about mental performance, all related to like having good cholesterol having good gut health um and then i will make my way to my dirty counter and i'll start to make um my functional mushroom uh recipes so i have the dirty coffee um i add tremella powder into there which is really good for your skin and chaga uh which is great as a source of natural energy um so i'll then drink that as my morning coffee um i'll then have um the dirty gummies.

1:20:41I have the dirty cordyceps gummy because I work out in the morning. So the cordyceps gummy has something called ATP or helps with the production of ATP. It's a compound called cordyceps. It can increase the lung capacity, helps get oxygen through the body to the muscle tissues, the organs and the cells. If you work out, I'd say it's an absolute game changer. Your endurance levels are mad. I can do a two hour workout when I have cordyceps. I can run longer than I've ever run in my life on cordyceps is it's the secret weapon to any workout you can lift heavier weights gives you more strength so I'll have that and also I have creatine as well which is amazing I think you said you have it sometimes it makes you a bit too big so that's kind of all my supplementation done I then stretch so I'll do 15 minutes of stretching I used to like disregard stretching because I found it really boring but then I started to get all sorts of problems, mainly in my back, particularly my lower back.

1:21:37And I realized I wasn't flexible at all. So I've started to stretch every single morning for 15 minutes. No cold showers. That's your brother. No, I do. But I do ice baths. Ice baths. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, my brother does, will either do a cold shower, ice bath, or go to the lake. So I will, then I go to the gym. Yeah. um so i really focus on more like hit high intensity workouts um because i think it's so important to have a really strong heart i really believe that like my dad unfortunately had a heart attack about maybe like 20 years ago and ever since then i really look after my heart he's fine now by the way um and um and then i will either have an ice bath um they have them at my gym now um it's called brass monkey it's the best ice bath you can go into um i'll do a minute for every degree of water uh degree of temperature in the water so that's what the guide is anything under 10 degrees is good typically the ice baths about three degrees so i'll do three minutes uh if it's a weekend um i'll rather do the ice bath i go to the serpentine lake with my brother um he goes way more than me but we go in serpentine lake as in hide park in hide park yeah and we'll go swimming in open waters in the lake.

1:22:55Like now in January, February, you would go. More so, more so. And you can get like zero degrees in there and it's freezing, but you feel amazing mentally when you come out. And we do that. There's a lot of members of the Dirty Tribe. That's our community that will come and join us as well. So it's a good way to connect, to engage with our community. And then I will, yeah, get changed, have a shower and I get to the office and I begin my day. Jesus. Some people might be thinking, how long does this take? Is it like you wake up at 3 a.m.? Yeah. No, if I do all of it, it's like a two to three hour routine.

1:23:33I might do 50 % of it. The thing is like, so for today we're recording this podcast and that means I've taken out hours of the working day. So I'll have to do this work, the work that I've missed, I'll have to do at night, which means I might have to go to bed 11, 12, midnight, maybe even 1am depending on how much I've got to do. That means I've then sacrificed my full morning routine. The gym part is non-negotiable for me. I think it gets me fired up for the day. I think getting everything firing on all cylinders is really important. So I'll make sure I get up early enough. If I have to get to the office late at 10am, it's the more routine.

1:24:13How long have you been following this routine? uh i've had a morning routine for eight years um that looked like this uh it's grown significantly the stretching component is eight months old uh the ice is about three years yeah i think i've been doing ice therapy for three years um supplements have grown i think i probably a year ago took about eight supplements now i take about 20 um so yeah it's evolved it's grown i've tested um i get inspired by others and i get inspired by what works can you give me three benefits from this routine three benefits um i never used to be productive in the morning i'd get to the office and i'd be super sluggish it would take me from 12 to run one before i actually get into the day i'm firing on all cylinders um uh from you know like I'd probably feel pretty low in a mood from a mood perspective, stressed out.

1:25:15I, so one thing I don't like, I like to be ahead of the day. Um, I don't like, like if I see people who are, you know, I live in white city. So people coming out of the station, getting to the office, that means I'm behind. I like to be before everyone else. So I get ahead of the day. So starting, um, sort of with this morning routine, if I'm before everyone else, it just feels like I've got an advantage like mentally and I'm not rushing I hate to rush like to take my time um I I like the organization the structure the system if I have the system in the morning it means I have the system throughout the day when it comes to my work and I just feel more organized I don't feel like I'm chasing my tail um so organized energized yeah one more uh I said the mental the mood okay yeah yeah so mental mood firing on all cylinders yeah um and and uh what did i say organized yeah exactly a system organized okay yeah interesting

1:26:17let's talk about forbes so you made it to forbes list and for some people this had an effect in their business performance but to some others it didn't did being in forbes contribute to dirty growth in one way or another

1:26:40uh i think a lot of these things are like credibility and validation and i've collected a lot of that uh throughout my working life so um i think getting on the the list was always a kind of a dream for a young age because it was almost like you know obviously it's forbes right and it's 30 under 30 so it almost validates your genuine entrepreneur um you know it's it's probably the stepping stone to eventually get on some kind of rich list which is a real genuine thing because they look at obviously like your financial data uh actually i think they look sorry i think the forbes actually look at a little bit of that don't they they do look at the financial data of the company that's right of the company um i don't know if i don't know if it's helped me No one's ever given me an opportunity because I got on the list, if that makes sense.

1:27:34But I think it gives you credibility. As soon as I meet someone and they say I'm under 30, I take them more seriously. So maybe people take me more seriously. But yeah, for me, from a young age, I've always wanted to be validated. I've always wanted to win things. I'm extremely competitive. um so any any opportunity like that to claim an award or a recognition i guess it's great for your self-esteem your confidence your credibility um and probably for like our age you know forbes 30 under 30 is probably the best thing that you can probably achieve to get that first recognition of entrepreneurship what i want for people to understand from your particular answer in relation to Forbes is that you don't need to go to university to make it to Forbes.

1:28:23If Forbes is a goal of yours and you want to make it to the list, going to university is not part of the recipe to make it.

1:28:38Andrew, this is quite a complex question. It may sound simple, but it's quite complex and multilayered. How would you define success?

1:28:53that's a great question i think success is a whole variety of things i think the one of the first things people say is like uh when it comes to sex they think they think about the monetary value um i think once you've made money you realize it's not fulfilling it just enables you to do anything that you want right to live the lifestyle uh to start another business to invest in other people's companies which is great there's amazing liberation that comes from that right um but that's not success i mean if i look at my business to investors to the market it's all about revenue it's all about profit you know like a successful business is something that exits right and we haven't exited yet so for me even though people say that dirty is one of the most successful consumer brands in the uk for me um i i can't really connect and relate to that until we've sold it or it's gone public that's when i go right that was that was a success right um for me though success is about happiness like all i want to do is be happy so i do things to make me feel happy the business being successful or um or achievements within the business that makes me happy spending time with my family that makes me happy spending time with my girlfriend and going on trips and holidays that makes me happy being able to do something I love every day which is I get to wake up every day and have another day building dirty that like makes me happy that's kind of like success right a lot of people talk about um is it the the journey or the destination right um and i think it's it's actually both um i think the journey is more exhilarating you have ups and downs when you get to destination it's kind of all over right and you're going to start something new um i think uh relationships and and friendships the people you meet along the way are actually the best part of it you know if i look back on the journey so far whether it's my career my life building dirty it's actually the relationships and connections i've got through that and those relationships of what create this indelible mark i think when we all turn to dust and you look back what was the best part of your life it's those relationships and connections with the people that you end up loving whether they're friends whether it's your partner whether it's your family your brother that's that's what really matters to me so i think there's a lot that I can define as success, but actually I think the relationships we build with others is what constitutes success for me.

1:31:29According to this definition, would you consider yourself successful?

1:31:38I've had successes. Successful, I don't think I'd ever claim that until Dirty reaches the ambitions we set from the beginning. so dirty has been massively successful in the eyes of others you know it's generated a lot of revenue we have loads of subscribers we're in you know big stores where it's chains like boots or you know we have a concession in selfridges these are amazing milestones and achievements to me they're successes to other people um we set ourselves a goal we've got a way in which we want this journey to go and end and culminate until that happens, that's when I'll say like, yeah, I'm successful.

1:32:28Thank you. Thank you, Andrew, for coming. I personally appreciate any progress at the global scale, which is related to well-being or wellness. So I honestly welcome your products with open arms into my lifestyle. When you look at the progress and the transformation cross-industry that happened over the last 10 years, you can clearly identify one industry which has been transformed the most, which is either food and beverage or the link with the well-being sector by far. Right now, we live in a day and age in which consumers are very much aware of what they put into their bodies and they want to be healthier, live longer, and live a more meaningful life through everything that is food-related.

1:33:17I think that launching a brand like yours with functional mushrooms, which is something that in a way still new to the general population, at this point in time is the best moment to do it because consumers are more open to try new things related to wellness. and I think that paired with your charismatic leadership, which is undeniable, as well as the amazing branding that you have, which I personally believe it's very good, are three important factors towards 30s, rapid growth and success. So congratulations to that and I really look forward to seeing all of my friends, even without me telling them or even without them having watched this episode, just naturally going into utilizing and consuming your product so thank you for that thank you so much that was amazing