John co-founded New Covent Garden Soup Co. and Little Dish scaling them to £15-20M each in revenue before exiting. He now focuses on mentoring, investing and building challenger brands in food and drink as part of Mission Ventures.

John tells us about how he built New Covent Garden Soup Co. What defines a good entrepreneur. The effects of 'normalised' global crisis on business and investment. And how startups should adjust to navigate through today's economic climate. He also explains why the culted entrepreneur personality on social media qualifies for the big bin of bullshit.

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Okay.

Very good.

Let's go.

Ahem.

Hello, and welcome to Business Without Bullshit.

I am Andy Ory, and alongside me is my co host Pippa Sturst.

Hi, Andy.

And today we are joined by John Stapleton.

Uh, John is a serial entrepreneur, business advisor, mentor, keynote speaker.

Lovely Irish man, indeed.

He's responsible for putting some of the biggest brands on shop shelves, including the new Covent Garden Soup Company and Little Dish.

He actively manages investment portfolios, advises.

Growing businesses and is the investment director of Mission Ventures, a business accelerator which builds challenge of food and drink brands in the UK.

Wow.

Very good.

Thank you for making the time.

Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, and that's the best introduction I've ever heard.

Yeah.

Did I write that?

Yeah.

It's a real pleasure to meet you, you know, especially as an Irishman as you are.

So we always like to start with a very simple question, which is, what's keeping John up at night?

Uh, the economy, the, the, the cost of living crisis, the war, uh, yeah, that's a, that's a, I guess that's what's on most people's mind, but in a business context, I guess it's the implication of all of that.

It's the, particularly the effect on the investment community.

It's like lots of really good businesses out there, because I'm involved a lot of the time in startups and helping them grow and helping them getting investment ready.

And investing in them potentially.

Um, a lot of really good businesses out there not getting the traction, not getting the investment that they probably deserve.

Now, go back two years, five years uh, businesses were getting a lot of investment for all sorts of reasons about high valuations,

really crazy valuations actually, so I think it's It's good that, you know, the edge has been taken off that overheated situation.

But now the pendulum has swung the entire other way, and there's some really good business propositions not getting investment, or getting investment at very poor valuation.

So it's really tricky, really difficult time out there for businesses at a startup phase, ready for investment.

Was part of that COVID, or was that like a short, because, you know, I had a lot of companies that were about to get investment at the very start of COVID, and pretty much all those investment rounds.

fell over at the time, but it felt like they picked themselves up quite quickly.

Yeah, they did.

And a lot of, COVID presented an opportunity for lots of businesses to reinvent themselves, pivot, or just to start taking advantage of the fact that people couldn't go out and do things that they normally did.

Unfortunately for them, people have gone back to doing things they normally did.

And therefore, you know, a lot of the opportunities presented to them were short lived.

But COVID, you can't ignore it, because, you know, it's a once in a lifetime, hopefully, event.

And it had a huge effect across all of society.

I don't think COVID, in its own right, was responsible for this.

I think the combination of events, which has culminated in a huge degree of uncertainty, Um, in the markets, you know, in, in society, in business,

everybody's uncertain of what's going to happen next because things have happened in the last five years or so that can never happen before.

People didn't reckon with.

Are you talking about the B word?

Hey, there is that as well.

Yeah.

We started off with the B word and that was bad enough.

And then we had COVID and lockdown.

That was really bad.

Then we've had a war.

When have we last had a war?

And we have had wars.

People have kind of ignored them.

And then there was supply chain problems.

And then there was like a crisis.

Of, of, of, how do people pay for essentials and energy costs?

And then there was like the, the whole issue about staff and, and resourcing.

And all this has come, you know, it's like when's the next crisis going to hit?

So we've almost been in this kind of situation now where crisis has become the norm.

Uh, and, and uncertainty has become the norm.

Now that's all great because I think there's great opportunity from that.

Especially if you're an entrepreneur and you're a startup environment.

The problem is the investment community are going, Ah, hang on.

I, I, there's far too much uncertainty out.

I can't.

Predict.

You can't predict.

Your business plan sounds good, but something else might go awry that you haven't predicted.

So I'll just hold off.

Great idea, but just not for now.

And it's happening over and over and over again.

And businesses are kind of going, how do I get, you know, the investment I need for growth?

That's really quite, really quite tricky.

Is there any advice you could offer anyone at the moment?

The obvious advice is, is, okay, try to stick with some sort of, maybe, revised down growth aspirations.

It doesn't need so much investment.

Okay, go for a, go, go, go, just be less hockey stick about this sort of, you know, your, your ambitions, as it were.

Yeah, it's difficult if you have real ambitions that are, you know, justified in reality and you've looked at the consumer or the, or the, or the customer base and you think, this is great, this is going to happen.

I want to do it before somebody else does.

So I want to get on with this.

That's essentially what an entrepreneur does, right?

And sells the potential and then wants to realize the potential.

So I think reducing the aspiration, reducing the potential, is always really difficult.

But if you can't get the money to fund it, then my, you know, it's a question of wait until the market is a little bit better.

Carry on the best you can and grow within a limitation.

Should they take investment if you feel, they feel it's at an undervaluation?

That was going to be my question, has valuation changed?

And you're, you're an investor and you're saying these values too low.

Would you ever, I mean, it's madness to say to someone, I think your valuation's too low, you know, would you say that?

Well, it depends what side of the fence I'm on.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

But, but, um, often the time, uh, well, answer that question in a different way.

For the last couple of years I've been saying, actually, your valuation is too high, let's be realistic about this.

Yes.

So, what we're in this, as I say, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

I, I think good businesses will, slightly contrived to what I just said, good businesses will always get investment.

The issue is they have to swallow their, uh, valuation expectation.

So the businesses that are getting investment right now are getting it at much lower valuations or poorer terms than they did maybe even, even a year ago.

And that's not a bad thing at all, if you just come to terms with that.

Some of you can then maybe use that investment.

Don't raise so much.

Invest it for a shorter period of time.

Prove your concept.

Hit a few milestones and then go back to the market.

It feels that, it feels that if you try to summarize the change in investors, investors are just like, Make money, show me you can make money.

And it less about sort of like, Yeah, less about like, Oh, we're going to build a brand and, you know, giving away free fruit to the staff or something.

I think the making money point is a really interesting point, because I'm not saying that investors were never interested in making money, clearly not, but there was an acceptance.

That money come, uh, making profits or getting to profitability or breaking even is like secondary.

Yes.

So combined with the crazy valuations, I don't mean crazy valuations.

You had business plans that weren't really demonstrating when you're gonna break even and actually make some money.

It's all about grabbing revenue, which is great.

Don't get me wrong.

It's all about growth.

But at some point you have to demonstrate that you can make money.

Maybe not today, because I'm starting out, maybe not even tomorrow.

But otherwise, what are you doing it for?

Exactly.

And there's got to be a realization that businesses can turn a profit.

Maybe you're three, right?

That's a reasonable, I think, assumption if you're starting from a standing start.

But a lot of business plans didn't.

A lot of businesses never did, actually.

You know, there are quite a few obvious businesses out there that huge valuations, lots of money, lots of expenditure.

Growth in revenue, but never really bothered to deliver a profit.

And the market has, I think, they've wived up to that.

And they say, okay, Coke, so I hear about your ambition and growth, but when are you going to break even exactly?

And if it's not within a time frame that I'm happy with, you know, I'm not interested.

And that time frame is probably quite short.

Within two years, Max, maybe.

It has come from never, or not really being so obvious.

To, to, yeah.

Two or three years is, yeah, I think two or three years is a reasonable timeframe to expect a business stunning look.

Yeah.

Starting from a standing start.

In other words, you know, isn't that the pre revenue of bootstrapping?

I just wanted to explain bootstrapping.

It's not just like, not spending any money, it's showing this thing make, can make money.

You know, showing that, that, that effectively a, A equals B.

You know, my, my advice is in the, in the growth context is bootstrap until you know what you're doing.

Now, that sounds a bit arrogant, but you will know in your business whether you know what you're doing or not.

It's like, have you proven the model?

Do you know what works?

Do you know what levers to pull to actually demonstrate a return on the investment that you haven't got yet?

So, if I had lots of money, I would pull this lever, this lever, this lever, and that would work in terms of my consumer profile or my brand or whatever, get me to a point of traction.

If you don't know what those levers are, guess what?

You pull every lever in sight until something works.

And then you don't really know what works.

You haven't figured it out.

You're crazy.

So you're still wasting money on stuff that doesn't work.

So bootstrap until you know what you're doing.

And you will judge when that point is.

So don't raise a lot of money.

You will need some.

Maybe get enough friends and family or whatever you have to get you to a point where you know what you're doing and then demonstrate, you know, what you're doing.

Maybe it's only a small scale or a case study, but I can tell you, Mr.

Investor, you give me X.

I don't have to spend it and turn it into 10 times X in a couple of years time.

That's a great, that's a compelling argument.

You can't get away from that argument as an investor.

You want to know more.

And then you're likely to get, you know, into a conversation about, about making that investment.

But if the argument is, oh, I'm raised because I got a great idea.

Well, do you know what you're doing?

And the answer is, invariably, if you haven't worked it out, no I don't.

And, uh, entrepreneurs have a really difficult time admitting that to themselves and certainly to investors.

I mean, to sort of conclude on, you know, what do you think people should put together in terms of business plan?

Is it like a two year plan?

Is it when they're going to make money?

Is it, because I mean, I, I always get annoyed if a client gets asked sometimes by, sorry, Asshole investors who'd say, can you change that into a five year discounted cash flow, profit and loss and balance sheet?

Because it's like, okay, we're just, we're in la la land now, you know, but what do you think you should come to the table with if you're trying to raise money with an investor?

A whole bunch of things, but let's keep it simple.

Definitely a, a, a, a, uh, a business plan, a business plan.

I'll come back to that in a second, but in terms of numbers, you need a, you need a P and L, you need a projection.

I put it as three years or five years.

It doesn't really matter.

You need a.

You have a balance sheet, obviously if you're talking about this kind of cash flows, you're having the wrong conversation with the wrong person, because that means nothing to a startup.

I mean, this kind of cash flow, really, that's, that's a way that an accounter would, would approach a mature business.

I had to actually value it.

Yeah.

But, but that, that doesn't make any sense for a startup or pre-revenue or early stage or even, you know, before, um, before break even.

It's all about, it's all about the ambition, and I think your business plan lays out your ambition.

in English, and then all your numbers do, which a lot of accountants or commercially minded investors go to straight away, converts those assumptions in English into a different language called sums, or maths.

So it quantifies all the assumptions you've made.

So the business has a list of assumptions, and some are like, really wacky, and I've got no idea, and some are kind of, I have a fair idea, and some are pretty, I'm pretty certain about, because I've been thinking about so.

It's not just me sitting at a pub thinking I've got a great idea.

Whichever idea you start, but it's actually doing something about testing the assumptions.

So you have a bunch of assumptions at various stages of evolution.

Um, and you just need to be clear which ones are guesses, and which ones are certainty, and which ones are in the middle to your investor.

And then say, I've now translated that into numbers.

Uh, that's my P& L.

That's a really nice way of putting it, isn't it?

It's a sort of lay, lay it down because it, yeah, algebra and all it's just an expression of whatever.

So the numbers are just representing what's in your business plan.

You, you, these are the things you know, you don't know, put them on a, but how long should I, that model seeing into the future, because I was mixing too many things in my question, but, you know.

We can't see more than a couple of years ahead, can we?

True, yeah.

Is it worth it?

Yeah, the further you go out, the more bullshit it becomes, and the more or less relevant it becomes, and it really is a guess.

The problem is, though, if you want to demonstrate break even, you've got to take it to...

You've got to take it to that point.

Yeah, so, and like I said earlier, if break even's year three...

Well, you got to go then for a four year plan to demonstrate going past break even, right?

Yeah.

Uh, you don't need to go to year 15 or 10 or 5, maybe?

And an investor will always discount, will always discount the further out anyway.

And I think maybe you know what you're talking for the first six or 12 months, but after that you haven't got a clue, do you?

And you go, no, but I've got a better clue than you do, because it's my business.

Great, let's talk about the assumptions.

You come back to the assumptions, I think, and then quantification of those assumptions.

And nowadays in your career, are you more, you're much more a mentor than you are an investor, or?

So Mission used to invest in it, but...

If you stop now.

Right.

Two questions at once.

Yeah, yeah.

How do you split your day?

Three questions at once.

You guys are great.

No, uh, the first thing, let me just try and get that, because that leads to the second question to be fair, is, is, is, so, it's still all jumbled up really.

I started off when I sold my third business, which was a little dish, then deciding, okay, I'm not going to set up a fourth business, but I am going to try to add value to.

Guess what?

Startups and early stage businesses, that's what I've done, you know, 10 years new Covent Garden, 10 years Little Dish, tucked in roughly to between 15 and 20 million revenue.

So it's zero to 20 million.

That's like the sweet spot of growth or whatever within an eight to 10 year period in food.

That's me.

So how do I leverage that experience?

Well, I help businesses who are doing exactly the same thing.

So I started off mentoring.

The entrepreneur who is trying to do this and then without knowing I began to advise the business and actually it's only by doing both I realized there's a difference between the two mentoring the entrepreneur and

advising the business are two different things sometimes you start off advising the business and then you realize you know what's needed here for a bit is to mentor the entrepreneur and you come out of the advisory mode.

You go into mentoring mode and you come back into the business again.

So there are two ways of helping businesses grow.

And the third bit is actually investing.

But that's really only an extension of getting excited about the, the bit that you've advised about.

You're putting money in your mouth and you think actually this is a really good idea.

I like this entrepreneur.

I want to become involved and invest and, and I, if I invest, I want to be hands on.

I want to contribute value added.

Which takes me to the fourth bit, which is mission ventures and, and the Reedsdale Food Fund, which we now have in Ireland, are two kind of platforms which I use to invest.

So I invest directly as an angel investor, and I invest indirectly through these platforms, um, which I, uh, part ownership in, if you like.

The Reedsdale Food Fund is a VC fund, a very straightforward VC fund, we invest in start ups, based in Ireland only, so it's high risk.

Is it a particular?

Sector, like it's all about food.

You're a very slim man for the listers at home, but you, you spend your life in food.

I I it's always, uh, it's like the slim chef.

How have you managed that anyway?

I'm not, I'm not a chef.

I don't, I don't, I don't have any, any idea how to cook food, ask my wife.

Not really and, uh, so it's all about business and it's all about, but although I'd tell you what, I don't order any anymore restaurant or in the Tescos or wherever I go shopping.

I don't order soup anymore.

I'm all souped up.

Yes.

I have eaten so much soup between 1987 and 1998.

And that does me for ten lifetimes over, I gotta tell you.

Uh, but you don't put up much weight with soup, you know.

Soup's okay.

So, in terms of investing, we had that BC fund in Ireland.

So, the theme is...

Food and drink.

That's true.

I'm actually going to say that.

But, um, and it's typically startups, early stage growth businesses in various guises.

And the Irish definitely, the Irish, uh, investment fund is easy to define because it's a VC fund.

That covers that.

Mission Ventures, you mentioned, based here in London.

It's not a fund at all, even though it sounds like it, Mission Ventures.

But we are, and this won't do it justice, but we are really, um, an incubator stroke accelerator to help businesses that we facilitate investment in, but we don't invest directly

ourselves, I'll come back to that, but we facilitate investment in and then we help that business to invest, excuse me, to spend that money wisely or spend that investment wisely.

So not to waste as much money, you will always waste some by definition, you can't.

But, but the idea is that through our experience and we're a bunch of entrepreneurs ourselves been in the food industry for many years.

We advise, and we have a program which does this in, in, in a, in a structured way called the Mission Map.

And we do other things as well.

Uh, you know, it has really grown beyond just that in the last few years.

But that's what Mission Ventures is.

Right.

So it's another vehicle which I have part ownership in that we use to help businesses to grow by making sure they're using the money that's invested in them wisely.

And we have relationships with the source of funds as well.

So we have a bit of carry attached to, to that particular business model.

So yeah, so I help businesses by mentoring the entrepreneur and by advising the business, by directly investing or.

By indirectly investing, as I've just described.

You're an extremely helpful man, it must be said.

So, yeah, I mean, that's, that ends up being a very busy man, I imagine.

Yeah, but I like being busy, don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing.

Having said that, I need to find a way to say no.

More.

I'm saying no earlier.

I know how to say no to the right ones.

Well, yeah, because there's always some exciting new idea or exciting new person or a new theme or new way of doing things.

Or do you feel you like, do you get that, that sort of feeling you want to help people?

You sort of feel this sort of resident, you know, there's a, there's a, um, you, you know, I find no matter how busy I am, you'll, you'll meet people and.

Yeah, you like, and you, you want to help them.

You know what I mean?

So you're like, it's an arrogance too.

You know, some would say it's like, you know, who are you to come and save them?

Do you know what I mean?

I call it, I call it ego.

I call it ego.

Ego, yeah.

It's an ego to it.

Where, but you, you put it under the title of care.

Do you know what I mean?

It's, it's somewhere between the two.

You could do that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I must try doing that.

Yeah.

I just call it ego.

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's, it's ego.

At a small e it's, it's like, it's like, um, I think an entrepreneur with a big E, it just has to have ego to live and exist.

It's like, but it's not a bad thing.

People go, Ego, I'm not sure I like that, well, I'm talking about ego in a small e, I'm talking about it in a constructive way, like, we all have to have some ego to literally get

out of bed in the morning, you know, why bother, right, so then why set up a business, I mean, you need to have a lot of motivation You gotta be crazy and confident and I, I, I

actually, you know, I, this is where we get into the women men chat because I, you know, women set up less businesses or whatever, but I, you know, as a generalization, you gotta be

fucking crazy to set up a business, you know, and men are huge risk takers, much more generally, and it's, you know, Yeah, I will, you know, I will lie in bed and think about that.

that startup that I'm never actually going to do because I don't have the.

You get into trouble making generalizations, but from my experience, women had, would worry more, you know, in that it makes sense.

They've got to, you know, they look after babies, all sorts of general, but, you know, I think about entrepreneurs and you just.

You just, you've gotta be nuts.

You've gotta be nuts, you know?

Well, there's two things.

I think there's a very fine line between being nuts and, and, and being an entrepreneur.

I think it helps to have some, yeah, I'm exaggerating.

I don't actually mean nuts, but, you know, well, some, some of the decisions you gotta make, sometimes you do have to be nuts, right?

Mm-hmm.

Or, you know, it's kind of like, it's gotta be brave, brave, it's a better word.

It is a better word, but, but actually to, to, to the uninitiated.

Being nuts is actually, it's quite challenging, because the answer to that is, well, what do you mean by nuts, and then you go, I would never do that.

Okay, well, that's fine, you don't have to.

Um, but if somebody decides to do it, then, then they, you know, there's a lot to overcome.

Even if you have a wonderful idea, and a really clear idea of how you're going to implement it, there's a lot to overcome.

And, and, and, we're getting to a different area here now, but sometimes if I'm asked, John, would you invest in a business that had a really good idea?

Like, I mean, this was a, you know, you never have a dead cert, but as close as you get to a dead cert, market opportunity, idea, and as a kind of a reasonably good entrepreneur.

Or you have an idea that's like a bit wacky, I'm not quite sure, but you know, it could, and you have a wonderful entrepreneur, and I'll maybe define what that means, but basically it means resilience.

Which would you go for?

And it's slightly counterintuitive, but I'd go for the latter.

I'd go for the really strong, resilient, creative, not let anything get in their way entrepreneur.

Because you can overcome so many problems that both opportunities, both businesses are going to encounter.

And if, and even if you've got a great idea, there's no guarantee it's going to work.

No.

But if you've got a really good entrepreneur, you've got a really good chance it'll work.

And also, you know, I, or maybe this is just me, but I have no idea when people come to me, you know, for legal advice, not that I'm investing in them because I don't invest in them, but whether it's actually something that...

it might not have a market right now, but they might be able to drive a wedge into the marketplace and create a market.

So you look at something like popcorn and you look at proper corn, for example, and you think when they first started out, I can remember having conversations with people where they were like, popcorn, that's just a subset of crisps.

There's no, nothing there is there's no market for it.

And, you know, you've effectively over the last kind of five, ten years, people have created a market for it.

So you never know that an idea is really stupid.

Oh, no, you don't.

The quality of ideas is, yeah, the value of that information is less than you thought.

And they have slightly given up trying to work it out.

Well, there is no formula.

If you're trying to find a formula to make it work, like back to DCF, that doesn't work for startups.

Formulas don't really work for startups.

Uh, at all.

It's like, it's just crazy.

You try to pin it down and suddenly, it disappears and reinvents itself somewhere else, right?

It's, it's a very, uh, tangibility is, is, is really difficult with a startup.

But there's two things, uh, that I will say, and one is that if you've got really strong consumer insight, and who's to say what that, how you define that, but I have my own version of it.

Really strong consumer insight.

You think you know what the consumer wants.

Sometimes, a bit of arrogance again, or ego.

Consumer might not know themselves what they want, right?

There's a certain bit of that in terms of Newcomen Garden Soup Company.

But if you view consumer insight, you think that consumer need is there and it's considerable, and they, if they only had it, they would buy it.

Then that's one piece.

The next bit is coming back to resilience again.

It's like, so the first bit is in the creative, you know, can we define it terribly, terribly well?

It's like out there.

But the resilience is here and now, it's like the doing.

So you need to have, you need to have the craziness and the ego and the insight and the stuff that's less tangible.

And then you need to have the person that's, you're actually going to implement stuff and get shit done.

And if you have the combination, it's a very potent combination.

As an investor, it's like difficult not to want to know more, at least.

And, yeah, tell me more, show me your business plan, I might get behind it.

You said you might, you might tell us what a great entrepreneur is.

Is it the resilience, is there any other piece of it, do you think?

Or, I mean, so it's got to be a bit crazy, got to be resilient.

I really like the bit about, you've got to get shit done.

Yeah, you do.

And of course, you gotta get the right shit done.

So you gotta have, that's going back to the, the inside.

And having the right prioritization.

And knowing what the top, you know, 20 percent of your effort lands.

Well, not much fighting getting that shit done, really.

It's the 80 percent that lands.

I think what I'm saying is some of the most successful people, and I have a personal experience myself, are really strange people who sort of are highly unpredictable to deal with.

Do you Do you think that's nonsense?

You know, maybe too controversial to use Elon Musk because there's a whole bunch of different views about Elon Musk.

But go back to when he was doing SpaceX and going back to before he went off the edge a bit.

You know, he made things happen that nobody else believed were even possible.

That's unbelievable.

In fact, I watched a documentary movie the other weekend about Federico Lamborghini.

Wow.

Right.

Oh yeah.

So you might imagine what he did.

The point about him is he came out of the war, he was Italian, came back from the war, he was a farmer's son, like I am, and his father thought

he was going to take over the farming business, he was the eldest son, and he actually got into mechanics in the war because he became a mechanic.

Anyway.

He invented a really cool tractor.

Nobody knows that.

Well, I didn't know.

The Lamborghini started off making tractors.

Did they go fast?

Were they purple?

They had a go faster strap down the side.

Now anyway, it was a revolutionary kind of tractor, really successful, lightweight, powerful, all the rest of it.

And then he decided He would try to help Ferrari fix the clutch problem and he approached him and Ferrari was very arrogant and told him to go away and in certain terms he said, you know what, I'm going to do it myself.

So he designed a supercar called the Lamborghini, right, and it all went on for, this was like through the 50s, and it was all about like the can do attitude.

People were going, can it be done?

Well, let's just make it.

Let's just make sure it's done.

And I say, well, can it be?

I didn't ask you.

And he's going, I don't really know, but I'm going to make it done.

I'm going to make it happen.

So can we do it?

Can it be done?

The answer is always, yes, we can do it.

And now a quick word from our sponsor.

Business Without Bullshit is brought to you by Uri Clark.

Straight talking financial and legal advice since 1935.

You can find us at uriclark.

com.

What do you think is bullshit in your industry and why?

It's, it's like the culture of the ent of the entrepreneur and this kind of self-congratulatory or self-indulgence that goes on a lot of time, especially on social media.

You, you, you'll see this about, I'm all for sharing views on social media, don't get me wrong, but it's like ad nauseum.

Let me tell you about what I did and what I learned from it and why.

Oh, the evangelicals of it, or the cult of personality almost.

Yeah.

Well, the, the, the cult of the entrepreneurial personality is crazy.

It's like, you know, I've done this, aren't I great?

Let me tell you how.

Not just how you could do it and set up your own business, but how you can bring meaning into your life by listening to me telling you about what I've done.

But the fact of the matter is you probably just made it up as you went along and being lucky or by accident got there, but that's what most of the time happens.

So it's, it is a lot of bullshit.

Anyway, so I kind of think, and unfortunately I think the...

Gross generalization coming up here.

But the younger generation is much more gullible about that sort of stuff and feed off it.

So you've got this kind of feeding frenzy of the more bullshit that's put out, the more it's believed.

So guess what, there's more bullshit that's put out.

Somebody once said to me, what?

Failure isn't the opposite of success, failure is part of success.

Yeah.

Yeah, sort of.

You can't build a career on failure.

So, it's not about failure, it's about learning from failure.

That's the issue.

Yeah.

And you can't go making failure, failure, failure, because guess what?

Nobody will listen to you, nobody will follow you, nobody will work for you, nobody will invest in you.

So failure doesn't get you very far.

But so long as you make a mistake, or you have a, um, a situation where, where really you screw up, and then you learn from that, that's what turns into success.

Because you say, I'm not going to do that again.

Or that's taught me something about what I need to do differently to be successful.

Great.

So it's not about failure, it's about learning from failure.

It's slightly that failure needs to be painful too.

You know, do you know what I mean?

There's an aspect of those experiences need to be visceral to you and then you will remember.

No, no, that is really true.

It's a very emotional connection with the failure.

I put it like this.

I say, success is a lousy teacher because you're never really sure what in there that you've done has made your venture or your business or your life, if you want to put it that way, successful.

Whereas with failure, you're much more exposed.

It's kind of you, right?

If you're an entrepreneur, it is you.

And you can normally pinpoint what it is that you didn't do that you didn't do.

As an advisor, we learn through failure.

the truth of it, you mark something up and then you really realize the thing you thought you understood, you know.

You never fucking do it again.

You Well, failure, back to your point about pain, failure isn't a great place to be, but it's a wonderful place to have been because it makes you make sure you never want to be there again because it's so hurtful and it hurts like hell.

So you say, well, you know, I'm never going to, and that's a great lesson.

Really figure out what did I do wrong to end up in that situation.

And I'm not gonna end up in a situation ever again.

I might make a different mistake, which is fine, and that's for me is the value of, of failure.

But just to say, you know, everybody should fail.

No.

Do you think people should watch any of these, these pe, these classes online?

I mean, I'm so with you.

So often we look up these people sometimes they apply to be on this podcast and, and they, I've made a hundred companies, six figure.

They're just always about six figure numbers, five x.

And you, you know, as an accountant, I can look up all their supposed companies and stuff and you think.

There's nothing here.

So actually their business is telling people that they've made all this money.

I know.

There's no, you know, and that's very common people.

Like most of these people, there's no substance to it.

They're just building a social media account.

I know.

What advice should you, should you, is there a podcast or do you think, you know, cause you need, you need, you need some information when you're starting a business.

Or do you think just, just roll your sleeves up and start working on it?

Consumer insight.

Consumer insight.

Followed by resilience.

So the consumer insight is the, there's a new idea, there's a new opportunity.

I have insight into the consumer, or the customer in your case, that they act in a certain way and my product, my idea, my

service is going to make a big difference in that particular target audience in such a way that they're going to buy my product.

I've got to be so happy with

it.

You've got to sell to everybody.

You sell to everybody, you'll end up selling to nobody.

You've got to be really clear.

You have to have a target audience.

A consumer group, who really, whatever you're doing differently, makes a real big difference to them, right?

And, and, and, and, and zone in on that.

Make sure you know where they are, how they buy, what their behaviors are.

And that's all, much more than that, to do with consumer insight.

Great.

And then have the resilience, the entrepreneur has the resilience to not take no for an answer.

Because irrespective of how good your idea is, from day one you're going to be told no, you're crazy, no, it won't work.

We were talking about this with Newcomer Garden, there are lots of reasons why this is a stupid idea.

Put soup in cartons in the chiller, that's ridiculous.

Soup goes in a can, has been for centuries, well decades certainly.

You know, we were told, we were said, we, we were told it'll, it won't work, you know?

Absolutely.

Soup doesn't go in a carton.

Soup goes in a can, you know, it's, why are you reinventing the wheel?

It's already, there's a thing called a soup aisle for Christ's sake.

Yeah.

Go down there and buy your soup.

I, no.

Yeah, but you put soup in a can and it's, it's like, it doesn't taste like soup anymore.

It's true.

And it's not nutritious because you've burnt it all away.

So we wanna, we wanna make it safe.

We, we put it, you know, cook it a little bit, but put it in a carton so it's fresh, short shelf life.

You don't need 18.

18 months.

You just need 18 days.

Right?

Go in the chiller.

That's where you'll buy it.

Nah, that won't work.

Okay, well, let's try it then, anyway.

And then they thought the carton.

They said a carton is the most ridiculous idea in the world.

Fresh milk goes in a carton or maybe juice in those days goes in a carton.

Soup doesn't go in a carton.

That's a ridiculous idea.

So, well.

Let's try it.

And then the chiller.

People said, retailers told us, don't put it in the chiller, chiller belongs to us.

We put lots of ready meals in the chiller.

Soup goes, guess where?

Soup aisle.

I said, well, let's try it.

Right?

And all of, you know, we eventually tried it, but we were told count the number of times, no.

No.

And it worked the first time you tried it?

Well, once we got all those ingredients literally together, but we got the fresh soup, we designed a process to make it safe, not

sterilize it, but just pasteurize it, safe enough within a chilled environment, put it in the chiller and told people it was fresh soup.

We didn't have a huge marketing budget to explain what Fresh Soup was about, it wasn't even a thing, it was like this weird...

It makes sense the first, yeah, did it work the first time, it must have.

Well, well, on that point, the brand communicated the benefits of the product.

So the brand was promising to the consumer this benefit, right, that's the consumer insight.

And the product crucially delivered.

In that the product is so much better than what you did before.

Like last time you bought soup, it was in a can.

This was in a carton.

But anyway, the big picture was make it fresh.

Don't over sterilize it.

Put it in a carton, convey it to the consumer, and make sure the product delivers on the flavor and the composition that, that, that, that can never can.

But we're told so many times, the point is that it won't work.

For all sorts of reasons.

By experts who knew their stuff.

And we were going, yeah, but, we didn't really want to deal with that, we wanted to deal with this, and let's try it.

Eventually we got to the point where we could try it.

And that I think is the resilience of saying I'm not taking no for an answer from all the experts who thought we should know more.

How many years did it take to try it?

Well, it was about 18 months.

It took us from...

The original conversation is actually getting the technology, because we had to invent a new technology, we actually patented the technology, to make fresh soup, because I know

it's crazy today, you think fresh soup is all over the place, ubiquitous, didn't even exist then, so, it wasn't like we could just do it, we had to figure out how to do it, it

had to be safe, so, you know, the people who said to make it safe were right, people who said, you can never make it safe, so don't do it, were wrong, we had to prove all of that.

So we had a lot of science coming into, into, into making it work.

So we had to, had to build a plant, we had to raise money, build a factory, had to go to waitrose, Had to soup.

I mean, if you want to make soup down in those days, you'd say, you know, the answer was, uh, how big do you want the can to be?

Because every, you know, all liquid soup was in a can.

So we had to develop this process, design this process, and build a factory around that process.

Wow.

To actually physically make the soup.

And then of course we had this big factory, uh, and no volume, nowhere to sell it.

So we had to run like crazy to sell it.

But then, pretty quickly, we got listed on Waitrose and then Tesco, I think, and then we had a target by the tail and we were just trying to run like crazy to keep up.

So it worked out.

Okay, so we do the five second rule.

Which is, uh, where we're going to ask you a list of questions to get to know you a little better.

And you've got about five seconds to answer each question.

Alright.

Are you ready?

Sure.

Cue the music.

Uh, and we're off.

What was your first job?

Uh, my first job was newcomer guy at the soup company, believe it or not.

Yeah, I came out of university and did that.

I did actually feed cows when I was a kid and got pocket money for that.

Maybe that was a job.

That's the second cow feeder of the week.

Yeah.

There must be some kind of...

Yeah, cow feeding convention in town.

I've got a whole story about cows and cows.

Do you want to hear it?

No, no.

Yeah, yeah, do, actually.

But what was your worst job?

Weirdly, or happily, happily, I've never had a worse job.

I've only ever worked for myself, I suppose, which is bad enough.

You wanna, somebody's gotta fight to work for me.

But, but, uh, no, I, I, I've never, I could, I could never say I've had a worse job.

Well, you, I mean, you've done well.

Your first job was, um...

Uh, starting your own company, that's, that's great.

Uh, favourite subject at school?

Organic chemistry.

Ooh, I didn't know we got a selection.

I thought it was just chemistry.

Oh yeah, there's inorganic chemistry, and there's some other kind of chemistry I've forgotten now.

Organic chemistry is all about organic, which is carbon based, and it's the foundation of the world.

It's how every, we're all versions of carbon, right?

Yeah, that's always trippy, isn't it?

It's absolutely fascinating.

That, you know, we will all return to dust at the end of our lives for a reason, that it is all carbon.

So it's recycled carbon going through the entire world.

It's fascinating to think about it.

Yeah.

We're just borrowing somebody else's carbon to live in our body for a period of time.

What's your special skill?

Yeah, being schizophrenic.

Oh.

Yeah, I'm Libra, so I'm very balanced.

That's the other way to put it.

But I can see both sides of the argument quite quickly, which is a bit confusing, uh, for me.

But I've got, this is me, so I'm quite used to it.

Yeah, that's a really interesting answer.

Um, I think it probably, it's probably a reflection of your intelligence.

What, what, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be an athlete.

An athlete?

Well, I was an athlete for a good few years.

At school and university.

You're very tall, you're a runner, are you?

Triple jump, believe it or not.

Triple jump.

Yeah, exactly, that usually is a conversation stopper right there.

Triple jump and long jump, I used to do it.

I represented Ireland, it was great fun.

You represented Ireland with triple jump?

I did, I did, I went to all sorts of international competitions.

Triple jump feels so fun, too.

It's like one of the Odie's.

It's a sport I liked at school.

You go, doop, skip, doop.

And it's like, yeah, I like it.

It's got a sort of rhythm to it, you know.

What did your parents want you to be?

They never really imposed their view on it, but I guess my dad wanted me to be a farmer, because I was the eldest son, and he was a farmer, we had a farm.

So it made me a farmer.

Cattle farm?

Yeah, yeah, in the West.

Dairy farm?

No, cattle, beef.

I know I make the best sense of the world and I guess that's what you normally do.

But I had other ideas and did something else.

Which was originally to be an athlete.

I'm not prepared to discuss that.

Ha ha.

Because, because you're going to ask me to hum it or sing it.

No no no we don't do that.

No no no, we do not do that.

Really?

Well you 16 pints of Guinness and then it's come on Eileen.

Office dogs, business or bullshit?

Bullshit.

There's one down here, who owns this?

This is my dog.

Sucks.

Okay, so.

No, no, no, no.

Please, please.

We ask it for a reason.

I think I agree with you there, bullshit.

But, you know, he's ended up more like he just, he sort of hangs about, about sometimes.

Have you ever been fired?

Have you ever been fired?

No, I haven't.

Because I've only ever worked for myself.

But I have fired myself on many occasions, or at least, I, that's a bit of a cop out.

You should give yourself a reprieve after a while.

Well, what I mean by that is, I think it's important when you've got a business, and this is a longer than five second answer, so just hear me out maybe.

I think it's really important, when you set up your own business, you, you, you, you, guess what, you do everything yourself, because there's only you.

Maybe you have a co founder, but between the two of you, you're doing everything yourself.

And that carries on for quite a long time, in that you're doing everything yourself.

And even when you get to a point where you have a team, you're still doing everything yourself.

And there's got to be a point where you've got to realize that if I carry on doing everything myself, I am now limiting the ability of my business to grow.

Beyond my own ability.

Yeah, you can't scale.

Well exactly, you want to do is introduce and encourage people outside of the organization to come and join you who are better than you are at all those disciplines that you need them to be good at.

So you don't do that then, you don't do this because you've got somebody to do it.

And then you switch from doing to kind of delegating and monitoring and encouraging and directing and helping the boat go faster in the same direction.

Because if you bring in lots of like minded people that are self starters, guess what they're going to do?

They're going to self start, in all sorts of different directions that you don't want them to be in.

So you've got to work on making sure that they're working in the trickiest bit, hiring people who aren't like you because you might not like them, or you know what I mean?

But the point about it is you've got to get out of your own way.

You've got to be, you...

And the problem is, a lot of entrepreneurs, coming back to the earlier point, have such an ego, that's what gets you to start in the first place, that to get out of it is a really difficult decision.

Because you kind of think, uh, you know, nobody can do it as well as I can.

Which is a fatal argument to have, and a fatal flaw to make.

So yes, I've tried to make sure that I've fired myself from doing...

everything to doing fewer things.

So it's trying to make yourself redundant from a lot of is very important.

So it's not quite the answer to the question, but but you do have to get out of your own way to grow your business.

You've got to work out what your way is, but you know, that comes out of experience.

It's interesting to think that maybe men are just more egotistical, Pippa.

You'd probably go along with that, yeah.

No, no, it's in like...

You're just attributing things to

me that I would never say.

No, no, it's a big ego themselves.

So...

Pippa, how do you know this is the second time you've brought up this men women thing?

I think it's a long running And apparently got a problem.

What's your vice?

I have no vices.

And no virtues.

You've no vices.

You don't have a drink.

An Irishman who doesn't drink is most concerned.

We've already talked about 16 pints of Guinness.

Yeah, and that's viewed as a virtue anyway, over there.

So, so, um, yeah.

Um, I guess going to restaurants is one of my vices.

I mean, the fact that I'm in the food industry has nothing whatsoever to do with this.

But we just love, my wife and I love to go to restaurants.

I mean, all the time.

That's a nice thing.

We go to...

a place because there's a really cool restaurant there and then figure out what else to do with the rest of the weekend and stuff like that.

Do you want to have 30 seconds to plug something?

Anything you want to tell anyone about?

I like to tell somebody, anybody who wants to listen really, all about turning uncertainty into a competitive advantage.

We've come through so much uncertainty and it's all, it's all around us.

It's still been, it's still got me with us for, for quite some time.

But I think the last three 5, 6 years, uncertainty has kind of got to a stage where it's overbearing.

And I think some people think that, you know, they're frozen in the headlights and they can't make decisions.

I think the opposite is the case.

I think uncertainty provides opportunity.

Certainly in an entrepreneurial environment.

The more uncertainty, the more opportunity.

And I think if people realize that.

And stop getting frozen by the uncertainty.

Yes, decisions, like investment decisions, it's much better when you have more certainty.

But certainty favors the establishment, and uncertainty favors the start up guy and the entrepreneurial guy.

So, you know, embracing adversity and learning from failure and having the courage of your convictions are all part of what you need to think about to try to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage.

And I think if entrepreneurs realize that more, then we wouldn't be so phased about this uncertain world we live in.

And let's face it, uncertainty is not going to go away any time soon.

It suggests that the UK is a great place to do business right now.

I mean, we're being in a fairly uncertain...

I feel we're philosophically trying to work out who we are now, as much as anything.

I think the UK, generally speaking, is a great place to do business anyway.

And I'd include Ireland in that as well.

We have a very similar culture and attitude in that way.

There's a lot of common sense, more so, and I live in Germany, right, and the Germans are very capable of doing all sorts of wonderful things, and have done, and proven it over and over again.

And I just think entrepreneurship is not as accepted as much in Germany as an asset, certainly the food and drink space.

Whereas in the UK, or in Ireland as well, it really is.

Yeah.

It's all about dealing with practical challenges and finding practical solutions, and that's really what it's about.

It's less to do with theory and trying to figure out what the ground plan is.

And there's lots of incentives.

People recognize that.

The government has recognized that.

And ever since the days of Thatcher, there have been incentives and opportunities and encouragement to be entrepreneurial.

Apparently in engineering, the British are known in engineering circles that they're weird.

It's all trial and error.

It's like, that's how you, the Brits do engineering.

You're brilliant engineers, but you're, it's all trial and error.

Most other countries, they come from a much more theoretical base where we're just like, well, I don't know, can you put a badger on the back of a bus?

I've never tried.

You know.

I don't know that there's...

A business plan there.

It needs to be.

To be honest with you.

There needs to be a badger in every stupid idea.

I think it's...

That, that's it.

You've been absolutely brilliant, John.

Thank you for coming.

Uh, and uh, that was this week's episode of Business Without Bullshit.

Thanks Pippa.

Uh, thanks Invisible D, and uh, Romeo, and we will be back with BWB Extra on Thursday.

Until then, it is ciao.