Latest / Millennial Masters / Success can break the business too ☕ Zain Peer

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Success can break the business too ☕ Zain Peer · Millennial Masters

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: When Dragon's Den aired, we started to get orders like crazy.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: I remember even our website crashed, it was so busy.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: For three months afterwards, I still hadn't slept.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I would wake up at some crazy early hour and I'd literally be
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: on my laptop till We were the customer service.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were everything.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have any employees.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Three months in, it feels like someone's just pulled down their pants and it was crazy.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, it wasn't like work.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was enjoyable.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: We were having the best.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: We had investment from Two Dragons,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: and I remember we accepted the offer,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: but then we were thinking it's too much of the business to give away.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of sales that we had in just the week of the show was multiple times
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of cash.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: This week's Millennial Master is Zane Peer of London Nootropics,
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: an adaptogenic coffee brand he co-founded in 2020.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: His TV experience showed him what happens when demand grows faster.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Terima kasih telah menonton!
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Zain, welcome to Millennial Masters.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let's dive straight into it,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Zain, because I know you didn't wake up wanting to build a wellness brand.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: You were actually trying to solve a problem for yourself.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm wondering at what point did you realise you weren't actually selling coffee anymore?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We actually started by having coffee with other natural ingredients to give us
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: a 100% natural boost as a pre-workout before the gym.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: To stay healthy and a lot of people like,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: hey, I'll buy this off you, you should start a business.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we teamed up with a nutritionist and she's like, what are you guys doing?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: You're adding guarana powder into coffee.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is caffeine on caffeine, which is just a stimulant.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And she introduced us to functional mushrooms and other adaptogens
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: that synergize really well with coffee.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: And while we were still going down this pre-workout path,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: we started to have different adaptions every day,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: depending on what we needed in that day.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day we woke up and, hey, we have a wellness brand.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it was ever a coffee.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: We even call ourselves an adaptogenic wellness brand from day one.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Which is a mouthful,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: but you would understand what it is about now that you break it down like that.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And we never ever say that we sell coffee on its own.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: We always say we sell adaptogenics.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: How did you start?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because wellness is probably one of the hardest categories to build trust in.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of products would say they improve focus, energy, sleep.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: How do you stop sounding like everyone else?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: How we started was we're still doing the pre-workout course here.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And we had a eureka moment one day when we had a development day.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't go very well.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: The taste was horrible.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: We were a little bit deflated.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: We were driving back to London and I was like, I really need some ashwagandha right now.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I feel stressed.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the eureka moment.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Why are we focusing on this pre-workout when actually in our everyday now,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: we're having different adaptogens?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that we discovered straight away with adaptogens is quality and
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: the big differences in quality.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: So even the lion's mane mushroom,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: we ordered 20 different samples, more than that from around the world.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't find in the UK high enough quality extracts at the time.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: So once we started having what we call best in class adaption extracts,
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: and we felt like the real impact in our day Then we were like,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: hold on a sec,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: no one can have access to the adaption extracts that we've got
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: because we're importing them ourselves by the samples from around the world.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then how we started was, hey, we should just make these into sachets.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's way easier than trying to make a bottle of a pre-workout or a can
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: because we were thinking about this cold brew situation.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so how do we do this?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a lot of Googling, figuring things out.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have any advisors, anyone in the CBG or food and beverage world helping us.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: We had a development day with a consultant that helped refine the flavors
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: and test different coffees and adaptogens to try and just get an effective amount
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: of adaptogens in a cup without it tasting like crap.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: How many iterations did it take to reach the right taste?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Probably over a hundred, easily over a hundred.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had spreadsheets,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: iterations,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: even just tweaking the milligrams and how much coffee we put,
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: how much adaptogens we put.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we wanted to maximize the amount of adaptogens.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And because we used really expensive extracts, it was also looking at the cost per cut.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, hey, listen, let's not worry about margins right now.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: When we scale up, we'll achieve cost efficiencies.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: One of the other key things was,
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: we spoke to a few manufacturers that said,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: hey man,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: we can make this for you,
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: but you have to order a minimum of 50,000 or 100,000 sachets.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have that.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then I came across a company who were like,
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: we work with a lot of startups,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: we have machines,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: and we'll show you how to use them,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: where you can literally fill a sachet,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: three grams, and then you can seed it yourself.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a couple hundred quid.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: We were like, why don't we just make it ourselves?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we made the website ourselves.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: We got the machines and we just started filling our own sachets.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then one day we just turned on the website and we started to get a few orders.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we just grew organically from there.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it's oversimplifying a bit that you just switched on a website and got orders.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: There must have been something else at play there.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Was it social media?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Was it word of mouth?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Did you spread it to customers from adjacent industry businesses to get your first orders?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we turned on Google Ads, Book Ads, Word of Mouth.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we had our social media.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I think they were the main sources and it was just trying to get traffic to our website.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: In those early days, we didn't have any partnerships or collaborations or sponsorships.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was a minimal amount of online marketing.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: In those first couple of months,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: I remember,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: we'd just get a random order from somewhere in the world and we'd be like,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: How did this person come across us?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Where are these people finding us?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: But there was clearly a market of people looking for our product.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: For each market of people,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: in terms of launching in the space,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: there wasn't that much competition and people were looking for our Right now,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: if you start,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: it would probably be a lot different because there's a lot of different beverages
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: with mushrooms and adaptogens on the market.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot more awareness as well of the benefits of adaptogens.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's grown up for years.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: But in the early days, it was very much organic.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in those early days of building the business and also marketing it
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: when not many others were competing in the same space,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: when did you first catch yourself writing copy that sounded better
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: than you could actually stand behind?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: As in marketing copy and emails?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: We always put thought into...
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: If we were being shown this, what would excite us?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And even that follows through to today.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: We write our own emails, all our comms is in-house.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: We do it ourselves.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: We keep everything very, very educational.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've always been educational because I think that's the most important thing for what we do.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's two types of businesses.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're the ones that are brilliant in marketing.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: They've got big budgets.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: They've got investment.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: They'll get marketing agencies to write lovely copy and they'll sell the product.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: But their main aim is just, we just want to maximize profit.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: They will cut corners on the quality of ingredients.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas because we came at the angle of we just want to help people.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: We helped ourselves.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Our mission,
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: and it's still the same to this day,
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: was to help people incorporate best-in-class adaptions into their day.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we've always stuck by that kind of mission.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And to help that, people need the education.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: They need to know like,
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: okay, if coffee makes me jittery, which adaptogen do I need in my coffee?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: We made zen for when we were having a stressful day.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're not sensitive to caffeine.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: But a few months in,
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: we get people writing to us saying,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: hey, I haven't enjoyed coffee in years, but I've just tried your Zen coffee.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the first time I've had the lift of coffee in my day.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel so balanced.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: I feel great.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of became the coffee for those sensitive to caffeine.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed, Zane, that you use language such as, it has been shown to, or it's known that.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any language you simply refuse to use, even if it probably would sell more products?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to be really careful with our wording.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because in this space,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: if we're saying, hey,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: this thing is going to give you energy,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: because cordyceps is like a mushroom that's shown to boost ATP,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: our energy molecule, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: So cellular energy.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Our aerobic capacity, our oxygen flow, it's going to give us true energy.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas caffeine will block the adenosine receptors in our brain, which make us drowsy.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: A stimulant giving us a lift, but it's not true energy.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now we can't claim on our product and say this gives you energy
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: because there's no official claim that you're allowed in the UK and EU for Cordyceps
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: to say that.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: We can easily do it if we just add B vitamins to the product.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: But for us, it's like just keeping it real.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if you put B vitamins,
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: and you'll notice in so many products, hey, this has got B vitamins, this is energy.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: The energy source is something else, and the B vitamins are helping.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because with B vitamins, you can make that claim.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we're just really careful with our wording from day one in what we can and can't say.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And hopefully,
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: the authorities in the UK and EU will one day catch up with the benefits
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: of adaptogens.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's clinical studies on them now.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: That they'll be added to a claims list.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's quite a few adaptogens that are actually on like a, not the official claims list.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember the exact name, but it's something like the pending claims list.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Other companies have put them through to make claims on them.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we have to be really careful with our wording.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: But if there's a clinical study that says it's been shown to do this in this study,
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: and then there's also traditional use.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it can be traditionally used to do X, Y, and Z in these cultures.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's evidence for that.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fair.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Zane,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: everyone talks about getting on Dragon's Den,
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: but almost nobody talks about what happens the week and the months afterwards.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious to hear about your episode and what actually broke inside
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: the business afterwards.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: What broke inside the business, our backs broke.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the whole Dragon's Den story.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: So we never applied to be on Dragon's Den.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: We just actually reached out from a BBC researcher,
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: and it wasn't something that we would think we would ever be chosen to do.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we were tapping away on email, like, yeah, sure, we'll do this, we'll do this.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then we get this filming date.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: So we're speaking to the BBC,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: and they're saying a lot of stuff,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: because you'll probably have a lot of orders and stuff.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we did a big production round.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: The episode went brilliantly.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: I remember we were there for the whole day and the producers kept coming down
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: to our green room and they would like poke their head in and they'd be like,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: these guys are fun.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And our guy looking afterwards,
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: I remember it was England versus Germany that day and he had a big England shirt on.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, guys, I got to leave.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've got the doctors.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, dude, you're just going to watch the England match.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So we were left alone and we were there for the whole day.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: I remember at one point I ordered a pizza and I was watching
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: the England versus Germany match in the green room
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: while my business partner's shares was just practicing walking up and down.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, it's so chill.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So the whole experience for me was a little bit chill.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: They make it quite intimidating when you
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: go in.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: They have all these cameras.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: You won't see any cameras.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: You see the biggest cameras ever.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're in there for a few hours speaking to the dragon.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: And waiting and anticipating.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's this whole build-up to it.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: They want to capture these moments.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then afterwards, you wait for months, right?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, you're going to be on TV at some point.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know if it's going to be a two-minute segment in the episode or much longer.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: We were actually given the longest segment in the episode, like 15 minutes, which was brilliant.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: We had that date given to us, I think it was a month or two before.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So we've already got our production underway.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, when the Dragon's Den aired, we started to get orders like crazy.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I remember even our website crashed.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was so busy.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was three months afterwards, I still hadn't slept.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: We got ourselves an office two months before it aired because we're like,
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: we need a space to store all this stuff.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So we got ourselves our first office.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: We had a lot of stock.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then I remember...
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: I would wake up at some crazy early hour and I'd literally be on my laptop till 1am, 2am.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: We were the customer service.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: We were everything.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have any employees.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was three months in, I think Shez called me and said, it feels like a bomb has gone off.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: We were having the best time.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: We had all these customers coming in.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: We had the loveliest messages.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then even afterwards,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know you mentioned a few months afterwards,
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: we'd be at a different event, a show,
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: a practitioner conference,
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: and people would come up to us and they'd say, hey,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I saw you guys on Dragon's Den for months and months afterwards,
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: which was really cool.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: If you'd like to share if you had investment through the show or was it just
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: a segment that showed people what you do and you came across really well?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So we had investment from two dragons.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember my brother telling me, hey, if anyone offers you money, take it, you're on TV.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we were like, okay, cool.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: And then two of the dragons who had never partnered before,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Deborah and Sarah, they were like, hey, we'll do this together.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: We love you guys.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we accepted the offer,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: but then afterwards we were reviewing it and we were thinking it's too much of
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: the business to give away.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't clear to us the impact and what they would be doing in our business.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So afterwards we declined.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: We declined to go forward with the actual investment.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that people don't realize,
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: that it's agreeing on a preliminary deal in the show versus what happens afterwards.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of time,
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: the founders change their mind like you did,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: or sometimes the business itself falls through in the due diligence stage.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just what happens on the TV show.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you were bolstered by the amount of attention and orders you had as well,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: which grew your confidence, I'm assuming.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of sales that we had in just the week of the show was multiple times
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: the amount of cash they offered to give us.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: So in terms of that, it was brilliant.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: I highly advise anyone that gets the chance to go on one of these TV shows is just to do it.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: You live once and it's something to experience.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you mentioned that you already scaled up by the time you went on to Dragon's Den.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, I'm hoping you can tell me that Romania packaging story,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: because it sounds like one of those week's founders never forget.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's one time where...
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: We urgently, urgently needed packaging.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And usually they send it in a lorry, but if it's urgent, it can be by a flight.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: But we needed the packaging yesterday.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, how can we get this?
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: We need it now.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then we were thinking,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: hold on,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: one of our team that are helping us out with quite a few events,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: helping us in the office, we could send someone, how much is a flight, right?
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in the end, she took a flight in the morning.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: To Romania,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: there was two suitcases packed,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: took the flight back in the evening,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: and all our labels,
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: everything delivered to the office that evening,
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: and there was no quicker way to do it.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then sometimes you're like, hey man, this is actually way cheaper than posting it as well.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of these stories where you get creative to source what you need to source.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And let's talk then about retail,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: because Harrods and Selfridges sound glamorous,
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: but operationally,
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: what changes when you're sitting on the shelves
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: of such major retailers versus just doing it on your own website?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, there's a funny story with Harrods,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: actually,
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: because they reached out to us and they said
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: a few customers have requested adaptogenic coffee,
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: and what you guys do, like you specifically, is Could we get a box?
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point, we didn't have a label for retail.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have a barcode on a box.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: They were just plain boxes and all the information on the side, right?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: We were selling it online.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we sent the box over and then we're like to the buyer.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you think?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, tastes delicious.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoy that.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the sample.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: What about your retail box?
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, What does he mean?
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then Shez came up with an idea that's actually,
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: we can put a sleeve with all the information you need for a retail box
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: and just slide it onto our box.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And we sent it back to him and they ordered.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So operationally, it's like changing packaging to make it ready for retail.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the big one actually came after Harrods and Selfridges.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we're speaking to a few other places.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Ocado, right?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Ocado, Colin and Barra, and a few others.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And they were...
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They all said the same thing to us.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, do you know what?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Love that you're in Howards & Selfridges.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good credibility.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: But they're department stores.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a lot of shelf space.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And our boxes are like flat, wide boxes.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I had one.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: That you basically send.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: And in the post, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they would display them very nicely.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: To fit through the letterbox, yeah.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and they would fit on a whole shelf.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we can't stock your SKUs how they are now.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: You're taking up this much space for one SKU.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: You need it this way and for it to be a box that can stack.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: We were so busy for like, I think it was 18 months.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And then we made the boxes and we launched straight away in Holland and Barrett.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Two years ago.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it took us a while to create a retail box.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that was probably the biggest change operationally.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember the Holland & Barrow buyer walking around our office and saying like,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: is everything going to be shipped from here?
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at this At this point, we didn't have like a 3PL.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: We were literally going to pack the pallet, wrap it up and send it to them.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, oh, no, no, no.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a big warehouse.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be fine.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then within two months, we had to sort that out, get the warehouse, get the stuff.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the first order, we just wrapped the pallet and got it picked up ourselves.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: What about producing so much stock in advance and putting it on the shelves
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: and obviously spending the money to do that?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is probably one of the biggest hurdles, especially without investment.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we're still fully bootstrapped.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: As we grow,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: every round needs to be slightly bigger than the previous one,
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: but you need cash for that round.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's many creative ways and companies that can help you with that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's companies that will say like, okay,
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: we know you need to produce this,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: We will pay for your supplier invoices and give you 20 days to pay us
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: after you sell them.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we want to have 1% or 2%.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's ways around it.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's all to do with cash flow, right?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: But even now, we are careful not to produce too much.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: To have all the cash tied up in stock and we can't use it for marketing and growing.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a careful balance, yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And what would you say then is the balance
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: between your own sales via your website versus the sales you have in retail
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: in Harrods, Selfridges, Ocado, Holland & Barrett, etc.?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, yeah.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that about 80-85% is through our website.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have a subscription program that we set up, and that was the game changer.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting ratio.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that also brings me to the question I had on retention for you, Zane.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think a lot of founders obsess over getting the next customer and the next customer.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: But you said there was a game changer when you enabled the subscription,
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: so you haven't done it from the beginning.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: What was the thinking behind that?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now, everybody tries to do some sort of subscription,
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: but when you've done it, it wasn't the thing that everybody was trying to copy.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we didn't have subscriptions for the first two years,
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: two and a half years of our business.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: We had a few requests from customers, I would love to subscribe.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: But for us, we just didn't know how to do it.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: We were trying to figure out so much and we're like, subscriptions would be great.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't realize the impact it would have.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's insane.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Customers don't need to worry about ordering.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: They get a little discount.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: We give them free delivery in the UK.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the biggest piece for retention, I think, is the subscriptions.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's just a game changer.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we didn't have a Shopify website.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: When we moved to Shopify, subscriptions were easier to handle, to grow, etc.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just the perfect experience that we even have a rewards program where
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: at certain intervals in your subscription,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: we'll send you some merch and other gifts.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: We always think, what would we want?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd love to have the coffee delivered every month and not worry about it,
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: the adaptogenic coffee, and get all the perks for being a loyal customer as well.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And on the tech side, you mentioned how you use Shopify.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a big platform.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, they take a cut.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's also what a lot of founders are torn when they try
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: to build their website and their systems.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Shopify is expensive, but it's worth it.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's the summary.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: We originally built on WooCommerce, and it was so easy.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: They had a subscription plugin,
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: pay once,
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that was like 300 quid for the year or something, and that's it.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: You can negotiate the cheapest payment gateway to take payments.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's great from that perspective, but you have to keep it updated.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: You need to always constantly be working on it.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But with the Shopify website, everything is so smooth.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like the smoothest experience.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's expensive, but it's worth it.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's just the summary.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you're going to build a website, build it on Shopify.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's obviously cheaper to do your own website.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: The tech stack that comes with Shopify and I think there's a reason why Shopify is
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: the biggest and the number one e-commerce website platform,
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: because they're the best.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we have our products on Amazon.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: We didn't have our products on Amazon for a long time.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had it in my head that our products are so good,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: there's a little bit of ego,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: our products are so good that they'll go viral on Amazon and
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: then Amazon will be like,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: oh my god,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: we need to make this and then Which is
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: what they have been shown and seen
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: to do relatively
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: often in various categories.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, then they'll just copy us and then we won't be very good on Amazon.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I think after maybe two years ago we
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: launched on Amazon,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: we realized that actually there's a whole marketplace of people that are searching
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: for our products.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we had requests from customers, etc.,
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you use fulfillment by Amazon,
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: they have Amazon Prime, which is brilliant for some customers.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it also takes some of the orders and stress off our team and fulfillment side
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: to be like, hey man, some orders are handled by Amazon.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think the fees are quite expensive.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it's another marketplace.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Is it up to 30% from what I've heard?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: After you've got the Amazon fees,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: the FBA fees, etc., it's even a little bit more than 30% in some cases.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of hassle as well with the listings, with things being blocked.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: They asked for some certifications randomly.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently, it's happened to loads of brands in the past two weeks.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: They implemented some AI thing that went a bit rogue.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, until you send us this, we can't accept deliveries.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, well, actually, we've sent it to you all already.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: You have it all.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we resent everything, all our certifications.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's just a waiting game now.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have the inventory and you want to grow,
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: it's another place where a lot of consumers shop on.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: They find it easy, convenient.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're going on holiday the next day.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can rely on Amazon to deliver.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: So is Amazon also included in your 20% overall sales
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: from other retailers besides your website or is that a
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: separate thing?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: We count it as direct-to-consumer.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a huge percentage of our sales.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you make about Amazon in a way imposing the minimum price or
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: the cheapest price being with them?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a little bit annoying at times.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: So one of our SKUs on Amazon,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: they stopped showing the buy box because Amazon are like, this isn't the cheapest.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't find it cheaper anyway.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: We hardly ever do sales on our products.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: So our Amazon agency was saying, hey, we need to drop the price to £10 a box.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, we've never ever sold £10 a box.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's crazy.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's cheaper than subscription.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: We can't do it.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_01: Just stick with the price and keep writing to Amazon.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it took about two,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: three weeks for Amazon to reinstate the buy box for one of our most popular SKUs.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, every couple of months, there'll be some little issues somewhere on Amazon.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: But if you can handle it yourselves or you have an agency,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Overall,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: it's worth it, but you need to have the resource and capacity to deal with it.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because Amazon's a beast,
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: and it's not like a retailer where you can jump on a call,
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: sort anything out quickly,
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: and you're dealing with some remote support people
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: that usually just send you automated answers, which is quite frustrating.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: But if you've got the patience to deal with Amazon, it's a great channel.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if the channel doesn't represent a significant chunk of your revenue and sales,
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: then you can also afford to wait two, three weeks until that issue is sorted.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a 12 sachet box, right?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: To start with.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Our boxes were all 12 sachets.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Then we're like,
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: we're going to make a 60 sachet box because if someone wants it for like
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: a big family or for an office, then maybe...
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: They can get 60 sachets and it'll be a little bit cheaper, right?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why 12 and not 7 or 14?
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think we were looking at everything available and we were like 12 is a good number
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: because we have three blends and we can have a box with four sachets of each.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it kind of just landed.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great question actually.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: I actually don't.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was 12.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then, so 60 was like, okay, this is perfect for two sachets a day for a month.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I asked.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: So it's two sachets a day for a month if you want to have a subscription,
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: but it's great for a business or a big family.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we did that and then everyone started to buy the big box and we're like,
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: hold on, let's make an even bigger box.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we made something we call the hamper box with 240 sachets.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: What surprised me is that repeat customers will buy the 240 sachet box for £200.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: That was made for businesses and stuff, but it's way cheaper unit cost.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And there's people that even subscribe to it,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: maybe not every month, but they'll have it every other month.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: They'll get the huge hamper box.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that was probably a big surprise that we wasn't expecting.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So more of the product at slightly Bigger discounts when they buy more made sense
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: and people
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: like that.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I know some people are like, hey man, I just want to stock up.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I just want this to come every other month or I just want to buy a big hamper bot.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think the discount you get at that quantity is pretty decent as well.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It also can be a marketing trick and you can make the smaller one cheaper versus
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: the bigger one, which a lot of producers do when it comes to that.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to give the example of a small Coca-Cola where a can can be £1.50
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: and it's £2.20 for a two-litre bottle, for example.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: But there's less packaging involved.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's, you know, less is the product.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of savings along the way.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like a slightly, a different example would be like bottles of wine because there's no shelves.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: In supermarkets, they will put a really expensive bottle.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's like $10 bottle of wine and a $20 bottle of wine and you walk in
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: and you're like, Hmm, which one do I buy?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: It could be 50-50.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: But suddenly if there's a $50 bottle of wine and you walk in,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: you're going to a dinner party, you're like, I don't want to buy the cheapest one.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: The $50 is a bit expensive, so let me buy the $20.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: The middle one, it pushes you in the middle one, yeah.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So Zane,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: if somebody tried to copy every ingredient and product you have to try
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: and replicate your business, What couldn't they actually copy?
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: So our recipes.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: People have tried, but they can't get our mushroom extracts.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we work exclusively with a company called Heifas Deterra
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: for their own mushroom bioscience company.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_01: The only company that has ever worked with them ever.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they've been going 25 years and they have really, really high quality mushroom extracts.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: They even have an oncology range of supplements with studies on cancer.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're mycologists.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the quality of their mushrooms, which is like the outer compounds, is insane.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think this is why we've grown so much in the practitioner community and
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: with doctors and functional medicine,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: nutritionists, et cetera, because they know the quality.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I think from that aspect, it would be difficult.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: And the credibility that we've built over the years, I feel like it stands for something.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a very loyal customer base.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think we'll always see some products that are quite similar,
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah, that's the world we live in.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the pie is big enough for everyone.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Fair.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you look back,
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: would you say that there was a crucial moment and something that maybe nearly killed
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: the business first?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or was the hardest thing to get right?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was it getting the ingredients right?
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or people to actually enjoy the taste and drink it every morning?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I think the recipe was everything.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because for our sweet coffee connoisseurs, this has to taste nice.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: You have to enjoy the experience.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: You want to be looking forward to your next London Utropic Sedatogenic Coffee.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's probably the key from products we come across,
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: not necessarily in our field, but just in general.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can see they're trying to do good.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to put good quality ingredients and stuff,
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: but the experience doesn't quite match that.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think both are equally important, the impact on your day and the taste and experience.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's what we got right in our business, that Terima kasih.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you can share from your point of view what that is.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's building that community and building that loyal customer base
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: from scratch and having the patience to do that and having the quality product.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: We even looked into, can we trademark this recipe?
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do that.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's why Coca-Cola has their recipe in a vault somewhere.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And two people or something in the world know the actual recipe, right?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing that you need to protect.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have your recipes in a vault?
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in our heads.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, it's in the cloud in a
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: vault somewhere.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a couple of closing questions, Zane, on your journey in business.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm wondering what's become much more important than you realized
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: when you first started in business, but also what's become less important?
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Less important is easy.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: So less important was at the beginning, you want to perfect everything.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's your baby.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: This has to be.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then you realize after a while,
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: even with launching, it took us two years to get the right recipes, etc.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: The packaging was not yet perfect.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we're like, it has to be perfect.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: We could have delayed another year just trying to get the packaging right
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: and this right and that right.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the moment we launch, it's like, okay, amazing.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now we just keep improving and we're going to get feedback from customers.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: So as long as it's good enough,
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: if you can spend years perfecting something, I'll just launch it, take that step.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's the thing that we let go of pretty early.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Perfectionism.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Perfectionism.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: So even now, say,
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: we were launching a test on our website,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: and we're like, okay, we want it to look like this, this, and this.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not perfect, but do you know what?
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is good enough to get the data, and if it works, we can improve it from that.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's move quickly.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that is the thing that we've kind of let go of.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: And something that we've gained,
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: probably perspective in terms of What we're doing is really impacting people's lives
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: and we have people right to us and it gives you that motivation every day
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: where you're like,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Holy crap, I built this business because we wanted people to have adaptogens.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And someone wrote to us a letter saying how we saved their marriage.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's crazy.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I explained everything.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: I was so stressed in my day.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was coming home.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't paying attention to my wife.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then someone bought me this adaptogenic coffee.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: I was so reluctant.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: But then I started trying it and everything changed in my day.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I started paying attention to things.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you're always talking about, listen to your internal cues.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew when I was stressed, I knew when I was reacting.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And now I'm so balanced.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: I see everything.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I started paying attention to my wife.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I genuinely believe that your coffee saved my marriage.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, how can some small ritual, we preach like you should do X, Y, and Z.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is just part of what you should be doing.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then that perspective changes.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: How you go about what you're doing, who we want to work with, is it aligned with us?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Is it aligned with that mission of impacting people?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's something that's changed for sure.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you wings and a motivation and a bit of oomph to continue through some of
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: the things which are not Always that's fun.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: What is the end goal here?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: It definitely does.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: So finally then,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: what's something you believed about building a business five years ago
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: that you've completely changed your mind on in your journey at London Neutral?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the aspect of community
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: that we built and the network that we built is probably everything.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've always brought good vibes and met really cool people along the way.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone wants to help everyone.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just what we've attracted.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: We've got loads of people willing to help us.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: They believe in our journey, our mission and everything.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we've got our team and then we've got also this network of just friends
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: and Talented people,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: people with connections that are just like, hey man, I'll help you.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't want anything in return.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's unconditional.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: But if anyone else needs anything, we'll do the same for them.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's really beautiful about something that I think a lot of people don't realize.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: The people think it's like the world in them.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a lot of people willing to help.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And just give free advice.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just give free help.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, I know someone that will really help you with this thing.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: That was my question.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: For any new founder starting up a business, Do in-person, in-person meetings, events.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: People are so digital.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: People are on social media, on the laptops.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: Community is so important.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: There's proven health benefits to it, right?
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: We try and have a meetup every few months and just do something fun
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: and we'll coincide if we're going to do something with a client.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: So we have clients that are longevity clinics or we went to a members club.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: In Richmond.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they just hosted us and we had a whole morning with our ambassadors.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that person things are very powerful.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Even though they're small scale, I think they're important and powerful.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is a very good ending note for this episode of Millennial Masters.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Going out there and meeting people,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: not just posting or advertising on social media in order to Gain new customers.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: The real life connections are possibly the ones that will take you the furthest.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: And genuine connection as well.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think there's a lot of people that are like, hey man, I just need to network.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they'll go to a thing, like a conference, and I literally saw it.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: A girl kept saying, hi, what's your name?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do?
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's your role?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: You haven't even said hello to this person.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're asking them what they do.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: You don't genuinely want to have a connection with this person.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: You just, is there something for me here?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's connections, but genuine friends.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just a business transaction.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is a personal thing.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's an important distinction to make.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: Just going around and asking people what you do,
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: that's not going to build your community and the genuine connections.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Great net to end on.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much, Zane.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Daniel.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in all the way to the end of this episode.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed it, please share it with someone you think would get value from it.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube,
• 39:44
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• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you'll get all the latest features and new episodes straight
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: to your inbox every week.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: Catch you next week.