Startup lessons from the sauce aisle 🥄 | Liam White

Sacrifices is everywhere. It's a marathon, not a sprint. So I'm very much trying to not sacrifice health, trying to make sure that I, you know, stay healthy and sleep and all this kind of stuff. But there are times when you have to go quite deep, deeper than you would in a normal job. Definitely more stressed than I would be in a normal job. But I think the upsides overall outweigh that. I get to work with a great team every day, make products that taste fantastic. And I know that I'm building something that's pretty meaningful.

So this week's Millennial Master is Liam White. Co-founder of Dr. Wills. He swapped investment banking for the sauce aisle and built one of Britain's boldest healthy food brands. From late nights in a restaurant kitchen to supermarket shelves, Liam's secret sauce is grit, taste, and relentless graft. In this episode, we talk about the biggest mistake most food startups make, how personal branding drives real retail sales, and what it really takes to survive the 10-year build. Millennial Masters is proudly sponsored by Jolt, the UK's top web hosting service. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling up a custom app, every great project needs a reliable home. That's why Jolt has hosting plans starting at just £3.95 a month, with unbeatable deals on domain registrations too. Why Jolt? It's a no-brainer. There's no waiting around with support within 30 seconds on live chat. Your site stays live no matter what with over 99.99% network uptime. And you can also pay with Bitcoin or American Express, so you can rack up those points too. How good is that? Sign up today and enjoy your first 3 months free. Head to jolt.co.uk to get started.

Liam, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

Very well, thank you. Thanks for having me.

Great to have you. It's going to be a tasty conversation, just to have a little bit of a play on words. And starting with food, I know your mum is a food writer. But you wanted to be a footballer as a kid. You can tell me a bit about that one. And you ended up in investment banking after you studied engineering, computing, and maths at uni. So how does this all fit into your entrepreneurial journey so far?

Yeah, so a bit of a roundabout path, as you mentioned, I guess, starting from my mum. So I grew up surrounded by food. My mum is a writer. She's written books with lots of chefs, Jamie Oliver, people like that. Giorgio Locatelli, a fantastic Italian chef, John Torode, those sort of people. So I was very lucky to grow up with my mum, sort of influenced by all these chefs who my mum was working with, see her cooking and writing, go to lots of restaurants. So I kind of think I was developing my taste buds and my palate quite early. I wanted to be a footballer like I think every teenage boy probably pretty much in the UK. Played to an okay level, but it was actually track and field running was probably where I was strongest. I was kind of in and around the England squad for that. So I've always been kind of sporty and foodie growing up. Those were probably the two things. I always liked maths, I always liked some analysis, that kind of thing. So I decided to do something like that at university. I did engineering because it was a combination of those things. So maths, computing, mechanical engineering. And I thought, if I do that, I'll learn enough stuff and be able to have some options when I graduate. I did a couple of internships in investment banking, and I thought, like, again, that's the best place for me to learn because it's one of the toughest work environments and you learn how companies work. So my job was essentially advising companies on when they were looking to either be sold to a bigger company or big companies buying other companies. So I was looking and I was working in consumer. So it's all food and drink in that world and what the big companies were looking to buy and their strategy and all this sort of stuff. So I had this insight into this world, albeit on a much bigger scale. But I realized quite quickly, a couple of years in, that I found the work really interesting, but this wasn't my kind of like calling for as a career long term. Both my parents had freelance entrepreneurial backgrounds and I wanted to do something like that. My thinking was, I was at the time, I was 25 when we started Dr. Will's. I met Will, who's a medical doctor, and had the idea for healthier condiments initially. And I thought, you're 25, if this all goes wrong, I'm young, I'm not married, I don't have kids, I don't have any of these responsibilities. Now's the time to have a go and see where we are. And yeah, about 7 years later, age 32, I'm still making ketchup.

And mayo. And barbecue sauce. So you'll tell me all about that in a bit.

Exactly.

You said that it was a very tough working environment in investment banking. Now, a lot of people don't get to have that experience. So I'm wondering whether you can share what were the good bits and the bad bits and the lessons you had from that. You said you've been, you've done it for a couple of years, but you also had a gap year and some work experience both in London and in New York, right?

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I, before I went to university, I did a program with Rothschild, a boutique investment bank. So I did 9, 10 months at Rothschild in this gap year program they used to have. And honestly, that was amazing because I went to university having already done best part of a year of proper corporate work. And then that definitely helped me to get my internships and then get my grad job. And I think I just, I just learned so much on that year and kind of went to university sort of having a bit of an understanding of how the world worked, how the world of work worked. Um, and then I, yeah, I did an internship at Credit Suisse, um, like during my— after my second year, in the summer of my second year. And that's kind of the typical thing in banking is you have to do a penultimate year internship, and then if that goes well, you, you get a grad job. I then had an offer from Credit Suisse to go back, but I also got an offer from JP Morgan, um, and I took the— decided to take the JP Morgan offer and go there. Partly there's a few reasons, but one of them was that the training program was in New York, and that was a big thing because it gave me an opportunity to go out there, work in New York, do a global training program with the whole bank. And I thought that was such a cool experience, and it was. That was probably some of the best, I think, 7 weeks of my life when I was aged, what would have been 20, 22, 23, coming out of university, staying in a one-bed studio in Manhattan.

From Bristol to Manhattan, exactly. Sounds like fun, right?

Yeah, I had a great time. But I think in terms of highlights, it's— I'd say the team, the people you work with are amazing. Like, it's a real elite group of people who are super smart, and everybody works really hard, and you learn an absolute ton. Like, I don't think I could have learned any more in those 2 years, and I wouldn't be able to do what I do now without that background. I think the combination of that plus some of the sort of the sport I did to a fairly high level helps you build resilience and just ability to continue going, roll with the punches, And I think that's one of my skills is resilience for sure. And that's been built through investment banking and the sport I've done. I think that's a really key thing. But yeah, I learned an absolute ton how to manage various different projects, work with very demanding, challenging, brilliant people. And I, and yeah, and just be able to do really high quality analysis, present things well in a way that tells the story you want to tell. So I learned all this stuff and that was great. Challenges, it's absolutely brutal in terms of the work hours. So working regularly into the early hours. Yeah, I'd often leave the office 1, 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning, get into my taxi, fall asleep, get home, sleep for a few hours and go again. You work a ton of weekends and that's just the reality of it. And the investment banking bosses will attest to it. Like it's not, it's not a secret. That's just, that is just the way the industry works. As a result, I thought it was pretty clear that I didn't want to do that. I'm very happy to work hard and I work extremely hard.

I wanted to say the long hours, I'm sure it was a recurring theme afterwards in the startup, but we'll get to that.

Exactly. Yeah, it is. But I think that the difference is it's on your terms. So you're very much, there's a bit more control over the hours and you, you know, you decide when something is, when you're working the long hours, which is often the case, it's, yeah, it's with some control and on things that really, really move the needle in the business. So yeah, those are some of the challenges, but overall I'm positive on my experience in banking and I have loads of great friends in there. One of my old bosses invested in the business and like I'm still in touch with lots of those guys, get on really well. And probably one of the only things I miss is the kind of collegiate atmosphere because we had this group of young guys, big group of young guys, and we all would all be in the office ordering pizza at midnight, which isn't necessarily the healthiest thing, but when you got a ton of work to do, keeps you awake and interested until the early hours.

Tell you what, pizza at midnight has been a recurring theme through a lot of entrepreneurs I've spoken to on Millennial Masters. So I think that's a rite of passage.

Exactly. Across into. That's the key thing.

So you had the entrepreneurial flair and inspiration from your parents. You had the experience and the appetite for risk from investment banking, let's just say that. And you decided to join two of your friends to start a healthy condiments company. What were the first steps? Yeah, not an industry that a lot of entrepreneurs get into. So I'm curious.

Yeah. So the first thing is there's a very weird, and I have no idea why it is, but there's a very strange investment banking into food and drink startup sort of thing. So since I've realized that I was in the same, say, not even the same bank, but the same part of the bank at JPMorgan as the founder of Little Moons, Howard, and we realized that when we were having a conversation, and there's quite a few people who've done investment banking, private equity, that kind of thing, and then gone into food. So for whatever reason, it does seem to happen. I didn't actually know Will and Josh. They're absolutely my friends now, but at the time I didn't know them.

So I was looking to do—

I was essentially looking at what I could do. So I looked at anything from starting my own thing through to joining a small startup through to joining a bigger startup. But I knew I wanted to work somewhere smaller than where I was and where I had the scope to build something, have some equity in a business, and really try and, you know, align, align the work with it, with equity, and build something myself. I, through that process, I met Will when I was looking for a job. Will had this Will, when I sat down with him, realized quite quickly that he needed a business partner. I got talking to Josh as well, who was his business partner, and essentially the three of us, Will and Josh, had come up with the idea. So his mum was—

hence the name.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then his mum was a nursery school teacher, was seeing parents trying to get their kids to eat their broccoli, carrots, vegetables. She was going to Will and saying, isn't there something healthier for these kids so that they can eat their vegetables, but at the same time not cover them in sugar. We couldn't find anything. And that was kind of the little piece of insight that got us started. So I met Will, realized they needed a business partner, and I decided to take the plunge because like I said earlier, I'm 25 and I thought if it all goes wrong, I can go back into finance, but I don't think anybody's going to look down on me for having a go. So that was kind of my thinking. And then took the plunge to go in and go in straight away full-time on it. And we started from there really. And I can go into more about the steps we took after that.

Let's do that, because I know the first batch of sauces were made in one of the co-founders' restaurant kitchens.

Yeah, correct. So Josh at the time was running a restaurant in Newcastle. For any northern listeners, it was Jam Jar up in Jesmond. So kind of like a gastropub kind of concept. Lots of cocktails, that kind of thing. But like, place that students really like to go to. We had the restaurant kitchen, so that enabled us to have a space where we'd get the ingredients together and make some sort of prototype versions. So we made our first ever ketchup, uh, beetroot ketchup, which was a mistake. Um, we actually were— originally when we made our ketchup, we— it was going very orange because we were using real tomatoes, um, and we were just struggling to give it that nice red color that you want. So we were like, how do you get red? Well, if you add orange and purple, you get red. So we added beetroot added way too much, but it tasted amazing. And that was our beetroot ketchup. So that was our second product.

And then we also—

was it a bit darker than red? Was it closer to brown?

It was, yeah, it was purple, to be honest. It was a nice color, but it was, yeah, it was very much purple rather than red. But we launched that and then we made a barbecue sauce. So we did that in Josh's kitchen. So we had— we were lucky to have that. That gave us our first batch of sauces that we could test on a market. So we took them out to Jesmond, the Bridge Market in Jesmond, Armstrong Bridge, and I think one of the first things was we sold about 200-300 jars of sauce to Geordie's on a freezing cold afternoon. It was raining, it was a horrible day, and we sort of thought to ourselves, right, if we can sell a couple of hundred jars at a market in Newcastle when it's freezing, like, maybe there's a market for this in the UK. And that was kind of how we, you know, got started initially. And then, and then moving on from there, brought a manufacturer on board and sort of scaled the business, got into a few delis, farm shops, and sort of built from there.

I know from Rob at Arrowtown, who told me you are his mentor in one way or another, that he followed your advice and outsourced manufacturing as well. So I wanted to touch a little bit on that, how outsourcing manufacturing us after you first developed your recipes allowed you to scale quicker.

Definitely. So first of all, I'd say I have a huge amount of respect for people who manufacture their own product. I think it's brilliant. It's very hard to do, but I think it's brilliant. When people do. I think for us, what was really important for us is that we make the best possible product. And we realized in order to do that, you can— there's two routes to do it. You can, you can make just as good a product if you make it yourself, or if you make it with a manufacturing partner, as long as you have the right partner. So we realized quite quickly, we're going to be a lean team. There was at the time, there's three of us, three business partners didn't have any, any people, we had a couple of interns here and there, and we can get, get people in on like a university program and those kinds of things. Government grants help support that. But we realized if we're going to do this in a lean way, if we, if we find a manufacturer, we can then focus on sales, marketing, and product and make sure those three things are fantastic. And those for me are the key things to scaling a food business. We found a great manufacturer early on, and what that meant is, you know, they are in the UK. In the UK, yeah, always been UK manufactured, 100% of our products. Um, found a great manufacturer, and what that meant is they are experts at making a product consistently every single time, start, middle, end of batch, being everything as close as possible to identical. So they could do all those things, whereas we would have spent probably a couple of years learning how to do that, getting the right kit. And then you get to a point where you need to then ditch that kit and buy new kit because you've outscaled it. So you're constantly investing. And again, that's not the wrong thing to do. It depends on like what kind of business you're trying to build. But my view is you can scale faster if you do outsource. So we, yeah, we found the right partner. And that's key. They were, you know, laser focused on quality, but also shared our values in terms of making products with natural ingredients, not adding unnecessary sugars, additives, that kind of thing. So we use dates rather than sugar, we use less of it. But they shared that, that kind of vision with us. And that meant that we weren't— some manufacturers you speak to, and they're just trying to make as much profit as possible. And, you know, as many jars they can a day. And that is how you make money in manufacturing. But if you have the right manufacturer, they understand, they want to work with a business, and actually you're going to build a valuable brand. And you're going to do more volume in the long term. If you can build, if you can really launch fantastic products and work really closely. And that's what we have. But yeah, some are just trying to add in as many preservatives, additives, and that, and we can't work with anyone like that. But when you have the right partner, it enables you to scale fast, but have the benefit of a fantastic partner that you're working hand in hand with and you're speaking to. We speak to them every single day, multiple times a day, and I'll be there tomorrow. I'm like, we're very, very hands-on and it's very much— a lot of people will talk about things being a partnership when it's just a buy-sell relationship. But this is very much a partnership.

But isn't there a danger or a risk, let's put it like that, when you work with other manufacturers that they can outsource in a way your secret sauce, your balance of ingredients, your condiments into other products, or even we've seen it happen to a lot of people for supermarkets' own brand, cheaper version of your product? How do you mitigate that risk?

Yeah, definitely, there's always risk. And there's risk in everything. Even if you make product yourself, someone could leave and take that expertise to another factory, there's always going to be some kind of risk. There's things you can do, practical things you can do. So you can obviously have an NDA in place. But there will be intangible learnings that come from making our product or someone else's product that enhance the knowledge and capabilities of a manufacturer. So there will be a little bit of that. But I think the main thing is you have trust with your manufacturing partner, they're not going to share your recipes. And, you know, I know from speaking to them, they've never shared recipes of any other customer to us, for example. And you can tell from how they act, act with us that there is that kind of Chinese wall on confidentiality. And I think at the same time, what's important is we're building a brand, right? So absolutely, there's things we do in our process. And we're very clear with the manufacturer that that's why the NDA is there. And there's things that we do in different ways that I think makes us have a healthier and a better product than others. But the value for us is in the sum of the parts. So it's probably not one individual process of a product, but it's a brand that what we want is essentially every consumer who is health conscious and wants to buy condiments that taste fantastic but are better for you. I want Dr. Wills to be their go-to brand. So, you know, whenever you pick up a Dr. Wills product, it's gonna taste fantastic, but it's also going to have great ingredients, and it's just going to liven up your meal. But you don't have to sort of worry because we've got you covered from a, from a quality and a natural ingredients and a low sugar perspective.

So that's what we're trying to do, and the value is in building that So when you work with a manufacturer, are you involved in the sourcing of the raw products as well, such as beetroots, tomatoes, etc.? Do you say— obviously, the tomatoes, you won't get them from the UK, but for example, beetroots, you could. Do you look for a particular kind, or you're more flexible on some of the raw ingredients?

Yeah, we're really close. So we have, we have, we get a spec on every single ingredient that we use in our products and we go through that with the manufacturer before we approve it. So we have standards in terms of we, we never have any added sugar in a Dr. Will's product. Um, so if there's sweetness, it comes from dates or it comes from tomatoes, it comes from a fruit or vegetable source.

Of course, the dates won't come from the UK either.

No, no, no, no. So we will source where we can within the UK. So like you said, if there's an opportunity to source UK ingredients, we'll work with our manufacturer to do it. Um, we've looked at sourcing British tomatoes, but getting the volume and the quality is difficult.

So we use Greek, we try, especially all year round.

Yeah, exactly. And that's a challenge. So we do what we can and we're trying to do more in the UK as much as we can. But there we tasted, for example, that's a good example, we tasted the Greek and we tasted the Italian and we agreed that the Greek were better and sweeter. So that's why we went with the Greek in that case. So we were very close to all the ingredients. And like I said, with the— when I talk about not adding any sugar, that's also in it, that's in every single constituent ingredient. So if we're adding, say, I don't know, a chipotle paste or something like that, because we're adding a smoky flavor and we're doing some chipotle and maybe a barbecue sauce or in some smoky flavor, we will check the ingredients back, make sure we're happy with it. And if it has added sugar in it, then that product's out and we're, we're finding another one. And it's a combination of us and our manufacturer working together to find something that works. So it's very much collaboration from on every single part, whether that's packaging, raw ingredients, process. So yeah, we work very, very closely, and particularly with some of the stuff that we're doing, we're trying to do quite innovative things. So using different ingredients to what is normally used, like your condiments, quite often it's just like, ah, throw some potassium sorbate in there because that's a preservative and it will just mean the product's bombproof. Whereas we don't do that. We say that yes, our ketchup might over— it will be redder, redder at the very start than it will be in 6 or 8 months' time, because that's natural. That's what happens. And we accept that. And we're you get— it will be a shade browner after 8 months because that's, that's oxidizing, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's what happens to food, and we're happy. We would rather have that than, than add a bunch of chemicals that, that mean that the food stays exactly the same. Equally, we'll get ever so slight texture variants and things because you'll get a slightly different batch of a raw ingredient. We mitigate them, we make sure we have quality product every time. Stick our mayonnaise, it will always be thick and creamy, but there are minute variances in egg yolk and things like that that we work with to make sure that we still provide you with a great thick creamy mayonnaise. But we're not just adding like some bombproof stuff to mean that it's perfect every single time.

So you— well, Dr. Wills was in a way a pioneer in the healthy food and condiments revolution back in 2017. As you said, less sugar or no added sugar. Ultra-processed food. I don't even think it was in people's minds back at the time. But you started to have a lot more competition ever since, but you also diversified. How did you see the consumer market changing, especially after and during the pandemic years?

Yeah, definitely. So I think we'll be the first to admit we were probably ahead of our time when we launched. So we were looking across the pond at the US, and we saw— when we looked at the US, we saw that, A, there were much more interesting flavors. So if you think about barbecue sauce, for example, tons of regional barbecue sauces, whether it's Texas barbecue, Nashville, lots of the southern regions in particular, Louisiana. There was loads of kind of individual regional flavor profiles, which was pretty cool. Hot sauces were really in vogue. So different, you know, whether it be like mango added or pineapple fruits flavors or different regional ethnic varieties of hot sauces. So we saw this kind of innovation on a flavor point of view, but then also on a health, from a health point of view. So there were more low sugar options in the UK where there were low sugar options that were just replaced with sweeteners. So it was just like, yeah, you've got lower sugar, but it's full of sucralose or aspartame, something like that. Whereas in the US they were doing real low sugar, like replacing them with dates, agave honey, like whatever it is, like stuff that people are now realizing actually, yeah, that's what I want to be eating.. So there's more kind of, yeah, low sugar things like avocado oil was a big thing out there. Avocado oil mayonnaise is a big product for us. We saw that over in the US that had been a thing for probably the last 15, 20 years, but it's only really become a thing, you know, in the last 5 years in the UK. So the UK is often 5 years behind. So we saw all of this and then I think we were probably ahead of our time and we also probably didn't get the balance right in the early days between we had this product that was incredibly healthy, fantastic, But it probably didn't deliver on flavor. So it was a little bit chalky in texture, didn't get it quite right. Probably kept the sugar levels so low that actually you're not doing that much good if it's, you know, yes, it's like incredibly low sugar, but your target market for that product, if it tastes completely different to anything that's out there, is quite small. So we realized quite, quite quickly, yes, we're going to make the products lower sugar. Everything we do is lower sugar than the market leader and significantly lower. But you have to have to have those flavor profiles for people to relate to a sauce. So if you have a ketchup, ketchup. It needs to have tomato flavor. It needs to be, you know, have that sort of tangy vinegar flavor. You need a little bit of salt and you need some sweetness. Those are the flavor profiles that you want to come through. So I think we didn't get that quite right in the early days. We actually went kind of like so clean to the point, and all we've done is just slightly increase the date proportion and just got it and just worked on process to make the product smoother and give you that kind of texture you want from a ketchup. So it's been a long iterative journey. The market definitely— COVID was a big like we had a bit of a boom in COVID because we got into retail, mainstream retail for the first time. So the start of COVID was horrendous. We were selling to quite a lot of restaurants, farm shops, delis. We, um, lost all of our business overnight, um, which was pretty horrendous. Um, and then after that we got into retail. We launched into Tesco and Waitrose, ended right at the end of 2020, and then our retail business kicked off. So that was probably like, you know, we've grown consistently pretty much every year since we started, but that was probably like one of the first big waves of growth. And I think the second one is, was 12 months ago when I'd say healthy eating went mainstream, and the ultra-processed food movement has been quite incredible. I think there's been various different health movements. If you think of like low calorie, low sugar in isolation, I think for me what's really different and important about the ultra-processed food movement is it encapsulates all of those things, and it's just really relatable for people. So if you eat a primarily whole food diet that is, is minimally or unprocessed, essentially all of the other boxes that you take are like second and third order effects. So it's like, if I eat whole natural foods, I probably have a diet that's low in sugar, I probably get a good sort of— a good amount of protein, I probably get quite a bit of fiber because I'm eating like real fruits and vegetables and, and, you know, proper food. So you kind of tick all of these boxes that a lot of these sort of more fatty diets have picked up. And that's been amazing for us because people have realized quite quick, okay, condiments are a massive source of added sugar, and then a lot of people in particular are trying to move away from things like gums, artificial gums.

Those are stabilizers, right?

Stabilizers, that kind of thing. And then we do an avocado oil mayo, and a lot of people also want to cut down on seed oils. So avocado oil mayo becomes one of your only choices if you're, if you're a mayonnaise consumer. And we have beautiful avocado mayonnaise that we sell in Tesco. One of my favorite products, one of the best ones we've done. We've had it in the range from, you know, since about 2018. 2019. So it's been in the range for a while, but it's, yeah, it's really accelerated in the last year off the back of a lot of people suddenly thinking, oh, I can't have normal mayonnaise, let's have this avocado oil mayonnaise that is essentially made of avocado oil, egg yolk, vinegar, some mustard, and a bunch of spices and some salt. That's it. It's a super simple mayonnaise and it tastes brilliant. It tastes like a homemade mayo. And people are like, okay, that's what I should be eating.

So what would you say was the turning point in about a year ago in this ultra-processed food revolution or rejection of ultra-processed food?

I think the book Ultra-Processed People was probably the biggest part of the movement. Um, number of people who read that book, and what was interesting to me is like, I've always grown up surrounded by healthy food. I was an athlete, I had my mom as a food writer, so she was very much around like looking at provenance of food, sourcing locally, organic, high quality, all of this sort of stuff. So I've grown up with it, but I've seen very much in the mainstream. Friends' parents who I wouldn't say are particularly health conscious saying, have you read this book? It's amazing, like all this kind of stuff, and changing the way they eat. Even some athletes I know who were kind of on this sort of low calorie diet have been looking at and think, actually, I need to eat butter again. I need to be eating butter and olive oil and healthy fats and not eating this like margarine, low fat kind of thing. So I think that was probably the first catalyst. And then you've had guys like Zoe, um, uh, with what they're doing, like, around gut health. I think there's been loads of kind of like off the back— the book was the biggest thing, I'd say, but off the back of that there's been a huge social media thing and just, just a big rise in the number of people who are promoting whole food eating. There's Eddie Abu, who, you know, some of the stuff is probably, uh, I think, you know, massive net positive because he's getting people to think about real, like, real food eating. I think you've got to be a little bit careful about going like like so far down the line where you only eat a couple of things, because I think plant diversity and micronutrients is really important as well. So you've got to be a bit careful about being ultra-specialized. But I think net-net, he's getting people to think like, actually, I need to eat eggs and real food. And I think that stuff is massively positive.

Because you mentioned eggs, I'm assuming you're not vegetarian or vegan?

Nope, not vegetarian or vegan. Um, I just try and eat a balanced diet. I eat a high-protein diet. Um, and I'm essentially— I'm probably your classic sort of ultra-processed rejector. So I just try and eat whole foods diet with loads of fruit and vegetables, big diversity. Eat meat, try and eat really good quality meat, but I don't eat anything— I try and avoid sort of, uh, yeah, processed food wherever I can. Um, but I'm not perfect. I follow the 80/20 rule. I'm out and about all the time, so, um, and I'm out, so I'm aware that when you eat out you can't have complete control. I try and pick healthier places where I can, but But I'm absolutely not perfect. I love a burger and I try and get it right 80% of the time. But I'm not going to pretend that I have the best diet in the world, although I do my best.

So in order to keep this healthy and balanced diet, and I'll come back to some of the habits later on, does that mean you cook a lot at home?

Yeah, I do. So I love cooking. I love cooking Asian food. That's always kind of like been my thing. My mum has always loved cooking, you know, Thai food, Japanese, that kind of thing. So I kind of grew up with that and that's always been something that I love. So I cook a lot at home and then I just, yeah, I just eat simple food and I repeat quite a lot of the same meals because I just know that they're healthy. I take a few supplements, nothing crazy. And I think that's very much the sort of 5% around the edges. The most important stuff is very focused on sleep, exercise, that kind of thing. I wear a Whoop band and that's like really insightful. I've had that for, I've had that pretty much since they launched, probably about 4 years. Seeing your sleep in that detail makes you like really think about routine and those kind of things. But I also work hard and I get stressed from the stresses of running a business. So again, far from perfect, but I'm thinking about it all the time and trying to get a little bit better every day.

So how many hours of sleep are you trying to get every night?

I'm very good at sleep. I almost always, I get 8 hours and that's 8 hours of actual sleep. And if I don't get them, I catch them up at the weekend. Even if I'm working, I'll nap and make sure I get some good deep sleep. So I'm pretty I'm pretty good. I probably average about 7.5 hours, but I'm pretty, yeah, pretty close on the 8 hours most of the time, like 100% sleep performance.

So you do your sleep catching up at the weekends when you have the chance to do so?

I sleep a fair bit in the week, so I will try either start early with work or work late and not do both. Sometimes I do if I'm in a really busy period, but I try and manage that. And so I try and sleep as consistently as I can in the week, but inevitably there'll be some social things. I might sleep late one or two nights, but at the weekend I'm trying not to do like the kind of the thing where you do all, you know, you sleep barely in the week and then you sleep loads at the weekend. I'm not doing that, but I will, if I get an opportunity, I'll take an extra hour of sleep and lie in a little bit and just catch up. Um, because that deep sleep is pretty much like the most important thing. If you read Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep, just having like deep and REM sleep is so important, that restorative sleep. So I'll do everything I can to maximize it.

And exercise as well is a big thing for you, especially as you said you were quite athletic growing up.

Yeah, definitely. So I try and do something most days. So I try and exercise about 5 5 to 6 times a week is ideal.

Um, I don't always hit that, but I do almost every day, basically every day.

Yeah, in an ideal world, I'd exercise every day. Um, and that's a combination of— when I was younger, it was all running. Um, and I think, like, actually I've learned as you get older that weight training is so important, resistance training. So I've added a lot more of that. I used to be a really skinny, gangly, lanky runner, um, and I've tried to change that a little bit. Um, so doing a lot more weightlifting, but then primarily running. And I love cycling as as well. Um, that's a great way to get lots of kind of zone 2 exercise. So a combination of those things. But yeah, I'm pretty focused on it. I'm doing a half Ironman in, in about 3 weeks, and I've done, yeah, done a few of those lately and racing half marathon next weekend. So I'm always kind of like trying to add sporting events in to give me a bit of a goal to focus on and a challenge. Yeah, exactly. I cycled across the UK a couple of years ago. We did it as part of Dr. Will's, raised some funding and things. So I'm always trying to do those kind of things. I think you have to challenge yourself is pretty— if you just kind of like try and train the same every week, it works for some people and they can be disciplined on it. But for me, I need to sort of have something in the calendar that's kicking me a little bit to get me out of bed.

Let's get back to business a little bit. You shared with me that you've been closing a funding round recently, but we'll get to that in a second. I wanted to go back to what I believe was your first one or your first significant funding round. Back in 2021. And I've heard you saying that you had some big investors ghosting you. So you ended up doing crowdfunding, and you raised over a million through crowdfunding, which is both a big sum and something quite unusual, especially for a pretty new food brand. So I wanted to reflect with you and find out what were the learnings and some of the tricks and maybe some of the secret sauce you learned from crowdfunding at that time? Because a lot of entrepreneurs I know could be contemplating that, not only in the food industry, but in other industries as well.

Yeah, definitely. So we've done a few funding rounds over the course of operating the business. The most significant one, as you mentioned, was 2021. We raised about £1.1 million. Of that, we did a big portion of it from crowdfunding. So around 500% of it came from crowdfunding. And I guess if it's useful for people just to understand how crowdfunding works, typically you raise a combination of money offline, and online. So what you want, what the crowdfunding platforms and the investors on the crowdfunding platforms want to see is that you have some cornerstone investors. So that can either be a fund or something like that, or in our case, some significant angel investors. So once you have some of the money raised, you can then go on to the crowdfunding platform with, say, 30%, 40%, 50% of your, of your target raised offline. And then that enables you to sort of get some traction and, you know, not be going from a standing start because, you know, one of the challenges with crowdfunding is you have quite a lot of people, and some people put in some big tickets, but you get a lot of people who are putting in a small ticket. So you need a lot of them to raise your money. So we did that, we did that crowdfund. It was really successful. I think we did a sort of very from the heart crowdfunding video. The video is quite a big part of your, of your pitch, just talking about what we're trying to do. And essentially that was do our bit to make the nation healthier by having our products which are better for you available across the UK and make them taste so good that people want to switch because they can be the healthiest things in the world. But if nobody wants to buy them again, then that's fairly useless. So it worked very well for us. I think we probably, the crowdfunding boom was a bit before that. So I think probably about 5 years before you had BrewDog and you had a whole bunch of businesses. BrewDog, I say, really pioneered that model. Crazy things with crowdfunding and you're kind of seeing it now.

And now we know they were forced to do so because they were on the verge of bankruptcy. So they had to do that.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know loads about that, but yeah, I mean, they came out recently in a few podcasts that he spoke about that and opened up about what happened at the time.

Interesting. Okay. But I think what they did well was they got kind of real people interested in the business side of things, and that's what crowdfunding did. And you've seen a big movement in the public markets, particularly in the US, of like retail investors starting to move the markets and investing more into companies. So it's something that's definitely still growing. I'd say that was the boom time. We were a little bit after it, but still it was a really, it was a really good crowdfunding market. Some people had some money in their pockets because they hadn't spent any money for the last 18 months. And I think we captured the imagination and we did a really good raise. I'd say crowdfunding is something to consider for businesses now. I'd say it's a trickier market for sure, just because the whole fundraising market is not good at the moment. There's so much macro uncertainty. And in the UK in particular, we've had had a couple of years of, you know, cost of living crisis, and people are, you know, the consumer doesn't have lots of money in their pocket, and that translates to crowdfunding. Because you remember, with crowdfunding, it's normal people, it's not high net worth. So I'd bear that in mind, but it's definitely something to consider. And if you can raise some money from some other sources as well and you want to do crowdfunding, it makes sense. The last thing I'd mention is the best thing about crowdfunding is you get this whole bunch of evangelists who, who come on board with the journey, right? So the best thing we have is we have about 600 investors and they're people that you can update on your progress, but they want the business to succeed. So they're picking up your product. And our investors are fantastic. Like, the number of people who go and buy 10 jars online so that they can drop them around to their neighbors or go to a dinner party and bring 3 or 4 and do a little tasting session— like, that kind of stuff's amazing. And 600 people is not a small number. So if you have those people who are shouting from the hilltops, if every one of them tells 10 friends, and then those 10 friends maybe tell 3 more, and, and the message gets passed, passed on like a game of Chinese whispers. You suddenly start to reach quite a lot of people, and that's kind of the beauty of crowdfunding. So definitely something for brands to consider.

So crowdfunding is, besides raising funds, a great way to bring your biggest fans on board, but also ideally it would be paired with offline fundraising, so to week. So that gives also both the other investors confidence that there's public traction in your product and brand.

Completely, completely. I'd say it's very hard to do a crowdfunding round from a standing start. Um, so I don't know any brand who's raised like 100% of a funding round from, from crowdfunding. So as you say, pair with offline, show the crowdfunding investors that you have traction from, from other perhaps more experienced investors. But it's as much a marketing campaign as it is an investment campaign.

And what are some of the key learnings you had from dealing with both angel and offline investors? In a way, public crowdfunding is a bit more transparent. You said the video makes a big difference or the biggest difference. But how do you adapt your pitch to, in a way, institutional investors?

Yeah, definitely. So I think with crowdfunding, it's, it's very intense. So talk about that first. It's typically a 2-3 week campaign where you raise the money. So you do a bit of a pre-launch kind of thing. So you send out a bit of a teaser and then people can opt in and essentially say, yes, I want to receive some updates via email if you're signed up to these crowdfunding platforms. And they can express what they might be interested in investing. So you can get a bit of a sense of, okay, Hey, if this goes well, there might be this much money on the table. And then you do the campaign, which is 2-3 weeks. You have your pitch deck, you have some financials that people can request if they want sort of further information. And then you have like— they— the nice thing is everything is filled in in a certain way. So they have a platform that enables investors to get the same standardized information every single time. So once you've uploaded those things, some of the bigger investors might ask a couple of questions, 10-minute call, that kind of thing. But generally Everything is just done through that platform. And once you've uploaded the stuff, people will start making their investments without having to do much more. With, uh, you know, angel investors and, and, and more professional investors, there's no specific process in place. So there's a fairly well-trodden path in terms of sending a deck, sending follow-up information, um, due diligence of its larger investors, that kind of thing. But it's very much you have to sort of drive the process yourself. You don't have the, um, you don't have the process set out in the way that you do with a crowdfunding campaign. So you very much have to do that yourself, set the deadlines,, you know, push your investors to stick to those deadlines. Yes, it's still same principles, you know, momentum campaign, keep your investors updated, tell people that might be interested that you're going to be raising in a few months, update them on the traction coming up for that moment, you want to sort of like line these people up, you don't want it to be all cold outreach, you want to sort of ideally by the time you get to a funding round, if you can have updated these people and already made some contact, that people say the best time to raise money is when you're not raising. And it's true. Like outside of fundraising, if you can just be networking, meet these people, And then, you know, can you add them to your update list, add them to your quarterly updates? And maybe it's a slightly redacted version, you're not giving them anything sensitive, but you can just give them a bit of an update on how the business is doing, any new listings you've won, new products, send them some samples. Like the biggest weapon you have as a food and drink business is hopefully you make a damn good product that you love, right? Get that in front of people, let them try it, let them, you know, get excited about it. And that's, that's what they can fall in love with. So yeah, raise when you're not raising. And then I'd say, yeah, try and build the momentum, build it over time. Keep the conversation going, gently sort of feed out the information. And then, and then you have the more formal process when you're actually, when you get to fundraising, essentially sending a deck, having some conversations, sending up any sort of follow-up information that's requested.

So you said having a good product is important and you've explained how hard you worked at improving and developing the product and the line of products. But you also said earlier that marketing and sales are equally as important. Important because you can't have one without the other. And from what I've seen in my research about Dr. Will's social media, and particularly video, you deployed it to grow the brand and awareness and in a way, I would say in a campaigning manner in terms of deploying the health aspect and the mission behind Dr. What are your learnings from that? Because where I'm getting to is how social media has changed, especially in the last 2, 3 years, compared to the reach and virality you could get organically in the early years when you started Dr. Will's as well.

Yeah, definitely. So taking the first point, so sales, marketing, and product are the key, probably the 3 key ingredients, I'd say, for food and drink. And then obviously there's bits that sit underneath it. So you need to have a good supply chain operations and finance, but essentially those are the 3 things: sales, marketing, product. And I'd say the product underpins all of them. So if you don't have a good product, you can get— you can only get so far because you'll always be limited by repeat rate. Your product has to be fantastic. And I think most small food and drink businesses are obsessed over it. So we're always trying to find how can we make our product 1% better? How can we make it taste a bit better? Can we improve the nutritional profile? Can we improve the packaging? Can we improve the standout on with some of the callouts we're making or the boxes that sits in, like constantly iterate those things because your product sits under everything and how well your distribution, sales, and your marketing works depends, you know, over time is a function of your product. So product number one, and then I'd say sales and marketing are equally important because you can have the best product in the world. If you don't have any distribution for it, whether that's D2C online or more like us, which is working with the retailers, then you're limited because you might have a great product, but if nobody can, can buy it, then, um, then that's a waste of time. So you need to have sales, you need to have distribution. And then marketing is communication. So marketing is how you— how do you bring it to life? You have this fantastic product, but how do we explain to a consumer what it is, why they should buy it? Uh, I guess we talk about that because that's the second part of the question. We've always just tried to be down to earth and just honest with people, um, as much as we can be. So yes, we absolutely take really nice foodie photos and put them on Instagram showing people how to use our product. Absolutely, that's important, and we always will do it. We're trying to, you know, give people inspiration and do better on that. And, you know, how can you elevate a normal meal by using condiments, by, you know, drizzling some sriracha over the top or adding a great ketchup to a burger, um, that kind of thing. So we will always do that kind of stuff, the core thing. But what we do differently, I'd say, is we're on TikTok all the time, and it's It's from me personally rather than the brand, which is probably one of the interesting things. So people buy from people, particularly Gen Z. They want to— they don't want to be sold to by a brand, but they want to like understand and they want to buy from people. So it's my personal profile. And every single day I post something and it's normally us in store talking about what we see people like. And it's just that that's a sort of slightly different angle. And I spend a lot of time doing that because like after this, I'll be going down to Tesco. We've got some some extra space, some off-shelf distribution on our Sriracha Mayo. So I'll be going down and talking about that and how did we get it, what does it mean, what sales uplift might we see. And people love it because people go into supermarkets, they spend, you know, everybody goes to a supermarket probably at least once a week, but they have no idea generally how the food got there, what it means, why is it on promo, like all this kind of stuff. People don't understand what goes behind it. And I didn't think people would be very interested in this stuff, but then we started doing it and people loved it. So yeah, we try and do as much as we can and just talk to people people about what it's like to run a brand, the challenges and like warts and all. And people seem to respond to that kind of content. And that's something that big brands can't do. You know, you're not going to get Mr. Unilever standing face to camera walking down supermarket aisles, like it's just not going to happen.

You won't get necessarily Mr. Will either, or Dr. Will, but you will get Liam. And I think you've put it yourself that way as well. I was hesitant to say it before, but I think we are basically looking at personal branding. In terms of marketing Dr. Wills, even though you as the co-founder and the CEO of the business rather than the actual name behind the product. But also speaking with other founders, that could also be a pitfall in some situations when your job evolves so much that you don't have the time and the dedication able to do that, but you're not that point yet, are you?

No, I think it's always a struggle because you're doing everything. It's all— but what I've realized is it's so important. And I think previously it was like, oh yeah, we need to make a video here and there, whereas like now it's like one of the key priorities is what's the content plan for the week. And I'm not naturally a marketing person. Like, it's, it's the area of the business that I'd say when we started was probably weakest for me, for sure. But it's changed a lot over the years, and I'm not a classically trained marketer, that's for sure. But it's— I've realized the value of it is so important. And it's, you know, it all drives Dr. Wills, but people respond to that. And the reach we can get— you talked about organic versus paid on Instagram. We have loads of followers. We have, I think, 35-ish thousand followers, something like that. But the number of people, unless you pay— and we don't typically, like, we do some ads for sure, but we're not promoting every single post— um, the number of people that your post reaches is a small fraction, 1% if you're lucky, of those followers. Whereas TikTok, very different. If you have a video and it just, for some reason, the algorithm likes it, it sort of, it works for the audience and people like it, they go viral. Like we had a video last week, 280,000 views, just me in a supermarket talking about the product on shelf. Very simple stuff, but people love it. And like the number of people who are in the comments saying, I'm going to pick up your product, where can I get it around me? And I'm just like DMing these guys or replying in the comments. And it's awesome. People like, oh, I had said, you know, I like this, or I saw your product, they put it backwards on the shelf in this store, send me some pictures, all this kind of stuff. I get loads of feedback there and then. We get store managers from stores saying, oh yeah, like, had a box, some of the boxes were falling apart, have you done anything about it? Yes, we've just launched new boxes, they'll be in on this day, let me know what you think. And he's come back to me and said, they're fantastic now, you've like reinforced and they're really good, all that kind of stuff. So we get all these great interactions with consumers through social media, and I love it. And it's like, TikTok's been brilliant for us. It like just lets us— what you want to do as a brand is, is you want to be as close to the consumer you can and how can you reduce those barriers. And the traditional stuff is great, like email and all of that sort of stuff. But social media is great. It's real time. Like I was, I was on just responding to comments from a customer this morning and he was liking and replying to them in like 1 minute and it was great. And I was just going back and forth and I was like, this is, this is really, really cool. It's kind of customer service from a founder, but it's, it just enables you to get closer and get faster insight than, than we ever could in, in the sort of pre-social media days.

You said that TikTok now is the one that gives you the most organic reach and we'll see how this conversation ages. But from that perspective, both millennials, and we remember Facebook used to be like that, and it used to give you loads of organic reach until it became a juggernaut and started also only spreading content to a much, much smaller amount of people. Then Instagram went through the same cycle, and now TikTok, which is rivaling both of them, is offering this viral and huge growth. So would you say it's a case of just not necessarily focusing on one platform, but making sure that you focus on whichever platform is next and offers you the best reach from a marketing and advertising point of view?

Yeah, definitely. I think what you have to do is, I think I always say to people, you can give advice, and it's very popular to give people advice that is really binary, right? Right? Do this, don't do that. But the reality is, is often somewhere in the middle. And I think what you don't want to do is be across 12 social media platforms because it's just like the chances of you, particularly with a small team, doing it really well is, is very low, right? You're trying to do Pinterest and all of these kind of like slightly— slightly— you might do incredible job, right? I have no idea. But it's just, it's unlikely that you're able to do all of these channels really well. But you do need to pick 2, 3, 4 channels that are important to you. For us, it's Instagram and TikTok primarily, uh, uh, because of the vertical video. Yeah, exactly, the vertical video. And what we do see actually is what I think something that's interesting is, yeah, you probably don't want to completely back one horse, um, and, and be in trouble if something changes with the algorithm. We saw it with TikTok, right? Like when there was the, the US ban and all that kind of stuff. Didn't last very long, but that could have been a bit of a nightmare. Particularly if other countries followed suit. So you are, yeah, you probably want to back a couple of horses.

Well, it's still in the works. It's not a settled matter.

Completely, completely. So we don't know. But I think what's interesting is Instagram has responded to TikTok in a way because like with Reels, you can now get sort of pretty good viral reach from free Reels again. So you've seen sort of because people have gone back to the, you know, organic posting driving traction, we now do pretty well on Instagram. We get some Reels that do half a million and all this kind of stuff. So it's a dual-prong strategy, definitely with both of those. But TikTok works really well. And I think for us it's just trying to, trying to build the biggest community we can across those platforms and just figure out what works on each and just do as much of it as we can. Because as a brand, it's free primarily. Like, yes, you can sponsor things and you can pay ads, but if you can make it work on organic content, you can reach so many people. Like, we reached— my personal TikTok reached half a million people, um, half a million people last month, and that was free, right? Like, people will be trying to sell me advertising billboards and all this kind of stuff. Stuff with reach for less than that that will cost you £50k, money that you just can't afford as a small brand. So it's, it's important to do it, to do it really well.

So what would you say then are your lessons from working with big retailers? You mentioned Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, basically the biggest supermarkets in the UK, but also working against some of the biggest brands. And when we're talking mayo, we're obviously talking Helmans, when we're talking ketchup, we're obviously talking Heinz. So there's some really, really big names that you're going up against, or at least carving some market share from theirs. Definitely.

So I'd say if you talk retailers first, probably the biggest— well, some of the biggest learnings are it's a relationship game. You're often— your fate is in the hands of a very small number of people, right? It's a few people at the big retailers who—

those would be the buyers, right? Right?

Yeah, exactly. The buyers and the team around the buyer. So build the best relationship you can with them, um, and, and understand what they need, what are their KPIs, what are they trying to do, and then figure out how you can fit with that. Are they trying to drive value? Are they trying to drive incremental purchase and volume or cross-shop? Whatever it is, like, understand those things, and then you can, you know, speak their language and have a partnership. So I'd say that's key with working with the retailers. I think do the basics well. So make sure you obviously have a great product, like make your product as, as great as you possibly can. That's going to help all your numbers, going to help you repeat, make sure it looks fantastic on shelf. Like you can— I can't control whether you go away and watch my TikTok videos or whatever, but what I can control is at some point you'll probably be in Tesco or Waitrose or Co-op in the condiments aisle and you'll see my product. So when the product's there, what can we do to make sure that it looks fantastic every time, the packaging is clear, you can see the Great Taste Award, you can see it's made with natural ingredients. Like, how can I make that come across as clearly as possible to the consumer? So focus on those basics. And then, you know, when you work with big retailers, you can't screw it up. So make sure that you invest in supply chain, make sure you have, you know, stock on hand, you're forecasting with them so you know that if you have a promotion coming up, you're making the stock and you, and you're prepared and you're ready to supply them with more and have those, you know, frequent contact. And like, we're speaking to them every day to make sure we get stuff right. Right? So that's the retailers. I'd say with the big brands, I think there's stuff that they can do that you can't do, and there's the vice versa thing, right? Stuff that we can do that they can't do. They have so much more money than we have, and they'll be able to pay for space, pay for promotions, pay for end of aisle, like all this kind of stuff that you can't get. But we offer something very different to the retailers, and we can still do a great job. We can service them well. We can provide everything that the, the big, the big brands do, but we can be reactive. So if they're looking at, you know, launching stuff in 6 months or whatever, you can be a little bit more responsive to that if you know that there's a category need. Bear with us, we might have something for you. And so you can be a bit more responsive, a bit different. And in terms of competing with the big guys, the thing that they can't do is they don't have the startup kind of mentality. They don't have the love of the brand that you do. So we can authentically phone in front of your face, face to camera, make these videos that work really well for us. And people sort of respond to just like, guy from London trying to build a ketchup business alongside a few great people, friends. And people respond to that story, whereas like big brands don't really have that story. The founding story is a few hundred years ago, and the business has been like bought and sold 10 times since then. So they don't have that. And then also like, yeah, while they have all the money in the world, they're not hacky in the way that they can do like viral content and this kind of stuff. So we can use online. Online levels the playing field a lot. Yes, they can spend a lot of money on ads, but you can like, you can, they can't organically reach the people we can. So figure out those things you can do and, and, you know, make the most of it. And then just, you know, beg, borrow, steal. You have to as a, as a, as a small brand. So figure out your mate— I don't know if you've got a sports product, your mate runs a 10K race or something like that. Give your products out to everyone at the finish line. Just like, what can you do? Like, what partnership can you do because of who you are that other people can't? Do a partnership with another brand who has a similar consumer base, like give them some free product that they can stick in their boxes every time they send out an online order because they do loads of online volume, but you're a retail brand. You know, little things like that. Just do the things that the big guys can't.

Coming back to Foundr you mentioned that you have not one, but two co-founders. And I'm curious, what are the dynamics, the responsibility split, and how has that evolved over time?

Yeah, changed a lot over time. In the early days, it was essentially three of us just covering every base. So it was only us in the team. We'd have a few freelancers or interns and people that could like help with very specific things. Things. Um, so in the early days, I did operations and finance. Will was doing all the kind of like marketing, brand building stuff, stuff that weirdly I do a lot more of now, but doing very much like face of the brand, all that kind of stuff. And then Josh was doing sales. So Josh was speaking to all the retailers, the wholesalers, the independents, that kind of thing. So that was kind of our split in the early days, and then it's evolved over time for sure. I've always been full-time in the business. Will is a medical doctor, so he's gone sort of in and out. He did a PhD where— which enabled him to like be pretty close to full-time on the business because he was doing the PhD part-time alongside. So now he's back to being a doctor, so he's focused more there. And then Josh has a couple of other businesses as well. So things have evolved over time. Now I'm the one who's driving the business forward. And then we've like— the big difference is we've hired a specialist team. So we've hired some senior people, so someone to lead on sales, someone to lead on operations and product, and then a couple of, uh, a couple of people who support them. And then we've got some great freelancers as well that help us with opening doors and other areas social media, graphics, that kind of stuff. So we've changed a lot over time. I'd say, yeah, the difference is we now have a, like a rockstar team that we just couldn't afford in the early days. It was just so we would do everything between us, whereas now we've been able to hire experts in, in, in each other.

How big is your team now?

Small. So 5 full-time and then like a couple part-time and then a few freelancers.

And how did you— often do you stay in touch with your co-founders then to, to stay aligned? On the core mission, the brand, the product, and its development?

Yeah, all the time. So we're always, we're always talking. Will in particular, I'm speaking to almost every day really. And then Will's dad is still our finance director, so he's been involved since day one. And I actually speak to him every day and probably actually the most out of the founders. And he's a director of the business as well, so I speak to him probably the most because we're communicating on like the day-to-day stuff. And then with Will, we're always sort of talking back and forth outside of when he's in, in, when he's like in surgery. So yeah, always in touch with him.

Now, you told me about some of your habits and routines that keep you grounded. So I'll brush past that. But you also mentioned how in your investment banking days, you were working long, hard hours all the time. But also, I know from my experience twice over that building a business is also just as demanding and requires many other sacrifices. So my question for you, Liam, is what were some of the biggest sacrifices you had to make to be where you are today with Dr. Wills?

Yeah, good question. You definitely sacrifice your free and personal time. Yeah, in investment banking for sure. I didn't plan anything on weeknights. Weekends, nothing at all. So I just, I just knew that I'd let people down if I did anything Monday to Thursday. So all my socializing would be Friday to Sunday, or with people who also worked in Canary Wharf, we grabbed lunch or something. Quite a lot of sacrifice there. I'd say on the Dr. Will side, you sacrifice a lot. I think one thing that you don't think about when you start a business is how long you'll be doing it for. So you do a job and you get tired of it, you're like, ah, I'll quit, move on to the next one kind of You can't really do that with your startup or your own business. No, and you don't think like this is probably going to be a 10-year project or something when you start, and that's the reality of it. So yeah, you, you lock yourself into something. I probably would have moved abroad and tried working, tried working abroad if I, you know, if I wasn't running a business in the UK, for example. So you still like to do that at some point, but you put that on hold and it's worth it because there's nothing better than building this and seeing your products on the shelves and trying to turn yourself into a up a challenger brand that's going to be on the shelves against all of these guys and doing a real, real serious business. And I love building that. But you definitely make sacrifices in your personal life. I'd say you take a sacrifice on salary and things like that for sure. You're always paid below market rate, well below market rate as a founder pretty much until you get to a point where you're, you know, the business is really humming along. But yeah, sacrifices is everywhere. I think You absolutely— I think I'm— it's a marathon, not a sprint. So I'm very much trying to not sacrifice health, um, so trying to make sure that I, you know, stay healthy and sleep and all this kind of stuff. But there are times when you have to go quite deep, deeper than you would in a, in a, in a normal job, and you do have to, you know, and for longer. For longer, yeah, exactly. And it's stressful as well. Like, there's no, you know, you absolutely try and mitigate it, and we talked about routines earlier, and I do what I can there, but I'm definitely more stressed than I would be in a normal job. But I think the upsides overall outweigh that. I get to work with a great team every day. Make products that taste fantastic. And, you know, you see people sending you pictures and just saying how much they love them and products have changed their life and all that kind of stuff. Diabetics, you can have ketchup again. Like, all this kind of stuff, like, makes it, makes it worth doing. And I know that I'm building something that's pretty meaningful. So, you know, net-net is positive, but that doesn't mean that there's not a ton of sacrifices that you make.

Now, as we kind of like wrap, wrap up, Liam, I wanted to ask you, are there any particular books books or business books that inspired you and helped you along the way in business? And also if there are any role models that you keep in mind when you keep on developing Dr. Will?

Yeah, definitely. Books-wise, I wouldn't say— I read all sorts of things, like long and short form. I think what I enjoy reading is like biographies and stories. Um, I listen to a lot of podcasts, so just hear founding stories for different businesses. So I wouldn't say there's one single book that is the book that inspires me, but I'd say, yeah, I think it's probably just a combination of lots of like here, like lots of fan stories. I enjoyed the book of like Zappos, Tony Hsieh, H-S-I-E-H, I think it is. I'm probably spelled that wrong, but that was a great book. And it's like, he's just like the most kind of customer obsessed person I've ever like come across. And he sold that business to Amazon, which is also entirely customer obsessed. So I love that book. It's like, um, I try to remember the name— Delivering Happiness, I think, is the name of the book, or is the strapline of the book. Um, so that's like probably the one I can remember. Um, Shoe Dog—

I'll make sure I include it in the show notes.

Yeah, that'd be good because I probably butchered the title. Shoe Dog is probably the other one I talk about. So that's Nike. Yeah, I'd say those are probably the two sort of like foundry story ones that, uh, that, yeah, I look up to the most. I think, yeah, those, and I think the Shoe Dog story is fascinating because it's, you know, it's about Nike and building of the brand and all the origin story. But you also see that they're growing so fast, they're just constantly running out of money. And you can like really relate to that as a startup founder. It's like, things are going really well, but we've got to raise more money. And like you learn how the working capital cycle works. And it's a great story about brand and all of the kind of the exciting stuff, but it's also a really, really kind of important story around the boring business realities that you face when you're, when you're growing a business. So I'd say those from that point of view. In terms of role models, I think a really good network of like people doing what I'm doing. So while there isn't like a particular, um, a particular role model like in food and drink, there's just— I have a great founder network and that helps me. But yeah, and then there's, yeah, lots of business people I look up to.

But, um, yeah, in this case then, Liam, my final question My question for you would be, if you would be able to write a letter to 25-year-old Liam, who was just starting with two other people, brand new condiment, healthy condiment company, what would you write to yourself? What would be the advice to your younger self you would give right now? Now, almost 10 years later?

I think I'd tell myself to hang in there and that things will get better. Because I think like in the early days, you're like, are we ever gonna be able to sell any of this stuff? Like, it feels like you're rolling a, you know, rolling a boulder up a mountain competing against these big brands. But actually, you can see in the sales data now, like, things are going really well. And we're growing fast. And we're starting to, you know, make a bit of a dent in the category. So I think I would tell myself that and let myself know that that's going to come if I just keep battering away because your belief starts to get tested a bit in those early days. And you just feel like it's just such a long journey from like where you are to where you need to get to. So I'd remind myself of that. And I'd probably also tell myself sort of like not to panic. This is going to take some time. I tell myself that, you know, it's probably going to be a 10-year project and sort of know that at the outset would be, would be because I think, yeah, often you're sort of pairing yourself to people around you and what are they doing and moving jobs every couple of years and you feel like, you know, you're on a very different path as an entrepreneur, but I'd probably remind myself of the progress that we have made now that I didn't know we were going to make when I was 25.

Well, that's something that I've heard from other founders. Keep going and don't give up. So I think that's a great point to wrap up our conversation today. Liam, thank you so much for coming on Millennial Masters and sharing your journey so for your time so far and your learning so far. And I can't wait to see what Dr. Wills will do next.

Thank you very much, Daniel Ionescu. It's been a pleasure to be on it. Thank you for having me.

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