The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E48: Jamie Laing & Ed Williams - The Sweet Success

Episode Date: February 20, 2020

In this week's episode of The Diary of a CEO, I chat to Jamie Laing and Ed Williams, the co-founders of Candy Kittens - the fastest growing confectionary brand in the UK. Our conversation delved into battling the misconceptions of family wealth,...

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Candy kittens. I wonder what you think I'm talking about when I say those two words. And I'm guessing due to the success of this business, a lot of you will actually already know. It's one of the fastest growing confectionery brands in the UK and it was started by reality TV star Jamie Lang with his business partner Ed Williams in 2012. It kind of begs the question, what adult would start a candy brand at the age of 20 something? But these guys have absolutely smashed it. They're selling a bag of sweets every couple of seconds. They've sold millions and millions and millions of bags of candy, generating tens of millions in revenue over the last couple of years. And their brand is an absolute juggernaut. The momentum is absolutely crazy. And these two guys, Jamie and Ed,

are the perfect pairing. If you've ever wondered what your perfect business partner would be, if you ever thought what the perfect complementary piece of the jigsaw puzzle that you might be missing, these guys have found that in each other. One of them is incredibly overly stimulated and excited and Ed, on the other hand, is calm. He's pragmatic. He's very, very practical. My conversation with them was funny. It was informative. It was real. It was everything that this podcast has always been. And I can't wait for you to hear it. So without further ado, this is the Diary of a CEO and I'm Stephen Bartlett. I hope nobody is listening. But if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Ed, Jamie, I alluded to the fact that I'd known Candy Kittens sometime before we started recording.

And here's how. So I don't know what year it was. It was a couple of years ago. I was on Cedars. I was a broke young man, entrepreneurial, an investor. And I was scrolling down Cedars and I saw Candy Kittens and I was so, so compelled by the story the story i saw you on there i looked into the brand a little bit more i'm not talking shit here it was probably the closest i've ever come on cedars to investing in something and so i've seen it grow and grow and grow since then every time i get on a virgin flight now from new york to london which i do all the bloody time it's the thing that i'm eating. I'm eating like the watermelon ones. And at the end of the flight, you come to my chair

and it's just all these fucking wrappers. Like the candy. Amazing. Yeah. So that's my sort of historical connection to the brand. I love the fact that, because when you said,

you said I was broke, but I was looking to invest. And I was like, how is that not working? It just allows you to, right? Yeah. You've got to click a couple of buttons and pretend you've got

a little bit of excess income and you can, bob's your uncle so did you ever invest in anything on cd i've i never did and i've invested off cedars but i was looking for a platform like that i was obsessed with dragon's den and it was one of those platforms that would allow me to invest a little bit and feel like an investor and there was two ones that i really remember one of them was like some indoor beach whatever and the other was candy kittens that felt the most solid at the time yeah so i guess my my first question is how did you get there how did you get to that point what's the the context of you know i know you guys met in a pub one day and all those things but why did you choose cedars as a platform to raise investment versus all the other options out there

it's a good question actually i think that um we'd reached a point where we thought, okay, to get to that next level. And I think at this stage, we were probably... We were still young. A couple years in there, we'd kind of gone through family and friends, round of investment, pulled together enough money to kind of get the business going. Can I ask you a question on that? Yeah. I've always been too scared to raise money from anybody that i know and maybe that's maybe that's a sign that

i don't back myself but the thought of raising money from friends and family terrifies me i think that well i think to be honest this is jamie and i have always been sort of we're very different people but we bring completely different things and one thing that jamie's always been amazing at is finding money. So he's like a Jack Russell for money. He can go and sniff it out and just go and find the people and the right friends. And I think that as long as you're doing it

in a way that everybody's happy and everybody's upfront and transparent from the beginning, that actually, look, we're going into a point here where it could go wrong. I think it can work, but what do you think? But also, I think there's two things to this as well, because firstly, we were quite young.

We didn't really understand how important cash was for a business. And so we were looking at the easiest place to get it. We didn't realise that you... We did, but we didn't realise the concept of you could go pretty much to other people and other people would do that we kind of well what's the easiest place to get money okay friends and family and that's why we'll do it and I think also for for I think it's important to understand that there's a sort of big misconception that I have money growing on trees everywhere and then I have this bank balance from McVitie's I've never seen that I and

everyone always writes things saying that oh he's heir to McVitie's. I've never seen that. I mean, and everyone always writes things saying that, oh, he's heir to McVitie's. I'm not. I don't know where that money is. But it is true. Have you seen that Lewis Capaldi video where he's talking about he found his net worth of 10 million on Google?

Oh, yeah, yeah. He's still got the New York wallpaper in his bedroom. Have you seen that video? No, he's hilarious. Yeah, he's a genius. But it's true. And people throw numbers around with all different things. And actually, you's a genius but it's true and people throw numbers around with all different things and actually um you know most of it's not true but uh you know i

think that i've always said this it's you know in terms of business you cash is so important it's oxygen you need it to make you breathe and for us we need the cash and i think that it's like a riddle everyone has money in their pockets just finding a way of getting the money from them into your pockets if you have a great idea, if you're passionate, most people buy into the individual as you know, they're not really buying into the business unless it's something like, okay, that's a great thing. But when you're meeting someone, you kind of go, okay, it's this person. Do I like this person? Are they passionate? Do you think they got drive? Do you think they're going to achieve what they want to achieve? And then you kind of invest in

them. You know, you can create a great business, but if you have a wrong team surrounding it, it's probably going to fail. But if you have a great team and a mediocre business, more chance of it succeeding. So it's about going to different individuals and persuading them, approving to them and showing that you really have a belief that your brand or business is going to achieve something great. And I think that's what we were doing with Candy Kittens because it was so authentic and real to us we found it quite um not easy at all but we found it um easier to meet people who were potential investors um but cedars for us was a platform because it was exciting it was fun we could make a big show about it um we were new publicity publicity i think also at the time crowdfunding itself was new yeah it was a real buzz around it so everybody that you spoke to that was talking about raising money or doing

these things was doing it through crowdfunding so we i guess we we also slight kind of human sheep mentality we were like okay well we want a bit of that we want to go in and get involved in that as well um did it work yeah that's another story another story but it was actually it was quite a good thing i think from a pr and kind of hype perspective and i think that's important to to say is that it didn't work for us um why because we approached it in the wrong way we we believed um that because we had a profile in myself because the brand had a profile um because we had 80 000 people following us on social media with the brand um we thought that people were going to invest and we thought that was gonna that that amount of people was going

to turn into cash and it just doesn't work that way as you know it really doesn't um and we were mistaken i think with there's lots of i think uh crowdfunding is a great um place for a lot of different people but for some people it isn't because you know that you you kind of got to get investors before you got to get people interested before you've got to do all these different things and we did none of that work we just thought okay fine we're going to put candy kittens on the website and everyone's going to invest and it didn't work out that way for us. I mean, you hear about all these kind of big success stories where people fund in 30 minutes.

Yeah. But actually the reality is that a lot of them are doing a huge amount of groundwork beforehand. So we didn't really, we were too naive to that and actually didn't really line up any investment beforehand. We did a bit because Cedar's kind of explained that that's sort of a good tip would be to do this and we had a bit but not enough.

And so how did that play out for you to conclude the Cedar story? How much did you raise? So what actually happened which was again just another example of one of the hundred times in our lives where we've been just incredibly lucky. We hit a point where we were about a week out and it looked like we probably were about 80% funded, but we didn't think we were going to just tip over and get that extra 20, 25%. So we spoke to our existing shareholders, our first investors. And one of them said, oh, well, if these 150 people have backed you and are really interested maybe I've missed something why don't I just put all the money in myself and we were okay well

wish you'd said that six months ago but let's go for it and he actually essentially put all the money in himself and then we had a group of about 20-25 people that had invested or pledged on Cedars over five grand I think it was so in order to kind of honor their commitment to us and honor their their faith they showed in the brand we said okay well you guys can still come in at that valuation we'll kind of honor that bought them in um and then everybody that invested less we kind of politely declined and sent them a bag of sweets and said thank you very much and kind of kept them involved in the journey but But yeah. I'm super intrigued there, Jamie, about the misconceptions thing. Yeah.

Because it's got to be the case that that misconception follows you around, right? Yeah. And I also noticed you were very quick to address that particular point. So I wanted you to give me context as to what that's like as an entrepreneur, you know, because the more successful you get,

and this is just me guessing from a very, because I've never had to sort of carry that misconception around with me because of the mcvitties thing um the more success you get the more people because of the way that humans are like to discredit or discount your success because in some respects will make them feel good about themselves or if they can take the credit off you and mitigate the hard work that you've done and and try and take that away from you then it shines a better light on themselves in some respect the thought that you might have worked really really hard and done something really really good is something that makes others feel inadequate to some degree yeah that's totally it and i suppose if i'm totally honest it's probably a defensive thing now

because um you know i i think that that is it the sort of main question when ed and i go and do different talks and chats and all these different things the question that comes out every single time so well you had a lot of money so surely your family helped you with that i said well no that's not the case um and it's it's it's probably a um it's probably a defensive thing for myself but also it's important to know that um i we didn't come from a place from that situation so people listening to this podcast or listening to our talks or whatever it is know that it is possible to achieve those things even coming from a a completely normal place in a sense um but i think yeah it is tough because

i think life in life you want to be kind of proud of what you've achieved and proud of what you're doing and all those different things and so when people try and um give excuses or say for the reason well this is why you've achieved what you achieved you kind of want to hit them back with something else a lot of the time and so that's probably what i do but i don't i you know i i mean i joined a reality tv show i mean the the amount of shit that i got given you know i'm used to it i'm totally i'm used to it but i think totally, I'm used to it. But I think it's more, for some reason, you have more, there's a lot of pride we have with our business and we have a lot of passion towards it.

And Ed and I were 21, 22 years old. You started as a young entrepreneur. You know how hard is the beginning for people to take you seriously, for anyone to take you seriously. Even our parents didn't believe that we were going to set up a sweet company. And Ed and I, to our sort of credit, have built this company up from the ground up,

you know, nearly losing it a million times and going through lots of different struggles like every single person does. And so you want to be proud of that because you kind of go, well, this is what we've done and this is what we've achieved. And we started with £3,000 in the bank. We didn't start with a million or whatever it was. And so I probably counter it every single time for two reasons going back to your question is firstly because i want people to realize that anything is kind of possible if you put your mind to it

you don't have to be in a certain situation to raise capital or to build a business you don't have to be wealthy and anyone can do it if you really put the hard work in and secondly we're proud of candy kittens and uh we built it ourselves and i don't want other people to believe differently because why would i and then also as you said then they can't they won't see that path as being achievable for themselves that's it you want you want to kind of make the path and i think you know in, I think what is really important, I think that success, growing up, I always thought that if you made a lot of money and you had this and had that, that was going to equal success. And what I've realized now is that that is totally not success. That is actually having a purpose and that it links to success. If you have a purpose in life, you feel very successful because you wake up every day and you want to achieve and do something um and for us it's we feel incredibly successful every single day because we get to do something that we want to do all the time um and we really encourage the younger generation to go out there and do the same thing because freaking

out people now are told you have to go into this job or into this industry to to achieve this you know we always talk about this at schools you're told you have to pass this exam to get to this university and if you get to this university you get this degree that means you're going to reach here it's totally false um you know going out there and doing something that you really want to do and want to achieve that is way more fulfilling and way better than anything else you know you dropped out of university and look where you are now. And it was because you just said, oh, screw this. I kind of want to go and do what I want to do. And we really want other people in this world to go.

It doesn't matter what background, from what gender you are, whoever you are, you can go and do it if you put your mind to it. And here's me playing devil's advocate. And this is a question for both of you. Yeah. And I guess the reason I asked this question is because I think as much as we, and i think i literally posted about this on my

linkedin yesterday as much as entrepreneurs we did it ourselves and the reason my one of my first questions to you was about misconceptions so it's interesting that you raised it before i asked the question the reason i my first question was about misconceptions is i know that even if you come from say say you did I know that it's a great great whatever yeah even if you did come from a wealthy background it's not a precursor for success in your own life and I've got so in fact my most successful friends typically aren't the ones that go on to do great things because they if they had it handed to them and it's often my friends that were deprived of their parents or whatever their parents resources that end up going and building a life for themselves umar kamani is a great example with pretty little thing who's who's coming on to do this this podcast live in a couple of weeks

time he's he he's had the credit robbed from him because his dad's the billionaire founder of boohoo but i've been there with him and i know that his journey and so i even as an it's a shame that isn't it i mean we had somebody on our podcast it's a tremendous shame jamie and i've got our own podcast we had somebody on a few weeks ago and i had a call the day before from their uh her pr manager and she said can we just make sure we whatever we do do not talk about school life or early life because she had quite a privilege went to a really nice boarding school blah blah blah and she doesn't want to talk about that because it always discredits what she's gone on to achieve sure and it's just kind of a weird thing that people actually have that because with umar he is he is

the most obsessive hard-working it's it's it's he's obsessive to the point where you one might diagnose as a bit of an illness and, and, and to think, and to have watched him for five years where he's a bit of a client of mine, but he's become a very, very close friend to watch what the sacrifice he's gone to. And to hear everybody in the city and globally just say,

oh, well, his dad's a billionaire. It feels like a massive injustice. Yeah. And I've had no, you know, right now.

And with, with my team and stuff, they'll ask me, what's, what's he more like? And I'll say, I'll give'll give you i'll be honest with you he's a bit of a genius he'll never be given that credit yeah yeah and that's why but how does he feel about that is that um he he realized that was the case and i think it did impact him early on but now he's so comfortable because he's gone so far and so many people have been around him to see that he is the one that's taking the brand there that he's getting more and more relaxed with it um but that's why the first question to you was because i didn't think it that was the case yeah but i think also it's it's just

you know that's the sort of cross you bear but also i really think it's important not to um not to to forget about where you came from your roots and. And, you know, I went to a private school. I went to a boarding school from the age of eight years old. And this was my question about self-awareness was, what are the privileges that you think you've had in your lives that have put you here? Because they might not be financial privileges, but they could be educated, could be good parents.

Yeah, I mean, we talk about this a bit, but I think actually for both of us, probably, speaking for both of us, probably speaking for both of us, is that our parents have always let us, have given us the confidence to go and do what we want to do and have never, ever held us back. Yes, when we started the business, they said, sweet company, you're mad.

What are you thinking about? But ultimately they believed in us and said, actually, go on then. If you think you can do it go and show us and i think that's probably the the greatest kind of gift that definitely i was given is the fact that our parents believed in us and and kind of encouraged us to go and achieve anything um i was never told that i wasn't good enough or i couldn't go and speak to that person or go and do that thing I would go and

be confident to have a conversation with anybody from any background any walk of life and and I think my parents gave me that and that's probably for me um the the biggest asset I think to to do what I've done yeah I think that's exactly it I think the biggest asset um I think I think what growing up right you know like i said i went to sort of private school and things like that and i don't think you're educated better i don't think that um you um have a lot there are lots of things that are positive about going to a boarding school private educated school there are lots of negative things as well but the biggest positive for me was you you you're given confidence you're you're told to stand up in front of the whole school

and give a talk or you're told to read a poem out and that inner confidence that it puts within you is so vital in life the reason why a lot of people don't go out there and achieve what they want to achieve is because they lack confidence they're scared about failing they're scared about not achieving something they're worried what people will think of them and i think um it's really important from an early age to have confidence because then you can believe in yourself that you can go and achieve stuff and for ed and i at the very beginning you know we wanted to go and set up a sweet company right we had no idea how to make sweets we had no idea where to get them from we had no idea what we were doing but we thought well no we're going to do it because why why sweet company well it's interesting because um i believe a lot in kind of uh sort of fate i think and when i was a kid um so i say this a lot but it's just it's the truth when i was a kid i was scared of the dark and i used to share

i used to go and sleep in my brother's room because i was scared of the dark and wanted to share a room with him and he used to tell me a story of brother's room because I was scared of the dark and wanted to share a room with him. And he used to tell me a story of Jamie and Sweet World to make me fall asleep. So I had this obsession with sweets, coupled with the fact that my parents didn't allow me to eat any sweets because I was so hyper. They fed me, I tell you, I fed me white chocolate. There's more sugar in it than anything else. So that's what they used to feed me. So I had this obsession with sweets.

I love sweets. And growing up, my one wish would be to have a world made of sweets, that sweets didn't damage your teeth. And I think this manifesting in my head kind of grew and grew. And I went to New York when I was about 17 years old. And I went to Dylan's Candy Bar, which is Ralph Lauren's daughter's sweet shop. She has a few over America. It's kind of like the Hamleys, the Harrods of sweet stores.

You imagine Willy Wonka. Yeah, it's a crazy place. It's amazing. And I went in it's crazy actually it's amazing and i went in there and it was incredible and it was amazing and it was wonderful and people were spending 300 on sweets i thought this is crazy i want to create a sweet shop and the idea behind it was to create a sweet shop that was a mixture between willie wonka and hugh hefner that was the idea because i wanted the kittens to be beautiful girls because i thought that'd be fun for me and i wanted the the candy was a sort of uh generalized time for sweets so I had to drop the Hugh Hefner thing pretty quick yeah it wasn't a good look the climate and Ed very quickly swooped in and said let's not set up a sweet shop let's not do that because that means that we only have one situation where people can go to you only

have a location and why do you just want to have a location why do you want you want everyone to have these sweets and i said okay this is a good idea but what about the hugh hefner thing he said it's a terrible idea get rid of that i think it was the fact that jamie had kind of stumbled across this um massive opportunity in in the market for a modern confectionery company somebody that was delivering something that was relevant and resonated with a young audience if you look at chocolate there's a chocolate bag box bar but literally every single person out there from like a real cheap cheap chocolate bar through to a champagne truffle 75 cacao thing and then sweets there's just sweets for kids and maybe a tin of sweets in that weird kind of like white powder hardball sweets that your grandma's got in front of her car and nothing in between as jamie started

telling me this idea it was sort of like a light bulb moment and it kind of came off together and yeah we've kind of been going at it ever since but also which i think is so important is that when you're when you're selling a product right i really feel like it needs to have a story and it needs to feel real towards the consumer. And for us, um, it was very real. It felt real towards everyone.

They, they actually believed it. So it was kind of okay for us to, to go down this road of making sweets because I went, Oh no, this is believable. Actually, I understand where this is coming from. We had this story and we had this background thing

so we kind of knew what we wanted to create and where we wanted to go with it i think the trouble happens is when someone says okay what do we what do we they sit in a room they brainstorm about what they want to create i don't i i'm sure it has happened a lot of times but i find it very rare that someone goes okay there's a gap in the market for a new water let's go and create a new water because you don't actually it's not within you and you really you know steve like like business and building a brand is hard it went to your point about it doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or you have so many uh so many social media followers it doesn't matter your business is still hard and going back to the pretty little things guy it's amazing what he's done with that business doesn't matter if it's

does billion in all these different things it's incredible what he's done and he should get the full credit for that and it's because he actually really believed and he knew what he wanted to do and if you get lost in life doesn't matter whatever you're doing you then become muddled and don't know what you're doing you need to have a destination without a doubt and for us we always knew our destination we knew what we were trying to create we were trying to create the best suite possible which we were doing or we're still doing today that's we want to just create the best suite possible that's what we're always trying to do um and i think if it's not authentic and not real you

suddenly forget what you're what you're driving towards i think consumers also can just see through that so easily now right there? There's so many touch points. When you were Haribo and it launched a bag of sweets, they just put a bag of sweets on the shelf and they can make up the story and say what they want and there's nowhere else to find out. You see one TV advert and one bag. Whereas now, there's so many places for people to go and find out about your brand, whether that's the content you're putting out

or the stuff that other consumers are saying. And there's so many brands as well so there's so many so much choice so you can see if there's 30 000 bags different variations of harry bow it's very easy for there to be a standout and then gray exactly actually that's right you know it's a great point and that's where we started this kind of um unique segment for premium confectionery so we're the first people to come along and make a gummy sweet and sell it for three pounds aery. So we're the first people to come along and make a gummy sweet and sell it for three pounds a bag.

Can we just quickly say, we did that by mistake. That was an accident. We did it by mistake. Like a lot of things that we've done, they were happy accidents. Which part was a mistake? Three pounds.

So we just kind of made a sweet. We said, okay, we want it to taste like this. We want to use real fruit juice. We want to use natural ingredients. We want to put it in this nice bag. We were like, sweet, okay. That's going to cost cost three quid and then we just kind of put it on the shelf it's interesting you refer to that as a mistake because it's like unintentional intention you created something that you wanted and that you thought was great and you are also probably

the customer to some degree as well so it's funny that the most it's unintentional but it comes from i suppose yeah it's unconscious more unconscious more more than unintentional i think we were just going okay this is the thing yeah and we talk about this a bit where we say i studied design at university and a big part of design is all about doing your research and understanding the market and really going out there and we do all these things everything creative and you just think why because actually if if we had gone out and asked the market what they wanted you nobody would have never have come back with this we would have come back with another harry bow exactly so for us that three pound thing was just so jarring and so unbelievable but for people in the industry but actually for us we thought well we believe it we can do it and

we've proven that and um yeah you're right it's just don't go and ask the market for research yeah yeah the best business plan is no business plan supposedly it's a really interesting thing i say about my own business which you know we we were a bunch of young kids we walked into this office the first thing we did we spent 13 grand of our startup budget on a slide and it was and we were like everyone can go on holiday whenever you like you don't have to book holidays. The next thing we bought was a basketball hoop. So we've got this office, no desks, a 13 grand slide and ball pit being installed.

We're all sat on these fucking one pound vented desk. Yeah, a couple of bean bags. And then there's this photo of this office, massive office. And they're just installing a slide before the desks have arrived. We're going to be Google. Yeah, but it was totally like, this will be a fun place to work every day.

And it's funny that in reflection, the naivety is the motivator behind all of our greatest decisions. Yeah. Because if we'd read a book on how to run a business and how to make an office and how to do marketing, we would have been doing fucking newspapers in a four white walled office. But the naivety made, you know, these kids,

we started doing thunderclaps on Twitter with people like you back in the day. And we create this term thunderclap. And then in this crazy fucking wacky warehouse, we have a hundred meter jungle in there where the birds sing. And that naivety, which you probably see in Disney and PLT and your brand,

is in fact the specialist. Well, it's funny that when we... You talked about Cedars at the start. When we put together our Cedars campaign, we went out and got a few kind of testimonials for our campaign video. And we thought we'd smashed it. We were selling in Selfridges at the time. So put together our cedars campaign we went out and got a few kind of testimonials for our campaign video and we thought we'd smashed it we were selling in selfridges at the time so we went and spoke to the head of food at selfridges and she said we said can you say something nice about us and kind of put the camera on her and she was like and we

thought she was going to say you know these guys are geniuses they've they've nailed it they're experts of what they do and she actually just said do you know what i think these guys are going to go really really far because they haven't got a clue what they're doing yeah they don't know anything about the industry they're totally naive and that was the like everything you've just said is the fact that we came at it from a completely fresh fresh place i honestly say this and it's so funny that you use the word naivety i said all the time naivety is your biggest weapon and it is so important to realize that people go out into the market and try and study everything and understand how they do this and that. I put it down to the same thing.

If someone said, we're doing The Mask 2. Have you seen The Mask with Jim Carrey? Or let's call it Ace Ventura. Go and do Ace Ventura number five, whatever it is. But it's not going to be Jim Carrey. You're going to play it. If you've seen Ace Ventura, it is impossible to play anything else but how Jim Carrey played it. It's impossible.

So it's actually the naivety of going into it, just seeing it completely raw for yourself. That's when you'll gain success because you go about it just how you think. If you start following others, it is so important to, I think it's important to have a mentor. I think it's important to have someone that you can turn to and look up to. But in terms of what you're creating, do it yourself. Like I said, we were 21 20 20 years old creating sweets putting them in the bags that no one else seen before making them gluten-free making them cost three quid and just putting them out there and and we did it and we said well we like it so we're going to do it and i think that's so important people try and follow these trends and if you start following

these trends but you know the same thing goes for and it drifts into different things like um i always talk to people who go into reality tv or who are creating a podcast or creating a youtube channel you have to know the reason why you're doing it if you're going into reality tv or doing a podcast or or doing youtube just to become famous you will get lost because when you get that fame you won't know what to do with it. Yeah, you go, what's happening now? And this is why we have a huge problem at the moment with these different things because people gain fame and they don't know what to do with it.

But you have to know where you want to go. And they didn't know why they wanted it in the first place. And then actually what you find out, yeah, Steve, is that you've realized that actually it's very unfulfilling. It doesn't bring you happiness and success as much as you thought it would do. And you go, oh shit, everything that I was striving towards doesn't really mean anything the anti-climax must be crippling

crippling and so you you've got to know from the beginning what you want to do and where you want to go otherwise you'll get lost i think the same applies to you know you talked about fame there but success and wealth generally as well i think if you if you don't understand the motivations from day one as to why you were striving to get rich or build something great, I remember some of the most confusing days of my life were the days when someone came across and said, we'll buy your company for X, tens of millions. And going home, an 18-year-old Steve showing up in my mind

and being like, let's get that Lambo. And then going on Rightmove that night, I remember being sat on the bottom floor of my house and going on right move that night and being like, okay, we'll look at mansions. And then looking at a photo of a mansion and thinking, okay, well, if I live there, that's going to be 45 minutes away from my friends.

There's seven bedrooms, a tennis court. I don't think that's going to make me happy. Okay, I'll look at Lamborghinis. Looks at Lamborghinis, black Aventador Lamborghini. That looks really uncomfortable versus like the big four by four I have now. And thinking, so why did I do this again? I know there's a reason, but I don't think I was fully in touch with it. Right. Cause I love getting up every day and I'm enjoying this, but 18 year old

Steve who was broken, come from a family that were bankrupt, that never had Christmas and birthdays had somehow told himself that, you know, if you get rich, then your parents might stop arguing. That kind of thing. But that wasn't the reason why i was doing it and so it was success and getting success that made me super self-aware and like why are we doing this every day and if you're just going to keep getting more and more successful what is the purpose of that pursuit where's the finish line exactly because you're going to you're going to keep climbing and and you're going to get more you know more power and more freedom and you can't believe that every step up this ladder is going to make you more happy because if you believe that it will make you more miserable and that's the

anti-climax point yeah and i think it's and and listen you know we're not i think all three of us can agree we're not sitting here and saying you need to know exactly what you're doing right now you can you can start on your journey and understand that you want to create the best sweet possible but you're you've got to learn on your journey that actually you've got to really understand why you're doing this and what you know there's a great story that ed and i heard that again i've mentioned on another podcast i'm sure about a guy who worked for jp morgan i think it was he worked for somebody by only huge amounts of money um and he went on holiday to thailand he was in thailand and he was sitting on a bus and uh this guy got on and he was like,

he didn't really want anyone to sit next to him. So he kind of covered up his seat. But the guy came and sat next to him anyway. And he's an American guy and he turned to him and said, how are you doing? Started speaking. He said, yeah, I'm good. I'm great.

He says, what'd you do? He says, I work for JP Morgan. And he said, oh, you must be earning a lot of money. He said, yeah, I do. I earn a lot of money, actually. And he said, are you happy? And he went, I don't really know if I am. And he said, okay, you must be earning a lot of money. He said, yeah, I do, I earn a lot of money, actually. He said, are you happy? He went, I don't really know if I am. And he said, okay, we'll do the test.

If you're sitting in your rocking chair when you're 90 years old, are you going to be happy with your life? He said, I don't think I will. He said, okay, we'll change it. And he came back from Thailand, he quit his job there and then, and he set up a company called Change Please, which is a coffee company that is around London, different places, that hires homeless people and houses them for a year and serves coffee and it's amazing business and he's happier than ever

um and actually he realized that his life wasn't about earning cash and those kind of things actually it was about success but success in a different form and his success was helping others and doing something to make a difference and it's so important to realize that from the beginning i think i think true i think it's true for going into any situation really whether that's a business or a relationship or even on a lower level going into you know having a coffee with someone what why am i doing what what's this for what why and and something we've been talking about recently with our team is every meeting we go into what what's the reason for this meeting because you can just go through life just turning up to stuff sure but not really knowing what the purpose was what you were hoping to get out of it and i

think thinking sometimes selfishly what what's in it for me what am i getting out of this is actually something that we are taught all our lives not to be selfish and growing up it's a bad thing to be selfish which on a macro level is true but actually day to day and there's little things why why do we want to go and do this thing what's what's the point and if you're not careful you can slip into probably a career of 30 years where you actually think well hang on a minute what happened there none of that was for me so i think yeah knowing what you're doing it and it comes back to that self-awareness point i suppose so key and also i just because i want to mention these guys we were in um germany something called the ism uh the other day which is we've been there for the last

eight years um it's been eight years hasn't it ed went there by himself to begin with this amazing story how you basically go there you can think of every single sweets and snack and it's a big like conference trade show thing yeah confectionery it's amazing and ed went there we've had a sort of a funny journey with our our sweets and ed went there to look at different sweets and find a manufacturer and came across these guys called catchers who were a german company i know catchers yeah yeah they're great right um and they for listeners who don't know um candy kittens our brand they make percy pigs which is um m&s sweets um and ed said to them oh look we we want you to make our sweets for and they said okay well your minimum order is 400,000

tons a year and we just dropped morrison's we went okay well we're a startup this is uh probably not going to work um and anyway what happened then to skip to eight years later they've just bought some of our business and they're making our sweets for us. And it was an amazing journey from the beginning. But I met these guys there who lit this year who have a chocolate bar called Tony's. And there were four Dutch guys who were journalists and they went and checked out the cocoa trade in Africa and saw how horrific it was, saw the child labor that was going on and said, fine we want to do something about this so they wrote an article about it no one paid any interest to them they went okay fine well why don't we set up our own um chocolate brand and use the cocoa trade to try and get arrested and they didn't get arrested so what they did is they they would

set up a chocolate that was completely ethical um and their story and how they do it and the uneven road of all these different things and again again, for them, the reason why they did that is because they went, okay, well, this is something that we want to do, we want to strive towards. It's like with Candy Kittens, we want to do it because we like sweets. We're like, well, this is going to be fun. This is going to be great.

This is going to be exciting. And also at the same time, we're giving other people pleasure because we're feeding sweets to everyone. So for us, it was always about doing something that we always want to do. And I think that's really important. I know, I don't really have to reference what you said earlier because even as an entrepreneur i know that there's um the i think the outside perception is you know you start a

business up you go fame success money it's all wonderful but there's there's a very rocky road to travel to get there and i wanted to know a little bit about your your really really tough times the time is when you you know your darkest days in fairness i mean we've had tough times really really tough times and and most of them probably um are started off and finished with cash and i think that that that having that cash in the bank is is literally your your oxygen that that keeps the business going um but i wouldn't necessarily say they were dark days in that sense because i think that we've always been quite good at kind of managing the emotional part and the way that we're kind of involved in the business emotionally um so yeah that's probably been a good thing we don't take

life too seriously which definitely helps being an entrepreneur because it's pretty tough um but yeah i mean the toughest times i think probably have been days where you look at the bank and you've got no money in there and you've got to pay the wages tomorrow um that's pretty horrible we've had days where you've had to go out and get kind of 20 or 30 grand in an hour to kind of keep ourselves going and you're just calling every single person you know how does that feel though on those days say days when you you look at the bank account there's no yeah it's weird i don't actually remember that feeling particularly oh i was scary and horrible but i don't i don't remember ever really thinking we're we're done i never never ever thought this is the end this is why

it's you know very important to have someone you know i think there's something like 73 percent of businesses have a co-founder or or you have a business partner and it's really important to have um i personally think it's important to did you start by yourself were you completely by yourself no i had i had a co-founder you had a co-founder yes i think it's i think it's important to have a co-founder because firstly, it's a lot of stress. And to have someone else to do it with is a bit better than even stress. It's more exciting to be on a journey with somebody else. It's a bit of a lonely place.

I heard you talk about an interview once where you said that, I think you spoke to Gary Vee, who said if you want to be super successful, it's going to be very lonely. And I kind of definitely see that. I think you spoke to Gary Vee who said, if you want to be super successful, it's going to be very lonely. And I kind of definitely see that. So if you have a buddy along the way to do it with, that's quite a fun thing to do. And again, I think, you know, if you're greedy, then yeah, you want to take the whole business yourself 100%. But if you're not, I think it's a great thing.

But Ed has always been this guy who has never worried too much. I catastrophize. Oh my God. But Ed has always had this level head and I think that's really important to have and especially when you're running a business because you need to have, in situations of emergencies

or in situations of chaos, you need someone to break through the clouds who can look above like a telescope and say, okay, now we're going to be all right. Well, you can't worry yourself out of a problem, right? Yeah. So it's like, okay, crap, we're in the shit. What we're going to be all right well you can't you can't worry yourself out of a problem right yeah so it's like okay crap we're in the shit what are we gonna do about it and in this case okay we've run out we need 30 grand by 10 o'clock okay who do we know that might have four grand five grand okay we're gonna call this guy this guy this guy this

guy and and we you make it work and i think that we've had, those are the kind of tough times really because it's kind of... Did your team ever realize? Probably not. Probably not. I'm quite fascinated by this world that employees never really get to see, which is the same for my business, which is total chaos upstairs.

Like with the CEOs and the founders, total chaos, but almost like a blissful ignorance below i find it really hard i i even just about 12 months ago we were going through a really really big um kind of negotiation and kind of like top level conversation about the future of the business and what we were going to do in a strategy and i came out of a meeting feeling pretty shit and thinking you know lots of thoughts going through my mind and just needed to kind of digest it all and i got back and i sit at my desk and everybody's gets up and having beers in the office and they're all the fun stuff that we have built and encourage and want people to do

and they're like oh we're gonna order some pizzas there do you want anything do you want a beer and i was just like no thanks just put my head down and kind of just like and that's the loneliness that's the loneliest It's an emotional loneliness. And you're just sat there on your own while the whole team are just having fun. I was thinking, if only they knew what we've been talking about. Are you sometimes envious of the ignorance to those problems? I think so. In a respect, you wouldn't trade it.

I wouldn't trade it. But I think sometimes I think, shit. And I'd love almost, almost the point where I'm like, I could almost just tell them that I don't want them having fun fun right now and you just kind of hold back and you go no okay we'll just is there a part of you that that is somewhat um wishes you hadn't because i think of entrepreneurship is like something that you can't unsee yeah and like when you're building a business you can't like unsee your dreams your ambitions where you want you want this to go. You can't turn that off. But I wonder this, I know, I don't think this is true,

but I wonder if I would have been more happy if I didn't have the disease that I have. Totally. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, the answer is probably just no, isn't it? Because you are who you are, right? Yeah, I'm happy. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

But it is interesting. But I've actually, on the kind of flip side of that, I've got lots of friends who are trying to run their own business. So they're pursuing entrepreneurial... Endeavours. Endeavours. And actually, I look at it and go, do you know what? You'd probably be better just having a job.

Yes. And there's loads of people like that that we meet. And you think, why are they doing it? Why are they putting themselves through the pain? We go through that pain because we believe it's it's right and that's just what's called us there but surely they do too right but i think no but i think actually sometimes people listen to to your podcast they look at your instagram they look at people like gary v and they go yeah that's me i want a bit of that i agree and that's like it's like being the footballer now when you grow when i grew up i just i couldn't think of anything more than wanting to go and play football

and be a pro footballer kids are now growing up going i want to be gary v it's kind of a it's a weird flip nobody when we were growing up wanted to be a businessman or an entrepreneur that word didn't really even exist because because i think it goes back down to that that situation now where we turn on instagram or go on to youtube and and we see everyone driving Lamborghinis or fast cars and we think that generates happiness. And so we go, well, how are we going to reach that happiness? We have to become an entrepreneur, set is a huge happiness in having security and working in a community where you have a job and you can go to work every single day and you can switch off at night. Being an entrepreneur and running your own business, you can never do that. You can never.

I said this to Ed the other day. I said, Ed, when was the last time you think you switched off? And he went, I don't. And I went, exactly. You can never switch off and yes and what i honestly believe that the majority of entrepreneurs are filling a void within themselves they have something missing within them um i don't think ed actually has i actually just think ed just quite likes running people and just yeah just being a leader. It's like driving. Yeah, I think he actually does.

But for me, or I think maybe for you, Steve, there's something that you want to fill. And so the reason why a lot of these successful people who people think are entrepreneurs put stuff on social media and things like that is because they're trying to constantly create and constantly do and constantly do different things and hey and show this and that but actually i think honestly probably for myself

you're filling something or you're trying to be validated for something and so that's why we're doing it there is a huge bliss in being part of a huge corporate business and turning up and doing that and leaving work every single day and having your life being an entrepreneur is not all roses and sunshine at all and it's stressful yeah it's very it's actually something that kind of bothers me a little bit in the fact that you know when we have our podcast or or we we get bold with stuff like this there's lots of people listening that then perhaps get encouraged to take that path that perhaps didn't didn't need to go down that route and i sort of feel partly a little bit guilty sometimes to think you know it's actually okay you can have a great job and be really happy and enjoy that and and there's nothing nothing wrong with that you're

gonna have probably a much easier life it's gonna be okay it's i think there's a balance between sort of giving advice and then yeah and also there's a real total difference between being an entrepreneur and being a businessman there is such a difference you can be a great entrepreneur but you can be a bad business and i think i think personally i'm a good entrepreneur i don't think i'm a very good businessman i wouldn't be able to without ed there is no way that candy kittens would be a success not in my wildest dreams but i also think on the flip side ed ed sort of is both he's an entrepreneur and a businessman. So, but without Ed, without me,

there was probably no way that Candy Kittens could have been. You would have seen this as well. I mean, you guys have now gone public, right? So presumably you're dealing with people in that world that are very high profile, very well-respected business. Of course, every investment bank, I've just...

But these are not entrepreneurs. They don't, they can't think like you think. No, of course not. bank i've just but these are not entrepreneurs they don't they kind of think like no of course not no i mean the finance team typically you do well to find someone in a finance department that is entrepreneurial in their nature they are more it's more like a risk yeah do you find it hard to communicate um with with with individuals who who are in the big corporate banks it's it's it's um it's a lesson i've had to learn over the the last couple of years which is just if you want to succeed with those types of people you have to know their motivations and what they care about and you have to take your like dreamy ambition we can do everything we're going to take over the world stuff and you have

to try and filter it through their the way they see the world so i try and speak their language even though naturally i'm like you where you know i'm big dreamy like the business would have gone bust if it was just me right um same with you ma same with you ma he's told me a million times and you'd learn i try and learn over time how to how to speak in a different language to those people whereas to you know on stage yeah exactly spreadsheets and if i'm talking about culture and buying a slide i'm not now i know to talk about it through the the impact of the pnl yeah the positive impact of the pnl and like so we bought a slide in this in our in our office five five six years ago whenever it was five years ago and every major newspaper buzzfeed vice channel four gadget show

came down vice did a documentary and i said so it's all about the fucking slide and so you think about the marketing roi on that slide it's like dispro the bbc had me like laying in there the other day and everyone comes to this and it's the it's like the and you could not have bought that but how do you communicate a bit of brand work that is going to have no direct or like yeah you know, to a finance person. So that's the skill that I'm learning. But that's interesting because that goes back to your naivety as well. The fact that you got that sign because you thought it would be fun and then you get all this press because of it.

But also I think that analogy of the slide is a great story because it actually just shows what the culture within a business is so important, what you're creating. And we spoke to an amazing guy called... It's brand now. This is the big distinction. In a world where companies are now glass boxes, where employees can take a Snapchat or an Instagram

and show you inside and social media, there's no such thing anymore as internal company culture. It's just brand. And so you can tell me the stories of you hearing about Amazon staff pissing in bottles in the warehouse because we're all glass boxes now. You can tell you knew about google's office people will know about your office through all of your employees doing beers and pizza and that is part of your brand i think the

biggest contradiction in the world would be if i came to candy kitten's office and it was a bunch of like miserable you know sure you know yeah yeah totally don't come don't go yeah don't come is it but okay but i but i see but your i think steve what you what your your slide analogy is great because even though you spent 13 000 pounds on building a slide that you probably couldn't afford and don't use and don't use you still created something within your business that was exciting fun um energetic something that you that was you and i think that's really important because even though it cost you a huge amount of monies it represented something much more important

and i think that's key that you never lost what you were trying to do and what you were trying to show you kind of just went this is what we represent but listen listen, changing subject, the podcast sponsor, which is Boost by Facebook, they are a dedicated one-stop shop for entrepreneurs, for CEOs, for small businesses, job seekers, and anybody with ambition that's looking to thrive in this digital economy. They launched with the aim of creating a place where all of us can understand this new world of digital and social. it can be incredibly intimidating. My mum was talking to her about Boost with Facebook the other day. She doesn't know how to use a phone. She doesn't know how to type and she's trying to run a business in 2020

and compete against people that do. Boost is a place for people like her where she can learn more about the digital economy, about features and skills and training and all of the things that matter, the things that might level the playing field for her as someone that doesn't know about this new world that we live in. You can learn more about this at facebook.com slash boost with Facebook UK. And if you do check it out, drop me a message and let me know how you find it. I always pop on there every now and then to try and make sure I'm staying ahead of the curve. But yeah, do let me know how you find it. I was really interested in what you said a second ago about you've got a couple of friends

who are trying to be entrepreneurs and you know from your perspective that they shouldn't be. And now to even have that understanding, it takes a tremendous amount of self-awareness, right? Almost an impossible amount of self-awareness because the narrative is just keep going never quit you can do anything you say but what you're saying is quit you're saying you shouldn't do that

and that's the counter narrative to all of the messaging out there so i guess my question is how is someone supposed to know when entrepreneurship is not for them not sure i'm intelligent enough to answer i think that it's i think it's so so difficult but it does come down to that kind of self-awareness piece and i think jamie mentioned earlier about you know people that are sat in a room trying to come up with an idea so that people that say i want to be an entrepreneur i just don't know what business is going to be yet yeah it's the worst that's like well that doesn't work yeah it's like saying i want to be a professional sportsman but i just don't know what sport yeah but you can't how how's that going to happen yeah um i think you have to it comes from those real kind of in a idea like the ideas within you isn't it you genuinely as

you just said you know really believe genuinely believe in um and also probably the the way you're enjoying it and going through the process i think some people talk i talk to people about you know so we meet people at different events or whatever and they say okay i've got this thing and i want to do i'm struggling to get hold of the right people to make the business work they say okay well what have you tried and so we've sent some emails out but nobody ever gets back okay well that's the point where you should you should stop now that you should now quit yeah because if you just sent an email and somebody hasn't replied and you can't possibly think of any other way to get hold of them then it's not going to work for you but also ed made such a good point the other day we were

talking to a friend of mine who um is working for a gin company and he said oh i'm trying to get hold of waitress and things at the moment i can't get hold of them how do i get hold of them and ed sent them email saying honestly just go in there go to the headquarters and walk in that's what you need to you need to have that and i think you you know when you shouldn't be an entrepreneur if you're not willing to take risks and risk is everything you've got to put yourself out there and just be willing to do anything and everything to achieve what you want to achieve. Question to you then. Yeah. How does one go from being a non-risk taker?

Because you guys, one of the things that you said you shared, one of your privileges per se was confidence. Sure. So if someone's listening to this right now, and they are maybe not the most confident person, is there anything they can do to build said confidence? Yeah. Different types of confidence though, right, as well?

Because it's not always about saying i'm confident enough to stand up on a stage and deliver a keynote it's also the confidence to say i really believe this idea can work and i don't care what anybody tells me i've got confidence in my idea or there's there's confidence in knowing that you're very good at maths and you're going to absolutely kill it and your numbers are always there's different levels but i and i don't know which one you necessarily need or if you need all of them or maybe one of them to be right but confidence is a quite hard thing to teach i think particularly as you get older so where did it come from in you though

what would can are you because what one of the things that when i look back you know there's obviously nature and nature and i'd be somewhat naive to not, you know, pay homage to the presence of those things in my life. But when I look back at my life, it's doing something and then being like, oh, that was cool. I didn't know I could do that. And then taking these small steps that, you know, today it's almost like a staircase. You take one step up the staircase and you think, oh yeah, fuck me, look at me go. You take another small step. For me, it's like public speaking. I spoke in front of 50 people i was shitting myself shaking couldn't read what was on the thing and then the next you know 100 people and i'm like oh my god fuck and then i'm fucking 15 000 people in brazil with obama and i feel the same and i think it's that it's almost

like this little staircase and the problem with motivational speakers and shit like that is they tell you to just throw yourself into this like fiery abyss of uncertainty whereas for me the the way to get there is just these tiny fucking steps over a long period of time and that could be make the instagram account today like come up with a name yeah you know i i think that's exactly it i think you've sort of hit the nail on the head there where um okay for example if you sort of say to someone so you know ed and i and yourself we were lucky to probably have confidence from the beginning we did something whether it was score a goal in football when we were younger or pick up an instrument or sing once and so oh my god that's great go and do here and slowly by slowly you build it up like that and that's how you build stuff but it's the same way if someone says right i'm gonna go and start the gym you

know don't make these huge dreams you go okay i'm gonna have a six pack or whatever by one month's time you've got to slowly do a bit by bit if you go on a five minute run one day and then do a 12 minute run the next day and then a 30 minute and you build it up like that that's the way to success and that's the way to building these different things and repeating that repeating that yeah you just have to i think in terms of confidence you have to be willing to work at it like everything and you have to be willing to take it step by step and try different things, whether that is giving a talk in front of five people, then doing a talk in front of 10 people. You know, I went and did stand up comedy for the first time in my life the other day. And holy shit, it was one of the worst things I've ever had to do.

But I went and did it and I thought I'll just go and do this I went on stage and it went really well and it was funny everyone laughed I was like this is amazing so I then went okay well I'm gonna go and do this again and I went on stage again and it was one of the worst things I have ever done yeah don't make a joke at the beginning about I made a joke. I came on pretty confident for the second time, and my first joke was, oh, I've done stand-up comedy before, and this is the second time I'm doing it, and I got in a taxi coming here, and I spoke to the taxi driver,

and said, can I practice my routine on you? And he went, yeah, go on, lad. And I said, oh, and obviously he spoke like that because he's working class. And no one laughed. And I went, oh, my God, don't make a joke if you're white, privileged and posh in Hans Bay. But it was this learning and it's the same thing.

You learn these different things. You learn how to get confidence. So going back to your question, how do you teach on? It's about within you. If you want to start becoming fit, you have to do it yourself. If you want to give up alcohol, you have to do it yourself. If you want to learn to get confidence,

you have to do it yourself, but it's bit by bit. And you do it yourself if you want to learn to get confidence you have to do it yourself but it's bit by bit and you have to go on that journey yourself no one else can teach you it but that's the big thing right no not there's only a small amount of people that are willing to put the work in and i suppose then that goes back to the question of how do you know when to quit so you genuinely really really willing to sacrifice and and give up but i think if you if you start seeing it as a sacrifice, that's also part of the problem. Because I never considered, I don't, I mean, you have obviously made lots of sacrifices

to choose to kind of live the life you're living. But I don't know, do you kind of acknowledge that? Of course not. You never look at it and go, okay, well, I'm going to make a decision today. I'm going to sacrifice this thing instead and do that. Because it always, the nature of sacrifice almost makes you believe that you're giving up something you wanted to do more yeah for this but i never wanted to go out and go to tiger tiger in manchester more than i

wanted to sit and build my website so although it's almost yeah like it's something people will look at your life and say oh you sacrifice so much i'm like well no i didn't want to yeah and you could you can tell what i wanted to do by my actions like so um you're a rarity for sure because you you you were 17 when you started was that right 18 18 yeah and that's pretty rare to understand what you want to do at that age i i i said once i said again i think the educational system is completely flawed in in lots of different ways because firstly it drives creativity out of you in lots of different ways um secondly it's a it's a place where you can't copy cheat you can't collaborate

you can't do anything in life is all about collaborating and copying and helping each other and at school does happen and you're meant to know exactly what you want to do at the age of 18 years old you're meant to know you want to go and study this at university and do that and no one fucking knows i didn't know yeah but i think it's weird because i didn't know what the word entrepreneur was until maybe two years after i'd become one i like when i when i started out there wasn't this like you know like the social network movie and all this you know gary v stuff and all this i was i was a kid that my favorite game with my brothers was turning my bunk bed into a business and making fake money and passing it to each other. My mom was always really entrepreneurial, although she never had any money and she failed and she

slept on the shop floor of her business every night, never came home in her, in her corner shop. But I just thought that by at 16 years old, I realized that my grades were going to be really, really, really bad. And that, that, that meant that this narrative of getting good grades and being rich was never going to happen for me. And i also think i overvalued money because we never had it i think i was like insecure and inadequate i'll give you one more layer i was the only black kid in a school of 1500 white kids in an area where everyone was middle class but our house had like six foot grass at the front and smashed windows on the front for a decade and a half i felt inadequate i was dealing with this complex about me being black

and having fluffy hair and all the kids having straight hair. And it was just like this constant, I need to like, if I'm getting, my parents aren't around either. So I'm like, if I'm gonna get it, I need to get it on my own. And I definitely wanna get it. And so- You had that hunger driven within you

because you know, your mom was sleeping on the shop floor. It was ridiculous. Yeah, it was crazy. And so you saw, I think, what a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of successful people experience when they're younger is that they experience sort of pretty hard times. And they can see not what hard work, but where life can lead. And I suppose what you're saying is that you didn't want to, you didn't want to leave that. You wanted to change your family's life and, and, and build it like that. And that comes from a place. So even though you didn't know what you wanted to do, you, you knew where you didn't want to be. And so that's non-negotiable, but that's even better, right?

That's actually, so for, I suppose for Ed and I, and a lot of it is, is an emotional feeling. And that emotional feeling can arrive from, say, your dad being a billionaire and you feeling like you're always in his shadow. And that you can get the same thing, the same motivation, the same drive. There's this huge misconception amongst like entrepreneurs that we're all on the fucking playground selling fags at 12 years old and we're all like wheeling and dealing. But the emotional feeling can come from any circumstance. can come from like female rejection it can come from you know it's just that feeling of inadequacy or or independence you know so i totally i i totally hear what you're saying i think that's so funny there is that there is that kind of misconception again where when you know you ask when did you start your first business

and i always say i make i didn't make it up but i said oh i picked heads off my daffodils of my mom's daffodils i don't think it i don't think it happens that it gets to a place like you said where you wanted to build something for the reason you know ed and i when did it is because we we were more excited about the prospect of building candy kittens than actually going and working for a corporate business um i think that's i think no that's sort of an example of life doesn't really play out like a like a movie so we think it does so you go and i'm like oh shit what was my first business like what shit what how did i because everybody expects that kind of disney

fairy tale entrepreneur story yeah but it's not always there so like yeah i was washing my dad's car and getting a couple of quid for it but that wasn't a business but it was probably something that led to work hard get money work harder get more money and and it it do it turns a bit of business but yeah it's just uh i guess it doesn't always play out it plays out definitely for everybody it's so important because again that's empowering to a lot of people who can't think of you know them selling fags on the playground at 12 years old and the narrative is that if you weren't doing that then maybe you're not cut out for it in some respect but the entrepreneurs that i've met on this podcast alone are so diverse in their

upbringings they are introverts and again that breaks the narrative because apparently all entrepreneurs are these fucking wacky wacky you know yeah super confident people they are introverts that have remote teams and have built businesses that are making hundreds of millions they are they are sometimes extroverts they are sometimes the you know the people like me and probably a little bit like yourself jamie and gary who are you know much more sort of externally confident and they come in different shapes and sizes. I think that the question that I wanted to pose to you guys is we've done a lot of, I guess, looking backwards and like looking at now,

but what is it that you guys are playing for? Like, why do you get up every day now? And what's the, where is this going over the next couple of years of your life? Edwin, do you want to take this one, buddy? I think that for me i want to continue to build the best possible business we can build and when we started we we really had ambitions of going out there and kind of knocking harry bow off their perch yeah going okay let's let's really properly challenge a market

we're now the fastest growing manufacturing companyery company in the UK but beyond that we're we've still got a long long way to go isn't that nuts though it's crazy a packet of candy can and sweets is bought every 12 seconds is that

yeah I mean maybe is that wrong have I just lied that sounds interesting yeah we look at

have I just totally lied about that we're selling more we were selling more things than like major brands like Skittles. We're growing quicker than Skittles. We're growing quicker than a whole heap of brands. And these are kind of like household names that we grew up with that we're then going toe-to-toe with and challenging, which is fun.

So that, I think, is great. But we want to do that properly on a kind of global stage. Personally, I think it's about that kind of sense of achievement inside yourself to say, yeah, okay, I'm really proud of that. Really, really happy with what we've done. Nothing makes me more happy than building the team. And I think seeing the team grow and go on to do amazing things. We employ some great people, some really talented people, people that have come through our internship program and end up being then kind of senior managers in the team

is really fun. How does it feel like when they quit? I've probably only had, we've probably only had one person quit that I was upset about. And how, talk me through that feeling. You find out you get that email or whatever, you have a chat and they say,

I'm going elsewhere. How does that feel? I think it's quite upsetting. But actually, in this case, she left to go and start her own business and do something else. And I think that was kind of cool as well because you think, okay, well, she's kind of been a part of what we're doing. In some way, perhaps has learned from us and been inspired by what's happening within these walls. So actually, that's kind of cool. She can go and do her own thing.

If she leaves to go to a competitor or leaves to go somewhere else then i don't really get upset about it i say okay cool go and do what do you think interesting question and i'm going to ask you both in isolation so you have to answer separately um jamie how would you feel if ed turned around tomorrow and said i'm quitting i said like i don't want to do this anymore i'm gonna i'm gonna sell my stake whatever to this guy. And I'm going to leave and I'm going somewhere else. I would, in all honesty, I'd probably feel quite let down. I would because I think that, I think there's a, I think persistency is a really big thing.

And you kind of, if you go into something, you kind of got to stick at it and go for it. So yeah, I would probably feel um i probably feel let down because uh you know i for ed i have not been an easy journey for him you know i i started a tv show i was doing lots of different things and he had to build run the business while i was and and i'm like that on bad days. So, but I think at the same time, when you go into something together, you kind of have to stick at it and you kind of got to do it together

and you go on this journey together. And I get that people change their opinions and change their minds and different things, but you kind of want to stick things out. And how would work feel the next day? So Ed's gone, you get into the office. It would like to be getting into a cockpit and trying to land a plane.

I'd have no fricking clue what is going on um so it'd be pretty damn scary for me you know ed and i as i said at the beginning we are two very different people um but we're similar in lots of ways and we have the same aim and we complement each other in loads of different ways would you feel like a bit a bit of your sense of purpose as to why you were doing this was was gone i would i would probably i i would i would feel inadequate to do it i don't think i would not be the right person to to run it it's it's you know when you're building a business it's very important to hire people who are better than you in so many different ways and it's very important to hire people who do the job better than you um and ed does the job far better than me than every single way. So it would be a tricky scenario because I don't know how to find another Ed.

And that would be a very hard task to do. So I would probably, is he about to tell me? Is that the whole point of this? This is like the very second date. I would feel scared. I would feel worried. But I would, with everything, you just got to push on. And you've got to achieve what you've got to achieve.

And you've just got to go through it. You know? And that's what I think. What about you, Ed? Tell him. Tell me the truth. Go on. Okay, so we set this up today.

No, so I think, yeah, I think it's tough. I think that there's this kind of old adage that everybody in a business is replaceable but i think actually in in our case that the the relationship that jamie has to the business and the relationship that jamie and i have jamie has made himself very very difficult to replace it's so synonymous with the brand and kind of such a a sort of bedrock to what we're what we're about um i think it's probably safe to say that candy kittens wouldn't be candy kittens without jamie's energy and personality and everything that he gives to it um so so yeah it would be very tough i think that we would have to seriously consider kind of how the business would move forward from that point um we've got to an amazing stage

let's put it putting that to one side we got to an amazing stage and from day one we were kind of keen to make sure that candy kitten stood on its own two feet as a brand and there's lots of places now you know we sell in in the states where people don't know who jamie is and and we've got we're building the brand there based on the fact that it's a really good product um but it would be tough and i think that as jamie says it would be that kind of sense of being let down and thinking okay if he quits then then what am i still doing here what why why is what's he seeing that i can't see or what am i do i am i looking at a goal and the potential that just isn't there anymore? So,

yeah, I would, I would feel a little bit disappointed, I think. Let's go back to that question about the future then. So the, the future of, of Kittens and where you want to go with this and where you're.

I think probably for, for, for both of us, I think that, you know, at the beginning we want to establish ourselves as the leading confectionery brand in the UK. That's what we want to do. And we still have that aim.

We're a British brand. We want to continue to do that. But I think that you kind of, in terms of the future, you don't really want to give yourself boundaries. You kind of want to just go, you want to aim for the stars. Is the answer you don't know? I think for us, we just, I think, you know, Ed and I, if we are totally honest with ourselves,

will we be selling sweets for the rest of our lives? Who knows? And we always say the same thing. You know, if we had gone and sold socks, we would probably be doing the same thing. You know, we actually don't make the sweets. A German company, Katch, is making sweets for us. But what Ed is and the team is and I am,

we're good at is we're good at building brands um and i think for us we will constantly whether it's candy kittens or something else we'll constantly build brands and we'll constantly start things and build things and create things i think creativity is the most important thing in life and i think that's what we will constantly be doing um whether that's candy kittens or something else and you don't know how long that you know that could be three years five years ten years could be you know just depends yeah i mean i think the goalposts keep moving further away for us sure we thought okay when we get our first supermarket we will have smashed it and then you get that one and you want the next five supermarkets and then you get those and then you want the

supermarkets in different country and then you and you keep going and it just those goalposts keep moving further and further away but I think I'm okay with that as long as I keep enjoying it, as long as we keep having fun and we feel that sense of achievement and pride then we'll still be chipping away. And this is my last question before the last one money

you talked about catchers coming in and buying some of your company out, I'm guessing that was they bought your equity. Yeah we're rich, we're really rich now See you later This was in fact, this podcast was and buying some of your company out, I'm guessing that was they bought your equity. Yeah, we're rich. We're really rich now. Yeah. See you later. This was in fact, this podcast was to announce to your employees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're off.

We're billionaires. We're really excited about it. No, Kat just came in. They bought out, I can say this, can't I? Yeah, they bought out the minority shareholders. Okay. So Ed and I are still in, very much in.

We're still there. We just wanted to team up with someone that, again, we've built the business a very long way, but I think we know exactly what we want to do and we continue doing what we want to do. But to have someone on board who are a manufacturer is really important. And that's what the German company catchers do for us.

They make amazing sweets. But you haven't got a payout per se yourselves yet because they brought out the minority. Same in my company. They brought out the minority shareholders. Yeah, so we're still kind of working away. And I think that what's amazing for us is that we've suddenly got this startup world that we're in

and we've got a young team, lots of naivety, energy, creativity and everything that comes with it. And then on the other side of the coin is this huge German company that's over 100 years old. And they're generating hundreds of millions in revenue, owning companies across the globe, real kind of corporate mentality. And those two worlds kind of collide in a really nice way for us so we're able to work with them learn everything that they have to offer um and ultimately the reason we kind of went and made the partnership happen was because we really believed in them and they were just a great bunch of people it's still family-owned organization and although it's this

huge huge thing they they share a lot of our kind of mentality and ethos so yeah really nice you know 53 percent of german businesses are still family run really it's amazing and in the uk what we do is we we think okay we'll build this i'll sell it build it i'll sell it and actually it's a really the germans are amazing because it's not about being cash rich what it's about is having uh you generational wealth in terms of building for your family and for your family's family and for your family. And it's about building family. Passing it on.

Passing it on. They never sell. They never sell. And in the UK, we think we are incredibly selfish and we go, okay, we're going to make the money. And that's why we have something

called the third generation curse, which is grandfather makes it, father sustains it, and then son loses it because they don't do anything. And it happens over and over again. And in Germany, it doesn't happen because it's all about keeping it within the family um very mafia of them but it's uh but it's a good way to to be and it's an important way to be as as founders that are yet to take cash off the table how what do you does that does that play on

your mind as you're getting older you're signing families and those kinds of things? And do you think, I would like to take some cash off the table at some point? Go on, Jamie. Well, I think, listen, there was an interesting statistic that came out the other day. The happiest people earn €72,000 a year. Those are the peak of happiness because anything that you earn less, you want more,

and anything after that actually just is more problematic. You don't really have to earn that much money in order to be super happy what what cash brings you is a bigger house and a faster car and nicer holidays um pretty much that's what it brings you but it's interesting because the the we're actually talking about this with the um with the german guys and they were explaining that if you every uh increment you get a salary increase up until about say 50 60 000 there's a level call it 50 000 sure every time you get a salary increase it has a real benefit to your life so you can suddenly rent a nicer flat you can do this you can do this and then when you get to like 50 000 pounds say there's nothing that you can do differently to the guy earning a million pounds a year because okay and he gave an example this is the owner of the business in germany said okay well

i'm going on holiday this year to cuba with my family okay cool i'm gonna fly probably first class and i'm gonna do some nice things over there a nice hotel but you could still go to holiday you could go on holiday in cuba you just get a different plane to me and maybe you stay but the the core experience is still the same yeah you can still live in london you can still do this you can do so the what you do with your life is the same so there's a a massive void as jamie's then saying the more money you earn more money more problems you get to a point where actually that doesn't benefit you so i don't know for us i think we want to get to a point where life is sustainable and i think as an entrepreneur if you are not able to kind of do the things you want to do in terms of having a family or I got married last year, these kind of things, you are then sacrificing a little bit, maybe too much.

It's going to make your business really difficult to run. So if that's causing you financial stress and anxiety and trouble outside of your day-to-day life, then you're going to probably be a worse person in the business and you can see the value you've created it needs to be a balance and we were taught from a very early stage of candy kittens to pay ourselves a uh a reasonable salary um i remember going into a meeting and kind of putting out on the table with our um our board of directors kind of what we thought we wanted to earn and being quite punchy and saying okay well we want to earn that and it was like it was silly it was like 18 grand a year because we thought okay well we can that's enough to pay our wage i'll pay our bills and we can survive on that and it'll make the business work and they were like no no you guys need to pay yourself a proper

salary because otherwise you'll be you're going to be resentful and you're not going to be working properly and you're going to be scraping around for cash so so yeah there's a balance but i don't feel desperate to take cash off the table i think there's a lot we still want to do and we're in it for the long run my last question then you mentioned marriage i i always i'm always intrigued by the impact that the entrepreneurial pursuit has on um romantic relationships for entrepreneurs and i know you're you're in a relationship jamie um you're married now what impact has being an entrepreneur running a business and being obsessed with your own with with candy kittens had on your relationships um i think actually

probably in the early days of our my relationship with charlotte it was probably the the thing that drew us closer together because um it gave me a an escape gave me something else to think about she did she gave me something else to think about and focus on um so i thought you meant kind of kittens gave me an escape from charlotte you're in trouble no but actually you know leaving not sitting in the office at 11 o'clock at night and just getting a takeaway. I actually had somebody to go and see or go and go out for dinner with or whatever. So that was that was quite a positive thing.

She also runs her own business. So in my case, I'm very lucky. We spend a lot of time talking about each other's work. So that kind of works well. I think it's i think it's finding the balance though and also knowing when to switch off and we've sort of seemed so far to be able to do that yeah and i think i think sort of the same i think it's about um i think it's really healthy and a good appetite to have is when you lead two different lives and you you lead different lives and you kind of come together as one i think for um my i've had a sort of

checkered past in terms of relationships um and that's for lots of different reasons but i think now i'm in a relationship where we kind of value each other immensely and understand and appreciate each other um and i think it's just about balance i think balance in life is really important are you easy to date um god i was thinking about this the other day i think i think i'm i don't know i think i i am and i'm not why aren't you um because i'm hectic i'm i think i'm hectic i'm a really i'm a really good in relation so i'm i would consider myself fun and and loving and all those different things but i um i've had to learn to not be so selfish. And actually, there are other people

who you need to appreciate and love and different things. I think... Compromise. Yeah, compromise. I think for a lot of my 20s, most of my 20s, it was all about what pleased me. And then you realize, actually, it's not about what pleases you,

it's about pleasing others. And I think that's what I probably had to learn a lot but i think it's a it's about having a healthy balance between work life and and relationship life because at the end of the day if you if you don't have family and love i said this before the meaning of life is really to love i think and it sounds super cheesy but um i think it is and you know when you're you know when you're older you're just gonna want your homie next to you and that that's pretty much it. You don't really care about anything else. The last, uh, the last point I always say on this podcast is just about, um, my, my little dinner party song and dance. I don't know if you've had this before, but I tell the guests that they can

pick if they were to have a dinner party today at this very table and you could invite four guests that are alive, who would you invite? So I'm going to let you invite two guests each and just explain why you'd invite those two people. Dead or Alive, anybody you want. Oh, God. And also what we're going to eat. Okay, I would probably go for, I'd have to go for an adventurer.

So I'd probably go for Shackleton. Wow. Shackleton would be great just because he's a leader. Oh my, what a leader and the things he did and the things he saw. So I'd go for someone like him in terms of a leader. And in terms of someone entertaining i would probably go for someone like um i think elvis wow would be quite cool just because of what he stood for what he did but also why why it tumbled so badly towards

the end when you have that much success and that much fame and all these different things and everyone what they want to achieve and why they want to achieve it why does it go wrong what happened was it unfulfilling and i don't want to find out quite depressing but i kind of find out and we would have a uh starter would have a barata delightful you can pick the main then yeah okay cool i'm gonna stick italian theme as well actually it's already sorted in my mind so um i would go for Muhammad Ali nice because I just think he's super cool

I watched the Will Smith Arby film the other day again one of my favourites I just think that never seen it so cool

is it great just insane you need to do that homework for you Jamie I was watching Bruno last night so that's a bit more highbrow

so yeah we I think he just the experiences he's gone through and the the challenges he faced but also super entertaining and fun i'd imagine um and just the guts to say do you know what i'm gonna give up my whole career because i don't want to go to war yeah and you know willing to go to jail and all those things crazy crazy but just so quick-witted and away with words and be a real kind of capture the whole nation. Yeah. Amazing.

And similar sort of vein, actually, Obama, I think, would be pretty cool. I mean, you look at this kind of state of politics kind of globally at the moment and somebody like Trump in power power i just think that's it's just you can't get your head around how they've gone from like one of the greatest spokesmen spokespeople of all time character to then go to and and you know whether or not you agree with like the the details of obama's policy policies and politics but actually just to be that great spokesman and such a great ambassador for a country and then you just go to donald trump but those two i think would be pretty cool and what are we eating we're gonna eat

gnocchi oh which i just love so simple what's that heavy heavy heavy pasta yeah you sound like my wife now because i've never allowed it at home so that's why i'm never allowed i don't have everything we could have had we're having burrata the gnocchi i'll let you guys sell that later thank you so much for giving me your time today it's been an absolute pleasure and i'm super excited to watch the future of candy kittens unfold it's an incredible brand and um yeah every time i get on the flight every single time i see it and i i um it's my uh somewhat innocent or guilty pleasure however you want to look at it but i want to say thank you as well because you've created something that makes my flights a lot more pleasant to new york so thanks thanks buddy appreciate it thank you so much Thank you.