discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER - 15% off - single use only (as of Friday 27th Oct)
Today on the podcast we welcome Stu MacDonald, the founder of the ground-breaking peanut butter brand, ManiLife. Stu is a food fanatic with an incredible tale of seizing a chance on his travels to Argentina and turning it into a revolution in the peanut butter market. Learn about Stu's journey, from overcoming the fear of starting a business to developing an unwavering focus on product quality and provenance. Plus, don't miss out on a special discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER for 15% off.
Stu didn't just create another peanut butter brand; he changed the game with ManiLife. An example is how he wanted to create a new peanut butter chocolate flavour and It took him a year to find the perfect cocoa supplier. Listen as Stu talks about juggling product development, quality assurance, and customer satisfaction, recounting the time he went all-in to deliver an order to a pregnant customer via Uber! His dedication to his customers is inspiring and a key takeaway for any budding entrepreneur.
Stu lets us into his personal life and the challenges of balancing business and family. As a father to twin girls, he shares how his family life has helped him stay grounded amidst the whirlwind of running a business. In a true entrepreneurial spirit, he wraps up the episode by offering a ManiLife discount code and encouraging listeners to check out the brand and taste it for themselves. You're in for a treat.
discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER - 15% off - single use only (as of Friday 27th Oct)
https://mani-life.com/
discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER - 15% off - single use only (as of Friday 27th Oct)
Today on the podcast we welcome Stu MacDonald, the founder of the ground-breaking peanut butter brand, ManiLife. Stu is a food fanatic with an incredible tale of seizing a chance on his travels to Argentina and turning it into a revolution in the peanut butter market. Learn about Stu's journey, from overcoming the fear of starting a business to developing an unwavering focus on product quality and provenance. Plus, don't miss out on a special discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER for 15% off.
Stu didn't just create another peanut butter brand; he changed the game with ManiLife. An example is how he wanted to create a new peanut butter chocolate flavour and It took him a year to find the perfect cocoa supplier. Listen as Stu talks about juggling product development, quality assurance, and customer satisfaction, recounting the time he went all-in to deliver an order to a pregnant customer via Uber! His dedication to his customers is inspiring and a key takeaway for any budding entrepreneur.
Stu lets us into his personal life and the challenges of balancing business and family. As a father to twin girls, he shares how his family life has helped him stay grounded amidst the whirlwind of running a business. In a true entrepreneurial spirit, he wraps up the episode by offering a ManiLife discount code and encouraging listeners to check out the brand and taste it for themselves. You're in for a treat.
discount code: JAYSPEANUTBUTTER - 15% off - single use only (as of Friday 27th Oct)
https://mani-life.com/
3, 2, 1, 0, 10, lift off. Lift off, lift off. Hello and welcome to another episode of the recipe for greatness podcast. I'm your host, shae Greenwood, and in this podcast we're going to be found as behind some of the best food and drink brands in the UK and down the podcast we have Stu McDonald, the founder of the game-changing peanut-bust brand Mani Life. Stu shares his craziest rebuilding and startup into the nation's most loved peanut-bust brand. The stories he shares tell you all about the hard work and dedication it takes to be a self-founder the core principles you need to live by to create an outstanding product in the company.
Speaker 2:This one left me inspired and is definitely one to listen to, and Stu has also been kind enough to give our listeners a discount code J's Peanut Butter. But what I'll do is I'll leave all the details in the show in it. So please sit back and enjoy this amazing conversation with Stu from Mani Life. Stu, welcome to the podcast, so excited to have you on and I want us to jump straight in and talk about. I know you've taken a lot of inspiration in Mani Life from cooking and I'm curious about where your love for food came from and what influences has had on your path for Mani Life.
Speaker 1:Hey, jay, good to see you and good question. I think, in all honesty, the passion for food came much later. It was like what food brought that I loved. I love my friends, I love a good chat, I love my family, and food is, it's almost like a glue that brings all that together. I'm much more interested in people and coming together than I actually am in product, and it's because of that that Mani Life is so focused, or much more focused, on the meal occasion and our strategies around making peanut butter and ingredients and taking it beyond breakfast, because of that aspect of bringing it all together More into people than food. But do you love food now as well?
Speaker 2:Amazing, so I think it's good for everyone to hear the backstory. So you were university and decided potential careers in the council and PWC, but there was that sort of inside feeling that maybe a career wasn't for you. And I'm just curious why did that feeling? Why did you feel that a career wasn't for you? What was there something inside of you that just felt like that path wasn't going to work out? That's it Well good question.
Speaker 1:To be honest, it was probably because my job was an accountancy job and if I'd walked in and that was for lack of a better idea I think if I'd stumbled into something that was more congruent with my personality I may have spent more time in it. But as you'll probably tell as this track goes on, maybe from chapter four, I'm like the anti officer. It was chalk and sheets. So I think it was more fear of being an auditor than it was necessarily fear of a career.
Speaker 2:You went to Argentina and I understand it was because you wanted to build up enough guilt that you actually would justify taking this audit job at PWC.
Speaker 1:So what happened?
Speaker 2:over there. What were you doing that made you think differently about a potential career path and made you see, I guess, other potential options for you rather than that career?
Speaker 1:So, like complete luck basically, I arrived and was looking for work and I basically fell into work with this guy who run a peanut butter steak head prize, which is awesome because we used to go around soup kitchen teaching kids and families how to use the stuff and through that developed a real passion for a product with magic, but also through that saw what it was like working with someone who was just figuring it out and it demystified this idea of starting a business.
Speaker 1:I could always been somewhat entrepreneurial in the sense that I earned money selling tickets for events and selling beers at the Cube mall, but the idea of running a business was still kind of alien. And then via that I that's that kind of got rid of the fear of business being this mystical thing and then through that started selling peanut butter again out of the kitchen there to like local community. And through that I then met the family that owns the peanut state that we still source from this day and just love them and how they spoke about the product and what I learned about the product. It really resonated because you drink a lot of coffee and peanut butter is like the same as coffee, like provenance counts, quality and reading counts, roast counts, blend counts. But at that point peanut butter was like pure commodity. It was smooth and crunchy, and so it all kind of fell into place and I came in and put off the job and start a main life.
Speaker 2:So would you say that sort of like peanut butter sort of found you rather than you searching for a business? Because I guess when people think about business, some people think, right, I've got to like search like all the gaps in the market for opportunities and then create like a 12, like 12 month business plan and then projects out five years where it sounds like for you, you know, it's more. Just like, right, this looks amazing, tastes amazing and there's, like you know, real tentative. So was that kind of more for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean like absolutely, and I always joke with team that if the family I've met made honey, I'd have started honey brand, because they've made potatoes and produce a chip brand or Chris brand, I think, and this has made more for your listeners. I got very, very lucky that what I found turned out to be a great opportunity and the stars kind of aligned, in the sense that I did see that the market was growing. So I thought there's something in this. Very often with food businesses it's bred so much out of passion that you can that people just go like next deeps trying to start something that where the market is like too many in quid and there's three brands and it just doesn't stack up.
Speaker 1:We were fortunate that peanut butter was growing like trappers and, yeah, we kind of we'd stumbled across a way of thinking about it that hadn't been done before. I think if I was gonna do something again in business, I probably would approach it more in a like strategic way. But very lucky that the first way was. It's a lot more authentic, a lot more fun and it's good to start with passion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've seen that it's like that ignorance is bliss or things you know some of us have certain opportunities you might not do it. So I guess as well it sort of goes into the fact that the next ladies journey, where you know you ordered all this first order, right, peanuts. And then you last minute the manufacturer just says right, not gonna do it. So what I love is you tell the story about, like, what you got, what happened and what you did next and sort of what that summer was like for you when you first got that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it was a complete like disaster and I remember it really well. So, as you said, tons of water arrives, a ton of peanuts that is, and the day arrives our production partner you just based down south of singlin pulls out. So I had a ton of peanuts and 25 kilo bags on bedroom. That summer I actually managed to get an article published in the grace of looking for a manufacturer, which is big, for retail magazine and I still to this day I think no one's read it. But that summer basically rented out my old rubber cub kitchen we called King's old boys and we bought two little kitchen blenders, got about 45 friends together that summer and we made 4000 jars of peanut butter, one jar at a time. And we got a lot of peanuts and we got a lot of peanuts and we got a lot of peanuts and we made 4000 jars of peanut butter, one jar at a time. And for me it was pretty horrendous because I was up at three in the morning. James bed late wasn't paying anyone, so that had to keep everyone happy. I think they already enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:But it was formative for a couple of key reasons. One was I hate this word, but it was like the beginning of the mani life, like hustle so is kind of, when it all costs, always find a way. But the really big thing was is that we transitioned from what was ultimately going to be a provenance led KOPAC brand, because our hook at the time was known, was speaking about origin, known we're speaking about where they got the peanuts from, and I was completely in love with Argentina. So we transitioned from that to a brand that had provenance at its core but made the product in a way that no one else had and she was. No one else still does to this day. And that was all bred out like, basically, the experiment that were those 4000 jars. So that was the summer where we invented deep roast peanut butter, for instance, which is now like a global phenomenon, and it was just like a few lads in the kitchen messing around and we basically, yeah, we can talk about it later. So, yeah, that somehow has a lot to say for itself.
Speaker 2:I think as well, because I guess now you, if you come across any hard times, you can always reference back to say like well, I can do this because I've done it Right, is that? Is that true now? When something comes across, you're like, well, we can just dig deep and get it done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I think that's perhaps one of the reasons why a common thread amongst people that like get involved with this stuff is they've had some element of being like crisis or suffering relative suffering obviously in their past. So my, my toughest period in life was before that. I got really really at school and had to take like a year off, essentially, and then the initial challenge was like came back to school and my doctor and my teachers were saying like he's really the year and I said no, I'm going to get through that and do quite well. So I think challenge is definitely a kind of breeding ground for future success. I guess that's the far word, yeah.
Speaker 2:Amazing. At this point, you're doing everything yourself, right? So you've got your friends helping you, but you're not paying them. You're out trying to sell it. You're basically doing everything. How are you funding this at the same time? Are you just like savings? How are you getting the money together for this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so initially it was like bought the peanuts and then just kind of sold them and plug that back in and the set and the peanuts bought with savings, which is ultimately like get some grandparents or whatever. So, yeah, I think I didn't have many savings like I'd say by myself. But then a big thing that I tell everyone to do you talked about starting business is I took on a personal loan from I think it was, san Fandere, and they still do them. What you basically the maximum you can borrow is 25 grand and it's based off of partly your business idea but primarily your personal CV. So they want to know that if your business doesn't work, you'll be able to get a job that can pay back the loan. And so that initial loan lasted us through a year where we were in a position where you kind of built a case to raise money.
Speaker 2:But there's all the classic stuff like dropping cases off in my mum's car or yeah, the cliché is basically and I'm right in thinking that you sort of did this this summer and then you kind of just thought, right, well, this was fun, but then you went back to work right. And then what was that point where you suddenly started working. You know what? Now it's time to actually give this real go. Was there a real, like a pivotal moment where you said to yourself, right, right, it's now or never. Like let's, let's do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just thinking about it. So I did get back because we weren't making any money and I hadn't got the lane yet and I just thought and weirdly, despite the fact that it was done nothing, I remember feeling like insane amounts of pressure, so I wasn't necessarily enjoying it that much. So we went back to work and there are a couple of things. So one was people started asking for it like almost as soon as I've tried, as soon as I'd started at Pidducy. And the other one was and this is just like save for ego it was way cooler to tell people that you were like the founder of peanut butter business than it was. You were an accountant.
Speaker 1:So I kind of got, I kind of got myself with this track where I told so many people that I was involved in peanut butter. There had had no choice. But I stayed in that job for 11 months, which I'm probably started back and I have full time with three or four months after I started there. And I would highly recommend to anyone, any of your, any of your listeners, if they're starting out, so like, keep the job going as long as you can till you hit breaking point. And then, because what it means is you. It requires you to be a lot more efficient and and there's actually weirdly not so much stuff to do at the start when you're trying to figure things out, and to be able to spread that into like an hour before work, two hours after work, it's quite useful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree completely with that. I did the complete opposite, which was quit and realized that you don't need a whole day to do some of the simple stuff you're doing and realize you could have just carried on working for a lot longer.
Speaker 1:So definitely get a job.
Speaker 2:Now, one thing I think is really great is to sort of lessons through stories, and I know one thing that's really big for my life is people in product. So I was wondering if you could tell the story. I guess one story that I heard around the product about how important, like the whole, like provenance and quality of it was when you created the peanut butter and chocolate combination.
Speaker 2:That took you like 12, so you 12 months, right? So you sort of run through like how important that journey is for you and like why the product is just such a big thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've got, we've got a few pillars with our products. So one is like it's gonna taste the best and I think the awards we receive and the testimonies we receive suggests that we've achieved that with almost every product we have launched. The other is that the core ingredient needs to be ingredient with context, which is basically a fancy way of saying like we've got to know the people behind it. We've got really loved them. They got an interesting story. So with when we decided we were going to do cocoa, there were, there was a few things. So one was like developing the recipe, so that's the combinations of cocoa, sugar, peanut butter, and we got to like a pretty good mix and the process is like different, so let's forget about that. We got to mix. It was.
Speaker 1:Then the big challenge was finding the best cocoa and like we spent a really, really long time doing that and all over the world we found a few that are that were good. What the one we use is head and shoulders and we are very fortunate that the one we found was from a cooperative called Cocoa Committee and like they're just amazing In terms of they do loads of work with the community. The cocoa we ship, every container we ship comes to the charter of the names the growers. So it's pretty awesome. It's in the chocolate ear world, regardless of some of the best cocoa in the world.
Speaker 2:So yeah, again, it was great product, but lucky that the people were so good and I guess they're around about answer Sorry there must be some temptation, though, because in your head you're like right, if we launched this, in three months, it's going to be, people are going to want this product, so we're going to increase revenue by X. But you know, you just still fundamentally just say like no, we can't do it. So is it, is that challenge where you kind of think, well, let's just do it, and you have to stop yourself, or yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and it's part of my wife being like shoot, go back and try again, because I'm very impatient. It's a mix of like impatience and very high standards and they're sometimes odds. But yeah, we very almost launched a product six months before we actually found that it wouldn't be nearly as good. Well, yeah, it wouldn't have been as good as good. Probably would have got like two stars three.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about people now and one story. I think maybe you should talk about the sort of I guess one thing, one like thread that was about everything I listened to was just about how much dedication you show to people communicating with them if complaints. And one thing I really highlighted me was pregnant woman's story, so could you tell us about that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this was really, really early on. I think it was just me and I remember getting a phone call or message, but the woman basically said that she was going to labor and that peanut butter hadn't arrived. And we got in touch that it turned out that she she left home, so she was on her way to hospital, and so we arranged this will. Uber had kicked off at this point, so we arranged an Uber to drop off the peanut butter at a hospital, which obviously received it, and then we got a message that a few days after with a picture of her and the baby, and baby was like holding the child. Peanut butter was pretty magic. And it all stems back to this point where it's like our focus is make great products and make people happy. And it's the making people happy bit which is kind of the most fun and it basically is an everything we do.
Speaker 2:Let's go back to the touch on as well, because it's it seems like the key focus is like making people happy and incredible products and so by products of. That is, people just pick it up and they become your advocates and sort of tell the story for you. And you've had quite a lot of that on social media right, you had some big names just pick it up and talk about it online. Has that been?
Speaker 2:a help to like get that product out there, and I guess it's there is. The only thing you're doing is just creating just a great product to make that happen.
Speaker 1:So first bit as I probably we don't know what the like counterfactual is, but I mentioned having like a Joe Wicks post about us, or you have to let me talk about us is probably helped, which is cool, and we don't pay these guys anything, which is amazing. And, yeah, I hope they realize how grateful we are. And then, on the make people happy point, product is a big part of it, but we've got this like it is an ethos of call it, keeping it personal. So any interaction we have be it responding to a complaint or responding to like fan mail, meeting people on the streets it's always really important that we interact with these people as people.
Speaker 1:I think quite often my brands interact with consumers or customers. There's this weird almost brand Fugazi where it feels like you're speaking to a brand and that is not what we do at all. If I remember when I started my life, I just things as when I used to wear a vest and I said I don't want many of us to be a brand. Do I hate brands? Because my understanding of brand is like yeah, like Mac is where they, where you know you're speaking to. Obviously Mac is one of the best brands in the world, but I didn't like this kind of false interaction that would always happen with brands I encountered Ironically. I think the best way to create a great brand is to keep a personal and through this conversation you mentioned a few key things.
Speaker 2:I guess maybe they're pillars around the company where it's like ingredients with context, keeping it personal with these values and you've just written down over time, and have they been like things that you now keep sort of within the company to remind people, or is it just something you'd naturally say to yourself just to remind you of what you're doing and why?
Speaker 1:So it's like so funny you can spend so much money on consulting these sessions, defining your brand values and all this and basically what it is is you're just defining stuff that you've already done in a more concise way so you can communicate it Like the main people. Happy point and like keeping it personal was just I really liked to run, interact with them and it was really important to me that worked at making the best products. That, again, the ingredients of context is just a really smart way of saying we like to work with people that have good stories. So again, if I was to do it again, formalizing it earlier on is useful because it means that you can communicate to the team far more efficiently and like it's a piece of paper to come back to. But ultimately it's just stuff we've done and we've written it down and now it's on a piece of paper.
Speaker 2:Now keeping on the story front, going to the next one. So bad things can happen in the company and you either you have, I'll say. I'll say you have lemons or you can make them an Ate, right, and I guess? One key story is with you around creating the deep roast. Can you tell about sort of that story and how it all happened?
Speaker 1:Oh man, that was magic. So for those of you that don't know what deep roast peanut butter is, is basically think like dark roast coffee, deep roast peanut butter, and it is something which now exists globally. So it's just super deep, dark products and basically in was it 2015? We were in this rubber cup kitchen and we overcooked the peanuts and before we threw them out, you made a mistake. We decided we blend out.
Speaker 1:One of my friends tried it and he was like she's pretty good. So we kind of sat in a circle, came up with the best name for burnt. We could just deep roast, and we are. We wrote deep roast on all the on all our jars in handwriting obviously limited edition, because we're not going to do it again and it sold like way faster than our standard product. Subsequent years we like honed it and now it's properly dialed in and yeah, it's like a new subcategory peanut butter. I saw nine months ago Jeff, which is the largest peanut butter brand in the world by a mile, has a deep roast equivalent, which is quite so and it's yeah, few thousand kitchen messing around.
Speaker 2:I love it. It's incredible. I thought it was interesting about that as well, because it's like the accent happens and it's almost like a wordplay as well, because if you call it like burn roast peanut butter, it probably wouldn't sell, but when you call it deep roasted, it just brings that aftersand sort of flavor and just does the boxing for you basically is this it's so interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well a print, sorry a print. A principle that I heard once was like being a innovation through being open to serendipity, and if you think about the amount of stuff that's been created by accident, that's like mega, the classic examples of penicillin, right, but there'll be loads. I think that's quite an interesting mindset.
Speaker 2:Now, definitely a completely agree with that. And then one other story was which I found amazing was you?
Speaker 2:have like you're in the process of creating your business, you've got like a trustee you're keeping to and then you get a call from a big person called gusto and I guess that's not on your radar to do, but yet you decide that we should just give it a go because you don't know, essentially, if it's going to be a one off, that's never going to happen again and it's going to like take this time. So what was that? What was that story? And like what happened after?
Speaker 1:I guess yeah, so this was like a make-you-many life moment, I think. So, yeah, we were a team of two at the time me and Uncle Jay, who left us shortly after, actually got this call. She did 9,000 mini-pots in nine days because her supplier had let it down and we had a board meeting the following day. So the board meeting ended and it was almost like an afterthought and I was like, guys, just by the way, we've got this call. I'm not really sure what to do about it, but yeah, I'm my chairman at the time. I'm still very friendly with Rumeant. Sunnage looked me and said shoot, find a way to make it happen. And in eight days we've got 30,000 mini-pots. So they kind of snapped on mini-pots shipped from Belgium.
Speaker 1:We found a kitchen act and we got 14, 12 or 14 people together and we basically, with this just ludicrously rudimental production line, we packed 9,000 mini-pots over two nights using piping bags and managed to deliver it on time.
Speaker 1:And the thing that I'm staying off to speak about is about two hours before the truck was set to arrive to collect it, we ran out labels. We had only 1,000 pots to pack and so luckily, there was kind of a DIY print shop around the corner. I went there and I got them to print off these little soap budget little square mania labels, and whereas before the labels we'd had would been a reel which is super easy to peel off and put on, we basically arrived with an envelope full of square cutouts, almost stamped, the ones we have to peel at the corner. So for the last hour we were all in the kitchen just like sweating, completely silent, trying to peel off these little corners, and we did it just in time, and one of the people who was there the other one was Sarah, and she's now my wife. We got two kids, so that's pretty cool, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. And then what happened off back off Gusto, sort of getting that.
Speaker 1:So we basically we got a call from Hello Fresh like month later, call from mine from chef a few months after that and we don't want to say cornered the rest of the market but we were the peanut butter supplier for the rest of boxes for, yeah, that period and we were, we were the supplier, peanut butter, the rest boxes in lockdown, which was like mega obviously, and it's quite cool as well because, going back to the point around how we want to position ourselves as an ingredient and like a kind of instigator, meal times of community being part of the rest box scene is like the one because pretty hard to use a rest box on your own I love it and I.
Speaker 2:One thing I heard you say which I completely agree with as well was like we always focus on so much about what we, but not how we can like. Sometimes just eating with friends and community is so much more beneficial than it is just like eating healthy or stuff like that. Sometimes it's like how we is so key but people just never focus on it that much.
Speaker 1:Completely. It's like and so funny a health health is. It's so obvious that this is the case, but it's funny how it's was what health is like. Completely holistic, right, and people talk about mental health as well, and then the cliches, but it's all. It's all important and it's why I think, if you look at the French, diet is pretty, is quite like perceived, perceived as quite average, like very fatty, whatever. But I think one of the reasons why you get so few like a beast in France is because there's a ceremony to me all time Like eating is sit down, you slow it down, it's like there's more to it, there's the states and here you always got the whole process for you think, but food is often like a function and it's just like need energy and need to push energy out, and I think it's really important for so many reasons that we create more moments around food.
Speaker 2:Completely right.
Speaker 2:That's why I love the sort of the ethos around my life and I know that one part as well is you know you being a cell founder yourself and you build a business up over a long period of time. That's had a lot of challenges on you and I guess one thing I want to talk about is because now you got to a point where you can employ other people. What's that process been like for me? From sort of building the company and balancing that and then also then having to relinquish control, which will obviously another stressful part of that journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so few things. I think tricky, in short, but for a few reasons. So one I started the business and I kept on my own with volunteers for a very long time, far longer than I would do if I was to do it again. And what this meant is one the business became like far more in my head than if I'd split it out earlier, and I also built a habit of like I'm asked these guys to do things but I'm not paying them, so I kind of have to help do it and show that I would do it anyway, which is just like when you're building a team, a horrific habit to form. And so I mean it's probably somewhere there.
Speaker 1:It's like there's still a thing about I said like Gil, and asking people to do things, which is ridiculous, because when you have a job, you obviously don't want your boss like doing it for you. It's like it's it pisses you off and that's something which which dealt with over probably a longer than maybe kind of him. And then the next point is kind of like that it pushes out. I think this is an incredible human technology. In fact, I haven't got anything coming from it to labour it. Darlingq delayed me from being in touch at the time I'm I just want to win, but the habit was the trickiest thing to overcome and hopefully, hopefully, my team will say if it's not been achieved, at least I'm well on my way.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Just want to finish on a few final points. Nanny, Life has brought you some incredible things. Has brought your wife and also brought you twin girls right so what's life, like you know, pre kids versus post kids, because a lot of people struggle with that adjustment of sort of managing a business which I guess is their own sort of baby in some way.
Speaker 1:How do you manage the thought of like productivity with, also, you know, managing, like you know, kids and the family and I've got like a amazing wife Like is a really big help, like she's mega, that's number one, very lucky to have that.
Speaker 1:And the flip of it is business is obviously all consuming, but it's not necessarily healthy for it to be all consuming and there are very few things that like can take your thoughts on business away in demand. Presence and kids is probably one of them. So having Bonnie and Ren, I think pretty, quite useful because, like, it's quite hard to be thinking about whatever's going with the customer on this buy chain when you've got like two beautiful girls giggling and like pulling your hair and I don't know. So, yeah, that's, I think it's been useful. If I had them before I started, it'd be very different, because I think there is a spell where, like it needs to be all consuming and you need to be able to take lots of risk. And I think if I'd started later, if I'd started after I'd had them, yeah I think it would have happened. I've massive, massive respect for people that start business when they've got young kids.
Speaker 2:I was about to say that as well, because you mentioned on some of those conversations you say like essentially there was, like you know, from a privilege or background, where there's the risk is like I have to go live with my parents again, which is like similar to me. But then you've got people who like have kids, and there's real people depend on them. That's like the real, like wow you are yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:I always kind of like say in a laugh but it's where people always say, are you such big risk? And like for me it wasn't really they were. You're risking like career progression. But yeah, I love my parents, but hey, my parents, I see them all the time and it was a blessing. But, as I say, different complete in the story when you've got proper dependence.
Speaker 2:Amazing. Well, I think that's a perfect place to wrap the interview. It's been great. Any like final thoughts at all for any of the listeners or anything else you want to get across, or um, uh, yeah, I will.
Speaker 1:anyone who hasn't tried many life, I will make a code for you on the website and it's going to be J's peanut butter and you'll get discounts. Just type that in and try many life.
Speaker 2:I'll post on the show links, just in case people are allowed our audio, I'll get tons of messages. So go, I'll put it on the show. Nice that's good, but honestly she's made so much coming on show journey. It's incredible, it's inspiring to me and also I just love how open and honest you are about the journey. So I appreciate you coming to the show.
Speaker 1:Thanks, appreciate it. I hate my bumbling stories. My team up.
Speaker 2:As always, guys, thank you so much for listening, really appreciate the support and if you guys like it and you're enjoying what you're listening to, please like and subscribe and fire review would really appreciate it. Um, again, we'll be back doing this weekly and, yeah, if you want to know more about starting a food business, head to wwwjgringwoodcom. But, guys, as always, thank you and be great.