How to leverage Dragons' Den with Déj Doherty, Co-Founder, The Wholeleaf Company

With over 225 episodes of Dragons’ Den recorded so far, thousands of entrepreneurs have pitched their business ideas to leading investors. However, the show offers a lot more than just investment. 

In this episode, I hear from Déj Doherty, founder of The Wholeleaf Company, the sustainable palm leaf tableware brand. Déj co-founded his company to reduce the amount of plastic tableware going to landfill, while also creating employment opportunities in developing countries. Appearing on Dragons’ Den was a pivotal moment for the business which has since gone on to supply leading organisations including Waitrose, Glastonbury Festival and Buckingham Palace. 

Déj shares his experiences of Dragons’ Den, how he leveraged his appearance on the show and his advice for anyone thinking of applying. 

Déj's advice:

• The more you prepare the less nervous you will feel
• It’s not a comfortable experience, waiting to be interviewed
• You may be encouraged to ask for more than you actually want - to make your case more exciting - but this could work against you
• They prefer only one interviewee, even if you do have a co-founder
• Have confidence in your forecast numbers
• If you show you are genuinely passionate about your business, that is more likely to convince them
• Afterwards, do as much PR/social media as you can to maximise the effect of the show
• More than any investment, what you will be gaining is brand awareness for your business
• You will probably notice an increase in attention (from potential investors) as a result
• Raising money is a full-time job which is hard for a one-man band, so you may find it better in the long run to grow more slowly and do without outside investment

If you’d like to contact Déj you can reach him via
adejare@thewholeleafco.com

FF&M enables you to own your own PR. Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2023 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason. 

Let us know how your start up journey is going or if you have any questions you would like us to discuss in future episodes. 

FF&M recommends: 

• LastPass the password-keeping site that syncs between devices.
• Google Workspace is brilliant for small businesses
• Buzzsprout podcast 'how to' & hosting directory
• Canva has proved invaluable for creating all the social media assets and audio bites.

MUSIC CREDIT Funk Game Loop by Kevin MacLeod.  Link &  Licence

Transcript

Dej edit

[00:00:00] Juliet: So yeah, were you waiting with bated breath going, I don't know what it's going to look like.

[00:00:03] Dej: I don't, because there's quite a lot of footage 

[00:00:04] Juliet: Yeah. For two hours. Down to what? Five minutes, 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:08] Dej: I think it was about 10, 11 minutes, or something like that. 

[00:00:12] Juliet: So insane brand awareness for your business.

[00:00:14] Dej: it was unbelievable brand awareness for us. I'm not sure, actually, that we would have survived without it. [00:01:00] Thank you, Dej, for your time today on How to Start Up. Before we get into Dragon's Den and everything that you experienced through that process, it would be great if you could introduce who you are and a little bit about the business that you founded.

[00:01:34] Dej: My name's Dej. I founded a company called The Whole Leaf Company. We make sustainable tableware and takeaway packaging out of waste palm leaves. We supply to the hospitality industry and our mission is to create an employment revolution in India and get lots of people in rural areas into decent, paid, safe 

[00:01:55] Juliet: When did you start your business?

[00:01:59] Dej: So the [00:02:00] brand, I guess, if I could call it that, started quite a long time ago. In 2008. So it was a, a side hustle sort of kitchen table business for quite a long time. I did that alongside a number of other things and I'd say probably about six or seven years into the business, I started to see a bit of a change in the zeitgeist in terms of sustainability.

[00:02:21] Dej: And I realized that this was probably the time to start taking it a lot more seriously and go out and raise money and do all that kind of fun stuff. Having said that, when we when I started in the early days I did think let's go and raise some money, but there wasn't really that sort of ecosystem around, 2008, you didn't have.

[00:02:39] Dej: You didn't have this ecosystem of VCs, angels you probably had some bigger private equity guys, but what we now know is the fundraising path that a lot of startups followed just didn't exist. And the only thing you really had at the time was, bizarrely was Dragon's Den, which we'll talk about later.

[00:02:56] Dej: Yeah.

[00:02:57] Juliet: yeah, so is that what, when you started [00:03:00] going maybe full time on the startup, you thought, right, we need investment, that's the place to go and get it. Was that the reason you went towards it?

[00:03:07] Dej: Yeah. It was the only kind of route. So when I started whole leaf in early 2008, the global financial crisis very quickly kicked in. So as opposed to when I'd been thinking about it and thinking, Oh, it's fine. We'll just go to the bank and get. Alone or an overdraft or whatever. It might be some bank funding to get us on our way I put in all My pittance of a life savings at the time And then the financial crisis kicked in 2008 and then there was just no cash anywhere So, banks just weren't lending particularly to new and pretty exotic businesses.

[00:03:48] Dej: So genuinely the only sort of seemingly realistic way of getting any kind of funding at that time was Dragon's Den. And that's how I ended up applying to it and getting on it. It [00:04:00] was actually as a way of genuinely trying to raise some capital rather than raise awareness or publicity.

[00:04:06] Juliet: And so from when you first thought about it to applying was it quite an arduous process to get an application in? you first thought about it to applying, like, was it quite an arduous process to get an application in? Mm

[00:04:27] Dej: I think there was a an acknowledgement email and then about three or four months later I got called in for what was essentially a screen test. It was pitching to a producer uh, what is now White City House.

[00:04:41] Dej: There was then the BBC TV studios. And then a couple of months after that, it was, yeah, we like it. It was, I think actually after the sort of the screen test, as it were, there was a couple of months of to ing and fro ing and fine tuning our pitch and that sort of stuff. And then a couple of months after that, it was, okay we're going to put you on and you're on in.[00:05:00] 

[00:05:00] Dej: It was something like eight or nine weeks or something.

[00:05:02] Juliet: And were you nervous about going on TV? Had you done some media training or had you put yourself out there before?

[00:05:08] Dej: I hadn't really put myself out there in that way before. Was I nervous? I probably was, but I don't remember being nervous. And also you, the way it all happens, it's almost like you don't really have time to be nervous. And I think the more you prepare, the less nervous you feel.

[00:05:25] Dej: I knew. The idea and what we were doing well. And frankly, numbers wise, there weren't a lot. There wasn't that much to remember, so, so that part was actually pretty straightforward and it was a weird experience because I watched Dragons Den a lot. I don't, I probably don't so much these days, but at that time, certainly I was watching it.

[00:05:46] Dej: You know avidly and so I think just actually being there on set was quite a strange experience and also realizing that it was a set because this is back in the time when Dragon's Den purported to be in this sort of disused [00:06:00] warehouse on some industrial estate which is all rubbish. It was just literally a set at Elstree and Bournemouth Studios and

[00:06:05] Juliet: yeah, it's the studio,

[00:06:06] Dej: it's a studio yeah.

[00:06:07] Dej: But it was quite a bizarre experience because they make you get there, and certainly we did anyway, we had to get there at something like six in the morning or something like that.

[00:06:16] Juliet: And join the queue of all the other people going for it.

[00:06:19] Dej: yeah, and it's not you, they just shove you all in a room and kind of, feed you sugary snacks. And there's me thinking, oh, it's great.

[00:06:25] Dej: I'm going to turn up. There's going to be some sort of, nice warm sandwich and tea and coffee. There's none of that. 

[00:06:31] Juliet: You're in a holding pen until you're,

[00:06:34] Dej: yeah, with not quite enough seats for everyone and, so you, some people have to stand, etc. So, yeah, it's certainly an interesting experience.

[00:06:42] Juliet: were you so determined because you needed this investment for your business to grow. Was it a kind of make or break if you didn't raise, it wouldn't happen? 

[00:06:49] Dej: That. I think a lot of entrepreneurs Probably feel the same way where you don't think anything is terminal until it really [00:07:00] is. And I think there's a weird thing you have to do as an entrepreneur is hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time, Which is that okay, maybe it could be terminal, but it's not going to be terminal.

[00:07:09] Dej: And I think you'll go through your journey, always having to have this two opposing ideas of knowing that something. Could end your business but at the same time thinking that nothing's going to ever end your business

[00:07:23] Juliet: It's that blind faith and that confidence. A few guests have talked about that, of if you are not so resolute and so committed to that idea in those dark days, you'll give up. And actually if Dragonsden doesn't work out, I'll find another way it'll work out. Because also something when you start a business that you don't realize is that, You get knocked the entire time and then you just get used to it.

[00:07:43] Juliet: Whereas when you're employed by someone else and you've just got a regular job description things are a lot more dramatic in a weird way because you don't get so many knocks. So when you do, it's a big deal. Whereas I think when you run a company, you never know when the next iceberg's coming your way. but for you going in there, so you're like, give it my best shot, see what [00:08:00] happens. And what were you asking for in terms of investment from the dragons?

[00:08:04] Dej: we were asking for £120,000 for 20 of the business at the time and effectively there was no business, like I think our Sales had been, £5,000 or something for the year before it was really just, I'd say start up, but it was it was barely even, that it was an idea with me, it was completely clueless at the helm but it was, I thought it was a good idea.

[00:08:25] Dej: But one thing we did have. Luckily, or weirdly was that I'd approached Sainsbury's and Sainsbury's had agreed to put our products in 500 of their stores as had Oxfam agreed to put our products in sort of 300 stores and we didn't really have anything, and we couldn't, we went to the bank and said, look, we were in 800 stores and we just literally just set up shop and our bank manager at the time said You're over trading, you don't have the money, you can't do it.

[00:08:56] Dej: And I'm not giving you any money. 

[00:08:58] Juliet: To fulfill. So you had the [00:09:00] orders, but you didn't have the stock to fulfill the order, so you needed the investment, the cash flow to produce the product to fulfill the order.

[00:09:07] Dej: Yeah, so we needed cash for a number of things. We needed cash to, to fulfill the order. We actually ended up being able to fulfill it. But ideally, once you get into, to grocery stores, then so you've got sell in to grocery stores, which is, getting ahold of the buyer and getting your products on shelves.

[00:09:23] Dej: And I think most people think that's job done. But actually the difficult job is getting people to go into stores and buy your product

[00:09:30] Dej: And actually getting people to understand that it's there on shelves. Because I think there's a sort of idea in retail grocery that, Oh if your product's good enough, it'll sell itself.

[00:09:40] Dej: That is just not true. Ironically, having said that our product did quite well without any marketing budget at all. 

[00:09:47] Juliet: That's definitely not the regular way it goes. That's a nice surprise, 

[00:09:52] Dej: it was a nice surprise, yeah, and it did a lot better than both expected it to do. But,

[00:09:56] Juliet: So you could walk into the den saying, we've got these orders they're [00:10:00] signed and sealed. We're just about to fulfill them. You're at that tipping point.

[00:10:03] Dej: we were at that tipping point, and I thought, and going back to your earlier question of whether, how I felt about not getting the money, at no point did I think we weren't going to get the money.

[00:10:12] Dej: Said to me that's not going to happen because that was what was going to happen.

[00:10:15] Dej: It

[00:10:15] Dej: didn't 

[00:10:15] Dej: happen. 

[00:10:16] Juliet: Oh, what? So what did happen?

[00:10:18] Dej: I went on to the den and they basically gave me a lot of reasons why they thought it wouldn't work, which was everyone gave me slightly different reasons. So this was quite, the kind of classic panel of Peter Jones, Duncan Bannatyne, Deborah Meaden, Theo Paphitis and James Caan. That was that time, and they all had different reasons for why they thought it was amazing, but just wasn't going to work at that point in time, mostly around the fact that there was a financial crisis.

[00:10:49] Juliet: here we are with an product 

[00:10:51] Dej: whilst being 

[00:10:52] Juliet: amazing 

[00:10:52] Dej: and 

[00:10:52] Juliet: sustainable and ethical and all those good things 

[00:10:55] Dej: and looking fantastic, 

[00:10:56] Juliet: it was just too expensive for the market. In [00:11:00] what was a price sensitive time. 

[00:11:01] Dej: Now it seems logical, but actually it turned out that was not correct. But that kind of put paid to our pitch.

[00:11:10] Juliet: But they all seem to love it. 

[00:11:11] Dej: And actually 

[00:11:12] Juliet: one of the most interesting things that happened 

[00:11:13] Dej: in that process 

[00:11:15] Juliet: was that unbeknownst to me, once I actually walked out 

[00:11:17] Dej: with them, 

[00:11:18] Juliet: they all turned around to each other and said, this is amazing. So I found that quite bizarre, if it's so amazing you should have given me the cash.

[00:11:24] Juliet: Yeah. So none of them offered?

[00:11:26] Dej: No, James Conn came the closest. Which is annoying because he basically said if you'd asked for a little bit less money I would have been in and actually when we first put it to the BBC We were after 80, 000 pounds And they effectively said, make it a bit more interesting and ask for a bit more money.

[00:11:46] Dej: So we ended up asking for 50 percent more. And that actually was probably a little bit too much for a business that effectively had no sales. And, lots of potential and, contracts for Sainsbury's, et cetera. But we hadn't sold [00:12:00] anything through Sainsbury's yet that was coming online

[00:12:02] Dej: Months after, I went on Dragon's Den.

[00:12:04] Dej: So we didn't, we didn't really have anything to stand on.

[00:12:07] Juliet: So were you, did you walk out there a bit deflated and a bit disheartened?

[00:12:13] Dej: I booked out probably quite high on adrenaline. 

[00:12:16] Juliet: yeah.

[00:12:16] Dej: I was actually in front of the dragons for two hours almost, I think it was, and which was shocking to me because I had my co-founder at the time, Peter, he was downstairs. So usually with Dragons then they don't, I don't know if this has changed, but if there are two of you, they prefer one person to go on unless you absolutely need two people.

[00:12:38] Dej: So, so I was upstairs in front of them and he was. I was downstairs and I came down and he says what have you been doing for the last two hours? It's what? Two hours? What? And he's yeah, you've been up there for like almost two hours. And it felt like

[00:12:49] Dej: ten minutes.

[00:12:50] Juliet: And were they grilling you about the business, getting to know the business? They were obviously intrigued and interested, but just not quite enough to offer.

[00:12:57] Dej: Yeah, I think they were very [00:13:00] intrigued. Certainly by the products. They'd never seen anything really like it. And I think is an incredible product. It's completely natural. It's made from waste that would otherwise be burned. We don't use any chemicals. It's made in a very simple, low energy process.

[00:13:14] Dej: It's home compostable. You can put it in the oven. 

[00:13:17] Juliet: You were solving a lot of problems back in 2008, that's fairly revolutionary. Now people almost take it for granted that there should be a sustainable message in a product somewhere. With the rise of B Corp, I think there's now 1, 500 B Corps in the UK. It's all going in the right direction, but back then you were coming with a proposition that they probably hadn't seen too.

[00:13:37] Juliet: Often. But for you in terms of putting yourself in that position, was there anything that you would have wanted to have done differently in hindsight 

[00:13:46] Dej:  I think definitely I made some mistakes. I think one of them really was not being more adamant that the numbers that we were talking about in terms of the actual products and what the kind [00:14:00] of volumes that we could reach, not being more adamant that was not just a possibility, but just, a drop in the ocean for the market.

[00:14:07] Dej: So that was probably a function of not really having. a strong enough grasp on the market size. Even though I'd done all the market research, etcetera I think with hindsight, I don't think I was vociferous enough about. The fact that, what what I was claiming we could do was really quite

[00:14:25] Dej: conservative but t o them it seemed outrageous, but in hindsight, it was pretty conservative 

[00:14:29] Juliet: And from filming to it coming out, what was the time between the two? 

[00:14:34] Dej: It was about three months.

[00:14:36] Juliet: So quite quick. And then when it came out, did they tell you that you were going to make the cut and did they forewarn you, you were about to be on national TV? Yeah,

[00:14:51] Dej: People on Dragon's Den crumble and some people do exceptionally well, and some people are either made to look silly or come across as [00:15:00] being quite silly and then you realize once you're there that first of all, it's a very high pressure environment and As instead of what you see on TV of being quite an organized sort of pitch and answer Q& A session, it's not.

[00:15:12] Dej: And again, I don't know if that's changed, but, it's a kind of a free for all. You have five dragons. Often asking you questions at exactly the same time and often wanting answers first.

[00:15:24] Juliet: It's like a firing squad.

[00:15:25] Dej: so it feels a bit like that and 

[00:15:28] Juliet: So hopefully any founder knows their business better than anyone else. And if they don't, there's a problem, but you have to be completely confident on your answers and succinct. A lot of people talk about investment saying investors need to have, yes, the business plan, yes, the numbers, but they need to have faith in the founder and they need to be convinced by the founder's passion.

[00:15:44] Juliet: That's what tips them over the edge of, okay. The business is solid, but I believe in this person. So for you standing there having all these questions fired at you, was it a bit bamboozling? 

[00:15:54] Dej: I remember it being relatively difficult to manage because it's just the [00:16:00] case that when you have five people all talking to you all at once, that's quite difficult to manage, regardless of who they are. But, I did have a lot of passion for the project.

[00:16:09] Dej: In fact, all I had was passion for the project and just having this very strong feeling that. The world was going to change and sustainability was going to be completely normal. And that this was, without a shadow of a doubt, going to be part of our futures. And I was 100 percent sure of that.

[00:16:27] Juliet: mean, you were right.

[00:16:29] Dej: Incidentally, yeah, luckily but I suppose it's one of those things where it seemed too good to be true, but it actually wasn't. And the product generally is as good as that. And it's, was one of those situations where I well, I just can't see myself doing anything else now.

[00:16:43] Juliet: Fast forward to today, we're 2024, just in January and you're in Glastonbury Festival, Buckingham Palace, like you've clearly gone on and built this business to be a success. And your clients are thrilled to be able to use you as a supplier. But for the episode around [00:17:00] investment, businesses need.

[00:17:02] Juliet: Cash to survive and something I've learned through B Corp is that you have to be a profitable business to become a B Corp. Before you can protect people and planet, you have to be profitable. And it's great to have the best will in the world, but if you don't have a business, you can't really affect change.

[00:17:15] Juliet: So when it came out and you had that two week lead time, did you put like a marketing and PR campaign around it of like, how do you leverage this?

[00:17:23] Juliet: Or did you just sit back and wait for it to come out?

[00:17:25] Dej: No, we did actually put a marketing PR campaign around it. There wasn't much so by way of social media at the time. So Instagram didn't exist

[00:17:32] Juliet: Oh, take me back to those days.

[00:17:34] Dej: Exactly. 

[00:17:35] Dej: Was very early days.

[00:17:36] Dej: Yeah. So we put as much PR and marketing around it as we could and just really creator media presence on the internet again just didn't really exist. So, at the time, traditional TV like BBC was really it. And then social media was in, its very early days.

[00:17:52] Dej: So certainly did as much as we could. It was quite nerve wracking time because you you don't know how you're going to come across on TV.

[00:17:58] Juliet: And you don't know how they're going to edit [00:18:00] it as well. I think this is something that people don't realize, saying, as we talked about with podcasting, once you're on it, it's in the hands of the editors and they could actually skew it any way they like. You've given over that right to control that message.

[00:18:12] Juliet: So yeah, were you waiting with bated breath going, I don't know what it's going to look like.

[00:18:16] Dej: I don't, because there's quite a lot of footage 

[00:18:17] Juliet: Yeah. For two hours. Two hours down to what? Five minutes, 10 minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:22] Dej: I think it was about 10, 11 minutes, or something like that. 

[00:18:25] Juliet: So insane brand awareness for your business.

[00:18:27] Dej: it was unbelievable brand awareness for us. I'm not sure, actually, that we would have survived without it. 

[00:18:35] Juliet: You went in purely with, I need to raise some money, but the brand awareness would be nice and came out of it going, hang on, the brand awareness is actually meant so much more to the business long term. 

[00:18:45] Dej: Dragon's Den has always been a very Popular show. And I think what I found quite and I think one of the things that's more specific to the UK in doing business is that provenance is very important.

[00:18:56] Dej: So as opposed to the US where everyone loves new products and, everyone's ready to [00:19:00] try something they've never heard of before. And, know, if a company's five days old or 50 years old, no one really cares. Whereas in the UK there's a cachet of being an old company that's been around for a long time.

[00:19:12] Dej: You get your Royal warrants and you've got, Fortnum and Mason since 1868 or whatever it might be. So I think there's this sort of culture of the older your business, the longer it's been around, the more we can trust it, there's probably some truth in that. And then the converse of that is the new your business.

[00:19:29] Dej: And I think being on Dragon's Den gave us a little bit of a shortcut to trust. And I think people look at business that they've seen and there's something things in their head because I've seen this somewhere before and it just gives them that little bit more trust than they would have if they've never seen or heard of you.

[00:19:48] Dej: And I think that was the part that really

[00:19:50] Dej: saw us through the early years, not just selling to consumers, but also selling to businesses as well.

[00:19:56] Juliet: That's the purest editorial you can get because you haven't bought [00:20:00] your spot to be on there. It's earned media. And we talk about that in our day job with, print, column inches, digital newspapers, social media content. You can earn media in lots of different forms. But being on TV to that weight of an audience is unfortunately, still being on the Daily Mail.

[00:20:16] Juliet: The reach is so phenomenal and people will, yeah, build that familiarity. But a lot of people don't understand that. Paid and earned different. Paid, you pay to be someone, get that brand awareness, whereas earned, because you earn it and It's that dragon's opinion that you're worthy on being on that show.

[00:20:33] Juliet: It gives that weight to it that someone else is saying that you're really good and that you deserve to be there, but also the familiarity. People need to see things between five and eight times to build up that conscious thought of hang on, that's familiar. That's familiar. That's familiar. Okay.

[00:20:45] Juliet: They've got that integrity. So for you, is it an absolute game changer when it broadcasts? Did you see a lift in website traffic straight away? What was the aftershock?

[00:20:56] Dej: So we definitely saw a lift, in web traffic. Our phone did [00:21:00] ring, we definitely had people curious about what we were up to potential investors, but again, going back to what I said earlier about, they're not really being that ecosystem. These weren't neutral traditional VCs or even angels as we now know them.

[00:21:14] Dej: These were people in related industries that, maybe had a bit of cash and that we're just quite keen to understand where we were. And I think the thing that struck most people was just how small we were.

[00:21:26] Juliet: Yeah.

[00:21:27] Dej: And the fact that, because obviously the first natural question is so what have your sales been or, what's traction been like?

[00:21:33] Dej: And, when you say to someone who's a potential investor, we've done 6, 000 pounds in sales, they go, Oh, I thought from seeing it on Dragon's Den, it'd been a lot more than that. But, really at that point in time, it hadn't, we were we were just

[00:21:45] Dej: barely sputtering along. 

[00:21:46] Juliet: Someone said to me very early on in season one is as long as you can get someone to pay something for your product or your service, it has weight, it has value you've proven and it doesn't matter how much or who, you've just got to get someone to pay you something. [00:22:00] And it was really reassuring of I'll work out my pricing as I go, but as long as someone sees value in transacting on it.

[00:22:07] Juliet: It's proven and then from there you have got the confidence and you obviously build and build but yeah for you bursting their bubble like you've been on dragon's den like you must be huge and they're like we're still tiny we're still starting but for them that must have been quite exciting because it's a new opportunity and they can get in early.

[00:22:25] Dej: I think these days, yeah, I think if we were a two year old company, I think the approach from investors and our approach would probably be a little bit different. But going back all that time. I don't think these were necessarily savvy investors per se. These are mostly sort of industry people with businesses, a bit of cash, and we're quite interested in seeing if they could get involved in some way, shape or form.

[00:22:48] Dej: So I think their approach to business and what we were doing was quite traditional in that. We want to see turnover profits and that sort of thing, as opposed to what is a little bit more of a [00:23:00] modern way of looking at some businesses, particularly in our sector of okay, okay, you've got turnover, but what are you trying to do here? You're growing a brand or you just a B2C player. But, we were actually D2C and B2B and we were building a brand, so our value wasn't purely just in the sales and profits really we had some brand equity 

[00:23:22] Juliet: So did you land investment from someone inquiring after you'd been on Dragon's Den or did you find it somewhere completely different?

[00:23:29] Dej: No, we never got any investment from anyone. Even after Dragon's End, there were people that we spoke to for a little while

[00:23:35] Juliet: So you grew it organically?

[00:23:37] Dej: completely bootstrapped it. Just no investment at all. And I think that's happening now, particularly with the last 12 months, having been so brutal for startups and not being able to raise money, that,

[00:23:47] Dej: getting that revenue and getting sales is key and it became very quickly apparent that we needed to just go and get sales and to both Further prove that the business was viable, but also just to [00:24:00] survive frankly. Even though I had co founders they very quickly dropped out because they Just wanted to go and do more straightforward stuff with their life have proper jobs and

[00:24:09] Juliet: I'll have an easier life, yeah 

[00:24:12] Dej: so I was a one man band for a long time,

[00:24:14] Juliet: Less mouths to feed, less stakeholders, quicker decision making. We often have this debate in our co working office of like sole founder or co founder. And when it's a co founder that works, it's amazing. You've got double the capacity, but I've only ever done it on my own. So I just make a decision and crack on with it.

[00:24:30] Juliet: I don't have to run it past anybody else. And I find for my way of working, I much prefer that. However, it can be really lonely. So it's you looking back is, would you have it any other way? I

[00:24:43] Dej: give to anybody an entrepreneur is don't do it on your own.

[00:24:46] Juliet: really 

[00:24:47] Dej: having done it and having seen other businesses that have had co founders, and I think it depends on the type of business to an extent.

[00:24:55] Dej: Um, but I think certainly our type of business where, we've got [00:25:00] operations and we're shipping.

[00:25:01] Dej: And we've got products and we've got a plethora of customers and we're in a number of different verticals and there's a lot of moving parts. It would have been really helpful to have one or two other people at my level in terms of, making strategic decisions and just being able to bounce ideas off and also just having hands on deck, being able to actually get stuff done.

[00:25:24] Juliet: Having the time and the bandwidth for sure. Have you since gone after investment since then?

[00:25:30] Dej: Yeah. So we actually then So I'm going to talk a little bit about what I said about seriously raising and going back to your question of investment is part of the reason I didn't is because being a one man band, as you touched on earlier is raising money is a full time job. So if you're one man band and you're

[00:25:44] Juliet: Trying to do all things 

[00:25:45] Dej: to To trying to sell to Sainsbury's and selling online and also selling to caterers, et cetera, and just doing sales all day. And then you add trying to raise money. you're going to drop a ball somewhere, either you lose customers or you're just not very good at raising the money [00:26:00] and actually what happened for a long time is that it's just.

[00:26:03] Dej: Couldn't, I didn't have the bandwidth to go about raising money.

[00:26:07] Juliet: So you grew a bit slower than you might've done. Yeah.

[00:26:12] Dej: slow. We actually had a point where we grew very quickly and then it's the business kind of plateaued for a few years, just cause, we needed more cash, but I couldn't actually.

[00:26:22] Dej: Spare the time really to go out and really hunt it down. And I think it got to a stage where I just had to go and raise money. And I raised a little bit of cash and definitely dropped some balls, I think, in terms of just running the business because it really is, was just all consuming raising money, but that was a game changer.

[00:26:42] Dej: For us because it allowed me then to go and grow the business a little bit more, but also higher. And that became the key to being able to go and raise a little bit more money. And having said that, you know, we actually haven't historically raised that much. We're Raising this year. So we've got our [00:27:00] first really substantial raise, but we've only ever raised tiny chunks of cash in tiny pockets over the years.

[00:27:07] Juliet: presumably If you can then still grow the business in the way that you want, you're giving away less of it. So, I've grown quite slowly, or what I think is slowly. But everyone's like, but you own 100 percent of the company and who wants to know one? I was like, yeah but what else could I have done another way?

[00:27:24] Juliet: And that's where I think a lot of people have to sit down and think long and hard about what does success look like to me in this job that I've made up for myself. And I don't really Have the answer to myself on that. As long as I'm happy and I'm learning, I'm fine for now and it'll come. But someone's you're going to grow and sell it.

[00:27:39] Juliet: You're going to do this. I was like, Oh, I'm just paying my mortgage. Like what? I just started off the back of redundancy. So a lot of people, I think if they're debating stepping away from a salaried role and doing their own thing, I think it's a big other than money.

[00:27:51] Juliet: Why are you doing this? Because you're never going to work as hard as in a startup. And for you, what does success look like to you and your company?[00:28:00] 

[00:28:00] Dej: Good question. Um, Success looks like from a personal point of view, freedom and having the freedom to. Not necessarily have to spend a lot of my time almost just firefighting and actually being able to innovate because I think that's what I personally find interesting and exciting is, what new stuff can we do with our material, with our products or that's related, that's cool, that's new, that's, no one's ever seen before and takes a process Creative thinking and actually watching something come to life.

[00:28:31] Dej: I find that really exciting and interesting, and I'd love to be able to do more of that. So personal success to me, it looks not necessarily having to go and fundraise all the time and and 

[00:28:41] Juliet: Do the bit of the job you love.

[00:28:43] Dej: exactly. Yeah. For the business, I think certainly within the UK and I hope further field is.

[00:28:51] Dej: Becoming for the brand whole leaf, which is our trademark to become something like a household name, which is where we want to go So actually we're [00:29:00] not in waitrose anymore. We're not in any grocery stores. We actually pulled out of grocery stores because Again, just didn't have the bandwidth to deal with them.

[00:29:07] Dej: Payment terms are not great. You need to have a lot of backup inventory in case sales do all of a sudden And ideally when you're in grocery stores, you want to have a budget to be able to market your products and do activations and be able to give out samples and all that kind of stuff.

[00:29:24] Dej: So that your stuff is actually selling through supermarkets. So that's one of the things that we're going to go and do after we've raised money, but we're now we mostly supply businesses who. Either pay up front or pay on delivery and their volumes are good and that's much easier to deal with

[00:29:41] Juliet: best of luck with it all. Something that we do with guests is that we have a question from a previous guest for the next guest, and then we'd ask you a question for the one after you. And actually, the predecessor to you on the R series investment was Rohan, who founded Quarter. And His question was, what gets you up in the morning and [00:30:00] what stops you sleeping at night? Because something that I've definitely noticed is people are like, you need to protect your health first and foremost. You put your air mask on before anyone else's and if you don't do that, your business will crumple.

[00:30:11] Juliet: And I have been guilty of burning a candle at both ends. Someone says you're a lark and an owl. How does that work? I'm like, it doesn't. So for you, what gets you up in the morning? What motivates you? And what keeps you awake at night?

[00:30:23] Dej: So, there are two things that get me up in the morning and it depends what stage you're in. When things are going really well, and there's something really interesting to do, I'm up and I'm ready to go. And, if we're designing new products and I've got to go meet the designer and kind of discuss something that's completely new that it's fresh that I find exciting the other thing that gets me up in the morning is paying bills

[00:30:46] Dej: And paying wages. Right. So, we're quite a seasonal business. We're particularly busy in the summer and then we're not so busy in the winter.

[00:30:54] Dej: So winter our cashflow dips quite a lot. And then, we make it all back in the summer. It's quite, can be [00:31:00] quite tricky to manage, but frankly, just when you've, Which I actually realize now is the thing that I would say that I'm actually genuinely proud of not even the most proud of is probably the thing I'm really actually proud of is just employing people.

[00:31:14] Dej: I think it's like a massive privilege to be able to hopefully impact on someone's life and to be able to convince. right minded and right thinking people to join you on this weird journey of whatever it is that you're doing and feel like this is what I want to do rather than going and getting a job at some massive firm that probably will pay me more.

[00:31:35] Dej: so I think that's the biggest privilege certainly of having my own business. But yeah, those are the two things that get 

[00:31:41] Juliet: And then probably they could also be the things that stop you sleeping at night.

[00:31:46] Dej: exactly. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah, responsibility and that's another thing about fundraising that I think you you have this idea of the responsibility you might have when you get investment. But until that money actually hits your account, do you [00:32:00] think, Oh,

[00:32:00] Dej: now I've now got someone else's cash in my account, and I'm responsible for it and they've entrusted me with their hard earned money and all of a sudden.

[00:32:10] Dej: There's a weight of responsibility on your shoulders. It's right, I can't screw this up. Which is quite different to when you're one man band and you own 100 percent of it because you think worst case scenario, everything goes upside down and I'm the only person that suffers for it, hopefully.

[00:32:25] Juliet: What would your question be for the next guest? 

[00:32:27] Dej: My question would be if you were being paid a million pounds a year just to get out of bed and do something for six hours a day, would it be what you're doing now? And if not, what would it be? 

[00:32:38] Juliet: That is such a good question. Because someone said to me, it's okay, if I came to you with a check of this much, what would you do with it? I'm like I genuinely don't know. Because I've never had investment, so I've never allowed myself to think about it. And it's a month later, I'm still thinking about it.

[00:32:51] Juliet: What would I spend that on? Because I find people actually is the hardest part. And I would love to invest in more people, but they are so goddamn hard to find. The right people who [00:33:00] get our values, get our culture, get our ways of working, get why we're doing things differently, and then can do it as well. If I had a magic wand, I think I'd avatar the existing team and times them by 10 because they're wonderful. But that's not a thing yet. Who knows, there might be someone working on it in a startup 

[00:33:14] Juliet: somewhere. 

[00:33:15] Dej: know. You never know.

[00:33:17] Juliet: Thank you Dej so much for your time and your advice and insight. It's been fascinating talking to you and best of luck with everything Holy.

[00:33:24] Juliet: It's 

[00:33:24] Juliet: very

[00:33:24] Juliet: exciting times. . [00:34:00]