Guy Blaskey: How to scale smart, lessons from a £30M exit

Starting a business is a huge effort, but scaling it to new heights takes a great deal of skill. So, I wanted to hear from a serial founder who has not only grown and scaled a multi-million-pound business, but also decided to start from scratch and do it again.

Guy Blaskey founded healthy pet food business Pooch & Mutt in 2007. Having scaled it to £30 million in sales, he sold the business in 2023 for £11.5 million. Since then, Guy has founded Detrash to upcycle waste products into high quality watches.  

Keep listening to hear Guy’s advice on what he learnt about a sales strategy, selling a business & why laying the operational foundations is one of the most important things you can do. 

Guy’s advice: 

• Think about how you can do things differently
• Don’t spend too long on your business plan; get going and make a plan afterwards
• If you need a retailer, remember it’s less about the product (and less about you) and more about what makes your buyer’s life easy: filling a gap in their range, price point etc.  Think about them
• Always think about your customer and how you can help them achieve a result
• It takes time and rigour - and some failures - to get everything right and become a strong business
• You need a strong understanding of the finances; it’s not just about the brand
• Budget properly; predict sales and follow through
• Don’t overfund early on; if you start small you can track the money and see what works and what doesn’t
• Produce the product and get going with a small budget before considering looking for VC
• Marketing and distribution channels are quite as important as the product
• Work on your business rather than in your business; in other words, delegate the knowables

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Recorded, edited & published by Juliet Fallowfield, 2025 MD & Founder of PR & Communications consultancy for startups Fallow, Field & Mason.  Email us at hello@fallowfieldmason.com or DM us on instagram @fallowfieldmason.

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Transcript

5 Guy Blaskey | Pooch & Mutt: How to scale your business to £30m+ of sales

Juliet: [00:00:00] Starting a business is a huge effort, but scaling it to new heights takes a great deal of skill. With this in mind, I wanted to hear from a serial founder who's not only grown and scaled a multimillion pound business, but also decided to start it all again from scratch. Guy Blokey founded Healthy Pet Food Business, pooch and Mutt in 2007, having scaled it to 30 million pounds in sales.

He sold the business in 2023 for 11.5 million pounds. Since then, guy has founded DTR to upcycle waste products into high quality watches.Keep listening to hear guy's advice on what he learned about sales strategy, selling a business,and why laying the operational foundations is one of the most important things you can do. 

 if you'd like to contact Guy, you can find all of his details in the show notes along with a recap of the advice that he so kindly shared. 

 Hi guy. Welcome to How To Start Up. It would be great if you could kick off with an introduction as to the businesses that you have started and a bit about your background.

Yeah.

Guy: [00:01:00] Hi, I'm guy. So my background I started my career kind of in advertising. I had a very interesting start in advertising. So I did a French degree as part of my, third year, I was in France. I worked at an ad agency. I worked on the SC Johnson toilet duck account, and learned quite a lot there.

And I was supposed to go to Italy. I did French and Italian. I'm supposed to go to Italy. And I had a job lined up as a ski guide in Italy. And the, the counter kind of came to me and they said, the whole team in Italy has left, has walked out. you're literally the only person in the world that knows this account that can speak any Italian.

We'd love you to go to Milan. and help out on that while we sort everything else out. And had I said, yes, I probably would have been sorted for life in the world of advertising. And I said, I really want to go and be a ski guide. And I left and went to be a ski guide. then when I left uni had kind of trouble getting back [00:02:00] into advertising.

 I ended up at a stunt agency where we did really fun stuff and we worked with amazingly fun clients and the bit of the business that I was running made zero money at all.but you know, used to go to really fun parties and stuff.which was good.

And thenI was given an article about the founder of Red Bull, who was a marketing person who kind of said, I need my own products to market. and that kind of rang some bells with me and I thought I'm fed up with making other people's brands successful. or givingmy value to other people and not getting the value back.

And at the same time, my dog Cookie was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. we were treating her with a horse joint supplement that was made by my mum's horse health supplement company. and it worked really well. And those two things worked together. And I started launchingjoint and a probiotic supplement for dogs. With kind of no idea what I was doing. and quickly [00:03:00] realized that Marketing isn't as important as sales, as accounting, as logistics and all the other things that actually make a business work. And that was a 17 odd year journey. I built the company, exited the company. I did a gradual exit and I stayed on kind of as.

 an advisor for another year afterwards. and I've left that finally in December. And meanwhile, since June last year, I started a company called D trash, it looks like a watch company and it is a company that sells watches. and that is kind of what we are, but actually it's more one of my gripes with.

A couple of things happened. One, wanted to buy myself a watch to celebrate selling my company. And I was really surprised looking at the watch industry. I'm in a WhatsApp group with lots of FMCG founders in, in FMCG. Everyone's trying to source better. Everyone is trying to be ethical. There's been a big transition.

I always mention like the likes of Flash to Method or [00:04:00] Cadbury's to Tony's Cioccoloni. there's been a massive transition and it hasn't happened in Watches. And I was really surprised that it hasn't. and it's actually way easier in Watchers than it is in FMCG.we're the first.

Watch company, first European watch company to join 1 percent for the planet. Whereas there's about a bazillion FMCG companies that have joined. so that seemed odd. but the other bit of why I say it isn't necessarily just a watch company is it's about championing alternative materials.

and actually showing that you can make something just as nice, if not nicer out of eco friendly materials as you can from virgin materials and that there are some really cool materials out there. Ithe first watches that we've made are recycled steel on ocean plastic straps.

the ocean plastic, we work with a company called Tide. So it's all guaranteed and where it comes from. And you can go on that website and see everything. But also we're working on one at the moment which is like a leather strap but it is [00:05:00] made in association with Budweiser from the spent grain from the brewing process but it looks like leather.

So it's getting there it's like I quite enjoy finding out about those materials and making things out of them and getting those things into the world. My hope is that lots of other people then start thinking about their decision making processes differently and how they can do things differently.

 I think that is where the big change that DTrash can make will come from.

Juliet: I have so many questions because I was a Chanel watch PR for many years, so I went to Basel watch for many, many years and now we became B Corp, I'm pointing over my shoulder so our little B Corp plaque behind us, in my own business, leaving the big Bond Street brands behind and I remember when we got certified and I went to this founder networking thing.

So why would you bother becoming B Corp? You're tiny and you're a service based business. Well, 98 percent of the UK economy are SMEs and 78 percent of that are service based businesses. So if we all did a bit better, I think everyone [00:06:00] will be better off. And that kind of piped that person down. But it was more the fact that in my own working day, if I want to have purpose and value and reward that's above monetary, spreadsheets, what does that look like, and this small business I want to know I'm doing right by my team and by my clients and having no boss?

Having the B Corp boss of kind of, you've been audited and we, have a framework for you and gave me a huge level of relief and comfort. 

Guy: B Corp is quite interesting because I think it's actually a much better B2B brand than it is a B2C brand.

 I think it was because then you can work as a service for other people who are B Corp and that makes sense. 

Juliet: people understand what it is, but that, that drive for you having, potentially may not have needed to start another business after you exited, 

Guy: I mean, it depends what need is financially. I didn't like mental health and having something to do with my life.

Juliet: and purpose when you've been that busy to imagine not doing anything, what would you do? But a lot of people I meet in coworking offices are like, [00:07:00] what are you going to do, lifestyle business?

Are you going to sell it? And it's quite an aggressive, you've got to make loads of money and sell. It's like, I don't think in today's business world. If you look at the interesting founders, that is what it's about anymore. 

Yes, as a premium price, but there's a good reason behind that, but because the client will demand this, we're working in a world now where the consumer. Leads where their feet and they want to buy from brands that aren't killing the planet. So presumably full circle for you services, your need to want to design your perfect watch and your brain is interested in finding interesting materials, but you're also not trashing the planet.

Guy: And also I just thought, so so I advise some businesses as well. I do it pro bono through Imperial, and I do some paid stuff I mean, it all tends to frustrate me cause I'm a bit of a control freak. but I've continually advised people don't make sustainable your number one thing, be sustainable, make it number two.

But you need something else. [00:08:00] and then I've got a launch brand, which is basically focused on sustainability, but it just surprised me so much that,there is a company called IDGenev. who are doing things at a slightly higher scale than us. they're not rescalable, but it's quite cool what they're doing.

They're like repurposing movements and stuff. there's a company called tree where who doing things at the lower end, but there was no one where I was looking that was really leaning into it.

And actually. I was like, oh, it's just too much of a gap. it was annoying me so much that no one was doing it.

Like we should go out of business because everybody is using recycled materials. but that doesn't

Juliet: but we're a long way 

off. 

And that's kind of, you know, if that happens, then that's probably a measure of success.

Totally. But I think every single person I've interviewed has said they have borne their business out of a need that they had themselves. They're fixing a problem they were coming up against continually that they had to start the business to solve that

problem for themselves 

Guy: Although there's a lot of bullshit founder stories where people say that,There's some especially in the pet food world, there's a few founder stories of Oh, I [00:09:00] couldn't find a good pet food. So I had to go make one. It's like, well, you used to work at a company that made one that you copied the formulation of.

and you use their manufacturers. 

So that hangs true. and I've seen another, I shouldn't say who, but it was a brand like, I saw my. My sister in law really had this need. So I had to go and make the company. It's like, I mean, try harder. you were a banker at JP Morgan and you saw investment in the sector, but that's not a great founder story.

Juliet: my, my redundancy story is it's the first time I'd ever been made redundant and I was so cross and indignant about it. I was like, fine, I'm starting a business next day. And our mission and vision is to become redundant with every client because everybody hates PR agencies. So we're going to teach people how to do it themselves.

And my first thing on my to do list was thank my previous employers in a year and mean it. Cause I thought, I'm going to win this because I clearly was very cross about the whole thing. And. Just servicing that need of, okay, everyone hates PR agencies. How can we fix this?

How can we make ourselves redundant? And my business coach is like, this is a terrible [00:10:00] business model. You're not gonna be able to scale. You're not gonna be able to sell. It's like, well, if the clients are happy, we'll win more business through referrals. And that's been happening. 

Guy: it's like a physio saying we're going to fix you. You're going to fix you. Not keep treating you.

Juliet: Exactly, exactly that. And just being really, that's where we've got B Corp points is being really honest about how PR works and how PR doesn't work for people and for businesses. so it's a, it's an interesting view on where people come at starting their businesses. And for you as a second, second time founder, is that fair to say?

This is your second business. So you've got some other ones as well in there.

Guy: Yeah, I mean, I did advertising consultancy. when I started Pooch and Mutt, it was a bit weird. I, so I had concurrently started Pooch and Mutt and, an advertising consultancy, and Iwell, I did enough work to pay for myself to found the company effectively.

and one of the original ideas at Pooch and Mutt was, It was kind of the advent of online advertising. and it, it was kind of, can I prove it with my own brand that I can then go and help other people by saying, look what I've done with my own brand. and,

Juliet: your own best case [00:11:00] study. 

Guy: yeah, and it was almost supposed to be a case study.

And then there was a point where I started working with a coach and it was like, actually, I just need to go all in on this. this has got a future rather than it just being a case study. But I'm a big believer in, and I prophesize this a little bit to people. I think people sit and they make business plans for a long time without actually doing anything.

And I'm a big believer in the minimal viable product approach of just get something done, get something out there and then make a plan. and even doing it second time around. With D trash, I was like, I'm going to make some watches.last year was, can I make some watches?

Can I make some watches that people like? Can I get some watches that people value? Can I get some logistics set up so I can get them out to people? and it's supposed to be that things will evolve you know, the water is a great wearing one. I always wear one. Everyone that has them really likes them, but you have to take a risk on a [00:12:00] manufacturer.and I just believe that yes, you do need to do planning. You very, very much need to do business planning, but actually sometimes you just need to get started.there's a phrase called, make a plan to make a plan. 

So just get started, see who your customer is, see what works, see what doesn't work.

You know,does PR work does Meta work? Does Instagram work? Does

Juliet: Well, you learn by doing so much faster. And I feel on my team, we were like, well, we could watch the training lessons. We could just try and get into it and break it. And there was some podcast editing software. I was like, actually, trust me on this. We do need to watch the training on this one. It's so complex that it will save us time.

 it was a real, fine. Okay. We can't just get going, but that getting going, because then you know, your audience, you get that feedback, that live feedback that you iterate far faster. but for you. Taking this back to sales in both of your businesses, how would you define sales and how did you learn to sell?

Guy: That's a good question. I mean, there's different types of sales. [00:13:00] is pure D2C, we talking to one retailer as a pop up thing, but it's really, it's supposed to be a D2C brand, and, I like that because it's easy, watchers are easy, no shelf life, the minimum orders are quite small, you can store them for ages, they don't need to be refrigerated, there's no, you know, 

Juliet: Their trend led to a point that a long term

purchase. 

Guy: exactly,I have the cash available now that I can spend, I spent 40 grand on my first order and I can take me five years to sell them and it can you know Not be a massive thing to the future or they sell out a lot quicker, which they kind of are doing Um, and and that's fine.

 my daughter helps me pack them She's five and can help me pack them. They're in a cupboard here Print a label off and set them out drop them off at tesco that every place in the morning. It's really easy so sales for d2c is very different because that's very much online led thing.

So PR is important to getting sales. And I, at the moment, I'm making myself [00:14:00] front and center of the brand when it comes to things like Instagram, both from a paid point of view and a kind of organic point of view, and that's kind of how you sell. And it's a lot about building brand and building trust.

and then we did a lot of that at Pooch and Mutt as well, but obviously with Pooch and Mutt, especially in the early days. Less so in the latter days, cause we built, the DTC turnover is about 20 million in my last year. And when your DTC turnover is 20 million, you've got enough volume that you can kind of launch stuff and get through it, you know, you're going to sell it basically.

Whereas early days we had to get a retailer on board. the first product that we properly launched mass market, we launched some dog treats and tubes and. I designed those, I print them out on a bit of paper, I stuck, sellotaped the paper to some Haribo tubes, got some other dog treats from another company, put them in the pack and took them to Pets at Home.

And I needed Pets at Home to order in order to go into production, because [00:15:00] otherwise we would never have got through the volume that we needed. When sales to the likes of pets at home, and we deal with Tesco and Waitrose, Sainsbury's, et cetera. The way that I always looked at that is it's less about your product.

It's less about you. It's about, what makes your buyer's life easy. And a lot of people go to supermarkets, especially, and they're like, I've got this product and it's great. That's like well brilliant is is it the product that your buyer wants? Do they have space on the shelf for it?

What are you going to take off the shelf to put that in? You know, there's only certain amount of products that they could fit in. Where does it fit price wise? They don't really want to change the products that are on the shelves, especially the successful ones.

They don't want to take a risk on a new brand. So you have to, you have to just see things from someone else's point of view.

and I think that's the same with all sales. I think, when it comes to detrash as a watch brand, a watch is a way for people to [00:16:00] put forward a version of themselves into the world.

So it's a way to say something about themselves. And especially for guys where, you don't have a lot of jewelry options and, and dress is relatively conservative. A watch is one of the very few ways that you can put forward a version of you into the world. So we are giving those people a way to say, I'm kind of a good citizen of the world.

I care about the planet, I care about stuff. That's kind of the job. Now, my job as a salesperson now is to get people to understand that, that that's what they can come to us for. But it's about meeting that need for a customer.

Juliet: you're solving the problem of the audience, whether it be a buyer or your consumer. 

Guy: there's a great thing. So this is from, a guy called Donald Miller and he has, his book called How to Build a Story Brand. And, it's based on The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell. And you can do this with loads of films, but the best two [00:17:00] are either Harry Potter or, Star Wars. But if you do it with Star Wars, because most people know Star Wars, is the, Yoda is super powerful, and Yoda should be able to beat Darth Vader.

And actually, if you open the film, here's Yoda, he's a really powerful character. There's Darth Vader, he's evil, he beats him at the end. It's not a very good story.and that's what a lot of brands do, a lot of brands try to be the hero. And if you think about the actual story, which is You've got Luke, who is nothing, has no power, and Luke has to kill, Darth Vader.

He, it has to be the good versus evil. But you've got Jeopardy, because you don't know if he can do it, you then bring in the Yoda, who is the teacher. And Yoda teaches him to be the hero, and then he triumphs as the hero. And Donald Miller's point. Is that as a brand you want to be yoda in that [00:18:00] point of view?

Luke is the customer the customer is the hero the hero has Their job that they want to do their conquest that they need to go on and you as a brand Are there to help them achieve what they want to achieve? It's about the customer's success. It's not about your success

Juliet: Oh, this is music to my ears. I said for a long time that PR is sales without a commission and the sense that we get a lot of clients that go, we want to be on Vogue or we want to be on the FT, it's like, but why does the Vogue editor want the all Vogue reader to read about you on their platform?

What's in it for the reader? And they're like, well. Oh, I hadn't thought about it like that, but we want to be, it's like, it's not about you. It's about the reader. The business is servicing the reader first and they need you to give them exciting information and angles and news that's going to benefit the reader that then they might discover you and then maybe buy your product, but it's not about you.

And when you flip it that way around, people are like, Oh, okay. And it's servicing that need of that audience.

Guy: yeah, and I think it's it's [00:19:00] interesting because So we as a dog food company with pooch and mutt No one really wants to write about a new launch of a dog treat. and I said my first job was a first proper job in london was a company called cunning stunts and We were the guys who projected gail porter onto the house of commons and 

and you can and my actual my first job there was to convince the press that we had projected carmen elector onto the moon And this is pre digital photography, so we kind of like mocked up some images and actually got them put onto camera film and delivered camera film to news departments.

And they wrote it because it gave them a story because it's quite a fun story to write about. And I actually worked out this way that we could do it,using a solar farm, but projecting backwards. So you project the image to the mirrors of the solar farm, but then go up to the moon. That was my theory that we kind of wrote and it got a bit of coverage.

and then it was in, in pet food. It was like, how do we get PR on,we work with Stacey Solomon and people, and that got lots of PR. [00:20:00] And then it's interesting going into watch world. Cause actually people want to talk about watch, like there are whole publications that are just about a watch, the color, the spec, the materials, and it's like I'm ingrained to think.

We need a bigger story than here's a product, but actually for once the product can actually speak for itself. It makes 

Juliet: Yeah.The watch, I think it's watch, watch, wine, art, cars is a bit of a niche behaved product in the sense that the journalists are completely obsessed with that category. And I remember going to Basel watch fair and afterwards when I became quite close to them, they said, Oh, it was actually really refreshing meeting because I said, you know, way more than I do.

I know about the Chanel watches I'm about to tell you about. Please tell me where I go wrong because I'm new to this and all the movements automatic, this skeleton, dah, dah, dah, dah. And they like, no, you've actually done an all right job, but this movement is quite interesting because it dates back to that.

Anyway, the knowledge that they have is unbelievable. So yeah, you're preaching to the converted and also they're interested in [00:21:00] seeing people doing different things in that space. So you're giving them nudes

And it 

must 

Guy: we're not, it's, we're taking a different tack cause We're not like a urologybrand. There are brands that, are doing incredible things. With movements, they're all total waste of time in a way, because the Casio G Shock does everything better than any other watch that's ever been mechanically made, but.

Juliet: How 

many bubbles have you burst with that one?

Guy: but there are no, I mean, and I go on this watch podcast I was like, oh, we need to stop talking about it. Like, uh, you know, I'll 

Juliet: what's interesting you is the sourcing of materials and the problem solving of like, well, we need a leather, but we can't have leather. So where are we going to find it? And that keeps your brain happy, which means you're passionate about it, which presumably 

when you 

come to sell 

Guy: a way to, and it's a way to display these materials. And, we've got great. Automatic movement in the watchers and it's made by Seiko. It will, it's like bulletproof as a movement. It's, it's a proper movement in that it's got a rotor and [00:22:00] everything.it's not beautifully engraved or anything.

And,it could be thinner and there's lots of things that it could be, but you then get into kind of that very niche world where things actually just don't work as well. And you need to employ watchmakers and you need to do everything else. And that's kind of just not what we're about.

And I love that there are brands out there where that is what they're about and they are making everything by hand. 

Juliet: There's room for 

Guy: that's. There's room for everyone, but I don't think that's how we have the biggest impact. I think the biggest impact in terms of DTrash is the more wrists that I can get them on. 

Juliet: I was going to say, how have you found your customers? In this new category, new space for you. How have you found them?

Guy: it's interesting because I'm looking at it from a few different ways and there's definitely there's an early adopter group and there's like a watch enthusiast group, and I'm obsessed by the early adopter kind of principle and tipping point, et cetera. I used to. Do talks on the whole [00:23:00] thing.

there's definitely like a really good niche of watch lovers who really like them. and that's, and that's great. And I, and I love the watch lovers. And you know, I

had a load of set it's kind of finite 

And

but we're at a good price point for those people And the interesting thing will be whether it does but I do think that we need those people and those publications For the trust element.

So when we do go out to a bigger market, you know the fact that the watch writer at gq who obviously does know what he's talking about has named detrash It's one of the top 17 british watch brands andthis watch was the number three watch launch of 2025 already 

Juliet: you're building that integrity in the, in the nuclear, and then it will feed out to the wider

Guy: yes, and then it will feed out but then there are bigger markets to get into And I think it's interesting to look at kind of the cohort of brands that you put yourself with and I don't put D trash withwhether it's the [00:24:00] Tudors or the Omegas or the Bremonts or anything else I put us withlike Finistere and Sun God and companies like that.

And I think that's the audience. And we need to do more work on that and getting to those people more. But I think that's more of our audience. And I've defined it as watchers for adventurous people who want to help protect nature's playgrounds. And I think there's quite a lot in that because I live by the sea, I do Ironman training, so I'm out cycling, I'm swimming in the sea, I hike in the Alps, I ski, and I'vedone this different, hiking routes around Mont Blanc, and I see theglacier every year getting smaller and smaller as well,and I think there's that thing about kind of nature's playgrounds and wanting to protect them, appeals to that adventurous kind of people who are in those environments.

Thanks And I want the watchers to be used in those environments.

Juliet: I think it's a really clever tactic because you, again, Chanelism that you're in a bit of a microcosm and a microclimate or whatever the expression [00:25:00] is, you're too in your own bubble and if you're looking to where your client is behaving, they're going to need hiking boots, sunglasses, waterproof, a watch, that is the same person, a sustainable water bottle.

And if they're out in nature and they're appreciating it, they'll want to preserve it. You'll reach a more targeted audience, but a wider one,

if that makes sense. Yeah, that's really interesting. Is there anything that you've learned from Pooch and Mutt that you've brought over that you would.

Guy: Yeah, I mean,you know, I was young when I sat up Pooch and Matt,I always used to joke with my team, because I built, I'm not saying I built the whole team, because I built people who then built people who then built people, but 

yeah, people, yeah. 

 we were doing 30 million and I'd always refer back to my first year and it would be like, Oh, this month we did what we did in our first year this week, we did on the first year and it got to the point of like this day. We did what we did in our first year. and even this hour we did [00:26:00] in our first year.

but Poochamut it took 17 years to get to 30 million. In some people's heads that's you know, it's incredible to get to 30 million Anyway, and it's still going and it's still growing and it's under good leadership and it has a very solid future.There are other companies Who go out and get investment?

Etc who would you know? if I went to a vc and said it's gonna i'm gonna grow a 30 million company over 17 years There's no way they'd fund me because they'd be like no we need you to do that in threebut actually it takes a long time to get your fundamentals, right? And I think there's a lot of kind of getting fundamentals, right.

And getting your knowledge, And the reason that Pooch and Mutt has been so successful is because we nearly went bust so many times that had, we had to be really rigorous about getting everything right and really understanding the business. 

Juliet: That expression, you learn the hard way has never been more real in startup life. Someone said it was the trampoline effect where you hit rock bottom and you get laser focused on what matters and how to fix it fast.[00:27:00] 

Guy: Yeah, I'd probably agree with that. I mean, sometimes you can't fix it and there's lots of different rock bottoms. You had multiple different rock bottoms, I had five kind of failed investment or sale processes over the years. And there was one point when the company is about a million turnover that we were supposed to have a sale.

I was supposed to get 2 million, plus extra workout, which would have been nice. And it fell through with 80 grand's worth of legal fees. And for anyone listening when you're selling a company your lawyer is working for you not for your company So that 80 grand's worth of legal fees is yours not your company's which you don't really think of until it falls through because you assume you're gonna have 2 million to pay the legal fees withbut anyway, it fell through and I then sat with my accountant and I said If this had gone through we would have had a proper board.

We've had proper advisors I need someone that can help me with all those things. I don't know And he said i've got someone [00:28:00] great for you They've really good marketing they do this this and this and I was like no I need like a finance and an ops person 

Who knows the stuff that I don't know who can help me with that?

And he said Well, I know someone but he'll never do it. and it's a guy who was cfo at covent garden soup? He's very much behind the scenes. He doesn't have a public profile, but he was cfo at covent garden He and some others bought a small loss making chocolate company called green and blacks and then sold it to cadbury's And then he was chairman of multiple companies and multiple investor And he came in and for free at first came in every week And and he did get paid in the end.

but he taught me how to set up a management team. He taught us how to do our accounting, taught us how to do our reporting and, taught us basically how to operate as, as though we were a 300 million turnover company. And actually we were, bought by a company that does about 600 million.

[00:29:00] And our reporting systems are considerably better than than that And our understanding of the business I would say is better than theirs They would probably say it's better than theirs and it's definitely better than anyone else they've ever boughtso going into business two with that knowledge of I know I'd set up, we know how to, and even like going to an accountant and saying, this is how I, I'm telling you, you need to structure my P and L.

This is what needs to be at every level and actually being able to use that information. you have to understand your, your cashflow and your balance sheet and who should be on a management team and what the different areas are. doing it

Juliet: We're being

so comfortable with your numbers. There's a lot of creatives I've met. It's like, Oh no, I don't do spreadsheets. It's like, well, you're not going to have a business if you don't understand your

Guy: Exactly. And I was very much like, Oh, this is, you know, first time around. I have a friend, he's a. MD of an investment bank when I was first trying to get investment like two years in and I turned over about 20 grand or something but I was like, I don't need my numbers.

It's all about the brand someone's going to come in and build the brand [00:30:00] by the brand and I was like I look back on that now and i'm like that is stupidly naive. and actually I went back to him. We,we were offered VCT investment, which HMRC wouldn't let us do, which is a long story, but he helped me with a pitch deck and it was all like, this is how great our brand is.

This is this, this is this. And he sat with me for an hour and just went like appendix appendix appendix, got me to a four page presentation. Which the first one was like very clear about the ask. The second one was financials. And the third one might have said something about the product or the brand.

And  I took the full VCTs and got three offers within 10 minutes.it was ridiculous.cause again, back to the point on sales, it's giving, it's understanding. of 

people go to 

investors. Yeah. an investor's job, you know, I try and coach people on getting investment and it's like.

They don't care. they might say they care. They don't care. The investors job is getting money from people who want to invest in their fund and giving a [00:31:00] return on that investment. If you can go in and say, this is how you're going to get returned. This is how we're going to scale, put this money in here.

It spits out this much here. You're going to get investment. whatever it is. whereas you can go in and say how brilliant you are. And you're going to save the planet. well, good for you, but

Juliet: you don't have any money. Yeah. Well, going back to the B Corp point where you have to be a profiting company to be B Corp, Then you can put people and planet above profit, but you have to have profit and there is no shame in that. I think a lot of people, what's that awful statistic about how many businesses fail, not because it's a bad idea, but it's just don't have the cashflow.

Guy: Yeah, and 

also people don't understand the difference between cash flow and, you can be highly profitable and cash flow negative or you can, be like Amazon and lose loads of money and be cash flow positive and actually pay people with cash, not with percentages.

Juliet: yes, exactly. Goodness me, there's so much that you need to do a whole workbook or podcast on this for people. I'm sure many people 

listening 

will [00:32:00] benefit. 

Guy: it. Yeah, 

 I've written, a few blogs on it. There's, I've got a blog at guyblasky. com, which has got some blogs that I send people to about cash flow, especially,

um, 

Juliet: Yeah,

Guy: There's an incredible course at Cranfield Business School called the Business Growth Program.

that, I think Dryrobe went through, Go8 went through, Goo went through, and it was James from Goo that told me to go on it. And it's from businesses, I think it's 2 to 20 million, who've got there by nows, but don't know how to do anything properly. And they teach you. How to do things properly.

Juliet: so I went into the marketing lectures and I was like, Oh, I've written articles on this, I've written books on this, done talks on this. I went into the cashflow lecture and I was like, did you all know this? Like, why has no one ever explained any of this to me? And I walked out of that lecture and I just changed everything about how we set everything up, which enabled us to grow.

Guy: just based on the cash flow and actually when I did the [00:33:00] The sale deal for pooch mud. It was basically based on that lecture and I Actually sent the terms of the deal to the guy that delivered the lecture And I was like you have to look at this because I based on what you've taught me And he just looked at me.

He was like you need to bite their hands off. This is brilliant Like this is the like the best structure i've ever seen for a deal and again, back to the sales point, the investors are really keen because I think we're about 3 million turnover when I did the deal. I told them when they got the 100 percent of the equity, we'd be at 10.

And. They kind of said bullshit, but if you're at four, we'd be happy anyway, because it works and we don't have to pay you as much and one of them was quite harsh to me in the deal and he drunkenly Took me aside at a party in italy. It was like i'm really sorry I just thought you were full of shit and you've actually totally delivered because I never thought you would and now I help him, you know, i've given them advice on other m& a stuff as well But he's like we never [00:34:00] thought you'd get to 10.

I think it was it was 12 when they finally took Full ownership, and within two years of that, I was 30.

Juliet: my God, 

Guy: And I knew, I want to say I knew it could be, but I feel like a lot of founders say, well, I knew it could be brilliant. And I don't mean like knew as in I was determined that it could be. Because we had done so much analysis on the business, we knew the figures, we knew how it could go, we kind of knew how it could be done,

Juliet: going off knowledge, fact, experience, you'd been in the business 17 

years to know, you knew it wasn't

Guy: well not,the guy from Green and Blacks who you next slide He taught us how to budget properly and if you look at a pooch and mud budget you can see product x In the seventh week of the year in sainsbury's will sell this many units like we predict down to to that level And obviously it's not perfect, but you can just do the math and add it up and you see where you get to at the bottom and if we don't sell that [00:35:00] many we try and understand why and if we sell more we try and understand why and 

Once you get that reporting, you kind of know what you can do.

Juliet: I, I feel for founders who invest in PR because it's like, it's probably the one element of marketing that you pay for something, but you never know what you're going to get back and you can never, ever prove to us, the number of times I've been in CFO offices in my old world of, we got this coverage and we're pretty sure the engagement went up because of X, Y, and Z, but we can never prove it and that return is really exasperating for a

Guy: well 

you can that's where D2C is great, because actually, we got a great article published on Friday and then got a massive uplift in sales over the last two days. and if you're small enough, you can see what works and actually that's where I think the whole get started to do your planning is a good idea because actually when you're small, you can see what works, whereas if you had a.

Juliet: And you've got 

Guy: spending millions Yeah, 

this is what tends what can happen with overfunded companies is [00:36:00] You go in you go to vc you get a load of funding You have to grow really quickly, which means you have to spend really quickly And if you're spending really quickly, you have to kind of spread the money around

and by spreading it around don't necessarily know what works Whereas instead of that you start small and you try small things

Where 

Juliet: it's isolated. 

Guy: and it's isolated 

Juliet: Yeah.

Guy: exactly you can see what works

Juliet: Yeah. I see a lot of wastage and it makes my heart bleed because there's so many incredible businesses out there that are doing amazing things and some of them are not going after investments, some of them are, and some of them are just. Spending, as you said, they have to, have to be seen to be spending, but they're doing it blind, they're not doing an informed way, they're not looking at the data in detail, they're not working out why something wouldn't work to then inform the next decision and they just hemorrhaging budget.

And I'm like, Oh God, please

stop. 

Guy: also a big cultural problem with I need to be nice to hear how I say this, but, so I like I said, I've done, I do pro bono. mentoring through [00:37:00] Imperial and there's me and a couple of others who are on the consumer side. there's lots of non consumer stuff that I don't get involved with.

but we we work on the consumer side and a lot of people are like, this is my plan to do my, I need to raise 200 grand at series A, I need to raise 400 grand at series B, and then I'm going to raise a million at series C, and this is what we're going to do. And I sit there with them and i'm like you've not sold anything 

You're not made a product. You're not sold a product. Don't go and raise money now, and I had one person on that program who came to me and she said can you help me? I need to do this and then i'm gonna raise 100 grand or 200 grand and I sat with her and I was like You can launch this company for three grand.

do you have three grand? It's like yeah, and I was like do this This is how you gave her a full plan of like you can do this for three grand And then when you go for investment, you've got sales, you've got proof, you've got proof of concept, 

you've got proof that people like the product

Juliet: You put your own skin in the game as

Guy: and your own skin is in the game.

And youshow a viable business. [00:38:00] And then she came back to me like six months later and said, I've just raised a hundred grand and the VC needs me to put a board together. Will you be on the board? I was like, well, on a hundred grand, you can't afford me on the board. And I'll help you for free, but I'm not helping a VC investor for free.

Cause why would I, and you've already proven that you're not going to listen to me. So why would I do this?

Juliet: that, and then be careful who you get into bed with. Cause the minute, if you start your own business, you are your own boss. The minute you take investment, you lose some of that autonomy and you waste a 

Guy: exactly. And I, And I, 

Juliet: comms.

Guy: had different person for that. I had a, product business that had a 7 percent gross margin. And I said this can never work. It's impossible for this to work. And they were like, but, but there's loads of loss making businesses out there and gave all these examples of loss making businesses.

And I was like, yeah, they've got a good gross margin, and Pooch and Mutt as well Was not profit making for most of its lifetime But it was fast growing and it had a good gross [00:39:00] margin where when you get it to a scale It can pay back the losses and actually a lot of fmcg businesses You have to get to a certain scale to be able to pay it back.

So it's okay to be loss making If you've got a route to profitability And I was explaining that yeah There are loss making businesses out there and that's fine because they have this route because they have a good grace margin but at seven percent you can never do it like it's impossible to do it and People disagreed with me.

It's like there's numbers of numbers

Juliet: Well, it's based in fact, and this is where I get quite excited about spreadsheets because I don't get to do numbers that often. When you can have something anchored in fact, and it's maths versus. A story, an idea, something creative, which is wonderful and exciting as well. But proof is proof.

And when you're in business, you need that. And I think this is front and center for me, the one thing that any business.

Anyone working needs to think about is numbers, 

Guy: Yeah. so talking about Cranfield, I went back to Cranfield to do like the [00:40:00] entrepreneurs talk after I'd done it,And they knew me as like the brand and purpose person and thought I was going to come and talk about brand and purpose. And I did a little bit of my story and then talked about budgeting for about 20 minutes.

And I was like, you just all need to get on top of this, get on top of your numbers. And the lecturers who knew me, they all came up to me at the end. And I was like, not what we expected, 

Juliet: but back to your point, sustainability should just be given. It shouldn't be the, the talking point. And a lot of people say, Oh, we're sustainable. It's like, I'm sorry. If you murder someone with an ax every day, you're a sustainable ax murderer. It doesn't mean that you're good. If you have good ethical practice.

Yes. Great. But if you're sustainable, you're turning on a light switch. You're not sustainable. 

Guy: I think Apple's a really good example of this, where everyone talks about Steve Jobs as this kind of.you know, got up to 300 million, which is very impressive, but his, successor gets it to 3 billion by getting operations.

Right. They've not invented anything since the Steve Jobs. There's been no real massive creativity. They're not particularly good computers. They're not particularly [00:41:00] good phones. There's nothing good about them. They're not creative about them, 

but the the ops is amazing. and it's a well oiled machine and that is what gets you there The other example I quite like is is gymshark because people talk about innovation It's like there's nothing you can get at gymshark that you cannot get at nike or adidas or anywhere else But their marketing channels and their distribution channels have been massively innovative So innovation doesn't have to be about the product and what you offer, you know It can be about how you operate

Juliet: Oh, I love this. It's such an interesting perspective, thank you. what we do have is a question from our previous guest, who has a question for you, which is, what is the one resource that you would have messed in again?

Oh,

Guy: If I was to start again, the best thing I did is invest in myself.

Juliet: yeah.

Guy: uh, Boundaries, work life balance, mental coach, [00:42:00] meditation, mushrooms. I've heard it all,

yes,

I mean, mushroom, honestly, I, the, I had a very transformative journey with mushrooms, which is a very long story, after the first failed sale, I started doing weekly therapy. you know, it's hard to have problems at work and be the boss, but we'll not want to share the problems with the people who are working for you.

Cause you're the boss, so you need to be able to share them. the course at Cranfield I did. was game changing. I did coaching with, handle coaching. Who's also Hugh Jackman's coach, which was really good. spending time learning, getting a mentor. Mentors, mushrooms, 

Juliet: and it's taking the time out because a lot of people are like, no, but I'm too busy to do any of that. It's like actually. You have to, to do anything else well.

Guy: I don't actually, there's a, there's a great phrase, which is, work on your business, not in your business.

Juliet: Hmm.

Guy: I can do everything in a business really mediocrely, but I can always [00:43:00] hire people better than me, but I can do it to a level that I understand it and I understand what they're doing and I can get things started, but I can always hire people far, far better.

Juliet: of all trades, but master at hiring.

Guy: yeah, not even a master at hiring, lucky at hiring or trial and error at hiring, good at managing and good at delegating and good at mentoring, but getting people to work on things and actually you being able to step out and work on your business.

And, but as it comes to sales, I think one thing I found as a founder, especially. I was formulating the products. I was designing the packaging did all the naming. I did absolutely everything.

Did the formulations.if you then go into a sales meeting and someone says something negative about it. It really hurts and actually one of the things that was part of the therapy I did is Disassociating me and the company and it's like someone can say something bad about the company.

Juliet: And it's not you. Well, someone else said this years ago. She said, yes, I [00:44:00] started a business. I have a job. It just happens to be a job in a company that I happen to have started, but I'm employed and the business is bigger than me and someone said to me very quickly, you go straight in and limited company and you're working for that company and it's not you, it's not personal.

And it's hard because you are at the coalface, especially when you start and you're small, and people have opinions, but

Guy: And I'm really terrible at criticism, my wife will confirm. I do not take criticism well. I don't, and especially when it was, everything was so close to my heart. so I found that really hard. And actually with DTrash, I've decided I'm just going to lean into any criticism and have a go back at them.

Cause. 

 I don't need it. for success. I'm not going to bow down to other people or kowtow to other people. We get a lot of people who are like, why would I want a watch that says trash on the front? And I'm like, well, if you don't get it, you don't get it. It's not for you. 

Or I quite often say, turn your brain cell on and think about it. which is what you can do when 

Juliet: Yeah. 

Guy: to make the [00:45:00] sale that day.

Juliet: in business that you aren't going to be everything to everyone. 

And someone said, don't plan for failure, which most people do plan for success. Cause it might mean you have to work a seven day week and you don't see your family and you can't travel anymore. And like it works both ways

Guy: So I did that the other way around I've got a five year old and a nine year old. I've had dinner with them and done their bedtime and bath time for 95 percent of their lives. And maybe I could have got a little bit more money if I hadn't done that, but I'm 

not particularly interested in that. 

Juliet: way though. Yeah.

Guy: Yeah, and actually I did an interview in the magazine. I said like my biggest success is that my wife has also been really successful at the same time that my kids are really successful that I see them a lot 

Juliet: In terms of metrics of success, that's a major one. It

Guy: yeah, and I think you know,I read Elon musk's biography and there's an email in there from somebody who says, I need the day off because my child's just been born and Elon Musk [00:46:00] replies, no, because we're trying to change the world. for a start you're fucking sending satellites into space for cheap.

That's all you're doing. You're the easy jet of satellite launch, but it sounds better to say you're going to Mars. it's not that important. Whereas some of those kids are important. And we had, especially coming from advertising, because advertising is always long hours, we had very flexible work hours.

 Everyone had gym membership. People encouraged to go to gym at lunch. I did half Ironman's triathlons, CrossFit the whole way through Putin, ma I, I was healthy, I was mentally stable. 'cause I'd spent a lot of time working on that as were the team.

 know, we went, we went fully remote and locked down. We've got 60 people who are remote and I, I have an article that's penned on LinkedIn about what that means. And it isn't working from your bedroom. It's being able to have the freedom to work how and when you want. And I spoke to, I had a call with the MD who's now running it last week about something.

And our head of e [00:47:00] commerce or, new head of e commerce is, is trying out working in Cyprus for a few weeks at a time. And actually that makes me happier than, if he'd said, Oh, we've launched this product and it's going really well. The fact that actually people are taking that on board and like,

can I work from Cyprus for three weeks? 

Yeah. 

That's so much more important. And that's my measure of success.

Juliet: no, it's a good one. And I think when you work hard, it, that is important. You need other things to matter. And what would your question be for the next guest? It could be

Guy: I had something else, having said what I've just said, I'm changing it to what are your measures of success that aren't financial?

Juliet: Amazing. Thank you so much, Guy. I'm conscious we've taken up far too much of your time, but I'm very grateful.

We've covered a lot. Go, go, go. Go, go, go, go,

Guy: screaming kids come in. No, it's

Juliet: We will.

I'm going to click stop because it needs to upload.

 [00:48:00]