Speaker 1 00:00
You want to preserve what made your business special, but you can't just keep doing the things
you were doing when you were selling 100 boxes worth of gin when you're going to look at
30,000 next year, right? Like you have to get more efficient. It's an interesting time in the
liquor industry now, right? Because you hear about younger people aren't drinking. There's an
epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the New York Times. They wrote an article: Have people
forgotten that there's pleasure and ritual and community in these spaces? Great leaders take
the blame and share the credit. Is what it boils down to. There's an opportunity in every
interaction to let that idea guide you.
Speaker 2 00:46
Growth is something every founder chases, but what happens when you actually achieve it?
Welcome to another episode of CEO Behind the Scenes. I'm your host Fred Fuller. Today's guest
is Charlie Moss, co-founder and CEO of Papa Salt Coastal Gin, the Australian craft spirits brand
he co-founded with Tom Ackerley, Josie McNamara, Regan Riscus, and actress Margot Robbie.
In just a few years, Papa Salt has grown from an ambitious startup into one of the fastestgrowing
gin brands in Australia, while expanding into the UK, Spain, and Italy. But as Charlie
has discovered, success creates a whole new challenge. Building a great brand is one thing;
scaling it without losing what made it special in the first place is something else entirely.
Growth has forced the business to rethink almost everything, from its team and strategy to the
way it approaches marketing, while staying true to the identity that's driven its success. So,
how do you reinvent a business without losing the very thing that made people love it in the
first place? Charlie joins us to share what scaling has taught him about leadership, brand
building, and knowing when to say no. Charlie, welcome to the show. How are you?
Speaker 1 01:55
I'm doing great, thanks.
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Speaker 2 01:57
Great, great to have you. You are in California.
Speaker 1 02:00
I am in Los Angeles, California.
Speaker 2 02:02
I got a whole bunch of questions about the geography, though that's not really part of the
conversation because you have an Australian brand. You're in LA. There's some obvious ties
into LA, etc. But, but one of the things I think we could start with is, you know, I've I've been in
business for 25 plus years, and I've been part of businesses that are growing, part of
businesses that are declining, part of businesses that are steady state. And I think one of the
big misconceptions in the corporate world, one of the hardest things to do, is actually manage a
growing business. And so, Papa Salt is growing faster than ever, but that success has come
with a surprising reality. You've had to rethink almost every part of the business. Why do you
think growth creates so much change?
Speaker 1 02:51
I mean, the boring answer, right, is like cash flow management. Just the, I mean, I have to go
buy glass six nine months before I fill it with gin and sell it and get paid and you know if you
think you're gonna we're up 200% in the UK this year that's like three times the glass I've had
to buy this year compared to last and I haven't gotten paid for any of it yet I think like the the
really boring answer maybe to anything when you're running a business, is cash flow
management, right? It's like so hard. I think more interesting than that, and the harder
challenge, and one that's maybe universal but also specific to to each individual business, is
your needs as the business change, your human resource needs change, how you need to be
presenting yourself. You really eloquently sort of wrapped it up in the in the intro there that you
want to preserve what made your business special, but you can't just keep doing the things you
were doing when you were selling 100 boxes worth of gin when you're going to look at 30,000
next year, right? Like you have to get more efficient, and you have to get more out of people,
and it just sometimes it leads to some really hard decisions around is this person the right
person to be leading the business or even markets expansion. Every decision comes down to
how do we sort of manage this. I don't want to say runaway train, but it feels like that
sometimes in a way that's going to build something that you're proud of and doesn't get so
much farther away from kind of the original idea. But also, you've got to get more efficient, and
if you don't, you're you're going to stagnate, and you're not going to have the resources you
need to really continue growing.
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Speaker 2 04:36
You hit on something there that I think is I've seen, and I think it's really an important part.
Which you talk about resources, and so resources come in the form of many things, right? You
get money and people, and and supply chain, and a lot of different things that you're
navigating. I think people is one that's really interesting in that going from selling, you know,
and I apologize. But I don't know if you're selling, you know, boxes or crates or you know pallets
of of gin. Yeah, and you go from 10 to 100, like everything changes in that scaling, and and the
people sometimes need to change as well. Have you had that experience?
Speaker 1 05:14
Yeah, we've. I mean, we've had to let go of people that I really liked, and and who were doing
the job well enough for the period we were in, but we needed something else to to move up.
You know, in terms of a weight class, and I think what's interesting for us right now is we've
been on sale for three years in Australia. The last couple years we've been the fastest growing
gin there. You know, the small sample sizes it's it's pretty easy to grow when you haven't sold
much the year before. I think we've now reached the point in Australia and the UK where we're
where I can make a pretty credible claim that we're the fastest growing gin in the UK this year.
But you're still, you know, maybe a 10th of the size of the big brands, maybe a 20th, right? And
the big brands for me and gin are you have Hendrix, Roku's really came on in the last few years
with a lot of support from Beam Centauri, and in Australia there's Four Pillars, which is a craft
gin brand that's been around for a very long time and is beloved, and it's great liquid, right?
And so I've hit this point where I can't sit back and tell my team or potential investors or
something. Oh, we're the fastest growing on a percentage basis anymore. Now you need to
look up and say, how do I 10x the business from here? And by all accounts, we've had a great
three years. But when you look around and say, all right, we need to put another zero on the
back end of everything, it really changes. You know how you look at people. When it comes
come back to human resources, sometimes the people that brought you there aren't prepared
for that next step, and it's it's a really sad part of of the business. And it's fun to grow, and it's
really fun if you can grow with your entire team intact. But sometimes you have to look around
and say we need we need different help. That's maybe the the most painful part of like leading
the business and leading this growth when you hit that decision.
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Speaker 2 07:10
Yeah, I think if you're on the other side of this equation, one of the things that should be
comforting is is actually growing stronger in what you're really good at. I worked for an
organization and we had a CIO that launched it, and we did really, really well. And then it
became time to evolve and get better in our processing and do some different things.
Technically, that individual didn't have the talent; he didn't have the the skill set for it. And I
was heartbroken when I heard about this. And then when that individual, when a new person
came in, I saw how quickly they made the changes, and I was like, oh, like there it is, right? And
I think there's power in just knowing, hey, well, then maybe you're you're a great person for a
startup day zero to you know to year three, right? But beyond that, maybe you're not the scale
person. It's a tough thing to to kind of come to grips with. I've seen it as well, and nobody likes
that part of the part of the job. So how do you know when it's time to evolve? Is it on a
spreadsheet? Is it a feel? Is it a market indicator? What is that?
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Speaker 1 08:08
I mean, I think you need all of those things, right? You have to really look at everything in front
of you. The spreadsheet, you can, like I said, I can look at this and think, "Hey, I need to 10x
this business. How do I get there? And I look at that. You're not gonna you're not gonna go from
where we are to Hendrix's volume overnight. It's something where next year you're targeting
this tier of brands, and then you're trying to like give yourself more achievable goals than
overnight success, basically. But I think also for my brand, there's there's a marketplace for gin
on every street corner, right? Whether it's a bottle shop, a liquor store, or a bar, and I can walk
in there, and you'll see the same brands over and over again, and that's that's because they've
earned those spaces. And so, I like to think of you know my next challenge is you want to make
you want to take your product from one that that you're selling to people to to one that they're
asking for, it's a marketing challenge. It's an operational challenge. It's a sales challenge, and
and that when I think of this next stage in the business and the evolution that we're on, you
need you can do have a really good couple years and a good launch if all of those teams aren't
working necessarily in concert, right? Everyone's on the same calls, but people are kind of
doing what they want to do, and you're sort of trying to get them to row all the same direction.
If you really want to go challenge, you know, I talked about Roku, Jin, and Beam Santori. I think
I have three full-time employees right now, including myself. I mean, I can't imagine how many
people work at Beam Center, right? It's 1000s probably. So if you're gonna actually, and what's
wild in in my business, and maybe in a lot of consumer packaged goods, and I'm sure this
applies across many sectors, actually, is like, so we have three people, they have let's guess
3000, and we're only 10x smaller, right? Like. We're not that far behind if you're just looking at
sheer manpower, but you do need on the startups from the startup sense. You need all of those
three people to be working like at least 100, right? I'm not going to say they all got to do 1000
people's work, and the only way you can really do that is everyone's really aligned and working
together. And sometimes you don't. I don't know. Sometimes you don't realize that's not. I want
to make sure I'm saying this eloquently. Sometimes you don't realize everything isn't working
in concert until you start to map out those goals going forward, and you realize here's what I
need to do to grow the business. I need my on-premise sales team to be getting 500% more
accounts, right? So that's five 6x the number of places you can buy it. I need my marketing
team to be pulling that through 50% faster, and that's how you're going to get that growth. It's
not going to be any one thing alone. And so I guess sometimes when you sit down, you look at
that spreadsheet, you look at the back bar, and say, how do I get there? You have to really look
at your whole team and say, how do we make sure I am getting 100 people's worth of effort out
of you know my my three people?
Speaker 2 11:11
Well, the beauty of a you know a smaller organization compared to some of these bigger
brands that have 1000 employees, they're not moving right nearly as quick, and so you have
the advantage of being nimble, which is an incredible gift. And then if you get everybody
rowing in the same direction, like bingo, right?
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Speaker 1 11:26
Yes, speed, speed for sure is a small organization. If you're not taking advantage of that, you're
sacrificing maybe your biggest or your only leg up you have on the big guys. The other one that
I think people don't think about as much is consistency. Like I have three people. Everything
should be look the look, the feel, the tone should be consistent. There's no agency or designer
working on this that I haven't met, right? And so, as a small organization, because I, you know,
before this, I was at another liquor brand, and we were we were a small organization. We were
the second largest independently owned spirit in the United States, and we were doing maybe
70, 80 million turnover in the U.S. And we still had a small team, and I could still see
everything, right? And that was the only way you're going to be able to fight with big
conglomerates. You can't fight them on money, and you can't fight them on manpower, but you
can be faster and you can be more consistent in your own execution.
Speaker 2 12:27
It's smarter. Smarter is always good, right? So, so I love. I read the. You did an interview with
CEO of the magazine a couple couple years ago, I think it was, and and I love what I read in
there, and so I think I know the answer to this question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. And
that is, what are the foundations of Papa of the Papa Salt brand that simply can't change? What
are the things that you just can't compromise on?
Speaker 1 12:54
Papa Salt is a gin brand made by five friends who liked drinking gin, and one of them, myself,
happened to know how to make a gin. So we we went out over four years, and we made the gin
we wanted to drink. Every meeting was in a sunny backyard in Los Angeles, and that occasion
and that really imbued the the product, the package, the finished look of it, how the liquid
tastes, and it's this sense of there's a luxury to being able to take a whole afternoon to sit with
old friends and catch up and and share a drink, and that is something that we really focus on.
We've called it different things from you know barefoot luxury to like premium but not precious
is some of the internal language we use, right? But the point is, there's no velvet rope, there's
not a bouncer. It's time well spent is the biggest luxury. It's not some exclusive list or some
exclusive party, and we're trying to bring that to life for a consumer that you know oftentimes
now feels like either they don't have the time or they don't have the money to to really sit with
friends and and and kind of I don't want to say waste time because I think that really demeans
the value of quality time with ones that you love, but it is that sense of we don't need a plan,
you don't need a schedule. Let's really clear the afternoon and kind of fill up our our mental cup
in a way.
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Speaker 2 14:32
I love that position on it. I love what you're saying there. Of it's not wasted time. It's actually
the most valuable time we have. It's the most important thing we do is connect with people.
Period.
Speaker 1 14:44
Yeah, it's an interesting time in the liquor industry now, right? Because you hear about younger
people aren't drinking, and then there's also on the other side of it, there's an epidemic of
loneliness and isolation. And I was reading yesterday in the New York Times they wrote an
article questioning. Have all of the the public health messaging around oh you shouldn't drink
at all? Have people forgotten that there's pleasure and ritual and community in these spaces?
And I think you know the UK, for example, has this brilliant pub culture, and it's a public space
for the community. And you go into your local, and you might see an old friend, and you stay
for a little while, and for a lot of people, that might be the only chance they have to have a
conversation with someone outside of you know work or going home. And look, I'm all for public
health. I think people certainly you need to be drinking smart, and you want to have control
over your own actions and behavior. But I do think there's an interesting sort of backlash to the
backlash here, where people are saying, "Well, we've been drinking for 10,000 years, maybe
longer than that. I don't know the exact the exact time frame, but it's been a part of culture for
a very long time. And if you just want to throw that out, you need to think about everything
you're throwing out with it, which for a lot of people is a chance to bond and and commune with
their with their neighbors or their friends.
Speaker 2 16:08
Yeah, that's a very interesting perspective because I've never I've never thought of it that way,
and I've I've spent plenty of time, you know, in in bars and pubs and hanging out with friends,
I've worked in them, you know, lifetimes ago, and the value extends well beyond what you're
putting in your body. It actually is is far more important than that. That's a that's a great
reminder.
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Speaker 1 16:33
When I lived, my wife and I lived in London in 2016 and 2017, and our other partners, Tom,
Margot, Josie, all lived there at the same time, and we had a fair number of G and T's in maybe
not London's nicest pubs at the time. We all bonded over that experience and had a good time.
We were young people at the same time. We had a neighbor who was 90 or so who lived alone,
and he would he would walk down his four flights of stairs every day and go around the corner
to the pub, and I think he'd have half a pint or maybe one pint. But you know, we would always
talk to him if we would see him. We always took comfort in the fact that at least he's getting
out of his house. He gets to see some friends. He interacts with people, and rain or shine, his
name was Don. He always made his trip, and I, I, yeah, I think that's been lost in in some of this
discussion about efficiency culture and could I do more and let's all take some peptides. It's like
you might get a better response from you know taking an hour to just go catch up with a friend,
whether it's over a gin or a cup of tea. I don't really care, but you know I think that aspect of
community is something people have been missing.
Speaker 2 17:42
I've spent a tremendous amount of time in the UK as well, and that that pub culture really is
something special. In my experience, started it was Thursday nights, Thursday night, Thursday
afternoon, four to 5o'clock. It wrap up what you're doing. You go out to the pub, and then
everybody's got to get on the trains and get home before the trains shut down. So it actually
makes for kind of an early night, right? Like it's. I love the culture and the way that that sort of
the rhythm of of the social norms there is really nice. So saying no as a leader, as a CEO,
probably most people undervalue or underestimate the the the amount of no's that you have to
administer. Why is that so important, and why is it trending now? It feels like it's trending
amongst sort of leadership discipline.
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Speaker 1 18:26
I can I'll give the specific answer to my business. Right, restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, whatever
it is, on-premise venues where they serve alcohol are all struggling, and they all want extra
support to be able to keep their business doors open, right? And so we get approached all the
time. And sometimes it's people that want to do a special event and they think it's really cool
and it's a match. And other times it's just people that want a better deal on the gin, right? And
the explicit trade-off here is our venue is a shop window. It's a marketing opportunity for you,
and particularly for the the higher the venues that are really trendy these days, or you know
higher up on on sort of people's lists of places they want to go. They realize that power, and
they say, "Okay, you want to be here. You got to be in this martini, this G and T. Here's what
it's going to cost you. And I don't, I don't begrudge them that at all. I think that's that's good
business, right? But as a brand owner, you're approached with so many of these opportunities,
and for me, I might love going to Duke's Martini Bar in London, for example. Not that Duke's
has asked us for the gin. I wish they would, but that's an amazing spot. Great martinis. It
doesn't necessarily fit the brand I just told you about. You're not outside drinking in the sun
with your friends. There's always a line. There's like six tables. It's pretty exclusive. Don't get
me wrong, Dukes. I love you, killer martini. Please visit if you're in London. But you. Have to be
able to separate your personal preferences of where you want to be and what you want to do
from where your brand lives, and I think, especially as a young brand, if you don't define what
your no's are, you're gonna end up kind of scatter shot, and then the the consumer doesn't
know what you are right. If you extend this to consumer choice, when they go in to buy the
product at a grocery store or a liquor store, they have 100 options. There's something that's
always on sale, and unless they have a reason to pay more for your product, I mean, my
product's at the higher end of the gin price spectrum. They have to have a reason to know why
they're buying the gin, and that reason often comes down to what your brand is, what you've
communicated, and so it comes back to say no. If you say yes to everything, no one knows
what it is, and you need to give them an occasion and a time period. And this also coming back
to like everybody rowing in the same direction, you know, marketing these days has changed
so much to this sort of bottom up. Give people a reason in a community, and it's changed away
from oh, this sort of broad, above the line focus. Let's just raise the general awareness number,
and the sales will follow. And I think that all comes back to knows at this point. You need to be
able to say no. I don't know 100 times before you find the right thing for you. And if you're able
to do that, you will at that point have a much better idea of your own brand.
Speaker 2 21:33
So let me ask you in regards to knows with with Tom, Josie, Regan, and Margot, all these
requests come flooding in, and there's probably a great portion of them that you just singlehandedly
sort of yes, no, yes, no. There are others that fit into a gray zone where maybe you
rely on the co-founders. I don't know if they make up your board or if you have a board. You're
you're a young company. How much of that is kind of up to committee decision versus decision
that you make, and and how do you think about that? And how do those perspectives play in?
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Speaker 1 22:07
There's big no's and there's little no's, right? There's or big yeses and little yeses. Some of the
easy ones I just sift out, right? There's, for example, we're in a very early discussion right now
about maybe having another site for Papa Salt where people can come really enjoy the brand
and live it, because where we make the gin is very much an industrial gin production facility.
You can't come get an exciting tour and understand what the brand's all about, right? And so
something like that I take to the board, and that is our co-founders. It's the five of us. You
know, we developed the brand together. We self-funded it. We've built it to this point, and we
still make all of those big decisions together. Those big yes and no's come back to that team.
What we're trying to do now, and this is another challenge of growth, is if we can take some of
that info of what's a yes and what's a no away from the board, put it down on paper, and give it
to our GM in the UK, our GM COO in Australia, a new head of marketing hire we're just about to
make, you would hope that-not even hope-you have to be able to decentralize some of that
decision making, or else you're never really going to be able to. We come back to speed, right?
If you have to, every big decision has to go to five people who might be scattered across the
world on different projects at any given time. You're just never going to be able to act the at
the speed that you need, and so big nos, big yeses. Hopefully, we're able to sort of codify. This
is what we believe the brand is, and that comes out. I mean, we're working on this 60-page
document now about what should a Papa Salt event look like. You shouldn't have like the fancy
ice, you know, that's like too precious, and nobody wants to even sip their drink, glassware,
smoke machines. We don't need smoke machines. No velvet ropes, that sort of stuff, right? And
once you get that out there, you hand it off to people and let them let them go with that
information. Although I do, I do hope that even if the brand gets to be Hendrik size, we're still
making smoke machine decisions as a as a group. That's that's an important part of business.
Speaker 2 24:25
I've done a number of these interviews, and I've never asked somebody something so forward.
But I'm going to go ahead and say this: when they come up to you and start talking to you
about shooting people out of cannons, and they want to do a demo, can I get invited to that?
Speaker 1 24:38
Yeah. Yes, 100% You you you're in.
Speaker 2 24:42
I'm not participating. I just, I just want to watch. You know, like I can't imagine the crazy stuff
that has to come across your plate.
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Speaker 1 24:51
Yeah, I mean, the there's a lot of people that be based on what the brand stands for in being.
You know, let's have a good time. I mean, we've we've long sort of said internally that we hope
the people open a bottle and they finish the bottle. And now that means go to a party, bring it,
share it amongst your friends. This isn't you. This is not you alone at home, right? Yeah. But
people take that ethos to mean a lot of different things, and certainly when some of these
event invitations come along, you sort of wonder: Have we said something that would make
you think that we would do this? Or like, where in your right mind did you think this was the
event we want to be at? But it is fun to get kind of all those offers. And again, you just have to
you got to have your nose ready.
Speaker 2 25:41
You got to enjoy it. You have to enjoy it. That's outstanding. You've articulated the the brand
now over the last 25 minutes or so, and so it fits into a category of sort of backyard chill.
Speaker 1 25:54
Yeah, 100% I think if you're going to have your friends over and you want to do something nice
for them, we hope people reach for a bottle of pop of salt, and we also hope that we made the
bottle very distinct, so you could really tell it's got this sea glass look to it. It's a it's a beautiful
bottle. I mean, I know I'm biased, but people are really struck by the bottle. We hope that if you
walk in somewhere and want to give this as a gift, or or if you're just pouring it for your friends,
people will realize, oh, they you know this is going to be a special night. This is going to be a lot
of fun, in the sense that we're we're doing a little we're doing a little bit extra with the with the
cocktails today.
Speaker 2 26:33
Just something a little special, right? Something a little bit a little bit special that says we're
here with intention. That's uh that's wonderful. So, from a leadership perspective, you have a
principle which is you know take take the blame when things go wrong and give the credit
when things go well. Is that still your philosophy? How has that changed over time, and and
why is that so important to you?
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Speaker 1 26:56
Yeah, I I can't remember where I read that. It might have been in the Economist or something
like that. One one of those magazines that give great advice, right? Maybe it was in CEO
magazine. Who knows? But I always loved that idea, and I think if you if you think about that in
action, right? And the the the full piece of advice, right, was great leaders take the blame and
share the credit is what it boils down to, there's an opportunity in every interaction to let that
idea guide you. So, for example, I was just on a call before this. We have a marketing endeavor
in one of our markets that has not gone. It's gone fine, but it hasn't like blown the doors off.
And the the conversation was really around, you know, what's going to happen in the next
couple weeks? Is there anything we can do to really squeeze the value out of this, right? And I
was able to have a great conversation with our team member who's running this. And at the
end of the conversation, I wanted to make very clear: you've done a great job, and a lot of
these issues come down to this wasn't planned so well in advance, and that's on me, right? And
that was a the truth. That that's how I feel about it. But b that really empowers that person to
go out and say, okay, no one's blaming me, right? But I can come back to you and honestly say,
here's what's wrong and here's what's not, and here's how we fix it. And I think if people know
that they're going to get credit for doing well, and they're not going to get blamed if something
goes wrong. They'll take chances, and they'll work harder, and they'll show up with a smile, and
they'll tell you if something's wrong. I mean, I've been in organizations where you sort of
wanted to hide if anything went wrong because we didn't know what the reaction from on high
was going to be, and that's detrimental to the organization in the long run, right? If I let's go
back to this marketing operation going on right now. If I got the wrap up report at the end of
the at the end of the year, and I've said, "Hey, well, we didn't deliver on our numbers or
whatever our goal was, right? We didn't deliver on our KPIs. It's no good at that point. The
money's out the door. The activation's over. You want people to know that it's a safe space to a
make a mistake, but b also call out if things aren't going well. And I am. I mean, I'm I'm not
going to say I'm amazed, but I at this point I'm used to the fact that in almost any interaction
with someone you work with or or a partner, there's an opportunity there to to kind of absorb
some of that blame and offer up more of the credit, and it works. It's it's so effective in getting
more out of particularly smaller teams,
Speaker 2 29:42
I tell you what's appalling to me is the actual percentage of leaders that do the inverse of that.
I'm like, why, why, why? You're the leader. You stand at the podium already. Why do you need
that podium to elevate you yet again higher amongst people? Like. Taking the blame when
things go bad. I mean, it's it's my mom. Yeah, I did. That's me. I I subscribe to that. I supported
it. I pushed for that effort. Didn't work out. I'm on. That's on me. And then when things go really
well, the hey team did an incredible job. Great work. You guys really did an outstanding job.
You make everybody look better. Thank you so much. And the safety that that creates in the
environment, in your environment, and the things that you can achieve when people feel safe
is just light years ahead of what happens when you do the inverse. And I'm just absolutely
shocked at the number of people that still do that. I
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Speaker 1 30:35
think we've all had bad coworkers that rise through the ranks, kind of sucking up all the oxygen
and the credit, and I guess it's not surprising to me that some of those people wind up at the
top, right? Some of them are really good at that, right? So I don't think it's a real effective longterm
strategy, but that's that's just me. I think that the if you're running, look, I'll be honest. We
make a gin brand. Nobody needs it. Like we're not changing. This isn't a tech product that's
going to change the way we envision the world, right? We're trying to invite people in to have a
moment with their friends and have a fun drink and maybe celebrate something. So, I the
people that are going to work on this, I need them to enjoy it, and I need them to want to come
to work and work hard. And I guess there's a world out there where maybe you pay people
really well and you treat them poorly, but I just don't. I don't. That's not the world I want to live
in, right? That's not the the team I want to be on. And I had a thought earlier today because I
was I was thinking about this conversation and I I was thinking about like a piece of advice like
the CEO should dance at the holiday party like don't you don't have to go like Elaine Bennis
right like don't don't lose your mind but like it's probably beneficial for your employees to see
that you're a real person and you can have a good time and then that gives everybody the sort
of the freedom to do that
Speaker 2 32:04
levity, just a little bit of levity and humility, right? It's funny to see you say that because I'm
like, oof, yeah, I don't know, man. If our CEO, if I could get up and dance, and but you kind of
you have an obligation. Like, there's a thing there that's beyond. I don't care if you're
comfortable with it. Like, you're doing it for the sport and for the fun. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1 32:22
sway a little bit, right? Just a little, you know, right?
Speaker 2 32:25
Just we're coming up on the on the end of our time here, and we have a few, a couple of closing
traditions that we we like to do, and so I will start with the the first piece of the question, which
is, tell me something that you thought that you were right about, and you ended up being
wrong. Something where you changed your mind about a kind of firmly held belief, and over
time you said, "Wow, maybe I'm on the wrong side of this, or I see it differently now. So my my
last liquor brand I
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Speaker 1 33:00
worked on, we had a huge amount of success with this above-the-line mass reach advertising
strategy. This was from like 2013 to 2021, and I brought that over to Pop Assault, and it fell flat
on its face in this modern media environment, and I'll tell you, I was so embedded in this
strategy, and I still do believe it worked at the time. I gave a talk at South by Southwest Sydney
with Byron Sharp, who wrote the book on sort of like mass reach. It's called How Brands Grow.
It's a great book, but this was I was dogmatic about this, right? And I've really had to face in the
last year the in the environment we're in now for the consumer, where there are so many
messages and there is so much vying for your attention, a billboard-it's not going to do it.
You're not cutting through. It doesn't matter how clever it is or how beautiful your bottle looks;
it's not working. I sort of cut my teeth in in marketing advertising before I worked in liquor, I
was at an ad agency for five years. I really thought this was my thing. This is the thing I
understand. And in the last six to 12 months, I've sort of had to hold my hands up and say, "I
don't understand this anymore. I I don't understand how consumers learn about brands. And so
we've gone out and hired some wonderful people that are going to do great work, and I've sat
in. We we were we were doing an interview process the last couple months, and to a person, all
of these candidates who were amazing, basically advocated the exact opposite of what I've
been pushing for for 10 years, and I just had to say, you know what, I'm wrong, like there's no
way. I know I'm wrong, and I'm gonna. It hurts a little bit, but it's also freeing, right? If you could
just let it go, and say, okay, I'm gonna hire this great person because they know more about
this than I do, and I'm gonna get out of their way. Not totally get out of the way, right? I'm
probably peeking over the shoulder a little bit, but let. Do what they're gonna, what they're
good at, right? This has been a journey for me in the last 12 months. Of really, one of my core
beliefs was I know how to build awareness and market a product and drive rate of sale, and I've
sort of had to say maybe I don't anymore. I need some help.
Speaker 2 35:17
It's changing rapidly, very very rapidly. I have somebody who's very, very close to me who's
made their living in in PR and marketing. And when we start talking about some of this, some of
these things, you were talking a lot. We've talked, spoken a lot about brand through the course
of this conversation and how important that is, and how that is the leading indicator. Right,
that's the guiding light for the things that you will and won't do. That's the guiding light for
where you need to say no or or say yes, right? All those things they kind of get lost in some of
the in some of today's environment, right? Because things move fast and there's a lot of
different mediums and a lot of different ways to message. And so, do you find that holding that
brand steady over that becomes a little bit more challenging?
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Speaker 1 36:01
Yeah, it certainly does, and I think there's always an appeal to whatever the latest TikTok trend
is, right? And I don't say that derisively. You can move a lot of volume if you are on trend and
you catch lightning in a bottle, but you can't plan for that. That's not a business strategy to
good to go viral on any of this social media, right? And so, what you need to do on the brand
side is you have to have a really good understanding of who you are, and continually remind
consumers of that. And if something rolls along that you can really play in, great. Papa Salt is a
savory-tasting gin. We talk about the beach and we talk about long citrus drinks and drinking in
the sun with your friends, but it does have a real savory note to it, where you can make some
of these more savory cocktails that are really trending now, and so we can play in that, right?
But like that doesn't mean we're going to change our entire approach to how we present the
brand, like it's still it's still pop of salt, and so there's other trends that we just can't be involved
in. It just doesn't make sense for us. So I think the the brand is that work you have to do every
single day, right? And then some people think like trending or virality is sort of not. It's the I'm
not. What's the word? It's not the opposite of building a brand, but it's like those two things are
opposed. No way. Like if you build a real brand, you will eventually get to the point where you
can go trend on TikTok, not because something you've done, but just because whatever
random harebrained idea the internet is obsessed with for that 15 minutes. Finally, it finally hits
the Venn diagram with your brand, right? But if you're always trying to push your brand into
whatever that thing is, that 15 minutes, you don't have a brand. You don't you don't know who
you are. You're just you're tracing sort of a sugar high of sales and awareness that's going to
dissipate as soon as as soon as they move on to the next thing, which is quite quickly these
days. Yeah, it's the
Speaker 2 38:07
dopamine clickbait machine. On the other side of this coin, then is the is the the the other
question, the other piece of the question, which is what is something that you've held firm to,
and you believe that others need to come and see things more from your perspective.
Speaker 1 38:25
Mine is pretty specific to my industry, and we touched on this a little bit. Drinking is supposed
to be fun, like you're supposed to be out with your friends, you're supposed to be having a
good time, meeting new people, making a memory, and I, I we've said this from the start. I was
like, could we just be the brand where drinking is fun? I think, like for your own whatever
business someone is running, if like you should have an idea of how your category interacts
with the consumer, right? And if you feel like there's something out there that's not portraying
the category well, maybe you can stand up and and say, this, you know, this isn't the way this
should be, or this isn't the way I think of gin or pubs or nightlife, right? It's not, it's not a waste
of time. It's it's it's worthwhile if you make it so as the consumer and and you as the brand
have the opportunity to communicate that to people,
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Speaker 2 39:26
yeah, that's again, yeah, we talked about that. It's very powerful. Well, that brings us to the
end of our time here, and so before signing off, anything that we didn't cover that you would
like to share?
Speaker 1 39:40
I think we covered it all, Fred. That was that was a lot of fun. I feel like we we went pretty wild
wide there.
Speaker 2 39:45
We did, and I and I greatly enjoyed it. I I appreciate. I always I always appreciate these
conversations because business is hard. People look at business and they look at leaders and
CEOs and the private whatever it is. Right, the billionaires and all this other stuff. Running a
business is really hard, and as I said at the beginning, running a growing business, I think, is
one of the most difficult challenges in the landscape. When a business is attriting, you've got
decisions to make and and cost to cut and things to do to survive for as long as you can. But
when a business is growing, there's a lot of people tugging on your shirt tail, telling you how
you could do it even better and bigger and faster. And most of them, many of those folks, have
never achieved it themselves, right? So growing a business is remarkably hard. I also like that
we got to talk a little bit about the resources and the people that help you with that journey.
And I love what you guys are doing here as as a as a brand, I like the brand. I love what you
said a second ago. Drinking should be fun, and that's that's kind of a it's it's a little it's a
nuanced statement, right? Well, drinking can be fun. It can be a little too fun if you're not
careful, right? But drinking should be it should be enjoyable and social and pleasant.
Speaker 1 41:01
I think if younger generations have taught us anything, we should bring some intentionality to a
lot of these activities. Right, drinking is one of them, but I think that intentionality can also
come down to I'm really going to enjoy this moment with my friends or my family or this reason
to celebrate, and that's that's worth it. And I think that that sort of intentionality can really be
an antidote to the sort of burnout efficiency culture. I think a lot of people find themselves in
these days. I will also say, Fred, I love what you said there. To anyone out there growing a
business, you're doing a great job. It's it's hard, and a lot of times if you're growing, people
think, "Wow, everything's easy peasy, and they got it made. And I, I just know that like your
fellow startup founders and CEOs know how hard this is, and we we're rooting for you.
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Speaker 2 41:53
Always go back to Churchill. If you're going through hell, keep going. Right. It's just that simple.
No matter how hard it is, you just keep putting one foot in the other. Go, go, go, and you'll get
through it. You will break through the barriers. You will see the success that you want to that
you want to see. You just have to put your head in that space and and and just keep keep
pushing. I've really really enjoyed this conversation. To our subscribers or listeners, if you know
somebody that might be interested in this conversation, starting up their own distillery or brand
of spirits or anything of that nature, or just want to hear about business, please share, like,
subscribe, do all the good things. We would love to hear from you and and and spread the
word, Charlie. What you're doing is incredible. For Charlie Moss, I am Fred Fuller. Thank you for
listening today on CEO: Behind the Scenes, and we'll see you next time.