This is a chat I have often, mainly with entrepreneurs who over-value their brand, occasionally with people who are (potentially) being screwed in a sale. The 1st answer is that your brand is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, but understanding why someone should pay helps. Understanding margin and brand worth One […]
Since selling Pooch and Mutt I get a lot of investment opportunities. Most want my money to spend on these things, or need it because they have spent too much on them already. These are my big red flags: 1) BRAND: You do NOT need to spend £££ on a big agency to get started. […]
Getting your product into supermarkets is not about luck and it's not about hard work… its about understanding who you are selling to. (Most FMCG brands get this wrong). The brand I started has sold over £50m through UK supermarkets. With no corporate FMCG training I built Pooch & Mutt from scratch. Within a year […]
A few disclaimers to start with; First, I am not an accountant, second, every business is different... although the problems that most businesses, especially FMCG businesses face are pretty similar. What I am is an entrepreneur who set up and successfully exited a business with 95% equity (my mum had the other 5% for a […]
The other day I was listening to Mark Zuckerberg on The Tim Ferris podcast talking about values and he made a really good point that really got me thinking. Values have been important to Pooch & Mutt from day 1, they have always been integral to the business, but like many founder-led businesses, they weren’t […]
A few years ago I was recruiting a member of the Pooch & Mutt sales team and had a chat with one of our advisors. I told him that we were being asked by some candidates if they could work remotely and asked if he thought it would be a good idea to let people […]
In the pre-pandemic world, I used to meet up with friends maybe once or twice a year and play a game of poker. For me, this was less about the poker and more about the occasion, seeing people, having a chat… as we all know men find it very difficult to just chat without some […]
According to Entrepreneur.com “80% of Purpose-led brands outperform the market” According to Deloitte Insights “Purpose-driven companies… grow three times faster on average than their competitors” According to Forbes “Consumers are 4-6x more likely to purchase, protect and champion purpose-driven companies” And therein may lie the problem… the cat is out of the bag. If everyone […]
There’s a new series of Dragon’s Den on TV, but very little has changed. Very little has changed in the 16 years that it’s been on the TV. Dragon’s Den infuriates me. It is probably the most high-profile business show on TV. It should be about encouraging and championing entrepreneurship. It should be about how […]
About 10 to 15 years ago “everyone” was talking about Behavioral Economics. (Obviously by “everyone” I mean a select few people in marketing and business circles, but it was a big thing). Dan Ariely published “Predictably Irrational” in 2008, which was the first book I read on the subject, in the same year as Martin […]
I love reading both read and listen to books a lot. The recomendations below are normally available as paper books, kindle books and audio books. These are my "must-read" books for all entrepreneurs out there. I should empasise that these are my choices based on what works for me. I am sure that other people […]
This may not be the most exciting topic, but it is something that comes up a lot with the people I work with on a mentoring/ consultancy/ coaching basis. To start with, there are many ways to structure a P&L. I am sure that people will argue for different ones. The one I am going […]
What is marketing? There is no defintive answer to this, despite the billions spent on it every year. The American Marketing Association gives the definition, "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large". Let's be honest, […]
The Queen’s Gambit is one of Netflix’s biggest successes of 2020. More than 62m households watched it in a month. I was in one of them and I loved it too. I was rooting for Beth all the way and (spoiler alert) wished I could be in the crowd outside the Russian chess hall to […]
Innovation is often praised and discussed as something that we should be aiming for, something that is always valued, but is that really the case? Are real innovations rewarded? Let's start by looking at some real innovators and what happened to them. Alan Turing Alan Turning basically invented the computer and helped the allies win […]
I’m a huge fan of business books and have probably read more than I ever needed to, some I have loved, some… not so much. Some I liked the main idea, some I didn’t, but me liking the arguments and them being right are very very far from the same thing. Seth Godin is one […]
The biggest companies in the world all have slogans, so you should have one for your company too... right? Maybe... maybe not. We all know the slogans or tag lines of the big, successful companies: McDonalds - I'm lovin' it Nike - Just Do It KFC - Finger Lickin' Good Skittles - Taste the Rainbow […]
A few years ago I went to see a Derren Brown stage show, in which he quoted Seneca, "You stop caring what people think about you when you realise how seldom they do". This really struck a nerve with me, as it seemed so simple. A couple of weeks later I went to see Derren […]
Pet food brand Pooch & Mutt puts sales centre stage to accelerate growth. Founder Guy Blaskey says: “Instead of spending hours debating between two products or marketing approaches, you can stick both on Facebook or Google and with a £50 ad budget find out what customers think.” Mr Blaskey believes it’s the only way to […]
Guy Blaskey is the founder and managing director of Pooch and Mutt, a dog food brand that he set up in 2008 and is now registering an annual turnover of £4.5m. He admits that he made many mistakes before unlocking the keys to growth. "When I started, I thought that all a business needed was […]
There is no right or wrong way to name a company or a brand. There are plenty of successful brands with terrible names (Google!!!) and plenty of brands with great names and no success. The 5 points below describe 5 different approaches. In very basic terms, the higher up the list the more 'ownable', but […]
An edited version of the comment below featured in The Grocer and is available to subscribers here. In terms of jobs, if you believe Yuval Noah Harari, then all jobs are at risk in the future. AI would be a far better doctor or lawyer, and definitely a better buyer or marketer. Humans have two powers; muscle power and […]
Guy Blaskey, founder of independent pet food business, Pooch & Mutt, is challenging the goliaths of the market, Mars and Nestle. He launched the business in 2008 with two health supplements for dogs – the brand’s only products for the first few years. “This gave us a good understanding of the market and its dynamics, and […]
This article by Guy Blaskey was originally published on smarta.com Stoicism is a school of philosophy that is looked over by many philosophy professors and students. Unlike other schools of philosophy the stoics were less bothered with searching for the meaning of life, and more bothered with how they should live their lives. The three most […]
