Dare to put yourself in luck's path - Barney Mauleverer

Summary

Podcast Summary: Daring Creativity. Daring Forever.

Episode: "Dare to put yourself in luck's path"

Host: Radim Malinic
Guest: Barney Mauleverer
Date: September 6, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, Radim Malinic sits down with serial food entrepreneur Barney Mauleverer. Together, they unpack the power of "putting yourself in luck's path"—taking calculated risks, embracing uncertainty, and letting curiosity drive your path. Barney shares a candid, often funny account of his unorthodox journey: from chaotic jobs in his twenties, building FMCG businesses, to founding and later selling Fuel 10K. Now, he's championing open collaboration and innovation in the food industry with his “Future of Food” initiative. Along the way, Barney offers insights on finding joy in one's work, the role of luck, the value of being a generalist, and why entrepreneurs—not buyers or investors—are the true industry rockstars.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Embracing Chaos, Curiosity, and "Back Strategizing"

• Non-linear career path: Barney describes how a series of “random,” often unrelated jobs—from hospital porter to complaints hotline to bartender—built the foundation for his future success (05:14–08:31).

  “There was very little strategy, there was a lot of searching, but there were certain moments... that got me into the seat where I ended up... it was about luck and trying to put myself in the path of luck.” (05:14, Barney)

• Advice to young creatives: Try different things, learn what you love and don’t love, and recognize your formative experiences as building blocks, even if they seem chaotic at the time.

  “Just go and try lots of different things... because the rest of your life is ahead and it’s okay to take a little bit of time to figure it out.” (08:31, Barney)

2. Key Lessons from Innocent Drinks

• Joining a Rocket Ship: Barney was employee #7 at Innocent Drinks, learning on the job from visionary founders and applying an intensely hands-on approach (14:16–19:35).

  “My job title was fruit nut, and I was given a cow van... told to go and sell innocent smoothies to anyone that might wear a kilt.” (14:16, Barney)

• Importance of understanding people: The founders knew how to bring out the best in their team, treating Innocent as both a business and an informal incubator for entrepreneurial talent (19:35–20:58).
• The power of being a generalist: Early Innocent teams were filled with generalists—people interested in many fields—serving as invaluable “connectors” who could drive forward new ideas.

3. The Generalist vs. Specialist Debate

• Barney champions the undervalued skillset of the generalist: people who connect dots across disciplines and see opportunity in chaos (21:31–23:29).

  “I recognized that I was a generalist very late in life and I wish someone had said to me much earlier in life, do you know what? It’s okay. In fact, it’s a superpower if you know how to use it.” (22:13, Barney)

4. Building and Losing: From Fresh Marketing to Fuel 10K

• Learning from failures: Multiple failed product launches (popcorn, coconut water, yogurt snacks) became stepping stones (29:47–34:33).

  “It was expensive and hard and emotional... not to be put off, we then tried a whole iteration of other things.” (29:47, Barney)

• Fuel 10K origin story (see notable moment below for full details).

5. Creating Luck and Listening to the Market

• Selling before you build: Barney describes “reverse entrepreneurship”—pre-selling an idea to a supermarket buyer before the product or brand existed (37:30–41:10).

  “If a supermarket said yes, you could work extremely quickly to then create the product and packaging for it all to be put together.” (35:00, Barney)

• Empathy as a sales tool: Success comes from solving the buyer’s real problem, not pushing your own agenda.

  “So few founders really think about the alternative perspective... what’s going through the buyer’s head right now?” (38:12, Barney)

6. Collaboration and Open Knowledge in Industry

• Rethinking competition: Barney highlights how too many businesses treat knowledge as something to be hoarded or sold, arguing for open-source sharing to drive collective progress (51:56–54:02).

  “My view is it should be open source now... there’s way too much of this management consultancy thing where it’s: I’ve got this nugget of information and I’m going to sell it... I want to have a go at blowing up some of those hanger-ons as it were.” (53:23, Barney)

7. Future of Food: A New Platform for Food Entrepreneurs

• Supporting the true risk takers: Now, Barney is uniting founders, innovators, and industry leaders to solve tomorrow’s food challenges together.

  “...investors, buyers, journalists, they are all seen as the gods in the industry... But actually it’s the entrepreneurs that we should be crediting for taking the ballsy risks and the emotional strain it takes...” (54:38, Barney)

• Highlights from the Future of Food event: Collaboration, cross-disciplinary invention, and breaking down silos.

  “All agree. Let’s... say that we’re never going to buy cardboard for our own label breakfast from these guys... and then they would have buying power together.” (54:38, Barney)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

The Origin of Fuel 10K (00:37, 34:33–37:30)

“He said, well, look, if you think you’ve got something, book a meeting, then come up and show me... I left the trade show then and there and got the Yellow Pages out. Granola manufacturers in Europe, anywhere, any manufacturer, and found four manufacturers... and during the meeting he ate the whole pack pretty much. And he said, okay, that’s it, we’ll go for that. He literally said, I’m going to give you 600 stores and you’ve got to be ready in 16 weeks. Oh, by the way, what’s the brand? And it was... that is how Fuel 10K ended up being born.” (00:37 & 35:00–36:20, Barney)

On Adaptability and Resilience

“You gotta be a bit careful that you're not flogging a dead horse... but I just knew we had something and it was worth just going that one more time, just one more time.” (45:08, Barney)

Empathy in Entrepreneurship

“The sale happens when you’re listening... You don’t know my pain points. You don’t know what I need. I don’t need a prettier packaging...” (39:52–41:10, Radim re: Barney's approach)

On Team and Shared Success

“Literally without the people and the engaged people around me, none of it would have happened.” (46:40, Barney)

Future of Food: Why It Matters

“There are many common issues founders and management teams are going through... there is no real sort of safe zone... for them to share each other’s pain.” (54:38, Barney)

The Value of Opportunity & Luck

“Let’s continue to be lucky. But to be lucky you have to put yourself in the path of luck and that might be quite a wiggly journey.” (61:26, Barney)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Early career chaos and “back strategizing”: 05:14–08:31
• Joining Innocent Drinks, generalism, and learning on the job: 14:16–22:13
• Transition from Innocent to founding Fresh Marketing: 23:49–29:22
• Learning from product failures, experimentation: 29:47–34:33
• The birth of Fuel 10K—pre-selling, "putting yourself in luck’s path": 34:33–37:30
• Lessons on empathy, listening, buyer-centric innovation: 38:12–41:10
• Branding failures, rapid iteration at Fuel 10K: 41:10–44:27
• Handling rejection, resilience: 45:08–46:20
• Team building, importance of people: 46:40–50:45
• Future of Food—purpose and insights: 50:45–54:38
• Open knowledge, collaboration in the industry: 51:56–54:02
• Abundance, challenges in food industry, opportunity: 58:40–60:39
• Final words on creating your own luck: 61:26

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Final Reflection

This episode is an energizing, brutally honest look at the realities of building something from nothing in a chaotic world. Barney Mauleverer demonstrates that daring creativity often means acting before you’re ready, listening rather than assuming, and treating every misstep as a chapter, not a dead-end. His “luck” is the product of relentless curiosity, unapologetic generalism, strategic improvisation—and perhaps most importantly, putting himself where the action happens.

“To be lucky you have to put yourself in the path of luck and that might be quite a wiggly journey.” (61:26, Barney)

Those seeking permission to zig, to experiment, and to collaborate as they build creative careers or businesses will find plenty of fuel for their own journeys in this conversation.

Transcript

[Radim Malinich]

Hey, just a quick note to say thank you for joining me on this episode.

[Interviewer]

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[Radim Malinich]

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[Interviewer]

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[Radim Malinich]

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[Interviewer]

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[Barney Mauleverer]

He said, well, look, if you think you've got something, book a meeting, then come up and show me. Literally, I left the trade show then and there and got the yellow Pages out. And granola manufacturers in Europe, anywhere, any manufacturer, and found four manufacturers and four factories around Europe put together the Red Bull of granola in their various different formats. And I had samples coming into my office in Dorset, can't remember which samples came from where. And we went up for a meeting and there was one particular manufacturer that had absolutely nailed it and the buyer said that one. And during the meeting he ate the whole pack pretty much. And he said, okay, that's it, we'll go for that. And he literally said, I'm going to give you 600 stores and. And you've got to be ready in 16 weeks. Oh, by the way, what's the brand? And it was that is how fuel 10k ended up being born.

[Radim Malinich]

Welcome to the Daring Creativity Podcast, a show about daring to forever explore creativity that isn't about chasing shiny perfection. It's about showing up with all your doubts and imperfections and making them count. Becoming more of who you already are. My name is Radim Malinich. I'm a designer, author, and eternally curious human being. I am talking to a broad range of guests who share their stories of small actions that sparked lifetime discoveries, taking one step towards the thing that made them feel most alive. Let me begin this episode with a question. Are you ready to discover what happens.

[Interviewer]

When you dare to create?

[Radim Malinich]

Today I'm speaking with Barney Mauleverer, an entrepreneur and champion of businesses that drive meaningful change. He embodies the philosophy of putting yourself in lux path through curiosity and generalist thinking. In our conversation, we discussed how he didn't follow a linear career plan. Instead, he embraced chaos and uncertainty in his 20s, taking seemingly random jobs that ultimately laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial success. At the core of his philosophy is the belief that entrepreneurs are true risk takers who deserve recognition, not the buyers or investors. He advocates for open collaboration, embracing global challenges like population growth as opportunities for innovation. His current Future of Food initiative reflects his worldview, creating platform for entrepreneurs to share knowledge and collectively address industry challenges. It's my pleasure to share with you my conversation with Barney Mauleverera.

[Interviewer]

Hey Barney, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

[Barney Mauleverer]

Very good, Radim. Thank you for having me on. This is exciting.

[Interviewer]

You're most welcome. Normally I've got guests who are, what I would say on the other side of this equation. They are normally creatives, illustrators, designers, art directors, working with founders like yourself on helping them grow their products, design their products. Whereas you are very much on the other side of the fence, shall I call it fence, being entrepreneur, creating brands, working in an FMCG and actually having a view of where the real stuff is made. So I hope to uncover and join quite a few dots. So we get a lot of value for our listeners just to show them of how you see it from them from your side. But for those who might not have heard of you, and which might be potentially every of my listeners so far, how would you introduce yourself?

[Barney Mauleverer]

Okay, so I have been in fin drink for a very long time and I describe my experience as being in the trenches of fmcg, complete startup to trying to get somewhere from brand creation to getting product onto supermarket shelves, ultimately trying to get product off supermarket shelves into consumer hands. And I've experienced the full circle of complete startup to exiting, which we did in October 2023. But there was definitely a bit of a backstory to how on earth all of that happened. So in a nutshell, food and drink all my life, very passionate about it, love entrepreneurship and want to now help the next generation look into the future of where our food system's going.

[Interviewer]

I love that you said I spent my life putting food on the shelves and getting them off the shelves into people's hands. What led you to that career and entrepreneurship?

[Barney Mauleverer]

I love this bit because I always refer to this thing called back strategizing. So now that I've got quite far into my journey, I'm 50 years old now I can look back and say that I meant to do absolutely everything that I did to get me to where I got to. The truth of the matter is that it was absolute chaos, particularly in the early years. There was very little strategy, there was a lot of searching, but there were certain moments throughout my career that got me to got me into the seat of where I ended up getting to. But a lot of that was about luck and trying to put myself in the path of luck. So trying to put a start point on it. I did A levels, I went to university. I wasn't particularly good at either of those and I spent the Formative sort of years of my twenties searching. I did so many different jobs. I worked at St Thomas's Hospital, wheeling patients around. I worked on the complaints line at Parcel Force. I did a lot of waitering and I did a cocktail bar waiter course, learned lots of whiskeys and cocktails and worked in lots of bars trying to figure out what it was that kind of got me out of bed. I did a stint in the City. I wore a tie and a suit and walked over London Bridge for about six months and realized quite quick that wasn't really my gig. And there was a moment where I was on holiday with a friend and their husband said, you're obviously pretty frustrated by this whole work life thing. Why don't you come down to Dorset and work for me? You can live in our house and I'll pay you £100 a week and you can be my secretary and I. And it was a bit like that advert that we all go say, would you like to spend a career in A, the City for the rest of your life? And I just said B straight away, whatever B was. So I said yes to this wonderful offer. I had no idea what I'd said yes to. My poor parents were beside themselves thinking I was going to be a merchant banker or something. And I ended up moving down to Dorset and working with a friend who had a factory that was held together by elastic bands and razor blades, making garden cloches, plastic garden cloches. And my role ended up being selling these things to garden shops. And for the very first time, I realized that actually I really liked the sort of practical side of something physical that you then go and sell to a shop. And then the shop, it has to look good in the shop for someone to pick it up and pay for it. So that was my first sort of, not quite FMCG and definitely not food, but my first experience in this sort of thing. We're making something, we're selling it to a shop and someone's going to buy it off a shelf.

[Interviewer]

I have to rewind back by a few steps because everything that you've said, what you did in your 20s, made me instantly smile, because when you said initially, like it was, I was meant to do everything I was doing and it was a chaos. And when you were describing the St Thomas's Hospital and the complaints lying in a bar and so that's six months of City, that feels to me like building blocks of an entrepreneur's career. There is something about that almost presume invincibility when you Start when you make a first sale, when you realize that some of this stuff really works. Right? How did you feel that way?

[Barney Mauleverer]

So actually I have spoken to lots of young people, I've got four kids of my own now, all starting to think about what they're going to do for careers. And I'm literally like, just go and try lots of different things, just work in a bank, work in a hospital, work in hospitality and go and figure out what it is that you enjoy doing. And equally what you don't enjoy doing, what you think you're good at, what you think you're a bit shit at, put crosses against stuff because the rest of your life is ahead and it's okay to take a little bit of time to figure it out. And so this whole back strategy thing, I can now wrap up that parcel of my life and say, well, I meant to do that. I meant to jump from one job to the next job to the next job and work in the factory, endorse it selling garden stuff. But actually it was, as you say, it was the forming of me, I discovered by accident, I suppose, but just in a curious way. What is it that gets me out of bed in the morning and what do I enjoy doing? And I realized that I enjoy being around people, I enjoy physical products. I wasn't that excited about pushing other people's money on spreadsheets and the city, but I can now have an opinion of what all my friends who ended up staying in that industry have. And it just wasn't for me. But I wouldn't have known if I hadn't gone to try stuff out. And I. It took me until age 25 to get very lucky. I was working with my friend in Dorset for 18 months, went around the world, we went to trade shows in Chicago and France and all over the place and. But I realized that the garden industry wasn't a particularly exciting industry for me, but I really enjoyed the work that I was doing within it. So tick, tick to the sort of type of work I was doing and cross against the industry that I'd fallen into. And I then decided, and this was back in 98, 99, so 1998, for those who don't have a calendar that go back that far. I. It was the era of the Internet. The Internet was just coming out and I was living with a guy who had been working in it and we ended up on the side of my gardening business thing, on the side of that, set up a website, which was a voucher website or coupon, a bit like Red letter today's, if you remember red letter days where I would phone up extreme sports or zorbing or tank driving or what have you and say could I get 10%, 20% off the value of a ticket and I'll sell vouchers to as birthday presents or stag do things to people in London. I was still living in Dorset at the time so I, I knew that I wanted to transition out of the food industry into this sort of extreme sporty sort of world using this voucher business. And the idea was to then sell my tickets to all the people I'd met in the city during that time. So they're the guys with the money and I was going to create something that they would buy but I realized I needed to be in London for this to actually work and so I gave my notice in to my friend, much to his dismay and disappointment. Although we're now best friends. I live in Dorset again and moved to London looking for and I needed a job to pay my rent in London and I was about to enter something called the Shell Livewire competition which was a sort of business plan competition and you can win some cash prizes and what have you. And the people who won it the year before was this company called Innocent Drinks. And I ended up on their website because they were obviously winners from the year before and, and I thought well they look quite fun. Didn't really know what a smoothie was but wrote a letter to them saying I'm looking for a part time job, I'm setting up my own thing, can I come and see you and have you got a few hours in a week? And I went, ended up going for a full on interview with Adam, Richard and John from Innocent Drinks. The founders who couldn't quite work out what kind of a person I was because I was looking for a part time job but I had my own business, I wanted to get going and I think they kind of gave me an opportunity that no one else would have done and said okay well why don't you come along and work with us? And I was the seventh employee at Innocent Drinks in the year 2000, I call it 07 of course. And then I can remember it and Innocent then became what it then became and very quickly I realized that actually Innocent was the one that was my calling rather than my own Internet startup thing. And so the voucher business subsided and I then threw myself Innocent Drinks.

[Interviewer]

So we're going to talk about Innocent in just one second. But you said for those who haven't got a calendar going dudfy was 1999. You mentioned Zorbing. What is Zorbit?

[Barney Mauleverer]

I think it still exists. It's when you get pushed into a big inflatable ball and then someone throws you down a hill and you roll within it. Yeah, don't do it. Terrible sport, head injuries.

[Interviewer]

Your running theme around all of this is not having something that gets you out of bed. You've said it quite a few times. So you find yourself as the seventh employee of Innocent. Is that quite a sort of early start? That it wasn't as big back then or the production wasn't as big? Like, what was the first learnings from them, building the company, your newfound role there? Like you're finding yourself back sort of liking the products. Because again, products is another recurring theme in this conversation so far. So I love the fact that you went in there and said, I'm looking for a job. They created almost a road that wasn't there that you made them happen, made them create. What was it like to be in a company that's focused purely on a product that more or less spoke to your soul, even though you had to find out what smoothie was? Yeah.

[Barney Mauleverer]

Do you know? So what I realized there were two big turning points for me. One was about me. And I would credit Adam Bellon, my boss there, one of the founders of understanding which buttons to press in me to get the very best out of me. No teacher, no lecturer, no. No guardian, no parent, no. No one else had ever figured out me the way he did. And I think he turned me into a kind of. I was at that stage in life also where I just wanted to really roll my sleeves up and get down dirty and learn real quick and get good at something, I think. So that was one big thing that happened in the early days of Innocent. The other big thing was the food industry. The food industry, I would say, is probably one of the best industries. If you're not sure which industry to throw yourself at, because it's. It uses your five senses. It's your taste, your touch, your smell. Everybody's got to eat. Humanity depends on it. You can save recessions, knock out premium products and stuff, but no recession is going to stop you eating food. You can sit at a dinner party table and rather than talk about your job in some insurance company, you can talk animatedly about the different flavors of fruit in a smoothie and. And whoever's sitting next to you will at least have an opinion whether they like it or not. And so really good sort of topical product and on Top of that, innocent was a machine in, in getting things right. Their product tasted amazing. Their brand was industry defining, which of course I didn't realize at the time, but looking back at it, they were almost doing B Corps before B Corps happened. They were pushing boundaries that had never been pushed before. And I just assumed that's what everyone else did too, until I came out of it. But I learned so much in a very short space of time. My first job, my job title when I first joined was fruit nut. And I was given a cow van, a Ranu kangu van that was dressed up as a Friesian cow with a tail and eyes and a moo horn and black and white body. And I was told to go and sell innocent smoothies to anyone that might wear a kilt. And so I then drew on a map where people might wear a kilt. They didn't have to wear a kilt, but they might. So off I went in my cow van with a van full of smoothies and went up to Scotland, over to Wales, over to Ireland, down in Cornwall, there's a stretch down in Cornwall where the Celtics hang out a bit and northern France. It was a little bit urgey. And I spent my first year selling smoothies to anyone who might wear a kilt. And through that learned the whole process of wholesalers and how wholesalers then supply in independent stores and then what products need to look like when they're on shelf and how you merchandise and all. But real life, it couldn't have been the. It was the best MBA in how to kind of get a product on shelf. So that, that was early stuff that was invaluable, as you can see on my face.

[Interviewer]

I've got questions. Why people in kilt? We'll be back after a quick break.

[Radim Malinich]

This episode is brought to you by Lux Coffee Company, the first creative specialty coffee company building a platform to shine the light on emerging global talent with a mission to make a positive impact.

[Interviewer]

On a creative industry and Beyond.

[Radim Malinich]

Lux Coffee Co. Offers exceptional coffee sourced from around the world through ethical and sustainable practices. And you can discover the current range of signature blends and single origins coffee hardware and accessories along with exceptional apparel. @luxcoffee.co.uk you can use the code podcast to get 15% off your first order.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I think this is just the alternative way the innocent guys approach things. It's like you could have said anywhere outside of London, but actually to make it a little bit more fun and topical. And I kind of knew what they meant. They were incredibly strategic. I often Kind of would go away on a week's trip or so and come back and what they had said they were going to do in their business plan at the beginning of the year, they had delivered plus so they were incredibly good at doing what they say they were going to do. And that was probably one of the other lessons I learned.

[Interviewer]

So here's my question. When you mentioned business plan, I always think to that quote, that business plan is only as good until it meets the customer and everything changes. But you said they did everything in their business plan plus more. So how focused was the operation? Because you said that it was the Adam was the one who pressed the buttons in you that nobody else could have done and what has managed to do in the past. And he said at that age you felt like rolling up your sleeves and actually do some proper work. So how was it that you've seen their vision, their mission, their drive and as you said, them becoming B Corp almost before B Corp. How focused and observant and mission wise were they at that time? Because it again, 25 years ago. Were people as focused as they are now or is it just an impression that we're making for ourselves?

[Barney Mauleverer]

I think they were quite unique. There were three of them and they covered different areas. Adam sat in the sort of commercial seat, so he was my direct boss. John was more operational financial and Richard Reed was more creative. And so if you draw a linear line of the skills required in startup land, you need to know about ops and finance, you also need to know about fluffy creative and in the middle you need to be able to pull the whole lot together and make some money. And so I think they, they were also ex Bain and McKinsey. So they were very well trained. They were incredibly smart out of Cambridge as well. And that's the way they like to do things. And interestingly, later in life trying to emulate anything that they had done was very difficult because they were just so wired and trained and focused in, in what happened. And quite interestingly they, their early teams that joined when I was there, so I was there for five years, all of them that they were hiring generalist, entrepreneurial minded young people who hadn't quite found their own thing yet. On reflection, looking back after I left, a few of the others left and then went on to set up their own things themselves. So it was almost like a place to learn how to do it and then go and do it yourself. An incubator of sorts is the G word generalist.

[Interviewer]

And looking at your record so far, you were a Generalist you were looking at, you were looking around the corners, you were looking like how to add up all of these numbers to get through the equation that adds, not equate something which is valuable, which actually goes somewhere. And generalist. And I'm thinking it's always been a good thing to be generalist because you've got your specialist with their talent and they do that one thing over and over again. Whereas I believe it's the generalists that have changed the world. You need your specialists, but it's the people who are looking around the corners.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I think this is a topic I talk a lot about. I wasn't an A grade student, a star this, that and the other. And I could never really understand why that was so important to me. So drivenly academic down one channel. I was always interested in multiple sort of subjects. My A levels were geography, French and maths. I mean, you couldn't get a more diverse mix. And again, reflecting back on my career so far and having kids that are coming through, my daughter's 20 and then we have a 19, 18 and a 16 year old encouraging them to think big beyond just the subjects they're being taught. And it doesn't suit everyone. And some people really are specialists and they want to be mine into biochemistry or they want to mine into the legal system and be. You have introverts and extroverts and all sorts of characters. And not everyone can be a generalist, otherwise nothing would get done. But I think it really helped that I was in the sort of commercial seat at Innocence, so that the sales end because you needed to understand about product, you needed to understand about brand, you needed to understand about finance and operations and you also needed to be able to wrap it all up and explain that to your customer. So I would say that most commercial sales type people, particularly when they're opening new business, not necessarily just account management, are that they need to be interested in the whole gambit rather than just being a cog in the bigger thing. So generalist versus specialists is a really good subject and it's okay to be a generalist. I recognized that I was a generalist very late in life and I wish someone had said to me much earlier in life, do you know what? It's okay. In fact, it's a superpower if you know how to use it. And I genuinely think that that was a revelation. But late 30s, 40s, suddenly like, oh, that's why I'm not that good at anything in particular.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so you spent five years at Innocent and as you said lots of generalists who were part of the same cohort have left and started their own thing. Because I think you guys got a great education in business and product vision. After five years, what was the nudge to go and what were you looking for next to do?

[Barney Mauleverer]

Yeah, so I, I ended up coming out of that original role of selling smoothies to anyone who wore kilts to running the UK sales team as we were going into supermarkets. And then my last role in my last year was the European manager. So we were opening up France, Germany, Belgium and looking at other markets too. And I had always got this thing in me that I did want to do my own thing. I joined Innocent thinking that it was going to be a part time job because I wanted to run my own thing. I obviously hadn't quite got my business idea kind of grounded properly and I also genuinely didn't have the skills for it either. But I felt after five years Innocent, my time was if I didn't do it soon, I was going to start getting caught up in I'd got married, we got a mortgage first, kid on the way. There was a moment where if I didn't get on with it, it was going to become more and more difficult to start my own business. But I never really meant to leave Innocent. I had spotted an opportunity within the lifecycle of that brand building where the founders were looking at a potential US launch using Starbucks as their lead customer. And Starbucks was growing very rapidly back then and that would have got them really motoring. I then pitched to my boss, Adam, saying, well, look, can I have France? France is a really tough market. I don't know why the French don't get what a smoothie is. I was completely blinded by the. I could not understand why people wouldn't buy smoothies. It was just the best products. So I had blind faith that I could convert the French finally. And he was going, really? You want to do that? And I said, well, look, you're going to focus on America. I'm the European guy. Actually, if I just took France off you and I'll act as agent, I'll be your agent in France. I want to build a little team, but I want to be able to do other brands as well. Which was a little bit contentious because you then step out of the family of Innocent into this kind of weird place where you think you're running your own business, but your boss is still your main customer. So that was quite an interesting move. But Innocent was my first customer. For a year, France was our target market. And I set up a company called Fresh Marketing which was all about trying to help Challenger Brands in the uk. They weren't called Challenger Brands back then, they were called New Brands Launch into the French market. We had a little office in Paris. I spoke very rubbish French. I used to talk a lot about les tendons, which are the trends. We used to talk about the triangle sandwich, having a go at the baguette, all that sort of stuff. French didn't find any of it funny and spent a very long time trying to get innocent going in France. And we did. We launched it into Monoprix, into Cassino, into Cafour, a lot of the food service places. And in the meantime, the American thing for the innocent guys subsided. The Starbucks buyer left or something happened where it didn't happen. And Adam then turned his attention back to Europe and his first call was, hey Barney, what's this thing you're doing in France again? Can we have another look at it? And I think at that point it became really clear that France was going to cost quite a lot of money to get going. And that isn't an agent job, that needs to be an in house job. So we dutifully shook hands and I handed back the business to them, but had taken on brands like Eat Natural cereal bars and Forest Feast and Burt's Chips. And there were a handful of others as well that we worked with, Naked Bar, which ended up selling for gazillions later in their kind of journey. But yeah, the handover, the move from innocent drinks to fresh marketing was definitely an emotional one. And it was at that point I realized that I just stepped off a, firstly a rocket ship and secondly a very special place and experience. And again, all my friends and my parents were beside themselves going, what are you doing? But I needed to do this. I didn't really have much more of a plan than we're going to represent brands and try and get them into international markets again.

[Interviewer]

I think it just proves the fact that you want to get out of your bed for the right reason. Because in hindsight, yes, you stepped off a rocket ship, but you kind of build your own rocket ship. These were the beginnings of your next rocket ship. Because where was the way the story heads? It heads in the right direction, has in the right on the right reason.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I was living in London, I was on the 5am Eurostar frequently and because that was far cheaper than any of the other ones and for me even back then, so I must have been 20, nearly 30, 30 years old at that time with one one kid and a mortgage in London and we wanted to move back down to Dorset and actually that wouldn't have happened if I stayed in employment in London. So that was one of the drivers, but the other was just wanting to do my, be my own captain, as it were. And I saw an opportunity which I thought was credible, helping brands launch overseas. And so export then became a very big part of my life for the next 20 something years and even today. And again, this was all about people, culture, soc, food habits. And then you've got all the underlying sort of pricing, logistics, labeling, et cetera, which I was just fascinated by and spent many a year at a trade show around the world and touched many sort of brilliant brands along the way and learned from them too. So this is that generalist thing again, multiple brands and what have you exactly?

[Interviewer]

Well, let's talk about your rocket ship that you've built because you've. I know the story of how you got to build your next well, how to build your food product. And you started with something, then the question was about something else. You adapted, you changed and was the world you end up with the product that it was. And the brand that you built and exited a couple of years ago wasn't the first idea that you had.

[Barney Mauleverer]

Yeah. So in true strategic fashion, we recognize quite far into our fresh marketing journey that we weren't creating anything of real value. We were a middleman, we were an agent, we were a distributor, we were creating value for the brands we were working with, but not for ourselves. But that was kind of okay for us. The next part of the journey was actually how do we, how do we create our own product brand that we can build real value into and experience that journey of complete startup and take it as far as we can. We were lucky enough to have built quite a good distribution business through fresh marketing. So that became our incubator for testing a whole load of ideas. And my first stupid, ridiculous idea was flavored popcorn. There was a brand in the US called Oogies that was doing Parmesan pesto flavored popcorn and a variety of other things. And I asked for samples on the premise that we might help them launch in Europe, which was a bit mischievous, I suppose. But they sent me this massive box of samples and they were amazing. They were brilliant. It's like we don't have this in the uk. And so I then said about what factories could possibly make this product for us. And most popcorn in this UK is cinema popcorn, sweet and salty. And there were factories that pumped out that stuff in massive Big bags. We were able to convince a company to have a go at it. And our biggest mistake was to choose air popped popcorn over oil popcorn popcorn back then because we thought air pop much healthier, lower calories, et cetera. But it just didn't taste as good as the oil pop stuff and it went a bit soggy when the bag open. And oh my God, we went through so many iterations of that. We launched that at exactly the same time as Metcalfe. Julian Metcalfe, who founded Prep, he'd sold that for gazillions and got into flavored popcorn. And there was Metcalfe Skinny Popcorn. And he was using the oil based and calling it skinny popcorn, which was frustrating. But with his weight and might and brand and name, he was able to beat us into every retailer that year. And there was a catalog of errors where our factory then got bought by a bigger company who then said, we're not going to make anyone else's brand, we're just going to stick to cinema popcorn. So we then had to go and find another manufacturer and by that time lots of other people launched into flavored popcorn. You could buy a popcorn machine on a credit card, you could put it in your back garden and make popcorn and put flavoring on it. And we were just too late to pick it up. So that was our first sort of foray into own brand. And it was expensive and hard and emotional and we were still running fresh marketing in parallel to this. But not to be put off too much, we then tried a whole iteration of other things. When coconut water was getting going. We saw the trend in America. We looked there for inspiration. We took a bit too long to launch our product which was made in a factory in Austria up a mountain where coconut trees don't grow. We had so many issues with this product. The first production, because the product was created at altitude. The bottles paneled, then the paneling is when they get sucked in, which made the shrink wrap label around the bottle buckle. And it just happened to buckle on the barcode. So none of the barcodes scanned. So we then had to manually put a barcode sticker on all of the whole thing was a disaster. Anyway, we pulled that one quite quickly. We got, we did a long life yogurt drink. We did a brand called I Am Super Beans I Am super, which was a project actually with Tetrapact. They were trying to bring in their Tetra Recart to take on the Heinz baked bean tin. And. And we worked very closely with them. The only factory in Europe was In Italy that could use this machinery. We created the brand, got it on the shelves of Asdra and Sainsbury's, only for a little thing called Brexit to happen. Our margins destroyed and the whole project fell apart, which was emotional. We launched the Crisp brand because Burt's Crisps, who we'd built up over the years, took it all back in house and they happened to be our biggest brand yet. We had a pretty good view of what flavors and products and customers would want to cress brand internationally. So we launched a brand called True Spirit in Belgium. And again, that was at the same time as I am Super. So we had quite a few projects happening at the same time. Trying to launch multiple brands at the same time. Talk about being a generalist. It's all strategic, by the way. All of this is strategic. And Brexit. Yeah, got the better of that one, too. And then the fuel thing came about.

[Interviewer]

I believe somebody came to you with a question because you were promoting a popcorn at a trade show or some kind of event, and somebody says, this is all good and well, but I'm looking for the Red Bull of breakfast cereal. I think that's what you told me. And by the way, I didn't know all of these little brands that you tried to sell because I thought like, oh, maybe there was just one thing and then it led to another and then to another. Little did I know that was about number 15 products.

[Barney Mauleverer]

My theory was that that because I didn't know what the next thing was, and because we had. We had so much energy and we kind of figured out that you could pre sell stuff and if a supermarket said yes, then, you know, you could work extremely quickly to then create the product and the packaging for it all to be put together. I think our record was 16 weeks from you're on shelf in 16 weeks, what's the brand Literally would go away and try and create a brand. But yes, we were at a show in London called Britain's Next Top Model with our popcorn brand. We were dressed up and the brand was called Diva Popcorn. And three hulking men on this stand at the most ridiculous show. I don't know what the buyer was actually doing at that show, but we could see that they had a Tesco badge and. And he said, don't worry, I don't buy popcorn and stuff. And we asked, well, what do you buy? And he said, well, I'm the breakfast buyer at Tesco and just here for inspiration. Quite like your brand. And we got talking to him and he said, we Asked him what's going on in breakfast and are there any anything, any opportunities? And he said, yeah, I'm trying to find the Red Bull of granola. Granola is the only category growing at the moment and energy is a big thing, obviously, outside of the category. I want to try and bring energy into the category. We said, well, what if we found you the product and had a really good brand? Would you consider having a chat to us? And he said, well, look, if you think you got something, book a meeting, then come up and show me. And literally I left the trade show then and there and got the Yellow Pages out. And granola manufacturers in Europe, anywhere, any manufacturer, and found four manufacturers, told them that we already had 600 stores guaranteed from Tesco, said that we've already spoken to Bear Grylls about putting his face on the pack or. And if it's not Bear, it'll be Jamie Oliver or something like that. And four factories around Europe put together the Red Bull of granola in their various different formats. And I had samples coming into my office in Dorset, can't remember which samples came from where. And we went up for a meeting and there was one particular manufacturer that had absolutely nailed it and the buyer said that one. And during the meeting he ate the whole pack pretty much. And he said, okay, that's it, we'll go for that. And he literally said, I'm going to give you 600 stores and. And you've got to be ready in 16 weeks, by the way, what's the brand? And it was. That is how fuel 10k ended up being born.

[Interviewer]

As you speak. Like, my head is literally popping up with so many questions because what you display in here, from the experience is often what, in my opinion, and from my experience from the branding side, what is what people get wrong. They want to be as ready as possible, have the product ready. Beautiful. Like, okay, now we go and ready to sell to someone. Whereas you're like, you didn't have anything, as you said, like, how do you pre sell something? Like, how do you sell a concept and then work out how to do it? So on. On my side of things, it works from here to there, whereas you're working from there to here. Does it make sense? Like, there's a whole different mentality.

[Barney Mauleverer]

So this is a really important bit which I have now put into various sort of anecdotes and nuggets. But I think that so few founders really think about the alternative perspective, actually the perspective of who. Who's going to buy your product rather than so A lot of salespeople go into meetings and say, we've got the great flavors and the pricing's this and the best selling that, and we're a B core and what have you. But very rarely do they put themselves on the other side of the table. So if you're sat with, I don't know, the Sainsbury's buyer, what's going through Sainsbury's buyer's head right now? They're going royal. I need to sell more per square inch of shelf space than my predecessor. I need to be more profitable. I want to get my bonus and I want my boss to give me a promotion. That's what they're thinking. And this becomes very personal. And you go, okay, so if you start your meeting with that buyer saying, hey, I think I've got a way of helping you get a bigger bonus this year, you immediately start tapping into the way that they are thinking. And they might find that a bit weird, but you qualify it with, look, we can now demonstrate that we're bringing new consumers into the category at a much better margin than, I don't know, Kellogg's, Weeds, Bix, whatever. And it was a little bit like that startup. It was the buyer saying, this is what I want, rather than me saying, this is what I've got. Will you buy it? And so you're morphing yourself into the recipient or the buyer of the project. And I think that sort of empathy is a really valuable thing to share with anyone. A lot of designers do this where they've got beautiful designs, but who's it for? Who's going to buy my product? It's like, why didn't you ask them? Because that's quite an easy question.

[Interviewer]

First, what you're describing is that logic of the sale will happen when you're listening because as you said, lots of designers will come with a ready made sort of solution. They will come with an idea like, maybe you should have this and that without having a foggiest clue about what the brand needs or what the buyer needs, or what is the buyer's motivations. Because I remember you and I had a conversation in the past about the fact that you were approached by design agencies or creative agencies going, hey, we would like to work with you. And you're like, you don't know my pain points. Like, you don't know what I need. I don't need a prettier packaging. I've got my issues. Maybe somewhere completely different. But this logic of the sale happens when you're listening, goes to the fact that you listen to a buyer from Tesco's, he wanted the Red Bull of granola, then you did your bit, the way you did it, going from there to here. You watched him hit a whole bowl of cereal going, this is good. We actually had that visualization of 600 stores and that's how you started building your brand. I mean, it's absolutely brilliant because as I said, I've got guests on this show who are working in the other direction and, and I think from the founders and the creators, we meet halfway through, hopefully somewhere, halfway point, and we get the work done. But I just love the way that you had a totally different logic and that's how you made your progress.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I also think there's something about in that branding piece, I might have mentioned this before, but, you know, a lot of Brandy people talk about the demographics, their target demographics or their sweet spot demographics in terms of wealth and age and what have you. But if you put Prince Charles and the late Ozzy Osbourne onto that profile, they're probably both as wealthy as each other, same age, yet you would probably speak to them slightly differently through branding. And so it's psychographics, it's the need state that these people want. So what kind of people are they? That what's what mobilizes, motivates the consumer rather than their defined sort of what you learn in geography, a level, population flows and trends. It's about what's going on in their head. So I think it's quite interesting, but we've. We got to the happy point of launching into 600 stores without a brand literally on PowerPoint. I for some reason had this image in my head of this guy standing on a pile of granola. Silhouette of a guy and quite energizing, energetic sort of call outs and what have you and put it into PowerPoint. And that was then translated into packaging to try and meet the deadline. And I always loved the word fuel because fuel was and again energy. So the brand originally was called Fuel on its own, which of course we couldn't trademark. And we sent a press release to the buyer saying, would you mind, can we have a quote? And he said, well, have you got a branding. Let's have a look. Because he was as excited about it as we were. We sent him a box from the production line and he said, do you mind if we don't mention my name on this press release? We were like, oh dear, we hit the 600 stores. But very quickly we had a call saying, this is a disaster. It's not working. The branding's rubbish. Product's good, but I'm afraid we're gonna have to pull out of this. And after much begging, we said, look, could. Can just give us 200 stores, take us down to 200 stores, and we've got this new brand. We've got this new look and feel. We just didn't have enough time to reflect and think about it. And we met. We had met a guy who had worked at Relentless Energy who helped create the fuel your 10,000 hours brand with lots of depth, about 10,000 hours being the number of hours it takes to become perfect at your craft, whatever it is. And he said, you're in a sea of yellows and blues on the shelves in breakfast. Why don't we go black? Let's be a black brand. We'll really stand out just because of that. We had our logo became fuel your 10,000 hours written out like that. And then over time, we shrunk it down to fuel 10k. Such a convoluted journey. Looking back at it, you should see this lineup of packaging that we did over time. That was a journey in itself. But the buyer agreed to that, gave us 200 stores. Then we started appealing to a very unique kind of consumer that wasn't buying Kellogg's or Weetabix or Jordans or what have you. And then that was the starting blocks of fuel 10k done. And from there, we grew. We moved into porridge, we moved into drinks, and what have you.

[Interviewer]

Let me ask you a question, because, I mean, it's a great story, and I think, yeah, there was a D word. It was a disaster. There's quite a few recurring themes I've got on this podcast, and some of is a rejection or let's say failure or a disaster. We can actually add to the same category. How did you guys feel? Because obviously, again, it shows your relentless adaptability or, like, not thinking like, okay, this could be potentially the end of the road, but you made it not. You just made it a chapter. And you. And you learn from that, and you built on top of it. So how did you deal with the fact that luckily what you had in the box was good, but the man standing on a granola with the PowerPoint design wasn't exactly helping you to conquer that?

[Barney Mauleverer]

Yeah, genuinely, we were a test. I was to test and learn all my life. And I think what really helps, again, get you out of bed when you're doing stuff like this and you hit massive rejection and disasters is what the alternative looks like. If you don't get it right. And the older you become, the more deeply unemployable you think you are. And with more kids arriving on the scene and you kind of go, well, if that didn't work, something, let's try this and let's try that and let's try this. And so I think the personal motivations helped a lot. And I think you gotta be a bit careful that you're not flogging a dead horse. And you just keep relentlessly making mistakes and may maybe you're not the right guy for this, but I just knew that we had something and it was worth just going that one more time, just one more time until luckily we cracked something, having had so much rejection and failure of all the other brands as well. Meanwhile, Fresh Marketing was kind of keeping us afloat. So we knew we had a bit of a. We could always slip back to that. Everything really did fall apart. But we were so keen on. Keen and yeah, wanting to create our own thing.

[Interviewer]

What you created was your rocket ship. You built it up, it was successful and you exited that business not that long ago and you started writing your next chapter. The next chapter is now, which is the future of food. It's your. How would you describe it? Future of food is your organization, competition, movement, community.

[Barney Mauleverer]

Well, I think that the one little bit in between Fuel and the next part was we haven't talked nearly enough about team. And I had a business partner on Fresh Marketing. I had a third business partner on Fuel 10K. We hired really smart specialists in roll. And I spent quite a long time really trying to understand what motivated those people to want to be even more than they could give. And for anybody listening in on this crazy story, literally without the people and the engaged people around me, it would. None of it would have happened. But luckily in October 23rd, we sold Fuel 10K pretty successfully to Premier Foods. Everyone on that Fuel 10K journey who had been with us for a reasonable amount of time benefited, I think significantly from that sale too. And Alex, my business partner and I stepped off on the following day after signing. And suddenly there's a sort of void. The pressure of going through an M and a deal with a multinational listed company was quite something. But also the constant journey of pressure on us right from the very beginning, even from the age of 20, there'd always been that kind of niggle and pressuring. Come on, you can do it. Get on. And. And suddenly all of that evaporated. And it took me a couple of months to rationalize everything, but very quickly I wanted to get back into the food industry. I wasn't, I didn't want to start a new brand but I wanted to engage with other entrepreneurs, innovators who were really doing a similar journey to what I'd just been through, but also doing really good projects. Previously in 2023 I'd run us with Fuel 10K. I ran a competition called the Future of food and fuel 10k was the subject the schools involved. So we had 20 schools that applied to join this competition. They were advisors to the brand and the year was 2043. What will you be advising Fuel 10K to to launch and why will it work against the megatrends of 20 years time? And it was such a brilliant exercise. We did it purely not brand building anything else, but just enjoyment really. The school's got a lot out of it, I think. And I was able to persuade some of the big guys in our industry to come down and be judges at that. So we had Adam Leland, who's the editor of the Grocer magazine, we had Rebecca Oliver Mooney who's head of commercial at the co op. She brought her daughter down to it, had a few others from Mintel. We have someone from the DBT department of Business and Trade. It was phenomenal. And Adam Leland at the end said if you want to bring this into the real world with really like to be involved in some way and the real world meaning the food industry. And so that was my sort of spur on, you know, let's have a go. And so last November I booked the Royal Geographic Society, the whole place for the day and free to enter, free to attend, not for profit. We had six amazing judges. We had speakers who came in to frame the future of food and what's coming down the tracks. We had 105 entries which we had to whittle down to 16 finalists. And we spent the day championing entrepreneurial endeavor in front of 350 people in the food industry, from investors to retailers to journalists to manufacturers. And we were talking about things like how do we reduce plastics in our foods, how do we, what are we going to do about ultra processed food, what's the impact of weight loss, drugs? What are the different things that, that entrepreneurs can create and add value to in this food ecosystem? And we know there's change, we know populations are changing, we know ice caps are melting. And so that, that was, yeah, our first iteration. I thought that was going to be a one off and then go and do something else. But yeah, it was the wash up afterwards where everyone was like, I think you're going to do that again.

[Interviewer]

Would you describe the reasons and the trial sessions and was it the mission and purpose of what you do in the future of food? It create this incredible energy in the room with the founders, with the myriad of different finalists, bringing something to the table which is. Which were unusual because people showed up for themselves. People show up because of their curiosity. And you said at the beginning of this conversation that the food industry is one of the most exciting industries because it appeals to five senses. What I've learned in that room on that day, and it was such a pleasure to be part of the event, it was the fact that I've learned so much more rather than when people show up for themselves to just to project and just to broadcast their mission. There was none of that. There are people with genuine interest about now and about the future and how we can potentially do it so much better than we do it today. Because I have, for example, my takeaway from the event was there's lots of people trying to make baby formulas. But one of the speakers was talking about the fact that there's no category for people for over 65s. It's like that's gonna be bigger category than the 5% category for kids.

[Barney Mauleverer]

They're gonna be 10 million more people over the age of 65 by 2050, 10 million in the UK. Only when you do those demographic things we were talking about earlier, you go, well, you have the 0 to 2 year olds, the 2 to 15 or 16, 16 to 30, and then it goes 65 plus. And it's like, hang on, there's like a whole load more so layers above that. And it was just, yeah, crazy. But it was amazing. I think I was listening to someone else's podcast the other day, Rory Sutherland, he's a sort of behavioral science guy. I love him. I love that whole behavioral science thing. And he was saying that that often you can get an awful lot more and become more successful if you don't feel like you have to generate revenue from every revenue stream and sometimes giving you get a lot more back in different ways or what have you. And I think that's what the future of food competition and all the people who've supported and you've been incredibly brilliant and generous with your time and design and skills and elevated what might have been another silhouette man on a pile of granules realizing I'm not a designer. And his point, because he was saying what I do podcasts, I don't charge to be on a podcast, but I want to share my experiences and what have you. And but he obviously charges to speak in front of, I don't know, the city Christmas ball party at HSBC or something. And so it's about being part of the ecosystem and where I love that whole concept of free information flow and sharing, collaboration and I think there's way too much of this management consultancy thing where it's like I've got this nugget of information and I'm going to wrap it up and sell it to one company for lots of money and then I'm going to change the logo at the top of it and sell it to another company exactly the same thing. And my view is it should be open source now a lot of this stuff should be open source. And yeah, it's that again, that's what I want to have a go at blowing up some of, some of those sort of hanger honors as it were and support supporting the entrepreneurs who are taking the risks out.

[Interviewer]

I think we need to talk about the fact the future of food is happening and is actually is growing and I think there's no stopping you in the mission because I think it's just, it just comes from your soul. It comes from the right, from the right place. You said I've been in the trenches doing this, but it's not really trenches anymore. It doesn't feel like trenches. It feels like it is the right thing to get out of bed. For what I want to know about future of food, what was the thing so far that surprised you the most? That you've learned from the founders or from the inventions? What has surprised you that you didn't even know after 20 odd years in the food industry? Yeah, there are a few things I.

[Barney Mauleverer]

Think first of all what I've really recognized since leaving fuel 10k is that there are many common issues of founders and management teams are going through and they're all trying to figure it out themselves. And there is no real sort of safe zone stroke platform for them to share each other's pain. And this goes right up into sort of supermarket land. You've got these big supermarkets who all know that they need to reduce plastic. They need to figure out the plastic bag thing and not have chlorinated chicken or talk about the sort of wax on lemons just to make them look pretty. They could all collaborate if there was a platform for them to in a safe place away from competitive IP and all that sort of thing. All agree. Let's go together and let's say that we're never going to buy cardboard for our own label breakfast from these guys or these sources anymore because it's destroying the planet. And then they would have buying power together, et cetera. So this whole collaboration thing, I think around entrepreneurs, they're all trying to do the same thing thing in their own different ways. And I think that was probably the biggest revelation. We never, I, we never formally fundraised ourselves, but I've been surprised how many of them are constantly fundraising all the time. Of course it's expensive out there, so that's a whole process that I've really tried to understand and I've invested in a few of them as well myself, but took myself off on a course, an eight week course, to understand the dynamics between the investor and the entrepreneur. Having just been through what I've been through with Premier Foods, I kind of then thought maybe I should learn about what the hell just happened. And that was revealing. So I feel a little bit like I know a bit more about how to value things and financially, but there are so many cool people doing cool stuff out there and it's really hard to get airtime with the right people. And I have a real issue with the fact that investors, buyers, journalists, they are all seen as the gods in the industry and we must all bow down to the buyer. Whereas actually it's the entrepreneurs that we should be crediting for taking the ballsy risks and the emotional strain it takes to get these things out the hatches. And I think we should be crowning them more and making them not have to pay so much to make stuff happen. So that is a view.

[Interviewer]

It's definitely the view and I think it's a very good view, actually. Putting a focus on the people who go through much more stress and strain and burnouts than the buyers, than the journalists, because it's. No business is ever easy, really to make successful. Like as you said, you need a catalog of chaos disasters to get to the other side. Because yeah, if it was easy, and that's the famous quote, if it was easy, everyone would do it. But it's the people who put themselves in a position that they're often driven by the enthusiasm, by the vision, by the obsession. And you use the word fuel. I believe in creativity. We all have that fuel, that reason that gets us out of the bed for that reason. And fuel. 10k became your trademark kind of word for your mission. And I'm still, I believe that fuel is very much there. And I think what you're trying to create and what you're creating already and how shared information through your channels for your LinkedIn like of putting focus on where the hell are we actually going with all of this? Because it's the fact that we all know that UPF is bad for us, but it's also very easy to buy it and, and eat.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I went to the science museum and David Attenborough was doing a kind of history of the world in about 45 minutes. And you could have watched it on YouTube probably. But the my one big, kind of one big takeout was he was born in 1926 and at that time there were 2 billion people on the planet. There are 8.2 billion people on the planet now. And you kind of go, why is it also hard? And is there enough food? It's like the population's just quadrupled in the last hundred years. The number of cars on the roads, the resources that are being used. An awful lot of the world has become more middle class and out of poverty. So more demands, the Internet's opened up more demand because I want more, I want the latest gadgets and what have you. It's no surprise there's so much strain on our resources, but we need to adapt. And I think, thank goodness the sort of robotic AI era is coming through. And so what I'm really excited about is like, and this should be about opportunity rather than issue and pointing fingers and blame. The opportunities are. We know that populations are swelling and getting older, so how can we use the tools of today to feed them in? So keeping it within the food industry, of course there's clothing, there's energy, there's defense, there's all sorts of other industries, but I'm going to keep it in the food industry because that's a bit. I vaguely understand, but what are our kids going to be doing? So if my kids come into and follow a similar journey to me, in 20 years time, the world's going to be quite a different place. Where's a good place for them to start? And so if I can inspire them and get speakers in and say, well, these things are happening, maybe don't go down this route now because that's done, we've got enough pizza, let's move over here and talk about vertical farms or seaweed replacing plastic or wonderful fermented cheese or lots of cool stuff and that's about future proofing the food industry. And I think the UK is a great place to start. But this isn't just a UK thing.

[Interviewer]

I love how you round up this conversation with the word opportunity because people sometimes wait for the opportunity to come their way. But what you've told me in the last hour is pretty much creating your opportunities is how you get to where you want to be, how you apply yourself, how do you express your soul, how do you find your fuel? Because yeah, there is a lot more people and there will be for a while, but it's finding your own pocket of existence and finding the best way of applying yourself is exactly what you've done. And yeah, your story is inspirational. What you've created is incredible and I'm so excited personally to be part of Future of Food and on the sidelines in my little bit because yeah, it is the future of what we need to do and how we need to think. So Barney, thank you so much for your time today and yeah, I'm so excited we got to capture this conversation.

[Barney Mauleverer]

I think let's continue to be lucky. But to be lucky you have to put yourself in the path of luck and that might be quite a wiggly journey. And here we are today from your one email a year ago or whenever it was. Who knew?

[Interviewer]

Thank you, thank you Foreign.

[Radim Malinich]

Thank you for listening to this episode of Daring Creativity Podcast. I'd love to know your thoughts, questions and suggestions, so please get in touch via the email in the show notes or social channels. This episode was produced and presented by me, Radim Malinj. The audio production was done by Neil Mackay from 7 Million Bikes Podcast. Thank you and I hope to see.

[Interviewer]

You on the next episode.

[Radim Malinich]

If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever.

[Interviewer]

You are and whatever you do.

[Radim Malinich]

To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and can you use the code podcast, have a look around and start living daringly.