Speaker 1: Welcome to the Mentor. I'm Mark Boris.
Speaker 2: Matt Jones, Welcome to the Mentor, Mate, Mark Credi beer here.
Speaker 2: I'm well stocked here for Gin by a look of stuff.
Speaker 2: And we'll go through this in a sec and we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about your book. But first, Matt Jones,
Speaker 2: co founder of Four Pillars Gin. Is that how you
Speaker 2: say the four pillars Gin for.
Speaker 1: Four four pillars Gin is the brand, you know, we
Speaker 1: come from four Pillars Distillery. In the hour of four
Speaker 1: Pillars Distillery. That's better. But one of the decisions we
Speaker 1: made very early on, and we'll get into this, was
Speaker 1: we wanted to be a Gin business. So I've always
Speaker 1: sort of treated it that four Pillars Gin is the
Speaker 1: business because we're in the business of one thing and
Speaker 1: trying to do one thing the best in the world,
Speaker 1: and that's making Gin.
Speaker 2: Okay, I like the sound of that. And I don't
Speaker 2: know what these ones are, but they're pretty fancy labels.
Speaker 2: That one there's got a cake on it. This one
Speaker 2: here is a four Pillars bloody Chiraz Gin, and and
Speaker 2: this one is I've had this one before.
Speaker 1: That's probably one of your signature ones.
Speaker 2: Correct, So that's rare dr gin. That's the gin that
Speaker 2: started it all. Yeah, So okay, tell me a little
Speaker 2: bit about you just don't co found a gin business.
Speaker 2: Gin's Australian gin. Gin in Australia, I should say, has
Speaker 2: become quite a there's quite a lot of participants and
Speaker 2: it's not a lot of whiskey, and I'm in the
Speaker 2: whiskey business, but a lot of whiskey people produced gin.
Speaker 1: And we'll go a.
Speaker 2: Little bit later talk about why it's about cash flow.
Speaker 2: But why did you and where did you get your
Speaker 2: hutzpa to go into the alcohol game.
Speaker 1: I love the use of the word hutzpar like I
Speaker 1: do a lot of podcasts. That's the first use of
Speaker 1: it I had. You need to have to go to
Speaker 1: the booze game. You know what I think you do?
Speaker 1: And I think you need humility. Yeah, and I'll tell
Speaker 1: you why I think you need humility. Beat up all
Speaker 1: the time. But mate, you rewind twenty twelve, right. So
Speaker 1: I've just moved back from New York City as a
Speaker 1: global head of strategy for a big brand experience firm.
Speaker 1: I'd spent the last six years advising big brands like
Speaker 1: Samsung and Google and Volkswagen brand, an advertising centre for
Speaker 1: a brand experience agency, so much more focused on how
Speaker 1: those brands showed up in the world and interacted with
Speaker 1: their customers, whether it was through events, experiences, retail. And
Speaker 1: it was a really interesting time to do that because
Speaker 1: that was the same time that social media, digital media,
Speaker 1: mobile phones were changing how people interacted with the world.
Speaker 1: So I would use this again. This is twenty six
Speaker 1: to twenty twelve. Was when I was in the world
Speaker 1: of agency. Before that, I was a failed political strategist,
Speaker 1: so I became a half decent brand strategist and I
Speaker 1: moved back from New York to Australia. I had a baby,
Speaker 1: looking for things to do, doing a bit of consulting,
Speaker 1: and I go for lunch actually just up the road
Speaker 1: in Surry Hills, and I meet this guy called Stu
Speaker 1: greg and Stewart at the time was running a public
Speaker 1: relations firm called Liquid Ideas, and he'd sort of been
Speaker 1: in the wine industry and one of his senses was
Speaker 1: that Australian wine was world class but didn't always tell
Speaker 1: its stories very well, didn't really walk as tall on
Speaker 1: the world stage. And you could argue the same about
Speaker 1: Australian whiskey at the time, incredible world class whiskey from Australia,
Speaker 1: not always getting the credit it deserves. So Stear was
Speaker 1: trying to solve that problem. He had another mate, Cameron McKenzie,
Speaker 1: and a Cameron's a world class athlete. Olympian always reminds
Speaker 1: us you run fast. Once you get to the Olympics,
Speaker 1: you're an Olympian for life. So he ran fast enough.
Speaker 1: In ninety six he made Atlanta for an a meter
Speaker 1: runner around for Australia in the relay. He intertumed meat
Speaker 1: in the wine industry. Become great mates. Cameron stays in
Speaker 1: production operations, marketing, sales, the whole nine yards. Stew as
Speaker 1: I said, goes into public relations. But they'd been daydreaming
Speaker 1: about making gin and I think they thought, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe we need a third wheel in there, someone else
Speaker 1: who can inject something a bit different. And he was
Speaker 1: me fresh off the boat from New York, interested in
Speaker 1: the theories of how to build brand in this new
Speaker 1: social media socially wired aids necessary Gin well for me,
Speaker 1: not the so Jin for those two. They'd had a
Speaker 1: couple of cracks at wine. They were interested in wine,
Speaker 1: but I think those had been hobby businesses. This time,
Speaker 1: they're like, if we're going to do Gin, we're going
Speaker 1: to do it seriously. For me, the opportunity to take
Speaker 1: what I've been learning and applying in the world of
Speaker 1: agency and go, maybe I should take my medicine, put
Speaker 1: my mother, put my advice where my math has been,
Speaker 1: and do it. And Gin appealed to me because Gin
Speaker 1: has this beautiful combination of you can differentiate through product,
Speaker 1: like you can make a genuinely different product. It's not vodka,
Speaker 1: it's not mineral water. And yet if you don't get
Speaker 1: the brand piece right, you're not going to succeed. You're
Speaker 1: not going to cut through, you're not going to pull
Speaker 1: off the shelf. So it was a lovely piece of
Speaker 1: in a world of abundance, there is room for another
Speaker 1: Gin as long as you have an angle, as long
Speaker 1: as you find a way to make it better or different.
Speaker 1: But even then you're going to have to tell the
Speaker 1: story and build the brand really well. And that's what
Speaker 1: we tried to do.
Speaker 2: It's interesting when you just said to me, then, because
Speaker 2: until I'm not here to give your business a blog,
Speaker 2: But it's actually until why I had a I'm not
Speaker 2: a Gin drink as you as much, but I always have.
Speaker 2: If I've got guests coming out, I've got to have
Speaker 2: a gin in my house and vodka. Yeah, but you're right, vodka.
Speaker 2: And I thought about it until more recently, but has
Speaker 2: got to be there's a formula.
Speaker 1: It's got to look a certain way.
Speaker 2: You know, it's clean, clear, you know, blah gin on
Speaker 2: the other hand, And it wasn't until I started seeing
Speaker 2: four pillars gin.
Speaker 1: And in fact, in fact, I don't think it was
Speaker 1: this one. It was another one I had.
Speaker 2: It was sort of a yellowy color, had a bit
Speaker 2: of abi use you gin. It had a different color
Speaker 2: to it, and I thought, what's going on here? I
Speaker 2: originally thought to myself maybe this is an old that's
Speaker 2: gone off or something like that, because I'd had it
Speaker 2: in my cup for ages. But my my EA had
Speaker 2: bought it for my said go and get me some gin.
Speaker 2: She went and bought me three bottles of four pillars,
Speaker 2: but different ones. This is one of them, but there
Speaker 2: was another.
Speaker 1: Chelms in you you're a whiskey lover, yeah, so she
Speaker 1: bought you one of our barrel age gins. So it's
Speaker 1: got a bit of color. Stu Gregan always says it's
Speaker 1: gin for whiskey lovers, and it is. It's got that
Speaker 1: lovely softened natural sweetness from the barrels. Yeah, and you're right.
Speaker 1: We've been able to make gin that is fundamentally differentiated
Speaker 1: at a product level. Camera and always says like Australia
Speaker 1: is the most delicious place on Earth. We are so
Speaker 1: lucky not just to live here, but to eat and
Speaker 1: drink in this food culture, in this natural environment, this
Speaker 1: climate that gives us botanicals think about gin is it's
Speaker 1: got to be distilled juniper. If it's not juniper, it's
Speaker 1: just kind of weird vodka. But with juniper it's gin.
Speaker 1: But after that you can add whatever you want. So
Speaker 1: we add things like Australian lemon, myrtle, tazzy pepperberry. We
Speaker 1: use whole fresh oranges that we steam for the rare dry.
Speaker 1: We use sharaz grapes that we soak in gin for
Speaker 1: the charas. We really make the most of Australia's flavor culture.
Speaker 1: So you know, you talked about hutzpa at the start,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, but balance with humility. Well, the
Speaker 1: hudspa was we can make more delicious gin. The humility
Speaker 1: was even then, The world, even in twenty twelve, was
Speaker 1: not crying out for another gin. Like you went to
Speaker 1: that Big Wall Bay in Dan Murphy's there was plenty
Speaker 1: of gin. I don't think anyone was losing sleep going
Speaker 1: where's the Australia clear color gins? Pretty much? I mean
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of Cameron loved there was a
Speaker 1: particular barrelized gin that he discovered on a fact finding
Speaker 1: mission he enstewed in the States, an old tom from
Speaker 1: Ransom up in the Pacific Northwest. There were examples, but
Speaker 1: not many, but certainly the opportunity to explore gin and
Speaker 1: to go, well, what are all the things that gin
Speaker 1: can be? And that came as well from the humility
Speaker 1: to go that, what doesn't need another gin? But maybe
Speaker 1: we can wedge our way in if we make a
Speaker 1: product of exceptional quality. And we will do that by
Speaker 1: focusing on one thing and one thing alone, and that's
Speaker 1: gin making. And as a result, and this is what
Speaker 1: you've identified, we then went really broad with gin because
Speaker 1: when you only get to do one thing every day,
Speaker 1: you've really got to hone your craft and become bloody
Speaker 1: good at it and get experimental, and you earn the
Speaker 1: right to explore, and I think that's what we've done.
Speaker 1: We've never got distracted. We've respected. Let the whiskey makers
Speaker 1: make whiskey, Let the vodka people make vodka, and we're
Speaker 1: just going to make gin and try and be really
Speaker 1: bloody good at it.
Speaker 2: Can we just talk about the process of making because
Speaker 2: you said juniper berries, most people don't even know what
Speaker 2: juniper they is. I actually must I've never seen one myself,
Speaker 2: but a juniper berry is what and where the hell
Speaker 2: did you get them from?
Speaker 1: So great question, And I want to have a little
Speaker 1: run up, and we allowed run ups on the pody.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I talk about a bit
Speaker 1: in the book is how business is just the constant,
Speaker 1: active decision making. And you know that you've built many
Speaker 1: more businesses than me and far more successful than me.
Speaker 1: Like you're just making decisions all the time about people,
Speaker 1: about process, about investment, about priorities. We had to make
Speaker 1: a bunch of different decisions very quickly after that first decision. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to give it a go. We're going to
Speaker 1: put some money in the bank and make gin. What
Speaker 1: kind of gin? Are we going to make? London dry gin?
Speaker 1: The classic British style, very juniper heavy gin that we've
Speaker 1: all been drinking like Gordon's beefeed a tank ray. Are
Speaker 1: we going to make modern Australian gin. It's a big
Speaker 1: tick there, like, well, the world doesn't need a British
Speaker 1: gin made by three Aussie blakes, it needs modern Australian gin. Okay,
Speaker 1: Gin's based on juniper. We said we're going to make
Speaker 1: modern Australian gin. So does that mean we have to
Speaker 1: use all Australian botanicals? So what's juniper? Juniper isn't actually
Speaker 1: not a bury it to conifer. It grows wild on trees,
Speaker 1: and there's very little juniper in Australia. And what juniper
Speaker 1: there is that grows wild that's hard to cultivate, isn't
Speaker 1: particularly good quality. So then that's an easy decision. It
Speaker 1: grows on what conifers, little yeah, little ones, little like
Speaker 1: baby ones, and it mainly grows down in the Balkans, Macedonia, Kosovo,
Speaker 1: and they'll literally go around harvesting juniper, is just beating
Speaker 1: bushes with sticks, and the little juniper berries, these little
Speaker 1: conifers are like falling off and they're beautiful. The astle
Speaker 1: berry it looks like a berry. Technically it's a conifer.
Speaker 1: We're already outside of my natural scientific comfort zone with
Speaker 1: this conversation. But it looks like a little berry, it's
Speaker 1: actually technically a conifer. Starts this real beautiful royal blue
Speaker 1: and as ages it gets a bit darker and under
Speaker 1: distillation it just releases this lovely, almost kind of painy.
Speaker 1: Note it's a great classic London dry gin which is
Speaker 1: very juniper heavy, smells like a pine forest. Not great
Speaker 1: London dry smells more like pino clean. And so we
Speaker 1: needed to ask the question if we're going to make
Speaker 1: world class gin at meaningful scale, Well, it can't be
Speaker 1: based on a juniper supply locally in Australia. That's a
Speaker 1: pretty small spy of pretty mediocre stuff. So immediately like
Speaker 1: got to get our juniper from Macedonia, from Cosova, so
Speaker 1: that's where juniper comes from. So then the question came,
Speaker 1: or what can Australia give to it. So we had
Speaker 1: this philosophy from the app set that we're going to
Speaker 1: distill the best botanicals from anywhere in the world, but
Speaker 1: we're also going to do what you know, Neil Perry
Speaker 1: and his modern Australian restaurants does find the produce from
Speaker 1: Australia that balances with Asian spice, Mediterranean citrus and just
Speaker 1: gives us this wonderful modern Australian flavor canvas to play with.
Speaker 1: Shaniel just left. He was here on podcasts. Yes, so like.
Speaker 2: But in terms of getting your juniper berries out of Macedonia,
Speaker 2: which you know it's a pretty exotic place, wouldn't be
Speaker 2: too many Australians have been in Macedonia. There's not even
Speaker 2: a huge Macedonian population Australia.
Speaker 1: There is one. I have one working for me actually, and.
Speaker 2: Alice Voulknoski is father's Macedonia.
Speaker 1: Do you do you fly to Macedonia to source this stuff?
Speaker 1: I mean, Caon Cameron's been at but we have got
Speaker 1: a fantastic juniper dealer, a juniper deal Yep, we've got
Speaker 1: a juniper dealer. We've got in Macedonia. Or he's actually
Speaker 1: based in the UK. So he sources the juniper that's
Speaker 1: by Hendrix, by Tanker, by four pills. All the best
Speaker 1: gin producers in the world use this guy. He's been
Speaker 1: out here a bunch of times. He's done juniper master
Speaker 1: classes for the team, Cameron's taking him fishing and dodging
Speaker 1: snakes down in the Yarra Valley. But you know, we've
Speaker 1: built these relationships and as you know, business is so
Speaker 1: much about relationships. And one of the great networks of
Speaker 1: relationships that Cameron in particular is built is with growers
Speaker 1: with producers, whether it's the guys who grow are citrus
Speaker 1: for the oranges, the guys who grow a lemon myrtle.
Speaker 1: In this case, Juniper supplied Tommy who's over in the
Speaker 1: UK and making sure we've got enough supply and we're
Speaker 1: forecasting demand and that along with you know, you asked
Speaker 1: how Jim was made. With the other side of it
Speaker 1: is the Gin machine, like we distill in big beautiful stills.
Speaker 1: And one of the first decisions we made were sending
Speaker 1: Cam and stew On that fact funding mission to the States,
Speaker 1: and they came back and went, we have to have
Speaker 1: a Carl still. And I thought they meant a still
Speaker 1: named Carl, because they showed all these photos of these
Speaker 1: great stills from these American distill who's all just had
Speaker 1: Carl written on the front. Turns out, Christian of Germany
Speaker 1: just outside of Stuttguard. They like the Mercedes Benz, the
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce of gin making machines, and it was a
Speaker 1: stainless thing. It looks stainless. Actually every part of the
Speaker 1: still that touches the gin is copper, and copper is
Speaker 1: this beautiful purifying metal. Because what Carl Steels do really
Speaker 1: well is they intensify flavor while purifying spirit. Because what
Speaker 1: you and I want to drink is something that is
Speaker 1: full of flavor but really clean, goes down smooth, feel
Speaker 1: smooth the next day, but it's full of flavor as well.
Speaker 1: And Carl Steels do that better than what else. Carl Carl,
Speaker 1: Christian Carl was the name and founder. They've got this
Speaker 1: factory the size of a couple of footy fields. They
Speaker 1: handbuild them. They make about one a week. We had
Speaker 1: to wait twelve months from putting the order in to
Speaker 1: actually receiving and we called her Wilma after Cam's late mum.
Speaker 1: Wilma arrived And that twelve month pause is really the
Speaker 1: subject matter of the first section of my book. Because
Speaker 1: we had this very rare opportunity in business to actually
Speaker 1: slow down and think and go. We thought it was
Speaker 1: a good idea. We've put down the deposit on a still,
Speaker 1: we've started to think about what kind of gym we
Speaker 1: want to make and why we want to make it.
Speaker 1: But now let's really actually sketch out the beats of
Speaker 1: what is this business we're going to build, because then
Speaker 1: when Wilma arrived and Cameron could start doing experimental batches,
Speaker 1: start fine tuning and finalizing that gin, and then it
Speaker 1: was on and it didn't stop being on for a decade.
Speaker 2: So you and I mean, in my whiskey business, we
Speaker 2: have the whiskey maker, the dude who does this for us.
Speaker 2: He's an expert whiskey maker, and none of us know
Speaker 2: to make whiskey. Does do you have a gin maker?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's Cameron, So he's a gin maker. Though
Speaker 1: we got really lucky. There's a lot of luck in business,
Speaker 1: right like I mean, you make some of your own
Speaker 1: luck and some of it. You know, you make the
Speaker 1: most of what you're given. And we were very lucky.
Speaker 1: On two caps one stewing Ham have both got exceptional palettes,
Speaker 1: like unbelievable palettes. The technical knowledge of distillation Cameron went
Speaker 1: out and built. You know, it's very lucky having an
Speaker 1: Olympian on your team, because once he puts his mind
Speaker 1: to something. He's going to make it to the Olympics,
Speaker 1: and in this case, he taught himself to become now
Speaker 1: I think the most awarded gin maker in the world.
Speaker 1: He is only the twentieth worldwide to be inducted in
Speaker 1: the World Gin Hall of Fame. He's in the Australia
Speaker 1: Distilling Hall of Fame as his stew He's won more
Speaker 1: more metals, more bleeding for gin than he ever got
Speaker 1: near in athletics. He has become an extraordinary gym maker.
Speaker 1: But that's him, and he's now built a whole distilling
Speaker 1: team of master distillers through the assistant distillers. But he
Speaker 1: remains that the visionary who built that making business.
Speaker 2: And then you remember your very first bottle. I mean,
Speaker 2: the gin process is much quicker than whiskey. So you
Speaker 2: can get a gin out, you can distill it.
Speaker 1: Winner's it really like a year, I don't know, eight
Speaker 1: hours and two weeks, right, So that's quick. It's about
Speaker 1: eight hours to distill. So Wilma makes about four hundred
Speaker 1: bottle batches. Load her up with a neutral spirit whectually,
Speaker 1: don't distill our own neutral spirits. You want to start
Speaker 1: at zero. You want to start with the purest wheat
Speaker 1: grain spirit. You can takes a stell the size of
Speaker 1: a multi story building to really clean that to zero.
Speaker 1: That goes in in what's called the pot, along with
Speaker 1: whichever botanicals we wanted to still with everything called a
Speaker 1: botanical anything you put in their steams in the vapors.
Speaker 1: That's where we put whole fresh oranges sliced in half.
Speaker 1: It takes about eight hours for that process to unfold.
Speaker 1: Cam likes to leave that gin to settle and tank
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks before we bottle it. But
Speaker 1: really that production, that innovation timeline, as you say, is
Speaker 1: super compressed, so you can make experimental batches and pretty
Speaker 1: much be iterating daily to fine tune and get to
Speaker 1: that perfect recipe. And then it's about consistent. So it
Speaker 1: doesn't go to a barrel though, like whiskey does not
Speaker 1: dry gin. Yep, we do barrel age gins, and barrel
Speaker 1: aging adds something. It adds layers of flavorite puls, different
Speaker 1: botanical flavors add it adds sweetness. But dry gin, perfect
Speaker 1: sort of gin and tonic gin is not barrel age.
Speaker 1: It's just distilled.
Speaker 2: It's to go straight into the bottle correct straight in
Speaker 2: the bottle, so from beginning to end, from beginning to shelf, yep,
Speaker 2: it's what weeks, just weeks. So it's a pretty good
Speaker 2: cash flow business in that regard. I mean, because you're
Speaker 2: assuming build by head.
Speaker 1: It is capital hungry to start with, yep, because you've
Speaker 1: got to set up buying a lot of dry goods.
Speaker 1: You're buying this expensive gin machine. We believe straight out
Speaker 1: the gate. We had to have a brand that stood
Speaker 1: for craft and attention to details. So like custom bottle,
Speaker 1: custom mold, beautiful labels, beautiful materiality of everything from the
Speaker 1: outsets and you get wanet chance to make that impression
Speaker 1: and be new. But once you've made those capital investments,
Speaker 1: you're right, the cash flow was reasonably steady, so we
Speaker 1: sort of tried to figure out what it would take
Speaker 1: to stay in the game for the first three years
Speaker 1: because even with that cash flow one of the challenges
Speaker 1: of Australian spirits is we send so much back to
Speaker 1: the taxman. So you think you're in clover because you
Speaker 1: know people are paying seventy five eighty bucks with bottle
Speaker 1: of gin, but thirty thirty five of those dollars again
Speaker 1: straight to camera, so you're not making anywhere near the
Speaker 1: margin you'd like. So we recognized to build a super
Speaker 1: premium brand, a luxury brand, a brand that could could
Speaker 1: sort of ultimately take Australian gin too the world. It
Speaker 1: was going to take time. We couldn't get into the
Speaker 1: promotional marketing game too quickly. We couldn't be discounting. We
Speaker 1: had to hold on to price level and premiumness. So
Speaker 1: even though the ash would start flowing, we still had
Speaker 1: to have the capital and the banks that in the game.
Speaker 2: So I think audience is like to know this. So
Speaker 2: as you say the setup costs, like you know, you've
Speaker 2: got to buy all the materials. You've got to buy.
Speaker 2: You've got to buy a whole lot of juniper berries.
Speaker 2: You've got to buy all your aromatics and all the
Speaker 2: things that you put in. You've got to have a
Speaker 2: stock of this stuff. You've got to get your stills,
Speaker 2: you've got to get premises. You got to pay rent,
Speaker 2: you've got to pay staff. You probably when you sat
Speaker 2: down and worked out, and of course you've got to
Speaker 2: pay tax.
Speaker 1: Before we can sell anything. You have to pay first.
Speaker 1: You can't pay as it goes. You the producer have
Speaker 1: to pay.
Speaker 2: So as it leaves the bonded area, it's gone give
Speaker 2: me correct, it is bonded. So in other words, if
Speaker 2: you want to get that onto Dan Murphy's or wherever
Speaker 2: it goes, you cannot do that unless you pay the
Speaker 2: tax first. So there's a lot of upfronts. How does
Speaker 2: how did the you three guys go about funding it?
Speaker 2: Like what was your game? Did you just sell a house?
Speaker 2: Did you borrow against your arts? Did you go and
Speaker 2: get some startup investors? And what was the process?
Speaker 1: So we were fortunate. There's a few dimensions to that
Speaker 1: will be really quick. There are advantages and disadvantages to
Speaker 1: funding businesses in your forties, right, like I mean we did.
Speaker 1: We were not a picture of diversity. We were three bald,
Speaker 1: middle aged white blocks. But there were some advantages. We
Speaker 1: had a little bit of capital between us, so we
Speaker 1: were all able to put some cash into the business.
Speaker 1: We had Stew and I were running our own businesses,
Speaker 1: so we could generate our own income and not put
Speaker 1: our own salaries onto the business straight away. But we
Speaker 1: recognized we need a camera at camera was going to
Speaker 1: build the distillery, make the liquid. We need to take
Speaker 1: him out of his full time job and start paying
Speaker 1: the day a week. We got really lucky and made
Speaker 1: of ours who earned a winery in the air of
Speaker 1: value that you can have a bit of the bit
Speaker 1: of the bit of the winery out the back of
Speaker 1: not really using it. You put a cage up credit
Speaker 1: bonded area. Wilma can move in there. You can have
Speaker 1: that rent free for a while. Will be grateful to him.
Speaker 1: Rob Dolan in the Air Valley makes great Pinana grateful
Speaker 1: to him for life. But even with that, we recognized
Speaker 1: we needed money, and we decided let's not be greedy.
Speaker 1: We'd rather each own a smaller percentage of a business
Speaker 1: that had legs. So we went and found twenty friends
Speaker 1: and family investors. We called them investors because we thought
Speaker 1: it was very clever to put a G in front
Speaker 1: of any word. Starting within that happened until we start
Speaker 1: talking about genovation and we're like, okay, we're calling this
Speaker 1: it's too much.
Speaker 2: But we got twenty G investors. They put in twenty
Speaker 2: five cage. We wanted patient cash, we wanted non stressed cash.
Speaker 2: We didn't approach people we thought would be stressed by that,
Speaker 2: so we didn't think it was nothing. But we thought
Speaker 2: it was a small enough investment for the right people
Speaker 2: that they could just send leave us alone between our
Speaker 2: cash and those twenty G investor shares that had enough
Speaker 2: cash in the bank to make those capital investments to
Speaker 2: start to fund those initial brand investments.
Speaker 1: And we thought that would keep us in the game
Speaker 1: for three years. And the reality is we were growing
Speaker 1: at twice the speed weekst mean geneering more capital. Correct.
Speaker 1: So eighteen months later we went back to those investors
Speaker 1: and good news, bad news. The good news we think
Speaker 1: on paper your investments four times what it was. Bad news.
Speaker 1: That's because we've run out of cash with any more money.
Speaker 2: And you might ask you this because because it's it's
Speaker 2: a lot of people sort of often talk to me about.
Speaker 2: It is the way you find twenty investors twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand dollars half a bar half million dollars that buys
Speaker 2: a lot of stock, gets a lot of runway for
Speaker 2: you in terms of getting kicked off. And I'll come
Speaker 2: back to the perhaps you may may not want to
Speaker 2: talk about, but you know, what percentage do you give
Speaker 2: them for that? Because at this stage it is just
Speaker 2: an idea two percent eachk, so forty percent you give gave.
Speaker 1: Three co fan Is owned twenty percent each one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of control. We didn't give anyone controlling rights, but
Speaker 1: in terms of equity, we sold forty percent. We held
Speaker 1: on sixty.
Speaker 2: Okay, that that's pretty generous, Very generous to your investors.
Speaker 2: I'm talking about, you know, because a lot of people
Speaker 2: you know, I will give away ten percent. But that
Speaker 2: means your business is worth five million dollars. I mean
Speaker 2: it can't be. It's just an idea. But and you
Speaker 2: know it was clever calling him investors that that's quite clever.
Speaker 2: How did you sell it to them?
Speaker 1: Though? Like?
Speaker 2: And does it help having two other co founders? In
Speaker 2: other words, trying to find twenty people? Like if I
Speaker 2: said you find twenty people, at that point, you probably
Speaker 2: struggle to find twenty people your so I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Have found two. I think I did find two. One
Speaker 1: it was my dad. Okay, you're one hundred scent right,
Speaker 1: and twenty is a lot. It is a lot, and
Speaker 1: go three. I say, well to an extent, And I
Speaker 1: think probably probably Stu had the biggest network, and Cameron
Speaker 1: had a bunch of people in his area in Wine
Speaker 1: Country who believed in him and his potential. But I
Speaker 1: will say something else. We almost exactly this time eleven
Speaker 1: years ago and twenty thirteen, two things were going on,
Speaker 1: actually four things were going on, fine tuning the GYM.
Speaker 1: We still hadn't finally finalized the GM that we launched
Speaker 1: in December tween thirteen in terms of the taste, in
Speaker 1: terms of the final recipe, exactly right. We were fine
Speaker 1: tuning what i'd call the traditional launch avots. We were
Speaker 1: going to take over bars in Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney, Albourne
Speaker 1: and launched for pillars to the trade drinks, drinks, media, bartenders,
Speaker 1: everything you'd expect. But the other two things. One was
Speaker 1: what you're asking about now, the pitch to investors, the
Speaker 1: pitch to ginvestors. But the other, and this was critical,
Speaker 1: was our crowd funding campaign. So we decided to launch
Speaker 1: both in the traditional way to the drink's trade and
Speaker 1: the non traditional way. We were the first GIN brand
Speaker 1: in the world to launch through crowdfunding, not which ones
Speaker 1: you use, which possible, which is the Australian platform. I
Speaker 1: think it was the third biggest in the world at
Speaker 1: the time after Kickstart in Indiegogo. Now that campaign we
Speaker 1: aim to raise ten thousand bucks. Over the course of
Speaker 1: a month. We put one batch of gin up four
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty bottles, sold it out in four days.
Speaker 1: It put thirty thousand dollars in the tank, which was
Speaker 1: not nothing but was not game changing. But what it
Speaker 1: did is it pumped conviction into the business. The day
Speaker 1: before we launched that crowdfunding campaign, we had nine of
Speaker 1: the twenty g investor slots field seven days later I
Speaker 1: was getting panicky emails because we were on nineteen out
Speaker 1: of twenty and people were scrambling to get that twentieth
Speaker 1: slot because they could see that something had just happened
Speaker 1: without having a drop of gin for people to taste,
Speaker 1: without having a bottle to show people simply by telling
Speaker 1: the story well of what four pillars was our purpose,
Speaker 1: our ambition, what Australia could bring to gin and selling
Speaker 1: that out on crowdfunding to three hundred and seven people
Speaker 1: who didn't just give it a like and a share
Speaker 1: on Facebook, but put their money in the put their
Speaker 1: hand in the pocket and handed over cash. That built
Speaker 1: the conviction amongst the remaining ginvestors to go this could
Speaker 1: be a good idea. So thousand Bockstege people pledged. No
Speaker 1: people bought a bottle of gin. Right, So on crad funding,
Speaker 1: it was a seventy five dollar pledge that brought you
Speaker 1: one bottle of Batch number one and it made you
Speaker 1: imperpetuity a member of we called our Batch number one Club.
Speaker 1: We said, anything new we make for the rest of
Speaker 1: your life, you get first dips. No equity is no equity,
Speaker 1: just pure crawdfunding. So crowd equity is something that was
Speaker 1: launched I think probably two or three years after we
Speaker 1: did that. This was pure preset. Let's call it what
Speaker 1: it is. It was pre sales. But the act of
Speaker 1: that successful pre selling campaign created the remaining conviction for
Speaker 1: the crab funding campaign, and its hard for the for
Speaker 1: the equity investor campaign. And I think it's sort of
Speaker 1: hardwired into our business, this belief in the power of storytelling,
Speaker 1: of intimacy, of winning consumers sort of one consumer at
Speaker 1: a time, and trusting the impact that could have on
Speaker 1: your way to business.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that, Yeah, so you you you use that
Speaker 2: as a proxy for your investors, your actual investors, equity investors,
Speaker 2: to say here's a proven concept, and though we haven't
Speaker 2: produced a model of it yet, here's a proven concept
Speaker 2: that people would.
Speaker 1: Be interested in this story, correct in what we think
Speaker 1: we can produce here in Australia. Correct, And we weren't
Speaker 1: cynical about it, and I don't think we ever use
Speaker 1: the language of it. It's almost like a minimum viable product.
Speaker 1: It's almost a test. But in hindsight, that is exactly
Speaker 1: the role at perform. What did you what did you
Speaker 1: play into What did you talk about in terms of
Speaker 1: the the story.
Speaker 2: I mean you talk about, you know, Australian sort of
Speaker 2: tastes and smells and native fruits.
Speaker 1: We talked instinctively about all the things that eventually became
Speaker 1: the kind of key if you're like pillars of the brand,
Speaker 1: which is that we have this incredible flavor culture in Australia.
Speaker 1: We have this great drinking culture. We've got a climate
Speaker 1: that both lends itself to making gin and drinking gin,
Speaker 1: and this irony that actually all the gin we drink
Speaker 1: here in Australia, and all three co founders were guilty
Speaker 1: of this is gin from the other side of the world,
Speaker 1: and that kind of made no sense. And we said, okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's now demonstrate that we understand some of the barriers.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about them already. Some of the barriers
Speaker 1: like XCIS and tax were the things that had stopped
Speaker 1: Australian gin becoming a meaningful movement. We said, well, those
Speaker 1: should not be obstacles. If we can figure out how
Speaker 1: to clear them out of the way, we can just
Speaker 1: have a hell of a lot of fun. We can
Speaker 1: make gin that no one else in the world can
Speaker 1: make because of the climate, the flavor, culture, the produce,
Speaker 1: the botanicals we can access. And really we just romanced
Speaker 1: people with that vision, and I think also convinced them
Speaker 1: that Australians were people to make good gin fun, that
Speaker 1: sometimes you see brands that are so committed to craft
Speaker 1: and process and that folks on excellence that the fund
Speaker 1: trains away like, well, it's still gin. It should still be.
Speaker 1: It should just still be generous and warm and enjoyable
Speaker 1: and have a laugh. But so we can. So we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about like taking our craft seriously but
Speaker 1: not taking ourselves too seriously. And I think even though
Speaker 1: we hadn't quite sort of crystallized that as a strategy
Speaker 1: at that stage, instinctively, particularly just stew I think those
Speaker 1: instincts were just really strong from the outset. So frankly,
Speaker 1: people were just carried along with the story and thought
Speaker 1: this will be delicious, but also this will be fun
Speaker 1: and also very Astralian back them and very Australian, very
Speaker 1: very modern Australian. I think we you know, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about Neil Perry. I think, you know, people
Speaker 1: like Neil Perry became almost you know, marketing. You sometimes
Speaker 1: talking about like your news consumer, like who are you
Speaker 1: picturing when you're picturing, who's going to buy your product?
Speaker 1: Who's going to be your number one consumer? I think
Speaker 1: for us we almost had like news makers like if
Speaker 1: Neil Perry made a gin, this is the gin he'd make.
Speaker 1: If X y Z was a gin, it would be this.
Speaker 1: So there was that sense of we're not we're not
Speaker 1: old Australia. We're not sort of just down at the beach.
Speaker 1: We win a leather chair like and with a jack
Speaker 1: and no tire shirt in the Australian Club. Correct, we're
Speaker 1: the lame Ways of Melbourne. We're Surrey Hills, we're Darlinghurst,
Speaker 1: we're Collingwood and we're wine country and we're mashing all
Speaker 1: of that together and turning out extraordinary gin. So what's interesting, man?
Speaker 1: This is that the By the way, I need to
Speaker 1: know where's the name? Four pillows come from? What is that?
Speaker 1: So name came from stew The name came from the
Speaker 1: need to have a name. I talk about a bit
Speaker 1: in the book. I think naming is often the most
Speaker 1: painful part of building because people try and use the
Speaker 1: name to solve all the problems of the brand. They think, well,
Speaker 1: all the things you know, brand is about feeling, right,
Speaker 1: I mean you know this. A brand ultimately is just
Speaker 1: a word we use to describe how people feel about
Speaker 1: a business. What really matters is the business, but also
Speaker 1: what matters is how people feel about it. And so
Speaker 1: when we talk about branding, talking about that emotional, storytelling,
Speaker 1: signaling side of a business. So people then go, well,
Speaker 1: I hope that the name I choose can send all
Speaker 1: the signals I want to send, and no name can
Speaker 1: do that. And most businesses that we all know and
Speaker 1: sometimes love, the Bavarian motorworks, who was mister Mercedes? And
Speaker 1: who was mister Ben's? What is a face book? And
Speaker 1: yet you know Tesla was a dead scientist. Like all
Speaker 1: these names, they don't mean something until they are made
Speaker 1: to mean something. So you get to the point of
Speaker 1: making four pillars and you're like, Okay, we're going to
Speaker 1: make great Australian gin. We're briefing in label design. We're
Speaker 1: briefing in a custom bodle, and the designer goes, what's
Speaker 1: it called? You're like not sure, and stud says, will
Speaker 1: put four pillars on it for now, and asked him afterwards,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's four pillars me made? Is? Ah? Camer
Speaker 1: and I used to play this drinking game. Would be
Speaker 1: at events like boring wine events, and we'd start just
Speaker 1: to divide the room up into the four pillars of humanity,
Speaker 1: and there was one humanity that was like unnameable on
Speaker 1: this podcast or any podcast. So for him, it was
Speaker 1: just like a fun name that referred to an in
Speaker 1: joke that he and Cameron had. I liked it because
Speaker 1: it wasn't too long, Like you look at it on
Speaker 1: the bottle, you don't need too much with like it's
Speaker 1: nice and tall, it's easy to design around. But then
Speaker 1: if you turn the bottle to the side. Every gym
Speaker 1: we made, I said, what are the four pillars of
Speaker 1: this gin? So it became a philosophy, a philosophy about
Speaker 1: doing four things well and every gin everything we released,
Speaker 1: we just said, what are the four pillars of this?
Speaker 1: So it's the stills, the botanicals, the water, the love.
Speaker 1: Bloody Schiraz is about the fruit. It's about the process
Speaker 1: of bleeding color from the grapes. So it became a
Speaker 1: discipline and a philosophy. And if you walked into the
Speaker 1: Four Pillars Distillery in Heelsville tomorrow, every single person on
Speaker 1: that tasting bench who tastes through the gins or offers
Speaker 1: you a drink, they'll tell you different stories. But I
Speaker 1: guarantee if you went back five times, every time, you'd
Speaker 1: walk out and have the same feeling about Four Pillars.
Speaker 1: And that's what we ultimately wanted it to be, not
Speaker 1: one of those brands with a very rigid story where
Speaker 1: everyone tells the same story, but instead it stands for
Speaker 1: something and four Pillars is just the name that reminds
Speaker 1: you of all the things it stands for. So that's
Speaker 1: where it came from, and that's where it came to it.
Speaker 2: We're going to get the breaking and it comes straight
Speaker 2: back and I want to talk to you about a
Speaker 2: little bit more about them, more mechanics of the business,
Speaker 2: like you know, shelf space online, social media, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So I go straight to the break I come back
Speaker 1: here with Matt Jones.
Speaker 2: He's one of the co founders of Four Pillars Gin
Speaker 2: and all his very variations in terms of the various
Speaker 2: gin flavors, tastes and aromas. And we've got the story
Speaker 2: about how we landed alongside his two co founders in
Speaker 2: terms of not only funding but also getting the business
Speaker 2: I up and running. I mean, I mean, we haven't
Speaker 2: talked about We won't talk about it because I mean,
Speaker 2: I know, through the whiskey business.
Speaker 1: But to the shape of the bottle, making sure you
Speaker 1: get the caps right, the labels right. I don't know
Speaker 1: if this stuff comes boxed. They're not boxed like like
Speaker 1: you know it comes in a pouch or not.
Speaker 2: But like it is a nightmare. The logistics of these things,
Speaker 2: it is a nightmare. Especially during COVID it was even
Speaker 2: worse because it was hard to get supply of stuff.
Speaker 2: I remember my business, it was very difficult to get
Speaker 2: some bottles, for example. And then of course you know
Speaker 2: you probably had issues around getting your junivate berriers because
Speaker 2: they've got to come from another place. But I do
Speaker 2: want to talk to you about the marketing side of
Speaker 2: this business. Now it's got a great name. It's got
Speaker 2: you guys are all sort of have the three of
Speaker 2: you have great.
Speaker 1: Genetics in marketing.
Speaker 2: We were we were were you're being very polite. We
Speaker 2: were probably overweight in terms of marketing and brand leadership
Speaker 2: and underweight in terms of traditional like commercial and finding
Speaker 2: team well logistics. Luckily, Cameron's got a lot of ours
Speaker 2: in the day, so he figured a lot of stuff out. Well,
Speaker 2: let's talk about So we talked about how the you know,
Speaker 2: it looks. Look the present is beautiful, the whole bottle
Speaker 2: is beautiful, the wrap on it's very nice. I mean,
Speaker 2: everything looks schmick like. I mean, I guess this is
Speaker 2: not how I originally looked. It was probably pretty close
Speaker 2: to it. What you're right, and your label you put
Speaker 2: in your label.
Speaker 1: But how do you sell this? So what is your
Speaker 1: sell strategy? By which distribution method ologies? There's a film
Speaker 1: came out a couple of years ago, Everything everywhere, all
Speaker 1: at once. That is the four pillars cell strategy. It
Speaker 1: is get all the plates up in the air and
Speaker 1: try and keep all of them spinning. And I think
Speaker 1: it was really important that we did that. So I'll
Speaker 1: unpack a bit what I mean. I think it's really
Speaker 1: important as a business that you have a theory of growth.
Speaker 1: I mean it may sound obvious, but I think everyone
Speaker 1: who goes into business they need to understand how is
Speaker 1: this business going to grow? To your question, who's going
Speaker 1: to buy it? Where are they going to buy it,
Speaker 1: why are they going to buy it? And what is
Speaker 1: the role of all the traditional marketing piece, the product,
Speaker 1: the place where it's going to be sold, the way
Speaker 1: it's going to be promoted, the way it's packaged, all
Speaker 1: of those things and the price. And the price is
Speaker 1: so critical we decided that we needed to take both
Speaker 1: a traditional and a non traditional approach at the same
Speaker 1: time and make them work hard for each other. So
Speaker 1: on the traditional side, we're like, well, you can't be
Speaker 1: a world class gym business if you're not a gin
Speaker 1: that's on world class back bars. If world class bartenders
Speaker 1: aren't making world class martinis and the groanies with your gym, Well,
Speaker 1: how can you really say to your consumer we're the
Speaker 1: best gin in the world, But every time you go
Speaker 1: to a bar you don't see it there. So big
Speaker 1: focus on relationships with influential top bars and restaurants at
Speaker 1: the same time. How do you do that? You wear
Speaker 1: out the leather on your shoes and you meet people
Speaker 1: and you invite them to come to you. So we
Speaker 1: spent a One of our biggest marketing budgets in the
Speaker 1: first three years was travel. Travel for us, particularly stewing
Speaker 1: cam they were the front men out in the trade,
Speaker 1: but also travel for incoming bartenders. We bought a bus,
Speaker 1: really on bought a gym bus just so we could
Speaker 1: get now drunk bartenders back to Melbourne or back to
Speaker 1: the airport, because if we could get them to come
Speaker 1: and make with us. You use the advantages you're given. Right,
Speaker 1: most world class gin distilleries are in the northern Hemisphere.
Speaker 1: Ours was an hour from Melbourne airporty five minutes from
Speaker 1: Albourne CBD. Let's use the advantage your proximity, get them
Speaker 1: to come and make with us. Be generous. Stu would
Speaker 1: talk endlessly about the importance of generosity, like walk into
Speaker 1: a bar, ask them about their bar, ask them about
Speaker 1: their business. Don't just give them a nip of gin,
Speaker 1: hand them the bottle, Invite them to come and spend
Speaker 1: the weekend with you. Invite me to come and make
Speaker 1: gym with you, be friends, build relationships. So really we
Speaker 1: wanted to be, you know, part of that Australian gin movement,
Speaker 1: which includes the drinks movement. Same for retail. We can
Speaker 1: I just stop around there just on the drinks. In
Speaker 1: terms of do it lets you we're talking like I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, I'm just imagining this sort of sup like
Speaker 2: a thousand bartenders would have attended your premises or you
Speaker 2: attended their premises.
Speaker 1: Many many many thousands, many thousands, many thousands, And what's
Speaker 1: the follow up?
Speaker 2: So like they're coming down there for a day or
Speaker 2: two days, whatever the case may be. You drop them
Speaker 2: back to the airport the half tanked. You then ring
Speaker 2: them back up and say, hey, John, what do you
Speaker 2: think of this? So it's a great question and I
Speaker 2: feel we could spend the whole podcast on it, and
Speaker 2: let's do it if we need to, because it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: So we had a great distribution partner called Vanguard. As
Speaker 2: a I think it's really important to understand the edges
Speaker 2: of the business you are in and drinks distribution. Distribution
Speaker 2: is a logistics game, it's a cash flow game, it's
Speaker 2: a personnel game.
Speaker 1: So you need a good partner who's actually out there.
Speaker 1: But your distributor is not your relationship builder. We needed
Speaker 1: to own the relationship. So a lot of the task
Speaker 1: of follow up and selling in that you're talking about
Speaker 1: was the job of the distributor. But you also have
Speaker 1: to make bets and not know that all of them
Speaker 1: will pay off. So you're going to go and build
Speaker 1: great relationships with the ten most influential bartenders in Australia.
Speaker 1: Some of them will be working at a bar that
Speaker 1: currently has a deal that's completely wrapped up by Diagio,
Speaker 1: and you're not going to move to the ashually being
Speaker 1: one of the distributors correct or. Some of the world's
Speaker 1: great drinks businesses Diazuo, Beam, Suntory, pan of Acard, they've
Speaker 1: all got great they're all good businesses, they've all got
Speaker 1: great deals with bars.
Speaker 2: You've just won Diazzio's World Class, which is one of
Speaker 2: the world's top bartender competitions. It's a very good chance
Speaker 2: that your bar has now got a very lucratively retained
Speaker 2: back bar full of Diazio spirits. That's fine, that's part
Speaker 2: of the game, but that doesn't mean that that bartender
Speaker 2: isn't still influential and important and influencing and training other
Speaker 2: bartenders and having other bartenders working under them who are
Speaker 2: going to.
Speaker 1: Go and open their own bar. And so you've got
Speaker 1: to sort of trust, and I think this is a
Speaker 1: big part of the four pillars model. You've got to
Speaker 1: trust that what you give out to the world will
Speaker 1: come back to you. That if you are generous with
Speaker 1: your knowledge, generous with your gin, building relationships, making friends,
Speaker 1: being seen as good people, making a good product, the
Speaker 1: return won't always be immediate. So in some cases you
Speaker 1: wanted them to list the gin and not just on
Speaker 1: the back bar, but in their house gin and tonic
Speaker 1: in a listed cocktail. Most consumers aren't going to walk
Speaker 1: into a bar look for a gin they've never heard
Speaker 1: of before in order that they're going to point at
Speaker 1: the menu and go, oh, martini, I'll get that martini.
Speaker 1: And I see you make yours with four pillars olive
Speaker 1: leaf gin fantastic, sounds delicious. So you have to have
Speaker 1: this combination of some people are giving you a more
Speaker 1: immediate return. Again, segmentation of bars. There's influential bars small
Speaker 1: they're not going to do big volumes, but they're going
Speaker 1: to have a big impact in terms of profile, then
Speaker 1: you've got the marra vels of this world groups who
Speaker 1: are going to give you scale but a premium. And
Speaker 1: then you've got the sort of wider pubs who are
Speaker 1: not going to give you premium profile, but might unlock
Speaker 1: some volume if you can hit a price point. So
Speaker 1: not all bars are credit equal, not all relationships are
Speaker 1: credit equal. And we had to have the subtlety to
Speaker 1: navigate that landscape. And we had to make sure that
Speaker 1: after Mark Borris had been into a bar, had that
Speaker 1: great martini, went Wow, that's the best martini I've had
Speaker 1: this year. What's the gin? And this out? It is
Speaker 1: olive leaf gin that four pillars make. Who the four
Speaker 1: pillars are down in the Ara Valley and this is
Speaker 1: made with olive oil and I've seen them make it
Speaker 1: because I was down there a month ago. So now
Speaker 1: you've got personal testimonial bit of connection. You walk into
Speaker 1: Dan Murphy's, you need to see it on shelf, you
Speaker 1: need to see it ranged with its friends, and hopefully
Speaker 1: that's that point of discovery. So we really had to
Speaker 1: call that the entrade and the trade. But all of
Speaker 1: that is the distributed side to what It's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's a huge and it was only half of what
Speaker 1: we did because just join me on the other half
Speaker 1: of the business. Right, So we make this decision very
Speaker 1: early on, we're only going to make gin. We make
Speaker 1: rare dry gin. We launch it in December twenty thirteen.
Speaker 1: In March of twenty fourteen, it wins its first big medal.
Speaker 1: It gets double gold San Francisco World Spirits Competition. That
Speaker 1: means every judge and the comp had given it a
Speaker 1: gold medal. Now at that point, sensible business people like
Speaker 1: had you been on our board, you'd have said, guys,
Speaker 1: it's time to double down. Time to like blow the
Speaker 1: doors off red dry gin. Nationwide distribution, get it everywhere,
Speaker 1: get behind it. Everyone in Australia has to taste it.
Speaker 1: And that I think would have been a completely legitimate
Speaker 1: bit of advice. But we also looked at it and went,
Speaker 1: we've written into our purpose we want to be Gin makers,
Speaker 1: we want to explore gin. We want to make the
Speaker 1: most of what Australia can bring to Gin. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean one Gin. That means playing with Gin broadly. And
Speaker 1: it's that that led us to making the world's first
Speaker 1: dedicated gym for a NEGRONI beautiful bit of week cocktail.
Speaker 1: We want a gin that smashed it in a the groany,
Speaker 1: the Martini gin. I talked about the Christmas gin that's
Speaker 1: on your table here, the gin soaked with Charaz grapes.
Speaker 1: And to make the most of that, we needed a
Speaker 1: direct consumer business. We needed a way to build a
Speaker 1: database a fanatical gin collector's gin lovers people. Seth god
Speaker 1: In is the marketing guru that I love. He would
Speaker 1: talk about, you know literally, you know, you need people
Speaker 1: to be almost contagious with their love of your brand
Speaker 1: to sort of sneeze it to everyone. You can't say
Speaker 1: that now we've had COVID, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And so we were trying to build that and as
Speaker 1: well of going how do we build out of that
Speaker 1: crowd funding campaign that first three hundred quickly that was
Speaker 1: a database of two thousand quickly, that was a database
Speaker 1: of fifty thousand people who we could email direct and
Speaker 1: say we've just made a gin with Zoe Foster Blake
Speaker 1: at Go to Skincare and it was gone in four hours.
Speaker 1: We've just made another batch of Blachera's gin that lasted
Speaker 1: two days. And so the energy that we created through
Speaker 1: that direct consumer business this way that we were constantly
Speaker 1: putting our gin making Gin love in credentials on display.
Speaker 1: I remember the first meeting we have Dan Murphy's. I said, please,
Speaker 1: don't don't be scared, don't be worried, don't be offended.
Speaker 1: We will try relentlessly to sell Gin direct. And I
Speaker 1: guarantee Dan Murphy's every bottle of gym we sell direct,
Speaker 1: that person who buys direct from us will send ten
Speaker 1: people into their local Dan Murphies to go and buy
Speaker 1: four pillars. That this system will work. And that really
Speaker 1: is the system. We're back so effectively we were growing
Speaker 1: two businesses at the same time. This fast turnaround, highly
Speaker 1: experimental direct consumer business and this longer lead time logistical
Speaker 1: business of getting into every bottle shop, every bar, first
Speaker 1: in Australia and now in thirty countries worldwide, in thirty
Speaker 1: countries world one. Now, well done, Gragilation. That does amazing.
Speaker 2: But I think you've been very modest because how many,
Speaker 2: Because what you just talked about then is a mission,
Speaker 2: a big mission, a giant mission, the three of you.
Speaker 1: To get in to get into so many places of
Speaker 1: what you like. Ten years now we're ten years, eleven years,
Speaker 1: eleven years.
Speaker 2: Year to be in bars around the world. I'd say
Speaker 2: you're in most of the bottle shops that I've ever
Speaker 2: been to. You're probably in a lot of Australian bars now,
Speaker 2: and a lot of Australians have probably tried it by
Speaker 2: buying it.
Speaker 1: I buy it online, well, my office does when I
Speaker 1: do buy it.
Speaker 2: Did you ever get to a point where you thought, oh, shit,
Speaker 2: like this, this we've bitten off too much more than
Speaker 2: we can chew, or this is overwhelming? Do you ever
Speaker 2: get to that point the three of.
Speaker 1: View, utterly, utterly overwhelming? And I think what's what's interesting
Speaker 1: is you sometimes build a bit. Yeah. I think we
Speaker 1: built a business that was a system, you know, and
Speaker 1: the system worked, and the different pieces of the system
Speaker 1: were fueling each other our capacity. We could only have
Speaker 1: built the business we did because of Cameron's endless capacity
Speaker 1: to be inventive, because of Stew's endless capacity to take
Speaker 1: these inventions and generate pr and coverage. And then the
Speaker 1: team I built, and it's endless capacity to then take
Speaker 1: each gin and go right. We're going to tell the
Speaker 1: story of that. We're going to tell the stories of drinks.
Speaker 1: We're going to shoot beautiful content we're going to inspire
Speaker 1: people to buy it direct, we're going to back it
Speaker 1: in the trade. And so the system worked, and it
Speaker 1: made the most of the advantages we had. As that
Speaker 1: system grew, you started to realize that the gears would
Speaker 1: sometimes grind a little bit that we were I would
Speaker 1: walk out of a meeting and oh my god, We've
Speaker 1: got this amazing opportunity to make this new gin and
Speaker 1: do this and this, and I'd look at the marketing
Speaker 1: team and they're all just gone white because we're on
Speaker 1: a deadline to help figure out what's the summer campaign
Speaker 1: that's going into Dan Murphy is in ten months time.
Speaker 1: So the speeds and the rhythms are different. And then
Speaker 1: you go to export a lot of those home ground advantageers,
Speaker 1: those advantages of proximity and intimacy no longer have those.
Speaker 1: The distributor that you hire in the UK just doesn't
Speaker 1: care as much as you do. Like you've you've got
Speaker 1: your one little gym business. They've got forty different brands
Speaker 1: in their portfolio. They don't really they care about you
Speaker 1: at best one fortieth as much as you do. So
Speaker 1: you start to realize, okay, well, some of what got
Speaker 1: us here in Australia help us over there, but also
Speaker 1: we have to figure out some different ways of winning.
Speaker 1: So that's I think when it becomes sometimes overwhelming, is
Speaker 1: you realize you've built a system that wasn't necessarily built
Speaker 1: to scale to the level you're at. Doesn't mean it
Speaker 1: was wrong. In fact, it's only because of what you
Speaker 1: did that got you this far. But to quote Marshall Goldsmith,
Speaker 1: the leadership coach, what got you here won't necessarily get
Speaker 1: you there. So that wrestling match between what do we
Speaker 1: hold on to where do we stay the course, but
Speaker 1: also where do we now adapt and tweak and maybe
Speaker 1: question some of those assumptions. I think that's the that's
Speaker 1: the constant battle, and sometimes it is a bit overwhelming.
Speaker 2: So do you get to your point with your investment
Speaker 2: with your capital, because you know, if you're when you
Speaker 2: raise capital, you say you make some assumptions. You say, look,
Speaker 2: we're going to need this runway and we need to
Speaker 2: raise five hundred thousand dollars and that'll lasts us for
Speaker 2: two years. And but you know we've done better than
Speaker 2: as you said, we've done better than we expected. And
Speaker 2: the valuation now is whatever foll bagger we need to
Speaker 2: raise more money. Do you get to a point where
Speaker 2: the three of you thinking to yourself, am I giving
Speaker 2: away too much equity? Is it worth it for me
Speaker 2: to have you been able to maintain more than fifty
Speaker 2: percent equity yourself through So.
Speaker 1: We had a couple of events since since the ones
Speaker 1: that we talked about at the start of the podcast,
Speaker 1: And I think they're driven by two factors. You know,
Speaker 1: one is capital and one is cash flow, and they're
Speaker 1: both important, right, and they're importantly distinct. And I would
Speaker 1: have known nothing about this before I started Four Pillars
Speaker 1: and I fil and they're far too much about that
Speaker 1: and banking covenants and all those other important things. If
Speaker 1: you're running a business, and I think you get to
Speaker 1: the point from a cashflow point of view where your
Speaker 1: mortgages are on the line, it's still connected to your
Speaker 1: family's financial wellbeing, and you're like, these bets are getting bigger,
Speaker 1: and we have to take bigger bets because at some
Speaker 1: stage our appetite to take the risk required could become
Speaker 1: a constraint on the growth of business. It's not that
Speaker 1: we want to be inappropriately risky. We want to be
Speaker 1: appropriately risky, but the business now needs a bigger risk
Speaker 1: appetite than we have as individuals. So you start to
Speaker 1: look at how do you pull those two things apart.
Speaker 1: You also go these investors who joined us in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: they deserve a good day at some stage, they deserve
Speaker 1: some return maybe, and you go, we probably need some
Speaker 1: more capital. So in the case of Heelsville, we had
Speaker 1: bought in twenty fifteen and old timber shehed. We'd fitted
Speaker 1: out quite cheaply, but it looked beautiful and it was
Speaker 1: home to Wilma. Our first still, Jude, named after Stew's mama.
Speaker 1: Second still my mum doesn't drink. She got the experimental
Speaker 1: stell Eileen. So those three stills live there happily. Barrels
Speaker 1: we age gins in a lovely space to taste and
Speaker 1: make drinks. But we were outgrowing. We had queues out
Speaker 1: the door every weekend. We were getting about ninety thousand
Speaker 1: people a year through that space. We needed a bigger space,
Speaker 1: We needed a bigger boat. So we raised some capital
Speaker 1: and we found a wonderful partner in Line, Australia's Great
Speaker 1: Boroh ultimately owned by Kieran, but a very Australian business.
Speaker 1: Here the business of two two e's and four x
Speaker 1: and stone of wood and little creatures. So they came in.
Speaker 1: They put some capital in to help us buy the
Speaker 1: building next door. They said, look, we'll guarantee a bit
Speaker 1: more funding to help you with your cash flow and
Speaker 1: the growth of your business, but we will leave you
Speaker 1: guys in full operational control. And we ran the business
Speaker 1: for four and a half years. So I chaired the board.
Speaker 1: Laren had two people on the board plus me and
Speaker 1: Stewing Cam very very happy, amicable, and would have been
Speaker 1: even more happy have we not had COVID come in,
Speaker 1: and then COVID followed by a supply chain crisis. So
Speaker 1: for those four and a half years, I think we
Speaker 1: were feeling very smart and very lucky that we had
Speaker 1: a big brother sort of standing over our shoulder, letting
Speaker 1: us run the race, really backing our theories, but also
Speaker 1: kind of knowing that you had a bit more muscle
Speaker 1: behind you if you needed it, and luckily we didn't,
Speaker 1: that you always knew it was there, And I think
Speaker 1: psychologically that period would have been very different. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we'd have made different decisions, but psychologically there
Speaker 1: was a level of safety that you had because of
Speaker 1: that backing, and then on the first of July twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, they exercised the right to take out the
Speaker 1: remaining fifty percent of the business. So now I continue
Speaker 1: to consult, I continue to work on the business, but
Speaker 1: I no longer own.
Speaker 2: So you guys had a liquidity event, correct, you and
Speaker 2: your partners, So now Eline Nathan owns all of it.
Speaker 2: So they took out the original vents as well, Son
Speaker 2: Nathan ours and we and we stayed.
Speaker 1: We were firm that we stayed aligned with those investors throughout.
Speaker 1: So when Line took fifty percent, they took fifty percent
Speaker 1: off everyone. So all large investors sold out fifty percent,
Speaker 1: but stayed on the journey, and so they got to
Speaker 1: stay on the journey with us until ultimately we all
Speaker 1: sold our resting. Actually, so what's the difference when I
Speaker 1: mean in the business, so generally speaking, when they have it. Look,
Speaker 1: when a founder has a liquid event like that, a
Speaker 1: lot of founders just leave, they go there, you go off.
Speaker 1: What did someone like in multinational Line say they say, Okay, Matt,
Speaker 1: you've got to be restrained.
Speaker 2: We're going to pay. We can't get unied to go.
Speaker 2: We go and set up another one of these gin businesses.
Speaker 2: We want to keep you on board and keep you
Speaker 2: in the business as a consultant or in a role
Speaker 2: marketing or branding role. Is just explain how that works
Speaker 2: when you get by a multinational.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. And you know, I've seen this
Speaker 1: happen a lot in my old life of agencies. You know,
Speaker 1: people build up an advertising agency, then they try and
Speaker 1: sell it to a big holding company and they knew
Speaker 1: exactly right, they have a handcuff period. As soon as
Speaker 1: that's ended, you never see them again. That was not
Speaker 1: the case. Here were the four and a half years
Speaker 1: that we worked together in partnership that effectively was the
Speaker 1: lock in period. And once that that sort of final,
Speaker 1: you know, once they executed their right to take the
Speaker 1: remaining capital, we could have all walked away. My view was,
Speaker 1: and all three of us were very amicable and very
Speaker 1: keen to see it succeed. And I think we all
Speaker 1: just looked and went what contribution can we make? And
Speaker 1: as the as the brand guy, I'm like, I think
Speaker 1: there's a role for me to continue to play because
Speaker 1: the job is only half done. We've got this into
Speaker 1: thirty markets worldwide, but we are the leader in Australia.
Speaker 1: You know, in twenty twenty one we caught up and
Speaker 1: overtook Hendrix by volume. Hendricks had had sixty six zero
Speaker 1: percent of super premium gym in Australia when we started,
Speaker 1: and we ever took them in twenty one. But in
Speaker 1: markets overseas we are still a drop in the gen notion.
Speaker 1: So A there was a job to do there, but
Speaker 1: B lined to great business. But it's a it's a
Speaker 1: beer an RTV business, it's an on tap business. It's
Speaker 1: a pub driven business. You might call it a fast
Speaker 1: moving consumer good business. Spirits is luxury. Mine didn't have
Speaker 1: a spirit's business. Kieran, their parent company, had a couple
Speaker 1: of interesting spirits assets Fuji whiskey, Fantastic Japanese whiskey, four
Speaker 1: Roses Bourbon out of Kentucky, So we said, well, why
Speaker 1: don't we help you now build a wider spirits business.
Speaker 1: So we've called it four Corners Global Spirits. It's a
Speaker 1: bit to b not a bitter C company. It's not
Speaker 1: consumer facing, it's trade facing. It includes not just four pillars,
Speaker 1: but Vanguard. We encourage Line to acquire the distributor that
Speaker 1: we'd worked with, So I've just sort of been working
Speaker 1: behind the scenes helping them both continue to grow four Pillars,
Speaker 1: but also start to think about what could a genuine
Speaker 1: Australian global spirits business be that took Australian spirits to
Speaker 1: the world as well as building, you know, bringing some
Speaker 1: great spirits into Australia, And is what is the reason
Speaker 1: you wrote your book. I wrote the book because I
Speaker 1: got really lucky. I met two people who knew a
Speaker 1: lot about the craft of making gin, and I knew
Speaker 1: nothing about it, and I still know very little, as
Speaker 1: you saw in our discussion about Judipervari's and I think
Speaker 1: I was able to support their craft and their expertise
Speaker 1: and their passion with structured thinking about the business and
Speaker 1: the brand. Someone said to us, They're like, I figured
Speaker 1: out four pillars. Cameron makes the gin, Stu you make
Speaker 1: the noise, and Matt you sort of makes sense. And
Speaker 1: in a way, the book was trying to extract the
Speaker 1: making sense piece, because Stu does a lot more than
Speaker 1: making noise. He has got a brilliant entrepreneurial mind. Cameron
Speaker 1: does a lot more than making gin. He's got a
Speaker 1: great creative mind. But I think what I've brought is
Speaker 1: a slowness and a structure and a strategy to building
Speaker 1: the business and building the brand. And I thought, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be good if I could give that to people
Speaker 1: as a structure to help them think about growing whatever
Speaker 1: it is they're trying to grow. Well.
Speaker 2: I think it's a great Australian story of you know,
Speaker 2: taking something from the very kernels of the original idea,
Speaker 2: branding it, building it, raising money, distributing it, getting it
Speaker 2: in the psyche.
Speaker 1: Of everybody who knows about gin or at least uses
Speaker 1: gin and drink.
Speaker 2: It's just the greatest strange story, to be honest with you,
Speaker 2: that's a and then the ultimate having a liquid in
Speaker 2: event tour.
Speaker 1: Really, by the way, Line Nathan.
Speaker 2: Is I don't know if they comes with Line Nathan
Speaker 2: or you caught lyone, but Line Nathan anyways, as I
Speaker 2: know them is a great owner of brands like Stonewood
Speaker 2: for example.
Speaker 1: They let things run their own course. They they don't
Speaker 1: don't go and interfere with it. I mean right. And
Speaker 1: James Brindley, the managing director of Line, you always would
Speaker 1: say to us, thank you for choosing us, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: it was true it was a mutual choice. Like they
Speaker 1: saw the power in what we were building. But we
Speaker 1: also saw the power in the way that they invested
Speaker 1: in brands, let brands do their thing, and the way
Speaker 1: they valued Australia as a market. Because this, we can
Speaker 1: underestimate how much opportunity there is even before you leave
Speaker 1: this continent. There's so much opportunity to grow great businesses here.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to say, I want to congratulate you
Speaker 2: and your partners who don't get to me, but congratulate
Speaker 2: you all the co founders of this great Australian Australian gin.
Speaker 1: Brand, and well done, mate.
Speaker 2: Like it's that's pretty quick o retenue period that not
Speaker 2: many businesses get built and sold and have a bit
Speaker 2: of COVID in the middle of it overtenu period. And
Speaker 2: not many businesses when they're owned by the new people
Speaker 2: retain any of.
Speaker 1: The original owners. But generally speaking they try to move
Speaker 1: them on and all those people move on. So well done, congratulations,
Speaker 1: this is a great Australian story. Thanks Mark,