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We all know those people. The people that won’t stop talking. The people that never seem to be quiet long enough to hear what is ACTUALLY being said. They’re too interested in what they THINK is being said. Unfortunately, this is the category that most entrepreneurs get lumped into. Loud. Obnoxious. Won’t shut up long enough to take a breath.
Bobby Besant is not one of those entrepreneurs. He’s anything but.
The Ivey Entrepreneur Podcast is sponsored by Connie Clerici, QS ’08, and Closing the Gap Healthcare Group, Inc.
Transcript
You're listening to the Ivey entrepreneur podcast from the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship at the Ivey Business School. In this series Ivey entrepreneur, and Ivey faculty member Eric Janssen will anchor the session.
Eric Janssen
Are entrepreneurs born or made? I don't know if we'll ever get a definitive answer on that question, but I can tell you that my guest on this episode of the Ivey entrepreneur podcast was dead set on starting his own business for as long as he can remember. As soon as he could walk, he was wandering the floors of his dad's printing company, which was passed down from his grandfather. And before he even got to university he had a series of entrepreneurial ventures under his belt. Bobby Besant, the co founder of iconic brewing is the entrepreneur behind ready to drink brands like dusty boots hard root beer, which is a category they created in Canada, cottage springs, vodka sodas, and cabana coast Moscow mules. But before Bobby successfully launched iconic he took a whole bunch of swings, he ran student businesses, scrub boats and cottage country and even successfully pitched a new alcohol concept on Dragon's Den. Twice. In this episode, we cover Bobby's founding story, why he chose in a typical career path, how to use age to your advantage, and his biggest advice to his 20 year old self. Enjoy this episode with iconic brewing co founder Bobby Besant. All right, let's get things fired up here. So I'm here with Bobby Besant. How are you? I Bobby have never been happier, how you doing?
Bobby Besant
Couldn't be better.
Eric Janssen
We're gonna go through a little bit about your story today, your entrepreneurial journey. So I actually want to start if you don't mind with a little bit about you as a human, and understanding a little bit about where you grew up, how you were influenced, and where the heck these entrepreneurial inkling Inklings may have come from?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, well, it's something that I mean, as far back as I can remember, I've been just interested in business. AndI think a lot of it was influenced by my, by my dad, initially, even when I was like, not even in double digits at of age, we were talking about businesses, he would get me fired up about an idea that was like, I think back to now, and it's like, no one's gonna buy that. But he would get me fired up about stuff. And just as always putting little little nuggets out there. And I mean, from a very early age, she was kind of thrown into the business world as well. So there's kind of really three generations involved, there is a business that his father had originally originally bought, that was struggling and, and then he ended up passing away very young, at 48 years old. And then my dad had to leave University at the age of 19, or 20, and kind of jump into the driver's seat of this failing business. It was in the paperboard manufacturing, making boxes for consumer packaged goods companies, for the most part. And the big opportunity that he saw on and graphs grasp onto which ultimately made him successful in the end was really the beginning of the private label kind of transformation in North America, when president's choice started coming out, and no name and that and that kind of stuff. So I mean, I grew up around that, went to the office with him every weekend, walked around the plant, sat in his office printed off 1000s of pages of nonsense, for whatever reason, I just always enjoyed kind of the vibe of being in a company and kind of the, the environment. So I mean, literally, as long as I can remember, there is nothing else I want to do in the world, besides being entrepreneur, be in business. So yeah, it really just comes through the bloodline. I mean, even an interesting little quick anecdote. This week, I actually met up with the lawyer, who has met now three generations of my family, my grandfather, who I never even met my dad and now me and kind of seen the journey throughout kind of 50 years of, of our entrepreneurial family.
Eric Janssen
Does he say anything? Like, you look left sound like look like act like anything like that?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I definitely have, like, kind of definitely some tendencies that came came from my dad. I mean, I've I like to have a good time and like to joke around. I think I'm a little better looking. But he just thought it was it was it was kind of neat. And I mean, I'd actually never met him before. But it was it was kind of cool just to just to sit down and kind of hear some stories from like, way back in the day when, when he was involved with like my grandfather, who I mean, sounds like a cool guy from everything I've heard.
Eric Janssen
He've dealt with three generations or had the privilege of working with three generations of bees, ants.
Bobby Besant
Exactly. Yeah.
Eric Janssen
Cool. Cool. So unlike a few others, including myself, I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of entrepreneurs in my family, I think for me it was driven more like an inside motivation. For you, it sounds like you saw something that you liked about the way that your dad was or the life that he had, or the excitement or the buzz around entrepreneurship. And that's why you knew that you wanted to do it. Like, what about it? Got you. Yeah,
Bobby Besant
I mean, he just always seemed so kind of passionate about, about everything, like, he could work 8080 100 hours a week, kind of no problem, just because he loved it. And just kind of seeing as much as I was young going to the plant and everything. I just, I could see kind of the magic of being done. And I've asked him to tell stories over and over and over again, kind of just about his, his journey. And as much as he was not in, not in a new world business. It was paper, board manufacturing. Just to see someone kind of work towards being the absolute best, and at what they do was pretty cool. So kind of, I've always kind of wanted to try and do that as well, in my career.
Eric Janssen
Cool. That's neat. So then you, as a child, you had these entrepreneurial ambitions, which is really cool. And then you went to Western?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I went, I went to Western. I mean, even before that, I had a few little businesses in the summer in high school and whatnot. Little side hustles. Actually one of them or the vast majority of them were with my current business partner cam. We actually met working on a gas dock. And in cottage country, filling up boats. It's a cottaging thing. I got a marina I guess. So our day job was filling up boats. But we were always trying to figure out a little side hustles that would, a earn some extra money. So we were doing boat detailing, we were doing property management. We were doing landscaping kind of up in cottage country, we kind of also used it as a platform to meet a bunch of interesting people that we thought we saw as quite successful. So we use it as a networking opportunity as well, kind of back in high school. And kind of using your age when you're young to get in front of some cool people is a huge asset for sure.
Eric Janssen
Smart. I worked at a private Golf Club, and sort of viewed it as the same thing. It was a bunch of these members that are there because they've done something, right. Yeah. And if I could try to pick their brain here in there for nuggets, like what is it? What do you do? You drive up playing golf three days a week, and you're pulling up to a nice car, wonder what this guy does? And asking him some questions about that.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, well, still to this day, some of those guys that we met will still call up on occasion and either get together for a drink, some of them they've even, they've almost been investors for us that periods of time too. And in different projects are going to undertake You never want to burn a burn a relationship. You always want to always treat everybody you meet as good as possible. Because you never know.
Eric Janssen
Speaking of you and I met when you first went to school here. So, I was teaching at Western at the time for your business. Yeah. That's where you and I met?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I came in as a as a young, naive, first year. Sure. didn't really know what to expect. But from the get-go, business was naturally my favorite class. And I think you made it that much more exciting, because he had a lot of great stories to tell as well. Like, a big chunk of business is just being able to storytel in order to make people relate to it, versus just regurgitating stuff out there. So I mean, that yeah, that's how we met. And we've kind of kept in touch a little bit over the years. So it's kind of funny how things come full circle. And what is it nine years later? 10 years later, now? I'm sitting back here.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. Now I'm trying to learn from you now. I'm on the tables of tearing this is really cool. It's cool for me to be on the other side of it. So and if I remember, just to touch on for a second in class, you were good student. But I wouldn't say you were one of the most outspoken students, I would say you were people have this perception of entrepreneurs as being, you know, boisterous and loud. And I wouldn't say you're not at all shy, but I wouldn't say that you were one of the people in the class that were particularly loud or, I don't know, did that does that?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I mean, for me, like, when I'm gonna, when I'm in a situation where, I know I'm not the smartest person in the room, or I don't have the most knowledge in the room. I prefer to listen. In a classroom setting, there's a ton of different perspectives obviously around the room, then there's the the prof I actively try and listen more than I, then I talk. And when I, when I talk, I tried to make the words kind of count, versus just kind of talking to hear my own voice. It's pretty as it is. I definitely prefer kind of listening and kind of trying to synthesize the conclusion in my head based off of everything that I hear. I think to some degree, I think at times, I need to talk I need to speak up more. But for me, listening has helped me kind of learn all sorts of things. And yeah, so it's cool.
Eric Janssen
That's it's a good anecdote. I think people have this perception that entrepreneurs are a certain way. And I think they'll come in different flavors and types and sizes.
Bobby Besant
I think finding like a good balance, like obviously, someone who's overbearing, it kind of gets hard to be around someone like that too much. And then someone is too quiet. And it's hard to hold a conversation with it's too much. On the other end of the spectrum, I just have good, healthy back and forth dialogue, where you can learn a little bit from me, I can learn a little bit from you.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. And we'll get into a little bit later. But coming off is not shy, didn't stop. You pretty much, If we measured talk time, when you were on Dragon's Den twice, you spoke up probably more than anybody else. So it's not like you're a shy person.
Bobby Besant
No, I mean, I would say I'm more introverted than extroverted. However, when I'm in a scenario that kind of requires kind of presentation, you almost put on this not alter ego, but you're acting in a sense to present in a way that projects confidence, and that in thatwhat you're talking about. And when you do know you're talking about it makes it that much easier to to do that. So makes making sure you're prepared for any sort of presentation, whether it's on Dragon's Den or in front of a buyers is is critically important. Because other than that, you'd be either talking in circles or are not talking at all. But yeah, I enjoy presenting. But it was, it was certainly, like public speaking, I would say was more of a fear of my own. I was younger than it is now.
Eric Janssen
Cool. Cool. I do want to get into Dragon's Den here in a little bit before we get there. So when you were we met when you came to Western, you then went to Ivey and an HBA 2, we do a project that I'm actually teaching now called New Venture project. So in this project, students come up with new ideas, they come up with problems to address with specific ideas or solutions. And they put it into a essentially business plan. So you participated in the new venture project?
Bobby Besant
I did. Yeah. unsurprising.
Eric Janssen
Unsurprisingly, you had an idea that you brought forward for the new venture project. Can you tell me a little bit about that process, what the idea was or what the problem was that you identified and a little bit about that project for you? Because you have an interesting story that's gonna lead to my questions about Dragon's Den.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, well, I so I mean, thinking, thinking back to kind of how the new venture project went, for me, it started off as an ideation session. So like, there's a couple, few people in the group or whatever. And we all kind of threw all sorts of ideas out there. And I mean, ideas are very abstract. When you just throw them out there, it's hard to really know if one's going to go anywhere. And kind of one night, I had this very university student oriented revelation, when I was when I was at a friend's house, having a few drinks before we're going to go out later, I noticed a lot of people were bringing a kind of a full bottle of alcohol, a full bottle of mix. And the vast majority of the time, kind of a lot of that was left behind. So I had this concept that if you could make a two compartment bottle that separated the alcohol from the mix, not only would it allow the person to have both be able to purchase both at the same location, because in Ontario, you're buying vodka, you have to buy the lcbo, then you have to go over to the convenience store, it'd be more convenient to carry for the person. But it would also create a new, a new experience for for for the customer as well. Having the basically basically becoming your own kind of bartender and mixing, mixing your own higher end cocktails, the idea of separating them out. We were using, we would use real fruit juices versus all the artificially flavored other stuff that was on the market at the time. So that was kind of the germ of the idea to improve the pre drinking experience for the university student with a cool concept and I ended up pitching that to my group. As a potential idea, and I mean, given the stage of life, we were all at all at the time, it seemed, it seemed like a homerun idea. So we actually ended up pitching it to, to the, to the new venture project, I guess, profit the time, and then waited for his feedback on whether he thought it was a good idea or not. And he ended up coming back to us shortly after, and he had two main, two main pieces of feedback. One being the lcbo is incredibly difficult to get into work with expensive, the chances are very low of getting a product in there. It's just it's, it's too hard. The other being commercializing a very customized package and product was going to be very expensive and difficult. So he ultimately, can the idea and told us that we needed to come up with something else for the new for the new venture project, which we did, which was actually a pretty cool idea, too. And it could have been a fun one to explore as well.
Eric Janssen
So to rewind for a second. So you, you got in a room with your group, try to come up with a bunch of ideas. Yeah. to abstract. Yeah. And then you went to a party. Yeah. And then your own experience experienced a problem. Mm hmm. And that then led to the idea
Bobby Besant
of sage sage, the two compartment bottle. And I mean, I think, like a lot of the kind of the best ideas, they come more from experience than just sitting in a chair and hoping that something hits you in the, in the face. I mean, even some of the biggest companies in the world now, Uber, Airbnb, they were all started with a simple pain point that the founders had. So I think the more you can get out there and you're trying to ideate is is probably better than just all sitting in a room and hoping something miraculous comes to you. Or even a lot of great companies are started by people who did work in another business, and noticed a niche opportunity that no one just sitting in a chair could have ever come up with themselves because they weren't involved in that space. So
Eric Janssen
yeah, yeah. So that's, that's great advice. I mean, get outside the building. You can you can have a hunch towards an idea. But I think getting validation, especially when you're we call it scratching your own itch. Yeah. Is is good. That's good advice. So when you first got going, so I'm a stay at stay on Sage for a second. So got rejected from the process, which is interesting.
Bobby Besant
I got rejected it.
Eric Janssen
How did you decide who you were going to focus on with that specific idea with Sage? How did you how did you decide that this was a product for a specific segment of customer? Well,
Bobby Besant
I mean, sage, I mean, in my mind, the target demographic was, was that university student, I mean, it was almost like I was somewhat creating a product for kind of myself, because I, I kind of did the same thing that I was, I was witnessing, or people were kind of leaving half of half of what they brought behind when they went to the bar. So I mean, I'd say I was creating a product for myself. And then also, I mean, creating it for my friends that were around me.
Eric Janssen
That's great. And so you didn't come up with an idea and figure out who would be best for you experienced the problem yourself. And you thought I know this better than anybody. This is for us. This is for the university student.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I mean, it kind of came from, I mean, witnessing the problem and trying to put a solution to it versus coming up with a solution than trying to backtrack and find the, the problem for that particular solution. So I mean, this is a stage. It's always it's a relatively simple concept. But I think diving deep in into whatever problem you're trying to solve, or whatever little inkling of an idea that you have, is the best way to, it's really is the best way to find a real sustainable product, both from creating it, as well as producing it and marketing it. If you do all the right steps in preparing leading up to it, you should have a pretty good idea whether you're going to fail or succeed,
Eric Janssen
and easier when it's something that you don't hate doing.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, exactly. I mean, in that in the sage case, it was I mean, kind of doing what you love and university.
Eric Janssen
Not that I could condone either way to each their own. But yeah, I mean, doing something that you you did socially of something that you Yeah, you know, you knew well, so the profit a good point, the ecosystem in that case was a huge challenge. I'm gonna come back to that because the lcbo at least in Ontario is a massive barrier for a lot of people. ton of competition in the alcohol space with big budgets. So how did you even if we fast forward now to post new venture project, he's somehow come back to sage. So you must have not liked the idea that you did for the new venture project. And then you end up coming back to Sage?
Bobby Besant
Well, I would say like I was kind of working on, on both kind of concurrently, after it got denied as a as a project idea. A friend of mine who had had had a few other little businesses with growing up, was actually in in London that weekend, visiting his girlfriend at the time. And he came to my my room, I my student house, and I kind of pitched him the stage idea to see what he thought and, and to see if it was something that he may be wanting to kind of join in on the journey with. And I mean, he was at the same stage of life as me and he saw that it, it could be a really kind of unique transformative product for the for kind of the alcohol industry and how people kind of consumed drinks. So we started this was that I guess we had to start coming up with ideas. The end of third year, I think it was or beginning of fourth year. That's right. Yep. So we kind of tinkered with this idea of this two compartment bottle for we had another year of school left to tinker with, with this thing and try and understand the feasibility of it a lot of research, quote, unquote, to do yeah, I mean, a lot of research in terms of I mean, we didn't know anything about, like the alcohol industry, besides how to how to buy it. And we didn't know anything about the packaging industry, in terms of plastic bottles. I mean, my family history is more on the cardboard side of things, not the bottle side of things. I mean, I did I will say I did get some warnings from my my dad that customized packages are, are can be quite expensive. But I think I was just a little too, maybe a little too strong headed. And in saying that, no, it can be done. And it actually it can be done. We did pull it off.
Eric Janssen
But so hold on before you get to with what happened there. So you graduated, you made the decision to not do the traditional thing, which is go get a job.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, so I mean, a lot of pretty much everybody in 90, probably 99% of the graduating class, went off and, and got different jobs and a multitude of different fields. But I mean, I just had this, again, an depressible drive to try and start a business. And I had been like waiting my whole life to essentially kind of do this. For real. All the other little businesses I had kind of growing up are just like, little side hustles little projects here, little projects, their
Eric Janssen
practice, practice for the
Bobby Besant
practice, practice. Yeah, but this was kind of like the opportunity where I mean, we could go for it, we have really nothing to lose at this point in time. Or we could go off and get jobs and potentially get comfortable and in that scenario and not have the desire to do it. Five or 10 years down the road.
Eric Janssen
I want to tease that out for a second. So a lot of students that I'm in front of Now think about, you know, if I don't get my first if I don't get the internship this summer, yeah, if I don't start off in whatever industry if I don't start off at whatever company, I'm screwed, I'm gonna you know, I'm in a bad place. What would your message to people who don't get their dream internship, right off the bat be?
Bobby Besant
I would say, stay patient, stay curious and keep searching because pretty much everyone that I know that graduated and maybe a chunk of them got their dream job, they're no longer at that dream job anymore. Because they just realized that it wasn't there. The beyond the end all they like to romanticize whatever that career was, without understanding all the kind of underlying stuff that goes into it. I mean, for me, I mean, I coming from a kind of an entrepreneurial background and family like I knew it was wasn't going to be pretty at first. I knew we were not going to make a lot of money. We were gonna be like, living on scraps to start you expect you expected the chaos. Great. Yeah,
Eric Janssen
I mean, Robin noodles, whatever.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, like I like one of the the kind of pieces of life advice we my friend cam and business partner cam and I got when we were working one of these odd job companies up in up in cottage country from a successful guy out there, his happiness is equal to expectations over reality. So keep your expectations low or lower. And you end up being a lot happier than if you have these wild expectations and expecting the reality to catch up.
Eric Janssen
I love that. It's good advice.
Bobby Besant
Yeah. So I mean, we we kind of knew that we knew what we were getting into by doing In this and I mean, we tried to start the company really lean. So it wasn't like we went out and, and raised a bunch of money and got got comfortable salaries. We didn't make any money for the first couple years.
Eric Janssen
But hold on you, you did start lean, but you were. So in 2015, you actually appeared on Dragon's Den for the first time. Mm hmm. With sage, can you maybe walk us through that experience?
Bobby Besant
So yeah, after we fully decided that we were going to go ahead with the, with the sage concept out of university, we continue to tinker with the idea and try and pull it together. A common other just a little funny story is our first prototype was a hand blowing glass bottling bottle. I think it cost us $1,000. And we were it was 333 bucks apiece. And we didn't have much more than that. We actually gave it to a friend to take some pictures for us that we were going to use to help try and pitch investors. It fell over and broke. So that our first prototype and then we discovered 3d printing, and we actually started 3d printing back in the back then. Yeah, we started 3d printing prototypes after that in 20 1415. Mm.
Eric Janssen
I guess that's just become fairly common now. But it was early enough. Early ish.
Bobby Besant
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're not super cheap either. But I mean, you can get like, one at least proves the concept. Not maybe not pretty. But for 150 bucks, something like that. So yeah, we started 3d printing. After that. I realized glass was not the way to go.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. So how did you get that one? Have you applied to be on Dragon's Den? So,
Bobby Besant
yes, and no. So we did know, we kind of knew who one of the producers was there. And we kind of reached out to ask what the process of how can we get on the show and, and, and whatnot. And she kind of told us that like, Oh, you have to apply and you have to go through, kind of jump through these hoops. You got to pitch to the producers first. Generally, we were able to basically finagle our way in so we didn't even have to do the audition step and just go right to the live shows. Skip the audition, we basically skipped we skipped the audition. Yeah, basically, because the producer kind of knew we were already about and thought we would make an entertaining story to put out there. So we But typically, yeah, you apply, you have to audition to the producers, then they cut it down, whether they like you or not. And then you go to the I guess the taping shows after that. So I mean, the first time we showed up, we didn't really know what to expect. I mean, we've obviously seen the show a bunch of times on TV. I mean, for me, like the experience, it was actually a lot more like a real business negotiation than I expected it to be. Just based on how they kind of cut and edit the pieces. They make it seem a little bit more showy show businessy. But you really dig into the, into the nitty gritty and I mean, he they can make you look like an idiot pretty quick. If I'll put
Eric Janssen
the I'll put the link in the show notes here. Yeah. But you so that when they cut to you behind the scenes, and it's the three of you negotiating the back room, that's real time legitimately talking through? Yes, you're gonna take the deal? Yeah.
Bobby Besant
So you're there for it. We're there for about an hour. It's fast, actually. Yeah, an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I mean, we've been able to connect with a couple of the people that had pitched on it before. And they kind of gave us some tidbits in terms of how to make the pitch go as smoothly as possible in front of them. So we were well, well prepared. It kind of comes back to the preparation point. And but yeah, it's it's all it's all live time. There's no like cut this dot it's a full one hour, hour and a half taping one shot. If you get offered a deal. Generally it's good to generally it's good to take a deal no matter what and, and work on actually closing it behind the scenes because I mean, like like any deal in business, all the ones that I've been involved in trying to negotiate. They all sound great when they first start and a fraction of them ever actually closed for one reason or another.
Eric Janssen
Alright, so you guys did really well, actually, there wasn't seemed like from the very beginning, despite the fact that you'd call this a first world problem, right? Like this wasn't we talked about in our classes a gushing neck wound which is a very visual
Bobby Besant
Yeah, it's a visual. Remember that term.
Eric Janssen
They talk about. It's the big burning problem that you really need to dig into and think about. And I would say that at least from my perspective, this isn't a gushing neck wound. But at the same time when you pitched every single dragon was nodding their heads, like everyone was into it. There was nobody that thought. This is ridiculous. Yeah, not a good idea. Mm hmm. So I thought that was interesting, ultimately. So you did do a deal. on that show. Arlene came on as a partner, our sorry, invested,
Bobby Besant
Well, we didn't actually close the deal with her.
Eric Janssen
On the show you did the deal.
Bobby Besant
On the show, I was on the show, we did the deal. It didn't close because we had actually just raised a little bit of seed capital before we finally got the pitch on there. So it just the timing wasn't right. But she was she was very active in trying to invest. But one of our other investors that had come on also had a marketing agency. So it didn't make sense to have to those in the investor group. But she was great and very, very active and trying to close the deal. But the timing just kind of didn't work. Because you can't really you can't wait to raise money for your business just to go on Dragon's Den and try and raise it. So the financing round just happened to close a little bit before we actually got there to.
Eric Janssen
You never know when it's gonna close, you gotta have a fire
Bobby Besant
And take the money when it's available. Because investors see so many opportunities. If they're excited about yours, do everything you can to close it. Because if you sit on it, they might be already on to something else by the time you circle back with them,
Eric Janssen
Right. Like this is sales one on one if it's hot close on it or Yeah, as a friend of mine, Murray Kern who used to be an Eastern Twitter candidate he's now at Palomar x Meteor the weather network. He says his dad's favorite saying was make hay while the sun is shining. So if the money's there, jump on it while it's there.
Bobby Besant
Always be closing.
Eric Janssen
Always be closing. Okay, so you on the show accepted didn't end up taking that deal didn't end up closing you explain why. But you came back on Dragon's Den in what year? This was the 2015 was the first show
Bobby Besant
2015 was when it aired but we would have taped in 2014. He taped it a long time before got airs. Okay, and then I think the next time we would have taped in 2016 and aired in 2017.
Eric Janssen
So then you Sage was no longer say it was gone.
Bobby Besant
So yes, kind of the closed the loop on sage, I will give the the prof that turned the idea down. One half of the wind wears commercialized in a customized package, very expensive and difficult to do especially especially for a inexperienced team when it comes to customize packages. But on the other hand, the lcbo what the sage product did for us is it pretty much opened the door to every liquor board in Canada because everyone we took it to was like wow, we love it. So it served as a relationship building tool with all these different liquor boards. And it's really what kicked things off on the right foot for us from the get go. And since then we've had one of the best strike rates in terms of getting new products in
Eric Janssen
Awesome so he was right. To be fair,
Bobby Besant
he was right I'll give him the win.
Eric Janssen
But as is often the case, the first idea is rarely the idea. And it you listened to feedback, you develop some relationships and that turned into the new company, which at the time was iconic.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, so kind of re positioning the company. We we didn't want to stick with a name that was also related to a product that we were no longer selling. So we decided to rename the company with the overarching mission and vision to build the iconic Canadian company and the next great beverage alcohol company in the Canadian industry and specifically in the ready to drink cooler space because at the time four or five years ago, the space was pretty much full of old boring competition call it the Smirnoff Ice is of the world and
Eric Janssen
Games is the joke icing somebody's like anybody really drink them it was just kind of a joke thing
Bobby Besant
it's certainly pushes a lot of sales that icing icing joke but yeah, it was just full of these old kind of products that weren't terribly exciting. So we focused on trying to usher in the more craft side of the of the ready to drink cooler space as it was already exploding and in beer and wine obviously there's a lot of crafts producers and the next area that made sense for us was the the ready to drink market. The other nice thing about the ready to drink market, it's a blessing and a curse. You can gain traction very quickly with a new product. But it can also disappeared quite quickly as well
Eric Janssen
Got it. So you were on Dragon's Den you pitched iconic and the brand at that time was how many products?
Bobby Besant
So the focus of that pitch was on dusty boots. So at the time of the taping, we had just launched in a Berta, I believe, kind of the first alcoholic hard soda in Canada. We had launched it in in Alberta and kind of sales just taken off out of the gate. It was really an unbelievable, it was truly like a hockey stick growth curve. Kind of that year, we experienced basically 500% growth and in top line revenue of the company. So it was a MBA and cash flow management, supply chain management. All the managing expectations. Yeah, it was certainly a fun experience. At the time,
Eric Janssen
Was there anything like this in Canada?
Bobby Besant
There wasn't a call it hard soda in Canada. No. This is the first of its kind. The industry's very quick to react now though. So you get a lot of people that follow afterwards. But at the time, it was first of its kind. And I mean, even the story of how we ended up on Dragon's Den, the second time was a little bit unusual. We again didn't audition, they actually called us up and said that one of their groups had had dropped out for their for their last day of taping, again, we weren't looking for money really at the time. And they asked what we liked your pitch the first time around, and we thought it was entertaining. Would you guys like to come back for the second chance show? Because we technically didn't close the deal the first time around. So we had to think about it for a little bit actually because a direct competitor of ours she was on the panel. The min has brewing family
Eric Janssen
Who she was right away the only one that was like No, don't like the taste. I'm out.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I mean, I'll just leave it at a difference of opinion between between her and us. I'll just everyone else was into it. I'll leave it there. She had a competing product in market, right.
Eric Janssen
It tastes like it should it tastes like root beer. I didn't think if it's sweet. It's because maybe root beer sweet.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, so like her her home markets Alberta. We launched in Alberta first. We were wappinger. But pretty good. And in sell through us. Oh, 421 at the time. Yeah. So, there's she has a history of sure of it. Sure.
Eric Janssen
Sure. So when you ended up at the time, that was dusty boots, was there. Did you have another product that I mean, on the show? Did you showcase another product?
Bobby Besant
I think it was just boots. It was mainly around St. Louis, I think we may have had a cabana coaster. But we were there pitching, like dusty primarily.
Eric Janssen
That's where all the sales came from all the numbers.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, that was our lead dog at that time. So we were writing that one.
Eric Janssen
Yeah. So then you get two offers. This is like people Chris, try so hard to get on the show you guys got on it, because you got asked to get on the second time. And then you got to a second deal. So between the few hours that you had in the first one, the few hours you had in the second you ended up you had Michelle and Joe who offered you almost what you asked for. Then you had wack offer you kind of like a royalty deal until he got his money back and you took wax deal.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, so I mean, a little bit of strategy kind of going into the pitch, we know knew that if you made a deal. And when you were there, it greatly improved your chances of getting on TV. And I mean, we felt like whack had the the biggest personality, that equity was no equity. I mean, his deal was not wouldn't have been a great one for at the time, we were growing incredibly quickly for the cash flow of the business paying out. I think it was a 10 cent royalty per bottle per bottle. Frankly, I would never have done that deal in a in a private boardroom. But from a strategic standpoint of of the show business world, he seemed like the right person to align ourselves with. But again, we didn't actually end up closing that over that deal either. Both times we were there. I mean, the second time we got called 24 hours before taping. We didn't have any time to really prepare for it. We weren't it wasn't the right time for us to bring on a new financial partner. And obviously you have to go back and do due diligence and our current investor group just said it wasn't the right time. We didn't feel it was the right time. So we we had to decline both both times but still great experiences not nonetheless.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So there's a couple other things we got to get through here in the next few minutes. But we're coming to a close, actually, on the resources side. So there's a lot to figure out in businesses like this. And we're pointing at your products now. So we got a whole lineup of products here, we got dusty boots, we've got some seasonal, dusty boots, products. There's a couple other brands spin offs that we'll we'll touch on maybe a little bit later. But there's a lot to figure out from manufacturing, marketing distribution, and with limited budgets as a startup, like how did you not get deterred by all that? There's got to be like, overwhelm, and oh my gosh, how's it gonna work when we're up against these big people with comparatively unlimited budgets. How did you get your head around everything that needed to get done?
Bobby Besant
I think I think you either have to be the either a little bit naive or just a little bit crazy to think you can do it all on like a shoestring budget and make it happen. On the on the competitive side, like, we knew we had a lot of other competitors out there, but they moved like the big guys, but they move quite a bit slower. They weren't the tastemakers, they were the taste followers. So we felt that we get a jump out ahead of them, we could have some success there which we have on like the resource side manufacturing, I mean, it really comes down to, if you don't have the skills in your immediate team, finding the right people to are willing to work with you and help you in any sort of interesting arrangement. However, it may or may were extremely free product or if they liked your story, I mean, I think starting young and using the fact that you are young as as an asset to do get services at a significant discount or for free at time works is a good way to do it. So I mean, it was a steep learning curve. Nonetheless, there is nothing linear about it. First, like two and a half years, we're kind of very hectic trying to trying to figure out how the whole industry works from a regulation standpoint, from a selling into the customer standpoint, to a sell into the end user standpoint, to manufacturing and managing supply chains and cash flows. It was just one one grand experiment that we had background knowledge to try and manage. But until your assets really on the line on the line, you just find a way to make it happen.
Eric Janssen
When the stakes are high. They see that old adage, burn the ships, right when you'd never know. You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have. And so in that case, your back was against the wall. It was like, oh, there we go home.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, there is multiple times where I mean, if we didn't get creative, we could have gone out of business, either from trying to grow too quickly or some other disaster or birth control takes place. We had to be very on the ball and aggressive and creative to stay in business.
Eric Janssen
So something that you mentioned in the beginning you had worked with your So Dan, one of the partners played professional or semi professional hockey from the Czech Republic.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, he originally came to Canada to play hockey playing the W h. l. Western Hockey League
Eric Janssen
And your other partner was the one that you did.
Bobby Besant
Yeah. So Cam and I were working on the the gas dock from our high school years. I don't know how old are probably 14, 15, 16 somewhere around there. And had a few little businesses along the way, whether it was landscaping to trying to do smartphone accessories or whatever, all sorts of little of little businesses just because we were we just couldn't wait to try and try and do something. So yeah,
Eric Janssen
So it sounds like three of you guys came from a background in beverages or the industry or anything like that. And I think in your case, a little bit of naivete probably went a long way. The fact that you thought you had a chance against these big dogs, maybe maybe a good thing.
Eric Janssen
Yeah, I think I think having a little bit of naivety definitely helps. You can try and prepare as much as you want. But one thing I've kind of found in like this industry dominated by a few big players, for the most part. Sure. There's a lot of small suppliers out there now but the big companies are really looking to the small companies to lead the innovation curve. And just anecdotally hearing from friends at work at these other companies We've popped up in their internal slideshows, multiple times, I could imagine. So as long as you're not following them, and you're leading them, it's like the elephant in the mouse thing, you can kind of run around and create a market for yourself. And they try and catch up with you. And, and they can, if you don't stay focused, because they have the resources to just keep going at it year after year after year. But if you can get far enough ahead, multiple products that we've launched, these Molson or Labatt has come out with something kind of similar the next year and much later, much later. And they're not on the market anymore.
Eric Janssen
So some interesting learnings there. I mean, the team that you were comfortable with you had experience with a handful, or at least one of your other co founders before. It sounds like you did a good job of plugging the gaps maybe in the lab experience or lack of experience that you folks had is that?
Bobby Besant
Yeah, we certainly tried to find kind of mentor relationships, I guess I'd call them like early on in the industry, not being afraid to reach out to people that are either higher up in the industry in different businesses that are related to yours, and trying to seek mentorship from them. We were very hands on to trying to learn as much as we possibly could, but I mean, we made a ton of mistakes. And in the first little bit, there was a lot of other there, up until tomorrow and the next day after there's going to be always mistakes and failures that that are going to happen. As long as you I mean either have a plan B or you've made it so it's not betting the business. A mistake is generally you're able to come back from it.
Eric Janssen
Cool. So a few few left here while we while we try to wrap up update on where iconic is today because we're looking at a whole bunch of new brands here. So we've got cabana coast, we've got cottage springs that I know has seen some great traction, maybe just a quick snapshot update of where the brand is today.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, so iconic as a company. We still have dusty booths going strong in the heart soda space. cabana coast is kind of as Marber cocktail in the can brands. So higher end cocktails Moscow meals, have a cucumber gin and tonic we launched. And then cottage Springs is more of our, I guess call it healthier oriented brand where it's no sugar added no carbs, nine, nine calories per can. And that area is seeing a lot of a lot of great traction right now, as well. In addition to our own brands, we both an agency business as well on the side. So we represent and sell other brands and products for for other companies that are complementary to our own. We won't sell another part root beer, for example, but a couple craft vodka companies and and some other beer companies. So it makes our sales, the sales side of our business more efficient, and allows us to hire more reps as well. Smart. And ywe almost got into the manufacturing space. We didn't but yeah, we're pretty much cross Canada, the only provinces we don't have a big presence in yet or Quebec, and not as much in BC. But every other province we've been in for the last at least three, three years and keep bringing new products to market every year.
Eric Janssen
Awesome. Awesome. Got a few more rapid fire wants to ask you. But if people are looking online, how can they find either your brands, your products, where's the best place to find them?
Bobby Besant
So in terms of communicating to people, we do a lot of that on on social media, Facebook, Instagram, we do have a website iconic brewing.co. that confuses a lot of people, it was one of the dumber kind of communication mistakes we made. But yeah, if you want to kind of see if the products available close to you, in Ontario, the SPO website and just search it a lot of the other provinces around Canada have kind of similar websites where you can search for the product. I mean, lcbo will deliver it to you now if you want but, but that hasn't really gotten a lot of traction yet.
Eric Janssen
Cool. Cool. Okay, so a few more rapid fire things before we wrap up for good. Where do you do your best thinking?
Bobby Besant
My best thinking has generally been done driving randomly pretty much anytime a day like driving a car or even driving in a boat. And then I also just do like more deep thinking like just on my own at the cottage sitting on the dock and super quiet with one of your own products in hand.
Eric Janssen
Absolutely. And of course, advice you'd give your 20 year old self, if you could think back to you with new venture projects, advice you'd give your 20 year old self
Bobby Besant
I would say maybe just be kind of a little bit more patient and a little bit more focused on setting the foundation for the business before just jumping right off the cliff, I would say like there's there's definitely some learning lessons in there that if we took a little bit more time to either find the right person to help us with the problem are the project versus trying to do it ourselves. Yeah, I would say just just be patient because, like good things that they take, we thought we're gonna make an overnight success. So when we when we first started, but things take at least five years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. It takes a long time to build something and more take more long term perspective towards towards things.
Eric Janssen
You could do it all just not all at once.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, exactly. And you can do a lot better if it's done in a more structured manner.
Eric Janssen
Last one here for you personally, as an entrepreneur, what is your superpower? What are you better at than either your partners or most people?
Bobby Besant
I'm generally a pretty creative guy. I come up with a lot of a lot of different ideas. And I'm pretty good at kind of seeing the big picture of whatever the the project or product might be.
Eric Janssen
Cool. That's good. It's always someone to keep you on track who can see the big picture. That's good.
Bobby Besant
Yeah, I can see the big picture I sometimes get a little too a little too over the over the edge. So I have my partner's kind of ring me back a little bit.
Eric Janssen
Cool. Bobby, this has been awesome. Got a ton of good notes here. Got a lot of things to put in the show notes has been really good to sit down and spend the time with you. It's nice to catch up.
Bobby Besant
Thanks, Eric. It is great. My pleasure.
Introduction/Outro
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