Ahead of this year's Cultivate conference, Hillsgreen's Andy Venables speaks to the Farmers Guardian podcast about digital marketing, growing your business and diversification. Tom Warner, from Warner's Gin, talks about building their farm gin brand, top tips for farmers diversifying and growing new and exciting crops on farm to flavour their spirits.
For more information or to book tickets to Cultivate visit https://cultivateconference.co.uk/
Ahead of this year's Cultivate conference, Hillsgreen's Andy Venables speaks to the Farmers Guardian podcast about digital marketing, growing your business and diversification. Tom Warner, from Warner's Gin, talks about building their farm gin brand, top tips for farmers diversifying and growing new and exciting crops on farm to flavour their spirits.
For more information or to book tickets to Cultivate visit https://cultivateconference.co.uk/
You're listening to the Farmers Guardian podcast. Gin has massively increased in popularity over the past decade, with smaller distilleries driving new trends in the sector. One is gin, a farm based in distillery was at the forefront of this boom. Farmers Guardian is media partners with the Cultivate conference. I'm Alex Black and ahead of the conference on May the 1st, I caught up with Tom, Lorna and Hills Greens Andy Venables. From rhubarb to raspberry and elderflower to lemon balm. What is has been combining great gin with taste of the English countryside. I spoke to Tom about growing the business from 2012 to today. But first Andy told us about the importance of marketing for rural businesses. I'm Andy Venables, managing director of Hills Green, so we're a digital marketing agency purely focused on helping the agricultural industry thrive. And back in 2020, we teamed up with my business partner, Simon Haley, to create the Cultivate Conference, which I'd love to talk to you more about that this morning. Yeah. Good morning. my name is Tom Warner, founder of the Walters Distillery, which we like to say is the world's leading farm based distillery. and that's all done on my family farm in the village of Harrington, in Northamptonshire, which is now the global epicenter for quality gin, because when we launched this business, we launched it with a mission to save the world from mediocre. gin is what we said at the time, but now it's mediocre drinks because we actually manufacture gin, rum, vodka and nonalcoholic spirits. So we we got a whole spread of products coming off the farm. And we like to say that we're farm born. British spirits is what we're producing. And we focus on the flavors of the British countryside as well. I'm looking forward to talking to you guys. Brilliant. So, the first of all, as far as digital marketing and agriculture aren't always the best kind of natural combination. Just tell us a little bit about you know, your passion for both and how you, I suppose, how you combine the two. Yeah. So I, started life on the family dairy farm, in Macclesfield, Cheshire. Still very much involved in that family farming business. currently milking 350 cattle, selling our milk to the co-op. but my career took me in a different path than the traditional, farmer, I suppose, and I, I fell into marketing. I ended up working for the majority of my early career, for a digital marketing agency in Manchester. And what really excited me about marketing is almost trying to get a message in front of an audience that they have a need or a one will actually generate a reaction, whether that is them to inquire about something or go on online and buy the the product. and 2016, there was the opportunity for me to get back involved in the family business. And I started looking at diversification and maybe we could go into to glamping or a farm shop. And I kept coming back to this almost agriculture being seen as the poor cousin when it comes to other industries. And really the fact that there was a lot of great businesses in agriculture but needed a bit of help and support when it came to actually marketing and connecting with that customer. So whether I always working with farmers that are diversified or whether it was businesses trying to get their new product and service on farm, I started doing some marketing consultancy and it and it sort of grew from there. I suppose the farm is coming into the industry now, have grown up with smartphones and the internet. So naturally when they need something or want something, they go to Google or they're on social media. and Hills Green was set up with the whole focus on how do we help connect those businesses that have got a great product or service to help those farmers with the farmers itself. And as far as the pandemic really just grew our business because agriculture had to start thinking differently and how did they use digital and the internet to to connect with their customers? Yeah, and I suppose traditionally maybe farming hasn't been the best at getting its message out there in the right way. Is that fair to say? I think that's very fair to say. Like within agriculture, you have this really passionate industry. and I think it's actually bringing them together to have one voice to tell our story better to, to consumers. It's something that I've been very passionate about. I started a mission for milk campaign back in 2019, and then, mission. I, in 2021, where I wanted to try and bring the industry together to really shout about what we do. And I think if you look at the vegan movement, that's something they do very well. That's the group of passionate people. They've got an agenda and they're very clear on their message. And I think what I would love today of my career in agriculture is to try and bring the sector together, to collaborate, to help get that message, landing better with consumers. And, so speaking ahead of the cultivate conference, just tell us a little bit about the conference, where it is, how farmers can get along and what you'll be discussing. Yeah. So cultivate, as I said, we set it up in 2020, having worked out of the sector, I had the privilege to, to go along to many business motivational speakers. And I really felt actually what I learned in those sorts of environments and conferences benefited me becoming a better leader. I think coming into agriculture, whether it's the small family farm, these are now businesses where they're employing simple cases, significant numbers of staff and people are coming into the industry with no training or mentoring, around how they can become a better leader. Because I think going back to that point around how do we connect better with consumers and actually champion agriculture, it comes from having better leaders in this industry. So that's where cultivate was formed. The format is quite simple. We bring in some top business speakers to talk around leadership and development. For those people that actually understand the importance in investing in themselves. So in the room, we have everyone from farmers to those businesses that, related to farming, whether it's consultants, nutritionists, vets, etc., but also the the importance of investing in themselves. So that's why we bring in speakers from outside the sector that the, you, the dealing with many of the global brands and helping them build better leaders, but also bringing in rural, successful entrepreneurs like Tom Powell, their story that trials, their tribulations, their challenges that they've been growing their business on almost leave the leave the event on a high in terms of, you know, feeling really motivated and inspired and and if they could leave with 2 or 3 different things that they could go in and implement their their business tomorrow, then we we've done done our job. And, and so I've played a small part in in developing the leaders. So this year's conference takes place over in House farm, which is a great wedding venue again, a format that was probably not really, thriving. It came to the Mix farm 20 years ago, and they looked at an opportunity to diversify and have this great, you know, rural wedding venue. So it takes place on the 1st of May. you know, we've we still got a handful of tickets left. so those people that, are looking to, to attend and, and invest in themselves and becoming a better leader had to cultivate conference, study UK and, grab one of the last few tickets remaining. Excellent. And so, you'll be talking at the event, so just take us back. I think you launched the gym business in 2012 to take us back. This was a little bit further about, you know, what you were doing at the time and why you decided to go into Gen. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, what I'll be getting I'll be doing my best not to really not this conference. That's what I'll be doing on the day. I'll make sure I don't let you down on the weekend. Entertaining stuff, but, Yeah. So I grew up on a farm, right? growing up on a farm, I think it's a blast experience. I always describe it as, like, meat slavery because, you know, you're basically adventures around the English countryside, but you are free and available labor from the day you born for the farm. went off to agricultural college in Shropshire. Harper, had a great time there. Finished off as SC president. and then, whilst I was there, part of my course you had to do a sandwich group, which I ended up being in East Africa coffee buying for that, which was quite an adventure. and then I went into the produce industry, so dealing with farmers all around the world. So I didn't go straight back to the family farm, wanted to be involved in agriculture. I wanted to be involved in farming and food, but do something a little bit different than just go straight back onto the family farm and dealing with farmers all around the world, growing crops that we can't grow in the UK, everybody. It's the same language, same kindred spirit, same attitude. So it was a farmers son. It was, you know, duck to water kind of stuff dealing with these guys. So bananas, pineapple pulls oranges, you know, you name it. Just they're just crops. Right. And brought those into the UK. And the other fun part of my job was, dealing with the multiple retailers, the grocers, who, you know, at my job was locking horns with the buyer weekly on price negotiation. That was all part of it. so did all of that. But after a decade of the produce industry decided, well, actually, you know, about seven years I did a decade, about three years before leaving, started thinking about diversifying the family farm. So that was 2009. And, that really took about six months of looking at lots of different business ideas. and the penultimate idea we looked at, and I'm always envious of people that just wake up and say, that's what I'm going to do. This was just an evolution of wanting to start something and looking at lots of different opportunities. And I advise anyone that wants to start there. I'm going to tell you that there's there's no straight line journey with this stuff. so we looked at lots of different ideas. The penultimate idea was producing essential oils via distillation. So growing crops of lavender or, rosemary, that kind of stuff on the farm, distilling and extracting the oils. the evolution of that was what do you do with the still for the rest of the year? You can make those. Why are we talking about flowers? Let's make beans. Was the evolution of that business idea. But little did we know, we've come completely full circle, because now I've converted 10% of the farm now to growing plants for distilling. So we've got 15 acres of botanicals that we manage now, which is probably made up of around 250,000 plants, 750 trees that we grow for flavor to go into those spirits. Because, you know, our mission is make the tastiest drinks in the world. We know that everything that we grow home on the farm is actually better in terms of flavor, because we've used, local academia and food science teams to actually analyze our farm grown ingredients down to a molecular level. So we know that what we grow in the farm is tastier than anything that we can buy in. So why wouldn't we grow it? But it's also great for the planet because we are. Instead of importing ingredients from all over the world, we're actually creating biodiversity here in the UK, which is a hot topic, right? We all know carbon is a problem. We've got to deal with it. Biodiversity is arguably a bigger problem for the country right now. so creating an environment on our family farm, which is only going to go one way, hopefully, which will increase it over the years. we're creating a really rich environment, for invertebrates, which then are supporting five internationally protected bird species that live on the farm as well. So you know, the side effect of making gin is nature positivity, which is a big part of what we do for the brand. gin cane, the evolution, one was we're going to make spirits. The first place this plan was gin, vodka, rum, tequila, brandy. You know, we didn't know anything about the industry. We had to tune in to what we could make, what ingredients we had at hand. You know, the hedgerows of the British countryside and. And everything that we can grow here have been our inspiration from day one. and that really led us to gin, because the other factor was we couldn't afford to age something. if you think of the cash flows of a whiskey business, you have to raise millions before you can launch a business like that, because just to manufacture it, you basically set up a manufacturing operation with no revenue for at least three years. So you think about the cash flows of a business like that, and you've got to continually build up your stock in warehouse. Difficult today. So that left us with white spirits. Gin is obviously the most delicious, foodie spirit in the world. Vodka, quite possibly the most boring thing you can drink is literally just the drug used to make soft drinks. Alcoholic genius for 30 days. Gin? Well, London Dry Gin was created by the British and we exported it all around the world. So, for all of those reasons, we decided to diversify the family farm. And at the time, we nearly stopped the business plan because we found out two other people were doing this, and that was in 2010. We found that out. We still launched in 2012. So we thought, okay, there's two of us. We'll get on with it. We're up to about 850 in the UK now. So a very different landscape for independent distilling. And we were part of the vanguard that sort of started that movement off. And I suppose, remember back to 2012? I was at university, so there was a lot of gin drunk at the time, but it had a big, you know, there's a big movement, you know, especially with all the, the flavored gins that they became so much more popular than they, you know, they had been in previous years. So you must have hit the market at the right time. The. 100%. Well, listen, this is a bold statement to make, but I've always asked people to prove me wrong. there was no flavor gin until waters launched. and that was a simple interaction. My mum came into the kitchen developing our first, London Dry. We called it Harrington Dry Gin, and she picked fresh elderflower from the farm. And it would have been summer 2012 we had launched yet we were developing our first recipe, and she had put fresh elderflower into a bottle of Gordon's, and we were like, mum, what you tell me. Gordon's And she was like, Tom, it's an experiment. but that small instance on our farm summer 2012, adding additional flavor to an already distilled gin. Now, most flavor gin is just literally flavorings, alcohol, water, sugar. Send it down the bottling line. Everything we do on the farm is we distilled one of the best London dry gins in the world first, then add natural British organic material to it after it's been distilled. And it was that day that my mum inspired that journey for us. So we launched our Elderflower Gin Summer 2013 first flavored gin in the category. It's what got us into Marks and Spencers. It led us to make our rhubarb gin, which everybody now orders pink gins and they go into a bar lighter. Ended up pink is a color, not a flavor. But anyway, our rhubarb gin created that pink gin craze thing. but everything we do is natural. So our rhubarb gin has actually got rhubarb in it. A third of every bottle is very bob juice. Our elderflower gin. We have to make it three weeks every summer. We've got to make a year supply because we only use fresh out of the flower. We. I think we're the only nutters that do this kind of thing. But we believe real taste better. Just tell us about some of the those crops that you grow in. You know, for that flavor to take us through a few of them that you grow it. Yeah. So for all of our gins, we self-sufficient in a crop called Angelica, which is a British native crop. We outsource the production of it. Actually, it's not a particularly sexy crop to grow. Eastern Europe tends to produce most of the world's Angelica, crop now. And it's primarily used for making Angelica oil. super important ingredient in gin, though. When London Dry Gin was invented, the banks of the River Thames would have been covered in Angelica. and arguably it would have been the more dominant flavor profile in London dry when it was first invented. we grow it on our farm. It grows really well in British fields, in soil and climate. and, you have to plant it sort of 18 months ahead because it's year to start. Year two is when you're harvesting that crop. but it's part of what we call the Holy Trinity. So juniper, coriander, Angelica, that they're the three that you want in your gin. and we're self-sufficient. All the Angelica. We grow a lot of lavender that goes in our London dry gin, lemon verbena, which is kind of only half hardy. So it's a bit of a problem in the British countryside. But we've got an insurance policy with a glass house that we rent down the road that we if we get a bit of dieback in the winter, we can just, fill it in the spring. But those three men try our London Dry, which is available in Sainsbury's and Tesco's right now, is absolutely beautiful because it's a walk through the British countryside and our farm, Angelica, that bright British native, Heathcote blue lavender that we grow. It's not soapy like the French. It's actually fruity. Jammy. So you get a fruity, jammy lavender? No, some lemon verbena. But we grow. We actually grow elderflower. My dad's been trying to pull out of hedges all of his life. We've got an elderflower orchard now. We actually grow dandelions, because we roast the roots and turn it into a spiced rum. we grow camomile, we grow raspberries, roses, rhubarb. blackberries. Yeah, you name it. A whole host of different crops are grown on the farm. We even managed to grow some on paper. although I don't think it's going to be scalable. I think the next crop that we're going to try and scale is licorice, because that's done quite well in trials. So we're going to get some licorice in the ground as well. We also keep our own base to pollinate all of this stuff. And then, you know, the great transaction there is we end up with honey that goes into one of our genes called honeybee excellence. some interesting crops. and go back to kind of the marketing. I know you have the experience of dealing with the, the retailers in your previous, you know, your previous jobs, but how did you find, you know, going out and market in the general shade, you know, once you'd created it? Yeah. I mean, there's there's layers to that. It's all of the two phrases. It's physical availability and mental availability are the two things that we're looking for with the brand. You've got to know about it, to buy it, and you've got to be able to find it to buy it as well. So if you've got if you've got great availability, no one knows about it. It's going to be very difficult to sell it. and if you've got loads of if everybody knows about it, you can't buy anywhere. It's going to be very difficult to sell it. Sell it. That's the game that you're playing the whole time. I think arguably as a brand we've probably got more physical availability. The mental availability at the moment for sure. if everybody in the UK overnight suddenly knew how awesome our brand was and how it's made, I don't think any other would be sold. The game is the big boys have control of all the marketing channels because they've got the the margins to spend infinitely on, on, sort of reaching the consumer. What we've got is quality and authenticity. So it's a much longer journey. But what it does mean is people want to stock us. so we've got some great distribution and, and when you start, no one cares. You know, literally I think that's one thing that everybody that starts a business needs to know. The world does not care about you. so you can't just sit there waiting for the phone to ring. You've literally got to get out there, grab people by the throat, kick down doors, get in the car, boot their the car size up and down the country. And that's the game. so we, you know, we we Monday to Friday for us was if we weren't distilling, we were out in London or Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham going to visit bars or shops or on the phone, just smashing, phoning people up. and at the weekends we were at every food or drink event in the country, up and down the country, sort of banging the gong. different now, a far more competitive environment because there's a huge amount of additional distilleries out there. So the advantage now is everyone in the country understands craft distilling because it wasn't an industry ten years ago when we launched far less competitive. But every sales call took about 15 to 20 minutes of justifying that it wasn't going to kill someone. It was actually better than than any of the stuff that the big boys were making. Yes, HMRC knew about it and the duty was paid. You know, all this kind of stuff because it just wasn't understood, because it was only made by big corporate entities back then. so yeah, it's attritional is the short story, and it's definitely not easy for any small business to sort of find their name in the world. And it is a large amount of never give up. You just got to keep in the game marching forward every single day. and some days you're lucky, other days you're not. but just stay alive and, and, yeah, you'll you'll make it in the end. And, if you could give some top tips to anybody who is maybe just setting out on their diversification and, I suppose a little bit further down the line, what would be the top tips that you would give to people? I think it's really understanding the consumer demand to what you think you're doing in your area. And however you can do that through surveys, talking to people. Because if you if you've got a farm shop 100m down the road or half a mile down the road, that's already excellent, and you're thinking of opening a farm shop, you're probably going to struggle because the reality is, all you're going to do is dilute the sale between two businesses that one business have. So I think it's really find the white space for the opportunity. Why are you genuinely different? Why is your service needed in the area, or why is it significantly different to anything else that people are are offering? why are you better? I think you've got to think about your value proposition. Are you doing this to sell lots of stuff at a very low margin, or are you doing this to sell a few things at a very high margin? And how can you justify that? So what type of business model, do you, do you want to run? and a big thing for me is what? She always have a fire. we didn't do this. We launched. I think I'll do a cash flow. Cash flow on sales forecast that went out about three years, but we didn't really build anything behind that. And for me, that felt quite advanced at the time, you know. Well, that's what we're going to sell by, by month for the next two or 3 to 4 years. you then get into the white heat of running a business, and you're lost in the melee of it. Having a plan is super important, and being able to break that problem down into small chunks is super important. So we, about two years after we launched, we got a growth coach, which at the time is European money. We got a guy from the Manufacturing Advisory Service. They were that's all been wound up now, but there's probably other things out there. And he made us look at where do we want to be in five years in terms of revenue. social media likes on each of the different channels, number of e-commerce customers, number of, bottles. We want to be selling, the revenue that we want to be generating as a business number of countries. We want to be selling. And so just 8 or 9 key markers five years out. What. And driven primarily by the top line revenue number and the volume number, you got to sell that much volume to make that much revenue kill. Tick, tick. how how is that going to be broken down by the different channels that within drinks, there's two primal primary channels, which is the on trade side bars, hotels, restaurants and the off trade, which is any shop that sells a bottle. But you've also got e-commerce, you've got international on, have a target on all of this. And then you go, right, well, there's actually if I if that's what we needed to look like in year five, what is it all about. What does your three look like? What is it to look like? What does year one look like? Once you've got year one? I would then advise everyone to read a book by a guy called Gino Wickman called traction, which is the entrepreneurial operating system. Most entrepreneurs actually do a lot of this innately anyway, but it's really once you've got that one year target, break it down into what we're doing for the next 90 days to get through to where I need to get to, to doing the next 90 days, to do the next 90 days, and breaking it all down into small sprints that are achievable because it can be really overwhelming, because you start a business and you could do everything. And I think being hyper focused with your efforts, and doing it in those sprints is, is a really important thing to do. And I'm saying all this, you know, it's my wife is my business partner. She's far better at structure and process. To me, unlike I'm Willy Wonka, she's deeper made. And if we want to add sort of personality types to it, I'm ADHD, dyslexic, big vision, I spot trends, I create products, on the spiritual leader for the business, on energy and passion and all that kind of stuff. Failure is fantastic at organization process, making sure the team know exactly what they've got to do. So a lot of what I've just said is really what she's driven into the business. as well, in terms of that entrepreneurial operating system. because, you know, even if you're a one man band, just having those steps because running a business is exhausting as well. And I think if you haven't got that plan written down and those sprints when you wake up, you're exhausted. You could do anything that day knowing exactly where to point the laser beam to create the most value for you. Even super important. So you were talking to them about, you know, you've gone from from gin to all the different spirits that you're now, now producing. Plus the non-alcohol spirits, which I think is another area that's not massive, massive growth in in recent years. Just tell us a little bit about where the business is now and what you're looking for. So the coming months and years. so, you know, Covid the last three years have been pretty horrific, to, to operate, in business either, I think, I don't know many people unless they were selling PPE or, in, providing, energy, that kind of stuff. That about a good time over the last three years. So that's been, that's been pretty tricky for us to navigate. We're coming out of the backside of that now. And actually, things are starting to, to shape up. Quite exciting for the future. so we've diversified our range. We launched our nonalcoholic in 2020, September. And we like to say that, nature's nonalcoholic spirits. What we're making is, the most highly engineered water in the world is the reality, the process and provenance and ingredient that goes into it. Far harder to make the gin. we're still we're doing distillation. We're also doing maceration, and we're blending different ingredients, all of that together to create the nonalcoholic spirit. But actually it's the fastest growing part of the business off no dice. And I think especially in younger generations, there is a much higher propensity for, people to moderate their alcohol consumption, if not, absolutely not drink at all. So this is future proofing the business and being very authentic about it. we believe our known outlets are the most authentic in the category. we try and grow as much of that ingredients on the farm as well. and, we've just got to stop the other day in, Graeme King, actually the, Pink Berry Spritz, which is the not out pink, but it's one of the spirits that we produce. the only cocktail that sells more than it is alcohol, spirits, which is mind blowing. Right. So the number two selling cocktail is a knock out in Greene King pubs. so it's a really important part of the business. We've also sort of because we're, creation is the, energy within the business. It's what we love to do. We launched, the spice of the British countryside, spiced botanical rum, which we are growing dandelions on the farm. and this is mask that we worked out in 2019, that one of the only spices you can produce out of the British countryside is roasted dandelion root. so we grow dandelions, we roast them at a local coffee roasters, and we use that as a, a botanical to make a fantastic spiced rum, which is sort of only just going live across the country at the moment. But it's an absolutely delicious, spiced rum, made with farmable British ingredients. And we've also just launched a secondary brand. Not that we had enough to do already, but we came up with a concept called trash and treasure. One person's trash is another person's treasure, and it's about taking food waste from the manufacturing industry in the UK. So we're taking, pineapple and mango peels from a fruit factory, in Northamptonshire and turning it into a tropical rum. We're taking citrus peels from a juicing company in Kent, lemon peel and making a really super lemony vodka. so that's a that's a separate brand to warn us, but it's all in support of our sort of, sustainable credentials as a, as a business, and one for the future. And then the other, the other element that we're driving at the moment is obviously international side of our, business. this sounds more impressive than it is, because all of this is quite a small volume, but we export to 35 countries. the big one is us where we've just got to live with, with a very big partner out there. So God knows what could happen. I think the problem that we sort of said at the start of this, which is physical and mental availability, I think we're going to have quite a lot of physical availability out there, but no one's going to know who we are. So that's the next challenge that we've got to face. And, in a different country across the pond, foreign games. So yeah, that they're the kind of the big things that we're the big is that we're pulling at the moment and obviously just recovering from Covid and, and the last 12 months cost of living crisis, which has been a dramatic face for the business. and what does the team look like? You obviously mentioned yourself and your wife, but, the other members of the team. Yeah. So there's spring cleaning, maintaining a steady chair in the business. a lot of those people, you can always split it. roughly a third of that is commercial sales and marketing. then there's a chunk of it which is sort of administration and finance, and then a big bulk of that is actually production and bottling, distilling and blending and bottling. so, yeah, because we do everything, so we distill, we bottle our own, our own products. And add their own. It's come to you for your top tips after it had problems, you know, again, for people to diversify, maybe they've got a product ready to go. maybe they're still in the planning stages. What would your top tips be for marketing that. Yeah, well, I was smiling because I, I agreed wholeheartedly with, with Tom. And as much as it's very easy to say having a plan, but it's a lot simpler to say than actually to do it and then deliver on it. because as in the marketing business, we're going through those growing pains. We're currently a team of 12 and got our ambitions to double in the next three years. And having a plan is key and then breaking it down, but then, delivering on it and then adding people in clients into the mix, present a few, a few challenges. But I think just to tap into something else that Tom mentioned around having, you know, don't set up a farm shop when there's one down down the road. What does the customer want? You know, do that research. I remember Jane Lane from the, the best bowling great tea bay in Gloucester services, speaking at cultivate a couple of years ago. And she said the story of when her father was told that the M6 was going to come through that farm. He saw it as an opportunity, not as a as a threat. And most of her childhood was spent going into service. Station car parks, counting the number of cars that were coming in, how many people went for the toilet, and how many people had a coffee, and could they actually put a business plan together to capture an audience that is going to go so far? North has to be now looking like they're visited. Their research and times changed, and there was definitely, a market for, for that product. But but as much as you think, oh, this would be great on the farm or we could do this or could do that, is there a need for it? So so do your research. And then I think then following the next point is can you get really passionate about it. Can you get as passionate about that business as Tom is about his business? Because really, you know, it's flipping hard when you start, you know, and the, the doors that you've got to knock down, as Tom says, and the people that you've got to speak to to get there. So you've really got to get passionate about it. I'm going back to my situation. There was probably an opportunity and a business or consumer need for almost a glamping, diversification or a farm shop. But to be honest, I really couldn't get passionate about it. What I was really passionate about was the marketing and actually helping those businesses thrive through, through better marketing. And so that's what I believe our business is being successful because one, I felt there was a business need, and two, I could really get passionate about it. And the third piece is do the numbers stack up. So there's got to be a need. There's got to be passion, but the numbers have got to be there in order to make it viable. And I think if you've got those three things in place, you've got really good foundations to to go on and grow a successful business. And just, finish it off. And if you go back to call cultivate, obviously you going to be able to hear more from Tom, but just tell us a little bit about some of the other speakers that you've got there as well. Yeah. So, our business motivational speaker is a guy called Paul McGee. nicknamed the The Sumo Guy, which stands for shut Up and Move on. there is plenty of content online of Paul speaking, so if you want to get a flavor for what he's got, got to say for himself, we've got Jim Bloom, who's the founder of Warren Dale Waggy. waggy. He's become quite big within the live stock market in recent years, and he's got a really interesting story of how he took the family farm and different farming enterprises. He went in before starting Waggy. He's got also a very successful poultry business, but also what's next for the future in terms of looking at biogas and just. Yeah, Liz, the editor of the FDA, is going to be interviewing him in sort of a fireside chat. Just understand a little bit more behind what's driving him and what's he learned along the way. And then we've got Sammy Kinghorn, who's a Paralympian, grew up on their family farm in Scotland and had a horrendous accident, in a teenage years. And actually how she took the fact that something that was so devastating happened to her on farm and has turned it into it's a real success story in terms of going to the Paralympian Paralympics and competing for for GB. So we've got a real mix. You know, there's that nice theme of rural and agriculture and bringing those people together. you know, we're set for a sell out, which is 270 people. And having that buzz and that enthusiasm as people that really care so much about the industry is going to be great. But then having the likes of Tom and Jim and Sammy and Paul coming together from all different, angles, you know, is set to be a really great event. And, I'm very much looking forward to it. And, and the theme for this year is going to be around resilience. If we think about what's happening in in farming and agriculture at the minute, we've got the reduction in BP, we've got these supposed new ways of working in terms of grants and the SFI and the focus on how to become more sustainable and reduce our carbon footprint and challenges that, you know, our costs are going up, but yet consumers don't or aren't able to pay that. There's there's some big challenge is coming within our sector. And we're we're staring them in the face right now. So how do we come more resilient as, as people, as, as leaders, as people within this, this industry that we care so passionately about? What what can we do to almost build our armor in terms of building our resilience? So I'm hoping that through the theme of those speakers, we, you know, people have some real good take homes. Well, yeah, we had some on the podcast actually last year for Farm Safety Week issues, you know, really interesting, really inspiring, inspiring person. You know, after what obviously happened to her on the farm. that's great. Well, thank you very much for joining us on the podcast. That's great. Hopefully people will be, check it out, cultivate and get in those last few tickets. and the PhD team will be there as well. So pop over and say hello to us as well. Thank you to Tom and Andy. And don't forget, if you want to get your tickets, visit Cultivate Conference dot. Co.Uk. But that's it for this week's episode of The Farmers Guardian podcast. Make sure you are following us on your favorite podcast platform. We'll be back with another episode on Friday. Thanks so much for listening. Goodbye for now.