Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Josh White, Co-Founder and Global Brand Director of the water brand, Cano Water, a fully recyclable alternative to single use plastic bottles and a very, very attractive thing it is too. Describing his time at school as some of his most painful days, as he dealt with the effects of ADHD and alcoholism, Josh found a love, an obsession for music which led him DJing across Europe while founding and running an events business showcasing artists. In 2014 on a trip to Thailand, Josh and his two best friends, Ariel and Perry, came across huge amounts of plastic pollution. Having not thought of themselves as environmentalists, the three nevertheless became focussed on tackling the problem. Cano Water was launched in 2015 aiming to take on the corporate giants in a bid to reduce single use plastic and despite setbacks that almost closed the business, the trio persevered, crediting the incredible growth driven by the impact of the Blue Planet series.
Welcome. You have talked a lot about setting up a business and never imagining in your wildest dreams that’s what would happen.
Josh White
Sure.
Elliot Moss
How did you get to that point? Tell me about the bit just before the three friends, the Three Musketeers, decided they were going to do something.
Josh White
Yes so I, I always talk about if was to ever write a book, it would be called ‘The Accidental Entrepreneur’ because I don’t think that I had much self-belief before starting Cano Water, I actually had a failed business and event company before Cano which sort of was probably one of the best things for me because I think failure is actually a positive thing, if you can look at it in that direction because that also isn’t easy but I think for a long time I didn’t have any purpose so, didn’t really, or a sense of belief, so didn’t really know what my purpose was in life. Being an entrepreneur wasn’t necessarily in my DNA before starting Cano Water but Cano brought me this, this sense of purpose and you know I’m very open about my ADHD, I think that one of the things with ADHD is you need to find this superpower that is beyond the negatives of ADHD and everyone has it in them but it’s about finding what it is and I think a sense of belief and purpose can really lead you into finding this real, raw energy that you may have never sort of found before, which I found when starting Cano so, I went from this real no sense of belief in me to finding this purpose and this power that I’ve used to build Cano with the others.
Elliot Moss
And just on ADHD because people, some people, will be very familiar and some people won’t. What does, tell me what it feels like to have a, describe what it is to have ADHD.
Josh White
Yeah. So it’s this, a lot of, a lot of the time, I got diagnosed with ADHD at a very young age, eleven years old, at a time when no one was talking about ADHD and it was sort of…
Elliot Moss
How old are you now, Josh?
Josh White
I’m 33 now.
Elliot Moss
He looks very young.
Josh White
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
He is young. It’s all relative of course.
Josh White
So quite a, quite a long time ago and you know what I love, especially when talking about alcoholism, addiction, ADHD, is that right now we’re in a time where a lot of these things are spoken about a lot more often and it’s also a lot more accepted whereas I think back when I got diagnosed as a kid, it wasn’t as accepted, you were looked at as like maybe a bit of a problem child and you had a bit of a, a problem with you and you were put in a category so, I would describe ADHD as, well first of all, I find it incredibly hard to concentrate if I’m not interested in something so, if I’m interested in something I will hyperfocus into it and I will be completely and utterly obsessed with it and I will put so much time and energy into it that people will be like oh my god like, this, I’m like a force to be reckoned with but if I’m not interested, which for me a lot of it was like academia so, maths and English and these types of things, I’ll just completely zone out and I’ll find I’m doodling or I’m listening to music or I’m going into a world where I have to try and find this dopamine where I can sort of come back to reality so, you know a lot of people talk about brain fog, a lot of the time it is, it’s constant brain fog and it’s not really having the ability to see past that brain fog and it was really, really, really tough growing up with that because I’d see that people would have a vision in their life and they would be able to see from you know A to B, I didn’t have that unfortunately and I just was completely clouded but when I listened to music or if you know like I’ll do mad things like I’ll have an ice bath now or I’ll go to the gym, if I get this dopamine hit, it’s like I can actually see, see, I can, the brain fog clears and that’s the best way to describe it.
Elliot Moss
Tell me about that relationship with music and what it unlocked and what you found in it that kind of gave you that sight beyond the fog.
Josh White
Definitely. So, without music, I genuinely don’t know where I’d be in all honesty. It is one of the most important things in my life. I have been obsessed with music for as long as I could remember. I am completely and utterly obsessed with finding new music as well, it’s something that I always, every single Friday without fail, which is New Music Daily on Apple Music, I have to go through every single new song, which I proper crazy.
Elliot Moss
A particular genre or anything?
Josh White
Not even, no. Every like everything that’s on that list, which is probably a hundred songs, I have to listen to every single one of them, so I will go for a walk and I will try and listen to as many as possible and through that week listen to that whole playlist and it’s something that I’m looking for a way of how a song makes me feel and you know I’ve, I think I mentioned to you guys that I’m completely obsessed with artists like Bon Iver and there’s another artist that I’m obsessed with called Novamore which is, you know there’s this, it’s sort of like this Indie alternative music that I completely, I completely sort of have fallen in love with, it’s quite mad and I think that DJing came at a very young age, my dad, it was around the same time where I sort of got diagnosed with ADHD and my dad always did things for me where he would buy me things, not that I wanted but what I needed and he bought me my first pair of Numark belt drive decks and I became just completely and utterly obsessed with mixing music and how one song can blend into another song and how, you know, a DJ makes it feel so seamless sort of two tracks going into each other and I was also obsessed with blending different genres as well and I basically spent probably the best part of four-five years and you know that saying about that 10,000 hour rule, like every single day after school, I would be so uninterested in school but I would come back and I would just spend hours and hours and hours of just practicing and practicing and at first I was just completely and utterly horrendous and terrible but then when I got it, it was like oh my god, like I just can’t believe that I now understand and I would just practice with old and new and you know I’ve crafted this, I wouldn’t say that I’m a one genre DJ at all and I never have been interested in being a one genre DJ.
Elliot Moss
And you still DJ?
Josh White
Still DJ.
Elliot Moss
What kind of things do you now do?
Josh White
So I mainly, I’m a hip-hop and R&B DJ, that’s like my, the genre that I love but what I do when I DJ for most private events is I will DJ anything so, house, hip-hop, pop, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘70s, like anything but I am the type of DJ that will blend like a, a ‘70s instrumental with like a hip-hop acapella and I’m, you know, I’m completely and obsessed with, and this is similar with Cano as well, of doing things that no one has ever seen before and just creativity is something that I am just completely in love with so, if something has never been done before, I latch onto it and that’s where music and art, you know the world of culture and creativity just baffles me of like how has someone done something new, which you know we’ve achieved with Cano.
Elliot Moss
And we’re going to talk lots about Cano and what happened when you went to Thailand and what happened straight after that because I’m interested in that, how you’ve taken that passion and translated it into business. Stay with me for much more from my guest, it’s Josh White, Co-Founder of Cano Water, he’ll be back in a couple of minutes. Right now we’re going to hear a taster from the Positive Disrupters podcast, a new podcast which can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Kieron John, a lawyer at Mishcon de Reya, talks to leaders who’ve taken innovative approaches to make a positive impact. In this clip we hear from Chris Rigby, Co-Founder of the venture consultancy, Colab-8.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again, one of a maybe 500 now, if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. My guest today is Josh White, Co-Founder, Global Brand Director of the water brand, Cano Water, a fully recyclable alternative to single use plastic bottles. So the passion for music, this finding you know something you absolutely loved. Now I’m jumping forward to the trip to Thailand with your friends, tell me what you saw there that you all went “we need to do something about this” because we all, we see stuff, I say this to a lot of people I meet, you know one person sees it and they go “oh that’s a shame”, another person sees it and “well that looks great” and you do nothing, you do just carry on…
Josh White
100%.
Elliot Moss
…in your happy little life and you keep going. You didn’t do that.
Josh White
No and I think like you know for the purpose of anyone who wants to know a little bit of back story. We’re not environmentalists, we were never environmentalists. We never went on the trip to Thailand with any expectation of coming out with, you know, an idea and a business and that’s where, you know, the authenticity of Cano Water is, is so special. Three very, very, good friends who went on a normal sort of lad’s trip.
Elliot Moss
How old were you at the time?
Josh White
I was 22 at the time. And you know we went to a remote island and basically just saw loads of pieces of plastic and plastic bottles and it got us thinking how are brands that we grow up loving, you know, the Danone’s, the Coca-Cola’s, the Pepsi’s, how is this happening? Why are they letting it happen and why is no one talking about it? And you know from a Google search you can see very quickly that there were people talking about it but these were environmentalists where you know a lot of people look at an environmentalist as someone that is different, and I think that also that might not be as accepted in society, you know you have people like Greta Thunberg now that a load of people listen to but, you know, a mad story, I was actually sampling at Whole Foods once and this 60 year old woman came over and asked for my autograph and I said to her, “Why? Why are you asking for my autograph?” and she said “Because I’ve been speaking about plastic pollution for thirty years, no one’s listened to me but people are listening to you” and it was one of those moments, those really amazing moments that, that we’re taking this into the mass market and we’re not sort of these environmentalists that are standing outside of Coca-Cola’s head office saying, you know, screw plastic.
Elliot Moss
But where was, where was life for the three of you at that point because at 22, I’ve got, my eldest is sort of 20 and I, I can’t imagine him going on a trip right now and he may well be listening so he’ll probably punch me when I see him. He wouldn’t punch me but he’d do something. He, I can’t imagine him going oh there’s my idea and I’m going to do it. What was going on for the three of you at that moment?
Josh White
Yeah, listen, we all had full time jobs, I was in events, Ariel was in recruitment and Perry, you know, was a designer. I think that we all wanted to have a sense of purpose in the world and I think because we were, especially speaking for me, because I was always like, as a kid it was always like “you can’t do that, you can’t do that”, you know “what is your purpose in life? What is your purpose in life?”. Because there was no sense of purpose, it was like I was looking for my purpose and I think that 99% of people would have thought of the idea of Cano Water and be like “nah, that won’t work, it won’t work”. I think it needed the three of us with the creative minds that we have and the sort of the failures that we all had in our early years to really turn around and say you know what, we can make this work. I always say that you know if we were drinks industry experts, we probably never would have started this business.
Elliot Moss
Because you would have known it wouldn’t have worked.
Josh White
Exactly.
Elliot Moss
But the other thing that’s occurring to me is this, you said it a couple of times, “I was looking for my purpose.” Why? Why again was that a thing that you, Josh, were interested in?
Josh White
Do you know what it is, I think it was proving people wrong. I think that was something inside of me, you know, my parents and I’ll never forget like when I first told my family about Cano Water, they literally thought I was crazy. I heard my sister having a conversation with her friend around how stupid the idea was.
Elliot Moss
What are they saying now, Josh?
Josh White
Listen, now, they love the brand and you know, it’s crazy.
Elliot Moss
Funny that.
Josh White
You know my parents from like, from the old Josh to the new Josh, it’s like it’s crazy, like people would warn their kids not to be around me and now they’re sending their kids to me.
Elliot Moss
I’ve got to tell you, look, and we’re going to pause for a minute but the truth is, most of the people I meet are dangerous.
Josh White
Of course.
Elliot Moss
In a really good way and that’s why they’re able to go and do stuff because they don’t see, they don’t see the danger but they are dangerous themselves, very positively. Stay with me for much more from my dangerous by very nice as well Business Shaper today, it’s Josh White, we’ve been talking about all sorts of stuff around finding purpose. The reality though of this business is that, and I’ve grown up and most people of my age have grown up with plastic becoming a thing. The reality is you were trying to change the habits of billions of people, of everybody because people are used to drinking water out of a bottle and the notion of it being out of a can was just not going to happen and that’s not just the people drinking it but that’s the people selling it, as in all the people in distribution. You’ve now got Amazon, you’ve got Tesco, you’ve got Waitrose, you’re kind of everywhere, I don’t know how many cans you sold last year but you’re going to tell me. How many was that?
Josh White
Last year was about 18 to 20 million cans.
Elliot Moss
Right, I mean that’s quite a lot of cans. I’m no expert, Josh but that sounds like a hell of a lot.
Josh White
For sure.
Elliot Moss
How, you talk about chipping away at things, how did you manage to create that habit change because in all the theory that I’ve looked at over the years and worked with big, big companies like Procter & Gamble and things, it’s a hell of a journey. So what were the things that you did that you look back and go, “that worked”?
Josh White
I think anything that is different to the norm, you know, one of our main brand propositions is to defy the norm to encourage change and I’m a firm believer that doing anything different and anything that is sort of outside of the box and being creative and also, just being a bit disruptive can fast-track it because the truth is, the big brands will do everything in their power to make sure that we’re not heard and we’ve seen it, you know, it’s a very, very dog-eat-dog world in the food and beverage industry, where you could just be overtaken overnight, in all honesty and I’ve seen it with some really, really great brands that they didn’t make enough noise and they were just sort of, you know, they were just eaten alive and I think that you have to be in your own lane and, you know, I have this thing around innovators and copycats. The innovators are the ones that come up with the ideas, they’re the ones that are constantly thinking and challenging the consumer and trying to, you know, we don’t have a lot of money, we don’t have a lot of, you know, the biggest marketing budget but we will do things that are original ideas that we might have taken inspiration and we’re happy to credit people but it’s very much our own ideas, coming from our own sort of vision and then you’ve got the copycats, the ones that wait for the innovators. So, you know, we see this a lot of the time where brands will wait for us to make our next move and they will, they will copy us. Now, we have to make sure that we are always ahead of the game and you know there’s a lot of competition out in the market now which has helped us because it’s very lonely being the first to do something, you know, you’re in a category by yourself and even though, wow, you’re the only ones and you know that actually isn’t fun because you’ve got big plastic sort of turning round and saying well no one else is doing cans and they’re not moving, whereas you know one of our main visions was to remove a billion plastic bottles within ten years through selling infinitely recyclable cans but also inspiring others to follow suit so, we’ve always tried to maintain being this innovator and I think that by doing that, we have you know shown consumers in the UK that this is a brand that sort of stands on its own two feet and also, you know we’ve seen it with brands like Oatly and BrewDog, you know, we are the hijackers, we’re the disrupters, we’re the plucky underdog going up against the big plastic giants and I think that the UK consumer really, really likes that story and gets behind that story because they understand and know that there is an enemy out there and very fortunately, people like David Attenborough, BBC, Sky News, have done an incredible job to propel us to the top of the iceberg and shown that plastic pollution is a real, real problem and something that the big plastic producers can’t hide behind anymore.
Elliot Moss
Define your enemy. You’ve got a really big one, which is great. Stay with me for my final chat with my guest, it’s Josh White. We’ve also got some South African jazz from the one and only Mr Hugh Masekela, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Josh White is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. You’ve talked about the innovation, you talked about the copycats and you’re clearly innovators. What’s the dynamic, the vibe between the three of you? Are you all as innovative as each other? Do some, does one of you say no, no hold on a minute or does someone say yeah but we could do that, and has that developed over time or is still three mates who are on holiday, who are having a laugh, living their best lives, people often say, which I never believe and now here you are, a few years later, working together. Tell me a little bit about that.
Josh White
For sure, so we’ve all got different skills which I think is incredibly important. It isn’t easy working with your best friends but I think that we all have very, very similar interests which funnily enough the business really comes from our interests really, like the branding itself comes from mainly mine and Perry’s love for art and minimalism and there is also, if you look at a lot of the stuff that we do on social media, there is like a bit of like a hip-hop undertone, so the whole business really, really stems from like this culture and common interest that the three of us have. Listen, we do agree on certain things but I think the nice thing is, we know what is a, you know what is a cool and fun idea, like I’ll give you a perfect example, last year we turned up at outside Wimbledon, they had just renewed their contract with Evian, who are obviously one of the biggest polluters in the planet, owned by Danone, and we had a big electric van go outside which basically said, “Wimbledon, we think you’re in a toxic relationship” basically, and you know a lot of people, especially corporate companies would be like oh no you can’t do that, you can’t do that but the three of us are so aligned that the only way that we’re going to make noise is by doing things like that and it got everyone’s attention and we got huge, you know, a lot of press from it but what I think what’s nice is that the three of us are aligned to do things like that. If one person wasn’t, it would probably cause a little bit of a fracture in the business, you know.
Elliot Moss
And absolutely and of the three of you, is any one of you more business minded than the others because what you’re describing is fabulous and fun and it’s got to have cut through otherwise, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now but who’s the person that goes “just a second, there’s numbers here, we’ve got margins to deliver, we need to grow”?
Josh White
Yeah, so all three of us have that knowledge and we’ve also got an incredible team behind us, you know, we’ve got a, an MD, we’ve got a COO and we’ve got a Finance Director as well who very much understand our vision and trust me, there have been some crazier ideas, definitely, that we’ve just turned around and said you know what, maybe that’s beyond the mark, so I think that, and I think it is incredibly important to understand like what is the purpose of this idea and if it isn’t to drive brand awareness and you know you can’t generate a return on investment straight off but as long as the main purpose is to create noise in order to get positive increased brand awareness then I think that you’ve just got to do it and we’ve seen some incredible brands grow from that and a lot of them are purpose led brands like Cano Water.
Elliot Moss
Now purpose has come up a lot, we talked about your search for a purpose, we talked about the fact that actually through the ADHD and the addiction you’ve learned that there’s a kind of search at the end of that rainbow which goes “I’m looking for something, I’m looking for the hit.” What’s the hit going to look like now for you going forward because arguably, Josh, we can tick the box that you’ve proved them wrong.
Josh White
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
We can tick the box that you’ve kind of you’re not the kid that the mums and dads will say don’t hang out with Josh because actually, you’re a respectable person in business now, Josh, and the business is doing well and you’ve just got funded so, what are you still searching for now, as Josh White?
Josh White
I get asked a lot of the time through deep conversations with friends, “What is the purpose of life?” and personally, for me and it’s a big question obviously, for me, it’s about giving back, it’s about doing good, so Cano Water doing good for the planet, ADHD and addiction, I help a countless number of people on a daily basis giving back and helping people who are going through the same thing that I went through, you know, I have so many young entrepreneurs come to me and say like, you know, “I’m trying to build a business but I have ADHD” or “I have addition problems” and I will never say no to it, to anything, you know, there’s been times where I’ve put up a post on LinkedIn that I’ve had nearly 700 messages and I’ve got back to every single one of them within you know a few days because my purpose in life is to do good and to help so, I think that I’m not necessarily searching for my purpose anymore because I know my purpose and that’s to help and give back and I think that that’s something that will continue for the rest of my life.
Elliot Moss
It’s been a real pleasure chatting to you, Josh, thank you and thank you for explaining the, literally what it feels like to have ADHD as well. It’s just something that you know most people go, “oh yeah, you’ve got ADHD or you haven’t”, it’s very rare that I hear someone actually explaining what that is, so I really appreciate that. Just before I let you disappear, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Josh White
My song choice is Pretty Wings by Maxwell. This is a song that I actually heard on the radio and it sort of stopped me in my tracks a little bit because I wasn’t waiting to hear a song but it was just on the radio in the background and there was something about the instrument arrangement that I just completely fell in love with, it was a song that I was just completely drawn to and one of those ones that I can just listen to forever and never get bored of and I’m surprised that I only heard it really in the past three years and it’s one of those ones that you would just sort of, I was just sort of like how have I not heard this song before and it’s just continued to be on my playlist for, yeah, for the past three years.
Elliot Moss
That was Maxwell with Pretty Wings, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Josh White. He talked about loving doing things that no one has ever seen before, really the, the mark of a fantastic and innovative brand. He talked about the importance of proving people wrong, of saying “no, I’m not like that, I’m like this”, which I loved. He talked about defining your enemy, really important if you’re building a disruptive brand, as he has. And finally, a lovely thing about Josh, he’s all about, what is his purpose? It’s about giving back and about doing good. Brilliant stuff. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a super-duper weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.