Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
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 I am extremely pleased to say is Ben Branson, Founder of Seedlip, the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirit and the Founder of Pollen Projects, a venture studio that have so far created Seasn, a range of cocktail bitters and Sylva, a distillery and maturation lab making non-alcoholic spirits from trees and not just any old trees – we’ll find out which ones. And Ben’s the Founder also and importantly of neurodiversity charity, The Hidden 20%. While running his own design firm focussing on the food and drink industry Ben, who’d grown up on his family’s farm was inspired by a 17th century recipe book for alcoholic and non-alcoholic medicines and began experimenting with distilling his home grown herbs. After ordering a non-alcoholic drink at a restaurant as Ben says, ‘a disgusting pink sugary cocktail’ the dots started to join up and Ben wondered if he could create a superior option to help others disappointed with sweet, childish drinks. Launched in 2015, Ben took Seedlip from his kitchen to 35 countries in three and a half years and to a majority acquisition by Diageo, the world’s biggest spirits company. Ben is also the Founder of neurodiversity charity, The Hidden 20% as I said and hosts their award winning and incredibly large and successful podcast championing neurodiverse role models and aiming to help break the cycle of silence, shame and stigma. It’s great to have you here.
Ben Branson
Thanks so much Elliot for having me.
Elliot Moss
You have always made stuff haven’t you?
Ben Branson
Yeah I think if I think back to sort of childhood of you know, growing up on farm and therefore being outside a lot, kind of kicked out by you know, mum, two other brothers, go and make your own fun and so loved building a tree house or a bow and arrow or a football goal or a ramp for a skateboard or yeah, just liked making things that are useful. I’m not an engineer, I’m not a kind of, I’m definitely nowhere near a rocket scientist but I do, I like figuring stuff out and I think I like making things that help and I like spotting things that need changing maybe or improving.
Elliot Moss
And that fun, that sense of play does it go back as far as you can remember being alive? You always just wanted to do stuff like that or was there a, were there moments, you know, sometimes you think and therapists apparently say this, I mean I couldn’t possibly comment but a lot, you remember a lot from when you were a 7 year old kid? Do you know what I mean is there a…
Ben Branson
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…conscious, I remember the film made by a friend of mine, Nick Goldsmith called Son of Rambo and Son of Rambo was all about being out and about and stuff and those wonderful long summers but it feels like to me because you were on a farm, because you were in the outdoors, that was just your life from day one?
Ben Branson
Yeah I think I’m increasingly aware now with children that I have, with my daughters you get to re-do lots of things and you know, I’ve got to re-do a bow and arrow for example or pooh sticks or play in the woods or do leaf printing you know, I’ve got to re… I don’t know, rediscover all that stuff and do it again and I guess I’m trying to apply some of that naivety, innocence and play into my work where it then doesn’t feel like work which is great but also I, I think if I’ve learnt anything from Seedlip but I had no idea about the drinks industry and actually because I didn’t…
Elliot Moss
I was going to say, it’s better isn’t it?
Ben Branson
…yeah.
Elliot Moss
I’ve read you know, you, people always chose this big word ‘disruption’ but actually back in 2015 when you set Seedlip up there were no decent non-alcoholic…
Ben Branson
There was nothing.
Elliot Moss
…nothing, I mean there were…
Ben Branson
…there was Becks Blue…
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Ben Branson
…launched in the 70s, there was O’douls which is a non-alcoholic beer, very old, tasted like cardboard in the US and there may have been you know, another non-alcoholic beer legacy kind of old brand but there was nothing, there was nothing in menus, nothing on the shelves. There was maybe some Schloer masquerading as wine…
Elliot Moss
I remember Schloer.
Ben Branson
…in a wine bottle.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Ben Branson
But there was nothing and so people thought I was a lunatic and that Seedlip would never sell a bottle and what’s the point, why do you need non-alc and yeah.
Elliot Moss
And in a nutshell, and then I want to come to your own, you as a human and why you don’t drink alcohol and all that. In a nutshell what was the moment that precipitated the ‘do you know what, I want to make a non-alcoholic drink’ before we get into clever marketing stuff, exclusivity in Selfridges and it’s not your local supermarket and all that. What was it if you can recall?
Ben Branson
I think common to everything that I’ve done work-wise and the brands I guess that we’ve created, none of them have been about business and none of them have been about the outcome of I know what I want to do, I want to put some liquid in a bottle and have my own brand and start a business. I think they’ve all been driven by a curiosity and a ‘what if’ and an opportunity to try and there’s been a physical aspect to that of let’s see what happens if I, can I distil mint at home from my garden like, what do trees taste like? Like can I try, shall I try this stuff and so, yeah it’s that curiosity that definitely has been a feature throughout childhood. I think with Seedlip I, I was either thinking that you know, I was going to change the way the world drinks in some grandiose, ‘oh my word this is amazing, why can’t everyone see what I can see’ kind of style through to ‘this is never going to sell a bottle’ and ‘I shouldn’t do this’ and ‘this is a rubbish idea’ and ‘no one is going to buy it’.
Elliot Moss
So basically just a normal day in the life of Ben Branson. We’re going to come back to the dichotomy in there.
But the business thing is real right. You, you obviously you are a curious guy and I want, I want to talk about neurodivergent in a bit. You did have to get serious about what I would call formalising the curiosity and structuring the creativity and all that. How did you find that process of actually getting grown up without becoming boring?
Ben Branson
Well a couple of things. Firstly, growing up everyone in my family worked for themselves. People don’t think of farmers as business owners or entrepreneurs but everybody around me worked for themselves. Today both my brothers work for themselves, my dad works for himself, uncle’s etcetera, so I was sort of grown up around that sort of entrepreneurship I guess. So that’s one important thing. I think the second one was I bought, I literally did buy the Business for Dummies book.
Elliot Moss
Literally?
Ben Branson
Literally. Literally bought it.
Elliot Moss
I love the honesty.
Ben Branson
And…
Elliot Moss
Was it good? Evidently it was pretty good.
Ben Branson
It was okay, I mean I signed up with the wrong VAT code when I started Seedlip but I was desperate to learn about every single aspect of the business and I was really okay with the fact that I didn’t know what a value chain was, I didn’t know what an FSDU was, I didn’t know all these industry jargons, terms. I didn’t know how to construct a PNL, I didn’t know what a balance sheet did but I learnt and I learnt that I really love Excel and I love numbers and I love how numbers can speak stories and shape narratives and so I do, I enjoy the business bit. I think it’s the outcome though of, I just want to make a big impact and I want to make a bit change and so when that’s my driver, in everything that I am doing, the way the vehicle in which I can do that I guess that I’ve chosen is having businesses and a charity.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Ben Branson
I’m just a vehicle.
Elliot Moss
And on the business thing, you just said the thing behind it is the big impact. You know how when you are thinking logically about numbers and you say numbers tell a story and they absolutely do it, it’s fabulous when people realise, when you get it you go ‘oh’ but on the other side – and that feels good because intellectually you’ve understood – when you talk about impact and making an impact, what does that feel like in your head and your body? Because that’s a different part, what’s that about?
Ben Branson
It is a different part and you know I was on my own launching Seedlip and you fast forward 10 years – we celebrate out 10th birthday in November – and you’ve got a category that’s 25 billion dollars, you’ve got thousands of brands, you’ve got the world’s biggest beer brand, some of the world’s biggest spirit brands with non-alcoholic versions.
Elliot Moss
And tasty too.
Ben Branson
Yeah you’ve got a global category that’s still only 2-3% of alcohol. So the headroom is enormous and you’ve got people’s habits and behaviours and drinking repertoire completely changing like and that’s not all because of me obviously but being part of that feels great, feels great but also I’m pretty consistently dissatisfied, so it’s not enough. Not good enough.
Elliot Moss
And how do you handle the dissatisfaction in your head?
Ben Branson
I think it’s really healthy to, to be cynical and unhappy and dissatisfied with the status quo.
Elliot Moss
But does being unhappy about the status quo make you unhappy?
Ben Branson
No, I think it does a couple of things; I think it keeps my feet on the floor and I don’t remember all the nice things that people have said about any of my projects, I hold on to the guy that said, ‘Seedlip tastes like witches wee’.
Elliot Moss
And we are going to hold that thought, everyone needs to think about what witches wee looks like and what it smells like. If you haven’t thought about that, think about it right now. Much more coming up from Ben Branson, my Business Shaper – I couldn’t resist, I’m sorry – he’s back in a couple of minutes.
You can hear all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can catch this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is Ben Branson, Founder of Seedlip, the world’s first distilled non-alcoholic spirit and the Founder of neurodiversity charity, The Hidden 20%. Before I talk about neurodiversity which I want to and sobriety. Talk to me about the tattoos? Just describe a couple of them because there’s quite a few even though I know you’re mainly covered over there. I hope I am not being too personal.
Ben Branson
Yeah, I got my first tattoo when I was 15.
Elliot Moss
And why?
Ben Branson
Embarrassingly a Chinese symbol that meant dangerous.
Elliot Moss
Did you know, did you know that’s what it meant?
Ben Branson
I did know that’s what it meant which is why it’s even more embarrassing. Thankfully that’s covered up with another tattoo. I guess I, I’ve, I’ve used tattoos to mark moment and so it was a big moment when I got the Seedlip crest tattooed on my arm because I was committing, it was a form of sort of commitment, right I’m going to do this. I’ve got all my other projects I guess, logos tattooed and then my children have played quite a bit role in my tattoos of their doodles and their drawings and their initials and their names and I just, I don’t really care sort of what other people kind of think about them, they’re…
Elliot Moss
They are for you?
Ben Branson
…they’re for me and probably the most recent one I got was Isaac Newton obviously did a whole load of amazing things but he also, one of the things that he did discover or create was the formula for calculating the speed of sound through liquid. I have it tattooed on my neck and it’s how we make Sylva our aged non-alcoholic spirit and I have very fortunately a two metre high cutting apple tree from Isaac Newton’s original famous apple tree.
Elliot Moss
How did you get that?
Ben Branson
Because it’s at my home.
Elliot Moss
But how is it in your home?
Ben Branson
Because if you take a cutting, if you take a branch from an apple tree. Not that I went up to Woolsthorpe Manor and took a branch.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Ben Branson
But if you take a branch you can plant that branch or you can graft it on to another tree and grow a tree. So yeah, tattoos are I’ve got my kids drawing a snail at the moment because I’m increasingly interested in doing things slowly and things that take time and in this world that kind of can’t sit still and is constantly seems like it’s speeding up.
Elliot Moss
But yet a challenge.
Ben Branson
Please.
Elliot Moss
You say this Ben Branson but you, I don’t know where you say you have something or you exhibit the characteristics of, you’re if I understand ADHD, have ADHD?
Ben Branson
I am ADHD part autistic.
Elliot Moss
You are ADHD and autistic.
Ben Branson
Yep.
Elliot Moss
You move, if anyone looked from the outside and I am looking from the outside, I can’t be in your brain, busy in there probably. You, you’re going at the speed of light, you’re doing a lot of things. You’ve done a lot of things. You don’t stop and I am assuming you, the voice is saying, ‘no, no you need to stop’ but that harnessing. How have you learnt over the years to harness the way that your brain works into this person I now see?
Ben Branson
Yeah so I didn’t, so I was diagnosed in 2022, autistic first and then ADHD second and I had no idea what that meant. I had no idea or had very limited beliefs on what autism is/was dyslexia, ADHD that full kind of range of neuro types. I really had no idea and I guess I’ve learnt in the last three years that a lot of society doesn’t really have the right idea or the right information or an up-to-date understanding of neurodiversity. So I’ve gone through this sort big learning curve I guess of you know, my immediate reaction or understanding that I was autistic was well I now need to know everything about autism and I now need to harness and recognise the good bits of my brain, like having a photographic memory, actually that’s really helpful or the sensory side or the social side or the things that I struggle with.
Elliot Moss
And your palette apparently is incredibly?
Ben Branson
And my palate, yeah. My hearing is, my hearing and my no… I kind of lost my sense of smell for about six to nine months when I was in my early 20s from a fall and when it came back my god it was, it was incredible and so Seedlip was all developed via smell memories and my nose and Sylva you know and playing around and working with wood, there’s a huge sensory aspect to that as well so yeah I feel like I’m built for what I’m doing which is good and I feel like I’m trying to learn how my brain works to kind of harness that but being autistic is a bit like being in a car and you’ve got this wonderful gearstick that is very logical, very structured, systems orientated and then I’ve got this accelerator called ADHD that wants to go head first, 100 miles an hour.
Elliot Moss
So that dichotomy, that and your awareness now of that thing happening and who you are and which bits to not press and which bits to pull. You translated into this bigger charity, The Hidden 20%, you’ve created a podcast, you get very high profile people to come on to it, you won a bunch of awards. The voice that you’re giving to this big community, what’s been the feedback?
Ben Branson
I used to say, I still say I think on the drink side, ‘let’s not get carried away guys, we’re not savings lives’ you know, ‘let’s, let’s kind of make sure feet on the floor’ whereas with The Hidden 20% we have saved lives and we have you know, my wife was a guest earlier on to come and talk about what a nightmare I am.
Elliot Moss
What was the biggest bit of the nightmare and what did she say?
Ben Branson
She just I think…
Elliot Moss
Where to start?
Ben Branson
...I didn’t even tell her I was going for an autism assessment for example and I decided to do this while she was pregnant with our third daughter. I mean like just silliness but following that episode we had a lady reach out who was literally bags packed to walk out on her husband and she listened to the episode with Sam with my wife and didn’t and it’s all good kind of sharing you know, information or listeners hearing from famous people or world leading experts but that kind of change or yeah, we’re getting emails on a sort of daily basis from people who write long, very long emails and pour their heart out and are basically saying thank you or I feel seen. I think that’s another comment we see a lot of ‘thanks for the visibility, I feel seen, I feel heard, I feel understood’. Which feels good.
Elliot Moss
When you set it up, was it as simple as ‘I’m just going to do this’?
Ben Branson
I was diagnosed. I then went straight into research both sort of I guess for my own brain but also what’s autism all about, what’s going on in the world. I was then diagnosed ADHD and so added that into the research mix. I then was learning about things I’d never heard of like dyspraxia and dyscalculia. I was coming up against oh my god I don’t know anything about this, I know all the myths okay. Then I found two things; one, I found all the problems so the homelessness rates, the suicide rates, the unemployment rates, the divorce rates, the bullying rates etc., etc., etc., being completely abnormal to what is ‘quote/unquote’ normal within society. That was dreadful. I then on the flip side, I remember watching the Apple’s 1984 Think Different Ad and I’d seen it a number of times but I hadn’t realised that basically every person featured in advert was neurodivergent that or believed to be neurodivergent. I hadn’t realised that Muhammad Ali was dyslexic or, all my heroes, all the wonderful Mozarts and Picassos, Agatha Christies, Hans Christian Anderson you know, all these amazing people both in science, art, music, film, business were all either diagnosed or believed to have been neurodivergent. So I was like how are we at two ends of the spectrum here, how have we got it so wrong and so set the charity up to like join the dots and try and share the truth and catch society up on actually a modern day understanding that a lot of the you know, I was born autistic, I didn’t develop it. I was born ADHD, I will be ADHD for the rest of my life but we believe that you got to your 16th birthday you could only be a white boy by the way. If you are a white boy, you get to your 16th birthday and ‘da dah’ ADHD leaves and so we, we’ve known so little actually and therefore we developed so much stereotype, so much stigma, so many kind of this ‘this is what an autistic person is, does, looks like’.
Elliot Moss
And of course and we’ll come back to this, just to cut in, the connection with addiction…
Ben Branson
Yep.
Elliot Moss
…is very well documented.
Ben Branson
Yep.
Elliot Moss
And once you understand that you can start to address the addictive tendencies which of course is a, is a big issue for society at large and for individuals as well obviously. Much more coming up. I hope we’re going to squeeze it in to my final chat with Ben Branson, that’s coming up in a couple of minutes. We’ve also got some music from Kamasi Washington, that’s all coming up in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Ben Branson is with me just for a few minutes, Founder of Seedlip, Founder of The Hidden 20% and also of Pollen Projects which is the over, what is it, what do you want to call that? The sort of the top company.
Ben Branson
I guess yeah.
Elliot Moss
The top Co.
Ben Branson
The top Co.
Elliot Moss
The top Co.
Ben Branson
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
In, in…
Ben Branson
The ling.
Elliot Moss
…the ling.
Ben Branson
Professional.
Elliot Moss
In the lingo, exactly which oversees all these other clever things that he’s looking at. What I read about you is that you make things simple. That’s the way you describe yourself you know, at the end of the day you distil literally and intellectually issues down to what is really going on here and that’s about understanding. Is that the main driver of, of your success and I am going to call it success and then I am going to ask you something after that. Do you think that’s what makes you different? And is that the function of ADHD meets autism and all that?
Ben Branson
I think I’ve, one of my most favourite books and I would and I give this out to all my team is a book called Brutal Simplicity of Thought and it’s written by M C Saatchi and the premise is really, really simple, you don’t even have to read it, it’s, it’s really, really hard to make things simple so most people don’t. It’s really easy to make things complicated and complex and wordy and all the rest of it so yeah I do, I kind of have to make things simple for my own brain because it builds capacity. If I’ve got, you know I have four or five projects on but I only have to remember three things about each one and each one only has one priority and so if it’s made simple, which should translate down through our plans, the team’s work etcetera, and that’s what it also needs to do for the consumer and for the public because we’re busy, people have got busy brains, we’re bombarded with information.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Ben Branson
When people send me pictures of trees, events about trees, photos from their holiday of a tree, ask me if they can send me some of their wood, what I know is they have seen a tree and they’ve thought about me and Sylva. That simple tiny little connection, that’s what we need to do and so yeah I think I am consistently pushing for simplicity to make things easier for myself, clearer for the team and hopefully stickier for the public.
Elliot Moss
Now I get that and this is all the positive articulation of the benefits of making things simple, distillation. That process though to get to it, do you enjoy the there are 48,000 things or there are 38 variables and now I’ve got it down to one simple Sylva, the lovely drink think of trees. Getting that, getting to that is not easy.
Ben Branson
No.
Elliot Moss
Do you like that process or do you kind of have a love/hate relationship with it? What, what’s the deal?
Ben Branson
I think I, I do actually really love it. I do you know, but on Monday I want to close the business and stop everything and everything’s rubbish and on Wednesday everything is back to being wonderful and brilliant.
Elliot Moss
Because you’ve found the time to go through the problem?
Ben Branson
Yeah and so take trees for example, there are 73,000 tree species. That’s nearly twice the number of edible plants. Think about that and then creating a liquid from trees. Well which, where do you start and when nobody can tell you, yeah there’s a lot of variables and so I’m a big fan actually of a lot of self-imposed rules. I hate a blank piece of paper, it’s the worst thing that you could give me and it is about enforcing kind of some rules or some structure. I think that’s the way to get better ideas and that’s what has certainly helped with yeah, with Sylva I think and some of our own projects.
Elliot Moss
And just to, because we are going to run out of time. Just one quick question before we, we go to your song choice which inevitably will be about trees I think. I think it is. What does the next 5 years look like? We’ve done the last 10. We’ve cele… we’re going to celebrate in November 10 years. What’s it about? Give me it in a brutally simple way? One word.
Ben Branson
I’ll give you two words, don’t know. I am not a, I don’t have the 5/10 year, I’m not a planner in that sense. Yeah I just, I can’t, I’ve got dreams of course I have and I’ve got pictures that I can see of how I would like things to be but I don’t work back chronologically from in 5 years’ time I want X, Y and Z.
Elliot Moss
No. Maybe it’s just dreams?
Ben Branson
Yeah I think it’s…
Elliot Moss
Keep going, keep dreaming.
Ben Branson
Yeah it’s dreams, I think that’s lighter and…
Elliot Moss
Yeah and probably more truthful for you?
Ben Branson
Yeah more agile.
Elliot Moss
Keeps things open. Yeah. It’s been really cool talking to you Ben, thank you.
Ben Branson
Thanks’ Elliot.
Elliot Moss
Really, really enjoyed it. Just before I let you go, what is your song choice per chance Ben Branson? What’s it called? Is it called Trees?
Ben Branson
It is called Trees.
Elliot Moss
Amazing.
Ben Branson
By Sarah Vaughan. It had to be.
Elliot Moss
And why have you chosen it?
Ben Branson
I just, well (a)…
Elliot Moss
Apart from love of trees obviously.
Ben Branson
Apart from my love of trees, I think (a) I have three daughters, it’s a pretty busy household, it’s quite a loud household and I am obviously subjected to lots of different music with having daughters. Most of it is not that old and so, or not that slow and so actually going for a walk in the woods and listening to someone’s voice like Sarah Vaughan’s that is just honey, yeah had to be something like slow and steady and obviously about trees.
Elliot Moss
Sarah Vaughan with Tress, the song choice of my Business Shaper today Ben Branson. He talked about none of his ideas having anything to do with business but underpinned by his own curiosity. Start with that, the rest will follow. ‘I learnt about business’ he said and he even bought the book about setting up a business for dummies. How honest was that. ‘I hate having a blank piece of paper which is why I create self-imposed rules’, a fantastic way of thinking about structuring your thinking and your creativity. And finally the thing he loves most, it’s positive change. Absolutely great. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that addition 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.