Episode 18 - Effective Presentation Skills: Interview With Paddy Willis from Mission Ventures

In this episode, I interview Paddy Willis. Paddy is Founder and CEO of Mission Ventures and has a passion for building better challenger brands. He was co-founder of disruptive baby-food brand Plum, which was sold in year five to Darwin PE in 2010 on retail sales of £15m. Since then he has been mentoring and supporting start-ups across the industry, with the first UK Food accelerator launched in January 2015. Recently, Mission Ventures announced their partnership in The Good Food Fund, a £1.8m fund established by Big Society Capital with Guy’s & St Thomas’ Charity to tackle childhood obesity with market-led solutions. Today, we discuss effective presentation skills.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmons:

We are in. Phenomenal. Welcome to another Sticky Interview. My name is Nathan Simmons. I'm senior trainer and coach for MBM, Making Business Matter, the training provider, soft skills provider for the U.K. grocery and manufacturing industry. The idea with these interviews is to be sharing the thoughts and concepts of great people in great spaces doing great work to help you be the best possible version of yourself. Today, I'm speaking to a gentleman I got to meet last week by the name of Paddy Willis.

Nathan Simmons:

Paddy, I'm going to read his bio here. I'm going to tell you why some of this is so engaging for me, though. Paddy is the founder and CEO of Mission Ventures, and has a passion for building better challenger brands. He was co-founder of disruptive baby food brand Plum, which was sold in year five to Darwin PE in 2010 on retail sales of £15 million, which on its own, Paddy, is pretty phenomenal.

Since then, he has been mentoring and supporting startups across the industry with the first UK food accelerator launch in January 2015. Recently, Mission Ventures announced their partnership in the Good Food Fund, a 1.8 million fund established by Big Society Capital with Guy's and St. Thomas' Charity to tackle childhood obesity with market led solutions.

Nathan Simmons:

This is where it got interesting for me, why I wanted to, and when I reached out to Paddy, so there's three elements of this. One is challenger brands. I thought that's really interesting, disrupting markets. Two, childhood obesity, this is a huge thing that's going on with the way that the industry is moving.

Paddy Willis - Founder and CEO of Mission Ventures

 

Then I got thinking, those two facets on their own are difficult enough. What do effective presentation skills... What is a great presenter in that space where you're talking to companies about challenger brands that may put them out of business potentially or disrupt their market, and also getting people to make moves on the amount of sugars, and salts, and fats, et cetera, they're putting into their foods, and what sort of skills have you got to have in order to present to that level, to get people to make those shifts?

Nathan Simmons:

I thought, "This is a person I need to get to know. This is a person I need to ask some questions to, and this is a person [inaudible 00:02:22] interview." Paddy, thanks for being here.

Paddy Willis:

Thank you for the invitation, Nathan, delighted to join you.

Nathan Simmons:

Thank you. So look, one of the first things is, and we talked a little bit about this before, that necessity to create a brand. Why do you do what you do? Originally, it was Plum baby foods, but now you're helping other markets do that disruptive thing that you do. Why do you do what you do?

Paddy Willis:

Well, they always say that if you do what you love you'll never have a job in your life. I think I've probably got that wrong, but you know what I mean. The principle is that if you do what you love, then every day is a great opportunity and great fun. I do what I do, and that's in terms of working with founders and entrepreneurs of, in this case, food and drink businesses, but I have worked with a whole broad range of different sectors over the years because I'm drawn like a moth to the passion and the commitment and the vision of these individuals who often don't...

Paddy Willis:

Particularly, this is very true in the food sector, and this is completely an unscientific observation, but it's based on having worked with food and drink startups over the last five-plus years on our business accelerators is that I would say 85, if not possibly 90%, of founders do not come from within the industry. The reason I think that is, is because if they did come from the industry, they probably wouldn't start because they would realize just what a challenge it is to succeed in this market. It's also been helped by the fact that a lot of barriers to entry have come down.

Paddy Willis:

It's become much easier and resources to things like shared kitchens and consultants, everything else, has become much easier. When we set up Plum back in... We launched in 2006. So it's about the passion for the people and the purpose that they have behind what they do. I'm sure we'll talk a bit about that in some of the context the challenger brands. The other thing, and this we'll come back to, it's irrelevant to the concept of what makes for a good presentation because really it's about story telling, and a good brand is about telling a good story. I always remember. There's a guy called Daniel Priestly, an Australian entrepreneur who I try and think when I heard him speak. It was at a small event for founders. I don't know what it's called. It was 10 years ago.

Paddy Willis:

He talked about the fact that he is a very keen mountain walker, and it's a thing. When you go mountain walking, you know where you're going and you set off up this hill. Which the hill becomes a mountain, and you get to the top, and you eventually get there, and you take in the view around you, but inevitably your eye is drawn to the ridge that it's going to the next peak, and that's going to take you onto the next part of your journey. He says, "But if you were to look down where you've just come from, you would see that inevitably there are going to be people following you in your footsteps, following the paths that you've trodden." He says, "It doesn't really matter what you do," and this isn't exclusive to an entrepreneur.

Paddy Willis:

It could be anybody in a career, and in life in general, is that you will at all different stages in your life, you're starting on a mountain of value, and that's everything that's helped you get to that point in your life. He says the simple thing to do and the pleasurable thing to do is to look behind you and say, "Actually, do you know what? I wouldn't go left there. I'd go right because I tried left and it was a bit tricky. I went right and I'm here." So it doesn't really matter whether you're five minutes ahead of somebody, or five hours ahead of them or five years ahead of them, or 50 years ahead of them. There is always this concept of being able to share with people what you've learnt on that pathway, and that's what I love doing.

Paddy Willis:

I do a lot of mentoring, do a lot of activity particularly around helping our young students to understand the world of entrepreneurship, open their eyes to possibilities as and when they eventually get into the workplace. So it really comes down to working with people with passion, and wanting to try and share that journey, share what I've learned from standing on whatever mountaintop I might be on, or even the mountain I might be halfway up. Wherever you are, it's just helping to pay that back.

Nathan Simmons:

Exactly, and that is why I do what I do. With 23 years in leadership positions, I have made a lot of mistakes. I've made a lot of errors. I've failed countless times of being knocked back from interviews, by being frustrated at myself, and it's not about denying, and I've learned the difference between pain and suffering. It's not about denying people the pain because you need the pain to make the movement, but it's helping people to make the movement faster so they don't wallow in it, and then it becomes suffering.

They don't do anything, and then it takes them longer to extract that goodness out of where they're going. If you can pass that back one year, two years, five years, 20 years to someone else that they're at a turning point in their journey at 23 rather than 43, and I say that leadership and parenting are not two sides of the same coin.

Nathan Simmons:

They're exactly the same thing, and you want the people in your care to supersede you. No parent in their right mind wants their child to be equal to less than them. They want them to supersede them. So when you go and mentor and business coach or do all those things, you want that person to supersede you, so they can go do something incredible. That comes from people like you, by sharing some of that wisdom to help them go left instead of right at the right time, phenomenally powerful.

Paddy Willis:

I'm a great believer in karma and what goes around, comes around, and all these other phrases that basically mean that you treat others as you wish to be treated. So everyday I'm learning something new. I wish I'd been braver to ask for help and mentorship when I was younger, but there was sort of a sense that I had in my head, if no one else has it, just in my head that I just got to figure out for myself, and the reality is that there are so many things that I don't...

You're absolutely right. You learn far more from the failures than you do from the successes, and successes you just think, "Oh, that was good." And then you carry on and do a bit more, but actually, when it doesn't work out, that's when you sort of think, "Well, why didn't it work out?" You're forced to rethink about it and readdress it.

Paddy Willis:

Yeah, so I think for anyone in leadership positions or aspiring to a leadership position,