An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Don’t take it personally and come up for breath Of course it’s personal; it’s YOUR business…but don’t take things that happen to the business, good or bad, too personally. It’s business, not life.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Davies.
Tim is the founder of DuelFuel; the new kid on the nutrition block, game-changing, great tasting, combined Performance and Recovery Nutrition solution for all us regular people.
A self-declared former “corporate maverick”, Tim held senior executive positions across sectors spanning hospitality, consumer goods, security and consultancy and applied the learnings from his corporate career to develop and launch a solution to the problem that so many of us face; “What should I eat before and after my exercise to get the maximum benefit from it, whilst making it convenient for me to do so”?
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was born in Kent, England and am the shoulders-straight, chest-out-proud son of shop-keeper parents.
I loved every minute of growing up in a shop; I watched my parents calculate mark-ups, profit margins and loss-leaders, whilst building up and motivating their team and always…always putting the interests of their customers first.
My parents sold their shop and we moved to Brussels, Belgium when I was six. I went to a French speaking school and grew up speaking better French than English.
We moved back to UK when I was eleven and a few years later I started my first side-hustle, selling rock concert tickets to friends at school. I would skip class, get the train to London and stand in line to buy tickets for the most popular shows and sell the tickets on to friends at a small premium to face value, which more than covered the cost of my ticket to the show.
After college, I started working and took a job in the Middle East, working for an international hotel chain in sales and marketing.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Growth happens outside the comfort zone”, which means to me that we cannot learn by repeatedly doing things we have already accomplished.
I learnt fluent French, at six years old, when my parents enrolled me in a French speaking school in Brussels. I couldn’t speak a word of French on my first day of school, but I was fluent within six months.
I knew nothing about the Middle East until I moved to Riyadh, at which point I started to be exposed to and understand a little more about the richness of the different cultures in the region.
DuelFuel would not have happened without this “don’t fear failure” mindset and everyone within the team are calculated risk-takers.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Robert Greene’s “Mastery” had a big impact on me when I first read it. The book’s overarching message is “master your craft”, which is a natural progression from moving outside any area of familiarity.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
I must have thought about starting at least four or five businesses over the past ten years, but never progressed from “thinking” to “doing”. With DuelFuel, I broke down the development of the business into two stages; the first was to answer the question “what problem are we here to solve”. We spent a lot of time talking with a range of physically active adults, from elite athletes to weekend-warriors like myself, to understand the details of the fuelling problems our customers face and what the ideal solutions to their problems look like.
Having the problems clearly voiced and understood enabled the entire team to model the solution, which in itself gave us the building blocks of our product and business structure. From that point onwards it was, is and always will be about striving for excellence in execution.
The fact that the entire DuelFuel team experience the problem we set out to solve gave us terrific terms of reference and meant we were acting as experienced advocates for our customers.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
Think about the problem, or need, the idea solves and who it is designed for. Speak to people who experience the problem; bring them together and get into “discovery mode” to really understand what problems they have. Really knowing what the need is enables an accurate determination of whether there is a product or service currently available that addresses it.
It is unlikely that any need exists that does not already have a solution. The question is whether a new idea can be brought to life in such a way that it addresses that need better, cheaper or faster than options that already exist.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
- Idea and Market “Fit” — what problem are we solving/what need are we addressing.
- Customer Behaviour — how, when, where, how often do customers experience the “need” the product addresses — this analysis determines much of the business model.
- Competition — what products already exist, how well do they address market need.
- Idea Improvement — can the idea be improved and/or future-proofed, definition of product’s unique selling points.
- Financial Model — cost of goods, cost of manufacture, packaging, logistics, target price, margins, fixed and variable costs, cash flow, financing.
- Business Plan — commit everything you have learned so far to a three-year business plan.
- Manufacture — Identify the right manufacturer & share the plan under a strong NDA; let them see you are serious and a credible business partner. We met with six manufacturers before we selected the right one.
- MVP — development of first product in partnership with your manufacturer.
- Test Marketing MVP — product trials with target consumers. Qualify and quantify the feedback and iterate the product accordingly.
- Implement the business plan, monitor results and adjust as needed.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why?
Founding a business and putting your heart and soul on the line every day…it is definitely not for the faint-hearted. It takes HARD work to get a business idea off the ground and even more HARD work to keep it alive and growing.
- Know every element of the business
The idea came from YOU, all roads lead back to YOU, the business is a reflection of YOU…so at the beginning you must have a well thought through plan of how you want the business to operate and you must be on top of how the business is operating.
When you launch the business, it might only be you — so you may have to do everything. This is an opportunity, as it enables you to understand and set the standard for how things need to be done and then, as the business grows and you bring in new team members you can teach them how the job needs to be done.
2. Do not be in a rush, but do work fast
It is a cliché, but launching and scaling a business is a marathon, not a sprint. Understand it and accept it but do not use it as an excuse for not working fast. Speed wins in the start-up world, not least because the faster you work, the more you accomplish, the safer your business becomes.
3. You set the standard to which others will perform
You founded the business and its culture will come from you. Be very clear on what you want that culture to be. Your team will take their lead from the way you work and how you conduct yourself. Make sure you are setting the right example for your team to follow.
4. You will encounter obstacles
You will encounter obstacles every day. They will either wear you down or make you more determined to succeed. View every obstacle as a test of you and your business, which when you come through it will make you and the business more resilient.
5. Don’t take it personally and come up for breath Of course it’s personal; it’s YOUR business…but don’t take things that happen to the business, good or bad, too personally. It’s business, not life.
When I launched DuelFuel I immersed myself in it for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week for the first year, which proved to be unsustainable for me and the business. I have now pulled back and I make sure I take at least one full day off a week, which gives me a weekly chance to step away, recharge and look at the business at a distance.
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
- Figure out how you are going to pay the bills.
Seriously, if you are going to do this properly it is going to take time. There is no such thing as an overnight success in business and any business we admire will have taken time to build. If you are going to dedicate time to your idea, how will you earn money while you are doing so? Will you quit your job? The first thing to figure out is how you are going to keep paying the bills.
2. Figure out how you will you finance the business and build a robust funding plan.
In DuelFuel’s case I bootstrapped it fully. No external investment.
3. Establish if there is a need for the product and how well other products or services are fulfilling the need.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
I am skeptical of the sort of consultants that circle around business founders; if they were as good as they claim, why are they not leading their own businesses?
In the early days of DuelFuel I engaged a consultant and did not get anywhere near the value that was promised or paid for. The engagement started with a “fact-find”, where I set out in detail my thinking and the consultant took the information I provided, repackaged it and presented it back to me as their own thinking. In short, the consultant asked to borrow my watch and then charged me to tell me the time. Lesson learned and one never repeated.
My advice would be if you do engage a consultant, always be very clear on what your expectations are. Qualify and quantify the outcomes/deliverables from the engagement and only renumerate once the deliverables have been achieved in full.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
There is no “one size fits all” to bootstrapping vs venture capital, the decision is probably best taken by weighing up a combination of factors including whether you can fund the business idea yourself, whether the VC can bring value other than finances, for example expertise, routes to market etc and of course what valuation you and they place on the business.
The earlier you take investment into your business, the sooner your equity in the business becomes diluted, so my advice is to think this one through, very carefully.
I bootstrapped DuelFuel 100% to launch and it is self-financing at present. Our plan is to do a first round of investment over the next eighteen months to fund international expansion, but we are not in any rush. Our business is growing well and every day it gets stronger, it increases the valuation.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Great question. I don’t consider DuelFuel a success…yet, although we are on the way to becoming one.
One of the real privileges of founding a business is being able to hand-pick the initial team. In DuelFuel’s case, I was determined we would give as much opportunity to people who demonstrated the right values (hard work, determination, honesty, authenticity, team player) even if they did not necessarily have the qualifications or experience. Our most recently joined team member is a school leaver, at risk of long-term unemployment, who lacked confidence. Over the last four months, they have grown in confidence and stature and are making a substantial contribution to the business. It is a privilege to watch them grow and to be able to give them the opportunity to do so.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Keep an eye on the people around you and stay tuned in to their energy. At a time when we have all been impacted by Covid, you never know what challenges people might be going through. A heartfelt “hey, are you OK?” could make all the difference.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
On the grounds that business founders are supposed to never settle for the first offer…can I meet two?
If so, I would like to meet Peter Rahal, founder of RX Bar and Paul Stanley, founder and lead singer of KISS.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Tim Davies Of DuelFuel On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
