Alan Barratt on entrepreneurship, business ownership, and the reality of building a brand from the ground up.
Everyone wants the freedom of being an entrepreneur, but few are ready for the weight of total responsibility. Alan Barrett, the founder of Grenade, joins me to discuss what it actually takes to succeed in the protein bar market. He shares the unfiltered truth about being unemployable, taking full ownership of your outcomes, and navigating the friction that comes when you start disrupting major industry players.
🎬 Edits Course: https://jamessmith.business/ig-edits
👁️ Try Neutonic: https://www.neutonic.com/jamessmith
🤼♂️ Wear Adapt BJJ: https://adaptjj.com/
📝 Business Mentoring: https://www.jamessmith.business
Try Grenade: https://www.grenade.com/
Grenade on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@teamgrenade
Allan Barratt on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/al_barratt/
Chapters:
0:00 Trailer
1:20 How Alan and James actually met
3:23 Richard Branson: "I don't know where there is"
5:24 Starting Grenade on a 500 pound loan
9:27 Selling supplements gym to gym
11:29 The first protein flapjack
15:36 When the supplement industry was the Wild West
17:38 Positioning against the chocolate bar
21:40 Making a bar people could actually afford
25:46 Why most people should not be entrepreneurs
27:48 Selling the first business
31:50 Doing right by people pays you back
35:52 Fitness plus military: where the name came from
37:42 The fat burner that started it all
41:46 The fight for the Grenade trademark in America
45:02 The bottle, the shape and a copycat industry
49:10 Borrowing a 17-tonne gun to steal the show
53:11 Demand outstripping supply
57:18 Beating Twix into the UK top 20
59:20 Mars complains to Nielsen
1:01:13 No disruption in chocolate for 40 years
1:01:40 The phone call from Giovanni Ferrero
1:03:23 Ferrero or Cadbury: a two-horse race
1:07:26 Choosing Mondelez, and going full circle to Birmingham
1:11:34 The lawyer who got it badly wrong
1:15:36 Cashing half, rolling half back in
1:19:37 What Grenade is worth now
1:23:41 What America teaches you about packaging
1:25:43 When one can bursts across 50 pallets
1:29:51 Fifty countries that supposedly share a language
1:33:55 Where Grenade goes next
1:35:59 The Cadbury Creme Egg protein bar
1:40:05 Those companies are gone. Grenade is still here
1:44:10 Hitching the caravan to the Ferrari
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