From Concept to Company: Gareth Lloyd, Co-Founder and CEO, Truly Nuts! Gareth Lloyd and Greg Vickers ventured into uncharted territory in the snack market with Truly Nuts!, a company that specialises in producing a wide variety of nuts, seeds, and related snack products, by introducing Brazil nuts with unique sweet and savoury flavours.

Entrepreneur UK talks to Gareth Lloyd, co-founder and CEO of Truly Nuts!, about the importance of continuous progress and passion in business, overcoming financial challenges through innovative funding strategies, and the importance of resilience and problem-solving for success.

What inspired you to start your business?

I've always aimed to progress in everything I've done. From a young age, I learned to play the guitar, wanted to be in a band, started doing gigs, became a disc jockey (DJ), built a sound system, and then took that system out to get paid for DJ-ing and travelling the world. Progression has been at the heart of everything I've done!

When I started in recruitment as a trainee, I wanted to learn how to manage other trainees and their development. Ultimately, I aimed to run my own business, which led to my first venture and subsequently multiple businesses.

With Truly Nuts!, we operate in a unique part of the world, specifically the Amazon jungle in Latin America. I'm highly motivated to improve the lives of those who collect nuts there and to help maintain and develop the forest's infrastructure in a way that supports the Amazon rainforest rather than detracts from it.

What was your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge? Great question. Working in Latin America, where most of our production facilities are located, presents a unique set of difficulties that I haven't encountered in other parts of the world where I've run businesses.

Culturally and linguistically, Latin America is very different from Europe, the UK or the US Legally, there's a lot more paperwork and processing involved. Financially, it's more challenging because the same level of financing available in Europe doesn't exist in Latin America.

So, while there are many challenges, I think the biggest one is securing capital. Unlike the UK, you don't have the same support from banks or financial institutions in Latin America.

Related: From Concept To Company: Dan Fabian, Founder, Ten PM

How do you stay motivated during tough times?

In terms of staying motivated when growing businesses and even through tough times, I always focus on the long-term goals that I've set. And no matter what challenges come at me, I stay focused on the short, medium and long-term goals, and really visualise those goals: what's it going to feel like when we're at that number, or at that size, or our products in those supermarkets, or our facilities are in those countries. I focus on my goals—short, medium, and long-term—for both my businesses and personal life, no matter the distractions. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Staying focused on these outcomes helps me navigate tough times.

The second thing I do is I look at how far we've come. On the first day of a startup, there's nothing to fear. By day 365, you'll have faced many challenges, but you'll also have made significant progress. Recognising and appreciating how far you've come over the year can motivate you to keep going. And finally, breaking things down into small, manageable chunks and using key milestones on every goal to reward yourself.

How did you secure your initial funding?

Regarding our initial ability to raise funding, I was fortunate enough to be in a privileged position to invest my own money, thanks to success in other ventures. Consequently, the initial capital came from both myself and my co- founder.

Also, to overcome our capital challenges, we devised various strategies to incentivize the private debt market to engage with us. These strategies ranged from coupon-based loan deals to equity arrangements, where friends who initially lent money to the business were brought on board as equity partners. Our most recent funding method is a profit participating note (PPN),

which offers investors a share of the profits from our finished products.

This innovative approach has proven highly successful in raising capital. And with a capital intensive business like producing Brazil nuts, where you have to buy all the raw products over the first four to five months of the year to run the factories all year round, that comes with its own challenges.

How do you handle failure or setbacks?

In terms of handling setbacks, I have spent the best part of 30 years developing the right mindset to deal with setbacks and failures. And now I immediately look for the opportunity within a failure: What have we learned? How does this challenge create an opportunity?

And that's really the only way I can look at things because business is about solving problems and finding the opportunity in everything. So if I think about it, it is like a challenge. I think about some of the problems that we had when we were outsourcing the production or sharing a production facility with an existing Brazil Nut producer.

We encountered numerous issues, ranging from slow delivery and theft to various other challenges you might anticipate in such a situation—working in the Amazon jungle with a partner who's not a business partner. The opportunity allowed us to build our own facility from scratch, which has been a pivotal moment for our company's growth. We equipped it with the

highest quality technology, enabling us to achieve one of the lowest, if not the lowest, production costs in the market. What began as a challenge - ultimately turned into a significant positive.

What advice would you give to people starting a business?

The best advice I could give anyone starting a business is to know yourself and know your ability to be able to deal with setbacks and your ability to be resilient. That is the fundamental part of growing businesses. Your ability to manage stressful situations positively and keep going because every setback brings you one step closer to success.

So anyone I'm working with or any partners that I have partnered with, I'm always looking to understand what challenges that they've been through previously. And how did they get through those challenges and come out the other side. Because resilience is the key.

'Trep Talk: Gareth Lloyd, co-founder and CEO of Truly Nuts!, shares tips for entrepreneurs

-Build Resilience "It's essential to develop a strong sense of resilience. I refer to this as your "resilience well" – a reserve you can draw from during tough times. Challenges and setbacks are inevitable, and without resilience, you might give up at the first, second, or even seventh obstacle. To be successful, you need to push through these tough times. I recently completed a property deal in the UK, which involved going through four different mortgage companies. Each one pulled out for various reasons, but my passion for acquiring the property and my resilience kept me going until I succeeded."

-Pursue Your Passion "Focus on things you are passionate about. Passion is closely tied to resilience; if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're less likely to stick with it through the difficulties. Steve Jobs famously said that there are too many things that can go wrong when building a company, and without a deep passion for the journey and the desired outcome, you're likely to give up."

-Hire Better Than Yourself "Always strive to hire people who are better than you in areas where you have shortcomings. Being aware of your own limitations is crucial. By bringing in individuals who can fill gaps in your skill set, you create a stronger, more capable team."

-Solve Problems "Success in business is all about problem-solving. The journey is never linear; it involves many ups and downs. Your general trajectory should be upward, even if it involves setbacks. Dream big to stay motivated and keep pushing forward."

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