Tessa Court (00:04):

Welcome to the Brand Intelligence Podcast, the show where we pull back the curtain on some of the world’s smartest brands. We will dig into how great brand marketing is the flywheel for growth and how to manage brand compliance and governance while growing a business. I’m your co-host Tessa Court, and today we’re taking a deep dive into the world of mushroom agriculture, brand extensions, white labelling to big grocery and food compliance. Joining me to discuss all things ag marketing and branding will be my good friend and partner in crime, Georgia Beatty, who’s the CEO of Bulla Farms and Mushrooms Saloon, your newest brand. Welcome, Georgia. All

Georgia Beattie (00:38):

Right. It’s so good to be here. Thanks, Tessa.

Tessa Court (00:41):

Yeah, it’s great to see you. I think the last time I saw you, we were on top of Mountain. That’s right. Skiing in the sun. So it’s nice to see you here in the studio

Georgia Beattie (00:50):

Being all professional.

Tessa Court (00:51):

Exactly, exactly. So I guess a couple things before we start, we’d love to talk about a theme song. I am one of those people. I think everybody has a theme song that sums up the way we live or what we think or what motivates them. Mine is proud Mary, as you know, because it was my wedding song and lots of other fun things have happened to that song. But what is yours and what do you love about it?

Georgia Beattie (01:14):

So I found it really difficult to choose a song and because I’ve got quite a varied taste in music, but I did after a little while as I love the arts and I mean I go to the M S O every week, sorry, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra every week. So I could have gone down the bark or Beethoven’s Nights sort of path, but I decided on a show tune and something that’s really sort of over performative, but it’s a song that I listened to if I’ve had a bit of a rough day and I need something to sort of bring me back to me. And so it’s called This Is Me, and it’s actually from The Greatest Showman, the movie, which I don’t think I’ve actually watched the whole thing of, but I love this song. So I’ll send it to you so you can have a play. But can I read you a couple of lines from it? Of course

Tessa Court (02:07):

You can. Of course you can.

Georgia Beattie (02:10):

And these are some of the things that resonate with me because it’s sort of acceptance of yourself and your flaws and self-love and not being afraid to be seen and standing up for something. So there’s a line here, let me read a couple of lines, look out, because here I come and I’m marching to the beat I drum. I’m not scared to be seen. I make no apologies. This is me. And it’s just this, I love this song, particularly if I’m had a big day and I’m driving back from the farm and I’ve got a lot of time to myself in the car. It’s a really song. So that’s my song.

Tessa Court (03:01):

That’s awesome. And I do love show tunes. I love all show tunes. And I think that really describes you when we met. So we met 13 years ago at a women’s technology accelerator. I was think 43. You were 28, you were young, you just had started your own business. And I just can’t remember how I was so impressed with the fact that you had your own company at 28. I started Intelligence Bank I think when I was 40, and I just couldn’t even imagine being 28 and having your own business and exporting wine to China and doing all those cool things that you did. Can you talk about how you started with, so before you got into mushrooms and branding mushrooms, which I think is an incredibly hard thing to do, branding a commodity. Tell me about your journey with building a singles serve wine brand, and what was it and what did you do and how were you successful because you ended up selling it I think a couple years later. So that was an awesome journey for you.

Georgia Beattie (03:59):

Yeah, I mean it wasn’t a couple of years in the business. It was longer and it was hard. I mean, the whole business came from a place of naivety really. And I guess it’s really different when you start a business when you’re 40 and you’ve got this consciousness and you are planned and you know what you’re doing. Where I was just sort of like, let’s give this a go. And so

Tessa Court (04:18):

I think you have a mortgage. I think you have a mortgage when you’re 40. I think you don’t necessarily have one when you’re 25 mortgage.

Georgia Beattie (04:24):

That’s the difference, right? A life that you like living where Yeah, it’s true. I had nothing to lose. And so I was just having an absolute swing, which I think is the fantastic thing about entrepreneurship, particularly in your twenties. And you see a lot of big founders starting businesses when they’re that age because they’ve got a blue sky on the risk that they’re happy to take. But remember, I studied entrepreneurship over in the state, so I came back here. And so I was ready to start a business and I was at a music festival and I brought one of the glasses along, so you can see, got it on my bookcase at home. I should have brought some mushrooms in. That’d be more sort of helpful. So this is one of the glasses. So I was at this music festival and they wouldn’t serve me a glass of wine, so I thought I’d solve all the world’s problems of Are you underage poverty under age?

(05:13):

No, I was not underage, Tessa, come on. I was just out of uni. I was 22 and I started the company straight after that. And so I went home and got a plastic glass, put wine in it and ironed a bit of foil onto it, and that was my prototype. And then I somehow raised over a million bucks and had this factory and this business just got so much bigger than I ever thought that it could. And I was just sort of, rather than having the attitude of measuring up risk and going for something in a very sort of planned and executed way I do in my business now, I was just throwing things at the wall and seeing if they would stick. And a lot of them did so, so I ended up having sort of a factoring that would, one side would injection mould this glass and the other side would put wine in it and seal it. And then we’d put them into hotel minibar and airlines all around the world. And it was fun. It was a really fun business…

Listen to the full episode to see even more great conversation between Georgia Beattie and Tessa Court…