Managing work/life balance as an entrepreneur with Seamus Tighe

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Welcome back to ZevoTalks. I’m your host Ashlyn. I get to talk to risk takers, thought leaders and great people making change. In today’s episode we are speaking with a young Irish entrepreneur Seamus Toig.

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He’s the founder of EverSnacks and has led the way in introducing healthy snacks to the Irish market that are affordable. So hello Seamus. Hey. Thank you very much for joining us and you’re very welcome to ZevoTalks today.

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Could you start off by telling us what Everest snacks are for anyone who doesn’t know. Okay so basically we’re a healthy snacking company. We produce a range of high quality granola cups. It’s a granola with yogurt, porridge cups and protein snack bars and we’re going to be expanding our range into more healthy snacking products in the next year or so.

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Lovely. Can you tell us how Everest snacks came about, so how you started? Yeah so just from playing sport and training my whole life it sort of had an interest in eating healthy and things like that and then I got the opportunity to get a contract for a coffee chain to make all their sandwiches, soups, salads, the lot and that went well.

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We got the trial. We got a trial with them basically for eight weeks in Dublin airport for terminal one and it went well so then we got all their cafes and so then they wanted a healthy breakfast option for their on the go sort of breakfast person in the morning and that was getting on the planes and shooting off so I didn’t have much time to hang around with so we did a bit of research and we came across like granola cups and that they served a lot of them in the airports in London and New York etc so we went around getting a high quality granola.

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up with the greek style yogurt and they started flying out of the terminal one we sent 50 of them a day and then we sort of realized that there was nothing on the retail market like that so we went about sort of seeing how we could get it set up and manufacture it at a scale so that’s sort of how it started and then we came across the Super Value Food Academy and that was the start of it then and can you tell us more than about the Super Value Food Academy and kind of what that program is like yeah no so it’s a it’s really good we had you have to go and pitch in from the sort of the buyers to get into it and I sort of put the idea across of the Everest granola cups and I brought samples with me but we had no branding or proper packaging or anything at the time it was just sort of a product in a sort of clear cup and i put my idea of whatever i wanted to get the company to and blah blah blah and the guys accepted it they liked it and then you basically go into sort of it’s nearly like a a crash course in retail and how it all works and there’s so much to it that like people who weren’t involved in the business wouldn’t really know about like even learning about SKUs KPIs the whole lot and SRPs everything delivery into their depot the whole lot it was a brilliant course and i suppose without it it’d be nearly impossible to learn about that side of the business without getting a job in it before yeah and was it there then that you like did you already have the name Everest i didn’t actually at the time i just pitched the idea and then i sort of had they said oh god we like your product it’s great so that was in june and i think they said right you’re going into stores in september so i was like oh god quick turner yeah it was a bit of a scramble yeah so yeah no eventually came up with the name and uh ever sort of came from the sort of peak sort of summer um high quality foods it’s sort of the highest you could get to i suppose that’s where i came from yeah then i came across dave kern design um on clown william terrace actually true the food academy they put me in touch with him he helped us come up with the brand the packaging and you know it was just once we got that sorted then it was about sourcing yeah all the packaging getting then manufacturing and getting all that done uh it was crazy thinking back at it yeah yeah so we started off in 10 shops uh delivering with a van and then basically we got that was called a local listing and then we got a dublin listing because the products were selling well then we got a regional listing which was like lenster and then eventually think yeah that started in September then by May we had we pretty much got Irish nation sorry nationwide distribution so then they took we got accepted in to go through the warehouse with Musgraves and that was brilliant it really kicked us on to the next level then it was learning how to pull the product through to make sure when it’s delivered we you deliver to their central warehouse and then it’s delivered to stores by Musgraves but you have to get reps in there and stuff like that to make sure that the products put on shelf and everything like that so learn about that was a was good as well sort of brought us to the next level and was it always your ambition to have your own business I always wanted to have my own business I suppose my parents when my dad where I would have had his own accountancy practice and as involved in another in a number of different businesses and I suppose just growing up looking at that probably made me want to get involved in my own business.

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Yeah, sort of from a young age. And do you think that maybe coming from kind of a family that was entrepreneurial gave you a benefit and like you could ask them for help or questions or advice? Yeah, 100 percent.

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It’s always been good to have someone that you could ask questions to get some advice off. And then I was put in touch with some really good people at the start of our journey with the food academy and stuff like that.

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So I could always ring them up and ask for advice. Tygo Donovan was one of them and Tygo sort of was working with us from the start. And he was great help. Yeah, he was fantastic. And without him, like it would have been very hard for us because we had no industry experience or anything like that.

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And you’re dealing with experts like the best people in the business and we didn’t have an idea about it. But we learned and we’re talking to people like Ty and then having getting business advice of my family and other people like that, friends, et cetera.

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It was invaluable. If you can’t ask for help and you don’t know what you’re doing, it would be very hard. Yeah. And does your motivation come from the desire to be your own boss or to make healthy, affordable snacks?

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It’s actually both, I suppose. As I was telling you, I sort of always had an interest in healthy eating and getting good products to the market. And then I suppose, yeah, business is something that I’m very interested in in general.

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So it would be both. I like obviously working for myself, but then definitely food and healthy eating is something that I’m really passionate about as well. And so is our company. Like we wanted us. launching products and getting them to market to grow the brand and grow our customer base.

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And in terms of products and expansion with kind of more people focusing in on dairy-free and vegan and that kind of thing is that a route that you might go down? Yeah definitely we’re going to be adding to our range maybe definitely bringing out some vegan options and one of our bars is the hazelnut and dark chocolate bar is vegan friendly but yeah no I think we have to cater for that because it’s such a growing category now at the moment it’s it’s it’s really grown legs like the vegan movement so yeah we definitely have to cater to that and we’ll be releasing products that are vegan friendly in probably the next couple of months yeah.

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If you weren’t doing this what do you think that you would be doing? I suppose I would I don’t like it. I have a strong interest in sort of building and things like that yeah so I probably would have gone into the construction sector at some point but I think that food is something as well I’ve always been passionate about so maybe something along the lines of restaurants or cafes things like that always something that would have really interested me and food healthy living maybe something along the lines of that yeah definitely I would still be in this sort of place I think yeah yeah and then something that we we’ve asked all of our guests and I guess it’s important to use all because you run a business is how do you look after your own well-being so I suppose yeah there’d be a lot of pressure owning your own business it’s true what people say like it doesn’t really leave you alone like so you will be thinking about it when you’re off and things like that and so yeah it’s probably important that you know how to unwind I try to get to the gym every day and if I can’t do that then I’ll go for a run and I suppose if I don’t do that I feel like a different person really so I think yeah training and eating healthy is so important as well like you feel so much better in yourself training and playing Gaelic football things like that yeah would be how I’d sort of look after my own well-being I suppose talking to friends as well and things like that if you keep it all bottled up and it can get very frustrating and you can feel it can feel like a lonely place sometimes when you see like all your friends that work in companies that that they can take like two three week holidays and they’re off doing this and that I suppose I haven’t really had a holiday longer than four or five days in four or five years that can be sort of frustrating and things like that so but I suppose you as you get older you learn and I think it’s just important to take time out and talk to people and do your training look after yourself take yourself away from it for a while we’ve done some work with some social media influencers.

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So what is your own thoughts on social media? What kind of impact do you think that it has in terms of maybe business and then maybe we can look at the mental health side as well. Yeah no it’s a huge huge factor in in every aspect of life now.

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Sure the amount of people like you just come home from work and you’ll be scrolling on your phone. I think I read something there a while ago was the average 25 year old scrolls like 50 feet a day or something like that on their phone.

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I could be wrong now on that but it was some crazy figure like that. But like say for example our brand ambassador with Everest is Neve Cullen and Neve’s actually she’s brilliant to work with and she’s a great role model for like young girls and and lads and she’s just brilliant because she’s really into the health and fitness.

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So it’s a perfect match for our brand but like the power that she commands to our following is it’s it’s mad and it’s just yeah it’s I think you need to be careful though as well as a company starting off that you don’t run up these costs spending so much money on social media and stuff like that probably distribution and getting your product out there is probably the most important thing and then obviously having then brand ambassadors etc to back that up is good but you can put the car before the horse and how do you think that social media has an effect on your own life do you use it much or yeah I suppose can drive people mad like when you see they can give you a fear of missing out things like that and I suppose it’s it’s good to try use it as a positive tool rather than sort of making you think these unrealistic things I suppose people always say they look at bloggers etc like that and they see them living these lives they want to be like that exactly yeah and I think that’s what drives people mad mostly and trying to achieve those sort of things when they’re not they’re not say real yeah as such like their day-to-day lives aren’t really like that they’re just pictures or stories so I think people need to realize that and if they did if they don’t you could drive yourself crazy trying to do the do these things by these things and you know I definitely see how it can have a a negative impact on people’s mental health but then there’ll be people on it as well that can inspire people and really have positive impacts on people’s lives I’m sure you probably know loads of positive things like people see I think there’s been like a kind of a change in in terms of like what I see based off of people that I’ve followed and unfollowed.

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So I think it’s their own responsibility to unfollow accounts that have a negative impact on us. And if we’re constantly looking at someone being like, I wish I had their life, that’s something that I need to obviously take responsibility and say, well, I need to not follow them anymore.

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So I think we all have our own responsibility to do that in order to change kind of our thoughts and stuff. Yeah, I’d be on my phone pretty much the whole day between work and yet basically like I do a lot of my work on my phone, just calling people, sending emails.

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But then like, say if you’re talking to, like say your parents or whatever, you can be sending emails on your phone or doing work things, but people just think you’re texting or they don’t, they think you’re not paying attention to them or whatever like that.

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But it’s so important to try, actually pull it away for a while and live your life normally. Because they can like and another thing is as well, you know emails People are expecting you like a rapid response now because everyone knows that like you have access to it like that Yeah, but like no one five ten years ago People weren’t like that and Finland bringing in the four-day working week or yeah,

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or six-day working day, which Sounds great that but because they knew right say the Friday was that the day off that they had That they’d Monday to Thursday they had to get everything done in that time frame that they just worked more efficiently and that they were more productive with their time and They prioritized things with the title deadlines and and stuff.

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I think that eventually it’s I think especially Being a millennial and the generation that’s coming up next into the workforce I almost think that a four-day workweek is gonna be what they expect because I just think that they’ve a completely different mindset of how Things should work and the benefits that even companies offer now are so much more and they’re more important to a Person looking for work than they were years and years ago Like you just wanted a job you didn’t matter if you got your gym membership paid for or if you got like free lunch or whatever It was I think the benefits now and and that kind of thing are more you want to attract More people to work for you and like the best kind of people.

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So a four-day workweek would definitely something I think that would attract a lot of people and good working people as well. And I suppose technology Makes everything so much quicker. So possibly you could get everything done in four days And I think that’s actually a good point that you made that People know that they’re just in Monday to Thursday and they have to get this done by then.

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Yeah It’s probably stricter deadlines, etc. Probably would work. Yeah, I suppose We have you on record now The benefits that the tech companies are offering now is they’re incredible so and within your own company then how do you practice wellness and and what kind of do your staff do to practice wellness?

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I think it’s actually a probably a big issue for small companies starting off that they don’t have the resources to help all their employees and things like that compared to larger companies so it’s something that we need to look into more to try help our employees and with their wellness and everything like that but I know everyone that works with Everest is their fit and healthy and they do their own training and stuff like that but there’s definitely more we can do as a company to like build the team and morale and everything like that because we’re just so busy all the time it’s go go go and we don’t take time to do these sort of things but I suppose it’s important to step back and try and prove that so it’s one of our goals for 2020 to improve the team spirit and wellness in the company and hopefully we’ll get there Yeah,

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I think startups it’s all about the grind kind of. Yeah, you’re trying to to build into your growing and I think it’s like the growing pains. It’s probably the last in your list at the moment. Yeah, but I suppose if everyone was If you noticed a morale dip and that kind of thing I suppose and but I guess once you’re conscious of it It’s always good.

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Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like starting off a business. It’s hard So everyone’s always sort of really we’re pushing pushing pushing the whole time So it’s a you know, definitely something that we need to put plans in place to get to that our well-being is being looked at and everything like that for everyone because I like as you say it improves productivity and General health of the company as well.

Unknown speaker

Yeah, thank you so much for talking to us today. Thank you very much Thank you for listening to another episode of Ziva Talks. We would like to thank Seamus for joining us today At such a young age Seamus has played a role in making Ireland that bit healthier Tune in next time to listen to more influential people making positive changes in Ireland