Start-up to Scale-up with Channel 4 Ventures: Overcoming the Challenges of being an Underrepresented Founder with Grace Ubawuchi

Grace Ubawuchi is the trailblazing founder and CEO of the award-winning cocktail brand Xin and Voltaire. Grace shares her inspiring journey of creating a disruptive offering in the food and beverage industry, leveraging her youthful fearlessness and problem-solving mindset to over come the challenges of being an underrepresented founder. Grace shares her approach to securing investment, demonstrating how persistence and creativity can open doors for entrepreneurs. It is a must-listen for any aspiring entrepreneur.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST   If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Grace Ubawuchi on Linkedin, Instagram Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list,  Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter   Transcript Teresa: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Your Dream Business podcast. This is the fourth. episode in the special Channel 4 Ventures series that I am doing. [00:01:00] And today I am interviewing Grace. Now, Grace is the founder and CEO of award winning cocktail brand Zinn Voltaire. And for years, Grace has been dedicated to pushing boundaries and redefining the cocktail drinking experience, harnessing innovation in food technology, science to create a disruptive offering in the world of F& B. Now, the thing that struck me the most when interviewing Grace is She's in her 20s and it made me feel very old being a 45 year old woman and having only started my business 10 years ago. But what was so fascinating about her and what was so inspiring about this conversation and something that I have seen all the way through with, you know, Tom, the conversation yesterday, Tom almost said something identical. Sam says or something almost identical the day before was they identified a problem and they thought. Why isn't someone fixing this? And this is exactly what Grace did. She saw a problem [00:02:00] that she wanted to elevate the kind of cocktail experience and where you could access cocktails and what they were about. And she couldn't understand why anybody wasn't doing this already. So she decided that she would fix it. And what was just amazing was imagine Now, I have stepchildren who are 21 and 27, I think she is now, and my daughter is 15. And if you are a parent, you will know that, like, they get to that age and they think, like my daughter thinks I'm an absolute stupid idiot and she knows everything. She's way smarter than me. And also they take different risks or they're not bothered as, as other things. It's like. I think as you get older, what I'm trying to say is as you get older, I think you get really conscious of like, okay, what if this goes wrong? What will happen? And I think what was one of Grace's best advantages is that she was young. So she thought nothing of just thinking, right, I'll [00:03:00] fix this. I'll make this. I'll do this. She talked about, the stories of how she guessed people's email addresses and just reached out to them. And when you find out some of the companies that she was having conversations with, and some of the people that she was in front of, it's wild to think that she just thought, screw it, I'll just send them an email. And I think sometimes as business owners and as humans, we don't want to take that risk because the thought of being told no, the thought of being turned down, the thought of being ignored. And I think her age helped her have that. And I think also there is, one thing I talked about her and, and And Tom, I felt the same, was like, their brain must work in a certain way that makes them just go, let's fix this. I think there are lots of people who wouldn't think that, that wouldn't look at a problem and think, how can I fix this? There's a lot of people that would just moan about the problem. And both of them really inspired me from, they just went, how am I going to fix this? And I wonder whether there's like a certain trait or something in [00:04:00] those, people that they have, their brain works in a certain way. Anyway, I digress slightly. So we talk about the random emails that she sent and how she got in front of some huge people. She also talked about the fact of how she basically pitched the product when there was no actual product. She hadn't even done a prototype to a massive company and how she got through the door, which was fascinating. And then we talk about the fact of, did she know she needed to start. Did she know she needed investment from day one and that and what like? I think it's really interesting the businesses that kind of go day one, I need investment and the ones that don't even think about investment being an option where she knew she had this amazing idea and she had this brilliant company thought, but she needed money to get started. So she knew from day one, she needed to have investment and how she went about finding that being in a world where. She didn't know that existed. So it's a really fascinating conversation. I found her super inspiring. I think you'll [00:05:00] love her. I did. I thought she was awesome. So without further ado, here is the lovely Grace. Grace, welcome to the podcast. How you doing? Grace: I'm good. I'm good. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited about this. Teresa: My pleasure. So am I. So Grace, let's start off just for my listeners. Tell us who you are and what you do, and how you kind of got to do what you do today. Grace: Amazing. I've always found that to be the hardest question. I feel like now it's such a philosophical thing, but briefly, so I'm Gracie Ubawuchi, obviously I am the founder of Stina Walter's Pair. We are an avant garde alcohol brand, and we make what we've referred to as high proof sorbet cocktails, which are essentially high proof frozen cocktails. I was lucky enough to work with a very inspiring woman called Nina Mettier. For about two years to develop our products. And I think we have a really incredible range of flavors that we're proud to put out into the world with some more coming, of course. So how did I get here? Uh, putting one foot in front of [00:06:00] the other. I was a uni student. When I, when I started and now fast forward, like seven, eight years, it's well into well, not well into my twenties, but almost 30. Yeah. For me, it was just by inquisitive nature. I loved cocktails and like you do. And I wanted more, I wanted more outside of the bar. I wanted to be able to have it in all the different occasions that you do and you find yourselves in. And so for me, it was. Well, who's doing it? And I found nobody doing it. And so one person who was at Diageo at the time said, why are you asking us to do it? Why don't you just go do it yourself? And so I thought, actually, yeah, why, why don't I just go do it myself? And, and yeah, now here I am doing it myself, but luckily with an incredible team of people who are, who are kind of the foundations of the business. Teresa: So, I love the way you talk about, you know, yeah, I'm just doing it myself. Like, I definitely think there is something in someone's [00:07:00] brain that either has that or they don't. Like, lots of people don't think like that. Lots of people don't go, Oh yeah, no, why isn't this thing like this? Or let me change that. Let me create something. And also to be in a business that is like, this doesn't seem an easy thing to get into. When you first thought, okay, do it myself, had you already got people in place that you could talk to or what were you doing at uni just out of interest? Grace: So I was studying business and international relations. So I was on my second year and to, do you want me to dive into the question? Because I think, yes, to be honest with you, yeah. Basically, for me, it was quite, I've always been a problem solver, so I called myself at the time, which seems so silly, but I called myself a solutions provider, which was whenever I see an issue, it would frustrate me to just bang on about it, right? I just [00:08:00] loved, so what's the solution here? Oh, you know, this is going wrong. So how do we fix it? And so I've always been that person. And so for me, I hated when I didn't have an answer to everything. And so if I didn't have one, I just went out and found it myself. Cause I just, I think, I think that's the naivety that you find in young people. We, we kind of just feel like the world is our oyster and we can just do everything. And And so I think that was the...