How do you answer when someone asks: "So, what do you do?" As a vegan business, we're all really excited about our companies. But how do you get someone else excited about your business when you've only got a really short amount of time to explain what you do? Maybe you've got 60 seconds to introduce your company at a networking event. Or perhaps you've got just the time it takes an elevator to go between two floors to tell your dream contact what it is you do. What do you say?!David gives you seven fundamental points that every 'elevator pitch' needs to have - starting by explaining what problem you solve for your customer rather than just saying what you do, through to how embracing your vegan mission might be the most powerful way you could ever introduce yourself.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How two of our Vegan Business Tribe members hit their crowdfunding target. We recently teamed up with CrowdfunderUK to take a group of our Vegan Business Tribe members through a crowdfunding programme. In this episode, we follow-up with Victoria from Happy Carrot Skincare and Laura from Primary Veducation about how they hit their targets. What is really interesting though is where the money came from. For Victoria, she already knew most of the people who backed her project or they were already customers. For Laura, the majority of the backers were complete strangers.David speaks to both about how they decided how much money they thought they could raise, how they kept the momentum going through their campaigns and what they would do differently if they were trying to hit bigger targets.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you find your niche as a vegan business?  If you think you are already a niche company just because you are a vegan company then I'm afraid you're at least five years too late. 'Vegan' is just the sector you are in and if you want to find your niche, then you are going to have to dig deeper.A niche is something that a lot of the population won't care about but a select, smaller percent of people will absolutely LOVE. And if you do it right, you can develop a company that has pretty much no competition. In this episode, David takes a look at how businesses find their niche and why just thinking you have found a gap in the market isn't enough.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How the pandemic has turbo-charged the vegan market place. Before the pandemic, half of all UK adults already said they had adopted some form of vegan buying behaviour - such as having meat-free days or choosing plant milk over dairy. But a recent survey by The Vegan Society also found that 1 in 5 people in the UK cut down on eating meat as a result of the pandemic, supercharging the plant-based sector even further. We know that Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease, or rather it is a disease transferred from animals, usually as a result of eating them, farming them or wildlife trading. And with three-quarters of the world’s new infectious diseases emerging this way, a lot more people are examining our species' relationships with animals. This is now playing out on the supermarket shelves, in the food and the products that people are buying. What does that mean for the meat industry? What does it mean for consumer buying behaviour? And what does it mean for your vegan business?About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

What is a marketing funnel, and how do you create one to get more customers? If you understand the journey your customers take before they buy, if you map out the steps that someone has to take to become a customer, then you can develop strategies to move people along those steps instead of just leaving it to chance.This is what we call a marketing funnel - but don't think that people will move through your funnel on their own. Some will, but the vast majority won't. In this episode, David takes a look at the three stages of a marketing funnel, how you can take customers from the top to the bottom, and (if your funnel isn't working) where people are probably getting stuck.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Why do so many of us absolutely HATE selling and how do you get over it? Why do we have such a revulsion to selling ourselves? Being vegan, we're not usually afraid to push a cause - but promoting ourselves or making money from the vegan sector seems to really make us feel uncomfortable. Your experience of 'sales' is probably someone trying to pressure you to buy something that you were not really sure you needed or even wanted - but that's not sales, at the best that's scamming people. If you genuinely believe that your product or business will improve someone's life or solve a significant problem that they have, then it is your duty to help that person become a customer so you can solve their problem. In this episode, David takes a look at how you can reframe 'selling' into 'helping', and how to develop your own confidence in your product and your pricing (did we mention that membership to Vegan Business Tribe is equivalent to buying a coffee a week from your local cafe?!). Because if you don't overcome your aversion to selling then you will always be holding back, you will never be giving your business your best shot.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How to get the most out of having a stall at a vegan fair or market. If you are trying to get your business 'out there' then sometimes the best way to do that is to literally 'get out there'. For some companies, vegan fairs are one of their main routes of selling their products to the public, others do it to build an audience, but one of the main reasons to do your local fair is to get real one-on-one engagement with customers that you won't get anywhere else. If you are early-on in your business and struggling to work out why people are not buying your product - then go take a stall at your local vegan fair! It won't surprise you that many huge brands and business multi-millionaires started out on market stalls because this is where you can do all your first-hand research to work out exactly what REAL people want and think about your products. David takes a look at how to make the most from taking a stall at one of these events and what strategies you can use to find new customers, even if they don't actually buy from you on the day.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you crowdfund a vegan business? How easy is it and what does it take to hit your target? The truth is less than 25% of crowdfunding campaigns are successful. 10% of campaigns don't receive a single pledge.In March 2021, Vegan Business Tribe teamed up with CrowdfunderUK to help a group of vegan businesses owners go through a collective crowdfunding programme. In this episode, we share everything that the group learnt about rewards-based crowdfunding, including how to work out how much money you are likely to be able to raise, which platform you should use, and what it takes to get your crowdfunding campaign over the line.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

You can't just sit there waiting for motivation to happen. Because it just doesn't, that's not how it works. If you wait to do something until the motivation to do it manifests itself, then you're still going to be sat there waiting this time next year.To understand how motivation works, you first need to understand how the human brain works. There is no such thing as a naturally motivated person, those with motivation have a strategy in place to first get motivated and then stay that way. In this episode, David looks at how you can trick your brain to motivate itself and then use techniques such as accountability groups to keep you going. And if your business is firmly rooted in the vegan cause, then you also have a whole extra toolbox to keep you motivated.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

We share what worked (and what didn't) from our first year of building Vegan Business Tribe. Few people wake up with an idea for a business and then just go out and build their vision. It doesn't work like that because you don't start out with all the pieces. Lisa and David never meant to launch Vegan Business Tribe, they actually set out with a completely different idea entirely. And to celebrate our first year anniversary, David tells the story of where Vegan Business Tribe came from, how it grew so quickly, and how testing the concept proved that all our assumptions about what we THOUGHT people wanted were utterly and completely wrong!About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Is there a guideline for how much money a vegan business should allocate to marketing? Maybe you're planning a business and you want to know how much you need to budget each month for marketing costs. Or maybe you want to know what a reasonable percentage of your turnover would be to put back into generating sales? Surely there's a recommended percentage that companies allocate to marketing?The truth is, what each business needs to spend on acquiring new customers is wildly different. Would you launch a business if you had no idea how much it cost to make your product? No, of course not. So why would you launch a business without spending the same time working out how much it was actually going to cost you to get a customer?About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you build up a mailing list? How do you get people to give up their email address? One of the big problems we see with vegan businesses is that they are just not talking to a big enough audience. In this episode, David looks at how you can take a mailing list from a couple of hundred subscribers to several thousand, and what strategies you can put in place to make sure your list keeps growing.Do 'lead magnets' work? Do sign-up forms on your website actually get sign-ups? Should you just buy new contacts? And if you have thousands of followers on social media, how do you get those people off your Instagram page and into your email list so that you can actually start having conversations with them?About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

We talk a lot about success, but what about the taboos in business that EVERYONE goes through but few talk about? Business failure, debt, mental health pressures, hidden disabilities... We bring together three successful vegan entrepreneurs to have an honest discussion about these things that we don’t talk about in business.In this playback from a live panel as part of VegfestUK online, we approach the subject with some much-needed honesty about the journey that business owners and those running a business actually go through. That might be the mental health toll of running a business, dealing with the reality of debt and business failure and how to get through it, or living and working with disabilities that might be invisible to others.Hosted by David, we are joined by three vegan entrepreneurs who have each successfully overcome their own struggles in business: Mike Hill from One Planet Pizza, Blue O’Connor from Kings Grooming, and our own Lisa Fox.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

If you are a vegan business, how do you compete with the big brands launching products into the vegan marketplace at the moment? The Vegan Galaxy chocolate bar, the Greggs Sausage Roll - they have years of brand recognition, huge marketing budgets and agreements with retailers to get the best shelf-placement?Trying to beat them using their rules isn’t going to work. You can’t just say you make a better product because they can use their marketing power to convince customers otherwise. But you have three advantages over these brands: your ethics, your knowledge of vegan customers and your mission. You have a burning desire to create a fairer, cruelty-free world, meaning you can connect with your customers in a way they simply cannot: when you have a vegan business, lives are literally at stake.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

The power of collaboration: How linking up with other vegan businesses will make you both more successful. 'Vegan' is not just an industry sector, it's a movement and we know that we can achieve more together. Maybe you sell vegan handbags and you link-up with someone selling vegan shoes. Or you sell LinkedIn training and you collaborate with a vegan photographer who does professional headshots. Or you sell vegan doughnuts so you team-up with your local brewery to make the perfect match-up to their vegan beer. There are lots of ways you can collaborate with other businesses to create a bigger story for both of you - and sometimes, to create a bigger mission.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you find, approach and work with a vegan influencer to promote your business? And what will they want in return? An influencer is just someone who has brought together an audience of people who are interested in a specific topic, and if you find the right influencer, they may be the conduit to a perfect ready-made audience for your business. Influencers aren't just YouTubers or Instagram stars. They may have email lists, blogs, podcasts or run live events.So let's take a look at how vegan influencers operate, how you can find them, how to contact them and what they will want in return. And if you DO want to work with influencers to promote your business, it's important to understand not only how they earn a living, but also how they built up their audience in the first place. About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you make sure that your product, and business, is 100% vegan? Ever wondered why apples are so shiny? Ever wondered what alcohol is filtered through? Ever thought about how they get refined sugar so white? Animal-derived products and ingredients have permeated every corner of our world. They are cheap, they are gruesome and often they are hidden - and it's your duty to make sure they don't get into your products. And if your business doesn't make a product, there are still lots of ways you can embrace your vegan credentials - from the handwash in your washrooms through to the suppliers your business buys from.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Do you feel like a fraud in business? Are you worried someone is going to find you out? Do you have an internal voice like this always questioning if you’re good enough? If so, this is something we really need to talk about. Because it’s not something that is unique to you – it’s called ‘Imposter Syndrome’.Not only do we need to talk about it - but we need to talk about how to overcome it because it will always hold you back. EVERYONE has it, in fact a 2007 study showed that 70% of us will suffer from impostor syndrome. So how do you get over it? Well, the answer might not be what you are expecting!About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

(Part two) Recorded live at VegfestUK, we bring together three experts in funding vegan businesses in this special two-part episode. In part one we heard from Nick Mayhew of VFin, who compares both the traditional and modern ways of raising money, and Claire Smith, founder of Beyond Animal and Beyond Investing who is herself an impact investor. In part two, David speaks with Mike Hill, co-founder of One Planet Pizza who talks about his first-hand experience of raising money as the company grew. Finally, after the interviews, we then bring all the experts together to answer questions that were submitted by members of Vegan Business Tribe which you really don't want to miss, because there is just as much information in the Q&A session at the end as the individual interviews.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Recorded live at VegfestUK, we bring together three experts in funding vegan businesses in this special two-part episode. The money IS out there. If you have a really keen idea for a vegan business, or even better if you've already proven a vegan business and now need more funds to scale it up, then there is a lot of interest in backing vegan and plant-based businesses right now. But it might be if you don't have the contacts, or you've never tried to go out and find money before that you don't know where to start. So in this panel, I interview three experts in vegan funding: Nick Mayhew of VFin, who compares both the traditional and modern ways of raising money; Claire Smith, founder of Beyond Animal and Beyond Investing who is herself an impact investor; and Mike Hill, co-founder of One Planet Pizza who talks about his first-hand experience of raising money as the company grew. Finally, after the interviews, we then bring all the experts together to answer questions that were submitted by members of Vegan Business Tribe which you really don't want to miss, because there is just as much information in the Q&A session at the end as the individual interviews.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Did you know there's a secret code that vegans use on LinkedIn to find each other? In this episode I'm going to convince you why you need to be on LinkedIn as a vegan business owner or vegan professional. You might already have a LinkedIn profile, and it sits there not really doing anything and you don't see the point to it. But since Microsoft bought LinkedIn in 2016, the platform has started to become more appealing and accessible to a wider range of users. Yes, you still have your big boardroom executives using LinkedIn, but now you also have more smaller business owners and mid-level professionals.  And this is where the magic of LinkedIn can happen: those decision-makers and people in senior roles who you are unable to contact through other methods, there's a good chance that you can connect with them on LinkedIn.So today's we take a look at Linkedin, why you should be on it and how you can use it make better quality connections. We also look at the secret code that vegans use to identify and connect with each other which will hugely increase the number of connections you make.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

You may have been told that vegan is too much of a niche or a fad to launch a new product into, or it's too small a marketplace to grow a successful business. But what's the truth about that, and if that's the case why are so many vegan businesses growing so quickly right now?David takes a look at the statistics and answers the questions: 1. Just how many vegans are there right now and are there enough to sell to? And 2. If your company sells to other companies, how many vegan businesses are there that will want to buy your services?About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

The reason why some businesses fail and others succeed often comes down to one simple common element: the attitude and determination of the person running it. To learn why businesses fail, what you ACTUALLY have to learn is why successful businesses succeed and identify what's missing compared to those that don't. In today's episode, we look at why building a successful business is like running an obstacle course, with each obstacle just being another problem you need to overcome. But if you don't have the right mental attitude to learn HOW to overcome each obstacle as you hit it, then you will join the majority of the population who get stuck or just give up.  David explains how you can build an unshakable faith in your ability to learn, and why your attitude to overcoming problems dictates your chance of having a successful vegan business.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

What's going to be the next big thing in vegan, and what are the future trends you should be aware of if you have a vegan business?In part two of this two-part podcast recorded live at VegfestUK Online, I continue my discussion with Louisianna Waring, The Vegan Society's Insight & Commercial Policy Officer, and Dan Strettle owner of Alternative Stores (and vegan himself for over 5 decades) about vegan product trends. In part one, we talked about what's hot right now and where this demand in plant-based products and services is coming from - and in part two we now go on to talk about what the next BIG THING in vegan is going to be.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

What's going to be the next big thing in vegan, and what are the future trends you should be aware of if you have a vegan business?In part one of a two-part podcast, we're going to answer a REALLY big question. And that is: what's going to come next?  What's going to be the next big thing in vegan?  To answer this I am joined by Louisianna Waring, The Vegan Society's Insight & Commercial Policy Officer, and Dan Strettle who is the owner of Alternative Stores (who are based at Heather Mill's Plant-based Valley, just outside of Newcastle in the UK) and who has been vegan himself for over 5 decades.We recorded this discussion live as part of VegfestUK's Summerfest Online. In the first half, Louisianna, Dan and myself uncover where all this demand for vegan and plant-based products has come from and what's really hot right now. Then in part two (in the next episode), we look at what the growth areas are for vegan businesses, products and services and give our own tips for where the market is heading.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

To build a successful business, you need a group of followers who absolutely cannot live without your product or who believe in your vegan mission. These people will help you spread your message and attract more people who also love what you are doing. They will become your brand ambassadors. They will become your ‘tribe’.In this episode we look at why when you create a vegan company, you shouldn't just launch a business, you should start a movement.  Because having 10 customers who are absolute champions for you business and believe 100% in your company's mission is better than 100 customers who just buy from you once and you never see again. And once you've found and built your tribe, David explains how to keep them and use your tribe to help you grow a more successful business.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Veganuary can be an amazing time for your vegan business. Here are the four steps to get ready for it.In January HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people will be signing up for the Veganuary challenge. Veganuary is a worldwide movement to get people to try being vegan for 31 days every January - and although it started out small (in 2014 they had just over 3,000 people take up the challenge) it has grown every year with a staggering 400,000 people signing up through the Veganuary website in 2020. BUT, the Veganuary organisation estimate that ten times as many take on the challenge without officially signing up.What does this mean for your company? It means there is a big spike in interest for vegan and plant-based products every January. So if you have a vegan company or you sell a plant-based product or service, it means you too can tap into this rise in consumer interest in vegan every year - and leverage the publicity the campaign brings. In this episode, David walks you through the 4 steps to put together your own marketing plan for Veganuary, shows you how to get your company involved so you can support the campaign and gives some tips for things you might want to do to make the most of Veganuary.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

Join us for our vegan PR masterclass with Caroline from Eden Green PR.Today's episode is a little longer than usual because I'm sharing a masterclass that we recorded for Vegan Business Tribe with Caroline Burgess-Pike from Eden Green PR on 'how to get your vegan business in the news'. Now, one of the biggest questions we get asked at VBT is 'How do I get my business OUT THERE?' Because when you first start a vegan business, you spend a lot of time focusing on your product and your service but you don't always have those skills in place to then get your product in the news. If this is you, then we're going to change all that in this episode.So first we look at how to work out what's actually newsworthy about your business - and the truth is, your company JUST BEING VEGAN is no longer a news story. Once you've worked out what that newsworthy hook is, we then go on to talk about the practical side of getting your business in the news: how to approach editors of magazines and online news outlets, how to connect with influencers on Instagram and YouTube, all the really hands-on practical stuff. This is really one to listen to with your notebook nearby!About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!

How do you REALLY find more customers for your vegan business? Let's go right back to basics and find out.In this episode we are looking at something which is the LIFEBLOOD of any vegan business, and that is finding customers. And it doesn't matter if you sell a physical product, or if you offer a vegan service, or even if you are a charity looking for donations - you RELY on people giving you their money. And this is where many vegan businesses falter. Because, and I've said it before, vegans don't seem to be comfortable making money! But we all need customers and, usually, we all need more of them.So - we're going to get right back to basics. You might be wondering about the best way to find customers, should you be using Instagram, should you be doing PR, or should you try some appointment-making telemarketing or Google Pay Per Click advertising - and the reality is, if this is where you are starting when trying to work out how to get more customers then you need to just STOP. Because do you know what is completely missing from your planning? UNDERSTANDING THE CUSTOMER.If you don't, then all you're doing is guessing what will work, and you hit nothing by shooting in the dark.About Vegan Business TribeHosted by Vegan Business Tribe co-founder, David Pannell. Lisa & David have worked with some of the largest high-street brands and food manufacturers to help them understand and connect with the vegan marketplace. David is also the official UK agent for The Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark and Lisa writes the monthly business column in Vegan Food & Living - the biggest vegan print publication in the UK.Vegan Business Tribe is where they give back with weekly content, seminars, business clinics, networking events, mentoring and online courses to help you create a successful vegan business. If you want to go beyond the podcast and connect with our community of like-minded vegan entrepreneurs or get support from Lisa & David, then head over to www.veganbusinesstribe.com where you will be welcomed with open arms!