Be More Rory

I first met Rory at the Bristol Vegan Fair last year. He came to our Vegan Business Tribe stand and told me about an idea he had to create a vegan game company as a way to educate people about veganism and climate change. I thought it was a brilliant idea and told him to do it!

He signed-up with the Tribe, we kept in touch, and a few months later he’d got the prototype of his first game Plants Against Veganity manufactured in time to test the concept at Vegan Camp Out in the UK. He spent the festival walking around with an usherette tray and sold just under 300 decks of cards in one weekend. 3 months later he is seeing record sales of his game month on month. He’s secured his first retail stockists, has released two expansion packs and has quit his job to work on the business full time.

I keep bumping into Rory at different events. At the Vegan Party Conference in London, he was there selling his game. At the Manchester Vegan Fair last weekend, he was there selling his game. I suspect I’ll see him at the Leeds Vegan Fair this weekend too, selling his game. And the remarkable thing is, he doesn’t have any expensive stand graphics (he has no stand graphics at all) just a pile of his boxes on a plain table and a card payment machine. But what he does have, is Rory.

And you can learn a lot from Rory: he had a good idea, tested it, proved it, then put everything he had into scaling it fast. He focussed on selling face-to-face during the testing phase so that he could get instant feedback and learn how to sell his product (watching Rory on his stand, he asks the same opening question to everyone who stops and then has two pitches depending on their answer). He’s replaced a lack of marketing budget with self-belief, energy and momentum.

So my message this week is ‘Be More Rory’. Often, the thing holding back your business is you, not lack of money or lack of time. But what that means is the thing that can propel your business forwards is also… you.

David 💚🐷🌍