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SCOTT OXFORD: 00:02.046 G'day, I'm Scott Oxford. Welcome to Brand Jam, the podcast where, you know, we jam about brand, because brand is our jam.

SCOTT OXFORD: 00:12.493 Today I'm jamming with Phillip Di Bella, director at the eponymously named Di Bella group of companies. And if you like your Brand Jam with coffee rather than tea, then Phillip is your man. And surely, it's time someone made a coffee-flavoured jam, hey? Full of caffeine, of course, and that's going to be his next challenge. Phillip's a highly respected business entrepreneur, with the exciting ability to visualise and commercialise what others miss. Though initially know for the establishment of Di Bella Coffee, which became Australia's largest specialty coffee company, Phillip's entrepreneurial spirit has brought success to other businesses, such as international coffee traders, Abbotsford Road specialty coffee in New York, and more recently, The Coffee Commune, which we're going to dive into in this episode. Not satisfied with simply focusing on building his own successful businesses, Phillip has dedicated much time to supporting the growth and development of other businesses. Often referred to as an entrepreneur-in-residence, Phillip regularly lends his strategic thinking to businesses like BDO Consulting, helping their clients overcome challenges, seeing the opportunities, and then supporting the commercialisation of these solutions. Phillip's further extended his commitment to the coaching and mentoring of other businesses through the establishment of The Coffee Commune. It's a business dedicated to the long-term development, sustainability, and success of the broader coffee industry, for all participants, for everyone involved. And we're going to talk about that. Through The Coffee Commune, Phillip enthusiastically shares his experience and knowledge of the coffee industry, and continues his passion for encouraging improvement and inspiration in others. Phillip is a brand himself, and a passionate brand evangelist. His name has been part of my coffee drinking for as long as I can remember, and I'm stoked to finally meet him, and welcome him to Brand Jam today. So welcome, Phillip.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 02:00.985 Scott, thank you.

SCOTT OXFORD: 02:02.535 So I've had more Di Bella coffees in my life than I could ever count, in cafes, in drive-throughs, at home, in my machine. Your name is a brand. I mean, you're a brand, but your name is a brand. Your surname is a major brand, and it's obviously made your family famous. How do they feel about that?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 02:20.656 Yeah, well firstly, thanks for your patronage, because if people don't choose to drink our product, then we don't have a brand, and we certainly don't have a business. But look, as a son of migrants, my parents are obviously very proud. They migrated here over 60 years ago. My brother and sister were born in Italy. My dad jokes that four people came on a boat with only two suitcases. They spent three months on a boat migrating, and of course, to see myself achieve success, with the name, and it's Italians being very patriotic, and they're very big believers in the whole name and leaving a legacy, then they're stoked. And I have to say, it's one of the best successes for me. Achieving success is seeing that your parents are proud and happy, and they're alive today, thank god, and they're around to see that and enjoy it, and yeah, puts a smile on their face when they're off to their doctor's appointment. You get to that age, at 85 and 77, the updates from Mum and Dad, when I ring them three times a week, if what doctor's appointment they've got and how the weather's affecting their health. But when they're off to the doctors, and they see the surname, yeah, it makes them quite chuffed, so it makes me proud, too.

SCOTT OXFORD: 03:21.385 Yeah, absolutely. And look, an incredible decision, to pack your family up and move, particularly when Italians-- all my Italian friends are richly proud of being Italian. And yet, pack up and leave, with a promise of opportunity, and then to see you actually make something of that, and now sort of share it-- was there ever a decision to call it anything but?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 03:47.391 Yeah, look, I have to say, I mean, I'm 46 now. I started the company when I was 26, so next year it'll 20 years. Obviously, I've sold it now, but I started in 2002. And I have to say, I was still at the end of the era of where being Italian and being a wog was still a little bit uncomfortable. It was right on that cusp where-- my brother and sister went through it more. "Oh, you're a wog, you're Italian." "Oh, you guys eat funny foods. Why are you eating those rotten tomatoes?" And now Australians go and pay $80 a kilo for them so we have the laugh. Salami and mortadella back then wasn't as cool and funky as it is now. And focaccia, well, they couldn't even pronounce it. People still struggle with the word, bruschetta, right?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 04:25.918 So I was at the cusp at the end of that and so it was a little bit of this, "What do we call it? What do we not call it?" And I have to be totally honest, and I don't think I've ever shared this before so here's something new for the listeners. My first name is Grimach. And if you think of it now, and knowing what I know 20 years later about brands, Grimach just would not have cut it. Grimach was a mixture of grinder and a machine which is what makes a cup of coffee. Yeah. And now I talk about brands are emotional engagement, they generate emotion, they're memorable, they allow you to have an emotive. Grimach would just not have cut it, so. But I have to say, Dibella, it still gets called Dibella, Dibello. There's no O on the end; it's an A. The Di in the Dibella I can understand but the Dibello I certainly don't understand. Look, in hindsight we made the right decision.

SCOTT OXFORD: 05:20.071 I think so. And everybody's wondering who this Diane Bella is. G'day, Di. It's a very Aussie kind of way of looking at it, isn't it?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 05:29.762 Yeah. Very true. Well, with the hyphen and no hyphen-- and I have more issues with my name than you can imagine because my Italian name is Filippo with F-I-L-I-P-P-O. It's spelled D-I space B-E-L-L-A and if the Filippo doesn't throw them, because the Australian version is Philip-- coming through Customs is a bit of fun. My licence says Philip, my passport says Filippo. Bank accounts, well, some say Philip, some say Filippo. The Di Bella throws them because some put the-- they put the space in or they don't.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 05:56.976 But, hey, I suppose it is part of your brand and like I said, you fast forward now and you look at how funky it is to have a European-- and, let's face it, what makes Australia amazing is we're over 250 different nationalities which is phenomenal, right? And, of course, not forgetting the ancestry before and the Aboriginal community and all the rest of it, of course, but Australia as we know it today, founded from the Aboriginal, fast forward to over 250 nationalities. That's what makes Australia such a unique and amazing place in the world.

SCOTT OXFORD: 06:26.710 Yeah. Absolutely. And there is no one dominant kind of, sort of group that has come to this country that has sort of overtaken it. You see in places like San Francisco that were very heavily founded in the Chinese community, in particular, and other places. But, yeah, we are this sort of rich melting pot. And it's interesting what you say about that, culturally, there was positives and negatives back when you were kind of getting going. And we've always loved Italian cars, though, haven't we?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 06:59.807 We have.

SCOTT OXFORD: 07:00.258 In Australia we've always had a real passion for those and--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 07:04.093 Yeah. Food, cars, fashion. Italian is very popular and leads the way in a lot of ways. And [in each?] nationality, the Germans are known for, obviously, what they're doing around technology and all the rest of it, the Asian countries for manufacturing. Everyone's got a strength in that and that's what makes Brand Australia quite unique, right? In the spirit of what-- you're a professional at talking brand and, Brand Australia is unique. And sometimes we probably don't speak about it enough. What is it that makes Australia such a unique place? What makes it? And then I think that people have got to remember that that's a foundation and what goes wrong with a lot of companies, a lot of businesses, a lot of countries is they actually forget the foundation of their brand. And again, I always talk about brand as an emotional engagement. What emotion does it evoke? And I love Australia for that reason. I've travelled the globe with coffee and it's one of the reasons why I'm grateful for the industry I'm in. And I've been all over the world and I can assure you that you don't get greater Italian food in India. You get amazing Indian food, you'll get some good fusion spices and fusion Asian, but you won't get great Italian. You go to somewhere like China, you'll get amazing Chinese food, and different variants, and you'll get amazing variants of Asian fusion, but you're not going to get amazing Italian. But in saying that, Shanghai now has imported some Italians over the last 5 to 10 years, and they've got amazing Italian food. So people make products. People build brands in countries, make products and get people to engage. And that's what starts to build community. And Australia really does that and we were able to add our little bit in Australia with coffee. And that's what puts a smile on my face is we've actually-- I didn't teach people to drink coffee, we did not bring the coffee to Australia, it was here way before I was ever born, what we did is, I think we helped make coffee accessible. To make people conscious that it's part of their everyday life.

SCOTT OXFORD: 08:53.251 Yeah. Well, I'm only a couple of years older than you, but I remember when good coffee was Moccona, when you invested-- there was never any doubt that international roast was pretty much the sweepings off the floor, but Nescafe was the every day, and if you wanted a really good one you'd have a Moccona.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 09:10.502 Moccona, yeah.

SCOTT OXFORD: 09:12.105 And then, probably in my teenage years, I discovered Aromas, and Aromas was really, from my memory, the first time. Sadly not really a brand anymore.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 09:22.663 No, but they did well. They were one of the pioneers, right? Aromas was one of the pioneers, Basil's coffee, and Cosmopolitan, which was a place I actually cut my grass at working when I started at 17, which was actually ironically owned by my sister-in-law. And that's another story. But as I said, my now wife's family owned that business. Yeah, they were the three in Brisbane that were pioneering the way. So much so that Cosmopolitan used to produce - and here's another first that most people might not know - is that Cosmopolitan used to produce all the coffee for Merlo. So I used to deliver coffee to Dean Merlo's store in Queen Street. It was an amazing business, but his coffee used to be roasted for him at Cosmopolitan, and then he went on, through different circumstances, and started his own business and he's been very successful building a great coffee brand.

SCOTT OXFORD: 10:07.129 Yeah. And it is something that most of us drink every day. So that's the beauty. And there seems to be plenty of room in the market for people to do individualised and good coffee. And I think that's it. It's not just about different flavours, though, it is about origins, it's about story. And when we do talk about brand, as we said, a logo is a little badge that goes on, that helps you know that, but it's all of that rich sort of story--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 10:34.223 Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 10:35.401 --right from where it originated. And a few years ago, I was on the board of an organisation that helped plant the coffee industry in Thailand, up in the mountains above Chiang Mai where the villagers had consistently lost any of their individual rights, and their land, and restarting the coffee industry, and I think the King of Thailand even sort of gave them a special award for creating a coffee industry in Thailand. But more importantly, it empowered these villagers to actually sort of take back their livelihoods and their lives, and so that story, the power of choosing where you sort of spend your money and the product that you do, that it can evoke those. But then there's all of the love and care all the way along right from the bean, through to the roast, through to the like.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 11:27.334 It's an ecosystem. We say coffee's the second most drunk beverage in the world. Water's number one. So we didn't have to get people to drink coffee, we had to get them to choose our coffee. And that's by, again, creating that emotional engagement. And what we brought to life is-- I didn't pioneer coffee in Australia, what we pioneered was service. So we brought service to the mix, and then our initial client was the cafe owner, and then their client is our consumer. So the customer of our customer. So our customer's the cafe owner, their customer's the consumer. We always approached it from a bi-partisan approach. We always had a strategy in place for the customer, which was the cafe owner And then we helped with the strategy on the consumer, so that the consumer would drive sales to the café, and the café would buy more coffee from us. So we flipped the model around. And the story is, part of what we did out of that, was to actually create, and we were the first to do this completely in its entirety, was we built a company called Crop To Cup, and which meant that we built a separate business that actually imported. We became our own trader, back in 2010, importing coffee from all over the world. And as that started to build, what we realised is that the disconnect, it was very much segregated. You're a farmer, you produce coffee, then you ship it out, and you have no idea what happens to it. And the part of things-- and I always look at things, and how can I do it different or better? I said, "I want to actually connect the farmer to what's happening with the consumer." And we built the Crop To Cup model, which now - obviously, I had to sell that with Di Bella and to the Coffee Commune - call it plantation to consumer. It's the full ecosystem from plantation to consumer, because there's so many touch points. So what I said, listen, is, "Next time you're having that cup of coffee, and some of you might be drinking one right now, is that cup of coffee started and touches so many people's lives." And the countries that you talked about, like Thailand, there's over 45, 46 countries around the world, now, growing coffee. In 90% of those countries, it's their number one currency. So if the system falls down, if people stop drinking coffee at the consumer level, then it's not only going to affect the café, the barista, everyone that works for the café, the roaster, the importer, even down the treasury, because it's traded on US dollars, but it goes right back to the corner of where it starts, which is that farmer. And for that farmer, it's currency. It's their job. It's their livelihood. And one thing I wanted to bring to life, is that every cup of coffee has a story, and every cup of coffee touches thousands of lives along the way. And so, when someone says, "Oh, it's $4.50 for a coffee?" Well, think about how cheap that is for the amount of people that it impacts along the way. And when you start to talk that narrative, which is what people need to understand about brand. It's not only about having a brand. You've got to talk the narrative of the brand. What's the emotion behind it? What does it stand for? What does it believe in? What promise does it make? How does it leave people feeling? And that's what we wanted to do. And you can see, when I jump on podcasts or interviews, or I'm doing speeches, they expect me to talk coffee. But I actually don't. I talk principles. I talk values. Coffee's just the industry we play in.

SCOTT OXFORD: 14:08.414 And I think, a beautiful thing for someone who's growing a product like that to understand where it ends up. That idea of putting something out in the world and having no sense of where it goes and what it does. And it really cuts both ways. It's about both ends sort of to better understand that journey along the way.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 14:27.576 Yeah, and a lot of my colleagues do that now, Scott. It's fantastic. We were one of the first, if not the first, to do it in Australia, to that level. But we had the audience. We had the client base to do it. But I'm so proud, now, that my colleagues-- you can get coffee from 3,000 different places around the country now. Not cafes, 3,000 coffee businesses sell a bag of coffee. What I love about the industry now, is most colleagues are doing that. They are very respectful. Coffee, now, as a product, goes into three categories: it's crap, it's okay, or it's memorable. So if people want to sit there and tell me how great their coffee is, I'm not interested. They're the naïve ones. The industry now understands, there's crap coffee, there's good coffee, and there's memorable. And you want to be in that good and memorable space, right?

SCOTT OXFORD: 15:05.011 Indeed.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 15:05.600 But what I love is that people have evolved. Most people in this industry have evolved, and understand that it's bigger than the product, and it's not about their ego. It's about producing something that tells a story. The Italians, I was probably fortunate, because I was born in the Italian community. Coffee is a symbol of unity. If you visit an Italian, the first thing that goes on the table is coffee, and then your biscuits and all the rest of it. It's a symbol of unity. This liquid symbolises coming together. It's like a breaking of bread, so to speak. And I grew up with that, as a kid. Visitors, you'd have visitors two to five times a week in your house. First thing that goes on the table, after the tablecloth, is the cups for the coffee. By the time I could reach the stove, my parents were teaching me how to make coffee so I could make it for guests. So it's not about that product. It's about the symbol. It's what it stands for. No different when you talk about Nike. Shoes are shoes. They're comfortable, or they're not. They're functional, or they're not. What makes somebody buy Adidas, or Nike, or Reebok? There's an emotional engagement and connection. There's something that that brand stands for that evokes an emotion for you to choose it.

SCOTT OXFORD: 16:09.466 Yeah. And that's a great encouragement, I think, as we've done with our fashion, to start actually asking questions about the origins, and start understanding the care and love. And I think that's when pricing ceases to become an issue. And it is all about that, and it is about what you're empowering, and those who you're contributing to. And just joining that story. And I think that's the-- we talk a lot about connection. What makes brand connect with someone is when they can become a part of--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 16:37.291 Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 16:38.252 --that story, and they can actually take some ownership about this, and feel just a little bit proud, incrementally. I've got this tiny little part that I'm playing in the livelihoods of all of these people, and by making this decision instead of that, I'm supporting and I'm becoming a part of a story. And I think if we go back to your-- as you say, your Italian heritage as well, I think that was the masterstroke in putting your clearly Italian name on the product, because there is a heritage of-- even if we, as average bogan Aussies, didn't quite understand it, we always knew that there was immense pride in that. And I think--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 17:18.965 True. Yeah.

SCOTT OXFORD: 17:18.975 --it's like bringing out the good wine. There is that real pride, in Italians that I know, whether preparing food, or good coffee, or even the wine as well, it's actually a mark of love, and care--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 17:30.120 Correct. Yes.

SCOTT OXFORD: 17:31.520 --and respect. I even remember a time when I was a kid where I just couldn't understand this-- preparing food. My mum would prepare all of this food and it's like-- and we'd just sit down and eat it, and it's just gone. And then it finally dawned on me, actually, there's a whole lot of love-giving here. And it's not about food and nutrition and sustenance, it's actually an act of love. And that's the thing about great coffee. And when I was headed to New York a few years ago, I had a friend who was on-- had been on Broadway and spent three months performing over there. And I said, "Tell me where the Australians-- where I can get the coffee from the Australians," because I know that they'll-- if they're over there, they're going to kind of care about it. And it was all Italians or Australians that we bought the good coffee from.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 18:15.894 Yeah. Yeah. It is. And, of course, like I said, the world's catching on and the rest of it. But the pride is a big one. I've got a wine cellar, right. It was my excuse to get into wine, because wine and coffee are very similar. That's what I tell my wife. She says, "Yeah. You've got an excuse for everything." [laughter] But I've got into wine. And I'll have visitors come over, they go, "You can't open that bottle of wine, it's too expensive," and I said, "Well, when do you want me to open it? When I'm on my own?" And some people just don't understand that. I said, "I'm actually likely to drink a cheaper bottle of wine on my own, but I'll bring out the best stuff when I've got people over," not to show off. But that's pride. Great wine needs to be shared with great people. So to me it's an actually-- it's a gift, it's an honour. Because I'm sharing this great bottle of wine with you, because I think you're a great person. And that what comes down to another point about, obviously, about brand that I talk about when we're putting it in action and creating brands, whether it was Abbotsford Road in New York, which I've now sold as well, to my other partners, whether it's The Coffee Commune recently, I follow the same template. The brand has to offer something. It has to make a brand promise. And that promise is far greater than you. It's got to be about a movement. And one of the things I'm studying at the moment, and I'm looking at-- because I like to look at things futuristically, is-- one of the brand elements that's going to come into most organisations in the next three years - and it's already starting - is things like carbon neutral. So we've already put our platform down to try-- and I'm not sure if official or not, but we will be carbon neutral by next year. But I think we'll be the first, or-- if not one of the first, that is actually making that step. And I think that that's another element to brand, because, as you said, people want to give back. They want to feel part of a movement. One of the companies I respect and what they did was Thankyou Water, because if you look at that whole brand-- and now it's not just water, it's everything, right? Not only do you get-- buy the water, and it's Thankyou, I go to the bathroom with the body wash, and my wife's bought the Thankyou body wash, and then the hand soap's Thankyou, and-- it's a movement, right? It's a good product. So I talk about perception, quality, and then consistency. So the perception of that brand is what gets you in the first time. So with the Thankyou Water, well, it's water. Okay. The perception is that Thankyou, well, they give an element away to great community projects.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 20:17.238 So I buy it the first time. Now, if that quality of the water is garbage, if it tastes like Brisbane river water, I ain't buying it again. But if that water meets my expectation of good or memorable, then I'd buy it again. And I consistently buy that product because of how it makes me feel, that I'm giving back, that I'm getting value for money, until they change something. And the moment that they change it is when the cycle's got to start all over again, and the rebranding happens, and the millions of dollars have got to be spent. So it's a great case study, Thankyou Water. McDonald's are another great case study around the five minute-- you used to go to McDonald's and it was a $5 transaction, five minute. Their brand promise is consistency. It's not quality. Everyone knows those chips are going to taste like cardboard, and there'll only be on pickle on your cheeseburger, when-- even though there should be probably three. But you know what you're going to get. And consumers are okay with that, because it's perception, quality, consistency. However, recently, McDonald's tried to be everything to everyone when they did the build your own burger, and we put the chips in a basket. It went to a $15 transaction for 15-minute wait, and the consumer created an uproar. So much so that they've now gone back to the old model, where there is no build your own burger, and there are no chips in a basket. And I love looking at what other brands do, good and bad, and dissecting it. And I call that data, analysis, and then strategy. So collecting the data, analysing it, and then building a strategy of what to do or what not to do.

SCOTT OXFORD: 21:35.578 Well, you're talking about staying in your lane, and I talked to Steffen from Booktopia a few weeks ago. And we talked very specifically-- it was the biggest theme that came out of the whole conversation-- was about doing what you do well. McDonald's tried to be Grill'd. And we want to go to Grill'd when we want Grill'd.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 21:51.499 That's correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 21:52.160 We go to McDonald's because we want McDonald's.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 21:54.647 Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 21:54.970 And you get greedy. And again, this comes up in most of my conversations. When a brand gets greedy-- we talked a few weeks ago about Coles, sort of going to this, going to that. And certain things you can tolerate, and then you're like, "Hang on. You don't have a right to-- you don't have the right to be there. Just--"

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 22:10.828 Know your lane, right? Know your lane.

SCOTT OXFORD: 22:11.779 Yes. Know your lane. And do it really well. And that idea of making a brand promise, it's all about that promise kept. And--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 22:20.321 Correct. Correct. And we did that. I mean, Coles and Woolworths all wanted us on their shelf. We were the number one brand in the country. They wanted us on their shelf. One of the biggest cheques you've ever torn up is not going on a-- especially when they want to pay you in advance. And no, because the brand promise was you enjoy us in a cafe, a restaurant, or at home. You don't enjoy us in the supermarket. Now, I've got colleagues of mine that have put their product in the supermarket shelves, and it's been the demise. Now that they might lift their revenue, and they might achieve corporate goals, which is-- I applaud them. So like, when Grinders got bought out by Coca Cola, they made no secrets they wanted to go to corporate. Now, a lot of people rubbished them, and I said, "I'm not rubbishing them. They're achieving what they want to achieve. So that's their corporate success. All they've done is create an opportunity for me." Because being in a supermarket shelf, being in corporate, the cafe owner that's my target audience doesn't want that. So we're going to pick up business. Lavata did the same, one of the brands I respect most in our industry in the world. I've visited. I got a personal tour of the Lavata factory by the family. Now, they've got great admiration for what we did in Australia, and they asked me, "Why can't we beat you in Australia?" And I said, "Because we're a different market segment. You are the number one retail brand in the world. And in Italy, you are the number one retailer, and it makes up four times your sales. You've got four times more in retail sales than what you are in cafe sales. In Australia, you're one or the other." And you'll see this, still, brands making the same error. There's colleagues of mine, and if you go to Woolworth's, and I won't mention the brand, it'd definitely be a top three brand in the country in specialty, well now it's in Woolworth's. And what's going to happen there is--

SCOTT OXFORD: 23:46.291 Devalue it.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 23:46.327 --you're going to start to devalue it from the specialty coffee. Now, that doesn't mean they've done the wrong thing, because if that corporate goal is to increase revenue, and it achieves it, well then they're successful. And that's one thing, when people ask me about success, success is what you set out to achieve, not what somebody else expects you to achieve, or what somebody else want you to achieve. Whatever you outline personally, professionally, and family, that you want to achieve, what your purpose is, whatever you want to call it, target, your vision, and you achieve that, then great work. Now, at what cost, is what I say.

SCOTT OXFORD: 24:14.239 Absolutely. And in my business, my biggest pitch to potential clients is that, our job is to align your brand strategy with your business strategy. So there's no point doing things with a brand unless it's going to-- and the business strategy clearly, like you're talking there, it has to have assessed its positives and negatives, and you have to understand exactly what will happen there. But exactly what you said. Again, I make decisions. And this is one of the questions I wanted to ask you too, is coffee is a lot about perception. You drive past or you walk past a cafe, in certain areas, there's always a couple to choose from.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 24:52.281 Yeah.

SCOTT OXFORD: 24:52.883 We make subliminal decisions. We read signage. We read the like, and we make decisions on how good the coffee's going to be, by a whole lot of things that-- how much is that a part of it? Because you just mentioned there, we've perceived that the quality of the coffee is dropping, because I can now buy it in coal, so it's going to be-- whether it's just the same product or not, it can't possibly be fresh, or it's not going to be fresh enough. The things that go on in our heads when we go, "Am I going to buy a coffee from this or that?" Or if I'm in the city, the 17 places. So what do you think about that?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 25:25.710 Well, coffee brand used to be the number one thing, so where you'd see your signs. So like, I started in 2002 saying, "I'm not buying umbrellas. I'm not buying barriers." And within six months, I had barriers and umbrellas everywhere, because I realised that brand of coffee, and what it stood for-- so being Italian, as you said, pride, dedication. I did a lot of public speaking, so it was this, "Oh, he's giving back to community. He's building a wee company. It's about people. It's not about product." So how did I get that out there? Well, barriers, umbrellas, get the name, built that name. So that was the transition. That was the focus point. And then it was if you could smell the coffee. Because I'm going to give you two stages here. So back then, say in 2002 to say 2010, 2012, it was about the brand name, so barriers, umbrellas, and cups, and signage. It was then about the smell, because a lot of the coffee back then was imported. Now, coffee's at its best 7 days to 21 days of roasting. There was no product imported, that can be 7-21 days. Yet the major brands at the time were all imported products. So the next thing would be, if I could smell coffee, they're going to be good. That's back then. The next was if the coffee didn't have-- because I transitioned, I learned when it was the big dome cappuccinos with the extra froth and spoonem. But by 2002-2010, it wasn't. It was about silky milk. It was about these cappuccinos that you could wobble the cup and nothing fell off it. it was all about latte art. It's got a love heart on it. So these were the cues back then. You fast-forward to 2010 to 2000-and-now, right, so 2020, '21 and even now we're starting to shift into a new era, which I'll talk about in a minute. But the next decade of coffee all became about what brand of coffee machine, so the visual cue was a little bit about the brand. Was it a Di Bella? Was it a Campos? Was it a Merlot? Depending on what city it was in before most of them all became national, because we were the first guys to actually become truly national. And when I say that is we controlled the process from crop to cup, from inputting the bean, roasting it, distributing it, training cafe owners. We're the only company of our scale that did the whole process. We didn't have distributors in different states that was onboard. So it became a little bit about the brand still, but it became about what coffee machine you use. What equipment do you use? What brand do you use? Do you have a barista or is it just a staff member? Where we're going to now is about personalisation, and that's why The Coffee Commune. And where we're going now is to a local buyer. Are you local? Am I helping you? People want to feel good about their transition. So what they're looking for now, the consumer, they'll pay $4.50 or $5 for a cup of coffee. Does it come from a locally manufactured company? Is it fresh? Do you have a barista that's getting paid the right wages, not getting paid shonky? Because that's been a big thing in the last five years. So it's funny how you have these series, so if you break it down in decades, we're at the start of a new one. And that's why The Coffee Commune is growing in strength because we're empowering local manufacturers to come and build their own product, or as a cafe owner or a chain owner of cafes, you can come to us and we build your own bespoke recipe with your own labelling with your own product.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 28:18.603 Now, rest assured, what's in the marketplace. People say, "We do private labelling." No, they do rebadgeing. They don't build the bespoke recipe or product for each customer. They also alongside that have their own brand that they compete with you. What makes The Commune different is it's a facility. We're not a coffee brand. We're a facility. We're an ecosystem. So we're a place where you come in, you choose what green beans, you choose your recipe, it gets manufactured for you, or you roast it yourself on premises, and it goes to you and it's your recipe, your bespoke product, and it doesn't compete with The Coffee Commune because The Coffee Commune is a facility, not a brand. That's the next era and that's on the back of this buy local, sustainability, what good am I doing when I buy a cup of coffee, am I ensuring that the person's being paid the right wages? That's what we're moving-- we're moving more to community causes. And now I get excited by that because these are the different ways. That's what we call evolution and we want things to evolve. No one wants that scooped up frappe, cappuccino that you shake and the froth goes flying and lands on someone's moustache, right? You don't want that. We transition then to, okay, with the equipment. Well, it's not about the equipment if you don't know how to use it now, right? We're now transitioning to, "Well, I don't care how good your coffee is and your equipment and what you're doing if you're paying your people wrong, or if my money's not going to a better cause." So it's interesting times. It's good times.

SCOTT OXFORD: 29:32.793 Yeah. And, again, the more you talk about it, the more you realise that even just in that process, how many different parts there are that lead to that $4.50 cup of coffee, which is the training behind the staff, the cost of the equipment, not just the cost of the product and the story and all of that. But yeah, what I love about that is that sense of individuality, that we can promise you something that's unique, in the same way that the fruit and veggie box that gets delivered to me every week at home, I know that everything's sort of been sourced within a [inaudible]. These products only come from here, and they only deliver to this certain area. And the bread that comes is made and it's Salisbury there, and it's sort of that very kind of local--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 30:16.360 It's story-telling. Everything's got a story. So that means everything's got emotional connect and by one purchase you're impacting many lives. And this is what I love about the work you're doing, Scott, in your business, is that you're helping people tell their story. You're helping them to be able to tell a story. Because I see so many good businesses-- to me it comes naturally. My background is commerce. I didn't know whether I wanted to be a lawyer. I didn't know if I wanted to be an accountant. I ended up with doing a commerce degree and I loved marketing, which then went on to do HR and retailing, so put them together, this sort of stuff comes naturally storytelling, brand optimisations, and all this sort of strategy, but it only does-- and as my wife said, it only comes naturally to you, 2 out of every 100 people. So what you're doing is fantastic, and these podcasts are fantastic, because hopefully people listen and say-- and if you don't, I'll say it for you. Scott might not be as brash. Don't ever sit in front of a fricking TV, in front of a mirror, in front of a piece of paper, and think your product is better than anybody else's. Because you're full of shit, and you're lying to yourself. It's, how are you going to build something that evokes emotion, that creates an emotion, that people want to buy time and time again? And brand is the strategy you need to have. And you know what? You don't need to be an expert. Go and talk to people like yourself, that can help you with it. Because I've seen great businesses go broke, because they do amazing things, but they can't tell the story. Or vice versa, they tell a story, and then the quality doesn't match the story. So you need to get the perception, the story, right, then you need to get the quality to match that story, and then you need to keep it consistent, otherwise you've got to keep starting all over again.

SCOTT OXFORD: 31:43.464 And the big word there that comes to mind is authenticity. A very overused word, but so much of marketing and what gives marketing generally a bad name, is that it's this idea of almost like politics, of crafting what people want to hear. And the reality is they actually just want to hear a very real, honest-- and it's not about-- and if someone doesn't want to hear that story, then they're not your audience.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 32:06.176 Totally.

SCOTT OXFORD: 32:06.912 And if you can find your audience-- and that's my big-- that's why I do this podcast. It's what I love about brand. It is connecting people with fit. And I don't want to try and flog a product to somebody who isn't interesting. Why sell coffee to people who don't drink coffee?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 32:24.043 Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 32:24.490 There's no point. And so much of marketing and advertising is about throwing money at a wall and hoping some of it will stick. Whereas brand is all about building connection with those that care, and actually sharing in affinity. And yeah, that's totally sort of covered that connection kind of piece. Because I was going to-- you mentioned, in terms of your study and what got you into business, but you worked in Cosmo, in Fortitude Valley.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 32:51.106 Yeah. Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 32:53.091 I mean--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 32:53.554 Armis Street, Brunswick Street.

SCOTT OXFORD: 32:55.050 Brunswick Street, yeah.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 32:55.755 355, I think it was. I think I even remember, 352 or 355. I was there for nine years, so it's scarred in my head.

SCOTT OXFORD: 33:02.445 [laughter] Yeah. And again, what I love there is, that you'd go in and you'd pick the coffee that you wanted to have, because it was all of the different beans, and you could then take some home. And it was like you couldn't get them anywhere else.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 33:12.598 Totally. And it was roasted fresh on premises. It was ahead of its time. And it was, I say a great time, when I look it back, but at the time it was traumatic working there, because when you're working for somebody, and it all started well and that, but then, when you start to work for somebody who doesn't appreciate people, treats people poorly-- and then that's my bug-bear. I can't stand people treating people poorly. I get quite righteous about that. And anyone that's worked for me will say I treat my people well. I'm honest. Even if they're not good, I say to them, "Look, you need to work out whether this is the right place for you, because there's a disconnect here." So I've actually never ever fired anyone in my life, because I'd rather them make that conscious choice that they need to move, because it's better for their personal brand. And it's better for my brand, to be able to say, "Look, we're not a fit. I can't go anywhere, because I have too many responsibilities, and I owe people money, but you can, so you may need to opt out." But look, Cosmopolitan at nine years, and the point I suppose I really want to make here is this. The youth of today-- and I don't use that in a bad way, I've got a 13-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old boy, and I love sharing stories with them, because that's how we learn. You don't know what you don't know. The youth of today are amazing, and they have so many resources. But what are they going to do with the resources? So my challenge to the youth of today - and this is what I say to my kids - is what are you going to do with the resources? And there's a sign in my office that someone gave to me. I did a speech early last year, and it was just on that drought side, and there was farmers, and a guy got up and says, "I represent all these famers, and they're whinging, and they're carrying on. How can I have an impact?" And I said, "Do more. They can whinge as much as they want. They can talk as much as they want. Because they need to get it off their chest. But at as long as they're doing more than they're talking, you watch how magic happens." Three months ago he bought me a plaque. He said, "I had 100 of these made, they're numbered, and you've got number 1, and it says, 'Do more by PDB.'" And he said, "This has changed our community in 12 months because we didn't try and shut down the talk, we said, 'Talk,' but as long as you're doing twice as much, or doing more than what you're talking, then we will change community." And he says, "Now this town is thriving because everyone's taking the responsibility of just doing more." So they're still allowed to talk, they're still allowed to-- but they do more. And that's how I was brought up. My dad used to say, "Talk as much as you want, but always do more than what you're talking." This is from a son of migrants. And people say, "Well, I didn't have the million-dollar education." Yeah, I went to uni and my parents paid for it. But I went to Sandgate High. It was a rough school. What I learned was make sure you know how to throw a punch because someone wants to kill you for being Italian, right? And I loved my schooling. We had a great year and a great, great, great school.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 35:36.239 But from a brand point, you talk to people now, "I go to Brisbane Grammar," or, "I go to Churchie," which is where my son goes. It doesn't matter where you go, it's what you make of it. Where you go is a resource. Now your resource is better than the resource that I had, but that's not guaranteed that you're going to do something with it, and it doesn't mean you have to open your own business, you just need to set out to achieve what you want. So when I say the youth of today, I say, "They're an amazing group of people," right? And everything that we begrudge on them is what we created. Either my generation and yours, or the one before us, right? Because they didn't invent the iPhone, right? The young generation, my 13-year-old daughter didn't invent the iPhone, right? It was someone actually above my generation that did. So the problems that people whinge about today has not come from them, it's come from there. So what I try and say and defunct that is, from a brand point of view, how do we help people build their personal brand? And that's something that doesn't get spoken a lot, is yeah, get emotionally attached to a brand, whether it's a shoe, clothes, a car, whatever it is. But what are you doing about your personal brand? Because your personal brand is what someone says about you when you leave the room.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 36:32.653 What do you want people to say about you when you leave the room? And so, that's what I try and do. I do a lot of work with schools and universities and talk about personal brand. How do we help you build a personal brand from a young age so that you understand exactly what it is you stand for, what you're going to achieve with the resources that are given to you, but more importantly what's the impact? What's the legacy you're going to leave behind? Because that's your dedication to community, which will fulfill your purpose. And you might not know it right now, and there's a big chance you won't know it right now because the world looks scary, but what actually happens is that you stand for something and when you pass away and they talk about your eulogy, you pass away, someone's going to talk about what you contributed personally, professionally and family. They're not going to talk about your car, they're not going to talk about what wine you drank, they're not going to talk about your restaurants and your jewellery and your clothes, they're going to talk about the emotional impact you had on people around you.

SCOTT OXFORD: 37:18.483 Yeah. A personal brand is a really interesting one. I'm on the hunt for a guest on personal brand actually, because it gets a bad rap because there were practitioners who would try and create a synthetic brand. It's almost like the Instagram filter version of who you are, but I have a 13-year-old daughter, as well, and I gave her a copy of the book about Sunny, who I interviewed a few months ago called, "Rare Breed," and it's all about being able to celebrate what makes you unique. The stuff that everybody tells you is, "You're too loud," or, "You're too this," or, "You're too that," it's all about being able to capture that and channel that and really hone that. And that's your true, honest, personal brand.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 38:00.154 Personal brand. Yeah. And my advice to people - I do this with my kids - give them a piece of paper and get them to total up personal, professional, family. Now for kids, professional is school. And so, when my kids are doing their goals every year I say to them, "Put in two things you want to do personally, just about you. Two things you want to do as a family. And two things that you want to achieve at school, which is your profession." It doesn't have to be complicated, it just has to be a guide because you know what, if I give you the keys to my car and said, "Drive," you're going to go, "Where am I going?" Well, it doesn't matter, the moment I tell you where you're going, you feel at ease, you feel that comfort, you have a trajectory. The brain works at it wants to know what's going on. So that's what a map does, that's what a plan does, that's what a piece of paper-- but what folds out of that is what you become known for as a brand. What is it that you want to be known for? And I'm a visual learner so I'm a visual and auditory learner, I'm not a book learner. So for me, it's always been about watching, looking, dissecting, learning, asking questions. I love researching things that go wrong, more than researching things that go right, and people go, "Why is that?" Well, I've noticed that when you research things that go right, which most people do, they then try and copy them, and no one wants fakey Louis Vuitton, right? They want the real deal. You know the people walking around with the fake Rolexes, why wear it? If you can't afford a real one, that's fine, don't wear one. Hey, I've got beautiful watches, I don't even wear a watch these days. I've gone to that other extreme, but I certainly won't put a fake one on my wrist to try and portray an image that isn't true. No one wants the fake stuff. So I learn more from people that get things wrong. And I always say this, if I hadn't spent nine years at Cosmopolitan Coffee building resilience, then I would never have been able to achieve what I did with Di Bella and what we're doing now, and all the other businesses that we set up. The fundamental, to me, of a great business - and great is not about scaleable or size and turnover - great is it fulfills a purpose, is that it knows how to solve a problem that exists. And you're not going to find a problem to solve from businesses that are kicking goals and doing things amazing. You're going to find opportunities in people that are not filling a niche that's needed.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 39:53.364 So it's a bit of mindset work there for people to say, "Well, hey," when they come to me and they go, "I want to open a cafe." "Why? What are you going to do different?" "Oh, my cafe's going to have the best food." "That's what you think. What are you going to open? Where are you going to open? Are you going to open in a place that has a lot of traffic flow, but doesn't have a cafe? Are you going to be paleo? Are you going to be vegetarian? Are you going to fill the need? What need are you going to fill?" And they still don't get it sometimes, and I say this, "If you build this business, it's a high rating success; if you close down tomorrow, where do they go?" "Oh, they'll just go next door." You've answered your own question. If it's that easy to replace you, then you ain't building anything very creative, right? It doesn't mean there's not a place for you, but the best businesses are those that when you shut down, or you're out of the market, then there's nowhere to go. That's a true company that's fulfilled the need to the best of its ability.

SCOTT OXFORD: 40:36.378 And I think that's not pessimistic, that's very optimistic, and what it's saying-- it's like values, values are fine until things get difficult, and it's only when things get difficult that your values are tested and whether you can actually live them or not. The rest of the time everything travels along fine. It's similar to sort of brand, as well. Brand is fine until it's tested; until that pressure comes on. And optimism's important, about building it, but I'm an auditory learner, as well. I'm trying to develop a good reading habit, but I'm a big podcast listener and every single person-- I just listened to the founder of Canva, Aunt Melanie, and she was talking about just-- it was consistently about the problems and the things that went wrong, and of all the things I remember from that, my own plans for future start-ups is the things that went wrong, the things that were damaged, the risks that are there. And I make my own notes now, so I've got a big page, "What are all the things that can go wrong?" And it's like, "Oh, this is so negative." No. No. I don't want to be taken down by something that could have--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 41:46.259 No surprises. Be prepared. People say, "How do I know when to do this?" And I say, "It doesn't matter, as long as you're comfortable with the worst possible scenario. The moment you're comfortable with the worst possible scenario, don't let anything hold you back. Change your job, change your partner, change your whatever it is. Change your vehicle. What's the worst-case scenario? The moment you're happy with--"

SCOTT OXFORD: 42:02.634 What's the worst thing that can happen?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 42:03.233 Yeah. But it's about getting comfortable with it. Because you don't want that I don't give a shit attitude, either. You don't want people walking around going, "I don't care. I don't care." Because that doesn't morally bind to anything, right? You need to care. What are you comfortable with? So I did a rally experience the other day, a great mate of mine got me this beautiful rally experience in a Subaru on dirt tracks and away we went. And some people go, "I would never do that." But you skydive, you're happy to jump out of a plane. I'm not jumping out of no plane.

SCOTT OXFORD: 42:29.359 No, no, no [laughter]. Yeah. Yeah.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 42:30.640 So what I'm comfortable with you're not comfortable with and that comes down to what I say, worst-case scenario. Confident. But the moment you're comfortable with your worst-case scenario-- and I see people give other people advice, and they go, "What are you stupid? Change your job. Change it. What are you mad?" And I just go, "Oh, bad judgment call." What they should be saying is, "What do you feel comfortable with? What's the worst thing that can happen and are you comfortable with it?" That's what a real person does, right? Because your comfort level will be different to mine, and mine will be different to somebody else, and they'll be different to someone else. And I'm no judge and jury, right? So it's interesting because if you just sit back and you look and you listen and you learn, and you start to see that at the end of the day, all we're doing is connecting a person to a product or service. So I get in a room with people that are experts, and I've had companies bring me in recently - a big, big national accounting firm brought me in - and said, "We've got 40 high performing execs, scare the shit out of them." And I said, "Challenge accepted," right? [laughter] Yeah, that's part of my personal brand, you want to scare the shit out of someone bring Phil Di Bella in, he's going to do it in a respectful manner. And I sat in there and I said, "You guys are great at what you do." And they're all looking at each other and they're all chuffed and smiling, and I said, "That's why I'm here because I've been told you guys are the best in the business. This business needs you guys. Yeah. Yeah, you've all achieved and you're all earning 750,000 plus a year," and they're all nodding and they're all like-- you could sort of see this, if they were in America they'd probably be hugging and patting each other on the back, right? The ra-ra club. And then I turned around and I said, "Great. So I'm going to open the door, you're all fired, and who's going to replace and look after your clients?" And the room just went silent. I said, "Because I can find another 40 of you. We just go to PWC, we go to BDO, we go to all these other companies, we offer them what you guys get paid, and guess what? Your relevance has just gone and walked out the door." The question that I posed to you that I'm going to open with and finish with is, "If you weren't here today if you were gone, what impact? What need would not be met?" And the moment you answer that, you've increased your value. So instead of worrying about how great you are, technically, how about you go away and worry about what contribution you make to the firm, to your clients, that makes you as irreplaceable as possible.

SCOTT OXFORD: 44:26.721 Make yourself a key person risk for this organisation. Make yourself so important.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 44:31.189 Correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 44:32.551 Yeah. And what's interesting is that those of us who own businesses, we are a big key person risk because if the place relies on us, we're trying not to be, and you're saying to these guys, "Make yourself absolutely invaluable," because in an organisation like that, they'll be invincible.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 44:50.046 Totally. One of my best-ever GMs at Di Bella Coffee was a man called Michael Hunter, which was amazing. He was my operations manager, and I loved his ethos. And it was hilarious because his ethos was, "Boss I'm going to work to make sure that I'm redundant." And people would hear that and go, "Is this guy mad?" right? And I said, "No, he's actually very valuable." Because I don't want to monitor what time he starts and finishes. I don't want to monitor what days he works. And if he can go at the drop of a hat to see his daughter play a sport, or go and see whatever he wants to do, then this man is valuable to me because it means that if he doesn't have to worry, I certainly don't need to worry. But if he has to be there every step of the way and he has to technically worry about what's going on, then that means I have to worry, because if something happens or he's not across it, I've got to be across it. But if this person who I know is a high-achiever, amazing at what he does, and he attacks something and he feels comfortable to leave it for a day or he doesn't need to be there, then how comfortable am I? So the fact that he makes himself redundant means that I have an exceptional manager. And it took a while for people to get their heads around it, and it's that same ethos. Think about it, it's common sense when you think about it. The moment you have managers that have to be there because everything's going to fall apart, then that's when an owner gets nervous, because what happens if that person leaves or something happens to them or they get sick? That's when the owner-- so the owner mindset has got to shift as well. It's got to be around empowering your people. We've all got to be-- I always talk about my job is to provide vision and boundaries. So think about jumping in the river. This is the destination. These are the boundaries. Come to me. I'm hands-off. I'm not a micro-manager. I'm going to set clear parameters of what are the dos and the don'ts. I'm going to give you a very clear destination of where we're going to be, and you know what, sometimes you might even paddle backwards. That's okay. But in a downstream with lots of momentum, you can only paddle backwards for a certain time before everything catches up. So I'm a real big believer in analogies and I'm a visual person. I talk about the soccer team, which is topical at the moment with the Euro going on. Ronaldo, Messi. Everyone knows those names. Even if you don't know soccer, Ronaldo and Messi, and they go, "Yeah, yeah, best players in the world." Correct. They've never won a world cup. Why? Because 11 people are on the field at the time. And it doesn't matter how many goals Ronaldo scores, look at him now. Portugal have come through. They just scraped through to the next round. Now, Portugal. Ronaldo is Portugal, right, and that's the problem. Great nation, great people. Now, Portugal's got great players, they just don't play to a team strength. Now, Ronaldo, he's the best in the world. Look at the stats. The stats tell you that. The highest scorer is--

SCOTT OXFORD: 47:11.670 Best individual--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 47:11.864 --correct.

SCOTT OXFORD: 47:12.614 --football player.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 47:13.575 But when you come together as a team, it's a different thing. So you can have Ronaldo in your schoolboys' team scoring 100 goals, but if you've got a goalie that lets in 101, you've lost the game. And most organisations, that's the problem that happens. They build a very strong front end, sales team or business development team, but they don't have a strong operations or delivery team. And you'll find that that generates brand. Because you know what? As they say, and you're the expert in it, that you'll do 10 things and the one thing you get wrong is the one you're going to be remembered for. So--

SCOTT OXFORD: 47:43.003 Yup. That's the whole thing down. The whole house of cards comes crumbling down and brand trust is lost.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 47:48.091 Yes, correct. I had it last night. There's not many negative things written about me, and one them we joke about it now, but it wasn't funny at the time, was the State of Origin when I got a bit lippy on the social media and I called the referee a few choice names [laughter] and, all of a sudden, it went viral because I was advising to the Premier and the Lord Mayor of the day. And the next morning I get a phone call from both the Premier and the Lord Mayor saying, "Phil, is there something you want to tell us about last night's State of Origin game?" And it was an oh shit moment for me. Okay, I've let people down. They're expecting better behaviour than me than that. And I didn't make excuses. I apologised for it and all the rest of it. Well, fast-forward - we're talking 8–10 years ago I think - I get invited to my first ever State of Origin last night I went to. I've been invited many times. I've just never been. I went to my first State of Origin, I'm sitting in the box, I got a beer in my hand, and one of the guests that I hadn't met before turns around and says, "And I've been told to take your mobile phone away because there's no calling referees any names." And I went, "There's brand in action." This is a person I've never met and this is an incident eight years ago. It's one of probably only, if you could say-- yeah, probably my only ever slip-up in that sort of scheme, and this person raises with me the fact that I'd called the referee a few names. And it was obviously in jest, but that's the power of brand. I'm the person who got on social media and called the referee names, and it sticks with you. And, as I said, it's funny now. At the time, it wasn't because the team had just won a Telstra award. Telstra thought it as right for them to take the award away. The funny thing is I argued with Telstra and said, "Well, you can't take it because it's not my name. It's actually made out to the company. It wasn't a company statement that was made; it was mine. But you can keep your award. We're okay." But I learned from that. I learned that perception is reality. I learned that you can do 10 things right, 100 things right, but you piss one person off with something that doesn't resonate with them emotionally, they're going to remember it. And you know what? I'm not angry about that, I just understand it better now. And I'm certainly not the person I was 8 years ago. I'm a lot more careful about what I do or don't and I'm more strategic. And to me, that's success because I'm learning to be a better person every day. And one of my brand promises to myself is, better today than yesterday. But, yeah. It's topical because obviously, the State of Origin was on [crosstalk].

SCOTT OXFORD: 49:58.183 Absolutely, and man, it's humbling, isn't it? And--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 50:03.697 Oh, it brings you down to earth very quickly.

SCOTT OXFORD: 50:05.597 Yeah? I hope that that person took the time to get to know other aspects of your brand. [laughter]

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 50:11.134 Oh yeah, we had a laugh. Yeah, no. We had a laugh. I mean, and you can look at it, it all comes down-- and I say this. Two things that I really talk about is; intention, what somebody's intention you rise at. His intention was not to piss me off. His intention was to-- that was a bit of a communication starter, right? And the next thing is, well, if he's researched that, then he's researched me. And I feel honoured that somebody would do that because I don't have tickets on myself. I'm a humble guy from-- son of migrants. I was taught to be-- humble's drummed into you left, right, and centre, right? And I felt honoured that he would research it. Where somebody else looking at it from a different perspective might get the shits. But that's not me. It's certainly not my style.

SCOTT OXFORD: 50:47.856 Yeah, good on you. We're running a little short on time, but I do want to ask you a couple of things. We've talked about Italianality as a brand in itself and I want to take you back. You weren't born in Italy, but you obviously grew up richly Italian. What was the first brand that resonated with you? Was it a car?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 51:10.526 Bialetti. The Bialetti Stovetop because from a young age had seen it and I think I was 10 or 11 and dad said, "well, now it's time for you to make the coffee because you know how to turn the stove on." And-- because my dad's a coffee freak, right? Everything's about coffee. So first thing he wakes up, coffee. First thing after breakfast, coffee. Mid-morning, coffee. Before lunch-- so mum used to go, "Hey, you give me the shits now." right? So when I got to that age I could do it, he goes, "Son, make your dad a coffee." So that one of the first brands that stuck out was the Bialetti machine.

SCOTT OXFORD: 51:37.292 Iconic.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 51:38.610 It is Iconic. I've still got one at home.

SCOTT OXFORD: 51:41.500 Yeah? Yeah, they're beautiful. I learnt the hard way not to put it through the dishwasher. [laughter]

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 51:45.648 Yeah, not the aluminium ones, no.

SCOTT OXFORD: 51:46.604 No, the stainless steel ones are okay. But yeah, absolutely. And I've got a terrible story. Had a Bialetti for many years, and a terrible story about having some coffee and fishing what turned out to be the foot of a cockroach out of my mouth and realised that it had obviously crawled into my Bialetti. I was like, "No! these things are meant for Italy, not Australia."

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 52:07.155 Well, it would have been sterilised, so.

SCOTT OXFORD: 52:08.854 [laughter] Yeah, exactly. I figure it was all good. It's just that moment where you go, "It wasn't what I wanted from my first coffee of the day." but. What's about a brand that you trust?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 52:21.323 Lamborghini or Ferrari, Bentley-- one of my passions growing up, my mom always said it, she says to people now, "My son always talked about cars. He said, 'I'm going to drive a beautiful car.'" partly because Mom and Dad never owned a brand new car. So I've now in the last 15 years bought them two brand new cars. But I was grew up about something that I really wanted to strive for and achieve. And two brands that-- I've been able to own a lot of cars. Ferrari and Lamborghini, because they fulfilled their brand promise. Ferrari and Lamborghini, what makes them unique? I'll use Ferraris because they did as a case study. They went to kids under the age of 10, I think it was, and they said, "Car, red." and everyone said, "Ferrari." They said, "Car, red, fast, Ferrari." Right? What makes that story unique is Ferrari don't spend any money advertising. The only advertising is for Formula 1. So it's a brand-- It's intriguing in many ways. It's represented by a horse and people go, "What's it got to do with a horse?" Well, horsepower. It's represented by the colour red. Why red? Well, it's not like-- Okay, it's on the Italian national flag. But it lives up to its brand promise. The Ferrari looks amazing and for many years it wasn't functional. It wasn't until the 458 came out that you could drive it every day. The Moderner, the 360 you couldn't drive them every day, they're too clunky. The 458 came out you can drive it every day. Now they've gone eco so they're all-- for the gas emissions. So they're all turbos not the big raw V10 engines anymore. But it lives up to its brand promise. It has to look good. It has to feel good. It has to go good. So it's a brand that really stands out. And Lamborgini's a passion of mine too. Very similar story. They obviously copied each other very closely.

SCOTT OXFORD: 53:58.795 Yeah. Yeah. I got to drive a couple of very beautiful new Ferrari's on a drive day about a year or so ago. And I had this thing for a couple of days afterwards it was this pain in my cheeks because I couldn't stop grinning. And someone said to me, "It's called the Ferrari high." And once you've driven one of these things-- and it was out at Sanford got to really drive. One was a drop-top one, just the full audio experience and it was-- a lot of us will never get to drive them but I can say having driven a couple there is this magic happens and just that feeling and it wasn't just a boyhood kind of dream fulfilled kind of thing. For me it was this is unlike any other experience--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 54:42.854 It's electric. It's insane. And so much so that like you said, I can see the smile on your face the listeners won't and the emotion it depicts. But yeah, it's hard to put into words. And you've got to do it. I mean, you get the opportunity to do it on drive days or stuff like that-- in America, there's a place called Dream Racing $1,000 for the day and you can drive four or five. You can pick what you want McLaren, Ferrari, Lamborgini so they are making it more accessible. And one of the things I love about the brands here in Brisbane Ferrari, Lamborgini, they do it really well, they love the kids going through the showrooms because it's building aspiration. Now, how's that for a brand? I mean a lot of places around the world they won't let you in the showroom. Even down in Melbourne, I remember-- and I was a person who could afford one and I go down to Melbourne a few years ago to look at the showroom and I'm wearing shorts and a t-shirt and the guys looking at me really strangely. And it's like whereas you come to the Brisbane showrooms they want the kids to come in and look at them and they go, "They're going to be a future customer."

SCOTT OXFORD: 55:39.992 Because fingerprints can be wiped off can't they.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 55:41.603 Correct. But impacts on the mind and the heart can't.

SCOTT OXFORD: 55:45.644 You never forget it. And look I just have to share a story. When I was a teenager just driving, drove down with a mate to the Gold Coast and we'd popped into the Honda dealer of all things. They had an NSX in the showroom which was sort of their attempt at copying quite a respected car in its time. I remember sort of looking at it through the glass and the security guard comes over and we go, "Oh, we're just looking." And he goes, " Do you want to sit in it?" And I was like, "Yeah." So we went and sat in this car which we didn't get to drive at 17 years old but I remember from that moment even though it was security guard he was empowered because there's cameras everything like that. And I thought, "That's it." And even though Honda have completely lost me in every possible way because their design aesthetic, everything about them isn't me, it's not my brand story, I'll never forget that moment of that experience. And what you say, I even heard a Bentley story as well about farmer who walked in and was sort of turned away at one and then went and paid-- literally had a suitcase full of cash and bought an alternative because he got treated like a human being not like a potential customer.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 56:55.407 Yeah. And it happens all the time. You just never know who you're talking to. And if you adopt this I'm in service to you, and this emotional that I'm going to be good with people then you never know where that's going to take you.

SCOTT OXFORD: 57:04.406 Absolutely. And you cannot pre-judge. You absolutely cannot prejudge. Is there a brand that's broken trust with you? It's a rough question because we don't always want to name brands.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 57:14.238 Not personally. I'm thinking, yeah, not personally but from a case study point of view. McDonald's broke trust. They're a great case study. They tried to be everything to everybody and they sort of broke that trust. It wasn't a five-minute transaction. It's not quick and easy. I mean, I go to a local cafe-restaurant; I'm happy to wait 15, 20, 25 minutes, even 30 minutes if they're busy because that's what you expect. Everything's hand-crafted, done. But I don't want to be waiting 15, 20 minutes in McDonald's. So it does break that trust. Now, have they done it completely appalling or it upsets me? No. I don't get that emotionally engaged with something like that. I just put it down, and I analyse it and say, "Well, okay. I don't need it." Pick it up, put it down, and away we go. But yeah. No brand that's actually destroyed it or done anything for me. I'm probably a bit more conscious about choosing brands, maybe. Probably the "why?" is that I'm conscious about, before I actually step out, I'm looking for the right things.

SCOTT OXFORD: 58:09.643 Yeah. And like we talked about before, for you, provenance and story and all of this is so important and--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 58:18.388 Oh, actually, I do have one. Here we go, Alfa Romeo. Got excited, my first every convertible. Bought this Alfa and they're telling me they're fast and they're quick and they're this. And I get in this Alfa, and I could have run faster. [laughter] I had it a month. Within a month, the bottom [marker?] tray fell out of it. I remember pulling out the-- I was playing soccer -- I think I was about 24, 25. I was still playing in the soccer team, and half the car's missing. And the boys in the team are laughing, and they go, "What sort of idiot buys a piece of shit Alfa? Don't you know?" And then I start researching that Alfa--

SCOTT OXFORD: 58:46.115 That is their brand promise!

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 58:47.174 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It is. Yeah. "Buy an Alfa because things are going to fall apart." Lucky they've come a long way, right?

SCOTT OXFORD: 58:51.698 Yeah. They have.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 58:52.082 But imagine, a 24-year-old buys this Alfa convertible - I can't remember what it cost me, 30. 40 grand - because I always worked hard, so I was fortunate. No-one handed me anything. I buy this Alfa, and it starts falling apart. There you go. So I've never bought an Alfa again. But yeah, it didn't shatter me. I just sort of went-- at the time it was like-- now it's bringing back that emotion, going, "How can this thing just fall apart?" I mean the whole bottom engine cover, whatever it is underneath.

SCOTT OXFORD: 59:16.320 Bits fell off.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 59:17.314 Fell off. So it was just crazy, yeah.

SCOTT OXFORD: 59:19.837 Yeah. It's like I always loved Jaguars in the sort of '70s and '80s. And every time I mentioned that to an adult, they'd be like, "Ooh. Bits will fall off. Bits will fall off." And Alfa's always had the same. But man, they've turned things around.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 59:37.118 Certainly have.

SCOTT OXFORD: 59:37.869 Look, I could talk all day. I always say this, but. We've talked a lot about your advice, and you think deeply on brand. Is there one big piece of advice that you'd give to someone who's-- what's the biggest thing that you could think that would make a difference?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 59:55.238 Build your brand from the outside in. It doesn't matter what you think. You've got to identify your values, and you've got to stay true to your values. Don't get caught up in things that you don't believe in, but you've got to build the brand from the outside in. Without a customer, you don't have a business. And people go, "Oh, that's simplistic." So simplistic that people get it wrong. Without a customer, you don't have a business. And if I give you this analogy, which I will, it will help people understand. You can be the best chef in the world, creating the most award-winning food ever. If the customer doesn't want to pay for it, or they don't want to eat that rich food, or they don't want to eat degustation, you don't have a business. No matter how good you are technically, if someone doesn't want to buy what you're offering, you don't have a business.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:00:29.024 And the big tragedy around hospitality is that it's got to be something like 70 or 80 percent of people who go into hospitality with big dreams, building the business they've always dreamed of, nobody wants. And they fail.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:00:40.675 Yeah. Correct. And if you're not there, it comes back to problem-solving, right? So I mean, Zenic talks about the wine, it's all the same thing. What's your purpose? What's your problem? What's your unfilled niche? What is it that you're going to do? It all says the same thing. At the bottom line, what is says is build the business from the outside in. So I never release stuff without talking to people. "What is it that you need?" So capsules, we've released a capsule. And the capsule, they said, "Oh, we want it to be sustainable." Great. We're using plant-based capsules. So it's already recycled. You don't have to recycle it. You've already done the good by buying it. "We don't want to pay more for it." Okay, No? So we've got a product that ticks both boxes. "And I don't want to be limited to one." Okay. We've got three different choices. So see how we build the business from the outside in. So the capsule sales are going well because, what? They're plant-based. They're already being made out of recycled material. They're no dearer than Express Zone. In a lot of cases, they're cheaper. And there's three different product offerings. So we build that from the outside in, and a lot of people don't. They build it and then you know that whole build it and they will come that is so '70s it's not funny.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:01:35.384 Yeah. it is absolutely the whole reason my business exists. My whole industry exists because they don't come, you've got to give them a reason. Is there anyone, any big brand that you would dream of working on if you got an opportunity?

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:01:52.900 Formula 1. I'd love to work on the brand of Formula 1. I'd love to travel for one year. That would be an ultimate highlight, travel for one year with them. And what got me into that is that drive series, I think it's called Drive something on Netflix and it's all about the Formula 1 behind the scenes and it comes out so I watched the 2020 season came out in February or March this year and you watch it so now I'm waiting until next year to see the '21. And it gives you all the behind-the-scenes. And you understand that what the consumer sees if you just follow it on a surface level is people driving around a race track fast. If you actually emotionally engage with a brand you start-- and this series was built to get you more engaged. You start to see that it actually starts at the engineering level. It's a bit like coffee, starts all at the plantation finishes with the consumer. Formula 1 finishes with the driver but it starts back to the investors, the brand. So Red Bull doesn't actually produce their own cars and stuff like that. They buy bits in. And so you'd have to say one of the most successful ever brands in Formula 1 that don't actually make-- they're not like Ferrari, you don't buy a Red Bull car. So the brand of Formula 1 would just be fascinating to see the different elements of it right? The companies that invest and why, the engineers, the amount of people that are part-- down to the PAs that travel around with these people to organize the intimacy of you've got to be at the press conference at this time, you have to be at weight training here, you have to meet your nutritionally here, you have to do this, don't drink any alcohol after this time. There's just so many moving parts. Well, then the logistics of moving that stuff around, and yeah, it would just be, yeah it would be full-on. That would be a dream.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:03:21.587 Yeah. Well if anyone can do it I reckon you probably can.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:03:25.089 Look I'm sure if you've got an endless amount of money you could do anything [crosstalk]--

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:03:28.942 There's not going to be a developed Formula 1 team anytime soon.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:03:31.557 No, no mate. I'd be doing other things with the money like helping a lot more communities before I'd put a Formula 1 team together. But, yeah look it's things that fascinate and it's exercising your brain. Give yourself the freedom to think outside the square. Give yourself the freedom to think of things that aren't possible because they may just become possible, you know? That's something. And the freedom to think is something that I think people strip away from people. Give people the freedom to think especially kids. Nothing's taught me the brand of being a dad is one of the most powerful things you could ever do because you've got something and as my mum says, " You never stop caring for your kids." My brother's 13 years older than me, so he's nearly 60, right? And she never stops caring about him, even when he's pissing her off she's still caring about him, right? That's the brand of a mum. That's the brand of a dad. And I just have to say one of the most powerful things you'll ever do is become a parent because that brand is a brand. How you emotionally engage, how you get them to engage with you and how can you be better today than yesterday? What is your brand promise to your children? Like I said to my daughter, "You're not always going to be happy with me but I'm never going to let you go. There's going to be times when you're going to feel distance but know that I've always got one hand there. I'm always going to have one hand there keeping you close, safe, and supported where I can. You've got to step up and all the rest of it but I'll always be there as best as I can."

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:04:46.462 Yeah. We say that brand is in the conversations that happen about you when you're not in the room. And I think the mark of parenting is in the way children--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:04:57.075 Talk about their parents.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:04:58.591 Yeah.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:04:59.071 Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had a beautiful moment the other day where my wife comes home and says Ali our little boy she spoke to his tutor and the tutor said, "I just want to say something remarkable about your son. And we tutor over 200 students every week and your son is only one of a handful that can actually have an adult conversation. Not only can he have an adult conversation but he can have a kid conversation. So he can talk to kids that are younger than him, he can talk to kids that are older than him but he can talk to adults." And they said that's a very rare thing. And I just went, that's very powerful and then he went on to say when I asked him, "What makes you such a good conversationalist?" And he goes, "Well, because my parents talk to us all the time and they don't talk to us like kids they talk to us appropriately." And I just thought, "What a really cool thing for a kid to say about their parent." And he obviously values that and respects it that he's not treated like a baby, he's treated as he wants to be. He's 11-year- old so sometimes he's treated as an 11-year-old, sometimes he's treated as a 15-year-old, sometimes he's treated as an adult. Appropriate conversation for the appropriate time. But to him obviously, he values that. And not only does he value it he then follows in stead. And so it comes back to what you just said, "What's the conversations going on about you when you're not in the room?" And this is one thing that's probably very empowering for people is put yourself in positions where you can get that feedback because at times we're hard on ourselves, we all are. But the conversation going on around in the next room might actually just be something you need to hear because you're thinking one thing and they're thinking another you know? And you could be being very hard on yourself when actually they're thinking you're amazing. And a lot of people fall into that trap of depression all the rest of it because they just get so hard on themselves.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:06:34.032 Yeah. That's the beautiful thing about research is that you can be afraid as a brand of hearing all the negative things but there are lots of beautiful things as well and it's about being how to grow from the negative and embrace and be buoyed up by the positive. Phil, I could talk to you all day.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:06:53.818 It's been a pleasure. It's been fantastic.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:06:54.110 It's been wonderful. And I love that we finished on band dad. That's a beautiful place because it's a special thing but yeah Phil thanks so much and--

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:07:04.158 Thanks for having me.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:07:04.799 My pleasure.

PHILLIP DI BELLA: 01:07:05.473 And congratulations on what you're doing because obviously of you're not taking that step and doing things like this people don't get to hear our stories. So I really value that and grateful for it.

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:07:12.631 Cheers mate. Thank you. [music]

SCOTT OXFORD: 01:07:17.277 So you can follow us by subscribing to the podcast. You can connect with me Scott Oxford on LinkedIn or follow brandjam_podcast on Instagram. You can also read about all my guests at brandjam.co. Drop me a line there or connect me up with the person you want to hear interviewed by me. And to finish off I haven't got a brand quote so much this is a bit more of a communications quote. Anne Morrow Lindburgh who says, "Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after." So I hope this podcast keeps you awake for hours. I'm Scott Oxford, thanks for joining me and Phil Di Bella today on Brand Jam. [music]