Peter is a serial entrepreneur and consumer marketing expert with over a decade of experience in scaling some of the world’s top brands. Peter has built, advised, raised for, and sold multiple ventures, including High12, one of Canada’s top cannabis CPG companies. Most recently he founded Gwella, a wellness company with a focus on mushrooms and psychedelics.
What is Gwella all about?
Gwella is a wellness platform that exists at the intersection of 3 mega trends: personal wellness, mushrooms, and psychedelics. Our mission is to build the most accessible & original over-the-counter wellness product portfolio in the world. Our open-access approach focuses on accessibility and scale. Our leading platform is tailored towards consumers who opt-in to natural alternatives supporting day-to-day physical and mental health.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your business?
I’ve been a bit of a mushroom nerd for a while; I’ve grown them for 8 or so years, and I’ve been an avid user of the various mushroom wellness products on the market. Brands like Four Sigmatic. It’s a huge trend and I thought there was a gap in the market; most new mushroom products on the market were essentially a variation of coffees, teas or tinctures. And it’s still very much a niche but growing trend with an early adopter community. I wanted to create some products that were different, built for a specific health use case, in a convenient form factor and wrapped in a beautiful brand.
I’ve also been extremely passionate about Psychedelics since I first tried them at 18 (they were legal in the UK where I grew up). Over the last 2 years we’ve seen an explosion in interest in how they can be used medically for treating things like depression and PTSD. A mountain of capital has started flowing into the space; we now have well over 20 public Psychedelic companies. I wanted to create a company that helped improve access in a non clinic setting. While most companies are focusing on hyper medicalized applications, we believe that accessibility will be a major problem for years to come and that the biggest addressable market will actually be driven by self-improvement in a non clinical setting. Our audience is the millions of people who use psychedelics either to get more creative, to improve cognition and have profound life changing experiences through altering their consciousness.
How have the pandemic affected you or your new business?
We launched the business in Feb 2020, right before COVID hit Canada. It’s funny, I haven’t met half of the team in person because of the lockdowns, and we’ve done two capital raises fully remote.
In many ways it’s just been a lesson to me what can be accomplished when fully remote, if handled correctly. Working remote puts a magnifying glass on things like organization skills, accountability, communication. Get the right tools and processes in place early. Be very clear about goals and objectives, even more so than usual.
What was the biggest problem you encountered starting up and how did you overcome it?
I think early on it was tough to get anything done – say March to April. People had no idea what the future looked like. They had no idea how bad this would get and whether they’d be safe health wise AND economically. That made it harder to sell the idea to others; we all just had way too much other existential stuff to think about. Thankfully by summer things normalized a bit and conversations, particularly with investors, became much more about planning for the future, rather than worrying about the present
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
Moving faster. I had this idea two years ago, but it kind of took the back burner with other commitments on my plate. I think we could have been a lot earlier to market and taken more advantage of very early hype in the space. So I guess just prioritizing stuff when I know it has potential. Start now and get building.
What is one thing that you do daily to grow as an entrepreneur?
Talk to other entrepreneurs – I have a great group of people that I speak to almost daily, usually in closed messaging threads on platforms like Signal. You can draw on so much knowledge and learnings that way, it’s like an informal advisory board that you can shoot ideas around with.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
- Value proposition Design: Alexander Osterwalder
- Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies – James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras
- The Book of Five Rings – Miyamoto Musashi
What was your first business idea and what did you do with it?
I wanted to create a social network for music at age 18. Myspace already existed, and needless to say I didn’t do much with it.
What are you learning now? Why is that important?
Trying to build a daily breathwork and meditation practice to help me manage day to day emotions and stress better.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
That speed is sometimes much more important than perfect. I think of building companies now as video games. I’m also asking myself; what do I need to do to get to the next level. What boss do I need to finish? You don’t have to solve every problem and get everything perfect, you have to do a small number of important things to get to the next stage. Then you have to do another small number of important things. Focus on those important things; move fast and prioritize. Build to get to the beachheads and the move forward.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Really it’s just been organic to date; talking about it online, speaking at conferences and generally just getting the word out. We haven’t started selling product yet, so that will change once we do.
For Mojo our key marketing channels will include Instagram and soon-to-be TikTok, with an emphasis on influencer (Micro and Macro) and referral based marketing. We are also exploring Twitch and Reddit as seeding channels.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Validation. I love how Justin Mares built Kettle and Fire. He essentially tested selling products first – he wanted to see if people would pay him money before he even had a product and built a business around it. He spent a small amount of money on ad spend driving people to a front end store. Once he knew people would buy, he built the infrastructure. It’s now a multi-million dollar business.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Don’t become one dimensional.
We have this tendency to hyper-specialize, to focus on one thing, to flatten ourselves for optimal impact. Traditional career advice has been just that; build a narrow skill set and specialize. We think that that’s what makes us successful. But it’s not. You take in less stimuli. Your inputs become less diverse, which means you’re less creative.
For entrepreneurs, we can let work dominate our lives, to the detriment of other areas. A few consequences results from that. You take in less stimuli. Your inputs become less diverse. Which means you’re less creative – your ideas become stale. We focus at work, and we focus on work. Taken to an extreme that makes you a less effective business person. Less creative. Less productive. Sometimes you need to work less on a problem. Take a break. Have some down time. Get some inspiration.
I think that’s a mistake a lot of us make: focussing too much on one thing, to the detriment of other things. It impacts our health, our productivity and our creativity. You may think that I do A, so I put more effort into A, and A will be that much better. But it often doesn’t work like that. You need other inputs that inform A. In fact the opposite may be true. If you obsess and work only on a problem, without being conscious of your other needs, you may reduce your impact.
To be an effective business person, you need to be a whole person. You need to be three dimensional.
What’s a productivity tip you swear by?
12 months ago I would have said my intermittent fasting. . But now, my secret weapon is the product we created; Mojo™. The world’s first productivity gummy, engineered to simulate a neurological experience identical to a psychedelic microdose, using completely legal naturally derived nootropics. The result of 12 months of R&D, Mojo contains a complex blend of 14 active ingredients including our proprietary full-spectrum Cordyceps Sinensis (CS-4) mushroom concentrate. It provides you with an all-natural, sustained 6-8 hour energy boost, physical focus, clarity, and precision without jitters or a crash; clean bio energy for flow-state activation. Over time and with regular use, Mojo’s mentally and physically enhancing ingredients may improve your overall performance baseline.
What is your favorite quote?
“The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts.”
– Movie scene in Lawrence of Arabia
It beautifully illustrates the power of the mind, as it applies to all sorts of scenarios. For example, I do a daily Ice Bath. It’s cold and unpleasant. What’s the trick? The trick is not to mind that it’s cold and unpleasant. We don’t have to be carried away with every physical (or emotional) sensation we encounter – we can feel it, witness it, but not get swept away downstream with it. Of course, the body (and mind) has limits, but those limits are much much deeper than we think.
What is your definition of success?
Time. Having time to do what I want to do, when I want to do it. That’s really my ultimate value; freedom. That’s why I like building my own businesses; it gives me control over my own destiny.
I don’t think money is a good metric for success, but I would say having money is a part of freedom and being able to determine where you want to spend your time. I always liked this Kanye quote:
“Having money isn’t everything, not having it is.”.
Money isn’t everything, but not having enough money will dominate your frame of reference and limit your options. It doesn’t create happiness, but lacking it can create misery.
How do you personally overcome fear?
Accept and lean into it.
Business, and life, are a sine wave, not an arrow. There are always ups and downs and you have to roll with it. Especially as an entrepreneur. You will always have ups, and you will always have down. Learn to deal with it. There is always something to worry about or be afraid of; so stop worrying. I noticed the quickest way to solve a problem is to get a bigger one. In other words, you will always have something on your mind – a problem that seems like the end of the world and will dominate your thoughts.
One of two things will happen: You’ll solve it, then find another problem to think about OR you’ll get another problem and you’ll instantly forget about the first one. You always have something to worry about – that’s our nature. The trick is to don’t obsess and stay present.
Recognise that life has ups and downs and handle it with equanimity. I characterise happiness as being okay with how things are. You don’t need more or want more. You’re okay as is. It’s different to pleasure – that’s the monetary drug we chase. If you spend your life chasing that pleasure or trying to solve every problem – you’ll never be happy in the moment.
If only I could fix this I would be happy, or if only I could buy this, or if only I could close this – That perfect state is an illusion. It’s always just over the horizon, life is ups and downs.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Hit me up on my email: peter@gwellamushrooms.com or over on twitter @digidharma
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