Benjamin Young is a rare breed of a visionary; he set out to do something great but understood that in order to be successful, he needed to tap into his customer’s psyche and market it just right. Here’s what happens when you believe that success is about playing the long game and building an honest and straight-talking brand.
What follows is the full interview on how Founder and CEO of Frank Green brought his vision to life.
What is your business? Where did it come from and how did it start?
All my life I’ve seen lots of single-use cups sort of spilling out of bins and blowing down the street and in oceans and estuaries – that kind of thing. That hasn’t been acceptable to me and I thought there was a better way of us working together to not have so much waste in the world.
As a result of that, after my corporate career, I decided to do something great, and that’s where Frank Green started – The idea to remove single-use products in the environment and make reusable products that people actually want to use.
Where did the name Frank Green come from?
Frank means straight forward and honest and green means sustainable. The virtue of the business is also its name. Frank Green is a highly likeable optimist that is always smiling and looks at people for their greatness. Frank Green is the kind of guy that if he came to your house for dinner. He would ask you what you’re cooking so he could bring a matching wine.
How did you take the idea and take it to the next step?
It’s about solving a market problem. You need to understand the needs of the consumer and the reason why people didn’t – don’t use reusable products today. It’s all because they don’t look good and they don’t have very good functionality. They leak for example and they definitely don’t have innovation within them.
Once you understand what consumers are looking for, you can do all the design and innovation, making sure you get the manufacturing right so you have a seamless consumer experience.
And then you think about the environment as well. The environment pains me to say this but the environment is about a fourth or fifth order decision for a customer typically buying something. They all care about how it makes them look in the eyes of their peers and the psychology around that so we at Frank Green. We just do that as table stakes.
It’s what we do in the morning, we get up and we make sure the environment’s looked after and we concentrate on the things that the consumers actually care about to make that difference.
What is the one piece of advice you would give to someone who has an idea but is afraid to do something about it?
I think It’s really important that people understand who they are inside and you know you might see all these people starting a business and being successful but it doesn’t happen overnight.
You need to understand that you have the financial backing, the partners around you and you have a great idea. I think that’s the super important thing you need to be wary of.
To see the rest of Benjamin’ story, head to Shippit.com/Hustle.
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