Summer Special - The Best Things in Life

This 'Best Things in Life' blog post brings together both June and July's inspirations from our favourite Red Magazine. The sun is (finally!) shining, festival season is in full swing and we are feeling good!

Katie

The best things in life...

I am loving Luke Johnson’s weekly article in the Sunday Times Business Section, my recent favourite was on ‘The Anatomy of a True Leader’ which discussed elements that are crucial such as the ability to motivate, reliability in a crisis, frugality and financial literacy…to name but a few! We met Luke when Not Dogs was named by DEFRA as one of its 50 Food Stars last year and he gave us some unfailingly honest advice which actually turned out to be very true!

A 2015 summer spot this year has to be the champagne roof top terrace at Marco Pierre White in Birmingham’s The Cube – it’s a real sun trap combined with an energetic atmosphere, and the cocktails are delicious!

As the meat-eater in the Not Dogs duo, I love how Quorn helps me to go meat-free and reduce my carbon footprint. The latest test taste I carried out was the humble chicken nugget…I haven’t had a chicken nugget in years, mainly because of being conscious about eating cheap & untrustworthy meat…one word….WOW. I dare any meat-eater to give it a go!

What marks the start of summer for you?

A BBQ at my mum’s house – this year I’ll be offering up some delicious meat-free delights!

The one thing I can't travel without is...

One million bags, even though I have travelled so many times I still haven’t mastered the art of streamlining my travel essentials… and if I’m traveling by car, I’ll fill it up in no time. The other thing I always have handy is a scarf – perfect for covering up on a chilly plane journey!

My favourite summer inspired pin is...

Jane

The best things in life...

Light is the New Black book by Rebecca Campbell - I recently stumbled across a few quotes from the Hay House author on Addictive Daughter's Instagram channel and quickly pre-ordered the Kindle version of her first book. I brought it the day it came out and I've not been able to put it down since! It's positive, inspiring and written by a modern-day 'jet-setter with a gypsy spirit' (love that description!).

My morning routine - I've really made an effort to follow a morning routine of; an espresso while writing my to do list for the day, followed by meditation (just five minutes if that's all I can manage) and then ten minutes of fun yoga using the PopSugar app. While at Glastonbury and coming to terms with sleeping in a tent, I lost the routine and once I was home really saw the impact that not doing it for a few days had on me.

Sunshine - For me, waking up to blue skies and sunshine makes such a difference to my day. It instantly makes me happy and itching to get outside to start my day off right. I think I was born for sunny climates!

What marks the start of summer for you?

The first festival of the year - BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend! The start of summer used to be the summer break from school and moving to France for two months, then it turned into finishing work for a holiday when I worked 9-5 but now it's the first festival for Not Dogs! Now summer goes by in a fun blur of sausages, new cities, hotels and laughter with Katie. Oh how my life has changed but I wouldn't have it any other way!

The one thing I can't travel without is...

My pink squashy pillow, or mooshy as I like to call it (embarrassing!). It's perfect for the airplane or car and it gives me a little piece of home wherever I sleep!

My favourite summer inspired pin is...

Sir Richard Branson gets Not Dogged with the Ultimate #SausageSelfie & Happy Birthday to Us!

Last week we were invited by the lovely team at Virgin StartUp to watch the live finale of Pitch to Rich – a campaign by Virgin Media to award three businesses an amazing package of business support. Nine finalists pitched live to Sir Richard Branson and his judging panel which this year consisted of the inspirational; Jo Malone MBE, Supermodel turned business investor; David Gandy, Vegetarian CEO of the hugely successful Shutterstock; Jon Oringer and founder of Mumsnet; Justine Roberts.

Last year Not Dogs made the live final of Virgin’s Foodpreneur competition which saw us cook live in front of the judges, including Richard Branson so we really felt the nerves of the final few! Last year as the judging panel took Q&As and as we sat furiously scribbling notes on the front row, Richard gave the valuable advice that you should never be afraid to make a fool of yourself to get your brand noticed. Following that, he directed a question at me (Katie) and asked outright what we’d been doing to make fools of ourselves for Not Dogs in the past year. 

By September 2014, just three months since our first event, there was a growing list of things I could mention! We’d named vegetarian hotdogs after ourselves, decorated a food truck in bright purple zig zags and driven it into Middleton Hall (as in physically into the wall of the hall!), only narrowly missing the lake. We had been so busy organising the delivery of 1,500 hotdogs to Coventry, that we’d forgotten where we were going to store them – a shout out here to Bob the freezer man who kindly let us borrow all the freezers in his shop last summer! We’d even bought (wait for this) purple and orange slippers each as a crazy IKEA purchase (this should not have been a priority) and, this one is Jane's favourite - I once pushed the trailer so hard I fell down face first in chicken poo. It was safe to say we left our pride at the door of our little food truck as we embarked on our Not Dogs journey!

Apart from these happenings, we hadn’t actually chosen to go out of our comfort zone to truly make a fool of ourselves and at the prospect of bumping into Sir Richard himself again at another Virgin event, we thought maybe we’d take him up on his advice. We decided we were going to make a fool of ourselves to get our brand noticed with the aim of getting the ultimate #sausageselfie to celebrate our 1st Birthday!

Yep... it took every piece of confidence we had but we dressed up as walking Not Dogs making people laugh all the way from Euston Station to the event in Shoreditch and taking lots of Sausage Selfies with all kinds of people! Our first was Paul O'Grady after Jane spotted him at the station!

The Pitch to Rich event was fantastic and we heard from some great businesses and entrepreneurs. We, as ever, were inspired by Jo Malone who spoke very poignantly about being relentless as an entrepreneur, every single time you want to quit, keep going, because tomorrow the whole landscape can change in just a day – so very true. 

We really enjoyed speaking to vegetarian Jon Oringer who's creation Shutterstock has been going from strength-to-strength since 2003. More standout advice came from stylish investor David Gandy who said when pitching, many investors want to know about the people behind the business and the human elements of the brand rather than simply the figures - something Jane and I have been building within the Not Dogs brand.

Of course Richard wasn’t going anywhere until we’d captured the ultimate #sausageselfie – a lifetime goal for both of us!

This week marked the 1st birthday of Not Dogs… wow what a year. We've grown quicker than we could have ever dreamed of, met some very inspirational people and are building a brand we are so proud of. We can’t tell you how exciting the journey has been so far and how thankful we are to our customers who support us from all over the UK. We couldn’t and wouldn’t be doing this without you all!

We've very excited to be continuing our second summer tour this weekend with our return to Godiva Festival in Coventry, followed by Lovebox and Citadel in London. We hope to meet many more of you over the summer - you can view the full line up at www.notdogs.co.uk

Keep up to date with us on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook too!

Here's to a successful year two with tonnes more #sausageselfie photos... Wonder who

can beat the ultimate one with Sir Branson!?

Eat. Sleep. Not Dogs

Katie & Jane x