“Sometimes you need to be a cockroach and just survive”

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jonathan Grubin, the founder and CEO of SoPost. Before narrating his wise words, here is a bit about his background and company: Sopost was a company founded in 2012 and is now worth tens of millions. The man who enabled this steady rise was Jonathan Grubin. Sopost is a digital marketing company that "aims to revolutionise the digital marketing space." They do this by harnessing the power of tech and databases to send out samples to targeted consumers globally. They track the response of a sampling campaign to retrieve important data about the product and brand image for the company. Sopost was the first company of its kind to enter into this gap into the market and continues to be superior to their competition. Sopost has worked and still works with many exclusive brands, such as Gucci, Armani, L'Oreal and many more.

When interviewing Jonathan, one of the first questions I asked was what inspired him to start SoPost, to which he replied that it was not his first time trying to start a business with a similar aim. He had previously dropped out of King's College to work full-time on another startup, which was unsuccessful. It was brand-centred around connecting a person's location to match their Twitter account. This never took off, but it gave him a precise aim, passion and motive for his next startup titled, SoPost. The unsuccessful attempt taught Jonathan a lot of critical skills, and even though he admitted it took a lot of time to recover from this loss, ultimately, it enabled him to create a fast-growing startup which has already achieved much success. To follow up on this previous response, I asked about his experience when it came to dropping out of King's College after only a term. He replied that he was not too keen even to attend and already had a presumption of his dropout; he was also not enjoying his course and knew it would be best for him to follow his passion and put everything into his first business.

After discussing the run-up to the launch and the company's beginning, we began discussing his role as CEO. When asked about the most fulfilling part of his day, he stated, "Seeing the culture all the employees have built over the last decade fills me with pride. Each employee has a unique story, and all have grown to such lengths during their time with SoPost." In contrast, the most challenging part of his role as CEO was "to get to grips with the fact that my role was constantly changing and to ensure that I was growing with the business."

Discussing essential skills, he replied that it is imperative for any young person to be resilient and to have work ethic. ”Having a work ethic, in my eyes, means that you need to go above and beyond and, at least for a little while, be consumed by the job and your role. Now, I feel as though my work and life have become blended. Resilience, especially when starting a business, is so important; there are so many times when I look back and think, how on earth did I get through that?" A key quote mentioned here is "You need to be a cockroach and sometimes just survive!" I also inquired whether he believed creativity was a skill that was important when starting a business in which he replied “no”. He stated that "being driven and passionate came in first, frankly I believe most businesses are quite boring and in reality those are the most successful." Jonathan also stated that his mentors enabled him to self-reflect, learn many new skills and ultimately end up with a global business over the years.

Overall, this interview with Jonathan was full of many key learning points. My key takeaway was his ability to keep going even when the first business failed. In the future, Jonathan plans to keep growing So Post as long as he finds it enjoyable and can't wait to see what the future holds for the company. The website is https://www.sopost.com/ if you want to find out more!

By Annika Bjerregaard. Edited by Aurore Lebrun and Annika Bjerregaard