Reflections on 20 years in business

Ben Reid, the founder of 20-year-old design company Milk, is a second-time entrepreneur.

He set up his first company in his final year of design school – a move he now says he had absolutely no right to make.

Though an “absolute shambles”, the startup somehow managed to stay afloat. 

But, feeling like he “wasn’t learning”, Reid passed it onto a colleague a few years in and never looked back. 

“Sometimes your ambition can get ahead of your ability, but you learn,” he says. 

Reid joined design agency Insight Creative for a couple of years before embarking on an OE in the UK, dabbling in working at different design companies while there. 

Returning to New Zealand with a few more years of experience under his belt, he set up his second startup, “values-driven” creative studio Milk. He owns two-thirds of the company with the other third held by design director Anthony Hos.

The bootstrapped company has a two-pronged approach to branding. The first is to engineer a personalised brand strategy by jumping into businesses and unpacking them. The second step is translating that strategy into robust identity systems, packaging and communications.

With 15 staff – double what it was five years ago – Milk services around 30 clients across New Zealand and Australia (seven from the latter). It has an annual growth rate of around 20 percent. 

This year, apart from celebrating the big 20, Milk has plans to build up its New Zealand customer base and expand further in Australia. 

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Reid talks with Caffeine journalist Mary Hurley on his “journey of discovery” so far.

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What do you wish you knew starting out?

Understand what you’re good at, and don’t be afraid of admitting what you’re not. 

Milk has always used design as a tool for transformation, but we had less awareness of our strengths and place in the world. 

Effectively, my head was in the sand for about three-quarters of the time I have been in business, always trying to do everything myself. It was a lonely place. I didn’t have as much outside influence as I should have. 

I have been lucky to have found and benefited from our two in-house business partners – creative director Sarah Melrose and design director Anthony Hos. They are at the top of their game, bringing different ways of thinking and doing things into the business. They taught me a lot. 

Over the last five years, we have transformed the Milk model and the value we deliver. We’re more research and strategy-based now – building systems, not just identities. 

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What did you learn from something that went wrong? 

We’ve been burned a few times working with clients and figuring out how to actually A) make money and B) carry on as a business because it can get pretty volatile.

We had this one project, we got it to the point where it launched into the market, but then the founder disappeared on us. We were super proud of it, winning D&AD pencils [awards] in the UK, and yet it just crashed. 

It was one of those moments where it’s like ‘okay, working with small businesses is amazing because it’s so fulfilling, but it can also go the other way as well’.

It taught us that understanding your client profile, where they come from and who they are, is really important. Make sure the people you're working with and the processes you have in place are solid. 

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Who has helped you on your startup journey?

Before I went to the UK, I had been working at Insight, and my creative director was Simon Cairns. He was instrumental in my development – an incredibly smart fellow [and] one of the best writers I’ve ever come across. 

When I got back to New Zealand, we started Milk together. I was lucky enough to work with him for 15 years.  

In 2013, he decided he didn’t want to be in the industry anymore – he runs The Island Grocer on Waiheke Island now. 

I was left in this place where I had just bought out this person who had a huge influence on me. It was one of those sink-or-swim sort of moments. I knew this business had legs, but I had to figure out how to make it happen. That was pretty daunting.

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What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?

I’ve worked with a business mentor, Zac de Silva, for nearly 10 years, and he’s been an incredible sounding board across all aspects of business. 

In the first five years of working with him, he talked to me about team culture and its importance. He told me to work hard on getting that right. Which led to the question: how do you do it? 

The answer is that it doesn’t happen quickly; it’s a long-term game of finding the right people, skills and shared values and it never ends. 

At Milk, to get a good sense of how people are feeling and what areas we can improve, we run internal and external surveys each year, with 65 questions across 11 categories. 

We’re pretty proud that we’re in the top few percent of agencies globally for staff satisfaction. I think we’ve got a score of about 8.63 out of 10. 

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What advice would you give to a startup founder? 

Steve Jobs said something like perseverance is the most required personal attribute needed to run a successful business. And, as I approach 20 years with Milk, this resonates with me. 

Within that, there’s a philosophy of adaptability. The business you start today will be very different from what you have in five years, and that’s the beauty of it. If you can adapt and develop with it, it’s an amazing journey.

Then there’s the philosophy of betterment; it’s what we have at Milk. We are constantly pushing and challenging what we do, no matter how easy it is to fall. 

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Finally, what was your first entrepreneurial moment?

I went to art school at Unitec and majored in painting. Though I always wanted to be a designer, somehow, my tutor convinced me to go into fine arts. 

I don’t regret it at all. It opens up this whole new discipline and gives you a real ability to critique work even without a brief. 

During that time, I would have exhibitions using whatever I had in front of me. I was dirt poor.

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Did you have a most successful piece? 

God no, none of that. But people did buy some. 

I have a nephew who was born deaf. He’s an incredible kid, and he had the first cochlear implant put in in New Zealand. I did a massive portrait of him, which was quite abstract around the edges, describing his story. 

That would have been my ‘so-called’ successful piece. 

But design is what I was always destined to do. 

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Founder Feedback is a weekly series asking founders about their startup journeys. If you have a story to share, reach out to mary@caffeinedaily.co

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