Stu Macdonald
- Stu Macdonald is the founder of a top UK peanut butter brand called ManiLife.
- Before becoming a full-time entrepreneur, he had an accounting job at PwC.
- Macdonald said it's useful to have a full-time job as long as possible when pursuing a business.
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Stu Macdonald, founder of the peanut butter brand ManiLife, who lives in Wilmslow, England. Macdonald, 32, quit his accounting job at PwC in 2016 to work on ManiLife full-time. Business Insider verified his employment and resignation from the company. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I always wanted to do something a bit different with my life, but when I was studying Economics and Spanish at university, certain professions, like banking and accounting, were dominating careers fairs. I decided to accept a job at PwC, a Big Four accounting company, for a three-year graduate program.
I graduated in 2013, and the job was meant to start in September 2014, but I deferred my start date for a year and moved to Argentina. I wanted to party lots and live a hedonistic lifestyle, stocking up on extreme fun so I could be a serious citizen for the next three years.
While there, I got involved in peanut butter production. When the time came to return to my accounting job in September 2015, I gave up my peanut butter venture and returned to the UK.
I didn't want to be a career accountant, but I thought the job would be a good business tool. I intended to finish the program and start my own business, whether in peanut butter or something else.
I started working on my peanut butter business, ManiLife, on the side while at PwC. I quit PwC after a year to pursue my business full-time.
While having a stable job like accounting was helpful for a time, I left the corporate world at the right time.
I had shelved my idea for a peanut butter brand to work at PwC
I came up with the idea for ManiLife — my peanut butter company — living in Argentina. I'd seen an ad to work in a peanut butter social enterprise and reached out.
We sold products in parks and visited soup kitchens, teaching kids and families how to use peanut butter to improve their diets. I grew more interested in peanut butter production and started developing recipes in a friend's kitchen and selling jars to the local community.
People weren't talking about peanut butter the same way they spoke about coffee or chocolate, there was no system where you could trace the product's source.
I connected with a family based in Córdoba, Argentina, from whom we still source our peanuts today. I came home from Argentina in 2015 with the idea to start ManiLife and make it the world's first provenance-led peanut butter brand, focused on traceability — knowing where your product comes from and the story behind it.
Back in the UK, my friends and I spent the whole summer before I started at PwC making peanut butter. It was quite hellish but formative.
Setting up a peanut butter brand was exciting, and I wasn't looking forward to starting at PwC when the summer ended.
I didn't get caught up in the prestige of working at PwC
I worked in the assurance department at PwC, doing auditing. I saw it as an opportunity to meet clients who ran businesses.
There was a face-time culture at the company where staying late was a badge of honor. I was quite weirded out during the "busy season" in accounting, from January to April, when I'd see some people staying until 1 a.m.
I thought it was an inefficient use of time. When I started working on my own business on the side, I couldn't stay as late as others. I typically worked from 9 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. during busy season and 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the rest of the time. My peers and higher-ups understood I had a reason to leave and got lots of free samples.
The company invested a lot in socials, hosting regular drinks for the grads.
I couldn't relate to lower-level employees who were so in awe of the partners. I've always been comfortable speaking to people on all levels of seniority.
I was making enough to support my lifestyle at PwC but I was also living at home. I'm not sure how things would look if I had to pay rent.
I didn't really get caught up in the prestige around PwC. Because I had decided to shelve my own business, it didn't feel that positive or like I'd hit the big time.
I reached a breaking point at PwC and decided to quit to pursue entrepreneurship
When I entered full-time work, I thought I'd given up on ManiLife forever. Around three months into my PwC job, I started getting calls about the product from shops and consumers I'd previously sold to. A month later, I restarted production, spending my weekends hopping around kitchens on the side of my job.
I always got my work done, but my business venture probably affected my ability to operate as a PwC employee. I worked all day and wouldn't sleep until late to maintain both. I got to the stage at my job where I'd sneak ManiLife calls in on the way to the toilet and skip lunch to get stuff done for the business.
11 months into PwC, I cracked and decided I wanted to pursue ManiLife full-time. I believed in its potential. One of the catalysts was an email from a buyer at Ocado, a British retail company, asking us to pitch to them in the summer of 2016. We didn't get a yes at the time, but it felt like a signal of potential success.
I was hesitant about quitting, but I felt that if I didn't, I would risk regretting it for the rest of my life. I left the job in November 2016.
I suddenly had an extra eight hours a day to commit to entrepreneurship. To grow the business, volunteers and friends were helping me with sampling, selling, making Instagram content, and setting up a relationship with a third-party logistics company for deliveries.
I hired my first employee and conducted initial fundraising in April 2017. Since then, the business has generated millions in revenue.
ManiLife is now considered a top peanut butter brand in the UK. Our products are stocked in major supermarkets and sold in hundreds of independent stores. Several publications have ranked us as the tastiest peanut butter in the country.
Having a stable job helped me get my business off the ground
I think I left my PwC job at the right time. Lots of peanut butter brands have sprung up in the past five or six years, and if I'd waited longer, there's every chance someone might have come and done a similar thing before us.
It was helpful to have a salary in those early days. It meant I could save up, and it helped me secure a loan for the business.
I'm glad that I stayed at PwC until I was at a breaking point. I feel that if you quit too early, you have less stuff to fill your time, and it could create anxiety.
It's useful to have a stable job for as long as possible.
PwC declined to respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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