How To Bootstrap £500 into £350 Million - Oliver Cookson Founder of Myprotein
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Oh, by the way, before we get into this episode, I would love to tell you a little bit about Life Notes. Now, Life Notes is a weekly-ish email that I send completely for free to my subscribers, and it contains my notes from life. So notes from books that I've read, podcasts I'm listening to, conversations I'm having, and experiences I'm having in work and in life. And around once a week, I write these up and share them in an email with my subscribers. So if you would like to get an email from me that contains the stuff that I'm learning, almost in real time as I'm learning it, you might like to subscribe. There is a link down in the show notes or in the video description.

What's that like, sitting at the table with someone who's just offered you 35 million quid? Weirdly, I think because it wasn't something like I won the lottery, so one minute I didn't know it was coming, next minute I did. This has been building for many a year. I had this vision when I was eight. I had this vision for the last 10 years of becoming in this position. So it just felt like part of the process. And that sounds quite strange, but it's... Yeah, it wasn't... I didn't go out and buy a new car. I didn't do anything extravagant. It was...

Hello and welcome to Deep Dive, the podcast that delves into the minds of entrepreneurs, creators and other inspiring people to uncover their journeys towards finding joy and fulfilment at work and in life.

My name is Ali and in each episode I chat to my guests about the philosophies, strategies and tools that have helped them along the path to living a life of happiness and meaning. In this week's episode of Deep Dive, I sit down with award-winning British entrepreneur Oliver Cookson. Oliver left school aged 16 with just one GCSE and went on to become one of the UK's leading self-made millionaires after he founded the sports nutrition business MyProtein and later sold it in 2011.

Earlier this year, Oliver released his book Bootstrap Your Life, where he writes about his experiences launching MyProtein with a 500 pound overdraft and scaling the company into the number one sports nutrition brand in Europe. - Looking back then, I was very much in the moment.

I was just living in the moment and obviously that is the only way to be successful. You hear anyone saying it today, any sports stars, you just take game by game, step by step, moment by moment. In the conversation, we discussed the story of MyProtein from the early days right up until the sale, covering the challenges that come with being an entrepreneur, his mindset and how we sometimes have to roll with the punches. Mental health of an entrepreneur is something that gets overlooked and look, we

Everyone thinks we're all strong and we're all okay and we're making money and all the rest of it. Sometimes it doesn't work out that way. So please feel free to grab a cup of tea and enjoy the conversation. Oliver, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having us and for inviting us to your place in Monaco. Thank you, Ali, and thanks to your team as well. My pleasure. Yeah, it's cool that we're here for a couple of days. I wanted to ask, what

What prompted you to move to Monaco? Okay, well, not the obvious question, or answer everyone says. Look, there's a few different things. A lot of my friends still work nine till five, so to speak. So I was finding myself kicking around at home in England on my own. And also, I've always wanted to live somewhere abroad, where there's a bit of sun near the sea. So I did my research, and Monaco was top of the list. Look, it's central to Europe.

There's obviously business benefits of being here as well. It's a beautiful climate, it's secure and it's safe. What kind of businesses are you into these days? Because we'll talk about the story from MyProtein from the beginning to the end. But I'm curious, because you sold it about seven years ago, was it? Yeah, a bit more. Yeah, about nine years ago. Oh, yeah. Yeah, maybe a little bit more actually. But yeah, nine or ten years ago I sold MyProtein. But I was on the board of the Huck Group.

Then, and I also ran another business, which is another online business called Monocore. But I subsequently sold that. Not for as much as my protein. If I'm honest, completely, I didn't really have the desire, the drive, the dedication to jump out of bed in the morning and, you know, get the cold face. So I thought I could sit back and watch the business from a far more of a delegation sort of approach. I had a management team from day one. So completely different to my protein. And then, yeah,

sort of manage it more remotely, maybe do a few days a week. But when it comes to, when thrust comes to cuts, cut comes to thrust, it doesn't work. You need to be there. You need to be driving it from the front in an early stage business. Yeah. Because I guess kind of with MyProtein then, it sounded like from the early days of what's been going on in the book, it sounded like you were very, very involved, like 16 hour days, that whole shebang. What was that like in the early days for you when...

when you were getting this off the ground? Yeah, look, it's not, I know it's a cliche, but it's the actual truth to actually start a business and work full time, which I was doing as a web developer at the time. So I was doing, you know, doing eight, nine, 10 hour day, typically in the working day, plus then building the own website, building a website, because back then it wasn't WordPress, it wasn't Shopify and all these things. So I built the website literally in Notepad with ColdFusion, MySQL,

HTML. Yeah. So I did it literally from the ground up, which was a big task in itself. Completely custom. There's no frameworks. And then obviously did all of the manufacturing ourselves or me. Literally, there wasn't anything in the business I didn't do. So to do a full-time job on that at the same time, it's literally impossible to do it in less than 16 hours days. Yeah.

Yeah, that's interesting. So like I get a lot of messages from from students mostly or people who are newly in jobs. And I think a lot of people these days have this thing of I want my job to feel meaningful. I want to have impact and stuff. And when you're a 21 recent grad in a new job, it's very hard to find a job that's actually meaningful and impactful and stuff like that. And so there's this idea people have of, hey, I'm going to quit my job and start a startup. Yeah.

How would you advise someone who's like maybe someone who's 21, just graduated uni, not really enjoying their job and has an idea for something about whether they should quit their job versus kind of do that

that overlappy thing that you were doing where it's like you've got the job and you're doing your side hustle? Well, I can only advise what I did, otherwise I'd be... So look, at that age, I didn't have much money. My salary was around 25,000, 30,000 a year, which is obviously great, but we're talking 15 years ago here. So obviously inflation has moved on. And I bought my first house.

I was three times my salary. So it was around 90,000, my first house. So it was as high as you could go back then. I'm not sure where we are today in mortgages, but three times your salary was the loan to value. So I was a bit risk averse.

So I thought, I believed in the idea, but I was always cautious and I did calculated risks. I was 23, so certainly not mature. I didn't have any backing from my mother and my father. They were, it's more working class jobs, didn't have any capital to expend, had no friends, no mentors, no investors. So it was really going out there. So I would advise if I was a student in that position, which

would be in a similar position. I'd advise just doing a bit of an MVP, a Minimum Viable Product, getting it out there, which is what I did effectively, but before MVP was a thing, getting it out there. There's tons of useful info out there on MVPs. If you Google it, I'm sure you've maybe read

covered it in the past, get a test product out there and you'll know pretty quickly if there is some traction. And if there is, then you can do the considerations of leaving uni, but that's a big consideration. But do something while you're at uni still. If you're working 10 hours a day at uni or whatever the hours you do, there's enough hours in a day to do an MVP. - Interesting.

So when it came to MyProtein, you tell the story in a really interesting way in the book about how you first had the idea. I wonder if, obviously we'll put a link to the book in the video description, but for the people who aren't familiar with the story, how did you have the idea to start a powdered protein brand? It's pretty random. It is random. However, saying that, it wasn't random for me because I was a user of the products, obviously not MyProtein, but I was a user of MaxiMuscle, which was the leading product brand

in UK at the time. It was a retail product. So Maxi Muscle was effectively the sports nutrition go-to brand in the UK. So rolling back slightly, I was into fitness back

And I was since I was around 16, 17. And as you progress through the fitness chain, you then got into the nutrition side of it. And again, as part of the nutrition chain, you then find the supplement side because you can't get enough nutrition from food.

as you need to to maximize your gains. And I was a bodybuilder, if you like, back then. I enjoyed myself on the weekend too much, so I wasn't fully strict. But back then it was, but certainly Monday to Friday, I was very, very anal, if I can say that, very precise on what I trained, on what the weight. And so naturally through that, supplements become part and parcel of the everyday life of a bodybuilder.

So I was using a product by Maxi Muscle, a whey protein product. And it was just a eureka moment, as the chapter in the book says. And I did this systematically with probably 100 plus products before I did it with the protein products. It was a positive habit I had where I broke it down and tried to see if I could do it better.

I knew I believed in myself. I believed in, um, my web skills and I believed in what it's put. And I believe in the web itself. This was 2002, 2003. I believe that I put a product on online, vertically integrated. It was its own brand. It had the right economics behind it. I could sell it. I believed in myself to do that. Um,

So the positive habit I had was to actually break the product down. And one day I was sat in my kitchen, my mum's kitchen actually, and I was making my bedtime shake. I think it was a Thursday night. And I can remember it vividly. And I said, what is actually whey protein? And it just sort of came to me because I did it systematically, as I said. And I looked in the back of the ingredients and it said whey protein, flavouring, sweetener.

some of her fillers and vitamins and whatnot. And then I didn't actually know what whey protein was. I don't know if I was, I'm alone on that, but back then it was actually a by-product not that many years before, maybe a decade before that was being thrown away.

No pun intended. So whey protein is effectively... Nice. I just got that one. No, whey protein is actually a byproduct of cheese. So when you make cheese, the cheese floats at the top and the liquid at the bottom is whey. Whey's in curds, as the old nursery rhyme says. So if someone once found out that the whey protein is very, very high in protein, and if you filter it enough, it becomes a highly bioavailable source of protein.

It's used in baby foods and, of course, whey protein powder for sports nutrition. After doing that research, then I found, I thought, okay, well, that's interesting. I wonder where you get whey from. So I found some dairies who make cheese. I went through the cycle of asking lots and lots of them. But in short, I found out it was three pounds a kilo to buy whey protein, the raw material.

And then, yeah, I did my maths, basically whey protein with flavoring sweeteners. I could make the product for about five, six pounds a kilo. And it has been sold retail for about 30 pounds for two pounds, which is just less than a kilo. Wow. 908 grams. Yeah.

So I thought there's some margin in that. Okay. So Maxi Muscle and stuff, they were already selling whey protein. Correct. And so it's not like you reinvented the wheel by just suddenly discovering whey protein was a thing. It was more like, hang on, I can do this better and I can do it cheaper and I can go direct to consumer. Absolutely. So obviously the key angle, the key USPs, which are obviously absolutely essential. When everyone says, oh, I've got a new business. What is your USP? It is...

It's fundamentally if you have multiple USPs better. So look there's people selling whey protein I'm not trying to profess I invented whey protein. Absolutely not. This was done for maybe maybe five six seven years before and in America for longer But what no one who was doing was there selling online as a brand a vertically integrated brand so I own counter customer and

So, so effectively straight from the dairy into, into our plan, we, we, we blended it. It wasn't a big manufacturing process. It was more blending powders, adding flavorings. And then we sold it directly to the consumer. We did all the fulfillment and then all of the aftercare customer service. Yeah. That would have been quite like trailblazing in back in 2002, where, you know, accepting payments on the internet only became trivial in like 2012 when Stripe came along. So like how, I've,

How did you go about building all of that in the days where we didn't have WordPress and Shopify and WooCommerce and all the other stuff? Yeah. Look, obviously that was a big barrier to entry, to be honest. And I was fortunate enough. I've come from a tech background, a personally, a self-trained tech background, um,

But my, I was, I actually, when I left school at 16, I had a year of milling around doing not very much productive. And then I had a wake up call, time to get your arse in gear, if I can say that. And what jumped out at me, I tried the academic study route, Ali, but it wasn't for me. I was, I don't know, I don't learn that way. And I believe that's a behavioral thing.

behavioral thing a learning disability in some some way for me. It's not how I learn I learn very much on the job So I tried I didn't do very well at school. I got one GCSE And it wasn't through lack of lack of care. It was free lack of focus and like it wasn't engaging with me So that's if there anyone to try and champion at some point in the future because I think there's not one way to skin a cat in terms of in terms of education secondly, I tried college

But I knew, I went and did IT at college, but I don't want to sound big-headed or cocky here, but I said to the teacher, look, I believe I know this. Can I go into the higher class, the higher form? There's two, there's lower and upper IT. He says, no, you're not good enough. You're in lower. But before that, I'd been building computers from ground up and working with computers as well. So I knew everything. So I just said, look, this is a waste of my time. And one thing I hate doing is wasting time.

So I left college, had a year of milling around, and then I walked past a, back then it was shop fronts with modern apprenticeship opportunities, which I'm not sure they still do modern apprenticeships these days. It's effectively working within a company where you learn on a job but do a day at college every week. So it's like, and then you come out of an NVQ level three, which is equivalent to an A-level.

So I went, right, this is computer development, junior programmer working for a company making IDE drivers, which basically make industrial machines talk to each other, which is probably the most boring thing you can develop in the world. But I went there, I went in at 16 or 17, and I was doing photocopying, making cups of tea, and doing all of the things you expect a junior apprentice to do. What I did learn there, which was absolutely key, was the dynamics of office politics.

And that is so, so important. So I learned how different people engage with each other and what's expected and just the way the dynamics of an office flow. It taught me so much. And then I learned how to start developing that more professionally. And that is when someone introduced me to the World Wide Web.

And then my mind was blown. So from then, which is about '97, I was starting to, I bought a book of how to make websites and I literally taught myself Perl, I think the language was, JavaScript, HTML, later Java.

And then finally ColdFusion and MySQL. But websites, so I was building websites for about seven years before I started my protein in 2003. I worked on BBC, Jessups.com and quite a few other websites. We're going to take a very quick break to introduce our sponsor for this episode, and that is

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It's so interesting how for a lot of entrepreneurs, they got into it through the web design route. So even Ben Francis, the Gymshark guy who I interviewed a few weeks ago, he got his start making websites and building an iPhone app, an iOS app about fitness. And even for me, obviously I'm not in the same league of success as you and Ben are, but I got my start through freelance web design when I was in school. And so I'd been making websites for seven years before I got to uni,

And at that point when I had an idea for a business that actually worked I was able to make a website around it and then market it nationally it was a business that helped people get into med school and I think if I didn't know how to make websites if I hadn't been Trying to make these crappy business ideas for the last seven years I would have had the idea for oh, you know Someone should make should help people get into med school and he would have stopped it would have stopped there I wouldn't have been able to take it forward or I would have had to pay thousands Which I didn't have to hire a company to make a website. Absolutely. It would have killed it. It could have dad. I

- That is one of the key things which I believe was a key barrier to entry back then in 2003, 2004 for competitors to make a website back in 2004. There was none of those pop-up websites, Shopify or WooCommerce, whatever there is.

I, you know, you had to build it or you had to spend tens of thousands of pounds on a development house making a website, which is a lot of big barriers to entry, something I didn't have. But yeah, it was a lot more primitive back then. But we did take credit card payments. There was that. I think PayPal was around then as well. I think that came into our payment track a bit later on. I'm not sure if it was actually.

How did you take Credit Park Payments in 2000 and 2003? PSP, Payment Service Provider, which is the same now. So I integrated into SagePay at the time, it was called. I integrated, so we did a seamless integration. So it was a real, it's not where you go to jump off to a third party website and then come back again. It was fully integrated. But I'd been doing that for Jessips.com the year before. So I would already walk that path. Oh, interesting. Yeah, because I remember any time I tried to do any payment thing, it was just like...

you've got to get a deal with visa or something like this is like never gonna happen

One of the good things about the MyProtein website initially, I'm not a designer, I'm a developer. So my sites were very functional, but they worked very well. They didn't break, they were quick. They were very, very pragmatic and fluid. So yeah, I think that was a key thing for converting people in those early days. Yeah. It works. Okay. So in the early days, you've got your functional website, you're blending this whey protein that you've got from the cows directly. How did

How did you get it off the farmers? What was that process like? So I actually... Well, in the early days, it wasn't fully counter-customer. By the end, it was. So we used... I called maybe 20, 30, 40, maybe more dairies to buy the raw material from. But none of them would sell me... I only had £100, £150 to buy the raw material. So I only could buy...

There's 20 kilos in a sack. It's three pounds a kilo. So it's 60 pounds a sack. So I think I bought two sacks originally, which is 120 pounds approximately, plus delivery probably. There's no VAT back then. It was zero rated. There is now. On a pallet comes 20 sacks. So it's like about 1,800, quickly math off my head, about 1,800 for the pallet. And no one would break the pallet down because they said it's just become more of an admin issue because obviously you've got a part pallet. But then I did phone one guy called Andy.

And he believed in something in me. He says, I'm going to give you a go. And he says, but he had in his latest sense and God bless his soul, he's died now, but he's got my soul. He said afterwards that he knew I'd come back. He felt something there. And it was, it was by two, then by, then sell and by four, then buy a cell phone by six. It wasn't exactly those numbers, but.

So in terms of the actual dairy we bought from a co-op, they were actually a cooperative for farmers. So all of the farmers pulled in their excess whey produce and then they sold it. They're a distributor from New Zealand of all places. Okay. So you were getting sacks of like powder.

And then how do you go from that to a protein powder that tastes reasonably good? Like, how did you land on the formula? Like, how did that work? Yeah. Look, I'd love to be scientific in the answer, but I'm an honest man. I like to be transparent. It was trial and error. It was trial and error. So I bought, so obviously got a raw material whey, which isn't a very bad tasting product. It's similar to milk.

I actually drink my whey protein raw these days without sweeteners and flavors. And then it was, I bought flake powdered flavoring, which was using ice cream. Um, so it was like a strawberry or vanilla and chocolate. It's kept it basic. And then I just put some in and tried it and then put some sweetener in. It was a, I think about then it was aspartame sweetener. Um, but when we moved on to more of like a better quality Steva or sucralose later in the trap down the track,

And then it was just trying it out. I'm not going to lie. It was... So you're just like putting powders into a blender and then trying it. I was just doing, yeah, just in my mum's kitchen, I was just making the products and I came up with a recipe which was perfect. Okay. However, on the first version of MyProtein, it was called MyProtein for a reason. It was called MyProtein because I wanted protein for you. Because if you buy a protein product off the shelf...

it could be for a 16 year old who's just joined the gym, who weighs 8 stone or it could be for a 18 stone seasoned bodybuilder so my theory was back then to personalise it a bit more, that wasn't another USP, so it's not just vertically integrated, it's actually choosing what you want so when you went onto the product page, this is why the website has to be custom, because it's definitely not something you could get off the peg then you could choose if you wanted it unflavoured, if you wanted flavouring, do you want light flavouring, medium flavouring or

or heavy flavoring. And the same with sweetener. Some people like one sugar in the tea, some like two, some like zero. So again, do you want no sweetener, some sweetener or lots? And that was, so everything was made to order. Okay. So you were getting orders in through the website and you'd put in, you'd be like, all right, this person wants two sweeteners and this flavoring.

Exactly. Stick the powder in a blender, blend it together and then stick it in an envelope and send it to them. Yeah. It was, it was as primitive. It wasn't even a blender. It was a, it was a, it was a, it was like, it was a 20 liter bucket. Do you know when you go to Wix and you buy, buy paint, the Magnolia, yeah,

A big white bucket, yeah? As big as bucket as you could get. It was one of those. Powders, everything in there. You weighed it in, of course, using the scales. And then top on, shake it for 20 seconds vigorously. And there you go. It was a hand blend. Okay. And so... There's no machinery in this. No machinery. No.

So you were doing all this while working 10 hours a day as a full-time web developer? Yes. And then doing this in the evenings and on the weekends? The mornings. So I would wake up at four or five o'clock, print off all of the orders, which would create a works order. Basically, it would, it was effect, it wouldn't just say one protein, two scoops. It would actually do it in a works order that would

it'd categorize everything together so all the simple orders would be together all the one kilo orders we could do them systematically then it would break down how many milligrams or how many grams of flavoring and whatnot into each one depending on the volume so i didn't have to get sit there with a calculator yeah i got an algorithm to do all the back end which would have been impossible to do otherwise so i got put four or five went to my my unit which is the size of this room um and did

did the orders, went to a job, did my full-time job and then came back and then packaged them into boxes and put the parcel for stickers on. It was a long day. And then I went back to home and then I did a customer service, the purchasing, the web development, the marketing and everything else. How did you kind of keep motivated to do all of this stuff? That's a good question. And honestly, sat here today,

I have no idea how I did it. Honestly, I didn't. I think if I would have thought about it, I don't think I would have been able to do it. I was just, I looking back then I was very much in the moment and,

I was just living in the moment. And obviously that is the only way to be successful. You hear anyone saying it today, any sports stars, you just take game by game, set by set, moment by moment. And I did that. And I didn't do it through reading something in a book. I just did it because I had a really burning desire within, which I think was instilled from my childhood.

And I really wanted to be, one of my goals when I was a child was to be a businessman and I wanted to be a millionaire and I had all of these, you know, aspirational targets because I didn't have that when I was younger. So I think that became instilled within me. So once I found this idea and I realized it was working, I didn't want to let myself down.

if I didn't try my absolute hardest to achieve and I let myself down, I would have, that would be the, that would be a very difficult conversation to have myself. Yeah. When did you first realize that things like this idea was working? Well, from day one, we never got a day, a day after the first day, we never had a day where we had less orders than the day prior. So we got orders on the first day and the day after we would have got more orders and it was a completely different,

It was a linear growth. I think there might be a couple of drops on a Friday, which typically in e-commerce is a less busy day than a Sunday on Monday, which is the busiest day for e-commerce typically. But it was certainly on a five-day rolling average. There was never a five-day before than was more busy. Oh, interesting. Probably the absolute moment was when Danny, his name was, the parcel force driver. He used to come around. He used to do the last collection for me always because...

because he knew I was working and I had to rush back to get there before the six o'clock before he went home. And the day when I backed

Packaged all the orders up, went down, and he goes, Oliver, I can't fit all your boxes in. Literally, he went back to drop all his load from previous deliveries or collections, and then came back to my unit, filled it up, and he couldn't get any more. We had them in the front seat. We had them all in the back. He said, I'm going to have to phone someone else to come and get them. And then that was a bit of a euphoric moment. Interesting. So one of the things, I've done a lot of research

reading into the research around motivation. And what the consensus seems to be is that you kind of start, like people think that you need motivation in order to do something. But what the research shows and what I guess all of our personal experience shows is that you actually start off by doing the thing. And as you start seeing small successes, that fuels the motivation to keep on doing the thing. And I guess as if the numbers are continuing to climb, it's the same with a YouTube channel. Like

You know, you refresh your app like eight times a day and you see, "Oh, I've got one more subscriber. Yes!" And that fuels the desire to make the next video. And then it's two more and then it's four more and then... Absolutely. I guess you start to adapt to the thing and then now suddenly if you're getting 100,000 worth of orders in a day, it feels less good than it did on day one. It do. Unfortunately, humans do seem to adapt to the background. We are quite primitive creatures in that way. Or complex, whichever way you want to look at it. I guess...

the fulfillment side of it is the same as what you just said. So, you know, getting more orders in a day was fulfilling me and giving me a drive to do more. We created our own forum, which was trailblazing back then. No one did a forum on their website. And, you know, building that community and hearing the feedback from the community was amazing. Reading the Trustpilot reviews, and back in the early days, one of the first users of Trustpilot in the UK, and

Reading the reviews of positive reviews was great. Launching new products and seeing it sell. Because literally in the morning, I could come up with a product idea. So for example,

I don't know, like a random product I did, just a blend of products, like a bedtime formula. So I wanted to create a blend of proteins which would slowly digest through the night, stop the catabolic effects of lack of protein in your body. So if you have whey protein, it's processed by the body more quickly than a casein, a milk-based protein, 'cause it's a delayed, it's like a drip feed, if you like. So I created a blend of milk-based proteins

We put a few amino acids in that, like glutamine, something which helps repair. A few other ingredients. Anyway, I came with that product out there in the morning. It was on the website by the afternoon.

It was that quick. Cause we, cause we, we had the production in house. We had the labeling house with everything, marketing in house, copywriting house. Most of it was me in the early days, but it was from idea and no one could keep is impossible. Literally impossible. I don't use that word lightly for any competitor to keep up with that. Who can launch, create the products in the morning and launch it in the afternoon. And then to do that and then see it start selling in the evening and actually the money hit the account. Yeah. It was, it was a great feeling. I can imagine. That must feel, feel amazing.

So you said that from day one, you had customers? Yes. How? How did you get customers from day one? Yeah, it was, look, it was the key driver. So Google AdWords was something I really championed in those early days. 2003, 2004, it was pretty new. I think it launched in 2002. Mm-hmm.

Maybe earlier. But anyway, I was, but that was something I was super passionate about. And I, I managed the AdWords account. I built it from scratch. I managed it all the way to 2009 when I finally delegated it away. And, you know, I was very proud of that because it was a £2.34 cost per acquisition all the way through.

And that's without branding there. So, take your brand out. So, only MyProtein searches were in there because we're getting a lot of repeat custom. So, the customers for day one was that. So, we did some marketing on some other competitors.

Which is obviously what you're allowed to do. And then, but I think the key driver was Muscle Talk, which was a forum for bodybuilders back then. I'm not sure it's still around anymore, but back, this is pre-social media. So this is before Facebook and all the rest of it, which has killed a lot of the,

the vbulleting type forums yeah the old school forum thing is just not a thing anymore no it's kind of sad in a way because those were great communities i loved it yeah that was i learned a lot in those forums and on irc as well but anyway the so there was a real strong community of bodybuilders called muscle talk i think it had tens of thousands of members i approached a guy called james which is one of the co-founders of huell actually really cool guy really cool guy anyway so i approached him and he

I just said to him, can I create a sticky post? Basically a post at the top and make it because in people's and functionality, but then you could Chris stick and then was doing it then. So I just said, can you do that? I'll give you X. And it was trivial amount of money. I just had new concepts.

give some really great offer i can't remember what it was now i think it was something for free or it was very cheap and we were selling basically a kilo away for a third of the price of the competition and it was better quality we had the full certificate of analysis and whatnot so yeah that was i put the thing in there then the i put the post on there and then the we got customers straight away because bodybuilders like to be new and do something new and try and get ahead of the curve

But once they're in and once they like the product, they're the best ambassadors out there. They're like cyclists in a way, which are a great community drive. If a cyclist gets a new product, I've seen this with Wiggle back in the early days, if they have a great product, they will champion it within their community as like an advocate.

And that's what happened. Interesting. That's kind of like the modern day phenomenon of like YouTubers, creators and stuff. Like if I discover a new app, then I will sing its praises from the rooftops. And then like tons of people will be like, oh my God, I downloaded this app because of you and that. Yeah, it gives you a bit of kudos, doesn't it as well? You know, and that's the feeling I think it does with someone who finds a new product in the bodybuilding world or any sort of area. It gives you a bit of kudos, gives you a bit of authority. You know, you're leading the way on what's best to use. Sick. Yeah.

So those early days, would you, in hindsight, were you having fun? You know what? I...

Fun's a subjective word, isn't it? I was, look, there was some dark, dark, dark days when I was growing my protein. I'm not going to say it was all rosy. I probably had one of the best times of my life, looking back at it. But was there some dark days? There, of course. I think business and life in general is peaks and troughs. You know, you've got to realize in those trophy days,

you know, the day will end not too distant future and you've got a new day than the day after. So it was challenging days, but overall, looking back at it, sat here today itself, I would say it was definitely one of the best periods of my life. What were the dark days like? The dark days were as dark as they come. It was, so certainly later on in the business, when I had a, you know, a large business, you know, we got to,

leading number one in Europe online. We were trading in six countries. We had hundreds of thousands of customers, lots of staff. So when something went pitong, when something went really wrong, then...

All of the pressure was on these two shoulders because I was still 100% shareholder. I didn't have anyone to lean on. I had no mentors, no chairman, et cetera, et cetera. So it was a very, very lonely, very, very lonely space. And yeah, it tested my mental fortitude a lot. There's no pity party here. I went in for it and knew the expectations. Well, I didn't actually, but I do know them now. And I try and champion that now. The mental health of an entrepreneur is something that gets overlooked.

And look, we, everyone thinks we're all strong and we're all okay and we're making money and all the rest of it. Not, you know, sometimes it doesn't work out that way, but I think it is a, is a lonely place and there's nothing wrong with, you know, with that being the case. And you've just got to really roll with the punches in those situations.

Interesting. Yeah, I was listening to your podcast where you were talking about hiring and the importance of building a senior management team. I think around the 2008-2009 mark was when you brought people in to professionalize the business. This is something that we're going through right now in our business where...

you know, for the first two years, it was just me making YouTube videos. And then there were like two, three of us. Angus was one of them and Christian in Romania was, was another. And now we've got a team of 12 people. Oh, wow. And we're hiring another like eight or so. And at this point, I think a problem that we're having is that,

we're all very like young and inexperienced and just sort of making stuff up as we go along. And a lot of people have said to me is that, okay, it sounds like you need to bring someone in to help professionalize this now that you're actually growing and where I would recognize. And I know you talked about it in the book and the podcast,

my weaknesses, I think my personal strengths are in the idea and in the sort of talking to a camera and hopefully being engaging and that kind of stuff. But I really suck at, you know, holding people to account and operationalizing and processes and systems and HR and finance and all that other stuff associated with running a business. What was that like for you to kind of bring in a management team to help professionalize things? Yeah, look, it was a challenge and it was a challenge sort of

So I think that the story, look, and it's, you've got some, you've got some, uh, interesting times ahead, but very good times. It's going to be hard work, but these, it's certainly the right, absolutely the right course of action. So with, so in around 2008, as you correctly said, I started to have thoughts of maybe I should cash in a few of the chips, which would sell some of the business or bring in some partners who could help elevate the business in, in certain areas that I was looking for. Um,

like European expansion, so VCs or private equity that had that ability.

So I had a very candid conversation, just a casual conversation with a local corporate finance house, boutique. And they came in and said, "Look, you've got a phenomenal business. "We're making a couple of million pounds a year, "a bit dire at the time, I think. "And you're a brand, you're vertically integrated, "it's in the high growth sector, "the forecast for the next decade is to grow hugely "and it's surpassed that." But they said, "There's one problem, Oliver, "and it's a big problem.

If you get run over by a proverbial boss, where does it go? Where does this go? And it's obviously, you know, you're in a similar situation, probably more so. But the, um,

But it's a bit of another Eureka moment. I was like, okay, you're right, actually. No one wants to buy a business when there's only one person as a sole break point. And also, I don't want to be doing everything forever. I need to delegate. They said to me, so we'll do that. However, you're not right to groom the business. That's the word in the industry. So to groom a business is to professionalize it over a year, bring in the senior management team, bring in the processes and the process managers,

procedures into to make sure it can run on its own.

And they threw the old red rag out in front of the ball and they said, you're not the man for it. You can't do it. And I went, okay, not to them. They went away and I went, okay, let's try that then. So I will give myself one year to professionalize business. And that's what I did. So I went right down to my programming days. I wanted to systemize everything. So everything from printing an order to picketting.

to picking an order, to every job within the company, we created a process book. So if I, it's basically a handbook of how to run the business. Obviously not the creative side, but the functional and operational side, which is obviously the bit that you're weaker at.

And then I looked at myself and I thought, what are my strengths? And I'm similar to yourself as well. I'm more creative, entrepreneurial. But I've got a technical side as well. So it's slightly unique in that side. However, I'm weak. I was weak in finance and I was probably weaker than I should have been in operations. However, I did do five warehouse moves and create a system. But I knew where I was weaker at. So I got the finance director and operations director first.

And then I brought in a marketing director, but he was, I was good at marketing, but he took it to another level. So yeah, I think you've got to cover your weaknesses. I think that's the key thing first, is priority, cover your weaknesses. How did you, and I'm asking this purely selfishly, how do you go about hiring people

people like an operations director or a finance director, as in the issue I'm having is that I don't know what good looks like in that role because I don't know anyone who's in that team. You'll know when you meet them. Okay. You'll know when you meet them. So with, in terms of, I have different levels of recruitment. It is actually in my book later on, in terms of how I do the interview process. Because for me, the interview process is absolutely paramount.

If you spend just, you know, just hire very slowly, if you rush hiring and it's the wrong person, it's just so devastating, especially for a small business. For a large business, even still, it can be toxic. So if you hire someone in the wrong, someone's then got to train them. So that takes someone who's already working your business out of the game for X weeks.

then if they're wrong, you're obviously paying this person a salary to sit there. They could be wrong and create a negative vibe in the culture of the department, could be toxic. It could create all sorts of problems. Then you've got to go through the process of letting them go. And if they've already left the job to come to you, it obviously has an impact on their life as well. So I'm just very, very...

can't stress enough you've got to be really higher slowly take a little bit longer and it'll create so much beneficial in terms of senior managers directors i used to use a three-step process initial one was more of a how are you doing you know does the fit does it feel right are we you know have we got the initial ticks and ticking the boxes the second interview was more um

was more question-based around the role. And if I sensed what they were good at and what they weren't good at, I'd challenge them on, I'd ask all the awkward questions and try and challenge them on that. Try and see how they handle the pressure and whatnot. Then the final one for senior management was very important to me, which was very bespoke on what they were actually going to do. So for example, when I was employing my marketing director,

I'd set them a marketing task. I'd create something bespoke to say, okay, I've created this. I'd give it to them and say, I've created this bedtime formula to use for an argument's sake. It's going to be called Bedtime Extreme or whatever the name is. Oh no, actually I didn't even give them a name. It's a bedtime formula, Project Bedtime. It has these ingredients. It's targeting these people over to create a marketing campaign or name it.

Then what they would do, I'd give them a week, they'd go away and they would do the work and then come in and I'd ask them to present it to me. And then I'd ask them to present it and then ask them to, and I'd give them some more questions around it. Some people wouldn't want to do that. They wouldn't want to do a, because it is a reasonable amount of work. They're probably not right for this business then because we want people to really get stuck in.

If they've not got a passion there, they're not right. And you will know if you sat down with someone, give them an absolute scope of work for being an operations director for your business, you'll know after they tell you, you'll see if it's right for you. Interesting. Yeah. I was listening to your podcast. You've got a three-part series about hiring. Yes. And in that you say that, I think one of the things that you said that even an extra like half a day spent like interviewing someone is...

absolutely going to pay dividends in the long run and i was thinking in my mind that oh you know we've got these 10 writers to you know to go through and i you know let me try and go through their tasks as quickly as possible and then i heard that and i was like hold the economy yeah it is a false economy you know just spend that time on it for you you know obviously your primary but also for them because it's it's a big people in their lives you don't waste no one's time but obviously you know think of business first just make sure it's right because it it's

Unwinding employment is painful for everyone. No one's a winner. Yeah, naturally. Especially if you don't like confrontation. Yeah, no, I absolutely hate confrontation. Worst thing ever. So yeah, yeah. But oh well, there you go. So why did you decide you wanted to sell the business? How did that come about? Okay, so that's a good question and it's one that's been asked quite a few times. And sitting here, well, first of all, I'll roll back. So in 2008, I started to have those thoughts again.

I didn't know what selling a business was really. I just knew I was sat on a valuable business, an asset, and all of my value was in this business. I owned 100% of it. I didn't have any other assets whatsoever, maybe a car or maybe a few quid in the bank from dividends. I did have a, actually, I did write myself a cheque, but the absolute material part of my wealth was within that business.

So the analogy that I use is if you're on a one-armed bandit machine, a fruit machine, and you keep on spinning that wheel and you keep on seeing the jackpot go higher and higher and higher and higher, this is risk averse, I agree. At what point do you press cash out? Because look, something dramatic, something really dramatic, even outside of my control could have happened. I know it's being fearful and with hindsight, I should probably not have thought this, but you could have lost it all.

Because it's not sensible for any investor to have 100% of their eggs in one basket.

That's foolish. So my actual theory my plan was to to not sell the whole business It was to sell a minority stake to take some chips off the table secure mine and my family's future forever or for the at least, you know secure it for the long term and and then get go with the Private equity company and a second bite of cherry and really drive the the European growth That was the plan when I went into it. Okay, so

That's not what ended up happening. That's not what ended up happening. I hear you got like 25 offers or something or 25 people wanting to bid on the business. Yeah. And then eventually the Hut group made an offer that you couldn't refuse. Yeah. Well, they were all at about 25. So there was about 25, maybe even more, 30 plus offers. Some of them, I worked with a corporate finance broker, if you like, someone who managed that process. And they

You know some of them didn't even make it off the table and straight in their bin. You know, they might have been low offers or dreamers or whatever it was and then did it boil down to a 17 private equity and there was like three or four big trade offers. The hook did come on later on actually. So Pepsi were one, Nestle were another. I don't think I've ever said this. I'm not sure I should. No, I'm sure it's fine. There was a couple of other big conglomerates in there as well. They were trade buyers. They wanted to buy 100% of their business.

The private equity wants to do a minority stake, so they might have bought 30% of the business and I would have rolled the new equity into Nuco and then grown it for three, four, five years and then get that second bite of the cherry. And that was the plan. And that's what the management team were focused on as well. It is what I was focused on. So there was what happened. So we boiled it down, went through the process and then there was two private equity firms that I really liked.

I won't name the names because it's embarrassing for one of them. So they don't know who they are. But I actually, what I wanted, I didn't want just dumb money. I wanted someone to come in. There's loads of money people want to throw cash at it. But I wanted, because it was probably one of the hottest businesses of the year in terms of that size. So I wanted someone to come in and add value. Yeah.

So the value that I wanted to add was something where they had European knowledge because I was looking to roll into Europe. So you sign a deal for 30 days where you basically say you're not going to speak to anyone else, i.e. the seller. And they're just, no, it's me. They focus completely on my deal and I focus completely on them.

So in that period of 30 days, it really goes into a deep due diligence. So they really do start kicking the can around, do financial due diligence, really getting the numbers, they ask, they interview the management team and really get into the thick of it.

And I said to them, guys, this is fine. I appreciate, you know, we're spending, you know, tens of millions of pounds without getting into a number of things. But however, this is going to take up serious amounts of management time and my time. And things will probably plateau because when we're not applying the work, you know, things aren't going to grow as much. They won't go backwards. We've got repeat customers, 33% customers with repeat customers.

but we are going to soften off. So I don't want to sit here in one month from now, look at you and go, well, the numbers have dipped off this month, so we should reduce the price or something to that effect. So no, no, no, don't be, we'll take that into the round. I went, perfect, no problem, let's do it. So we went into the 30 days of deep due diligence and it was more work than I thought. It probably took up 95% of your working day and for management as well. It wasn't an enjoyable process at all.

But we got out the back of it. It was all rosy. Everyone was positive and they were happy. Then he came to me and he looked me in the eye and he said to me, Oliver, it's flattened off the numbers. We're going to have to rework your multiple and basically chipping it.

And I just went, let's just stop the meeting right now. If you're in sales mode and you're telling me this, then, you know, I can't get into bedroom work with you because there's no trust there. So we'll just call it off. And it was as simple as that. I just thought that let's just drop it. They were like, well, and then it went away. And since then, he've actually told me we were the one that got away and we shouldn't have tried that little trick on you. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, because I've heard this happens a lot when you're in the process of selling in the due diligence. They're kind of figuring out ways to kind of chip away at the multiple and be like, oh, well, actually, that thing that you said was worth 100K is actually worth 80K. Absolutely do. That whole shebang. It's a bit...

I think it's just the wrong way around. For me, you know, obviously if there's something materially wrong, if you said the business is making a million pounds a year and it's really only making 700,000, and obviously that's going to have a massive impact. But, you know, I think you've got to have some tolerance in there. And I think if you try to build a relationship, which you need to have the founder on board, they need to be fired up. They need to feel, you know, trustworthy. I think a lot of the PE houses go about it the wrong way.

And this is where they need the more less the corporate, more of the entrepreneurial side in that. - 'Cause I guess if they're gonna be a minority shareholder, then it's a relationship. It's not like they're acquiring all of the business and they're just- - No, they need you. They need you on board. Obviously that's one of the other things I didn't like, the provisions that private equity put in, even if they're a minority,

So, you know, they can swamp you. There's bad lever arrangements. There's loads of different legal technicalities where they can pull the rug from under your feet. Like, for example, a bad lever arrangement, which was a scary thing. Yeah, what did that mean? If you got caught drink driving, if you did a criminal offense for one reason, or if you do a gross misconduct, or there was some lower thresholds, if you did something along these lines, you were classed as a bad lever. Yeah.

And then if you're a bad lever, that means all the directives taken away from you. Oh, yeah. Okay. That is not an extreme situation, but that has happened. Look, obviously you're not going to be drink driving or whatever, but you won't. Why would you even put that in the risk factor? Or one day you might do something which conceived as gross conduct, but it actually isn't.

So so I was quite clear that starting one any of those heavy provisions obviously if it's something like fraud or Yes, it's prison for many years then obviously fair enough, but you don't want the accuracy taken away from you. Hmm

So you went into this sales mode thinking you wanted sort of minority private equity acquisition. Correct. But then that's not what ended up happening. No. So we had that conversation with that private equity house that remained nameless. And they're a famous one. And then we went back to square one. We went back to square one. The other PE house wasn't right because there's a few things I wasn't fully comfortable with.

i can't remember the details but i wasn't comfortable so we sort of went back to square one and this was like a year-long 18-month-long process we just come out the back of

a heavy due diligence period. We're all a bit tired. Yeah. As well as everything else growing a business. So, and then, you know, in the 11th hour, the whole group came, came into the, into the equation. They, they made an attractive bid, which was attractive in the sense of the conditions. There was no provisions. There was, I could have, I could have left the business the day after or could have stayed. And,

And yeah, there was no, it was just very clean. The deal was around about 34 million quid cash day one. And then the rest of the value of the business, which was about half of the value of the business was rolled into the hook group. So I would then own, I think it was around 14%, one four of the hook group. The valuations hardly worked out on that day.

And so I met with Matt, Matt Moulding, the CEO and founder of The Hut. We sat down, we got on, I believed in his passion, he had a good vision, he was a very personal person.

and I believed in what they were doing. So I thought, you know, this could work. I sort of worked my rear end off. Well, I didn't sort of. I worked my rear end off for the last eight years. This felt like a good way of taking cash off the table, which is a ridiculous amount of money, and then rolling it into something for... The plan was it for its IPO one or two years later. But due to some...

Due to issues of what they presented to me, the business, the whole group wasn't doing as well as they said in those days. I think they said they were making...

Three or four million pounds profit which transpired and making minus one. Oh, I would never have done the deal if it was no Yeah, so my protein was a bigger business as more profitable business in the whole group that alright. Yeah They were selling CDs online. Yeah, we were you know, what that was a road to ruin Yeah, but we were we were obviously in a really high growth industry making five million EBITDA and

um but anyways at that point in time that it was what i knew at the time was we were i was acquiring a good stake in a highly profitable business with a good vision and obviously it's transpired since then nine ten years later it ipo'd for you know for a great number 30 billion or something yeah it's not quite that much it's about six and a half six billion oh was it okay okay what what's that like sitting at the table with someone who's just offered you 35 million quid

Yeah, it was. And it's funny this because actually someone else said to me when I got the check for the bigger check last year, and Matt actually said to me, Matt said to me, when we were doing the deal, signing lawyers, he says, what was it like signing, you know, seeing 35 million quid or whatever it was landing in your bank account? And it was no different. It made no difference to me in a way.

Weirdly, I think because it wasn't something like I won the lottery. So one minute I didn't know it was coming, next minute I did.

This has been building for many a year. I had this vision when I was a I had this vision for the last 10 years of becoming the position so it just felt like part of the process and that sounds quite strange but it's Yeah, it wasn't I didn't go out and buy a new car. I didn't do anything Extravagant it was I just it was quite a is a surreal moment. Obviously. I was happy inside. Yeah Yeah, it wasn't a wow

Interesting. So I've spoken to a few authors who've had their books hit like the New York Times bestseller list. And one of them, you know, I asked, what was that feeling like when you got the call finding out you hit the bestseller list? He was like, to be honest, it didn't really feel like anything. You know, I'd put in the work over such a long period of time. At that point, it was just a cool, went back to mowing my lawn. Yeah.

It's exactly the same. It's something that you've, you've obviously aimed at and it's not, it's not new news, is it? It's something you've been working towards, but yeah, it was, I think, there you go. I'll, I'll agree with them. And hopefully we can, with this book, we can get in a safe place. Yeah.

Yeah. So the subtitle of this book is how to turn 500 pounds into 350 million pounds. Yeah. So presumably the other 315 million was from the shares of the hot group. Yes. No, just yet. So that's a lot of money. Yeah. Well, it is a public number. I've done really like, yeah, this was a very much of the,

Oh, yeah. It's always a bit awkward when you're an author being like, oh, it's a big clickbait. Yeah, it wasn't my idea. Of course. The name was, but the subtitle was, they pushed me towards that. No, they always do that. Yeah, okay. Authors always feel weird about that. Yeah. So, look, it is public knowledge. You know, in September last year, pretty much from year to the day, I sold a lot of my shares. I think it was for 289. Yeah.

um um in in in the float of the hook group i still own a good chunk that shares in there as well but so 289 worth shares in the whole group is a public record so so yeah it's in it's already in the papers and it's it's a float what's the difference between having 35 million in the bank and having 350 million in the bank yeah it's just like pure curiosity yeah at those levels of wealth like what

I mean, I was looking at some prices of yachts and stuff and they're in the tens of millions. So I guess that's one thing. But what's that experience like? I think it becomes pretty, I think if it was over a certain amount, it comes to a point where it doesn't really make that much difference. So I, look, I'm in a very fortunate position and I'm very, very grateful. I count my blessings every morning without fail of where I am healthy. I've got beautiful people around me and I've got a lot of money in the bank.

And, you know, I'm very grateful for that. I think that's first and foremost. I think having over a certain amount gives you, the key thing it gives you is freedom and choice of options. You know, like now I could literally decide to go and jump on a plane and go to,

Barcelona for the weekend or whatever, you know that and if you're working in it with for someone or you've not got expendable cash You know might be a bit of a consideration, but now I can do it So that's the first thing it gives you the choice to being able to help people which is important to me around me You go to child people. You don't know as well and help people who are less fortunate. So all of these things are great and

The one thing doesn't do is give you happiness. I know it's it You know wealth and there's definitely no pity party here But wealth brings a whole raft of its own problems. What kind of problems? Oh god jealousy, okay

You obviously acquire more things which need more management. People's expectations are raised to a whole new level from people from yourself. Your own expectations are raised. You've got this wealth. You want to be helping people, helping yourself grow the monies more. You don't want to rest on your laurels. It creates a lot of its own dynamics, obviously.

And again, no pity party. I wouldn't want to change anything, but it's not all right. You've got all this money. Life's really happy. It's really easy. It creates a lot of its own stresses and strains. There's a famous study they did about, I think it was people who won Wimbledon and also people who won gold medals at the Olympics. And in the aftermath of that, they had an increased likelihood for like mental health problems and stuff. And the theory was that like once you've hit the pinnacle, then you're,

you sometimes can feel this sense of, oh crap, what do I do now? Absolutely. Did you have that at all? Yes, yeah, I did. I had that in 2011 when I saw MyProtein. You can see how much work and effort are put into MyProtein. Literally blood, sweat and tears. And I'm not just coining a cliche for a reason. It was everything. It was my life. It was the first thing I thought about. It was the last thing I thought about. It was what I dreamt about most nights. So, you know, these...

Going from that to having not the business from literally one day to the next, you know, in literally a split second was a huge void that I struggled to fill. It was hard. And even now today, it's hard to fill. I loved being at the coalface and working. But over the last decade or so, I've got more things to do now running various investments. And I'm working on a lot of Charles Wills things and my book, podcast, podcast.

spending more time with friends and family. - Yeah, like in the 4-Hour Workweek as well, he talks about how once you've gotten to this point where you've automated your business, you've got all the passive income and you are theoretically only working four hours a week, you have this void, which you're like, you have to fill up with something. And how it's in a way a cautionary tale about how a lot of people

sort of are aiming at that point thinking that it's going to bring them happiness of like, oh, once I exit my company, once I quit my job and I have my business, then I'll be, then I'll be happy. But I guess what you're saying is that it's absolutely a dream and aspiration for everyone. It was for me. And, you know, I, I managed to achieve that dream and aspiration, but certainly it's not the, it's not the end, you know, it is. And it's not the right. Everything's okay. Now you need to plan for after, after that.

I think footballers is another perfect example. How do they do it? Footballers have the career and then when they finish the career, they're like, what do we do now? And I think that needs to, there should be more help and more, and this is one of the things I'm going to do in my next season of the podcast actually, is I'm going to train people who are fortunate enough to exit a business to try and help them start planning for that change in their lives. It's something I didn't do and I would have done it with hindsight.

Because it is a huge change. I moved to Monaco as well. That was another reason one of the times to change. I wanted to change the scenery, try and fill in the gaps. You said one of the problems with having lots of cash in the bank is jealousy. Yeah. Like how...

Did you notice that kind of friends and family were treating you different, that kind of thing? - Look, I have, most of my best friends I've known for 25, 30 years. They're still my friends today, the ones I had from primary school, secondary school, before I had any money. And to them, I'm just Ollie. I'm just the same guy that I walk into the pub and they'll often buy me a pint. They're my close, true friends. So it's not changed, there's never seen an ounce of jealousy within them.

But then I guess you have different levels of friends. So maybe some of the friends who are more just mates, acquaintances, you do notice it. You do notice it. Nothing, nothing specific. It's just, and it's, I think it's quite a natural sort of emotion for some people. And then you do get some, you obviously get other people you don't even know who become jealous and say some catty remarks like, oh, you should be helping everyone else or you should not have this much money. I don't know. Just, just, just, just, you know, just.

Yeah, because you've had quite a lot of media attention, you know, rated number one entrepreneur, there was that list of self-made millionaires under 40, which you went kind of top of the list of.

Did you get like haters and stuff on the internet through that? Yeah, I do. Not as many as, look, you'll always get haters in life. I'm sure I've got quite a lot out there and that's, you know, that's a progressive. It doesn't, it doesn't affect me either way. That's, you know, everyone's got to have their own views and beliefs. I'm not going to challenge them in any way, shape or form. It makes no difference to me. However, the, I think people need to realize, I don't know, they don't need to realize, but I think it's,

Don't know if I was if I was in if I didn't know how the successor did if I would view someone who started a business with nothing come from a working-class inner-city family single-parent family from Manchester and Grafted to get to where I did and I'd have admiration for them. I'm not saying I'm not giving myself kudos here Well, in fact, I'm a little bit but I'd have an amrisha fly. It's not as if they just are

found money on the beach or something or or or maybe some people have more jealousy with someone who inherited and they have to work for it which is a very important thing for me and my children you know I don't want to become silver silver spoon but yeah for someone who's actually built it but created wealth and jobs from nothing then then then I think these it's harder to hate but yeah I'm surprised

Yeah. And that was one of your dreams when you were eight, isn't it? Like to be able to create jobs for people. What was the line that you wrote in your journal? Okay. So quite a while ago. I forgot. No, no. It was something along the lines. There's a beautiful story in here, Ali. So when I was eight, I apparently wrote this. I can't remember writing it. But it says, the question was something along the lines of from the teacher, what do you want to do when you're older? Yeah.

And typically when you ask an eight-year-old, it would be a football player, a fireman, astronaut. Exactly. So I actually said I wanted to be a businessman. I wanted to create jobs for others and help other people or something along those lines. And I didn't know about this, but I think a few years ago, my mom brought me on my birthday, brought me in a fray, obviously wrapped a fray and ripped it off. And I was like, wow, wow.

And it was actually the letter that I wrote when I was eight and it was framed. It blew my mind because I then started to thought I'm massive on self-reflection, I'm massive on self-reflection nowadays. And I was like trying to understand what was the reasons I wrote that.

Because obviously I can't remember why I did it, you know, 35 years ago, whatever it was. So, but then I was trying to, I sort of figured out, I understand why I would have wrote The Businessman and because I would have figured out that's a way of making money. And that was a very clear goal of mine. But I don't know the jobs bit. I don't think that was something that, I don't think that's something you're born with.

Which is saying my book. I think it's something that's coming from something in life a pattern or or something I don't know and I don't understand the psychology behind that but I want that's something I'm going to reflect deeper into and trying to understand because I find that fascinating interesting Yeah, so you talk a lot about self reflection these days. What is what does that mean? And like what does that look like practically for you? So I think Naturally, I've always been self-critical. Okay, um

I naturally always reflected on things and always looked at how I could do them better. And this wasn't from reading a book, and this is before I knew the word self-reflection. This was just something I did naturally. I don't know. I think it's just the way I'm wired. Everyone's good at certain things. And

So I self-reflected organically, if I can say that, all the way through my protein. I always looked at what I could do and I always want to continually improve. So what's key with me and a real key analogy is some people come to me, slight tangent, but some people come to me and say, oh, well, I've been trying this business for a couple of weeks and it's not working and I'm going to give up. And then the best analogy that I can give is if you get a bucket of water and throw it on some rocks,

Throwing rocks maybe a hundred times. Nothing's going to change nothing However, if you get that bucket and throw it on the rocks every two seconds for centuries or millions of years ill erode the rocks and you know, that's that with patience water can erode rocks with patience and Perseverance you can do anything. So keep doing what you're doing. Do it systematically do it absolutely with consistency

you'll achieve your goals for sure that is absolutely paramount to be successful it's cornerstone so slight tangent nodes went off on with the but in terms of self-reflection that's what I saw I saw when when I continually did something time and time again even if you can't see it then you will start to chip away at the rocks chip away at your goals chip away at your aspirations so the the

So I actually really look, so I did that all the way through my protein. That was one of the things I saw. How could I do that better? Always ask yourself the awkward questions. So be self-critical.

So if I say, why didn't I do that? Okay. I can do the best of this in that time and be reasonably unreasonable with yourself. Okay. Reasonably unreasonable. So don't be not fair with yourself or don't be nice with yourself. Be a little bit unreasonable. Be reasonably unreasonable. Okay. Yeah. So just beat yourself up a little bit, not too much. And just, so, okay, I did this. I could do better next time. Make yourself feel, do better. Challenge yourself. Then, then,

Then in, you know, if you can't, if you can't challenge yourself and make yourself proud of what you're trying to strive for, who can you do it for? You know, I think it's got to start from within. So in terms of the self-reflection, so that's one side, the self-critical side. Then on the flip, give yourself a pat on the back. If you've done something, you've done something well.

Sit down and give yourself a pat on the back. And that's not, it's a balance between being overly confident and overly critical, but get that balance right. And that's self-reflection in a nutshell. So I actually reflected, I think I really realized I was reflecting and I went deeper into the self-reflection process when I thought of the book. So when I started to think around the book,

and then started to think of different stories within the book and the different limbs to the book and how that could look the book then i really started to go oh wow okay this is there's loads of reasons why i did the book but that was when i put pen to paper metaphorically speaking then i actually went just a whole new level of deepness within myself and within the self-reflection process and it made me a lot better

in terms of how I can improve myself. Look, I'm far from the finished article, but it really did help. And I would absolutely recommend for anyone, even if they don't have a, what's perceived as a, you know, a story like this, even if they just lived a normal life, inverted commas, Yeah.

Do write a memoir. Maybe you don't need to get it published, but write a memoir. Reflect on your period of your life over the period of time. You will, you absolutely guarantee you will find things which will make the next period of your life better. Do you have any examples of sort of what did you realize about yourself through the self-reflective process that came about through writing the book? So I... Good question. I think there was pluses and minuses. So I...

if you want specific examples, I think I did understand that I was starting on a plus. I didn't understand that I did, uh,

Do well, I did really really on some of the things I can remember exact examples Maybe in some management leadership sides of things maybe on product development on the website development Maybe I did really excel within my own capabilities there and I should Pat myself on the back and maybe try and improve myself in terms of even go even better on certain areas Okay, so that project now I'm starting to do better coding again. I

Not for a commercial project, but just for me, I'm doing a few things which are just off the air. In private, I guess. And then negatively, what did I learn?

I learned that I could be quite, I am naturally shy. I'm actually an introvert. People don't see that a lot of the time. Maybe you do. So that was something I felt like I could really try and break out of that shell, break out of my shell more. Maybe I could be more compassionate sometimes.

There's certain areas where I really did, you know, I was very, a detached emotion and I believe I could have been more compassionate in certain situations. I won't give examples on that point. But these, so I think there's a few examples. What was the process of writing the book? So the process of writing the book. So first of all, I wanted to,

I think the initial process was coming up with the reasons why I wanted to write the book. If the reasons weren't profound enough for me to do it, I know I wouldn't complete it. And then once I've started on that journey of doing it, I don't want to stop. So I think the reasons that I wrote it, one were... And it was a multitude of reasons. One was to...

I've got a process and in no particular role. One was trying to give back. I believe it's an inspiring story and hopefully it's a helpful story to budding entrepreneurs or whatever. So I wanted to give back as part of the podcast, as part of some of the other initiatives that I'm doing in the background, I wanted to give back to the next gen of entrepreneurs. And hopefully if it can inspire one person, amazing. It has already inspired numbers of people from emails I've had and whatnot. So that was first thing.

Secondly, I'm part of my deep thinking self-reflection process. I sort of thought about the people who stood behind us. So, you know, we're all here today drinking this beautiful water and from a tap and from, we're eating fruits for our breakfast, which have come from far flung lands, you know, and that's all, we've had the internet, we have all of this infrastructure in place. It's from all the people who stood behind us.

You know, so we should be super grateful for all of our ancestors who've laid the tracks for where we are today. So I think we have to all be grateful for that and be reflective on that. But then it's spun on to the future. So the people who stand in front of us, we should try and leave our legacy, our personal legacy or the world in a better way than where we are today.

So I wanted to, by writing this book, I hopefully can then inspire some of my ancestors in 100, 200 years maybe of where this happened, you know, what happened in that family tree. I'd love to read about my ancestors. So that was, I think that was an important point. And then it was also finally, it was a bit of a memoir for me personally because my mum actually said to me, told me about a story in the days of building my approach, which is many,

And I forgot, I literally couldn't remember it. I couldn't not remember it. And I was like, wow, that's, that's concerning. I'm not getting any younger. My memory's going to start going only one way. I need to write this down for my own personal memoir. Um, and also for my children, my children's children, you know, I put a lot of hours in and maybe not been as, as, as done as many hours with the children as I would have done if I didn't have a business. So I want to, you know, I want them to, I want them to read it when they're older and understand daddy, we,

was doing something. So those were your reasons for writing the book? Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. And then what comes next? So like I'm writing a book at the moment, but it's like a, it's not a memoir. It's like a guide on productivity and stuff. So the process is, I guess, quite different to writing a memoir. So I'm curious about what the process for that is. So I then, so I had some solid reasons to do it. And then I just sort of started fleshing out what it would be about. Is it going to be a, I don't know,

a helpful book? Is it going to be like a biography, autobiography, a memoir? I thought, look, realistically from when I was born to when I saw my proteins, an interesting bit of my life, this stuff that's happened since then, maybe a sequel, if it ever sells enough, um, if I have the time as well. Um, so then I just started to flesh out a bit of a timeline. So I started with a timeline. So it started 1979 to 2011. I started putting in points of what happened in these years and,

I started to get a structure together and then fleshed out a bit of a synopsis per chapter sort of thing. And then I sort of just bounced the idea around and I felt like it had legs. Then I actually met up with an editor, someone who's worked with books before and I give him the idea.

I work closely with him. So I created scribbles and he turned it into copy. I wrote some things, he rewrote it, he advised. We worked together really in a way. Most of the copy has been written

I'm not going to try and take any credit. Most of the copy had been rewrote by him to be more grammar. I'm not, I'm not, I don't, I'm not an A star in English lit, but, um, but all of the key parts of the structure was mine. And then at what point did you get the publishing deal? Like how did, how did that process work? So I wrote the manuscript first. Oh, okay.

And then, so we wrote the book. It was pretty much print ready because he actually wrote a few books himself. And I was happy to manage scripts. It was a very collaborative process, the end bit. Bounced it backwards and forwards. We spent many an hour and he was great, Martin. How does it feel having published a book? I'm proud. Yeah. I'm proud. It feels like another tick in the box. It's always been a lifelong ambition, if you like, to have a book. Yeah.

And yeah, it's good. It's good. There's a lot of work there. It's a huge time drainage, as you're probably finding out. So, but it feels like an accomplishment. It feels like an accomplishment. It feels like a...

I've done, I did the work and now I've sort of wrote about it. I've sort of signed off now. Yeah. There you go. You can get run over by the proverbial bus now. So there's quite a lot of lessons in the book from kind of very early days, but you also talk a bit about like scaling the business and going for the sale. How do you think about like, or rather who, who,

Who is the book aimed at? Like who would benefit from reading it? That's a good question. I would say I think it's a multitude of demographics. So I think it's primary. No, I think there's a range. I think it's anyone. I wouldn't like to put an age bracket on it, but I think it's anyone who's starting a business.

First and foremost, I think it could be really powerful for them. I also believe anyone who just wants a little bit of inspiration in life from, and it could be in a career. It might not be one to start a business. Maybe they just enjoy reading about an inspiring story. I'd like to say some business owners as well. Maybe there's some information in there, not just as a startup, but maybe as another business. So I think it's a reasonably wide range.

Yeah, I think like whatever stage of the journey people are at, like chances are they're not at the point where they've sold something for 35 million.

I benefited a lot from the stuff around hiring and leadership and all that sort of stuff. Whereas people earlier on in the journey would really benefit from the stuff around mindset and keeping going and finding your USP and all that kind of stuff. - Yes. I think mindset is something that I believe I've got quite a, I certainly don't profess to be an expert and write a book on it, but I certainly can write a few chapters on mindset. It's something that I think is so important with life.

But also bootstrapping essentially, but for certainly in business as well. So yeah, I think mindset is so key. Well, there's tons of good books out there. What are the mistakes that you see other entrepreneurs make around the mindset thing or traps that people can fall into quite easily? Yeah, just mindsets. I'd say, I think people like to overthink and it's not, look, it's an easy thing to do. Procrastination is...

is something that most people do. But I just think you need to recognize when you need to just stop and just close that thought off and move on to the next one. Because, you know, your brain is like, you know, another analogy is like your broadband. It's only got so much bandwidth. You know, if you keep on thinking about all this stuff here, you know, you're sort of reducing your bandwidth by half or whatever it may be. So, you know, free that bit up

And then you've got full bandwidth to attack the next problem. The other thing is, which is on the same sort of premise, is fear. Fear is a liar. I've coined that one a few times now. Yeah, you mentioned that a few times in the book. What does that mean? So fear is a liar. Look, if you've got a fearful thought, then it is lying. That's the bottom line. So basically don't believe what fear. Never believe a fearful thought. Don't believe in fear. So...

Easier said than done. But if you, for example, think, okay, just as a round example, I'm going to start a business, but what if this happens? Maybe this will happen. Can I do that? Am I capable of doing this? What does that person think? What happens if I fail? All of those are fearful points. They all come from fear. I've never known anything in life, which is outside of fortune, where fear is the right thing.

Instigates with a decision. No fearful thought is the right decision interesting So the whole point is you don't you've got to ignore those fearful thoughts That doesn't mean go and jump off that balcony and you're gonna fly so not fearful of it You got some rationale there's got to be some constraints of you know being sensible and

But in terms of how that can improve mindset, so if you're thinking something, oh, can I do this? Or what happens if I fail? All of these fearful things, recognize it like a cloud in the sky.

and let it pass acknowledge it recognize it let it go it's gone then then you're free and then you're then you're then you're then you're bandwidth for three free it's easier said than done i completely respect that it takes a lot of training and so it took a lot of time for me to learn to be able to do that sometimes i can't believe me there's many a night i lie in bed and i can't switch off from things i'm really trying to meditate i'm really trying to go within

But it doesn't, it's not, look, I'm not a Buddhist monk by any stretch of the imagination, but I can do it a lot of the time. I can do it for 80%. And if people could start just recognizing their fearful thoughts, acknowledging them and then letting them go, they can give themselves more time to focus on the positive things. Positive habits equal positive results. The end. Yeah. I think the fear thing is really interesting. Like I find that a lot of, a lot of the things that hold us back, we call fear.

things like imposter syndrome and perfectionism and stuff. But really, it's just fear. And I've been realizing this over the last year or so that when I feel like, oh, I'm too much of a perfectionist, therefore I'm not doing this. It's like, no, no, let's call a spade a spade. I'm scared. I have fear. And then once I've labeled it, I'm like, oh, okay. I'm scared about what people will think of me. I'm scared that there's a small minority of people on the internet who will not like the fact that I talk about money on the podcast.

okay, great. I've now labeled that. And now I can be like, okay, that's, it's a bit dumb to be scared of that. Let's absolutely not let that dictate my life choices. So screw that. That's it. That is exactly the same process that I did.

And again, this wasn't something I read about in a book. I've become more spiritual, but I was naturally more like that anyway when I was younger. I'm more stoic. I'm naturally stoic, very stoic. But I think the spiritual side, look, and again, I don't profess to be a spiritual teacher of any shape or form, but a lot of things I did were more spiritual and some things I need to do a lot more spiritually. But a lot of the concepts really resonate with me. But if you label something as, yeah, you can call it all the different names under the sun. If it's fear-induced,

then label it, acknowledge it, and then let it go. And just do what's right for you, I guess. You know, you're never going to please everyone, are you? What do your goals look like these days? Like, what's the make-up? Yeah, the goals are getting more and more...

empathetic more personal more feelings based so I want to you know I've achieved a lot in business do I want to be a billionaire or do I want to have 100 homes around the world I'm not sure to be honest I feel like I've really achieved right now I'm just trying to get everything in order so it's structured

So it's professionalized again, if I get rid of my proverbial boss, everything's going to work and run. I'm going to be able to continue my giving journey. I'm going to be able to help people who I want to help and succession planning behind me in front of me. So, so that's a lot of my bit. My time now is focused on structuring and creating the right structures and processes of how to run. Cause effectively where my, my, my life now is like a, it's like a business, you know, with this, with that level of wealth,

whatever the number is, then it's, you know, it's as big as a medium or even larger business. Is it like family offices and that kind of thing? Yeah, all that sort of stuff. So, you know, creating all that structure in place is where I am. However, a massive part of this now is my next part of my life is giving. I want to...

I want to give, but I'm not going to just go, right, here's a load of money, here's to everyone. I certainly, you know, I don't respond to people who just email me out of the blue because that's, I give to certain charities. I'm a patron of Make-A-Wish. I give money to them. I do various things with them. I'm an amazing charity. Anyone can,

help, you know, if you can help a child with, who's got a serious or terminal condition, make their dreams come true.

you know what if you can't if that doesn't give you joy within what's going to give you joy in life i mean it's an amazing feeling and you know i've helped hundreds of children and plan to have hundreds more um you know do they wish in fact last year i it was i think it helps all the children who had an outstanding wish in greater manchester i did everyone in one obviously i'd like to help more and that will happen over time so that's one is the caldwell children who'd like to mention who are

John Caldwell is a friend of mine. He helps children with various disabilities. So that's another charity and I've got various other ones as well. But what I want to really do early next year, and I've already got the idea in play, is I created a legacy in business in MyProtein. MyProtein will be here in hundreds of years, it should be, if it continues as it is.

And I want to create a charitable legacy. Okay. So I don't want to just create another, uh, another fund or another trust, which is, um, which is then just giving my money away. I want to create something with the money that I've got, actually create more money and continually give when I'm dead. When, you know, I'm talking like a hundred years, I want something to be, to be there and to be evolving and to be a tangible thing and actually help it forever. I've got an idea. Um,

So it's an entrepreneurial charitable idea. Okay. Which is going to be fully self-funded by myself. It's going to benefit a lot of people in the disadvantaged communities in the UK predominantly. Well, no, it's going to be solely the UK. Predominantly they're going to focus in Manchester and then

pilot it and then roll it out um so yeah that's that's gonna take up a lot of my time one thing that you said i think in so toward toward the end of the book you said that um had you not sold my protein you would be a billionaire right now right um i have heard of a lot of people who are like like you know multi multi hundred millionaires who then aspire you know to join the three comma club it's become billionaire all that all that kind of stuff do

Do you see in yourself a drive to make even more money? Slash, do you know people, have friends who are ridiculously rich and want to become even more ridiculous? Is that like a thing? Yeah, it is. Look, I think you can get a bit... Your goals, if they're consistently just to be the richest man around, you're never going to achieve them, realistically. There's only one person who can do that in the world. And the chances of that are...

you know, next to zero. So, you know, from where I am today to get to that position, it's never going to happen. And why would I anyway, you know, after certain amounts of wealth, where does it become a bit of an ego thing? You know, and look, it's all very well being proud and having goals and achieving goals. But I think there's got to be a balance between

Between that and the ego. So I, look, do, you know, do I believe I could turn this into a bigger number? With three commas or not? Of course I can. I'm 42. You know, I've got another at least 30 years, 30, 40 years plus of, I've got at least another 30, 40 years of business if I want it to be. Hmm.

So yeah, there's no doubt I can get into that three comma club. However, I want to, it sort of offsets the giving side because I want to also help people. Yep.

So, you know, you can't do everything. So I'm going to try and balance it out. I'm going to try and create more wealth to help more people and to, you know, to keep me busy as well. I'm good at it. So why not? What does a standard day in your life look like these days? Every day is different. Every day is different. If I'm completely honest with you, I wanted to come up with a more routine today because I think routine is one of those things that people hate most.

to be in yeah yeah the rat race in london or the rat race in manchester wherever it may be you know everyone when everyone's in that they get up at seven get on a get on the train at eight do your job come back when you're in that routine everyone hates it but when you're out of routine you don't have a routine everyone hates that too yeah there'll be some kind of balance there right so that's so i'm i've sort of got a loose routine so i wake up

I've never been an early waker by the way, early riser. Even when I was building my protein and doing these hourly days, right at the start I was, 'cause I was doing two jobs, but once I lost my main job, I always woke up eight, nine o'clock earliest.

And now, now I'll probably wake up at a similar sort of time. I'm not super early waker. I wake up, I read, I read the news. I read, um, try and read something of value before they'll do anything. I realized how grateful I am to be where I am and, and do this, um, sort of ritual. If you like, I use the gym, I do emails, um,

And then I have various functions or work or social activities. So it's pretty loose. One thing I do want to do and one thing I need to do and one of my goals at the moment is to create a more rigid routine for detoxing digitally. Okay.

I need to figure out a routine for my phone because right now I have, it's too intrusive. I'm finally getting WhatsApp and I'm replying to it. I have RSI as it is from the years I was really hammering a keyboard. But now it's starting to come back again because I'm using WhatsApp too much.

So I think I'm going to, I need to find a way of, I need to, I'm going to Google it and research and find, because obviously this is a well-trodden path of actually just sort of disconnecting a little bit from the digital side for periods of the day and having focus hours. So yeah, I believe that would help me because it's, yeah, it creates lots of negative emotions when you get stressed on your phone. Yeah, no, naturally. I just wanted to end by, so we've got these 10 like rapid fire questions that we ask every guest at the end.

The questions are quick, but the answers don't have to be quick. So it's just in a random order. Okay. I'm sat down. Perfect. So number one is what advice would you give to your younger self? Oh, that is a punchy question. One that I would know. Look, and it is absolutely what I said before about the patience and consistency. Be consistent, be patient and believe in yourself. Nice. Who is your favorite musical artist or band?

Wow, there's so many. Look, I'm quite peculiar when it comes to music. I only listen to electronic music, so it could be ambient music, it could be techno. I like everything. I like electronic. I'm an electronics technical geek, really. So what's your favourite band or music? I guess it's an artist. There's too many. No one would have probably heard them because they're quite...

A bit niche. Yeah, a bit niche. What's a good gateway drug that we can listen to? I don't know. A good gateway music. It depends on the mood. Like I said, I listen to Melodic House. Look, Jose Padilla, who died earlier this year for Café Del Mar, is something I listen to when I'm working, when I'm relaxing. You can't beat that vibe, that Café Del Mar ambient music, down tempo. Cool. Something like, it's going to be very obvious, but like a gateway, like a Solomon or a black coffee for a more energetic...

more new age house and that'll be enough to keep people going. - Fair play. Who has had the biggest influence in your career? - Myself. - Yeah, nice. You're your own trauma. What's one tip for someone looking for success?

One tip, one tip. And look, I've made this a cliche now, but it is important. It is important. And nothing is in the way of saying it. But no, there isn't. Fear is a liar. And it's something I've been coining. But it's so important. The sooner you realize that these fearful thoughts are going to bring absolutely no positive impact to you, they're not going to serve you at all, the more you can focus on the good stuff. Love it. What did the first and last hour of your day look like?

Oh, the completely difference to the first hour when I was building the business. So my first hour is, I'm not a morning person at all. In fact, I dislike mornings compared to evenings. But the first hour is just really a lazy, lazy hour. I'm lazy. I love training in the gym, but I'm useless in the gym.

So that's the first hour is lazy. And the last hour is all about reading or watching and learning. I'm a night person, so that's when I really zone in. And that's probably why I can't sleep as well as I should. But the last hour I try and pause

Part of the process I'm going through now, I turn my phone off at least an hour before bed. So I read a book or I watch something on television, which I know is more blue light, but it's more easier to consume. Yeah. What material item could you not live without? Material item I could not live without...

- I'd like to say my phone. I'm trying to move away from that. Materializing that I could not live without. - Is there any kind of physical product or anything that's added a lot of value to your life? - My laptop. 'Cause I use it for everything. Without my laptop, I couldn't achieve my protein. I research on it, I write my notes, I do everything on my laptop. I even watch Netflix and entertain myself as well. - Nice. What book, apart from yours, would you recommend to anyone?

The Daily Stoic. Oh, nice. Alex, is it? Alex Holliday? Ryan Holliday. Ryan Holliday, so yeah, absolutely brilliant. Amazing. He's actually the one who's had that line of when he became a New York Times bestseller, it felt like nothing. Oh, right, really? Yeah. Well, no, yeah, he's... I love that book. I think it's absolutely brilliant. If you lost everything...

you know, wealth, fame, et cetera, et cetera, but you still had all your skills. What business would you start today? If you. That's a good question. That's a brilliant question. Look,

Or like, how would you go about it? Yeah, excuse me. My mindset right now is not in that zone. So I don't know what the next new trends are. However, if I did was in that position, I would go into absolute flight or fight or flight mode. If you like, I'd go and get out there, stop researching niches and seeing what new growth areas are and really get under the belly of stuff and start doing that process of where I break everything down and try to see if I can do it better. But I'm not in that zone. I'm so in a different place.

So I can't really say which niche is there. It could be something obvious where, you know, post-COVID, but I don't know. I don't think it would be. I think we're past that now. I think we missed that boat. It would be...

It'd be obviously something technical, it'd be something online, but I don't know what niche it would be. In terms of how I would do it, I would absolutely just do what I did in the first instance. I would go in my everyday life and everything that I do in my day, I would stop and go, can I do that better? Ask all the awkward questions. Can I do that better? How can I make this more attractive to the consumer?

What would I do if, what would it look like if it did this? And try and turn everything upside down and challenge the status quo on everything and anything. Don't accept anything as it is today as the best. It's going to be very difficult for anyone to come in with anything unique, I think, these days. Very difficult. Not impossible. I'm sure there will be some absolutely, you know, of course there's going to be some complete unique innovations. But everything is going to be just a slightly better evolving something.

So I would, that would be where I'd go to. What quote or mantra do you live by? So, well, I've obviously, I'm going to say that one again. I would say the one which is at the start of my book is, it's slightly obvious, but I think it really does resonate with me. It is,

Give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. Look, it's been used many a time, but I think it's very, resonates very well with this. I think again, with me, I think you should always learn and teach yourself how to do something and you can believe in yourself. So I think that's an important thing as a real core mantra for me. - Amazing. And final question, a bit cryptic, a journey or destination?

Journey. Love it. Oliver, thank you so much for coming on. This has been an absolute joy. Any final words of wisdom, parting advice for me, for the listeners? No, just buy my book. Buy the book, bootstrap your life, link in the video description, link in the show notes and all that jazz.

- But no Ali, it's been really enjoyable. I'm avid follower of your YouTube channel and just keep doing your thing, please. - Yeah, thanks for inviting us over. It's very gracious of you to have us in your house with all the cameras and everything. - Pleasure. - Chilling here.

where can people find more about you other than in the book? Oliver Cookson.com is where there's a, there's links off there to a podcast, which would be a great starting point. If there'd be, if they can put all this to avoid any longer, uh, obviously links to the book on there. And it gives you a bit of a potted history of my life as well. Uh,

Obviously the book is the main place to go. - The main one. All right, Oliver, thank you very much. - Thank you, Oli. - Everyone, thanks for listening and we'll see you next time. That's it for this week's episode of Deep Dive. Thank you very much for listening. If you want to connect with Oliver or read Bootstrap Your Life, all of the relevant links are in the show notes/video description. We're also still running our two minute podcast survey to get your thoughts on the season so far and hear what you'd like to see in future episodes. That'll be linked below. So if you've got a spare two minutes to spare, a spare two minutes to spare, something like that, I'd love to read your thoughts there.

Thank you very much for tuning in. And if you did enjoy this episode, don't forget to subscribe to be notified when we release a new episode. Thanks for listening and catch you later.