Tobi Pearce - £100m in Revenue Aged 27
Guests: Tobi Pearce
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My guest this week is Toby Pearce. For those of you that don't know Toby, he's the CEO of Sweat. Toby describes Sweat as the world's biggest online digital gym. It's a digital empire that offers fitness and health guidance for women.
Toby's start to life was unconventional, to say the least. Choosing to leave home at just 16 years old due to family and personal issues, he set off in life to become a self-made entrepreneur. He started off by working in a music shop before turning to personal training.
This is where he met his now-fiancée, Kayla Itsines. Kayla, if you don't know, is known for being one of the world's biggest online fitness influencers. Their business was born in 2014 and through Sweat, they're already generating hundreds of millions in revenue.
They have a dedicated community of more than 20 million women using their products all around the world, and the impact they've had on health and fitness is astronomical. Toby is smart, funny, direct, honest, driven, and pragmatic. Toby is an exception. He thinks differently. He's the type of person you would bet on no matter what they decided to do.
This is one of those conversations where I walked away smarter, more motivated, and more inspired, and I know and I hope that you will too. Without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody is listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.
I don't really have questions as such, Toby, but I wanted to thank you for joining me first and foremost and making the time. I know you're a very busy man. I read through your story, and I was quite—and this is just my honest opinion—I was quite shocked. I was shocked at the start you had in life and also how far you then managed to climb from that start.
I think if people read what I read, they would assume someone that has that start to life would then maybe go through life feeling sorry for themselves. We see that a lot, right? So, I guess the first place to start is, how was your start to life? Can you talk about your childhood?
Yeah, a little bit, sure. Probably late on in high school, I kind of made the decision to leave home. So I was kind of living by myself from sort of 16 years old. That definitely complicates things, I think.
Why did you leave home?
Just a rough family environment, I think, to a degree. But I think also, and this probably talks a little bit to my independence and problem solving, I felt like I was always kind of in control of my destiny. So at a point when I was very, very young, I was kind of like, well, I'm not probably really that happy here now, but I think that I can control the outcome of that.
Sorry to interject there, but that point for me is really, really important because for whatever reason, and I've talked about this on this podcast before, I felt the same way. I did not know the future, but for some reason, I was arrogant enough to think that I would be completely fine. Why at 16 years old did you think you could control your own destiny?
Yeah, I think perhaps a little bit of shared arrogance, or confidence, however you want to define it. And perhaps probably even a little bit of naivety at a young age. But I think that to be honest, what is an entrepreneur if not a problem solver?
So I think that literally even from the age of sort of seven, eight, nine years old, I was always a really kind of great problem solver. I actually really enjoyed it. Not that I think that any kind of teenager really enjoys the thought of leaving home, but I was just kind of very confident that I can kind of keep myself up on my own two feet. I'll figure out a way to get a job, I'll figure out a way to get through university and make a life for myself.
I think if anything, that challenge of succeeding was almost probably the largest motivator. I've gone through adversity, but I'll come out the other side and it'll be fine. But where am I going to be and how do I get there? That's a pretty stimulating challenge for me, I think.
Did you have brothers and sisters?
One sister, yeah. But again, probably not the strongest relationship. I think even from a very young age, I was kind of quite introverted and kept to myself.
And was your relationship with your parents close?
I think probably with my dad, pretty good. Yeah, definitely for sure. But I think stuff that was happening in and around my family, I was kind of just not really that patient with it.
And I think as well, to be honest, even if that stuff had not been happening, I was always sort of the person that I probably would have left shortly after anyway. I was always like, I've got to go on and do something. In high school, I kind of got asked to leave because I wasn't really doing much work at school. Eventually, in Australia, you can sit a test called a STAT test to get into university basically. I tested pretty good, got into uni, and then just picked myself up and kind of went.
I didn't have anyone telling me to go to university or forcing me or paying for it. I just wanted to learn. And because I knew that basically in order to succeed in life at anything, a fundamental part of that is learning and working hard. So I just went ahead and did that and wanted to make the best of it for myself.
So, 16 years old asked to leave school?
Would have been 15 years old asked to leave school, and then moved to another school and then sort of finished high school. And then about sort of six to eight months after that, sat that test to get into university and then started picking myself up after that.
And when you moved out of your house, presumably you didn't move out of your house with loads of funds?
No. I was actually working in a music shop. I studied classical piano for the majority of my life. So yeah, I was working at a music shop sort of selling pianos and selling sheet music about five or six hours a week for sort of 15 bucks an hour sort of thing.
A couple of my friends were pretty helpful and helped me to kind of bridge the gap. But I think I was able to pretty quickly pivot out of that into figuring out what do I want to do? What do I want to study and learn? How do I pay for that study? How do I actually cover that cost and how do I find a job that's flexible?
I was like, oh well, I really like the health and fitness industry and I'm training in the gym a bit, so I'll go and do a personal training course. Literally from there, everything kind of really picked up massively. Within a matter of months after that, I was personal training in a gym. Within six months of that, I'd started my first business. I was running my own business as a personal trainer in a gym but also then went out and started doing boot camps for women outdoors.
Another sort of six months after that, had my second franchise, and another six months after that, Kayla Itsines and I had our first online business together. The momentum really picked up when I kind of took things into my own hands and got on the front foot as opposed to the other way that someone can go through adversity—choosing to feel sorry for themselves. That's a very slow, depressing path, not one that I really think that I wanted to go on.
And so you go to university. You graduate when you're how old?
Didn't graduate uni. No. Got about two and a half, three years in, I think. Had started the online business that was doing sort of about 10 million a year at that point and highly profitable. And I was sort of like, oh, well, I'll defer uni because at this point in time, it was critically, and to be kind of frank, it was like, what's the ROI on my time?
What return on investment do I get? I can go to university for however long to learn about something like law or construction, or I could put that time out temporarily, I can force my own learning quicker by doing online courses or reading books, and I can run a business on my own terms. The long-term plan wasn't necessarily to never go back to university, but it was more about well, these opportunities don't always come along and when you get an opportunity, you've got to go.
So you dropped out?
Yeah. Deferred initially and then sort of a year and a half later we were doing about 25 million a year in revenue. And then I was obviously sort of just like, well, I think again, same situation again but sort of a year to 12 to 18 months later, what's the ROI on my time? Do I go back to university for another two and a half years and slow down my business?
What would happen in two and a half years if I just spent 150% at this company? What would that actually be? And then sort of about another year and a half later we're doing sort of 50 or 60 million dollars in revenue and another year and a half is kind of now, where we're doing about 100 million in annual turnover plus, and trying to grow still.
One of the things I get asked all the time is messages from young kids that are at university now. They either have an idea, they're either working on an idea on the side, often there's very little traction, and they're asking me the question, "Steve, shall I drop out of university?" What's your advice to them?
Yeah, well, I mean, look. So I think in that situation, there's probably not going to be one rule or one size fits all, right? Like, I mean, my thought process was pretty logical, sort of like: am I making enough money right now that I can actually justify not going to university when compared to basically what job I would be able to get after that?
Am I going to potentially yield a significantly larger benefit by not going to uni in the short term? Yes, I probably think so. And I guess also what's the opportunity cost of going to uni? Even forget the dollar amount, it was more like these type of opportunities and business opportunities are not once in a lifetime, but when they're here, they're here.
And if you don't take that opportunity and you don't get on the front foot, then it's gone. So I think for people that are in university now, if you've already started running a business and you're already getting revenue and you're already getting growth, I think it's kind of up to them to determine at what point. For some people it could be 200 grand a year, for some people it could be 20 million a year.
It really depends on the intensity of the business, it depends on the intensity of the learning. And also I think as well, if you drop out of university and then all of a sudden you're not studying, you're not reading, you're not watching videos online, like you're not forcing yourself to learn, well, if you need university to be the thing that actually causes you to grow, then I'd probably keep going.
But for me, I was like, I could actually learn a lot quicker by not being at university and that's literally what's happened. So I'll read sort of 50 to 100 books a year, podcasts, travel, networking, whatever. They are for me in my mindset far more valuable learning opportunities. So I wouldn't say there's like a one size fits all; I think it's kind of balancing the odds.
Whenever someone mentions books on the internet ever, the first question people ask is, "What's your favorite book?"
Yeah, so I think at different points in time, different books, right? I think for me over the last probably two years, probably two books. One of them is *Good to Great* by Jim Collins, which is really a really good almost in some ways statistical analysis of the reason why businesses have gone from being effectively good businesses to becoming great companies that stood the test of time.
So for me that was really kind of eye-opening about the approach to business should obviously very often be about sustainability, not just growth. So I think that was really critical. And then probably more specific subject matter, but there's a book by a really, really clever guy called Tien Tzuo who runs a company called Zuora. They're basically a subscription management software. He wrote a book called *Subscribed* and it's just a really, really enlightened view on modern business models and how effectively the subscription economy is going to change business in a really big way. Because we run in subscription business, that was really good for us.
Going back to the business you started in university that started making 10 million, 20 million dollars a year. Talk to me about that and what business that was.
Yeah, sure. So basically after we'd been running a couple of boot camps and Kayla was doing—we were doing a studio, running a PT studio—we entered the online world selling ebooks. This is sort of like really early 2014 almost. Instagram's kind of a new thing and ebooks are sort of there but sort of not, and in the fitness industry definitely not really.
So we kind of—we had a lot of people online effectively we'd generated a decent fanbase to effectively lead generate for boot camps. But then what started to happen was obviously you can't just build fans in kind of one suburb. So the fans online started being like, "Oh, we've got some in America, some in Russia, some in wherever."
And they were like, "Oh, like, I see your client transformations and I see your workouts, they look really cool. I want to do that." So we kind of wrapped that all up into an ebook, a couple hundred pages, packaged it with a whole bunch of what we believed to be kind of almost mandatory education material, and sort of put it on a website that we built that was really gross and barely worked and crashed all the time and whatever.
But yeah, pushed it out on the internet and then sort of off it went. So we were to be honest really surprised. We launched it and sort of in the first week probably generated more revenue and sales than what we would have done in like six months in our existing business.
Obviously the initial emotion is like, "Yes, like, that's amazing," but then it's kind of like, "Oh, but what about next week?" So that was, and I think to be honest that kind of almost fear but like critical view of what's next and what's coming for the business is probably what kind of helped us to take it from just like, "Here's an idea" into like it's an actual legitimate business.
I didn't really introduce Kayla. I should probably take a step back and introduce Kayla. Obviously, I know, but I'm not sure everybody listening knows. Who is Kayla?
So Kayla Itsines is my fiancée, but she's a personal trainer. We started dating sort of probably about a year, a year and a half before we sort of started working together, at least online. But yeah, she was—we went to market effectively with her brand, her name as a brand to sell what was initially the *Bikini Body Guide*, which has now become an app obviously.
But she was the face and the name of everything that we did sort for the first few years and is now currently—Forbes recently named her the most influential sort of fitness icon in the world, which is pretty amazing. But yeah, she's having a massive impact on the space.
You've just recently announced that she's got a baby on the way?
Yes, yeah. So we got engaged sort of beginning of last year and then yeah, we're currently pregnant, due in eight weeks and five days. Pretty soon.
How long have you guys been together?
Coming up six and a half years.
And you've been working in business for?
About five. Five, yeah. Even really early on, like when Kayla was doing her personal training and I was doing mine, we kind of had this sort of shared and parallel kind of view on women's fitness and workouts and client engagement. Except I also kind of had this really deep passion for business.
So even like really early on in our relationship, it was more just kind of I'd help her problem solve certain stuff in her business, but then she'd have this really great idea about content we could create or different workouts we should do. And so it was kind of a really the perfect partnership in some ways like in that way really early on and we knew each other's strengths and we kind of stuck to that.
What's it like doing business with someone that you're romantically involved with?
Yeah, a question we get asked all the time. I think now, like, I don't really see her at all during the day. Like it's not like we're in meetings together. I'm more so doing the business stuff and what's coming next and whatever for the whole organization and she's obviously kind of more critically focused on her own brand.
But I think early on there's definitely kind of some, you know, like sometimes there's tension or more discussion about certain stuff. But I think we've been really fortunate—we've to be honest probably never really actually argued about business or anything like that. I think that really comes down to like my role in this is X and her role in it is Y and like we both kind of have the trust in one another that we're going to dominate in those two areas and that's that.
Kayla did a post on Facebook that I've got here. Do you know which post I'm referring to? On Toby's profile it says he was expelled from school, but people always think this is a bad thing. Toby was actually asked to leave school because he spent a lot of his time being bored and yes, this made him a little distracting to others.
"He is a genius. I'm not saying that because I think he's smart, he really is a genius with an amazing mind. He was studying classical piano from age four and was at university level by 13 years old. He is able to work on mathematical problems in a matter of seconds. He has a photographic memory. He can analyze a person or a situation and know everything that is going to happen next. He can finish your sentences, which she says is sometimes annoying. He can fix anything, learn new languages in a few months. Nothing is too difficult for him. And as amazing as this sounds, he thinks this is a burden sometimes." Why is that a burden?
Oh, there's a lot going on up in my head, I think that's for sure. But I think Kayla's very generous with her words. But yeah, I mean, well, I don't know about the stuff about me being being really clever or whatever, but the stuff about the piano and whatever that's all true. Like I definitely did that stuff and was effectively kind of doing the equivalent to concert piano level performance when I was sort of 13 years old.
And just kind of the way I was always into problem solving. The burden part—what did she mean? What is she referring to? I've heard a few people refer to their own mental sort of cognition as a burden. Elon Musk is one of them.
Yeah, so I think probably kind of two things. Fundamentally there is so much traffic in your mind, there's so much information going in and out, which—and it's literally also like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it never ever kind of really stops. And I think also as well then—and something I've been really trying to work hard on over the last sort of 12 months as a leader—like the communication is really hard.
So when there's so much stuff going on in your head or when something seems really simple and obvious and you've just like you've clearly got the answer, but trying to communicate that to other people who for whatever reason might not be as strong in that field or it might not make as much sense to them, that barrier can sometimes be a little frustrating.
And especially early on in a business where you're trying to move a million miles an hour—not that that's really changed, still trying to move a million miles an hour—but you're trying to really move super, super fast. But when you're the person sitting there and the vision is really clear to you and you can see all the answers and whatever and it's right in front of you, but then you've got a team of people who are doing their best to keep up with you and of course they're doing a great job, but trying to bridge that gap can sometimes be kind of painful in some ways.
And especially then when you couple that with someone like me who's self-confessed extremely impatient. Brand's going a million miles an hour, really impatient, there's a bridge that you've got to cross. Sometimes it can be a bit of a burden but it is what it is.
Because when you say that, I completely get it. But then I also know my friends that are CEOs of big companies like Umar who leads PrettyLittleThing. I had the same conversation with him last week in LA and he is the same. I said to him, "You're the most impatient person I know." And I watch him get frustrated to the point of his face going red because Umar will decide something, he'll have a vision and know it, and the problem is he needs his team to do it.
Yeah, it's the lag factor. It's no different to, I don't know for any of anyone listening who's ever done online gaming, right? It's like you're playing Call of Duty or something and you start lagging, it's literally the same thing. It's the frustration.
And how have you—this is just advice for myself—how have you come to deal with that?
Yeah, look, I think so to be honest it's kind of like most things. Becoming aware of that first and understanding what the deficit or surplus is in that particular area is really critical. So for me, being aware of that and then communicating that to my team. So like, "Cool, like, my brain goes a million miles an hour, if you don't understand something or it doesn't make sense, just ask."
And sometimes something as simple as actually opening the door for people to have an opinion or to be able to ask a question is actually really critical. Because as a CEO, as the person that's very often making the decisions or at least setting the vision, sometimes people kind of want to just take what you say immediately, "Yep, cool," but they're afraid to actually ask what that means and kind of validate it for themselves.
So I think the awareness and allowing that type of communication with your team members is really important. But at the end of the day, I think it's much like a lot of things in life, whether it be health and fitness or learning or whatever—it really is a discipline. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how smart you are or how fast your brain can go or if you've got all of the answers or whatever, if you can't bring other people along for the journey and you can't get them motivated about it and you can't get them to understand it clearly, it doesn't really matter. So the discipline to be patient, which is sometimes very difficult, but the discipline to be patient and considerate and communicate is really the foundation for success there.
In Kayla's post on her Facebook page she says a lot of very, very nice things about you and points to a number of attributes about you that might be responsible for your personal success. But from your perspective, why do you think that you've been successful in the way that you have? And I'm talking personally in terms of not opportunity or timing or Instagram—I mean on a personal level, what are the attributes of you as a person?
Yeah, so I think categorically probably a few things. You would have heard of these a thousand times I'm sure, kind of speaking to other leaders and CEOs. But I think there's the basic one is about you need to work hard. I think that's a thing. And for me, working hard is not a learned behavior; it's actually just inherent to who I am.
So working multiple jobs or working long hours or working whatever—I think outside the bounds of the kind of traditional nine-to-five. Yesterday was more like a five-to-nine sort of thing. So I think the hard work is definitely a thing. The discipline I mentioned as well is obviously a really critical thing as well because discipline's kind of when you're working hard but you get tired and you want to stop, like that's what's going to kind of perpetuate the momentum.
Because really at the end of the day it's about building momentum and maintaining it. So having the discipline and the drive are really the two things that are going to keep that going. And I think really outside of that, a lot of things kind of cascade from that. It's the learning and self-development—well that's still like you've got to be driven to want to learn and you've got to be disciplined to keep learning.
Surrounding myself with like really, really highly intelligent and experienced people as well to help again perpetuate the momentum has been really critical. But I think everyone kind of has their own secret sauce, and I think if I had to get kind of out of the generalist sort of stuff, I think probably my greatest strength has been being really detail-oriented and really strong in information architecture.
And so what I mean by that basically is that a lot of people would probably describe me as OCD—like highly OCD—but I would just describe that as highly specific about what I want. And I think on the information architecture thing, about being able to frame things in a way that makes sense and being able to organize things in a way that makes sense for a lot of people kind of breaks down the barriers again like I mentioned before for communication to generate that momentum for the team.
You're a very young business person. It's not always easy as a young person to get into business because you have more to prove. People expect less from you. But I also think in some respects that them taking you for granted creates an opportunity as well in some respects. Talk to me about what it's like being a young person trying to get into business and your experiences of that.
Well, I think obviously depends who you're in the room with, right? But I think there's definitely some pretty savage experiences. I've literally been in—shown up to a meeting before, gone in to work with someone and literally just been like literally marched out because 30 seconds into the meeting they're like, "You're just a kid, don't care."
And it doesn't actually matter what you're talking about, they don't—some people generally don't care. And that's a very kind of broad-stroke remark, but there are genuinely some people that just don't care if you walk into a meeting room and you're sort of 20, 25 years old—they just don't really value your opinion.
But I think without being negative, on the opposite end of the spectrum there's also some people that are tremendously welcoming. So I think part of the journey is having the resilience to survive what are probably the shitty meetings or the shitty people that you network with and to try and find the rose amongst the thorn type situation.
Where is the person that doesn't judge me for my age or for my lack of knowledge in certain areas? Because I think part of being young as well or of any age is you might be an expert in whatever—software engineering and product development—but you might not know anything about finance. So you go and meet with an accountant or whatever, and because you're actually doing really well at something, there's kind of a preconceived expectation that well, you must think you're pretty good. But then when you come into a meeting vulnerable like, "Oh, I don't actually really know a lot about this but I really want to learn," they kind of get almost taken back by that.
But yeah, I think it is hard in some ways being a young person trying to do business, but I think it's only as hard as you let it be hard for yourself. At the end of the day, you can get emotional about that and emotional about a lot of things in business, or you can kind of just brush it off and kind of move on to the next thing.
Much of the—well, I think anyway, I think because of various films and Instagram quotes, all these kinds of things—a lot of people see entrepreneurship as being a pretty rockstar thing like jet skis, lots of holidays, private jets, money, cars, and everything in between. Do you agree or disagree?
Yeah, I think—I think that we live in a society and a generation where things are probably or definitely hyped up a little bit. And I think as well, like, a lot of people want to—and probably maybe rightfully so, they're really proud of what they've achieved and they really want to show that off and whatever.
But I think that that being set as the benchmark for the aspiration for a lot of our generation is probably what the actual mistake is. So I think showcasing it and being proud is of course cool, it's one thing. But I think if you're someone who is not in that position and you're at the very beginning of your journey, I think aiming for that is actually the wrong aim. In a multitude of different ways.
Having money is cool and having things and whatever is cool and whatever, but ultimately there's a really, really, really distinct realization that happens kind of early on in the journey. And that is that that's not—and as much as people want to argue—that's not actually going to bring you joy in life at all.
The thing that brings you joy is the journey, it's every win that you get, and not necessarily just the win about money—it's the win about progress that you've made. You've just hired a really elite person who's going to add massive gains to the business, like whatever—it's all those little wins that are actually the good things.
The car and the house and the private jets and the whatever—that's cool and it's fun for about 30 seconds and whatever, but after a while, who are you really actually pleasing? Is that pleasing yourself or is that pleasing other people? Would probably be my argument.
At what point on that point of money—this is basically a yes/no question—if I gave you another million quid now, would you be happier?
No, not at all.
At what point did your happiness stop scaling based on financial income?
I don't think that I'd be able to say, "Oh, it was at this dollar point." But I think that really there was a realization sort of as Kayla's brand started to lift off and we started to make this pivot into the app that was like, everything just became so exciting.
And to be honest—and not that I think that any accountant or financial controller would want to hear this—but you almost forget about the money. Really, it just becomes it's just a measuring stick. Did we win this quarter better than last quarter? That's the grade, yes or no.
But I think for me, I was literally just dumped into the middle of learning software engineering and learning marketing and user experience and automation and whatever. And for me, that was like literally the best part of the journey and still is the best part of the journey. I get to learn all of this front-leading world-class stuff that otherwise I wouldn't be exposed to.
And for me that's an epic part of it and being here today like meeting someone like yourself same age like killing it in a completely different space—that stuff is actually worth it. That's the memory that I'll be able to talk about even if I have zero dollars one day.
But you can't—when you do have zero dollars potentially in the future, you're not going to look back and be like, "Oh, it was so great when I had all that money," because that's going to be depressing. But being able to go back and be like, "Oh yeah, we achieved this—we ran boot camp tours for 100,000 women around the world—we literally changed the space," that's awesome. And that's going to last forever. That won't ever fade.
Are you scared of losing it all?
Oh, look, I think that anyone would be lying if they said no. I think there'd be different reasons why people are fearful, that's for sure. But I think part of a good entrepreneur and the thirst and drive for success is probably a fear of failure.
I don't think it's necessarily a fear of losing a dollar in the bank account, but it's more about a fear of going backwards, it's a fear of slowing down, it's a fear of the product not being as good, it's a fear of not being the frontrunner. I don't think that that's something that anyone's going to be happy about, that's for sure. But for me specifically, it wouldn't have anything to do with money; it's more about progress. My obsession and my drive is for progress, not for dollars.
What is your long-term aim then if you're obsessing over progress? What is ten years' progress to you?
So, if we zoom in a little bit on the business, Sweat is effectively what we kind of define as a digital gym. So our desire is to be the world's biggest digital gym. We view the fitness industry basically as being fragmented. There's big-box gyms, there's 24/7s, there's SoulCycle and F45 boutique experiences, and then there's hundreds and thousands of fitness apps and trainers and whatever online.
The last segment of that is the segment that we play in. How do we aggregate all of that? When you think about music, you think about Spotify. If you think about entertainment or movies, you think about Netflix. When you think about working out, you think about anybody. In five or ten years' time, when you think about working out, you'll think about Sweat.
When I say "hard times," what's the first thing that comes to mind?
The very first launch of our app. To summarize that in really short—go into this project to launch an app to kind of pivot the business, expect to spend sort of 200 to 250 thousand dollars building it, spend sort of the better part of three-quarters of a million. Hope it's going to take sort of 12 to 14 weeks, takes you kind of the better part of a year.
So after all that time and all the extra money and effort that's gone into it, you finally get to launch day and you're like, "Oh, like, this is great. People are going to love this. It's going to be a really big win. The company's just going to go to the next level." You press that big red button to go live and then the first 24 hours you kind of get 25,000 complaints.
Wow.
Yeah. So when you've got a team of at this point maybe 20 or 25 people who have literally worked their arse off for a year and they're all looking at you like, "Why didn't it work?" and then you've also got 25,000 consumers looking at you like, "Well, that was crap," and so yeah, I think there's the fear of like, "Shit, did I just mess this up? Did I just break everything?"
And then there's the "What the hell am I going to say to the staff that are here?" and then there's the "Well, we've actually also got 25,000 members that we kind of need to serve and provide a good experience to." Everyone literally is looking at you. So I think at that point in time, when you talk about fear or you talk about hard times, for me that's probably one that's kind of stitched into my memory pretty well.
Is there another?
There's plenty. But I think every business goes through difficulties like setting things up, getting your website URL, whatever. I wouldn't really say there's necessarily another massive one, but I think there's probably tens or hundreds of small things like that that a lot of people kind of either don't remember along the way.
It's the only thing that matters at that point in time, but then two weeks later when the next one comes up that's the only one that matters. So I think along the journey, you're constantly faced with these what at the time they feel like kind of world-crushing events, and they kind of are in many ways emotionally, mentally, but then sort of two to four weeks later you're already onto the next one.
And what have you learned about hard times because of that? Because they happen so frequently in the world that you've put yourself in. What insight can you give us into hard times?
First and foremost, it is totally okay to be emotional and you should at all times be aware and conscious and feel your emotions. However, no matter how emotional you are, your emotions will never ever fix the problem.
So it doesn't matter how sad you are, doesn't matter how angry you are—short of that motivating you to solve the problem, that's not actually going to fix the problem. So my mind will kind of go like, "Oh, like, that sucks. Shit. Okay, cool. So the solution for the problem is blah." That's really the way that my brain works.
So I think people going through repeated amounts of hard times—it's cool and you need to have an outlet and sometimes people need to complain and they need to vent to their friends and family, but I think again it's kind of the discipline: do that, timeout, and then go on and win. Because the reality is you could dwell on one problem for six months or a year even—you could be really upset about it—but all that time you spent being emotional and upset about it is just wasted time you could have been making progress.
A lot of people would probably refer to me as intense, but it's that intensity to move and intensity to win and intensity to kind of frog-leap your problems is what generates momentum and perpetuates the growth for the organization. If you're the leader of your organization and you want to sit there for weeks and weeks and weeks on end kind of complaining about the problem, well, you've not really achieved anything.
I've worked with people over the last five years where when something bad happens—say the room is on fire—they'll be the type of person who will repeatedly let you know that the room is on fire. They'll scream "the room is on fire," they'll tell their team "the room is on fire," they'll tell everybody they can that "the room is on fire." And there's another type of person who will be in a room that's on fire and instead of saying it—because it's clearly obvious—they'll be solely focused on how we get out of the room.
Yeah, exactly. 70% of the emotion and behavior of a team in an organization is stimulated by that of their leader. So regardless whether it's the leader right at the top of the organization or whether it's a leader who's managing a team of four people, those four people will still inherit behaviors from their leader.
The second person sounds like someone you want to hire. The first person sounds like someone you probably not only don't want them in a leadership role but you probably—being savage—don't really want them in your organization at all. Even if they're not responsible for leading the team, they still sit next to someone, and that someone still sits next to someone. It is in many ways like a compounding domino effect.
It's those conversations, it's the water cooler conversations and whatever that create and perpetuate culture. We would probably say that we're pretty hard on that. End conversation—what's the solution? And then if it's continuous "it's on fire, it's on fire, it's on fire," it's probably like, "Well, maybe we need to have a discussion about how you deal with problems." And then if not—fire.
And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're a bad person. It just means that your workplace and environment and your team is not necessarily for them.
A lot of people would view terminating an employee as a bad thing, and I think in some ways if you're like, "You're fired, get out," that's probably a little bit mean. You should always shy on the side of caution with an employee and be there to support them, of course. But if an employee—if you identify and they can also agree and identify that the workplace is not right—it's like a bad relationship. Don't force it to remain together; you could be better off apart.
I completely agree. One of the other things Kayla wrote on her Facebook post was that sometimes people think you're arrogant. Explain that to me.
Well, I think any person that's in a room that's extremely certain about what they want and extremely certain about the solution can sometimes—confidence can very often be mistaken for arrogance. I think probably what I would delineate as being the key differentiating factor there really would be that someone who is confident is someone who has the answers or believes in their own abilities but has something that actually can validate that.
So a professional golfer can be confident in their ability to putt a ball in. Whereas if you've never played golf in your life and you're like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to smash you, going to get holes in one," that's probably more so arrogance because you don't actually have the experience and you've never done it before.
I think there's a gray area there somewhere in between about how you communicate that and how you show yourself and how you show up to things. But I think generally speaking, colloquially, people who are extremely confident and who are maybe not known so well by someone else that can very often come across as arrogance.
And that often attracts a lot of hate. I think in today's age where we're all connected and we get to see a lot into other people's lives and read their stories in an instant, I think everybody has haters. People that will, especially successful people, right? So what's your view on that and have you had haters that literally no matter what you do will just say you're a piece of shit?
Haters going to hate, right? That's going to happen kind of regardless of who you are. To be honest, you don't even need to be successful to be hated. I think that the reality is—and maybe this is a shock horror to society—but we don't actually all need to get along and be best mates.
Not getting along and not being best mates doesn't mean that you hate one another. I think that in society and social media perhaps perpetuates this a little bit, but I think that's kind of what the view is to some people: you're either best mates or you hate each other, there's no kind of in-between.
If you're in the limelight, you're in the media, you're online or you've got fans or whatever, most people that are going to be haters probably don't actually even know you, they've probably never even met you. So I think it's how you deal with your problems—do I want to engage with them and waste my time and emotional energy actually justifying that, or am I confident in myself and who I am as a person and I'm just going to leave it and move on?
Hate and jealousy are inevitable. But do you want to waste time dealing with that or do you want to spend your time getting more gains?
Hate comes in various forms from various different people, but sometimes it comes a little bit closer to home. Negativity generally—one of the other most popular messages I get into my inbox is from young people who have an ambition or a business they want to start and their mom, dad, boyfriend, girlfriend doesn't believe they can do it, is being critical, is sometimes people can speak just by the facial expression they give you. What's your advice to people like that?
First and foremost, is what they're saying—is that saying something about you or is it saying something about them for a start? Are they telling you it's a shit idea because they actually genuinely think that the idea is shit, or are they saying that it's a shit idea because they are fearful that you might go and succeed?
Or that they're jealous that you're actually having a crack because you've got the confidence to go and do it? Or because maybe they're afraid that you might actually succeed, you might actually dominate and then they won't be on the same level as you?
Do you reckon that's a real thing?
It's a massive thing. My best mate, his name is Mitch—we've been best mates for 15 years. I slept on the floor of his house sometimes when I wasn't living at home and whatever—we've been through some savage times together. He came from a family that were well-off. And he's working really hard now to do his best to try to dominate in life.
A couple months ago he's like, "You know man, sometimes I can imagine it would be hard for me as a person to be friends with someone like you because what I say is I'm doing my things and I'm living my normal life doing whatever and working as hard as I can, but what you do is always so extreme." And he's like, "But that's only really bad if I think about it in that mindset. If I go: but you're my best mate and you're actually winning at life and that's really amazing, I'm really happy for you."
That's the mindset shift, right? He's able to kind of be like, well, just because I'm not doing what you're doing and what you're doing is really cool and awesome doesn't mean that I need to be negative to you. I can actually go with a positive mindset. He's going to buy his first house and whatever at the moment and I'm like, "Cool man, like good luck, I want you to win, go get it." It's no different to in that situation someone could turn around and be like, "Oh well that's not good enough," but that's not really achieving anything.
And how do you spot those people within your friendship circle? Because if you've got bad apples in your friendship circle they have more influence and more potential to tear you down than strangers do. Is there a way to know who's on your side and who's not?
Whatever it is that you do to recognize them, spot them quickly, because it's a waste of time otherwise. But I think it's exactly like what's their facial expression? What's their response? What are they communicating to you when you're talking about the thing that you are most passionate about?
If you're talking to someone about something that you just really want to win at and you're so passionate about and they're telling you no, no, no, no, no, it's like well, I'd be having a conversation with them about that to let them know that this is really important to me, so if you're going to keep shutting it down then we're probably there's going to be an issue. And if they keep doing that then—is that person adding value to your life or are they draining energy and emotion from your life?
You live your life to make yourself happy and those around you happy. In that situation, you're not making yourself happy and you're also not actually making them happy either, quite obviously. A lot of people get stuck in this mindset—"Oh, but we were friends in high school, bro, known you for so long, we've got to be mates forever." That doesn't have to happen. Just because you might drift apart from someone doesn't make you a bad person or them a bad person, that's just life.
Next topic I wanted to talk to you about is personal mistakes. I read online about your speeding offense and those things. Being completely transparent, I got banned from driving too for my own stupidity. I apparently was going 101 miles an hour on the motorway in a Range Rover. It was 4:00 AM in the morning; I'd just dropped someone off at the airport in London and was driving back to Manchester. Talk to me about that process and what that taught you.
Well, I think first and foremost something that was really valuable that came out of that was that I actually that was a really kind of great notification of the fact that I'd kind of changed from being a kid running a business into a leader leading a team and leading an organization and leading a vision.
It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things how small the mistake is or whatever, but it's more about the message that it actually sends. As a leader, like I mentioned before, a huge portion of the behavior of any organization is stimulated by that of the leader. How am I actually showing up to work and what do people think? Because it's not enough to just win and it's not enough to just be smart.
It's how you win. Are you winning and being the douchebag that's going around bragging to everyone about how great you are, or are you winning and then taking your team out for dinner and celebrating with them? Because at the end of the day, no organization—Steve Jobs, great dude, ultra smart, visionary, genius, whatever—but he won because he had an incredible team around him as well. Without the people he couldn't have done that.
So as a leader making a mistake—whatever it is, speeding fine, cool, whatever, right—but what did you take away from that? For me I took away well, I can actually have a profound impact on people by doing good things and or bad things. What am I going to choose to do? Let's choose to do some good things.
I read that there's over 20 million people using your products. Is that accurate?
We would have had in total I think about 35 million people use the product now in total. Obviously there's different amounts of people using it at any given point in time, but yeah, plenty of people.
Sometimes you forget about how many people that actually is and how many people are being affected by what we're doing in a really, really good way. That's nearly two times the population of the country that I grew up in.
For me and for Kayla, that's a pretty big wow moment.
Are you scared of dying?
That's a good question. I would be scared of not being able to add all the value to the world that I believe I can add.
And how much of value is that?
A lot more than what I'm adding currently. So in other words, I'm not so much fearful about the notion of not being here and being on the planet—we'll see what happens over the next 50 years—but I think more so I'm really confident that based on how passionate I am and how driven I am and the stuff that I've been able to learn that I think that I can do some pretty cool things for people.
I'm really blessed to be in the position that I am in and I'm really blessed to have the mindset that I have. So I think that I would be afraid to not be here and die or whatever if I hadn't really had a red-hot crack at being able to do that in a big way. We've done an alright job today, but I think I'm still kind of only really just getting warm. It would be fear of waste, basically.
Last question which is a piece of advice. I've read through your story and it was super inspiring. There's going to be some people out there that are listening to this podcast right now and they have big dreams, they have a level of belief that they can achieve those dreams, and they're living a life that is not true to who they are. What message do you give to those people that think maybe the life that they're living isn't completely true to who they are?
Who's in the driver's seat, man? Who's driving? Every single person on this planet effectively is in control of their life in one way or another. A lot of people can put some extreme situation up and say like, "I'm not in control of this," and in some cases perhaps that's true. But the thing that is consistent and common among every single person on the planet is that they're in control of something that impacts their life.
Sure, you might not have enough money to move out of home, and you might not have a job, but you can control what you choose to learn to get a job. You can control what you choose to do with your time. You can control whether you want to have one job or two jobs. You can control whether you want to spend that money on a house or spend that money on a holiday or spend that money on a car.
So there's no right path. Right now there's a battle between the millennials and our parents being like, "Oh, you've got to go to university and you've got to get a house." If you want to have what we would forecast as being a generally pretty successful and decent life, that's one way to go about it. But I don't think that that rulebook necessarily matters anymore.
Running a business isn't for everybody. Do you actually want that life? Because that life's not about just having the car; that life's also about the long days and it's about the pressure and the stress and the whatever. You might not want that. So I think everyone's in control, we've all got equal control. I think it's about taking the control to the extreme and then controlling what you want and then working towards getting it.
Amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. It's been a pleasure to get to meet you.
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