Dan Murray on the £25M Brain Health Brand Celebrities Swear By

29:57I don't think he would, right? But if he did, it wouldn't come across authentic. So you have to like, have strong conviction on what you know is going to work or what you know isn't going to work. And sometimes a way less famous person with a much better story will outperform a really famous person and a poor story. Yeah, 100%. And I think you spoke earlier about you can't differentiate the claims that you can make within supplementation, but your strategy is impossible if the product doesn't work the product isn't great so you know these people aren't going to talk about their own experience exactly and there is no marketing reason why they can't talk about that they can't say things like it's cured my mental health or anything like that we're not allowed to use that any of that but they can just talk about all the great things it's added value to their life for and they do it so passionately and excitedly um you know we filmed with carol vorderman last friday she like literally invited us to come to her house in bristol because she was like i just got so many other supplements i've taken in this basket like these two baskets and like i want to show them to you like i want you guys to see them that is like a real thing and i've switched all to heights and also all these books that i've written on nutrition by the way in my career which i didn't know about um but they're all in her library they're really cool and like but you know can i do that in my house so do you want to come and do that and i was like yeah yeah of course i do that's amazing i um because we've we've worked with you guys for a couple of months now on the creative side so i've really studied doing a great job by the way thank you yeah appreciate that.

31:18Great job. And we, so I've studied a lot of these kind of celebrity ads that you guys have been doing, and I don't know if this is intentional, but I think from the outside, it looks very intentional that you have almost bucketed these personas that you've been able to extract through these celebrities. So for example, Carol Vorderman, the post-60s, sorry, post-menopausal woman, you know, the Ben Shepard, which is almost the professional dad. You have the Spencer Dan. Has that been intentional? Because I think by doing that, you've almost increased your TAM by speaking to these different subsets.

31:56So not at all. Genuinely not at all. You've just articulated it for the first time. No, no, no. I was saying, so what's funny is my plan in 2026 is to start to be strategic. And I know that sounds absurd because it looks like we fucking smashed that strategy. But the really interesting thing in our space is we come from a fundamental principle on the science that if you build exceptionally high quality products and not that many of them and they're combinations, right? And they do different things. We have one that's vitamins, vitals. One that's bacteria for your microbiome, that's biotic. One that's minerals, that is the magnesium, because it's a core mineral that you actually need.

32:34Well, hydration as well is minerals. So let's say those two are minerals. And karma, which is basically a botanical blend. And then thrive, which is like the longevity one, which is for cellular energy. These are all different systems. Different people want different things for different outcomes. But the point is, because we've just focused on like, what is the, if we're taking that category and making one product in the entire category, let's make it the best and how do we do it? If you do that, it's as effective for a 25 year old, you know, like Grace Beverly, for example, as it is for Carol Vorderman at 65.

33:07And they are completely different need states. And then also Spencer Matthews doing a Guinness World Record of seven Ironman ultramarathons in 21 days, right? Which is insane. That's the same core product all three people use. And that isn't intentional. It's just based on like, as a human being, knowing what most people eat on a daily basis and the nutrient gaps they have and the nutrients they need, that does cover the fucking basis for these people. Now, there are other types of personas, like a Brian Johnson is a really good example. Like, Heights is never going to be relevant for him because he is in pursuit of perfection and these people mostly are in pursuit of progress they're busy they don't want to take loads of things and they do want to know they're covering their bases like it's very important to them but they're all really busy so they just don't have time to faff with his like a hundred supplement routine or anything like that a lot of people do and a lot of people don't um so back to the how do we get our celebrity ambassadors literally literally like i once went into an agency uh called ymu and i gave them 50 50 vitals basically 50 of our core products and said give them to whoever you want and let's see what happens because they're always trying to sell me their celebrities right i know there's a most common thing like my inbounds are all just like hey do you want to work with x celebrity they they love you and i'm like well i don't believe it i've well no no they like they love heights i'm like i've just gone on shopify they're not a customer.

34:34No, no, no, they definitely are. Why are they under an alias? By the way, this fun fact, side story, this exact thing happened with Ryland. His agent kept trying to tell me that Ryland was a customer and I'm like, he's fucking not. And then it turns out his name's actually Ross Clark. He's been a customer. His agent has been trying to sell me Ryland for two years and Ryland messages me and stuff. He's always like saying, I love heights, I love heights, but I just do not believe it. Anyway, I found out in the end, Ross Clark has actually been we've just done a content shoot with Rylan absolutely fucking brilliant and ready to go amazing he was amazing and like and interestingly he's a good example of someone I would never have originally said like we're going to work with a I said no but b I wouldn't have originally thought we'd work with someone like him because I don't feel like that's like necessarily like theoretical brand fit right but that's where I've been completely wrong because actually heights is all about reaching your heights at whatever stage you're at in your life and your personal goals and where you're looking to get to next, which is a deeply personal thing.

35:33And I think initially, I focused a bit too much on this idea of what the perfect customer looks like, versus understanding that we offer simplicity and high quality, which means if you're a busy person living a busy life, you're a perfect customer for us. And you might be busy at 25, you might be busy at 65, and everything in between, we're right for you. And so this YMU story, sent it out to 50 people. Two people, basically, out of the 50, obsessed. One of them was Jake Humphrey, one of them was Matt Willis, and neither of them were ever on a list of mine. They've both been two of our best ambassadors by a mile.

36:08Like, so many of our referrals come from them. It's really authentic. They've been taking the product for three years. They both signed up. So this is the other side of it, is like, people always think I'm joking, but I'm not. I'm like, you know, with YMU, they're like, they love it. Can you send more? And I'm like, no, if they love it, they'll buy it. Like, it's really simple. It's their bodies and it's their health. Like I'm not their mom or dad. So like if they genuinely think we're our products better. So assume that 48 people didn't think that about heights. I'm not offended. Go fucking take AG1 or whatever it is you take.

36:37Those two people subscribe to heights. So those two people are the people that we work with. And neither of those people are on my list and their content bangs. So like the one rule that we've never compromised on is this. Like, no. Same with Anthony Joshua, right? They want to, no. Unless he's literally going in like a human being, back to the point earlier, and signing up like a human being, I don't care if he's like the biggest person in the world, is for his health. But if he doesn't authentically believe it, none of the stuff afterwards will work. So there's no point even having the conversation.

37:08So it becomes really easy with this kind of funnel lens. It's really easy working with celebrities because most of them are too busy, or they don't follow through, or they don't become customers, or any of those things, they just don't happen. And we are super low ego about this. We're like, we don't know who we should be going after. We just know that the most authentic stories are the ones that work. And that is just whoever it ends up being. I love that. Yeah. And just moving on then, you've recently raised 2 million pounds at a 60 million pound valuation. I saw you post something about you could have raised at a hundred million pound valuation.

37:43I love the vulnerability to talk about this, which is something I've never really seen spoken about online, because usually it's, as you put it, like a stroke of the ego to get a higher valuation. Talk about your reasoning as to why you didn't raise a higher valuation. Yeah. So very simply, I've already failed a company that, you know, valuations got away from us. So it's important to say that, you know, you learn and you reflect. Valuations are a vanity metric at the end of the day. they're less so a vanity metric when you can tie them to real outcomes so in our space a very very safe bet is that you might get 4x revenue on an exit right in d to c if you've got good metrics like assume your retention is good assume your churn is really low assume a lot of things but four to six in our space would be quite reasonable so i'm now thinking in the mindset of my investors like how do I know for a fact I'm not like it's going to be hard to lose the money if they invest that's one thing because actually I've already lost my investors money before and I hated that feeling like I swore to myself and Joel we're not doing that again like our investors are getting a return the later people that come in the smaller the return profile is right so at this point the tickets you know they're they're a little bit bigger there's fewer of them and the window that you might sell in is shorter and the narrative you're no longer saying this is a hundred xer You're like, look, I'm going to look at you in the eyes.

39:12I don't think it is. You have to make your own assessment. And I have no idea what the answer is. But four to six is like, you know, exactly what the current market looks like. You know, because we get all those emails from the banks and stuff who send them to us. So it's fair to say that under four would be reasonable. Three is like, three becomes a no-brainer. Three X revenue becomes a no-brainer. Because you're like, four is the lower end. Three is, you know, why wouldn't we? now on the 100 million thing the worst case scenario that could happen is like we do have a flat year um we do uh we struggle you know you you become an entrepreneur for so long you notice that it's not always just even your fault the world can change and everyone remembers like russia invading ukraine and everything tanks suddenly like who saw that coming it's so random so that tanked like the world economy like quite quickly um so these things can happen right and so So as a result, those things can happen.

40:08Everything could turn bad and our revenue could go down. And if all of those things happen, climbing back up to 60 still feels really doable. But climbing up to 100 seems really far away. You have to genuinely believe there's 100 million pounds of value in this business. I think that's a lot of gaslighting that entrepreneurs do to themselves. In real world terms, in the real world where people buy companies, I don't see it, right? So that's the first thing. I want to make sure that we weren't gaslighting ourselves as entrepreneurs. And I want to make sure that our investors definitely get a return.

40:45Secondly, I think entrepreneurs really focus on the wrong things. The most important thing, again, this is a lived experience from making a mistake. The most important thing is keeping control of your board and keeping control of your company. Joel and I have 50.1 % of control of the company, no matter what our dilution is. That is in our contracts. And when you start to raise more money, people try and pull out contracts like that. Or they pull out clause like that, like, no, no, we'll give you more money at a higher valuation, but that's got to come out. And I'm like, well, I'd rather take less money and keep control.

41:17Thank you. So no, thanks. So there are certain levers and negotiation tactics you as founders can put in when you're in control. And so if your dilution is really small, investors never have much of an upper hand to negotiate anything with you ever so the point is at different stages like what we've done anyway at heights is raise a very little dilution you know this round was a three percent dilution so it's absolutely tiny it's virtually meaningless to us right that's three percent on the whole company so it's like you know even less than one percent to us it's like you don't even notice it um but it's enough to help us reach the next like milestone that we need and keep all control and the price that you pay for that is like a slightly lower valuation.

41:58But again, the valuation means nothing. The only valuation that ever means anything is the price you sell for. And everything else along the way is literally made up. So I just feel like there's this weird narrative we've got ourselves in more commonly because people want PR, actually, and this is usually from the tech company side, but it's permeated into other spaces too, where the big number is the big thing. but like that is a very glossy way to tell a story and it has nothing to do with the underlying business and actually Joel and I have a lot of conviction that we know how to turn this business into a multi-hundred million pound valued company and the way to do that is control so it's that simple makes sense what is that, so you've raised that money what is that next like threshold that you're trying to reach in terms of growth?

42:48well you'll be pleased to know as soon as we spend money with you

42:55this year we went from 12 to 25 we're like close to finishing on 26 actually um but we'll call it 25 um because it is like at least 25 um which was our stretch target and i think that's really interesting because now the whole team believes like start of the year we didn't really believe that was possible um this year like now that it's happened we believe so um forecasting for end of next Jan, so Jan 2027, because Jan's obviously a big month for wellness in general. So Jan 2027 would like to be at 50 million ARR. And even though that's doubling the business and so much has to happen in order to do that, now it doesn't feel insurmountable at all.

43:37In fact, now I feel like, you know, I'd be surprised if we don't do it, or I'd actually be disappointed if we didn't do it. And I think at that point, you know, the real target here is we want to be the most trusted supplement brand in Europe, right? That's the job. So there's a really interesting thing on our funnel that we've noticed, which is like the big celebrities with the good content and stuff is great for top of funnel awareness. Like most people don't convert off the stuff, but it's great for the top of funnel awareness. And that's our job, right? Our job is to get people in the heights world so we can retarget them with the content that you guys make for us so we can retarget them with science content like take them down the funnel and if someone lands on our page like our ctrs have to be really strong conversion has to be really strong and so the really exciting thing we've done is invest over the last year in uh in being the first company in the uk and i think in europe but we need to verify that with a double blind placebo controlled gold class study on a multivitamin in healthy adults so why that's important multivitamin is the biggest category of vitamin full stop.

44:46There is only one other study currently that's done this way, which is for over 70s. And so this would enable us to literally say, we are the only multivitamin in the whole country that's proven to work. The only one, because this is something you do in pharma. Like a double blind placebo controlled study for those who don't know means that not only do the participants taking the study not know what they're taking, but the researchers don't know what they're taking, and the universities that are participating don't know what it's taking. The whole thing is randomised. So there's no way to fudge or fake the data, and the results have been exceptional on vitals.

45:20And we did this in the winter, which is the worst time to do it, because usually people do this stuff in the summer where everything's going to get better metrics anyway. We did this in the winter on healthy adults. So when we published this, we've got the results through now, and they're all really positive, and I think this is going to be a total game changer for us. We have to go through a process will probably get published in a journal in March, etc, etc. But this is kind of like the start for our next evolution, right? Like each product for us has to go through this process so that we can literally stand on each product and go, in a very easy marketing, you still, by the way, with claims, you can't make any different claims, the most annoying thing.

45:56So even though we can prove this stuff now, prove it in a science lab in a pharma trial, you still can't actually say any difference. What you can say is, that's cool, but is your one proven? Because ours is. So that's a big opportunity, right? because just last thing on this is if you imagine the biggest biggest category of multivitamin customers is not convincing someone to take a multivitamin because actually if anyone takes anything it's a multivitamin it's convincing them that yours is better than theirs and it's not guesswork it's like this is a scientific fact and if you don't believe us go back to your brand and ask them where their trial is and that's the thing because people don't do them because it doesn't feel like they're going to get the good result and it takes time and money and money yeah Yeah, it's a few hundred grand each time to do one of these trials.

46:38I think that whole expert, authenticated, study-backed is going to be a big, big thing over the next couple of years. I think we've seen it rear its head with the opposite of that, like the bad side this year with some of the things with James Smith. Yes, totally. I love that stuff he did with creatine. Also, by the way, I've been saying gummies are bullshit for years. When everyone's like, you know, when do you know if you'll sell out? Or like one of those kind of questions. I'm like, you see us make a gummy, we sold out. Unless the science dramatically changes. But otherwise, it is honestly just a sugar delivery system.

47:13It's bollocks. That was a kick up the arse for the industry. James Smith was completely right. But I mean, again, if you really genuinely make super high quality products and you're very high standards and you're not in any kind of way a charlatan, you know that it is true. You can use gummy as a carrier. It's just like, it's going to taste like shit. It does away from the... like gummies are made to make them nicer. Yes. To do it properly, it takes that away. And actually, I always say to people with kids... Apple side is the worst. Yeah, but I always say this with kids. As a dad, would I give my kids gummies?

47:45Yep, because that's better than sugar. So I'm not pious personally, but as a company, as a brand, would heights do it? No. Yeah, I think we've seen the negative side, but I think in a world where there's more new players, barrier to launch, barrier to execution is very small. A lot of Chinese factures are filling things out. 100%. It's like the things that are difficult, create moats, create barriers, are what's going to work. Whether that's content, whether that's authentication, etc. I think that's going to be a big, big trend. Totally. And actually, you nailed it, which is that most of the stuff is just cheap and easy and minimum order quantities to get started from China and just get going.

48:27and so gummies obviously vitamin pills um greens powders for sure you know like all these categories maybe not liposomal vitamins but like you know a lot of these categories they're you know it's easy for five grand just get started not worry about quality stick up some slick branding and just get going and that is where this market is just full of shit yeah you mentioned the growth rate you've seen this year i think by looking at how long the business has been and where you're now you can definitely take like you can take a view that growth probably not been linear through that process right no exactly um and i don't think any e-com businesses growth is like a linear path or any business or any business any business it's a series of weird except for im8 weirdly yeah except for them i wonder how um but i think yeah it'd be interesting to know one note i had down was just like what have been some of those like big inflection points and that doesn't necessarily it just needs to be like marketing it could be like personal growth it could be people um so isolate maybe a couple of those over yes good question i mean but let's start on the other part which you referenced but we didn't you didn't ask which is like actually we did have two years of flat growth um and it was fucking painful and you know we we did a round in 2021 um and And it was an amazing, it was just a great round, great people, great feeling.

49:54And then we've pretty much from the fucking month that happened, just flatlined at 5 million for about two years. Tough to keep. I think it's really, everything is easier, especially with people when you are winning, I feel. Yeah. In terms of motivation, culture. Totally. Energy. And we had 25 people at 5 million and we were really pushing. We launched in America and did all of this stuff. and it just didn't go anywhere. And so we basically got to a real crunch time where writing was on the wall, cost of living crisis came up, Russia, Ukraine, all of these things have really started to take effect in 2022.

50:32I realized that if we didn't let go of almost everyone, we were going to be fucked. We had these really, you know, we'd hired great senior team to catapult us for the next period, et cetera, et cetera. It just did not work. It didn't gel. It didn't happen. And so we end up having to get rid of 75 % of our employee force went down to basically six people on top of Joel and I. Our salaries cut in half. We just basically went into cash preservation mode. Based on experience, again, right? This wasn't like urgent in theory, but it was the right thing to do because we were spending on growth and it wasn't going anywhere.

51:07So like we knew that what we're doing isn't working. And with the team that we have, it isn't working. But the cash burn is enormous because the team is experienced and senior. So we did this bold move and got rid of pretty much everyone unless they were like quite junior. And kind of built up again and started again. And, you know, for context, we're at 25 million now this month and 21 people. Okay. So, you know, that just shows you 25 people with 5 million, 21 people with 25 million. So there was bad leadership decisions from us, like things that we were doing wrong, bad processes, you name it.

51:44But whatever we were doing wasn't working. And so that was one thing to say, which is like resetting from that point. And in that reset period, you know, there is another side of it, which is because of the way we do stuff at heights, which is like this has to be the most scientifically credible product, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We only had one product in the market for three years, right? So Vitals was our only product. Biotic, which is our second product, we kept thinking was about to come out, but then it failed the next test that we were trying to get, right? which is like we were trying to make this product proven to go from the mouth all the way through to the colon and survive the stomach journey, which is a uniquely difficult thing to do that no one else was doing and focusing on.

52:26But all of our, you know, most impressive scientists we spoke to were like, that's actually the job of the probiotic. Like if it doesn't matter how many CFUs, like bacteria basically, are in the capsule inside the bottle, that's what the industry markets. what matters is how many have got your colon through your body that's the job so we were like that sounds like a great challenge let's try and do that it turns out it was much harder than we thought so it took three and a half years um ignorance is bliss totally and like would i mean over the long time yes we would have done the same thing again but like it was very painful because obviously having just invest and having two products exactly and having two products will do a lot for your revenue over one product everyone else in the space everyone i'm sure that you've ever seen with vitamins broadly, you know, they'll go broad rather than deep.

53:11Whereas we kept like sticking with the same product, updating it, more trials, more tests, more evidence, updating the vitamin quantity and quality every time we could. That was like the job of us with vitals. So our inflection point that year was, what we're doing is not working. It was called the smart supplement, right? And it was really focused on brain health and brain messaging in general, because obviously this was based on like my story, my journey, what I'd learned, and it would really work for people like Stephen Fry, Stephen Bartlett, these people like brain, brain, brain, great. Wasn't working broadly for other people.

53:45So he took a low ego approach across the whole business, which is like, hey, assume that we don't know anything. And that actually everything is wrong. How do we go about like a testing process to get this right? Because when we put people through to our fucking website, they're not converting. So something's up. The two big changes, the inflection points, and I love to share this, because I think they're so interesting. Probably the biggest change of all in conversion rates and everything was changing the name the Smart Supplement to Vitals. Positioning. Positioning, product naming, never gets talked about.

54:20No one talks about the importance of that. We knew the Smart Supplement was clever, but it wasn't quite right. It always needed explaining. Vitals doesn't need that much explaining. It still does, like what is it? But it's vitamins, vitals, etc. And there's just something about it that made people be like, I need my vitals. Sure. So that one thing, enormous lift. And then the second thing was moving away from just really focused brain messaging. Because the problem that we had, by the way, was people we were learning now were taking vitals and a multivitamin. So we're doing a really bad job of explaining it's brain and body.

54:56But the point is it's brain as well, because it's omega-3s, it's antioxidants, It's things you don't get in a multivitamin. We've added them to a multivitamin and made it brain and body. We're doing such a bad job of communicating that through our messaging matrix that people are buying a multivitamin too. So actually getting too much was actually not good for them, right? So we were like, okay, there's messaging work to be done. Those two things and a commitment to spending barely anything on growth, accepting that we were not going to grow. Instead of like forcing it, we spent like a year being like, let's just work on messaging.

55:25And this took quite a long time, by the way. about six months of testing to get to vitals and broader messaging on the product but those two things made an enormous impact yeah i think vitals are really really good positioning the previous what was it called before smart supplement almost leaves you with more questions than answers it's like right what supplements what what like there's a follow-ons i think i almost was chatting to our coo because we're built we're building out this rating system for brands of giving them a score of 100 is like a where we think the benchmark what the growth leavers look like and the one thing that we that is almost a foundation for all of that is messaging and positioning yeah it's so hard when we get when we come to when we start working with a brand and they've not got complete clarity on that it's almost impossible to make it work with heights it's actually really hard because you know the other thing is this is great for tam in theory but like it's the opposite of what everyone tells you to do our audience is 50 50 male female so like there's no like make this more female make this more male it's actually all just like just clear simple scientific like clear messaging yeah but it's not very emotive to men or women which in itself is really interesting we use the ambassador's personal stories and relationships that they might have to connect with people to do that job for us but that's a really unusual thing again for a brand like it is especially like supplement brands a lot of them we work with but totally i think Going super gendered is a genius strategy.

56:54Yeah, but it's almost your biggest disadvantage, but also your biggest strength, because especially now with Meta's Andromeda, it's all about persona diversification and how you adapt that messaging and angles and how we're speaking to those motivators and pain points within each of those core personas. So the more that we can diversify them, as long as you can nail each of those, the bigger opportunity that gives you for incremental reach. And then another really big lever, which is, again, this is where it becomes your biggest strength. Very common thing is our typical customers somewhere like 35 to 55.

57:31Super common thing. They then buy subscriptions for their parents. Mom and dad. So that's like age benefit and gender benefit, right? Because they're like, it is actually really important. It's even more important. Like, in my opinion, that's like the most important audience. Tricky to get on social media in general. Like they all have a low trust and all of this stuff, right? so it's trickier but we don't then need to sell it to them at all actually it's like the existing customers who are feeling the benefits who are like i should do this my mom and dad great i think that problem of of dive like diverse consumer is a problem in an early stage brand because it creates a prior prioritization problem it's like which should i get you're right and you try and do them all you're right you're completely right but once you're past a certain level it's a massive is something that I would long, many brands would long to have that.

58:24A hundred percent. You try and break through, don't you? Because you can build four different funnels and you can access the full market. Exactly. When you go through growth, you also go through these weird things of like compromise, non-compromise. I just saw an ad today. Well, sorry, a LinkedIn post from the founder of Mudwater. Yeah. He's like, we're launching coffee. And it's like, okay, but like your entire brand was about like, I'm breaking up the coffee. That was literally the whole entire purpose of Mudwater is caffeine's bad for you. I'm anti-coffee blah blah blah now obviously it's his own product the way that he's done etc I also think he's great in general I've met Shane a few times I really like him and and I actually believe it will all be authentic and stuff but that in itself tells a story right which is like you know you just in this search for growth yeah yeah yeah well you know you're but you have to find a new way and a new lever and actually to your point if you already know that authentically you stand by the fact that you are great for men and women and yes it is all ages and actually if you're busy, this is the best format and it's the highest quality and it's as simple as that.

59:23You don't have to then trip yourself up over how to message later and change things and stuff. It's like, well, no, we were always at that, actually. Liquid Death launched an energy drink was another one of those. It just feels weird for that brand, for what they are, what they stand for, what they've tried to do. I bet it'll do well. It will. It'll do amazingly well for them. But it just felt a bit odd with the journey. Who knows after the recent controversy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Talked about the inflection points in the business. I also wanted to talk about your own position within the org chart.

59:58So obviously, like, obviously you've gone through multiple different type org structures and different sizes of scale. How many people did you say you're up to now? 21. 21. I certainly feel like every sort of seven to seven people, at least every six months, you almost have to reinvent yourself as a... Yeah, totally. as a founder in terms of your role, in terms of what you have to be great at, how has that journey been for you? Yeah, this is a really interesting question and spot on. I have been CEO, co-CEO, CMO, all the titles. Do you know what? A couple of years ago, me and my business partner, Joel, basically went for a really good long walk.

1:00:44And it was just sort of like, look, co-CEOing is actually slowing us down. and it had actually been really good for us for a long time like everyone says don't do it etc it had actually really worked for us but now we could see that it was slowing us down and there is like a good question on like who would be better at reporting to who also who is a better people manager because that person in theory should be the ceo and the answer to both those questions really were joel like he is a much better people manager than I am he's also um like more strategic with more very strong opinions on like you know the strategic levers and stuff and I have always been someone who is very very very flexible and very easy and like like happy to do grunt work that no one else wants to do which got to as a founder anyway and really high level strategic work and also jump on a plane and go and do that thing with that person there so because of that and then that joel definitely less like that for sure you know i'm like happy i'll just turn up at the warehouse then i'll go here and you know all over i don't really mind like you know last week i was at the warehouse on thursday i was in bristol with carol on friday you know back in the office on monday yeah that's totally fine with me i can't do that one totally i think that's the glamorous that's like the glamorous thing that people look at is like founders it's like oh they get to go all go do these things meet these people yeah super glamorous being on a train that much yeah but the thing i meet cool people it's like totally but i guess it's draining yeah it's draining it's very draining i've got two kids you know it's all draining and i do every bedtime and bath time as well so we like try and triangulate how to still be home for six o 'clock and all that stuff point being um it became very clear to us that like he was better to be the ceo role and my role is i mean technically as executive chairman doesn't really mean anything.

1:02:33At the moment, interestingly, in the last six months, main thing's actually been really involved in the creative process because I've really enjoyed that. Actually, interestingly, it's this weird thing where, when we launched, I was doing all of the copy, brand, marketing, comms, PR, the newsletter, the socials, everything, all myself. The whole entire strategy. from the whole entire strategy and the whole entire every job in it like from start to finish i set up all of our klaviyo like you know like you name it i did it um and over time obviously delegating into like teams and stuff and letting other people do those different bits is great um i very consciously stepped away from doing much of the content after about year one because and this is another thing i do have strong opinions loosely held but strong opinions that you don't want the brand to be completely focused around the founder.

1:03:30I actually think that this is like, uh, over time, a net negative. Um, and I really understand the value of personal brand. I understand why people do it. And I understand all of these things. Like I really do. But over time, I don't think that's a valuable brand story because it doesn't give the brand independence of its own story. It's almost lazy, right? It's like, it's obvious who your personality is, how you think, how you feel. But the job is to figure out how the brand is supposed to make your customer feel. So if it's all about you, you're not really taking someone through the hero's journey of like, you know, the customer is the hero, you're not the hero.

1:04:07So I stepped back from that for quite a few years and did all these other roles in between, right? You know, everything, but like fundraising and community management and like all the brand and marketing work still just not the face of it and then in the last year started to do a little bit more and nick who's our marketing director who you guys work with will like regularly point out that like my content's like outperforming the ambassadors that i'm spending fucking tons of time negotiating with us campaign with you your your founders well the the objection handling founder story was the yeah this is and this is the thing that's interesting right like i'm not a data-driven person uh that's not my vibe like i'd rather fucking kill myself but joel's very data-driven Nick's very data-driven.

1:04:49I'm more of a vibes guy. I'll go and I like to enjoy, spend time with people, do the thing, turn up and just wing it, but wing it with good energy and authenticity. I think anything scripted is a bit painful because it should come from a real place. And so I didn't have strong opinions on being too involved in the content or whatever, but I want my company to win. So at the point where there's two things happening, one is that you know, there's data and insight that says, actually, Dan is really useful for us that you do it. But also that I'm just one character amongst many that we're using in a diversified funnel for a brand.

1:05:25I'm comfortable. If I'd have done this too early, I think we could have got into that spot where it's a very founder led brand like Tara and Grace Beverly or something like that. And I think that's a challenge on your time, your capacity. But I think it's also in general um you know not a healthy long-term strategy if you look to exit the company yeah and you are the company then you're fucked so i didn't want that either right like like all entrepreneurs like pretty much the highest value i hold in life is freedom so i didn't do this to create like another cage for myself so you've got to really be careful where you utilize yourself in the in the funnel and knowing that um my content really works is exciting and motivating to me it makes me want to do more but it also helps me then sit in the funnel on the other campaigns and pull out creative ideas and insights for our ambassadors on what works so that's really where i'm spending most of my time at the moment and next year is like in the creative process because i find it super fascinating it sounds it sounds like you have a lot of humility and don't have an ego which i think is sometimes what i mean everyone has an ego but yeah but in the state I've taken a lot of Ayahuaca.

1:06:33Classic. But more from the sense of like you are, you will do what needs to be done to win, whether you don't have an ego from the perspective of I'm bigger or better than that. No. Which I think is really, really important and interesting. Yeah, I definitely think the founder is a vehicle, right? It's a vehicle for a message, not the whole identity. There are edge cases. Layering the strategy. You mentioned Grace, Beverly and Tyler. I also re-listened to a George Eaton podcast yesterday, and I just find him as a founder and the way he's built that business around his identity just quite fascinating.

1:07:10I think he's just such an edge case. The brand is him. Totally. I was thinking about that the other day as well, which is like... And you can't... It's interesting. He obviously has an enormous ego, and it's not an insult at all. You have to have a big ego to think, I'm going to build an entire brand around myself. Because he is an operation, I guess. Totally, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, and he's... By the way, I buy represent because I rate George Eaton. So no shame on having an ego, right? Like, I trust him. I think he's cool. I want to be cool. So I buy represent. It's like really, genuinely, like, I'm that basic.

1:07:47It works. Like, it's a strategy that works. The point is, I didn't want that strategy for myself. But I also don't think that's the right thing in a, like, health space either. Like, it just isn't, right? Like, again, we need Carol Vorderman to want to invite me to her house and hang out and look me in the eyes and feel like she can trust me that this is right for her. As much as Grace Beverly, another customer of ours or whatever, and everyone in between, without being like, this is Dan's journey, Dan's story, whatever. If I do that, then I'm just going to be getting men between 35 and 45. Yeah, you're not selling a lifestyle.

1:08:19and each person kind of that product is a is a crutch for them in a different way versus like you say George Heaton which is selling a lifestyle yeah and actually what I'm selling is like the promise of that we do the science research and that you're never going to find like you know like ambassadors talking about our product that's all like fake and paid that's nonsense obviously we pay them but they're our real customers yeah nothing's going to be inauthentic like that's what you're basically paying us for is this like idea that we really focus on the truth and the science and have this aspiration to be the most trusted brand in the whole of Europe in this space.

1:08:59And I'm absolutely more confident than ever that we're going to get there. And I think that's always been the belief in how you win. That's also why, by the way, when we started, we only had one product. And the goal was like, before we make another product, that has to be the most validated we can in the space too, because short term, that's pain. We knew it was going to be pain. I'm actually surprised we got even up to 5 million with that strategy because I think that's a very slow start strategy. But 10-year strategy, it's really obvious that that is how you win. And fair play to IM8, for example, they come from Prenetics, which is a company that had already had a lot of data and insight.

1:09:36And I know Danny, the founder of that, because we're talking about maybe working with Heights in 2020. And I met him from Hong Kong. and he was a customer, actually, of Heights on Vital, our first product. And, you know, the reason that's working isn't just David Beckham, is that there is a lot of scientific credibility behind their actual story. It's also their execution. Like they are, we've actually got him coming on in January. We managed to get him on the podcast because we did a massive breakdown. Who Danny? Oh, that's wicked. Did a really big breakdown of the marketing funnel, like a mirror board and gave it away.

1:10:09And he commented saying, this is great. We sent me some IM8, actually. It was both. and their execution quality funnel they went out the gate hard obviously he's he's fucking good entrepreneur yeah yeah like he really really really gets it yeah he executed every part of that funnel that's what i mean right so like you know again there's there's not many brands in the space that will do that yeah you know i i i quite rate ima i fucking hate ag1 and think they're shit but like i absolutely you can't fault their strategy like their business acumen and their strategy their products gash but their strategy absolutely i mean i don't care who knows it's true it's just bloody true but their strategy and their business way of doing things is absolutely second to none beautiful isn't it one product yeah that's a big scale into nine figures with a single skew is unbelievable crazy unbelievable um we are coming to the end of the episode yes but i did want to do a little segment quick fire now before we finish up you did a linkedin post about december reset yeah and i want to ask you some of the questions that you put into this post sure if you're happy answering them go for it yeah uh so the first one identify the habit that quietly carried you this year oh um okay so i do a word for the year um every year um as in a single word as opposed to a resolution.

1:11:36And that's been one of the most game-changing things I've done. I've done it for the last seven years. And this year's word was focus, which seems really obvious. And all of this stuff is an interpretation of how you apply it. Now, my focus this year been two things. One, do less and do it better. And two, on my body, actually, because I've always hated my fucking body and I've always wanted to change it and do something about it. and the focus thing on the body side has actually meant that I have lost 10 well 11 kilos um gained muscle mass gained bone density I've done a dexa scan every three months I've done these things I put I booked pre-booked a dexa scan every three months knowing I was going to do that I set myself a Saturday morning date every single Saturday this whole entire year to weigh myself and just like take my like photos and stuff and just committed to going to the gym four times a week basically and I've pretty much not missed that at all all year and as a result I've gone from 26 % body fat to 15 % body fat and I know this is like a bit OTT on the answer but the reason I did all that is a single thing which is like focus and focus on body this is my goal this is what I want it's achievable if I just don't try and do too much and these are the things on the focus side on business actually one of the reasons why it led to me shutting down secret leaders as soon as that was my goal if it was really unauthentic to run another company that's taking me away from the focus of heights as it's scaling so much right yeah so it also creates compromise where you have to say all right fuck i said i was going to do this thing am i going to make a really hard decision yes yeah our listeners will know that that is literally all we've been talking about this year focus doing less better and i think you know it's very relevant coming into january with the new year new me and everyone kind of tries to build all of these new habits and go from zero to 100 and as a result, everything by the 1st of Feb goes out the window and it's true.

1:13:29It's like, do less better and therefore you're more likely to succeed. I think it's a maturity in business. I feel like it's hard and you go through this early stage of growing a business, opportunity becomes more frequent, you tend to say yes more, there becomes an inflection point where you start to realise that it's actually doing the opposite of that that drives the results. Totally, totally. It's definitely maturity. I know, I have to go through it yourself though. Absolutely. People can say it, like, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do that, but you're just going to do it, and you're going to fuck up, and you're going to be like, shouldn't have done that.

1:14:01It was literally the inflection point in my agency. We went from doing six different services to lots of different types of ICPs to just doing one ICP, one service, and that was what grew our business. It doesn't surprise me. Yeah. It's annoying, isn't it? Because actually everyone, this is not a, you know, this will be the millionth time someone's heard this one. You never know, but you never know if it's the moment, that strikes someone as being like, oh, fuck it, I will commit to that. You do finally commit to it, you learn that it is true. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, the second one, what drained you more than it gave back?

1:14:37Definitely doing what you're doing right now. Podcasting. Yeah, in the end, in the end. And I think one of the reasons for that was, as I was saying earlier, I've got to follow your curiosity. I think I sort of like partly also just fell out of love with it. I am you know not as obsessed and interested in what everyone else is doing in their business nowadays as I am in like philosophy and like just other things right and so with a breadth of interest as opposed to when I started when I was just laser focused interested in business all the time as a result of that I felt like I was sitting in an inauthentic place and if you do anything that feels inauthentic to you anymore it is very draining yeah and final one what kind of days do you want more next year writer obviously um record sales yeah exactly record sales days i mean you know deep down that's obviously the answer let's be honest um do you know what i i've got myself into a really really just great process by this focus thing figuring out the things so many obvious things um but just figuring out you know commitment to who's doing what childcare on what days and on the days I'm not doing childcare, right, this is how my day works.

1:15:54You know, on those days I wake up at six, head to the gym. I've done everything before work starts. I'm home by six. I've done my exercise. You know, I just commit to going to bed early the night before some very obvious things and they sound really quite boring, but actually they are the things that made me feel like my shit is properly together. Um, and so, uh, I actually want more of exactly the same days i've already cultivated this year nice yeah final question what what big things do you what what does 2026 look like for heights um so honestly like my main main thing is this you know rcts randomized control studies um or trials um the like in all of the things the number one thing i care about more than anything is that is just getting evidence because I'm so bullish on our products.

1:16:46I know exactly the process that we go through. We've done trials on everything, by the way, and we always do when the trials come back amazing. But there's always some **** on the internet who's like, it's not randomized, control, placebo, double blind. And you're like, because no one fucking does that. I don't even know what that means. It's like half a million. Well, this is the thing. But it's like, I am that petty that I'm like, I will find that **** that comments that ****. I did it the other day. I literally... Send it to him. I argued down an internet troll the other day. Him and I basically ended up being like, well, fair play to you too.

1:17:19I don't think I've ever seen that before. On one of my ads, for sure. He was just fucking trolling on all the comments and stuff. And I basically responded to all of them with the evidence and everything else. He was telling me how shit our products is, where it's from. I'm like, you're literally wrong. This is where it's from. Here's the certificate. Here's the link. Because I take such great pride in the fact that genuinely our products are the best. and the annoying thing about retail is you really can't tell that story. Like I said, you just have to put on a supplement label and it has to just say the same claims as everyone else and you can't do a job of storytelling.

1:17:51But on the internet where you can at least explain yourself and you have put all the effort in and you can link back to the pages and the trials and the evidence, I am petty enough to make sure that people genuinely know that if they're taking heights or even considering heights, it's the best product in the world. So these trials like genuinely are the thing that I care about more than anything else. And I think it's because I believe that the way that we get 100 ,000 customers, the way that we get a million customers is that, like, I fundamentally think that that is the cornerstone to everything.

1:18:21If you know you have the best product, there's very little reason left for people not to choose you. Yeah. And you can tell that through, I think you've had over 250 clinical studies, which is crazy. Never see that with supplement brands. Well, Dan, thank you so much for coming on today it's been uh it's been a pleasure been really enjoyable where can people find you you can find me on social ranting about quality um at uh dan murray s um on uh instagram linkedin and uh if you are nuts enough then twitter yeah all the heights ad comments yeah all the heights ads comment yeah i mean i'm i'm on them i'm on them for sure yeah yeah thank you you're like oh this one's got like 300 comments all right 290 of them a dad thank you yeah thank you very much for coming out it's been a pleasure thanks guys cool see you in the next episode