He Failed His Dream at 17. Then Built a Business From £60K | Stephen Howarth

0:00So we put together a business plan and worked out how much we needed to finance it, which realistically is probably about£3 million to give yourself a bit of runway and breathing space. So we started with£60 ,000. I'd wanted to join the Marines since I was probably about 13. I think I was 17 when I did it and I failed catastrophically. It was a way of toughening me up. I came back from that, I was 19, and felt ready, went down, smashed the selection, and then went into the Marines age 19. What we did is probably impossible. We entered a market of established giants. Nearest sort of credible competitor revenue at the time was north of 100 million.

0:40North Face then their revenue was over 2 billion. Okay, so you're trying to make an entrance into that.

0:52Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't a lack of ideas. It's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnell and this is Screw It Just Do It, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. So we put together a business plan and worked out how much we needed to finance it, which realistically is probably about£3 million to give yourself a bit of runway and breathing space. So we started it with£60 ,000 and we were facing not being paid for an indeterminate period. which is exactly what happened. You do a good couple of years without a salary.

1:32I'd wanted to join the Marines since I was probably about 13. And I was academically very bright. I was an active, physically active, slightly wild kid. All I wanted to do was join the Royal Marines. I think I was 17 when I did it, and I failed catastrophically. I thought I was tough. I went down for this course, this initial filter, and I got the shock of my life. And I just thought, you know, there's sort of four years of dreaming about the Royal Marines and I'm just clearly not ready. I remember I had this thought in my head when I was down there. How do I sort of...

2:08Alex Chisnall:I was down in Exeter, right? Yeah, come out of training centre, yeah. I remember thinking, this is a man's world. It felt just tough and big. So I then did something really stupid. I abandoned my A-levels a third of the way through and I went to sea on an oil tanker as a trainee officer cadet, a deck officer with Texaco. Didn't really want to do that. I had no interest in that, but that was a ticket to travel. And I also saw it. I'm not sure whether this was hindsight or whether it was planned. I'll say it was planned. It was a way of toughening me up. Yeah. And that is indeed what happened. I joined this oil tanker.

2:49I remember climbing up the pilot's ladder off the coast of Scotland, uh age 17 you know getting on board and there's all these sort of 20 year old 20 year in hairy terrifying weird seaman waiting for their next victim and uh so i did that for about 18 months sort of went to a few interesting places in the caribbean and central and south america and lots of stuff in the north sea as well and did it toughen you up it did toughen me up yeah um i realized that later i spent most most of the time homesick um wondering what on earth i was doing but still i had this marines marines goal so i i came back from that i was 19 and felt ready went down smashed the selection and then um went into the marines age 19.

3:36so 21 years in the

3:38Alex Chisnall:military in total for you yeah um did you have a vision of what life would look like post-military before you left or as you were leaving um i didn't really alex um i only ever wanted to join the marines um i was a pretty enthusiastic royal marine but curiously i was one of those people who also probably wanted to leave from day one for me it's like what's the next thing what's the next thing and that's how i conducted my career um you did a series of interesting jobs that kept me in and as I came to uh leave the marines when I finally sort of ticked all the boxes I've done everything I wanted to do and I was both um you know satisfied and probably um becoming you know somewhat disillusioned or stale or or bored by what could be next then I then I decided to leave um that was probably a two to three year process a couple years thinking about it then you have to give a year's notice I do you?

4:43Wow, okay. So I worked my years notice. Now, it seemed to me that most ex-Marines officers go into one of just a handful of industries. Security, obviously. Well, that looked to me just like being in the Marines, but possibly more dangerous. And Tommy did that for a couple of years. Extraordinarily well paid. You know, he was out in Libya when that all went up. And other places in Africa as well, earning a lot of money. Security is one of them. There seemed to be quite a few experience officers in finance, but that was more of a younger person's game. And then some go into medicine, become doctors, those sorts of things.

5:21Management consultancy is a big one, leadership management consultancy. I've never felt warm towards consultancy. I'd rather be doing it. So none of those appealed. What did appeal was starting my own business, and what did appeal was doing something in what Tommy and I sort of vaguely referred to as the outdoor, outdoor space. Could have been guiding, could have been making rucksacks. It turned out to be making clothing, which we kind of always knew it would be. So during that notice period, about three months away from it, I emailed Tommy, who'd been outside for a couple of years, and posed that question, do you fancy starting an outdoor company?

6:05He said, yeah, sounds great. And that was our screw it, let's do it, or just do it moment. So yeah, we went in on that. And how long from idea to actually doing it, living, breathing it? Right, so we got our, from registering the company, just probably when the idea, thinking of the idea, naming the company and registering it, that was pretty quick, obviously, to getting a product to market was probably about 18, 20 months, something like that um we the first thing we did was write a business plan so we did all the research and so on and so forth and one of the things one of the strengths we did have i suppose was the ability to plan we knew nothing about commercial environment nothing about the outdoor industry we knew what clothes should look like and how they should perform we knew we loved the outdoors and we knew we could put together some sort of plan um whether it's a tactical operational strategic plan didn't the you know the precepts of that look no different in the civilian world to the military world didn't know that at the time just applied what we had yeah so we put together a business plan and um worked out how much we needed to finance it um which realistically is probably about three million pounds um to give yourself a bit of runway and breathing space so we started it was 60 ,000 pounds a bit different yeah and we were facing not being paid for you know an indeterminate period which is exactly what happened you do a good couple of years without a salary so you know we've gone from sort of senior positions in the military to what felt like begging for money and trying to sell our idea yeah yeah yeah but you know it's a ritual you have to go through and it worked for us um yeah we got a supporter investor straight away and she invested in us and got us off the ground.

8:04Every week is challenging. And every day will ambush you with something. In the early days, you're sort of lurching from crisis to crisis. You're not in panic mode. Let me rephrase that. You're lurching from difficulty to difficulty. What we did is probably impossible. We entered a market of established giants. our nearest sort of credible competitor revenue at the time was north of 100 million I think North Face then not really an outdoor brand, they're in a different space now but I think then their revenue was over 2 billion okay so you're trying to make an entrance into that you've also given yourself in technical outdoor clothing a serious product challenge as well you know it's not fast fashion it's not gym wear it's not athleisure it's difficult to make very long lead times it's expensive to make as well it has to perform your reputation rides on that you're always on you know you as ceo you are battered by questions and um the need for your input and that that's challenging and it's your duty to answer it as well so when you get that text at 9pm at night or whatever it happens to be from your head of product you probably need to answer it yeah or you need to have a conversation don't text me at 9pm at night yeah um but she wouldn't unless it were an important text so being always on is it's been challenging and what

9:46Alex Chisnall:qualities do you think you've needed to to last the course so far then um i think you need a uh a sufficient degree of paranoia that might sound unusual it's a good answer i've heard that one before yeah i probably stole that but it's certainly true no you need a sufficient degree of paranoia why because you can see what's coming you're not resting on your laurels and i say sufficient not a pathological degree of paranoia you shouldn't be running the thing you know that'd be extremely unhealthy you can see what's coming see what's around the corner you can plan accordingly and develop contingencies for it what piece of advice would you give to somebody else who isn't currently where they want to be um to help them get to where they want to be um well you've got to think um seriously through whether that objective is achievable and if you decide it is achievable and that's not purely sort of technical exercise it can it can be instinct as much as anything but if you're if it is realistically achievable then you've got to structure a plan a roadmap um it doesn't matter if that roadmap or plan turns out to be inaccurate.

11:06Again, in the Marines, we used to say, don't confuse the map with the ground. It's just a representation of a possible future reality from which you can build contingency. But without it, you're lost. So build your roadmap, make your map.

11:20Alex Chisnall:Thanks for listening. And if today's episode has inspired you to take action, why not take the next step? Come and meet me at the Festival Entrepreneurs this November at the NEC in Birmingham. You'll be able to meet many of the founders you've heard on this podcast, along with hundreds of ambitious entrepreneurs from across the UK. I'd love to see you there. So just go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to register for your free, yes, free ticket.