He Quit BlackRock To Build A Gin Brand With £500 | Nishant Sharma

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't a lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It, Just Do It, the podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. One thing was very clear in my life, I would have never died or will die poor. Alcohol is in my blood. If alcohol gave my great-grandfather a platform to build something meaningful in his life, why should I not start alcohol for myself? I would literally fill up my entire Jeep and I would just drive with hundreds of bottles of gin, thinking I would sell them all.

0:35And then I would only do 10 cases and I'll bring back 90 odd cases back. I hustled really, really hard and that killed me. I would have been working, wearing a fancy suit made in Hong Kong, going up to meetings, which would have made no sense. I would have been dreaming and thinking, what the hell am I doing and drowning myself in booze over the weekend and starting all over again.

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1:31Alex Chisnall:So Nishan, welcome to the show. And I want to kick things straight off by getting you to tell me about your great grandfather and what his story means to you personally today. Absolutely. Thank you, Alex, for having me. I'm really excited and looking forward to doing this. My great grandfather, Tej Ram, so he was a Punjabi lad. born and bred in the northwest part of India, which is the extreme west near the Pakistan border. So we originally migrated from Pakistan. This is back in the early, early days. This is pre-independence when India was British India. And we lived in a small village near the Amrisa district called Chigama.

2:23This is before even my father and my grandfather was born. And this is the tales I've heard in the family. So great-grandfather had an itchy foot. He wanted more from his life. He didn't want it to be a farmer, a flower mill owner and a landlord like his family and his father. So he decided to set course to the extreme east. I don't know why. We never couldn't figure out why he chose two ends of the tale. So, yeah, he left his kids and his wife behind. Very entrepreneurial from day one, what we have heard. And he, you know, it was more bullock carts on foot and taking steam train across all the major states.

3:08And he lands up in a very small town called Dibrugar, which is also known as the T capital of India. He lands into the city with no idea, with no connections, and he lands himself a job in an Englishman's tea estate where he becomes a translator between the regime and the labor. He's managing the tea estate, and he started his journey. So, yeah, Tej Ram, who went from northwest to northeast.

3:38Alex Chisnall:That's a great story. Did you always feel that you personally would build something entrepreneurial or were you comfortable in financial services? I was never comfortable. I have ADHD from what I remember since I have gathered Headspace and a time that I can remember. I was always lost at school and class. I would always look out of the window, imagine and live in my own little bubble. I would be very imaginative and excited about the little ecosystem I created. I was a misfit at school. You know, imagine a Northwestern boy living in Northeast and suddenly I don't fit in the class. I'm not good at education.

4:30I'm barely scrambling through and passing. But growing up, I always had the itch to do more. So never thought about entrepreneurship, but definitely had this feeling in my heart that I wanted to do something which I could be proud of.

4:45Alex Chisnall:Yeah, similar to me, I think, in that way. And I always felt there was something in there that I wanted to do. I just didn't know what it was. So what was the moment where you thought, I can't stay in corporate life anymore? I think all my life I was chasing money. and because when I came to Scotland, I came with 500 pounds in my pocket. That's what my dad could afford. He paid my tuition, which was an international student fees. I came on a visa and he was very clear from day one, this is your decision. You're my only son. I cannot afford to pay your tuition quarter on quarter. So you have to find your own way.

5:24I would like you to stay back and work with me and build a life. We all have done that here. again because this feeling I had I can do more in life if I would have stayed back in India I would have been not good at just living and flowing like every other individual of my age was doing so I picked up my suitcase I took my first international flight to Glasgow and luckily I had my maternal uncle who had been in Glasgow since the 1990s so I had a roof over my head food on my table but I had no direction in life so when I started my journey money was the motivator because I had to make ends meet and when I landed myself in corporate after four years of working as a waiter dishwasher cleaner and then into selling insurance to a divorced woman through Sheila's wheels and the journey of life happened I did odd jobs and somehow I scaled I had this a hook what is that my manager does and I didn't like getting instructions from people they would tell me what to do so I would always want to be in their position so I would find my way into their job or find a job in a new place doing what they were doing so my last job when I was working with BlackRock and then HSBC it was a day-to-day contractor job I was paid very handsomely I was driving a big SUV.

6:55I was living the dream and I was splurging and living. I think that was the point that came to me that money didn't give me happiness. You know, it's always the dream that you want to buy your dream car and then you sit in your dream car and you realize what's next. And then suddenly the excitement goes out of the window. And that moment happened to me. And in that moment when my grandmother passed away in 2017 and I came for her funeral to Assam, I think something hit me really hard that life comes to an end. So we don't decide when we are born or where we are born. And we don't decide when we are going to die and how we are going to die in between whatever happens is life and we can control some part of it.

7:41and looking at her funeral, her cremation, I think really pushed me in a way, in a positive way that I wanted to do something more meaningful. And I started seeing money as a tool rather than a need or a necessity or a desire. It became a tool which allows people to do things. And this is where I had that shift and I decided to do what I'm doing today.

8:07Alex Chisnall:Love it. So you launched Rutland Square Spirits. What was actually holding you back from doing that any earlier in your journey then? What made you suddenly decide to, you know, name of this podcast, screw it, just do it and do the thing, right? I think the intention was not to start a spirits business. The intention was to do something that had meaning. So I call it this idea has is born from the fire of her cremation because I had a moment to myself and I'm being absolutely vulnerable and direct here as honest as I can. And I spent that afternoon just looking at her, you know, dissipating to nothing.

8:54And in that moment, something really shifted inside me. And the sort of emotions I never felt, I had no idea it would transpire into a business or a business into spirits. What did happen was sometimes there is a force of nature, which we don't know who that is. we call it you know god or we call it supreme power whoever that be I don't put my my force into a shape or a form and I think in that moment I got the opportunity to spend two weeks with my grandfather and this is where I learned about our inception story which was my great-grandfather leaving the northwest coming to northeast working for an English lord where he met a Scottish officer and they started an illegal business which was to blend spirits together for which was a side hustle so the Scottish officer would buy a single malt whiskey under his quota bring it back to my great-grandfather's backyard and they will blend it with no tools and they will sell it to the common man as Indian blended scotch at that moment when I was exposed to that story I felt alcohol is in my blood if alcohol gave my great-grandfather a platform to build something meaningful in his life why should I not start alcohol for myself I live in the makeup spirits you know and that was the birth of Rutland Square but the name Rutland Square didn't occur then it was just I should do something in whiskey and I came back and and then life happened so yeah so going from from whiskey to to what you're doing now and i can you know

10:33Alex Chisnall:for those watching i can see uh the lovely branding that you got there as well um looks very cool i'm sure it tastes very cool as well um it taught me through like the iterations to get to that stage and deciding on on the product and um you know the botanicals i know a little bit about um gin interviewed a couple of people who've got gin brands over the years over the last nine years on the show many drinks brands in total so yeah interested to to hear you got to where you are before i go there i'll tell you gin happened by accident i had no intention of doing gin and i like the drama of gin now and then but i am moreover a whiskey person so i'll pack bags came back to Edinburgh post this incident and I was very arrogant about doing whiskey.

11:22I thought I had some savings in the bank and then there was support from my family and friends and everybody around and life humbled me. Ignorance is bliss and sometimes it brings you back to square one. I soon realized whiskey needs millions and millions of pounds which I never had. Nobody in my family had and I had to pick up something which was not whiskey purely out of force because I couldn't afford to do whiskey and back then this is pre-covid 1819 1718 when I started the journey of onboarding a brand agency because I really wanted to focus on creating something because people buy from eyes first before they touch liquid to lips so the branding has to be on point I had this brain full of ideas and I thought I need an experienced agency to help me shape this.

12:13And gin happened because gin was trending back then and COVID happened. And then we spent three years finding about what gin is, how gin is produced, what should be my gin story. Because there are thousands of gins on the table. People are not going to entertain another bottle of gin. that was the root cause of rutland square the name rutland square came because the indian embassy sits in rutland square so the passage to india starts from rutland square that became the brand name so you have to go to rutland square to get your visa for india before you can board a flight chai spiced happened because i come from a region which is the capital of india what do they grow the most is tea and chai translates to tea in india so i picked up the word chai i registered at it and I slapped it on the bottle and I liked some spices in my gin and looked at the shelf a fear was the closest option in terms of spiced gin and it's led by spices which is peppers and few other botanicals for me it had to be something that I can sip because again whiskey was leading my palate and I'm not the one who mixes his drinks too much with the mixtures then chai was there brought back 200 variants of teas multiple trips and then we landed with the most expensive tea money can buy and i was like where do i start now god i can't even afford to make a gin so we found a sustainable source in india to help us find the sustainable tea which was the oolong white tea which took the palate forward uh local juniper scottish juniper the and then followed by warm spices cardamom cinnamon star anise lucrous orange peel lemon peel and fennel seeds and all those botanicals slowly came together organically because we were testing and drinking a lot of alcohol a lot of pussy nights and then we finally logged up to a recipe a matt who helped me create my recipe is a genius he he's been a distiller for the longest of time and kind of every time I would come up with an idea, he would clearly know what to do.

14:25I'm not a distiller. I had no idea how to create spirits. I had just an idea about what my product should look like. And then we shaped it together and then chai spiced happened. And that's like, we make it in Scotland. So it should be chai spice Scottish gin because we are paying homage to chai through, to India through chai. And then we need to pay homage to home, which is Edinburgh and the Scottish gin happened. So yeah.

14:51Alex Chisnall:Great story. And where did your first sale come from then? Oh, family and friends. Family and friends. I forced the bottle down everybody's throat. I almost created a FOMO by sending them WhatsApp videos. Oh, thank you for placing the order. I'm not going to name you, but you know what? Thank you. So I almost created a FOMO within the family group. Like somebody in the family, nobody was placing orders. It was just me creating FOMOs in the family. Oh, I see. And then it had a placebo effect because I went out and there was one order, a dummy order that I created. And I said, oh, thank you for this.

15:28Without naming names, the family member and the other family member thought, oh, I should support him as well because somebody in the family has. And then 50 orders came through. So first 50 bottles of sales, I only had 100 bottles to sell and 50 bottles of sales.

15:43Alex Chisnall:Did you do like a minimum order, like 100 bottles? Yeah, we had to have a minimum order in terms of our distilleries to create. And 50 orders came through and out of 100 bottles, I sold 50 bottles through family and friends. And then I thought, I need to go beyond this because it is not sustainable. And then I started selling one bottle, one SKU at a time, going out to every single shop in Edinburgh, in Glasgow, in the local areas. Rejected, left, right and center. Went out to the restaurants I used to work. asking them to please talk. And then I learned you need a distributor to talk. I had no idea you need a distributor to talk.

16:22So I learned the hard way.

16:23Alex Chisnall:Yeah. Well, we all learn the hard way, don't we, I guess. That's why I say ignorance is bliss sometimes because you don't know what's in front of you. Yeah, exactly. And you push the boundaries without knowing what the boundaries are, right? And if you keep going, you eventually get there. Was there anything that nearly stopped you from launching? like anything in life that yeah okay yeah multiple times i failed three times launching this gen so imagine the journey started in 2017 took me three to four years to create a recipe covid happened post covid i took my gen to market in 2021 i failed terribly literally almost went bankrupt and this is where I bought Virgin startups on board to help me lend some of the money and then they were very kind and they bought in and they gave me some of the money and then I failed again and then I thought and then heart attack happened.

17:24I almost died because I was going through the journey of selling alcohol one bottle at a time which wasn't the right way of doing it, picking up cases, bare hands, almost taking every single case I had in my warehouse to the shows without knowing how much I would sell. And I would literally fill up my entire Jeep and I would just drive with hundreds of bottles of gin thinking I would sell them all, overly ambitious and naive and positive. And then I would only do 10 cases and I'll bring back 90-odd cases back. and then deload them and then put them back. And I hustled really, really hard and that killed me.

18:08And then the COVID injection played an additional part, add-on, which created blood clots in my heart. And then I very clearly remember I had discomfort since morning on Friday and we had an event in Aberdeen. I went to Aberdeen with my partner and we started selling bottles. come Saturday I'm doing the same and I feel the chest pain and the heartburn as if I've eaten something really I shouldn't have eaten and I ignore the symptoms and come Sunday we wrap up and we are now driving back home I come home in the evening and I said listen I'm I'm I'm feeling a little uncomfortable I think I'm gonna sleep and she said why don't you just go out and get yourself checked just go to the emergencies and E &E and E &E and get yourself checked I don't know what came to me, a little voice from inside said, just get it checked.

18:58You know, there's no harm. Came to the hospital. They gave me Gaviscon to begin with. And then they drew some blood and I could see the nurse running back, sprinting towards me. And she said, did you drink that Gaviscon? I said, yes. He said, oh, you're having a heart attack. We're going to book you in. And then the whole series of blood thinners and injections left, right, and center. And then I clearly remember Monday morning, nine, nine, half past nine in the morning, doctor came in and he said, son, if you would have not come last night, you would have not seen Monday morning.

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20:05Alex Chisnall:Plus, signing up for an account is completely free and there are no ongoing monthly fees. You've got 60 days from sign up to use them. Head to worldfirst.com forward slash screw it and get your 50 fee-free business transactions. Now back to the podcast. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. So you thanked your partner. Yes. Encouraging you to go to the hospital. Yes. Or otherwise, who knows where. I would have, yeah. He said my heart was at so much distress that it was losing oxygen. and if I would have slept, I would have just passed away in the bed without anybody moving up. Nope. Wow. So that's, you know, looking back on that, that stress from starting a business, right?

20:49Alex Chisnall:From financial to working every hour that God sends, physical and mental, right? So you're literally maxing out both of your capabilities. Everything. Imagine you have a small kid in the house and now you have left your stable income and now you're depending on your partner's income and you have chipped in, borrowed money from left, right and center, from your family, friends and whoever your first seed investor has been, borrowed money as loans from the virgin startups and maxed out every single credit card and overdrafts and ended up almost dead. And then I have to restart the journey all over again, not knowing where should I start from.

21:28Alex Chisnall:Did you question everything at that point? as in did you did you sit there thinking i've made a massive mistake i need to go back to corporate life no never it never came to me i think i think that that was a driving force and i keep talking about is it never occurred to me going back i was very clear to my my partner that no matter what happens if i go back to corporate life uh i might end my life i was like so dramatic because i'm a liu and i'm a bit dramatic i said i just cannot go back to that 95 no offense to people in n-to-5 it just wasn't for me i i would be so lost sitting at my desk without having a purpose in life today i make it or don't make it i fail it a billion times i'll keep doing it until life leaves my body i don't have anything else to do and i've made a pledge to myself and every single investor who's part of my journey is what is your exit plan i don't have an exit plan there's an exit plan i have for you that you might make a multiple on my business on the growth i will bring into the business but i am living just journey throughout and is that true you did there is no exit plan still why should i have an exit plan why if i if i'll have an exit plan that means i'm working for money again i'm always looking to create a multiple on it and then exit the business if somebody comes up with a crazy offer and gives me so much capital that i can start investing in other startups and become a full-time investor that might be an option i might have on the table I will make a lot of money for my investors I'll give them the 5x, 8x, whatever they need if I am able to create that which I'm focusing on and I'm building upon but there is an exit for me personally I don't want to exit I want to grow this into an enterprise that grows arms and legs we want to build a group of companies we have plans to build a hydrogen powered whiskey distillery I want to go into hospitality build hotels expand the gin and rum into whiskey single malt, blended you know, wherever life takes me I love it, I love the vision massive I love it it's brilliant and is that true you mentioned earlier I was going to ask you then but now seems a good time to ask as well is that true like to start a whiskey business you need like serious money because it's aged yeah I think it takes me back to the purpose it all started for whiskey with whiskey I never had the resource the knowledge the know-how the route to market for anybody any serious player to lend me the money to start whiskey today i have some knowledge some traction some growth and there are people i'm meeting on a daily basis who believe in what i'm doing and they are investing in the business investing in me because one investor said something very smart he said you can come up with a lot of charts numbers growth plans when an investor puts money he puts on the horse not on the jockey so you are the horse so i'm putting my money in on you so you need to make sure that you know you run fast and you get get to the finish line first i like that and yeah like we were chatting earlier about mutual mutual friend mutual business piers lenny and i always you know ask him you know when you're in dragon's den and you're picking who to invest in and the different business ideas and it's like person like you say horse every time you know horse every time um obviously and you see countless examples of that where they they can pick holes in the business but the person they know they're going to do something and they want to be connected to that person but when they actually do nail something right um why didn't you quit then going back to the heart attack and i bet you'd like doctors people are telling you just just to quit right does that come back to purpose i think i was so much driven by the the idea of surviving because i had taken money from family and friends and almost i could have called it quits and that would have meant their money would have lost i felt accountability responsibility I would have taken five to seven years in a job to pay them because I would have not started on the on the on the top of the table I would have started at the bottom of the table after taking a five-year gap from the job market and I think I was sometimes you're just driven to extend that you don't I think you have your blinkers on you believe in the purpose so much that you believe in yourself if I'm not believing in myself why would anybody believe in me agreed so that was the driving force i literally remember i woke up i got into my sense and i picked up my laptop and i started sending emails to companies like craft chain club to waitress give me an opportunity and i still do that you know it's been such a long time i haven't got listing in waitress and i've emailed them every single day one day one day this person is going to see my persistence and he's going to say oh this guy is not going to stop let us see what is all about and that would be my opportunity to say okay you know what you have ignored me for so long now I am there and I'm and I'll back my product my product will speak for itself it's then it's that opportunity that you're waiting for and that transpires and that creates that whole domino effect yeah yeah I always remember it was one of the first ever interviews I did I did like four interviews to start with one was steven bartler one was jimmy cregan from jimmy's iced coffee and we did a live event i think maybe two years ago when he exited to britvik and he'd you know been in the game 13 years and you know the origin story was you know again just getting countless emails countless emails nothing picking you know the phone calls nothing and he just drove there you know with it with a van with a load of products and he you know he said they were trying to turn me away they're trying to like the security and trying to get within and i and i i can't remember the exact ins and outs of it now but i i you know the moral of the story um from him was literally as you say trying to get that product in front of the person who's responsible for making that decision but how you can kind of manufacture that um and it's you know so much to be said for um human connection and like you saying you know you're talking to people who are who believe in you they want to put their put their money on you and and i think if people can see the visions if the vision was smaller than that like you say people probably not going to back you if it's just like i'm going to exit you know um rutland square spirits whereas if you're talking like whiskey you're talking hotels it's like wow okay we're talking big brand here every investor is looking for growth and if i just ask them and tell them that this is all i have for you to invest in how am I going to show growth the growth means what is the next thing which is within within the pipeline that resonates with the products I'm creating that is growth for Rutland Square as well gin was the inception story one SKU for four years and somehow I managed to survive and then rum happened out of compulsion because one SKU wasn't enough and I didn't want to create seven gins which would have not served my purpose I might do a one-off limited edition just to create that excitement to see if something new and unique can be bought to life.

28:49But rum was the second category in the SQ, which is now fastest growing, and it supersedes gin in terms of sales. I'm not a rum drinker, and I was never going to bet my money on rum, and now rum is the hottest selling product. Literally, this bottle of rum, and we get around 15 to 20 orders every single day. that is from our website and then we are on other platforms as well and so rum has been doing crazy and i had never ever had a dream about selling rum gin and whiskey is where i was so much focused and then rum happened and now whiskey is happening yeah but i guess you've got to be

29:28Alex Chisnall:data driven to to a certain point right yes and some of it's got to be intuition right and gut instinct and vision but some of it's got to be what's the data telling us what what are people you know drinking out there at the moment um what are the trends and now we have people to sometimes bring give founders the context we are 25 people fd strong between two offices india and edinburgh and i hear ideas i listen to everyone in the office they're talking over lunch and we have a ritual every monday or the last or friday one person cooks and brings food and it's a motivation for everybody to work from office and this is where we sit down and we chat about the problems and what's what's next in the market and because there are two offices one in india and one here we hear their story and then we we share our pains and stories and kind of it puts a light bulb moment in your on your head okay so there is something that's working there but it's like gin's working in india crazy it's um because uk is it just still like traditional like whiskey drink is it is so it's market is evolving the the spending power is increasing people are looking at story led brands they want to associate themselves with new exciting products they're very mindful of what they're putting inside their body so there are a lot of elements they are contributing to craft and small businesses like myself because gone are the days of bigger players and i don't mean to offend them so they come and crush me people have had their products for years or generations.

31:03The grandfather had it, the father had it, they have tried it, but now they want products that has meaning, that has people in the face they can resonate and connect with. And yeah, people are always looking for exciting products. This is why Ferrari launches a product every year, because people want to connect to what's next. We're not Ferrari yet. Hopefully we get there fast enough.

31:26Alex Chisnall:We talked about investors, we just kind of touched on it but maybe you can you can tell our audience a little bit about um maybe your most famous investor then and meeting yeah meeting him how did how did that happen and maybe you can give a bit of context as to who he is and what he's done people use the word tenacity i use the word desperation um and in all honesty i was sitting post uh heart attack i think a year after my heart attack. I had no money left in the business and I had to make a 20 grand payment on Wednesday next week. And I'm sitting here on Friday thinking, what should I do? You know, I might go under litigation if I don't make that payment.

32:09And I started firing emails. So Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I've almost sent around a thousand emails. Whoa, seriously? Yeah. So I would put my kids to bed at nine and from 10 p.m. till six in the morning, I would send emails then I will have shower come to office work through the day probably catch up on an hour's nap at work and then go back home now doze off with my kids around nine-ish wake up again 12 1 2 whatever time I I get up and I did that so I would go on to platforms like social media this is a blessing for our generation who have connectivity through social media back in the day you would have to go through yellow pages hoping this person has money how people flaunt their lifestyles on social media platforms if i would see anybody driving a fancy car or doing something that reflected wealth i would send them an email so that created an effect where connections were built uh 99 rejections but i think i'd grown grown out of that phase where rejections would bother me and the most people can say is no but what it led to was sending emails to every single celebrity on the planet but I had this one celebrity who's a partner now and it made sense to me he has a very interesting story he come he's Bollywood royalty his family has been in Bollywood for the longest of time but he was actor turned entrepreneur and he backed businesses and I thought you know what he could be a good bet because he has business acumen he understands the world of business he might be able to open doors for me because he lives in dubai but he travels across the world and it's it's where people are they always say follow the money and at the moment dubai is where money is is flowing too and the best way of doing it is i was traveling to dubai i was in dubai and i was at a party i was accidentally invited to i met this guy on social on instagram he replied back out of hundreds of people who ignored me and he said dude come with me and i met him at a coffee shop he liked what i was doing but he said this is not for me because i'm into a very different business he invited to me to to a very high-end party where i was a misfit i went in my short sorry my trousers my shirt and my laptop bag and everybody was dressed fancy i mean casual clothing uh drinking sipping champagne there were it was um there's a flood of champagne and they were dancing on the tables at a club and during that discussion i said how arrogant are these celebrities they don't respond to your messages and says who are you trying to reach to i said this guy viveko bro i took his name he said he picked up the phone to him right there and then and and then i'd already tried few other people who claimed to know him and um that created a connection so he had heard my name a few times but he wasn't interested because he gets cold cold calls every single day because this person phoned him and said who the f is nishan sharma there's literally seven eight people have told me about him so i had a flight back to edinburgh at 2 p.m and 7 a.m he summons me to his house wow so i shipped my family to the airport i said listen you catch the flight uh i'll try to make it if i don't make it i'll catch the next one home and i went to his whole house and i pitched him But then I think we wiped.

35:34I think it's the vibe we really, really liked. And I was very, very honest and transparent with him. I said, I need money and I need to grow this business. I have a huge vision and plans. Help me. And then we did back and forth for six months. And then he took a trip to Edinburgh and we signed our MOAs. And now we have an equity partner who helped me. It was helping me scale. It's just another great element to the story, right?

36:00Alex Chisnall:what do you think you saw in you and your vision to back you and what do all investors do you think what draws them towards you have you thought about that if I think I did think about it I think one of my dear friends and advisors Nick Bassey says that what you have is tenacity and I didn't understand what tenacity meant and had to google it and then when I learned about learned the meaning about the word and I realized maybe he's right because I didn't stop I could have said you know what I had enough I'm embarrassed I have no respect left because I have cold emailed every single individual I could on this planet and I should put an end to it this chaos but then also there was a voice within me which said founders should be shameless you know shameless in a good way not that you are pestering people but one must keep trying it's like you are in the middle of the sea you can either drown and die or you keep paddling until life leaves your body at least you tried you might get to the shore or you might just die you you are you are going to drown anyways so you rather keep paddling slow paddle fast paddle whatever works for you just keep moving forward and keep battling yeah yeah yeah for me you're right tenacity and i think persistence you know again that that you know correct unless somebody literally tells you no you know again my attitude and again i think i've just become hardwired to you know receiving no's it's like well what's what's the worst thing that can happen if i ask that person some people you know so scared to ask the question you know like well their answer isn't going to kill you not 90 won't answer at all right i find i don't know if you found this but there's very few no's in life like the door firmly shut in your face it's it's either silence or it's uh maybe like later on like contact me in three or i'm busy right now doing this get in touch with me later and i kind of file that away and will always go back i think what happens is you're right and and i'll just add to what you said i think it's about sometimes the door closes because either you are not ready or they are not ready for you yes and until it's almost like um you know a bunch of bananas you might have picked up the right bunch of bananas from the supermarket not every single banana would be ripe enough for you to eat so until the time is right that door might not be readily available for you but then the time comes and this is what happens look at big companies when they go ipos pre-ipos or people who have made it they were all knows are now subscribing to you because you have shown them you know persistency consistency tenacity every single fancy word you can use on the planet you know that shows them that this guy is here to stay and we didn't back him then let's back him now and see if he can create a multiple for us because at the end of the day everybody's looking at themselves what can i get out of this guy yeah Yeah.

39:11Alex Chisnall:And also I saw something the other day, my friend Simon Squibb says, you know, the more risk I take, the luckier I get. Right. And you've you've clearly taken lots of risks. Yeah, that guy teaches us something. We all founders and every single one on this planet who's looking at entrepreneurship directly, indirectly, passively, however they are even thinking about it is that guy will interview anyone. and what is your dream and the most random place his only place I've not seen him ask that question is the toilets he would do that one day and I hope he does I love that guy I love that guy so much if I ever had the opportunity to speak to him I just want to be in his aura for the sake of you know taking from his energy that that takes guts and I've seen his journey from day one that that takes strength to be in most awkward places without thinking what is this guy girl person he she they them would think about him and he's not measured in followers but i remember i connected with simon back in i think 2020 and you know i i had you know he had about 2 000 followers on his on his instagram account i remember those days it's crazy numbers right um and we partnered with them for uh for help bank for our first event festival of entrepreneurs last year and i was chatting to their team last week because simon had said to me look it's it's too short notice for me i've got too much travel planned i can't do october but let's do the next year so got the team on the call last week and i was like right what you know what can we do you know um and they're like right we want to give us some space let's go like a small space a medium space and then just give us something crazy because we want to create something crazy and the crazier thing that we'll create the more chances simon will will notice it and do it and they go on they said he'll he'll we're going to create the same thing at um billion dollar followers follower summit in dubai we're going to do the same thing ideas fest and we'd like to do the same thing at your event and i was like what was what was the feedback from our event they said we we got more people who pitched their dream at your event than any other event that we did in the last 12 months and i was like that's crazy for like a first year event that we created now and i guess it just attracted a certain type of people right you know those you know again the dreamers people with big visions and and also people who not afraid to actually articulate that dream right because a lot of people got it and they keep it they don't write it down they don't tell anyone and it just stays there right and they never get to actually execute that thing no i'm hats off to that guy you know he's creating something that doesn't exist an opportunity anywhere and then I see people when he shows up as like oh I know you yes I have a dream I resonate with that feeling you know imagine it it's like a ray of hope when you're drowning because everybody's fighting a battle within themselves and they cannot share and speak to anyone in that moment you see that rope of hope that might give you an opportunity to climb on the other side aren't we all looking at the other side what is that other side it can be anything it can be money supercars private jets or maybe nothing just you know doing what you're doing like like people like ourselves just showing up to work without thinking is today the payday or is never going to be the payday we are just hustlers call ourselves bob the builders what we are building we don't know we are just laying breaks every single day yeah no i like that um a couple of questions to finish up and then we'll just do a quick fire round um if that's okay um is uk india um is it an opportunity for for founders and what do british brands misunderstand about india in your experience india is a very complex market it's um i think us in the west are very rigid in our ways of doing things either my way or highway and i think what I've learned through my travel is especially traveling to not only India is the place I'm born I understand traveling to China traveling to Singapore traveling to countries which are very much led by culture and tradition we sometimes need to bend in terms of you know we need to be water like Bruce Lee said you know water goes in glass you take the shape of the glass water goes in jug you take the shape of the jug we must not be rigid about our ways of working I think it's a global platform now.

43:44India is an opportunity. What do we need to sell people? India has the biggest population in the world, the youngest population in the world, economy which is growing because it's not perfect. They are still fixing, but look at that opportunity, infrastructure opportunity, real work opportunity. It is a land full of opportunities. And if you have something that you can offer and that you can share, it's not about what you can extract. It's about what you can share that is where the land of opportunity is look at china perfect example where was china 20 years ago where is china today it's a it's a whole new ecosystem and it's like a place from

44:21Alex Chisnall:the future right yeah yeah and i guess it makes sense if it's the fastest growing which i didn't know uh india then it's going to be the youngest as well whereas like you said china there's a problem there right it's it hasn't got the youngest because of the one child policy and they have learned and now they're pushing but that is exactly where the pivotal shift has happened why has India caught up with China because China made a decision that impacted China and India didn't make a steer on that decision they followed China but they failed they started a castration process picking up men randomly from home but that failed because you can't implement things by force but it is definitely for every single entrepreneur in the UK India is a great place to work but you need a local partner you cannot do it without a local partner but you need to find the right partner that is the biggest challenge and I'm working with people who are amazing who have been in the market for the longest of time they want to collaborate they want your products because that's how they are driving sales for themselves.