How Tom Gozney Ended Up Installing a Pizza Oven for Richard Branson

0:00Tom Gozney:We entered the Pitch to Rich competition and then we got through to the semi-finals and you know it was a huge amount of work building the momentum in that and actually getting like friends and family to vote for us in the public voting round and so Richard actually emailed me after the campaign because we got to the semi-finals he just sent me an email saying really nice to have you involved in the campaign and you know in the Pitch to Rich and so I sent him an email back saying Richard you know you really need to get a Gosney oven on Necker Island you know Necker won't be quite there until you get a Gosney oven in Necker and he just sent me a message back saying connect up with our head chef.

0:32Alex Chisnall:Today's bite-sized episode features Tom Gosney, the innovator behind Gosney, a brand that marries craftsmanship and engineering to build ovens loved by pizza makers, restaurateurs and food lovers around the world. Head chef just got given the green light to install one of our commercial ovens and so yeah probably six months

0:50Tom Gozney:later the NECA team flew me and my installers out to NECA Island and we installed one of our

0:55Alex Chisnall:commercial ovens on turtle beach welcome to this special bite-sized episode of screw it just do it

1:00Tom Gozney:from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes you mentioned um richard branson beforehand um

1:09Alex Chisnall:is it true story read that you'd been out to necker island yeah really yeah yeah yeah so

1:14Tom Gozney:so that was a week before my wedding and my my um so i got married in bali in 2016 and my wife flora was really nervous about me going because you know you go out to the caribbean and in the bvi all the flights are really unreliable and she was super i had like a day's lag time to get back and get on a flight to go to bali to get married but it's an opportunity we just couldn't miss and um so yeah i when we when we were leading up to the launch of rockbox we actually entered into the pitch to rich competition which richard does yeah which year did you did 2015 or 2015 no was it yeah no it was 2015 and so that was the first time they'd run the voom um pitch to rich and we did we did really well in it again it was like a huge amount of work like crowdfunding but what that did for us is that gave us a bit of a platform to be able to show rockbox to people and then part of the momentum that we gained in that was just gaining customers details and subscriptions when they gave their interest in rockbox and so we sort of entered the pitch to rich competition and then on the back of that we sort of used that as a stage to leverage interest for rockbox and we sort of had six months till we launched on indiegogo so we just started like collecting lots of details for customers that were potentially interested which is why when we launched on indiegogo we just had such success with the with the campaign

2:35Alex Chisnall:and was that when you spotted like the name richard branson and put an order in or

2:38Tom Gozney:so so so richard no actually it didn't happen like that we entered the pitch to rich competition And then we got through to the semifinals and, you know, we sort of, it was a huge amount of work building the momentum in that and actually getting like friends and family to vote for us in the public voting round. And so we didn't gain as many votes as the people that we're up against, but we still had an amazing journey in that process. But Richard actually emailed me after the campaign. So we got to the semifinals. He just sent me an email saying, really nice to have you involved in the campaign and, you know, in the pitch to Rich.

3:11Tom Gozney:And so I sent him an email back saying, Richard, you know, you really need to get a Gosney oven on Necker Island. You know, Necker won't be quite there until you get a Gosney oven in Necker. And he just sent me a message back saying, well, he just sent me a message back saying, connect up with our head chef. So he connected me to the head chef. Head chef just got given the green light to install one of our commercial ovens. And so, yeah, probably six months later, the NECA team flew me and my installers out to NECA Island and we installed one of our commercial ovens on Turtle Beach, which was an amazing experience.

3:46Tom Gozney:Really cool going to NECA Island.

3:48Alex Chisnall:Yeah. I'll have to check with my friend Ben is a DJ on NECA Island. Oh, really? All the jobs you can get when you're like, yeah, I think he's like 26. Wow. And he was there when the hurricane hit. Really? in the wine cellar with Richard. He's in Richard's latest book. There's a picture of him in the wine cellar, you know, hiding from the... I'll have to check out the oven's day for you.

4:12Tom Gozney:The oven was still standing after the hurricane. It was like...

4:14Alex Chisnall:Oh, my God. I didn't even think of that.

4:16Tom Gozney:We got a picture from a chap called Chris Kenny, who at the time was the head chef on the island, and I think he's now the ops director of NECA. And it was amazing. He just sent me a picture. You know, obviously, it was a complete tragedy with all the destruction that happened over there, but he sent me a picture and the oven was just you know carnage around it and it was just stood there proudest punch yeah but they are really big heavy yeah but they're big heavy bits of kit so

4:40Alex Chisnall:you wouldn't expect it to blow away yeah and did you get a couple of nights there then so we yeah

4:45Tom Gozney:we do you know what it was actually funny we got invited to one of the parties and we've sort of flown out and we were working installing one of our commercial ovens we had three days to install it because i was in such a tight time frame with getting back from my wedding and so we were working in the insane heat on the beach with no shade and stalling the commercial oven. So I was quite literally like absolutely knackered by the time. So we got invited to a party. I think there was a few interesting celebrities there and we just, we actually passed on it. We were so, we were so tired. But we, you know, we had some tours around the island and we, you know, we met all the teams and went and did lunches and dinner and stuff like that.

5:24Tom Gozney:It was really cool.

5:24Alex Chisnall:It's a great story, isn't it? Yeah, it was brilliant. Life's all about memories and that's part of them.

5:28Tom Gozney:It was amazing. I was sat on, on the last day, I was sat on a beach on Necker Island writing my wedding speech from Necker. And it was just, it was really nice to be able to, we got the oven installed. Were you really? Yeah, I literally wrote my speech for my wedding, sat on Turtle Beach on a sun lounger. Just, you know, and it was one of those great moments when you can reflect and, you know, sort of absorb how far we'd come from a tiny little idea and building an oven in my garden to installing for Richard Branson and all of the achievements that we'd had. It was a great moment.

6:00Alex Chisnall:That is amazing. I'm sure there's been a few more of them since then. Yeah, there has.

6:04Tom Gozney:Yeah, we've had some great achievements. It's been a huge amount of hard work and determination, but it's been great, yeah.

6:10Alex Chisnall:And interested to know, what was the vision back then, like when you were in your bedroom, for example, building?

6:16Tom Gozney:So it was really funny. So the business began, it's sort of a lot more entrenched in my life often people may think. You know, I had a relatively colourful set of teenage years, as you may have read in some of the articles. I won't have read that. You know, I won't delve into the details, but let's just say my life wasn't really in a great place. And I sort of, I got booted out of school when I was young. I'm dyslexic, so I found it really hard to concentrate in classrooms. And so because of that, I just, you know, I acted up in school and I was quite naughty and then, you know, kicked out of school.

6:51Tom Gozney:And then I don't want to say sort of got in with the wrong crowd, but, you know, there was a group of us that were just, you know, weren't leading a very productive lifestyle as teenagers. And so my life just really wasn't going anywhere. And at the age of 21, I knew I had so much potential and my parents were so supportive of me. And so I just decided to make a sort of massive change in my life at the age of 21 and and just quit everything that I was doing. So I quit drinking at the age of 21, which was tough. Quit partying, just completely changed everything that I was doing. And that was an amazing moment in my life.

7:31Tom Gozney:I sort of, I went away to get help with that. You know, I went to South Africa and spent six months in SA. Did you? Yeah, well, it's actually just shy of seven months. I spent seven months in rehabilitation in South Africa at the age of 21. and then I came back sort of highly determined to make my life a success and yeah it was like a really amazing journey for me back then but coming back to the UK being a completely different person I've been sort of drinking heavily and partying since I was you know super young like 13 14 and um you know I'd sort of yeah I'd like reborn as this new person that you know that didn't drink and didn't do all the other stuff that I was doing.

8:14Tom Gozney:And that was a really tough transition for me back at the time. So I had to come back and essentially learn how to conduct myself as a human, right? Without all of the stuff. Because, you know, it was all about going to the pub, hanging out with mates, going out partying, all that sort of stuff. And so coming back to the UK, it was like, well, how do I do all of that? You know, like, how do I socialise with my friends when it's not sort of centred around alcohol and going out? And, you know, at the age of 21 as well, it's really when people are getting started with going out and partying. True.

8:41Tom Gozney:And so I just took to hosting dinner parties for my friends. I was forced to mature ahead of my time. But I started cooking for my friends, and so I'd invite friends around for dinner. So I just got really, really into cooking. And then one evening, I decided to make homemade pizzas in my kitchen at home. And I was making pizzas for a few friends and my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife, and the pizzas came out of the convention, loving soggy and just a bit underwhelming. And I was, you know, I just immediately thought it would be really cool to be able to have a pizza oven in the garden.

9:14And so I jumped online to look at what was available in the UK market.

9:18Tom Gozney:And they were just all expensive. They were like£2 ,000 plus for these sort of brick ovens that you could, you know, either buy in kit form or get a company out to build them for you. And there was only a couple of companies doing them. And so I just thought, you know, I'm just going to build my own. And so literally the very next morning after pizzas, I said to my girlfriend, Laura, I'm going to build a pizza oven in the garden. And we were sort of, we weren't flush at the time. You know, I was doing laboring for friends. I was actually installing solar panels for a friend who had a solar company.

9:47Tom Gozney:And we, you know, we really didn't have any pennies to rub together at the time. And so Laura thought I was crazy that I was going to spend the little money that we had on building a hand-built brick oven in the garden. I just thought, well, I'm going to do it affordably. I'm going to build it myself. and I built the oven and it sort of, it completely transformed the way that I socialized. And as much as I was looking for ways to socialize with my friends, I built this sort of brick oven in the garden. You build a fire within it. You're sort of poking fire, cooking food next to it. And it was this primeval experience as a sort of boy in the garden, poking fire, cooking food.

10:20Tom Gozney:It was just awesome. And so there was a, excuse the pun, there was like a fire ignited. I found something that I was really passionate about. And so my friends that were coming around and enjoying, you know, I used to make dough. They used to bring toppings. And we used to stay up in the garden until like two, three in the morning, just eating pizzas, messing around with the oven. And then friends just started asking me if I could build them for them. And so after like building a couple of hand-built brick ovens for friends, I just sort of saw an opportunity to try and design something that was more affordable for the UK market.

10:49Tom Gozney:And so after doing extensive research about how ovens were designed and built, sort of little concrete igloos, I suppose they are, you know, like little traditional pizza ovens. I got a£5 ,000 loan from my mum and dad. I spent£2 ,000 of that building a mould for my first oven that I designed. It was sort of, I had no idea how to design products, but I just researched it heavily. Sort of designed an oven, spent£2 ,000 on building a mould that needed to be filled to cast the oven. and then another sort of two and a half thousand pounds on a website. And that's how the business was born.

11:22Alex Chisnall:So I've been trying to get Tom back on the podcast for a while now, and I'll keep trying. Key takeaways from when I interviewed him back in the day, that obsession and craftsmanship can become a brand differentiator. Fear and doubt don't disappear, but you learn to move despite them. And that building a community around your product is as powerful as the product itself. Subscribe to Screw It. Just do it for more founder stories from people who leaned in when it mattered.