She Sold Her Business... And Gave Away Her Identity

0:00Alex Chisnall:What stops founders from building something meaningful isn't the lack of ideas, it's the fear of getting started. I'm Alex Chisnall and this is Screw It Just Do It, a podcast for people who are ready to stop waiting, take action and make things happen. I don't think really I was ever born to be employed. You've got to love the journey when you're an entrepreneur, haven't you? Because you can be doing really well one minute and then the next minute is gone. And so all my businesses have been something that I felt really passionate and really believed in. And all my businesses, I've started on£2 ,000.

0:33You really don't need very much money. You just need to start. And I think, you know, starting with a minimal viable product, I see so many founders come to me with ideas. It's going to totally change the minute you launch it. What you think your customers are going to want, they're just not going to want. I've been doing it for 10 years, and I needed freedom. I think every 10 years, I just need to do something else. The one moment I said, screw it, just do it.

1:25Alex Chisnall:completely fee-free for 60 days. Head to worldfirst.com forward slash screw it to create a free account and claim now. Now let's jump into the main conversation. So thanks for joining me. I wanna dive straight in and ask you, when you sold your business, you actually had to sign over your personal social media accounts as part of the deal. That's something most founders, me included, would never even think about. How did that situation even come about? well it's business error number one wasn't it great to kick off the business error number one oh I just wish I hadn't done it um but I think at that point I was really keen to get the deal over the line and um they they wanted all my followers and they um and me and the Instagram and my found it was all very intertwined um I was the founder of the business that kind of what that's what set the business apart and was um it being very founder-led because it was an experienced gift company and they're kind of very faceless and this one wasn't um and they wanted to also keep me as as it being a founder-led business um so that was the deal and I thought it's only Instagram I'll just build it back up again

2:48cute cute bit of uh yeah well massive sigh yeah I was gonna say um when did you first

2:56Alex Chisnall:kind of regret that I mean and I get it right it's part of the deal you're just like yeah chuck that in chuck that in just get it over the goddamn line right just get the deal over the line yeah um I realized it when they really just didn't care about the Instagram whatsoever and they did nothing with it for the first four months so it just lay dormant and I tried to buy it back but they weren't having any of it so oh you did try and buy it back okay I did try and buy it back but there we go that's that is a lesson I always have your own personal Instagram and keeping your business separate yeah I just thought just because of my background I thought could you Imagine if Virgin ever solved that business and then like, could we have Richard Branson's, could we have your social media account at the same time?

3:45Alex Chisnall:Be like, wow. I know. It was such an error. Anyway. Part of the journey, right? Part of the journey. Yeah, exactly. Part of the journey. And also it's like, you know, it's all vanity, isn't it? It is. It is. I mean, Instagram is the biggest vanity metric there is, right? Out of all of them, probably. Yeah, exactly. I've got my LinkedIn. He didn't take that. You can't take my LinkedIn away from me. Oh, it's sad, isn't it? Sad what we've all become. That's another podcast.

4:19Alex Chisnall:You built multiple businesses, but when you started, your first one was literally started at your kitchen table. Right. At what moment did you realize, you know, hang on, this could actually become a proper, proper business? us I know it's that classic isn't it starting at the kitchen table um I just made one for myself uh it was a bag with pockets you put your own photos in and I was working TV at the same time and I just carried this bag around and everyone stopped me and said uh where'd you get that I want one it was it's that point when Anya Hindmarsh had her beer bag where you had a photo on the side of the bag and mine you could change them around and it was a bit like Facebook or Instagram your portable Facebook and Instagram before Facebook or Instagram existed and very quickly it went viral I had a big bag and at the bottom of it had stop me and buy one written on the bag and people did um in the end my mum had to you know she'd be running around London delivering bags and I was a I just had a stand at Portobello and sold out I think actually my stand at Portobello was the richest I've ever felt.

5:30You know, all that cash coming in.

5:33Alex Chisnall:Yeah, real money. Real money. And yeah, it just went viral very quickly. It got to a point where everywhere I went in London, I would see someone with one of my bags. Wow. And how did that make you feel? I've always wondered that. I know. You just want to run up to them like some sort of lunatic. I designed that. It was really proud. I was only, how old was I? 20, 23. Yeah. Yeah. After, you know, people I speak to and they've created a product and it's like they're in the supermarket and they're like looking at it and they're turning them around the right way around. And then someone will walk over and lift one up and they almost want to go, that's mine.

6:13We were, yeah, we were the number one selling product in the whole of Selfridges. Really? Above any tech, above anything. One Christmas, we sold more than anyone else. That's amazing. So that was a, yeah. And you would, you'd go to Boots or something and move everything up a shelf, make sure it was merchandised correctly.

6:35Alex Chisnall:I love that idea. And what was the first moment like in your entrepreneurial journey then? And you were pretty young, as you say, where you had to say literally, screw it, just do it. I'm going to go for it. The one moment I said, screw it, just do it. um well tv wasn't bringing in much money you know it was in the days you're young and and uh and you just do everything for free so uh the the bags well i suppose we had two screws the bags took over the house so there were boxes up to the ceiling uh you couldn't actually see the television through the boxes um so a big screw it just do it moment was when we moved out of the house where we were turning over maybe you know 400 grand out of the house the carpet had gone threadbare because we kept had the boxes were so heavy we would drop the boxes from the top of the stairs at my my mum's house down to the bottom um and at that point uh the screw it just do it moment was when we moved into an office yeah because it was just unbearable I think there was another moment when I'd ordered all the packing boxes to my mom's house and I thought it was 500 packing boxes how big could it be and suddenly I get a phone call saying there's a pan-technican outside the house and four pallets have been delivered on the doorstep this can't go on i was like oh that's a lot of boxes and that was mum was it yes wow having an episode she was very patient it's funny because a friend of mine's just launching um her business georgie day shout out on the podcast she's launching a journal and um she was just telling me um she's in the middle east um and she's sending them all she goes it kind of makes sense just to send them to my mum's house and then she can just like you know pack them up and send them and i you know i can help and i was just like have you told mum yet and she's like no not yet but and i was like your story wow okay yeah a big can it get right um i think in tv of interest um um what was i doing in tv oh floor floor managing floor assisting lots of live entertainment so and some deck takeaway and things like that i trained um at drama school and did technical theatre and that all kind of moved over to TV I've done I mean I've done fitness videos from fitness videos to those part works ads you know where you'd collect a little bit of train every week to ads and debt takeaway so I've just done it all was that like first job after um higher education then going into TV yes yeah I think I've you know I've had jobs since I was 14 just doing everything and anything and I think I was born an entrepreneur always been a weedler dealer yeah I went straight into radio that's how that's how I started I went to BBC Radio Wales in Cardiff was like after after uni and then then left that but kind of come full circle into podcasting which is radio under any other name really um yeah and often you know over the course of this nine years and you know 700 odd people interviewed there's often more than one screw it just do it moment there's usually like a series of those moments it's very rarely that there's just just one moment that people talk about in that journey um I think you get to a point also um once I'd started my own business it was very difficult for me to go back into being employed I don't think really I was ever born to be employed yeah I'm definitely not now that ship has sailed no chance same same there's just no way on god's earth that anyone could ever tell me to do something tell me what to do yeah it's shocking but it's true um was there ever a moment um where you nearly didn't start or or nearly walked away from things

10:38um gosh i did that business for 10 years and i probably should have done it for seven you know the last four years were a struggle we um i mean i sold them across the world we did we did brilliantly in japan and then they had that horrendous earthquake which um took out you know they they had more to focus on than obviously selling selling my products um so that went then we had the recession i i supplied maybe 250 stores across the uk and maybe 50 percent of those went down built it back up again um went more mainstream into tesco and after that but it was a real struggle and i think i should have probably quit the business after seven years instead of you know eking it out for the extra four but in the end i licensed it someone else took the business it went on for like another 10 years after that did it right limped on in some some kind of form because it was very much a trend um but i think you know it really was the journey with that business i traveled the world i did at one point we were doing 15 trade shows a year um and i just learned so much about myself and about what i was good at and what i was terrible at um and we've got so much press it was brilliant it was it was really a lot of fun i I spent a lot, my mum worked for me for most of that business, well, for all of it.

12:07So, you know, really forged a great relationship between us as well.

12:11Alex Chisnall:Did you manage to work well with your mum? You often hear of couples working together, et cetera, and the stresses and strains of that. Actually, yeah, absolute collagen. I remember interviewing like Maxine and Darcy and then obviously like mother and daughter as well. What was the dynamic like? We worked really well together. Looking back, I think we're too similar. And so, you know, as a first business, I wish I'd had someone that was much better at all the figures.

12:45And I think we're just too similar. You need someone that's going to really sort of complement your skills. And I think maybe that's probably an issue working with family. Yeah. You know, me and my mum are definitely cut from the same cloth.

13:00Alex Chisnall:actually when you said japan and earthquakes i actually remember being uh in a bar in japan with an earthquake and don't actually realize obviously probably unless you live there that an earthquake is happening you just think i've had a few drinks and everything's moving um and then you see the bartender turn around and literally put his hands against you know all of the bottles that are like pieces yeah taking around but um yeah we'd just done a big trade show in Japan and we had loads of deals lined up and then the earthquake hit 10 days after we got back okay yeah yeah um but I mean I went to Japan maybe five or six times and absolutely loved it and the UKTI were brilliant as well taking me over there and introducing me to everyone and and I worked in a department store for five or six weeks selling selling the bags I did yeah yeah it was so much fun everyone was so kind and so excited that i was there and you'd literally just i'd sell i was in the first the opening day of the department store we've been on television and i was just stood there like with my hands up and all these japanese people just like running off with my bags and buying everything i think i sold like 10 000 pounds worth of stock in about an hour and considering it was 20 quid that was a lot and you well you think you've made it then don't you they literally made it that's it game over walking off into the sunset oh I know you've got to be in you've got to love the journey when you're an entrepreneur haven't you because you can be doing really well one minute and then the next minute it's gone yeah yeah it's it's that thing isn't it of not not and especially with an example that you just gave of trying not to be too excited when you when you hit a high like that and then not trying to be so down when literally the bottom falls out of everything and just having like the worst day, like you lose a contract or the contract that you thought was just about to be signed, falls through, you know, just those kind of weeks that you have.

14:57Alex Chisnall:And you've got to try and keep it in perspective, which is really difficult as an entrepreneur, because it is the roller coaster, right? It is the roller coaster. But then you've also got to celebrate the wins, because I don't think I don't think I ever celebrate the wins. Well, you know what? And the biggest example of that, and I've used this more than one time on this show, but and that's because she's been on the show i think about three times but rowena bird one of the five co-founders of lush and i remember saying you know it was their 25th year and i was like what what are you doing to celebrate she's like oh i haven't really thought about that and i was like 25 years then it got to 30 years last year when i and i interviewed her at the festival entrepreneurs and i was like so what are you doing this time then and she goes actually we're going to do something this time and she's last time it was during covid so it was a little bit different i I was like, okay, okay, I get that.

15:45Alex Chisnall:But I said, you should definitely do something right. You created, you know, a billion pound business out of a failure, which was Cosmetics To Go before that, which came out of the body shop, you know, Anita Roddick, etc. You've got to do something to celebrate that, 30 years. Yeah, yeah. I know, I don't think, you've just got to stop and think about it for a bit. I just sold the Institute about eight or nine months ago and I haven't didn't celebrate it actually what I found was quite no no one celebrated it you think you'll start you think you're you know your staff and things would be no one's happy for you yeah yeah yeah yeah you think it's going to be like this big moment and then everyone's just a bit like oh they're a bit disappointed and deflated yeah and my favorite one's probably uh and again my listeners have to forgive me for mentioning it again but I just think it's the best one is with richard reed from innocent saying that you know he got home after signing that you know north of 500 million us dollar deal you know million dollar deal to coca-cola going home and he said and then you know told my wife and he goes somehow within an hour later i was stood in a queue ikea and she'd give me a bookend to take back that cost like you know 14 pounds 99 he said how did this just happen i just had visions of you know being in the pub and champagne being sprayed everywhere and nothing she literally sent me off the right gear um when the business started to grow then rewinding a little bit um what was the biggest challenge that you faced that that maybe nobody ever told you about that would come along oh that it all sit in stock everything all your money and all your hard-earned cash would sit in stock um and you think oh where's my paycheck this month oh it's there in those unsold makeup bags that that customer had told me they really wanted that make those makeup bags in gold and actually they didn't want them that much so that was a that was a big lesson you know your customers your clients always asking you for do more things and then yeah not quite delivering on their promise of purchasing yeah yeah can relate to that for sure I think most people who are in business can relate to that listening for sure yeah yeah um you mentioned um like the exit you know in in the rear view mirror now saying that that was a mistake with the um social media accounts but what was that one mistake you made maybe pretty early that that taught you a huge lesson as a founder other than maybe the boxes the pallets being delivered to your mind.

18:29Packs of boxes. Oh, well, this is, I think this is actually probably as a founder, when I was 20, I must've been 25 or something, not saving enough tax. I think everyone's done that.

18:39Alex Chisnall:Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, listening to your accountant, really having a good relationship with your accountant, I think is, is important. Yeah. And also I was going to lead on to this later on in the conversation, but it seems as good a time as any to jump into that now is that not being taught any financial literacy in school let alone being taught how to start a business and something like that that you would be taught at the same time as in saving enough tax out of the revenue that you're getting from the business to put aside in another account to then pay that when it lands and not make that mistake of suddenly getting that you know four or five figure bill and going oh shit now what do I do sell more I think I think it's slightly easier now because of all the software that you have that you can take much you know ownership of your accounts whereas you know back then I was dealing with little bits of paper and you know it wasn't quite it wasn't quite so simple so I wanted to let you know about something that I see trip founders up all the time if you're running a business with international payments, one of the biggest hidden costs is often foreign exchange.

19:55Alex Chisnall:World First is built specifically for businesses operating across borders, helping you manage payments, hold multiple currencies, and reduce unnecessary FX costs. They're not a high street bank trying to do everything. They focus purely on international business payments and currency exchange. That's their thing. Switching providers is a commitment, which is why they're giving our listeners 50 fee free business transactions to properly test their service. 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.

20:33Alex Chisnall:Now back to the podcast. Was there a moment where things look like they might genuinely come crashing down around your ears at some point as well? on um for the first business um did they only well i mean kind of like quite often really yep quite often um mostly when the recession the recession hit was i mean that was a big old recession that was tough yeah but like 2008 9 yeah yeah and then we did this big deal with flare which was a toy was a toy company um and we'd signed a deal to to uh do a product range with them which was about a 30 000 pound deal and they pulled it at the last minute and and i was really gutted but managed to get it back round and they totally changed the product that i designed completely and totally made it very very commercial and i think they sold four units no really yeah yeah wow and they created like a commercial and everything uh and i was like yeah but that's not the product i designed i really don't think that's gonna sell but based on my you know eight years of selling this product i don't think that's gonna work yeah anyway they didn't listen didn't listen that's a classic as well right yeah the big the big corporates not listening to the to the small creative people yeah um heard that so many so many times i don't I remember my friend Jonathan Davis selling, he had like the biggest personal training company in the country, you know, and I think the first one to, you know, literally have all these locations around the country before, you know, all those courses went online and, you know, sold it for north of 20 million, depending on what article you read, you know, in the press, et cetera.

22:28Alex Chisnall:And then him saying, you know, and he had his deal where he had to stay in for like another three years or whatever he said in that time, they managed to like, you know, take it from that figure you know right below because he's like i know let's do plumbing courses let's do engineering courses let's do beauty courses it was just like that well this is working that's why you bought it let's just do more of what's working more locations in different parts of the country let's go international no you know see it all the time they know best well yeah that's what they that's what they say you sell your business to the person with the biggest ego.

23:02Alex Chisnall:I love that. Yeah.

23:07Alex Chisnall:One of the things I really like about your story, what I know about it is that you've spoken quite openly about building businesses that support your life. How would you define a lifestyle business in your own words? A lifestyle business, something that brings you in enough money for you to do all the things that you love and gives you the time to do the things that you love. Yeah, that's the key, isn't it? The last part, I think. It's the time, yeah. How different is that for people listening and watching from building a scale-up business?

23:48I suppose I learned from Clippy Kit, it used up so much time. I was in so many trade shows and I never saw my friends and all my money sat in stock and it just got to a point where it was a real drain and no fun. And then when I built the Inditute, I purposely built it so I could work from anywhere. It didn't rely on me. I could subcontract most of it and it gave me the time to bring up a child and also as it was an experienced company, so it's a gift voucher business. So it was cash positive because you got the cash in first before you paid for the experiences. And that was all done on purpose.

24:33Right. After learning everything I'd learned from Clippy Kit.

24:38Alex Chisnall:Where did you get the inspiration to start that business? And yeah, if you can expound on that, I think that's really, really interesting on how you set that up from day one. And how long did that take you? oh well so I I think I was 30 when uh Clippy Kit went and I started the institute about three months later because obviously you know new and shiny and I didn't want any more stuff in my life so I'd got to a point at 30 I was like oh boxes of stock and things coming over trying to actually made me feel sick I didn't believe in what I was selling anymore yeah um and what I wanted was to not go to the pub and but actually do things with my friends I wanted to to learn new skills and it all started with uh ping pong classes and ukulele lessons and just doing really small things that were fun and you know cost 20 quid um but were really thoughtful gifts I think the best gift the best one the best experiences on the institute was a harmonica lesson and it was 20 pounds and it's an hour and a half and you learn how to play the harmonica for a lifetime and people loved it and it was it's something you remember forever yeah and that was me that was me at 30 right that was me at from 30 to 38 you know it's something that I really really believed in and that just the example you gave about the harmonica lesson right that's um what great value right 20 pound like you say but something then for the rest of your life you can't even measure the value of something yeah pleasure that would give you right and you just remember it was in a great location great teacher and you just laugh and you learn a new skill and yeah so uh and and and so all my businesses have been something that I felt really passionate really believed in and all my businesses I started on two thousand pounds have you yeah I've never had any investment is that was that a particular figure that you that you thought of like the two thousand pounds or just necessity that you just just necessity yeah yeah yeah and i mean now it's great sorry carry on no i've said now it's great because you can actually start something with absolutely no money yes exactly that yeah exactly that um do you think too many founders are focused on you know chasing investments um trying to scale without actually thinking about visualizing manifesting planning out whatever you want to call it the life that they actually want yeah they don't plan out their values yeah and and actually what it actually what it means um so for the second business i really did map out what what my values were and and my values is flexibility flexibility and time yeah yeah yeah that's really really important what would you advise then some somebody um listening watching now um and they wanted to start a new business they don't want to be the next you know microsoft virgin fill in the blank for whatever big corporate that comes into your mind but they actually want a business um like you have like i now have where you can literally work anywhere work whenever you want you can do nine to five if you want right but equally you could take monday and friday off have a long weekend away somewhere instead and squeeze it into four days by working in an evening or you know whatever you want to do right or just start early in the morning it's entirely up to you how would you um kind of advise someone to kind of map that out i think it's quite good to work backwards isn't it to work out how much money you need each month yeah uh to to make and how you and how you're going to make that and and what working hard or working efficiently looks like to you yeah yeah no I agree I always I always this thing start with the end point in mind reverse engineer the process but like you say yeah key and it's different stages of your life isn't it you're going to need more or less money depending on how you you set yourself up whether you're uh and again this wasn't a thing I guess 10-15 years ago it wasn't when I first started was being able to travel around the world, you know, with different like, you know, nomadic communities of, you know, digital entrepreneurs, you know, being able to work on your business wherever you want, dipping in, dipping in.

29:06Although, yeah, I don't know. I hear some horror stories about that. I think if, you know, in reality, I'd love to be able to work from wherever, but when I am wherever, looking at the glorious sunshine, the sea, I can't really be bothered to work from wherever. yeah what's the success rate of these digital nomads zero okay we'll move on from that

29:29Alex Chisnall:um when you eventually exited the business what surprised you most about that process

29:40um the the lack of celebration at the end i think yeah i'd say that without knowing anything about it as well yeah yeah it was like oh okay that's that then and everyone being slightly disappointed um around you because they haven't you know when i the people i worked with really enjoyed working at the institute we had a really nice time and um and it was fun and all our partners were lovely and then it went into something that was much more corporate yeah and they stuck with it but only because sort of they had to so there was this bit of disappointment I think and that was hard also I mean I love lawyers but off those meetings those those going through the spa agreements is tough mentally tough I found yeah yeah quite draining um and you know I don't really like also I thought about it I don't really like clutter in my life so I don't have any stuff for after having the clippy kit for so long so i even like digital clutter i tend to get rid of so when you've had an interview i did for 10 years periodically i just chuck everything out i'll clear my inbox and go i'll never need any of that again so then when you're going through due diligence and they're asking for this this email you go what oh yeah i'd have I'd have filed that into the into the bin a long time ago so with the next business much more

31:11Alex Chisnall:organized yeah and then something to be said for that again like when I moved house we were talking beforehand you know for the first time in like 20 odd years and I'm definitely not a hoarder but it gave me the opportunity to really like minimalize my life and there's I found like freedom within that and um you know and someone's you're talking about buying somewhere else now and someone's like you know oh yeah do you need what do you need to move house and I was like said literally other than my snowboard and my golf bag don't really own a lot of stuff really don't collect watches or cars or you know any of this kind of stuff it's just not it's not me but equally that did give me an opportunity to to really minimize things and also the same thing digitally looking at all that crap that you just subscribed to you accumulate you know accumulated over the years and just unsubscribe, unsubscribe.

32:05Alex Chisnall:And again, that just seems to free space in your mind as well as freeing up gigabytes on your computer, right? Yeah, it does completely. Even just going out for the day and not taking your phone with you and not looking at WhatsApp all day long is very freeing. And then you come back and you have 50 million WhatsApps and you look at them and go, oh, there wasn't a single one that was important. Yeah. Yeah, that's all very freeing. I need to do that. I need to do that. I can't kind of do that at the moment with with with house sales happening and being pinged. But you know, because that's happening.

32:39Alex Chisnall:I know like we just talking before, like the last couple of weeks for me, it's literally I can't remember the last time I checked email, WhatsApp, so many times. And it's at least a chaotic state of mind. I found like overwhelmed straight away, like for the moment I'm up literally an hour of getting up I feel overwhelmed which is horrendous and I'm normally chilled out as you like for anyone who knows me you know yeah um I think also with the selling of the business there's a lot of games that get played go on tell us your games well no I'm not sure I'm allowed to I have to look at warranties I know but you know having run a business the way I've wanted to run a business and I only work with people that I that you know I really like and you know it's quite a happy-go-lucky business then to suddenly get into this quite serious um discussions and then wondering what you know games are played so that was a quick learning curve as well it was there a moment in in the process of that exit where you questioned your decision to actually sell a business oh there was lots of questions yes because it was a great business and actually the business it was a really excellent business but there was um I was there was VAT I wasn't claiming VAT back correctly so every month I was paying so much VAT and I asked so many people about this VAT issue I was like this can't be right I'm paying so much VAT every month um and the minute I sold the business he then just started claiming loads of VAT back because I it was because it's quite a complicated business model so he saw the gap in the business um that he could suddenly you know make a lot of money from it which is great i've been doing it for 10 years and um and i needed freedom i think every 10 years i just need to do something else yeah yeah and also you kind of lose the you know you lose the love i mean i loved it but it does become a grind we did the um got through the pandemic and as an experience company to get through the pandemic it was a lot um you know all my seo went everything um no one searched experiences for a very long time of course and i also think that's true for people who are listening who are not business owners yet but dream of being a business owner and they've been in a company a long time like i was virgin atlantic 17 years and again i started looking at leaving when i was 10 i started looking at virgin records i started looking at um virgin you know health except looking at all these other businesses thinking actually i've had enough now i kind of i kind of done i can do the job with with my eyes shut right i'm on autopilot literally no pun intended pun intended um and then i started researching different business ideas so i was not even going out of my hotel room down real just in in in my hotel room on a laptop researching business ideas and i think yeah maybe it is a 10-year thing and maybe you know for people listening again who've you know always wanted to start the business then the whole point of this podcast right it it's you know to stop procrastinating actually do something about it and take take that take that first move you know whatever that first move might be for you whether it's you know researching something on the internet making a phone call sending an email whatever it is you need you need action to build momentum right yeah you need action and you really don't need very much money you just need to start yeah um and and i think you know starting with a minimal viable product i see so many founders come to me with ideas and they've got this fully fleshed out fully built and i uh app or something you're like it's gonna totally change the minute you launch it what you think your customers are going to want they're just not going to want yeah yeah yeah yeah very true um so you know it's it's really we the first business model for the institute was selling tickets to things and i quickly realized that this is a really hard game is selling tickets um so changed it into gifting very quickly so switched the business model within you know the first sort of I think year yeah yeah yeah I was going to say how long the first year okay yeah yeah pivot when it's not when we pivoted in the pandemic um to doing our home kits and uh home experiences and that actually did that did really well well we turned over a lot but actually made no margin and so that yeah it was a lot of work if the pandemic happened again I would be learning a language and putting everything on pause I think I've never worked so I never worked so hard as I worked in the pandemic and I had a three-year-old and I managed to fall off my bicycle in week two and break my jaw in five places so I did it I know I did the whole pandemic with my jaw wired shut oh my lord of a jeez I know just on soup that's a painful Oh, wow.

37:54Alex Chisnall:Yeah, it was resilience. Physical and mental at its peak. Physical. Yeah. Oh, my God. Wow. And yeah, you know, again, like many people during the pandemic, you had to pivot quickly. Right. You know, yeah. I actually loved it. I mean, I didn't love the pandemic. I loved the pivoting and when because it had all gone a bit. It was all doing too well. We were doing really well before the pandemic. and I was like oh this is great um and but I was a bit bored so I really enjoyed the challenge of literally just having a startup again yeah yeah yeah um coming back to my original question around signing over your social media accounts that your name and you know your identity um attached to them um is a big deal as you said but what does that teach you about owning an audience versus owning your company oh owning an audience versus owning my company um yeah because you said you had you kept your linkedin can't take my linkedin away but but you had your instagram audience and you yeah i mean did you really or did instagram own that audience is another question right yeah i think yeah instagram owns the audience and also i thought maybe that audience was kind of a bit outdated as well so i just saw it as a new opportunity to find people that be really engaged rather than just chasing the numbers yeah yeah yeah um but i do find it a bit of a it is a bit of a chore to keep on posting and i love it i love the linkedin i just find the instagram i think i'm of that generation where i do still cringe a little bit i i cringe about all of it the only thing I like doing um is is stories because I literally have got a photo or a video clip of me literally you know like running throwing myself in the sea playing paddle like last night going in the sauna and it's literally I just literally like putting uh a clip on there with a song because I love my music right and and for me that's that's my favorite thing everything else you can have it I'm not interested in writing posts on LinkedIn in or Instagram I do but again none of it fills me with remotely with any joy yeah and you do get on that wheel and it's just there's there's a lot when you're running your own business there's a lot to do and it's just it can be endless so you have to give yourself the give you give yourself a stop don't you otherwise you just continue going I think I have joy I did a bit of sorry I've done a bit of I did a bit of um tick tocking just before Christmas um asking random people uh if they thought their jobs were safe from AI, which all links through to my new company.

40:44And I actually really enjoyed doing that. And I got some great answers from people, but it's keeping up the momentum.

40:51Alex Chisnall:I just, you know, Simon Squibb and all those brilliant people that do so well on TikTok, but it's all just so male dominated. So I think the women need to rise up. I had no idea about that, but likewise it is in podcasting if you have a look. um and i've mentioned this a few times again but it's really interesting like i i used to do up until about a year ago which was getting away from the fixed location thing i was doing training courses as well for people who wanted a podcast just because people kept asking me you know how do you launch a podcast maybe i'll do a training course so i did like the physical and then the online and that but every and this goes whether i was doing it in in bournemouth um in london wherever i was doing it to have say um 15 people in a you know typical like a boardroom in a co-working space and you guarantee 14 out of 15 will always be female always be women there'll always be a token male but I couldn't even remember when there was like two males in one of them but again you look at the the demographics as to who's launching podcast or you look at the podcast charts and it's totally dominated by males and that's always like thrown me as to why that is why that is i have no idea either in case you're about to ask me what the answer is but no and that always threw me because females are always super interested in learning how to do it and and a lot of it you know when you have those conversations with people face to face in the workshops there's a lot of ladies who are coming back from work from having kids they and maybe it was that thing about having a voice again and expressing an opinion again um starting new careers starting new businesses and a podcast is an extension of that of having an opinion of having a voice etc so I always found that really really interesting it must be very difficult to get a podcast off the ground now to to get anyone to listen to it does it is it saturated do you think it is yeah without a doubt and that that's why I've reversed out of having a podcast agency because again everybody says they can produce a podcast one with the tools that AI is is bringing in but equally whether you're a PR agency a marketing agency um you say you can do you can do a podcast as well and it's like okay the nuts and bolts of creating a podcast I agree but if you've never done it you haven't got the experience of having had your own podcast like one of the USPs that I I had was the fact that I had my own podcast for nine years so I know how it how it works let alone the nuts and bolts of you know the editing and the production and the distribution and all that kind of stuff but yeah completely saturated and again lockdown was fantastic for me you know joined you know clubhouse which is basically like live podcast right and it was social media all i did was talk and people start following you rather than having to write something and i guess it's just the way you express yourself right for me i was just doing this and and you know literally in three months at you know the profile of like it was something like 60 000 people it was like this is nuts and then it crashed as quickly as it you know within a year it's gone um and it's at one point it was valued at like four billion i remember it you know taking on extra investment and stuff um i know that's why i think that lifestyle businesses are so great because the millions of people that so many entrepreneurs that i know that have turned over been turning over you know 10 million 15 million 20 million and then suddenly it all comes crashing down yeah um yeah so and And they go, oh, well, we're going to sell it for this.

44:23But until you sold it, it's not sold.

44:25Alex Chisnall:Exactly. Exactly that. And how do you place a value on the clients that you've got, unless you've got those agreements that they're going to be paying you for the next three to five years? It's very difficult to put a value on. And I think that some of the people that I do know that turn over sort of 10, 15 million, very stressed. They're usually very stressed. maybe it's at that kind of level where you're very very much in the business um and you have to sort of oversee everyone you're just trying to find a ceo maybe to step to replace yourself yeah to replace yourself but that's always a real struggle yeah um and they're just stressed and that just seems to me like an early death it's the biggest killer isn't it stress um that's why i champion yeah champion and lifestyle businesses and um you know it's uh they're not seen as very sexy and the press aren't that bothered about them but uh they're really important and you can be well and healthy and have a nice time yeah if i was starting again from from ground zero it's 100 what i would be doing um and to kind of lean into that a little but if somebody was building is building a brand today what do you think they should think about when it comes to separating out their personal brand and their business brand oh yeah do it from day one yes you just have to just have to run two instagram accounts instead of one yeah yeah cue stress yeah um i i people that do it well so um lemon does it well uh so it does the bra knickers so she's got two separate accounts so you can kind of move over to the other one but then you've always still got your founder account which usually does better um yeah hands down right yeah i'm a bit again mutual friend of ours talking about that recently daniel priestly starting his own YouTube channel.

46:30Alex Chisnall:And literally, I think he said in the first 90 days was up to 100 ,000 subscribers. Yet meanwhile, the dense global one was still at, you know, whatever, 20 ,000 after nine years or something like that. And I'm sure going on Diary of a CEO seven times kind of helps accelerate that. Yes, exactly.