The Moment We Bet Everything on One Idea

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. One of the beauties but also the curse of Hytro is that it's almost applicable to every single person in a different way. There's almost a sense of being greedy, like we want the old lady who wants to use it for sarcopenia. The young guy who wants to put on muscle size and strength, female athlete who's got an ACL injury, we want it all. And actually you can't do that as a business.

0:36What we quickly realized is actually the greatest place to authenticate the product and actually our route as a company through Warren and his background was with ProSport. It was becoming clearer and clearer that that was the route we needed to go. Ultimately, it's my shoulders to go, this is what we're doing. So it became a screw it, just do it moment really.

0:56Alex Chisnall:Before we get into today's conversation, this is genuinely relevant for a lot of founders listening. Are you running a business that pays suppliers abroad, receives international payments, or operates across borders? World First helps founders manage global payments and FX more efficiently with access to competitive exchange rates and tools designed specifically for growing businesses. World First have given us an exclusive offer for podcast listeners to get 50 transactions 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.

1:32Alex Chisnall:What was that initial vision when you met your co-founders, when you started having those conversations? Because I'm assuming things moved along and we'll come to the pivot later on. But yeah. Yeah, so I think at the beginning, we probably weren't as clear as we should be. i think one of the things that i've learned as well as the ceo of the company is focus is really important and actually saying no to some of the opportunities one of the beauties but also the curse of hydro is that it's almost applicable to every single person in a different way right and so there's at the beginning there's almost a sense of being greedy like oh we want we want you know the old lady who wants to use it for um sarcopenia you know staving off muscle loss but we want it the young guy who's just had um i don't know a kind of uh who wants to put on muscle size and strength we want uh the the female athlete who's got an acl injury we want it all and actually you can't do that as a business and it was at the beginning very much thinking the thinking was alongside the like the gym consumer it was at the beginning of the company yeah what we quickly realized is actually the greatest place to authenticate the product and actually our route as a company through Warren and his background was with pro sports they already understood the product because they used it but now we can say you can use it for all these other ways we had a natural community in there and we can talk about that later as well because that's actually really powerful for us as a company yeah and that for us as high trend it has it has done for the last two years in particular the awareness the credibility the authentication the performance stories we get are incredible and that's just transformed the business so really focusing on the pro sports and saying actually don't worry about d2c consumer at the moment don't do the medical stuff just yet do that and then that's that's really blown us up as a company and tell me when you you pivoted then from from that initial idea um what was it like making that decision how early on was it and third part of the question was everyone in agreement so it became a screw it just do it moment really because it was we've been thinking about it for a while so it was becoming clearer and clearer that that was the route we needed to go there was definite disagreement and we have some robust conversations in our team and it should always be the case we see again like we see the world from our team very differently from the people that are in it and that's useful um there was i think by the time we made the decision i think there was consensus but not we're not 100 there but then ultimately it sits on my shoulders to go this is what we're doing and it is okay let's go full hog pro sport let's forget everything else so we had to cut certain things out of the business screw it just do it focus solely on the pro sports element and then it took off from there so kind of april 2022 is probably really we doubled down on pro sports and that was when it just blew up through 2022 and there was it was with hindsight the right move but you can only tell with that with hindsight it's like sitting here now going yeah got 80 proteins yeah i knew it was going to happen didn't but you know you made that well we made that decision and we stuck with it and focus it was the big thing for us yeah who was the first sports team i think it was leeds rhinos was it yeah yeah first one yeah um who would be for you like top of the bucket list that you'd want to um well i'm a liverpool fan but we've already got we've got some of the we've got some product with liverpool but not quite the whole thing embedded so when it's embedded in liverpool i'll be very happy i think yeah um have you faced any resistance to adoption yeah i think yeah i think one of the big things is um this gets quite technical for this podcast maybe but um is it's like pressure validation so when you have a normal bfr cuff you can actually get to a particular pressure now there's a lot of research on this which is actually you don't need it needs to be within a range and we sit very nicely in the range okay and we've got the studies that show that we've proven it in lab settings so we had to get that publication done and now we have it it's a much easier conversation to say actually this publication shows we're in the range of pressure which then mitigates the the issue that you had so that was probably the big thing which we had to overcome and again it was useful going to practitioners first then you get that feedback before you go anywhere else with it so that was probably the big thing yeah okay and what um what kind of results have um athletes been getting using it so a really impressive one thankfully i mean a really good story is actually is kind of it's cam nori actually so cam started obviously british number one tennis player so he started using um hydro he's introduced to it around about wimbledon time he started using it and he really intentionally believed in it in fact he felt better for it so he was using it for a particular issue at the time it solved that issue he then baked it into his preparation and his recovery which is obviously why you know he was doing the moment he showed me the picture and he uses it all the time and what happened with cam and actually his team is that they believe in the product so much that cam invested in hydro his physio invested his other physio invested strength and conditioning coach invested and one of his best mates invested really yeah because it's just five for the price of one yeah it's true belief in the product and then with some of the studies we're seeing we're seeing for example like 82 reduction in fatigue we're seeing something like 30 reduction in joint pain so we're seeing real metrics that we can actually start to quantify yeah we've got a big pipeline of research at the moment across a number of sports teams which will hopefully show more of those kind of metrics that we can then talk about as well.

7:12Alex Chisnall:Interesting. And there was me after my, what was it, about 12K on Sunday, on Monday morning, suddenly feeling this knee pain and sat there with my Tiger Balm and my hot water bottle. Yeah, we'll get you some shorts. We'll get you some shorts. Trying to figure out what's going on here then. Yeah, definitely get you a drop. Interesting. I appreciate it. And also, I always just think, you know, when it comes to different sports, when you've got elite athletes who give you that buy-in, who are the top 0.1 % of tennis players in the world or motor racing drivers, et cetera. Do you get that kind of buy-in with a sports team as opposed to like tennis is a very individual sport and I would say F1 is the same, even though there's a couple of drivers, there's clearly massive competition in the different teams.

8:06Alex Chisnall:um yeah what are your thoughts on what are your thoughts on that when it comes to teams versus like individual sports in terms of buy-in so it's interesting because with a team well actually with both for us the route is always through the coach anyway so the first instance is through coach and we use our network for that yeah so the coach understands how to do it and kind of cam's case it was through like physio in most of the team that through snc coaches or physios i mean it can be anything or performance coaches they then give it to the athletes educate them how to use it and we help with that getting player buy-in is incredibly important though and obviously what we do with the hydro product is so simple and easy to use and you can feel it immediately so if you compare it to for example like a supplement where you kind of got to hope it's working you don't really know if you use hydro you will feel it immediately so that really helps so players can kind of see it use it believe in it then they use it and they see the results and often often what's really important and we found is that you get an advocate in a club and you someone like a senior player so for example like i mentioned castellan dragons sam tomkins so like obviously man of steel you know one point say a legendary rugby league player he was a big advocate for high training it's like you've got someone like sam then it becomes a no-brainer often that's quite important and actually having individual players um who advocate for the product is useful for that so it's less resistance for for a coach coming in because ultimately coaches we need to make coaches lives easier they don't want to be enforcing on a player they actually want players coming to them go have you heard about height choke and can we use some of that and that's what it's increasingly becoming as well interesting okay um yeah i was just like thoughts going through my mind then thinking at someone like a cam nori who's like super focused have got to you know top 10 in the world number one british male tennis player and then you've got uh teams of individuals who are like massive difference in in age range as well um i can't remember the name of the player but former Everton player who just retired at 41 and you think you've got people coming through the academy ranks who are like teenagers.

10:02Alex Chisnall:It's very, very different. But if you get an advocate, like you say, Sam has been there, done it, that's a great way to grow the business. So talking a little bit more action steps as well then to get to where you are now, next obvious market is the US for you. yeah um and again how do you how do you make a dent you know whenever you read stories about anybody in any industry trying to make a dent in the u.s it's it's just such a vast um landscape over there and i'm assuming you go through um the practitioners again try and build the coaches network yeah very very much so try and do it in the most authentic way you can or we can um so i'm flying out there this afternoon with warren and we've already got a number of meetings with NBA teams lined up and universities and it's come through our our network right and we had that already that's how we've already sold to the USA teams in the USA without really doing much it's come through coach talking to coach and it's actually authentically growing the business we then obviously need to have a visible presence over there so we've still we've got kind of a plan of conferences we need to be out there we know it's very much a relationship game as well so we need to be out there speaking to them understanding their problems how do we how can we work with them we need to have local knowledge in the team as well so we're hiring out there so you need boots on the ground, people understand the market so hiring is always a challenge as a start up but that's one of the things we're doing at the moment whether it's Julian, Hernick, Huell Al Barrett, Grenade, all say the same thing yeah and if you get it wrong at our stage it can be really costly so that's important and then just backing it up with actually good service to the team so making sure that they're happy they use it they embed it yeah to educate them and then tell the stories of how they're using it it's very similar to kind of what we've done over here yeah we don't what we don't want to do is have kind of some some some kind of brands do this where you kind of pay to play yeah and you don't know if they're using the product or not that doesn't work for us we want authentic use of the product we want to see the results and we want to tell everyone about that that's what we need got it got it and i'm sure you've thought of these things already but do you look at going to like the the the mlb or do you go to um you know the nfl and you have those conversations with to be the authorized license yes so it's yeah it's slightly different over there in terms you can that is an option um i think it's interesting how it's happened so far that we've kind of sold to individual teams in those leagues i think we'd like to have those conversations but i think there's a point we need to get slightly bigger to get the retention a little a bit it's interesting that we've had some of that tension from mls actually um so it's getting there uh i think next year hopefully we can have some of those conversations there's definitely a potential route to do a centralized deal in the u.s market that isn't over kind of applicable over here so you're absolutely on the money on that but it's difficult to plan for those kind of things you don't know what the possibility is just yet so you kind of kind of work the strategy so you're trying for that but actually if it doesn't work you've got other routes as well yeah yeah and who would you want to um who would you get on want to get on board in the us who would be like the top of your wish list uh i guess you're allowed such a thing i guess top of the wish list would be somebody who is known for their kind of dedication to recovering particular for their sport who would be a great advocate for known for using bfr so someone like lebron james would be a fantastic person to get on board I guess yeah okay cool um I read that you've said you'll never be ready to be a founder in a previous article um how do you cope with a you know the unique challenges uh you know which I can swear to myself from founding starting and now you know scaling a business yeah it's I think the different the difficulty with being a founder is you're always in something that's unknown you're always living in the chaos right and it's you're always looking for that clarity all the time but then there's always something else if this conversation resonated with you don't just sit there act on it make sure you follow or subscribe for more game-changing conversations and remember the only thing standing between you and your business breakthrough is the decision to screw it and just do it