The 5 Minute Secret to Changing Your Life ｜Alex Ikonn, The 5 Minute Journal

0:00What if you could transform your mindset, happiness and mental health in just five minutes a day? Alex Icon is the co-founder of the 5 Minute Journal.

0:35It was actually the first time in my business where I had my first unprofitable year. It was a big wake up call because that year is when I actually tried to be fancy. I tried to hire analysts, these operation people, and I got away from having fun. For me, I'm a lifestyle founder. I'm not a Musk. I'm not a Bezos. And I'm very comfortable as he's like, hey, make a few million bucks. Happy days. This episode will teach you how to build a life that's intentional, meaningful, and actually makes you feel good when you wake up. if I was 20 again, instead of going to like an entrepreneurship course in a university, instead, if you skip that, as you said, and go work for a founder that you are inspired by, if you can be there in the first five to 10 people where you can really touch and see everything, that is such an incredible learning opportunity because you get to see how everything works.

1:25Instead of even focusing out into the future, the way you create the best future is being fulfilled in the now. Hello, mate. Hey. How you doing? Really well. Nice little question for you. What are you grateful for at the moment? I'm really grateful for this. Yeah? To be doing this interview, to be in the part of London that I've never been before. I love that you've never been to London Bridge. Come on. That's ridiculous. I don't go south of the river. I love that you count this as south. I mean, it is technically, but wow. Do you just live and circulate all your entire life in West London? Pretty much, yeah.

2:00That is deeply depressing. that's amazing i love you just revealed everything you need to know about you in that one sentence uh welcome yeah to be fair if you think the london bridge is south of the river you must be like it's not bad the south london after all oh i've been to bricester come on okay so you've been father yeah okay um what else what else is keeping you grateful um obviously my daughter uh you you have a child as well i think how old is she she's almost nine okay amazing it's just amazing and children are so amazing because you get it's a human measurement of time so you really see like time just go by i said i said exactly this to my wife yesterday that's so funny that you say that because i was basically saying we've just just got our our daughter accepted into school um and so there you go right you're like wow that's mental our daughter's going to school next year like i just remember her being a baby and we're about to have another baby um and so we i was like it's funny you i don't feel any older today than i felt when margot was born like at all that's scary and visibly and a bit visibly i couldn't necessarily see that i am and stuff but like you just said with a child you're literally like consciously observing how fast life is going in front of you and i think that is the only way that i've ever been consciously able to measure life moving fast is actually watching a child growing up exactly because you get to our age and you kind of just don't notice it right yeah you're just sort of plodding along assuming that you're still 30 which we both are yeah okay sorry sorry for aging you right there um so you have a very interesting career and i know that you've spoken about it a fair amount um you've told me directly about it uh you've spoken on lots of different podcasts about it but i do think it's really important to give the context of why we'll be doing an episode talking about what you're grateful for etc so where did your career start what were you originally doing and were you a sort of different alex icon to the guy you are today yeah let's go way back it was actually i don't always talk about this story my i'll say entrepreneurial career started when i was 11 and um i was an immigrant in canada didn't speak much english immigrant from russia right and didn't have money my mom just divorced from my father single mother no english as well working uh like night shifts at a factory and i was like you know just like any kid like i want to buy candy i want to go to the movies and it's like there's no money so there's this guy this is super illegal he would take children uh in front of a 7-eleven we'll stop you right there yeah so how illegal are we talking my sister she was four years older so she was probably about 15 and she's like hey there's this guy who picks up kids on on on every weekend on saturday and sunday and takes them to random locations around the suburbs you basically he gives you a bucket of flowers and you pretty much buy it off him wholesale so say uh it will be 50 for this bucket of flowers he'll kind of loan it to you and by the end of the day whatever you sell you get the margin on each flower sold so that was my first foray I would say into entrepreneurship as as an 11 year old being at random strip mall plazas in Canada with barely any English selling flowers.

5:47So that's how my career really began. And then as I got older, still, you know, I'll say a lot of struggle growing up in, you know, I'll say what you consider like kind of like social housing here in the UK. And when you come from a poor background in those environments, all you think about is just money. You're like, I just want money. I just want freedom. especially back then i think hip-hop culture was really hot and i was really deep into that and so i was just always looking for different ways to make money and entrepreneurship was not as hot as it is now and back then it was banking so i was like okay i need to get into finance and be a stockbroker banking's always hot finance always hot exactly so i was like okay i need to get into finance and and I didn't have the marks for it however later on I got my shit together and was able to get into business school and got into and started working at a bank on a retail level so just like at a branch thinking like hey while I'm in university because I still had to work I will work at a bank get experience and once I graduate I'll get a even better job because I'll have more experience but then 2008 came along and I get fired so that was kind of a kick out of the corporate world for me okay so you get fired you're no longer a banker I you know can see you as a banker actually just a quite smiley one oh yeah I love wearing suits I can I'm not wearing one today but I should have showed up in the suit yeah I'm disappointed with your grateful tie uh so okay what happens next you know getting fired from a career that i thought you know i was really actually happy and i wasn't a person who's like hey i dread nine to five i hate this i was like i was just happy to have a nine to five and to potentially now work weekends because i also like my mother i said grow factory jobs myself also a retail stock person and selling flowers on the street.

7:59So having a job even at a branch was incredible. And get fired, that was my first lesson, especially in this corporate, organized world. You're just treated like a number. You're not treated like a human. I was fired because I had kind of like a side hustle. And in a bank, you just can't do that. You can't do side hustles in the bank. You have to be fully dedicated to the bank. Weird. Understandable. However, if you think about it, at that time, I was working at a bank pretty much full time. I was going studying university full time at night. So I was taking lectures at night. And I had a side hustle.

8:39And obviously, I was still dating girls. And I was like playing basketball and meeting all my targets. So in some ways, corporate was short-sighted to see the potential I may have. And be like, hey, actually, we're underutilizing your potential. why don't we give you more opportunity instead they're like get out of here you you like one plus one is two you don't fit into this box get out of here and that was my moment to start taking responsibility and say okay let me give this entrepreneurship thing a shot and that's when i went off on my own trying to build a business what business was that oh at first was social media marketing because this is 2008 and gary vaynerchuk was just kind of coming out with his book crush it and it was just ranting with his wine library and i was really i was like holy shit this is the thing and um i drank the kool-aid and it says social media is going to be the next greatest thing since sliced bread and wanted to be in this field you know twitter facebook Instagram didn't even exist and my first business was social media consulting and that was tough like back then you're viewed as a snake oil salesman like you're just this is not a real industry you can't do commerce on social media and so it was really difficult so for two years I really struggled and I would try to maybe even do some websites do whatever I can to try to get paid and I remember one of my friends Dan he now runs a business called Unbound Marino and he I think he felt sorry for me he gave me like a my one of my first consulting gigs and paid me like $300 for like two hours of my time I was like oh my god I made 300 bucks you know like that was that was incredible and and I was almost about to give up and that's when my other friend is like hey I heard you do the social media consulting thing I have a startup why don't you come work for me and his startup was called NanoDots and it was this magnetic toy for kids and I guess adults as well and I really didn't want to take a job however I needed the money so I went and I said okay cool he's gonna pay me like four thousand bucks a month I'm like that's actually more than I've ever made even at the bank back then so let's do it I took that job started working for her I'm trying to do social media consulting but like full-time and right away you know being back in the cubicle I was like I don't want to be here I can't do nine to five I'm now unemployable and there I was in that cubicle listening to the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss and be like I need to get out of this.

11:32At the same time, I would say I'm super grateful to my friend Dennis who gave me that opportunity and job because in about two months, I've learned everything I needed to learn to launch my own first business, which was, you know, because I was very curious, how do you source a product? How do you fulfill the product? You know, how do you set up a business? like the basic things because even books like the four-hour work week they may inspire you to have your own business but there's no tactics of how to actually run a business and here i was i was working directly with the founder and ask them all the questions i needed to ask to be able to then start my own business there is a lot to be said about that isn't there because i think that's one of the um the interesting messages on social media today is everyone should be an entrepreneur entrepreneurship's amazing just go be an entrepreneur actually surely the best step is go work with or for an entrepreneur and ask all those questions like be that person like be super curious and learn how it all works usually not for three months but a good couple of years yes yeah um and I think that's one of the best choices people could make is go for a couple of years and really dedicate your time grind harder than the entrepreneur in that time to learn the stuff for free because the entrepreneur is not learning that stuff for free it's costing them money it's losing them sleep it's all of the things that you are going to experience yourself when you leave that entrepreneur so if you can do all of that for someone on their dime and absorb all those lessons that's one of the greatest career choices you can make yeah i think it's one of the most underrated things that we don't speak about is let's say if i was 20 again and how would i get started an entrepreneurship five so yeah exactly almost there um instead of going to like an entrepreneurship course in a university instead if you skip that as you said and go work for a founder that you are inspired by and try to be as close to them as possible because obviously once as you know yourself once a company gets big enough where things get a little more siloed then you won't have that access but if you can be in that first first couple of years yeah first couple of years first kind of because at some point it's not it's not you know you take that chief of staff role but there's too much fragmentation anyway of roles yeah if you can be there in the first five to ten people where you can really touch and see everything that is such an incredible learning opportunity because you get to see how everything works and so this idea of before of apprenticeship whether it be in the trades but I think the same thing should be open to in entrepreneurships and whether it be consumer brands like ours and it's a lot of I see even people who work for me oftentimes they don't take advantage of being like hey this guy's actually built multiple eight-figure businesses uh he knows his stuff maybe let me ask him some questions people don't take that opportunity they they don't get curious and they don't ask questions and i think they should yeah i think it's really interesting there's there's a challenge that i i often bring up you know there's an ethical question about it but when i started in employment in general i did exactly this i mean i went to work for a total psychopath but i still worked for almost free i worked for 12 000 pounds a year yeah so really that wasn't even legal then but this is like 2008 right and so you know there were no jobs so to get a job even at 12k you were thrilled but i got to learn so much most the main thing that i really learned was actually uh sales skills but that's like an insanely it's probably the most valuable skill that you can learn that and people skills probably the most valuable skills you need to learn as an entrepreneur in your career either way right negotiation and people skills yeah um i got to learn the sales side certainly no people skills from him um but the sales side and i always reflect on the fact that you know when i've been building companies ever since which was you know considerably later it was sort of six seven years after that experience um if you want to hire an intern or even if you want to do it today, you know, London minimum wage, like living salary, etc.

15:58Now it's like, what, 24, 25 grand. So there are so many startup founders in London, let's just talk about here, who would absolutely love to have someone in that role, right, who's fresh-faced, full of ideas, desperate to become a founder, knows that being the right hand to a founder is a great career choice for them. And it's the dream for the startup founder to literally not legally possible outside of paying that person 25 grand. And if you're going to pay someone 25 grand, you're probably not going to pick someone who doesn't have any actual experience. Because at that point, you're going to start to hire someone who's got at least two or three years experience because you can at that kind of market rate.

16:40And I think that those are some of like the short sighted implications actually happen in the job market in the UK, where on the one hand, you have a very moralistic, logical down one lens thing that says, you know, you shouldn't let people work for free. You know, free internships is a terrible thing for people. It's just for rich kids. Like there's all this sort of narrative about it. But on the other side, there are, if you're running a startup, you don't have money. Like that is literally the definition of your startup. You don't have products, customers, money or anything, but what you have is energy, enthusiasm, ideas, passion, and the willingness to bring something to life.

17:16If you can get interns to work with you and everyone's happy and they're all agreeing that that is the way that they, well, the reality, basically, because there is no money, then that is a better opportunity for all of the people involved than just closing that door entirely. And I felt like that over the last 10 years, like I've been part of, you know, running companies in that shift. Very fortunate for me, like always just on the sort of right side of it, as we've always just had enough money that we can do it. but I know from my own starting point in my career that if that was the law even 15 years ago and it wasn't possible then I wouldn't have had a start on the on the ladder either yeah and I think that that is it you know it's such a shame that so many of those doors for what you're talking about and what's something that I I went through as well which is just being the person around the entrepreneur and working for basically free it's not really legally possible anymore I think it should be and in fact it's totally justifiable to pay universities you know sometimes tens of thousands that you're paying them to actually give your time versus that's why I think that trade if it was up to me if I was at that age instead of going to university for me if you want to be in entrepreneurship I would for sure rather work for you yeah for free yeah great well I've got record so i'll take it thank you for everything um so you got your first big hit with youtube what do you mean well your first business yeah okay yeah i love i love i love my leading question you're like no i didn't wait yes i did okay like it's been so long ago you know it's now you know 2025 we started on youtube in 2010 yeah and so it seems like forever ago and the funny thing about youtube back then people already would be like oh it's too late you know that's the like all the you know the youtube gurus or whatever they're already established uh there's so many people you won't be able to stand out and as i was speaking about seeing that social media at back then already is going to be the next medium for yourself to be able to build whether be your personal brand or your consumer brand because the reason we approached youtube as a channel because as you said as a startup you don't have a lot of money especially for marketing we started with no investors and wanting to just create a lifestyle business so that was very simple we had about 20 000 in initial capital which came from uh credit cards and a line of credit because we still work at a bank and the funny story in them they don't have this i think here in the uk in america you get all the time these offers from credit cards they're just trying to drown people in debt so if you have a credit card or they'll have this credit card offer like hey get this credit card and have six months of no interest uh and a credit limit of 10 000 i'm like okay free money for six months i'll take it that was our our funding and we had this crunch of like okay we're gonna draw this 10 000 we need to make money in six months or we get then 20 interest which is very expensive and so for us like what's the fastest way we can get attention and traffic to our business so we went from idea which came from us getting married with my former wife Mimi and we got married that's where the idea for hair extensions came and and I said you're gonna start a YouTube channel even before we even have a product so the idea right away was start a YouTube channel that's all about hair hair related content giving people value valuable content of like how to style their hair how to do different hairstyles so she was already growing audience as we're building the brand which i'm designing and like photoshop sourcing the product from china creating the packaging creating our own photo shoots all that stuff and we launched from idea to product launch in three months and when we launched we already probably had 100 plus subscribers on youtube which doesn't sound like a lot but it was you're already getting maybe 100 views per video and when we launched after those three months and you know you go live you go to sleep you wake up and we actually made two sales and to be honest to this day it's probably the the best money i've ever made in my life you know i'm going to sleep waking up and money in the bank account.

22:08And it was just incredible. So from then on in history, that channel then became, you know, one of the largest YouTube channels in the hair space with over half a billion views in about six years, over 3 million subscribers, over 300 videos. I've probably filmed and edited most of those and did everything. And at the same time, that was more of a four-hour work week. So we would go surfing Costa Rica for two months. we would you know travel around the world and have an incredible life so and only two staff in that business or even throughout the years as in two staff ever no no no we had like any we then scaled it but like the first few years yeah yeah because like we're just in our mid-20s yeah and um we and the goal was just to make 1500 bucks a month we didn't have this goal like hey we're gonna make millions we're like hey if we just make fifteen hundred dollars and if we do that together we make three thousand dollars a month we'll make thirty six thousand dollars a year we just live with my mom we can just travel and frugally and live a good life and in our first year we did more than a million and then uh second year three third year five and we only had two staff in the first three years and i presume that some of the places you stayed in just got a little bit fancier a little bit fancier yeah for sure yeah did you you sold that business for millions right yeah so what was the story there the story there was you know when i started on business i didn't know about uh as we were talking about like fundraising private equity vcs i didn't know about any of this industry even though i want to be in banking and and then um as the channel blew up all of a sudden we started getting approached by private equity firms by vc firms um there's one incredible story we were actually in the bay area and just traveling and we get an email from one of the partners at sequoia so sequoia is one of the largest vc firms in the world legendary google you know the whole thing and they're like hey we'd love to invite you to like sandhill road to like meet with us and Mimi and I are like sure okay we'll go to Sand Hill Road so we get there and we meet with one of the partners and one of the partner's wives is a customer and she's like raving about us and if you of course if you look at the the business from the outside you know like there are a lot of our videos back then we get like 10 to 20 million views on like a hairstyle video so just that the youtube channel alone is actually super valuable we would never actually monetize it which was a huge mistake and and then so we meet with one of the partners he's like right so like he's trying to get the whole story he's like very interested we come with no pitch unprepared and we're just like just these two people who are just living this lifestyle business and right away he's like okay i got it like they're not ambitious they're not trying to build a billion dollar brand And so he kind of just like writes us off.

25:15But at the same time, for us, it was still a very valuable experience to get recognized by some of the greats. And after, I think in about five, six years later, we met with another private equity firm. And I'm just like being open to these meetings because you can learn so much by people who are way experienced than you, seeing more businesses than you. so I get to also ask them questions like what are you looking for what's the kind of metrics that would get certain multiples and what is a multiple really going basic and and they kind of gave us a fairly lowball offer and we're in New York and then and plus like a three-year earn out and I'm like why would I stay for three years while I sold you the business and you get to keep their growth i'll just do this myself meaning i i've then learned of okay what are the metrics they're looking for how do i need to set up the business in a way where i won't need an earn out uh and then at what trajectory and growth i need to create in order to sell at the multiple and at the value that i want and then we got to work in regards to our this is where already we're in but our like our office was in Toronto we then hired kind of an operator to run the business who that's a whole other incredible story of like how we found her she was just literally a junior consultant from Accenture like 23 years old who then would become the CEO of the business in the next three years and we then sold that business like so we we then grew it and doubled it in the next almost tripled it in the next um kind of two to two and a half years and then went through the process we had a certain number in mind that we wanted to sell for and and then we sold and what was the number i i won't reveal in terms of it's in terms of private in terms of the number but at the time that we sold we got the business to like low eight figures and profitable and great EBITDA.

27:30We're probably about 20 % profitable EBITDA. So it's really great business. The reality is why they bought it. Private equity don't actually do much after they buy the business. They just fine tune it in terms of some financial engineering. But the business went on to triple in the next three years. even more and had pretty significant profitable EBITDA. So the buyers were really happy. Yeah, they were really great. And I was a bit sad. Yeah. But gratitude, obviously, enlightened. You don't need to be worried about such emotions after the fact. When you guys sold, what did you do the day that you exited?

28:19Nothing. Just like literally went home and had dinner? Yeah, we didn't do anything. We didn't celebrate. We didn't pop champagne. We were just like, okay, let's just keep going. Because I think at that point already, we were fairly used to money. Yeah.

28:39And all the exit provided was really that at that time, what we thought is like the safety net where I'm like, okay, I don't need to work. and that's what a lot of us entrepreneurs really strive for yeah you need the psychological freedom that you've got that safety net yeah but of course once it comes I've not really met many entrepreneurs and I've obviously met hundreds I've never met many that were like happy with the safety net and then never did anything again that's kind of the problem isn't it's like you've got the safety net that's great but it turns out that you know it's actually quite a meaningless existence to just do nothing of course i think at that point i was already intelligent change we've already had it at that point for about five years so you started during okay yeah we started intelligent change in thousand well 11 pretty much when we started working on the five minute journal and 2013 is when we launched and so it was always like a side thing but post first business business exit i was like this is what i want to do and i then i was already before the exit of that business i was already in the process of buying out my co-founder and intelligent change we're 50 50 and a year after we sold luxie hair i bought out my business partner and intelligent change fully and i said let's go and that was 2020 so okay christ good timing great time yeah intelligent change is interesting it has a bit of what i would call the deciem problem do you know the company deciem of course yeah yeah so nicola who's the founder and is one of my friends like she um you know she's the founder of deciem but if you say deciem most people don't go, of course.

30:36Ordinary. Exactly. The ordinary, they have the hit product. And I feel like Intelligent Change is very similar. I don't feel like if you go in the street and say, do you know Intelligent Change? People are like, yeah, I love that brand. But if you say, do you know the Five Minute Journal? Everyone's heard of the Five Minute Journal. It's a, you know, total runaway success hit product, right? I'm wondering, you know, just before we get into the story there, is that part of the thinking with something like Intelligent Change, which is almost like you know it's a portfolio business and there are products and in any portfolio you're gonna just have your hit and what you're trying to go for over time is obviously multiple hits but what matters is that you at least have a hit i think when we incorporated intelligent change that was more like okay we need a business entity um although now more and more we are working towards how do we build up the intelligent change as a brand to be that lifestyle destination brand for well-being and wellness and that is something that we've been working on in the last few years however as you said for sure it's the the products on their own whether it be the productivity planner or the five minute journal or now our new big hit is like actually life designer there are in a way separate brands and even the strategy that we're doing now is we try to really marry everything on the intelligent change website but what we're seeing is um building out standalone even like websites and funnels for each products is more effective towards it so in a way it's like it's um you know as disney creates films so intelligent changes that production studio and then that studio then creates separate off brands and hits that and titles that potentially will do well and we can continue and grow it um or vice versa but that's the it's we're really in the like the production business whether it be like movies or records or or books or in our case journals where you have to create this intellectual property that will either do well or not do you take a break in between you know exiting tens of millions and actually already having a business that's running to take any break in between or just get straight into intelligent change day one i think my life is a break and this is i think you know something we can kind of get into is that this whole idea of you know work-life balance and how do you design your life the way what separates me from most founders and entrepreneurs i'm lifestyle first this is also the reason why i i'm an investor as i am in heights and your business I don't take investor money.

33:22And the reason for that is because I want complete freedom. I actually believe that if I would take investor money, I'll be way more financially successful. Because when you take on investor money, there's way more accountability that is there because you're now responsible not just for your money, but also other people's money. And if they see me as people usually do in my stories, in the way I live, where I'm in Greece or in Cape Town or wherever I am in the world, they'll be like, dude, why are you not working? What's going on? It's funny you say that though, because I bump into in all the same places and you're my investor and you're like, why aren't you working?

34:00I'm doing this for freedom. Whereas I'm like, yeah, but at the end of the day - The results show. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't give a fuck what you think. I just, you care about the results, not necessarily where I am. But it is interesting that you think that. I think that is true. I think there's a real conventional reality. And I think the only other conventional reality, 100 % is you've got to deliver results. So if I'm hanging with you as you were in Cape Town and stuff, and you're like, isn't this guy meant to be fucking working? I'm just investing in his company. It's like a Thursday.

34:32Right. The only reasonable rebuttal that you have for that is like a really great quarter of results. But I think at the same time, investors can sometimes say, hey, well, Dan is doing so well doing this work-life balance. maybe he could have doing them more in revenue and i think that there is probably a good part of that i think that's a really interesting thing i'd love to touch on this with you right so there is totally an aspect that i think there's something that you and i have reflected on together um and you know we have in similarity which is when we're working we're productive as hell so we're good at prioritizing we get stuff done um and i think i can't speak to my like myself but I focus on output you know like what is the meaningful output that I'm driving with the time that I'm spending here and then also how do I make sure I'm recharging like how do I make sure you know I've gone through a really intensive period of work getting stuff done now how do I recharge my batteries and I think and oscillate between those sort of two modes quite a lot there is you know the alternative which is if you take to the extreme someone who's really great at getting stuff done etc and doesn't take the breaks you can end up with a career like elon musk's you just can right you just keep going yeah and so that is a totally fair in theory criticism of a person right which is seeing as you've mastered that thing you're actually wasting a lot of potential yeah that's the challenge and i wonder do you think that you're wasting potential potential 100 so much i waste so much potential um especially when you get around you know as we have you have your founders community and you you know you have an incredible community of founders that you know i do as well with like the summit that i run and the truth is we're surrounded by founders who are making hundreds of millions or a billion plus and you're like shit like i'm as good as he is you know like you're like i'm actually fairly good as capable as capable and i'm and i can pull this off and and sometimes I think am I leaving a lot on the table and in full truth I am however it is an intentional choice because what I realized for myself especially like post-exit or doing well even my first business is that how much is enough and I think many times we as founders we we get sidetracked by other people's success or style or even elon musk or bezos and we start trying to compare ourselves to them and try to emulate them and oftentimes it actually doesn't end up in a good way because you have to stay authentic to yourself and yes if you're a workhorse like Elon or Bezos or any of these guys and then you're fully in and this is your big vision and you want to go all in and you don't want to see anything else, hats off to you, go for it.

37:35For me, what I've realized at a very young age because I've seen my father pass away when I was 17 in front of me because he died of cancer and he died slowly in hospice care, that to me was a very full-on lesson with mortality and death and seeing that life can just end tomorrow. And you got to make the most of each day. You can't just, hey, I'm going to build this billion dollar company and then I'll enjoy life. What oftentimes happens that 10 years may become 20, 30 years and then all of a sudden you're 60 and your life has passed by and you have not spent time with your kids, you have not spent time with your friends or you didn't do the things that you really wanted to.

38:23And that is where also the book, like the four hour work week was such a huge inspiration for me too, to make me see like, I don't want to be a fat guy and a red BMW when I'm like 50 and be like, oh yes, I got the toys now. I want to enjoy it now. And I've always enjoyed things now. And that's why like, I also love what you're doing. And I think you're also setting a great precedent. And also one of the reasons why, to be honest, like I was on the fence about investing in Heights, what actually sold me in investing in your company was actually when you you had a very realistic goal of like where you need to get to what type of exit that you want I remember you trying to ask me you know is this a billion dollar company or whatever and I was like no and to me honestly I like that because uh same thing I've seen more founders chase things that are too big and I think that's been the whole theme of especially in the d2c space when people are like we're building tech companies and like dude like it's a website everything's a tech company it's a consumer brand like let's be real like okay and realistically the best exits and consumer brands come when you're able to sell for maybe for a few hundred million that's awesome because once you get over a billion the amount of buyers decreases significantly and so and then then okay you potentially have to go the going public route which is a whole other beast so you have to just choose your battles and so for me I'm more of an 80 20 guy that's like my life philosophy is how do I get to 80 percent results with just 20 percent amount of effort and in most ways that I have you know I have a great life and I don't have any regrets.

40:10I think it's a really important lesson for people, especially people who listen to a podcast like this. It's why I wanted you on other than obviously I want to chat to you. But it's like there's not enough people with that kind of philosophy running impressive businesses. And I wish there were. Yeah. And it's not to say that everyone should be and it's not to say that I don't think I work really hard on heights like I do I don't pretend that I don't yeah you know there's plenty of times when I'm working weekends and everything else and there are seasons as well where it's just all in and I don't see daylight and all that stuff and then there's plenty of times I'm like that's not the season right now so I'm going to pay attention to that and take a little break um but so many of the people that come on the show and build the impressive businesses that we are inspired by, that we do love and we do use, they have sacrificed a lot.

41:08And so many of them are not happy. And it's not that they don't know how to find happiness. It's just that they sort of, to your point, realize that they've blinked and missed a whole entire decade. And I think that is something that is my biggest fear since becoming a parent, is I just become so much more intentional about everything ever since having my daughter, simply because I don't want to, you know, the classic thing of no one ever sat on their deathbed and said, I wish I spent an extra minute at work. No one ever did that, right? It's always the same stuff. And so, you know, I had the same experience when my dad died in front of me and he'd worked in the same business his whole life and he'd worked really, really hard.

41:52And although my dad always came home you know for dinner and all of this kind of stuff you know he he really spent a lot of time in the office a lot of time working and actually I think a lot about you know is that what I would want with my kids do I want to spend all my time in the office like my dad was my hero he's my favorite person in the whole entire world you know I always would have opted to spend more time with my dad if it was on offer but he was in the office um I think a lot about it like ever since having my uh my first daughter Marco like I've just made a really strict rule even that I'm home for bath time and bedtime and just by saying that I'll be home for bath time and bedtime every night means that there are a few nights a year of course when I'm not because I'm doing I choose and even if there's an event happening I'll go home and do that thing and then go back out to the event and I'll just be like I'll turn up late or whatever like there are very few exceptions where I don't do it and I think that there's not enough thought that entrepreneurs put into life almost all the great entrepreneurs I know they put so much of the thought you know the 80 20 the 80 is all about thinking about how to make a great business and I think one of the things that you and I really connect over like and really understand deeply about each other's mindsets in general is if you go the other way and you focus your 80-20 on life how do I live a great life actually you'll find that the business really does flourish as well you can absolutely build an amazing business with a great culture and an awesome team and incredible customers and all the things what are you sacrificing there you are con like categorically i'm probably sacrificing that we might not be as like as big as athletic greens let's say right so you're right like maybe we won't be a multi-billion dollar company but if you build a really great consumer brand worth hundreds of millions and you made your whole team happy whilst doing it and you have tens of thousands or at that point hundreds of thousands of amazing happy customers and you brought value to the world.

44:11And whilst doing it, you lived a really meaningful life and you spent time with your family and your friends and you went on adventures because we both love adventures. That was such better time spent. And I think that the huge, sad problem that you only really learn if you have a parent actually die in front of you kind of thing is that everyone is waiting to live their life. My dad was waiting to live his life post-retirement. But actually my dad's health started failing from the age of like 45. So the right time to try and figure out how to optimize and tweak those things is now. It's like whilst you have your health, your vitality, you know, in the near future, I'll be in my 40s.

44:54And I was actually having a conversation with someone about this the other day. And they were like, how do you feel about being in your 40s? I was like, well, firstly, I'm not. I'm not there for a while. But regardless of all of that, you know, I've got a couple more years but I think your 40s sound like the best years ever firstly you have the wisdom of experience of being like past the difficult confusion of being in your 20s past the sort of you know um big moments that come in your 30s like marriage and kids and things like that it's all very destabilizing and very confusing because it's all so new and you don't really understand how to deal with it.

45:33But in your 40s, hopefully, if you've done some of those things correctly, you also have a lot of the financial leverage that you wouldn't have had in your 20s and 30s with a bit more of the freedom. So most importantly, if you've been sensible, you have your health. And so you kind of have this like beautiful convergence of all these moments of life that surely just like compound enormously in that decade. And I think it just sounds like the most amazing time ever. Like I'm super looking forward to it. Yeah, I think you're already, most importantly, you're having a great time now. Yeah. And instead of even focusing out into the future, the way you create the best future is being fulfilled in the now.

46:14And I think one of the things that you said that really resonated, it was actually something that I had big awareness on recently. Because last year was actually the first time in my business, I might have shared this with you, where I had my first unprofitable year. so I've always been at least seven figure profitable like always for the last 15 years like that's my track record like always at least million plus and last year was the first one where I lost money I've never lost money and it was a big wake-up call it was a big wake-up call because that year is when I actually tried to be fancy I try to hire analysts these operation people try to like do all these things that big companies do and i got away from having fun um approaching the business just like a game and try to be let's scale and grow and become all and that's not me and so for myself you have you have to understand as you said with many founders recognize what type of founder are you for me i'm a lifestyle founder i'm not a musk i'm not a bezos right i have fun i have it easygoing and i'm very comfortable as he's like hey make a few million bucks happy days yeah you know like i there is a hilarious thing about lifestyle founders that it's really is like laughed at and looked down upon in the general you know successful entrepreneurial community anyway and i always think like jokes on you if that is how you think like these lifestyle founders are laughing every single day like they're enjoying their work they're making money everyone's happy and they're living their lives you think that they want your life i don't think so and so that's that's why you know from even coming out and like speaking because i as you said not many people are speaking about it in this way yeah because it's embarrassing it's like i said it's you're considered a lesser person for wanting that because in the founder community a lot of times it's like you know uh what's your growth rate how many employees do you have like we get judged by those type of metrics yes and when you say to somebody oh like i have two staff like to be honest now i had a friend who's a founder he's doing a nine million run rate consumer brand he has one staff to me i'm like dude you're so inspiring so i think that it has to reverse now where it doesn't have to but i'm saying for many people and one of my goals even you know becoming more public and you know do more podcasts i'm gonna relaunch a lot of my content and YouTube is to show that I'm just a regular person.

48:55And if I'm able to create great consumer brands with pretty like the 80-20 philosophy, I believe others can as well. That doesn't mean, like you said, you still have to work hard, especially in the early days. We've all had those like nonstop. And in fact, I still work a lot. But my work is fun. so even when I'm thinking about my business all the time I get ideas all the time I'm having meetings that may lead to the business opportunities because I have that frame of mind that I'm having fun and it's and it's something that I'm enjoying but the moment I try to make I made my business something that is not authentic to me that's actually when things started to fall apart and this is why now I'm going back to my roots of like let's have fun create content meet other like-minded people also work with a team of like what ideas are we inspired to do not what even our customers want like what do we want to create what is fun to us and i believe in the long run you create hits like five minute journal was created not from this hey we're going to sell millions of units it was created with the idea of i have a certain problem that i have myself i want this to exist let's create it and see what happens let's print a thousand of these if it fails it fails it's fine and that's really my approach to business i think there's a quote that i keep coming back to in my life at the moment honestly it's it's having it's having an enormous reverberation in everything that i do which is from naval as most quotes are most quotes are misattributed to winston churchill but they were actually naval and it's we will fight them on the beaches.

50:45No, it's not. That one was Winston. It was do what feels like play to you, but work to others. And I think that that is where you find your zone of genius and where you really should be spending your time. And it's also I'm using it as a proxy at the moment to understand where I do and don't want to spend my time professionally and personally. It's literally sitting with the feeling. Does this feel like work? Or does it feel like play? And there was always a time when some things really always felt like play. And then the years go on and you notice it feels like work. Maybe it's time to stop or change.

51:28And I think that's really, really important because there is the other side of the founder syndrome, which is we're very gritty people. We're very resilient. can sometimes lack a huge amount of self-awareness, especially when it comes to what's fulfilling you and making you happy. And as a result, because you're so driven, you just keep doing a thing. Because it's making money. That's the worst trap. Because something's making money, you just carry on doing it because why wouldn't you? Or because that's just the way that I always did something. Or because of compound interest being that magical law, so therefore I'll just keep grinding it out and the compound interest will keep growing it's like sure that is how most incredible successful entrepreneurs do actually get those amazing results in the end but the counter to all of that is simply like you were saying and like Naval says which is but is this play are you having fun another question that I'm starting to use how would this look like if it was easy and similar to that it was like you can say how would this look like if it felt like play and because to that founder syndrome that you're speaking about we see a lot of you know founders speaking like hey you have to hustle you have to be gritty you have to you know eat glass like it's this dialogue stare into the abyss yeah Of course, you have to stare into the abyss.

53:01And a lot of times I felt guilty because when people ask me for my journey, I'm like, actually, like, I had fun. And I still made millions. So, okay, maybe I think you're getting to the billions, but for me it was enough. And sometimes knowing what is enough for you, because the truth is I now hang out with billionaires. and i still eat this at the same places say stay at the same hotels we okay what am i missing okay maybe i don't have my own jet card i don't fly private and i may not have as big as a fancy house okay but i i have what i enjoy you you just actually as well in that very quick sentence you actually genuinely ticked off the entire list as in because there is there is a top end to this stuff there there is the thing is it's not like a billionaire eats in a restaurant that a millionaire can't afford like i mean there are levels there are levels to these things like the really only difference i've ever known from i also know billionaires the only difference is that they fly in private jets and that is cool but that's the only thing and some actually and a lot of millionaires can afford to fly in private jets if they want to anyway so that's kind of the thing the levels aren't that different so really it just becomes about some kind of gross accumulation of intangible assets that are just sitting in digital numbers somewhere that you never really touch or feel when they don't really mean anything yeah one of my friends and mentors and he's a proper billionaire like one of the wealthiest families and he's quite older what i love about him is and that's why i he taught me to understand that enjoying life is the most important aspect because we were just walking in Hyde Park on a Thursday 10 a.m.

54:51He just stops, looks at me, smiles. He's like, Alex, this is life. It's Thursday 10 a.m. We're walking in the park. And this guy is super wealthy, but he understands that it's the freedom and time and ability to, let's say, go for a walk with a friend on a Thursday morning can be one of the most fulfilling, enriching things that you can do. and this is why now i get like high off life just being able to be present and to understand that one of the biggest gifts is just to be able to spend time with your daughter or your wife or your friends or yes maybe go on holiday with the people that matter to you or just like i said take a Tuesday morning off to go for a walk with your mom because you she's in town and you can do that and you're not hustling away and then you see your parents you know pass away so we do have to I think redefine what is success redefine how you can become successful and redefine how we build businesses one thing that i come back to a lot and i say to my wife almost weekly it's almost like a mantra reminder for both of us because obviously we're still normal people living in london right so you get stressed and all the things yeah i constantly like stop her and say we're living the good old days right now and it's because you know for a fact that unless you keep reminding yourself of the fact that you're living the good old days right now you will lose sight of and never met anyone really who was you know two decades older me whatever that didn't you know reflect with pure nostalgia and admiration for the age that i'm at and the experience i'm having with a young child and all that stuff and be like they were just the best days and it's hard to know when you're in them but the reality is like there's a huge middle chunk of your life probably from the age of 20 to 60 roughly right which is like just pure the good old days and the most difficult thing about running ambitious businesses and being those kind of entrepreneurs is you just totally lose sight of it all and all that matters is the next thing and that is just so difficult and it's a real shame yeah and i think this is the reason why the five minute journal has become a hit and the reason why i've created is to just remind myself of whether it be the simple things in life and every day because the ultimate formula for happiness is expectations minus reality equals happiness it really is and the reason why so many even wealthy people are quite miserable is because the expectations go out of control and you start comparing yourself to other people like oh well yes i'm wealthy but i'm not flying that jet so the yes if your expectations are there and even though you're flying business class but you're like you're still going to be unhappy and you have to remind yourself of what you have and for me it started with very simple things my life really turned around because when i was you know, a late teenager, and my father died when I was around 17, I felt like I'm the biggest loser, I have, you know, total victim mentality of poor me, lost a father, I'm poor, I'm in this really, you know, neighborhood where there's no opportunities, I'm just gonna work in a retail store if I'm lucky and to then pause and reflect and actually be like I'm 18 years old in Canada any 80 year old billionaire would trade places with me in a snap to be in my position right now that's the reality and that's why he said we sometimes lose the the sight of how lucky we are with what we have, whatever we may have.

59:04And not to compare ourselves to others, but to be present with ourselves and be appreciative and grateful for whatever we're given. And with that foundation, that's how I myself was able to build something that I dreamed of. But it didn't come from the lack of me not being there or not living my dream life. It came from actual appreciation of the present moment, even when I could have looked at myself and be like, I have nothing. And that's when my really kind of the whole journey began. And the five-minute journal, it's quite popular in these very wealthy communities because many people lose just remembering of just how special their life is.

59:53Because once you get into the trap of, oh, yeah, I'm just, you know, in Saint-Tropez and Amalfi, and here I am in my yacht. And you see, even we'd all fall into the hedonistic trap of once you do certain things many times, you just get used to it. But the way to override that is to stop, become aware of just how special this moment is, just to be able to breathe. We all know once we get sick, even with like a little cold, just how oh my god it was just amazing just to be able to breathe to get up to have energy yeah there's a great quote from confucius which is a healthy man wants a million things a sick man just wants one thing i always thought that was just like so profoundly brilliant isn't it because whilst you have your health you're always chasing all of these things and if that one thing goes then your life changes forever yeah and all you ever want is that one thing back that's why for me my baseline is just waking up honestly i wake up in the morning i'm like i'm grateful to be alive healthy i get to live another day incredible that's my baseline for happiness everything else is a bonus so whatever i get whether it be a hug or a great conversation or an opportunity like happy days but my baseline is just waking up and everything else is happy days yeah because people didn't wake up today it's all over the world exactly um five minute journals super interesting because you know i when i was um really depressed i was recommended to go to a talk randomly um at the welcome center and there was a guy called martin seligman doing this talk um little did i know never heard of him or anything else and i didn't know why my friend had recommended it to me but i went because i was like depressed had nothing to do um he talked about the study of gratitude and how you know it turns out this guy was one of the first people in the whole world if not the first person to scientifically prove that gratitude practice can improve your happiness um and you know where he was different from being just a psych you know a psychology based experiment is you know he would use um mfri scans in the brain to actually prove what's happening to your brain when you practice gratitude and all of this stuff anyway super fascinating and in many ways in the scientific community martin seligman is kind of the guy when it comes to gratitude which is super interesting because you've ever heard him met him or anything he's the grumpiest most miserable guy in the world super random it's true this is very good juxtaposition there um however in many ways i feel like the five minute journal is sort of like the thing that popularized gratitude and it's so interesting to create a product into the world that taps into a growing niche and explodes that niche in terms of awareness um if five minute journal was the product that popularized gratitude globally um Tim Ferriss, certainly, as far as I was concerned, was the cannon fodder, right?

1:03:18So how did, like, you know, you talked earlier about, like, five-minute journal and also, like, reading four-hour work week. You know, how did that feel, knowing that Tim Ferriss was using your product? And, you know, actually, that must have felt quite full circle. Well, the crazy story with Tim Ferriss is he received one of the first thousand five-minute journals we've ever created. And when we launched the five-minute journal in 2013, our friend Jason Gaynard was putting together an event called Mastermind Talks in Toronto. And Tim Ferriss was the keynote speaker. And it was like an all-day kind of mastermind event.

1:03:58and we just got our inventory and like the first units we literally just opened the box and like hey let's gift it to tim ferris because he's going to be at this conference that our friends putting together in the first five minute journals we actually had uh acknowledgements and uh tim ferris was one of them because we said hey you inspired us with the four-hour work week this is our muse business to create this product and my co-founder at the time UJ he gifted them the five minute journal and as you know these people get gifted stuff all the time or people pitching them their product gifting them products I'm sure you probably give Tim Ferriss your heights if you saw him in real life and by all means sometimes they can just look at it and just chunk it in the rubbish for sure so but you know obviously especially a product like a supplement orbit right because they're like yeah i'm not playing that in my body and i'm also like this book's heavy i'm gonna throw it away exactly when you're traveling and just by our luck sometimes you know um it just goes your way and tim was going through something and he saw something in the book and he's like hey i'll give this thing a shot and this is before his podcast this is 2013 so he was just an author back then and he you know i think a year or two later he launched his podcast and then he started talking about publicly how the five-minute journal was part of his practice of practicing and be able to practice gratitude on the daily and of course that really helped the trajectory of the journal and everything that we've done and the reality though i think as you know with your own customers it comes down not to just the celebrities or the influencers the success of the business is really by your customers if your product is something that they get value from and they benefit from they will tell other people and this is where also i think some of us get lost in the this kind of acquisition funnels and things like that and thinking we just acquire customers yes you may however if your product doesn't deliver on helping people solve a certain problem in their life it will still get flat the moment you turn off the tap of marketing and so with us it's been incredible that to this day it's been more than a decade he still uses and references to the five minute journal which is totally incredible and beyond and more incredible obviously that he's inspired so many other people to use this habit to be part of their lives as well so i'm very grateful to him and grateful to so many also just regular people who share and gift the five minute journal to you know their family and stocking stuffers like during christmas or or any other time so it's uh truly incredible i think it's quite an expensive habit which one five minute journal it's pretty what do you mean in what way well as in like you know i constantly feel like i've run out bloody pages again and now i need to buy again it's a genius like unlike most books it's essentially a subscription product right like it's genius because it's kind of like again very similar to heights of course but it's like the magic is in the daily habit.

1:07:32And so if you get through a journal, you've completed a really bloody amazing habit, essentially. You know, I'm sure most of your customers, not that you'll admit this, I'm sure most of your customers try it and don't get through the first journal because it's like all habits. Yes. But for the ones who get through the first one, you've just done an incredible commitment to yourself for your happiness and everything else in a really committed, gritty, meaningful way. And you don't want to give up that streak. And then the next book comes and then the next book comes. And before you know it, you're like four or five years in.

1:08:13I imagine, you know, you probably just have two sets of customers, right? The lifers like me, who are just like, that's just what you do now. You just are a gratitude journaler. And also often because that's how you started, it's also how you finish, right? I think it'd be very weird to get through a few five-minute journals and then change brand because also consumer habits right you know a brand has to piss you off or upset you for you to change once you're committed to it yeah like what's the point it's never done anything but add value to you so people don't go shopping around for slightly cheaper or whatever they just stick with the thing i think you know some of the things we can speak about which can be helpful in helping also people shaping habits or consumer brands also when we first spoke um what i really stood out to me about you creating heights was your intention in the design of your packaging yes and that what you said was to help people stick to habit you want to make sure that the product is out there and that they can see it so if the bottle is beautifully designed yeah there you go if the model is beautifully designed heights um you will more likely be able to put it out there because you want to show it off like hey this is a really cool thing that i have and you'll be able to see it and then actually use the product and same thing with us you know people think because now there's so many you know journals and things like that what helped us grow was really that intention that we've made in regards to making the product very simple beautiful and something that you want to have whether it be on your bedside nightstand or on your coffee table or even your kitchen a morning table when you have your coffee that you want to interact with it and it really uplifts and elevates your space to and also the way it makes you feel so even even those people who will say may not use the five minute journal but have it on their best side i believe they already feel more grateful just having the product there because it reminds them just by having that cue of looking at the five minute journal like okay maybe if they don't don't write it but they'll maybe think of something like or they'll think i'm a grateful person whatever it may be but having that cue and reminder is so key uh to product creation I completely agree.