Calling out Steven Bartlett: the serial entrepreneur who stopped health misinformation

0:00Ben Coomber, welcome to Strategy and Tragedy. About a year ago, you wrote an open letter to Stephen Bartlett about spreading health misinformation. information that video has since garnered over a million views what was the upshot of that well uh he blocked me on instagram i was team did uh so that's one thing uh the second thing is is like there was a bit of a slurry of activity after that so media started to write a bit more they started to dig into his past then they were like oh flight story investor um so whether i created any kind of domino i don't know i'm not going to claim that um i also know that there's a company that is involved in where it was a discussion point with the board like do we want to do anything with this information and stuff and there was a point in time i think almost six months ago they've brought in a process in the youtube where they were like oh we're now doing more fact checking we're now kind of looking at stuff we're looking at the research so things have changed positively on the whole or at least they're intimating things changing whether I had an effect I've absolutely no idea with a million views maybe a few important people saw I don't know I'm sure you had at least some effect there Ben and I want to obviously dive into like why that was so important to you why it mattered so much obviously you're the founder of a health brand yourself which we will dive into all of that but sticking with this sort of Stephen Bartlett theme a little bit because I know so many people are so disappointed and frustrated with kind of the new direction that's kind of gone in the state of social media today truth is not as attractive as it should be it's definitely not treated with the same level of respect how are you kind of reconciling all these sorts of like tips tricks I know you've got big following social media as well right like clickbaity hooks and shock tactics and doing kind of what needs to be done to kind of play that game and raise your head above the parapet and get visible versus not compromising on your values and still retaining the truthfulness of what you're talking about so with social media i see two people winning there's the people that play into the algorithm they do the game they know the hacks and they just kind of go all in and that's absolutely fine and then the other end of the spectrum there's people that really know their craft they're talking truth they're in alignment with themselves so they're everything they're talking about is congruent you can feel the energy from them you're like okay i kind of trust you and then there's all the people in the middle that are trying to speak their truth trying to give education but also try and play the algorithm game and they're just getting lost and i think we've all got caught in that yeah and i've been through a period you know quite recently where i've been trying to think about okay where's my personal brand morphing I've morphed as a person and actually I can't really do it the way that I used to I'm gonna actually want to kind of change it so I think if anyone's listening to this and they're trying to use social media like the best thing you can do is get very aligned with yourself get very aligned with what it is that you're about we talk about authenticity yeah okay that's that's kind of part of it yeah what's your own truth uh who are you talking to like if I think about myself as a coach because I coach entrepreneurs the the coach the person I'm trying to speak to is me five years ago yeah and a lot of people are trying to help or provide a product or a service like if you have a baby care brand where you're talking to new mums and you were once the new mum and you know the voice and the tone so the more you can get closer to that you're going to build a sustainable business it might take longer because you're not chasing the clicks and all the rest of it but i think we're we're moving into an area where you kind of fall into the oh i will do the short form content and try and really play the game there's a value there or you try and shoot for the nuance and this is where this podcast is valuable it's like we're gonna have a proper conversation we're gonna open up pandora's box find out all those little nuggets of wisdom and we know the value of podcasts like there's some podcasts out there with like 500 million like views a month i was reading a statistic on um lewis house's podcast this morning i was like that's bonkers absolutely bonkers absolutely there's there's real appetite and it is good news exactly that because the depth it provides that space and time to go deep and allowing for some of that nuance which you don't get in the shorter form content that more clickbaity sort of stuff that really resonates i think i've definitely sort of fallen like in the middle there and finding the way but what speaks to me is actually the patience that's required for us i I think you can, using like a food analogy, I think you can fall into that trap of chasing the sugar high and the quick fix.

4:37And that's kind of playing into the algorithm and the clickbaity sort of style versus the good nutritionally refueling food that is going to be better for us. Was there a catalyst for you? You mentioned that there was a shift and you kind of revisited your personal brand strategy. yeah so covid um towards the end of covid i got long covid um so i became very depressed very despondent no motivation didn't want to get out of bed and it just fueled a kind of we'll call it a self-crisis um and on my journey to uh better physical health i realized that there's more to physical health a lot more and i've been in the health game for 20 years and it made me then start to look at the mental health emotional health our energetic health as humans and with that you start to become closer to your truth as a human because you start to have to peel back all these layers of stories that you're telling yourself faulty belief systems limiting beliefs so the the hardest thing I found is that I was changing a lot as a person and I was still trying to move my personal brand forward.

5:47And that meant I was like, you know, I was just at this intersection all the time. Oh, we're going left. Oh, we're going right. Okay, straight ahead. I need to be doing this. And I wish I'd had the foresight or a great coach who'd been through a similar journey and go, no, no, no, no. These are two separate things. We think about the business. We think about your personal brand. What does your personal brand need to do right now to maybe support your business? Great, let's do that. And then what's happening with you is kind of over there. And unfortunately, my personal brand was a massive driver for our business's success.

6:19And I had a lot of my identity wrapped up in my personal brand. So as it started to shift for me internally, I was like, like, what do I do? Like, because I'm still the kind of nutrition guy or whatever, but I'm kind of more than that. I'm now a dad and all of this has happened. So unfortunately, hopefully I can just give a few tips so people don't screw up as much inside it. You haven't screwed up at all. Gang, whether or not you like it, if you're in business, you're in sales. Full stop. And in today's day and age, there is no excuse not to leverage the best tech to make you smash your sales and commercial strategy.

6:56Because here's the thing. I bet whichever CRM you're using is simply telling you what happened after the matter, but gives little to no insight on why deals are stalling or closing. That's why I am genuinely so happy to tell you about Gong, the revenue AI platform that turns every customer interaction into actionable intelligence. Whether you're trying to improve prospecting, sales productivity, customer expansion or revenue predictability, Gong offers a single AI platform purpose built for revenue teams. identify what separates your top performers from the rest, surface the objections that kill deals, reveal the patterns behind your wins and losses, and know exactly which messaging resonates with prospects.

7:39With powerful tools to understand every customer interaction, you can finally put an end to the guesswork and start scaling what actually works. Honestly, gang, this is such a cool tool for building sales machines. This isn't just about better data. It's about predictable revenue growth. Now, while your customers rely on gut feelings and outdated playbooks, you'll have an AI powered insights driving every strategic decision. If you're ready to turn your sales conversations into competitive advantage, then head straight to the show notes for your unique Gong link and see why thousands of revenue teams trust their growth to revenue AI.

8:18Because in sales, strategy beats tragedy every time. All right, gang, let's get back to the episode. So did you not find that like, or throwing in being a dad and all these other aspects of your personality, could that not, could you not kind of throw them into the mix and evolve with that? I did. It's just when your health's not great, you just don't have a good platform for thinking clearly, operating productively. so like for me health is such a foundation in all that we do and as soon as it starts to slip you're not as present you haven't got the focus you know you're not thinking clearly you're not a very good leader to yourself and other people so your health always has to be a priority um and i was just trying to do too much of it all yeah and try and make a success of it one part of that was the pressure that i put on myself the expectation that i placed on myself to be able to juggle all these things because i've been so good at it like my 20s i was became an expert But doing a thousand things, working 12 hours, 14 hours a day, life changed and I wasn't readjusting.

9:18This has become such a common theme, especially with, I'm not sure if you would, I guess you fall into like the millennial like generation, same as me. 39. Right. Okay. Elder millennial, perhaps. But yeah, it's such a common pattern that we see, especially when you do have the energy and the world did look differently as well when we were in our 20s. that you could just like push and go for it and it's not until you're forced for whatever reason that you have to confront actually thinking strategically actually making tough choices deciding you know I've geeked out on um actually the linguistic origins of the word decide so this absolutely blew my mind so I just want to share this with listeners as well so the word decide I don't know if you already knew this Ben but the side if you think about where that comes into play in other words so can you think of other words that have side at the end the same as decide no under pressure no by the way gang don't judge ben too harshly because when you've got three cameras on you it is difficult to think clearly homicide suicide like and it and it comes from death and decide means what you're killing off it's what you're killing off you're deciding you're killing off these other things yeah and this is where like the art of strategy is not what you say yes to it's what you say no to so this is a bit of my current obsession at the moment is that like stripping things away and so relating this to our early stage entrepreneurs who are listening who are depending on what age or generation they're in regardless if you're in the early stages of business you are under a lot of pressure so with the sort of less is more idea in mind what can you speak to especially with your coaching as well right like what can you speak to for these early stage entrepreneurs who either have the energy or they're going to find the energy from somewhere to try and do all of the things how can you counteract that as soon as you can afford it get a coach or join a group or find a community that you can meet with where you're starting to hear stories about kind of what you need to do because so much of building a business for so many people is kind of like in your bedroom doing the thing yeah foot to the grind yeah you're just in your own kind of like echo chamber and then a new opportunity comes up and you're like okay i'll just i'll do that i'll do that and you'd already kind of agreed on a strategy with yourself and now you're veering off the strategy because it's like fitness you start going to the gym and the results are really slow okay you've seen a bit of weight loss on the scales but you're like this isn't going that fast perhaps i should do this diet perhaps and it's like you just need to keep going for like another three weeks and you'll start high-fiving yourself and being like boom it's the same in business like you go and you go and you go and you're like i mean i remember i started blogging i started blogging in 2009 and it took me two and a half years to get my first like on facebook of sharing one of my blogs and i wrote a blog every week every week and do you know the only thing that kept me going is that i'd read that many business books where they were just like you've got to keep going you've got to be consistent like this is a two three and i always had this three year number in my mind that you should if you're doing a good thing start to really get moving at year three and i did i started to get moving at three years at the three year mark i was able to go do you know i can leave my other jobs now i can like do this full time fantastic um so i love that you share that little bit of literally that there's stuff like that we need to hear everyone needs to hear entrepreneurs especially of that that real specificity in your example there of I was blogging every single week for two and a half years until I got my first like like that's important share you might not have even read it I've just got like a sympathy it was Ben's mom it was Mrs Coomber um but you know this really aligns up I happen to be reading the book psychology of money at the moment and it's and it talked literally the bit I'm reading about those two things is the almost like the compound interest the one percent and it's kind of what you're saying there with the diet you go to the gym and you start to lose a few kilos you know you shed that first weight and then it sort of tapers off and it's so easy to then go and look for something else when you need to just keep going you need to toe the the path and stay steady on that and um and then the fact that you need that resilience you need to keep going um i just want to share this with listeners as well there's an amazing story that really resonated on Walt Disney actually and how he produced like literally hundreds of hours of animation that never got seen that were not a success by anyone's metric took his business into bankruptcy fallings out like pure like failures left right and center and it was actually the film Snow White that was the game changer for Walt Disney and that earned him his first Oscar it put him on the global stage and yielded adjusted for inflation like billions today it was an absolute like real game changer and the money he made from Snow White he was able to purchase the studios that still stand today in Burbank but it was that typical you don't see the rest of the iceberg this is the tip you think Disney don't even question it theme parks but all of that hard graft that's gone in so I want to connect that back to your health because obviously like health athleticism always has this really great connection with entrepreneurship so you mentioned that you're in health for 20 years what is your background ben so at age 18 i was trying to audition for drama school and become an actor nice and it wasn't going very well okay it didn't go very well as you can see and hey you're on you're on the uk's top 20 business show you made it very true i have made it thank you um i'm gonna go tell my mom after this um and with all the rejection within it I started to look at myself in the mirror and at the time I was obese overweight had eczema had asthma I was just not in a great place and I just sort of looked at myself and said perhaps I'm part of the problem perhaps I'm not you know and I looked at actors of the day and you look at like Brad Pitt and like they were slim they looked good like I was like I should probably try and do that so I went on a health journey had a lot of hiccups came into contact with a great coach he sat me down and in 30 minutes he changed the whole trajectory of everything that i was doing in the space of eight months i lost five and a half stone solved all my health like got on the way to solving a lot of my health issues and that just got me very interested in health because they're just such a transformation i was like wow interesting so i was grappling with acting and health and i always wanted to go traveling so i went backpacking on my own through asia wow and uh it was during that time i was piecing to some ideas together when i came home and my girlfriend at the time went for a walk and she was like you know she gave me good advice she was like just pursue what you're passionate about right now which is what my mom's always said and she was like maybe do the fitness thing so i took a bit of money that my mom had from a university trained to become a personal trainer nutritionist masseuse so stayed as like a hands-on one-to-one coach for like on and off five to six years mostly part-time I was never full-time as a trainer I was always doing other things so did you have a day job during this at the beginning I did what was that I was a van driver and then I was just incredibly curious and I knew there was something in me that wasn't just I didn't want to be a one-to-one coach full-time there was just a lot of curiosity within me maybe call it the adhd i don't know and i started doing all sorts of different jobs um and then when i was at uni i kind of got the bug for business in that they launched an enterprise center and they had grants going so they emailed around all the students they were like we've got grants who wants to start a business i was like sounds cool mum always said i was entrepreneurial so sat down i actually had an idea at the time and sat down with them and they helped me build out the idea nice built it failed miserably it was absolutely terrible what was the first idea it was called your diet advisor.co.uk it was an online nutrition coaching service but it was just set up incredibly complicated the avatar i didn't actually want to coach so i really built that business and that bill was business became my first ever successful business had 12 coaches running up working after me we were coaching thousands of people um and then they morphed into education and then the supplement business came in 2016 but within all of that there's always been a personal brand within it i've always enjoyed writing and speaking and coaching and that's always wrapped and intertwined itself around yeah yeah well as you mentioned personal brand what's your advice to early stage entrepreneurs now in 2025 this will be coming out around sort of september october time maybe so like bear that in mind with the timing because I know how quickly these things kind of change what's your advice now because I know that like you know I was just talking to someone earlier I've been posting consistently on LinkedIn for well over five years like since BC before COVID right and I was saying about like I'm not a published author yet and I was thinking actually the amount of posts that I've published on LinkedIn over all those years if you think like five times a week for basically like six years as like a fucking like linkedin trilogy within that but i've seen it morphed and changed so incredibly in that time so now this next era as we're coming into that second half of the 2020s what's your advice now on how to approach building a personal brand in marketing because this has come up already like there's there's so many ways to market of business and they do all work youtube podcasts flyers like it all works what you've got to do is refine the strategy you know do it long enough so you're starting to learn and iterate and what works and a b test and all that kind of stuff like with personal branding with finding your feet with it and this is only from the recent journey that i've kind of been on it's very easy to look at maybe what your market wants or what the product wants or whatever the best thing you can do is find a way to speak your own truth and all the power in personal brand is when you get the richness of someone's stories and one of the greatest storytellers on the internet right now in kind of business I think is Alex Hormosey and he actually takes incredibly I'm going to say quite boring stories sometimes like you know I did this I left my job but he's like he tells it in a way where you're like oh my god that was really like bold and whatever and like it is a good story and it's a very real life story but he's just really yeah the way it's been told the passion of it and it's incredibly relatable and actually you listen to Hormozy and he's constantly telling you it and the more that you can get in touch with your own stories like what makes you great what adversity have you been through what challenges have you had like right now who I coach I'm coaching people through the challenge that I had four years ago where I was lost depressed had the money didn't have the time was mentally crippled like now I can help you through that journey and now I'm going to try and tell those stories because they are my truth yeah you've actually been there you have through it you're speaking to that younger self and that's resonance yeah people will pick up on that and you will then find your people yeah so you mentioned homosey I'm aware that we need to close the loop on Stephen Bartlett before we keep going any further as well um but homosey do you like him do you look up to him what's your thought yeah okay um i think he very much fits into the hustle culture narrative like he's going hard he's just in that season where it's like i'm going for it i don't care like this is what i'm building that's kind of great so like with business when people get lost i find people often get lost because they've kind of lost their way with what they're building and why they're building it so like i work with a lot of established entrepreneurs where they're like, do you know what?

21:23My business is doing a million and a half, but I don't have much time. And I'm like, cool. Why did you build this thing? Tell me what your goals are. Why are you reading Hormozy's book when actually you just want to go on holiday with your kids, have more time and have a rich lifestyle. So make sure you're modeling your success on the right kind of model. On your own definition. Hormozy's a bad example for you. He's got great insight. He's got great tips. He's got amazing books. but and i think chris williamson always says this from modern wisdom podcast he said if you idolize someone and you won't take all of the things that make them great be careful what you idolize because you're creating a blueprint on that individual you don't actually want that you just want kind of bits of that so make sure you're finding your own kind of compass so any business owner that's listening to this it's like you'll get to these inflection points like you'll write down a goal like I want to make 10k this month cool when you get 10k what does that mean for you right like and reassess don't just keep going because you carry on the treadmill like some people can get to 10k with a 70 profit business and go actually I'm earning 7k a month that's doing well pretty freaking good right I'm earning twice what the average median income is in the UK like that's a good life sure like readjust because otherwise this unhealthy hamster wheel of just more and more and more keeps going and going and going.

22:48For literally what reason? For what? Yeah, exactly. So just readjust on why. Again, in psychology of money, this bit that really resonates is a lot of people say they want to be a millionaire, but actually, do they want to spend a million pounds? Because spending a million pounds is different to being a millionaire. And it's like all those connotations that come with being a millionaire, the fast cars, the yachts, whatever, do not mean you've literally spent your money on all of these assets. So there is like actually your point on like aiming for these 10K months is like, OK, and then what? Like, what does it actually mean?

23:20So I have to ask mentioning Homozy and he's kind of part of that hustle culture family. As a health expert and the founder of a health brand now, what's your take on hustle culture? Does it fit what you're doing and why you're doing it? Like some people out there, they're trying to build something great and we need change makers. Like I'm a change maker. I try to be to an extent, but I have my boundaries. So, for example, I work about 25 hours a week. I won't really work anymore in case I'm doing something, maybe doing something special, a bit of travel or something. and that's a boundary that I've put in place because when I work more some of the passion dies off a little bit some of that spark that fire and also I'm a dad want to spend as much time as possible with my kids I love going on holiday a lot I love playing sport and actually it is physically impossible to work 50 55 hours a week and be present for your kids and look after your body and have a social life so um and also I think it's a very interesting challenge because an entrepreneur will happily work 50 hours a week and you'll fill those 50 hours and sometimes you won't really know what's moved the needle on the 50 hours but because you're applying so much effort something must be working so it was a great exercise for me to go okay if next week and let's just say there's a business coach in the room you know saying this to me next week ben you're only allowed to work 30 hours what do you do and then you work 30 hours you're like hang on the second i had the same output i just focused on the shit that was really important so then i played another game ben you're only allowed to work 25 hours this week okay what do you focus on and i got down to like 18 15 hours and i was like hmm nice like there's a lot of filler here because you have to be brutal i love this i'm so happy you mentioned that because this is the the working harder fallacy of like you think you put in the more reps the more hours the more output you're going to get no and when you don't know what's going to yield the highest results because you know especially in those early days there's a lot of experimentation but it does mean that you're running that risk of wasting a lot of time so i guess like whatever sense you've got of the higher roi activities i actually don't think looking at it from that different perspective actually what is the filler that's a really great like framing that you put there with that question of if you've only got this many hours it really forces it's a forcing question to be like okay because how much time do we waste on like admin on i mean especially we mentioned like linkedin before as well social media like checking notifications and all these little like bits and bobs i love have you heard of the rocks pebbles and sand time analogy yeah yeah sort of but you're welcome to tell the story well okay so in case anyone else so basically you take You've got like a glass and you've got rocks, you've got pebbles, you've got sand.

26:18If you start by putting the sand and then the pebbles, the rocks aren't going to fit. If you start with the rocks and then the pebbles and then the sand will find its way in the cracks and in around the gaps between the rocks and the pebbles. So that's an analogy used in time management where if you get stuck into the admin responding to emails, checking notifications, answering Slack messages, that all kind of falls into the sand category and that can sort of just like fit around the edges but if you haven't already made space for the rocks so to your point on that important work the deep work what's actually going to yield the highest ROI then you will never have space for that and that's it I fell into that major trap like especially with my background and everything else I had to unlearn so much because what got me here won't get me there and I had to really I mean I'm still honestly kind of unlearning that with like that those sand items they're also never going to end that's another way you can identify what sort of tasks they are you'll never get to the end of that sort of to-do list you'll never get to the end of all the social media notifications you'll never get to the end of answering everyone's email and so you won't you need to kind of shift that mindset of I need to get all this done and once that's ticked off my list then I can turn my attention and focus on this so anyway so just a little yeah go for it can do um so when you're doing your work have a notepad next to you and you write down the task and you score out of 10 and it you just literally go by either data or feeling both are the same because when you're in your early stage your business you are doing lots of things you're trying to make work so you have to hustle for like the first i don't know let's just say at least a year or two yeah and then when you see patterns and data you start to go okay let's stop doing that stop doing that then you start to forge a clearer smarter path so as you're going about your day literally write email from email newsletter from a certain company okay three got no value from it and you just keep writing this data and then you can go back through at the end of the week and like all of the things that are below a five or a six because if that company sent three emails that week and you scored it a three a two a four no value like get rid of it there's more value out there you've wasted five you know minutes of your time yeah and that can be a really simple way of just trying to really simply just get rid of any kind of fluff yeah and it's not even so much about the minutes but it is the attention and the energy and what it sucks from you and i think even more importantly than that is the habit that it's building because it's just that habit that you're not even consciously like are you are you consciously craving to go and read that newsletter i mean there's definitely one or two that I think are amazing that I definitely look forward to landing in my inbox but if it's not a if you start with that blank canvas and you start out with that decision making that proactive from you of like these are the things I'm going to do these are my priorities it's then the other stuff that gets in the way it's then that habit that automatic I'm checking my emails why like is that going to move the business forward like stick to the path I don't know if you do this.

29:32I really like it. I've done it for a long time because I've been a digital nomad kind of business wise for a long time. I'll do certain types of work in different locations. I've got quite a large office. that's cool so i might use i've got a big imac yeah do certain things on that imac yeah and then i'll go and i've got like a little bench seat and i'll go and do my emails on the bench seat or in a cafe yeah then i'll do my writing always away from the office yeah go somewhere and a i feel that there's quite a nice ritualistic component to some of our work like i'm gonna do two hours of writing i'm gonna sit down set the scene grab my favorite cup of coffee whatever and you really enjoy it whereas if you're sitting there for eight hours at a computer and during those eight hours you've got blog slack email like bam bam bam bam it's all just like a bit of a mess absolutely and you never either get into a flow and you never really kind of invest yourself in the task at hand it's just this mess of bouncing around yeah i find that brings a lot more satisfaction yeah as well exactly i mean how many days have we had where we get to the end of it and we feel like we've been busy but we're not actually sure how productive that busyness have been i just laughed at that because i've you've just made me realize i think i've i do that subconsciously without even realizing and i think that the different spots i do different things which is one of the many reasons why i am such an advocate for that flexible remote working as well because one of the many things that's wrong with that status quo like office environments i can't ever go back to that i can't ever go back to like that one desk that one location to do all of your work in an open environment with distractions like kind of that's that's just the beginning anyway did we close the loop on Stephen Bartlett I've said that a few times now let's get back to that probably not I don't know let's close the loop on that because uh I wanted to ask you why was that so important to you like why did it bug you so much that he spread that uh I'd listened to his podcast for a long time and had a lot of respect from him I listened to it from a business perspective really enjoyed a lot of his early shows and being a health practitioner I spend a huge amount of time as does any health coach in quite often you know trying to rewrite misinformation you'll sit down with a client and they're like oh I read this and Stephen Bartlett said this and because Stephen Bartlett has a huge amount of authority and clow he has more weight than I do you know whether I've got 15 years working in nutrition or whatever because of perceived credibility credibility bias so I thought okay there's loads of people that I could pick on there's loads of podcasts I can write an open letter to but I also saw something in him is like he is on a massive growth trajectory he's doing massive things he has the power to inspire a whole generation to do differently and think differently I thought I'm going to aim my letter at him and it was also because they were taking a very specific misleading health approach to their short form marketing so they were a b testing to death because i know you know we many of us know the approach of their marketing person in that they're trying to find the hook that sells and they're throwing out comments on instagram that's getting millions of views like you can increase your testosterone by 1300 that's physically impossible that statistics literally been pulled via an orifice you know and you're like that's such bad misinformation because hundreds of thousands of people are going to go and do that thing that is beyond ridiculous like where have they found this health expert um so i kind of wanted to just try and do something yeah and that letter seemed to hit the mark it really did there's been some changes whether life affect that i don't know but someone has to knock down a domino yeah exactly and i'll give you that i'll definitely credit that to you i mean it did as we said at the start you know it garnered a million views more than that which is incredible so um it makes a lot of sense and i think it was about time i think also it's like there are all these rumblings and i know definitely in my circles as well all of these things are being talked about at events network all these things but you were the one to go and say it publicly and put it out there and get that traction I think where it's a more dangerous game than some of the other personal brand marketing that we've talked about is because it's to do with people's health so not to keep going on about book recommendations but the one just before this was bad blood the story of Theranos by Elizabeth Holmes and how actually the delusion and the vision and the work ethic would have been majorly celebrated if it had been a success and if there were a few other things that were changed in that but the fact ultimately that you're operating in the med tech space or in this case more health this is where you don't have as much license to play around with them what are the most common challenges and traps that founders fall into when it comes to their health when you coach them not listening to their biology um you know we're in our we're in a culture where we are seeking hyper productivity because it should in theory equal more output so ai is feeding this you know hugely now as we're trying to use it to accelerate progress in whatever we're kind of doing um and whenever we kind of feel tired or whatever i think the solution for most entrepreneurs is another cup of coffee or another caffeinated drink and the signals of tiredness are either indicating that you're mentally fatigued or emotionally fatigued you're physically fatigued you might just have eye strain like we're not really tuned in so when we talk about balance you know really what we want if balance is giving our body enough capacity to do all of the different things that we want to do in our life now you can work a lot i don't have an issue with working a lot but you have to do a certain amount to balance out that equation because you are not a machine you only have certain amount of capacity and as you get older that capacity in my experience does diminish i'm not the same in my 20s as i am my 30s and i'm an incredibly healthy guy there is a a little edge like i'm a little bit kind of rougher it takes a bit more recovery sort of thing yeah um so that's kind of a big one um the second one is like not knowing your drivers what you're actually kind of driven by and they can evolve as the journey evolves you start to see things as you start to get success it brings different things out in kind of yourself and then they're kind of like probably the two biggest things yeah I suppose the third thing is probably you know when we think about things like going for a walk or doing yoga there's this kind of transactional mindset where you're like i'm doing yoga to de-stress yeah i'm going for a walk to like get my steps in it's like yeah but actually all of this is just the creative beautiful flow of life like you will not get your best idea in the office you will get your best idea on a walk or at length 30 in the pool or in your fifth squat in the gym sort of thing so like actually doing all of these things makes you a more balanced creative individual like i feel that it's like it's almost like going on a holiday is strategic strategically beneficial to my business because i'll get a really freaking good idea like so rather than going on holiday twice a year maybe we go on holiday six or seven times a year and and the thing that i find is when you actually weave more balance in or things other than work let's call it that you create this kind of tension in yourself where you're like so for example i never really work more than five hours now and there's there's there's a really nice tension to that where i'm like i've got five hours let's go exactly whereas if you know you're you're oh i've got all day you gotta work all day it's like it's just this open loop of work i think it's called parkinson's law where you just the you the task expands to fill the time available right um yeah i love that and this is also why i think mums are the biggest like superhero powerhouses because like they they're like they have to make every minute matter right like they are just like okay on the clock need to really kind of extract as much value from like whatever time um dads as well of course but still largely tends to be much it's easier for dads because for my experience anyway my kids were only three and five when the kids are younger they want mom more than dad that's the just the reality yeah my experience so i feel like we all know that we need to be getting a decent amount of sleep we need to be fueling our bodies in the right way we need to be taking regular breaks we need to be moving our bodies maybe a bit of meditation clear the headspace a bit but what's actually getting in the way in all of your phenomenal like coaching experience of people putting that into action the fear that if they don't keep working they won't make it and then we've got to then ask the question what does make it mean what are you doing why are you doing it so you know a lot of entrepreneurs will wake up at three o 'clock in the morning you know they've been rustled in their sleep and then they're like all that thing tomorrow and they're like and then they can't get back to sleep so then they're they're kind of up um you you say you're going to go to the gym at four or five o 'clock and then oh something important comes in it's like there's just this fear floating around and it's got many different layers fear of failure fear of whatever um and i think that gets in the way of a lot um but what we want to do is we live we want to live our lives from a place of constant opportunity rather than fear not fear that we won't make it the opportunity that what if we do make it what we're going to build but i know that to make it i've got to look after my body i've got to look after my mind i've got to look after my emotional health i can't just push it to the side you can push it to the side for a while but at some point you know it's going to come and bite you back yeah um and that's been kind of my journey the last couple of years is getting rid of all the fear and get into the truth of what i'm building why I'm building it who I am like what I'm doing it for um because yeah fear can be a very unhealthy driver you hit the nail completely on the head there Ben and what you also make me wonder is whether there's like a delayed gratification element to this that puts people off so what I mean by that specifically is you won't feel the immediate effects of I don't know going to gym or doing a meditation or whatever you know oh that was a that was a waste of time especially if you're not that way inclined i guess maybe exercise is the exception to that right because i feel like after you've had a good workout like anyone feels better but i guess like is that another element where you're not seeing those immediate rewards to justify doing it consistently to build that habit yeah i think anything that we do if you see a benefit you will buy in right um and some things in life are hard like meditation for someone's got a busy mind running a business is a lot of business owners have ADHD.

40:53Meditation can be challenging. But I and I'd kind of like I kept being I kept pushing meditation to the side. And there was this one talk I was in a mastermind business mastermind and they brought this guy in and this guy ran three hundred and fifty million pounds of like various grouped companies. And his job was to basically keep building this business by acquiring more companies so this is like massive business this guy's doing and he was the most chill dude in the world and when he walked in i was like this guy's not the speaker he looks like a you know middle management from it kind of like in bt like just um it's like not a care in the world and he just sort of rolled in and he said do you want to know my secret of building all of this stuff he said meditation wow and he just pitched his journey with meditation so well and what it looked like and what he gets out of it now and i was like that's quite a compelling argument to actually invest more time because how many people with something like meditation we sit down and we're like i've been here 10 minutes right it's working right mine's not quite uh we don't know why i'm doing this okay you know dave's wrong like whatever and then we we kind of leave it and you know like most things in life you get two three four months in you're like oh i'm starting to see where the power of this is same thing with the gym yeah you get early results but like it's like weight lifting you're like actually my ass now like now i see it now you're really bought in so give us the tldr of this guy's pitch on why meditation was so transformative he basically said that look i've got all of this data floating around internally externally and meditation gives me an opportunity to just like see it all feel it all become I'm very calm, know where the truth is because information is coming at me all the time and I have to kind of put it all down and just like sit with it.

42:51And there's I think there's an element to it of like you're getting in touch with your intuition again. And in a world that's heavily led by data, like, yeah, great. But like if you feel like you don't want to do it or the path is over there, go with your feeling like you will always be motivated to do something. do you feel good about so if you want to go and serve x you know person that you're not currently serving pivot your business because you will go you will be so invested into it because that's where your passion is yeah and i think that's what he was always also getting at because you know businesses on paper they can all look good on a spreadsheet or whatever and it's like actually i feel like this one has the opportunity i have seen their leadership team and their leadership team feels really credible like like and and you just start to feel your way around the numbers and start to go that's what my gut's saying it's over there let's go i'm so here for this i really think we've we've developed and a really unhealthy over obsession and over idolization of data in this day and age i think because of tech because the information age and actually the explosion from like the enlightenment era in the 19th century like it's all become a spreadsheet has so much more value and weight to it than your gut instincts which is completely wrong so I'm definitely with you on that you mentioned kind of all these outside noises and factors that can kind of move you in different directions I want to talk a bit about dopamine as well right so dopamine in terms of both physically what we can put into our bodies but also talks about social media as well so on the online content space do you have any like tips tricks advice on breaking dopamine addiction and why it's important for entrepreneurs so when i used to coach my clients with nutrition i used to get them to do this little exercise which was before you eat anything you have to look at it for 30 seconds that's funny and what it did is it created a habit loop of like oh i'm not just going to automatically eat this because we can all eat somewhat automatically given how we feel emotional state the environment you're at a pub like there's a bowl of chips in the table and before you know you've taken six handfuls you've not even really thought about it so what i like to do is create loops and allow yourself to lean into that that space alcohol is a great example right when you quit alcohol the first like months like easy because you're like yeah i'm doing it like sober whatever and you don't really think about what you're missing because you make a conscious choice to say I'm going alcohol free for a month now if you do it longer you start to have to lean in to all the places where alcohol filled in your life where you're like you're now in a bar and everyone's ordering a drink and now you have to sit with that thought of if I don't have a drink will I be able to socialize like will I be involved will I be included will it be fun like and you have to sit with that and that's where real growth is as a person is sitting with all that uncomfortable shit and actually kind of leaning into it so when we think about dopamine when we think about where we're engaging with this stuff quite a lot of is social media with food like before you go on your phone just pause like even for five to ten why am I going on my phone because for so many of us we've built these habit loops where you might I'm gonna say it you might sit down for a poo and you're like, I'll get out of my phone.

46:21And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, I've been on the toilet for 10 minutes because you've been scrolling Instagram or whatever. And it's like, let's break all these loops and intentionally say, what am I doing here? Why am I doing this? And then we have to lean in to that answer. Are there some practical pattern interruptions that you can give us as like inspiration because we can't rely on our self-discipline and maybe like having just listened to you and with your voice fresh in people's minds, maybe that lasts for like a day or tomorrow. but when that wears off are there any other go-to pattern interruptions so i i love extreme experiments because i find it teaches the human you what is actually going on so alcohol is a good example so your phone you could create a phone screen that says what the are you doing and every time you go to your phone you have to just think oh yeah what am i doing okay i just picked up my phone because i'm bored okay why am i bored okay and then you get to unpack that um you could have an app on your phone where you're not allowed to get into social media till like after 6pm and then you have to lean into that space of like oh why do I feel uncomfortable that I can't get on Instagram what now so just think about like have the confidence to do these extreme experiments and you will learn so much about yourself yeah I love that Ben amazing all right before I start wrapping so I wanted to make sure we covered all these different topics I cannot leave you on a found entrepreneur podcast without talking about your own business of course so you did mention this is kind of the result of various other businesses so it's always really great for entrepreneurs to also hear about previous ventures previous failures and how this is so this is the third business that we've got here with awesome yeah this is actually my third supplement company oh okay it's not i don't think anyone knows strategy and tragedy exclusive gang this is why you tune into this show so overall what number business is this supplement but i don't know third supplement business it'll be like i don't know i don't know five six seven i don't know okay something like that no when you're early like there's so many little like projects like we did retreats and i've done this and all right well let's say seven yeah seventh heaven yeah seventh business overall third supplement company what are you getting right this third time around that you got wrong with the previous supplement businesses the see the previous supplement businesses were incredibly niche the first one was a single product sold to a very specific market so a very specific problem um and i was uh i didn't put my face behind it i just built a brand and put it into a niche where i knew it would be successful and it was it was successful i sold it and then kind of moved on to the next idea wow congrats the second business what was that niche story with the first one uh it was in muscle building okay so uh it was to help drive anabolism after training um and where did you get started sorry i keep cutting you off here but the first business where do you get started with a physical product uh well first time i knew what i wanted started to phone around manufacturers you kind of get pricing they give you minimum order quantities moqs you put your ass on the line of saying okay i'll take a thousand units and you send them a check sort of thing what validation did you have to order a thousand units when you were just starting out uh naivety right i think is actually what like the honest answer yeah i was like i'm just gonna go for it go for it make it work and i had a business that was bringing in some profits so i used the profit to start to play around and try some other stuff the second business was incredibly niche it was in transdermal technology so you put a cream on your skin it absorbs things through the skin it was in the sports market and it was to help with recovery and performance If I launch that business now, I think it would work.

50:00I think we were way too early. The research wasn't developed enough. My hypothesis, I think, is still kind of correct. And what we saw happen with people was still valid. It was just wrong timing, lack of research and lack of overall market traction. And it was just started to become very hard because the profit margin was very small as well, which made scaling very, very difficult. What year was this one? This would have been like 2012, 2013. Oh, wow. Okay. So we are going back. Yeah. And then Awesome Supplements was launched in 2016. Yeah. But I was also at the time working with another supplement company as their like brand ambassador, their nutritionist.

50:40So I felt that there was a conflict of interest doing anything else. I hadn't actually thought about it. But anyway, I fell out with said company. And then again, my naivety thought, how hard can it be to build a bigger, you know, supplement line sort of thing? and we were sitting around the table and people were like we were talking about names and people were like why don't you just call it awesome supplements you say awesome all the time and I was like you can't call a supplement brand awesome supplements and then we started to play around with it I was like it makes everything so easy awesome protein awesome pre-workout awesome electrolytes I was like okay it's really cool I love it I love the name yeah yeah it's great and so what are you getting right about it this time around we well when we launched and it's still true today following the research incredibly closely now with that what we mean by that is largely the type of nutrients that you use and the dosing the dosing is incredibly important so there'll be loads of products out there on the market that are highly famous um i've recently taken a pop at ag1 i was just gonna ask you about them as i'm glad what what why should we not be drinking ag1 well a product like ag1 that has like i don't know eight year old ingredients you're never going to get the right kind of dose of all of those ingredients to get the physiological effect that you want what we end up with is a product where you can make all of these marketing claims because you've got so much in it that it just becomes this like overwhelming argument to the end consumer of like okay cool i'll buy it because of this like these bazillion reasons to buy it now don't get me wrong it will have some health effect there's lots of healthy things in it but you've got so much underdosing of key nutrients like i did a breakdown of one of their groupings of their proprietary blends got like eight ingredients in it and the total value sorry the total weight of that micro blend in the product was just over a gram and there was two ingredients in it which needed over a gram to get the physiological effect that you wanted so you can be taking a product that might have like creatine in it but it only has one gram of creatine that's not enough like you're not getting the benefit um so that was a real big thing for us is getting the dosing correct so people could buy it with confidence and be like okay this is actually going to work that does mean the the line is on the higher end on the more premium side but the things work um and then being really freaking honest with our customers of what they need and what they don't need no hard sell no push and uh the third thing is taste unbelievable like every time you drink it like this is great love it yeah great i should do a live taste test on here with with some of these but i don't want to get messy open these massive packs can i or is this going to be a bit tricky uh i mean i've got a shaker we can try the thing is if i'm going to transport them afterwards well it's seals again okay yeah it does it real see let's do it then we don't just live oh yeah i don't know if i should mention i haven't had anything to eat today so this is going to go on a completely anything what are you like why what why are you not eating that's a whole other story i mean i've eaten a lot just a little bit just a tiny bit here we go well i can't i can't yeah but i've got to get the ratios right i'll let oh i'll let the master at work oh god this is going to be stressful oh this is this is very stressful this is live because i don't have a scoop i haven't thought about this right hang on we can do it right let's distract the audience

54:14I think I'm going to get this right A few moments later So how many protein powders have you tasted? Oh, great question Only, not that many And how many of them have been plant-based? I don't know, maybe none Maybe none, alright Well, you can just, you can judge this on purely the merit of it just being a protein. Okay. I will do. Oh, already that looks great on camera if anyone's watching the video. I'm going to try it in case I've not put enough in. This is high stakes. It is a little bit watery, but it still tastes unbelievable. Okay, I'll bear that in mind. So this is a gang. I'm trying all protein plant blend, chocolate salted caramel flavour.

55:07Lovely. And this is plant protein made with organic pea and rice. Yes. Okay. And it's won six awards so far. Oh. Counting. Our seventh is hopefully on the way. Oh, nice. Maybe I'll tell this episode is out. Well, maybe. All right. This is live. I've never tried any of this before. Okay. This is live tasting.

55:31nice yeah yeah that's really yummy that i can't usually protein shakes do have like a weird not not even aftertaste but there's kind of like this other taste going on yeah but maybe that's because i've tried plant-based maybe this is amazing i'd want that to be a bit thicker like i'd want 30 more powder in it but the flavor's still there and maybe with milk as well perhaps oh see we have we have a rule so a lot of companies you'll go to like expos and they'll be like oh yeah we've blended it up with almond milk and a bit of peanut butter and stuff like you just made it taste good by adding these things so our litmus test is water that's it yeah tastes amazing with water it's gonna taste even more amazing with milk that's a great point if you mix it with like coconut milk or all these other products yeah if you mix plenish coconut milk with that it's like it's unbelievable it's funny you mention chocolate ice cream no okay i'm definitely gonna do that i have a sweet tooth as well but i didn't even mention to you i am a chocoholic so you definitely chose the best flavors for this funny you mentioned plenish actually because i recently got that recommended as like a lower sugar oat milk is that right yeah like better so i usually drink minor figures yeah or out pro Oat milk, I like plenish and rude.

56:48Okay, I'm not tired either of those. Because they both put a little bit of coconut in it. Coconut puree. Nice. And it just brings the body of the oat. Like, yeah, I think it tastes pretty good. Okay, I'm going to buy some of my way home. Ben, thank you so much for bringing some of this for me. I feel bad. Well, if there's a promo code we can give the listeners. Yeah. You can use the code CEO15 and get 15 % off. Nice. Thank you so much for that. Well, gang, I want you to try some of this as well for guilty that I'm the only one getting to try some of this. So what you've got right, there's back to the business.

57:21So what you've got right this time around is like product, taste. You are foregoing kind of the pricing efficiency, that more premium positioning to get that quality, to not compromise on that. In terms of growth levers, what are your highest revenue generating channels? Paid media and ambassadors. Okay. Which paid media channels in particular? Facebook, Instagram. We're now starting to play around a bit more with TikTok. The thing with all of these channels is it still takes an incredible operator to get the best out of these channels. And our battle has been finding great people that don't end up burning your money.

58:02So advice for any early stage people here, I would always recommend trying to find solo contractors. So a paid ads guy that just does his own thing because, yeah, sorry, or hers where you're going to get their attention. Their reputation is like on the line. You know, there's so many agencies and like I've now found a good agency that we're doing some marketing with. But I've been burned by a lot. Yeah, I can imagine. And we worked with an agency last year. We ended up spending there was a point where we end up spending one hundred and eighty grand in the space of three months. And we netted one twenty.

58:40Like, yeah. That is painful. What? We've crushed our business. Especially at that level, right? Like, if you're spending hundreds or thousands, then, like, there could be an argument for, like, we haven't quite hit, like, the critical mass, the critical point there. But that. So I got my figure around the wrong way. Spent 120 and got 180. Oh, okay. It wasn't a loss. Well, it was a loss because the product is 50 % off the cost and whatever. So we made a loss, yeah. Wow, that took the air out of me. That is painful. Yeah, it was a painful mistake. Do you want to give a shout out to the agency that you're currently working with?

59:19We've literally been working with them for like two weeks. All right. Quite early days. We're very confident, but it is early days. I've known the guy that runs it for like 10 years. Nice. He's a great operator. Okay. I trust him. Nice. the thing with agencies you can really get sold down the river the last agency we worked with they were like oh yeah we took fuel from two to 50 million and you're like whoa okay yeah and then once you get into the weeds it's like like then the skeletons yeah then you drop down to the junior and then juniors off and then you get passed to the other junior it's like flipping it awful yeah i i do 100 % agree with you on that as an ex-agency owner myself so i used to run a marketing agency for six years and especially when you're in those like early days you need to get that fit right like if you're starting out with a new business if you're you know very kind of cash conscious if you've got a little bit of extent like whatever in those early days like go straight to a specialist that's going to give you that time of day the attention to your point their reputation is on the line but you're cutting out any of those other because it's like it's a bit like any agency model like it is a business and whoever's working in your account we need to be making our profits on that is no surprise it's like this is the agency model and so if you're not at that sort of level where it's not the right fit then go straight to a to a freelancer and all the better if you can get a recommendation as well right someone you can trust so it's great so you've got paid media getting a good like operator to manage that and you said ambassadors as well as working well for you how's your personal brand playing into this At the moment, I'd say it's not.

1:00:54Yeah. I'd say the personal brand. No, the personal brand's sort of been limping along as I've been figuring some things out. But also, I've set up my company, Awesome Supplements. I have to be in it a lot less now. Yeah. So my needs to be in that company now are probably about four to eight hours a week. Amazing. So I've really spent the last year stepping back from the business, putting a leadership team in place, getting a really strong marketing team so I can go and do some other things. because I want to get back to speaking and coaching and that kind of stuff. So I had to give my time and attention there.

1:01:27So the personal brand, if all goes well, should now start to kick on in a more meaningful way. But it did really help build it. Yeah, for sure. Can I ask you to take an external investment for Awesome Supplements? Yeah, leading up to this January, we're now going to do our first raise and go for it. So you haven't needed to up until? No, we've bootstrapped until this point. At the moment, we're working with Shopify to get cash injections for our cash flow because that mistake last year with the agency burnt all of our cash. So we're kind of dining out on borrowed cash at the moment. We're still profitable, but it just ruined our cash base.

1:02:08And when you've got to pay a£60 bill for a supplier, it all comes in random chunks. There's no consistent cash flow. So you need quite heavy working capital with product business. What's the runway that you work to to have that buffer? Like six months, 12 months? Ideally, like six months. Yeah. I mean, minimum six months, right? Ideally, yeah. But we've never built up. That's been like our previous poor financial management. We approach the business incredibly differently now. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, congratulations on building up this business purely bootstrapped, profitable. So like we're bringing a leadership team and you're marketing all the rest of it.

1:02:48Is that reinvesting the profits? then purely from that yeah yeah wow congratulations yeah that's impressive ben well done amazing ben we've covered so many of my favorite topics i could definitely talk to you for so much longer and deep dive even further into health and entrepreneurship and stephen bartlett but let's wrap my traditional closing question on this show is what's one tragedy that's taught you an unforgettable lesson ben uh losing my health uh i was into the health space still am um but i only ever really looked at the physical body and I didn't look at the mental and emotional body as well and they're very valuable because when they go it's a downstream effect when your mind starts then you know you're quickly slipping off you're a poor leader you're a poor husband or I was anyway so really look at the health your health full circle not just your physical this isn't just make sure you go to the gym it's make sure you look after your mind you know work on all of it Where did you go to for your mental health?

1:03:47I've done a lot. Like I had therapy for years and for me, therapy was good for building more self-awareness. But the problem is, is if you don't deal with the unconscious and subconscious mind, you will never change your behavioral patterns. You will just become aware of your behavioral patterns. So that then led my journey into meditation, breath work, trauma release therapy, psychedelics. I've done all sorts of stuff over the last couple of years. I heard you talk about this healer that you worked with on another podcast you said really helped as well on the energetics and everything. Unbelievable, yeah.

1:04:25Amazing, what a transformation. Ben, thank you so much for coming on Strategy and Tragedy. What a perfect guest. We've covered all these angles, but definitely a show called Strategy and Tragedy where he talks about the heights, the lows. Sorry, I've got some protein powder in my throat there. This is delicious. I just got caught in my throat. Ben, thank you so much for coming on the show. Appreciate it. And thank you so much for listening as well. You know what to do. Head to the show notes and get your promo code for some of these awesome supplements. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you've enjoyed this episode, give us a like, hit a follow, and hopefully see you next week.

1:05:02Thanks a lot. Bye.

1:05:13You