James Warnock - #41

0:00James Warnock welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me Jake. How was the commute in this morning? It was pretty good actually. Yeah it was nice. Nice weather. At least it wasn't raining. Do you know what I found mad is that when we organised this you were like yeah I'll just run here. So how far have you run this morning? It's only 8k. 8k. That's not too bad. 8k back? 8k back. Got to fit it in when you fit it in. Yeah I think if I don't fit it in before like I try and protect my time before 8am. If I don't fit it in before then it's normally too late. I'm too busy. for the people that may not know who you are would you just be able to sum yourself up in a couple of words yeah i guess i post on social media i own a business and i'm currently a fiance um i think i don't really it's really hard to not label yourself in this instances um yeah no that's uh that's i feel like you've like under we'll obviously dive into everything but uh yeah i think you're much more successful than what you've just made out there but uh no i love it i love how humble you are uh with that um obviously you're big into your fitness and i want to start there really uh where did it all start for you uh i think i've always been into it um my dad was just always like play as many sports as you can growing up and kind of like tennis football running everything and then you can kind of always focus down the line and he never put the pressure on me either so it was always like what i wanted to do and that meant at some points i was like really into my cross country and athletics and i hated it so i stopped it and then we'd become like football but I just always done it growing up yeah so football first I would say yes football definitely first probably from when I was like five or six and that was consistent until I was about 18 and then running across country became a big focus of mine and then it was when you went to uni it was gym yeah what did you study at uni natural sciences okay interesting and then when did it all kind of change for you because you're still quite young yeah in terms of what I was focusing on yeah like what you was focusing on like um did you like obviously you went to university did you did you have a job after that yeah so I guess like growing up you kind of you're aware of the gym but you're not like that into it and then when I was like 17 18 obviously when you're like okay I want to start growing muscles whatever and then went to uni and I just focused on the gym gained like 10 kilograms kind of lost a lot of my fitness and that was like my main focus um and then graduated and then at that point it was kind of when like the whole hybrid stuff was kind of starting to kind of take a bit of like a flow so I switched more to like running um and as well and then I lost my dad quite suddenly and running became the main outlet for me which is when the past like four years that's been like my main focus I'm sorry to hear that did that like change your perspective on everything yeah completely um i think it's one of them things where like obviously i'd taken back in an instant but also the direction my life has taken since then has meant that like all so many different opportunities have come so it's kind of like every cloud has a silver lining yeah that's cool that's uh it's good that it kind of like say like motivated you because i feel like i don't know people deal with grief in different ways yeah i think it takes time it takes like no one grieves the same way and for me it took me like two years to really start processing my grief my mum was like three months to start processing it and then I think you just have to kind of use it as fuel to do whatever you want to do in your life and realise you're kind of like living for you and them at that point which sounds really cliche but like I just it made me way less risk averse and I was kind of like what's the worst thing that can happen yeah I love that and I think um sometimes without sounding like harsh it takes losing someone to like realize that yeah um and realize like you know we've got a short life we've got limited time on this planet so make the most of it yeah exactly that's pretty cool so what was you doing for kind of like your profession at the time so i was i graduated in 2020 and i went into accountancy for three to four years at pwc so i was just studying for my account exams working a normal nine to five and then how was that honestly i actually loved it like i really like the structure of kind of like life and I was really interested in what I was doing it was very like mergers and acquisitions focused like tax strategy and I loved my team at the time um it was kind of going really well and I was very like me and my girlfriend were very money driven kind of growing up and we still are to an extent but only to the point where like we can afford to eat in a restaurant and not think about the bill but we were very driven towards being like partners and stuff and then when my dad passed away it kind of like tipped everything on its head um but i i love working in pwc yeah amazing and with this time like was you fully focused on like work and making money or was it more like was you still doing like fitness side yeah so like i've fitness has always been a massive part of my life and i think i'm not the kind of person that needs a race to just be training the way i normally do anyway um like i think back when i was at pwc i was doing double days every day which in retrospect when it wasn't very healthy um i think that's like an entirely different conversation what was like a typical training day uh so it would normally be run in the morning or gym in the morning whichever one depending on the training session of the day so if it was like if i was doing a track session in the morning that would always be first thing prioritized and then it would be gym at lunch or after work what made you because your life has completely changed since then yeah let's be honest like um you've started a brand you've started everything um from when like what made you not pursue accountancy i think there wasn't really anyone in the space i looked up to anymore and a big thing for me was always having someone who i was like aspirational and was like i can see myself being like you in 5 10 15 years time and there wasn't anyone like that was there anyone before that like when you was growing up um i mean i always looked up to my dad he was always a business owner um and then i think obviously when social media started you start looking up at people and then it's a very fine line between looking up to them but also trying to want to emulate them me and my girlfriend kind of realized this quite early on is that i don't know what trait of mind this is but i almost get like obsessive about characters whether it's in a book or a film or like on social media and it's like whatever they personify i then try and emulate to the point where i would like lose myself in the process because i would try and be that person too much and so i really had to take a step back and be like actually you shouldn't really look at anyone that way and just do you um yeah yeah i feel like um that can be like a blessing and a curse because uh like you say not pretending to be someone else but a lot of people do it where like they they have like an alter ego kind of and obviously we laugh and joke about that and there's so many things about that but it could potentially give you confidence you pretending to be someone else yeah like takes you out of your body and then you're then more confident and i know quite a lot of people that actually do that within the athletic space and like really yeah the athlete space and like they that's what gives them confidence on that start line imagining being someone else yeah or having like a character okay so a character makes sense yeah for a certain element of like things yeah so like and that's why sometimes you see um people go through like crazy changes in appearance and stuff like that because they're trying to be a new character or whatever yeah yeah them pretending to be that character and living that life then gives them the confidence it's like coping mechanism yeah yeah yeah but obviously like you say you you want to be true to yourself um and obviously you value that and i feel like uh that's paid dividends you just being yourself um so when did you start like posting on socials i started posting i think my first post was december 22 okay not that long ago obviously no yeah well you say not three and a half years ago three and a half years and three and a half years of consistent posting like people think oh you can get to the level that you're at with a lot less time but really like it does take that long yeah it does take a long time and i also think it depends when you start i think i started at a point where social media was kind of starting to we were starting to look at normal people's lives a bit more than like typical class a celebrities so the influencing games changed i think where you've gone from like your top celebrities who everyone followed to kind of look at and see what they were doing to now just normal people who are going through certain life circumstances and how they're navigating it and people kind of like really resonate with that and so we went through like i'd say it was two years ago where everyone started doing voiceovers and like talking to the camera more and i think i was just on that wave um i think it's probably a lot harder to grow now and i would say it was like two years ago because you're the same you had a massive growth period yeah yeah no it's um yeah it's kind of like whether it's trends whether it's um just being different i think is is one thing and just having like your kind of like niche i think on socials is and being you like but like not trying to copy anyone else it's very hard because there's uh there's a line where like copying someone else might might do you well and it might gain your followers and it might but like overall why are people following you and i think there's a lot of them like courses now where people are trying to sell like how to get 100k followers quite quickly and it's based off templates and like trends that everyone's doing and the issue with that is that yes okay you may have a few viral videos and they may convert to followers but it's not an engaged audience so it's a very different like position to be in there's no point having 100 000 followers and getting 100 likes per post you'd rather have 10 000 followers and getting like a thousand likes per post i think it is just about being true to yourself and what i always say to people is like social media is like an iceberg so people obviously they see the top videos and they see the success of you on like 30 000 followers but they don't see all the videos that come beforehand let's say you post like five videos and one of them goes viral and i go onto your page i'm actually quite unlikely to convert into a follower because there's not enough videos to substantiate you are who you say you are but if you've if i go onto a page and there's 50 60 videos all kind of like saying the same like point or showing that your ethos is kind of the same as what went viral then i'll convert so it's just like building brick of brick by brick over time it's interesting and then what what was your niche like starting out like it was actually very fitness at the start it was pretty much just pure gym stuff and then realized that i didn't really want it to be just gym stuff I feel like I had a bit of like body dysmorphia growing up and I also I understood quite quickly that like I didn't want my content to be based on how I looked and so I started doing more live stuff um no one really knew about the whole dad stuff like a year of me posting at the start um and then I was kind of at the point where mentally I was struggling and so it became quite mental health focused for a bit and then the story became how I kind of was working on myself trying to find my identity like quite like cliche things but people needed to hear it at the time yeah no one really talks about that kind of stuff yeah I think I think like it's become more of a like focus now obviously as it should be um but I think like two three years ago wasn't really talked about as much um and I was just saying as if it was like my journal it was quite cathartic to me but people obviously resonated with it and then my niche kind of became more just like life i guess it isn't really a niche but it was just kind of like every component of my life was on social media whether it was fitness relationship grief business like all these different bits yeah and that makes you super relatable because like you say you've got vulnerable parts uh you've got fitness that you're working on like say you're trying to build business and everything else and like i i look at your profile and i look i just see it as someone who's very interesting and you're living life to the fullest and it's very inspiring but I've got a question in regards to like say the grief and when you were struggling in this period did you posting on social media actually that help and you saying that you used it as kind of like a journal actually help yeah I think it did at the start because it helped me get things off my chest and I think it really helped like there's always solace in knowing you aren't alone with these things so it was nice getting the amount of messages I got because there's like a period where i got like 4 000 messages overnight from one of the videos that went like viral and that was amazing but then in retrospect my therapist was like my therapist at the time was like you can't read all of these messages because it's essentially like trauma dumping onto you and then you're then taking on that heavy load even though you can't really feel it at the time so with these messages like i've dealt with something similar yeah i appreciate what you're doing every end of the spectrum um it was like no grief stories really that that's similar like i've had friends who's like dad might have had cancer for a year and you watch them gradually deteriorate that's a very different like way of grieving compared to me who like it's like a band-aid being ripped off and it happened all of a sudden it's like there's so many different stories and narratives when it was like amazing to read but subconsciously i'm not like it doesn't allow me to process my own grief because there's so many different things and inputs i'm getting yeah no interesting so you like you say you you had the therapist at the time was that helping i think it helped me just like speak and i think i'm very i guess good and bad at intellectualizing my emotions so i won't actually process them i'll just intellectualize them and articulate them in a way that i think they should sound rather than actually probably going into like the depths of it I think therapy someone said to me like you should never stop therapy because like you don't stop going to the gym because you're in shape so if you're feeling good why would you stop going to therapy it's like that's the same kind of mindset um but for me I just got quite frustrated because I felt like I was going in circles with the same conversations over and over again and so I'll like revisit it in a bit but right now I feel mentally quite sound yeah who gave you that advice by the way was it a therapist for the gym no it was actually a friend it's actually it's a friend that i look up to and i was like that actually does make a lot of sense yeah it does yeah the therapist was trying to get me to spend more cash no it's interesting and the reason i ask is i've never really used a therapist i've had like one session with like a sports psych and that was that was really interesting um but like you say i feel like it's quite hard because you're bringing up the past yeah did you find that like if well even when you're in a good place like you're bringing up like the yeah i think my issue is i always speak very like logically and factually about these things and it's not necessarily emotionally and like i get triggered by the weirdest things like i watch like a random film that has no relation to anything and i'll just suddenly find myself crying i'm like okay where's that coming from but then as soon as you actually get me to try and talk about my feelings i like compartmentalize and i become quite like just logical about it and so there's something i need to do to sort it out but like in my head it's just and i should not say this but it's like down the line it's like a future problem i need to deal with yeah yeah but do you think in some cases that's that's a blessing because right now like like you say you've got so many things going on then things can't stop you've got to do them things like yeah regardless of how you're feeling yeah i think you've got to look after yourself first and i think the issue is like i feel like I'm actually okay like if I knew I had problems I had to deal with then I would face them head on but I feel like I'm in an all right position right now but I'm probably not fully like healed but yeah I feel like there's so many things I need to prioritize right now that the idea of kind of like everything else I just the list is so long like we've got the business is going really well but it's really busy I'm getting married next year the house is currently being renovated which is just like chaos to live in um fitness is always going to be a priority of mine it's just like yeah yeah it's full on um so let's move on so you obviously started doing content you were still doing like your your accounting job at the time right yeah what made you stop so there's the content started after i lost my dad and then i realized i didn't want to do accountancy anymore so i started doing a pt course was there was there like a reason that you didn't want to do accountancy um i was just ready to move i think i realized i really like my own autonomy and I always wanted to be my own boss and that wasn't going to happen in the accountancy world and I realized that a lot of my friends had started doing social media and I saw the opportunity it gave so I was like what's the worst thing that can happen let's start doing it at the time I was always into my fitness I started doing a PT course at weekends alongside my nine to five to qualify as a PT because the aim was then to become a PT it was like my first initial aim and then social media just blew up and at that time I think people were kind of really starting to get into like online coaching as well so I did online coaching alongside my socials for a bit what was your coaching people for uh a bit of everything it was running hybrid fitness um it was a lot and I think I learned a lot about myself and business doing that I was initially doing it with a third party app who were all about scaling which is great but like it's quality for them it's quantity over quality and it's all about churn and that wasn't why I got into coaching like I wanted to have like the one-on-one conversations and so very quickly got to 80 clients and I realized that was way way way too much um so cut it down to like 30 and then was way happier but then the issue became people started coming to me because of my social media for like therapy so it became like more of a life coach role which I wasn't it wasn't what I signed up for um I wasn't qualified in that way and it just became a lot and then all the SAP stuff happened and so I just had made a decision between either doing online coaching or SAP so let's let's move on to the business yeah what made you want to start your own business uh my dad was always like self-employed so I knew I wanted to do it for a while and social media is the best tool to leverage for something like a business because you have a certain amount of like trust and credibility of your audience but it has to be the right fit for you as a person and it has to be something that I like truly believe in and something that I use every day um and so when I met Connor who's my co-founder in South Africa we just got on like a house on fire and things just kind of snowballed from there did you meet in south africa yeah we met in cape town through mutuals um we both just turned up to a run with like a banana in hand rather than having any gels and we just kind of started like talking about it and like why we don't like taking processed foods like we're both quite whole foods based people quite conscious of what we put in our bodies um and then connor had this idea to kind of use maple as a gel it wasn't like revolutionary idea people have been doing like anecdotal evidence people using maple syrup concoctions for years in like triathlons ultra marathons and stuff like that and there are other brands that also do it but there was like a massive information gap from like the general population not really knowing how to fuel and these like natural alternatives which you think they can use so let's let's summarize your brand for the people that may not know um so it's called sap it's a good energy yeah uh it's a it's a gel yeah at the moment have you got any other products uh just gels at the moment at the moment yeah yeah cool uh and then what what are the what are the main ingredients so it's just grade a canadian maple syrup and himalayan salt for for like the electrolyte yes exactly okay so completely whole food yeah um how how did you know that there was like a gap in the market for this because i've seen like say in the us i've gone and there's like honey and salt i think it's called like sting or something like that um there's very there's different things but i've never seen anything like this in the uk so i think the way connor and i broke it down was like there's three categories that you kind of break the gels into it's like what do you identify as is it clean and is it effective so like morton for example you identify as being an athlete it's effective but it's not necessarily clean in the sense that It has like seven plus ingredients in it.

20:11And there wasn't really any gel in the UK that was kind of doing all three of these things where like you identify as being like a runner and it's like cool. It's also clean because it's minimal ingredients and it works. And so we were like, let's just hit all three of these categories. So that was our first point. The second point is obviously like you want to make, like at the end of the day, we're in a marketing game. Like you want to make the product look cool. People take photos of it. It's word of mouth. People, more people are going to see it. So it'll just grow. So that was like the main thing that we wanted to focus on as well and then we knew that gels for performance are like they work obviously all the studies have been done on mild detection and fructose you can see that it works but the issue is there's not much compliance with gels because people don't like taking them and we want to look forward to taking our fuel because the more you fuel the better you perform and like we know that under fueling is a massive issue in sport it's why like the rise of red s is like huge and so maple syrup and himalayan salt gives the same profile in terms of a one-to-one glucose fructose ratio as normal gels would you be able to explain why it's important to have like that glucose fructose ratio so you have a dual transport pathway um which is like the glucose transporter and the fructose transporter um and like obviously as the as you get the higher carb levels you want sort of like some fructose as well so you can absorb 90 grams plus of carbs an hour um the exact ratio is kind of up for debate but it's like one to one one to 0.8 roughly um and maple is sucrose which is glucose and fructose and a one to one ratio so that's maples just like natural states yeah it's sucrose so it's almost like that is the perfect ingredient for a gel for for optimally like taking on carbs essentially in theory yeah based off like did you find like is that the best ingredient like the issue is any different uh so honey's higher in free fructose okay so it's like higher levels of consumption can cause more gi issues right okay whereas maple is not as high so maple is like in theory a better fuel um the issue is there's not been very many studies done on it like all the studies have been done on mild detection and fructose which is why all these large brands can claim that the science is there especially at the high levels and we're not debating that like the dual kind of carb transport system is 100 the best way forward um i think it's just kind of realizing that there's fuel for everybody yeah and it's what works for you and like for us the best fuel is the one you actually take every time like if i'm in a marathon and i can't take any more than three or four gels because my stomach hurts or i'm feeling sick that's going to be less effective than me taking eight to nine gels or something i can actually stomach yeah and you kind of like look forward to having almost well exactly yeah how much uh himalayan salt do you have so is there kind of like a certain amount that you aim of sodium that you want so in the 25 gram gel there's 152 milligrams and then in the 40 gram gel there's 200 milligrams okay that was for taste profile and also just like because generally when you look at how much sweat people lose and how many gels they should roughly take per hour the average person roughly needs that amount of salt yeah so say if you're taking um three energy gels per hour one every 20 minutes yeah you'd it's around 450 if you've got the smaller ones and then like 600 yeah using the bigger ones but i use it i lose i lose so much salt it's like for london marathon i took on 4.25 grams like 4 250 milligrams of sodium wow so was you having like excess so it's kind of like the minimum dose in in the actual gels yeah for everyone yeah and then you can then supplement with exactly so i had 10 sap gels during the marathon i had five sap 40s and five sap 25 so it was like 350 grams of carbs um and then i had 10 precision hydration salt tabs which are 250 milligrams yeah um per one and i wasn't meant to take 10 but i took 10 with me just in case it was obviously a hot day and i lose i think i did a salt test and i lose like 3050 milligrams per liter of body fluid now i don't know my salt rate so i don't know how often that happens but i'm a very salty sweater and as soon as it gets above like 15 degrees and it's a race it's longer than an hour and a half i really struggle yeah yeah no it's uh it's interesting um yeah i i don't know if you've seen the the studies recently coming out about um and they've been it's been around for ages but uh like pickle juice yeah with the cramp and stuff like that so obviously uh for muscle contractions and stuff like that you you need within your blood you need a certain amount of salt which is the electrolytes but then there's also for like cramp comes on from a couple of ways obviously being dehydrated not having your sodium to water ratio right yeah the imbalances and then obviously like just weakness within the legs and muscles or whatever if we're running say for example that's what a lot of people have been like i read it actually the other day that cramp is actually just due to the fact that you're not trained enough rather than the fact that you've not got enough salt i think there's two ways i think it's yeah personally like that's how i think it's i feel i feel yeah if you if you're weak then and you're doing too much you're basically overloading the muscle then you've got a risk of cramping yeah because what cramp is it's just a warning sign for your body to stop and i always think tell the difference between if it's just one muscle cramping then it's a weakness yeah but have you ever had it in in a race where your calf might cramp and then your hamstring cramps and then suddenly you can't walk like it almost like disables you yeah yeah and you you cannot move I feel like that's then when it comes to kind of like a yeah an internal salt sodium hydration level okay I didn't think about it like that and that's like the real warning sign that you should stop okay if one muscle is just cramping then you could potentially push through yes you will cause damage to that muscle and there's things that you can do to relieve that which I'd say is pickle juice because apparently what it does it like shocks your taste buds and then it like resets your nervous system apparently or something like this apparently yeah i've probably butchered that a little bit um i'm gonna have to get like a nutritionist on to talk about that but i think uh it's pickle juice and then it's apple cider vinegar as well so it's just basically vinegar that does it and it's kind of like this like wow and then it shocks everybody into um so that's kind of like an immediate relief but then let's say you've got to get the the sodium right i feel like because it's a trend at the moment people are just thinking it's just pickle juice okay that like will stop cramps but you've still got to have your salt you've still got to be hydrated you've still got to yeah i think there's like a question to be had about the whole electrolyte like we were always told not to have too much salt because of like high blood pressure and now we're told to have like three salt tabs a day yeah hydration this is like a i feel like it's like a low level conspiracy like when you uh when you when you think about your tesco so tesco meal deals forever and we'll just talk about the meal deal but forever they've just been normal sandwiches then came along that salt was bad so they took all the salt out so like you'd get a sandwich and it's a reduced sodium or reduced salt on the packet so that went on for a couple years and then they sell salt back a pound of sachet or whatever it is in the form of electrolytes yeah so they've took all the salt out of everything that is healthy and then you've got to then take on electrolytes yeah and it's just uh one of one of my low levels conspiracies that the it's a great way it's a great marketing scheme great way to make money out of us but now you're paying for the meal deal and the salt and the salt so um maybe i don't know whether the the companies are tied i don't know but um yeah it's it's interesting um but uh yeah i i don't know where and and we've got to be careful because obviously we're talking within like a performance sector uh and for performance for people that are doing endurance sports especially you do need a lot of salt and you need to replenish your salt stores but for the everyday person you may not need electrolytes in every single drink if you're not sweating it out then you you might just be kind of like overdoing it and yes if you've got a healthy functioning body your body will just extra extra salt within your urine but there does become kind of like a limit um so now it's quite interesting um but let's talk let's go back to the business so you decided obviously there's like a gap in the market where do you even start because there'll be so many people out here that are looking to kind of like start a business like what what are even the first steps i had this conversation with someone the other day i think you've got to make sure first of all it's a solid product it doesn't have to be a completely novel product that no one's ever seen before you just have to reframe it in a way which is like digestible to the consumer second of all is like you have to have some kind of backing right or some kind of way of marketing your product to a large audience so yes SAP's been like here since mid-September last year I've been growing the social media page for the past four years and in that time you grow an audience of like 350 ,000 people that like you've shown you're a healthy person who runs a lot and gyms a lot and like all of this adds trust and credibility to when you launch a brand like SAP and then when SAP then becomes a product market fit which people want and it's backed by someone like myself or like Connor or like I know yourself or Johnny Davis or whatever people then trust in the brand more obviously they have to like the product so once they like it it's then about just like making sure your marketing is on point like what gets people captivated and one of the biggest examples we use is like Red Bull their marketing is absolutely amazing because on their page you don't actually really ever see a single Red Bull can what you see is what they stand for and their ethos and the whole like extreme sports like you wouldn't follow red bull if all they posted was their cans same with sap is like if we just posted about our gel and we were tested like this the facts about it the stats or like people holding it all the time no one would follow us it's like what you've got to do is think about like why people would follow a page like a gel and that's kind of why the sap good energy slogan came in is like sap is obviously the gel and then the good energy is everything around the gel and the running and like the community and like how do you then personified that within the brand and obviously people love like founder-based businesses so there's that element of it where it's kind of talking through how we're working as a startup the problems we're facing I think it's a very interesting conversation to have where like there's very good ways and bad ways of doing it if you're just talking about the bad things in your business that are going wrong people don't want to see that like they don't just want to see that you're putting fires out constantly what they want to see is what are the fires how is it impacting your business what is the solution how are you going to prevent that going forwards and it's just like classic value add stuff that people can really learn from um so that was a lot of garbling but no no it's really interesting so in regards to kind of like your main uh focuses when when starting the brand it was creating a community yeah so there's two ways of doing it right so you do what morton did where they work with kipchoge and it trickles down because kipchoge was obviously the best marathon runner for years everyone was like oh my god i I want to use Morton because it's the best performing gel.

31:51On the other side of it, you have someone like Pure Sport who built an incredibly strong community from the base up and then the products kind of like fed into that community and it grew through word of mouth. So there's two different ways of doing it. And then you probably have a third, which is, we can use BPM, where it's like founder-led business and people like say are following Nick for the incredible feats that he's doing and then he's creating a brand exactly yeah that's I didn't even think about that third but I guess that's it that's your three pillars um and I guess we are in between like the founder and the community side of things where like me and Connor obviously like people want to see the founding side of it and like people follow me but also we are we have such a strong community because we've actually solved a problem that people didn't kind of realize they needed which was a gel they can take every day without thinking twice about it do you think starting like at the the kind of back end of covid was kind of like a a time in london especially where you could kind of capitalize on creating that community as well for just general for for example i've seen your run clubs like i've seen how many people turn up like it is packed yeah um do you think there's kind of like a lack of community i think within the space i think there's there's so many different things that influence it i think our generation is really just not drinking alcohol anymore and so the old way of socializing or what we thought we wanted to socialize with which was like in the pub and drinking is no longer becoming a lot of people's preferred way of doing it because they want to like not necessarily be sober but they want to spend their time going on runs or going for coffees and not like necessarily socializing in their loud pub and run clubs and communities just became that outlet for everybody um and it's just one of those things where people always gravitate towards big crowds and if people all these people are going to this it's like what i always say is when you're growing up your friendships and your kind of whoever you hang around with is a lot of it's due to like proximity and circumstance so you might have the same like university course or you live in the same area and you might be best friends and it might be amazing but also like it's sometimes just because you're close when you're growing up then as you get older you can you start having more autonomy and you can be like actually we probably don't have that much in common but this person who i've only just met at this run club who wants to do the same things that i do doesn't necessarily want to drink we actually get on really well it's just the best way to do that is through these kind of communities and putting yourself out there do you think it's important to like surround yourself with similar similar minded people yeah 100 and have you kind of like broken off relationships or not ended relationships but just let them fizzle out naturally i think i'm i'm really guilty for this in that like everything i call it like pre-dad and post-dad like i basically cut off almost everything pre-losing my dad because it reminded me too much of everything beforehand and then them relationships which actually probably would still be here otherwise I'm now trying to like kind of work on a bit more proactively because I've realized that it was on me the onus was on me and there's actually nothing wrong with them friendships but I just couldn't deal with it at the time that's that one side of things and then if the other side is like if there is someone who I genuinely is effort and I feel like the energy is drained from me when I'm around them i just won't be friends with them and i'll just kind of move on like i only have a certain amount of energy and time to like kind of socialize and do these things i want to leave these like times being like oh my god i'm full of energy i'm so like motivated to do stuff that was a great conversation like it really flowed like flowed i think that's kind of where you've got to like be hard with yourself and not wasting time on people who just don't fit your person so like um avoiding energy vampires yeah we called it like radiators and drains like some people are radiators and they just like give you life and you leave the conversation feeling like full of energy and then there's trains where you kind of have these conversations and the whole time you're like i need to leave yeah yeah you and do you like assess that not after every conversation but like after a couple of conversations with people yeah it's very rare like in one conversation you'll be able to understand yeah because someone might just be having a bad day exactly um and i love one-on-one conversations so i'll get quite deep with anyone in like quite a short amount of time um so yeah normally takes quite a few attempts to realize it's interesting um with starting out how did the kind of like financials look and did you i feel like a lot of businesses kind of like avoid this but like how did you actually like set up was you and connor kind of like oh yeah we're going to invest this much each yeah so we're gonna we bootstrapped at the start okay um myself and connor for the first order which was around 30 000 gels and that was really for us like a proof of concept if we if this sold out and went well then we obviously knew we had a product at that point we kind of have to reassess how many gels 30 000 30 000 wow that's quite a big order right yeah it was it's a relatively big order i mean now we're doing significantly more than that um but at the time that was really all we could afford to do because there's just so many expenses it just shows that how like all in you were you weren't kind of yeah let's let's get a thousand and then let's see if these sell like 30 000 like say so it was 2 510 packs and then about 500 or 5 000 gels for distribution to obviously sample and give people away um but we forecasted three months to sell out for that one and we sold out in five weeks wow and so at that point we were like okay this is great but also shit we've got no product uh the lead time is like eight to twelve weeks for this stuff so we sold out like end of october and then we had no product until january the first what was it like like navigating them months um it was it was good in the sense that people love scarcity so the fact that we had sold out so quickly people were obviously like um i want to try sap which is amazing but also you've got no product to sell them so it's like kind of how do you keep them interested so that was when we kind of leaned on to the marketing side of things and we did a restock campaign it's like what you could do to kind of sorry like why sap works as a gel basically and like taking the piss out of artificial gels but also just like in certain circumstances why sap would be good and then alongside that we ran a competition um for the london marathon giveaway and basically if you entered if you bought a case or pre-ordered you would be entered the chance to win the london marathon ticket um we had like 2 500 pre-orders um which is basically like our entire first order before we even relaunched and then we relaunched with like an order that was three to four times the size of the first one and we sold out again in five weeks that's that's crazy so like you say success from kind of like the off but you'd been building this in the background for years and years and that's what people probably don't see they think that you just started a business yeah it kind of just blew up but cash is always going to be the problem so like yeah we did that first so the credit terms for us were not very preferential at the start so we had to pay our maple supplier before we even got the maple into the uk we had to pay a lot of the money for the manufacturing up front and like in halves and so like cash for us might have been like three four months delayed in terms of our like receivables which is not very preferential so in december we decided to raise um for the first time to just bring on some strategic investors to help us grow um and that was probably the best thing we did interesting and how's that kind of like change your whole business because let's say bringing on investors brings its own challenges they have now have kind of like an insight into your business obviously they want the best for your business because they want to make money out of it but does that take away a little bit from your personal beliefs in the brand i think it depends which investors you bring on board okay so like if it's we tried to avoid bringing on like family and stuff like that and they were all strategic investors and because of my social media my network was quite large connor my business partner i don't know how he does it but he's the most extroverted person you'll ever meet in your life i've never known anyone have a bigger network than him he just always like he'll always make an effort with everybody and he's just friends with everyone um and so from the initial success of SAP we obviously got quite a lot of interest and finding the investors was actually relatively easy for us but every investor had a purpose so they were in a position where like they already ran a business or they were a social media influencer who had a had a great audience that we could kind of like leverage because the thing is like as a startup you don't have much cash so realistically we couldn't afford to pay you to post about it but if you're invested in the business and as sap grows your equity stake technically grows then you're more likely to want to post and so there's no longer like a cash problem of we don't have the cash to pay you you're incentivized to post about it so every investor had a purpose um and they all trusted me and connor to deliver what we promised we were going to deliver so it didn't change our autonomy at all all it did was give us advisors who could give us help and assistance in times where we were like what the fuck do we do yeah no that's crazy because like if you win you all win and i think that's like one of the best ways that you can do it of just giving out equity uh the only problem with that is if it does grow to a substantial bit then not for not that it's a problem because like you say everyone that you took on as an investor you want to see win as well and you're kind of like sharing that um but like the less of less yeah yeah i know i think it's one like me and Connor obviously a big a part of us now is like yeah okay maybe in the future we will sell sap but we started it because we generally love it and like we love what it's doing for people's lives like we've had people message us who have Crohn's disease IBS like cardiomyopathy and sap's the only gel they can take because it's just like so much easier on the stomach or like it causes less of a so the there's the blood glucose spike from maple is like way lower than normal gels and it's way more stable so it helps these kind of people just take it and that for us is like we love our job so at the end of the day if we love our job then the way I see it is like the money will come but I actually don't care about it right now I'd rather just enjoy doing what I'm doing and like every day I wake up with like way more purpose than I've ever had before and like if I have 30 % of the pie 20 % of the pie I actually just don't yeah you don't care you're doing it for for the pure passion and i i personally like i'm no business man at all but starting a business like some people start with the intention we're going to grow this business and then we're going to sell it yeah and that's they don't give a shit about the actual business they just want to make money yeah and then there's some people who like they they kind of like want to be in it for for potentially ever yeah and they start a business because they they've got a true like passion yeah and i see that through you yeah i see that through uh a good friend of mine george with represent like he says he's he's never going to be without represent he never wants to kind of like fully sell and like move on too much part of his life yeah yeah and you know that's what would he do without it like he's kind of but that for me shows like a successful brand and kind of like a brand where the the founders are in the right mindset yeah i think for me like i have friends who have a lot of money and like i kind of found that like materially my life didn't change once i went past a certain amount of earnings like for me it was always as long as i can just like go to a restaurant and order food and not think about the bill that's enough yeah like i don't need the flash cards i don't need all that stuff um and so yeah for me it's just like money's means to an end yeah that's cool it's cool so um with kind of like the business obviously fast forward now how's the business doing right now yeah it's doing well i think it's one of them where you have marathon seasons so typically you have like from september through to december and then january through till april may so you're in the off season technically right now so you're not you don't have as many orders when it comes like your typical marathon runners which is why you then start to look at things like triathlons and ultra marathons and cycling and like different ways of kind of using the brand and the good thing about sap is it's like so versatile so out of the context of running you probably don't use gels really you probably would for performance like training the high rocks and stuff like that but like people are having it on their coffee in their oats in their sourdough they're having they can't have food in the morning they just have sap because it's so easy to consume it's like the use cases for it are so much more significant than normal gels because the versatility is huge um even if even if you're literally using it as like a sachet of maple syrup yeah um like do you know well i put it in my coffee and it's just it's a pre-workout yeah like a clean pre-workout um so there's different ways of using it um it's just kind of i think now we're at the point where we've grown from naught to one organically which is brilliant a lot of that is just because our like branding has been so good but to really scale the next level you kind of have to like really actually think about the business plan rather than trying to constantly put out fires and pivoting and learning and that requires like really like nailing paid media and like meta and stuff like that and that is a whole different ballgame to organic if you started kind of like yeah we started experimenting um putting budget behind it but it's one of them things again like with socials you could put like produce what you consider the best video ever but if the algorithm hates it it's not going to be seen to anyone and meta is similar where like it's an algorithm it learn it's it learns it's adapts like so you kind of like have to give it time to actually kind of bring all these values like we have cac and roas which is like cost like customer acquisition costs and return on ad spend like these things take time to improve and everyone thinks they're a meta guru and like tells us different things to do so it's really trying to like refine that and understand how best to proposition it's that yeah at the moment are you just in the uk uh we we sell to all like across the like europe everything um so you have distributor like uk based and then so just our distribution is just in the uk okay perfect um but we obviously like send to these places but it costs a lot of money so we'll look to have distribution in europe as well um is that kind of like the the next step going to europe or would you potentially want to go you know overseas to america i think with the us it's a whale like you've got to really be prepared to do it and we are not at that size yet like the order sizes will be massive there's different regulations with the packaging like we have to change so many different things and we're not at that scale yet i think what me and connor say is like when we get to the point where we're running around battersea park and half of the gels in the floor is sap that's when we know we're kind of at a point where we might be able to expand to the us but connor's connor's a visionary so if in connor's head he's already done in the us he's already done all these so if i was stuck with him right now i'd be like yeah yeah it's planned out for this yeah he's like he's he aims for the stars and i have to like kind of pull him back to the moon um and like our investors are very good at being like you have to focus on one thing at a time and like you can't go for the us too early because if you go for it and you fail that it's like one opportunity that you just missed out on so it's about being patient um and we're playing the long the long game for it so yeah uk is our main focus yeah no that's uh that's interesting and like i said there's so much there's so many people into fitness in the uk and like you say when you've got this multi-use product that doesn't have to be just a gel you can use it or you know for your breakfast and everything else or pre-workout like it's uh it's a great thing um how much emphasis do you split on like almost advertising in for you need this for your race compared to you need this for your training yeah good question i think it so ultimately the best gel is the one that you'll take every time right and we're always told that you need to race with gels which is so true you do like you need carbohydrates but also people and then people are not really training with the gels because they don't like taking them that frequently and so we're kind of filling that gap where yes you can like you train with it because you feel good using it and you're looking forward to the next one and therefore like your training is doing better so your races will go better if you then want to do like use an alternative gel like precision or morton or whatever it is for your race day because you trust it because the science backs it currently that's your that's completely your decision we've actually never said don't use artificial gels what we say is like just use what works for you and for me sap works for me and like all of our customers it works for them but some of my friends use half sap like half precision on like on race day because they like the fact that like precision is a neutral flavor but then they also like the addition that sap brings them um so it's really just like it's personal preference but for us like people will probably go through five to six packs of sap for their training and they might use one pack of another gel for race day how do you how did you determine pricing uh margins margins okay based off the cost of maple the packaging yeah that stuff yeah and just people don't realize but maple is expensive like it's generally i mean probably not as much anymore after everything that's going on but it used to be a barrel of maple was more expensive than a barrel of oil and what you what you forget is that maltidection and fructose is pennies it costs pennies to make maple doesn't so it's like what are you going to pay more for a can of coke or orange juice freshly squeezed orange juice like it's going to be freshly squeezed orange juice because it's a natural ingredient it's like not just made of sugar um but at the same time we're not more expensive than the top like the top performing kind of like super fair yeah so i think i think we are more of like a premium product but we're not also unaffordable um but we're also careful like we are aware this is like a problem and that the cost of living crisis is increasing so we're always looking for places where we can offer value in other ways um and like our future goal very much takes it into consideration yeah no it's um it's just i just found it super interesting um moving on so so like you say what is the the next step for you so you said that you want to move on to europe but in terms of like you say expanding do you want to take on like huge athletes do you want to um what do you see it becoming bigger than you and you feel like it is right now yeah um i i did chicago marathon in October and someone come up to me and was like you're the sap guy and I was like that's the first time someone's come up to me and said you're the sap guy rather than you're James and I do think the brand will out it has outgrown me already and I want it to outgrow me like I don't want to social media is an amazing tool but I don't want it to be my job in like four to five years time like I would rather be a private individual so if sap outgrows me that only benefits me um which i love um yeah no that's uh that's really cool um in terms of athletes is the do you want to go more down the because i always find this hard with like brands that i'm super interested i feel like influencers potentially have more reach they um are kind of like more successful on return of sales and stuff like that but then you've got your athletes which are kind of like the elitist and proof um and everyone kind of looks up to the top if that makes sense yeah i think there's different things to think about so one do you have the cash available for these people obviously like the top top athletes are going to have management representation and they're going to cost a lot of money and you're competing with other brands who have far more money than us the second one is um once we have like there needs to be more studies done on the benefits of maple as a fuel source would you ever kind of try and fund a study 100 % like it's very much on our agenda um because once you've got that then athletes have more information to go off which is what they want because they want their marginal gains and right now that information just isn't available so yeah we've currently signed two athletes um george and george grassley and inca padfield so george won the non-elite start for males um in like 212 at london which is just unreal um and he uses sap in all of his training which is amazing and then inca ran a 242w marathon and what we like about them guys is like they've now got a bit of a social media presence but they literally just have a nine to five so they're training alongside like their normal jobs and the whole point of like why sap started as well is because like the general population just has no idea how to feel properly and so these people like inca and george are yes they're elite runners they're incredible they're also very relatable because it's not their entire job um there is a world where we have some athletes that we want to sign um and we're kind of like i think we'll get there at some point but it just takes time yeah you just like naturally let everything um grow as it does no you've got more more people just need to use it and prove that it works like we had a guy run a 222 marathon just on zap like i ran a 241 and i would have felt absolutely amazing it's obviously not an elite time but it's like a respectable enough time that most people would be like it works yeah the anecdotal evidence is all there yeah and i was going to ask about that obviously like you say you you've built this you've got an amazing relationship uh with your fiance uh you feel i feel like you've got the balance pretty right you've also training a lot and you're getting really good results like say in the marathon 241 like how how do you find balance i good question i feel like i've fitness has always been such a massive part of my life so i don't even think about really working out anymore like it just it's such it's so habitual that it's just part of my like normal life um in terms of balance i would say i'm very good at working very hard but then i'm very good at switching off so like I'll work longer hours and I will work hard during them hours but as soon as it gets to like nine o 'clock I will just turn off and I'll go to bed and I'll read whereas I think a lot of people who don't have balance they never really know how to switch off I don't really know when that started but I'm just very good at like compartmentalizing certain areas of my life and then yeah I think there's no like no such thing as proper balance if you want to build a business there's going to be a time where you're going to have to forfeit other things in your life and it's just being comfortable with what you're going to forfeit so for me like I'm not as social as I used to be because the business and like fitness is my priority right now but like next year when I'm gonna get married the social side of my life will be way more prominent I might have a month where I take the business a bit slower and me and Conrad will have that discussion and fitness might be a bit less like you just gotta realize it comes in waves and you just need to learn when to prioritize what yeah has there been like a time period where you've struggled with the relationships aside and like the businesses cause like strain on that on my me and alex yeah i'd say uh no i think we did four years of long distance um when we're at university and as part of that the only way you make that work is if your communication is rock solid and so like we have times where we obviously argue but there's never any point where like if things are getting heated between us we just talk about it and that might happen in like an explosive argument or whatever it is but like we just communicate what we've really learned is that if you're not talking about it and things bubble up that's when like the major issues issues come about yeah no that's good and i'm i'm glad that you've kind of like got it all figured like even just just kind of like being around you today like you kind of just attack everything and you kind of deal with everything as it goes like this morning like you said you need to get a run in you've got a podcast then you've got a full day of work like you ran to the studio and then you're running home and then that's sorted yeah like i kind of love that yeah for me it was always just like if you have the ability to just do something just do it yeah like if i say i'll do something it might take me two years it might take me five years it might take ten years but i will do it eventually and like if you want to make a change the only person that's going to make that change is yourself so it's just like yeah how much do you prioritize like perfection over kind of just getting it done oh it depends on the context um with with let's do fitness first oh getting it done getting it done every time yeah i don't like i'm not an elite athlete i don't care about being perfect like i have goals i strive for yeah but for me like i speak to my coach about this all the time the best thing you can do is just not be injured and just like stack these days back to back to back to back for five years and that's how you get quick over time like i made the most progress i've ever made because i've not been injured in two years touch wood um and so like i've just got so much volume now in my legs and speed that i'm really starting to see the difference in my running now because it's been stacked but as soon as you get injured because you try and push it too much or you try and have like the perfect week where you hit 12 hours of training whatever it might be getting injured just sets you back for three months and it's just not worth it so getting it done in my head is just yeah would you rather be a little bit more reserved as well for that reason that you don't want to get injured well i said same with gabe like gabriel says i'm the best person at dropping out of a session but also the best person like doing the session so like if i've got 10 by 1k they set me at like 310 pace if i get eight reps in and i'm not feeling it i'll call it like i just i'll listen to my body and i'll just for me that 80 i've still benefited from okay i might not be getting that extra one percent of doing the entire session but at least i can run tomorrow rather than like maybe doing the next two reps and something happening yeah like i think a lot of people need to hear that uh in regards to kind of like your fitness goals going forward have you got any big things big bucket list things that you want to take off i want to run a sub 15 5k okay um my long-term goal which what's your 5k pb at the moment so i ran a 16 flat like seven months ago on a cold wet day by myself and it was just meant to be a 3k attempt and I just continued it um I think I'm significantly fitter now and so I reckon I'm around like 15 15 15 20 shape right now um I need to do a race to actually find it out but yeah that's kind of like short-term goal and then long-term goal will be a sub 30 10k but that's like I don't really have a timeline on that there's not like a it's not gonna be this year yeah have you got a race in mind for the 5k no I'm like I think I said earlier but like I they don't i just rather keep training yeah as if i'm going to aim for it and then if i see one in like two weeks i'll just sign up for it like my ethos for exercise has always been like be ready for pretty much anything yeah um i think that's like march on saying like ready for anything it's like if you told me that in six weeks we had x y or z i'd be able to give pretty much any of them a good go what's a typical like week of training look like for you oh it's changed a lot at the moment i'm it's probably the least i've ever trained and it's the fittest i've ever been which I think says a lot I think now I do between seven and eight sessions a week I would say normally it's six runs one gym and then one cycle if I can get out on the bike what does the gym look like just full body very you're pretty big like you're pretty muscular and do you think that's just from the years of kind of like bodybuilding and stuff yeah I think it's a mix of one genetics like my granddad was and my dad just we always held muscle quite easily and then two literally 10 11 years of fully bashing out the gym like i only went down to once a week in the past like year yeah i would say and like it's still i'm still doing enough i'm still eating well i'm still like active enough that i hold enough muscle yeah so that one a week is kind of like a maintenance dose that yeah can just make sure that you're ticking over you can maintain the muscle maintain looking good and then you can focus on the real goal which is running yeah exactly so like the way i found it was like so there's a period where i was really into my high rocks and being strong only makes a difference to a certain point beyond a certain point it's about being quick like running will always be dominant in my head in high rocks and so i was like i know that i have so much more on the table in terms of speed and the only way i'm going to be able to actually get to that point is if i start being specific with my training towards running whereas like in the gym i don't care if i bench 120 kilograms i don't care if i bench 100 kilograms i don't care what i squat like that doesn't bother me anymore whereas like running a fast time really gets me like excited no it's uh it's good um i i completely agree with the high rocks like like say the more muscle you have the the more kind of like muscle pump that you have when you're actually doing the race and then you feel slow on the running and like you say you're carrying around extra weight uh and so on so so um yeah how did you find our rocks i i loved i love it it's kind of race where like i won't really ever do like a 10 week block four anymore just kind of sign up and yeah sign up like i did london uh was it olympia or something one most recent no last may was the last solo one i did um that was like like hyrox open and did like a 58 minute and i loved it and it was amazing and i finished with like so much energy um and i would love to do a like a heart rocks pro maybe in like september or october yeah um because i feel like my running's got so much faster but i feel like heart there's so much training required to be a elite high rocks athlete now that like in and like for most people who are still chasing them goals they're doing normal nine to fives while still trying to train to be a high rocks athlete and they're just getting injured and that's what i realized when i was doing high rock specific training my niggles were just coming out of everywhere like anywhere you've got to be really um even when you're doing it full time like you've got to be really uh dedicated to not doing junk volume yeah and just doing the specifics yeah um and we probably still all do too much i suffer injuries and niggles all the time um probably on the borderline of overtraining all the time and i think most of the elite 15 are like that as well but that's being an elite athlete is you're always on that precipice of overtraining yeah being able to manage it i think sometimes it's kind of like a mental side as well like you feel like am i am i being lazy or am i just tired i don't know like it's kind of hard to kind of find where that line is but um recently i've been trying to be a little bit more reserved and like like you say you've been training uh as the least that you've ever trained but you're the fittest that you've ever been yeah and i think that's just the the compounds of years and years of training hard and then like you you've actually been able to feel that now yeah it's quality of sessions not quantity yeah i would rather do two really good running sessions a week and then like chill out then try and do multiple hard days do you think you've got another marathon in you i've said to my friends and my girl like my fiance i'm just gonna do one marathon a year now yeah i think i'm gonna do london continuously every year yes um marathons don't bring me enough joy to warrant doing multiple a year and that's also how you get injured um whereas like i really enjoy the short distance like my short times don't correspond to my marathon times like they're just quicker and so like marathon for me yeah there's probably more room for improvement but it takes so much more from your life to train for one and actually like get the gold that you want than me doing a 10k and then be able to do a 10k again two weeks later and then just keep like trying yeah no i i definitely agree with that um marathon takes so much out of you you're on a two was a 222 yeah and it it battered me yeah but um yeah i think uh like you say you see the top marathons in the world and they they're picking three or four a year and that's it because they've got these massive blocks but then they've got recovery time after um a good friend of mine alfie at the moment he's uh he's just kind of like recovered he's hitting his first race this weekend uh from the london marathon which is doing 10k or sort of 5k okay so that'll be his first race back but for the last what's it been since london marathon six weeks something yeah something like that he's just been like recovering basically okay and he still won't be in perfect shape this is just kind of like a training run to him yeah yeah this week so it just shows like even if you're at that top end like it still takes a lot out of you um so no that's interesting have you got any other goals apart from running at the moment for fitness no i i honestly just enjoy the process yeah i think people just get so like into racing all the time and like do you prefer the training i love the training i love the pro like don't get me wrong i love races but i feel like a lot of especially like influencers feel like they have to race every single week to like have content to post about and i'm like i mean i get fed up looking at it i'm sure that people get fed up looking at it but like the process if you love the process then the results will come and like i just love doing it every day and not thinking about the pressure of like a 5k 10k race coming up um so yeah i'll just stand up for random shit yeah and just train the way i do no i love that and like you say that's authentic to you how did you kind of like build this authenticity and like the fact that you you don't really look up to like you probably do have role models that you look up to and stuff like that but like you're just you like you can tell by this conversation that you you don't follow anything you don't um get like drawn into anything like you just do what's best for you i think that's taken years I don't think I've always been like that I think I've always worn my heart on my sleeve um I don't know when it's when I kind of I think I'm still trying like find myself or whatever but I feel like as long as you're doing good and you're not like hurting people in the process like just do what feels right to you and stop trying like what I have found is that when I was comparing myself to people and like being more present on social media to try and like get ideas for content or whatever that was when I was in my worst mental state because you're always thinking oh the grass is greener or like look at what this person's doing whereas like just focus on your life like classically like water your own grass and then like you'll be happy and if you're not happy then you have the power to make the change like the only thing the worst thing you can do is just look what other people are doing and be constantly comparing yeah no that's uh that's definitely good and even i need a little bit of that um advice and to set that on board um it's very easy to get carried away with like comparing yourself to other people i think um and sometimes you're gonna block that out uh how do you find motivation or are there days where like you don't want to get up or is every day like you ready to go yeah i think it's that classic like motivation versus discipline that everyone talks about like i'm not always motivated but i am i think my biggest strength is i'm very self-disciplined like if it's 5 30 alarm obviously I don't want to wake up at 5 30 but like I'll snooze it once cuddle Alex for a bit and then I'm up and out of the door because it's like I have to protect my time in the morning it's the only time I can protect um and being disciplined is the only way to do that and I've I know what it's like to not be disciplined I think once you can compare the two you know that being disciplined is always worth the actual like difficulty of it um and then motivation just comes and goes you can't really rely on it so that was always my thing is like I have to rely on discipline and then motivation when it when i have the wave and they come and they complement each other then i feel unstoppable but when it's not the motivation is not there i'm still being disciplined that's enough yeah like it might not be optimal but it's enough and it's just being comfortable with that yeah well that's uh that's class i always think of it as like someone who's obviously we're in a very lucky position where we're kind of like classes self-employed and but and someone who's working a desk job like they don't have a choice whether they turn up to work they turn up to work regardless yeah and we've sometimes got to take the personal feelings out of it and just it's your job it's your job to do that with regardless of how you're feeling it's your job to train it's your job to um look after yourself it's your job to go to work that day and i feel like um i don't know i feel like sometimes you you kind of let the the personal sides and personal feelings like get in the way get in the way yeah i agree but i think i mean i've never been happier having structure and like what i wouldn't consider a nine to five again compared to doing being self-employed like i'm still self-employed obviously but like sap has given me what i wanted from corporate i think the difference is you've got to make it work for you and it's like changing your mindset of what you want from it um like if you're kind of expecting your job to give you incredibly like exciting work and be like thrilled every day and it doesn't do that then obviously you're not gonna be very happy but if you see the job as being like this funds my life which outside of work I can then do stuff which makes me excited that shift in mindset also helps and I know friends who do that and they're like they work because it gives them and allows them to live the life they want outside of it whereas if you want your work to be your enjoyment then you have to take the onus the ownership on that to kind of make it work for you yeah no that does make sense have you got any bad habits uh the reason i ask that is because like you seem like a like superman no i i like i was really into i mean this is whole like stephen bartlett thing with like optimization and having three wines and ruining your life I think I went through a phase of like being so wellness focused like I had a whoop back in like 2018 before it was like really a thing and at that time I was still at uni so it was like when I was drinking I was seeing the impact it had I just built these like good habits over such a long period of time but I have so many bad habits it just depends on what context if it's like Alex will tell you that I'm sometimes not very clean or like when I get stressed I end up like dumping clothes around the house rather than like putting them in the right place like there's so many things i do that are so like red so many red flags um but you gotta remember like from an outsider perspective on social media i'm obviously not going to post like a video of me and alex arguing and like the way we approach it because that's just like why would you be videoing the argument in the first place but also it's not a good representation of you but like i'm honestly just like a normal bloke i make so many mistakes me and alex argue all the time like i make mistakes at work i have days where i'm so unproductive because i'm like stuck on a script which i just can't seem to figure out and i'll have other days where i do feel like superman um i have loads of bad habits basically no it's interesting it depends on the context yeah everyone's human yeah everyone's human exactly yeah do you see yourself like where do you see yourself in like say like 10 20 years time like actually i got asked this question the other day for the first time and um i think it depends on obviously how sap goes like i love sap but let's just say for example that we exit the next like five years the the ideal scenario is that social media is not my income source I've hopefully made enough money that like I don't necessarily have to worry about like trying to continue to make like massive amounts of it and then I utilize the platform to become like an angel investor so like I then see businesses which I love and I really want to back and because I've grown we've grown sat to where it would hopefully get to I can give them enough input that they feel like they're getting benefit from me as well as potentially a cash injection um so i think that's the long kind of term is like 10 20 years being an angel investor and then in terms of like another business or sap continuing you never really know like i'd have to really be interested in not just the business but also the people behind it which i think is so important it's like i connor who's my co-founder is like my best friend as well as my business partner and there's no one i trust more to like if a fire was in the business to put it out and so i think that's also are so important is like yeah you got to believe in the product but you also got to believe in the people you're working with um so there's so many things that could happen but I think my biggest thing is I would want a family so I want a family of like three kids I want to move back to Sheffield I want to have a house that just like has a nice size garden dogs like I would love to work for myself and then like just spending time with my kids my dad grew up looking after me because he stay-at-home dad like he had a job but he just worked from home and I want to be there for my kids I want to be able to do that and like my analysis relationship has been very kind of like parallel I would say and then I took the massive risk with like SAP and being self-employed of social media and she stayed as a lawyer and I feel like my path is now becoming a bit more stable as SAP becomes more established and like we've already grown in social media whereas so she can now be in a position where she can potentially take the risk and do what she wants to do and i don't mind then being the person that becomes a support system for that while she does what she does um so yeah i think that's like a hoover no it's it's incredible uh it's it's nice that you think about that and like say you uh you i feel like you've got it all figured out no i i we're still figuring out so many things but we are what we are as planners like we do think like where do want to be and like i think i made a reel about ages ago but like alex is a bit of a visionary but she's risk averse so the way our relationship works is like alex will be like okay we want to be here in like three to five years time but i don't want to take the first leap to get there and i'm like but i don't mind taking that leap so i'll take the first leap and then alex will join me and then she'll be like okay well where do we want to be next and so that's just kind of like how the relationships worked um so we're planners in that sense but day to day i promise you we are not very adult like we feel like teenagers still we're like oh my fucking god we've got to pay for our mortgage we're getting the house done we're having arguments like we're not the kitchen's not very clean like so many different like i'd say day to day we're less planned than we are for the like wider future no that's amazing it's probably nice to know as well um that we're all kind of just winging it oh yeah fully winging it and you also realize that and like in business as well like i'm speaking to so many more businesses because i've sat but like everyone's winging it to an extent like no one really knows like what they're going to be doing i mean obviously some people do like in a year because things just always change you've got to always like pivot and it's the same in like life yeah is it like as long as you have like your foundations which is for me like alex my friends my business and i like that's fine everything else can be chaos like i just need these like three stable things and everything else just like take as it comes yeah that's a that's a great way to look at it and uh i feel like a great way to Ben.

1:14:45Thank you, James. No worries. Appreciate that. Pleasure. Thank you for coming on.