LATE BLOOMERS - THE ART OF STARTING AGAIN: 4 game-changing steps for success

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

This week on LATE BLOOMERS, we're talking about starting again—whether it’s your career, your side hustle, or your entire life. We’re breaking down the four steps to starting over: Identity, Change, Delusion, and Commitment. Sounds simple, right? It wasn’t. We’re sharing the messy truth about our own failures—failed businesses, flopped albums, quitting jobs, and giving up on ourselves (more than once). Rox talks about abandoning 25 business ideas (including the infamous House of Resin), and Rich opens up about staying stuck in a job he hated for 20 years before finally taking a risk. If you’ve ever felt like it’s too late to start over, this episode is your sign. Because we did it… in our late 30s and 40s. And if we can, you can. Topics include: Why failure isn’t the end How identity holds you back The power of delusion (seriously) What commitment really looks like (spoiler: it’s not 5AM gym sessions) Our personal stories of starting again… and again

This week we're talking about how to start again and how to turn failure into success. We are going to talk to you about the four steps to starting again, which includes your identity, the changes that you might need to make, being delusional and staying committed. We are also, of course, going to talk to you about all of our personal failures. This is Late Bloomers where we are getting our lives together. Eventually. What was that sound effect? I don, poo, poo, poo, poo. So we did start again, didn't we?

You started again loads of times. I've probably only started again professionally once. Yeah. So I think it would be fun, well maybe not fun, useful to talk about our failures at work, mine being actual out in the world failures and yours perhaps more being a failure to take a risk to make a change. So I'll go first. Go on then. So obviously I failed like so many times in my music career, which is now currently going well, yay, but it wasn't always that way.

I began making music in my 20s. I spent loads of money on an album that absolutely flopped. I swore I'd never make music again. Broke that promise. Did another project. That failed. Did another project. That failed. Then decided to be a songwriter. And yeah, the whole thing, basically just, I became a bit of a failure in my own eyes over the period of 15 years. Will Barron I think it's important to say as well, yeah, you have got some music stories, but how many abandoned social media accounts and business domain names and Etsy shops have you got? So it's not just the big failures, is it? There's quite a number of-

Oh my god, there's so many. There was the resin business. There was a podcast years ago I wanted to do called Spiritual Gangsters. I had a YouTube channel called How to Unt Yourself. And if you look on my 123redge account, there's like 25. I had a YouTube channel called How to Unt yourself. And if you look on my 123REG account, there's like 25. I see it on the bank account. Yeah. I'm holding on. I'm holding on.

So I was never sure of ideas where my problem was I couldn't execute, I couldn't see it through. I could never move from the initial buzz of the idea into something that was long term working until recently with both music and then our stuff like Dubby, it's totally different. We have kind of managed to start again and find success, late 30s, 40s. Sorry, I've got to go back to the resin where you started, because that was my first like taste of your business entrepreneurialism skills. We were first together, like resin was like the thing, like making cool like tables and coasters and stuff and putting

playing cards in there and sobriety chips and stuff like that. So we did it for a bit of a hobby, researched it all. And then you were like, let's start a business. I've already bought the domain name. It's called House of Resin. I've started the socials. And like for me, then obviously I didn't know any different. I was like, wow, that is, that's an amazing idea. Like we're doing this. We're starting the business. So I ordered loads of resin, we made a big like table that took a whole day and we were like we could probably sell this for six or seven hundred quid and blah blah blah blah blah. That started, I wanted to continue and then well you just sort of didn't want to do it anymore. I was like wait

what? What's going on here? So I was loving it, I was loving making the products, adding in the glitter, making coasters, ashtrays, tables, watching all the videos. We got all this stuff. Obviously got the domain name, did the branding, did a logo, made an Etsy shop. And it was the day that we put the Etsy shop online. And I was like, oh my God, where's our first order coming? And we got no orders, obviously, because there was no marketing and I was just living in dreamland. And then I was like, oh, well, that's done. But you had bought like the whole kit, the whole of

your kitchen was like a resin making factory. To be fair though, like what that taught me about you and and it's a positive, is like how you can shrug it off and just move on. It's like as if it never existed. So that amount of time and energy and stuff like that, I was like gutted. I was like, wow, we've wasted so much time. But you actually find enjoyment of that, don't you? Of that like creative process and doing the logos and stuff like that? Well, a hundred percent. I don't know whether the shrugging it off like it's nothing after spending a grand on the equipment is a good thing, but thanks for seeing it that way.

What I have learned in the last few years is actually, and this is the same for a lot of ADHDs, you get the same dopamine hit from planning it as you do from doing it. So now, because I still have business ideas all the time. Hello. Yes, you do. Shadowlands. I won't go into it. But I did the logo, the branding, I named all the different stages, this music festival, but that's it. I've planned it as if it's going to happen and then not done anything. And I've done that loads of times. I did that with the underwear line. So I've learned. Oh yeah, the underwear line. Yeah. So I've learned to just, it's like a game. Like you would play Xbox. I like to create and come up with business ideas. And what saves me now is I don't actually

actualise them. I play it like a game. That's where we're really different. So before I go into my failures, like we're opposite in that, in that world. Cause I like, if I think about needing to start a brand and logo and register for the socials and look for a domain. That's effort and long for me. So it's like if I commit to do that, it's happening. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. So it's total opposite. So that's a quick history into all my lovely failures. So how would you see your failures? Because you had a steady job, the same job for 20 years, since you were 16. It wasn't the same job. it was the same company. I had a lot of promotions in that 20 years. I

started off as a cashier, then a personal banker, then an assistant manager and various different managers and ended up in a flagship branch managing 50 people. So looking at that story, it would be really easy to say, well, there's no failure. You worked as a, on the checkout at 16, you worked up to being this big manager in a bank in the UK. So what's it doing in an episode about failure? Well, I wouldn't see it as like actual failure. If you look at the measures of business success or income or whatever, where I see it, for

years and years and years and years, I hated my job. Like I hated going to work. The bosses were a lot of them were just bullies. The expectation was unreasonable. Like there was no, it was thankless. Like I hated it. So doing that every day and bearing in mind, they were like 12 hour days because I was driving over an hour to get to work, working a full day, driving an hour back. So probably left at seven in the morning, got home at seven at night. There was huge amount of pressure, huge amount of anxiety. So there was that, that there's a failure in that I'm living a

life in a job that I like can't stand. And the other failure, which is probably linked to a bit of being really risk averse is for years, because I was good at my job, although I hated it, I was good at it, that's why I kept on getting promoted. And I've got quite a business mind. Like I'm quite good with analytics, data, trends, understanding where opportunities are. So I always said for years, like, I wish I was self-employed because I think I'd do well. And it became a joke in the

end, because I always used to say, I would be good at running my own business. I just haven't got any ideas. And then wheel in the bluehead ADHDer that has got probably too many ideas on a daily basis. So it makes sense why it works. But that starting again was difficult for me. Yeah. So mine was actual doing it and failing, doing it and failing. Yours was failure to act, failure to look after yourself, take a risk, make a change. So I think that's how we're going to sort of approach the episode is those two totally different experiences and how we both managed to start again in different ways. So let's get into it and the four steps of

starting again. Of course you've broken it down into four steps. Obviously. So the four steps we're going to Of course you've broken it down into four steps. Obviously. So the four steps we're going to go over is identity, the need for change, the need for delusion, and also commitment. So let's start with identity. Go on.

And how that affected both of us. So for me, failing so much in music meant that I started to see myself on a core level as a failure. Like me as a human being, I have failed. I am not capable. I'm shameful. I'm not built for success. And when you have that self-belief as your core identity, it's very, very difficult to build something and be bold and be confident. So the way I would walk into songwriting sessions, like shoulders down, no makeup on, very quiet, very unassuming, nobody would have ever thought there was an artist within me that was capable of going and singing to 6,000 people at Download Festival. It's just no way because I carried myself with such a lack of confidence and low self-esteem

because I had fully absorbed that I was a failure. So how did you change that? Because that is not the you of today. No, it's not. I think that I don't know why, but when I tried again with you, 2021, I released my first single. I dressed up as someone else. I had this blue wig, put loads of makeup on, I dressed a bit more alt. That character was really far away. It's really funny because

I've basically become that person in real life now. But I had to create a character that was capable of being confident because I was not. So I kind of created Rory who was stronger, more confident, cooler, someone who I thought was deserving of success. I also want to jog your memory. I remember the music video for your first single. And something that had happened just before is that you had had a conversation with somebody called David Grant, who was like your voice stroke life coach. And he said something to you that struck a chord that was like the start of the

journey, which was about like singing with your head up, putting your chest out and just showing up. He said, I was doing a singing lesson with him and he's known me as Rox for many, many years, but I'd gone back for singing lessons and I was talking to him about Rory. It was, yeah, before that first music video and I was singing the song to him and he went, you are singing this as Rox, you're bringing Rox's history, Rox's low self-esteem. I love Rox but I don't want her singing this song. Put your shoulders back, put your chin up and bring the energy and the confidence. And I sort of like went like that, sung it and was like, oh, and that's the person that I am in

music videos and on stages. He changed my life with that one. It's really powerful because I remember it and it was the catalyst to change everything. And even like you talk about the music video and I remember standing on the sidelines watching you and every break I used to, I was reminding you of what he said. On the alternative video, he was shouting from the side, remember what David said, shoulders back, because I'd be like this and then I have to.

Yeah. And not only did it help, like if you think about your most viral videos, like the clip of alternative on the rooftop, it is the moment the video starts is with your shoulders back, you looking up at the sky. Yeah. And so it's just one small act that's very much linked to identity. Wow, isn't that insane? Yeah. That one sentence from someone could change an entire identity in a moment that I could

just choose to go, oh yeah, confident version. Totally faking it, by the way. Everyone's faking it. It doesn't come naturally. It's getting a little easier now because I've practiced it, but I have to like forcefully engage confidence switch. So that's probably my biggest thing with identity, shoulders back. Walk in as a winner, not as someone who's failed. And also I now look back on all of my music failures

as necessary steps in refinement, in resilience building. There's no way I'd be able to do what I do today without every single one of those failures. So like failures aren't failures, they are just the steps before success. So handing over to you, if we're talking about identity, where was your identity and what was holding you back? Well, mine is more, if I look back, it's just accepting reality. Like, you know, bearing in mind I hated the job that I was going to every day, but I had to provide for two kids and you know, pay rent, mortgage, whatever it is that I had bills to pay that I couldn't afford to not pay. I couldn't go anywhere because parents were in Spain, I needed to make it work. So my failure was just, I suppose, giving up control of my life. It was like, oh, this is life

now. It's just what happens. I've got to earn the money. There's nothing else I can do. I've worked here since I was 16. So of course I can't do anything else. I can't like go back into university and not earn any money. And because it's all I've ever known, my, my worth and value on the open market, getting another job wouldn't be anywhere near the money that I earn in this company. So it's just like, just defeat a statue. Just like, this is what happens now.

Your identity was a bank manager. Yeah. You'd done it since you were 16. It's all you knew. So you didn't think you could change. No, definitely not. Also as a dad that needed to provide. So you're a bank manager and a dad, and probably those two

identity markers like kept you there for a really long time. So looking back at the massive change you made a couple of years ago to take a year off work, to take a sab sabbatical to focus on all of this stuff. How did you change from the dad bank manager to what you are today? Well, look, I couldn't, I still, and I even looking back now, right, you can say, well, that's quite risky, like leaving a bank manager job to go and be a social media influencer. I still don't like saying those words. But I wouldn't have done it unless like we had a million followers, like we were just about to finish our first book. Like we built this business before I left work.

And even then, I couldn't just quit. I was like begged for a career break, which is something that they offered, which meant I wasn't getting paid, but I was still employed for the year that I was off. And I was like, I, I need to have at least a year's salary in the bank to even consider leaving. And then we released out of laundry. So it worked out okay, but I was still like, really risk averse. So don't you remember the conversation in the pub?

I was like, oh, I'm not sure about this. It was so scary to me to even consider it. It really was. So even in, yeah, those first couple of months, your identity was still bank manager. Or almost like, oh, I'll be going back next year. What was the defining moment? When did you actually think, I'm a business owner, I'm an entrepreneur, when did that change?

Well, so I see that as two different questions. When we released Dirty Laundry and loads of people bought it and loved it, I was like, oh, okay, there's something in this, like this, this we can do. But I still just felt like, well, I had an online audience and we wrote a book that we, we put a lot of work into and thought into and people resonated with it, but I still, I wouldn't probably have said that I'm a business owner until a little bit later, like when we made Dubby our app and there was other, other sort of streams of income and management and working with app developers and, you know, really working closely with accountants and profit and loss. And like it was, that's where I

felt like a business owner. Yeah, Dubby is probably a big part of this story actually for both of us. Okay. So my identity was as a failure shoulders back and yours was as a dad bank manager. And then we had to change those to entrepreneur and to a confidence person. So the second step in starting again is actually making change. So if you do the same thing over and over and over and over again, you don't change anything. Probably going to get the same result. same thing over and over and over and over again, you don't change anything. Probably going to get the same result. It took me a while to learn that. So in music for me, I kept starting these projects, but I didn't change the kind of common denominator problem

in all of those failures, which was in fact me. My own behaviours, my drinking, socialising, relationship issues. It's very hard to go and find success in a crazy industry and writing books, music, being online. It's a crazy industry. It's up and down. You need a really stable home life. You can't be drunk every single night because those are the hours we built ADHD love in the hours after work. It wouldn't have happened if we were drinking. So it's really about looking at your life, looking at the pattern. And if there is a pattern of failure over and over again, having a really tough convo, what do I need to change so that next time I go for this, when I start again, it's going to be fully charged. I'm going to give my best effort. So it's no surprise to me that sobriety and therapy come in 2018, 2019,

you come in 2020, and then my first single comes in 2021 and it's all worked that time. Because I changed massively and that's something we don't necessarily love to think about is changing ourselves. Definitely not. It's very similar for me. The one that's exactly the same is sobriety. So the thing about building our business in the evenings, so there was an opportunity or creating an opportunity was when I was still full time work and no chance could I have done that if I was drinking because before sobriety, I was getting home from work and I had a beer open before even taking my shoes off. So I was never going to, you know, build a business there. The other thing, and it

sounds quite bold, but it was to leave work. I had to take that step away from safety. Unhappy safety is where I was at, into more risk. Now, what I'm not suggesting is that everybody listening to this goes and quits their job tomorrow, because that could cause problems. But something had to change. And I was set in my identity as a bank manager, I can't do anything about it. This is life now to like, what if, like, what if? And then put all the things in place to just give myself the best chance. And do you know what? The amount of fear and anxiety

that I had about doing it, I needed it because what it meant was I put everything into it. Like it wasn't failing. So you need that. Like that's where I think like fear is good because if I was just arrogant, like, you know, I'm going to make it, obviously you just don't work as hard in my opinion. So both had to get sober. That was my biggest one and go again. And you had to change of leaving work. It's huge. Okay. So step number three, delusion. Now this is something that

despite all of my failures, I've never struggled with delusion. I think every idea is the next big thing, whether it's a new music project or the resin business or the underwear line or a new music festival. It truly feels to me like, well, I've just come up with the next biggest idea in the world. I'm fully delusional, I fully back every idea. And you do need delusion. It has to be backed by the changes that you need to make and the right identity and the right commitment. But delusion is a really, really key part to starting again. You need to believe that what you're doing is going to work. I think one of the

best examples of this for me was with Dubby. So for those of you that don't know, we have a body doubling app called Dubby. Body doubling is basically when ADHD has got company, they can get loads of stuff done. Don't know why it works, but it does. And we kind of had the idea to start a body doubling app and community. It's been running over a year now and it's just growing and growing. We've recently started doing live sessions with the amazing Nicky, a hundred people cooking and cleaning three or four times a day. It's the best thing ever. When I came up with that idea and told you, you thought I was nuts. I didn't like the idea.

You didn't like it. When I spoke to my manager, he didn't like it. When we spoke to the first app developer company, they pretty much laughed us out the door because they didn't think, A, anybody really struggled with cleaning or making their bed. And B, that no one was going to want to body double online. That feels crazy. But I was fully delusional. I just knew if we can get this out, it's going to help people, it's going to work. We're going to build a community. So strangely for me, delusion has probably been one of my like superpowers. Definitely.

So delusion for you, this is probably one of the harder things that you struggle with, really believing an idea is going to work. Yeah, so I'll never have the same brain as you that thinks of an idea. And like you can, I suppose the difference between me and you is that you can see the end product, you can like be in the room, like it exists now, this thing that you've conceptualised, you can mentally get to the end. Like, this is where I want to be. I can't do that.

Like, I find it really difficult. So I'd like to sort of reframe, because I don't think I'll ever be delusional, but what I did need, which is somewhere in the middle, I think, is just self-belief. And it was something that I was speaking to my brother fairly recently. I'm pretty darned, he's got ADHD, he's got as many ideas as you. But like this notion, right, like you can look on social media or look on TV or look at who's creating all these things. And it doesn't feel real.

It feels like you're looking through like a glass panel that you just can't get to. And actually being with you, and it's something that I was chatting through with him, it's like somebody does it, and they're not superhuman. They're just people that have been bold enough to just give it a go. And like, so why not be the person who just does

it rather than thinks about it? Honestly, the world belongs to the people that just give it a go. And you think like, exactly. And you think you've got loads of competition, you really haven't, because nobody just does it. Everyone thinks about it. But nobody actually does it. So your competition's quite... What's your saying that you like? The road or the extra mile? Oh yeah. It's really quiet on the extra mile. Yeah. Oh, love that quote. And it just means if you do go a bit harder, work a bit longer or a bit smarter, and you just do it, you're going to be so far ahead

because most people don't have the self-belief or don't have that delusional element. It always blows my mind. I just love to think about it, that literally anything that exists in this world, the people that made this microphone or any musician or any business that we know and love today. It began as an idea in one person's head. Probably in ADHD person's head, quite often. Quite often. I think the neurodivergence.

I think before going on to the last one though, and this might like fit into the last one a little bit, I think it is worth saying, obviously you've given examples of music, you've given examples of dubby. But earlier, we've obviously given examples of like resin and stuff like that. So like, how do you know, because you can't give this to everything, otherwise, it'll be too expensive and it'll cost too much money. So like, how do you know which ones to chase? I don't know. And I do give it to everything. So for me, my music career, Dubby, our books, I have approached them with the same passion that I have the resin business, the underwear company that never got off the ground. It's always the same. It hits like this is the

new meaning of my life and I go after it. And it's the ones that kind of have legs and I stay interested in long-term and very often the ones that you of have legs and I stay interested in long term and very often the ones that you decide to work with me on. So although I'm very good at delusion, I'm really bad at prioritising and knowing which of those delusions can become reality. So onto our final step, step number four, which is commitment. Which is exactly that. And not quitting when things get tough or when I get bored. So where delusion would be easy for you and hard for me, I feel like this is the other

way around. So I can easily breathe through mine. Like I don't struggle with it. If I say I'm going to do it, it'll get done. Like, I always say I'm someone of conviction. And I don't mind saying I won't do it or saying no, it's not going to happen. I haven't got time. No. When I say yes, I'll do it, I do it. So I don't struggle with this at all. Like the minute anything becomes a thing, whether it's the book, the app, the ADHD love videos, it's like, cool, that's in the schedule now. We're working on that. That's part of life. And it's never changing. And obviously for me, it's wildly different. This is where I really struggle a couple of months into ADHD love videos, I didn't want to do it anymore.

It became really, really difficult to find the motivation. And I was fighting against myself and you, because I'm like, we're helping people. This is amazing. Like why has my brain suddenly gone, no thank you. So I've had to, and it's only because by the way I was working with you that I've been able to carry on some of these things. If I was on my own, I probably would have stopped. You see reason though, right? So, yeah, you don't feel like doing it anymore or you fall out of love and there's no dopamine in it. And I'm, when you say like, when, when we commit to something, it's never changing. I don't mind giving things up as long as there's good reason. So like when you're like, I don't

really want to do it. You're always willing to listen to here's why I think we should carry on doing it. If you want to live in this house, we need to get like stuff. Like you can take a step back and reflect, I think. That's probably growing older, that's having you. I also think I've had to find within myself my own type of discipline. And it is not the discipline that we're used to seeing wake up at 4am every day, grind, workout, eat chicken breast raw for breakfast and then work 23 hours a day. I've tried to implement things like that. That was obviously a bit of a joke, but there's like super productivity things do it for two weeks, burnout, never do it

again, feel like a failure. For me, and I think for a lot of people with ADHD, discipline doesn't work the way it does for other people. You aren't going to have a daily routine that you always stick to because you need change. You need novelty. So I've had to unlock what I kind of call flexible or wonky discipline. So I rest all the time. I like my lions. I like coffee in beds. I like days where I don't have to do anything. But when it is really, really needed, when we're doing dubby lives and we have to be on there working with people or when I'm finishing an album and I need to be in the studio, I can switch into beast mode and work for a few days, absolutely exhaust myself and then go into rest. It's like a really up and down roller coaster of discipline

where rest is equal to super hyper-focused hard work. I've been able to unlock the success. I really hate the way success is always seen as people that grind so hard all the time. Like you can wake up at half nine and have a coffee and still build a successful business. I think that's really powerful. You're quite often writing songs at midnight, one o'clock in the morning, because that's when it takes over. So you just, you sort of listen to your body and your brain and your energy

levels, don't you? And when it's needed, it somehow finds its way of kicking in. It's the one thing I'd love all ADHDs to know. Energy management is the number one tool for success. If you work yourself the productivity way, the way you've been told, your burnout, you have to work how you work which is in a burst of mega energy and then rest. Anyway, talking about rest, I think I've...

Yeah, well, we're not experts guys, but that is our story of starting again. We hope it's been helpful. If it has, and you're going to go and start rocking it with a business, please let us know, go and start rocking it with a business, please let us know, keep us posted, leave us a review, give us a follow. And if this hasn't been helpful at all, sorry about that. Just keep strolling. Just keep strolling. Enjoy your day. Guys, we'll see you next week. Thank you very much.