LATE BLOOMERS - THE ORIGIN STORY: How one video changed our entire lives!

Episode Date: January 1, 2025

In our very first episode, we’re diving into how it all began. Rich had survived abuse, two divorces, and a gambling addiction. Rox was battling alcoholism, relationship chaos, debt, and mental health struggles. Between us, we’ve had over 20 different jobs and hit rock bottom more than once. Then we found each other, got sober, and built something extraordinary. With ADHD creativity fueling our ideas, we made one video that changed everything—going viral and creating a community of over 5 million people. In this episode, we’ll share the highs, the lows, and the hilarious moments that made us a dream team. Plus, why we believe ADHD can be both a disability and a superpower—and how the right support can help anyone change their life.

Welcome to the Late Bloomers podcast where we are getting our lives together eventually. Eventually. It's taken a while. It has taken a while. That's okay. Good things take time. We're going to talk about the origin story today, aren't we? We are. But before we start, I've just noticed your card. Have you written your bullet points upside down? No.

No, look at the other side of it. Oh no. That's on brand though for this podcast do you think i could read it upside down for the that might make life a bit more difficult and now everyone's going to be the ones watching are going to be focused on your card being upside down so sorry upside down but it is on brand it doesn't matter we roll with the punches we make mistakes we keep going we do so this is the episode nobody asked for yeah how it all began began began seems like ages ago when did it begin it is and it still blows my mind that two absolute idiots somehow ended up going viral on the internet yeah and i don't know i don't know

how many followers we've got now but it's a lot it's about five million between the two of us yeah is it yeah it's crazy isn't it like what do you know what i mean what sorry. We're so sorry. However, it did happen. Yeah. And here we now are bringing you the Late Bloomers podcast, which is all going to be about finding your magic a little bit later in life, whether that is with love, family, work, mental health, addictions. We've basically messed up every single area of our lives. Yeah. Caveat. We're not experts, but we are really good at how to mess it up. So we'll

talk to you about that and hopefully you won't. I actually think we are two leading industry experts in how to mess up your own life. Big time. Yeah. Let's just think about our credentials. What are you racking up here? Well, I'm a couple of divorces. Two divorces. I'm addicted to gambling or a recovering gambling addict, alcoholic. What else have I got up my sleeve? Oh, sexually abused. So like, I know that's, that's really quite quick to i shouldn't be laughing at your sexual abuse it's just how you dropped it in yeah no we'll talk about it seriously like in a later episode maybe we will okay so gambling addict alcoholic two divorces two kids from two

different mums yeah sexually abused emotionally unavailable well not now but yeah what about you i can see what i saw in you yeah exactly i'm a that was a catch what a catch me alcoholic loads of issues with relationships 10 broken partners with men and women broken partners you broke them yeah probably unfortunately um loads of undiagnosed mental health stuff that i've just been raw dogging so it hasn't been pretty i've had 15 20 different jobs yeah the various times and quit oh i was 40 000 pounds in debt with a very poor credit rating always wanted to do music and have never managed to get it off the ground so no wonder we're a match a match made in hell i'm not gonna say the f word but f ups yeah absolute f ups however even though that is where we began when we met now it is a bit of a different story it is somehow we have this

absolutely wonderful community of five million neurodivergent people that we get to all people that love neurodivergence people that love neurodivergence we've got a lovely house i now own a house for the first time you do my credit rating is excellent. You haven't got a third divorce. Not yet. Not yet. We've got one of the kids living with us. They're doing a bit better. Yeah.

The other kid. Legend. Legend. Yeah. Going to be a professional footballer, I think. Don't put that pressure on her. I can't help but put the pressure on her. I know.

But basically, basically Oh and work Work's going great My singing work I'm somehow A bit of a little mini rock star Yeah Wannabe rock star And I've got my own stuff going on

On social media as well There's a million people that follow me Like what? Do you know what I mean? Like I got it with the half blue Half brown hair Or half dark hair Like and everyone wants to speak to you. I wouldn't have expected them to follow me on my own.

But you're amazing because you're a bloke showing up on the internet, not being misogynistic and Andrew Tate vibes. You're showing up going, here's comedy and how to love your family and be a great partner. We need more of that in the world so I guess it would be super fun just to share with people how we have ended up here and where ADHD

love began so I guess I'll start with the tampon story no we'll get to the tampon story okay that's an easter egg for later well figuring out that i had adhd yeah and a huge part of that was the internet obviously yes there can be loads of misinformation blah blah blah however i saw a video of somebody explaining what they were like and it was ad, I burst out crying. Yeah. It was Connor DeWolf, wasn't it? Connor DeWolf. I burst out crying and just thought, oh my God, this is me. Yeah. This is me being messy, being late, being artistic, having a bad memory,

all this stuff that I'd always thought made me wrong, strange, broken, I saw someone else express. And obviously having ADHD, I now understand I went into a massive hyper-focus, all the podcasts, all the books, it came up in therapy and very quickly realised and got diagnosed with ADHD. It was the sense, I remember you being in tears going back to when you first sort of realised, it was a sense that you weren't alone. And that comes up a lot actually in our community, doesn't it? Like I thought it was just me that it was this mess. Yeah, well very often you're growing up comparing yourself to neurotypical friends, maybe even parents. And you're in a situation where you feel like it's just you.

You're failing at being an adult. You're failing at life. It's your fault. You need to try harder. You try as hard as you can. You keep failing. So the shame just stacks up and you end up absolutely hating yourself. And then suddenly you find community and it is the most freeing, beautiful thing. So you're newly diagnosed ADHD. Yeah. Rewind the clock a few years. And how did this become about? Because still I was a bank manager and you were aspiring to be a rock star. This wasn't planned, was it?

This shouldn't have happened. No, this shouldn't have happened. And I love it because it just shows that you never know where a massive life tangent is going to come from. And sometimes just showing up and rolling with the crazy punches will end up somewhere absolutely awesome. Yeah. So how did it start? I remember the night vividly. So it's back in November.

Wow, you remember the month? 2021. Is that right though? It could be wrong. David Lee. So it's back in November. Wow. You remember the month? 2021. Is that right though? It could be wrong. No, I think it sounds right to me. So it's November, 2021. We're in bed.

Yep. I'm on my period. Yeah. And you're checking in with me whether I've got a tampon in. Yep. Because even though I was in my late thirties every month, it still came as a surprise. Yep.

Does that sound weird for a guy to do that though? Let's just. It is a bit weird, isn't it? But if you have an ADHD partner. Yeah. With a vagina. Yeah. Definitely going to understand.

Yeah. Okay. If you don't. It's not the podcast for you. It's not the podcast for you. All right. Fine. Get it. So you're like, babe, just check in. It's not the podcast for you. All right. Fine. Get it.

So you're like, babe, just checking. You've got a tampon in. I'm falling asleep. I'm like, yep. And then you say, I just want to make sure it's a real tampon and not one of the roll your own toilet paper ones that you make. And I said, real tampon with a little smug smile. Yeah. You look really proud of yourself.

I was proud of myself. Yeah, yeah. I was proud of myself. It took a lot of organisation planning. Skills that I'm not necessarily great with. And after that combo, just the idea dropped in my head, as they always do, that would be a great TikTok. You weren't on TikTok at the time.

I had been on TikTok with my music for about six months. I was kind of just getting into it, much to the disdain of Sia, who would have been like 17, 18, having their step-mom on TikTok. But it was about to get a lot worse. God, yeah. Can you imagine how they feel now?

Poor kid. So I said, that would make a great tiktok you went okay let's film it tomorrow obviously because at this point it was like midnight probably yeah so well yeah so i said no let's do it now yeah the little lightning bolts went off i got my phone open tiktok think of an account account name it's going to be about ADHD because I was hyper focusing on it ADHD couple gone ADHD life gone ADHD underscore love done no branding no thought like something that's going to become your entire life's work it's mad when you think about it like that though like no planning and actually if you if you go

back and watch some of our first videos they're awful like from up there grainy bad lighting front like yeah they're just bad it's it's insane but i really love that because i'm such an over planner and over controller very much like to think about everything that's going to happen and decide I do it with my music a lot the fact that this happened with with no plan no hours of overthinking it was just done on a whim is testament to the fact that life can do awesome shit and and probably like good motivation for people that you just need to show up don't you just like do it just do it now it doesn't mean the first time you do it's going to work i've probably got 20 different social media accounts 25 different domain names for

different businesses like this wasn't the first time i had an idea. Yeah, but that probably leads into the next point quite nicely because this probably would have been one of those 25 or now 26 abandoned projects, wouldn't it? Let's be on it. Like, yeah, I think I was never short on ideas, but I was extremely short on execution and motivation and motivation after the initial buzz had worn off. So if ADHD love was just me, I would have had 10 viral vids and then I would have sacked it off. Yeah. But because I had you and we were creating together is when I actually started to realize the power of teamwork because I could bring ideas. They were never running out, but you would bring, well, let's film it. Well, when I get back from work tomorrow, let's have half an hour to

make a video. And again, we didn't have any plan. It was just like, oh, that had a million views. I guess we'll make another one. Yeah. We did have to work on communication though. I remember at the start, there was a bit of friction at points when I was like, come on, we need to start a video, like PDA mode trigger in your ADHD. Like, don't tell me what to do. I don't want to do it. That feels like the worst thing in the world to do right now. And your face told me that. And I was like, well, we've got to do it. That's what we said we were going to do. So why? That's a bit of your autism meets my ADHD. So it took a bit of work.

You had the plan. It did take work, but I think we've both learned so much about each other's brains, how we work, actually how insane we are as a team. And it's crazy, by the way, that I was like, oh, I don't want to do it. it and don't tell me what to do it's been the biggest blessing of my whole life and it's made me feel better we found community it's helped us to write books and do the app and I'm sure it's also helped my music career so it's totally changed my life but that didn't matter you didn't you wouldn't have known that though at the times at the beginning where you were like oh do you know what i mean i can't i just want to eat nando's or

whatever like you wouldn't have known and that's another bit of magic isn't it you don't know where something's gonna get to yeah you just have to show up and kind of do the work even reluctantly for our first year you were in a full-time job yeah so just tell people what you were doing well I was not only in a full-time job it was about an hour and a half away from home so I had to drive from Kent to Brighton on the on the south coast of England hour and a half there hour and a half back I was a full-time bank manager so I had like 50 people that worked for me and we were just I was coming home pretty knackered pretty exhausted and then we were filming funny little videos and we were and at the weekend so like we built it for I mean

how long would that have been nearly two years yeah we built it before things started to change yeah and then well the do you remember when we sort of said we could probably do this yeah so I think we'd been doing it actually I think it was six or seven months is that oh yeah we'd been doing it and we'd had our sort of first little brand deal and earned 300 quid. And it was crazy because neither of us had experience of this. You had been 20 years in the bank. I'd been messing about on all these different jobs, but I'd never done anything on the internet, like influencing, like it's such a strange world to go into. Yeah. strange world to go into. And we started to get a couple of brand deals and start to think, oh gosh, like there is actually, you can earn money here. There might be a job. And starting to ponder, we don't want to just go and like peddle loads of products. What could we do? What could we bring? And that actually led to us writing and releasing a book which was in 2023

however the magical moment it was in summer 2022 we were is it were you going to talk about when we had the idea for the book no it was when you decided to quit work. Oh, right. Yeah. So we, you had a day off and we basically had a random Wednesday together and we were going to the pub for a lime and soda in the afternoon. We were talking about what videos we were going to make. And I just remember saying and feeling really strongly, wouldn't it be awesome if this was life this was life yeah we could have more time together if you didn't have to drive three hours and do nine hours a day and we went and sat in the pub in the bullfinch and spoke about what would need to happen you've obviously got two kids we had rent to pay i wasn't financially very stable at this point because music, I was spending all my money on music.

I was still getting out of debt. So it was a really big convo. I remember being petrified, like, because all I'd ever known was having a salary on the 23rd of every month, being able to afford my bills, car, rent, like it was just done. So the thought of venturing into a world of unknown was incredibly scary, but I also knew it was a one-in-a-lifetime probably opportunity. Like it was quite clear that it's doable if you work hard.

Yes, something, some little magic had happened and put these two idiots yeah on a lot of for you pages and I think again it was the perfect mix between the two of us because I'm definitely more I lean more into take the risk do it don't think about the consequences so I was very much thinking quit your your job, let's go, we'll make it work. You were very much like, we have rent to pay, I have two kids, we have to get to a certain point before we can do this. So you actually, you did a year sabbatical, didn't you? Yeah, I took a career break for a year.

What year was that? I don't even remember like 2020 it must have been where are we now 2024 so it must have been 2023 yeah so you had a year off January to December and then ended up actually quitting your job yeah and the thing that really changed for us was deciding to write and release our own book we've written two now and working on a third one but the first book was dirty laundry that was the life changer that one that was like i don't need to go back to work we can make it work um well it probably gave us enough money like one year yeah one year of your salary and we'd always said if we can get one year we'll work our ass off in that year and see if we

can build on that business and make this sort of full time and now look at us we're sitting in a podcast studio that we made at home, speaking to these lovely people. Of course, we've made it at home, but it just makes me giggle because within that story, there is so much ADHD, creativity, ideas, risk-taking, and there's so much of you, possible autism, the plan, the execution, the kind of logical analysis. The mundane jobs. I love them though. I love getting wrapped up in the detail. Because I always said when I was at work, I wanted to be self-employed, but didn't have any ideas. You're full of ideas and I can just do the work bit of it.

Like it's a dream team. But I'd always had all the ideas, but I'd always got bored or had drowned in the admin side or had overlooked something. So it was always a sinking ship because I could never keep it going. And it's so beautiful

because I really think the story highlights so much of what our message online is as well, which is you don't have to do it alone, whether that's starting a business or life in general, find your people, your teammate and build that beautiful, like yin and yang. Like I feel together with one awesome. Yeah. And I definitely think there's a bit of don't have to do it alone teamwork element but there's also like I get we talk about ADHD right like without your ADHD like well clearly we wouldn't be able to be ADHD influencers but this the wild like what's the word like optimism like the almost sometimes

blind optimism in this case clearly it wasn't blind but just the belief that you can do it and it can be done because you wanted to have lime and sodas halfway through the day. It was like, we can make this work. We can do it. And I was like, oh my God, I'm going to not earn any money. We're going to lose the house. I'm not going to be able to provide for the kids. This is ridiculous.

And then it just happened. It's the balance of the two it's really interesting because so much of our content focuses around what people may see as negative i don't see them as negative now it is just me in all my glory but like walking into walls forgetting wallets, being late, being disorganized. Very often someone's going to look at that and think that's a negative quality. We don't often talk about actually some of the amazing qualities about ADHD that we've literally lived through, that we feel the sort of fruits of even now. And it's important to talk about because yeah, the blind optimism being a bit delulu, I've always had that. And if I have in

my head, I want to do something. I don't see anything in the way. I don't see the barriers. The same way with, I think that you can leave work. We can do it. We'll write a book or we'll get a brand deal, make it happen. Me becoming a rockstar at 40, I'll do it. No label will want me. I'll start my own label. I don't see a problem. You just see the end goal. You do not hear any of the noise. I don't like hearing about the noise or the risks. I'm just single laser beam focus. Now, when I was younger, that could be a bit dangerous because it wasn't tempered with a very logical, rational partner to help me make the right decisions. But with a bit of maturity, with an amazing partner partner both in business and life that delusion

was 100 necessary to change our lives big time to make a 20 year old dream of mine come true which is doing music and it does make me wonder about that side of the power of ADHD to be so, we often talk about hyper-focus, you know, sitting and focusing on something for six hours. But what if what you're hyper-focusing on is a business or an idea that will change your life? Like that is potent and powerful and I wish that I could bottle it. Yeah. I mean, that's, I guess that's the whole gig.

You're not going to be able to bottle it. It's just untamed. It needs somebody to be like, yeah, that's a good idea. That's got legs or I don't know whether this is the right time. Maybe like that's a conversation we have fairly frequently because we're obviously sharing this, but there are other business ideas that you have that maybe aren't, isn't the right time.

Hundreds. I'm always dropping stuff on you for new projects, hobbies, business ideas. Podcasts. Podcasts. You've let me slide through. So I have slid through ADHD in general, TikTok, the book, the app, the podcast. Four things have been allowed. And we're going to chill for a bit.

We're going to chill for a bit. Do you promise? I promise. I'm obsessed with the podcast. The pink mics, the pink mug. I'm going to hold you to that. Yeah. Give me three months.

Give me three months and we'll see but the beautiful thing that i've learned is i'm not a total idiot incapable of living life and that actually the parts of me that i've been most ashamed about are capable of making massive change in my life with the right support. One thing I always feel a bit icky about is when people talk about ADHD as their superpower. Because yeah, I can look at it today and go, we started ADHD love because of it and wrote the book because of it. And I'm doing music because of it. Cool superpower, but go back 10 years. I'm living in a basement flat in London about to get evicted because I haven't paid the rent I'm sitting in the darkness because I haven't paid my electricity bill I'm self-medicating with alcohol I'm still self-harming got incredibly low

self-esteem it's not a superpower then it was incredibly disabling both can be true right like both can be true it can be a superpower and it can really make people's lives difficult yeah it's it's both a disability and a superpower yeah and it's so important to know that the key between which one of those it is for you is very often the support that you get yeah you have loved me and supported me from day one even when you didn't know it was adhd and you just thought i was a messy fucker yeah you've loved me through that and that love and being seen as someone of a value has changed the game so it isn't it isn't as it's very grateful that you

say that it isn't just love though like it takes work right like because I would love you but it's the little things I think like rolling my eyes tutting huffing little micro aggressions and stuff like that that I naturally I wanna or I used to want to roll my eyes or huff when you were late for something but it's learning and accepting that actually you don't mean to do that and it's not your fault and so yes it's love of course but also the discipline to treat you fairly i suppose for want of a better phrase i guess love is working hard yeah to see the other person always in the best light you do that for me and I do that for you even when it's hard even when we're annoying each other even when we're annoying each other which I think is the most

important time and I just really hope that within this episode and within future episodes, what ADHD is or people that are with ADHD is neurodivergence in general, whoever it is that maybe feels a bit behind in life starts realizing is that if you are having a terrible time in life, it might not be because you're a bad, horrible person that deserves this kind of divine punishment. You might just need a bit of support and a bit of love. Maybe you might need a cuddle and someone to tell you that it's okay and someone to work with you on your communication together. Maybe a bit of therapy. I've had to do a lot. You've had to do a good chunk. But life can change like so dramatically going back to the beginning of this episode, introducing ourselves as the biggest idiots ever

somehow with a platform on the internet, you're rocking out with all these addictions and divorces. I'm in debt, failing at something for 20 years with 10 broken relationships behind me. And yes, being on the internet is cool. But more importantly than that, we're both sober. Yeah. Doing as good as we can parenting. I'm not gambling. Not gambling. You're not taking drugs. Not taking drugs. We are in a house. We've bought our own house we're really happy yeah the family we've got a little dog and that is the absolute juice of life is when you have safety and happiness within your own home i think and on that note it's probably time to drop the mic at that point drop the mic and if you have enjoyed today like share subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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