The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - E35: Julian Hearn: Huel - £45 Million In 4 Years

Episode Date: July 3, 2019

Julian Hearn is the founder and CMO of Huel, a nutrition company responsible for the increasingly popular, powdered meal replacement drink. Huel is basically a meal in a bottle designed for time-poor people, enabling you to get all your nutritional...

Quick one, just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. Julian Hearn, the founder of Huel. Huel is a company that's very close to my heart and anybody that knows me knows how much Huel I consume. If you don't know Huel and you've been living under a rock, Huel is essentially a meal in a bottle. And because I live a sort of a very busy life, shall I say, I don't have much free time. So I don't spend a lot of time cooking, going to restaurants and things like that. So having a Huel in my bag at all times means that I can get all of my nutritional needs while still focusing and getting the most out of my day. I've been so impressed by Huel, so impressed. And so I was overwhelmed with excitement when I found out that I'd be sitting down with Julian to understand the brand.

It's a great, great product, but it's also a great, great business. In fact, it's one of the UK's fastest growing business. And I think this year they're on track to make about 45 million in revenue. And that's in their fourth year. When I look at Huel, I see so many small touches of genius. So I've been so incredibly excited to meet the man behind the brand, to understand how many of those things were intentional, or how many of those things were just luck. My suspicions would tell me it was the former. In this conversation, I'm not just interested in the business. I'm not just interested in the this conversation, I'm not just interested in the

business. I'm not just interested in the revenue. I'm not just interested in the product. I'm interested in the entrepreneur, his personal life, his personal struggles, his personal issues, his personal relationships. And I think he reveals some things that even caught me by surprise. And I have no doubt, no doubt that this conversation will catch you by surprise too. Without further ado, this is Stephen Bartlett and this is Diary of a CEO and today I'm joined by Julian Hearn. I hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself. Julian uh thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today it's an absolute uh privilege to me because as I've said to you and I hope people know that this isn't bullshit I consume a lot of your product I think it was built perfectly for somebody like me who's time poor um wants something that tastes good

and wants to also maintain their health while they're traveling and busy and thinking about a lot of other things. So I guess the first thing I have to say is thank you for creating Huel. And secondly, can you give me a little bit of a brief intro as to how Huel came about, but also how you came about as the entrepreneur you are today how I came about as an entrepreneur I think it was really a a need smust situation that uh I'd been uh I was 37 and working in London three hours of commute each way uh leaving the house at sort of half six in the morning getting home at half six at night it was a long old day and me and my wife were trying to have a baby and we'd had a few miscarriages and so i wanted to be working from home so um a was not the hotbed of uh great places to work so i was a head

of marketing for a company in london there was no alternative and luckily i bumped into some guys doing some affiliate marketing they were earning some mega money and working from home in their pjs and i was thinking hold on a minute this seems pretty clever um they were like me you know they're normal guys i don't think i'm particularly outstanding at anything in particular and i just thought wow if they can do this why can't i do this so i just spent the next year practicing learning in my bedroom of how to do this sort of stuff and uh and then uh after about a year of a little bit of money on the side i thought i could do this said to my wife right give me six months we've got enough money in the bank i'm gonna start so started a company three

months later i was earning more money than i was as a full-time job and then three years later i sold that business and that was a an affiliate marketing business correct yeah Was that your first sort of foray into being an entrepreneur? Yeah, apart from my mum found a photo of me when I was eight selling her plants on a stall out the front of the garden. So when I was eight, I did. And then the gap was nearly 30 plus years until I did anything real. But yeah, I probably would still be in that corporate job if that hadn't have happened. Because, you know, when you, I was earning decent money, I suppose, as a corporate person.

But I never really thought, because I didn't have any, I don't know, role models or anybody else I knew that had run their own business and been successful. So I just went the sort of corporate route after leaving university. So I must have had a little bit of an entrepreneurial bug, but it wasn't obvious until that point. Were you studious? Were you good in school when you were younger? I left school at 16 with pretty poor GCSEs, to be honest. How poor? but it wasn't obvious until that point. Were you studious? Were you good in school when you were younger? I left school at 16 with pretty poor GCSEs, to be honest. How poor? Pretty poor in the sense of I got two Es at English.

Right, okay. I can't spell. I think we had a little chat earlier. I'm not very good at spelling. Same. I think I got a couple of Cs and maybe one B, something like that. Pretty poor GCSEs. And so I left school at 16.

So no, at the school I went to, there was, I don't think the teachers wanted to be there and the kids certainly didn't want to be there. So there was not a lot of ambition. I didn't know anybody who went to university, didn't know anybody who did A-levels. So I just left and got a job like everybody else. And it was only three years later,

one of my girlfriends said, what are you doing? I was digging holes in the road for two years. That's what I was doing, I was working, digging holes. And she said, what are you doing? I was digging holes in the road for two years. That's what I was doing, was working, digging holes. And she said, what are you doing? You're too bright to do this. So at that point, that's when I went back to college. And then, so you start this affiliate marketing business. You sell it.

Yeah. How old were you when you sold it? 40 years old. 40. And so how quickly after selling that business did Huel begin? Probably nearly two years later two years later and tell me about how that came about so i took a bit of time off luckily we did have a child and um you know so i i had no reason to work i had enough money to survive on and to live on so i had no uh reason

to work so i took a good year out if not longer but then you get itchy feet you can't like sit at home i think you gotta have a work work like balance works both ways like people usually work too much they need to have more free time when you've got 100% free time you need a little bit of work in there so I wanted to find something that I was going to be passionate about to be proud of something to keep me busy three days a week because the first company I built and sold I wasn't really proud of it you know you wouldn't want go down to the pub and talk about it with your mates. It was something that generated cash, but it wasn't something you would be proud of

to wear the t-shirt sort of thing. So I wanted something I was going to be into, proud of, something that was going to be beneficial to the world. So I started another company called Bodyhack and Huel span out of that. And so why did Julian make Huel? what why why uh you know why he'll you could have made any business you could have done marketing you could have done anything why he'll because the the thing that interested me when i sort of sat down i thought what am i actually

interested i was always interested in sort of health and fitness stuff so well-being and um so the body hack company was a uh i was trying to get rid of all the sort of dubious websites out there they're giving fake information what i was going to try and do is run every single people you know all different uh meal plans all different exercise programs to see which ones work take photographs every week after three months you would see which ones actually generated the result and so i did that for three months and i was um went down from 21 body fat down to 11% body fat. I was 40, 41 years old. So it's the leanest I'd ever been.

And that was because I was weighing all of my food from scratch. So it was crystal clear that what you eat is super important. It's more important than going to the gym, really. So I was doing three hours of exercise, but I'd done that for 10 years previous and I hadn't got the same results. It's the food you eat is super important. And so my friend said, how did you do that? And I told them.

And they said, how the fuck am I going to eat an egg at 11 o'clock with broccoli and, you know, cook an egg? And then at 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, I'm going to cook 200 grams of turkey and quinoa and baby spinach. And they said it's not practical. You know, you're living in cloud cuckoo land. So it made me think, right, so people want to eat healthy food, but they need it convenient. And typically it doesn't work that way usually healthy food is time

consuming to prep and uh and then convenience food is just junk food it's not good for you so where's the healthy convenience food out there so i was using protein shakes protein shakes super convenient but you can't live off protein alone so they're no good either so it made me think why why don't we could put all the stuff into one single product so i found james collier who's our co-founder james collier put a formula together which is pretty much what it is today and then made made us think well there's all the other benefits of it because when it's powder it's got 12 months shelf life so it's better for the world in the sense of um there's no food waste 30 of food is all thrown away

because it gets bruised or its shelf life expires. Well, you can't bruise powder. So that's really good. You can put all these meals into a single bag. So it's super convenient. It's got all the nutrients in a single product. And then we can make it vegan as well. Because if you can't see it, it doesn't really matter whether it's a meat product or whether it's a vegetable product. You know, you've just, you know, blended all these products down so it just ticked so many boxes it's time you think shit this is like better for the world it's better for the person using it it's more cost effective than most foods that people consume in today it's more convenient uh win win win win win so it made us think right that that's got some legs to it and then the next job was to come up

with a brand come up the name get the product made get it to market of all of that process you've just described what part of it were you uniquely good at and i can ask this question in another way when i meet entrepreneurs i always think um there's like one defining thing that made them succeed versus probably everybody else who would have had that same thought and would have um even maybe had the same idea but within the execution there's something within the founder or ceo whether it's you know bernett jim shark or other ceos that i've spoken to that is kind of unique to them and they're an experience and and often unique to how they see the world um possibly i'm not sure exactly whether it's one particular thing i think i've got a good design aesthetic i think i sort of I'm not sure exactly whether it's one particular thing. I think I've got a good design aesthetic. I think I sort of, I'm not a great designer. I can't design, but I think I

know something looks good or doesn't look good. So I think that was being beneficial. I think the fact that I'd already made my money meant that I could make something that, uh, in lots of cases, we over-spect it, you know, we spent more time or spent more effort or money on something, whereas I could have done a lot cheaper version. I think sometimes that's the problem. These types of products in the past, people have cut corners in a bad way. They've not used the best ingredients. They've not packaged it in the best way.

They've not cared as much as what I did because I only did that. I didn't do it to make money because I already made my money, so I didn't need that. I did something that I generally wanted, and the objective was to do something I was proud of and the size of the business was irrelevant sometimes by chasing after numbers i think that is the that means do you never get the numbers but by not trying you get there it's a little bit trying trying to go up maybe yeah yeah so you know if you try too hard it's yeah you don't get the results i think it's it's the fact that we didn't try too hard we just i my original objective was three days a week work and to have a thousand people buying it a month so it's

gonna be a lifestyle business that was that's what the objective was and something that i would i would use personally and something that i would be proud of wearing a t-shirt down down the pub with my friends and they may do it and i was talking seven days i went down the pub every day and they were all four of us that we went down the pub was all wearing one part of your clothing because they're sort of proud to be associated with the brand as well so that i think that aspect of already have made the money meant that this time i could do it in a different way and i wasn't always thinking about cutting corners or saving money it's all about how do i make something that is good you know a quality product you did it for the right reasons exactly

there's something about that i've noticed about entrepreneurs where where they are willing to do something even if it's unpaid for the next five years because it's coming from a genuine place and those are the entrepreneurs same with uh with with bennett gymshark now that i've mentioned him that over time especially in the macro with a macro perspective seem to create things that people love but also they're able to weather the storms that come along with the way because most people would quit upon getting the first piece of bad news or hitting the first wall but that passion and that desire to do it for the right reasons i think it keeps them going and on that i guess to

that point jumping ahead a little bit I think generally there's a perception that entrepreneurship is easy and someone might listen to you know that story they might see the timeline that you've achieved your success on and what you've created there and think oh I could do that as well it's very very easy and I think we as entrepreneurs have a responsibility to give them the full picture yeah and because there's not a lot of places certainly not Instagram where they're getting the full picture. So can you talk to me about some of the sacrifices and some of the hardships that went into creating this that people wouldn't know? Okay, so sacrifices.

I didn't pay myself for three years. You mentioned that. So I just thought, what's the point of paying myself? It's going to come out of the company pocket. I think, you know, probably the first 18 months, I was totally immersed in the company, obsessed, didn't do anything else really. You know, I did go out, but you know, the hours you put in are ridiculous. So every, it was seven days a week for probably the first 18 months, not full blast, but I would say that what was happening was I'd do a full day's work, come home,

have some dinner and then go back on the computer. I used to do all the Facebook answers. You still do some of the customer service, but I would do some of that every evening and weekends for, yeah, probably a good 18 months and didn't pay myself at the same time. Probably made myself ill as well. You know, like you just, you sometimes burn the candle

at both ends a little bit too much and you just try and get through these times. Me and my wife split up. So, and that partly was down to that. So yeah, it's not as easy as you think. But at the same time, I think sometimes people think it's not as easy as you think. But at the same time, I think sometimes people think it's too hard and don't start. And I just think you should, I think people should have a go at it.

I don't think that I'm wildly different from the next, you know, the next person. And so I think that a lot of people think it's too hard and they shouldn't do it. And I think some people should have a crack at it earlier than what they do. Looking back, I do think that I waited too long. I was 37, 36, 37 when I first started. And you're, you know, I don't know when you started, but you're super young, right? So you've done it. So you didn't, you know, you said earlier about,

I don't know about your education, but you didn't come from money. You didn't come from a super high level of education, same as me. And we've both managed to make things successful so it's just creating determination the the cost you spoke about there though you know i've i've experienced that myself you know i i try i've really never had a girlfriend i tried for a year and that went to shit because again you know irrespective of how many hours i

spend in the office, I spend all of my time in my head. If you know what I mean, thinking about things. And that can, I think, make people that try and be in a relationship with me feel very lonely, even if they're sat next to me. And I've never been particularly good at compromise. I've been very, very selfish over the years. And so what you speak about there with your with your partner with your ex-wife yeah is that something that what advice would you give to 18 year old steve who's who's uh someone like you that's thinking of starting their business um about the impacts that it can have on romantic

relationships um i think that there's probably nowhere around it. If you've got it in you that you want to do something, then sometimes things do have to change. And if you deny yourself starting something or doing something because you really want to, then it still might have that knock-on effect anyway because you won't be happy with yourself, I don't think. If you're driven in a certain way, you just can't help it, don't think so uh the good news is is that it doesn't last forever so while you're in a obsessed stage getting something going because it has to you know it's a flywheel it's a snowball

it has to get going that eventually so i'm back down to say maybe four days a week now and i'm able to do sort of podcasts rather than normally this would have been no i can't do this i've got i've got work to do whereas i can i can now do these these these extra things that are still useful for the business but at a time you know you're it's a life or death when the early days of a business you know if you if something's not done today the business could fail tomorrow so in the early days you do have to commit you do have to say suck it up and go it could be could be 18 months it could be two years could be three years but there has to be a time in your life when I think you just grit your teeth, get it done,

and then you can look back. And how do you know? Because there'll be a lot of people that will start businesses and they'll get two years in and nothing's working and they've sacrificed their relationships, they've sacrificed their time, they probably have made themselves ill to some extent. How do you know when to quit, to throw in the towel or to carry on going?

I guess this is a tough question. Yeah, I don't think there's any right answer, but I've had three main businesses. And those three, two of them went almost straight away. As soon as we launched, there was instant results. The other one, it was lukewarm. And I think that might be the signal that if you're, say, two years in and it's still lukewarm, that ain't ever going to come good, I don't think. Obviously, there are exceptions to that where people have chugged along very slowly for a number of years and suddenly it's exploded.

I think there's so many opportunities now. There's so many different ways to get the ball rolling. You should be able to get a minimal viable product out the door pretty quick and then you should see if there's no demand you shouldn't have to chase a demand i mean in the early days we couldn't keep up with the demand you know it struggled to keep up and i think uh my first business it just took off straight away like i said within three months i was earning more money than my objective was so both of those took off within the first few months you knew pretty quick you know there is a long run-up to get sometimes the launch stage but i think if you can think of ways you can try and get some early adoption then that should give you enough feedback

or nice enough inspiration to keep going but if that is hard graph you're not people are not that interested maybe it's not the right idea it's not not the right thing so going back to the question i asked a second ago as well um what's in the last couple of years is is there a particular day or moment that you would consider to be your hardest um there's probably a couple uh i think every day's pretty hard right i don't get me wrong like every day there's problems we just been talking about some problems in the building today. So every day can be pretty hard. There are some real crunch ones. So, you know, even pre-launch, we had a company that strung us along

for a number of months that had promised to make the product and strung us along, strung us along. When I say us, it's basically me. And then let me down. And that was probably a year in pre-launch. You know, that took me a year to get to that stage. So at that point, I sort of said i'm done um but the following day got out of bed and went what why should i give up just because of that one person let me down there must be other

people out there that can do it so just why not just keep going so that's that was one and then another one was just sometimes you get a lot of criticism on social media, which I'm sure you're probably aware of. And it's stupidly unjustified. Yeah, but it does get to you. And you just think, why are you even, you know, like we're an ethical company. We're trying our best to do the right thing. So when people criticize you, when you think there's all these other dodgy companies out there doing bad stuff, why are you picking on us? You know, why are you having to go out and that can be soul destroying.

Have you learned how to deal with that? Ignore it. having to go out and that can be that can be soul destroying how do you how have you have you learned how to deal with that ignore it i think uh in the early days i used to really go backwards and forwards with people trying to change their mind and uh never works i've read somewhere i have done it a couple of times i have i have managed to persuade a few but i did read somewhere they said like give your answer back to somebody and that's it that's it no more you just give one answer back so you give your side of the story they come with your criticism you you tell your side back and uh one thing quite often i i use to to kill critics too much is is uh there's a quote from ratatouille believe it or not the anton egon quote if you cut that and paste that uh and send that back to somebody which basically you know critics are worthless they add nothing to the society that's basically what the quote says

they i don't think anybody's ever come back after that and actually come back and had an argument back i'll send you the quote you can use i've i've i um i'm the same obviously i think i think all business owners are the same if you really care about your business and you you know that the things being said about your business and your life's work are fundamentally incorrect not even you know someone else's opinion fundamentally that didn't happen or that doesn't happen it can be one of the most triggering things even for me yeah yeah really can ruin your day yeah right um especially if then a bunch of other people jump on and believe that fundamentally incorrect thing and then it becomes part of your

brand yeah i've i've struggled with that over the years um with social and i've just i've arrived at the the decision that i will i will in some cases reply empathetically um but if i if i don't feel like i can reply empathetically i won't reply at all yeah i think that's the best approach so um yeah can you tell me something that you've you've learned from building huel and being an entrepreneur that you think most aspiring entrepreneurs have absolutely no idea about or that is not told I mean there's so much basic stuff behind the scenes like coming up with a brand come up with an idea you know you read so much advice on how to do those types of things, how to do performance marketing. There's so much advice on that. But there's the basic stuff behind the scene, just doing purchase orders,

just doing the real simple stuff, how to find an office, how to recruit staff, all the real basic stuff you don't really hear about because it's not the sexy side of it. And I think those sorts of things, you just, I mean, you have to make it up as you go um but i think that was one thing that was surprising to me because my first business was easy in comparison that uh there was no product there was no um customer service there was no fulfillment none of those sorts of things whereas with your physical product yeah is hard much much much harder than doing uh online stuff sure so my background was digital marketing and so creating the website creating the name it's all difficult but it was much easier

than actually getting a physical product and then actually getting that product to market then getting the fulfillment you know picking the cardboard boxes learning how to tape a cardboard box up you know all these really sort of basic stuff you're just not even aware of so there's there's absolutely thousands of things like that that you are not aware of until you start and there's no one to even tell you how to do it because it's not the sexy stuff so nobody's really telling you how to do it one of the questions that i think is most popular when i look at my inboxes from young entrepreneurs is a very sort of ambiguous question but it's just um where do i start right because there's typically so many things that one could be doing yeah that um i think entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs

are sometimes forced into like um they almost paralyze themselves because they look at all that you know i've got to do this this so what would your advice be to an entrepreneur that's listening that thinks i want to start a business but i'm just overwhelmed by the amount of things that I think I need to do? I would, in terms of the idea, I would always try and look for something. I think Huel was a product that I wanted. It was an issue that I had. I wanted convenience, healthy food, right? And that's what my friends wanted.

So I had the perfect audience because if you are your own customer, then you will use your own product and if it pisses you off then you can fix it whereas if you're trying to make if i'm trying to make i don't know a product for uh some different type of person i'm trying to guess all the time what they actually want whereas if i make it for myself and my immediate friends then i've got the perfect feedback loop i just keep using it every day and then that bit bugs me i'll fix that then this bit bugs me they'll fix that so i think being fixing a problem you personally got or people very close to you have got means that you will be able to get to the the best product very very quickly

and obviously you know when when you um have the success like you've had with your your previous business in marketing and then obviously huel a lot of things can change in your life personally yeah and one of those things is obviously money yeah which is a a clear upside in marketing and then obviously Huel, a lot of things can change in your life personally. And one of those things is obviously money, which is a clear upside of building a business and being successful and selling it as we would know. What impact has money and having money had on your life going from where you were digging holes in the road to now? In some ways, it sounds a bit strange, but but maybe not that much i still live on the same estate i live in a bigger house but it's the same estate uh i still go to my same local pub with the same friends um i still live in the same town um i drive a nicer car what car it's a seven series

bmw so it's a nicer car than i had before I go on nicer holidays uh when we first sold my first business we bought a house on the coast which was very nice but we didn't use it enough so we sold it and and got a lot of money in the bank so I can do whatever I like whenever I like I don't buy expensive I've got a plastic digital watch on here so I don't really go and buy the the crazy expensive stuff because um you know as long as you're financially secure i think spending you know basically i suppose i've been brought up a bit tight you know like uh you know you you you don't spend wildly so i think in terms of um but in terms of happiness and yeah i, has it made you happier?

Yeah, I suppose it has. You don't have to worry about money. You know, I don't spend recklessly, but I do take, you know, I take lads on holiday. You know, 10 of us are going to Spain later on this year, so I'm paying for the hotels. I've taken people to Vegas to watch UFC fights so I'm trying to do all around experiences rather than buying gold watches or something like that so those those times are really good you know so you remember those days so I suppose it

makes you happy because of those but on a day-to-day fundamentally day-to-day basis if you was 10 times smaller than what is today i'd be just as happy so a young person that's listening to this um that is wondering if money because when it's one of the lessons that i learned i thought for some bizarre reason that money would scale my happiness to some extent but i was content and happy at the time but i just presumed probably because lots of the unhappiness in my life growing up was my mum and dad screaming at each other because they couldn't you know afford things I presumed it would scale my happiness but um upon making a decent amount of money I realized that adding

more money to that would have very little effect but what I liked really liked about your answer is that realization that the happiness will come from experiences with like meaningful relationships and stuff yeah definitely versus cars and watches and stuff. Yeah, I think if it's a new experience, it's a new experience. Whereas with cars, I think somebody said it quite wisely, that once you've bought one, you get used to anything. So that's the new norm for you. So then you have to then, where do you go?

Then you go to a more expensive car, a new more expensive car. What do you do? Never ending. Yeah, never ending. So I think that by doing new novel things, like going to new places, like we went to the Grand National this year, took some lads up there, and we went to nice places. It was good.

So those sorts of things, I think, are the best thing that has come out of this. We gave some of our friends and family some money as well, which helped them out. But I think in general the the the gold watches are not the not the thing you are that do it for me one of the big things in our sort of society at the moment is the topic of mental health yeah and founders and entrepreneurs um go through very sort of high pressure um i guess high pressure journeys in order to try and achieve this objective. I've got so many questions here.

How do you protect your own mental health? And what have you learnt over the last couple of years about keeping your mental wellbeing in check? I think that because of keeping my friends close, I think those are useful. I think sometimes people might drop their friends, move out. We talked about spending money on a big house, but basically that big house has got to be out in the countryside,

which basically you're removing yourself from your social circle. It seems a little bit strange in some ways that actually you become more detached. So I've deliberately not done that. That's why I still live on the same estate with the same friends. So I think that's a good thing. Don't just, you know, forget where you came from and just move on to bigger and better things. So, you know, we were talking earlier about Ash, you know,

like you're still friends with this guy that you first started off with. So I think it's good to have long-term friends. I think that's a fundamental. And I think in terms of the last few years, if you go too mad in terms of hours, it's going to catch up with you eventually. So you will get yourself burned out if you're not careful. I'm a lot older than you,

so I'm probably going to get burned out easier. You could probably go harder than what I can for longer, but you do need to take into account that when you see it coming, you've got to try and take the foot off the accelerator a little bit but you know ultimately somebody asked me a question uh a place of a doubt you know there is no way around it you're gonna have to put the graft in you have to put the hours in it's gonna have to be for a sustained period of time to make these things work but try and keep an eye on yourself because if you start i don't know i probably

started going out too much you know like in the evening trying to make up for um do you think it's like a reward mechanism i suppose you think i've put all these hours in what am i getting back out of it i'm not going to sit i'm so i probably burnt a candle at both ends went out a bit too much and midweek weekends and you just think yeah you can do it you're indestructible you keep going but eventually it will catch up with you if you're not careful. Did it catch up with you? Yeah. Yeah.

And what were the symptoms of that? I'm asking for myself here because, because do you know what? What you said there is very accurate. I, at one stage, thought I was indestructible. Right. When I was like 18, 19, I thought I can just, I don't need sleep.

I don't need to speak to a human being. I can just hammer it away. And then, you know, I'd look at other people and think like, ha ha ha. Yeah. And then people would say to me all the time, you're going to burn yourself out. And I never believed the word of it. I never believed it either until I started to get super tired. Right.

So I just thought, oh my God, you know, like there was, when I, I'll tell you what the signal was when I stopped going to work. There was a couple of times where I just where I'd get up in the morning, get on the sofa and didn't go in. And that was not me. So yeah, and then like stopped going to the gym and stuff like that. And just like going to the gym, you used to look forward to it because it gives you a bit of a lift, a bit of a buzz.

And then I'd go to the gym and I'd dread going because I know I'm going to be even more tired when I come out of it. And it wouldn't do that. So I think I went and saw a doctor doctor said um chronic fatigue syndrome and uh and then the obviously the problem with that is it's not clearly defined as being an actual thing there's no clearly defined sort of um medication but she's basically said like you need to change your you know like sleep patterns and stuff like that and sort yourself out. Take some time off.

I said, I can't take too much time off of stuff to do. So it was just a case of, and this was probably 18 months, two years ago. So I think I'm sort of back to normal now. But it does take a long time. And some of those days were like, yeah, you're just fucked in terms of, you know, your ability to get stuff done. So luckily the team's a lot bigger now so we've brought people in I gave up the CEO role and so all those things have contributed to to put me back on an even keel um chronic fatigue fatigue syndrome yeah what did he just what did

he say the doctor say about that sounds like something that I I need to do my very best to avoid yes indeed uh I think that uh some people there no, I don't think it's even a clear, I think it's one of these really quite woolly ones. People say it's not even a thing. But for me, it was very clear that I was not the same as what I was previously. And so, yeah, I think it probably was burning the candle at both ends. And, you know, like I'd go, I'd do a day's work, go out in the evening, get up in the morning,

go to the gym, do a hard session, go to work, do it again. And like, that was a bit too extreme because of this sort of feeling like I could do anything. And eventually it does catch up with you. But I think it's just, you've just try and, in the early days of a startup, it's a sprint for sure. You could die the following day, basically. If the company, if you don't do certain work, the company could fail. So you are scared of failure in terms of this baby you've created.

It needs nurturing. You know, you've got to try and nurture that baby as best as you can. And if you don't feed that baby that second, it could die. So you keep feeding. And then eventually the baby becomes a toddler and it's more self-sufficient. And I think that at that stage, you can take the foot off the accelerator and that you need to try and get to that point um and notice that point and then do take your foot off the accelerator because if you try and keep going full pace full pace it turns from a sprint to a marathon so we're

in that sort of marathon stage now we sort of can see the future of being i've got this you know it's not it's not another year's time it's number three or four years time and if you're at full pace of number three or four is you're really going to struggle and it's i guess it's about trying to make your life a little bit more balanced and sustainable which is what i'm thinking a lot about the moment yes someone asked me the other day they said what's uh what's your goal for the for the next couple of years and i said um to try and achieve more balance and sustainability within my life because i've heard from enough people like yourself who've who are much more experienced than I am that um if I don't then it will actually be detrimental to my business in

the long term yeah versus me thinking that I can just sacrifice everything you know yeah and I've not been very good either at um maintaining personal relationships, but also romantic relationships, as I said. And I have this inclination that I'll probably get old and be lonely if I don't do something about that quite quickly. You've got lots of time ahead of you, but I think there is a strong argument to, you know, you've got a successful business now.

It seems pretty solid to me. You know, you've got some good people. You've got two big teams. You've got, you know, New successful business now. It seems pretty solid to me. You've got some good people. You've got two big teams. You've got New York and Manchester. So yeah, you probably could take a little bit more time to get that balance right. And if you think about, well, we went to Fast Track the other day

and Richard Branson came up on the screen and did a little talk. And he's, I think he's 68 years old now, but he's still got his fingers in lots of pies and he could be burning himself out but i think he lives on necker island so he gets on the morning goes kite surfing but he's still involved in his businesses but one of the other guys there uh i can't remember what he was the md of virgin or something like that he said that one of the the good things about richard is he doesn't get involved in the detail so when he comes into

meet and doesn't know the details you can take take the overview of the whole business and you can see stuff that the other people that are in the day to day, they can't see. So he's, he's more visionary. He can see the high level, but that works for him because then he doesn't need to know the detail. So it's sort of, maybe that's what you could be good at or what I should do more of is just don't do the job, but be the sort of visionary or the the overview of the

whole thing and that allows you to put less hours in because you've got a whole team to execute for you but you still steer the ship so you see the overview and that means you could spend less time doing the the nitty-gritty you know i i completely agree and i i um saw that you had relinquished the title of CEO of the company. And I think that the reasons for you doing that were 100% admirable and showed a tremendous amount of self-awareness. But so many people, probably myself included, have an ego, right? Yeah. Like, let's just be honest. And there's something that comes with the title of CEO that I think a lot of people would be attached to. Now you, and I've mentioned him a few times

now, but Bennett, Gymshark have both made that decision. And I really wanted to understand why you made that decision. Yeah. And to kind of understand if it's the best decision for me as well. Well, I'm not saying anybody can but there's lots of ceos so if you take a big successful company over the years they have lots of ceos they can only ever have one founder so you're never going to lose that so don't worry about the ego side of it because you're still always going to be the founder of social chain right so you don't have to worry about that that's that's can't change it's impossible to change nobody can come and do that but the ceo role is is hard you

know it's a lot of hours and and um and it's very broad so if you what i saw was that my skill set is not is not hr is not operations is not finance it's not new product development it's not people skills you know it's that is those but that's what ceo needs to be good at all those little things and i felt that i was very average at all of those but i'm very good at brand and marketing so why am i why am i it's just a bad use of um time for me to get involved in i mean some of the discussions the ceo has to get involved in were just very dull in my eyes i just didn't it wasn't the stuff that i think i was could add value to i don't think I was particularly good at. And I didn't find that interesting. So I decided to bring somebody in who was better at that than me. So James McMasters came in, he's done an excellent job. And so that allowed me to do what I thought I was good at, which is the brand and marketing and the beauty of brand and

marketing. It still can have input into all those other areas because if the operation is not right, the delivery is not on time or the product's not right, then I still can say that's affecting the customer, fix it. What's wrong with that? No, I still have input. It's not like I'm sort of sidelined. Sure. And I think Ben took the role of brand something or other.

Creative something, yeah. Yeah, so it's still got an overview of what the customer sees. And I think that the rest of it is the nuts and bolts, but really it's what the customer sees and i think that you know the rest of it is uh the the nuts and bolts but really that's what the customer sees is the key stuff and so as long as you keep a handle on the overall brand and the way people see the company how it actually gets executed can be passed over to a big broad team who can make that happen it's probably probably the case that the majority of founders should probably not be the ceo no i probably i agree you know what i mean yeah i do because you have the vision and you have the the understanding

from day one which is no one will ever be able to replicate no matter how hard they try they can create something different from the base you've built but they'll never be able to make your heel right um but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're the best with operations and finance like i'm not i'm definitely not and i've managed to put a lot of people around me that are much better than me at most things so my next question is um what what do you regret not starting sooner really yeah I think so I think looking back I mean I in some ways I never regret anything because the where I am today I might if I'd started sooner I might have failed because I didn't have the same amount of experience or wasn't the same level of motivation or whatever it was but I might have

given up so I might not be here today I always think that you know there's all little changes throughout your life and they're all possibly for a reason as you go through you pick up stuff as you go and I'm I'm here I'm in a place where I want to be so maybe is it was exactly the right way to do it but yeah if i was looking back you'd probably say i started sooner you started way younger i feel very old random question are you scared of dying uh no why because i don't think i'm gonna ever die i'm a bit silly i just don't i just it seems so far away it seems so far away that i don't even think about it no i'm definitely not scared i've i think i've had a full life i think i've um done most things that i wanted to do so no what are you scared of um spiders is that it yeah i don't like spiders

you're not scared of the business falling into the ground and not going wrong no like i said i think even if even if you was size of this room um and we had three staff and at the products we had today i'd still be happy something that i i like uh i think we've done a good job i think it looks good i think it's a good product that's good for the world so yeah even if you know even if we go back to the thousand true fans that I originally chased after and tried to make happier, I think if we started those, still got the same level of engagement, I'd be happy. What advice would you give me about that relationship issue I described?

And have you managed to find the answers in your own life? Relationship issues. Romantic relationships. I'm not sure I'm the right man to give those. I'm not sure. I think there's, you just got to do, I think don't try and please other people. There's so many people out in the world.

Somebody's going to be exactly right for everybody out there. So just do, just decide what you want. And if somebody doesn't fit in with that, then they're not quite right. No compromise. No compromise. Really? really yeah i don't think so i think uh um yeah relationships are hard long-term relationships super hard marriages are super hard um you know you're making a commitment to somebody who may change and you may change and you've made a commitment it seems a bit strange way to do it

i've never made a commitment to my friends and we're friends 30 years later they know that if they're a dick i'm not gonna be friends with them if i'm a dick they won't be friends with me so just it's an unwritten rule just be nice to each other and uh we're still friends 30 years later so there's no pressure that way and uh those relationships are the most long-standing relations of i've got so something in friendship that's there's an extra pressure in relationships which are not the same do you think that's something to do with the ring and the signing the contract possibly yeah exactly so i think uh i think relationships are uh put extra pressure on each other that sometimes you need space you know like friends don't live with me they're not on my case all the time and um i think there's something there that's um yeah friend friendships you know guy

friendships that i've got they're the best relationships i've got there's something there's got to be something there there's the the important stuff you're talking about you know friends you've got and uh yeah the the remote romantic ones are sometimes extra complicated for arguably no reason. Why don't you be nice to each other? And we'll still be, you know, romantically involved years later. Who needs marriage? Yeah, who needs marriage? I don't think so.

I don't think I'd ever do that again. Really? Can I ask, are you single? No, I'm not single. Okay, interesting. It's one of the things I'm most interested in at the moment because it's something I'm trying to fix in my own life. And I've failed repeatedly. And I don't really believe in marriage.

I don't believe in marriage. I think it's illogical to make a commitment to somebody for something that you're saying, you know, through thick and thin and forevermore, but you don't know how that person's going to change. I think, yeah. Me and you, say we've got to be friends you don't need to sign a contract don't need to do anything why you know that if i do something wrong we're not friends

anymore you know why does it need to be any more complicated than that just treat each other as you want to be treated be nice don't be a dick it doesn't it's not difficult what's success for you uh success um i think uh a community of people has been really something that i've sort of when you see our hooligans on social medias sharing the product i think that's been heartwarming and does indicate how well we've done clearly numbers done. Clearly numbers are some sort of crude measure of success. But yeah, I think being financially secure is a success as well. I think moving forward, we're just going to keep going, doing what we do. We've talked about exits at some point, but that will come. It's all a product of doing the right thing so we never when we raised our money last year we never went chasing after investors it was a they

came to us they chased after us and it's all because we just produced a good product customers like it re-bought the product and so it all happened um so yeah that's basically how i see it my last question okay um we're sat at this table now yep um dinner party yep you can invite four other people to the dinner party yeah and you get to decide what we all eat right they can be dead or alive uh okay so i think i would definitely invite you for sure okay right I think

I'm already there so you've got four others alright four others okay so I think I listen to a lot of podcasts so probably be podcast people right

so I really think Joe Rogan is awesome I think that he's got a very wide breadth of interests and I think he's generally

a decent guy so I think he'd be very interesting Tim Ferriss probably same sort of reason Derek Sivers same sort of reason this one has to be

okay this would be a pure entertainment one Conor McGregor just because I'm into UFC just to bring a bit of entertainment to the table that would be a lively dinner party what would they be eating okay so

your favourite meal my favourite meal would probably be I think I don't know maybe it would be a British Sunday dinner maybe just because

they've maybe not tried one before something like that is it one of your favourites I think it is, yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for creating a product that so many people, including myself,

rely on to function and to pursue becoming the best versions of ourselves because I really think that's what Huel is to me. I think it's an enabler and it's enabled me to be myself without worrying too much about my health or time falling at the expense of that. So thank you. And thank you so much for your time today.

You're a real inspiration to me. And what you've done through the product and through the business you've created, I think, is just brilliant. And I really, really mean that. So thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you very much. You're too kind. Thank you.

Thank you. Bye.