I am very excited here today. I have got Daniel Murray, Serta. Am I saying Serta right, by the way, saying it correctly. Okay, great. So Daniel and I have actually known each other since we were 14 years old. Payman was asking me earlier how I knew him, and Daniel was a very inspirational person in my life at 14. Was still is, still is. And one of the big things was, is that Daniel was a really hard working young boy. You might probably not remember that because you always say to me, I was an academic, but you were academic because you got four A’s in your A-levels.

Oh, I was hardworking.

Exactly.

Academic. I went to an academic school and everyone was smarter than me. But you can’t outwork me.

This is exactly it. And actually, that was the same as me. I went to a non academic school. Queen’s College. Definitely not academic, but what I knew from a very young age was that I wanted to be a dentist and so wanting to be a dentist since I was 12 years old, can you please vouch for me?

She really, really did. She’s the only person. I just like to say Rona was the only person I ever met at 14 who knew what they wanted to do, let alone the only person who wanted to be a dentist, which was so random. But she always wanted to be a dentist. It was remarkable.

Remarkable.

Really suitable. It was remarkable.

So I remember that lots of the teachers didn’t believe in me. They told me that I wasn’t smart enough. They would constantly tell my parents the only good thing that I was at was drama. And when I started hanging out with you and recognising the opportunities that good grades could give you, particularly if you want to go into a profession like dentistry, I thought, okay, I need to hang out with Dan, and that’s when we started revising together. But you don’t remember us revising for Othello together?

Not specific, no, but it’s probably because, like I said, hard worker. So I was revising for everything all the time because nothing was staying in my head.

Yeah, that was me too. So I’m just going to give everyone a little bit of background on Dan. He is an avid mental health advocate, so this series really is about opening up conversations about mental health and removing that stigma. Dentistry has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. I didn’t know if you know that. Yeah, exactly. And Payman and I already have had conversations about why that’s the case. And there’s really a plethora of reasons he’s been trying to pinpoint it down to one reason. And I said, Well, that’s the whole thing about mental health. You can’t pinpoint it down to one reason. But why is it specifically that dentistry has this problem and things are like it’s very isolated. You know, you’re in a room in a very confined space all day with pretty much your nurse and the patient. You’re working in a very small field. You know, the mouth is where you’ve constantly got patients telling you that they hate you, you’re trying to remove pain but then end up inflicting pain at times. And also there’s this big problem of litigation complaints, you know, and somewhat your profession being out of your hands, you know, because you’re always under the eyes of governing bodies and so forth. So there’s a number of reasons. But really the problem is, is that they’re afraid to have conversations and there’s really a taboo. You cannot talk about your mental health. And I think the more conversations we have, the more hopefully we can guide people to the right resources and tools to help them with their mental health. And for me, I think what better person than to do that than you, who’s been a great inspiration in my life.

I have a question. I know you’re doing the introduction. Sure. So I shouldn’t ask a question, but there are no rules. So are those are those stats global or UK? And I guess I’m also asking because I imagine in America the litigation stuff must make the mental health problems Ten-x.

Uk is worse than America through.

Litigation. It turns out the UK is now worse than America. Yeah, the only place that’s worse than the UK. Israel. New Zealand. Oh really?

Israel was up there at one point?

Yes, I was up there. Yeah. Um, although this statistic about dentists and suicide, it’s actually a 100 year old statistic. And we were talking about this saying that, you know, other than today’s problems, what is it about the job itself that causes this issue? And, you know, I’ve heard you speak about entrepreneurship and the stresses of that. And, you know, they kind of clear. But at the same time, there are jobs. We were saying jobs more stressful than dentistry, many, much more stressful.

Jobs, more stressful than entrepreneurship. When people talk about entrepreneurship, I’m like, mean guys. I’ve spent like a day in the Army. Exactly, exactly. Or hospitals.

But but then we come down to what is it about entrepreneurship? Is it to do with who you thought you were and who you actually end up being? Or, you know, the distance, the time between the hard work and the success, the few number of people who actually make it or whatever it is. And your story around heights and brain.

We’re going to come on to that.

Yeah, we will. But brain, brain nutrition.

I ruined the intro, didn’t I? I’m so.

Sorry. He’s my friend. I’m joking. I’m joking. Go ahead.

Play nutrition as as as a thing that isn’t, you know, even thought about isn’t isn’t something that’s considered, you know, that’s something that we want. We want to at least have dentists not only talking about it, because these days the stigma of mental health is much less than it was even five years ago. But okay, now we’re talking about it. What can we do about it? What are simple things that can be done is what this this series is about.

This is exactly what the series is about because I’m like, Well, we can all sit here and talk about our mental health, but what tools have we got available to us? And I think that, you know, particularly as well, I think that male suicide is something that hasn’t been spoken about enough. And, you know, I think that there’s a huge stigma still attached to that. That’s very much to do with men feeling unable to talk about things. And as well, there’s a lot of men in dentistry I know it’s dominated by females, but males in particular find it incredibly difficult. We were just talking about Twitch, you know, recently with his suicide and how everything seemed great. And I was just telling Payman that people were so shocked because they were like, Well, he had such an amazing family and he had such an amazing wife and how could he? It was so selfish. And I was like, That’s just the most unhelpful narrative because people that are going through such immense pain and mental health are not being selfish and actually labelling with that makes the stigma worse. So really we’re going to explore different ways.

And I think for dentists in particular, I have found that being outside of the dental arena, because I’ve never associated myself so heavily within the medical world, has really helped me because I’ve learnt about different parts of myself who I am, different tools to really. And whereas I feel like in dentistry we don’t get really get taught about mental health and how to cope. So whilst I’m continuing my introduction, Dan, you are one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I know. You also were the winner of UK’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. You That was when you were under 30? No. So you’re over 30. So we can’t claim that anymore. But you also are one of the UK’s top, top angel investors with over 50 investments, predominantly in health and wellness and sustainability as well, which obviously, you know, is a massive sphere that I’m in with Parler. And you have over 100,000 followers combined over your social media channels. You were very much hitting it on clubhouse. He became a huge thing during clubhouse, still going, by the way.

I don’t know, but it’s more like 150 if we count clubhouse.

Okay. If we count clubhouse, great clubhouse. So with that little introduction, I’ve already explained how we met, but I want you to tell me a bit about your first business because we’ll go on to heights, which is your current business. But I love talking about every aspect of what makes you you and how it led on to heights. So do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yes.

So I won’t tell you about my first business because we’ll be here too long. Um, but I will tell you about my first proper call it. Start-up Um, and I’m defining that as the, you know, crazy rocket ship ride of let’s do something different and exciting. So that was called gravel, and I remember it, yeah. And the reason it was called gravel, although obviously, you know, on retrospect, quite a rapey name, probably shouldn’t have called it that. But you know, other than it was kind of, you know, at the time seemed smart because you would basically have a bookmark like on Pinterest. Yeah, but it would be a grab button and you’d be able to grab products from all over the Internet track when they went on sale, um, buy them like through a web browser. And basically that went absolutely nowhere.

So we’re there because I’d love to have like a little basket where I could just put everything.

Everyone said it was a great idea, but it was very hard to get traction and it was quite technical. And then we were running out of money and had about a week left and we had a conversation with the people we were working. It was only five of us at the time. We had a conversation with them being like, Look, we’ve got a week left. We’ve kind of got to do something crazy. And we decided to basically make this super basic app copying Tinder. And so the idea was you’d swipe your products, you’d get a feed of shopping products that we were using from our web browser anyway, and you could swipe through them for inspiration and curation, swipe right things you like. They go into your basket, your save list. When they go on sale, you get a notification. Anyway, long story short, it blew up. It went viral. Um, we got up to the number one in the app store. Amazing. Overnight investors throwing money at us, which we gladly took and and went on a really exciting ride. And you know, I did. There’s many, many, many highlights in that journey. Um, none, none really of which I would replace. Like it was, uh, you know, we grew the team to over 50 people. We raised millions of pounds, won awards. You know that young UK Start-Up entrepreneur thing was, you know, because I was building that company, um, we got invited to things all the time that. You know, definitely contributed to imposter syndrome. Like I was invited to Buckingham Palace just to interject.

There as well. So for anyone in the audience, understand what is imposter syndrome?

Um, it is the feeling that you don’t belong. Yeah. Or that what other people are saying about you doesn’t register in your own understanding of your identity in any kind of way. And so a very good place to get that is at Buckingham Palace. So I was invited to entrepreneurship events regularly, I’d say once every couple of months for a couple of years. Don’t know that these things happen at Buckingham Palace until one day you’re invited and you do. And then you’re invited back and back and back. And I met so many incredible people, lots of amazing stories. I once asked the you know, had a guy, lots of people talking to him. And I was like, oh, what is this guy do? What do you do? And he’s like, Oh, my name is Tim. And I’m like, Oh, okay, Tim, what did you do? And he’s like, You know, I invented the Internet.

It’s like, Oh.

So Tim Berners Lee.

Oh my God.

I see. Cool. And he’s like, What do you do? I was like, doesn’t, doesn’t matter.

That’s amazing.

I mean so many, so many stories like that. But you do get imposter syndrome in those scenarios. A 26 year old getting a meeting, people like that and that was norm. Um, but underlying it all, you know, you’re trying to work out how to run a business, how to grow a business and didn’t understand anything really about that kind of business. Um, and so a lot of pressure, you know, I think there were multiple different things happening at the same time. Um, one was the underlying imposter syndrome that I didn’t quite belong in these circles that I was being invited to. Yeah. Playing alongside the fact that I have a growth mindset and I was like, I need to rise to the occasion. So these are limiting Self-beliefs you know, I’m good at like the self-awareness piece in terms of like helicopter view on my thoughts and actions and behaviours. But, you know, I slipped back inside my mind by accident all the time, even though I slip out and can do that. So I guess my point being, whilst I know rationally it’s imposter syndrome and I know that I have to rise to the occasion, I then still will get the same mental chatter. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. I don’t belong. And I’m like, Oh, we just discussed this, Daniel. We just said that you belong so that you can rise to the occasion. So I’d, I’d go in that, like, cycle over and over again, and then, you know, this can’t outwork me thing. I ended up getting burnt out, which, you know, was totally my own fault.

So was this like sort of in the middle of the success of towards.

The middle of the journey? And it was my own fault. And basically, you know, like I say, a lot of, um, contributing issues. One of the issues is which I wouldn’t change, but I like to help people and I think it’s really important to help people. And one of the mistakes I think I made was, is boundaries really? So when that’s happening to you, everyone wants your help all the time. Yeah. Um, which is fine, but most sensible people say no and they don’t say no because they’re unkind or whatever. It’s like I kind of got to focus. I’ve got a team, I’ve got people that need my help and they’re basically the people I’m employing. And so that’s the cycle.

But I just I just need to sorry to interject there, but I think it’s really important. So for those that are listening, Daniel has really helped me along the way. It was funny because we actually reconnected after several years of losing contact and then he actually mentored me for Dragon’s Den, Simon and I. So it was unbelievable because he just jumped at the chance and really took time out of his day, which I remember. But one of the most important words that I think you use, which are really important for mental health take away is the word boundaries. And I know that a lot of dentists struggle with that. I don’t know if you remember this pay, but they find it really difficult when people ask help even like the ones you work with personally, they feel like they have to answer everyone, help everyone do this. Whereas actually saying no is an act of self love and self care in some way because you have got you’ve only got certain number of hours in the day. So I think it’s really, really important that you learn to say it’s tricky, but also you’ve got it’s it’s that guilt. And I think it’s that conditioning because you were saying, why do we end up the way that we do end up? And I think conditioning is such a big part of it because when we’re growing up as children, we get told you have to do this, you shouldn’t not do that. So I think it’s some conditioning is some kind of way. So we’ve got to rewrite it. I think if.

You’re in the health profession as well, you have awful boundaries around that. Like you’ve literally chosen to serve people for your career path. And I find that I’ve got lots of friends who work in the health sector. You know, it’s tricky because, you know, you’re running you’re running a business, right? You’re running a practice and then people criticise you for making money. And it’s like I literally could probably not be criticised for like making guns because everyone expects me to not have a soul or whatever. But if I make money for helping people. People criticise me, which is mostly immature, genuinely, but also just completely irrational. We have this very backwards attitude. You know, I have this thing the whole time with heights, like the amount of people that give me shit and then will like, you know, celebrate the latest brewdog advert. And I’m like, They’re selling alcohol. Yeah, like, I love Brewdog adverts too, but like, why are you having like, a go at me? They’re literally going to make you unhealthy and feel bad. And alcohol is poison. I’m not pious. I drink. Yeah, not a lot, but I drink occasionally. But like, I’m not pious about alcohol at all. But it’s like we have this weird thing in society where we will celebrate poison and criticise health or anyone that’s actually trying to support and.

Yeah, go on in, in that sort of nootropic world where there’s a lot of crap, a lot of snake oil, right? And it’s, I think your superpower having followed you for for a long time, is communication and, and sort of packaging ideas, packaging things into nice ideas for for, for your market, I guess. And so I can’t think of anyone better than you to take on something like that. And but it comes with the territory doesn’t it, With supplements. Yeah. There’s so much snake.

Well this is the thing. We’re going to go, we want to go into the supplements. So tell us then what happened with gravel. Yeah. So before we go on to heights.

Yeah. I mean, look very quickly, um, with gravel, um, went really well until it didn’t is kind of the best answer. The business had really bad margin, but very great growth. So at some point our growth exceeded our ability to fund the team, the business, etcetera, and we imploded it. So I was always aware that the business wasn’t healthy, but the brand was smashing it and the product was smashing it. You know, we had a million monthly active users. We were growing at 30,000 new users per week. Wow. It was exponential explosive growth, but we never fundamentally fixed the business model. And so at some point, very layman’s terms, our costs exceeded our revenue and ability to actually support the business. And the only way of solving that problem was going out and getting a massive whopping funding round and we failed to do it happened exactly the same time as Brexit, like the same couple of weeks. So that was such a surprise to people that everyone just pulled out of the market. And, you know, I think there’s I’ve learned so many interesting lessons. But one of the things about success, you know, is a fine line. You do need luck to have success. You know, luck can work for you or against you if your market timing happens around Brexit or around Covid. Right? Let’s say you are the world’s best travel business and you literally couldn’t possibly, on any kind of level, do anything better as a business. Your margins are perfect, your brand’s perfect, your customers love you, etcetera. Covid happens, you’ve got no business. It was all irrelevant.

It’s really interesting that you say that because I always say I actually always say there’s no such thing as luck because luck when preparation meets opportunity.

Yeah, totally. But but, but what you need I, I what I think is you need, like, you know, hard work. Yeah. You need, like, obviously good ideas, good energy. Et cetera. But you do need luck because. And I say you need luck, but you need you also need to not have bad luck. So environmental factors. You know, I remember doing marketing exams like years ago when everyone would talk about all these different factors and environmental would pop up and I’m like, Oh, fucking boring environmental factors. When does that happen? I mean, the 2008 financial crash, you know, environmental factor, Brexit, environmental factor, Covid and now obviously recession. Those are environmental factors. Ukraine, you know, these are real things that impact lots of the world’s best businesses.

Had you already identified the business model as the problem back then? Yeah. Oh yeah. Was that in retrospect?

No, no, no. It was so obvious. Oh, so.

So do you think if Brexit hadn’t have happened, you would have had the appetite to know?

I mean, look, the thing is, I’m not big on excuses. Like, what happened was, um, in a business like that, you have investors when you’re my age, which was 26, 27 at the time, and looking for advice and looking for help and looking for support from people that know the stuff better than you, you ask, you listen and you do. Unless you have the courage of conviction to be different. And I didn’t have that right. I should have, you know, I literally could see that our business didn’t work. But lots of businesses don’t work in this space. Like Amazon didn’t work for many years as million businesses that don’t work until they work. So this is a very common model for venture capital backed businesses, which is what? We were, um, you know, so going to my investors and saying, you know, we’re not making profit, we’re not getting anywhere close and our costs are way outstripping demand. They’re like, it doesn’t matter because you’re growing so fast. We’ll just give you more money to keep up that growth because that was the model. That is how you make those really big companies. So keep going down. And if I had the courage to say, that’s not what I want to do and I know that’s not right, I would have been in control of the business and I’d have been able to make the right calls and turn it into a better business. But I didn’t. I listened to them. I carried on as I was. Brexit happened and then everyone was like, Yeah, sorry.

Question What effect did it have on your mental health at that time?

Answer Uh, shit, really? Um, I mean, yes and no. Like the honest answer is, uh, I started that business, you know, I think of you like, for example, you’re someone with a lot of purpose. Um, and again, I’ve just never met a 14 year old with such purpose. To be a dentist is so niche.

But there you go. You heard it from him. Yeah.

I mean, it was amazing, but it’s super inspiring. And everyone that met Rhona when they were younger knew she wanted to be a dentist because that’s how much you talked about it as fascinating. So but most of us are like finding a purpose, trying to find a purpose. It took me a long time to find some semblance of purpose. Um, gravel was not it? But I wanted to try being an entrepreneur and I wanted to try and challenge myself to learn loads of lessons super quickly in my youth, which is what I did, right? That’s what that opportunity gave me. But in the cold light of day, running that business, whether things were going well or badly, I wasn’t enjoying it and I didn’t care. I don’t particularly care about fashion. It doesn’t do a lot for me. I was having to, you know, the thing that I always remember and I say this every day, this is how different it is for heights for me and why I got so excited about heights. Um, every day I had to basically research and read the latest technology trends, mobile, mobile e-commerce trends and fashion trends to be great at my job. Don’t give a shit, don’t give a shit and don’t give a shit. Um, every day I’m having to purposefully fill up my head. You know, I’m very much a believer, you know, I believe in neuroplasticity and I understand how the brain works now, but even then it’s kind of obvious input in output out.

So fill up your brain with information. Doesn’t matter what space you’re in, you fill up your brain with that information. You start to become that person and you can change that at any point, slowly but surely, by changing the information that you put in. For example, you want to become an entrepreneur. At some point you’ll start listening to Secret Leaders Diary. Vizio. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. You want to become a health professional? You’ll listen to, you know, feel better, live more, and you start listening to different podcasts and different audiobooks. And before you know it, you know a lot about health or you know a lot about entrepreneurship. It doesn’t happen overnight. It just happens over a period of time because your brain is changing to the information you’re choosing to put into your head. So becoming an expert in fashion, e-commerce technology, I just did not care. And I was just becoming a sector expert. I was going invited to speak around the world at these events and I was doing these talks and I was like, This is just so boring to me. I don’t see how this serves my life. And I wanted an out. And I felt actually, you know, how was it for my mental health? It’s horrible to have to fire a whole team. It’s horrible to go through a lot of public humiliation, which I definitely did.

Was an element of shame. Yeah, so much shame because you were so, so much shame out there.

So much shame. Yeah, I dealt with that. Um, I think I dealt with the shame well, because I owned it, but it was.

Talk about it. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And actually, the thing that I’ve done with heights, which I think people have really appreciated, is what’s called build in public. So that journey started from when my last company failed. I wrote a LinkedIn post which went viral, and the LinkedIn article, which was a picture of all of our awards, of which there were a lot best, best mobile tech, best mobile start up in Europe. Like all this stuff from, from TechCrunch, from like all these like reputable Vogue award, like all this stuff, big table of awards headline. We failed. And this is why. And you know, since then I’ve never entered heights into a single award. They’re all bullshit anyway. But like, I guess my point is it’s less about anger towards awards or people that go for awards. I associate my immaturity in the last business as someone who lapped up the recognition and the clout and the awards and the schmoozing, which is a big distraction from. Are you building an actually good business? Yeah. And people do get distracted by ego and attention and not enough focus on actually doing the work.

Totally. And I think a lot of dentists listening to this as well, or even non dentists will resonate with that so much. And you Payman knows that because they base so much of their value and success on awards that we have a huge award industry. And I actually was gutted because last year I hadn’t. Entered for many years and won lots previously, but I hadn’t entered and non entering was actually the fear that I wouldn’t get anything. And the fear was people regard me so high and my clinic, if I don’t win it, it devalues what I’ve done, which is so ridiculous. So anyways, we entered like lots, we got shortlisted and we didn’t win a single award and I literally bawled my eyes out. I cried so much the next day and everyone was like, You’re so ridiculous as And like my friends and family, they’re like, You have a practice. It’s fully booked. Your patients love you, you’ve won awards. And I was like, I’m so embarrassed that people are going to think I’m a failure because.

You have a fragile ego. Yeah, we all do. Yeah, we all do. And the only way that you can work on becoming less of a egotistical human being, which we all are naturally, is to go through those experiences and say, All right, okay, that was a bit of an over-the-top reaction. Why do I really feel like that? What’s really going on here? And those questions are great for your mental health. I mean, sometimes they can take a mental health and a spiral, of course, as well. But in my experience, um, and you do this as well a lot, I think you’re fantastic because and you were kind of alluded to this earlier, but you know, you are interested in personal growth. You do a lot of personal growth, you do a lot of stuff that people would probably find very esoteric and weird, but actually woo woo.

I say they find it woo.

Woo woo, yeah, yeah, woo woo. But Payman.

Thinks I’m a bit woo.

Woo. Sometimes that stuff is the work. The stuff is the work. And there’s a lot of that that really does uncover proper deep insights. And actually, at the time of doing gravel, I was anti-religious. So when I say that, I mean like I grew up Jewish, but like a genuinely pitied anyone that believed in any semblance of religion, including Judaism, because I feel like religion just destroys the world. It’s just my God is better than your God. And back and forth over and over and over again without being everyone sitting around and being like, Wait, it’s all it’s all the same. God. Yeah. No. So anyway, it is getting to a horrible arguments and the world’s ruined, so what’s the point? So why totally remove myself from it And like atheist. But interestingly, you know, at some point had a very spiritual experience and. If you if you grow up Jewish. It’s an unusual one because it’s your race and your religion. So your spirituality is very tied to your religion and you can’t really separate those things. So I wouldn’t be able to consider myself spiritual. So I suddenly had this spiritual experience which was separate from religion, had nothing to do with being Jewish or any kind of religion.

It was just spiritual connection, feeling connected to the Earth and other people. And ever since then, um, the way that I’ve tried to the, the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had for my mental health have been thinking about it from terms of spirituality, which I know sounds again, woo woo. But the reason is because a lot of mental health problems, this is super basic statement everyone will be able to relate to. This isn’t woo woo all mental health problems really. They stem from your mind and from your basic obsession with yourself. I am this. I’m not good enough. I’m too good. This person likes me, this person doesn’t like me. Blah, blah, blah. Wow. Wow. You, you, you. You’re not the fucking centre of the universe. That’s basically the most important lesson that you can learn. But the problem is, almost all of us, myself included, up until this spiritual experience, are unable to see that you are not like, worth anything in the grand context of the entire planet.

And the thing is, we think everybody is constantly thinking about us, what we’re doing. No one’s judging us, but no one is. No, they’re thinking about themselves.

Yeah. So the reality.

Tell us what the spiritual experience was. Yeah.

So I did a, I did an ayahuasca experience. Peru, Uh, it wasn’t, it was actually in the UK, which was surprising. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Um, it was with, it was with a couple of shamans who flew over from, um, from California, but they had trained in Hawaii and Peru for ten years, so they’re legit. Um, but it was a really meaningful experience and it was very surprising to me. And I went because I was depressed. I had been I’d had depression for six months. So my best friend Rob was like, I was at dinner with him. Someone mentioned this ayahuasca thing. I’d never heard of it. He was basically being a good friend. He was like, You know, you haven’t been you. You haven’t been you for ages.

Dan Was there a specific trigger? Because I think I remember that there was quite a pivotal thing that happened in your life.

Yeah, my dad passed away, so I had depression for I always talk about depression, you know, in my terms as many different ways you can get depression. My way of getting depression was probably a very rational and reasonable like excuse for it, so to speak. You know, it’s worth saying I’ve never I do get sad. I do get like seasonal depression, but it’s not proper chronic depression. I got depression when my dad died, and I think that’s pretty normal, very common for people. I haven’t had generalised depression, which is a very different thing. And so obviously, you know, mental health and mental wellbeing and mental illness is a big spectrum include depression is at the far end of that spectrum right. And depression, the spectrum on depression is very different as well. The feeling is the same, but the trigger is different. So you want to remove depression from your life. There are multiple ways that you might have to approach that and it might be change your environment. It might be get over trauma and face trauma. It might be time. You know, lots of depression just passes with time. You know, there’s a it might be nutrition and hydration. It might be your health. There’s so many different things.

So but it’s Payman challenge me earlier and actually, it seems a good time to ask you this because he says, well, what’s that point? Because he asked me about my own journey. And I said, Well, I knew I needed to get help. And, you know, I had sources and people and stuff. He says, Well, what about the people that can’t even get help because they’re in such a bad spiral in a dark hole that they’re not sitting there thinking, I’m going to change my nutrition, I’m going to change my environment, I’m going to look up to all these people, he says. So where does that shift happen? Where it becomes like a black hole and they feel like there’s nothing to help them. And then there’s the people, like you said, where they’re on the lesser spectrum. Arguably you and I that are like, okay, what can I do? And then they change their daily habits and environment.

Is is a great question. And this is honestly the challenge because in my case, I probably would have just carried on with the Depression until I didn’t have it anymore if that was going to happen, I don’t know. Um, but I had a great friend and the great friend was like, We’ve got to do something about you. Like snap out of it, you know? And I was like, I don’t know, I can’t be fucked. And I also don’t really want to do psychedelics for a weekend right now where I’m at in my life. And he’s like, You’ve you’ve got to do something.

Shake it up.

Yeah. And so, you know, really interesting because, you know, I had a friend and the problem is in society, loneliness is such a trend, especially post Covid, especially with social media. You know, lots of people obviously don’t have that friend. And so, you know, the thing is, if you’re still even listening to this podcast right now, you’ve got to have quite a niche interest, right? You’re probably in the Dental profession. You probably are interested in mental health and maybe you or someone that you know is going through an experience. Us right now. And the first door that you can ever open here is curiosity. So if you’re curious enough to meet it halfway through a podcast on dentistry and mental health, which is amazing, by the way, to be so niche, but it’s so important to be niche because you find exactly the people you want to help. Um, go to broad, you’ll never find them. Um, so if you’re there, the first step is curiosity. And if you’re listening to information like this is such a good place to start, you don’t have to start and spring into action. You just have to have something, something, anything. Click in your mind that opens some light of possibility. And that’s why I needed, you know, I knew I wouldn’t feel like that forever.

Um, certainly with depression anyway, because again, for me, I was able to rationally connect it back to my dad. So I’m like, everyone dies, so but not everyone in the world is depressed. So I’m like, quite rational, right? I’m like, so what I’m going through is normal. He was my best friend. Um, at some point I won’t be depressed anymore. Time will pass. You know, it was ten years since my dad passed. I still think about him every day, but I don’t get depressed. I get joyous. So it’s a very different experience now. And that’s probably very common for people. So, you know, I think that there’s a, um, a journey that people go on. And when you’re at your lowest low, you’re totally right. You’re not suddenly like, let’s spring into action mode. I’m going to do my breathwork and a nice bath tomorrow morning. It’s like, No, I’m going to drag my ass out of bed, look outside, realise it’s fucking grim again. Why isn’t the sun up? But if all you do is take like one small step in the right direction, it makes a massive difference. And that can be listening to a podcast, reading a book, or going for a walk.

Yeah, I think also as well, there’s been way too much pressure now to have a perfect life, and I think that it’s also about being perfect every day. Like I get up, I’m happy I’m going to have my mushroom coffee, I’m going to do my breathwork, I’m going to do yoga, then I’m going to go to work and everything’s going to be fine. And the analogy that you were saying reminds me there’s a guy called Ben Carpenter. Carpenter. I don’t know if you’ve come across him. He’s actually pretty good and he’s basically like a fitness guy, the sort of debunks any of the BS online and he did the spoon analogy. I don’t know if you’ve seen it and he’s basically like everyone has a number of spoons and basically your spoon is like an expenditure of energy in your day. And sometimes somebody they will be like, I have one spoon to just get out of bed and shower. And sometimes when people are going through deep depression, as he described that he did at one point, he’s like, I couldn’t even shower. And people were like, You’re so disgusting and so lazy. He was like, But the energy literally wasn’t there and I just couldn’t do it. And I think it’s likening it to that, that you should even celebrate small steps and not achieving a million things in a day.

Recovery is recovery.

Yeah.

You look at physical health and you understand recovery, and that’s like very slow progress. I found that when my depression for sure, like there were definitely some days I wouldn’t get out of bed to shower. Definitely. Yeah.

That was the trigger that towards your recovery. So what happened after that?

Um, so the ayahuasca experience really just changed my perspective. Um, fundamental difference. Like I say, the fundamental difference was, you know, and this is very terrifying for people, I talk to them about, you know, they ask me about my experience and I’m like, ego death. And they’re like, That sounds like the worst thing ever. Why would I ever want to do it? I’m like, It is the worst thing ever. The actual ayahuasca experience is pretty much the worst experience you can ever have in your life. It’s pretty much like 5 to 6 hours of pure hell. It’s like, Did you vomit? And I actually didn’t. I didn’t. I’ve done ayahuasca now 12 times and wow.

Didn’t know you could even do it 12 times.

And I’ve only I’ve only vomited once. Um, but it, it actually feels very good to vomit, so it’s not a bad thing to vomit because you’re technically vomiting out like a trauma or something. Um, but, you know, they call it healing. And once you’ve done it, once you totally associate, you know, they call it medicine and healing. And once you’ve done it, it is absolutely the right language for it because what you do essentially is you become the observer of you. Almost like you’re floating out of your body and your ego is absolutely separated. So your sense of self is totally separated from the observer in your mind. And if this sounds a bit weird for people, um, you know, I, I like to liken it back to I always had a thing on my fridge which I bought at the Camden Gallery down there, actually a little, a little Post-it thing which says there’s a little voice inside your head reading this. That’s all it says. And I think that’s always been the best reminder of like, wait, there is there is a other person in here, isn’t there? What the hell is going on? So for anyone that can’t actually understand the difference between ego and self and stuff, you know, there’s a guy called Michael Singer who’s a great author, and he talks about, you know, you basically have a noisy roommate in your head whenever you have the loud chatter, the noise, the self deprecation, whatever the thing is that’s limiting you from doing something that’s giving you a like a hard time, the question is, who is that and who am I listening? Who’s the person listening? And once you realise there’s someone listening to a voice, you suddenly realise that there are basically two of you in there. So there’s like the chimp paradox. Yeah, it is like the chimp paradox. Yeah. And so, um, all of this is to say you separate for the first time completely from that sense.

And had you tried meditation before.

That or Yeah, I or.

Breathwork meditation.

I don’t think I tried it properly before that. After that I did meditation every day for years. I don’t haven’t done since my daughter was born. I’ve changed my mindfulness practice to reading to her because I was trying to do too much of that. I was trying to do too much. So it was like I was trying to still meditate and she’s fucking crying and ruining my time and my mind’s going off and all this shit. So I was like, You know what? The reason I meditate is as a mindfulness practice, I will change it to reading to her every day. And then I’m still doing a mindfulness practice to myself, but it’s something with her. So that’s been my switch since she’s been born. Um, but yeah, so back to the point, like the, you know, the experience separating myself from my ego made me realise that the world doesn’t revolve around me, that I am a tiny part of a huge cosmos. And, you know, the thing that both scientists and spiritualists can totally agree on is everything is energy. Everything in the universe is an atom, is an energy. You know, is some some form of it, right? So once you understand that basic principle, you essentially become in your experience like a speck of energy and feel connected to, you know, literally a tree, a human, a polar bear, a bee, you name it, you feel connected to it. And after you’ve experienced that sort of connection and you come back into your body. Your problems don’t seem so self centred anymore. And that was the big shift for me. You know, after I came back from that experience and I’ve had many more of like very like different experiences, but I did a complete 180 and, you know, it wasn’t like, I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in the afterlife. I was like, I believe in Mother Nature. That’s my version of God I believe in. Uh, us. I mean, I don’t have a word for it, but I just believe that we’re all connected.

You know, spirituality is such a funny thing because.

Stigmatised.

Word by its very nature. There aren’t words to describe how you feel when you feel that way. I mean, it reminds me it’s.

About connectedness, though, as well. Like everything that.

That I mean, you’re right.

You’re right. Everything dances. And again it’s like things that people would say is woo woo. But when you’ve had these and I again I’m gonna use another woo woo word when you use like the word epiphany as well, when you’ve had that epiphany where you’re like, Oh my God, this all makes sense. And we’re actually all connected. And, you know, you were asking me earlier, you were like, Well, how did you develop so much empathy for people and so much compassion? I think, again, it’s certain experiences that make you feel that way and realising that we are all one. And it’s really funny because and I’m sure you resonate somewhat with this, even when I meet like really angry people or people that you describe having bad energy. I have a degree of compassion inquiry because I’m like, people are the way they are because of something. It could be trauma, it could have been bad experiences, it could have been death. And the reason why they’re behaving that way in whatever arena you’re thinking in is for a reason. So having that compassion inquiry, which Gab or Matei talks about as well, is so important because there is something that just brings us all together as human beings. As cheesy as it.

Sounds, I feel like the ridiculous thing that’s happened in humanity again, very ego driven. People will go to war for Allah. People will go to war for Jesus Christ. You know, people go to war for Moses. These are men, basically. So we’re basically saying I base my whole entire faith in existence to something greater to this man, that man or that man. When it comes to spirituality, there’s no man. There’s no there’s no leader. There’s no person. What you’re basically saying is, I believe we’re all connected to everything, but because there’s no figurehead for that, it’s very hard to rally a group around. So spirituality is like not a religion and therefore doesn’t get cult like following. And so people literally would rather believe that a man walked on water than believe that you’re connected to birds and bees.

So do you think you would have found it if it wasn’t for the the chemical experience?

Because not personally.

There’s huge there’s a huge thing around psilocybin at the moment. So what you’re talking about as well And um, Dan led me to a book which was really interesting called How to Change Your Mind. And it talks about the whole movement. They did a Netflix series on it recently, but the whole movement around medicine essentially, and psilocybin is being used, assisted by doctors to help deal with traumas and so forth. I mean, if you watch the second episode, even on Netflix, if you don’t want to read the book, they’re literally showing how people I think in Switzerland so fearful of death, old people, they’re dying of cancer, but accepting it, you know, with the psilocybin. So what you’re saying, I mean, you’re crazy. And I wouldn’t necessarily call it a medicinal experience, but it’s probably it’s probably what people are, you know, going through because when these plant medicines are used, um, you know, it helps people.

I’ll put it this way, you know, like the number one cause of, um, well, I mean, I won’t, I won’t go that extreme. So certainly one of the main causes of mental health problems is loneliness. Yeah. What is the opposite of loneliness? Connection. Connection. So when you feel connected to everything and anyone, no matter what they’ve done, who they are, or even if they’re a human or not. Race, religion, hate. This doesn’t factor in. You just feel connected. So you don’t feel lonely. And there’s a massive difference between being, you know, to solitude and loneliness. You know, you can have 100 people in a room with you and feel lonely, and similarly, you can be on your own and feel connected. So this is the massive difference. And like my view and actually religion does a great job of connecting people within those communities. The problem is, as the group is separates, so the group separates from other groups. So whilst you do get the sense of connection and community, which I think is super powerful and valuable, no matter what religion you are, it’s broadly a challenge, as is proven by every bloody war over the last few hundred years. That doesn’t really help on a global scale. Whereas, you know, obviously the benefit of spirituality and trying to seek connection to something greater than yourself as an unlock to most of the mental health problems, again, I find self-obsession, ego and. Loneliness. You know, these are all victims and symptoms of just being completely self-obsessed and thinking about yourself all the time and becoming smaller and smaller and more insular as opposed to, you know, letting all of that shit go.

Do you think you lost something?

In what sense?

Well, we see what you gain, something which is this sort of where you’re much more sort of centred after this experience. But did you lose something as well? Because, you know, we were talking.

He lost his.

Ego. We were talking. Well, but.

I’d love to think so. But that fucker always comes back.

You know, you be before you had this experience, you were was your ego the driver for your success, and did you lose some drive?

That’s a good question. I don’t think so. I that was my big fear, though. Yeah. So I said this to my business partner. I was running gravel at the time. Things were like actually really starting to take off. I just wasn’t happy. But they were starting to take off. And I said to him the Friday before, I was like, I’ve got to come clean with you. I’m doing this thing on the weekend. I don’t know how it’s going to go. But like, my fear is I come back on Monday and this is actually what I said. It was ridiculous. Like, my fear is I come back on Monday. I don’t care about gravel, I don’t care about Arsenal, and I don’t care about my cats. That’s like literally.

Did that happen?

That’s my gravel. No, I still cared about gravel. I still cared about Arsenal and I still cared about my cats. And I was like, Oh, okay. So it’s not quite like that. It’s not like you just give up all attachment to everything. It’s just that you have a new appreciation for more. So it’s a great question, but I actually don’t feel like, you know, it’s like when people people talk about when they have children, like you don’t lose things, your heart grows bigger. Well, it’s sort of like that with spirituality. You don’t really are losing stuff. You’re just aware there’s so much more. And frankly, for anyone that’s like on a growth mindset journey and learning more is very similar to the point of view where the more you learn the realise, the less you know. You know the people who think they’re the smartest people in the world are the people who are the people who actually don’t know very much. They have quite small worldviews, very political, one sided, etcetera. Extremely sure that they’re right.

Question for you though, now, so we know the gravel journey. We we understood that you went through and the emotions, particularly the shame. So let’s talk a little bit about your current business, which I’m a massive fan and a paying subscriber for. Anyone wondering, Um, two years now. Yeah, exactly. So talk to me about how that business was born and where you’re at so born.

Because I was, um, I’ve been going through a different mental health experience, so you can tell I’ve been through the wringer on on a variety of them. This one was worse than depression. It’s worth saying in my in my personal experience, this was the worst thing I ever went through, which was insomnia. So I couldn’t sleep for six months. This was at the point of things going really well in the business, really well. And I was getting married soon and all this stuff. And then one day I just couldn’t sleep. Okay, that happens next night. Next night anyway. Starts to become a pattern. A few days turns into a week. Turns into a month. Turns into six months. So. Really just a totally debilitating experience which caused, you know, I have generalised anxiety occasionally because I’m a human being, but I mean I think it’s worse than entrepreneurship. I’m sure it’s pretty bad in medical professions as well. But like anywhere where you sort of have to, you know, have responsibility for other people on you, it’s a pressure. You know, I think it’s a very reasonable thing, therefore, to feel anxiety and something like that. But this gave me chronic anxiety, which is very different, which caused panic attacks, which, you know, again, is a very weird thing to experience because. You’re basically having a completely normal day and then you have a panic attack out of nowhere and you’re like, What the fuck is that? Nothing has triggered me.

Nothing that I’m aware of has triggered me anyway. So these were lots of things that I think were caused by not sleeping for so long. And yeah, I tried all of the things I was where I got into meditation. I tried sleepio, calm, CBT, sleep therapy, normal therapy, of course, went to the doctor. He gave me sleeping pills. No one suggested nutrition at any point, but at some point I went for dinner with a friend and she said, Sounds like you’ve got a mental health problem. And I was like, I definitely don’t because. You know, I’ve literally been to every one and no one said I’ve got a mental health problem, which is like, well, I mean, you’re describing insomnia. If you haven’t slept in six months, that is a mental health problem. And I was like, If you say so if it helps. My attitude at the time was kind of like, if it helps you to have a label for me, that’s fine. I’m not ashamed of having one. And then suddenly, as I was saying it, I was like, Oh, I mean, maybe I am ashamed of having one. Maybe I’m not actually like aware of the fact that I’m not dealing with this thing properly. And she’s like, Actually, based on what you’ve said and what you’ve tried, it sounds like you’ve got a brain health problem. And then I was like, Definitely not. I’m not an old man.

There’s like, you know, I was 29 or something at the time, right? I was like, There’s definitely not a brain health problem. And she’s like, Well, what do you think a brain health problem is? It’s like Alzheimer’s. And she she’s like, Yeah, I mean, no, you’ve got a brain as an organ. There’s loads of things that could be going on there. You really should go see someone, go see a dietician. And I was like, What is going on in this conversation? Like, how are you going from mental health to brain health to dietitian? Also, she’s not in the medical field, so even then I was a bit like got no credibility here. But she was like, Listen, I’ll put it a different way then for you. What’s worked? And I was like, None of the above. What haven’t you done? Dietitian? Do you want to solve this? Yes. Well, then fucking go. And I was like, That’s a much better way of speaking to me. Fair play. Because she’s basically eliminated my rational choices out. So I went and the dietitian very quickly literally saw me and said, because I was able to say to her, it’s worth saying. I’m not saying that nutrition is the answer to these problems. What I’m saying is, once you’ve easily eliminated everything else you’ve tried and still suffering was really easy for the dietitian to say. Yeah, definitely. Sounds like your brain is basically giving you an alarm signal to say it’s not getting fed properly.

You need these supplements Omega three, DHA, DHA and EPA, omega three seconds, B-vitamin complex and blueberry extract. That’s what I recommend to you. The reasons being omega three seconds are like your brain is basically made of them. So 60% of your brain is fat and 90% of it is DHA. So she’s like, This is like the main building block of your brain. Something could be up there. Go take them blueberry extract because they’re antioxidants. So she’s like, You can’t sleep. They will clean out your glymphatic system by giving it a car wash overnight was how she dumbed it down for me and B-vitamins because they’ll regulate your energy and you’re having spikes at like 2 a.m. and you’re unable to sleep. You need to regulate your energy flow. Like these three things should really help and I reckon they’ll help quite quickly. So anyway, I was like, Sure, whatever you say. Anyway, went to Boots to buy them, took photos, send them to her. She was like, Oh no, you can’t buy them, they’re crap. And I’m like, They can’t be crap. They’re sold in boots. And she’s like, You can’t buy anything that you need from Boots or Holland and Barrett. Like, you have to go to Planet Organic and this is the potency you need. And then I was like, Right, sounds a bit bougie, but I mean, this was on the NHS.

The bougie. I buy into all that stuff all the time, but I.

Just didn’t I didn’t understand that there was any difference between these things whatsoever. But I did what she said. I went to Planet Organic. I spent £120 on these three supplements, which I was like, I literally had no idea supplements cost this much. What is going on? This was like £15 in boots a minute ago and now I’m following your advice and I £120 what has happened? But I took them.

What was the difference? Was it dose or potency dose?

There’s an enormous discrepancy between basically all of the above can make the same marketing claims. So the ones in Planet Organic can’t make any more marketing claim than the one in boots. But the difference is there’s a an ocean of difference between the minimum amount you can put into a product and make the claim versus the scientific dose that actually does what you think it’s doing. So you need.

A bit like whitening. Yeah.

Yes. You need the efficacious claim, right? You need the amount that’s going to make the difference. That’s what you’re reading on the claim and the difference is huge. You’re not talking about like a bit talking about like a fifth, right? So you go and spend five times as much on the supplements and Planet Organic. Well, you’re actually paying pound for pound exactly the same. It’s just you’re getting the thing that you need.

Did you luck out with this particular dietician or no. Is that general knowledge amongst dietitians?

Very general knowledge against all nutritionists and dietitians know this stuff. Really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they all know. That’s why if you go to them, they’re not going to say go to Boots or Holland and Barrett. They literally give you brands that they recommend, you know the.

Whole brain nutrition. Yeah.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Especially dietitians. Um, because dietitians basically deal with sick people. Nutritionists will deal with like the the worried well more.

Um worried well.

But but but dietitians I mean absolutely yeah. Um and that’s the thing right who knew. I don’t know. And so, and so what I learned from this person is, you know, a lot of the people that come to see her, including on the NHS, but they never get referred by their doctors stupidly. Um, but a lot of their referrals are for mental health and there’s so many mental health problems, so mental health illnesses that can be supported and cured by nutrition supplements and diet. So. Obviously, the first place you go is is diet. You don’t obviously supplements clue’s in the name so I was actually quite good now but I’ve been practising all the last year but I was a shite cook so you know, I was like, go, go cook all of this. And I look at that, I’m like, Absolutely not. I’m busy. So what else have I got? Well, supplements, you could just take these. I’m like, I mean, definitely doing that. I’m going to take two capsules of something you told me rather than spend an hour and a half cooking and fucking up a meal. So, um, I add.

Nutrition. Sorry to there. Like, I know loads of dentists really, sadly, because they’re so busy working after as well. Yeah. Like looking after patients that will literally like their diet sometimes in the day, like chocolate bars and fizzy drinks even. They should be drinking fizzy drinks. But, you know, I mean, for energy, like I know some people that work on the NHS think 30 patients back to back to back to back and they’re literally like, just shove it in your mouth. And they don’t realise that that one change could actually make a massive impact.

A really large interestingly, a really large part of our customer base is medical professionals.

Dance.

Me Yeah, dance. Yeah. Um, well, there’s a lot of nurses, a lot of doctors, which is interesting because doctors don’t get trained in nutrition. They get seven hours over seven years. So there is no it’s not criticism of them, but there is no awareness. So as an educational thing, that’s why they don’t you know, that’s why I go to the guy. I went to my doctor with insomnia and he’s like, take these sleeping pills, not go see this dietitian. Did you to NHS? But he never referred me.

Did you have a particularly bad or unbalanced diet?

Um, it’s a good question. I was plant based, so it is much more common in people that are plant.

Based for the Omega and.

B12. A lot of them are B12 deficient and omega threes.

But I was taking B12 because the one thing that people tell you if you’re vegan is take B12. So what’s really interesting is you do you know, do you know why B12?

But the vegans being B12? No.

But do you know why it’s really important to take B12 supplement if you’re vegan, but otherwise just have B12 in your diet? This is the ridiculous connect that I think is hilarious. So no one thinks about nutrition or mental health, right? Really, broadly speaking, just do not make the connect. The reason that you take B12 is because if you don’t have B12, you will have psychosis, full blown psychosis, which will then the only cure for it will be B12 supplementation treatment, not an opinion. That is a scientific fact. Interesting. Yet the details. Take B12. Why does it matter? You’re vegan. Just take it. That’s basically what happens. So no one’s actually connecting the fact that, okay, here’s a real obvious use case that the nutrient deficiency of that will cause you a proper mental health problem that you can then overcome by taking that nutrient again. So it’s like it’s literally science and fact. And if you study it, that’s why you ask that question about nutritionist and dietitians. They’ll know this. Of course they know this is literally day one stuff for them, but it just never factors in the medical profession. And where do people go when they’re sick? The doctor, the GP. So the why.

They just don’t know you identified was the fact that no one knew about out there. People don’t connect mental health.

So my my opportunistic entrepreneur like idea, so to speak, was I think there’s a really interesting communication gap between us. So there’s not many spaces in the world where you can say, okay, science actually says this is true, not opinion, this is true. There’s endless science papers all available on PubMed for pretty much every single nutrient and all the different types of mental health, from psychosis to Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to moods to depression to sad. All of them, you know, different things and different nutrients for different things. But science papers proving how supplementation of or ingesting the natural version of this nutrient will impact this mental health condition. And so given there’s a plethora of evidence already is very rare to find a space as an entrepreneur where you’re like the evidence exists but no one knows about it. Here’s an opportunity that our job is to communicate it. And that’s how we started. We started as a newsletter, basically just trying to communicate what science says you can do to take care of your brain. And obviously I was aware how soon.

After you grapple ended did you start?

Um, so three months. Um, and it wasn’t like quite a perfect line, but we finished, we, we officially closed it down in July. Um, Joel, my business partner, and I took a couple of weeks off and actually just drove around the UK, did a little.

Known Joel since 14, but I haven’t seen him since I was 14.

Actually. You know, um, Nick Jenkins from Dragons Den who did your mentoring for Dragons Den. Like he offered us to come stay with him for like a few days, which was super nice. Yeah. Um, obviously as an entrepreneur, I was aware of, like, the things you start.

Heights with Joel as well. Yeah. Oh, excellent.

And grapple. So yeah.

They offer them. Yeah. So we, we spent a couple of weeks just going around the UK decompressing like seeing friends, like trying, but you know, starting to tinker and think about things. And we got back and we basically started writing this newsletter in November. Um, and the idea with the newsletter is we don’t know what we’re going to make. Just know that this is an interesting area to explore together. And we have different skills and basically almost in a weird way, our superpower was neither of us knew anything about the profession, which means that we can’t just make snake oil and we can’t just cut corners and we can’t do the things that everyone else does because we’re not willing to, because we wanted to make a great product and do it in a great way. So we had to literally start from scratch. And it was super interesting because we still get this now, but like most people don’t want to work with us because we don’t really cut corners then like, that’s not how this works, guys. And now we.

Have that challenge with Parler as well.

It’s really interesting.

Yeah, it’s like we just very.

Much, uh, this is how it’s always been done.

Exactly.

This is how you do it. Yeah. And you’re like, that’s literally not how you make the future, though. So that’s not how we’re going to do it. Yeah.

Um, it’s like I’m a challenger brand for a reason, you know?

So we got really lucky because in this newsletter, so amazing strategy, turns out because in this newsletter I found stuff from Sophie Medlin, I found stuff from Dr. Tara Swart. You know, these are people I was finding papers, I was finding really interesting research, and I was tagging them all on Twitter. So every week you have this thing and I’m tagging like tagging this person, tagging that person. Then they read it and they’re like, Oh, this is quite interesting and cool and end up getting in a conversation on Twitter and going to meet them in person. And that’s how I ended up meeting both Sophie and Tara was essentially from featuring them in my newsletter, from tagging them, from going to meet, and they.

Formulated the.

And they’re the ones who formulated our product. So that stuff is all happening in the background of like, we don’t know what we want to make, but let’s just go meet people that work in the space and talk about the problems. Um, and it was actually Tara, in fairness, that really identified the problem. So Tara, who’s our chief Science officer, she had a PhD in Neuropharmacology, so very much this space and she’s been a medical doctor, a child psychiatrist, neuroscientist, has this PhD and then was a coach for ten years. So but a coach to like CEOs, like global CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. And the thing that she’d noticed is how much when she was doing the coaching because she’d had her PhD in Neuropharmacology, she made nutrition and supplementation part of everyone’s program, which is the one thing no one did because everyone’s always like, It’s about the mind, it’s about asking great questions. She was like, I always started from hydration and nutrition because it is literally the biggest thing that’s going to make the impact for them. It’s what’s going to help them sleep better and get more energy. When they sleep better and have more energy, they’re going to be more creative, have better ideas, and then we can do the work. So I was like, Oh, so interesting. So she she started saying, The problem I always had though, is like basically have to get them ten supplements. Um, that you know habitually that’s hard. You go from not taking anything to taking ten you know take this vitamin D, take this omega three, take these vitamin C, take these B vitamins. And she was like, that was kind of the problem. So that’s when we started working on like, how do you combine all of this into like. An actual daily habit that’s really focussed around this problem idea of the brain. And it’s so.

Beautiful. It’s the most beautiful. I love taking it. It’s like a supplement you have.

Aesthetically, you mean, Oh.

My God, stunning. I’ve seen it. You know me. It has to match, you know, joking.

But a question for both of you. Yeah, because both of you have got this sort of purpose led business if we’re talking parlour. Yeah. Um, and I asked Simon the same the same question in a purpose led business in a way, if a competitor comes along and does what you’re doing, it should in a way make you happy because it’s making it’s fulfilling that purpose.

We say this, we say it depends who they are. I mean, if they’re cunts, then yeah.

But, um, but in their world, if Colgate suddenly goes.

Plastic, they’re not going to want Colgate necessarily.

Exactly. But this. No, this is the thing. No, totally. No. No. So do you know what I think? And Daniel probably agree. First of all, if you have a huge conglomerate company doing what you’re doing, it actually affirms that you’re doing something right in a way because they’re like, okay, cool, we need to do this too. But also there’s definitely not that worry. And I get that people are like, Oh my God, my God. Like, these people have so much money because I’m like, It’s a bit like, you know, when Razor Dollar Club came along and then Gillette tried to do the same. Gillette failed. Why? Because there was authenticity and the purpose was completely different that when someone else who’d been doing it been a completely different way for so many years, then tries to copy, you know, the little guys, it doesn’t necessarily bode well for them, you know, more often than not. So that’s what that’s kind of my view on it. It’s definitely.

True. I mean, in your.

World it would be.

Brinker.

Seven seas, whatever that thing is.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean.

He’s trying to be diplomatic.

Yeah.

We’ll edit it out. I’m joking.

It would just be a bit inauthentic. I mean, the thing is, Seven Seas, though, is the brand that people grow up with. So it’s good, right? Because it is good that people like parents give it to their kids and all that stuff. So I don’t have a massive problem with it. I think it’s more for me, you know, brands talking about and trying to enter the space of brain care, which is what the category we’ve essentially defined. That’s good. More people, including big brands, talking about brain care. Very good. That’s an excellent thing. So we always talk about this as a mission led company. Like you just said, our goal is to grow brain care awareness. And if heights is at the centre of the brain care movement, we win. If heights isn’t at the centre of the brain care movement, it means that someone else came along, took our idea, made it better, but we still made a change in the world. So that’s pretty cool. So it’s one of those things I think category definition and and building a category is a really interesting approach because in many ways you can’t lose you. You might not. It’s one of those you might not win the war, but you can win your own battles. Yeah. And so there’s absolutely the chance that someone out executes you and outdoes you, but.

Not a good thing. Often when you’re the first.

First mover advantage, well, you.

End up losing. Yeah, you.

End up losing. Yeah. Because people come up and watch your mistakes and do it better than you. And it’s very common.

Yeah. Do you have a fear of failure? Be honest.

Not any more. Not after 12.

I don’t like I’m pretty. I’m like, I’m pretty determined.

To ego death 12 times. Yeah, Yeah.

I’m pretty determined to win. But I wouldn’t say I’m scared of failure or death. Those are not things that, you know, I rationally am scared of any more.

Than you know how in a way you you’re kind of defining the London entrepreneur scene, you know, the UK entrepreneur scene. And you could have I mean, you live in London, but you could have done it in Silicon Valley or whatever. And over there, failure’s kind of much more accepted than here. Yeah, big time. And is that does that changing here now in the in entrepreneur land and with investors and all that.

And because we know as well that you support young founders you know we were just talking about that as well.

So I think more so you know it’s interesting actually, because I because I do a lot of angel investing and I speak to a lot of young founders and like some of them have had a tough time over the last few months. I’ve just spoke to a girl a couple of days ago. Um, she’s shut down within about four months of me investing, which is pretty bad. And I just emailed her being like, you know, Yeah, like, are you okay? I know how shit it is to go through what you’re going through and like, do you need me to speak to any of your. There was someone else as well. They’re doing more of a pivot, so it’s slightly different. But I was like, Let me know if there’s any of your investors that are being horrible to you and like, just intro me on WhatsApp or whatever works for you and I’ll arrange a time to speak to them and like, you know, calm them down and make sure they don’t do that, because that’s what I’ve experienced a lot. And you know, these last two that I spoke to and this is in the last two weeks, both companies, they’re both of them were like, actually, people are being pretty nice. They’ve actually been pretty understanding. And I’m like, wow, that’s a real I feel that’s a good marker to to realise because that’s not normal. You know, If I’d have done that a couple of years ago, they’d have been like, Yeah, I’ve got about ten people I’d need you to speak to for me. And I’d have done it because it’s important.

And yeah, but um.

It was, I was really impressed on both of them. They were like, No, actually we’ll let you know if we do. But so far people have been very kind. Yeah.

And I think again, it’s about those conversations. So I think we can talk forever and ever and ever.

I still want to talk about Secret Leaders because.

Do you talk about secret Leaders go.

It. It was marvellous. Marvellous.

Thank you. I was. I told you his hero. I didn’t actually know that. Why didn’t you tell me that when I was like, I’m bringing Daniel Murray?

I was going to tell you, but, you know, I. I ended up. I ended up in Amsterdam one weekend by myself. I end up listening to every single episode. Really? Oh, my God.

That’s dedication. It was just so good.

The guests were so.

So was Steven on that then?

Yeah. He’s the second or third guest.

Did you listen to that one?

You’d have you’d have had to go back through the backlog. I think Nick Jenkins was number one. Steven is in the first five for sure.

Steven Bartlett Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so many good ones. But but then now, now I see it says kindling media. Is that your company?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically we started off as secret Leaders and it was just me and a microphone, etcetera.

Is that what Joel as well?

No, I’ve got a different business partner for Secret Leaders called Rich. Yeah. Um, and Rich was originally, like producing and editing and I was doing the interviewing and, you know, writing interviews and producing sorry, writing interviews, doing them and marketing it. Um, but, you know, it started off as like a nice little side hustle and good interviews and stuff, but at some point it, you know, was growing too big and it.

Became the number one podcast business.

Podcast and business podcast. Yeah. And so it became big. And so it was like, it’s really.

Interesting. How did that.

Feel? I mean, that was amazing.

Um, amazing dance. Always had chat, by the way, in case you’re wondering, always sends you like 14. Always because he was fat.

So you.

Grow up fat, you get.

Great banter.

Um, so I think the, uh, but, but the reality is it’s, you know, I actually say this to people, it’s really interesting. You expect failure when you start, and it’s important too. But like, some people plan for failure, you don’t really plan for success. And so I didn’t plan for this side hustle to go, Well, I was doing it because I basically was wanted free mentorship from experts all the time. So it was a great way to do it.

Well, that’s people often say, right, the podcasts are that because you learn so much from the people that you’re interviewing totally.

And so, you know, that was basically it for me. Um, and that was enough. But basically it was, it was, it started to do really well. So we ended up having to hire someone and then, you know, learning about management and ego and stuff as a bootstrapped company as well as we’ve never taken any funding in, um. I was very this is at right at the start of the pandemic. Heights were starting to take off. Heights launched at the start of the pandemic, launched January the 6th, 2020. At that time, secret Leaders had just started to take off, too. So I was like, Oh God, this is actually going to get bad quickly. So I spoke to Rich and I was like, We need to actually hire someone full time for secret Leaders Now, the good news is we’d never taken any money out of the business, so we had quite a lot of money in it because we’d had advertising and it had grown and all this stuff. So there’s just cash sitting in the in the bank not doing anything with it. So fortunately we were able to immediately say, we can hire someone, we have a budget to hire someone, we can give them a budget to run it as a company. And so I think what’s been really interesting with that is, you know, we we we thought deeply about the type of role we wanted to create, the kind of autonomy that person actually had to have because of how little time we were willing to invest personally, because Rich has his own.

Start-up I had my own Start-Up. That’s just starting. At some point you have to basically say, Am I going to be, you know, pretend I’m Jack Dorsey and I can be full time CEO of two massive businesses? Or am I going to say, you know what, I think my best chances of success and where my purpose really feels aligned right now is heights. So I want to put 90% of my time in heights and 10% in secret Leaders. But I can’t make secret Leaders a success with 10% of my energy. So where does the 10% go? Interviewing. That’s it. So I like mapped out my ideal is in the next year. I’m like, I’m just turning up to interviews. I’m doing the interviews, I’m fucking off. Like I don’t do anything else. Literally anything else. Boundaries. Boundaries. And so it was really clear and we did this interview process, found a great guy. But part of this is you’ve got to give that person then the creative freedom to say, This is what I think we should do in the company. Trust them. Trust. Yeah. And so I think we got lucky with Will, who runs it because he’s, um, you know, he’d been an entrepreneur, he’d failed, he’d been a journalist, he’d really interested in media.

And long story short, he has grown secret Leaders really? Well, we’ve now hired a second person about to her, a third person. So it’ll be basically five of us in the company. Um, you know, talk about boundaries and stuff. I’ve got got to do interviews this Sunday for final round candidates for that company. Um, but the point being, um, as part of the process, he then was like, I’ve got this idea for this totally different podcast, but so I don’t think we should be secret Leaders I think we need to be kindling media. I think we need to be a media company and we should make podcasts, which would make great podcasts. This is my idea, this is how much it’ll cost. Anyway, a bit of a batshit crazy idea and I was actually quite anti it, I have to say. I was like, I don’t think we should do this a terrible idea. But that idea was called Bad Money, which is a show basically about the intersection of business and crime. And the idea is it’s like journalistically researched narrative stories season by season. And so the first episode, first series is about one called a gangster called Big Spender. And it’s because he’d grown up in he spent some time living in Hong Kong.

This was he’s a big guy in Hong Kong, basically responsible for the biggest kidnappings of all time. And it’s an amazing crime story. And so what we’ll did whilst running Secret Leaders is script this find journalists in Australia and Hong Kong. And I found the original police officers that like like jailed this guy like all of this stuff and like put together this podcast. Anyway, long story short is, um, we just hit 100,000 downloads on that. It’s been in the top three in crime in the UK for weeks now. We’ve had three offers from major Hollywood studios to option the rights to turn it into like a show. It’s like it’s really amazing to see what someone else I have nothing to do with that at all. But it’s amazing to see if you give someone some creative freedom, like where their ideas can take things and what they can do. And now he’s actually working on a personal finance show. So personal finance is a big problem in the UK. None of us really understand money. It’s a problem I personally really associate with as well. Um, so we’re actually, to your point, you know, you asked about videos and stuff. This will be our first foray into a video podcast setup. I won’t be. I might be a guest one time, but I’m not involved.

Um, but also, I just think as well, like, I’m smiling at that story because I think it’s so important that you have the right people putting in the skills because I’m like you. I’m like, I have ideas. I like rocking up, I like talking, I like the media. But I was just saying to Payman as well before you came, like, I hate admin side of stuff. Like I also like editing, like the thought of spending hours editing. I’m like, Not for me, you know, but knowing that you’ve got the right people and the right team, you know, like, it’s amazing how things can take a long time. It takes a long time. It takes a long time.

Run a 50 man company, right? So that that takes a bunch of trust and delegation.

Yeah, but I got letting go. Got it all wrong as well.

I got that all wrong. So, I mean, the thing is you learn. Yeah. And letting go is a constant.

Letting go is.

But letting but letting go is also, you know, I got to say, a lot of people will let go and learn the wrong lesson, as in learn the lesson, actually, that they shouldn’t have done that. And so letting go, I think I just had this conversation with someone at lunch, actually. Letting go isn’t the answer. Annoyingly, delegation isn’t the answer. And being totally in control of everything isn’t the answer. The answer is to do the work to find out where your zone of genius lies in the way that fulfils you. And maybe you’re a delegator and maybe you’re a control freak. That’s actually okay. I feel like both of those things have their place, and I feel like I’m still trying to find mine. But, you know, in this example with Will, you know, he could have been a charlatan, he could have been crap and the business could have torpedoed. So, yeah, there’s a lot of risk involved in it. It’s gone well. It could have gone badly and I’d be sitting here with a very different lesson.

So you’ve always had a co-founder and everything you’ve done, Always. You’ve got co-founders and Parlour, but not. Not in the practice, No. Yeah. Which do you prefer? Do you prefer being a partner or.

Do you prefer being interesting one? Right. Because I really enjoy. So the reason why I built the business model that I did at Chelsea is because we are Multi-specialist founder. And so at Founder Multi-specialist Clinic. So for me, my associates, for example, are almost like my founders. The reason why I say that is because I still think that no human being can do everything 100%, and I think people think they do are a little bit of micromanaging in their character. So like even in my practice, like, for example, I was texting Stuart, he’s one of my associates and I was like, There’s this really difficult case. You’re better at doing this. Can you advise on this? I need your help with this. I am not afraid to do that because I recognise my skill sets are certain and I really having that relationship with Parlour, it’s different, right? And I think it’s really different because when you co-found something, there is some point of the business, I think, where and I’m sure you’ve had this with Joel, there’s like resentment in some ways because someone feels they’re either working in a different way. You don’t see eye to eye.

And that’s the thing that I find most difficult, especially if you have like a certain type of brain, like I’m a very creative, slightly kind of ADHD brain where I’ve got loads of different things going on, but I’m really bad at putting it on like a computer, PowerPoint or Excel. Does that make like, I almost need someone to be with me typing it all up? Does that make sense? Whereas, you know, my other business partners like Adobe is phenomenal at the finances. I hate numbers, you know, And Simon is incredible as just like putting everything together and making sure everything’s done and very good at presentation and so forth. So in that way it complements. But I think it’s really important that everyone knows what they’re doing because there can be those conflicts and sometimes you can have those eruptions, which is normal. But in short, I just don’t think I’m ever really a one man band. I just don’t think I am and I’m not embarrassed. But I also don’t have problem letting go and controlling and trusting as in like I’m like, cool. I trust this person.

Go with it. You might find in the future that, you know, in this I sort of thing that’s happening, people with just great ideas will be amazing. You know, the best ideas will win because execution is becoming easier.

So yeah, I mean, it is it is in a way. But and also, like you got to think as well because why are people becoming so I actually got invited to a TikTok event a few weeks ago. I was really proud of that. I’m like, Am I a TikTok influencer? Anyway, I got invited to a TikTok event and there were all these, like, famous tiktokers, if you like. And it was really interesting because some of them had built like millions of followers on like the most niche things. But it was like how creative they were with like cooking and, you know, cutting things in a very specific way. I mean, there was a guy, millions of followers, because he only raps Dr. Seuss books. I mean, how nice is that? But he’s doing it like it’s a creative input, right? So I think, you know, the future is exciting and yeah, but I personally think one man bands are just really difficult. I don’t wish to be that.

I don’t wish to be it. Yeah, I’d much rather have half of something and more of my mental health than 100% of something and less of my mental health.

And I think I think that’s that’s a really that is a really good point because I’m going to ask Dan, we could talk for hours. Payman We know this, but I’ve got a I’ve got a rock.

I have to wrap up. Yeah.

So I’m going to ask you some questions. I think one thing that I want to comment on that you’ve just said there is that I’ve often been told, and I think surrounding myself with certain people is that like, oh, you know, like being a multi, multi millionaire is really important. I’m like, actually not. Because for me, having money gives you freedom. It doesn’t buy you happiness. And I think I always say I want to be comfortable, but for me it’s about having balance, recognition, health and respect that matters more to me. So someone said you could have like 10 billion and like none of the other things, or you could have like five and all of the other things I’d always choose the less.

Amount of money 5.

Billion, 5 million, five or whatever. Okay. But, you know, I’m just trying to say that I’d always choose something less in a monetary way to have your recognition.

Sounds a bit.

Egocentric. It is a little bit. But I think recognition in terms of when you’re remembered for something I hate to say it, maybe it is egocentric, but legacy legacy is important for me because I want to be remembered for doing something that makes a difference.

I was about to back Rohner up to say it. You know, it took me a long time to say and admit that I want recognition. And I. Do you think? There’s a really great thing for someone to accept and own their insecurities and there’s something uncomfortable about saying I want to be recognised. It’s embarrassing to say that to someone else because that fundamentally I’m very aware that that will make.

But again, we all want to be seen.

But we.

Most of us, we don’t.

All want to be seen, but a lot of us want to be.

Seen. Yeah.

A lot of us want to be seen. And that for some, you know, and.

That is ego.

That is ego. So maybe I have to go on a retreat. So, Daniel, amazing chat, as always. I love speaking to you, but I’m going to actually end with one question based on an egocentric question. Perhaps if you could be remembered for one thing, what would it be?

My cats. Fucking legends. Um, okay. Well, what can I say? I mean, honestly, like, the thing that I would love as a legacy is to have introduced brain care as a practice to the world. Um, and, you know, we, we in society do spend time in skin care, hair care, oral care, all these different parts of our bodies that are decaying. And there’s enormous industries set up around that brain care, not an industry, not a space, and actually an area where nutrition can make an enormous difference. And it’s just simple everyday practices and the impact that would have on society, on longevity, on human’s ability to have greater health span and life span, and therefore create even more beautiful, productive work that can actually encourage people to make this a better world. Like that stuff is super meaningful. So I very much believe in like butterfly effect and ripples. And I think that if that’s something that I can contribute to the world, then fantastic. So that far, much more than secret Leaders or anything else, because I think that’s where I can have an impact.

Sure. Thank you so much. Dan, again, thanks so much.

My pleasure.

My pleasure for doing this.

My pleasure.

Coming in. Thank you.