 Welcome to Don't Take Out Your Phone. I had a really cool chat with a guy called Adam French today who is the founder of a protein company called Wade Protein W-H-E-Y Apostrophe D Grass-Fred Wade Protein Very cool chat. We talk about how we started his journey so far They've been going for like six, seven months. It's a very cool journey. We talk a lot about fitness, nutrition He's a fellow crossfitter. So we had a good talk and I hope you will enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Thanks for joining me on the podcast. This is now like fourth or fifth location. We're supposed to do CrossFit at Engine Room where we first met. Then my house. I build this. Another coffee shop too loud. So we're ending up at Starbucks. Not that one at public side Starbucks. But thanks for joining me. That's alright. No worries. Thanks for having me. Pleasure, pleasure. So what is Wade? In its simplest term, because I've got about five or six different variations of what I say Wade is, but it's a pure, sustainably produced Wade protein powder sourced from the best area in the world which is hormone free and 100% grass-fed. So we have single serving sachets which are portable to use which we can talk about more in a minute and 30 and 100 serving bags. Was the weather cows from? The cows are from Cork in Southern Ireland. The reason for that is not just I'm not Irish. A lot of people ask if I'm Irish. The reason for that is because Irish dairy is the best in the world and so they're outside for about 80% of the year. If you compare that to somewhere say the UK so British cows are outside for about 50% of the year. It's all weather dependent so Irish grass is rich it grows quickly the soil is really good for grass growing conditions it's actually sunnier it rains more so basically what this means is you're giving these cows a free range of lush grass so the great thing about that is it creates a really rich dairy product so you hear about Irish milk Irish butter being very rich in flavour. What it also means is that the healthy fats the amino acids that are in the way in the milk are higher than they are elsewhere so if you compare that to other say protein providers that produce dairy from grain fed cows our dairy has five times more CLA which is an amino acid effectively more healthy if we and do most cows fed with grain or grass fed it varies actually grass fed is actually cheaper and is more sustainable so the dairy farms that we work with we have about 1300 dairy farms in Ireland in about a 30 to 40 mile radius they're all quite small most of them are family run I've been able to visit them a few times passed down from generation to generation but because the grass grows the cows eat it it's very sustainable so they don't use hormones to grow the grass whereas the cows in for example they're indoor fed have to be fed on grains which have hormones in to grow them quicker for example but no Irish dairy is some of the best even of the best yes so when I started the brand I didn't think about cost I thought what's the best product out there to give to people so it took me about 6 months trying to find where the best dairy is from in the northern hemisphere and it's quite important that we tell people that so a lot of the other brands it amazes me with something like dairy in general you don't know where it's from so whereas if you used to buy eggs you'd buy free range eggs if you'd buy free range chicken but with dairy there's not that same stamp of approval so what we're campaigning to do along with the dairy farmers is a thing called pasta promise which basically says if they're outside for longer than 50% of the year they get this stamp saying a basically free range dairy why is it being out at 50% when you get why? actually ours are outside for 80% of the year basically they're inside they have the free range of the grass they're under higher stress whereas they're outside they're just roaming on the grass and the only reason that actually the cows aren't out for longer is because of the weather and they come in for the coldest 2 months of the year so effectively the longer they're outside the better and there's a reason why the other brands don't tell that because they source their dairy from indoor grain fed cows and it shines through on the product so if you look at their macronutrients it's a lot worse than us there's quite a good trend now for people getting their milk from milk plants yeah exactly that let's just start getting our milk from milk plants it's quite interesting because if it was like invented now the milkman you've got like locally produced milkman and glass bottles delivering it in electric floats it's funny that it's a really old school it's plastic and all that kind of stuff if you look at dairy in general over the last 10 years I think there's half the number of dairy farmers there were 10-15 years ago and I went to Dorset North Dorset and I know a lot of friends I went to school with have family of dairy farms I had to close because the price of milk was just so cheap now so the price has gone down over the last 10 years because the supermarkets are pushing down price which is weird because I think everyone would be happy to spend an extra 2 pence we spend I think it's 20p more to have it delivered by milkman it's great actually because the world we're in now is people want to know where their product is from what condition their animals are in whether it's cows or whether it's something else and actually that suits our brand really well because that's what we're giving people we have a farm to fork initiative so every batch of whey that we produce we can source it back to the actual individual dairy farmer that produced that it's not quite as simple as you plug in the number online but we know for a fact that our current batch of whey is produced by a farmer called Glen so no other brand can do that because they don't want people to know where they get it from so as the world evolves people are going to want to know where they're buying their product from is it British me is it British dairy those sorts of things which is great because I still think people are quite sensitive yes they are so if you have a locally produced beef and a beef which is a lot more expensive than who knows where it comes from it's trying to find that right market fit so in my market it's such a disparity between the my proteins out there that charge 10-12 pounds a kilo to our product which is equivalent of 30-35 pounds so it's because we're looking to target people that care about where their product is from that's sourced in the right whey excuse me the pun and there's a lot of whey puns out there so it's not a one-size-fits-all in the same way that people would rather buy like you were just saying cheaper chicken or more expensive chicken so there isn't a one-size-fits-all but there are people out there especially nowadays that want to know where their products are from and which they should do is the right they have why did you start the business a couple of reasons the original reason was because I worked in the city in marketing and I would go to the gym at lunch times and there isn't an easy whey to take a whey powder on the go it baffled me that it's such a big market that's worth billions of pounds globally but trying to take a powder on the go was so complicated so I'd had a tupperware which I'd had to counter a few days I'd be at my desk powder everywhere I would have to put the powder in my shaker or in a little cup in my shaker and it just really confused me that there wasn't an easier portable whey protein on the go so I did a prototype of this single serving sachet that's thinner that fits in a shaker opens easily it's portable trialled that and actually had for myself and a lot of my friends loved it so I thought ok well I can create a business out of this and you always wanted to do a business 100% yeah I did a business at uni you had your own business at uni no I did business yeah I did marketing and sport at uni actually so it's weird now because I'm in marketing and sport and nutrition when I was 16 I ran my own ebay business selling Javiarnas which I'm wearing right now importing them from Brazil and reselling so I've always wanted to have my own business but I'm 30 now and I kind of got caught in the not the corporate lifestyle but moving to London enjoying the perks weekend away I was at Brunel University in west London I had to get out of the west country I thought I'd have to get away I came originally for sport because Brunel was top 2, 3 unis for sport and then as I developed I felt that business was more suited for me so I sort of changed in the second and third year to business and then got not an elite level nowhere near elite level so my main sports are football which I still play 3 times a week now and I come from sort of an athletics background so middle long yeah track so middle long distance running I started off as sprinter as I was younger then just got longer and longer and longer now I'm coming back so I'm half marathons probably when I was younger competitively yeah so competitively I would probably be 5k I did a lot of that when I was younger back in the west country so it's actually quite a hard distance because it's quite quick so it was good fun but as I've sort of grown older I've gone to the gym more so I was trying to have a healthy balance of doing probably now I would say I would gym 2, 3 times a week maybe 4 times and then football the rest of the time but 11 aside or 5 side well both actually I play 11 aside on Saturdays and I play 6 aside on Thursdays so yeah I've always wanted to be a professional sportsman yeah well there you go it's the new Tony I was a sort of a bridesmaid of the world I was never quite good enough you wanted to be a pro athlete yeah I did but now with Wade and we can talk about this more in a minute we're actually now working with the pro athlete which sports? so we were the sole provider for Wade protein for Wimbledon tennis this year so we replaced Optimum Nutrition which is the biggest Wade brand ever based purely on the quality of our way so we were in the players cafe so they would finish the games they would go to the cafe they'd eat and within the cafe was a Wade protein shake and that was made with Wade so in our first 6 months I was really impressed they contacted me actually because we test our product is tested with InformSport so basically it's a a certification where if you're an elite athlete you'll drugs test it quite a lot so InformSport basically takes a product and batch tests it for banned substances so when we produce our Wade we send it to InformSport they test random batches and check that it's secure and safe and then they give us our certification to say that is safe what that means is that we can now start working with pro athletes so when would a morning have even looked at us if we didn't have InformSport because if you're a professional footballer or an athlete, if you get banned that's your livelihood actually Wade protein is very safe but it still has to have this stamp of approval on it which cost us a lot of money when we're starting up but actually it's been a godsend to work with we're stocked in BXR London which is Anthony Joshua's gym he can't in Baker Street so he can't they can't be affiliated with a brand that's not safe and actually when we're pitching to to retail and to gyms they know that our product is safe for their members for their consumers which is kind of a good thing for them really so did you have to presumably source the factory in the UK or? so our way is obviously from Ireland and then we manufacture it in Chester in the UK and they're certified so manufacturers has to be certified a manufacturer of our sachets has to be certified the whole chain has to be so it's actually finding quite hard finding that chain of reps did it not make anything else so there are certain factories especially with sachets will create medicines into packaging so even then it's quite a these are drugs that are safe to use for medicinal purposes but if that gets contaminated with my product then it's not safe the clean rooms they have in these factories is amazing because it also has to be clean of everything they have food products in there they have nuts in there they need to make sure they are 100% clean and you see all of it so I actually just have the finished product so I've worked with the manufacturers to create them they produce it and manufacture it and then send me the finished product and you guys market there's been a few cases recently where people have taken tainted supplements or something like that got banned and then exactly that, I mean if you look at obviously Russia it's a tricky one because a lot of some athletes will blame their coach and say that I was told to take this but if it's got that informed sport approval on it, you know it's safe so a nutritionist will work and recommend to an athlete tennis players for example this is to the recommended diet these are recommended supplements but at the end of the day it's up to you but you need to make sure you're being safe and we've been working with rugby league players and they get tested about once a week at the moment randomly so I've had a few players come to me and say safe, can I see certificates and the armed forces as well so we work with a lot of people when an army barracks in Cyprus we sponsored a half marathon over there and they love the product because it's sachets really convenient for them but they also need to make sure that it's safe because again that's their livelihood they need to... they are, yeah, yeah so they need to, if you want to pitch to army barracks or work with people in the army they won't touch a product unless it's informed sport tested and it's quite important for them so those two markers are actually quite big for us all because we've got that testing which I never would have thought about so the gym that I work with said go out and get it, which I did it's not too expensive but it is quite at front cost but it's so worth it because actually I also know that it's safe because even though I sourced away and I know where I sourced you've still got lost in the pipeline so it's nice to know that it's clean and it's good for everyone else as well and it amazed me that you see products on the shelf such as sports supplements now that aren't tested because you could be taking anything to be honest I mean most people don't know I have no idea no exactly that and it should all be safe really but not every product can be tested because it doesn't need to be but a lot of people don't even know where way is from a lot of people don't realise it's from dairy for example which is fine but as part of our brand we want to educate a lot of people so your way because obviously a lot of people have lactose intolerance and all that stuff so your way is hydrolyzed so there's three types of way they all come from milk and it's basically what you do with them once you create the way so just very quickly you take say a pint of milk for example what they'll do in the factory is they'll take out the curds which creates the cheese think of a little Miss Muffet curds in a way the liquid that's left over is the way if you're going to have yoghurt there's liquid on top that's way liquid way effectively what you can do is three stages so you can dry that so take the water out and dry it that creates a powder that's way concentrate so that's the most common type of way protein out there at the moment so it's cheaper to produce because it's just basically dried liquid way but it has all of the fat and all of the sugar that you have from the milk excess of the cheese for example so that is about six to eight percent lactase lactose sorry so it's a great product and it has the same benefits as protein for example but a lot of people don't get on well with concentrate because it doesn't sit well on their stomach a lot of people aren't in theory lactose intolerant but they don't sit well with lactose so the second type of way is way isolate which is again quite popular but all they do is micro filter they basically push it for a filter to remove a lot of the fat and the sugar so it's about 90% protein content a concentrate it's about 70 to 80% so it's more of a pure way has a lot less fat and sugar in it and then the third and final type of way protein all from the same source of milk is way hydro isolate or hydrolyzed way which is what we produce and the difference between our way and say isolate is we add foods enzymes to it which effectively break down the amino acids all that means is it's partially broken down and partially so when you drink it it gets to your blood a lot quicker it's 0.8% lactose as opposed to 8% so it's a lot better on your stomach so a lot of the brands out there will say it's lactose free which most lactose people that are lactose intolerant can take it I refuse to do that because I think if someone's really sensitive to lactose they will take it and probably not get on with it but it's worth a try people are different for example but what it means is when you drink it it goes to your blood quicker so effectively what that means is you start your recovery sooner so you effectively recover quicker it was originally designed for athletes that train twice a day that need to recover really quickly straight off to their workout start the recovery process it sits well on your stomach so you don't get the stomach upset that you might get from concentrate there's a lot of people who try way protein and say I don't like it but actually if you try a hydrolyzed product it will be a lot easier on your stomach so yeah and actually in the past hydrolyzed way it's had quite a bad rep because it doesn't taste very nice but what we've done is we've worked with flavour and experts and actually our way all the taste tests we've done suggest that our way tastes nicer than a way concentrate and that's because it comes from a good dairy source so what we've created is the purest form of whey so the pure protein our servings have 20g of protein 0.2g of sugar so it's 0.4g of carbs so it's basically pure protein that just goes straight to your blood and it tastes really nice as well so you've got two flavours we've just reached a third so we've got strawberries and cream which Wimbledon loved obviously I didn't even realise at the time that it was perfect with Wimbledon and we've just launched a new flavour in inverted commas which is basically unflavoured so it's not got any flavourings in it at all but it's basically 100% whey a hydrolyzed whey and sunflower lecithin to make it mix so a lot of people when we were testing the brand and we had the original two flavours they were asking us to do a completely raw version because a lot of people bake with a product you can bake with it as well so a lot of people the common uses are straight after the gym with either water, milk whatever you want to take it in your porridge is really really good a lot of people don't have enough protein for breakfast and oats are great they have a coffee and oats a grab a croissant on the go and there's no protein in your diet actually in the morning your body is craving protein because you haven't had it for 12 hours so it's really good to just pour your oats to give you 20g of protein and then that little bit of extra flavour unless you go for the unflavoured unless you go for the unflavoured but a lot of people are making smoothies at home where they'll use fresh fruit so strawberries or banana they don't necessarily need the flavouring from the whey powder so they'd rather just have an unflavoured version people make protein bars, protein balls and we've got a few recipes on our site for that so the new product is about 92% protein in quantity quality so it is crazy high let's use zero sugar even though the R1 has zero sugar anyway but it's surprising because it doesn't actually taste of anything so as a single serve on the go you think I'm probably not right but actually it's just a taste of whatever you're mixing with try the chocolate, I'll have to try that one we're just manufacturing it now because we've got a new batch coming out how long does it take to manufacture? quite a long time actually dairy farm to sachet can be up to 9-12 weeks but it lasts a long time so the shelf life of our product is between 12 and 18 months for the unflavoured version it's even longer so it's almost in only 2 years which is great because it can sit on a shelf for quite a long time so for all of these different things to think about you found starting a business running it it's such a learning curve so I started the business when I was working in marketing on the side trying to find a manufacturer that would produce a bespoke sachet size was the hardest thing because they all do off the shelf versions so I designed this sachet size for a reason so it's easier to use easier to open but actually they were like great well we can't do it for those for your volume you can order a million and we can buy your machine bit so you learn loads of different things I refuse to you can source it from someone like China that's a lot cheaper but I wanted to keep as much of it as close to home as possible I wanted to visit the manufacturers I wanted to know these people so I spent a long time visiting manufacturers seeing their processes and eventually found these guys in Chester they're called Flex Packaging Services and they're amazing, I love them because they're friendly you speak to them, you can have a conversation with them they don't try and rip you off, it's a very much share so I've always wanted to when I was working in marketing I always sort of an agency site I sat in the middle I would be buying something off a supply whether it was media space or data and I was effectively selling it to a client so I sat in the middle and we'd be working with clients and I'm not going to name any names but these big corporate clients are just horrible people and they just to do business with they would just be overbearing it's just a nightmare so I always wanted to do business with people that I got on well with and I've had a couple of instances where I've dealt with manufacturers that actually could work with me and it was slightly cheaper but they just wanted my money so working with a manufacturer that would get on well they just were just interested in money rather than trying to build my brand so it's an important thing for me to try and enjoy my life a bit more and enjoy business but that was a learning curve because I've never done manufacturing before and branding took a long time as well so I worked with a small agency I went through various iterations of names concepts because I didn't want to have a brand that was the same as everyone else so our brand is very clean it's very gender neutral it's basically white in text it's not an image of a topless guy with a dumbbell in his hand and that's for a reason because a lot of the way brands out their scared away females and they shouldn't do so we've probably got a 60-40 split female to male of what the people who buy your product and that's just because women aren't afraid to pick it up but men are also happy to have the same product as well so it's the product quality that shines through rather than the marketing how many names did you go through? I would say probably about 100 some of the original ones I can't even remember what they were now but it took so long and I was getting so fixated on the name for so long and actually didn't mean that much in the end so we picked quite a simple name it works well it's going to be quite tricky if we ever try and move down out of way in the future which we probably will do or other products if we were to launch a vegan brand in the future and it's way it's what it says on the tin exactly, which we're doing at the moment but if we were to launch a pea protein it has to be called like peed or something which we can't do so maybe we'll think of that but the branding took a long time but it's quite important and we've had a lot of compliments on our branding and now we're pushing to retail it sort of stands out on the shelves because it's a very proud of marketplace that's probably the biggest not worry but the biggest problem I've had to overcome is trying to get my message across in a crowded marketplace companies that have been out there for 15 years have got much bigger budgets that are effectively paying to get customers on board by pushing influencers out there and sponsoring events and offering a cheaper cost of poorer quality there's so many things that are different about our brand the fact that we're honest about where we get away from the quality of our product quality is quite a subjective word the highest quality everyone says that but ours actually is our BCAA content which is a branch chain of amino acids it's higher than any other way on the market do you think consumers care about that or do they look at it? this is the thing, it's hard so I never wanted to when I was branding my product I didn't want to call it a diet way I didn't want to call it a lean way so the biggest diet way the most popular diet way on the market I'm not going to name names but it's called diet way brand in front of it has about 30% more calories than our product so ours is a lot better for you if you're on a diet or trying to lose weight but I don't want to falsely market and say diet we changed the wording slightly on our new sachets that we've just designed that will go into retail it's got 2 seconds for some to pick up your sachet it's amazing you're looking for a diet weight loss it's all marketing marketing baloney it's badly because it's deceiving the customer protein is for recovery protein is a macronutrient will increase your metabolism because it requires more energy to break down so in that aspect it will increase your metabolism it does help you lose weight if you have more protein in your diet if you replace protein from carbohydrates we'll come on and talk about diet in a minute it's tricky trying to think why take weight that's been our biggest problem the guys that have bigger budgets are going to outspend you online in terms of paid search so it's trying to get our message and our story across which we don't do enough of and creating content is doing a lot more why should I take weight so our big things is our one for one scheme for every sachet someone buys on a website we give a glass of milk to a school child in poverty so it's amazing in the last three months alone we've given about six and a half thousand glasses of milk to school children in poverty so it's a really neat I love the one they're called B1G one so we cover the cost the administration cost so for every penny that people donate effectively goes to a cause I've worked in charities in marketing for eight years and I've seen a lot of them doing it right and wrong if you give someone ten pounds just generally it's always hard to see where that ten pounds goes the model that Tom's created Tom's shoes this one for one is really easy so if every time someone buys a sachet we give a glass of milk so if they buy a 30 serving bag that's 30 glasses of milk it's quite simple and it makes a difference so we're not doing it to make money more money a lot of brands out there we give 1% of our profits or 10% of our profits what happens if you don't make a profit or you reinvest your money whereas ours whether we make a profit or not we're giving to charity so as we grow as a brand we've already made a massive impact if it gets the million mark it would be incredible you'll get there we'll get there eventually have you found then that the way you are trying to market is different to a lot do you think so the way we market compared to our competitors or maybe you're in a marketing agency so if you've seen over the last let's say 10 years massively that you've had to change the way that you've done things the marketing that I used to do was completely different to what I'm doing now so the only concepts that I can drive over is the general business understanding so the message that you put across I worked in data marketing we used to do a lot of direct mail inserts into magazines the market now doesn't do that at all the market that is now is Instagram influencers are massive whether they know what they're talking about or whether they don't know what they're talking about the new famous people it's like Kylie Jenner billionaire self-made billionaire he's assisted in a video lipstick I think it was the biggest brand that made like 19 million dollars on one day and they obviously the Kardashians are an extreme example there was an example I think it was one of the Kardashians that they put a post up about a men's face moisturizer and the next day that product was sold out in every single store in the UK by women buying it that's how influential they are and if you think about sport sponsorship it's been around for decades it's not a new thing but with Instagram more so than there's Twitter, there's Snapchat there's the other ones but Instagram is the big one is trying to leverage these people in the best way possible unfortunately again in that market they're expensive they're expensive to work with and if I'm working with a brand for a certain person and I don't pay them as much as the other person does so what I had to do to start with is to create relationships with each individual person I go and meet them these are sportsmen and women and personal trainers are great because they have a lot of influence a lot of people look to their trainers and it's not about someone I don't want to work with someone just putting up a top of his picture every day I want to work with people that are honest about getting healthy and changing your lifestyle so that's quite a tricky one but marketing is I think we're at the peak of the polarised Instagram at the moment I think it will change you don't think it's just started no I think we're at the peak I think it will be at the peak for a while I don't know where the market will move in the future but I think TV is definitely like from a TV point of view I think it's just dead TV's gone now YouTube is on demand TV is the new people don't watch adverts anymore they skip all the TV programmes have on demand now video on demand is massive basically if you're in a situation where you can click through to something that's where you're going to get your conversions brand outdoor billboards is all about subconscious and I think there's always still a place for that but I think what brands want to do especially startups is they want to get a return on their investment straight away and that's what's really hard because you can't do loads of branding at the start even though you want to if you look at someone like BrewDog who I don't know how old BrewDog are now but they're worth over a billion dollars there's probably like 12, I think there were about 12-13 years probably so they started their brand their marketing budget was zero they would just do crazy PR stuff so that's what we'll be looking to do in the future is to how can we leverage PR in a way that will get across our message that we are cleaner we work with charity that our product is what it says on the tin and it's basically content content content content and Instagram is a daily feed now people will go on Instagram first so way back when yeah way back when they were when they hear about a brand they used to go to the yellow pages back in the day and then they used to go to probably the last 5 or 10 years okay I've heard about Wade straight on the website which he kind of still do now but more and more so now the first thing they'll do is they go to their Instagram page so you've got to make sure that page is hot the content is good so you're posting every day so I'm working I'm trying to work with a new photographer now because I've done it but quite poorly probably but you have to have that content has to be on point what amazed me about these the Instagram is that you see the hair is perfect they have a photographer following them around wherever they go so they're on holiday they've got a photographer with them you don't think about that consciously when you look at the picture they're on holiday with their perfect hair they've got a photographer that will follow them around that's their full time job it's amazing really photography is something that I'm not necessarily that good at but I need some they're not going to follow me on holiday but they need to film every part of your brand people want to know, they want to hear the stories we've got a great story to tell we need to push that more and that's all free the more and more people we get on board we can spread our story our marketing budget becomes zero because we've got a lot of repeat business because we've got a good tasting quality product and people buy into what we're trying to achieve but we need to be pushing that more so it's interesting content is definitely you need to have your content on point blogging constantly about what you believe in that's what the broodog guys did really well they've done amazingly they went after the poor quality beers out there and they wanted to create a craft beer and they've almost created craft beer in the UK and then they did crowdfunding I think as well they do their own, they do equity for punks which is a really smart way of crowdfunding because they use their own customers to crowdfund so they're customers who drink their beer drink in their pubs become investors in their company but as an investor in a company they get like 20% off or whatever it is so they don't really want to go somewhere else because they're investing in this company they want to tell their friends because they're investing in this company there's such a good cycle we'll look to that further down the line because we want to have advocates for a brand and the stronger the advocates are the more they'll talk about your brand I've bought a few things in different companies on crowdfunding I've done like a bi-voe barefoot and so whoever I speak to now I'm like hey you've got to buy them I do because I've got a little bit of but that's the subconscious some people do it for money and crowdfunding is great I think we'll definitely look to crowdfunding expensive way to raise cash but then the marketing benefit there's sites like Kickstarter where you don't give away any equity it's hard to engage with people because your product's got to be really good for people to order it now pay for it now and then not get it for 6 months potentially but if you've got a really neat product Kickstarter is probably more for design products crowdcube, cedars they're the two biggest ones I think on crowdcube cedars maybe the minimum is 50,000 to raise but you also get these customers that come on board you're buying customers that are investing in your brand I would never go out and get investment from angel investors why not? because they're just obsessed with money I think and making a profit and I understand that so I used to work at my old marketing agency we were a small private company family run, feel everyone loved working there it was very close knit people and then they sold to a PLC and there was just a shift where it wasn't about having a good product creating a good service it shifted making money and when you think about money too much if I was concentrating on making a profit all the time I wouldn't be working with charity I'd be buying it cheaper way you'd be making shortcuts for me it's about creating a really good product that's the best for the consumer rather than just concentrating on the bottom line all the time you obviously have to have an eye on the bottom line otherwise I wouldn't have a product because it would grab business so I think for me at the moment I would much rather go down the route of equity crowdfunding but we'll see we could be talking in a year's time and do you have any mentors any business people I don't really know so I you hear about this a lot actually and I've kind of like where do you find these people and I've kind of reached out to a few people and met with a few people which has been quite cool and I've reached out to a lot of brands and asked for their advice I'm looking to go into a certain retail at the moment and I've seen in the store and I've reached out to these brands and they love talking about a business to give new advice I haven't got a regular mentor but I worked with Virgin Startup and got a Virgin Startup loan What's Virgin Startup? Virgin Startup is basically a startup loans company that Virgin sort of it's not actually a Virgin loan it's a startup because of UK Yeah so he pushed for the government to bring out a cheaper loan system for startups to try and get more entrepreneurs on the market because he creates more jobs I think he worked with David Cameron he pushed him hard and hard and hard so the government created Startup Loans.co.uk which is loans between £525,000 which you can repay early for no fee it's a cheaper interest rate than you get at a bank It's really good actually and what Virgin do is they offer a mentoring around the sites so you apply for the scheme then you work with them to apply for the loan of startups so then I did that I worked with a Virgin mentor to get my loan I did a business plan, forecast making sure they're secure It's an idiot skyd row this template which is amazing and even if you don't get it writing it down your business plan your forecast is really therapeutic and actually good for your business it definitely sees where your gaps are and then they offer you 12 months of mentoring after that so I get invited to start up funded events and Richard Branson pops along to a few he's not been to one that I've been in and then you get given from 7 to 12 months you get given a mentor in your industry because they've got a network of hundreds of mentors and I'll meet with them once every few months to sort of get feedback from an expert in the industry contacts so I've achieved that about three months ago so I've started, originally started way the sachets personal funding, credit cards that sort of thing just to try and keep it all controlled self-funded, the fear I call it if I'd just got someone else's money I wouldn't have the fear you've just jumped off the building it's all on me it makes me go out there and want to push the brand but then I got the loan for Virgin to push the larger bags so we had the original sachets but people were like I love the sachets from the go but I want a bigger bag so because of manufacturing the minimum orders are so big we just ordered another ton of way in bags and sachets so I had to get a loan to do that and to expand the brand so in about three months time I'll be allocated to mentor but I would recommend them massively people get a little bit scared of loans I think but you can spread it over five years it's actually quite cheap per month you don't have to go for the full of value you can go for a £500 loan and you can repay it early which is very what's the maximum you can borrow? £25,000 which is a small scale right it's great for startups so when I was in the room we were all talking about going around the room and there was just so many brands which I love and luckily it's just around the corner from my house the virgin stuff so it's really cool and it's really inspiring to be around other entrepreneurs all with different goals and people from all corners of the world creating all sorts of brands so it's amazing and that's all quite I think it's quite hard being on your own because the motivation to succeed that's why I like going out and meeting gyms podcast for example obviously this is the best one but I think you hear a lot of people say they start up as a partnership which is a good thing because you can bounce off each other so further down the line obviously I'll need to bring on more people because at the moment it literally is just me I started on my own as well you've got to be really mentally it's so easy to not go to work or not to but then that's when the fear kicks in because when I was running the business on the side for about six months when I had my full time job I'd sort of do mornings, lunchtime, evenings on weight I also had a full time salary I didn't really have the fear whereas now I've got the fear to push it forward which is great so do you keep strict working hours? not really, no I really don't like nine to five I know we were speaking before that I like to get up early my office doesn't open until half eight so I'll probably go to a coffee shop for a couple hours in the morning then I'll go to the gym my brain only works in the morning probably for some reason even though I don't feel awake my brain is working so my eyes might be shut but my brain's working so I'll get but you've achieved something by 9am and then I'll go into the office but about midday and in the afternoons I'll spend packing orders going to gyms, meeting people and doing as much as possible so the days are varied for sure which is cool because it's flexible so if I wanted to do whatever on a Friday afternoon or watch when the football was on I could watch a game at three because I've done eight hours of work by that point where do you fit your exercise in? all over the place so I normally go to a couple hours in the morning work and then go to the gym and at 9.30pm I've normally done two hours of work and an hour in the gym are you doing CrossFit? I'm not doing it anymore only because where I live in London right now there isn't a close CrossFit so I live in Notting Hill the closest one is down to Handlersmith but actually now I'm working with a lot of CrossFit gyms so engine room CrossFit for example I was down there this morning it's really cool getting to actually quite like visiting all these gyms because everyone's got their own take on it and the community is great that's the best part of CrossFit because I think it's got quite a bad rep from the outside in in what regard? I think people that don't do CrossFit or haven't seen it or haven't tried it just perceive these people they go to the gym five times a week all they talk about is CrossFit which is probably the case but because they're passionate about it I walked into Endroom this morning it's the first time I've been in there in this time of class I've been in there in the evening before people saying hello how are you I've never been there before and everyone sort of works together it's almost like a group workout and people think it's slightly American but actually it's such a good way of developing a community and other concepts are copying it now in group workouts but the best way to describe it is a football club as it's a team you train together, you play together CrossFit is like a group fitness you train in a group if you go to the gym on your own motivation can be low, you probably just leave you can't leave and CrossFit, you're in there it's addictive in the fact that it's so technical people think that it's throwing weights around and it's unsafe for you but actually everyone can scale which I love about it so you don't have to be putting 60kgs on a bar you put 20kgs on a bar you push to your limits you actually compete with yourself rather than someone else there's a certain number of people in the class for a reason the coach will go around checking that the form is perfect you have to go through an induction and you scale it and what's great is that because it becomes addictive in a certain way it keeps you fit without really knowing about it I'm all over it I love that because you also I work much harder in a group and also I've learnt so many new skills I'm trying to hand stand walk this year have you done it yet? I couldn't let a couple of little steps but the other thing is do you think it's quite elitist? so it's quite expensive CrossFit so you find that it's for people that you're talking about kids from Lowest Station how can we get them involved? I think to a certain degree I think the price, especially in London that's what put me off on a first move so I did CrossFit in Bath it's cheap it was like £60 a month and it's probably more expensive now as they move up but that's unlimited if you come to London some of them are £250 a month some of them are too expensive for what they are and London is different because of the rent you have to pay but there are some that are just but then again in London you've also got these classes that people pay £20, £25 per class so they pay more like £300, £400 a month to go to three or four classes a week like a yoga session it could be like 13, 14, 15 quid what's interesting I think actually Instagram this is the negative point of Instagram it's creating the elitist thing that you talked about I think there are certain people on Instagram that are elitist in what they perceive the problem with something like Instagram is that you've got everyone you can look at everyone in the world because if you go to your local gym and you didn't have Instagram you'd be looking at the people around you whereas on Instagram you're competing with everyone in the world and the people will put up pictures and you've got to remember these fitness models as they're called they don't look like that all the time so they might have like 10 or 12% body fat and they've got a shoot coming up they'll spend two weeks eating nothing killing themselves it's hard work you've got to commend them for what they do but actually that's not what they look like but also you're not just doing it to look good in the mirror as you get older you want to be able to move be mobile that's the negative point of Instagram it's almost creating this polarised view of what people think they should look like and there aren't anyone out there there's no magazines out there there's men that look 0.1% of people look like that 0.0% of people look like that it's a difference between it's a fine line between being aspirational and being realistic so it's a tricky one and that's why I try and keep off Instagram looking at those types of things so if you get into the crossfit stuff a lot of it's functional most people are working in offices they're sitting down on the way so when you get into it more about flexibility functional is a really good word to actually use it and the word functional is you see people called functional fitness and actually that's what I like about crossfit is that it's about flexibility building subtle suppleness and rather than just lifting loads of heavy weights above your head it's not that whereas it's creating a lifestyle change it puts a lot of people off though Instagram, Facebook it's quite negative actually because if you're trying to lose weight the concept of losing weight is quite interesting because like diets as well and I mean I don't like the word diet I can't, I say it but the word diet for me is too short term in what way? I think people see diet as a quick fix and it really isn't so there's lots of types of diet so you could be 5, 2, paleo keto there's hundreds but there's a lot of types of diet all designed for me to lose weight sometimes too quickly in a short period of time and what happens is you crash and what you should do is a lifestyle change it's nutrition it's teaching people habits rather than a diet losing weight is quite black and white you just have less calories and you consume it's literally as simple as that people think that if I'm taking fats on board this is more effective at losing weight it's not, the reason why the keto works to lose weight versus normal diets is because you're taking less calories alcoholics are thin for example they could just drink alcohol day and be thin but it's not healthy and I don't think Instagram doesn't have, and the media as well they don't have to tell the truth people want to listen to but also we don't really learn it you don't learn it at school you don't learn it anywhere my fiance's brother is 15 and I can't really remember now what we'd learn at school but they're not taught what nutrition is they're not taught to have 5 a day they're not taught actually having too much fruit isn't good for you because people have 7 pieces of fruit a day that's actually quite unhealthy because it's so much sugar it's natural sugar but it's too much sugar also you're taught that fat's bad for you fat's bad yeah, carbs are bad and it really isn't it's about energy balance it's about, I think it's quite easy someone said it to me the other day actually which really resonated with me it's quite easy to hit your macro goal so if you have 100g of protein to it that's quite easy carbohydrates, fats, it's quite easy to get those three but what it isn't easy to do is your micronutrient so your vitamins so like I was saying before you could just eat drink alcohol and lose weight but you're not getting any micronutrients in so hey you go to school and you ask someone what a macro and a micro is they won't know and it's not just about telling them what it is, I think it's about teaching them how to cook probably simple ways of doing it it over complicates and it really is a case of I think what they should teach kids at school is it's a balanced diet rather than a balanced diet for example rather than a keto or a 5-2 or whatever they can choose to moderate themselves in the future but at the end of the day you have a third of protein a third of carbs or whatever you want to do for what your body needs nutritionally because the government should be pushing it because it's going to save them a lot of money in the future it just confuses me but we went through periods where Jamie Oliver doing his school stuff but I went to see a few schools when my kids were going to school in September and they're still serving you'd say unhealthy pizzas, burgers chips what they need to be taught as well is that it really is a balance so my diet for example I would consider myself healthy but I would probably have a treat every day biscuits not every day biscuits are my go-to cup of tea and biscuits so my biggest like cheat would be or trick would be a lot of people I have a sweet tooth so if you've eaten like a quite high fat meal after you kind of want something sweet so rather than having like a chocolate bar or something have a nice lolly like 50 calories 10g of sugar and you get the same like satisfaction from it and you're not having all those calories late at night so it's but you're exercising a lot though I can cheat a lot more than normal people normal people it's getting that balance of how much activity you're doing it is and some people if you want to have a Mars bar or whatever you earn it if you have done a lot of exercise go and earn it it's just a balance and they say you can have about added sugar that's not from fruits or whatever about 35g a day that's quite a lot it's a kind of coke but I wouldn't recommend but if you want a kind of coke just filter it into your diet not every day have it as a treat, earn your calories I think and rather than just relying upon it it has to be a balance because I've done it in the past I've gone on a holiday I want to get a good beach body or whatever and I've done two or three days without any treats or any goodness and you actually get worse and you crash because the more exercise you do the hunger you get is actually quite hard but if you filter it in as long as you're hitting your micronutrients and you're not in a calorie surplus you'll be fine the tough thing is that it's hard to eat well because you pop down to the supermarket and a lot of the stuff they sell the quick meals are generally unhealthy and that's why you see the rise of meal prep companies I think they're very expensive at the moment so for the usual person they're up to 20 quid a day for three meals for three meals and a snack maybe two snacks actually for me that's too expensive now I'm starting my own business I don't pay myself a salary I pay myself enough to live and you learn it's quite liberating how to cook your own meals it's time though did you not cook your own meals when you were getting a salary? no I did I hate buying meals out I think it's such a waste of money even going to anywhere and spending £7-8 some people do it every day I think you spend 50-60 quid a week you spent that on food shopping but they also worked very long hours so it's quite hard I worked with a company called macro meals recently really cool guys and they sent me a few meals and I absolutely loved it so can you choose what like vegan you can choose you can pick and choose certain meals you can say I don't want broccoli for example you can say I don't like all I want this really really good and only £6 a meal actually really good but I can't afford it on my current non salary but if I could I would do it straight away because it's giving me what I need and all I've got to do is put it in a microwave which for a lot of business people it's a good way to do it it's a supplement almost the only way that a supplement is people say do you need whey protein like we said earlier on you don't but if you're on the go after the gym going back to the office for example having a quick shake and getting that instant hit of protein your body needs it if you can go and have some eggs afterwards then you probably don't need it but if your body needs what you do when you exercise you break down muscle tissue you're literally tearing muscle tissue without protein you're going to wake up the next day and you're going to hurt, you're going to have dogs that you build muscle is breaking it down and rebuilding it so your body is constantly in the process of breaking down cells, rebuilding them so protein is a macronutrient it's really needed in a diet and if you look at brands like Weetabix weetabix now I would actually say protein is the new fashionable macronutrient and for good reason because actually a high protein diet can help reduce increased metabolism because it requires a lot more energy to break down protein and you tend to replace fats and carbohydrates which are higher in calories with something like protein but it's all a balance but it's so hard there isn't a one size fits all even now we're talking about these prepped companies there's so many different things it's just getting people into the right if they need to go on a better diet we're just thinking about what's healthy being active the tricky point is is that you read what's in the media and that's not science the media doesn't have to print science so that's the thing is trying to look at who should I listen to now who's saying the right things so it weighed we're partnering up with nutritionists to say that this is the right diet so what we want to do on our site in the future is give people really simple diet advice and tips rather than diet this is what you should do just like step changes replacements rather than having an ice cream have an ice lolly or something like that as I said before teach people what they should have been taught at school because it's quite simple eat this roughly as a diet track it is really good my fitness power for example people don't realise how much or how little they're eating I'll go through stages I'm like two days on and then a month off it's quite a bit of an effort you should want something easy you should want to know that that's good for you soon you'll be able to take a photo of a product and I'll tell you how much the way the market is going you won't have to type there's already a Google lens on the new camera you can point at anything if there's words there it will bring up the website that's incredible I was at a conference a few months ago maybe a year ago actually they were saying they think in five years time they won't use Google search engine they'll just use an Alexa or they'll use a Google what's Google's version of Google okay Google they'll say find me the best way protein or find me a diet and they won't actually type anymore and it's weird that that's not going to happen but we're already starting to do it five years time seems doable for sure but the new SEO is getting on their list getting on Amazon's recommended list it's also I think some brands some big retail stores on Alexa and the other Siri and so forth you can just say hey cool customer services John Lewis or whatever it is amazing it's simplified in the process if you look at what Whole Foods and Amazon are doing with their have you seen a whole Amazon Go store Amazon Fresh oh is it no there's a store in Seattle basically because obviously Amazon have just bought Whole Foods like 13 billion someone told me I don't know if this is true that their stock price they actually basically bought Amazon Whole Foods for free because they're on the stock market that the value of Amazon went up by more than 13 billion when they bought Whole Foods so they effectively bought them for free which is just crazy Amazon is unbelievable do you sell for Amazon how do you find them as impossible getting a brand on there is so hard it mustn't have been that hard when they first started out they take less margin than the retail and they fulfil it all for me so it's good like that but actually getting it on there was really hard once it's on there it's fine getting higher at the rankings it's quite hard so you can do like they do sponsor ads in the same way that Google do but this store in this Whole Foods store in Seattle is you walk in and like you would on the underground you tap in with an app or a card as you walk in you put anything in your basket and then you just walk out as you walk out because it's all got a code on each or a barcode on each or something on the packet and you just charge it with a card there's no tails and that is such a black and white concept there will be so I reckon in a few years time there won't be checkouts so you can't steal anything you just whack it all in your basket I don't know if you can scan it so you've got it running total you just get the message on your fancy which you can easily do in Whole Foods but I think the supermarkets will go this way definitely because obviously theft will be zero but unfortunately there's another example that technology's making workforces one that can replace 15 people at a checkout but they do say that technology will create other jobs so it will be interesting to see how that all depends you can need customer service the only thing I was thinking about in those stores is you could just go in and eat the food in the store leave the packaging and then walk out but you'll have cameras all over you because people at lunch people don't in cities you go to New York, you're in London people don't have time, time is money and that's why delivery is so popular even though you pay in more for probably a worse service food turns up cold convenience, Uber it's just convenience a carder of binging great so if you can convenience is the power at the moment single serving sachets those sorts of things giving it to people on a play walking out of the store without having to go to the checkout I would love to be able to do that because no one likes queuing up take a picture show me their instagram page ordering your child ordering a dvd on Amazon Alexa accidently I accidentally did that nearly the other day because we've got on Alexa Amazon Echo we've got it free with my health insurance and I can't remember what I asked it or something and it was like do you want to purchase this product I was like no, no but luckily it didn't if I accidentally said yes at the end it would have been added to my Amazon account through the prime and it would have been something the next day then with the connected homes now Amazon have just bought some alarm or one of the ring doorbells so the Amazon guy can come it can ring on your doorbell you'll see the video it's not a smart lock you can open the front door they can come in all on camera it's incredible isn't it the drones are doing now they were saying I was reading on their site I was reading an article about you can be having a barbecue you run out of beer you order it within an hour you've got a six pack of beer turning up on a drone Amazon Alexa a lot of that stuff is actually done in Cambridge the development which is quite cool that it's in the UK their head and shoulders are by the rest if Amazon are doing it if Google are doing it if Apple are doing it you know that's the trend because these are the three biggest companies in the world and then you've got Facebook and Microsoft trying to catch up as well I don't really know what's happened with Facebook in years to come also they own Instagram so they're fine and WhatsApp Facebook point of view now with all the GDPR and the data they can no longer use to a certain degree we see their permission now our permission that's interesting but we'll see a lot of the adverts they've gone back to Facebook was originally friends, birthdays sharing I think they're trying to push a little bit more but there's still more people on Facebook than there is any other social media platform so it's great everyone uses WhatsApp did you remember MSN Messenger I don't know how old I was when that first came out but that was when the screen used to shake Hotmail, but then I was listening to a TED talk and there's about 588 million internet users in China which is about 38% whatever of the population so we're talking about the west but Alibaba thinks bigger than Amazon there's other bigger companies they have certain laws they don't have Facebook in China they don't have Facebook so they've got WeChat which I think We's part of Alibaba not sure so they've got state censored stuff but the market out there is unbelievable a lot of firms want to tap into that mark even look at Amazon they're not just going over to Australia now it's kind of forgotten about Australia but it's such a from a fitness point of view for me in the future I'd love to take Wade over there because it's a higher income area generally and because it's sunny all the time the fitness element of it outside people are more conscious of what they look like so they're obsessed with fitness cafes and this and the other we need to Africa too all the population growth is in Africa is it? they've got a young motivated workforce most people are like early 20s I've heard it there I watched a documentary recently on Africa on Ethiopia actually saying that 35% of the population is under 20 it's amazing and obviously if you're into long distance running Africa is the place it's where it was born almost wasn't it I think more people will be going to Africa on holidays my fiance is doing a tour of Africa in January I think we've done over an hour have we? thank you very much for chatting thanks for having me so look out for your product on our website www.way.com or Instagram or Amazon and all the supermarkets soon fingers crossed we'll see that's the goal a lot of gyms and your room CrossFit is the current one thank you very much hey folks thanks for listening don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places