Personable
Meet Andrew Mitson: The Founder of $30m+ Startups who is donating it all away | Ep 19
Meet Andrew Mitson the Chief Learning Officer & Co-Founder of Uplearn a company he scaled to 100,000 signups & a £10m valuation but decided to leave as he didn't feel like he was leaving the impact that he wanted on the World. Andrew is now a startup advisor to companies worth collectively over $100m. Andrew is building Afinity which is helping students to get into their dream university (Over 109k students have visited the platform from 87 countries) and ReHumanity which has a mission to reconnect people to who they really are. Andrew has a drive to give back and donates all of his income over £30k.
Personable is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners become the best they can be by learning from the world’s best in their respective fields. This mission is inspired by my mother, Louise, who encouraged me to become the best version of myself before she passed away from cancer in 2023.
Connect with Harvey:
Harvey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveybracken-smith/
Harvey's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmith/
Personable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmithpodcast_/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JOTYDER6m2FDrlhop4api
My dad's startup: https://www.thedraft.io/
Donate to the charity we have founded in memory of my mum: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/LouLouRacefoiundation?utm_term=PvByaxmdn
Meet Andrew Mitson the Chief Learning Officer & Co-Founder of Uplearn a company he scaled to 100,000 signups & a £10m valuation but decided to leave as he didn't feel like he was leaving the impact that he wanted on the World. Andrew is now a startup advisor to companies worth collectively over $100m. Andrew is building Afinity which is helping students to get into their dream university (Over 109k students have visited the platform from 87 countries) and ReHumanity which has a mission to reconnect people to who they really are. Andrew has a drive to give back and donates all of his income over £30k.
Personable is a podcast dedicated to helping listeners become the best they can be by learning from the world’s best in their respective fields. This mission is inspired by my mother, Louise, who encouraged me to become the best version of myself before she passed away from cancer in 2023.
Connect with Harvey:
Harvey's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harveybracken-smith/
Harvey's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmith/
Personable Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harveybsmithpodcast_/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7JOTYDER6m2FDrlhop4api
My dad's startup: https://www.thedraft.io/
Donate to the charity we have founded in memory of my mum: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/LouLouRacefoiundation?utm_term=PvByaxmdn
Hello and welcome to episode 19 of Personable. Today, I am hugely honored to be joined by Andrew Mitson. This is the podcast where we hear from the world's best, enabling you to become the best that you can be. Andrew is an entrepreneur at heart, at the age of 16, founding his first company, winning multiple awards and then, stupidly for most people, only leaving four weeks to revise for his A-level exams. But some would say he's an absolute genius, scoring the highest mark in his school at 98% and receiving multiple awards, gaining acceptance to Cambridge, nsc and multiple other schools.
Speaker 1:What I had initially heard of him for was founding this company called Upline, which basically offers students a guarantee to receive an A or A star through their algorithms and genius software. I might say In his own personal life, he lost 30 kg in six months, cooked dinner for Boris Johnson, travelled for three years and has personally donated all of his money over £30,000, which I think is hugely honorable. He's the co-founder and partner of Rehumanity, ceo and founder of Affinity, is a startup advisor to a portfolio of companies over 100 million and has, and through his articles has, over 10,000 viewers. He also co-founded Kickstart Global, which is London's first inter-university incubator across LSE, ucl and Imperial, which has 75 student-run companies and has raised over 10 million in funding. I feel hugely honoured to have you on today, andrew, and I'm very excited to get into your story. Andrew, I want to get started by asking for you to describe who you are and what you're about to all the listeners that haven't met you at all.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's always interesting to get to know somebody outside of their biography and various achievements and things. I would describe myself as a creative somebody who wants to help people, not much else beyond that. I love creating things, I like exploring, I love learning and I really care very deeply about helping decrease suffering in the world and increasing what I describe as positive, conscious experience. There's not much else that I would say about myself.
Speaker 1:When you were young and you built your. I didn't actually explain what that company did, but you built your first company, of which you built awards. What awards for? Did you always have this entrepreneurial spirit? Do you think that's something you're naturally born with, or something that entrepreneurs born or made? What should, I'm asking?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So for me it was neither of those things. I think I very much just fell into it. Basically, I sort of stumbled into entrepreneurship. The full story is basically in GCSE business studies I scored 100%. Now, gcse business has nothing to do with a real running, a real. That's not a weird flex, it's just the rapist story. So then the next year we had this young enterprise thing, this young enterprise program, running at my school. Because I'd stored 100% in GCSE business studies, people believed that I was qualified to managing direct this company basically. So yeah, just very much fell into it.
Speaker 2:The idea is that you're meant to put together a little pet business is how I would describe it and present it to a bunch of judges at the end of the year. But the year before us this school called St Paul's, which is a very well-funded private school they created this really cool thing called the perfume pen. They managed to get it professionally manufactured in China and they're selling thousands of units and I thought, oh, that's so cool. What if we do that? So, instead of selling cupcakes, what if we take it very, very seriously and try and win this young enterprise competition? And I think what's quite advantageous when you're young is the sheer naivety. So I get asked a lot like how did you have the bravery to start a company or whatever? And it wasn't bravery, it was just like a lack of awareness of what that involved and a kind of naivety and willingness to just go and try things. So I remember I was 16 years old at the time and we were sending emails to these massive manufacturing companies veteran product designers and they'd meet us and it was me and a bunch of other school friends and they thought that I was the teacher because I'd been emailing them. And then they came and met me and they're like you look like you're five, what are you doing here? So I think it was just like there was a naivety to it, and I think I really believe that a lot of people are naturally entrepreneurial and I think the education system slowly squeezes that out of you over many, many years. And so we look at the history of education. So our modern system is based on the Prussian model, which arose in 1806, I believe. So, basically, the Prussians were defeated by Napoleon in battle and their military leaders believed it was because their soldiers were thinking too much on the battlefield versus just following orders, and so they developed this education system to promote learning, obedience and all of those things such that by military age, kids would just be willing to do whatever their authorities commanded of them. And you can see that most of that is still true of our modern education system. It hasn't evolved greatly from that.
Speaker 2:There's a great book called Dumbing Us Down. I forget the author's name, but he won New York's Teacher of the Year three years in a row and then he quit and he wrote this book called Dumbing Us Down the Secret Lessons of Education, and I can't remember all of them, but there are seven in the book. A couple are contingent self-worth, so it teaches you that your self-worth is dependent on your grade. It teaches you that nothing you do matters because at the end of your exam all of that content is completely irrelevant to anything you do later in life. And it teaches you unconditional obedience. So even if you think you know better than the teacher, you don't speak up and you learn to just follow the very specific formats that is required for your exam success.
Speaker 2:So yeah, my contention on this question is that I don't think entrepreneurs are born or made. I don't think entrepreneurs are anything special. Basically, I think everybody has flares of entrepreneurialism. I think just my flatmate right now. She worked in investment banking for many, many years, so in many ways the opposite of an entrepreneur, right, corporate career, high risk aversion, all of these things. But she's getting ready for her 30th birthday and the way she's organizing it is extremely entrepreneurial, right. She's delegating tasks and she's so I feel like there's a natural entrepreneurial. I don't think there's anything special about entrepreneurs at all and I think, yeah, really, I think it gets slowly sort of sucked out of you. And when I sort of babysit kids and I spoke to my cousins, they do just have this natural I can do anything kind of attitude. They're not worried about what's the right way to do this, they'll just fucking do it basically. Am I allowed to swear? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can swear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so in the same way, like this podcast that you're running, right, you've obviously just sort of worked it out, you've set it up. It's not like a big deal, but it's a huge deal.
Speaker 1:It's a huge deal.
Speaker 2:Of course. Of course you have your recording studio right. I just can't quite see it in the background.
Speaker 2:No, it's just like yeah, I do think there's just like a common sense of publicity to entrepreneurship that does get eroded as you get a little bit older, and I do a lot of coaching now for young founders and the question I get so often is like what should I be doing? What's the right way to do this? What's the best way to do it? And these are all very useful questions, but they're also very pernicious to just doing things, because they keep you in the state of analytical paralysis and you ever just crack on with things and you get stuck in these what I call noob hell, this kind of beginner stage of doing anything where you don't you know things are very fledgling. You never get past that early stage and so you never get to have fun with the business. You're stuck in this sort of perennial startup. You don't actually have a functioning business, you don't actually have a functioning side hustle, whatever it is. So, in a roundabout way, yes, I don't think born or made. I think I very much fell into it and I think, if anything, it was that I wasn't. I wasn't unmade as an entrepreneur, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:It wasn't beaten out of me because I had very poor attendance at school, so yes, yeah, just sort of running in there, and I see a lot about what you're saying about the education system and I think in my family that's been something that said. Even though I went to Eaton College and I'm now studying at Duke University two sort of institutions that wouldn't really say on my forehead that screw the education system in any regard because I'm trying the best.
Speaker 1:I can. But I'm very curious, as what do you think can be done to sort of change this system? Like you're telling and I would agree with this we're telling students, hey, perhaps this system is bad, hey, perhaps this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As an entrepreneur, sure, just go for things, but at the end of the day you need good grades, you need to go to a good university, etc. Etc. So what do you think the solution is for young students, for young entrepreneurs, for how to cope with this and follow their dreams and not get the life sucked out of them, whilst also having some form of stability? Or is that a complete fantasy?
Speaker 2:within yourself. No, no, 100%. And like there's this other misconception I think about entrepreneurship, which is you have to be a risk taker and it's quite the opposite. Again, like no entrepreneur is going to take arbitrary risk for no reward, right? So it's always calculating the risk-benefit ratio.
Speaker 2:But look, I mean, this is one of the reasons that two of the ventures you mentioned at the start there's affinity and Kickstart Global. So Kickstart Global is an entrepreneurship program for students studying in London and so alongside your studies you can actually work on building different things. And so while you're in your lectures you're sort of beaten into submission to write the exam the way your lecturer wants it written and follow these particular protocols of academia. You have a chance to explore your own curiosity and I'm being very hard on education here but at the same time you also have an opportunity to sort of think for yourself a little bit, get out of your comfort zone and build something and I guess, get that reference point that hey, actually I can do this. It's not reserved for the higher echelons of Elon Musk et cetera. Really anybody can start something, and it's so easy nowadays with access to technology. So at a university level, I think there are a lot of these entrepreneurship-type programs out there, the people who are interested in this, and obviously some people aren't. Some people are very academically driven and some people love the idea of a career. I don't think there's any shame in any of these other routes. It's just what's best for you and then for students earlier on in life.
Speaker 2:That's why we created Affinity. So Affinity we help students work out A if they want to study at university, and if so, what courses are going to be best aligned with them. But B, if they don't want to study at university, what are some cool alternatives. And so, for example, we've got Code at Berlin. So this is like a three-year program.
Speaker 2:You can almost choose the syllabus yourself, which, ironically, is how university first started University of Bologna, the very first university, at least in the Western world. The students employed the tutors and the faculty, and so they got to learn exactly what they wanted. And then later it moved up to Paris and it became a bit more institutionalized. But yes, so Code's a very cool program. There's a London Interdisciplinary School in London where you get to study a variety of different subjects. Obviously, you're studying abroad, perhaps because you prefer the liberal education system, where you've got different modules and things. So I think there's an increasing offering of univiable university alternatives where you still get some degree accreditation but you get to do something that's a little bit more in line with reality, shall we say, or what students' ambitions might actually be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one sort of thought that I had in my mind was that I think, with a lot of the things in this sort of fear, with going towards adventure, it's not actually truly at the end of the day, it's not actually the fear of failure, it's not Harvey's going to do adventure and Harvey's going to get something wrong.
Speaker 1:I don't think that's the fear for a lot of people. I think the fear is falling behind peers and how it looks on the outward level. I don't want to completely mystify you or who you are, but I feel like you've gone against the status quo in a huge number of areas, in that you've built a hugely successful startup in Upland and then you decided to drop that, and I think that there's also a view of what success looks like is getting richer, getting more status, getting more money, getting bigger house, etc. How does success look to you and how do people take out that fear element of what others might think of them, instead of just going oh, I don't care, but truly following their passion and becoming the person that they want to become, which I feel like you have done in your own life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think it's a super interesting question. The first, the first point I will address is on this idea that money equates to success. So in the book I'm writing, I talk about the quantification problem, and so the idea is that once something can be quantified, you over optimize for that quantified metric as opposed to the actual thing that brings you value. So you get this very often where Do people actually want money? Of course not whether they want the things that money can buy, etc. But you get people who literally will, will live up until their retirement age Never spending any of that money or doing anything meaningful with it, and so they sacrifice all of the things actually wanted the money for. You know freedom, luxury items, whatever. There's no judgment as to what you might want to spend the money on, and instead they just they over optimize on the on the metric. So they're just looking at that bank balance metric.
Speaker 2:And there's a book by Bill Perkins, who's a hedge fund billionaire my understanding I called die with zero where he had to Write this book communicating to other sort of Wall Street bankers that you should spend your money before you die, because they weren't doing it. I remember listening about this book, as how does anyone need that message? But it's actually a very prevalent kind of like, yeah, weird, like irrational consumer behavior. So so, yeah, I think, like, whatever it is grades, it could be money, it could be the square footage of your apartment, I don't know but like, as soon as there's a metric on something people do kind of like rats Chase it and it almost gamifies what your life. So I think, being very cautious of metrics and I'm thinking deeply about what does that metric, what does that status symbol, what does that represent and what are the values behind those, those data symbols?
Speaker 2:For me it was never a particularly. I never think of myself as like rejecting a status quo again. It was just Acting quite authentically. So I didn't enjoy school very much, so I just I just stopped going and then, with the previous company, I started to zoom out a little bit and think about Okay, so you're helping kill children, get slightly better grades, we're going to slightly better universities. They end up in slightly more miserable corporate jobs. Is this really having the impact that I wanted to have? Right? And so again, stepping back from that, I can say no, not, not quite, and, and so I took a different path.
Speaker 1:So, yes, For you to describe what up learn was. Especially people in the US have no idea. Yeah levels are. Sure context on what it was, what you did, how you built it and then why, that you know why you ended up dropping.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, 100% so. So I think I mentioned Previously so. So, yeah, when I was 16, I left school and I self studied my A levels Just using YouTube videos and like forums and things like that, and ended up doing very well. Like you mentioned, I got an offer from Cambridge and that, for me, was a real Disgobulating moment because it was just like wow, like I've gone from dropping out thinking that I'm not an academic, I'm not meant for this world, and then actually doing, I suppose, as well as you can at that age, and so I I found that very interesting and, and throughout university, I was experimenting with different self study ideas and ways to help other students the way that I did, and eventually this idea came up for like these courses that would help students from zero to a hundred in terms of self-sustaining up. So, instead of Doing it the way I did it, which was, like you know, ten minutes on YouTube and jumping over to the student room to beg for help for random thread moderators, yeah, scouring through reddit and, yeah, torrenting exam papers here you. What we try to create is just an all-in-one solution. So you jump onto the platform. All of the contents laid out. It's beautifully animated.
Speaker 2:The videos themselves were Embedded with sort of like socratic style questions. So, the way that I would always teach, I'd never want to lecture somebody. Instead I would ask them a question. So I'll ask them yeah, harvey, like you know, how much would you sell an iPhone for? And you might start today so well, we'll sell it for a million pounds. You set up a five pounds and immediately thinking, well, a million, not many people are gonna buy it. Five pounds, I might not cover my costs. So then you might start thinking about what, what combination of price and quantity would make the most sense, and Sooner or later you end up with a demand curve and and so like. Things come much more organically from the student, and the student actually feels that they're involved in the, in the learning process.
Speaker 2:So so this is a methodology that I developed, tutoring a lot of kids, because I run a little tutoring side hustle, if you will, while I was at university. That's how I paid my way through through my degree, and so this was just like a formalization of all of those things that I was I was doing. So, yeah, the idea was an all-in-one self-study platform that could help students go from zero to AA star grades. And then, yes, when I got to maybe 23, 24, we'd reached, you know, eight-fig evaluation and so on, and I just felt very Burn out, for sure, but also just disillusioned with everything that I was doing, and so I think this tends to happen right.
Speaker 2:So, as you get older, you might look back at some of your A level studies and think it's kind of a waste of time, wasn't it hasn't really, in terms of, like, the actual impact it's had on my life.
Speaker 2:You might even look back at your university degree and think similarly, and so I think, just for me, when I got to 24, I look back on the idea of just helping students in a you know the global 2% I you know the United Kingdom Helping them get slightly better grades, slightly better university, and pushing them into the cycle that eventually leads them to a slightly more miserable Corporate job. It just didn't seem to make sense. I wasn't sure if I was making the world a better place, and that was a strange place to be, in that this social impact work I'm doing has morally ambiguous consequences, and so, yeah, I want to just take some time out and work out what the next step was basically, and so that led me to, yeah, travel for several years while I was Absolutely clueless about where to go next in life, and has finally led me to the current ventures that I'm pursuing. They feel a lot more resonant and I can see that they're going to have Impact beyond Sort of shuffling the cards in a zero-sum game.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean you've got an incredibly fascinating story, of which I didn't really know about all the other parts. I initially just knew about the upline, but perhaps all the other stuff is even more interesting. There is the classic question of whether wealth buys or money buys happiness, but I think that's kind of obvious and you're in your state. But one one sort of question I had was Is it not a good thing for good people if I was to call you a good person, and by that I need someone that wants to help the world and have a genuine impact on the world and isn't Single-minded or selfish? Is it not a good thing for Good people to have money? Because even if you give it all away and you help, the more money that you have, the more influence that you could theoretically have, and in my opinion, it might be a better thing for those sort of people to have wealth and be able to have a genuine impact on the world and on the planet and on the populations, rather than self-centered Individuals. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I totally agree. I don't know if you're familiar with the effective altruist movement at all, but some of their advice is if you want to have an impact they have this article. Actually if you want to change the world, go and work at Jane Street, which is, I believe, a big quantitative hedge fund, and the idea is, yeah, absolutely like, and you could Go and work as a nurse in a developing country or you could earn, you know, half a million pounds a year. Donate half of that to charity and you are going to have orders of magnitude or impact on the world. So now I completely agree, and Actually for a while, that's what I tried to Rewire my brain to do.
Speaker 2:So there was a while where I was sort of thinking what's that? Could I start like a financial technology company, become a billionaire before 30 and then give it all away? Is that how I impact the world most? I think for me, what I realized after sort of pursuing this line of thinking was just although theoretically it makes sense just the day-to-day of Doing something that you don't enjoy doing or doing something that isn't directly impactful was quite hard to come to terms with, and so you can actually argue that I'm being morally selfish in my current pursuit that if I was a more integrous person Like I, would perhaps yeah, I've had to work in a bank right now and I'd be donating millions year to charity. But it just wasn't something I could reconcile with the day-to-day of it. The grind off Sort of promoting a product or an idea or a vision for a company when secretly I didn't care about it at all and I just wanted the money to then give it to causes that I believe were more, let's say, in line with my, my moral values.
Speaker 1:I'm also there's something I've sort of noticed with a lot of my podcast and most of the people I've interviewed is my 19th episode.
Speaker 1:Most I came up interviewed are people that have already reached their levels of success, so they've built a business. A lady I interviewed recently was a reporter. For 35 years They've been an author, they've been an athlete people that have done things and now in the second step of their life, then now like, oh, I've sort of had this revelation that stuff never mattered to me. Now I want to save the world. Now I want to do this. But yes, the problem I get with that is these sort of people are already often very wealthy, or they're at least comfortable, and so they have the sort of privilege in that they're now able to spend their time Doing what they want. They gifted with the time and they gifted with the resources.
Speaker 1:But one thing I want to sort of consider is I'm obviously very privileged as well in the education and stuff that I'm able to receive. But when I put out this podcast, even if any one person or whoever listens to it, they might not necessarily have the freedom of that time. They might need to work a job, they might need to go to university, etc. But what you're stating and what you're saying about not getting a typical job or becoming a banker, I think there's a real need for some form of systemic change, you know, to revolutionize this system that has got us performing in this way. I was wondering if you had any sort of ideas for how we could change the system, or if it's in need of change, so that the average person could go about living a more fulfilling life without the pursuit of just chasing money, whilst also our system still working.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. A lot of my book centers on these issues. It's called why Are you Working so Much? And yeah, the idea is that, for the thesis is, if you look back 10,000 years, anthropologists estimate that we were working three to five hours a day. And then we have all of these massive innovations in modern technology and the average American is slaving away, including their commute, for about 60 hours per week, right? So it's very difficult to wrap your head around.
Speaker 2:Look, I think the cleanest answer here, the panacea, is universal basic income, right, and I don't know when exactly that will come into action. It seems, to me, at least, largely inevitable, even for selfish reasons, because if you want a consumer's capitalist culture, everybody in the economy has to have money to spend, and so it actually makes sense from a consumer multiplier effect perspective to basically inject cash into, let's say, the bottom of society, people who are from poorer backgrounds, so that they can still consume and buy things. But I also think that if you look at trends in kind of capitalism, it is moving towards a more sort of socialist capitalist hybrid, and so I think AI is set to add $10 trillion to global GDP, and so if we can just capture maybe 10% of that redistributive. I don't know the figures. Off the top of my head, I actually did the calculation for the book, but I think you could quite comfortably raise everybody's living standards to a point where they're not in survival mode and they have their basic biological needs accounted for, and then, from there, you are free to explore ideas that you believe are more interesting or more impactful, things you're more passionate about, so I think that the true answer here is yeah. The final answer will be some kind of universal basic income On the way there.
Speaker 2:One of the things I recommended in the book, though, is freelancing, and so there are skills that virtually anybody can learn, from personal training to becoming a nutritionist, to running some of these social media or personal branding, etc. My brother, for example. He dropped out of school as well, with two years at a level, and then he started working as a videographer, and now he works about one or two days a month. The rest of his time is pursuing his passion of MMA. I had a very similar thing, so one of the things that gave me I suppose the unknowingly gave me the courage to go and run a company was I'd been running this sort of tutoring freelance business since I was about 17. And so I never relied on the business itself, the startup, for cash, because I was taking care of myself sufficient, and so I think that's that's another very powerful way that you can go about liberating yourself from the shackles of capitalism or a corporative's career.
Speaker 2:But there are plenty of others, you know, I think, starting a part time job or also reducing your living costs. One of the exercises I have in the book is to go through your last month of expenditure and ask yourself you know which of these expenses actually improving my happiness and I've run this exercise of people they've literally had like panic attacks. They realized just like almost none of it is, especially friends in, let's say, higher socioeconomic brackets and things. So I think there's a lot you can do to get yourself to that point of you're no longer living paycheck to paycheck, you're no longer in survival mode, even without having any sense of sort of enormous success. You can take on a freelance career. You can wait till the government rolls out.
Speaker 2:You know UBI, you can, yeah, you can take a part time job. You can take down your living costs. So I think there are ways that you can. You can get to that point earlier on in life and if that is something that's interesting I think it's I can strongly recommend it, just based on my own experience, because it's it. For me, it was liberating. I was, I guess, financially free and away from from age 16. I was only working one or two days per week for my entire income, and it's not something I've ever thought about particularly much, but that was actually the stepping stones to a lot of these, let's say, riskier financial ventures.
Speaker 1:One of my sort of goals at some point don't know whether it's going to be now, a year or 60 years time is that I want to find my own business, perhaps something also online based, non technical, and also have no interest in learning to code. Hate coding, yeah, but I want to build a sort of sort of online business. I don't know if you want to build a business again or not or what your ethical standpoint is, but you seem to have that sort of you know, you sort of have had this experience to be able to build these incredible businesses. What advice would you have for someone like me with having an idea of how I could actually go about and build a business that actually is profitable and that works? Obviously, I haven't said the idea or what it is or what category it's in, but it's sort of like a generalist.
Speaker 1:Is there a template? Is there a way about going about these things, or not at all?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. So I'm obviously still building companies as re humanity and affinity that you mentioned earlier in the start. So, day to day, I'm still very much pushing forward and trying to grow these, these ventures. They are more, I suppose, altruistic and philanthropic in terms of their efforts, but they absolutely. I'm still on the on the front lines and I very much enjoy it. My answer to your question would be yes and no, right. So I think that there's a risk, whenever you give advice, that people will take that advice as gospel and so, and so I, yeah, there are so many ways you can start. Yeah, exactly, we'll start tattooing it on their fucking arms.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so I think that there's just some just as a caveat there. There are so many ways to start business, right, and so there's no right answer. But I think, especially if you're young and you're looking to get into the online world, I think it's as simple as you come up with an idea, you create a little website, you start sharing this website with friends and family. You don't have to create a product yet, right? But you can start sharing this website with people in your network and just see if people are interested in what you're creating. So very common technique around this. So Dropbox use this.
Speaker 2:So before they went and built Dropbox, you know what Dropbox is. Yes, yes, cool, so, yeah, okay. So so, like the Google Drive alternative, and before they went and built Dropbox, what they did is they created like a fake landing page, if you will, as if Dropbox was real and was ready to go. I just saw how many people would sign up, and that's a great way just to validate your idea Almost instantly. You could do it in about an hour, right? Go on Squarespace, create a very quick website and then the next day, you can go and distribute this through various social media networks and then, almost immediately you have feedback from a live audience.
Speaker 2:If people are signing up, you know that people are actually interested in your idea, and if they're not, you know that perhaps this isn't the right idea for me, it's not the right market time, etc. And so that I feel is like probably the first step and then from there, once you've got people signed up who are interested it's a bit cheeky, I suppose, but basically you get them to build a product for you. So you know, you speak to them, you work out what their needs are and you take their needs and you assemble all of the solutions to those needs into your product. You test with them and so they're obviously delighted because you're building exactly what they're looking for, and you're delighted because you're building a product that you know people are actually willing to pay for and the people actually need. So this kind of old school model.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, as a non technical founder, is this trying to hire, you know, programmers? Is this trying to get them equity? What's the sort of you know I'm thinking of someone with no limited resources.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah, absolutely so. There are a tremendous number of no code tools right now. So, actually with affinity, the first version, the first two versions you made, I coded myself, despite not having using these no code tools, without a super technical background or anything like that. And in fact the very first version there was no technicality at all, no coding whatsoever, and so a lot of these no code tools, you can kind of just drag and drop things and you can code in pure logic if that makes sense. So you probably know what you want your project to look like, right Like you click this thing, it takes this webpage, click that right, and so you're able to program things very straightforwardly, just sort of clicking, telling the software that this button is taking that. So I think no code is super exciting and I would look into those.
Speaker 2:I think my advice will broadly though, in terms of if it's a big business that you want to create, I think having a co-founder helps enormously. So if you look at Y Combinator, entrepreneur first, all of the big kind of accelerators, slash incubators they have a co-founder as a prerequisite and I think that's just building a business can get quite rocky at times and just having somebody who's got your back and if you've got a sick day or you're feeling down demotivated, having somebody who's got a little bit more pep in their step, I think that's just very helpful in terms of, like bringing some balance into the organization. But you know, that said, I know plenty of very successful solo founders. So, again going back to this original answer, like there is no template, there are 101 ways to go and do it, but I think a nice simple starting ground is website. Get a little email list built up, see if people are down, use node code tools, squarespace and all of these new website builders. And, yeah, then build with your customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I obviously have had no experience in this sort of industry, but I won't say his name, but I had a two, three hour long chat with a guy who's recently dropped out of Duke to join Y Combinator and he actually said a lot of the advice that you just said in terms of. He was like get out like Google Forms, build a website, build up as if it's a product and see if people are interested. And then, yeah, just keep speaking and learning from your customers. Because I'm not my younger brother, who's also not actually an entrepreneur, but he says this thing to me.
Speaker 1:He's like Harvey, like if you truly believe in something, there's no way that you can actually fail, because what's gonna happen is the minute you make a mistake and you do something wrong, you can do everything you can to fix it. And it's like with this and building this product, every time the customer's like actually I want this and you can make a product to them. So there's no way you can build that product to the customer and they're like this isn't what I want, because you've built it around their needs. So I just wanted to basically exaggerate how, or emphasize how good of a piece of advice that was you were saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and I think it is a very straightforward way to creating at least like a marginal innovation or a new business. On the same side, I would say like there are other companies, like deep technology companies, things that need more of, let's say, push to get off the ground. Anything kind of network based, for example, I think can require more serious investments. Not quite as straightforward, but, yeah, 100%, and yeah, that's very cool. So your friend has dropped out of Duke and he's now on the YC track.
Speaker 1:He is yeah, I don't want to talk about it too much.
Speaker 2:I'm potential broadcast in a few months time when I think of it as well, I'm excited.
Speaker 1:I wanted to take a bit of a shift. I mean, I've learned a lot from your sort of entrepreneurial journey and your altruistic sort of point of view, but you traveled through for three years and you've clearly got a lot of life and world experience. I was wondering if you had any stories or any particular lessons. One of the first articles I read in your line and I wasn't sure whether it'd be. I was supposed to interview you as you're about to do taking drugs or something, yeah, so I'd be curious if you had any sort of advice, lessons, stories from traveling the world a bit change your perspectives on anything you know. Particularly social media shows this sort of idealistic point of view of everywhere in the world. Yeah, no, no, no, just shoot if you have anything.
Speaker 2:What I find with a lot of social media is they only they provide one side of the coin, half the sentence, and so this dream life that people sort of envy, this idea of like, oh, I'm gonna move to Bali and I'm gonna sip cocktails on a beach and go surfing If you just continue that sentence for a little bit, away from all of my friends in a foreign country. I don't know how to speak the language Half right, I can tax it to disease and there's no healthcare, yes, yeah, so a lot of these things like if you actually look at the holistic picture.
Speaker 2:I don't think that I've tried this sort of traveler's lifestyle. I personally found it like quite meaningless after a while, and so I well, my solution to it was taking on various little learning projects. I learned Spanish, I learned French, learned to kite surf and all of these little things. But what I find with a lot of travelers is, after maybe six months or something, which is, I think, the initial decompression period from a very long career or like many years in education, where they're just chilling and having a time, people tend to seem to come back to like craving purpose and wanting to actually build something. And so I think there's something very perverse about social media, cause generally when you're looking at Instagram or something, you know you're on the couch or in the bathroom, whatever. It is not the most glamorous environment, and so obviously somebody with like a Photoshop picture with a ball in these beaches going to arouse your curiosity, interest, and slowly you're going to start wondering oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing right here.
Speaker 2:I think what's very useful, like Jim Carrey has this quote is I wish everyone could be successful and famous, to realize that they that's not what they actually want and I'm not suggesting that I'm either of those things, but I definitely wish everybody could live this influence alive for even just a few months, just to realize how vapid it gets after even just a few weeks. Even a lot of people. I mean I just speaking to a friend. He came and crashed on my sofa yesterday. He just he came back from a shipwreck in Thailand. It's a very cool story, but he was just, like you know, the whole time I was really just. I just wanted my routine back, wanted to get back into the gym.
Speaker 2:I wanted to build something. And so, look, you know, I know people who've been on the run for like 20 years on the run in terms of, you know, traveling country to country. I may just absolutely love it One of my friends, he's visited every country in the world and I met him at the hostel in Columbia, and that's that's important. He has a genuine passion for it, but I think for the probably the vast majority of people I don't have data on it yeah, that dream lifestyle comes with a lot of drawbacks and a sacrifice of a lot of like, the stability, the friendship, the meaningfulness of day-to-day life, and so what's nice now is when I was chatting to my friend yesterday and he was telling me, oh, I went underwater screw diving at night with this beautiful woman that I met by, I was like, wow, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 2:And I was like, but it probably wasn't. Like as in, it probably was an amazing experience, but, like the holistic, his entire holiday there, I wouldn't trade it for where I am right now. If you know what I mean, it's probably wasn't. So so I think, like I think there's something very useful in going and doing some of these flashier things to realize that maybe not for you, or maybe realize they are. Then you can actually orient your life to be more materialistic or more money-driven. But for me, I remember when I was a kid growing up.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah, quite possibly. So, yeah, I've had this like a few times, though in my life. So when I was 17, I didn't have any sort of design or clothing or anything. So when I first started earning cash, I went and bought like 37 Ralph Lauren Polos and I had like every single color combination.
Speaker 1:It's been like yeah it's absolutely nuts.
Speaker 2:I had like literally a wardrobe full of them and at the end of it I was just like these Polos are no higher quality than like the stuff you get at Asian or Primark whatever, and I gave them all away, we're gonna stop that.
Speaker 1:I'm sponsored by Ralph Lauren.
Speaker 2:I'm kidding so. So, yeah, I remember just donating away and that was like it was like a switch in my head. It's like cool, I don't care about that anymore. I think a lot of life is learning what you do care about, what matters to you, what you don't care about, what doesn't matter to you. So I think I'm all for, like I think, yeah, people should experiment as wildly as they can see what sticks and what doesn't. And, yeah, for me, what stuck was I actually really like having a routine I do enjoy, like, let's say, skyline view, so that's something where that's something I accommodate within my budget.
Speaker 2:I love having a basketball court nearby, but there are lots of things that I absolutely despise. I hate going to fancy restaurants. I hate designing clothing. I love going to like thrift shops and tariff shops and trying to find these really neat pieces. So just working out what's interesting and what's you and what isn't you, I think is, yeah, the most useful thing that I got from the traveling. But there were so many times where I was abroad and I was like, aren't I meant to be having the time of my life, cause this is what social media? I meant to be having a great time here and realizing that I wasn't, it was like, okay, cool, like this isn't actually for me. I'm not this sort of stereotype influencer person, so I think, yeah, that process of discovering who you are is enormously valuable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wouldn't be able to tell you what either the red pill or the blue pill is, but I think there's this big movement these days in terms of like escaping the nine to five, escaping the rat race, and I think meaning in people's lives is still based on generating enough money to have the freedom to do what you want. I would be curious on what your understanding of meaning is and how you can build a meaningful life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I can give you the neurobiological answer, which is meaning is in the brain, it's a subjective experience and it basically it's attached to anxiety reduction. So if you go back, well, if you take religion, for instance the great thing about any religion I'm not trying to offend anyone here, but it gives you one particular life path so the anxiety reduction is enormous. Cause, right now, as a especially living in like the developed world, you have like unlimited options, basically right. You could start podcasts, you could study the US, you could study in chat, you can literally do anything you want With a pencil.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and the and the and the, the decision fatigue is just like so intense and that's what creates this feeling of like meaninglessness and kind of confusion and anxiety. And so you take something like religion. It tells you, like you know, this path is the way. You praise this God, you follow these commandments, you follow this scripture, this is the way. So, on a technical level, that's what I think meaning actually is. It's you're given a.
Speaker 2:You alluded to these sort of like red pill, blue pill kind of subcultures. And I think again, if you take somebody like an Andrew Tate, what he does which is very useful for for men who are lost and confused, is he says you do these things, you, I don't know exactly, but you go to the gym, you start business, blah, blah, blah, and you, you know, misogynize women, you know. So whatever, whatever he says, regardless of whether it's true or false or good or bad information, it gives you a direction and that reduces the anxiety you have around which way should I go? And it just puts you on an onward pathway and you feel meaningful again. You feel like cool, I'm doing the right thing.
Speaker 1:So do you think there's? Do you think there's a layer on top of that, though? Do you think there's a difference between meaning and, in your case, that being anxiety reduction and fulfillment? Like I almost I don't know what the word is, but I almost feel like beyond, like, for example, in my life, getting a lot of sleep, eating well, training well yeah, anxiety reducing, but, for example, when I feel fulfilled, or like I feel like it's almost like a higher purpose, like, for example, doing a big charity thing or, you know, pushing past my limits and maybe running a marathon or something, I feel like in that case I might have a lot of anxiety or something, but I'm sort of breaking through a barrier. Do you feel like there's something to say?
Speaker 1:about that or you still feel like it's just reducing anxiety.
Speaker 2:Ah, so no, this anxiety answer is very much like a yeah, a technical, rationalist answer to it. More poetically yeah, absolutely, look. I mean, I think words often fail to capture some of these more felt, experiential things, and so, yeah, absolutely. Like every day, I feel like I'm building towards something, I'm creating something bigger than myself. That, I think, is a tremendous source of meaning for people. I also think, though, family friendship, all of these like sort of quite base biological things, can be enormously meaningful, and I also think you can bestow meaning upon things.
Speaker 2:So one of the things there's a chap I follow. He works at this place called the Flow Collective, and it's all about getting into flow states and improving your productivity and performance. One of the really interesting things he says is, like when you need to take a break from work, instead of checking your phone, basically just sit in silence and bore yourself as immensely as possible, because what it does, it makes your work more interesting, it makes the rest of your life more interesting, and so those little pockets of boredom I've actually started to appreciate, because I know that I'm going to sit in silence for a little while, not do anything, not stimulate my mind, and then those little things you do then feel much more meaningful. Cooking like a homemade lasagna or something does feel a lot more like wow, I've created this. So, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think for me a lot of my meaning comes from building something beyond myself. But I think at a more base level, it's largely my friendships and relationships that seem to matter, and I think my sadness of the world right now is that a lot of people are exchanging the freedom to buy of the freedom to live for the freedom to buy, and so you have a lot of people who are in very high stress jobs who will increase their consumption, et cetera and improve their lifestyle materially, but the sacrifice there is, the things that seem to actually matter, the friendships, the family time, et cetera. And it seems almost cliche now the idea of the miserable millionaire sitting in their mansion at age 40 thinking, oh, I've got nobody else here, I've got nine bedrooms but nobody to sort of share them with, so, um, I'll let it be.
Speaker 1:Yes, anyway, if any millionaire I had a few sort of thoughts on the things you just said. I would largely agree with everything you said.
Speaker 1:One thing I find almost kind of sad in my life is I live in a little island called Jersey, where I am now, and I have to travel back and forth to boarding school and now I'm based at University of America and I've always been off to traveling. Obviously it's cool to see new places, but actually, because you know, ignore the free wife on the plane, I just switch off my phone and I feel like.
Speaker 1:For me, it's always like a reset because I can, you know, reimagine everything I'm doing. I can plan out the next steps of my life, I can catch up on stuff, and I am pretty much along with literally everyone else that I know is a dick. I'm addicted to my phone. There's no reason for me to go on Instagram, there's no reason to be to go on Snapchat, but I feel like the little, you know, the little endorphin or whatever it gives you. You know it keeps me going, but I don't need it at all and I think, yeah, I find that really sad in my own life. I'm trying to fix it and at some point I will and I'm getting a lot better. With it is that I feel like within these little gaps where all it's almost as if we're sick and we need this social media, we need our phones to sort of keep us going, and the bottom is the thing to be afraid of, whereas I think the point you made is really important, in that the boredom gives us the creativity, it makes us enjoy the things we're doing more, and also our brains need time to sort of think about what they've done, what it's been through. That's all you have. Sleep. It's so, you know, as well as repairing the body, the mind can focus on what was said. The second thing I wanted to say and I didn't want to say my answer before you said yours in terms of what makes something meaningful For me, if you'd asked me six years ago so I'm 19 now if you asked me like six years ago, it was money. It was literally like I can't pretend, like I built a business in that time, but it was a little case of like I want to be as rich as I can, I want to be as successful as I can, because you look at all these documentaries like you see, like the social network film focused on the box of building Facebook, it's like he does this thing in harm and drops out. He builds this multi-billion dollar company. That's success right now. Wow, he's incredible. Let me be like that.
Speaker 1:And the transition I've focused on the last two years I mean there's still probably a lot of people that think I'm an absolute dick and I excuse my language there, but for me at least, there's been a mindset shift in a focus on connection with people. It doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter your status, it doesn't matter. I feel like my ability to now try and meet people and network and understand their stories and where they're from and build community. Build community in Jersey, build community in my family, my friends here in England, in America. I feel for me that is now my definition of success and what's sad in that is like it's not unique, Like that's not a film. It's like, wow, harvey made some friends. Like that's not a film. Yeah, but for me, in terms of building happiness, in terms of building success, sort of added layer that I hate, that I've rambled on for about five minutes, is sadly, sadly, on sort of a deeper level, my mom passed away in August last year.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and that's the reason I'm back, not in America right now, as we're doing a fun-reaching event, and the thing with that is she was one of the most loved people.
Speaker 1:I know Her funeral, literally a thousand people that are way more personable, as they may podcast way more possible than I am, because people liked her so much. But the thing with that is I found that for her, meeting people and like talking with them and enjoying and being in their presence was what made her happy, and so the message I'm trying to get through is for anyone listening you know you're listening to someone like Andrew Minson, who is incredibly successful, and hopefully you are a successful person one day as well. But even if you're not, there are practical things you can do in your own life that actually whether they're a millionaire don't have any money, creating those relationships is something everyone can do and can generate meaningful changes in their own lives.
Speaker 2:Sorry for that ramble, but I just want to say that was a very beautiful session and I think it's very inspiring to see that you've taken what is a tragedy and turned it into this fundraising endeavor. What exactly are you doing, sure?
Speaker 1:So so my, my mom's from a pretty sporty family. So her older brother so she's the youngest of four Her one just older is a guy called Kieran Bracken who I actually interviewed like episode four on this podcast and he won the rugby World Cup. So he was pretty successful. But my mom didn't feel like she got the probably attention she needed, even though she was a really good athlete. So in her 40s she got really into triathlon, ended up representing Ireland and Great Britain for triathlon, really pushed herself.
Speaker 1:So essentially, after she passed away my dad was like how can we best build upon her legacy? In that he basically wanted to find a way that we could find athletes, not just any other person that's interested in playing football or riding a bike, but kids that actually have the talent to go and do amazing things, like they could go to the Premier League, they could go, you know, and represent their country and triathlon or something. Find those kids and then both give them the financial resources so actually to be able to get their equipment, get that bike, get that plane, travel over to the UK. But also what's perhaps even more important is the access to the contacts, the people in the Premier League football team, the coaches, the mental health resources, and so we're basically trying to build this network of both money that's amazing and also the connection of mentors that can help them get there.
Speaker 1:So we did a dinner last night which was also framed as the 20 year anniversary since England won the World Cup, and I think I don't have the exact figure, but probably raised like 50,000 or something to go towards this cause. So, yeah, that's what we're building and for me and sort of how my family work as well is, we're not a very much of what and done sort of people. We're more a case of like, this is the start. Now how do we build this into something permanent? And so, yeah, that's what we're working on and hopefully build a good. It's called the Lulu Foundation after my mom, louise, so hopefully we can build a legacy not only for her but also seriously have some genuine impact on these kids moving forward.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. That's amazing. Yeah, this is so cool man. Well, look, first of all, I would love to donate and if I can be of use in any way, please do let me know. I do have. I'm working on a sort of biohacker gym project idea and so increasingly well-networked in this kind of like sports science space, so that might be something I can help out with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be amazing.
Speaker 2:I think, I think that's an amazing way to sublimate a tragedy into something very meaningful and fulfilling. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 1:Thank you. I understand that we're getting towards the end of our time, so I have two last questions. The next one I've got is you're still pretty young. I mean you're young and a lot of people, including the people I interviewed, are a lot older than you are and although you're sort of working on things now, when I asked this question of what's next for you, I'm more curious of what's next over the next 30 years, 50 years. Like if you were to look at yourself in like 50 years time and you would be like wow, I accomplished all of that from however old you are now to then. What does success look for you in that time? Like, what is the next big thing that you see yourself working on and achieving?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so most of my efforts right now are going into rehumanity, which is one of the projects we mentioned, and so rehumanity was born out of my own mental health crisis. So when I was 27, I sort of ticked a lot of things off the bucket list. I was struggling enormously to find a new meaning and, again, because there were just so many different things I could possibly do and I couldn't work out which one was most resonant to me, and it got to a point where I was just like, wow, I don't know if I can carry on living because there is just nothing. I can't seem to find a way to integrate back into society, and I think a lot of people are feeling like that. Right, where so many current careers having very little impact on the real world, 85% of people supposedly dislike their nine to fives, you've got 76% unfulfillment rate. Every two seconds somebody attempts to take their own life, and so this isn't an isolated case. I think a lot of people are really struggling in this world, and I think one of the culprits certainly is the work culture that we've created, where you are taken away from the things that really matter to you, ie your health, your family, your loved ones, your hobbies, and you're forced to work on things that for many people they just don't find meaning or impact in. There's a great book by the late David Griever, bullshit Jobs, where he finds that 40% of jobs are bullshit. In other words, the person conducting the job couldn't see any utility or benefit in what they were doing. They were sort of just employed there and a little bit too afraid to say hey, I'm actually actually pretty productive here. You can find me at any point. That might make a difference, and so one of the things I'm working on is why you're working so much that the book I referenced and within that is contained, I believe, solutions or the start of solutions to a cultural revolution in work culture where we can finally start to move away from a lot of these dreary. I call them like pseudo robotic jobs where people aren't really using their intelligence or human capabilities. We're sort of taking humans and trying to make them work as machines do, in a way repeat tasks and things like that. And obviously a lot of that's on its way out from with the rise of artificial intelligence, although I think a few decades short.
Speaker 2:But my big vision, I suppose, is to rehumanize the world. So work. Culture is one of the culprits. Social media, consumerist capitalism is definitely another. But what I see over the last hundred years is human beings have sort of been quantified down to individual statistics and people feel like there's no meaning, I think, the family units being completely destroyed. It's very uncommon now, for example, for a son to take care of their mother because you know. So all of these things are sort of like all of these traditional, I'd say like familial and cultural values have kind of like decompose all of these like human values. I think, really because of this, this rise of corporatist, rationalist capitalism and so what we're trying to do, a rehumanity, is bring back the humanity into the world. So one of those endeavors involves the book I'm writing and my plan is that hopefully, reading it, people will realize that if their values are out of line with how they're living, they can actually do something about that.
Speaker 2:But, more broadly, rehumanity we've created this new form of therapy, in a way, called rehumanism, and the way it works is we help people work out what's you and what's not you, and so, for example, when I met my co-founder, I was at this crisis point when I was, when I was 27. And I couldn't understand what was going on, because I felt like I was living the dream life. I was like, oh look, I'm an entrepreneur, I've traveled, you know, I'm in a wonderful relationship, all these things. And after just a few sessions of them, what I realized was that, yes, all of these things were wonderful, but I was basically living somebody else's life. So I was doing what might be great for you know, somebody with a different genetic composition, a different psyche, but for me none of these things really really resonated or meant anything to me.
Speaker 2:And so, with rehumanity, what we're trying to do at a very large scale is rehumanize the world to help people realize that the way they're acting or behaving at work perhaps doesn't align with their values. The work they're doing at work perhaps doesn't align with their values. I have a friend, for example, who is his number one value is honesty, but he works as a ghostwriter. I pretend that he's written things that right. And so what we're trying to do, very slowly, is reconnect people with these human values and move towards a more human world. I think just so much of the current systems that the world runs on are completely insane and very counterhuman. One good example is just the treadmill, which was originally again invented as a torture device in the 1800s and now it's sort of the pinnacle of health and fitness.
Speaker 2:I was reading the article just before. Right, yeah, it was very interesting, but it's just, I think, a great idea of how something as fun as sport and movement, dance etc. Has been dehumanized down to. You go to a gym, you're about to lift up and down the same weight, and then you run on the treadmill for 15 minutes and you just see this all throughout life. You see it, people trapped in these little cubal cages have a view of Canary Wharf from where I'm staying and it's just very constraining.
Speaker 2:And those ties around the investment bankers next they could very well be nooses, you know and the gray suits and everything so straight jacketed in. And again, these lifestyles are great for millions of people, I'm sure, but for many more there's this craving for a more human way to live, and so that's what we're trying to create, one form as a therapy, other form as a book, and eventually we're hoping to push towards human-centered policy. So I find it very strange that our number one economic objective is still GDP. And I think what's even funnier is Cousinates, the guy who came up with GDP in his paper Seminole paper where he defies the metric. He actually says this shouldn't be used.
Speaker 2:He warns against using it as a governmental objective, but obviously he was ignored. Now that is the north star of our economy. So I think all of these things are hopefully going to change in the next 10 years, in 20 years, and I hope to be very much at the front lines in terms of pushing some of those ideas forward. I've suddenly got one or two more questions, which is something. I'm going to ask them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I think you know. The next question I've got I think is different for you, because I feel like if I asked this question and you were trying to build a business where you'd make lots of money, it'd be a very different question. Yes. However, I think there's also a sort of obligation for you to answer and say that you are happy in that, for the idea that you're building a business or whatever, or an organization, in that you're rehumanizing people and by that people would think, as an output, that they would become happy. So surely, if you're happy, they could become happy too. But you mentioned an alignment to values. You mentioned humanizing the world and how you've. You know, even reading from your website, you were previously depressed and you've had this business and you've given away all your money and I've only had to feel like I've had to ask this question once before. But my question to you is are you happy?
Speaker 2:Andrew, I so. So, yeah, I think it's a really interesting question and what my answer would be is definitely I am happy at times, I'm sad at times, I'm empty at times, I'm full at times, and this is really the core ethos of rehumanity is that when we're not trying to make people happy, we're trying to make people happy, we're trying to reconnect people with the full arc of human experience. And so there are times where, for example, a loved one might be ill and I feel sad that because of what she's going through, but I also feel a deep fulfillment knowing that I'm there for her. And so you know, really, that the problem I see with the world isn't happiness or sadness. It's more the suppression of all of these human emotions and a dehumanization of the world, as opposed to an absence of happiness.
Speaker 2:I think suffering, for example, if you're suffering for a cause, that's one of the most meaningful, fulfilling things that you can, anyone could possibly do in their lives, and I've always been. I love the idea of being in a very committed sort of relationship where you suffer for your partner and you. You're in it together. There's that inextricable bond. So, look, I mean to answer honestly. I experienced a lot of happiness and joy day to day. I definitely live a very comfortable life. I can't say that I suffer particularly much, but I'm not in a permanent state of happiness certainly not, and I'm not sure I'd want to be and I think over the last few years I've really learned to enjoy the vicissitudes of life and I enjoy feeling sadness because it reminds me that maybe I've lost somebody that I love, or I lost my father a few years ago.
Speaker 2:When I think back, to the little tattoo here and on my wrist and it's not something that I describe as a negative experience. I would describe it again as a very human experience. And so, yeah, I think definitely, through this process of rehumanization, yeah, a lot of people likely will feel more happiness, more joy, more pleasure in their lives. But I think equally likely is people might feel fine things that are more induced, more suffering, but create more meaning. It depends on their values. But yeah, that would be my answer to the happiness question.
Speaker 1:It's a great answer. So a few more. Do you have time?
Speaker 2:to. I do indeed yeah yeah, please go ahead.
Speaker 1:I keep saying one thing or one question, so excuse that. There are a lot of problems and issues that need to be solved on a day to day basis, and I think the news and social media extrapolate how bad things or how not bad things really are. I don't know about your political ideologies or whether I would or would not agree with them, but it's clear that you are somewhat of a genius, both in terms of like your grades and how you've been able to do things, or at least you're very intelligent, and so I'd be curious if you would ever consider going into something like politics, or how you think you could have the greatest impact on a sort of societal level with the sort of knowledge you'd have and the impact that you want to create one day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting. So Politics, I think, is just like so fraught with well, political lobbying, political bargaining and these sorts of things. I I don't know how much impact you can, you can really have Politically just because you're so hamstringed by the needs for donations, the need to Very precisely communicate these. I was recently just listening to Barack Obama's auto autobiography. I believe yes, I think it was also and you know he talks about how this is one, this one conference he was giving, he sort of Two words sort of slurred together and sounded like something that he should have said nothing, sort of you know deeply offensive, but immediately, like the press is sort of tore him apart.
Speaker 2:And I think there's just something about Politics in general, or like the current status quo of politics, where you're not allowed to be a human being. It's actually a very dehumanizing role in a way, where you have to play a particular character. I think there are some, I suppose, like counter examples here where Donald Trump, I believe, does Authentically play himself in his political role, but if you look at Vivergram Swami or if you look at Rishi Sunak, etc. They don't strike me as particularly authentic or human characters. So I think politics I've always felt would just be too constraining.
Speaker 2:Firstly, institutionally, just because you have all of these strings from corruption to lobbying, to the need to raise funds. But secondly, because you've got this sort of media attention where you can't Say things authentically if you, if you I think the US is the best example of this where if you're on the right wing and you say anything that sounds like you're on the left wing, you're immediately a communist, you're immediately x, y and z. And so I think, as a nuanced person and I believe most people do have nuanced perspective on things, and why you know are relatively free in my thinking I think I would just struggle immensely with with anything political.
Speaker 1:Well, first of all, yes, first of all, I'll play this podcast back for you in 20 years time when you're. Second of all, I I've heard I'm it's my opinion from Netflix, so it's not very reliable. Yeah, I was watching like a political show or some made up, non like fiction, sure fiction show, whatever.
Speaker 1:Yeah and it was some of the lines of like, the people ruling the country and running things are actually I know this is a very big generalization Can often be more stupid than you are, and so it's basically saying that if you do have some form of intelligence, despite all the shadows that people try to cut you down, that you should run and still try and help out Society or the state you live in, because the alternative is worse. And so I Both agree with that statement, in that I think there's a lot of very stupid politicians. No, there's a lot of very intelligent ones that do make a change, but I think there's the system in a lot of countries around the world I won't even specify specific ones is really bad, and I feel like and I think it's quite obvious it looks like a joke to outside people. Like they argue like children, they discuss Ludicrous things, you know, it just seems more like a status game of power rather than actually, you know, making any meaningful change. Do you think there's any Systemic change?
Speaker 1:I keep coming back to systemic change because I think the whole yeah, yeah, it's changed. We as a nation, you know look at the UK, for example. Yeah, but how we could be more productive with our politics so that we would, you know, as an output, encourage the best people to become our politicians and, as you know, as an output of that you know, generate the most meaningful change in our society. Is there a way that can be done, or are we just constantly looking for shadows and cutting each other down?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, very loosely, so I haven't finished this chapter of the book, but the there are a few different proposals that that I suggest one is moving to something closer to a direct democracy. So if you go to Switzerland, you don't vote for a particular party, you vote on a per issue basis. So one month it might be, should we? I don't know it might be on immigration, the next month it might be. I just remember this example of Should we outlaw cows with a particular type of horseshoe? Strange things. I mean, this is, this is Switzerland, so they have their own issues. But but you know that that, I think, is interesting, because then it breaks you out of this paradigm of oh, I have to be Conservative on all issues, I have to be Liberal on all issues, I have to be right when I have to be left-wing. So I think that's one thing to be very helpful.
Speaker 2:I think the second thing, though, is Educational reform, because I think of education is the programming of your population, and so if the way you program your population is you reward obedience, you you castigate disobedience and free thinking, then I think, by the time you get to voting age, a direct democracy like this doesn't work very well, because the, the populace is so Impressionable, they can be sort of taken down whichever route has the most, let's say, social media presence or the most, let's say, I suppose, funding behind it. So I think those two things, potentially in parallel, could create absolutely system change. Now how you get the current Political class out of power and bring about a new system, now that that's beyond me, but I do think as a theoretical solution there's definitely something there where you would get more Individuated Preferences coming through. You wouldn't have a country. That's because basically, what you've got right now, if you take the states right, is you've got a Bunch of policies that 50% of the population is unhappy with.
Speaker 2:It's a little bit insane. Yeah, yeah, exactly so have a which way it flips.
Speaker 1:50% of the population is unhappy, so I think I think Living now, live in that culture and I'm very aware not to talk about which side I'm on or not on, yeah, but what I think is so stupid about the system is particularly in the US, no, I feel like that's like the epitome of this pitfall is that their politics is not your thought, it's not what you agree with. Yeah, it's an identity. Yeah, the minute I have an argument that's my identity is the minute you have downfall, because yes.
Speaker 1:Harvey says cows are the only ones that last cross the road, and then you say no, harvey, that's wrong, you're attacking Harvey. You're not attacking my argument? Hey, exactly me. There is no way to have progress when you're attacking people, not arguments, and so that's why I think the US and a lot of other countries are having a downfall in that regard. It's because it's about yes, I'm a Republican, yes, I'm a Democrat. Yeah, that's nonsense. Like literally every Republican, every Democrat has their own views, even within that a lot of them. You know you can have a Republican and Democrat. That literally like the exact same all that I see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's such a ludicrous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's why I think direct democracy. So the unbundling of those perspectives, you, it goes back to the, the individual issues, as opposed to, yeah, the identity, which I just think is so bizarre and it's so paradoxical as well. Like, if you look at some of the, the, the things that are bundled together, they make absolutely no sense. The idea that, for example, on the conservative side, you have such a high bias towards religiosity, whereas at the same time, they're meant to be super libertarian and You're meant to allow people to have different you know, divergent beliefs. So I just think some of these things are just fascinating. Or meat eating and abortion rights. There are contradictions internally between these things.
Speaker 1:So, yes, yeah, I can always find out. I talked to about politics, but I know, at a more, more self-centered, selfish question.
Speaker 1:You know, yes, I get your brand message, but something I'm so curious about as you've developed these sort of your sort of posts in which you've got, as you quoted, I think, 10,000 readers or something on those lines. So I've seen a graph and the graph basically goes as follows. It's like this sorry for anyone listening, but sort of watching the graph sort of goes at this like you're working hard, it's flat, but no, no real output, no real progress. Yes, and you know where you are, and often people like oh, you quit here before it goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at some point the graph will go up and yeah, so you get a lot of output for the work You're putting in, and that's that's sort of how I'm looking at this podcast and that I have a theory, and you know people like Gary V or whoever you listen to say, yeah, sure, and if you put good content out and you're consistent, that yes, you will receive that output at some point in time. So my question is for you as a super genius as I'm gonna keep quoting you what advice you would have for me in my podcast, in that, is it simply just a case of Creating great conversations like this one and being consistent with it, or do you think there's a third angle or a third round that I should be looking at in order to try and get the Listeners that I eventually want to get for this podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So all of this, all of these, I would call them like aphorisms, like these little Advisorial aphorisms that you get from the internet of like never quit and eventually you'll be successful. Obviously, there are many people who've worked hard for years and years of their lives and they've never seen any tremendous output out of it. So I think there's always like a flip side to things. I think knowing when to quit is number one, very important. I'm not suggesting you should at all, but I think Do you to your point of firm, because like, what's the mechanism there that like leads to this exponential return, but suddenly you're, you're doing nothing. Yeah, there's no obvious output for what you know, two, three, four years, and suddenly just spontaneously. So what's that? What's like the actual? I always like to think about what, what, what are the mechanisms driving that right? So one of the mechanisms, I think, is learning. So if you take business as an example, the first product you built might suck, people might not like it, and then you iterate on that product. It might suck a little bit less, you might iterate again and the suckiness decreases and decreases till you have something that people might actually want. So that's one side of things is actually learning. So you know, perhaps after this episode you might want to go and think about how could I've made that more interesting, how could I, how could I push Andrew for less rambling answers, etc. So so that's, that's, I think, one thing you can do. And I think again, if you look at the mechanics office, how you distributing your podcast right now, you could try different, different distribution channels, right. So I don't know what you're doing at the moment I know you messes me on, I think, linkedin but you could play around with different, different channels and you could see where you're getting marginal, marginal, more traction. Start experimenting with, with different content styles and see what works best. So I this, this graph.
Speaker 2:I think you'd be very misleading. I think it take a lot of people down the route of persevering on something that's a dead end, but you know five years of their lives. I mean, they're like, oh, hang on, you know just another year and you'll see that uptick it's. It's it's little different to the gambler's fallacy, the idea that you know You've been betting the whole night but the next hand you might, you might be, win big. But I think, like you know, the reason I get to pass around so much is because there is a a Logic to it which is, yeah, if you can learn and make marginal improvements along the way, absolutely those can aggregate and tend to something much bigger than you've ever expected. But I don't think just blindly repeating the same thing again and again per se is leads to success. But I think I think it's a useful message, because most people need the message of consistency as opposed to, you know, over-optimizing, but I think both are important.
Speaker 1:So, you know, learn what you can along the way and, yes, when you were at the sort of peak of your startup, working hard, sort of yes stage in your life. I don't know this, but this is a up-learn for all of this. You sort of at the stage where you're gonna try and work as hard as you can and this is what I want. Looking back, do you think that's self, so that that Andrew would be proud of where you are and who you are right now? What do you think? You're completely different.
Speaker 2:No, no, I think I think very similar. I think I felt very Inspired and very meaning focused. I suppose in that time I was very mission-driven. I was, I was working towards building something that I thought the time was kind of beyond myself. And sometimes you, you work towards things and you achieve those goals and then you're left in this kind of abyss of like ha, like what, what do I do next, exactly? But a lot of those traits of like hard working, this and determination and ferocity, I would say those are still very much present on a daily basis now perhaps a little bit more balanced and a little bit less insane, but yeah, I'm still, I think. I think I'd be very proud that I've moved on from one Social impact or venture to something that I believe is more socially impactful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, my actual final question now. I'm not gonna go on this and I've asked us to sort of every guest and that is what is one thing that you feel like you did or didn't say Throughout this podcast that you want to listen, to take away from it about you or what you said or something that they could Perhaps take into their life going forward.
Speaker 2:Hmm, the first thing that comes to mind is who the fuck cares, and I think I think it is, I suppose, person to what we've been talking about. But just like who the fuck cares, like I think people just walk around with so many complexes and I know that, for example, leaving a previous startup and then trying to go and do these new sort of social projects there's been so many times about, are you crazy? Was this the right thing to do? People are gonna see you as like taking a step down as opposed to a step up, and it's just like you know, the reality of it is really nobody cares, and If that's what they care about you, for that they're probably not. You know that the people you want to be hanging about. So, um, yeah, whatever it is, that's, that's kind of running around.
Speaker 2:I think I feel like most people have these sort of inner voices. You don't have to entertain them, you don't have to listen to them, you don't have to talk back to them and, yeah, if there's something that you can't seem to sort of get over or something that's Created a hang up like, I think that that question of you know who the fuck cares is actually matter. Is it important? Is it 's? You know it's? Is it's actually something I care about, or is it something that my mind seems to care about? But but I don't. Yes, that's what came up for me. Sorry if that's not what you were expecting. No, no, actually we're gonna do that bit. We're gonna do that bit again.
Speaker 1:That was. It's about 10, 10 tries and I feel like maybe we'll get to that. Yeah, definitely getting you guys to do that. Yeah, definitely getting you guys.
Speaker 2:Definitely new gas will be my yeah, I can ask you to generate some some better answers for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, we're trying to humanize. You're going against your brand as well, no. But on a serious note, I really, really enjoyed this conversation. I mean, this is the longest podcast I filmed so far, so I'm actually thrown all the way. I'm kidding. But no, I think when I was looking into you and I don't want to be offensive at all when I, when I say yes, I look to your profile and I didn't have it read anything. And these days that every fifth person that requested me looked in is an expert and XYZ is in 20 businesses is a speaker, a coach, a mentor in every field and honestly, they haven't really done anything, and I look at their profile.
Speaker 1:I'm like who the hell are you?
Speaker 1:Yes that was my initial thought. Looking into, you know, it's like he's humanizing people. What does that even mean? Yeah, and so I thought, here you've got this entrepreneur that suddenly you know sort of changed his life and what. What's going on. So I thought, yeah, we're going to talk about this for about 10 minutes, then we're just going to talk about happiness. But is that even a good quality conversation? So that was the sort of bias I had. Come to the conversation just sort of just for an honest in a Harvey. Maybe I should have said that sort of standpoint.
Speaker 1:What I think is so valuable and something that I feel like I've personally gained from these podcast, is a sort of at least an inner ability to think that maybe one day I can achieve what you're doing too. Like I don't want anyone to listen to this podcast and take what Andrew Mitzen, take what Harvey back and say, take what Ruben Nyling and what anyone any guest that I've had, and be like their word is gospel. What they've said is the truth. Instead, I want everyone to come in and listen to possible with an open mind and if there's anything that they've said or they've done, they can take away from it and it can impact their life and I feel like what's so amazing about your story is you're someone that is on paper and I feel like internally as well as achieved incredible things. You know you've built a startup, you built an incubator, you've built a brand that's actually changed the world and you're still humble enough to come on to some podcast that with a camera crew of like 20 people.
Speaker 1:But I'm truly inspired by your story and I don't know what my future looks like, you know, having lost my mom, and I'm sorry to hear about your dad as well, but I think what's very clear is it's you've got this openness to want to help people and I feel great, waking up every day, knowing that there's people out there like you that are there willing to help people and that money isn't the primary drive for them, and so I hope that anyone going away from this podcast if they end up making over 30k that they actually would just donated to me no, I'm kidding, but no. Thank you again. I loved having you on and I'm excited to see what happens when you run for Prime Minister in 20 years time. A pleasure, sir good.