Scaling Huel and Mental Health in Leadership: A Candid Conversation with James Collier, Co-Founder of Huel

I like feedback if I've got evidence behind it and people can give it in a constructive way. It's just being told in a straw man way that this is wrong and that's just not helpful at all. But if somebody says, hey, what do you think about a thing you did there? Do you think you could have maybe done a better job or done it differently? You start thinking and you say, well, how do you feel about maybe not doing that thing again? You might actually say, yeah, you know what, that's probably not cool. And you leave the meeting happy. And yet the person who's delivered the feedback's got the same result. You're not going to do that thing, but you've made someone feel shit about it or you've made someone feel actually pretty positive about it.

Hello and welcome to part two of my conversation with James Collier, the co founder of Huell and one of the most thoughtful down to earth leaders I've had the pleasure of interviewing. In the first episode we explored the link between nutrition and personal performance. But today we're going deeper into leadership, scaling mental health and how to lead in a way that's sustainable for both yourself and your team. In this episode, James speaks candidly about his own mental health journey while scaling one of the UK's fastest growing brands. And we get into everything from values led leadership to vulnerability, personal resilience and the emotional realities of leading at pace. If you've ever felt the weight of leadership, the pressure, the responsibility, the pace, then I know this conversation will resonate and if you haven't yet, it's probably coming.

Let's get into it.

James, welcome back. The second part of our two part podcast series.

First one, we're very much focused on the nutritional aspects. This conversation, I suspect nutrition is still very much going to be a theme, but delving a little bit more into the leadership aspect. First thing to talk about, if you are growing, scaling a business, like, yes, that's very exciting, especially if you're in the founding team, but it can also be pretty tiring. Right. It's a long, relentless journey. Thinking about your experience with growing and scaling Huell, which has happened at a pretty rapid rate. Right. Like how has the leadership team kind of you playing a part in that? How have you supported your colleagues, employees at Huell on that journey?

Yeah, it's been interesting. We've grown very quickly and there was two of us, Julian Hearn, who's the principal founder, and me as co founder from, you know, we're coming up to 10 years in tune with 10 years. And Julian and I were working together for a year before that when he commissioned me to come up with the original formulas and the original nutrition sort of questions he poised in me. So if people don't know my background, I did my nutrition degree in the early 90s. I went, as most newly qualified dietitians do, went and worked in the NHS for several years. Then I went freelance and then as also went freelance, I worked in the bodybuilding and fitness, running a website and doing other various things, not all of them related to nutrition for several years, but I always had my consultancy and that was how Julian found me back in 2014. It's been very different, you know, I did. I've had my own businesses before and I employed people. But was I a good leader? Probably not. Am I a good leader now? I don't know. I'd like to think I'm considerably better and I was. And I work with some really good people with different skills and I think that's the key. You know, you need to have highly skilled people within an organization, but also highly skilled people at the leadership level as well. Yeah, you know, I work with people that are, you know, in the operations, in the technology side, finance, of course, marketing, the human resources people side of it as well. And it's very good because you learn from them, as you know, and of course it's not your key area, but you see how everything connects and which is important. We're a food business and food's my thing. My job title is Chief Sustainable Nutrition Officer, so I'm. My background is a human nutrition, but I've had to learn a lot of the sustainability, environmental and ESG side of things.

Yeah.

On the fly. It's in my pillar of the business. It's not my area of expertise. So it's trying to just utilize the right people within the organization and the right skills and just being able to identify what the skills are, I think is important.

And in the hu journey, I guess this is probably going back to the. The earlier days, was there a particular sort of tipping point where you noticed that the. The business was really sort of growing and scaling? And I guess the. The linked question to that is. And equally was there. Were there any points where you felt like you or those around you might be sort of on the cusp of burnout just because you were pushing so hard to try and make this work and make it a success? And it kind of could have gone either way in terms of the business, but also people just burning out because it's tough, right? Sometimes I know this in my business, it can just feel relentless sometimes and it's a struggle and you're wading through like sludge, trying to get things. Things moving. Like, what was that experience like?

We knew we were growing quite quickly early on. Obviously we didn't know what the outcome was going to look like, but I guess a few years in, we know this was going to be something pretty big. We didn't know know. We didn't know all the products are going to be. We didn't know the regions. We know quite what it was going to look like. And the world's evolved a lot. We've been through Covid since then as well. Of course, we're going through very tumultuous political times at the moment. So it's interesting. Burnout.

That's.

That's an interesting one. So the early stages of hul, I was still involved in some of my other projects. I hadn't really, you know, I was. Guess I was part time at hul and although it was taking a lot of my time and I was certainly. I don't know. Burnout's a subjective thing. Right. Realize people have tried to define it. So I can only speak from my own experience. I can't answer the question on the other people here. We did bring in James McMaster a couple of years in, who's CEO, still CEO today because Julian was being the CEO before that and he realized it probably wasn't his best skills. He's a CMO now and has been since, so he's realized he's better at being the entrepreneur and the. And the marketing guy. And I'm certainly not CEO and, you know, and James does an outstanding job. So I was working a lot. I've had a lot of issues with my mental health since growing up, really. And in 2016, I had a serious physical illness that put me out of action for a while. That was late 2016. And then in 2017, I'd come off all the opioids and gabapentin and stuff, and my mind was going overtime. I'd missed a bit of fuel. I'd still been checking my emails, but I'd missed the bulk of it. It was growing very quickly and I had a. That's a bad depression that summer. It was really changing for me. I was like, you know, you wake up every morning with a brick in your. Your tummy. And I'd experienced that before, but it was a particularly bad one. I just. I don't know, I started being a bit More curious in other directions than nutrition in my life. And I started reading other books and then I came across the concept of meditation and mindfulness which I'd always poo pooed. Always been a bit of a science nerd. Right Ben and I poo pooed it as new age hippie stuff. Then I realized how wrong I was. So I found that as a calming mechanism. And I've had depression since a kid, on and off, not consistently. And when I say had had depression, we all get depressed. Right. But where it would adversely affect my life for significant amounts of time. That's what I'm talking about here. But that bout in 2017 I can confidently say will be my last. Okay. We can't be sure of anything. And I'm sure and I've had since and I will have sure many Blue Daisy. A couple of weeks ago I wasn't in a great place mentally, but they're not. I'm still carrying on with my life and I'm just feeling a bit cracked for a few hours, a couple of days. That's different to being depressed. And you know there'll be adverse things going on in my life that will affect me and I'm sure I've got some. We're gonna have hard times. We all are. Right. That's the one thing we're sure of. We're going to have hard times. We don't know what they'll be, how I deal with them. So I've got much better at coping with these things. Yeah, sure, I get down, but I can pick myself up pretty quick. I've always been a pretty positive kind of guy, even when depressed. So I've got certain strategies in place. Just trying to appreciate gratitude. And I'm saying I'm very good at being doing meditation regularly, but I'm very good at taking multiple mindful moments during the day just for a few seconds, just grounding myself. I find that quite good. Obviously diet plays into mental health as well as we discussed in the previous episode. And I've always had a pretty good diet. It's just being focused and, you know, acknowledging your shortfalls. And this is my experience as well. I don't want to pretend I'm some psychologist here. You know, I read a few psychology books and hey ho, I'm a bloody expert, aren't I? Just doing everything I criticize these nutritionists were doing in the last episode. I don't want to be that person, but I can speak from personal experience and I do know how to read scientific papers. Sure. I, you know, I don't know the standard depths of neuroscience, but I do understand a good quality paper. I think at least I've got a better understanding than most people, which could be, maybe that's a disadvantage. So I, I know that, yeah, I know I'm in a better place, broadly speaking than I was for most of my adult life.

James, I really want to ask you some sort of questions I had planned very much focused on, on leadership. And at exactly the same time I really don't want to skip over kind of where the conversation is going right now because it's something that really important to me personally. The sort of mental health police sort of the broader well being sort of depression is, is interesting as well. Like people who've listened to previous episodes of, of my podcast over the past few years will have heard me talk a little bit about my journey kind of with depression. Having lost best friend, father at short notice, kind of mum's journey with depression, dementia, my wife losing a best friend to breast cancer, all in a really short space of time. I guess the question that occurred to me when you was talking about your journey there and you mentioned depression, to what degree did sort of you talk to any colleagues at Huell about that? Because the reason I asked that question is I absolutely believe that part of our role is as a leader is to be inspiring, like a force for good in, in the organization. I talk a lot about the effect of emotional contagion and how a leader's state and mood affects the state, mood, performance of those around us. And at the same time some might feel these are competing or in opposition. And at the same time I absolutely believe that we need to be honest, authentic and congruent. Right. And real. And people in leadership circles, in the leadership sort of press at the minute. There's a lot of talk about vulnerability. Some people, some people I coach go like Ben, I'm the leader, why am I going to be vulnerable? Why should I show any vulnerability? And that's again, it's to the point in previous episode. That's a good debate to have.

Let's have that.

But there's a balance, right? Sometimes when a leader says actually kind of I am struggling a bit at the minute or actually guys, there's a lot going on right now. I could do with a little bit of extra support because I'm dealing with this. I think there's real value in that because it shows like that we're human. It makes it okay for other people to put the hand up when they're Struggling. And yes, if a leader comes into work every single day and says, oh guys, well I'm really struggling, that's not going to work. But equally, I don't think we should hide it when we are maybe having a particularly tough, tough time. So there's a lot there. But I just wonder what was your experience like and to what degree did you perhaps talk to work colleagues about.

So back then this was two years in to hear one less and I didn't talk to anybody about it at work. I got friends outside and a very, very supportive wife and you know. Yeah, spoke to them.

I guess the Huel team was very small two years ago.

It was quite small then as well. Yeah, it was. I think we do quite well with, with helping support colleagues at mental health that heal. In fact, I'm the senior leader who sort of looks after that side of, of the business. We, we have a platform with some with a company known as Self Space that we partner with. These are brilliant guys. It was worth people looking them up and they, they offer a support service. So we pay them X amount of money for a year. So if any individual at your can have an appointment online over zoom with an appropriate counselor now they might, they can try different, you know, psychotherapists, psychologists, counselors. Therapists I guess is the broader term and they. And it might not work out or. And then they might find someone have repeated consultations. There's no limit on how many people can have. We buy as many in one time maybe of course of a year. If you run out, we pay them more money and do more. We also try and support in other ways. We have a team of, you know, seven or eight people across the business that we call the mental health allies where people got some minimal training in supporting colleagues with mental health. Some of those that training is done by Self Space, some by other, other platforms and it's just a first person to go to who's not your manager. And it could be in a different part of the business you can go to and just sound off now that could be just someone to talk to. After that we were setting up all this supporting the mental health and the business and I was identified as a senior leader who would sort of work with the allies on that. Then I thought, yeah, I've got to try and open up and be a bit more transparent. So I did give a couple of talks and then we started going through Covid and stuff like that. So but I did try and you know, obviously I can help with a few nutrition tips and Maybe a few mindful tips. And I did try and share my experiences and I think that's good now. So there's kind of three things I think you asked me there. I think I've answered two of them. Firstly, what did my experience. Well, I'm not saying it was negative. I'm just saying I just didn't do it. It was the right time. The business then. I've said what we do do in the business now and I think why it's important that the senior people do share themselves. I'm going to probably talk that the third side of it is how much should we be vulnerable? I'm probably going to talk a bit like a Gen Xer here because that's what I am. I'm torn on this, Ben. And I'm going to speak. I don't know if this is going to come out. I don't know if I've ever spoken about it before. So what comes out of my mouth might not be what I'm thinking. It's just me speaking as I'm.

Yeah, go for it.

Words have come. I'm torn here. I love. I think it's really good that mental health is being spoken about as a concept for sure. You know, this is, this is being this progress. I do worry about some more that some people. It's become too much of a thing. I realize there's a lot of nuance here and people are using it as an excuse. The vulnerability thing is interesting. I think it's great and I think business leaders should inspire by sharing their, you know, their experiences before. And I think they should be. And I think that's good. But I do worry a bit to. Are people being too vulnerable? I do worry about. You said about that leader example, you know, you know, leader vulnerable. You can only share so much and ultimately we're in control of how much we share. And yeah, we should suck a bit up. I do think we should be. And I realize people are going to be criticizing me there and I'd love to have a bigger debate, you know, a longer debate about this and sucking. That's probably the wrong word.

Right.

We've got to take, you know, there's going to be. Shit's going to come our way and if we just go, oh, I'm just telling you, I feel that's just not right, you know, I. As stoicism. The little I know about it as a philosophy is quite good. We have to embrace hard times. We live in the west, we super privileged. Even if people, you know, on relatively low socio economic background and you know, maybe haven't had a brilliant upbringing, was still super privileged on the relative to the past and relative to other parts of the world. We're not in Ukraine at the moment when we're not in Syria, we're not in Gaza, we're not in Venezuela. You know, we're. We, we're super privileged and we have to acknowledge that. And adversity should be embraced and not all, not discomfort doesn't mean bad. I'm trying, I'm waffling a bit here. But yes, I want people to embrace, you know, show up if you're feeling crap. That's okay to share with your colleagues, even if you're a senior OC person, but you've got to keep a bit of it back and you can't go in like you said about, you know, moaning every day, you know, if, if a close relative dies, share that, that's fine. Everybody's going to know you. In fact, it's good to share it because people might know if you are a bit of a dick. There's a pretty reason that you're behaving like that and you don't mean to be like that and that's. And that's useful. But people have to be a bit stoic. Have to have a bit of a. Everything I said is going to be wrong. I was going to say have a bit of a backbone. I don't even know. I don't even know if I mean that. You can tell. I've already thought about, I've thought about this, but I've not thought about wording this.

Hey, here's a quick question while you're listening.

How strong is your senior leadership team really? Are they enabling growth or are they holding you back? The Leadership Capability Scorecard gives you a clear snapshot of your organization's leadership capability. It shows you where your senior managers are excelling and where development is needed to scale successfully. It's free, takes just a few minutes and gives you instant insights into whether.

Your leadership team is set up for growth.

Take the scorecard now. The link's in the show notes.

Back to the episode.

Part of the job of a leader is to shoulder some of the, some of the burden. It is to often protect and shield our team from, from stuff that's going on. The, the responsibility that comes with making some tough calls. That's what a leader gets paid for. So yes, we absolutely do need to do that. And I totally agree with you. If we go to work each day saying, oh God, I'm just really exhausted from all these tough calls I've got to make. Just give me a break for a minute, will you guys? That's not what we're talking about because that's not going to inspire anybody. But actually the flip of that is from time to time because being a kind of little bit perhaps more open and honest on the rare occasion I think is really powerful because people realize that leaders are human as well. And actually if you're saying actually I am having a tough time at the minute guys then it's okay for other people to do that because again you mentioned the Gen Gen X thing there like which I'm just on the cusp of. I think partly the Gen X view of work is you, you go to work, you, you leave all your home stuff at home, you come to work, work is work. It's very professional. Never shall the two to me like.

God, we're not modern world that can't work.

It's not reality. Right? Work affects home, home affects work. We can't put them in these two.

Separate working from home these days. And you know and, and you have it, you've got problems. You know we live in a global globalization so sometimes we're taking calls or answering emails in different parts of the world with the time sensitive because of different time zones. So it just, you just can't do it. And of course if you are you, if you're going through a difficult time with your marriage then you're going to bring that to work. You're just not there. And so, and I think so I think it's good to share share stuff but you can almost think yeah share that you but also share that I've got a plan. And even if the plan is like I don't know what my plan is but I know I'll, I'm going to be okay at some point. So yeah, I think be more vulnerable than people did in the, you know, the ultra stoic 1950s or 60s. But I don't need to hug every five minutes of the day, you know, it's just not going to be productive. It's finally a balance. It's funny balance what works for the individual. And I've probably been a bit too vulnerable with certain individuals in my business and I've sort of thought real back I thought I feel uncomfortable, I shouldn't have done that. And maybe I'm punishing myself too much. But I learned from that as well. And there's other times I probably haven't shared. I've Got a bit of stuff going on and maybe I've been a bit blunt with somebody and if I had have shared that, they probably would have given me a bit of leeway.

Yeah. Talking about sharing and learning then that's sort of a bit of a segue here. What would you say are some of the lessons you've learned specifically about leadership in the. In the Huel journey, let's say that might be relevant for other people who are building or scaling a. Scaling a business.

I probably learned a lot that I probably can't recall. I do know one thing that I've actively tried to do myself. My personality is trying to be a bit of a people pleaser and I've grown up caring too much about what other people think. I don't think it's been very helpful for me. I'm using this illustration. People go around saying this phrase, no fucks given.

Right.

I really dislike the phrase. Okay. But when I turned 50 a couple of years ago, I made it my new birthday resolution to sort of try and give one level less of a fuck.

Right? Yeah.

Okay. And since then I've tried to give and look at a couple of. With a gap between them a bit less of a fuck. But I never want to get to the point where I don't give a fuck. You have to care about what other people think. You have to care what other people think about you. But you can do it too much. And I think it's held me back. I still probably in certain circumstances care too much now. But that's partly hopefully because of me trying to be scientific integrity. I try and be honest and have some humility with everything I say. Even saying that probably lacking humility at the moment. It keeps you at a high level of trying to cross check yourself. If you know you're being assessed by other people, you're probably not. But if you think you are, then it tries to keep you honest. But you can care too much and that holds you back. And I think for most of my life that's helped me back.

Has that played out for you at any stage in terms of providing feedback to people kind of around you, helping people perform at their best and kind of. Again, what's behind this question? I've recently reread the book Radical Candor by by Kim Scott. We'll put a link to it in the show notes for everybody listening, but for anybody listening is not familiar with it. She's got this simple sort of four box model with two axis where sort of the. The vertical access is about sort of how much you care about the people around you. So the very top is you. You care deeply and personally about the people who you lead and work with. And then the horizontal axis on the far right hand side is, is what she calls challenging directly. So giving good, constructive, direct feedback. Challenging someone's perspective or point of view in a meeting when you're trying to get to a decision, a way forward. And she talks about when we care deeply but don't challenge directly. She describes that as ruinous empathy. Like we're really not help people develop because we don't want to hurt their feelings. And she talks in the book. There's a lovely story about someone in one of her first businesses who really wasn't performing. Everyone in the organization knew he wasn't performing. He was really nice guy, lovely bloke. And eventually got to the point where she had to have a conversation with him. And she met him in his office and gave him this feedback. And he was just said he was like this broke, broken man. And he sat there and his only words, words were, first of all, he said, why have you never told me this before? Because she'd worked with him for three years and he stood up to leave and went, why's nobody else ever told me this before? It was like too, almost too much empathy. Caring too much about the people.

Yeah. I mean this reminds me of the work by the psychologist Paul Bloom, the. With his book called Against Empathy. I don't know if you've heard of him. Another one, another one for the shadow. So without getting too off topic here, I think the title of it is Probably doesn't do it Justice. But he argues against empathy as being a good personality trait under all circumstances. And this reminds me of, of his work there because yes, empathy is a positive thing and he, he absolutely agrees with that. But he always feels people should be more compassionate rather than have empathy because compassion could be a bit disjointed. This is an example what the point you give there is an example of this. If you're compassionate, you can deliver the feedback constructively without hurting the person's feeling. I mean this is phrase compliment, sandwich. I don't know if it's a good phrase or not.

Yeah, Otherwise known as a sandwich.

It's probably a better, better one.

Yeah.

Because it's. You're putting, you know, you say something really good, you know, but you're delivering the feedback in a constructive way. But you're leaving them end on the, on the last, you know, a bit more positive as they Leave. And I think that's important. I've always tried to do that. I don't know whether I've all delivered it. I can actually recall one conversation I had back in 2019 with a colleague and I know I can call two actually about that period and I didn't do a very good job. I remember them. The fact that I can recall them now means that I played on my mind. And I've constantly thought, no, I didn't do that right there. Hopefully I've done it, done it okay since. So that, that bit, yeah, tough to say. You know, delivering feedback well is, is important and that's a skill, I think. I don't know if I do a good job, but I've certainly been consciously taught by, I've had help in delivering it. And I think that's really important for organizations to do because that example you've given is good because you want the best out of people. And sometimes people given the feedback can, can improve and you can support them in improving. But it works the other way as well, right? You know, I like feedback. If I've got evidence behind it and people can give it in a constructive way. It's just being told in a straw man way that this is wrong and if you do that, then it's, you know, we're going to fall out or something. And that's just not helpful at all. But if somebody says, hey, what do you think about a thing you did there? What do you think? Do you think you, you could have, you know, could have maybe done a better job or done it differently? You start thinking and you say, well, how do you feel about maybe not doing that thing again? You might actually say, yeah, you know what, that's probably not cool. And you leave the meeting happy. And yet the person who's delivered the feedback's got the same result. You're not going to do that thing, but you've made someone feel shit about it or you've made someone feel actually.

Pretty positive about it just to unpick that. James, you've absolutely nailed it. So whoever you worked with to help you on this clearly knows their stuff because what you described there is providing some feedback, but doing it through a conversation, right? Asking the person, like, how do you think that went? If he's going to do that again, do you think you could do it differently? Which is very different to come at it with. You did this, you need to do this differently next time. Which just feels a very, a little bit arrogant, right? Because we just, we're just Taking our view, we, we might not be right, we might not have all the, all the context and it's just going to feel like an attack. So actually feedback is a, is a conversation, more of a coaching style drawn out of them. That's super powerful, right? That's super powerful.

If the person delivering it isn't doing it in that negative way, it's all about how they feel. It's about their feelings. It's not about the result. We all want the result. The things in question being done better, that's the result. And the person delivering the feedback in that way isn't after that result. They're after. They want to give a bollocky.

Yeah.

And they care about the way they feel. It's quite a narcissistic approach to delivering feedback by the person giving the feedback. It's about their feelings. Whereas we want the result, that's the objective. We want that thing not to be an issue.

You mentioned narcissistic there. I talk about this a lot. It occurred to me, I think it's about five years ago. A lot of the time, the feedback we feel inclined to give somebody as a leader or manager, often it has absolutely nothing to do with the person we're directing the feedback at or their performance. A lot of the time it's so much more to do with us, beliefs, our values, our view, how we've been triggered. I talk a lot with leaders about. Before you're going to give some feedback, just quickly run through three questions like, does this need to be said? Does it need to be said by me? Does it need to be said by now? Because a lot of the time it doesn't. You've said something, it's triggered me. So I feel I need to give you some feedback. But it's not about what you've done, James, it's about kind of something that's triggered me. I'm not saying we should have, therefore should use those questions to avoid feedback. But just ask yourself, is it really about the person or is it about us? Physical metaphor, right. Every time you point the finger at somebody, get it on the camera. There's three fingers pointing back at us. What part have I played in this situation myself?

No. Yeah. Be self critical, be self aware. Yeah.

James, one final question to wrap up our conversation here and it's one that I know you've kind of thought about. So your background, it's in, in nutrition, as we've said. Leadership also requires us to think about balance, sustainability, sort of long term well being. Are there any principles from your background in nutrition that you think carry through and can be applied to leadership in terms of sort of first principle type ideas.

Just something reminded me of something I think relevant to the book well Fed here is people talk about sustainability in a business. Okay. And in the environment, you know, we're trying to sustainability, people think about environmental concerns. And in the final chapter as a subsection called the Dark side of Sustainable Nutrition, and I've given an example of a young individual who was following very extreme diet with. Based on environment, not necessarily on. On their own health and their own outcome was compromised. And that meant. So if we genuinely want to help the environment and other people, we have to be in good health ourselves. So we have to prioritize our own health. Now in my book, it's got the five pillars of contemplative nutrition, physical health, mental health, sustainable nutrition ethics and who we eat with. There's a reason those first two are the first two because they are more important than the others. And the phrase I use in the book is a diet isn't sustainable if it can't sustain an individual. And I think that's really important. So I realized it was a slight tangent, but it reminded me there because let's bring that back to leadership. You have to look after your own mental health to be able to be able to look after other people's mental health. And a business isn't going to be sustainable if it hasn't got good leadership. So my learnings from nutrition are. Well, I guess that can be translated in that sort of sense. Have I answered that question in our.

Yeah, you have, yeah. It's kind of an example is sort of what, what principles, if there are any from nutrition that we can translate that would work in terms of leadership more more broadly. But I think absolutely the one around, look after yourself so you can look after other people. Right. Actually, that's one of my foundational pillars of, of leadership.

You slightly prioritize yourself, but not to the detriment of others. That's the important thing. Yeah, you have to. You know, it's always that, that thing on the plane, isn't it, that they said when they're giving those talks, you've got to put your own, you know, mask on before you help anyone else with theirs.

It's kind of important, I think of it as being appropriately selfish. Most of us have been brought up as kids being told that to be selfish is a, is a really bad thing, that you must not be. Be selfish. But in terms of leadership, absolutely. We cannot look after Others, if we don't have the physical energy, the mental energy, if we've not got good social connections ourselves. So, yeah, we absolutely do need to be appropriately selfish. Like, I know I'm sure you'll resonate with this. Like, sometimes I will prioritize going for a run or going to the gym instead of doing a certain activity kind of with. With my wife and daughter, because I know if I'm not exercising regularly enough, I'm a crappy dad and a shitty husband. So actually sometimes. And sometimes my wife will even say to me, for Christ's sake, will you just go and ride your bike for 90 minutes? Because I'll come back and I'll be. Be better. So that's like, for me, what I mean by appropriately selfish.

Yeah, I get that. Yeah, that makes sense. So I guess that's my learning how it trans, you know, transfers from nutrition.

James, thank you so much for. For your time over the two episodes. The first one heavily focused on the. The nutrition, which was fascinating, and this one talking about some of your leadership experiences, particularly on the Huel journey. So thank you very much. Really appreciate your time on the show today, Ben.

It's been interesting because leadership is not something I speak about very often because it's kind of not my world. Well, it is my world, but not my experience. So hopefully there's something people can learn from that.

There absolutely is. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Ben.

To wrap up this episode, I can't thank James enough for how open and honest he was in this conversation. It's not always easy for leaders to talk about mental health or the weight that they carry, but conversations like this are exactly what we need more of in today's leadership landscape.

That I know for sure.

If this episode resonated with you, please, I'd love to invite you to take my Leadership Capability Scorecard. It's a free tool I've developed to help you assess how well your leadership team is set up to scale across nine critical dimensions that affect performance, well being, and growth. You can find the link to the scorecard in the show notes, and it takes just a few minutes to complete and get your personalized report. And of course, finally, if this conversation has struck a chord, then please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Because the best leaders aren't the loudest. They're the ones who are quietly doing the work on themselves for their teams.

Until next time, lead on.