How to create your own opportunities from nothing 👨🏻‍💻 | Stefan Husanu (Pith & Stem)

Naivety is a superpower. Just because you don't know how difficult something will be, that can bite you in the backside, and it probably will, but it is also a superpower because it just gives you the power to keep on going. If you know how, how tall the mountain is, then you'll never start. Whereas if you only see the first peak, then you go there, and then you get to that peak and you see that there's another peak. If I knew that it was that high, I probably wouldn't have started, but I'm here now, so I might as well go again. And you go there and there's another peak and you just keep on going. But that is a superpower.

This week's Millennial Master is Stefan Husanu, founder of Droptop. From landing in London with no qualifications to building multiple businesses, including a global brand redefining home workspaces, Stefan's journey is one of persistence and creating opportunities when none exist. In this episode, we get into how naivety can be your biggest superpower in business, turning rock bottom moments into rocket fuel for success, and building a thriving business from scratch, even when the odds are stacked against you. If you've ever doubted whether you have what it takes, this one's for you. Millennial Masters is proudly sponsored by Jolt, the UK's top web hosting service. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling up a custom app, every great project needs a reliable home. That's why Jolt has hosting plans starting at just £3.95 a month, with unbeatable deals on domain registrations too. Why Jolt? It's a no-brainer. There's no waiting around with support within 30 seconds on live chat. Your site stays live no matter what with over 99.99% network uptime. And you can also pay with Bitcoin or American Express, so you can rack up those points too. How good is that? Sign up today and enjoy your first 3 months free. Head to jolt.co.uk to get started. Stefan, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

Daniel, thank you so much for having me. I am great. I'm great. It's the late morning, just before the afternoon. I had breakfast and I am very excited to be recording this with you.

Let's do this. So your journey to a certain extent starts when you were in a police cell in Athens, Greece, and you realized you wanted to come to the UK and turn your life around. Tell me about that.

God. Yeah. So I am, I'm finding myself in a police cell yet again for the 8th time. I have been arrested and found using a fake credit card and I am now 18 years old. So I had been arrested previously, but I was, I was, that was before the age of 18. So I was treated as a minor, which is a lot more lenient, but I'm now 18 years old and I'm thinking, shit, I've got so many offenses before. Is, am I gonna, am I gonna be locked up for a while now? And as, as these feelings of, you know, again, you find yourself here, you promise yourself that you're going to be out, you promise yourself that this this is not the life that you want. And here you are again in a police cell. This time, I promised myself that if I get out, I'm gone. Like, I've tried before and I couldn't get out of those circles that I found myself in. They were my friends and everyone, everyone that I knew, all of my circles, they were all doing something dodgy, basically. And I decided that if I get out, I'm going to leave. And I decided I'm going to leave for London because I could speak some English. And it was, it was close enough. So for example, I could speak some English, but the USA, for example, was very far. I had heard very good things about London. So, um, it had sparked curiosity and I felt that I could do it. Like it was, it was easy enough for me to be able to get there. And then after I got there, what I would do, I didn't know, but I knew that it, you know, I can, I can make it happen. Um, I had that fire in my belly because if I stayed, I knew that I would end up in prison in future or worse. And yeah, I promised myself that I'll go to London. And a few weeks after I was arrested, I was trialed and I was very lucky. I had a good story about what had happened and the judges kind of felt for me a little bit. I remember the main judge asking to the right and then asking to the left. And when she asked something to the left, I overheard, what's the minimum sentence we can give? And the minimum sentence was a month. And because of the way the legal system works, it meant that I didn't need to do the month. But if I was caught again, that month would be added onto my sentence. I was a free man. And that's what I did. I had them. I had a car that wasn't very expensive, but I sold that for €1,300, and then I booked myself a flight and I came to London.

And how was it when you stepped into London for the first time?

Well, that, yeah, that's when the fun started. That's when I realized that life is tricky and things are tough, you know, you have to really work hard to make it work. So I didn't know anything, but the travel agent where I booked my ticket said there's the Piccadilly Line at Heathrow. So just find yourself into the Piccadilly Line and then go on the Piccadilly Line and on the other end, because I had booked a room to stay in and that room was in Arnos Grove, which is the other end of Piccadilly Line. Anyway, the travel agent told me just find Piccadilly Line and then just stay on there until you see your stop. And when you see your stop, Google Maps on your phone and find where your rented roomies. And yeah, that, that was the first encounter. There was no one there, no one waiting for me, no one showing me where Piccadilly Line is. I had to ask, and I got on the Piccadilly Line, got on the other end, went to my room, and then I was like, okay, what now? So I, I dropped out of school at the age of 15, so there was no CV, there was no qualifications, there was no base from which to start building on. The There was no foundation at all. So I had to build the foundation, but I was willing to do anything. So I started, I came out the house, I started working towards the left and any shop that I would find, I would go in and I would say, hi, I just came to London. I'm looking for work. Do you have anything? And so I asked in supermarkets, mini markets, fish and chips shops, petrol stations, car washes, everything, everywhere., and no one would give me a job for the first week. Then someone gave me a CSCS book and they said, read this, it's, this is a health and safety test, and this is the minimum test that you need to pass so you can work in construction in the UK. And once you, um, once you've read that and you're confident, book a test. And once you pass the test, here's two numbers for two agencies. They're always looking for construction laborers. They'll give you work. And so that's what I did., and I phoned up those construction agencies. I said, I've got my test tomorrow, do you have work for the day after tomorrow? And they said, pass your test first and give us a call. So I passed the test and then I gave them a call. I said, I've passed my test now, do you have work? They said, yeah, come tomorrow morning at 7:30 at Warren Street and you will see there's going to be a small group of people there. Don't worry, they'll take care of you there. And that's what I did. They took me. I went to Warren Street the next morning at half past 7. They put me in the back of a car and they took me to a construction site and they said, you're going to be working here. This person's going to tell you what to do. Thank you, see you. And then that was 2 weeks and a bit after I landed in the UK, I was working and I had already run out of money and my rent was due in the following couple of days and I didn't have money to pay for it and I needed to wait 2 more weeks until the first payment came in. So that was an awkward conversation with the landlord as well.

But you quickly found your feet in the industry when you realized there was a gap.

Yeah, quickly enough. So for the first year, I was just trying to, so I was on £6.08 an hour. Then the minimum wage went up to £6.12. So I was on the minimum. I was earning for a little while, I was earning, I was working 40 hours a week and I was earning £186.50. My room was £100 and the Oyster card was £36.75. So I had to live on the rest and I would still save £20 a week. Because I had a girlfriend in Greece and I wanted her to visit me. And then I started very quickly started just speaking to everyone and saying, oh, how are you earning more money? How are you an electrician? How are you a painter? How did you get there? What qualifications did you do? Can you show me this? Can you show me that? And I just, I was hoping, I was hopping from job to job. So if someone offered me £6.75, I moved, £7 an hour, Brilliant. 750, amazing. And I found myself working as a steel fitters mate. So that's a steel fitters assistant on the redevelopment of the King's Cross station roof. So it was a company that had the package there. And that was a long-term job. So it was like a year ahead of me. So if I did well enough, they could keep me there, I could be there for a year and learn the trade. And that's what I did. So I was very quick, very hungry, and I learned the trade very quickly because the way they would pair people would be a steel fitter and a mate, and then they would tell the steel fitter what he has to do. The steel fitter would get the mate and then they would go and work. But very quickly, I was the steel fitter there for that company. So they then gave me a mate, although they were still paying me as a mate, they gave me a mate and they said, yeah, you're going to go and work there. Anyway, I, um, I asked for more money. I stayed there. I picked up as much as I could. And then from that job, I went and worked as a, as a steel fitter somewhere else and as a steel fitter somewhere else. And then I saw a gap in the market. I realized that steel fitters were being paid between £12 and £14 an hour. But if you were a subcontractor, you could earn £20 to £25 an hour. So I was like, hmm, okay, how can I do that? So I need to buy a van and I need to find a mate. Okay, easy enough. I've got some money coming from my tax return, so I'll buy a van with that and I'll buy some more tools and I can find a mate because I was always friendly with everyone. So I can work with Jason and that's what I did. So I bought a van and then I saw another gap that more subcontractors are needed, but I can, I can have them working for me. That, that was a period of when I, from when I started the company to when the company started taking off. It was a period of about 2 years. So it took me a couple of years for me to be able to build any momentum and have 1 team, then 2 teams, then 3 teams, then 4 teams. And it was, it was very difficult to just get clients to trust you. So that taught me a lot, but I managed to nail it. And then people started trusting me and they saw that I'm taking this really seriously. I'm not messing anyone about. You do everything. I'll go, wait. Way above and beyond what anyone else would do. And I started building trust. I started building a small portfolio of companies. Then I stopped working on site and I was just managing guys and finding work. And it was the early stages of me realizing what it means to have a funnel of inquiries of people, you know, all of that. It started turning into a business.

Let's get into that because that was in a way a crucial point when you decoupled yourself from the, in a way, manual work on the business and you started to work on the business and developing it. And I'm assuming you were bringing more and more people on board. What was the turning point you would say that made you do that?

Yeah, so that was a crucial, crucial moment because when I was on site, so I was charging £300 a day for a fitter and a mate, and I was paying the mate about £10 an hour, so that would be £80. So then I had the balance, I had £220 for me, plus then any other teams, I would pay them say £150, £160 for the fitter and then about again, 80 for the mate, and I would have that balance on top. So I was— the business was earning something like £400 or £500 a day. But then if I stopped being on site, I would automatically lose that £220 a day because I would then have to give that to someone else. Um, so that, that was a big step because effectively I would halve my earnings, I would halve the earnings of the business, and the business needed to build profit because there was a gap between when I was invoicing and the gap between when I was paying. So I was paying weekly, but I was invoicing monthly. So the more teams you have, the more cash flow you need to have because you need to pay for 8 weeks until you get one payment in. So as the business grows, and that was a difficult part, and it still is a difficult for that business model because the more you grow, the more cash you need into the cash flow. So the business might have something like £500,000 in the cash flow, but the bank account is always at zero and you need, you need that there because you need to pay, pay, pay, invoice, money comes in, then you pay, pay, pay. And it's just, it's always that.

And it's crucial for clients to pay on time as well.

Yeah. And in construction, I can tell you for sure. They don't.

It's the same in many industries. I don't think it's limited to construction, but I can, I definitely believe that.

I know, I know construction. I know that industry very well. It's just, it's notorious. It's bad. It's excuses. It's if there's no more excuses, oh, the accounts lady is not in today. The person that authorizes the payment is not in today. They're on holiday. All sorts of things. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, that does cause a big friction on trying to run the business because the one thing that you cannot do is you cannot not pay the workers on time because they don't care. Friday came in, I've put my invoice in, I need to be paid. Obviously I worked, you know, where's my money? They don't care. They don't care about a client hasn't paid me or any of that. What they care about is I've got my rent and I want to go for a beer or whatever it is, my family. And that's, that's only fair. It's only fair because any profit that you make, it's your profit, right? I'm here, I'm paid by the hour, or I'm paid by the day, or I'm on a salary. I need to keep— I need to—

So you decoupled yourself from the day-to-day on-site working on the business, and you started working on the business? Yeah, scaling it. How did that work?

So I started working from home. So I bought a laptop and I plunked the laptop on a coffee table and I sat on the sofa and started to, um, yeah, just try to find like how I try to educate myself on how to reach out, how to email people, how, where do I find details of companies that are similar to my ideal clients. LinkedIn, I came across LinkedIn and I was like, okay, how do I utilize this platform to gain clients. And there was a lot of that stuff. There was, there was a lot of admin and a lot of work with planning the teams and where they're going to go. And then when this job finishes, where are they going to go after? But it was mainly building the assets of the business. So like assets for winning clients, contracts with, because we up to that point, I didn't have contracts, but then I had to build the templates, the contracts, get clients to sign them. Get workers to sign them. It was just building all of that. But there was a period of about 3 to 4 months where nothing was working. So like, I was doing all of that stuff, I was reaching out, I was trying to cold call, um, I was trying to utilize connections, but no new clients had come in. There was a period where I was thinking, is this, is this going to work? Where, where is this all going? Because money was, money was a problem because I I had lost a lot of income and I wasn't getting anywhere. So I was just thinking, should I go back to sites and try to maybe find clients from being on sites, you know, from creating more connections on site there, which it's a very, it's a very wrong approach, but you don't know what you don't know. But obviously there's a lot more that you can do if you just keep on pushing on what I was already doing than be limited to being on site every day. And having to do stuff all day.

So there was a time when you doubted yourself a little bit and you weren't sure whether the business was moving forward. So what changed the situation?

I think, have you seen this picture where like someone gets tired of digging and the diamond is just a few inches away where there's a big hole and then someone with a shovel and leaving and all they had to do was just dig a bit more. I was just stubborn enough to dig a bit more and then things just started working. So like we won a client, someone just out of the blue said, oh, I've seen your posts on LinkedIn for a few months now. We also have this project. Would you like to have a look at it? And I was like, oh, brilliant. So it is working, you know, no one's liking it. I've got 3 likes from friends and stuff, but people are watching and I should double down on that and confirmations of what I'm doing is already working then. Another client or a potential client rang me and they said, you know, you've spoken to so-and-so that used to work for me and you said that you provide this service, we're interested. And just start, it just started working a little bit here and there, but it was coming from all angles. I was like, okay, so what I'm doing is working. Let's keep doing that.

Just not straight away for anybody tuning in, the idea is that you have to keep added until it starts working.

Yeah. And that was, that was a lesson that I had time and time again. Things would come to a stagnation and like things would start going bad. And at some point I realized that this too shall pass. And like all, all that I have to do is just keep going and I don't control everything, but things are happening in the background and something's going to give. The light will break through and And that was, that has been true, like throughout my working career. Sometimes you just can't see the light, but all that you have to do is just keep on, keep on doing what you're doing and something will give.

And if it was your working from home, which ultimately brought us to our discussion and chat today and to the business you are mainly involved in now.

Yeah, indeed.

And also a global event which pushed this situation even further. Can we, can we get into that a little bit?

Yeah.

You started working from home, developing the business, things started to move. There were breakthroughs and there were breaks, but you were really into it.

Yeah. Yeah. So the global events, I don't know if you remember an event called COVID.

Vaguely. Yeah.

Yeah. So at the point, at that point when COVID hit, Atlantis, my construction business, so it's construction, metalworks. Um, so my metalworks business was doing very well. I think by then we were doing about 3 million in turnover. There was 50 or 50+ guys on site, um, every day working. There was a couple of people in the office. We had an office. There were a couple of people in the office managing things. Like, it had started taking shape, um, but, and, and it was profitable. Like, I, I had money. Like, money wasn't a problem anymore. No, not huge money, but like, I could afford to go on any holiday I wanted. I could, I could afford to take time off. I could afford to buy a house if I wanted it. And I was, I was way more comfortable than I was used to growing up. And up to that point, you know, there was profits, but I wasn't satisfied. I realized that I need more from business. I want more from business. I realized that I can, I can create, like I can use the energy and effort and creativity and all of my outputs to do something good. So I was trying to do something good. And when COVID hit and when I started seeing everyone struggling to work work from home and how they were hating it. So two things actually happened. We, we were all seeing on the news the red cloud above the cities of emissions dissipating and how working from home— well, how because of COVID the world had come to a stop a little bit, and that was really benefiting the environment. And people were working from home, so there was no commuting. And I, I very vividly remember those graphs on the news showing that the world is breathing again. You know, this is a for humanity, but like a breath of fresh air for the world. And that, that really touched me. And I was like, well, of course, one person working from home will change nothing. But then when you stop billions of people from commuting, well, that is big. And I could see exactly what was going wrong because at that point I had already 4 or 5 years of working from home. I started on the, on the sofa. I then moved on to a proper desk, multiple, well, dual screens and, um, I already had routines for working from home. I had a shutdown routine at the end of the day and I could see exactly what was going wrong. I could see why people are hating it. And I knew that there's a solution and I knew that this is good for the world. I had already started being vegetarian for the same reasons because I saw that the way we produce meat is not very environmentally friendly because you feed this animal, you give it lots of water, just then cut it. And, you know, fitted to the population. As I had an electric car, I was becoming very environmentally passionate. And then when I saw this, it clicked and it was like, I need to solve this problem. I could see it in, you know, friends were really struggling with it. A couple that was very close to me were nearly going through a divorce or thinking about a divorce just because being at home all day, trying to work from home, she was trying to work. On one end of the dining table, he was trying to work on the other end of the dining table, he was on calls, she was on Zoom calls, you're on mute, all of that stuff. It was just like driving, driving everyone insane. So that led to me really thinking, okay, what is it that everyone needs and how can we, how can we build a productivity powerhouse that everyone can have in their home? What are the problems? So problem number one, you know, people don't really have the space because homes were not built built for work. They were built for sleeping, eating, having a good time, being with friends, all of the stuff, being with family, having guests, all of the stuff that we're doing at home. Certainly they weren't built for work. No one had a dedicated room for work. So space was one thing. One of the key components that any good setup needs to have is extra monitors. So, okay, how do we build monitors? Everyone's decor is different. So how can I make something that fits in every interior? So something that doesn't take away, something that doesn't clutter the interior, something that adds to the interior, something that makes it better, a centerpiece, something that can be customized and, you know, work differently in every environment. And these were like the components that just started building this idea of the Droptop and The final product is a desk that fits on a wall. It flips closed and when it's closed, it has a picture on the outside and the picture is customizable. So you can have a nice family portrait or you can have a piece of artwork that represents who you are. Or you can have something more practical like a whiteboard or a chalkboard. There's options for everyone to fit with their style and personalize as they want. And then when you flip it open, it has monitors, it has, um, no visible clutter, all the cables are hidden. There's one cable that connects to your laptop, and then that gives you a multi-screen setup. And there's one power lead that powers the whole thing that also is removable, and you can, you know, put it away. So that's what started the idea.

So you had a business that was going well and it gave you a bit of time and freedom to start thinking about something else that you're passionate about and a problem that you would like to solve in a global context, given the year of 2020. And you then had the idea. How did you go about into turning your concept into a real product?

So yeah, the, the idea was born and I started sketching things down, but I, I don't have a design background. Um, I understood construction, understood construction of elements and understood manufacturing to, to a certain extent, but I needed someone to bring this to life. I had, at that point, I hadn't even established the company. So I hadn't even thought about what we're going to call the product, what we're going to call the business, none of that. But I put a job ad and I advertised for a furniture designer because I needed, I needed someone to help me bring this to life. I posted that, then I established the company and I gave it a name and because it was COVID and a lot of people had been laid off or they knew they're on furlough now, but their jobs won't be there when this is over. So there were loads of applicants, even though, yeah, as I said, there was no business at the time. There was no website. You know, when an applicant wanted to look normally, you know, when you look for a job, you'd research the company a little bit, see who else is working there, try to find some stuff on YouTube, you know, Glassdoor, all of that. None of that happened then. I had within, within a week, I had over 100 applicants. Then I stopped the job ad. I started looking through the applicants. Some of them were like, you know, from overseas, not, not a lot, but probably say 10% were from overseas and completely not what I was looking for. But, um, I shortlisted it to about 10 people and I spoke to them on the phone and then ended up having 3 interviews. And my first interviewee was Wayne and he's a shareholder of the business today and he's in charge of a lot, but yeah, he just stood out from, from the beginning. Like when, when we had that initial meeting, he was buzzing. Like he really felt it. Like he really understood the problem, the idea. He felt strongly about that, about the, the mission as well. He left, but then he was still calling me and he was like, oh, I've got an idea and do your other interviews, but whether I have the job or not, I need to show you this anyway. So when we then met for the second time, he had already like built something that's close enough to what the Drop Top is today. But there was a, there was a critical, there was a critical element for it to be able to be very steady. Because for me, it was very important that this is not a gimmicky product. It has to be very steady. Like if it's not practical, we're not actually solving the problem. We might make something look good on video and people buy it., but it's not going to go that far because it's not actually solving the problem. People shouldn't be afraid to like lean on it, even though it's wall-mounted, it should be practical. Anyway, so he had already three-quarters of the way solved that problem before the second interview. So, um, one, one thing that I want to, that I want to say there is like, people are key in building a business. Like there's only so much that you can do by yourself. Um, and I'm more and more a believer, and I'm more and more focused now on creating the right environment for the right people to be able to just create. So I think, um, Richard Branson talks a lot about that. Um, I think he says just create the right environment, put the right people in, and get out of the way. Like, more and more this is proven to me. Like, more and more I can see that I'm not the best at absolutely anything. The only thing that I need to do is just create that environment and just let people do their job. And then on the second interview, I was like, you've got a job there and then on the spot. This is, this is your job. And then we started building it and there were, there were a few key things like it had to be, it had to be steady, which we then overcame fully with creating our own hinges because there was nothing off the shelf that would work. So we had to engineer our own hinges, which we then went ahead and patented or applied for.

That's no small feat. Let's, let's just pause for a second and then go a bit into that because manufacturing something in the UK is not that easy and not that quick and possibly not that cheap either. A lot of people outsource their manufacturing. I'm pretty sure mostly do it in Asia.

Mm-hmm.

What your endeavor was looking at doing, manufacturing something in the UK and creating something that hasn't been done before in a certain way, especially with the hinges, is quite interesting. So tell me how you went about sourcing your manufacturing around the UK and how you created some of the elements that are unique. To the DropPop?

To me, it was very important that we get the product right. I mean, it was very important that this actually works, it actually ticks all the boxes. I didn't just want for us to be able to create some smart, nice videos and people see them and then they buy it. I wanted people to buy it and then be so pleasantly surprised that they do our marketing for us. Like, if, if it solves a meaningful problem, you're going to be proud of this and you're going to tell your friends about this. So that has always been core. And for that reason, it was very important for me that we develop this and we control the development of it because rightly, very rightly, as you said, we could have contacted a few companies overseas and said, look, this is the idea. You know, you're specialists in that. Can you create something for us? Here are some designs and let's work together and let's bring this to life. And the problem is those companies are very commercially driven, like they price engineer a lot. So they would do everything possible to bring the prices down of manufacturing, compromising along the way. And this was not what I wanted, you know, I didn't want any compromises. We've all had experiences with like flimsy furniture that you buy on Amazon, it costs £100, and you see it in the picture, you're like, oh my God, all this for £100. Yeah, brilliant. Take my money and then when it arrives, you're like, well, this is paper thin and it's all wobbly. Anyway, I didn't want any of that. So it was a clear decision for me. We need to do this ourselves. And there was a lot of unknown, unknown elements of how are we going to make this work and how are we going to make that work? So it was a clear decision for me that I need to do this. We need to do this here. So the, the other thing that we needed to overcome and it was very important. So number one, I touched on, it was, it had to be strong. And when I hired Wayne, actually on the second interview towards the end, I said, on our first adverts, we will have someone doing a backflip off of the desk. And he laughed and I laughed, but then he realized that I meant it. So that's what we did. And actually on our first ad that we filmed, we had someone doing like stepping onto the desk and then doing a backflip off the desk, which was an amazing, an amazing box to tick for me. It was like, yes, we did it. But the other thing, the other thing that was important, it was that it had to be easy to install. So DIY friendly, because you, you know, you can create all of this nice thing, but if someone has to then find an engineer and pay them, pay them £500 so they can fit it, um, on the wall, then, you know, this is not going to work again because it just creates too many barriers. Um, it had to be DIY-friendly and it had to be able to be installed on any wall. So that, that's a, that's a key, a key element because without that, and I had this written, without that, we won't launch this. This is going to be a waste of time and a waste of money because if, if you create something like that and only people that have got a brick wall can install it. Then what's the business there? There is no business. You're not actually going to help people because only certain people can have it. And I was already in construction. We were already on the biggest project in London. I know that most walls are plasterboard and we've all had the experience of trying to put something as light as a, as a clock on the wall. And even that's falling, a small mirror, and you could plasterboard deteriorates very easily. So we had to overcome that and Wayne overcame that. So the desk today is DIY friendly. You can install it. We have women installing it with basic tools. Doesn't need to be a lad that is strong or, you know, that can use loads of tools. Anyone can install it and it can be installed on plasterboard walls and wooden walls and brick walls and concrete walls on almost every type of wall. Um, and yeah, the other thing that we needed to overcome was of course making it look nice. The idea was always it needs to be decorative, but how, how do we make it commercially available for people to be able to choose what they want on the artwork without, um, for example, phoning us or emailing us and say, oh, can you put this on the artwork? So we created this configurator on the website where people can just go choose the color of the desk, choose what monitors they want, but then Also, they can choose what they want on the front, color frame they want, they could just customize it.

Then you had to manufacture it. Design, you figured out solutions to a lot of the problems you wanted to solve, but then you had to manufacture it before you can get it out to potential customers.

Indeed, because creating, creating a prototype or a series of prototypes, it's easy enough. You know, you can cut something on a saw, screw it from the outside, and, you know, just make, make it work for a prototype, and that works. But then you need to be— you need to then think of a load of other things for when you want to present this to a customer. So for example, I was very strong on— I didn't want any visible fixings. So the outside, um, the outside carcass of the crop top, the face, the desk, there's no visible fixings, right? So from a prototype to a, to finished unit, these are some issues that you need to overcome. But also, the biggest ones is how do you create many of— how do you make many of them in a day, by as few people as possible, utilizing the least amount of machinery possible in the smallest space possible, so that it doesn't cost a lot, so that you can sell it at a price that allows you to make a margin and makes it affordable enough for people to buy, for people to be able to buy it, because you can create something very nice. If you sell it for £100,000, no one's going to buy it. You just need to bring it down to where can we make a margin and have a customer base for this product. That was not easy. So it took us 3 years to be able to make them and make a profit. Not, not make a profit. Like we were making a profit on the, on the, on the drop tops in making them, but the business as a whole wasn't selling enough to be able to pay all the carpenters and all the, the office staff.

And we went through a whole series of, so they were custom pieces in a way, weren't they? There wasn't a production line.

Yeah, they are custom pieces.

Yeah.

They go on the website, they customize their drop top, then the order comes through and then we make them their customization because someone might choose to not have screens, they might choose it in this color and they might choose it with this, with this face. Someone else might choose normal, say, full HD monitor. Someone else might choose 4K monitors in a different color. So they have to be manufactured after they're ordered. You can't, you can't just make stock and then send them out on the next day. So we first borrowed the workshop from an events company. So we borrowed the space in a workshop because they had the CNC machinery that we needed. We started making them there. We outgrew that, um, pretty quickly, and the company then needed the space back, so we had to move somewhere else. So we moved in the workshop that I already had through my Metalworks business. So I had a workshop and we kind of split it half-half, and then I moved the Metalworks business to another unit, so we had the whole unit. But we outgrew that as well, and last year we moved from that workshop onto another workshop that was, it was much bigger than what we had. So it was over 2 times, over twice the size, but it wasn't as big as we needed it to be, or as big as we wanted it to be for sure. But it was as big as we could afford. We couldn't afford something bigger and we needed everything to go perfectly. So we had just didn't, we didn't even have enough budget. For that. Like, we didn't even have enough money to make the move, but if everything worked perfectly, or as close as possible to perfect, then it would have been okay. And of course, everything went sideways. Everything started going south. Nothing worked. We had all sorts of problems. We leased, so we bought on a 7-year lease. We bought machinery that we thought could do what we wanted it to do, and we're talking about huge CNC machines, but they weren't doing what we want them to do. Like we were not able to make them cut some small parts and drill holes in the spaces that we wanted them to drill holes and cut slots in the parts, millimeters, not even half to half a millimeter tolerance. There were loads and loads of problems. So early last year, January, February, we, we were burning through money that we didn't have, and orders were coming in, so customers were paying us money, and we were having to use that money to like, um, make this new system work. And we got, we got into a pretty, pretty bad place. I was looking for loans, I was speaking to potential investors because everything that we had created was, was falling apart because we just, we couldn't make it work. We burning through material, man hours, rent, electric, all of that. And like, we weren't sending anything out because we were not able to make the production line work. Yeah, it got, it got really bad. I thought that we were heading for bankruptcy and there was all sorts of bad thoughts and sleepless nights. And somehow one by one, we just started again, you know. Focusing on one thing at a time and just started solving one problem at a time. And around the beginning of March, we started shipping drop tops again. But at that point, we had November's orders, December's orders, January, February's orders, and no money in the bank. So we were relying—

you had a big backlog of orders.

We had a big backlog of orders and we were relying on money that was coming from the current orders. To fulfill these orders. There was one thing that I have to say is, um, whatever happened, I was determined to fulfill those orders anyway. So I knew, I knew that those customers that had trusted us with their money, they would have, they would have had their drop tops. Um, they, they may have needed to wait longer. And even if the company went in for a bankruptcy, I had some money from my other business that I was prepared to put in to fulfill those orders. Um, even if we had to like subcontract someone else and utilize, um, other people's knowledge and machinery to make them, like we, we would have fulfilled those orders, but it was, it was dark. I thought that it was all just falling apart.

You found a solution which was involved working on every problem one by one rather than all at once. If that's my correct understanding.

Yeah, that's correct. So when, when you're— when you— when there's chaos and there's problems everywhere, it's very difficult to, um, to focus on one thing at a time because everything's a problem. And while you're fixing this, something else is breaking somewhere else, and it's, it's very difficult. So you have to find peace and like just block everything else out and just deal with one thing at a time and And that's where a well-coordinated team is very important because you have customers that are asking for their money back. You have supplies that you need to buy and you have no money in the bank. You have manufacturing issues, like there's all this going on. And like, it's very important that everyone deals with their part. And then even within that, everyone deals with their subparts that they need to deal with in the right order. And, you know, that's essentially what happened. We regrouped and regrouped and regrouped, and we were like, okay, you know, let's work on this plan today, let's work on this plan today. You know, you're doing this, you're doing this, I'm doing this, you're doing this. And it just, it just, you know, everyone started finding these mini breakthroughs here, there, and everywhere, and then everything started building momentum the right way again.

So we're now basically a year on from that crucial moment and that crucial breakthrough. Where is Pest and Stem now and Droptop? And where are you going next?

After, after we started delivering Droptops on time and not having disappointed customers, because, you know, when you buy something, you expect it to arrive in 6 to 8 weeks, and then you receive it in 12, 13 weeks, as good as the product is, it still leaves a very bitter taste in your mouth. After we sorted ourselves out, customers started loving the process, the product, everything again, started telling their friends again. So orders started increasing and increasing and increasing again. We had some negative reviews, which were stopping other potential customers from buying. So those were either, either the customers took them down after I phoned them and spoke to them and explained the situation, or they were buried by other positive reviews from other customers that were like, super excited about the product and about the service that we provided. And orders have increased and increased and increased. To date, we've sold over 5,000 desks. And we sell anything between 10 and 30 desks a day now, mainly the UK and the USA. They're so the between the UK and the USA, that's 80% of the orders that we get. And then from there, we get loads from Australia, all over the Eurozone, the Scandinavian countries, and even as far as Singapore. Yeah, Australia, Singapore. We had some orders from Miami, you know, just all these crazy places that you see and you think, you know, this is just so amazing.

So with Droptop being for remote workers, how do you manage work for Pith Stem? You said you go into the office some days, but you also work from home. How do you balance that and how do your staff do it?

So with FitnStem, we have, so we have found that right now, 3 days a week and 2 days working from home works best for us. And I think—

Any days or set days?

We have, we have set and mandatory days. So for me, Mondays and Fridays, you have to be in the office. So everyone has to be in the office Mondays. We start with Monday morning meetings. And we plan the week ahead so that we, we all know what everyone's doing, what everyone's working on. If there's certain elements where through the week, either synchronously or asynchronously, we need to collaborate and we need, we need each other's help, and oftentimes there's more than one department, more than one people need to work on, on a certain thing to bring it to life. All of that is discussed there. We do And so we do the weekly projects that we're working on. We're looking at the numbers. So we have a series of things that we're tracking to see how healthy is the business, you know, how well we're doing. Then we have a different system that we're tracking if we're moving towards our goals. So we have quarterly goals. At the beginning of the year, we set out a yearly plan to where we want to be at the end of this year so that we're going to be where we want to be in 3 years, in 5 years, to then be somewhere in 10 years. So then all that comes down to quarters. So we're tracking again on the Monday morning meetings, if we're moving towards our goals and we've got certain things and we've got numbers, how close have we come to that goal that we said that we will work on this quarter? So all of that happens on Monday and it really kickstarts the week. Then from there on, everyone's free to come in any day they want. Usually it's Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, Thursday, Friday. But Friday is also very important to be in the office because that's when, I think, if you need something to get the project that you said that you will do over the line from someone, like this is when it happens. Also Fridays being Fridays, They're very bonding for the team. So we're still a small enough team that we can go and get a table at the pub or at a nearby cafe without it being very difficult. So every Friday, we all tend to go together, grab a beer at lunch or have a nice meal somewhere. So we're bonding, we're talking about things in our lives outside of work, about work. And everyone's, everyone's very, um, focused on what they're doing, and they— I think everyone's enjoying it. So most conversations tend to be about things, um, at work. But that being a Friday, it just gives you, just gives you the ability to talk about them in a very different light, you know. If you have the same conversations on a Monday, it's more about, oh yeah, action, action, action, action. On a Friday tends to be 'Okay, have you thought of this? You know, should we do this? Should we approach it in that way?' So yeah, these are the anchor days. So on a Monday and a Friday, everyone needs to be in. Of course, there's exceptions, you know, if someone has something and they can't make it on Friday, that's fine. But say if we're working 48 weeks a year, 45, 44, 43, everyone's going to be in on, on the Monday and the Friday. And then Yeah, the rest of the week is kind of open. I work from home on Wednesdays. On Tuesdays, I work on the other business. And then, yeah.

And you also go to the office for that?

Yeah, yeah, I also go to the office for that. And that's in the same business park, in the same kind of building, but it's a different office.

Okay, you made it easy then.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, made it easy. Made it easy for one person, that's for sure. Yeah, but equally it's vital because if something's happening and someone needs me, then they know where to find me and I'm, you know, one minute walk away. I'm always able to be reached. So, and then, yeah, Thursdays I will either work from the office, I will either work from home. Friday morning, sometimes I might have something that I will fit in, but I will always try to make it back to the office for Friday lunchtime and kind of end the day there. Hybrid for me is the best of both worlds. Worlds, I can see, I can see why companies want to be fully remote. You, there's a lot of costs that you're saving and then it forces you to be so good at systemizing and writing procedures and stuff for the business to be able to work that you, you know, you do all of that work and then you can work with people from all over the world. You can have access to people all over the world. And that's very nice. I find that at the startup phase, when you're figuring so much stuff out, especially for a physical product business. I think if it was a software product, maybe things are different. I've never run a software business or a tech business to know, but for a physical product, I really find that hybrid really works because you really are able to just figure out all the, all of those things, all of the unknown unknowns and, and just get closer. And the closer you get, the, the clearer things become and, you know, collaboration still happens a lot. I can also see why a lot of businesses are completely afraid of hybrid and remote. And they tend to be businesses that have got older managers. So baby boomers or just slightly below, because there isn't trust. There's a lot of that old school measuring inputs and not really measuring outputs. You know, if I can see you sat at your desk, then I know that you're working. If you're not there and you're at home, you're probably doing your washing up, you're out shopping, you know, you're doing everything else. You're playing on your PlayStation, watching a movie, anything else but work. I think that's a myth. And if it's not a myth, then that's a deeper problem within the business. There's serious issues there that can't be resolved, you know, nothing usually is that terminal, you know, you're just a few systems away, you're just a few things away. So stuff that I talked about just now, like having clear outcomes for everyone. What's everyone going to work on this week? Knowing what everyone's working on so that you don't think as a leader that they're not working on anything. So being clear on what everyone's going to do, having clear outcomes, knowing why we're working towards what we're working. So having those quarterly goals that will then lead to these yearly goals that will then take us here in 3, in 5, and in 10 years. Like having that clarity, honestly, really not difficult. We did, we did a 2-day workshop at the beginning of this year and we won't need to do a 2-day workshop going forwards, but this year it was needed because of the phase of where we are. But if you, if you at the beginning of the year, if you can do a half a day or a full day workshop with the whole team so that everyone gets aligned, everyone knows where we're going, everyone contributes towards that. Then that's the base of creating all of your systems. And then from there on, it's just that, just maintaining it every week, every month, every quarter. And then all of those myths just become myths. Then you will be working because you can see the outcomes of their work. You're not measuring bums on seats and hours worked and mouse stripes. You're measuring, okay, so, you know, we closed, we tick that off, we tick that off. Okay, we made progress here. We're making more progress here. Where everything's going and everyone knows where everything's going. So everyone can contribute better.

Speaking of knowing where everybody's going and aligning your team, you also mentioned that you have brought in people in key positions across your businesses and you've hired and possibly fired many people along your years in business. So I was wondering, what are some of your red flags and green flags when you are interviewing people?

I think every role is different. So if I'm looking for someone to do admin work, I will be looking a little bit at how good will they be at their admin work and can they focus on one thing at a time and, you know, just sprint from A to B and get those things done. If I need someone that's more creative, I will be focusing on can they not focus on one thing at a time and just be generally creative. So there's, there's things like that I'm looking at, but what, what I mainly look at is people that don't just want a paycheck. So I'm looking for as many clues as possible that I'm looking for more from my job. I don't just want it to be, oh yeah, you know, this is the highest paycheck possible with the least amount of work possible. Um, I'm looking at people that really want be in this with you for the long run. So what I hate the most is putting in the time training someone, and it, it takes, it takes a long time. So it takes, I think there's different, depending on the study, at least 3 months. I, I think it's a year. So I think it takes a year for someone to like fully understand and just like they almost need no guidance. They, they understand all of the problems within the role from every angle. And, you know, you can just trust them. Something happens, it's fine. John's dealing with it. I don't need to think about it unless John asks me something, then I need to think about it. But if I know that John's dealing with it, I think that point is a year. After 3 months, you've seen, you know, you've kind of covered most things. You can see a lot of progress. People are still finding their way. So, oh, where did you say that file was? And how did you say, how do you access that? And where's that piece of information? Who did we say? Who's doing that in the business? There's still a lot of that. I think a year. So I don't, I don't like wasting my time in training someone, having them there for a year for them to then want to move on somewhere else because they see their career path as moving from here, here, here, here, here, which is, look, it's absolutely fair enough. Those people will go very far, might go very far, might not go very far. I don't know. I'm not criticizing it. I'm just saying that's not what I'm looking for. Usually I will look for someone that looks after, they're after more than a paycheck. They're after something that they want to work in and progress and help a mission, a mission move forward. And I'm looking for people that are in it for the long run. And I'm looking for people that can manage one person and that's themselves. So we are at the, we're at the stage that we are now. I think the business is really growing. The potential is huge. There's hundreds of millions of people. That work from home every day. I think the traditional desk has no place in the home. Like a Droptop or something similar should be what everyone works from home from. It's designed for the home, it's designed around the needs of the 21st century professional. It ticks all the boxes. That's what we need. There's hundreds of millions of people that work from home. Every day or at least a few days a week. And I think the team is only going to grow. So if they can manage one person now, then hopefully they can manage two people. Hopefully they can manage three people. Hopefully they can manage six people at some point in the next couple of years. So these are the things that I'm looking for from people right now.

Cool. That means that you are now working on not one, not 2, but 3 businesses in one go in a regular work week. How do you keep it all balanced? Do you have any habits and routines that keep you grounded and productive when you're getting pulled from so many directions?

I have superpowers and I can tell you where to find those superpowers. I'm joking.

Let's do it.

No, the past couple of years have been hell personally because Pit and Stem was like burning through a lot of money in the beginning. So in the inception, so whilst we were in R&D, whilst we were first figuring things out, you know, Pit and Stem was, so the drop-top business was losing a lot of money. Then when we started making a little bit of profit, we had to move and then we started losing money again. So it was very important that I needed to deal with my metalworks business. Because that was the only thing that was keeping the lights on. And that was very, very difficult because managing, managing that business is a, it's a full-time job and a half. And at the same time, I wanted and I needed to focus on Pith and Stem and creating this business. And next to the construction business, I also had another 50-50 partnership. And that was, it was set up around the same time as Pith and Stem, maybe a little bit before. And the idea was that we can use the same clients to sell a different service to. And that was, that was working very well. That business did a million in turnover in the first year, and then it did a million and a half after that. But there was all this going on here to keep the lights on and not, not just for the businesses, but for me to be able to pay my mortgage and lifestyle and all of that. I had to be running this and it's a very demanding business that is very reactive. There's always problems. There's a lot of moving parts. There's 50 to 100 people on site working every day. That's 50 to 100 different individuals with their problems, with their frustrations, with their happy moments. You know, they get married, their families get married. They're going through sicknesses, you know, divorces, all of that stuff. So there's loads of different individuals, very small management team. And like that alone is very difficult, but then also to try to build a business on the side that's not making money, that's losing money, even more difficult. The only, the only thing that I can say is I definitely didn't do this by myself. Both, both businesses or all three businesses have got people in place in certain roles, you know, and they, they're doing that. They're every, and business is a team sport. I've never. Being in business alone, when I started my business, yes, I was kind of alone running it, but as quickly as I could afford someone to help me, I brought someone in. Quickly as I could afford a higher-level manager, brought someone in. And it's very much like trying to play football thinking I'm going to score the first couple of goals and then I'm going to bring a goalkeeper in. You know, you have to have have a team in place, you know, so that you can effectively play football. So yeah, it was, it was a journey of, um, getting more and more comfortable and understanding and knowing the roles and developing within, within their roles and affording enough people so that the businesses are making money and they're being managed properly. And up until last year, it was still challenging, but the Metalworks business now has an MD. 2 high-level managers, supervisors below that, admin, accounts, all of that. That business is taken care of itself. On Tuesdays, I work mainly on that business. So I have meetings with the team there. We're looking at what are the main problems, what assets can we create, what systems can we put in place, procedures, all of that stuff. And then for the rest of the week, I work on Bit Stem. The way this all works is just by other people.

So you brought more people into each business in key roles in order to be able to develop and grow them. And then you're focusing on different days of the week on either of the two businesses. But outside of that business sphere, in your personal life, Stefan, when he's not at work, How, what are your habits and routines that keep you grounded and productive?

Yes, indeed. Very correct. So I have gone through the periods as well where I'm overworking myself to the point of burnout, to the point of I just hate everything. I don't even want to get out of bed because it's just another day of crap coming from all directions. I've been lucky enough to be able to see what the root cause of these problems is. And usually it's very easy to see the problem for what it is, but you don't actually see where that problem is coming from. So I very quickly saw that I can have a day where everything's going wrong, but I can deal with it, or I can have a day where everything's going right and I'm feeling down. I'm not feeling happy. And these usually come from other factors. So, um, I prioritize my sleep. I track my sleep and my exercise and all of those things, but I get 7 to 8 hours of sleep every day. I wake up and I start my day with a 2K walk around the park. So we have a lake and a park and we walk the dog and that's about 25 minutes, 30 minutes walk in nature that kicks off the day very well. Then I go into the office. I have my coffee in the car. I have a half an hour journey of quiet, and usually I don't listen to music. I don't listen to podcasts. I don't listen to anything on my journey to work. It's just me and myself, and I'm preparing mentally for the day. I don't, I avoid phone calls, anything like that. I'm just focusing on my breathing, and it's a very easy journey as well. It's just one motorway up. There's a couple of roundabouts and a couple of, um, traffic lights, but it's like, I mentally don't even focus on that journey anymore because I've been doing it for years now. Autopilot. Yeah, it's on autopilot. And the car has an autopilot, which helps. Anyway, so yeah, I'm preparing for the day. Then I get to work. I use the first hour to 2 hours for focused work. So there's no meetings in the first, um, there's usually no meetings before 10 o'clock. Not usually, sorry. 99% of the time there's no Like I haven't got anything in the calendar unless there's going to be the old emergency where someone's on a different time zone and we have to have a meeting and like falls between 8, 9, or 10 o'clock. All the internal meetings start either at 10 or 11 and everyone has that time in the morning to get their most productive work done. So then we have meetings at 10 or 11 when we're still fresh. We tackle issues. We have Monday morning meetings. With BitnStem where we plan the week. We have Tuesday meetings with Atlantis, the Metalworks business, again, planning the week. And then every, every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, at the end of the day, I go to the gym. So when I'm working from home, I will go to the gym and that like clearly signals in my brain that this is the end of the day. So after gym, there's no work-related tasks unless I'm really working on something that's like very urgent, very, very important. After the gym, so in the evening hours, it will just be dinner and maybe reading a book, going for a walk, seeing friends, just spending time with my fiancée. It will, it will be just life-related, not work-related. And, and that is a very good separation. And also there's no alcohol during the week. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they're, they're working days. They're school nights, you know, there's no, unless there's someone's birthday or anything Anything like that. We, you know, we don't drink, we eat very healthy. I tend to fast on those days, so I won't have a meal until 12, 1 o'clock. They're very regimented days and that also really helps. And I find fasting really does that, but it really helps your, your brain to get that context of this is not a time when we have fun. This is a time when we get stuff done. Still having the mini breaks in the evening. I don't, and that, that was a big lesson for me as well, because I have stayed up late. I have worked on my presentation until 11, 12 o'clock at night because I really wanted to finish it. And then the next morning you've got a nice presentation, but you can't present it because you're too tired. Yeah, you're too tired. You focus, you overcompensate with coffee, but you have jitters and your brain doesn't work. But even if it's not a presentation, even if it's, you know, I'm working I'm going to finish this and even if I have to stay up until midnight or 1 o'clock and then in the morning and I'm going to keep going from there. The mornings for me, it certainly doesn't work because of all that I've done is I've stolen 5 hours worth of good creative time in the morning and use them in the evening being tired and not very productive. You tend to go in. You then just go around and around in circles in the evening, and then in the morning you're tired again. It kind of takes you up until after lunchtime until you feel that you've woken up properly and you're able to focus.

So unlike me, you find your creativity and your deep work in the morning rather than in the evening.

Yes, I think, think I'm a night owl, so I think if I stay up in the evening, I I find, find my, I find that I'm creative and I'm full of energy. The other thing is everyone works in the morning. So like if it was for me, I'd have them the other way around because that's probably when I'm most productive. So I can, I can be most productive in the evening, but then I can't be most productive in the evening and the day. So, and because everyone works in the day, I can't ask from everyone to work, okay guys, let's do shifts from 2 to 10 o'clock. Yeah, I'm probably not going to find any employees, but yeah, no, I, what I want to say is I have kind of trained myself to be disciplined and have my lifetime in the evening and just disconnect from work and avoid any work-related thoughts or tasks and just leave them for the day because then I'm looking forward to work because I've got all these ideas I've been pushing back. And do my best work in the morning.

You mentioned, Stefan, that you didn't have any formal education and you had to learn a lot along the way. Have there been— and you also mentioned that you enjoy reading— have there been any particular books that really shaped who you are today and guided you along the entrepreneurship and business path? That you would recommend to others?

For sure. So Keepers of Influence by Daniel Priestley, very, very good book. And Daniel Priestley is just amazing. He's this forceful of wisdom, all of his work, the podcast that he has done, his books, so Oversubscribed, the book Oversubscribed was really good by Daniel Priestley again. But Alex Hormozi has very, very good resources and free resources and they're equally as good as what others are charging a lot of money for. I think on their website, there's a ton of resources that you can get and use and apply to your business the next day. Cal Newport, I'm a big Cal Newport fan for productivity and work-life balance, separation between work, all of those things, deep work, focusing on one thing at a time. Other, there's other people that I follow on YouTube and on podcasts with like for business advice. However, I had no, I had no formal qualifications at all and no business school. I had no idea what business means. I had no idea what a P&L is, what the difference between a P&L and a balance sheet. Absolutely nothing. I figured all that out and it's not necessarily from a book, but like all the resources are free. So we live in a, we live in a time where knowledge is free. The, the problem now is there's too much knowledge and there's too much noise, and, and oftentimes there's too many conflicting pieces of information where one says this is red, the other one says this is orange, this is blue, this is green. I, I don't think that to start the business or, or to be able to create something beautiful, you need to go to a business school. I think that's so irrelevant now, just because when you come across an issue, I think it's definitely important to understand the legal parts of being a business owner and what are your responsibilities as a founder, as a business owner, right? You have health and safety responsibilities, you have legal responsibilities, you have responsibilities towards the people that you owe money to, towards the government. But these are not a lot. You could probably spend one hour on a YouTube video and you will know those things. But, and that applies to everything. So any issue that I've come across, it's as easy as Google it, read the blog, read an article, watch a video, listen to a podcast. Now you understand it. What are you going to do about it? Right? And that's the more important thing, like finding the piece of information, understanding how you can deal with it and what your options are, what you can and what you cannot do and what might work best for you. That's the easy part, you know, within 2 to 3 hours, 4 hours, 2 days, depending on how complex the problem is, you've nailed that. And then what are you going to do about it? And, and once you've, once you've planned that, the biggest thing is just follow through, just do the boring stuff, just repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. So yeah, I think not having gone to a formal business school or any like I dropped out of school at the age of 15. Like there's a lot at the end of, um, I understand maths, um, and, and no algebra and things that won't be relevant to what I need, but I understand maths enough. But yeah, there's, there's a, there's a big gap of things that I don't have there, but also naivety is a superpower. So just because you don't know how difficult something will be, that, that indeed can bite you on the backside and it probably will. But it is also a superpower because it just gives you the power to keep on going. Because if you know how tall the mountain is, then you'll never start. Whereas if you only see the first peak, which is okay, you know, I can get there in an hour, then you go there and then you get to that peak and you see that there's another peak. And if I knew that it was that high, I probably wouldn't have started, but I'm here now, so I might as well go again. And then you go there and there's another peak. And you just keep on going, but that is a superpower because if you, if you were to think from the beginning, oh, this is going to take me all day, then you probably wouldn't do it.

Speaking of naivety and you starting in a way your, your business journey just at the age of 18, 19, what would Stefan today tell to the 18-year-old who just landed in the UK and is looking at all the shops around him on the streets of London for a job, what advice would you give him if you bumped into him on the street?

So I've asked myself that a few times and I've often come back to the advice of don't worry, you know, everything's going to be okay. Take it easier on yourself. You know, don't stress that much. You know, don't worry. Things are going to fall into place and some will be guided by you into falling into place and some will just be, you know, by themselves, but just take it easier. But then I also think if I gave that advice to myself and I took it easier, how many things would have not fallen into place? So I don't think that that's going to be the advice. I wouldn't say that I would advise myself to take it easier. What I would say is, and I found out later, is that I had misconceptions of So I thought that money would bring me happiness in certain areas that money certainly doesn't. And that I would probably advise myself and say, you don't actually want the watch. You don't actually want the flashy car. This is, this is a waste of time. This is not going to make you happy at all. And money is brilliant. And it's a, it will, it will help you with money problems. It certainly is better to have money than not have money. I'm not going to pretend that money is evil. It's a necessary means to an end, but don't want money for the sake of money and definitely be less materialistic because I grew up in a very poor family. Like scarcity was all around us and we had very, very little, like we would often, not often, most of our clothes were like gifted to us by other families. We were a poor family in Greece. And so when I started having money, what I wanted was stuff. You know, so I went and bought loads of clothes and then I started buying more expensive clothes and, um, I really wanted to have the best, the absolute best car that I can have and all of that stuff. And I wanted to buy a mansion, you know, these were the things that I was dreaming of. But then when money started coming, I just started realizing that this isn't, this isn't it, you know, the clothes, the expensive clothes, potentially expensive watches, you know, expensive cars, all that stuff. This is a never-ending battle. You will want a yacht, you will want a bigger yacht, but this, this is a trap. So I would definitely advise myself to realize that earlier. However, I think luckily I did realize it early enough because I still see people now and they're always poor. You know, they might be earning, they might be taking home over £1 million a year and they're still poor just because they want more. They don't live below their means and they will always be support. You can, you can, you can earn a million, but if you want a 10 million, 20 million house, you will never feel that you've got enough.

And with that in mind, now that I've got us a bit self-reflecting and looking back, something that I like to ask at the end of my interviews is what is the biggest sacrifice Stefan had to make? To be where he is today, running 3 different businesses with employees across the world, delivering products and having this balance that you said you have found now?

So there is nothing comes without the trade-off. We all have 24 hours in a day and by, by putting your energy and focus into one place, you're Taking it from somewhere else. This, like, me being able to be focused on the businesses and, like, focus on going to the gym every day, having quiet time in the evening, sleeping enough hours, then starting my day, being at work when I'm at work, being present, being focused, being all of that. I would say friendships have suffered. So the line is very clear for me. With my, with my partner, so with my fiancée, I, I'm focused on that. Like, this is a priority for me. However, I can't say that friendships and family relationships and all of that are flourishing. Like, they're not bad, and I am, I'm lucky that everyone, everyone defaults to, oh, you know, Stefan's busy, he's running businesses, he's doing these things. So they understand, but there's a lot of, um, gatherings and friends going out for drinks and all of that, that I'm not even like invited sometimes just because they know that I'll be busy, for example. And I'm very bad at keeping in touch with people. Most people, and certainly my fiancée, she'll always be on the phone, you know, talking to this friend and talking to this friend and going on Instagram and liking their stories and, you know, doing all of that stuff. I don't, just, I don't do any of that stuff. I'll phone up someone when it's their birthday and if I need to tell them something, I'll phone them up. But the regular check-ins with friends and all of that, they, they almost never happen. And I have been aware of that for years now. And I have always said, oh, this year I'm going to be more in touch with my friends. But every year, I don't know, 2025, is that going to be the year? 2025? Yeah, this year is a little bit better than others and this year is probably a little bit better than others because I'm getting married in July and naturally I have more to talk about to people. So we talk about where they're going to stay, what we're going to do in the lead up to the wedding, after the wedding, how long we're going— the wedding is in Greece, so, um, um, a lot, a lot of, a lot of people from the UK and from other countries will come to Greece. So just naturally there's more to talk about, so I, I keep in touch a bit more, but 2026, let's see, maybe, maybe 2026 will be the year where I schedule on my calendar at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday for an hour, call a friend that you haven't called in a while.

Well, maybe we'll catch up in a year's time and see if you manage to do that. But for now, thank you so much for sharing your journey and your wisdom and learnings on millennial Millennial Masters, Stefan.

Daniel, thank you so much for having me. This has been great fun.

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