The business case for building a stronger body 💪🏻 | Tom Hutchinson-Smith

Discipline is like a muscle and it needs to be trained. Every step that you make towards the goals that you have, no matter how big or small, is like flexing those discipline muscles. And you must go across that journey and get better at all those things to accumulate enough of those kind of 1% changes to actually increase your discipline. And that is how when you see these people that have got the sort of hardcore discipline that you think, wow, like, how do I even get anywhere near that? If you often speak to them, there's a very, very long, long line of events and changes that happen across the years, and the reason that they just got the way they are is because they've spent the time just doing it and accumulating that mileage on the discipline journey.

This week's Millennial Master is Tom Hutchinson-Smith, founder of Straight Line and personal trainer to entrepreneurs and executives. Tom's built a business around one simple idea: your discipline in the gym shapes your performance everywhere else. He's trained clients from burnt-out execs to ultra-high performers, scaled his business from scratch in Dubai, and now helps founders make fitness sustainable, even with impossible schedules. In this episode, we talk about why discipline is a muscle you build, just like biceps, how to stack habits so fitness finally fits your life, and the truth about GLP-1 drugs, testosterone therapy, and crash diets for busy founders. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt. Fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex, so you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next. Tom, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

Dan, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm really good, thank you.

Delighted to have you on, and we're going to jump straight in with some mental exercise to find out how you first got into personal training, Tom, and what kept you in it.

Okay. So I first got into personal training when I was roughly about 17, sort of 18 years old. And at the time in the UK, they were doing personal training courses as an apprenticeship, which I don't think they do anymore. It was a very brief period of time when they did it where you actually got paid to learn and to give you some kind of work placement at the end of it. So I was always quite interested in sports, and I played basketball and things like that, um, and I was always into the training to help kind of aid that. And then I wasn't really doing a huge amount at the time, I was quite interested in it, so I thought, right, well, we'll try it. A friend of mine actually did it and he recommended it to me, so I didn't really have anything to lose, so I took the plunge. And then as part of it, you, like I say, you got a work placement, and the work placement was at a local gym. And then off the back of that, they offered me some work because they, they liked working with So it kind of all began from there.

And how did you stay in? Did you end up working as a personal trainer for that gym or for another chain of gyms? How did your career progress in this field from an apprenticeship and working out because you were enjoying it to having a full-time role in it?

Well, at the time, used to be able in the UK to give zero-hour contracts. I don't, I think they made it illegal now, but I had a zero-hour one, which meant that obviously some weeks I would work a lot. Or the weeks maybe not so much. So I tried to get as many hours as I could in the gym because it was what's technically owned by council, like a leisure facility. That meant that there was lots of other leisure stuff happening all under the same bracket. So I was able to kind of supplement the hours from the gym. I was doing things like setting up tennis courts and, uh, you know, football pitches and working on reception, things like that. So I obviously got to learn quite a lot about kind of the leisure and fitness side of things, which was really, really good. And then I got more and more busy in the gym as, as obviously progressed. And then off the back of that, I then went to work at another gym that was an independent one that allowed me a little bit more creative freedom. So I was able to do more personal training, create, you know, various classes and programs and things like that. So, you know, I went to work there for 2, 3 years as well. And then during that time, I actually launched my first business. Then, which was I actually had a boot camp company where, you know, we have the camos on and the, the boots and you run around the park in the rain and stuff like that, which was my first—

I guess that was all the range at the time. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's still going today actually, but still, yeah, I did that and that was, that's my first sort of stint of having some kind of business, you know, even though I didn't really know what I was doing, but I just knew that how to kind of run the classes and stuff. So that was my first, I guess you could call it entrepreneurial part. And then a few years later after that, I sort of realized that I really wanted to go into all in on personal training. I didn't want to do the group stuff anymore. I didn't want to kind of do the general gym instructor-y type of bits anymore. And I went to work for a company called Ultimate Performance in London. I applied there. It was, again, it was similar, like a little bit of an internship almost for the first year. And then there was like a career ladder sort of built in through that. And I I moved away. I'm from Derbyshire, so I'm in a very small rural town, and then I moved to London. So I was living on my own, well, with my wife, and living, you know, away from my family and stuff like that for the first time. And yeah, took the plunge and went down there and then sort of learned how to deal with, you know, more entrepreneurial and, um, high-performing clients. And off the back of that, then went to Dubai to open up a series of gyms for that company as well. So obviously from there I became an employee, and then I was an employee for 8 years.

So what does it take to open a range of premium gyms in Dubai and take the concept from London and implement it in a whole new country where you didn't really speak the language?

Yeah, I was, I was part of a team, so it wasn't thankfully just me on my own. I was an exception there, but, um, Yeah, when, when you work for a company or you have your own company, you obviously have a set of moral standards, values, and obviously a culture, right? And it's the biggest thing is, is implementing that culture from scratch with a fresh team. And that is obviously the thing that builds the underlying, you know, fire for running the rest of it. Once you've done one or two gyms, the framework in terms of like all your branding, your design, your changing rooms, equipment, you've kind of got carbon copy to some extent that you can just move into another spot. But things work very differently in the Middle East. So, you know, there's a lot of, I guess, unknowns in terms of working with different companies. When they say they're going to do things, like when they actually happen. And you've got different various licenses. Like you say, some people—

contractors are the same everywhere, right?

Yeah, exactly. So it's a little bit of, a little bit of the unknown, and it's a lot of patience. And, um, yeah, they're kind of the fundamental things that get it going. And then it's just launching it from scratch and building up the reputation and doing the things that you say you can do, basically.

So that gave you a chance to get used to Dubai and the heat and the atmosphere there. You already had a bit of entrepreneurial experience from your bootcamp business back in the UK. So what was the turning point when you decided to take a leap again from employee to entrepreneur and start your own business again, this time much, much further from home. How was that early transition?

Well, I think when you work as an employee, there's ultimately only ever so far that you can go. And obviously the company grows in different ways and they go in different directions over time. And I just felt that, you know, it wasn't quite the same exchange in terms of how much enjoyment I was getting out of it, how much sacrifice I was putting in, things like that. You know, you start to, you start to drift and you start to think about different things. You meet other people, then you start to network, things like that. And at the time I was on quite a big self-development journey, I guess you'd call it. I was reading a lot, learning lots of different skills. And to be honest, I just kind of felt like I didn't have a lot to lose. And, you know, I just thought, if I don't— it's one thing if you don't take the plunge, you know, you kind of always risk it, right? So it was time for me to, um, you know, to move on and just to try some different stuff. I'd unfortunately got into the routine that you can get when you move up the ladder in an employed position. I just ran myself down into the ground and I'd kind of lost the love a little bit for it. And, you know, I was a bit burnt out and I just, I needed a clean slate basically. So that's basically what happened.

So your business then gave you the chance to start with a clean slate. What were the first steps? How did you go about setting up your your own company there and getting the first clients?

Well, to set up a company in Dubai at the time after COVID became a lot easier. There were big incentives for people like myself to set up various trade licenses and companies. So the process got a lot more streamlined. So thankfully, by the time I got to being able to do it, it was actually very, very quick. It was a case of just going backwards and forwards. I used a PRO team, which were very, very good. And they just really, really helped me. And then within a few weeks, I had everything. You've got your visa. Once you've already had a residency visa in Dubai, all your kind of biometrics, like your eyes and your fingerprints and stuff like that, are already on the system. So it's a case of switching it over. And then with under a month, it was all set up. And then you just go to the banks and you've got your company bank account. And then the trade license allows you to use payment gateways for stuff like Stripe and stuff like that. So yeah, it's all good to go. I had a very strong network and stuff because I've been in the region for quite a while. So you know, I just went through some old contacts and stuff like that and managed to sort of drum up a little bit of business to begin with. And I gave myself like a 6-month buffer in a sense of, because I'd kind of burnt myself out, I didn't want to like go full in and have the same problems again but doing it all for myself. I wanted to just work very casually for 6 months, and then it sort of built up and it was quite obvious it was starting to snowball. So, you know, I just had to run with it after that, and I guess my break was over. And then I just went full steam ahead after sort of the first 6 months.

So would you say that you took it not necessarily easy, but slowly because you felt burnt out in your previous role?

Yeah, I was very casual with it. I did, you know, anywhere between 10 and 20 hours of personal training, one-to-one, um, and a little bit of online sort of consultation work. And then, you know, that was it really. I was working maybe half a day at the time and then, you know, just time to myself really.

So you basically were in fitness and a fit person for all of your life and became an entrepreneur yourself and started to look for a bit of balance in your life. And you've told me when we spoke before this interview that fitness is often misunderstood by entrepreneurs. So I'm wondering whether you can break down What's the mindset shift that's needed in order to get fit? If somebody hasn't been in this mindset of watching what they eat and exercising regularly, but they want to go into that journey, what needs to change?

Well, for entrepreneurs, they're often exceptionally driven people and very, very hardworking, and they can often be perfectionists, but that falls a lot of the time as kind of their worst enemy. So the reason why that is, is because when it comes to building your body and getting the sort of results that you want physically, you don't have to be perfect. And a lot of the time it's, it's impossible to be perfect. As we know, as entrepreneurs, your year is very, very much a roller coaster, some businesses more than others. So there's going to be pockets of really good and pockets of not so good. What can happen? This is one of the first things that comes up when I work with entrepreneurs is that as soon as it doesn't really go that well, they think, well, it's— that's it, it doesn't, you know, it's kind of over. But it, it really, really doesn't have to be like that. You're— you can make series of progress, then you can flatline for a little bit and keep your head above the water, and then you can go again. You may even regress. What you all you need to look at as an entrepreneur is like what happens over the course of sort of 6 to 12 months. Is the trend going upwards? If the trend's, you know, going down, obviously it's not going very well at all. But the trend, if it goes up, it can be in a very, very wavy line. It doesn't matter. You know, the most important thing is not treating it as a sprint and a little bit more of a marathon and overcoming all those obstacles as they come along.

In a way, just like a business. If you had a bad month, it doesn't mean that you're gonna stop the business altogether, right?

Yeah, the biggest misconception that a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they don't really know, or they don't have the skill set to achieve, you know, really good physical results. But they already have the skills because they've used them to, to build their career in the businesses. There's so many parallels between the two that it's just connecting those dots, really. As soon as they start to realize that, they say, oh yeah, you know, yeah, you're right, you know, business goes like this and there's good, good and bad, and then we kind of move and pivot around it. We get different people involved, it's exactly the same.

Why do you think then that so many high performers tie their identity to extremes? Like you said, they want to do a sprint rather than a marathon. And how do you guide them to something that's more sustainable?

Well, the 90-day programs, they look very sexy on paper, right? They're always going to be there, you know, they're a hardcore transformation program. And don't get me wrong, You can achieve a lot in that timeframe, but the reason why 90-day sprints don't really work for entrepreneurs is because there's no afterthought and there's no change of environment. There's no, no change in the process. And what happens is you end up with a, as soon as you start, there ends up being a start, sorry, an end date. So as soon as you have an end date like that, you're automatically going to start to check it out the closer and closer you get to it. You have to think of it more long-term and you have to have like an afterthought of what's going to happen after that 90-day program. Because I break mine down into 3 stages, which is first, obviously, getting the initial result, and then second is a huge amount of time spent on maintenance, which is learning how to live in your new body. Because up to the point of getting your results, you kind of really know all or nothing. And that's why a lot of people put weight back on, is because they do these little targeted sprints for an amount of time, and then there's no serious plan, or they don't treat anything after that with the same due diligence, and then you quickly end up back in the, in the same habits as you had before.

And the question is, what role does discipline play not only during the program period but also afterwards? It's basically a lifestyle change forever if you want to maintain or continue your gains in muscle or your losses in fat.

Discipline is like a muscle and it needs to be trained. Many people think you've either got discipline or you haven't. They think of discipline as like David Goggins, who's going to carry the boat, super hardcore, or no discipline, which is doing nothing and being lazy, I guess you could call it, right? So every step that you make towards the goals that you have, no matter how big or small, is like flexing those discipline muscles and you must go across that journey and get better at all those things to accumulate enough of those kind of 1% changes to actually increase your discipline. And that is how, when you see these people that have got the sort of hardcore discipline that you think, wow, like, how do I even get anywhere near that? If you often speak to them, there's a very, very long, long line of events and changes that happen across the years. And the reason that they've just got the way they are is because they've spent the time just doing it and accumulating that mileage on the discipline journey.

You mentioned 1% changes. I'm assuming here you are talking about habits and habit stacking. How long does it take to form new habits and then stack it in order for it to start compounding from your experience?

I think it's in James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, it's about 6 weeks. For some people, I guess it could be longer, but you need to really stick with it for at least amount of time to actually embed it. But one of the interesting concepts from that book and also what I've observed working with people is you need to make it as easy as possible for yourself, you know, and that can be a variety of different resources and changing environment to make it as easy as possible. But also one of those things, like you just said, is habit stacking and for entrepreneurs, their schedule is packed. So there's lots of different things going off. And the reason why a lot of people, or a lot of entrepreneurs, fail to kind of get started is because they just see this as a huge time commitment that they don't really have. So what they have to do from there is to learn how to combine these tasks together. So a good example would be pretty much all of my clients have a walking pad, or at least a lightweight treadmill, either in their office at home or where they work. And they will often be on their phone, either on a call, maybe like this, or they might be on telephone call, or they might be doing emails and things like that. And that way that they, they do their walking and also kind of do some concentrated work on their phone or whatever at the same time. So that way, instead of having to go for an hour's walk and an hour's lot of admin tasks or whatever, or call, they then just become one. So that is how you kind of have to learn how to stack them together to make it as easy as possible for yourself.

You're in a studio now, but I've seen one in your office when we spoke before. So you also practice what you preach.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, personally, I find that when you're on the treadmill and you're doing various bits of work, it's, it's actually a good distraction in terms of you can't do anything else. So you actually get a lot more in some ways done in that 30 minutes or whatever that I spend on there because You know, there's not lots of other things coming in, it's not popping up and it's just, I'm walking, you're constantly moving, you've got to concentrate on this and the time flies very fast and I find that it's very easy to get in more of a bit of a flow state to be able to do some work.

Then, Tom, what would you say is the biggest mistake you've seen people doing, especially entrepreneurs and high-powered people during the programs that you do and afterwards? What gets you off the rails super quickly?

I think the biggest thing that comes up is always going to be that sort of waiting for the perfect time. And I guess that falls to kind of getting started in the first place, but it also ties into what we just spoke about, about as soon as it doesn't go well, they kind of think it's over. Everybody likes to wait for these perfect moments and they're going to say, oh, I'm going to sort of do it casually and then we'll wait till this bit to get it done. But the fact of the reality is, is Every goal that we ever want to achieve has a series of obstacles that lies in the way. So it's, you can't move those obstacles, they're coming whether you like it or not. So it's about learning how to deal with those obstacles and changes in environment or whatever straight away. So often on, more often than not, a lot of entrepreneurs that I work with, they just don't see any other option. And that's why they can get demotivated and they think it's kind of over. But obviously that's where I step in. And I start to show them how they can train effectively when they travel, you know, how they can eat while they travel, how they can, um, optimize their sleep when they've got really, really busy work periods, how they can stack their habits together to cover the bases, how they can make the workouts a little bit more efficient but not as time-consuming. As I coach people through that, they start to see that there is always something that you can do to contribute towards your goals.

So just because you travel, it doesn't mean you can't exercise. And even if you fly somewhere far away, jet lag shouldn't stop you from getting some decent sleep. What are your top tips that you, you give when it comes to that?

So I always tell my clients to never stop training, and that sounds controversial. People will say, oh, recovery, rest days, things like that. But the intensity of the training can change, but it doesn't mean that you have to completely stop. So when somebody travels Does that mean that they have to be having the hardest workouts of their life? They're doing the most amount of workouts, having to really, really push yourself? No. You know, they might drop down to sort of 60 to 70% of what they normally do, and then that way they've kept what they've been working on, but also they've kept the habit and the process in the front of their mind. Because what happens is the further you are away from the process, the harder it is to actually get back into it. You know, that, that is a big problem because But for somebody like myself, I've trained and worked out for a very long time, so if I have a week or two off, I'll probably get back into it very quickly and it won't be that much of an issue because it's so ingrained in me. But a lot of people that I work with have only been doing this for a very, very short period of time, so they can't afford to really break that habit and, you know, kind of go in the opposite direction because they do not bounce back very quickly at all. And it takes, you know, a month or so to kind of get back into the swing of things. And if that bit doesn't go well that can often be a make or break situation. And in regards to the jet lag that you mentioned is—

And sleep in general, you also, you mentioned it before, so I take it besides nutrition, which we'll talk about in a second, sleep and rest is just as important.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, the thing is, the entrepreneurs have the problem that they push themselves very, very hard. Mentally and somewhat physically when they are working on their careers. So that comes at some kind of recovery detriment as well, just on its own from the stress and from obviously pushing themselves really hard. Then they add the, the exercise into the mix, which means then, you know, the recovery demands can be a lot, a lot higher. So it's a case of, again, people are always waiting for this kind of perfect storm with it, but it's about working with what you've got and making yourself sort of set up for success because you have to make the best out of a bad situation. Entrepreneurs are always sick and tired of hearing, uh, oh, you need to manage your stress and get your stress down and get it to go away. It's never going to go away, you know, unless you quit your job and, you know, go work on a farm or something.

I don't know. Even then, yeah, yeah. I've spoken with, with millennial farmers and they're just as entrepreneurial and they have just as many challenges as any other business.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, you have to learn how to, to manage and to deal with what you've got to make it as best you can. It's never probably going to be as perfect. You're not going to live like a monk. You might not live the athlete's lifestyle, but it's about making the best out of what you've got. And that's going to be making sure that you actually give yourself enough time to go to sleep, because that's the biggest thing. There's a lot of people work really, really late, or they might put their kids to bed and then spend a lot of time, you know, maybe watching Netflix or pottering about, whatever. And then if you're only in bed for 6 hours before your alarm, unless you drop to sleep pretty much the moment that you hit the pillow, then you're already at a severe deficit in sleep already. So it's about giving yourself enough chance to actually have it. And, you know, as entrepreneurs, we're all guilty of, you know, spending more time on our phones, checking things and, you know, doing calls late, things like that. We have to give ourselves enough time to wind down in the evening and to actually reduce the amount of kind of blue light exposure that really stimulates the brain. And that's why often a lot of entrepreneurs always report that they struggle to switch off at night. And those things definitely don't help that.

And what's the minimum amount of time of actual sleep time you recommend? Because you made a good differentiation there between the time you're in bed versus the time you're sleeping. You can be in bed and on your phone and on TikTok, and it's not the same thing. Yeah.

Well, I always try and recommend the all entrepreneurs have at least some kind of cutoff time when it— and that's always going to be slightly variable. And don't get me wrong, some things happen, but you realistically want to be in bed for at least 8 hours to give yourself something between 6 to 8, you know. And that way you will use— it's an insurance policy that you're more likely going to get there. If you are really wired and you go to bed for 6 hours, you're more likely going to probably 5 or less, you know, which means nobody operates really that well on it. So, you know, this is the thing that the recovery and the sleep element not only aids the physical stuff, but obviously your performance at work and, and your ability to have great cognitive function and, and to, to have longevity within the stuff that you do is, is super important as well. And that, that has a very strong correlation.

And is it true that you shouldn't exercise too close to bedtime, or is that a myth?

I wouldn't recommend it for a lot of people, but at the same time, you know, everybody is different. So if you exercise close to bed and you go to sleep and you're absolutely fine, doesn't matter, you know, so it's all good. But if you find that it actually impacts your sleep a lot, then it's something that you have to, you know, unfortunately try your best to hit on the head. It's the same as everything. There's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to, you know, building a body that reflects your work ethic. It's about finding and building those preferences and being aware of what's happening, you know, as time goes along.

And is there a good time and a bad time to work out then? Is it better to work out in the morning before you had some food, after you had some food, or in the evenings at the end of a workday, or maybe fitting it somewhere in between during your workday? What's your recommendation and your experience?

Entrepreneurs think they can fit it in, in the day. And then they're not. It ends up, as we know, things happen, stuff comes up, and then what happens? It gets pushed to one side. My biggest recommendation for vast majority of people that I work with is they need to get it done in the morning before they go to work or start their working day. They've got the least amount of distractions. It also incentivizes them to sleep a little bit better because if they've got to work out at 7 o'clock 8 o'clock in the morning or whatever, and they don't sleep well, they're gonna have a real, real hard time in the gym. And it just also kind of wakes you up and gets you switched on very fast in the morning. And, and it's also an insurance policy that it's done, you know, that's kind of the, the main box for yourself ticked off for the day. And then the rest is obviously, you know, down to the work. Some people do slot it in, but the thing is entrepreneurs have this big schedule management, and it's, it's a part of their kind of being and everything that they do each week. But when it comes to exercise, they often and don't treat it like any other appointment. And so what you have to do is you have to book it in and attend all the other meetings just like you do, and then make it almost a non-negotiable. At the end of the day, emergencies happen, but if you're just like, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna train when I finish work, it will never happen. You don't build that rhythm, and your body responds quite well to being consistent with things, and, and it likes, you know, continuous routine and rhythms. You know, just makes your life a hell of a lot easier if you book that in and just make it a part of the day.

And if we're talking about routines and making it part of your day, is the traditional 3 times a week exercising enough, or should you spread it out maybe in shorter sessions across the week so it becomes more part of your daily habits rather than your weekly habits?

You could do either. My argument would be if you're already making the commitment to maybe go to the gym, for example, then it's going to be some ways a lot more time to travel and get there if you're going to do it every single day for 30 minutes than it would be just to stay that extra 15 to 30 minutes 3 times a week. So it's all relative to the schedule and the goals. But if you want— if you're going to do 30 minutes of exercise, let's say you want to lift weights, for example, you have to get warmed up very fast, quite good at training to switch it on very quickly and to make it intense. And for a lot of people that is exceptionally difficult. So you could maybe do some kind of cardiovascular or like walking stuff quite regularly, but with weight training, I always feel that it's a skill acquisition. And, and if you keep doing it in really, really short frequent bursts like that, I find it very hard for people to get into it. And also, even though it is only half an hour, there's still something is quite sore on the next session, and there's quite a sort of recovery needed. I, I don't really see a lot of entrepreneurs being able to give up 6 times a week of 30 minutes or whatever versus, you know, just doing those 3 hours in the gym a week.

Unless you have the gym in your own house or in your own residential complex if you're in Dubai.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, maybe residential complex gyms always seem like a great idea on paper until you actually go and train in there, because anybody who trains in a residential gym, most of them don't actually respect the place and don't look after it, it tends to be not a great training environment. You know, people don't treat it the same way, so it can actually— more often than not, people find it very, very annoying to train in there on a regular basis. It often becomes just something as a nice supplementary workout to what you're already doing. That's obviously a bit more convenient because it's literally inside your house.

So it's, um, it's good to have it if you can't make it to your proper gym that day. But otherwise, from your experience, it doesn't really work.

Yeah, long term, I've never met anybody who really enjoys training in a residential gym. Period.

And Tom, you made a clear distinction between weight training, cardio, and walking. Now, all are good ways of exercise to, to a certain extent. What's a good balance between them? Do you have to do all of them? What's the minimum you can do?

A good question, and it's largely gonna be relative to your goals. So cardio is a big misconception that cardio burns fat and burning fat and losing fat are two different things. So you don't have to do cardio to actually lose body fat off of your body. So you wanna treat cardio as training your heart health. You know, because you won't get fitter unless your heart is beating more higher for a long period of time. So if you're trying to use cardio to burn calories, it's, it's never realistically going to work. Because if you think about any type of training you've ever done yourself, if you, if I was to give you a run now, you've got to do 30 minutes a day for the next 90 days. Do you think it's—

I'm not a good runner, but sure, yeah.

Yeah, well, that's even better example. So do you think you're going to be better or worse at running by the end of You're gonna be better, right? Because you've done it, you know, 90 times by the end. So your body becomes more efficient. Any stress that you put on it, it becomes an adaptation. So you will burn less calories over time anyway as you are getting fitter. So it's, it's not particularly great trade-off. So that's why I don't recommend using cardiovascular as a form of burning calories. You obviously will burn some, but if you're trying to work it out like that, it never really goes that well. In regards to starting to see some changes cardiovascularly, I think from what I understand, and is research-wise, is it's like 3 lots of 30 minutes at zone 2 is kind of the bare minimum to, you know, start to improve like your resting heart rate and your sort of VO2 max and stuff like that. So if you do want to go down that road, then that's kind of, I would say, is the bare minimum to get some kind of, you know, the needle to move. So And what zone 2 is, is your heart beating at a certain amount of beats per minute. So that could be done through anything. For some people, if they're not particularly fit, they could do that via walking, you know, they could do it via riding a bike, could be anything. So it doesn't necessarily have to be running, which is what always people associate cardio training with. A minimum requirements for weight training is for building muscle from sort of research, we know that between 10 and 20 sets per muscle group is what's to be kind of the most effective. Obviously, 10 at the lower end, 20 at the higher. So you could spread that out however you wanted across the week. So you could theoretically do 10, 12 sets between 2 sessions per week, and that would kind of COVID your bases. So I would say as an absolute bare minimum, it would need to be 2, but 3 is a bit easier on the body in terms of you've got a little bit more time to recover. You don't have to do as quite as big sessions, you can spread them out a little bit, and it also helps build that rhythm a little bit more. But it all depends on what the priority is for the person, and that's where a lot of fitness programs that people kind of try and take on board, they become not relative to the goal that they have. You know, it's a bit like business. If you try and do absolutely everything You're not really going to succeed in any of it. You'll get, move the needle, but it's, you know, if you, when you focus on one thing, you get really, really good at it. So that's the way I always like to treat it.

I'm assuming a lot of your clients come to you after they've gained a certain amount of weight or they want to lose weight to start with besides getting fitter. So that has a lot to do with nutrition too. What, what you put in and what you burn is the basic of it. If you're not in a calorie calorie deficit, you're not gonna lose weight and fat. So how do you help entrepreneurs and executives then build healthier food habits as well, combined with the exercise? Because you can just exercise more, but also eat more, and it won't move the needle, will it?

No, if you just exercise on its own and you rapidly increase your energy expenditure, it comes with fatigue. And when you're a bit more tired and you end up being a little bit more hungry. So, you know, if you don't manage that, you will naturally more likely eat a lot more, which, as you're right, you can end up gaining more fat because of it. The way I always start with somebody nutrition-wise is the first thing you have to do is to control the amount of calories that go into their body. That's kind of like the number one. As we've said, that is the overarching theme of whether you are going to lose fat or not, period. Don't care what anybody says. So the way I like to do that is through guidelines, and that could be through something like Hand Portions. Now, nutrition is like a bit like training. There's easy stuff and there's really advanced stuff. The advanced stuff sounds really, really good on paper, you know, and it becomes very, very hard to implement. And that is why people kind of go on the diet and they struggle to really keep it up, because it's very difficult to do. They're prepping food, they're weighing things all the time. This has got to be at this time, you can only eat in these certain windows. So it becomes very, very rigid. And from what they're currently doing to there is a huge, huge jump. So the way I like to say, I like to do it through guidelines. That's normally going to be a certain amount of meals per day. For most people, it's going to be 3 because that's normally what they eat coming to me anyway, you know. And then try and remove all the snacks out of it as well. And what I'll do is I'll set them a hand portioning model, which will be like a certain amount of protein. So it might be a palmful of protein, might be a fistful of carbs and then another palmful of veggies. And if they start to use that, that will then allow them to see that what they have on their plate was either going to match with that or not. So it doesn't matter if they're in a restaurant, doesn't matter if they're in a different country, doesn't matter if their spouse makes them a meal, doesn't matter if they buy something when they're out. You can implement that framework very, very, very easily. So what I like to do is make it as seamless as possible from where they are right now and taking a step towards getting the results. Now, there's pros and cons to that framework, but as an initial starting point, this is very, very good. And if you can set that up in a way that sort of works for you, is fantastic place to start because it really can't get any easier than that. And as you go across that continuum of nutrition, you will get more advanced as you go along. You might then step into maybe weighing foods after that and having some kind flexible meal plan where you have a certain amount of lean protein sources, certain amount of fatty ones. And then after there, you will end up potentially maybe tracking macros. Most people probably listening to this have heard of stuff like MyFitnessPal. So that is a way of what we call flexible dieting. So where you have, you know, a certain amount of macros to hit per day. And then, but what this, to be able to do this, you kind of need to understand all this other stuff before to be able to implement that and, and make it work well. And then the more longer term thing is gonna be what we call ad libitum, which is just you eat as you see fit, you know? But for a lot of people, that's what they've been doing, which means they have to come to me because they've been eating too much, you know? So they don't understand the amounts that they need anyway. And that is a very, very difficult place to get to for a lot of people. So, you know, we have to go along that continuum for nutrition to be able to gradual steps and to make sure that you can keep up with it.

So you don't recommend then, for example, skipping breakfast or intermittent fasting or not eating for a certain amount of hours?

So the intermittent fasting would fall into the guidelines. So those sort of 4 guidelines that I've given you in terms of the nutrition. So we've obviously got the hand portioning, the meal plan, the flexible dieting, and the picking whatever you want. Any system or diet, whatever you want to call it, you've ever heard of fits into one of those 4 categories. And that's it. There's basically 4 types of nutrition in some ways on the planet, you could say. So intermittent fasting is a guideline. So the guideline is you don't eat between these hours and you do eat between those hours. So it falls into that category to begin with. So skipping breakfast, it can be— it can work well for some people. A lot of entrepreneurs start the mornings very, very full-on. They have lots of stuff to do, they kind of need to get to work, they might have to train or something like that. So they're, they're probably not likely to want to sit down anyway and, and tuck into some eggs on toast or something like that. So it kind of works well really with their schedule. You know, if you wake up and you find that you're really, really hungry and then you're having to wait until, let's say, 2 PM or something to start eating, it's going to probably make it a lot more difficult for you because by the time you get to 2 PM, you're going to be absolutely starving. So therefore, you're more than likely going to eat more than what you would anyway. Or overeat. Yeah, you'll overeat. So it kind of defeats the purpose of that system. So those guidelines don't work for everybody. They work for a lot of people, and you will adjust to some extent, but not every single person is going to mold that well into So for me personally, my start of my day is quite physically demanding because I have personal training clients. I have to carry the weights and I'm pushing and doing stuff with them in the gym. And so I find that like by sort of 9, 10 o'clock, I'm very, very, very hungry. So if I was to wait then till 2, it would be very, very difficult. Just wouldn't work for me. So that's basically how I look at it.

In the nutrition and weight loss scene, especially in the last couple of years, particularly 2024, 2025 now, a lot in America and quite a lot in the UK, there's been a new kid on the block which has been helping people lose significant amounts of weight. What I'm talking here, I'm talking about the GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Mounjaro, which people can get through their doctor or prescribed to them to lose weight. And a lot of celebrities have been using it to have dramatic weight losses. But there's also been a bit of a backlash on it because especially people in the fitness space call it a cheat. And they don't give people who lose weight through GLP-1 drugs as much kudos as if they would be doing it just through nutrition and exercise. What's your take on it as a personal trainer? And also keeping in mind that for a lot of your executive clients, could be an aid for them to control their food intake and urges.

My thoughts on it are quite different than most of the fitness industry. Like you said, it's very demonized quite quickly and it's, you know, thought of the lazy way, I guess you could say. But like anything, it can be appropriate for some people and it can be appropriate or not. I think the fitness industry feels threatened by it because obviously there's probably less working out if, if people can obviously just take a drug, right? Which means less business. So I would imagine that's probably why, you know, and it kind of, I guess, goes against the moral sort of ethics of hard work and exercise. But at the same time is that when you are obese or you've got a lot of weight to shift, whatever you want to call it, it's not, it's not quite a cut and dry as you've skipped a few workouts and you've eaten a little bit too much. It can be very, very complicated mentally and physically. You've kind of got hormones to to factor in. You've got kind of mental health and emotional states to factor in, you know. And for some people, they have tried and tried and tried, and they just don't really seem to get into it. I mean, physiologically, their body will respond if they eat less. If you starve them, they would get lighter. But it, it's not that easy to implement, you know, for some people. You've got to think, if you gain, let's say, 50 kilos from now, right, and then how many wardrobes are you going to have to go through? How many comments are you're going to get from people. You've got to think about what the emotional state that person is going through over and over again. It can be very, very difficult to reverse. It becomes an identity in some ways over time. So, you know, they're left with not many options. So also depends on your physical state. If you're at the point where you might not necessarily be able to exercise through various health conditions that have come from being overweight anyway, or you might have some kind of injuries and things like that, I'm left with very limited options, you know. So the reason why these drugs can be useful is, is it because it can kick start that. And the thing is motivation builds and habits will build off the back of need, seeing the needle start to move for people. So that's why it can be very useful. I think there's, there's definitely a lot of people using it who don't really warrant it. I think there's, there's wrong and right candidates for it for sure.

Okay.

You know, there's a lot of people are just using it as a, as sort of the magic pill formula and they've to taken no regards into their health. They've, they've probably not done it Probably for a doctor, they've probably just bought it from somewhere, you know, and they're, they're using probably strong amounts of it and they're not really putting any thought into the lifestyle changes that you need to make to actually aid your health and stuff in the first place. The inevitable thing, like anything, you can't take GLP-1 forever, you know.

I guess that's the, uh, actually the argument for it, especially coming from, um, the diabetes side, which the GLP-1 was originally designed for, just like with regular diets and exercise, if there's no maintenance afterwards, you will gain the weight afterwards. If it suppresses your appetite, then it, you stop taking it, your appetite will come back. But similarly, if you are on a weight management diet and exercise plan, if you stop exercising or you go off the rails with your eating, you will gain everything back on. So I'm I'm guessing just like with everything, you need some sort of maintenance. And with GLP-1 being designed originally for diabetes, it could be a lifelong exercise combined with maybe more exercise and obviously looking after what you're eating, because you can still eat less, but you can eat unhealthy stuff and create further health conditions.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, losing weight and losing body fat will definitely improve most people's health for sure. But the reason why it's got a lot of backlash is because it attacks what's called the hedonistic sort of appetite part of the brain, where you, you think less about food. What happens is if you've not really got very good food habits in the first place, and then you're eating a lot less but still very poor choices of food, you know, you're gonna get a lot of cognitive problems in terms of like you're going to feel very lightheaded, brain fog, things like that. Your energy levels are going to be very poor. This is going to have a knock-on effect probably to your hormones as well, which can escalate in various different ways. And then you actually, you lose a lot of muscle mass if you're not training as well. If anybody was to, I guess, technically starve themselves and not train, you would lose muscle mass and We need muscle mass to keep our metabolic rate high and to support our bones and the rest of the structure of our body. So you actually will burn less calories with the less muscle mass that you have anyway. And so it makes it even harder long-term, obviously, to keep it off because your metabolic rate becomes slower. So if not managed properly, then it can definitely cause a lot more complicated issues. And that's the reason why it's obviously got a lot of backlash is because, yeah, a lot of people are taking this kind of in any way, shape, or form. And then now, because it's gone on for a little bit of time, we're starting to see some of the horror stories kind of come out. And, you know, it's, it's improperly managed. For the fitness industry's point of view, you can even still exercise and diet really terribly, lose weight, and still cause your body problems. You know, it looks great on the surface because you think, oh, you know, oh yeah, you're looking good, you know.

Yeah, crash diets have been around for ages, and it doesn't mean that they've been healthy.

Yeah. So, you So it, it is kind of the same principle really. So like I said, the, the overarching theme is there's good candidates and there's bad candidates for it. And my recommendation for anybody is you shouldn't really be taking any of these really, really strong, powerful drugs if you're not under supervision from somebody who really, really knows what they're doing, whether it be doctor or healthcare professional.

Another trend, and if you are somebody in our age group, millennials in our 30s, you will possibly get on your Insta and TikTok, Facebook, or any other social network you, you use all sorts of ads about testosterone replacement therapy, TRT, as, as it might be called. And this seems to affect men naturally in, in our age group. And it could be a more earlier onset or a later onset, and it can affect both your physical and your mental performance. What's your experience and your take on, uh, TRT?

So men as a whole, they have less testosterone than they've ever done, and that falls down to, you know, environmental factors, food quality, you know, societal changes and things like that. So this is why it's becoming becoming more and more of a thing because a lot of men sort of to the age of the mid-30s and beyond are suffering, uh, with the symptoms of low testosterone, you know. And I think it helps that— or the reason why it's become popular is because we've got a lot of, uh, very influential people such as Andrew Huberman podcast, stuff like that. We've got, you know, Joe Rogan. They've spoken about it, you know, quite extensively, which has brought it into the They're older men though.

They're in their 50s more so than in their— yeah, so more understandable that, that— yeah.

And well, the, the feedback generally is, is a lot of men that who are now finding it are saying, well, I wish I'd done this, you know, so many years ago. So that's why now it's becoming more popular, you know, in the sort of mid-30s and beyond. And I think as a whole society shifted, and for men especially, they're now a little bit more prone to actually taking care of you know, traditionally men would not go to the doctors, they wouldn't get anything tested. It was kind of, you know, not something that they did. But now it's not a taboo anymore, and it's, it's not seen as weak, and there's lots of options. So men are getting much more kind of testing and more, you know, help from doctors and things like that, and it's just becoming more aware of it. So the thing is, with testosterone replacement therapy is it can be very, very useful for men because your lust for life, your motivation, your emotional health, you know, and your muscle mass, things like that, they come from having a certain amount of testosterone. And once that starts to dip, you know, you, you've got a whole host of problems that makes your quality of life very, very poor. You know, you've got obviously a loss of the sex drive, which we know for men is a big thing for us. And when you've not got it it's not a very, very nice place to be. You know, it also affects your mood. So we've had such a shift in society about talking about more mental health now, and but the hormones play a massive role in that. So, you know, taking care of those will, will have a very, very strong effect on you, on your mental health as well. And yeah, your general mood and things like that. So your quality of life can be very, very greatly affected negatively by having these, you know, these levels very So have you worked with any of your clients who have been on TRT and you've seen differences and improvements? Yeah, absolutely. More so towards kind of 40 to 50-year-olds, but you know, at the end of the day, if, if you fall into that category of having low testosterone, it doesn't really matter whether you're 30, 40, or 50.

Yeah, it could be in your early 30s, mid or late 30s or onwards.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I've definitely worked with people before, and the biggest thing is, is going to be the mood changes. The grumpy old man thing is, is very much a stigma for the kind of low testosterone. And there's a little bit more kind of— okay, a little bit more oomph in there, I guess you could say. They're a little bit more chirpier, you know, a little bit more energetic. That's very, very noticeable quite quickly. Energy levels for them as a whole across the day tend to improve. Testosterone really been quite linked— well, low testosterone has been linked generally stuff like brain fog and things like that a lot of the time. So the clarity and the kind of cognitive function appears to be quite, um, significantly different. And the obvious one is obviously going to be the libido changes, you know, very, very fast. So, you know, in terms of the quality of life, it picks up very, very quickly. And the reason why it comes to them getting tested— so if they come to somebody like me and if they've not had any tests before, they don't know much about training, nutrition, they come to a point where you start to maybe not see the same returns of investment that you wouldn't expect from doing your training and your nutrition and things like that. And you start to obviously talk to them a little bit more about their day-to-day, and you understand that then something's not quite right. So then you can get a blood test done, and it's very, very cut and dry. You can get your free testosterone checked quite easily, and then they can go with that, obviously, that data, and go to their doctors or whoever they work with for their health. And then and obviously start to look at, you know, ways to improve that. So yeah, it is, I've noticed massive changes quite quickly. The biggest thing is gonna be quality of life very, very fast. And then as the muscle mass increases, you know, and they, and they become more fitter, their fat goes down as well, quite a lot easier. So it's, you know, it's a snowball effect.

So that's a positive one then as well. Are there any dangerous health trends or men's health trends that you spotted?

Well, yeah, the— with testosterone replacement therapy is, is the thing, it's replacement. It's not absolutely having loads of it, for example, because it can be tempting for a lot of people to have more because they, they have the positive effects, and then they start basically going into the realm of using performance-enhancing drugs, and then they're not doing that particularly monitored, and, and that can cause a lot of problems with you know, their cholesterol and their health and their heart and things like that, you see. So it's important not to get carried away with it. And that would be kind of the big thing, is once some people start to have a little bit, they want a lot, you know. So it's about managing your expectations and, and also being safe with it. Because the reason why a lot of people get started, because they want to improve their quality of life quite significantly, they want to improve their health. And once you start to go down that road of having too much of it, then it obviously contradicts the reason why they started it in the first place. So yeah, I generally don't recommend that. And obviously performance-enhancing drugs get really popular in the fitness industry. They always have been, always will be.

And now you're talking about steroids?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, for a lot of people, you don't need to take, you know, lots of drugs to get in good shape with your shirt off, because ultimately most of the gym goers, then they're not— they don't want to be champion bodybuilders, they just want to look good naked. Ultimately, that's kind of gyms for, to some extent. So yeah, you don't need to, uh, you don't need to do a lot of that stuff. So it's about separating what is medically needed and as a replacement therapy, and then what is you just kind of going superficial amounts of it. Two different things.

Some interesting points there. Thanks, Tom. I want to move back now a bit into business and your business sphere, and I know you've built your business through results and reputation and also social media and to a certain extent, personal branding. So I wanted to get your views on how important has been for your business building, your personal branding, especially as a solo founder.

Well, I work as my, my My job is a personal trainer. So the personal part is often what people forget, you know? So when you want to work with people on a personal service, a personal brand is obviously extremely advantageous because when you work so closely and intimately with people, you want to know who you're dealing with. You don't just want to sign up to something and get assigned somebody. You want to pick the right person for you. And as a coach, as good as a coach as I am, I'm still not the best coach for every single person in the world. You know, there's going to be people that fall outside of the kind of expertise that I have. There's going to be people that just might not necessarily like the way I do things. There's people that need a slightly different approach. So the personal brand allows you to align people with your values, your opinions. And what I found is, is that the type of person that is then contacting me to work with me tends to be a much better mold. Now, when I used to be an employee, I worked under a brand and the way it worked was person would sign up with the brand and then get allocated to me, but they had nothing to do with who they got to choose basically. And more often than not, I would find myself working with people. I had a kind of thinking, there's no way this person would pick me outside of these four walls to work with them. Like, I obviously know a lot about personal training and how to get results, but at the same time, I just thought I, I just couldn't couldn't see them ever, you know, wanting to go down that road. And you end up, you know, with the communications a little bit off and it just doesn't seem a right fit straight away. It doesn't necessarily mean there's anything wrong with them, but it just doesn't feel right. So I think the personal branding, if you're working in a personal services industry like I do, it allows you to get a much better candidate to work with you. And also for the people who are the consumer, they're getting the right coach for them.

So are there any lessons or mistakes or learning that you would advise others to avoid if you would be doing it all over again, or has it all been smooth sailing for you in this perspective?

I think building a personal brand for me has been, it's been difficult because I spent so long having no social media presence, having no experience talking on camera, having, you know, no ideas about content. So I was thrown into that end very, very well. I had no choice, you know, I had to start making stuff and it was extremely difficult. You know, I've spoken in front of hundreds of people before. The moment that camera turned on, I couldn't string two words together. It was embarrassing. I was honestly, I didn't want to do it. I just felt that big. I want to go home straight away. And obviously I had to get over that fear and to get it, you know, into it. And when you make content for your personal brand around your your, you know, your methods and your opinions, you will be terrible to begin with. But yeah, you kind of get better like anything. It's repetition. You get better to just get those first 100 videos that you make or anything like that, or 100 articles, whatever. Just get them out of the way because they're probably not going to be very good. It will come over time. So you just have to kind of get over that inertia of getting started with it. And I think, you know, if you work in a particular industry, it can be very tempting to kind of fall right in the middle of everything in terms of being quite generic. Generic, you know, and people say, oh, personal training's saturated, and it is, but so is every other industry, you know. This is— unless you've got an extremely unique job, then it's irrelevant. So being able to stand out is not just for the sake of it, but also, you know, you are going to have different opinions and values and thoughts against the generic sort of realm within your industry. So it's important to make sure that those come out. Quite quickly because again, that allows you to align with the right people and, you know, you're going to become a better fit and you're going to get the right type of people to work with because there's nothing worse with working with somebody that is not really the right fit. It's not great for the person, it's not great for you. It becomes, you know, being an entrepreneur is supposed to be fun, you know, and, and we create the job most times. Yeah, we create the jobs because we're passionate about them and we want to, you know, we really like doing what we're doing. And obviously, if you don't get those bits right and being, you know, authentic around what you do and putting your values in there, standing out, you know, then it's just not going to go well. And I think that's why it's really important to, if you're working in personal services, to build some kind of niche, because the sooner you do that, you understand your avatar better, you're able to provide more specific services around that. And it also allows you to create that personal brand more specifically. Around the niche and it allows you to stand out.

Now, Tommy, you also mentioned personal development, especially back in the day when you moved to Dubai and you were developing somebody else's business and launching it and you said you were reading a lot. So I tend to ask this for a reading list that I keep on building and sharing for Millennial Masters. If there's been any particular books or business books that changed the way you think about about business, entrepreneurship that you would recommend to others?

Well, ironically, the Straight Line name came from— there's a book called The Wolf— sorry, The Way of the Wolf, and it's written by Jordan Belfort. Everybody's probably watched The Wolf of Wall Street, but he had a sales system, yes, obviously around that, and it was— he used it, quoted it as the Straight Line Method.

So for me, they were doing other lines too, though.

Hey, yeah, so he, um, that whole book, it already kind of changed my thought processes around everything that I did because one of the lines in it is everything in life is a sale. And it is, you know, when people always think that sales is about me giving you something and you giving me money back for it, which which in some ways it is, but also like for me as a personal trainer, when I work with somebody, I have to get them to do things that they don't want to do. And that is the sale. So the mind, the way I communicate that and the way I negotiate that is pivotal to me being able to actually get any results with people because if they don't buy into me and they don't accept the things that I give them, it doesn't matter how good I am on paper, they will not do it.

It.

And the best personal trainers are always the ones that get extremely good buy-in from the people that they work with because they'll do whatever they say. And that comes from having great communication and negotiation skills and understanding, you know, the pain points that they have and the things they want. And there's a very smart, like, kind of methodology and straight-line method that allows you to move towards— they call it the prospect, so sort of saying yes. That for me was a massive turning point. It was like the first serious book of self-development book I read, I guess you could say, as well. So kind of really started something there for me. And I always, for a long time, my job was to actually coach personal trainers how to personal train. That was part of my, my role. And I would always give that to, um, the trainers because everybody thinks getting good physical results is just about nutrition and training and things like that, which they help obviously. But you know, your way that you can deliver certain information and communicate as a coach is just as powerful as your extensive sort of anatomy and physiology knowledge.

That's a good one. I'll make sure I include it in the show notes for this episode, as well as Atomic Habits, which we mentioned earlier on in the conversation. Now, finally, Tom, this is something again, I like to ask everybody, and you mentioned it quite early on in our conversation, sacrifices. And how there's no success without sacrifices. So I'm wondering, what are the biggest sacrifices you had to make, Tom, in order to be where you are today?

The biggest sacrifice for me was taking the risk to obviously get started in terms of my business. That was something I had a very secure job before, and I had to, you know, give that all by good medical insurance. You know, I had a very I could have been there for a very, very long time. So that was definitely a big sacrifice. And I think aside from that, the biggest sacrifice was swallowing my own ego a little bit and accepting the fact that the world has changed and so must I. And what that really means is that I was kind of not necessarily against social media and things like that and creating content, but definitely wasn't for it, you know. And I realized that if I wanted to impact as many people as I could, and to get my methodology out there and to get the, you know, to work with as many people as I could, I had to bite that bullet, get in front of the camera, you know, start to write more, you know, learn about all these different things about sales and processes and things like that. And, you know, when I first started doing this, a lot of people actually contacted me saying, I cannot believe you're on camera. Literally, like, what's happened? You know, like, you're a different person. And that's how, in some ways, I was opposed to it. That was the biggest sacrifice in some way because it was horrible at the start. Hated it.

Your ego.

Yeah, in some ways, yeah. But I'd obviously sort of like gone against it, and then I thought I'm gonna have to obviously then become a hypocrite in some ways and obviously then start to do it.

So yeah, or evolve rather than become a hypocrite. Evolve.

Yeah, phrase it how you want. Well, yeah, it was, uh, it had to be done, and that was, that was a big, big sacrifice for me, you know. And then, to be honest, a lot of it has been great because I've had the creative freedom to do what I want to do, and I've made it, you know, I've made it what I want, and I've made it fun. And it's always challenging, obviously, and there's some times where, you know, I sometimes wish I had a job in some days, but like, at the end of the day, it's great and I love it.

And one last question, Tom. I know I said already and finally, but this one just came through. If you would be able to write a letter to your younger self, would you advise yourself to start on the entrepreneurial journey earlier, or would you give yourself any other different advice?

I definitely wouldn't recommend anybody going on the entrepreneurial journey straight away if they're especially fresh or fresher into the industry, because you have to really master your craft first, and you have to get really, really good at what you do, because that is the hardest part. I think, you know, I'm not disrespecting marketing, sales, things like that, running a business, but I think in some ways they're a lot easier to learn than they are to, to learn a very specific skill of coaching somebody how to do it. And you need as many miles as possible. There's obviously the 10,000-hour concept, right? If you could build that and focus on that straight away— might not necessarily have to be the whole 10,000 hours, if you can build that straight away, you can then leverage that and move into creating your own thing. To be honest, I think, like, you have to run with it to a certain extent to see if you really, really like it. Everything's always exciting at the start, but when you've been doing it for a few years, you have to think, like, well, do I really want to continue doing this? And this is why a lot of people chop and change jobs and careers all the time, is because it might not necessarily be the thing that really, really gets them up in the morning that they want to And I think starting that business, you create so many more problems by having unstable foundations. So, you know, you produce much more commercial awareness and, and, and better skillset by working for either an entrepreneur themselves or at least working for a very reputable company and then building yourself up from there. And then inevitably, if the time comes, then it's, it's a fantastic launch pad. Would, you know, going into an entrepreneurial— and it's the entrepreneurial game. It's like, for me, being an employee was one of the best things I could have done. You know, it came to an end and it wasn't the same at the end, but it would— it, it showed me how to work hard. It, it gave me— obviously I didn't have to worry about any of the sales and things. I could focus entirely on working directly with people. The volume of people that I worked with was so, so high. I just would have never been able to do that realistically, you know, on my own. And then that way I didn't have to worry about trying to get really, really good at what I do. It was kind of already there. It was just making sure that I piece that in a way that to make it work and, you know, change the thing gradually as it went along. But yeah, I really don't recommend the whole kind of get started tomorrow type mentality.

That's at odds with a lot of things, but I guess the Learning from what you said would be learn your craft as much as possible before you start on your own. If I could wrap, wrap up what you just said.

Absolutely.

Well, Tom, this has been a great and enlightening conversation. I really enjoyed it. And thank you for sharing so many insightful, both mindset and health tips. And I am very much looking forward to see where you're going to be taking Straight Line next. Hopefully a straight line up.

Thanks very much for having me, Dan. It's been great.

Thanks for sticking till the end. If you're enjoying this podcast, tell you what's going to really help: a quick review or a rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or a quick subscribe on YouTube too. Or just share it with someone you think would get something out of it. And if you want more like this, millennialmasters.net is the place. I send weekly newsletter editions. There's Booksmart on Wednesdays, Insights on Fridays, and of course, podcast episode on Sundays, straight to your inbox. Join me there. Catch you next week.