The mistakes that turned waste into a business 📦 Jack Good

We started running out of mistakes. I've always had this idea when something goes wrong, I have work to do here. I've seen something that's not right and my job isn't just to fix the problem. If it's something gone wrong for a customer or supplier or something internally or HR, it's like, yeah, step one, fix the problem. But I've always seen it as like, I need to think, what do we have to do so that can't happen again? I found like an opportunity to improve the business. My job, if I'm running a company and I want the company to grow, grow, which I do, um, my job is like the crap filter for the company.

This week's Millennial Master is Jack Good, the founder and CEO of Reuserbox. Jack turned a side hustle selling secondhand boxes into a full-scale environmental business, proving that waste is just opportunity in disguise. In this episode, Jack shares how the biggest lessons come from mistakes, but only if you fix them for good. Talent is great, but mindset and resilience win every time when hiring. And how scaling a business isn't about having all the answers, but it's about staying curious and adapting fast. This episode is brought to you by Offware. Gym memberships, gift cards, free coffee, and pizza Fridays. Well, these staff perks just don't cut it anymore. That's why OffWork gives your team something they already love: travel. They can book their own flights, pick their own hotels, and plan the perfect getaway, all with the travel fund you set up for them. It's super easy. Just set the contributions and OffWork handles the rest. Better time More time off means less burnout, more motivation, and happier employees. Give your team a perk they'll actually love. Check out Offwork today on offwork.com. 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. Jack, welcome to Millennial Masters.

Hi, nice to see you today, Daniel.

Good to see you again too. It's been a while. So, Let's talk about your entrepreneurial journey. It started when you were a teenager and you got rejected for a job for a big fast food chain. Is that right?

Yeah, kind of. Well, it's a bit of a weird one, to be honest. I did try to get a job at KFC and yeah, I got rejected because I was quite like shy and nervous and they didn't want me basically. But, but around the same sort of time, so my, my mum and dad had like a small business, and they were kind of struggling. And basically, they were going bankrupt. And I basically couldn't get a job. And I kind of wanted to help my dad. So I kind of started buying and selling, kind of doing stuff with my dad. He had like some buy-to-lets. And originally, he would get lots of stuff from these like, crappy houses when people would like not pay the rent. And then there's like leave. So there'd be, there'd be like fridges and washing machines, TVs and sofas, really crappy stuff. So that's kind of what I started doing. I started like getting those, cleaning them, selling them. And yeah, I got kind of a bit of a bug for it really. It was quite fun. And then, and then eventually we ran out of stuff to sell. And then one day, discovered it was more driven from my dad, but we discovered a business locally and they were throwing away loads of cardboard boxes. They didn't have anything, any business for us, but they said, well, we've got 1,000 of these used boxes that we use to bring in some textiles into our factory. You can have it, take them away for free. So yeah, so we took those away and put them on eBay, we sold them and we made like a few hundred pound profit. And then that's how we started this little business. Because we're a cardboard box business, but we're different to all the others in that we, we're effectively trying to get cardboard boxes reused. So we started this little used box business. And then we were kind of We're kind of puttering along, really small business for a few years. And then I got a call one day from, from a guy from Royal Mail. And he said, we're, we're trying to achieve net zero carbon. And we think you can help us. We've got millions of used boxes. Can you get them? Can you get them sold basically for reuse? And I was like, yeah, sure, let's do it. Let's have a go. I guess you kind of think things are easier when you're, when you're younger. And then that kind of helped to scale up. But they said, there's one stipulation is we need you to track the environmental impact. So they said, We need you to show us how much carbon we're saving effectively. And that kind of, that kind of led us down this journey of realizing that we didn't actually start this little business selling used boxes, but we started an environmental business helping people reduce their impact from reusing cardboard boxes. Nothing was planned. It was just kind of weird, weird little journey. I'm still on that. It's 13 years later.

So a big client basically was the turning point for you from turning your business from just recycling and reselling used cardboard boxes to becoming an environmentally aware and environmentally forward business and playing a much bigger role in the ecosystem?

Well, I think, I think so much in business, and I guess in life is about like framing. And it wasn't so much that we got this giant opportunity from this big brand. It was more that we we didn't realize what our business model was. We were just buying and selling used boxes, trying to make ends meet. And they said, we want you to reduce our impact by doing this on a bigger scale. And then we realized, okay, actually, we've accidentally set up an environmental company, you know. So I think sometimes you can't, you sometimes you can't see. In fact, I think what happens with businesses, you start a business with an idea. And then you start doing it. And then the market kind of tells you that everything you thought was wrong,. And eventually you usually end up with a different idea. I think it's pretty common. So that's, yeah, that's what happened to us.

Tell me a little bit about those early years where you were still finding your path and you were going from supplier to buyer and you said you were doing things on eBay to start with.

Yeah, well, it was pretty terrible, to be honest. I think, I think basically, I didn't have any idea what I was doing. It was me and my dad originally, it was me and my dad a lot. And I was kind of working on the phone and like doing, building a website and selling stuff on eBay. And then I couldn't drive, so he would like come and do deliveries. Then we like rented an old cow shed to store stuff in. I think what happens is, eventually, if you can keep going, you start running out of problems, you start running out of mistakes. And I think that's kind of what happened to us is, you know, like, I think now we've got a fairly good operation, like things are We know how to sell, things are accurate, things are done properly, things are a bit more scalable, but for probably for too long, probably for about 8 or 9 years, it was just, you know, problem after problem after problem.

What were the biggest problems and mistakes that you had to fix and learn from now looking back?

Hmm, that's a good question, isn't it? Okay, so I mean, there's a lot. Probably couldn't choose just one. Okay, so a couple of things. So probably hiring people, obviously, like everybody that runs a business, that grows a business, they always go on about how important it is to get good at hiring people. When you start a business from nothing, like we did, like we didn't have any investment, we just started with like a few used boxes. And my mum and dad's garage, you know. So when you start a business like that, you don't hire, you don't hire people for the right job, or you hire the first person that comes along. And, and I guess what I gradually learned is the probably the most important thing is to try and hire the people with the right personality, the right mindset. And I think I got it wrong until recently, because I think I had this idea that when, when you're, when you're hiring people, when you're running a company, The idea I had is like, your job is to work out, yes, how to find a good person. But once you've got them, I think you have to work out how your business can be the success story that is their life. That's the, that's the kind of the idea that I had. And I only hit on that really like 2 and a half years ago, 3 years ago. But that's made a big difference. Because I think that first sort of 8 to 10 years was, I mean, it's hell, you're just working 12, 15 hours a day, and nothing works, and you don't have time to do anything. So I think hiring people and learning how to manage them, and that's, that's the thing I wouldn't say I'm at like the top or the peak of my career. I feel like I'm at quite an early stage. I wouldn't say I know everything. But I think at the moment, I think I've worked out how to find the right people and how to, how to manage them, you know, be part of the success story that is your life. And hopefully they'll be part of the success story that is your business.

Let's, let's share some of that wisdom. Tell me how What's your criteria now for hiring people? What are some of the green flags and the red flags you pick up on interviews?

This is like my favorite thing to do at the moment. And I have a feeling it's going to probably become, it's not, it's maybe it's like 10, 20% of my time at the moment, but I have a feeling it's going to become, hopefully going to become the biggest part of my job because hopefully we'll grow. But yeah, so, okay. So like we recently were at the moment, we're growing our sales team and we recently took a couple of people on. And yeah, so how I kind of, how I kind of approached it was the first thing I I was like, okay, what's the type of person that we need for this role? What's their, what's their kind of mindset? What's their personality? What do they, what do they like to do at the weekends? What do they do in their spare time? What do they look like? How tall are they? What do they wear? Like, I was trying to think about all these things. I was trying to write it all down as like a blueprint. And also kind of sense check it with the other people in the team. So I kind of started with that blueprint. And then I tried to make a job ad that is really specific to that blueprint. Which means that probably 99% of the people that see the job don't want to apply for it because they're like, what the hell's this? But by doing that, I'm getting like a small amount of people that actually think, yes, this is the right kind of job for me. So that's the first thing. And then the interview process is a lot of fun actually. So I'm trying to think about like mindset. So like with this last round of hiring, it was like salespeople. So we're trying to find people that can, um, that can, that can overcome objections and adversity and people that, people that aren't necessarily going to accept no for an answer, you know, so, um, we keep pushing them away throughout the interview process in various ways. And also like making them do like making them do a cold call in the interview, that kind of thing.

And, uh, so you have a practical aspect as well. Your hire, your sales hires have to do a cold call in, in the interview.

Do you pick who they get to call or do they pick who they get to Yeah, so what we were doing is, yeah, we would give them a list of like people, prospects to call, and we'd get them to do some prospecting in the interview. And unfortunately, sometimes what you find is you have a list of 5 people lined up and they don't answer the phone. So the last person we hired, we actually had a backup of, I had Tom in our team. We said, all right, if no one answers after the 5th one, we're going to get them to call you, Tom. And you're going to have to pretend to be, we called him Simon from Sci Products was our Uh, it was our person, but yeah, basically it's amazing because I mean, that's only one example of sales jobs, but every single person that came for the interview, they're like, let's do a sales call. And it's like, was no one asked you to do a sales call before in an interview? And they're like, no, it's like, well, why, why would you not, why would you not do a sales call in an interview for a sales job? We want to see if you can sell. But yeah, I think basically the thing, the thing that is becoming the most important thing in my life is trying to find good people.. And it's worth putting a lot of time into, into thinking about who they, who they need to be, their character. Training is really how to show them our processes. But I guess you have to hire on character and then try and go through that training process. Obviously, uh, you know, removing people from the company, I think that's been something that's been really challenging for me as well, because I've never had anybody that's like done a terrible job, or I've never had anybody that I don't like or anything. But as we've grown, I said earlier, like when you start, for us, starting without investment or anything, you don't hire the right person for the job, you hire the first person. And then as the company starts to grow, you start realizing, oh, this person's great, but I need someone more process-driven, or I need someone with these skill sets and they don't have them. So, so yeah, it's been hard moving people on, but I think that's a really important thing as well. If you want to grow a company, I think it's very important. Yeah. Because I I think companies go through different stages, and I think we are out of startup mode, and we're just kind of getting into that scale-up mode as a company. We're not up there, we're just getting into that scale-up mode. So the people that were in these positions when we're at this stage might not be right for these positions. So you have to move them on.

And restructure your team. You said you've made all the mistakes that could have been done in the first 8, 9 years.

I didn't say all of them. I said loads of them.

Loads of them. Okay. You still think you have room for a few more. Besides the hiring part, what, what are the mistakes should entrepreneurs be wary of in the early stages, in the startup stages of a business?

It's a good question, isn't it? I think other than hiring people, I think the common one is like coming up with an idea and then trying to implement it and spending loads of time and money, like planning something and trying to get it perfect. And then finding that it didn't work. Because like I said earlier, we have this company now, which keeps cardboard boxes in use for longer. It's significantly different to the idea and the purpose and the reason we had, and the business model we had on day one. And lots of crap's changed in that meantime. We've definitely spent a lot of time and money trying to do stuff and then finding that it didn't work. So I guess it's trying to work out how to like test stuff efficiently without spending 6 months or without spending £50,000 on an idea. You know, when I, when I first started, my grandparents died, grim start to the story. But my grandparents passed away and I inherited £5,000. And I had this idea and I was like, well, we're selling, originally we're selling lots of moving boxes to consumers. Because we're quite small scale on eBay. And I had this idea that I was like, well, if we're selling moving boxes, we could be doing like all removal services, storage services. And I was like, but we don't have the resources for that. So I was like, oh, we'll build like a marketplace, and we'll get removal companies, storage companies, and they can advertise on the marketplace, and we'll sell boxes, and we'll get a lead to them, and we'll sell. And I blew the whole £5,000 on this like website, I did loads of work on it myself. And I spent probably like 2 years on it. And it didn't work. It was awful. So whereas like later on, we're kind of thinking, okay, what's the quickest, easiest way we can test the idea? What's the hypothesis we've got here? And how do we test that? And there's been lots of stuff that we've tried. And we were like, oh, well, that was a bad idea. But you know, when you learn how to test it without spending lots of time and money, you learn how to progress quicker, I think, as a company.

So test early, fail quick, learn the lessons and move on.

Yeah, ideally without spending loads of time and money on it. That's a very good summary of what I just said.

So what was the turning point for you, Jack, when you basically took on the business by yourself and started growing it? What was the point when you could enable your family to not be involved in the business and you to provide and grow it?

Don't know really, it just kind of happened bit by bit. There was no there was no plan, which we just, we started, I've started to be thinking like, what's the long term? I've started to do like long term thinking and starting to try and like anticipate stuff. But for the first sort of 7 or 8 years, it was just like feeling your way in the dark. But my dad, my dad, the thing is, when I started, I was like 16, 17. I looked about 12. And my dad, it was a really, really good experience of something to do with my dad. You know, I remember being like 16, and I got a call from Poundland, they just rang us and they, they were closing, they bought 99p stores, and they were closing the stores like tomorrow. And there's a lead time for new cardboard boxes. So they were trying to work out how do we get them tomorrow. And they came across us because we, because we had a big warehouse full of used boxes, they came to us. And, you know, I had to go for a meeting with them. And I couldn't drive, I couldn't get there. And although I was quite good on the phone, I was quite shy, you know, so my dad was kind of like, I would do all the work and then he would go to the meeting and speak to them. You know, he would go and deliver the stock in the van or something because I didn't have a driving license. So that was, yeah, that, that was, that was how that started. And then gradually we got a bit bigger and we needed a full-time driver and my dad's not very good at getting up early. So we sort of fleshed it out as we grew. And also I realized that I don't need to be embarrassed about being younger or about how I look or how I sound. Actually, you know, people are coming to us with a problem and I know how to solve that problem. And if I could just tell them, you know, 9 times out of 10, it resonates well enough without having to send people because I'm too young.

I wanted to ask you, based on what you said, what helped you develop your your confidence and moving forward from a shy teenager to a business owner?

Yeah, I was actually really shy as well when I was, when I was little. So if I hadn't have accidentally started this business, I would probably be a massive loser. So I'm really grateful. But I think for me, and like I said, my mum and dad had a business, small business, and then, you know, they kind of lost everything really, when I was little, I think being like 16, I wanted to help them and I just kind of fell into it, but it kind of forced me to go out of my comfort zone. I didn't have, it's like, we need to get the money in this week because we have bills to pay. We have like a mortgage to pay or something. So I think that experience forced me to come out of my comfort zone massively early on. And then gradually I realized that it's, that's actually, that's, that's the most important thing in life, isn't it? Like constantly coming out of your comfort zone. And I think that's, I think that's what developed my, my confidence effectively.

You can certainly tell right now, that's for sure. So on the scaling up journey, you said a lot of the big things in the business happened in the last 3, 4 years after a long, hard slog in, in almost the first decade. What do you think changed? In order to enable you to implement all these changes? Was the pandemic a big point in the business for you?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think the main thing is what I said earlier. It doesn't sound like a very impressive answer. But literally, we stopped, we started running out of mistakes. Like I've always— well, on that point, I'll go back to what you asked for in a minute. But on that point, I— so I spent a long time I've always had this idea when something goes wrong, it's like, I have work to do here. I've seen something that's not right. And my job isn't just to fix the problem. If it's something gone wrong for a customer or supplier or something internally or HR, it's like, yeah, step one, fix the problem. But I always see it. I've always seen it as like, I need to think, what do we have to do so that can't happen again? I found like an opportunity to improve the business. I've always had that idea. But, but certainly for like the first best part of a decade, I used to get very stressed by it. How's this gone wrong kind of thing? It used to be a very negative thing, really, I think, in my own head. But then the last sort of few years, I actually kind of realized, again, it's this idea of like framing. I realized that actually my job, if I'm running a company and I want the company to grow, which I do, and my job is like the crap filter for the company, you know, like I'm my job is like all the problems. No, but this sounds stupid, but actually like all the problems, like I had a few this morning, all the problems should like float to me and they gather around me. And then my job is to get them out of the system and be like, how do we stop that coming into the system again in the future? And I think when I realized that, I started enjoying the job a lot more. You know, like when you enjoy something, always felt like a need to like achieve and progress stuff. But when you can enjoy it, it becomes a lot easier. And I think also it helps with culture as well. If you're really stressed out, everyone around you definitely feels stressed out. Whereas if you're feeling good about this problem because it's something you can improve, then everyone's going to feel that and it's going to build a culture of that. So yeah, I can't remember what your question was, but—

It's okay. I wanted to ask you based on that, what is your favorite part of being an entrepreneur and a business owner? And also, I know from my experience, you will have parts which you don't enjoy as much. But as you grow, you can offload them to other parts of the business. Although, as you said, all the problems come to you for solving.

So the, the, um, yeah, the thing, well, the thing that I've actually learned to realize, because I think a lot of the time it's like that framing, like that thing you tell yourself about your job or this situation that's going on. And I actually really like finding problems now. I always say to people, give me critical information, send some crap my way, please, because I know that we're not perfect. We're a tiny company. And this is like, the cardboard box industry is probably like £30 to £40 billion a year. And we're, we're a speck in relation to that. So I know that we're not doing things to the highest possible standards. So please send me crap. I like that. It gets quite time consuming. But I really like that. And I'm really enjoying like the whole like hiring people and interviewing people. And I mean, I really like that because, well, I don't know why, but I really like it. I really like that kind of thing of trying to work people out. And then you're like, I was wrong about that one. Yeah, I was right about that one. And the things I hate. Yeah, I mean, it's not a lot I hate. I'm not, I don't know if I'm quite easygoing with stuff, but I don't like lots of admin and HR and stuff, you know, it's It's obviously important, but it feels like that's time I'm spending on a menial task that whilst it might be important, could be done by someone else. And I could be trying to work people out and trying to find problems.

So how are you finding jobs to delegate and offload from your load to other members of the team in order to free you up to, A, do the important things, and the things that you enjoy most.

So is that how am I finding doing that, or how am I, how am I—

Do you have a method to delegate?

Good question. I think I'm still learning this a lot, to be honest. Like, I'm not, I don't think I'm at the top being like, this is how I delegated 10 million tasks to people. But, but yeah, basically I try and think about like when I'm planning my week, like we all do, like the week ahead, I'm thinking, what, what are the things that I can do best? I am— have you heard this analogy? So I think it was at like Netflix, they had this kind of like, company manual or something. I don't know, probably not telling the story that well. But, but I remember this story that they had, they had this analogy of how the management strategy, which is like, we're a sports team, and we're trying to win the championship. At the CEO's job is you're trying to work out how you have the best players in the right positions. And that's constantly changing. I guess linking on to that idea, like, I'm trying to think, like, who are the best players? And how do I make sure they're in the right position? I think that for myself, so like, I'm trying to think when I'm planning the week, and I don't— we don't have a massive thousands of staff or anything. So I still do tasks that I don't feel like I'm the best person for because we're not there yet. We don't we're not ready to bring on 3 people and have a department around HR, for example. But I'm constantly trying to think where can I add the most value? And how do I try and focus as much of my time on that area? And I'm also trying to think, how do I teach other people that and make sure other people are doing that as well?

Let's talk about selling used and recycled cardboard boxes a little bit. You started doing that on eBay. But in the meantime, you developed an entire tracking and selling system on your website that is rather unique and helps your clients track their footprint and the impact that they're doing. What was the journey in developing that?

Yeah, it's really like the last sort of few years, we've started to think constantly. So as like a management team, once a quarter, like we get together and everybody tries to— there's two tasks. It's like try and find better ways of doing what we already do within your department, or try and find new things to do for your department. So like once a quarter, we set this up about two years ago, we get together and the managers for each area. So I've got like a sales manager, I've got like a marketing manager, finance manager, impact manager for environmental impact. So it's like, come on guys, can you think of a better way of doing stuff you already do or something new to do? And that's been very effective at constantly trying to, you know, refine, trim, chop, change, develop what we're doing. And right now we're sat here with like plans for like the next 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years of what we want to do with that. And so I think, I think that's helping us grow because I think we've put in like a process. Of how we constantly do that. In terms of like actual sales, like our sales process and our impact tracking, we just realized that a lot of companies out there, we're an environmental impact initiative and companies want to work with us to reduce their impact. So we started thinking, well, what's important? And obviously impact tracking is a very important thing. It's funny actually, because when, when Roho Mel rang us, they said, can you do— can you sell all these boxes for us? And I was like, yes. And they're like, great, but one stipulation, you need to track the impact. And we went to the kind of the people at the top of the industry. So in the cardboard box industry, you've got one or two big integrated, they call it, manufacturers. So they make the paper, and they sell it to all the other box— make the boxes and they recycle. So that's companies like Smurfit, DS Smith. And we went to them and we said, what impact— like, how would we track the impact of manufacturing, recycling, and reusing boxes? And they were kind of like, oh, well, we've never done that before. And I was like, well, on your website, it says you're like the environmental leading, you know, box supplier, but they hadn't done it at the time. This was going back, you know, nearly a decade ago. So, so we had to work out for ourselves, we said, okay, well, if we want to get this deal for this customer, the thing that's important to them is understanding the environmental benefits. So we had to do it ourselves. We found some environmental consultants, got a study, sort of spearheaded a study with Lincoln University. And that was the first of its kind that actually said, okay, what is the environmental impact of manufacturing boxes, of recycling them, and of reusing them or keeping them in use for longer? Yeah, I think the important thing there was probably listening to what the customer needed, because we possibly could have blanked it and not given them any impact. Tracking. But at the end of the day, like, we're solving problems for people, we have to understand what are the problems that are— who's our customer? And what are the problems they're trying to solve? And how can we solve that? And we, I guess, we sort of found a little gap in the market because no one else was doing this.

So by solving one of your clients' problems, you basically innovated and did something that nobody else was doing at the time. And that became one of your unique selling points.

Yeah, basically, but I think, I think we've been able to create a small team of people that a lot of people are quite— nerdy is probably not the word, but they're quite interested about what we're doing. It's like, oh, this would be cool. It's like having that process with our management team of like every quarter, you find something new to do, can you find a better way of doing what you already do? Like, it's nice to get excited about that. And obviously, it's going to keep developing. But yeah, I think, I think the most important thing I've found is trying to have a process. So it's part of your culture, because I can't do all the things that we're doing. So I needed to try and get a team of people that buy into it and want to try and come up with these ideas. And actually, what I'm finding is, as we're growing, because we're still small, but as we're growing, I'm finding people are doing stuff far better than I could ever do it, you know. So I think, I think, you know, the answer of how do we develop our sales system and our impact tracking system, it probably started with culture, to be honest, on the simplest level. Culture is probably trying to find a team of people that can enjoy overcoming these obstacles, get excited about it, I guess.

What sort of things do you do to nurture culture at Reuserbops, consciously and unconsciously? But now as you grow, you, you tend to realize a bit more that it is part of the culture that you're building in the business.

Oh, It's hard at the moment because we are growing and it sometimes when everybody's maxed out, it can become a little bit toxic, you know, and I guess with culture, it's not like, it's not binary. It's not like you've got great culture, you've got bad culture. It's kind of like, it's a, it's a, it's almost like a living thing and it's constantly changing day by day, minute by minute. But yeah, for us with the management team, I think having that process that I talked about was very important, because that's all— that's, that's basically trying to create a culture of people with high standards, you know, like, you want people with high standards, like the leaders in the company should have the highest possible standards, right? And just little things that we've done, like, for example, we believe that this company is a vehicle for us to have a positive impact, you know, on the people around us and the planet around us. So little things that we did is like, we do charity volunteering days. So everyone in the company, 2 days a year, we deploy them to work for an environmental or social charity that we support. We still pay them, but, you know, we want them to, we want them to want to do that and to enjoy that. And I think that's important because it kind of teaches us that we don't need to get paid to do everything. And sometimes it's about just trying to have an impact, you know, the people around us.

So that's part of the B Corp certification, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's not actually something we have to do for B Corp. To be honest, we, I mean, we've just moved to a city now, we've got a new premises, but we spent the last 7 years on a farm in the middle of nowhere, renting like an old agricultural unit. When we, when we discovered that we'd accidentally created an environmental company, you know, we kind of got into it, you know, like, we kind of got into this whole idea of like, wow, this is a company that can have a positive impact on society, on the environment. We solve a real problem for people. And then obviously we started thinking, well, as we grow, we're going to have to find people that resonate with that. We're going to have to— how do we find people that have the same kind of principles that we do? And it turns out when you're on a farm in the middle, literally in the middle of nowhere, you know, the neighbors we had were some cows, for example. Turns out it's quite hard. So we started thinking of ways of how do we attract like-minded people. So we did the charity volunteering days, which we still do, which are good fun. We actually, as part of our process, so when we get boxes reused, we are saving trees, carbon, energy, and water because we're keeping trees in the ground. We're reducing the emissions by not having to manufacture, not having to recycle boxes. So we decided to go a step further and every time A-Box is reused. So every time we sell a box, we're also funding reforestation. So we're trying to fix the problem, fix the damage caused by the packaging companies that came before us. And that's not for our B Corp certification. About 3 years ago, we heard about B Corp. And we said, this really aligns with us. So we decided to become a B Corp. So we decided to apply for the accreditation. And we didn't do that for it. But it does benefit Yeah. And I think if anyone's listening, and they're kind of wondering what is it, so like, B Corp accreditation, it stands for like benefit for all, basically. So the idea is, it's like a movement of businesses, it's like a business philosophy. And it's how it's, it's making your business a force for good in society. So it's how do you use your business to have a positive impact on the people in society, or on the planet, on the environment around us. And when we saw that, we thought, oh, this is us. So we thought, let's become a B Corp. But what we found actually, which is worth mentioning, if there's anyone listening that's thinking about it, is basically if you want to become a B Corp, there's a thing called like the B Impact Lab. And you basically do this. So I don't want to oversimplify it, but it's almost like a giant questionnaire.

And it asks you lots of questions and it's like 80 4 questions or something like that.

That's right. Yeah. So, but what we found is when we did it is it kind of showed us how to make our business better, because it was like, do you have this setup? You know, do you have this maternity policy? Do you have this HR policy? Do you track your environmental impact? Do you track scope 1, 2, 3 emissions? And, and as we were doing it, what we, what we realized is this is actually a very good framework of how to, how to scale your company, because it kind of, I think a lot of businesses out there, they kind of think, well, I've got a business selling carpets. Apparently everyone is an environmental business now, I probably need to work out how to make it environmentally friendly carpet business, right. But I think, I think it's not quite that. I think with, with B Corp, it's the idea of how do you use your business as a force for good, for people and planet. And I think that what's really helped us is becoming a B Corp and going through that certification process. And going through all those questions, it's almost given us a checklist of what we need to do to improve our business. And it turns out that the businesses that look after their staff the most and their customers and society, turns out they're kind of the most successful businesses because people want to work for them, people want to work with them. So, so yeah, I did. We initially, we started going down this idea of how do we find people like us with these initiatives, and then we found B Corp. But the thing with B Corp is I would argue that any business should probably go through the certification process because it's like, it's free for starters. And you can get the framework online.

To download the questionnaire and to go through the questions. To get certification, it does have a cost involved.

Oh yeah, there is like a—

Just to clarify for—

yeah. Sorry, yeah, there is like a certification fee. There is like a membership fee. It's not extortionate. But certainly to, to, yeah, to go through the framework and to see where you score as a company, that's free. But yeah, our intention was, oh, this sounds like us, let's get the accreditation, maybe it'll help us find like-minded people to join us. But what we found is, actually, we now, after having gone through the, all the questions, we now have a plan of what we're going to do to develop our company over the next 1, 2, or 3 years. And I will kind of argue like, businesses shouldn't see it as an environmental thing. They should probably just see it as this is a good hack. This is a good way to work out how to get my business from here to here, because most people are trying to do that. And most people don't know how to do that, that have small businesses, like I certainly didn't.

So you look, you looked at B Corp as a blueprint to improve your business and your processes?

Yeah, well, that's what it became. Like, that's, that's what we found useful about the process. Originally, we just thought this sounds like, should we get the accreditation? Will it help us attracts certain team members that align with us. But yeah, we found it a very useful tool to help us work out how to develop and improve and grow our company. And yeah, and I would actually argue that as a small business doing it, it's probably easier than a big business, to be honest, from my experience.

If you certainly, as you grow, build into the business, all these criteria and benefits, then it certainly helps than having to implement them much later on. But yeah, but as we were speaking about the environment, I wanted to pick up on something else you said in a, in another podcast, and we'll give Richard a quick name check for that. You said that being alive is bad for the planet. So my question is, how can we survive sustainably?

It's a good question. Yeah, I think what I meant is that everything has an environmental impact. And I think that there are lots of people out there that get very concerned, you know, like climate crisis, you know, global warming, doomsday. And I think you just have to remember that everything does have an impact. So you shouldn't make it a problem, like the story you tell yourself shouldn't be this is a problem, I can't do this, I can't do that. But we're very lucky to live in a society where anybody can, you know, for example, do pretty much anything they want. Like, anybody can set up a business, anybody can really have a positive impact as well, you know, on the planet. We fell into that. And, you know, effectively what we've done is we've built a purpose-driven business. And it's just, it's, it's a nice life to have. It's nice to wake up in the morning and feel you have some purpose and you're progressing something. So I guess what I was getting at when I said being alive is bad for the planet is that we shouldn't focus too much on the negative impact that we have on our planet. We should only be looking at it as a benchmark to say, well, what could we be doing to have a more positive impact to address this? Okay.

I want to talk about a bit about your personal journey. Jack, I know as a business owner and a manager, life can get very hectic. You can get pulled from multiple directions. You can work crazy hours, especially when you're scaling up. And just a quick mention that you moved into a much larger premises and you're on the path of expanding and scaling fivefold, if I'm correct. So I want to understand now that you're maturing into the business, what are the habits and routines that keep you grounded and productive when things go crazy? How do you keep it together?

Yeah, it's really hard. I mean, I've just, it's really hard actually. I just like the last sort of 6 or 7 weeks as we've been like setting up this new like factory and stuff. I have been working, and a lot of people in the company as well, like really hard, like to the point where you're like, oh God, is this, is this bad for my health here? You're working like 15, 16 hours a day. And I think, I think that there's all, there's all the kind of like the corny stuff that everyone says around like, like sleep and exercise and stuff like that.

But do you agree with it or do you practice it?

I completely agree. I like, I try, I try and I try, I like running, right? And I've got a little bit out of the swing of things over Christmas, unfortunately. But like, if I get up 40 minutes earlier, and I go for like a 25-minute run, and I run as fast as I can, you know, I just kind of madman in the dark at like 5 in the morning. If, if I do that, and when I'm driving to work on my way into work, I feel like, just can't explain it, I just feel like, I feel like any problem I'm going to get today isn't a problem, I can deal with it. Like I just have a different aura in my mind. That's how I feel like. And likewise, when, when I don't, which happens sometimes, I get up late or I like snooze the alarm or something. Kind of, yeah, problems seem worse. I kind of, I kind of drive to work and I'm like, ugh, do you know what I mean? And as corny as it sounds, I know lots of people that are much smarter than me will say lots of important things you could do. If I get 8 hours sleep and I exercise in the morning, I feel, I feel like invincible. I feel like I can do anything. And when I don't, I feel stale, to be honest. So, so that's kind of it for me. But I think the, the, the other thing that I'm finding is like, you can't do this forever. I can't work 5, 6 days a week and work like 15, 16 hours a day. Forever, and neither can the people that work for me, because eventually you do get burnt out and you do get worse at what you're doing, and you, you know, you get angry and grumpy and you blow your top and stuff. So I'm still working on it, to be honest, but I'm trying to make sure that it's more like sprints rather than this is the whole race, if you know what I mean. Yeah, it's not healthy and it's not possible, but it is, it is, is healthy to build a culture where people will go the extra mile and put extra work in and stuff, but it can't be, it can't be every day, every week, every month, every year, because it's unhealthy. So I'm trying with moderate success, not been very successful recently, but I'm trying to, I'm trying to make it more of like a sprint thing in my own mind. And then the team as well. I know someone in my team was helping me with something and I know they emailed me at 2 in the morning. So they were up till 2 in the morning doing something for me. And then they came in at 8 o'clock today and like, that's, amazing that I've got someone that cares that much about what we're doing and they're going to do that, but they can't do that every day, every week, every month because it's going to kill them.

So how do you stay organized? You mentioned you look and plan your week ahead. Are there any tips, tricks, or tools that you use to stay organized and keep your team organized?

Hmm, with great difficulty is the answer. I'm not the most organized person, to be honest. I'm a bit all over the place. I'm a worker, like, I really like, I like working. I like putting the time in and the hours in. And I get excited about what I do. But I'm not an organized person. Yeah, I mean, I've tried lots of different things, like everyone listening has, and lots of things don't work. But the thing, the thing that I find best is trying to plan as far in his head as possible. And always, like, if I'm doing my plan tomorrow for next week, I'm always trying to think, like, I'll do it on Friday, and I'll think, okay, where can I add the most value? And sometimes, if it's something I'm going to delegate, I'm thinking, okay, well, who can add— who can do a better job at this than me? I need them to do it. So I think just trying to think, where can I add the most value? And what's the most crucial things? What's essential Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and what is like a nice to have, and then trying to not do the nice to haves. That's what I'm doing at the moment. I mean, I'm getting there. But like I said, I'm not, I'm not the, I'm not the like Fortune 500 CEO that's got like a trillion dollars in the bank and knows how to do all these things. Yes, I don't know what advice. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, that's the plan. What advice have you got, Daniel? What's your, what would you do?

Keeping organized, using a calendar and time blocking certain things during the day and during the week is one of the things that a lot of the Millennial Masters I've been speaking to for this series have been telling me. Color coding and color blocking in the calendar when, especially when you plan to do deep work or deep thinking. I have to admit that in my previous business life, I've been guilty of burning the candle at both ends for hours, weeks, months, and possibly years, which can lead to exhaustion and burnout. But the idea of time blocking and color coding can be a simple one. And I've even had mothers who were explaining that they were booking time with the family in their calendar to make sure they get to do that. So I would say that's possibly a good bit of wisdom to share and take on board.

I do agree with that because like the, from my experience of that, the to-do list is just endless. Like I could, I could work for 1,000 years, could keep working for 1,000 years. So I think that when in the past, when I've thought about, I want to work on this task or this project, if I get into the habit of thinking about tasks and projects, if I'm not careful, I look at the clock and it's 11 PM at night. Whereas if I think, okay, I want to do this task, but I'm going to do it for 3 hours. And then I'm going to do this other task, which is very important maintenance thing that I need to do today. I'm going to do that for 2 hours. Yeah, I seem to be able to cover more bases more, but I'm definitely finding like, just trying to do less is probably the best way of doing more. I can definitely thinking like, if I try and do 5 things today, then I'm diluting my energy into fifths. Whereas if I try and do one thing, I'm getting like 5 times the energy and focus on that one thing. So I don't know what you call that, but yeah, trying to do less, I think, is probably a good way of doing more is what I'm finding.

I think it's part of the 80/20 rule that is mentioned in a lot of the business books that I'm going to ask you about in a second as well. What was your inspiration? But now that I've brought it up, the 80/20 rule is to usually they say that the biggest impact from the things you do are the top 20%, while the other 80% is just taking a lot of your time without having the impact, but we can get really bogged down on those. So if we can identify what are the key things that move the needle and make a difference and just focus on those for the majority of the time, you can then delegate the, the other 80% of the things that don't move the needle. Speaking of, speaking of books throughout your business and learning journey, continually learning from my experience is also key. Have there been any books or podcasts or people who have inspired you or you aspire to be like that you can share with others?

Yeah, definitely. Book-wise, like my girlfriend always makes fun of me because she's like, all of your books are how to do this, this simple hack this way. And she's like, it's all like diagrams and like fucking textbooks, but there's, there's a good one I'm reading at the moment, which is called, it's called Essentialism. I forget who it's by. Maybe you can Google who it's by, but it's about trying to work out how to do—

We'll check it out and I'll make sure that I include all of them in the show notes. So don't worry about that, but tell me your, your takeaways from it.

Yeah, well, I've only just started reading it, but it's what I was talking about earlier. It's like how to, how to work out what's essential and how to do the essential tasks, basically. It's kind of like a productivity kind of book, but I'm reading that at the moment. But to be honest, like I actually, I'm getting way, I can't, I'm kind of like, I'm a sucker for like stories. Like I really like learning by seeing someone else's stories. So like, you know, biographies, biographies, I kind of prefer them. I'm actually like a I don't know how useful it— well, I have used my interest. I'm actually, I'm reading at the moment, a book I borrowed from my girlfriend, The House of Gucci, about Gucci family. I wouldn't say that's particularly good.

I have watched the film.

Yeah, I wouldn't say it's like a business book. I mean, they're all stabbing themselves in the back in that. But no, I mean, I love reading stories. There's like the Steve Jobs biography. There's a recent one about Elon Musk. I think it's very— I think when you read a biography, you're kind of like an autobiography, like you're, you're kind of like living that person's life and you're thinking their thoughts. And I think that you read it and you come away with kind of their ideas. So I almost feel like I prefer doing that than reading a book about like how to be more productive, for example. And it's a lot more inspiring, you know, when you hear the story of how they did it.

I was about to say more about inspiration rather than practical action, which you can then apply to your field.

Yeah, I think it's just, we love stories, don't we? You know, It's like there's something, if you're reading the book about like Steve Jobs and how he built Apple, like it comes to life in your own mind. And then you're thinking like, oh, this reminds me of this at my company. And this is how I could apply that. I think it's just a lot more inspiring, it's more palatable.

I'm going to ask you for a quick hot take before we taper off into one of the final questions that I typically ask the Millennial Masters. The question for the hot take that I have for you is, Hybrid or remote work?

Is this for, is this for me personally, or is this for?

For you or for your team or for your business?

I suppose the answer to be annoying is it depends, right? It depends. Like we've got drivers and we've got people that do production. We've got people that work in the warehouse, so they can't work from home if they do that. But I find that, I find that most people in our company, I think, work better, work more productively as a team when they're in the office. And certainly, I think it's better for collaboration. But I think that everyone would agree, and me too, that if you're trying to do something that requires kind of focus, sometimes it's really great to go away and do that, lock yourself at home or do that somewhere else. I think certainly, like, if it's like leaders within a company, I think that works really well. And it's nice to give people that kind of freedom, I think. I guess hybrid, hybrid, but like I said, it depends.

And where do you find your peace again? Do you do your deep work and your thinking and your planning while at home? You said you were up until 11 o'clock the other day.

I like working in the office, to be honest. I like, I've got like a quiet office upstairs now. I think I used to have like an office with everyone else, but I still have a desk downstairs because sometimes I like to you know, feel what's going on. I think with what I do, like I said, I'm the crap filter. So all the problems come to me and I have to feel like, what are we doing here? How are we fixing this? I'll be kind of like walking around seeing the problems and then going to my desk and then trying to like quietly think about what we do about that. So yeah, that's me. But I think everybody, I think benefits from a quiet working environment. I guess the trick is if you've got a team, it's like, how do you give people quiet focus space, but also, um, how do you create those chance encounters so that people build more of a culture and a relationship with each other, you know, in an office? Because if everyone's locked away in different rooms in a building, or if everybody's working from home, the, the trouble you might have is they're not very good at collaborating, and they're not, you know, there's, there's a certain magic you get when, when ideas are kind of like just off the cuff and shared. And yeah, I was gonna say, like, from my experience, the best way of trying to create that is trying to create— trying to— it's a bit, it's a bit schemey, but it's trying to like create areas where people can bump into each other and have those kind of chance encounters. For example, just making everyone have lunch at the same time in a canteen. It's a great way of trying to—

making sure that they collaborate rather than taking individual lunches or taking it at their desk.

Yeah, I think that the trendy phrase is siloed, but you don't want like a siloed team really. You want a team that works together, but can go and focus on stuff.

Fair enough. Ahead of us wrapping up, I have a question that I do ask absolutely everybody on this podcast. And it comes off the back of a lot of self-reflection. And what I wanted to ask you, Jack, is what are the biggest sacrifices that you had to do to be where you are today as a person and as a businessman?

Yeah, I think, I think that's a really good question. Because I think every, you know, everybody that's set up a business or running a business, like you have this like idea around what you could achieve or what you could be or what you could do. I think in every case, the truth is like to get from here to there is this massive gap. And you fill that gap with your time, you know, so, so if you, if you choose to go down this route, you, there's, there's stuff that you can't do. You can build a business and you can put the time into it, but on the flip side, you're, you're losing time, you're losing other opportunities. And, and for me, like, I do have, like, friends, I have a social life, but, um, I've, yeah, I've, I've been very absent from that for a long time, um, for the last few years. And then also, like, my relationship as well. It's hard having a relationship You can't really have one if you're going to work like 12, 15 hours a day. So yeah, so for me, I think that's, that's been really tough. And I've not really worked out the solution yet. I'm trying to, I'm trying to grow the company. I'm trying to work out how to delegate and I'm trying to work out how to get to a stage where those intense bits of work are like sprints and not my entire life because I don't want to be, I don't want to be rich and successful, but have no friends and no, no girlfriend. So yeah.

Are there any regrets or lessons that you're taking forward or that you would share with the 20-year-old Jack when he was in the early stages of the business? What would you tell your younger self now from the lessons you've had?

I don't think I have any regrets really. Like I said, there's been lots of problems, hell of a lot of stuff that we've done wrong. But, but I think that's an important part of the journey, I suppose. Yeah, I suppose that the, that there are kind of two, two important things I've learned, you know, that really probably the most sacred thing in that, that you can, that you have in your life is your time. And it's great and needed to spend all that on a company if you want to grow a company, but But I guess like people, people will judge you by the time that you put into them. So if you don't put time into your family, it will have a negative impact. And I'm still working that lesson out, to be honest. And I think probably because I've talked a lot about the mistakes that we made. So I think probably if I could give some advice to me 10 years ago when I was 20, it would probably be try and spend more time trying to learn from other people that have done this journey. So listening to podcasts like yours, for example, because I listen to lots of podcasts, you know, like the Stephen Bartlett one is like a really good podcast for like business people, for example. But I listen to lots of podcasts, try and read books. It's very time consuming, but it's the biggest source of learning stuff. And there are a lot of problems that I've actually not had to go through and overcome because I've learned about them from other people, then I've been able to anticipate them. But if I'd known that earlier, I probably could have probably could have reduced 10 years of work into like 3 years probably. And then I suppose that would have helped with the time thing. So probably learn from other people that have got to where you want to go is probably the most important thing for 20-year-old Jack and 20-year-old whoever's listening and 30-year-old Jack as well, to be fair.

That's some really good advice for sharing as we wrap up this episode. Thank you so much for sharing your story and the wisdom so far, Jack, and wishing you the best with your scaling up and the next move.

Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that. Um, yeah, it's fun today. It'd be, be nice maybe to come back on in like 10 years and see how I got on.

Or maybe much earlier than that when things skyrocket.

Maybe. We'll see.

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