Charles Robinson, Founder @ Water2

Charles, welcome to the podcast. If you could just start off by telling us a little bit about what you do now.

Sure, um, thank you for having me, guys. Um, my name is Charles Robinson. I am the founder of two companies, one of which is Gelcard, a hand sanitizer business I started at 19 when I dropped out of UCL, and the second one is a water technology company called Water2.

Yeah, and what was that experience like at university? Obviously you go to UCL in 2019 and then COVID hits. What were your main motivations for leaving and how did you find it while you were there?

Um, I arrived at university really ambitious. I'd got all A*s in my A-levels, I was moving to London as well, and I just felt I'm 18, I can work hard, I'm in the most important city in the world, and I just wanted to really work hard on something. And I arrive, and I didn't go to any Freshers' Week event, I just went to the library, I read all the textbooks for the first term straight away, and I soon realized that the academic relationship was way more transactional than school was, in that if you wanted to really get into a subject outside of the curriculum, you couldn't just go up to the lecturer at the end of the seminar and just say, 'Oh, can we have a coffee?' It was way more transactional. It was, 'No, these are my office hours.' They're for like half an hour a week for like 400 people. Um, and so I didn't like that straight away. So within the first, I would say, 6 to 8 weeks, I was already thinking like, 'I can't do this for 3 years.' And then Straight away there were strikes in my first term, and this was doing philosophy at UCL, so there was just no teaching. And then shortly after, uh, the first year was virtually cancelled down to coronavirus. So I had a really terrible experience at UCL. Part of that was down to myself, like I didn't engage socially, and that was like a conscious decision that I just wanted to work hard. And the idea of dropping out is actually like, I don't think I've actually dropped out yet. I deferred for perpetuity because I deferred my second year, I deferred my third year, and I just haven't spoken to them again. So they, I would presume if you drop out, you get some sort of document to say you're no longer enrolled at the university, but I never got such a document. So I've just deferred. And, um, the decision seems like a big one in retrospect. At the time, it was a very simple decision because the first year of council— so I kind of had 6 months of time at like 19 years old where I had nothing to do. We were all locked down in COVID, and I still kind of had some money left because my student loan was for the whole year, but there was nothing to spend it on. Um, so the decision at the time to sort of start a business and work on something was a very low opportunity cost decision. I just said, I'm 19, I've got 6 months of time with no obligation, I've got no rent, no children, blah blah blah, let me just work on something. And then one thing led to another. It was never like, oh, I'm at this crossroads in my life, I have to make this big decision. Just, it was accumulation of small decisions.

Yeah, so maybe On that, we'll come back to the decision-making behind it, but maybe that spark that you got in Jailcard sometime in lockdown, right? How did that come about and what was kind of the story initially during lockdown?

Yeah, so Bezos often speaks about, like, there's a narrative fallacy that everyone wants to look back on ideas and say there was this lightbulb moment where, oh, I thought of Amazon, I thought of Facebook. Whatever it might be. And it's true, ideas don't manifest like that, and progress doesn't manifest like that. It was much rather— I— it was, it was much rather a personal motivation of not wanting to do university. I wanted to do anything apart from university. So I was volunteering in politics, I started to try and write a book, um, neither of which worked. And Um, the, the— so that was the motivation to, to start a business. The idea came from— I was aware of a product which, uh, so for those who haven't seen it, GelCard is a, um, a hand sanitizer which is in a type of sachet. That sachet sort of clicks together and dispenses the hand sanitizer, and that mechanism has existed for a number of years, and it was used in other applications. So it was used at this point for some type of contact lens cleaner, which I was aware of. Like, the product was made in Italy, and this was a time where everyone was talking about sanitizer, and there was just an open-ended question: could you put sanitizer in such a device? And after you sort of call up the manufacturer, you do some research— yeah, that's, that's plausible, that, that could work. No one does it, but that could work. And it was just sort of putting two and two together. And getting a few samples, and with no idea what to do with them, no idea how to sell them, but just with enough motivation that I would just make it work, whatever.

Yeah, and when you started the company, like you said, you didn't know what you were doing, really. You didn't know how to distribute. How did you then develop then as an entrepreneur? You know, you didn't do anything to do with business at school or at university. Where did that learning come from?

Right, yeah, so I studied philosophy. I had I have no entrepreneurial ambitions. I've never wanted to be a business owner. So it wasn't like the, since I was 12, I was selling sweets on the playground. It was, and I think this is the most important thing in assessing any entrepreneur or business owner, it was I had a very, a high rate of iteration. So, and what that basically means is that when I would try many things and when something didn't work, I would try straight away again, but changing something. So it's clear, like we've established I had the motivation, I was hardworking at school, I did well, I didn't want university, so I had those qualities of work ethic, ambition, dedication. and applying that to business, it was, okay, I believed in the product first of all. I thought it was just an intrinsically and intuitively good product. And I would just speak to everyone. So that would be just cold DMs on LinkedIn, writing letters to people. And I initially— so here's an example of the rate of iteration. I initially had a reasonable thesis for a 19-year-old that the customer for a gel card would be a café, because cafés have products which are takeaway products, but you can't take away a bottle of hand sanitizer. So a sachet of hand sanitizer, which is really the only portable type of consumable sanitizer you can have, would be the perfect customer. And that kind of sounds plausible. Um, and then you go and speak to cafés, and we spoke to Pret, and They're like, well, obviously that's a stupid idea because the average order value in Pret is like £6.50, and this sachet of sanitizer is going to cost them like 25p. So that just takes up way too much of their margin for them to even entertain the idea, because like, these are businesses. So okay, I had this idea, it failed, like, well, it didn't work, whatever you want to say. And then the next day, okay, I've got to iterate on that idea. How can I do that better? And after speaking to more people, we thought premium restaurants wouldn't have this margin problem, because the average order value in a restaurant in Mayfair might be £200. So a 20p sachet of sanitizer, a gel card, makes sense. That's just kind of part and parcel of having a chandelier on the ceiling. It's just part of the environment. And that worked. And those were and are our customers. So that's just an example of the rate of iteration.

Yeah, and in those high-value restaurants, one of the things that happened there was that Bella Hadid was pictured using that, and obviously that's great publicity. What did you think about that when it actually happened, and what have you learned from that promotion that you got from it in terms of how it can help develop your business?

When it happened, I remember going to my phone and seeing the messages. I smiled and I sort of just put my phone down because I thought, okay, I didn't— I actually didn't know who she was. I knew she— I saw she had like a million followers. I was like, that's cool. I didn't know who Bella Hadid was. I couldn't name like a supermodel. Um, I was like, okay, that's cool. And then I, I saw my friends later that day and they were like, wow, this is like the best thing you've ever done. And I was like, no, the, the best thing I've done was I secured this restaurant deal with a restaurant you've never heard of around half the world, which should bring in much more revenue and clear sort of tangible benefits, but like consumers and people don't care about the internals of a business. If they see Bella Hadid with your product, that's a great thing. So in retrospect, it's something I'm proud of, and it is certainly something we've really used to its fullest capacity. Like, she has no commercial relationship with Jelco at all. And she didn't even mention our name. She just happened to take a photo and the product was with her. So in retrospect, it's one of the things I'm proud of. And I guess it's like clout, which actually does matter in consumer brands. But yeah, it's kind of like PR. Like, business owners know none of PR is real. That's not to say it's fake, but it's just a distortion of reality. What real businesses are based on are P&Ls and balance sheets and this sort of thing, not if you're in Forbes or if Bella Hadid has your product. So it's nice, but it's just not real. Yeah.

And I guess on that, in terms of you talking about your friends, maybe they don't really get what you're doing. Maybe before you started then, was there any reservations from your loved ones and friends? Did they maybe not get what you were Um, let me think.

So I was fortunate that I was the first in my family to go to university, so they weren't— they were like proud of me, but they weren't sort of really like stuck on me, okay, I have to get this degree. So neither my mum or dad went to university. Um, so family were fine. And also the nature of me dropping out wasn't that I couldn't be bothered to wake up in the morning to go to lectures. It was the, like, antithesis. It was, I really wanted to work hard and this wasn't stimulating enough. Then I think all my friends were sort of in agreement because it's very easy as a university student to agree that university seems pointless, and it certainly did at that COVID era. I have one friend in particular, Emmanuel, who definitely has taken the more considered route, which is like LSE, now grown works in the city and earns a lot of money. And he was like, at the time, I can't remember his exact words, but he was like, "That's a risk." And going back to what I said earlier, I never saw it as a risk because it wasn't one big decision. It was, okay, I've got 6 months to to just work on an idea with no opportunity cost, well, I'd be stupid not to. And then the business was at a point where I was like, okay, I should definitely defer for my second year. And then it was a point I should definitely defer for my third year. And now the question is, what would I achieve from going to university? If going to university, I thought I could build a better business after it, I would go straight away. But I just don't, I don't, don't see that being the case.

Yeah, you talk about how you're passionate for entrepreneurship and generally just like a motivated person, but I want to ask about the actual passion for the business you're doing, the idea you have, and maybe it's fair to say in your first one, it was more something that sounded logical and something that you thought should exist, and in the one that you've started recently, that seems like much more of a passion project, something that you, I saw an interview, you said you really love the idea and it's something that you really wanted to help out with, so could you just explain a bit about that company and why you decided to move on from your prior one?

Sure. So for clarification, I haven't moved on. Like, Gelcard is still an active business, growing fastest in Japan and the Middle East. So I'm doing both. But you're right, there's certainly a question to why would you not just focus on one thing. So it's clear, like, I am not passionate about hand sanitizer. And if anyone says they are, they're lying. And most founders will say, oh, I'm passionate about X, Y, and Z. And I generally sort of cringe when I hear that. And it's clear that anyone can see that Jailcard was a business built in response to what was happening in the world. And it was opportunistic. And I don't say that in a bad way. It's just like businesses built upon opportunity. And Water2, which is a new business, has sort of come from me being relatively young— 20, 21, 22— and thinking, okay, I've built this one business in response to the world, and I have some degree in and skill and dexterity in building businesses, hopefully. If you could build any business, what would it be? And I was trying to think about these intrinsic qualities around the most ideal business. So it's clear I haven't come from like a consumer problem, like necessarily, even though that's not totally detached from it. I'm just thinking, what business would I build if I could build any business in the world? And I like choosing really huge problems and just building in that space. And I would love to have many different products, and I would love to have a sense of recurring revenue. And I would— I think the most important thing would be I would love to have something where I could benefit from the compounding interest in 5, 10, 15, 20, even like 50 years. And building water in a space clearly lends itself towards that. Like, everyone's going to drink water. The transition away from plastic bottled water is only going to continue. And I just wanted to sort of keep building something that would just get bigger every year in that space. And it's clearly a limitation of Gelcard is that a lot of our demand was and has been contingent upon COVID. And that's made it hard to grow, because one month you do amazing, then another month a whole country shuts down. So the motivation behind Water 2 has been a deeply personal one. And from the consumer point of view around Water 2 is, I love bottled water as almost a philosophical idea that you can take something which under blind taste tests people are incredibly poor, they're almost worth, or they're about the same as random, as trying to attribute different tastes to different brands. So if you take away the Evian packaging, the Fiji packaging, whatever it might be, people are really bad. Still, Fiji are going to price higher but still outsell these other brands? And coming from a sort of philosophical background, that's a really interesting thing to start thinking about. And, and to me, it, it just is about the, the power of storytelling and, and marketing, um, and communicating these different ideas. And it's kind of that principle I saw on the bottled water market, and I just thought, if we could apply that to water filtration and build these amazing consumer brands like Evian, like Fiji, but as a water filter. I thought that would just be like a really cool thing, and I would like that as a consumer. So yeah, that's kind of the two business perspective, also the consumer perspective on why I started Water2.

Yeah, so maybe in your first company, it sounded like you went into it quite solo, you know, by yourself. You did a lot of it. But in your next one, I mean, everyone talks about for a company to succeed, that a team is essential, or maybe mentors that are guiding you. Have you got a team in your next one? And if so, what is the importance in that team?

Sure, yeah. I would openly say I think my biggest limitation as a founder is my unwillingness to delegate, and the very small amount of relative success I've had so far, it's really been down to me doing it. Of course, I've had people and amazing advisors and friends and business partners that have helped along the way. But really, and it almost is shameful to say this, but every pound of revenue I've ever generated, I have sold that pound. So it's clear, like, my business output has been largely dependent on my output. And I haven't succeeded so far in really building an amazing team and stepping away, as it were. It's certainly one of my ambitions in Water 2 is to grow more as a founder and do that. But I don't have a co-founder. I'm sort of solo in. But certainly, it isn't a coincidence that everyone from Jobs to Zuckerberg to Paul Graham emphasize on that you've got to build a great culture and a great team. So that's my ambition, but I can't give advice on how to do that.

Yeah. So I guess moving a little bit back then, you had this big problem you wanted to solve in terms of water. It was a big theme. How did you go about finding a solution to that and narrowing it down to, i.e., what your business does, Waterzoo? What were the steps, maybe, in taking that?

So, the world, I think, and maybe this is like a wider lesson on, because most of your listeners are going to be students who are confused. The way I view the world is very imperfect. And I mean to say that the world is very imperfect in that, in standardized systems, sort of school, university, It seems like, okay, if I just do the work, if I get these grades, I'm now gonna go to this class, I'm gonna get this promotion, I'm gonna earn this much, and the ideas just follow a more logical intuitive sequence. And that isn't the way it works. Like, a lot of your business success might just be because you were walking through the corridor at a certain time on a certain day and you bumped into someone and you gave them or you gave them your business card, and then that led to like your first big sale, and then Bel Hadid uses your product, and now you're on the podcast talking about it, right? So that's a really imperfect thing. You won't really— you don't really think like that when you're, when you're young. So that's something I, I would encourage. And going to the question, like, I was in like just outside Milan in Italy, um, at one of the warehouses that we keep the gel cars at. And our Italian business partner over there said that there's a factory along the road which specializes in water filtration for certain industries. And he had a brochure and just said, yeah, have a look through this. And at the time, I was kind of already interested in water. Going back to that philosophical idea around bottled water at different prices, I was always kind of— aware of that. And I remember reading through this catalog in Italian, so just looking at the pictures really, thinking, I don't have one meaningful thought about water filters. Like, how many water filter brands can you guys name?

None.

Zero. Brita. Brita, right, one. And that's— so the most common answer is one, the second most common answer is zero. And for such a huge product category, that's kind of strange. And If I got you to now name bottled water brands, you could probably name minimum 5, pushing 15. So that's kind of interesting. And then it's interesting to think, OK, why can I only name one brand? And why does nothing else come to my head? And if I was going to buy one, how would I go about doing that? So straight away, I was thinking, OK, water's interesting. It's a huge problem. You've got sustainability. You've got environmental. You've got pricing. You've got droughts. Accessibility all around the world. It's just a huge category of problems, and there just seems to be a lack of anyone doing anything interesting in water filtration. Um, so all these things were sort of sparking in my head, not that second, but kind of over a few days, and, and thinking about it. And kind of my, my initial thesis then It is mostly intuitive, but it's to make a water filter company that same consumer brand, such as Evian or Fiji, is that you've actually got to be a water company, not a filter company. You've got to focus on the water rather than the filtration. That seems like a subtle distinction, but to me, that manifests in the unique selling point around water, too, is that we have the water filter, but also, after the water's gone through the filter, we're going to can that water and sell it to people. So we're the first people ever, and literally ever, to have a water filter and then also sell the water, which came from that initial idea.

Is that sort of, in going with the Bella Hadid thing, that's sort of you tapping into what consumers want? So how they think is more about the water and not the process behind it. And although maybe you don't think in that way, you're sort of playing towards the fact that that's the case.

Yeah, there's certainly an attention, and like, I'm not an alien. I do consume things. I have like a prête-à-manger. Hot chocolate with me. So I've, I've consumed, I've consumed their brand. So I am like some, somewhat aware. And to me, I guess there's a thought experiment. And if I was thinking, okay, like if I wanted to really believe like this filtered water is good, I just thought the best symbol of that wouldn't be trying to send someone like a whole 100-page PDF of all the different chemistry or whatever it would be. Oh, if I saw someone on the street carrying a can of water too, and they went and bought, paid money for that, and it was good, and they were enjoying it, and they're having a good time, and they were being hydrated, to me that would be the best symbol ever that, okay, like, the filtered water is good, I want to get that for my home. So yeah, the idea behind the can, and you're right, is tapping into a similar principle behind the Bel Hadid idea, is that People act on emotions and stories, and the can is a story.

Yeah, I've kind of got two questions that sort of stem from this, is that you've got these great ideas, and it seems like you're doing very well on your own with them, and you've got what it takes to be an entrepreneur, as you've shown. But the actual lifestyle of doing all this on your own, I mean, I'm curious about that, being young, doing something that you're still learning, and also not having, like maybe at university, those deadlines to work towards. Those people telling you what to do. Like, how are you dealing with that? I mean, it's quite a manic-depressive feeling, I imagine. Like, you know, one day you come up with loads of ideas and have loads of success, maybe another day you don't. How are you dealing with all that?

Right, so I was kind of, I was kind of thinking if you were going to ask this in my head, and more if I thought you were going to ask, like, do you, like, recommend, or like, what's your advice for someone who wants to be it? And, and up to this point in this podcast, I've been very enthusiastic just naturally about what I've been talking about, but I really don't advise people to do this, um, in the— yeah, like, it's extremely painful, it's embedded in uncertainty and chaos, um, it will have a huge effect on any relationship you have with anyone, including yourself, Um, and the, the lifestyle, the lifestyle is very, very difficult. And I, I'm always confused when founders who I know go through these different things and, and stuff like that, then tell people, oh, it's great, like you get to rule the world. My, my, um, my advice is that you shouldn't become an entrepreneur, and that's kind of a loaded, um, advice because If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you're probably not going to listen to my advice anyway, and you're probably so forced or committed, or it's just something you have to do. And in my situation, it wasn't like, I want to be that founder guy, Forbes Under 30, whatever. It was just not— I hated university, and I just wanted to really work hard and just build something and just have that validation each day that I'm actually doing something meaningful. Um, so, so, um, yeah, do you want me to go into more, more about the lifestyle, or—

yeah, maybe just what your, your day looks like, or, or even what you strive for an ideal day to look like.

Okay, yeah, nice stipulation. Um, so I will— over the last 2-3 years, I've tested loads of different things, anything from like waking up at 4 to like, like not waking up, but, um I would generally wake up around 7 in the morning. Where I'm living right now is about a minute away from the office, so I'm kind of— I wake up, brush my teeth, go to the office, start working, have breakfast at the office. I will Every Monday I write a list of things I have to do, and I've now started including a sub-list of things I really don't want to do but should do. Um, and I just keep that as kind of a mental note, but I just do the most urgent things straight away. Um, and that's mostly emails. And we, we were in kind of different time zones, so we're doing a lot of work in Kuwait at the moment. Kuwait is 3 hours ahead of GMT. So they're already awake and working. And, um, yeah, this will kind of be the natural setup of any day. Then it might just take many different versions. So on Sundays I have to go to the warehouse we have in London. Other days I have a meeting or I'm on a podcast with you guys. Um, and yeah, then I will have lunch around 1 PM. Then I will continue working generally in the office until around 6 to 7. Then I will go to the, the gym, which is like almost a non-negotiable for me, like exercising. There was a period for about 6 months which I, which I didn't do anything, um, and lockdown. And I look back at that and it wasn't the right thing to do. Um, you gain a few hours in those weeks and stuff, but in terms of longevity, you're really holding yourself back. And so yeah, do that— gym, sauna, shower— come back home, and then I will, depending how busy we are, work from 8 till around 1, or just chill in the evening depending on the day.

Yeah, and with your lifestyle and some of the decisions you've made before, I think a word that sort of comes to mind is— and something that I think a lot of people, those decisions would— the feeling that it would invoke would be fear, like To me, that's what it seems like. I was wondering what you think about the word fear and maybe your relationship with it. Do you see it as like a driver or do you see it as maybe something you do experience but you just sort of power through it?

I remember when I was 14, our English teacher said, like, okay, what's your biggest fear? And they were going around the class and people said like snakes or a snail. And I said failure. And that was probably like an annoying answer to give when you're 14, but there is certainly some degree of truth to it. I certainly fear failure, but I would say I'm more motivated by winning than necessarily a fear of failure. And I will admit, and perhaps this is not a good thing to say, but I construct my identity as such that it is not in my nature to fail. And that doesn't mean I'm the best at anything or everything, but in the sort of things I've done— I played football at a relatively high level, I academically did okay, I did the business and stuff, is that I wake up every day and just say it's not my nature to fail. I have high standards. And I think that's generally phrased as a superiority complex, in that I think I am deserving of such things. And believe me, I'm not necessarily defending this attitude and saying others should have it. I'm just saying this is true of myself. But This is paired with some deep insecurity that I am not going to be successful. So it's a weird paradox. It's that when I walk in the room, I think, okay, I'm not going to lose. I'm going to outwork all of you. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that thing. I'm going to be the best at it. But also in the back of my head, I'm thinking he or she might be working way harder than I am. They might be getting up earlier. They might be doing all these things. So It's combining these two things where I am terrified of failing, but I am at the same time very focused that I deserve to win and that's what will happen.

Wow, yeah, I guess that's a lot of— it's a mentality that probably a lot of people can relate to. I guess at a university like ours, UCL, a lot of really high-performing people and things like that, and obviously you've taken a different route, but yeah, I guess an inherent fear of failure. At least for us, I'm sure, is something that, yeah, can be related to. Well, I guess maybe in moving on to how you're doing at the moment, what is your plans for, obviously, you've obviously got Water 2 coming up. How about the future as well in a personal vein and also in a business vein for maybe the next few years?

Yeah, so I turn 22 in September. I was speaking to a friend who's a journalist the other day, and we were saying, I kind of had a problem with the relationship with my age for a while. So the reason, largely the reason I'm here and the reason I've had PR before is because not Charles has a good idea, it's 19-year-old guy has a good idea. 20-year-old guy has a good idea. And the journalist in question, he used to write for Forbes, and he was saying other founders have had this, that they build their whole brand on. Forbes 30 Under 30, Zuckerberg was 19, Gates was like 20, Jobs was 21. You feel it's really hard to separate the age. And I kind of had a thing where when I was 19, it was great because you're like the kid on the block and you can't really do anything wrong at 19. 'cause you're either just working hard or you're successful. And then I was thinking, okay, I've got now to level up at 20. And oh, now I've got to be 21. I remember thinking like when I turned 21, just like, you're 21, you've only done this. And I was embarrassed of it. And now I'm hoping I've got to an age where I'm so clearly conscious about this 'cause I'm speaking about it, but I'm more now just focused on like the decade or the two decades or the three decades. And this comes back to my earlier point around water too. It's not, okay, I just want to make a lot of money this year. It's I want to now lay the foundation so when I'm 32, I can have something which I'm still benefiting from and that can still have some impact in the world. And yeah, and like, I guess I started the business and going into this world before I was like an adult. Like, I was living at home. I've never like had a job before. I've never had like a job interview before. And so I started young. So now I'm also like now having to sort of grow up on the side. Like, I've had to like move out. I've got my own place. I've got to be more conscious of you can't just work 18 hours a day because there's not gonna be any food in the fridge. And all these simple things which to any other mature person, they're just like, okay, that's obvious, you're just a child. But like, I, I have just been like a hard-working child up to relatively recently, so I'm just trying to mature more as a person. Um, and, and, and yeah, I, I guess something I, um, I, I heard on a podcast today was, um It was by Will Ahmed, who's the founder of a company called Whoop, which is a wearable technology company. And he made a great point that there is a false dichotomy between a marathon and a sprint. So some people say like, oh, it's a sprint or it's a marathon. And he makes a great point when he's saying like, if you go to see the best marathon runners, they're running 4-minute miles like 26 times. The average person can't run a 4-minute mile just once. So these people are basically sprinting every mile, but they're doing a marathon. So if you want to be that top performer, you're sprinting and it's a marathon. And I kind of thought about that around business and that's totally true. You've got to have this kind of relentless intensity every day, but also have it structured in such a way where you can go for 10 years. And I think before there have been times in the business where I would like work, but I wouldn't exercise and I wouldn't have any social life and I just work 12 to 16 hours a day for ages. And it's great, you make a lot of progress for 2 months, but there's no longevity in that. So I guess now I'm trying to just more focus on these sort of principles that are just gonna be things I'll be benefiting from when I'm 32, 42, 52, 62. And that in itself is a wider point that, Business is one of those fields where you're going to be peaking probably when you're in your early 60s. The average age of a millionaire is 63 in America. But when we're growing up, we kind of have a weird mentality that our idols are athletes or musicians, and these people can peak in their early 20s. And it's just kind of keeping that mindset that 'Yeah, like, I'm trying to do this for the next 40, 50 years, but not the next 4 or 5 months,' and act accordingly.

Yeah, and on all that, um, the question we'd like to ask all of our guests is their idea of success. Like, what is success to them? And maybe it's been different for you each year in your entrepreneurship journey, and it will change going forward, but as of right now, what is your idea of success?

There are a few questions in there. I'm going to answer the overarching question, then I'll like unpack it. To me, success is just down to one thing, which is family. Nothing, um, nothing comes close. And I always try to make this disclaimer that when I— a couple years ago, my, my, like, my boarding school, my high school, asked me back to do a talk. And I was thinking about this on like on my way there that I'm gonna speak to like 200 people, maybe 4 of those people are going to be entrepreneurs in their 20s. Maybe 10 of them will be entrepreneurs their whole life. So I'm not going to go and stand up in front of them and just say, oh yeah, you've got to be a millionaire by your 24 and you've got to do these things, because that's just not real life. And who's going to benefit from that? And what I tried to make the point was there are many versions of success. So In, in my very small world, maybe an epitome of success is building like a million, multi-million, or billion dollar unicorn, whatever you, whatever you want to say. But that is literally just one version of it. And I have friends who follow their religion or are building a family and are never going to earn much money, but you can't tell me these people aren't successful. So like straight away, um, that's just like a real distinction I want to make. But my, my version of success is, is family. Straight away, I always say that, um, to me, business isn't something where I ultimately see myself basing my, my success off. I kind of have a I'm friends with a politician, and I always tell him, I don't think you can win the sort of money game because there's always going to be someone richer, younger, better, more successful to you. And of course, you're always kind of playing that ladder because you always have a sense of where you're at compared to other people. But you can never win that game. So I want to play that game. I want to get quite high up on the leaderboard. But then at a certain time, I want to leave. My ultimate ambition is to go into politics, um, beyond any business ambitions I have. Um, and but personally, starting a family and like providing for a family is like what success means to me.

Yeah, and I think in a world of business, someone successful like yourself, it's easy to lose sight of things like that. Um, so yeah, that's really, that's really refreshing. So in terms of maybe just to to finally wrap up, if we were maybe to give you 1 minute almost to leave our audience with, something to talk about, something to leave them with that summarizes what you've been talking about, what would that be?

I would essentially disregard everything I've said up to this point because a trap I don't want to fall into is 22-year-old he's been on the news, now he's going to tell everyone what to do, which is like what most other founders do, right? Like, you get a sense of success that you're probably extroverted, you're probably confident, you like, you've got everything sorted out. You say, oh, everyone should be an entrepreneur. You're, you, if not, you're a slave working like 9 to 5, all these stupid things. And I think most people should be employed, and there is nothing wrong with that. And in fact, there's just so much right with that. For, on almost every metric. Financially, the average person is gonna be way richer as an employee. You're gonna have a better separation of like work and family and better mental health, better time management, all these different things. So my overall point would be is that I, I am not a normal person. And I, like, one manifestation of that is that I was 18 at university, I didn't go to one Freshers' event, I didn't go to one party. I've never been to a party, I've never consumed alcohol or anything. I've just kind of worked most days for the last maybe 10 years. And that's just my nature, so there's no way I should be giving advice to someone who, to whom that doesn't apply. So my overall thing would be, I'm going to, I can provide insight, I can provide experience, I can provide things that have worked for me, but you've got to interpret that in your own lens and and just with caution because I'm 22, I get much more wrong than I get right. Maybe when I'm 42 or 52 I can provide some proper, proper advice, but I'm not the person that should be giving that. I can just sort of provide my insight and it's really up to, up to you what you do with that.

Charles, I want to thank you so much for coming on today. I think everything you said has been so invaluable and I really appreciate your honesty throughout and, and relating it all to you because You know, like you said, not everyone relates to your mindset, but for those people that might or are interested in it, I think it'll be really helpful. So thanks for coming on, cheers, mate.

Thanks very much. Thank you. I don't know if we're still recording, but if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm very happy to provide any help or any advice to anyone who's interested in business.

Yeah, we'll leave your LinkedIn in the bio.

Yeah, sounds good.

But thank you very much, Charles.

Cheers, guys.