Hector Hughes, Founder @ Unplugged

Hi everyone, welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today we have Hector Hughes with us. Welcome. He's the founder of Unplugged. And he sells a 3-day digital detox in one of his little cabins on the countryside. Thank you. Welcome. Great to have you here.

Thank you so much, Marleen.

Great. Um, so I'd like to kind of go back in your journey as a founder to when you were at university. Can you describe what was your outlook on careers like? What did you think you were going to be one day?

Um, that's a great question. Yeah, so I, I've always been— I'd say I've always been optimistic, But I wasn't studious, so at school I was quite kind of dyslexic at school, so not academic, and then ended up going to Leeds, did a master's degree at Leeds, was, you know, did a pretty poor job of attending that for the first couple of years and then got a bit more engaged with it towards the end. So I think I always had like just a kind of feeling that something would work itself out. Without kind of thinking too much what it would be. I probably thought I'd go into finance, to be honest, just the maths, you know, it was around the time like investment banking seemed like the sexy thing to do, hate to say it. So luckily I applied to a whole bunch of grad schemes around that and didn't get any of them, so I got to the final stage interview for a Teach First, for a job as a high-frequency trader, for a job at an accountant, and luckily none of them offered me a job, so a friend of mine was like, why don't you just go and work for a startup for a year? And then reapply.

Nice, crazy. And what was your first job at the startup like? Um, what was your role? What did you learn?

Yeah, so I applied to 20 startups and 19 rejected me, and one of them offered me a job, which was a company called Nobly POS. It was iPad till systems. So if you go into a cafe or restaurant, they use an iPad for the till, and I was doing sales. I, I just thought, like, sales is probably something that, you know, it's useful to learn. I was rubbish at sales, but basically my job was— it was like 5 of us sat around a table in East London, and the job was to— I got given a list of, you know, hundreds of cafes and restaurants in London. I spent Monday and Tuesday cold calling them, trying to book meetings, and then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday going to any meetings and trying to pitch them a till system. So I did that for about a year, really pretty poorly, and then at the end of the year I was like, guys, I'm not a good fit for this. And they said, why don't you run product for a year? So I took over the product, which was like basically working on how that works, so working with the development team on building out new features, that kind of thing. Wasn't much better at that, and then took over growth and did that for a year, and it wasn't great at that either, to be honest.

Um, what was the experience like to kind of work in a startup and have the flexibility to like switch from role to role? Like, looking back, did that help you then build your own company? Like, you were in sales— I mean, you say you were rubbish, but I'm sure you still learned like some of the basics, right? Like, from sales and product and growth and—

yeah, all of that, for sure. I think I didn't appreciate at the time, but it really teaches you the kind of intangible things. So things like resilience, dealing with uncertainty, all these kind of things. And, and just like You really get the sense that no one's going to figure this out for you, so you just kind of have to figure it out. On my first day, they gave me this Nokia phone, which was a customer support phone, and I remember being sat at dinner with a friend and his partner on the evening after my first day of work, and this phone was ringing with all these customers who had problems, and I was like, I literally have no idea what to do with this. And so there's that. Very much like sink or swim, just kind of throw you in, you've got to figure it out. I remember at the time almost being like worried that I wasn't learning, I wasn't getting like qualifications or like learning any tangible skills, but I think they're overrated, especially if you want to go, you know, start a business or something, which wasn't necessarily on the radar then, but it's actually much better to just kind of, you know, have that experience and just understanding of how it all works.

And sort of like during your university or like during your first job, where did the idea of like wanting to do something with digital detox come from? Like, were you a person that was like locked on your phone, or was it more like you saw other people doing that and kind of wanting to help them?

It's interesting. So I went through a bit of a life rebrand around 25, so after 3 years of that startup, and I think it was just this kind of culmination. I basically had a decade from 15 to 25, where I was like drinking a lot, partying a lot, and just like wasn't really living life on my terms, I think. And I think a lot of that was driven by like an insecurity and just not being comfortable in myself. And after a few years at the startup, that just became this like bigger and bigger conflict. So I was starting to actually really enjoy that whole process and engaging with work for once, and yet I was still having these big nights and, and doing all of that. And I just, just kind of started to feel a real dissatisfaction for, for life. And so I think my phone was then just a, a symbol of that almost, kind of, you know, stood for all the, the busyness of like living in London and going out a lot and all these, all these kind of things. And I started to get more into like meditation and reading and it just became this bigger and bigger thing in my mind that was like, I'm really not loving this. I read a book called Digital Minimalism by a guy called Cal Newport, which does what it says on the tin. It's basically like the benefits of spending less time online, basically. And then ended up going to a silent retreat in the Himalayas in September 2019. So a friend of mine suggested it, and I laughed it off. I was like, I can't do that, what will the guys at work think? Eventually got myself out there, and it was 10 days at this Buddhist temple on top of a mountain. And the best thing about it was when you get there, they take your phone off you and you just spend 10 days cut off from the outside world. So up until then, I'd never really been on holiday by myself before. It was always like with friends to go drinking somewhere. Um, I never, never spent a long time off my phone really. And so it was a really eye-opening experience, and I very cliché, but came back from that, literally quit my job a week later. A month later I gave up drinking and partying, and I've been 4 years sober now. So I went through some really big changes in the couple of months after that.

Crazy. So you quit your job to like found Unplugged straight away, or was that you just first had a different role and then started Unplugged later?

Yeah, so that was the start of Unplugged. I actually had no intention when I flew back to to do that, but I was running growth at the time and I had to come straight back from the retreat for some, like, quarterly planning meeting. So flew straight back. 2 days into that, we were trying to raise a £10 million Series A at the time, losing £300,000 a month. So it was very unsustainable. And 2 days after I got back, the Series A fell through. So my boss got— he stopped the meeting, got a call from investors to say funding's not happening. So that night, he'd shut down half the company, closed the US, closed Australia. And I stayed on, but I was running growth at the time, basically marketing. We paused all marketing spend. So I had a week kind of twiddling my thumbs while he went back and forth with investors. And then I went for a drink with Ben, who's my now co-founder. So he was the first employee on the commercial side of this company. I was the second. So we met there. He'd left at this point, but we'd stayed friends. And I went and told him about this retreat. And he's not the kind of guy you'd find at a silent retreat any time soon.

No.

Very skeptical. We spoke about how there's a lot of stigma around retreats and meditation, and so much of the benefit is just getting people offline and into nature. And yeah, I think it was that perfect storm where the startup had got less interesting overnight because of what happened. I was feeling very zen because I'd just spent all the time in the Himalayas, and this idea popped up to do— we'd heard about cabins and thinking about this digital detox space and just thought, what if we put those two together? Because I think that the insight was it's going to be massive because we're only going to spend more and more time offline, so someone's going to build a huge company in the space. And fundamentally, the issue with it is that there's very little innovation in the space because no one makes money when you're off your phone. They make money when you're on your phone, they can advertise to you. So it's just a lot of consultants running corporate workshops. So kind of like Tesla do with electric cars, to really affect change, you've got to make it sexy. I just thought cabins were a great way to do that.

And when you founded it, was there like anything similar or like a similar concept in London? Like, it's such a great idea, so it's just like something crazy that didn't exist before. So, and what was like, how did you make it unique, or what was like your twist to it, especially in terms of like marketing it?

Yeah, for sure. So I think, I think most innovation is just like a development of what's out there already. So there was a very well-established kind of international seen of these like cabin startups, so big players in like the US and Australia. And, uh, that's a similar model to what we're doing now, but what they don't do is the, the locking away the phone. So I actually went to stay with— straight after quit my job, I went to stay with a company in Belgium, cabin company there, and a company in the US, and was really excited to get off my phone because, you know, I'd just come back from this retreat. And they have— they provide a box, I put it in the box, but then like half an hour later I kind of scrolling and straight back on it. So it was from that, I was like, we're actually going to have to lock people's phones away. So that's very much what we've, what we've really focused on, which is the digital detox element of it. It doesn't work if it's just a feature. If it's like, we, you know, it's cabins and you're coming for a cabin break, and by the way, you can do a digital detox, then people just don't do it, right? So for us, it was like, how do we make that the whole company? And that's the whole product, is you are coming for a digital detox and a cabin is just a means towards that end. So that's what, uh, yeah, the spin we put on it. And still, 3 and a half years later, nearly 4 years since launching, um, no, there isn't anyone else who's taken that angle, which is interesting.

So when, like, just to understand, so when I book a cabin, someone comes in, like, locks my phone for me, or I do it myself?

So you do it yourself. There was a lot of, a lot of talk about this at the start. We're like, how's it going to work? Should we get them to, like, hand it in at a local pub or whatever it was? But then we— what we figured out is that it's basically a behavioral psychology problem, because for the first cabin, we were checking, we were cleaning it, we were checking people in ourselves, and they came to lock their phone away. They saw a cabin on Instagram, and we, we tried to take their phone off them, and they were like, no way, what are you doing? You know? So yeah, it's won or lost before people even get there. So as long as you— like, people are excited, that's what they're coming to do, uh, then there's a lockbox with a padlock that you lock yourself, and then the keys in a sealed envelope. That way it's enough friction that you're not opening on night one, but it's there if you need it. And then the key is giving people all the tools that they might need so they don't have the excuse of getting their phone. So there's a Nokia in case they need to contact us, there's a Polaroid camera, a map, so they can have everything they need for those, those 3 days.

Nice. And I'm curious about the concept because I imagine like 3 days, like It's a lot when you think 3 days without your phone, but like in a grand scheme of a year, it's not that much. So what did some of your customers say the impact was like afterwards? Like, does it improve like your behavior with your phone or kind of makes you feel like less anxious and not constantly needing to check it? Or what, from your experience, are some benefits?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the most startling thing at the start, because we were checking people in, is like we'd see people before and afterwards. They'd come in looking stressed and tired, and after 3 days literally looked 10 years younger, some of them. So it was really amazing to see. But the, uh, but yeah, I think, I think the big benefits of some of the, uh, criticism we got before launching— people were like, this isn't enough time, you can't change your habits, it takes 21 days to change your habits, or, you know, whatever the research is. But it's, it's not about that. It's about changing your perception, you know, because fundamentally, you know, if we haven't spent a day off our phone or 3 days off our phone, we feel like we can't, right? The world's going to end. And then by actually going through that process, what you see is it takes about 24 hours. So for the first 24 hours, you're actually a bit more anxious, and then the mind starts to settle down. We start to access this like deep sense of calm. It's just because, you know, we basically spend our whole day so overstimulated because you check your phone first thing in the morning, and then we're just, we're just kind of constantly checking it all day. So what happens when you take that away is you give the mind a chance to settle down, and that sense of calm is fundamentally how, like, we're built to operate, you know. Humans aren't built to be, you know, chronically stressed and anxious, which a lot of us are today. So it's really just about helping people access that state. So yeah, I think off the back of that, you know, ironically it does change people's habits. I spoke to someone the other day who before staying was spending 8 hours a day on her phone, and in the months afterwards is spending 3 hours. So, okay, you start to get perspective on your relationship with your phone. And then just like being out in nature and being offline just really allows the body to kind of calm down and de-stress as well.

No, I mean, I think I would need a digital detox as well. I was thinking about it because, yeah, I mean, as a student, I feel like you especially, like, I think as a young person, like doing lots of things, like, and even for your job, right? Like LinkedIn or this constant bombardment of different stimuli. I actually have an interesting question because you have a startup, which is typically quite high pressure or more like chronic stress is very typical for a startup. So how do you balance your own mission of the digital detox cabins with your own company? Do you feel like the mission that you're doing has an impact on your leadership or how you like— lead the company?

Definitely, yeah. I think it's a really interesting question because it is intense. It's hard running a startup for sure. And, uh, but fundamentally, I think the same insight that led to starting this company, the insight that like actually we are better for spending time offline, like that's something I deeply believe, you know. So I know even though the temptation is to like fucking, you know, work all over the weekend and in the evenings, whatever it might be, I know that if I get offline, if I try and get offline like 6 or 7 every day until 8 or 9 the next morning, and just having that space, I know that I'm going to turn up better during the day. I think there's a big— because I also reflect a lot on what went wrong with this previous startup, so why I was so ineffective in my various roles. And in the last year when I was running growth, I was busy. I was like putting in hours and doing so much work. And I look back, and if I'm being really honest, 95 to 99% of what I did didn't move the needle at all. You could have scrapped all of that work and it wouldn't have affected the company in the slightest. And what I realized is that, like, that busyness was just— was coming from a place of insecurity, of like, I don't really know what I'm doing, so I'm just going to be busy, uh, to make up for that, to make myself feel better. And I think there's a lot of that being a founder as well, because it is really hard and you're not qualified for it. And I think, you know, you see when people do their second, third, fourth startup, like, they get less busy each time. A lot of that is they have the resources, they can hire people, that kind of stuff. But a lot of it as well is they just, like, understand the process better, and there's less insecurity around it. Because I think that, that, you know, that busyness— sometimes you do just need to take a step back and go and spend a few days offline. And, like, that's when you gain the insight on the problem you're solving. So I think startups You know, you obviously got to put in the hours, and it is, um, it is a lot of work that needs to be done. But there are also these, like, step changes with certain insights. So, you know, how you see the business is everything, and you can have these moments where you realize that you've been looking at it all wrong, and it completely changes what you're doing. And in 10 minutes, you solve something that you've been banging your head against the wall at for the last, like, 4 months. So I think work, you know, work expands to fill the time available, and it's just much more— it's much less like linear than people think. People think like, you know, you put 80 hours in to get double the results of 40 hours, but it just doesn't work like that. And fundamentally, I think spending time offline is a great way to hack yourself, to creatively problem solve. And then the other side of it is, I think, especially as a leader, You know, fundamentally, how you turn up, because a company is just a group of people, and how you turn up massively affects the other people in the company. You know, if you as a leader come in on a Monday morning and you've been, you know, working a weekend, you're stressed out, you're tired, then people pick up on that. And if they see you look worried and anxious and stressed, they're going to think, 'Oh, what don't I know? Like, what's not happening in this company?' And so it's going to affect their work as well. So I think one of the things I really try and prioritize as well is whatever is going on, I will turn up and just try and be like the most calm and positive presence and like supportive for the team. Because fundamentally, part of my job is to also empower them to do well in their job. And yeah, a lot of that just comes from being a calming presence.

Yeah, I think I saw like a recent LinkedIn post of yours that I really like where you said that you don't believe in deadlines anymore. Yeah, and, um, yeah, I think that kind of goes like, follows up on the previous thing, but like startups is typically very much like KPIs and like hammering it in and growth, growth, growth. So, um, yeah, like I'm curious about like the philosophy that you lead your startup with, like how, um, you know, probably you still need to grow and you have like investors and you have some expectations, but have you found that like actually the attitude of like calming down more has been like better overall for, for the whole team and the growth.

100%. You have to ask them as well, but from my side, definitely. I think it's just the way I look at it is like just kind of surrendering to whatever happens. I think we're— we spend too much time like fighting what's going on, like worrying about this or this deadline or all this kind of stuff. It's much better just to, just to surrender, in my opinion, and embrace like what happens and then just go with the flow, you know. So like if someone comes to me and says, hey, this is going to be delayed 3 weeks, then rather than blame them and get upset about it and all that kind of stuff, then it's just, okay, well, you know, what can we— what's the new plan? You know, it's like adjusting depending— just kind of whatever happens, rolling with it, and yeah, just kind of using that to your advantage, I think. I think you can just fight everything that happens, or you can just just let it happen, go with the flow.

Do you think you've always had this attitude? Because I think like when you, when you talked about your uni experience, you also seemed like more laid back. I'll figure out something with my career, right? It's gonna come. Well, I think especially like the London context, people are very stressed. Like you're 18, 19, you already start applying for jobs and maybe you don't even know what you want to do. Um, but I'm like, yeah, or did you develop this attitude, like, throughout your life?

I've definitely always had, to an extent, like, I'm a real optimist, and pros and cons of that. It's got me in trouble a few times, especially managing the company's cash flow in the early days, because too optimistic with our financial planning. But fundamentally, I think, yeah, I always have had a bit of a kind of happy-go-lucky attitude to life.

Yeah, no, for sure. And like, looking back at your times as a student, like, what do you wish someone would have told you back then that you didn't know, like, now that you're a startup founder? Or I don't know if you engage with students as well.

Yeah.

Um, what do you think, like, you missed at uni that was like— that would have been fundamental to kind of being more secure in the way you shape your career?

For sure, it's a great question. I think one would be like, you have time. That I remember feeling there is just this kind of pressure that if you mess up this set of exams or don't get this set of applications right, then, then everything's lost and, you know, how are you ever going to get back? Or it feels very high pressure getting that first job because it feels like you're making a decision that's going to impact you for 40 years or something. What I would say is the other big thing which I wish I knew back then, it's just that no one cares. And it doesn't— I mean that in like the nicest possible way, like it just doesn't matter as much as you think it does. So I think, yeah, just worry less would be the message, which is hard, right? It's so hard at that. There's another great quote that I reflect on a lot called— which is, "Beware of wisdom not earned." And it's like, I could give someone some advice, but if I'd heard that, it wouldn't mean anything. You kind of have to go through it as well. So I think just don't be afraid to fail. I look back and I really got a lot of things wrong for many, many years. All through my university, I did so many stupid things. And fundamentally, that has helped make everything I'm doing now possible because sometimes it's the failures and really getting it wrong that gives you the drive or the clarity to go and get it right. Not that I'm necessarily getting it right now, but I think if I had done better at university and got a job as an accountant, then it might not have led to everything I'm doing now, you know. So I'm— yeah, everything happens for a reason and just go with the flow, for sure.

And, um, another thing I think that I would like to touch upon is that you said like you, you stopped drinking like at 25, and I actually also don't drink. I stopped in 2024.

Amazing.

And, um, I think like, I'm curious to see like how you look back at that time where like, I mean, alcohol is like very common, right? It's kind of everywhere and you're very encouraged to drink wherever you go. What was like your realization of kind of this habit being really bad for you? Was there like a specific moment where you were like, oh, this is really damaging for myself? Like not only for like your job, but just like for your personal health as well?

Yeah, there were lots of moments, especially the last year before stopping. I would just have, you know, some very big nights and, uh, up till kind of 7, 8 in the morning, and then wake up the next day. I'd just be— I'd just be like a bit disgusted with myself, uh, you know, and I just think, what, what are you doing? What are you doing with your life? Because it just felt like any progress I made there would always be these steps backwards where I'd have like massive nights. And I think reflecting back, everyone has a different relationship with alcohol and it's just one that played on all of my worst qualities. So I really wasn't good at having an off switch. Like I'd just keep going. I'm a bit of a people pleaser, so I'm sure that played into it. And fundamentally I did have a lot of insecurity at that point in my life. And so, you know, a lot around like relationships and sex in my teenage years. And a lot of the drinking was a way of just kind of covering that up, you know? So I really took that to an extreme. So I think it's just, I'm a big fan in introspecting, obviously with a business where you get people offline in cabins. And fundamentally it's just like really assessing what role something plays in your life and whether it's serving you. And I think what's really not, was not obvious to me then is that stopping drinking was an option. It didn't occur to me. And then I, you know, was hungover one day, had a kind of big night, just after we started Unplugged, and I thought like, I've got to stop spending money, I've got to stop going out. And the next two weekends was kind of up till 7 AM again. And then I stumbled across this YouTube video that was a clip from a Joe Rogan podcast, a comedian called Nikki Glaser, and it was like Nikki Glaser read this book 7 years ago and hasn't drunk since. And it's a book called Stop Drinking Now, and I ordered it that day, read the book, and that was it.

That was it.

Yeah.

And was it like— I mean, similar to like the kind of the shock of like a digital detox, like, oh, I'm doing this and I'm stopping like straight away. Was that easy for you, or is it like hard to kind of— or was it hard to stick to that? Because it sounded like it was quite a big part of your life.

Yeah, so it was such a relief. It was such a relief. So it was actually really easy. The way the book works is it works to change your perception of drinking and the role it plays in your life. So by the end of the book, and it might not happen for everyone, but for me it was like, wow, I really don't need this. It's not serving me. And it was as we were starting the business as well. So there was something to really channel my energy into. So it's just a real relief. I was really excited about it. I was like, oh my God, this is going to make this business so much easier that I'm not hungover every weekend.

No, for sure, for sure. I think it also definitely carried like into Unplugged and like what your mission is and what you do. Um, what do you think is like up next for, for your company? Like where do you see it going? Do you want to expand, like do further things?

Or, um, yeah, for sure, sure. So I think we're very early in, you know, something that I hope can be massive. And we really see Unplugged as a social experiment because fundamentally all the momentum in society is towards spending more and more time online. And I think the future is much more malleable than we think. And so the bet with Unplugged is like, by succeeding, we can help move society in a different direction. You know, if we can normalize going and spending 3 nights offline at a cabin or wherever, then that will move certain— a different direction. That is really the goal. So I think we are in this for the long haul, want to just keep growing in the UK but also abroad, um, you know, listen to our customers about how we're going to help them outside of just the 3 nights they spend at the cabin as well. Yeah, we fundamentally want to— want this to become a cultural thing, you know, that like this is part of the, the British and then wider culture to go and spend this time offline.

Yeah, fantastic, great. And then last question I'd like to ask: how do you define success? I know it's a hard one, but what's your definition of success?

Uh, I think fundamentally it's like, are you satisfied with yourself and like how you've, how you've turned up, you know? So for me, when all is said and done, like what I really care about is not what I did and achieved, it's like how I did it. So was I kind, you know, was I humble? Was I kind of, yeah, I really think it's that like kind of, did I turn up with like kindness and compassion and leave things a better place? So I think for me, success is knowing that I'm achieving that. At the moment I feel good about that. Good. Goes through, you know, ebbs and flows where I'm sat here talking about myself on a podcast, like, maybe do some work on the humility piece. But, uh, yeah, I think that's it. It's like when the lights are off at the end of your life and you're thinking back, are you, are you pleased with how you turned up?

Great. Thank you so much for coming. That always made me sad. Thank you for coming. It was great having you here.

Such a joy. Thank you.

Thank you.