Ben Coomber on High-Performance Entrepreneurship, Burnout Recovery & Building a 25-Hour Work Week

What does it really take to be a high-performing entrepreneur in 2025 — without burning out?

In this powerful episode of Small Business Growth Addicts, Amanda Hughes sits down with Ben Coomber — CEO of Awesome Supplements (20-time award-winning company), high-performance coach, bestselling author, speaker, and podcaster.

Ben is one of the UK’s best-known voices in health, performance, and entrepreneurship. Today he opens up about:

• How to perform at your best in business and life — without the toxic “more, more, more” mindset
• The reality of burnout, long COVID, and bouncing back stronger
• Why better is more powerful than more when it comes to productivity
• How he built a business model that allows him to work just 25 hours a week while staying present as a father of two
• Why stress is a hidden killer for entrepreneurs — and how to manage your energy across mental, emotional, and physical levels
• Practical tips for small business owners who want freedom, flexibility, and sustainable success

If you’ve ever felt pressure to hustle harder, this episode will give you a refreshing and honest perspective on redefining success.

👉 Follow Ben on Instagram
or LinkedIn and check out Awesome Supplements using code CEO15 for 15% off!

🎙 Sponsored by Diane at Quinn Hypnosis
– helping small business owners overcome anxiety, imposter syndrome & overwhelm.

🔗 For full show notes, freebies, and guest links visit: smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, hello, welcome. I'm Amanda Hughes, your host of Small Business Growth Addicts. I escaped the corporate world after 12 months of a side hustle which turned into my full-time income. Fast forward 10 years and I'm running not my first but my second small business and this time around it's with a passion to share all that I know, all that I've learned and all that I'm still learning with fellow small business owners. As the title of the show suggests, I am addicted to growing my business and I know you are too. Growth means different things to different people though and that's why We talk about a whole host of subjects on Growth Addicts, whether that's in a solo episode, just me or with one of my many awesome guests. Between us, we share advice, tips and real life entrepreneurial experience. So grab a pen, a cuppa and a biscuit, obviously, and get ready to grow that small business of yours. This is Small Business Growth Addicts. Hello and welcome to another episode of Growth Addicts. I'm not going to be about the bush today because we've got a jam-packed guest episode for you today. Our guest today is Ben Coomer. You might know Ben already. He is the CEO of Awesome Supplements which is a 20 times award-winning supplement company. Ben's also a high-performance coach, a speaker, a podcaster, a best-selling author and a father of two. He's obsessed with being the best version of himself as possible as well as building a business that matters. And today we are going to crack all of that open. How he does that, what a day in Ben Coomer's life looks like, what advice he's got for small business owners and how to be the best version of yourself possible without always pushing for more and avoiding burnout. And Ben can tell us about that because he has experience of burnout himself. And so, like I say, I'm not going to beat about the bush. Let's go and meet Ben and get into this conversation. This episode is sponsored by Diane at Quinn Hypnosis. Diane helps small business owners just like us get rid of anxiety reduce overwhelm and feel more balanced overall diane offers a better balance better you program that's tailored to your individual needs whether that's group sessions or one-to-one just contact diane on instagram at quinn hypnosis for a free consultation Welcome, Ben. How are we this morning? I'm awesome, Amanda. So, Ben, I have already introduced you. I'll owe you to a lot of our listeners. You'll need no introduction because you've been around for a while and you're doing awesome things out there. So a lot of us will know you already. So I'm just going to crack on and get chatting, if that's okay with you.

SPEAKER_01: 2:28

You're the boss.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

Let's get stuck in. You yourself, Ben, you have built multiple businesses and a whole personal brand, like I say, that a lot of us already know you from. And you're all about being high performance in everything every area of your business. Let's just dive right in. What does it take to be a high-performing entrepreneur, small business owner in 2025? I

SPEAKER_01: 2:50

think a big component of high performance is energy, your energetic state, how you turn up, how you can continue to turn up. Now, energy is an interesting topic because we often think of energy as just like your ability to just kind of like do things. But there's kind of like your mental energy, your emotional energy, your physical energy, and a lot can kind of detract from that. And I don't think it's as simple sometimes as just looking at like being able to sleep well, eat well, gives you kind of half decent energy that will. The management of your energetic state is really important and really powerful. In the world of like high performance, I feel sometimes a little bit like, even saying it, like when we think of the word high performance, it feels like more, more, more, do, do, do. It's got this kind of assumed energy behind it I don't think that's what high performance is I think it's us being able to perform in any given situation to the best of our ability whether we're in a meeting whether we're on stage whether we're writing a proposal whether we're at home with their kids that moment has the best of us mentally emotionally and physically and in the world of business I think it can kind of take on a bit of a toxic form because many business owners are looking for more, more leads, more sales, more productivity, more output. And sometimes more comes from less, or sometimes more comes from more presence. And perhaps we shouldn't even use the word more. Perhaps a better word is better. I want to be a better performer. I don't want to perform more. I just want to be better in all that I do. And I very much felt the negative effects of this when I kind of burnt out and got really ill and my recovery period was long and hard because I'd just taken the more approach to everything, like more training, more work, like less sleep,

SPEAKER_00: 4:50

and

SPEAKER_01: 4:51

sort of died on the sword of business a little bit too much. And I kind of had that wake up of like, why am I doing all of this it's not just to be like someone that has such a ridiculous output I very much built my self-worth on my output too much like I get to the end of the day and if I'd done a lot like I was happy and that was very unhealthy as well so yeah high performance I think it's you being able to turn up to any situation in your life and perform to the best of your ability given your skills and awareness in that moment

SPEAKER_00: 5:26

gosh that's some really good points you make there yep okay can't deny when I hear high performance that is where my thoughts go push push push to be the highest performing version that you can be but actually when you were speaking there about it's about doing your best and I do like that back to parenting so I've got young twins myself and every day is a school day isn't it like I mean no one knows what they're doing they don't arrive with an instruction booklet and we'll definitely get into that later because you and I became parents at the same time during lockdown I believe but I'm doing my best with the best intentions you know like I'm doing my best I'm not always going to get it right but I'm striving to do my best and we can absolutely adapt that to our business as well it also doesn't come with an instruction manual there's lots of support out there but ultimately we're just learning as we go along and trying to do our best and so yeah it's about trying to be better than we were yesterday or this morning or you know is that a better thought process than high performance pushing for more more more

SPEAKER_01: 6:24

Within that it's really important for us to continue to define the rules that we want to play in the rules that we or the goals that we had like six months ago like might have changed because you can get caught in business right like you get your business off the ground and no word of a lie everyone's got to hustle at the start right you just got to put the hours in you don't know what is always going to be the right thing to do especially with like marketing like what's the best way to market my business you just got to work but then you start to get successful secure you know many of us don't always readjust and go oh actually that income goal that I had of like 50 grand a year to leave my job like I've done that let me reassess let me reassess if I want to apply the same level of effort because actually now I've got to that level I'm in a position of power to an extent I can readjust things I can choose whether I work more or choose how I approach the business because I've kind of reached a milestone but because you embed so many habits and behaviors into your lifestyle you might have You have this, you know, you've kind of almost like programmed yourself for hustle. You're waking up at 6am, you're doing the thing, you go to the gym, you come home, you work for that, and then it becomes a habit. And sometimes you've got to stand back and go, oh, do I want to keep doing that? Because I don't have to if I don't want to. Like I got a certain point in business, I was like... I'm pretty good financially. So it's just really important to call yourself back at times and go, where am I at and what do I want?

SPEAKER_00: 7:56

Absolutely. And of course, if we are pushing all the time, I know a lot of listeners will be in that hustle stage at the start and it's hard to break out of that. And if you are always striving for more, then stress creeps in inevitably, doesn't it? I know you've mentioned before that you feel like stress can be a hidden killer for small businesses. That, of You are very much the face, the voice, the brand of a small business. So how do you yourself feel when stress is creeping in? How do you catch yourself before it becomes a problem?

SPEAKER_01: 8:29

The only form of stress in my life these days is honestly anxiety. just overall load if I'm just doing too much. But honestly, I've hit in so many roadblocks and done it the hard way for so long. I am in a place now where I'm like, I don't have any stress. I have the freedom that I want. Nothing's a struggle. Everything's just a challenge. We've got challenges in our business right now. Three of our most popular products, we've not had stock for three weeks. It's huge for a business that's doing multi-seven figures. But I'm like, I'm going to change it. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. There's literally nothing I can do. I've just got to sit and be patient for this one to kind of blow over. Previous stresses for me were very much working and doing too much and thinking that I was invincible because I've been in the health industry for a long time. And I would say I know more than most about health and fitness and how to look after the body. It kind of gave me like a bit of a God complex. And it's like, well, I know how to recover better than most and I'm eating great so it'll all be fine and it's like stress is stress everyone's got their breaking point and I sat on the edge of breaking point for years just having this micro burnout and it just took unfortunately more aggressive forms of burnout and then a very bad one for me to kind of have that wake up call and go you know things have got to change I'm 34 and I can't get out of bed that's not old that's like 34 is young so for me it was very much I overworking doing too much being driven by unhealthy standards that i set myself and then there was a lot of identity and fear-based behavior wrapped up in that as well which took quite a long time to unpick so yeah it's good i'm at the other end and i feel amazing

SPEAKER_00: 10:19

you don't arrive in the situation like you've just described there without the low points it's not possible you've mentioned there a few rough times and i know you've quite publicly spoken about your rough ride with covid and long COVID. Was that a sort of turning point and experience that changed things for you as well as to how you run your business? If you know me by now you'll know that I love social media. It's how I've grown my businesses and now I want to help you do the same. That's why I created Get Seen Get Sales, my mentor group for small business owners who want to get seen online and actually attract followers that convert to customers. Inside you'll get weekly content prompts, live workshops and support on everything you need to grow If you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed or just ready to do things differently, I've got you. Head to smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com to join us.

SPEAKER_01: 11:15

I mean, that was the catalyst for everything. Long COVID, what I know, is just another form of chronic fatigue syndrome. Chronic fatigue in type A personalities is more common than people would think. Chronic fatigue is essentially a very severe form of burnout where your executive function is greatly lowered. You've got low motivation, don't want to get out of bed. You have like multi-system kind of dysregulation in your body. And what happened is I got really ill and then you're like, right, I'm ill. And he's gone like a physical journey to make myself better and then I went on that physical journey and when I got quote better there was a few things I just couldn't get right and I just didn't feel myself and that's when like the mental and emotional side of it came in and I think ultimately what happened is I had almost like a midlife physical mental emotional crisis where it was like you're out of alignment and you need to change a lot of stuff it's not just the physical body you don't just need to get better you need to change how you're a approach your life you're a parent now your goals have changed and it just made me re-evaluate everything.

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

But Ben that must have been quite difficult for you because you very honestly said there you know so much you've got so much experience you had this sort of godlike complex like I can recover from things a lot easier than other people but here you find yourself in a situation where what you were doing wasn't quite working you had to re-evaluate must have been difficult.

SPEAKER_01: 12:40

Really difficult most difficult journey I've kind of been on but I just knew it necessary like that was it and I remember being ill thinking oh if only I could just go back to like old Ben. I was like, hang on a second. Old Ben is what got you in this position. If you go back to old Ben, you'll be back here again. We need a new Ben. We need the real Ben. And that was when the journey to kind of like the real Ben sort of kind of started.

SPEAKER_00: 13:05

How did going through all of that affect how you ran your business?

SPEAKER_01: 13:08

Badly. I couldn't show up as a leader. I've actually done a little exercise in the company where we think we lost about half a million in revenue due to what was happening and my absence, not I wasn't, in the business, but I was trying to paper over myself. I was trying to show up as a leader, but I was useless. And what I should have done is gone to my team. And I had a solid team at the time. And I said, look, guys, I'm really ill. I need to step back from the business. I need you to all step up. What can we do to protect me? I'll be here a couple of hours a week. I'll come in for some key meetings, help you with some decision making. I need the time to go and get better. My team would have rallied around it they would have but my ego was too big my identity was too wrapped up in my business so I was like well I need to be there I need to be doing the marketing I need to be doing this stuff and I didn't and to be honest I think my business would have grown just as well as it was I don't know if not maybe better if I just said to my team you know what you're doing you're here you know the job you've been here for a long time you know the business you know the customer but I didn't unfortunately and you know that was also part of the journey that I had to see that I was then becoming a problem in the business because so much revolved around me. I'd put myself in so many of the different cogs and departments and processes and stuff. They kind of almost had to make me show up. So we kind of had to go back to business 101 when I did kind of realize all this stuff because it's like, oh, actually, we don't have a process here because it's all in Ben's head and there's no system here and there's no autonomy in this area of the business. So yeah, it affected my leadership, it It affected my decision making. It affected my ability to hire because I couldn't really just get a real good feel for people. And the people around me sort of had to carry it, but not carry it. They weren't formally carrying that. And it would have been a lot easier if I was just out of the way.

SPEAKER_00: 15:10

And did you realize that yourself or did someone within the team have to highlight that for you?

SPEAKER_01: 15:15

No, I had to realize that myself. Thinking back, did people say it to me? I don't remember. They might have. Would I have heard it? Was I ready to hear it? That's another thing because we will only accept information that we're ready to hear. They say the coach will show up when the student's ready. And if you're not ready for that information, for that change, you just won't even see it. You won't let it in. Your ego will keep you exactly where you are because it will want to keep you safe and feeling powerful. But yeah, we can't go back and rewind the clock and change things. All we can do is learn and improve.

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

Absolutely. There's no failures in life it's just it really is it's cliched but it's all an opportunity to learn isn't it if you want to and you touched on something important there as well I think for small business owners listening because a lot of them won't have a team it's them solopreneurs you know they're wearing all the hats there is no team to fall back on but you mentioned systems which is really important and if you've got systems in place so that if the shit does hit the fan you can hire in if that's an option for you you know there's virtual assistants for example and if you've got standard operating procedures sounds a bit corporate here but it's good to have these things have these systems noted down so that you can pass off to someone else and did you change anything like that in your business systems you said you were integrated into every area how did you change that so that you weren't

SPEAKER_01: 16:38

I didn't change anything in my behavior apart from like stepping back and fully empowering my team so I've got a great COO and I sort of almost got out of her way and I was like look create systems for this processes for that you know step stuff that she'd been wanting to do for years but I was like no we don't need that I'll do this we'll manage it easily we'll just have this g note or whatever so I let my staff do their thing

SPEAKER_00: 17:02

let them do their job

SPEAKER_01: 17:03

yeah I was just in the way of it and now there's loads of different systems and it helps make the business run way more efficiently

SPEAKER_00: 17:09

what a whole humbling process

SPEAKER_01: 17:12

this must have been for you it was all while navigating being a parent of young children yeah

SPEAKER_00: 17:17

yeah we're gonna talk about that next was there at any point during that you thought about walking away from your business at any point

SPEAKER_01: 17:25

no I had too much pride in it I've also been an entrepreneur since I was like 20 20 21 I say entrepreneur solopreneur so I started out as a personal trainer when I was 20 I didn't go full-time in business probably till about 2012 2013 kept doing a lot of like jobs on the side supporting my income finding out where I really wanted to go with the whole kind of entrepreneurial journey I'd also been at low points before I think it was like 2016 2017 I spent nine months fighting bankruptcy so I knew that I had it in me to kind of dig and to be resilient and I was like I've kind of been here before the challenge is different I think I'm very fortunate in that I don't know when it was in my youth but around kind of leaving school I think that was when the Dragon's Den program started and I really enjoyed it as a young man and I Remember buying all of the Dragon's books. and just reading all their journeys, Peter Jones, Duncan Ballantyne, et cetera. Same. I've got a couple up on this shelf, actually. I think what I picked up is just in everyone's story, there's hardship. In every story, there's like, this happened. It took us 18 months to turn it around. There was a health scare. I think that left something in me that at some point, this is coming in your journey. No one's immune to hardship, health hardship, financial hardship, growth. loss etc so I just thought well if they can get through it I can get through it we're humans we find a way and I'm not someone that's going to go and oh no like I'm just going to go and get a job like I'm unemployable so I'm not going

SPEAKER_00: 19:11

to get a job My husband often says that I'm now unemployable he's like you just I mean he couldn't imagine me having to be somewhere for nine I'd be like you know ten past what's the problem like I'm here now I think I'm in that camp as well

SPEAKER_01: 19:25

so I've got to make this work there were dark times but there was always something that just made me believe

SPEAKER_00: 19:29

and so you touched on how your entrepreneurial journey started and you said the word solopreneur which is a lot of description that a lot of the small business owners that will be listening today can relate to they're wearing all the hats they're solopreneurs so what did you do at that point you're a personal trainer and how did that work out is it what led to the bankruptcy

SPEAKER_01: 19:47

no no so personal trainer when I was 20 I would have been this would have been like 2005 2006 and to started off in a small studio did that for like nine months I live in quite a small town and it didn't feel like there's a lot of opportunity in the small town so that's when I went to uni so I went to uni as a three-year mature student studied sports performance and coaching and while I was at uni just got stuck in did every job go in did internships just like put my hand up for everything there was one point in my second year I had five jobs while doing sort of my degree and then in my second year of uni an email got sent around from my university from a new enterprise center that had been built and said, look, have you got a business idea? There might be grants available. So I went and sat down. I was like, I've actually got a little bit of an idea. I've seen this whole online world start to grow. I wonder if you could do nutrition coaching online. So the head of the enterprise center sat me down and he's like, this is how you would build your business. And he took time with me and I applied for a grant. I got a grant, borrowed a little bit of money off my granddad, used a bit of my student loan. And I think I invested like six grand into my first website to build this online nutrition coaching company. I spent a year working on that, failed miserably, wrong avatar, wrong product delivery, low profit margin, just made all the mistakes, was around good people. And they were like, look, your business model isn't broken. It's just how you've gone about it and your why and the avatar you want to serve. So they took me through this kind of like business avatar process brand process which was great they then built the same business but differently and this time I won't say it worked like there and then but it felt right like it fitted me and it felt like there was stickiness there so I worked hard and it took me about two and a half years and by the two and a half years mark I had clients all around the world I had coaches working under the brand and we kind of did like fitness body transformation type coaching packages online before it became a really mainstream thing. And then in 2013, 2014, I want to do something slightly differently and have a different impact. So we went into education. So the business then had nutrition coaching and then nutrition education. And we built the UK's first level four nutrition qualification. And then a couple of years after that, I went into the supplement business. So it yeah that's how it kind of like morphed after that point it was all progression yeah

SPEAKER_00: 22:27

before we dive back in I want to talk about something I know holds so many small business owners back low confidence that not so quiet voice of imposter syndrome whispering who does she think she is I've been there too but recently I had a session with Diane at Quinn Hypnosis and honestly it was incredible she helped me quiet that voice boost my confidence and feel good about showing up in my business again Diane has worked with so many small business owners to do the same helping them move past blocks of low confidence anxiety overwhelm and finally feel good about being visible in their business if this sounds like something you'd like to explore go find Diane on Instagram at Quinn Hypnosis check out her work and drop her a DM for a chat now you mentioned avatar there I'm going to presume you're talking about your ideal client avatar yeah this is a topic I am so passionate about and I just could shout from the rooftops to every business owner of any size that's where it begins isn't it you have to be so clear on who you're speaking to yeah would you agree yeah

SPEAKER_01: 23:35

totally because otherwise your message gets lost

SPEAKER_00: 23:37

yeah the whole you're speaking to everyone you're speaking to no one it's so true one of the most important things you can do before anything else is get clear on who it is you want to attract and then of course you learn that the hard way but now that you did learn that and now your business is so much bigger than it was when you started at that point is it something that you guys still keep in mind in your company?

SPEAKER_01: 24:00

Yeah we're reviewing it we've literally just done an avatar review three months ago every business evolves the founder evolves the marketplace evolves so it can shift what needs to happen is just to make sure that all the business behind it know who you're serving how you're serving them and it's communicated in your marketing your website etc and if you're not getting clarity this is where it can be really valuable to invest in someone coming into your business and sitting you down and being like right let's workshop this let's chat about it so you can get that clarity because sometimes it can just feel like that bouncy ball that bounce around in your head and you know spending a couple of hundred quid for someone to workshop with this properly creates such a cascade of clarity through your business that it is pretty invaluable

SPEAKER_00: 24:51

yeah And sometimes a pretty awesome feeling, workshopping with someone else, validation that you're actually, okay, I'm on the right lines, but it's just making sense of it all, isn't it? Totally on board with that. Ideal client avatar, massively important at every stage of business. And it's not a one and done exercise. It is something that has to be revisited because it will evolve. It will absolutely will evolve. Next thing I'd love to chat about, Ben, is parenthood. As I say, I'm sure you became a father, same time as I became a mother. Lockdown 2020, is that right? so tough times worldwide never mind becoming a parent at that point but what I'd love to ask first off is what did you imagine running a business alongside family life would look like before you became a father and what did it actually look like once your daughter it was wasn't it right

SPEAKER_01: 25:40

really tough lockdown happened it was pretty easy we're at home I had an office in my garden I had that for kind of a while so the whole setup was quite easy for me to like log on to work and log out was very easy. I've always run a purely digital e-commerce company with everyone being remote. So that was the norm for me. It was fine at the beginning. It kind of worked okay. The child's young, mostly want mom. So like pretty easy on the man. But then I got really ill. So I was trying to battle being a present parent, lead a team through a global crisis and then try and sort of like look after myself. So that was really the kind of challenge. I think the thing that I struggled with is just to make sure that I was putting enough time into everything and because I felt quite fearful fearful about business fearful about my health fearful about a lot of things I was always pushing rather than like trusting trusting in myself trusting in the process and that made me just keep pushing in all areas and it didn't allow me to see like the bigger picture and stuff but right from kind of day dot my number one guiding word in life is freedom I've always had a life of flexibility and freedom at the forefront of it I've not always had it in the way that I truly could have because of some of the things that held me back but I've always had quite a lot of flexibility you know like you say if I want to go to the gym at 10 o'clock in the morning do a class and start my work at 12 and work till 6 like fine like absolutely you know doesn't matter sort of thing so I think the challenge with parenting against work in my opinion is It's essentially a volume equation. The more you work, the less you can do of other stuff. So as a business owner and as a parent, I want to try and define the rules as much as possible. So it's like for me to be a great parent, for me to look after myself in the way that I want to and live my life and to build or sustain a company. So you don't always have to build. Sometimes it's just about maintenance, sustaining, and that's perfectly good. That's a normal goal. You're allowed to have that as a business owner. You might sit there and go, my business is earning£100,000 a year. I have a great lifestyle. I would like to stay here. That's a perfectly acceptable goal. You don't have to have this constant growth mindset. So I'm like, right, well, if I work 20, 25 hours a week, I've got time to parent, time to live my life, time to look after myself. Great. If I try and work more, then things become a conflict. The challenge for me in business was, okay, I'm currently working 50 hours a week. How do I work 20 hours a week and still have the same level of leverage? And that's when you start to play a totally different game in business. I was speaking to a business owner the other day, and I think we were speaking about schooling and sending our kids to private school. And she was like, I don't currently have the money to send my kids to private school. And I said, well, we're business owners, we can earn more. And she went, oh, but I'd have to work harder. I was like, it's a dangerous comment. You shouldn't have to work harder. You need to find a way to leverage your time better. There's people out there that are running billion pound companies working 10 hours a week. Everything is possible. So it's about how we approach it, how we leverage our time, how we use our skills. That was the game that I started to play around 2022 because I was still working like 50, 60 hours a week. It was like, how do I work 20, 25 hours a week and run this company so I can live my life?

SPEAKER_00: 29:13

Can I just ask, was your thinking about your model of the 25 hours a week, was that before a baby arrived?

SPEAKER_01: 29:20

No, I hadn't really thought through sort of how much I would be able to work. I didn't really kind of think through it.

SPEAKER_00: 29:27

So it wasn't until you were in it?

SPEAKER_01: 29:28

Yeah. My wife was fortunate at the time she had a good maternity package so she was going to be off for quite a while she was kind of going to be full-time and I did knew at that point I was like dad's not that helpful in the early days we can do some stuff differently but baby wants more than mummy and we kind of knew that to an extent so yeah I just kept rolling with it while I was in it

SPEAKER_00: 29:50

and so when you were in it then you realized that model had to change and you wanted to work you were working 56 hours a week and you wanted to move to this sort of 25 hour a week model so you could be more present in all areas

SPEAKER_01: 30:02

yeah because before that I wasn't a parent and until you're in it you don't really know what kind of like parenting looks like from a time perspective like I think most people think they will have more time than they do but you don't like yeah every day's chaos to an extent so it's like yeah I wanted to have that bandwidth to allow for the chaos to allow for the random

SPEAKER_00: 30:26

how has that worked out then has that been a realistic goal that you've managed to achieve that's out of a 25 hour work week as a CEO and a father yeah

SPEAKER_01: 30:35

yeah I top out at 30 hours a week I never work more than that a lot of weeks 15 20 24 hours a week is sort of my average and basically I'm out of the house most days 9 to 5 so I'll do like a lot of the morning with our kids and then I'll be home at like half or 5ish have dinner play bedtime that kind of stuff but between 9 and 5 I do everything for me so I'll work, but I'll also go to the gym, get my hair cut, go and get coaching, go and do the dump run. Like I do everything like nine to five. So that means that I end up working like 20, 25 hours a week, but I'm always in a good place because I make the time to look after myself as well.

SPEAKER_00: 31:16

And there's never been a more dad statement that you also include the dump run.

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

See, it's got to be done.

SPEAKER_00: 31:24

Why do dads love the dump so much?

SPEAKER_01: 31:26

Well, we're in, I my wife will do it yeah the green waste has to go to the dump right

SPEAKER_00: 31:36

absolutely I love that and so what advice would you have for anyone listening who would love that sort of balance of you know 25 or less work hour a week but they are juggling multiple things kids care responsibilities perhaps still working other jobs while building up their own business what advice could you give them

SPEAKER_01: 31:56

not many of us can like click our fingers overnight and this kind of just happens but I would love I love every business owner to challenge themselves and say, what is it that I actually want? And it might be that you say, right, I want to earn, I want my business to be able to sustain, I want to earn like 80 grand a year, for example, and I want to work 20 hours a week and I want to have the flexibility to do X, Y and Z. They're all fine goals. The next question is, okay, how do I make it happen? What position do I have to be in? How do I spend my time? So for me in my business, I play the game. So I was currently working like 50 hours a week. I said, right, I'm only allowed to work 40 hours next week. What do I do? What changes in my behavior? What tasks do I have to say no to now? You end up getting rid of all those fringe tasks that you accept. They're always like maybes in your head, like, well, maybe if I do that, that extra podcast it might lead to a few leads or whatever. So you kind of play this game and then you get to this point where you're constantly challenging yourself to only focus on the most highest leverage tasks in your business. And that's the position that I'm in now. I mean, I run awesome supplements working like eight hours a week. So I'm involved in NPD, new product development, strategic alignment, and working with my COO on how the team is functioning. And then I'm there for for the team on like specific things quite often around marketing a product and then I'm working on our like investment strategy for the future and that's it everything else is outsourced done by team members and then the other 10 or 15 hours a week that I work I now do coaching so I coach entrepreneur men on business and high performance yeah it works beautifully but I just had to keep having that challenge of like it's like the game where you say oh what if you were to go on holiday for a month next month how would your business run like what would you do and you're just forced to boil down the really essential stuff of course every business is different you know my comments come with like you know a pinch of salt but allow yourself to dream that that is possible because it is it totally is you know let's say there's coaches and consultants out there which there will be if I said to you you can't work 40 hours next week you can only work 20 and they're like oh well if I only coach 15 people I'm only going to earn three grand I'm like well your prices need to go up you need to find clients that are willing to pay you kind of more like my coaching is expensive I'm also really freaking good and get incredible results and it's very valuable so people are in the community that you know the type of people that I coach they are willing to pay that amount of money for the result So then my next strategy, so if I wasn't in that position, if I couldn't charge that much, my next question is, how do I become that more valuable? Or if I want my product to be more premium, how do I make it more premium? It's all just questions. The quality of our outcomes are dictated by the powerfulness of the question we're willing to ask.

SPEAKER_00: 35:03

Yeah, I love that. And getting really honest with yourself about what do I actually want here? Because you can just really get stuck into business and it's just so far removed from the initial idea. Sometimes you do have to sit down and have a little meeting with yourself and get honest about what is it I want here and how do I make it work? That's saying to yourself free you're only allowed to work x amount of hours next week and I feel like I had to adopt that sort of model there over the kids summer holidays there school holidays so it's the first time I've been faced with that and I adopted this sort of glass ball rubber ball theory if you've heard of that before the glass balls I can't drop these are the must do's these are like my paying clients that are relying on me the rubber balls they can bounce back I can drop them for a bit because I really only did have pockets of time to work so I guess without no own it i sort of adopted that strategy myself like okay next week you've only got eight hours what are we doing with them what's the glass balls can we pick up any rubber balls

SPEAKER_01: 36:02

that's a great analogy i love it and what i suppose would be interesting for you is like now you've done that you might even view some of those rubber balls a bit differently do i even want to go back to doing that or is that a valuable task for me

SPEAKER_00: 36:15

absolutely it's made me really rethink everything's fine you know we've managed to tick over really nicely over the summer holidays even though I was only really prioritising non-negotiables so yeah the rubber balls there has anything slipped from dropping them you know and things like PR and stuff like that yeah we need to do that and I let that slip a little bit but I can easily pick that back up and other things I've not missed them at all so that's something I can actually drop which is great it's been an interesting exercise I would definitely encourage you anyone to do that yeah you're only allowed to work x amount next week what does that look like good exercise definitely now you're a busy man you've just mentioned a whole load of things that you're involved in there but you managed to do it and and time that works for you and works for your life works for your family love that but I would love to know what a day a day looks like for you then you kind of casually mentioned it there but what sort of daily routines habit practices do you have to keep yourself performing at your best and everything and that you do? So

SPEAKER_01: 37:19

I like to start the daily performance conversation at bedtime because I think that's your commitment to making sure that you've got enough energy for the day. My kids go to bed at like 6.45 ish. They're still young. They're three and five. We take them up to bed story time and then I'll walk the dog and then a little bit of life admin. There's always life admin. And then me and the wife will watch telly for an hour. I massage her feet and we'll You know, I'll go up to bed at like 9.15, 9.30. I'm usually asleep by 9.45, 10. I don't have an alarm. I've never had an alarm. I don't like alarms. I don't like the idea of it. Like being woken up, I'm like, no.

SPEAKER_00: 38:01

My husband's got a whole series of alarms that we come up in the morning and we've had so many fallouts about it. It's heart attack inducing in the morning. Yeah. Because I've got like a loomy light that just starts to, birds are tweeting and he can't get his head around that. We're in very different camps for alarms. To be fair, the kids are our alarm's most days but i'm with you on that beeping noise or something to wake you up i can't think anything worse

SPEAKER_01: 38:24

so i'm in bed early and then i'll wake up naturally anywhere from like half four to half five it is early but i've still had six and a half seven hours sleep

SPEAKER_00: 38:33

you've gone to bed early yeah

SPEAKER_01: 38:35

yeah which is what i need some people need longer my wife needs longer she loves like eight nine hours sleep so like cool

SPEAKER_00: 38:43

same

SPEAKER_01: 38:45

yeah women generally will need more sleep than men that's That's just the thing. That affords me an hour by myself in the morning, sometimes a bit longer. So I'll get up, I'll go downstairs, I'll take a pint of water with electrolytes and creatine. And then I'll go out in my garden and I'll ground, get my feet on the grass, feel the cold air. You know, if the sun's coming up, like beautiful. And I'll just spend five minutes just being grateful for nature, myself, that moment. Then I'll go inside, I'll make a coffee and I'll just, sort of stop and breathe and I'll say what does this morning need of me so I have no strict morning routine I used to I used to try and program myself like a robot but I'm not a robot I'm a human and on any given day I might need something. So I might feel a little bit like overwhelmed for some reason, or there might be a project I'm really excited on and I might choose to work in that hour, or there might be something that I'm trying to kind of like work through on kind of like a mental and emotional level. So I might go meditate. Some mornings I might do some breath work. Some mornings I can't be bothered to do anything and I just want to be. So I make a coffee, make my breakfast, read a little bit of a book. Like there's literally no plan for that first hour apart from what I need and it's for me it's my hour that I lock in every day because I'm naturally quite an introverted person I like my own time and if I don't get my own time for a couple of days I can get a little crabby So I try and protect that time in the morning. Some days I'll work, some days I'll meditate, some days I'll do whatever. Wind back 12 months ago, nearly every morning was kind of meditation. I was working through becoming more mentally open, resilient. I was working through a lot of mental and emotional challenges. So my morning routine was a bit more fixed because there was stuff that I was kind of working on. The last couple of weeks I've worked more than usual because I'm building something new. I'm quite excited about it. I like the morning clarity around it, but that's not an every morning thing. And then the kids will get up like half six, seven-ish. I'll be with them for like the first hour, hour and a half, making breakfast, play, like do whatever. Kitchen's my job. I do like the washing up and the dishwasher and all that, bins and all that kind of stuff in the morning. And then the wife will get up, get kids dressed, all that kind of stuff. And then I'll generally start up work half eight nine or I'll be in the gym first thing so like three days a week I'll go to the gym eight thirty nine and then I'll usually on average work four to five and a half hours a day and that can be split throughout the day if I've got appointments or going to go for a run or sometimes on a morning I'll play paddle with friends that's like rubber the green and then like literally I'm always home by five o'clock unless I'm working away don't usually work away more than twice a month I just find more than that for me it's just like a bit much find it a bit dysregulating and puts a bit more pressure on my wife and then dinner time five o'clock with the kids little play all that kind of stuff and if I don't if I'm not there for that I really miss it like I like seeing my kids every day it's like how have you grown what's changed like let's hang out

SPEAKER_00: 42:08

quick pause from our conversation because I'm wondering how you'd feel if I told you I could give you a free 50 pounds today yep if you've been thinking about moving your business back account or perhaps you don't have a business bank account yet I can highly recommend Monzo and if you open an account with them via the link in today's show notes you get a free£50. Monzo are free to bank with, I bank with them personally, it's so easy to use and also the one best business banking provider in the UK in 2024. So if you don't have a business bank account yet or you're looking to change from where you are just now to free business banking and£50 in your account head over to smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com for the link and enjoy. gosh and so I think the key themes there although you're saying there's nothing structured and you know every day is a bit different which I love as well because we're not robots like you say and I've heard so many morning routines that are like you've got a journal you've got to do this you've got to do that and that can in itself bring pressure if you're just not feeling it that morning so I love that where you're taking that time to ask how am I feeling just checking in and what do I need this morning I think some of the key themes though you're saying there there's fairly strict bedtime and wake up time so it And your finish time as well. So there's time boundaries there, which are sort of woven into most days, yeah? Exercise, work, and then that family time. Are these the sort of common themes that run through each day?

SPEAKER_01: 43:28

Yep. And then that will be a pattern for like four to six weeks. Then I'll always have a holiday. So this year, I think I'm going on 10, maybe 11 holidays. A, I love it. B, it's fun. C, I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 43:45

And are these family holidays or you and your wife?

SPEAKER_01: 43:47

A mixture still got like four or five holidays with the kids three holidays by myself maybe four the wife's got two holidays then we've got a couple of holidays together everyone has a bit of what they kind of want and I like you know there's certain adventures that I like going on that my wife doesn't and also I like going away by myself like I like a personal reset you know I've also got groups of friends that I want to go away with and do different things so I bake that in into my year and most of the holidays that I've had this year we sat down towards the end of last year and we were like what do we want to do next year okay let's go to Portugal in July and I'm going to go to this festival in March and we're going to do this and then you work around it so for me it's a real priority to get those holidays and times away and life adventures in the diary

SPEAKER_00: 44:39

Gosh Ben do you know what I'm getting from speaking to you is that there's so much that you do for yourself which is to help you enable you be a better husband, a better father, and a better part of your team, better CEO. But you know what, the difference whenever I'm speaking to female business owners, there's so much guilt around everything and I don't hear one bit of guilt coming through, but she's so refreshing. Could you give us female business owners who are juggling all these plates some advice about how important it is to take that time for yourself? How do we do it without feeling that mum guilt as it's often branded?

SPEAKER_01: 45:20

Very challenging for me to answer this question given my situation so I am in a very good situation so I work 20-25 hours a week my wife doesn't have to work So she is primary caregiver. She has all the time to do what she wants to do for the kids and for our home life and all the rest of it. She does do a couple of hours in our business, but she doesn't even need to do that. We're in that kind of position. So I have that. That gives me and affords me freedom. But we've built that together. Emotionally, how a mum, I would say, naturally thinks about about her role is different to how a man thinks.

SPEAKER_00: 46:01

You're saying what does this hour need for me and I understand that you're doing it in order to be better at all areas of your life like I totally get it but generally a mother a business owner is asking what does everyone else need from me today what do I need to do and you're last but we would love to have that you know just to turn that around to the way you're saying it.

SPEAKER_01: 46:23

So when I wake up in the conversation it's also my environment some mornings I'll be doing things for the family it is a what do I need and then what does everyone else need from me if my wife worked the conversation I would have to have would be more in favor of like what does other people need from me because she might need help doing more for the kids because she's also got to work and stuff so anyway backtracking everything can be changed through learned behavior sometimes you have to try things on for size and see that nothing breaks, for example. So if you as a female wakes up in the morning and say, do you know what? I'm going to take half an hour for me this morning and go out for a walk and dad can sort the kids out. You go out, you come home, oh, nothing broke, nothing burnt down, people are dressed, bums are wiped. It's like, okay, cool. So you kind of test it. One of the things I have heard from people in this situation is because the communication in the relationship isn't as strong as it can be and because Because the man doesn't often think about the family unit enough. There's this kind of unspoken expectation that the mum just takes the load because it's not been communicated effectively enough and the load isn't been shared enough. So it's almost like the mum then thinks, well, there's no point even asking because this is what he wants to do. And I don't know. I think there's definitely a natural propensity for the female. I'll sit down with my wife on a Sunday because we do our weeks planning on a Sunday with food and that kind of stuff. I have to sit there and encourage my wife. I'm like, what are you doing for yourself this week? How can I help you? And that's where our couples conversation comes in. So I say to her, how can I help you this week? What space do you need? What support do you need? Et cetera. And, you know, she's quite often at a bit of a loss. She's like, well, kids are doing this and I'm doing that. And I'm like, but you, and that is her natural. So he needs me. to say to her what you're doing for yourself. And sometimes she needs to pull me in a little bit and go, oh, I need your help a little bit here. So it's kind of teamwork. Try it. If you're a mum and if you get woken up your kids every day, maybe tomorrow say, I'm going to set my alarm up 30 minutes before the kids wake up and I'm going to see how it feels to come downstairs and just have 20 minutes by myself, do whatever I want. Just try these things on for size because think about it. If we're all like a pint of water and we're constantly at the brim. We haven't got any room. Our cup is full. We're not going to be our best selves. And I think one of the reasons our family unit, I feel our family unit works really well, is we don't ever try and fit too much in. We're never at full capacity. We're never fully stretched. And partly it's because we don't live a really busy life. Our life is full of fun things and adventure, but it's also full a lot of presence in the home life we flow there's never any rushing in our house there's never any like oh my god we're trying to do a thousand things two minutes before you know going out the door for school because we don't want to live like that so buy these things on for size

SPEAKER_00: 49:48

no that's really good advice and if you do have a partner and you're making sure that communication is strong and you're asking how you can support each other that's super important isn't

SPEAKER_01: 49:56

it because the mum share your guilt like share that emotion literally say to a partner me doing this I feel guilty and I think Ritz in general, if I was to say, you know, real crude, we're not good at really saying how we feel and like what we want. And it's like nothing changes until we say how we feel and what we want. And you'd be surprised at how much support rallies around you when you just honor what it is that you want. If my wife comes to me tomorrow and goes, this is what I really want. I'm like, oh, how do we make it work together? Or if she's feeling a certain way, I'm like, I'm sorry you feel like that. What do we need to do to make you feel better? My support is totally open and unconditional.

SPEAKER_00: 50:38

No, that's good. Thank you, Ben, for putting that sort of spin on it. It just struck me there through our conversation how this exact conversation sounds very different when I'm speaking to female business owners. So yeah, I thought it'd be nice to address that. So I think that's a really nice sort of way to wrap up our conversation today, unless there's anything you'd like to chat about that we haven't spoken about already.

SPEAKER_01: 50:58

No, hopefully people got some value from this podcast. I think so much in business, there's so many like, what feels like unwritten rules out there with business and your time and just be willing to ask yourself hard questions like challenge what you're doing challenge the status quo can you rewrite the rules we are doing this yes because we want to provide a service or a product or something to the marketplace but like a lot of us want freedom and flexibility and make sure you're giving yourself that you haven't just made yourself another job that quite often asks more of you than the job you have had beforehand

SPEAKER_00: 51:36

gosh yeah absolutely then we can turn into being our own worst bosses potentially we've left a boss and then became worse ourselves doing it to ourselves so yeah yeah excellent and of course everyone listening wants to know where we can find you you're a bit of everywhere aren't you where have you got a sort of main hub we can come and connect with you

SPEAKER_01: 51:54

instagram or linkedin is probably the best places but i'm you know all over the internet at benkuma.com i don't actively run the show at the moment but i have a podcast that has a lot of solo episodes of high performance kind of concepts sleep caffeine intake and that's the awesome human if people wanted to listen

SPEAKER_00: 52:14

okay so i'll link to that in the show notes today for your website your instagram and your podcast and ben is also very kindly offering listeners 15% off awesome supplements today too yeah

SPEAKER_01: 52:25

yes if anyone wants to try it you can use code ceo15 a lot of entrepreneurs say ah if i was to take like a couple of supplements what should i take and i always say baseline high quality vitamin and mineral which is awesome defense omega-3 is literally no one eats enough omega-3 and then probably a hydration product and then if you don't have enough protein maybe a protein powder so if anyone wanted to steer that would be your steer oh and a lot of business owners struggle with sleep and we've got an unbelievable sleep formula that business owners love

SPEAKER_00: 52:57

yeah often that's a wired but tired i hear from business owners are just so many ideas and whatnot and perhaps they've not had the time they want to during the day trying to fit in a million things to really explore ideas and get thinking about stuff so often when you lie down in bed is when these things come to you isn't it

SPEAKER_01: 53:13

yeah

SPEAKER_00: 53:14

excellent okay so yeah I will definitely be having a look at that so thank you so much for the discount code I will link to all of this in the show notes today where you can find Ben link to the website as well so you can check out awesome supplements and of course I'm sure if you have any questions for Ben following this just drop my DM or comment on Instagram and LinkedIn

SPEAKER_01: 53:31

thank you very much for having me

SPEAKER_00: 53:32

pleasure thank you for joining us thank you so much for joining us today for another episode of small business growth addicts i hope today's episode has given you inspiration and tangible tips that you can use to grow your small business in a way that feels right for you if you love today's episode please head over to smallbusinessgrowthaddicts.com and check out today's show notes where you can find details of our wonderful guests sponsors discounts freebies and so much more please also don't forget to leave a review today reviews are invaluable to us to help us get the show out there every single one is really read and very much appreciated until next time