On today's episode of Gathering the Kings. The last thing I wanna point out there is that your ability to just persist through having this idea but not being scientists, not having money, but having this really big vision. What connected that for you? Like, why didn't you push all of our in that? What's up, everybody? I'm Chaz Wolfe gathering the king's podcast Chaz. I'm I'm into you from Brooklyn, New York. Doing some traveling here this week with my family.
In fact, we just got off of the gathering the king's family mastermind cruise. Literally just got off the ship yesterday. We went to Bermuda. It was incredible. But today, I'm in Brooklyn in a beautiful hotel interviewing a wonderful king across the ocean Leo Campbell. Leo, and welcome to the King stage. Thanks for being here. Pleasure. Thank you for having us on the show. Absolutely. We're excited.
And so I was just out in uncharted waters kinda kinda closer to you a little bit, but kinda not really, but in in UK territory, actually, So I I'm glad to have you on the show. I'm glad to be having the UK represented here today. Tell us what kind of business that you have. We're in food. We're a food business. And our focus is very much staple food, you know, the staple foods that feed billions of people.
And our mission is to harness the science behind human digestion and utilize that those discoveries to scale what's absent from almost all packaged food and is widely recognized, which is nutrition. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's almost so obvious or so hidden that it's obvious or the reverse, maybe saying Chaz. It's like, wait a second. I'm eating food. But no nutrition is what I'm hearing you say. Right? Yeah. That's right. I mean, our food system has evolved, you know, the last 40 50 years.
I think everybody's aware of all the discussion around it. Ultra process food seemed to be the term that are surfacing to characterize all the packaged foods that fit us up cheaply, pleasurably, but completely lacking any nutrition. And is the in a sense the underlying cause for the sex explosion of metabolic illness Chaz is crippling, you know, the individuals, families, communities, and whole populations, and and not to say health care systems as well. So within all of that Right.
If you take the one real moving part that isn't there, so maybe it's not moving part. I don't know. And that is you know, nutrition. So if you wanna put it this way, sir, our widget is alternative nutrition. Yeah. I I love how you said alternative nutrition, but it's like, really, when you really boil it down, you've got real nutrition and what we've been eating for the last however many decades is really alternate nutrition. It's it's this other thing that we've been putting in our bodies.
Would you agree? Well, that's right. I mean, it's so much that is right and wrong about science is the use of definitions and things like Chaz, not not being very clear. But, yes, so we we see nutrition as being something we need to achieve that is absent at the moment. But, yes, most people think that they are achieving nutrition. Through eating food when, you know, the real truth is they're not. Yeah. Okay. Well, so you just said achieving nutrition.
So I'm gonna dive into that here in a second because that's a super interesting concept to me. But before I do, I wanna give you a chance to practically tell us how are you doing this? Just you're bringing real nutrition to people, you're overcoming this huge processed food thing, how does your business help people do this? We've been at this for 6 years.
In the last 6 years, we've been in kind of stealth mode working with leading world scientists, research technology organizations, universities, but we're at a stage now where we've just launched our first scalable product. And so we're coming out of stealth now. And that's why we've accepted the invitation to be on this podcast. And what that product is so the first product we focused on is bread.
Chaz far as we're concerned, you know, our it is the world's favorite ultra processed food, a sliced loaf of bread. And so whilst that is our current product, called Tupelo, and is in a major retailer in the UK made by, you know, one of the largest manufacturers in the UK are objective in our aim, and we've already started this, is transferring all of those kind of platform technologies that we've developed. Around nutrition into other food categories. And and that's what we're doing.
Yeah. So there are two faces of Chaz. One is the loaf of breads that we've launched, super loaf, that sits on the shelves that consumers can buy that talks to consumers and is for consumers because it's based around human biology, but we'll come onto that. The other is the technology that makes Chaz life are quite different, which is an IP package of ingredients, and that in itself is in a sense a separate business. So we have 2 different businesses.
1 is brand, and the other is you could call it blends if you want to. 1 is a B2B play. 1 is a B2C play. And Our vision with all of that is to scale all of that is to become what we call an impact unicorn by 2028. And the definition of an impact unicorn is something or a product or a service that has a positive impact on a billion people. And that's the vision behind every decision we take as a business.
Sort about what's commercially right necessarily or what's right for us, it does that help us on our journey to become an impact unicorn. It's kind of on Doll's stall. I love that. Yeah. I love that. Super easy for everybody to remember as well. A little bit of a trade secret inside of creating a mission and a vision for your team. Is make it fun and make it memorable in which you have clearly done that. Sure. Sure. Team is super excited. So you've you've created the loaf of bread.
That's the practical application. I think that's a great place to start, but you've really got this bland technology behind it where You've been, like you just said, you've been doing stuff for 6 years in stealth mode behind the scenes, researching, and working on, like, all the different layers of nutrition so that you can go implement all the the cool things on the side. Tell me what's driven the passion.
I mean, to go 6 years into stealth mode, to go 6 years in research and development and product you know, all this formation, the blend before you even sell anything is pretty intense and it's gonna require a lot of passion and and, like, In her drive, I call it a burning desire, comes straight from, you know, thinking grow rich. What what is the burning desire in you that's that's clearly burnt So there are probably 2 start points here.
And in a minute, we'll come on, and I'll explain about science and how it works, because I think that's really important. But Chaz you say, let's look at the backstory. So my background, I've been an entrepreneurial in my life, a lot of it in the advertising kind of arena and more recently ad tech and stuff like Chaz, but I hit a point of adversity in my life. Where a tragic incident happened that changed everything for me.
And my partner, Melissa, who my co founder, but also my partner in life, she too had a very severe illness, and both of these things collided to come together and is one of the lessons that, you know, this is a podcast about entrepreneurship. And, and one of the lessons within all of this is actually It's all about harnessing the power of vulnerability, you know, that vulnerability is not the weakness. It's actually the birthplace of real innovation and change.
And within that whole concept of vulnerability, you know, there there are lots of subcategories. So in Melissa's case, you know, we call it the gift of adversity. She, unfortunately, found herself just after with me in a chemo ward, and we were there together one day. And into the chemo ward came a trolley full of refreshments, and it was chocolate bars, you know, potato crisps, soders and everything like that. Yeah. I'd I don't know what your policy is on swearing here, but I won't swear.
But she just looked at it, turned around to me, and she just said WTF. And Yeah. She was just learning the connection at that point in her life between sugar and cancer. And at that moment, Something went off for both of us to say, we've gotta do something about this if we can. This is so wrong. This is so messed up.
And You know, that that started the specific journey, the realization that if we wanted to do something in food, the world doesn't need another nut butter or birchwater, what we needed was to tackle us ample food. And then the other half a story, my own one, was that one of my children, a nine year old, she died, from an asthma attack, and that just completely triggered a whole kind of breakdown of the family unit and everything like that. And indeed for myself as well.
So I had a kind of 4 or 5 year call it what you want, but break down. Chaz that reframed everything in my life. And then I thought I'd never come out of that breakdown, but I did. Wow. But it changed the way I saw everything in life. And So sitting there with Melissa with her situation, me in the position I was in at Chaz moment in time, which was ready to to be angry about something. And, so those were the origins. Those were the reasons that we started this business.
Yeah. And maybe Chaz you say, within all of that, the fact that we've been this persistent for 6 years. Chasing a problem, town Chaz probably being galvanized by all of that background and a determination to it backs something, but also to just to be honest about, you know, what life's really about.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hear inside of both of those stories, your heart and her heart for justice, because an angle of justice is to do the right thing, and not just for you, but to make it, right, with the construct. Right? And you're right. I mean, sitting there in a chemo ward being offered a sugary anything is Chaz. And I think that most people just watch it happen. Right? And we just we just don't do anything about it.
And so this mixture of justice you know, mixed with your guys' entrepreneurial spirit and this, like, no. We gotta make change here. It's just incredibly inspiring. And and on top of that, my condolences for your daughter, the the whole situation of just like these things happening at the same time here, or or, you know, those things happening individually in your lives, Yeah. I'd, like, combust it is is kinda what you're saying. Do you think about those things often now?
Does Melissa think about that moment in time often now? Or is that kinda like the origin of the story? And now you guys are, like, on a mission and and that that was just the initial fuel, do you think? No. It's present with us every day because because it's becoming to woven into our mission and everything we do.
I mean, The other thing about entrepreneurship and, you know, you you know, this yourself, Chaz, and you've spoken to so many people, it'll be a recurring fee, is that you live, breathe, eat, sleep, your entrepreneurship. Yeah. That's just how it works. That's right. Or certainly one end at a scale. I mean, obviously, there's a spectrum of different types of entrepreneurs.
But if you're the kind of emotionally driven entrepreneur like I am, like we are, then you just let, you know, it is your every when you go on a holiday, you go somewhere where you're gonna get something, expand your mind for work, or go and meet somebody or visit somewhere, or even go and eat in a place that's done something special. Everything is driven by Chaz. And so the origin of how we've got there is never really very far away.
And the other dimension to it, which, again, people don't need to be told this, but probably doesn't harm is the level of personal sacrifice that you have to take. For all of this to happen. So a lot of the decisions that we take in life now ourselves Chaz a couple have been compromised by the fact that we have spent so long chasing a vision and making a lot of sacrifices along the way.
So he always comes home, you know, you think I don't wanna come across sounding It's not a complaint remotely, but you have to change your mindset. And, you know, there's less money available. There's, you know, there are less choice. There's less time available. There are fewer choices available to live life. So, yeah, you always remember that where this stuff came from. Yeah. Yeah. You're right.
I think you you had mentioned something just a few minutes ago around, you know, if the listener was an emotional connected entrepreneur like you guys, I would say that we all are ways just to whether we're in tune with whatever that emotional or that burning desire is. And I would even go another step further to say that if somebody's listening right now and they haven't figured out what that emotional connection or that burning desire is of why they do their business every day.
There's no chance they're gonna be in business in the next 3, 5, 15, 50 years. Would you agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. And because you have to dig deep to get across the line because everything you assume is going to be in your way, between where you are and bringing your idea to life. Goes out the window. Other things come along. Yeah. He goes on for years more than you think it's going to. Sure. And the rises get bigger and better you pivot along the way. But, yeah, you're right.
But if you don't have that that deep connection to your heart and your soul, as to who you are and why you're doing this, then you you don't have the resilience to see it through. In my view. Yeah. I agree. Okay. So you've got this super you I mean, obviously, you are already a successful entrepreneur, and feel free to dig into some of that if you'd like to, but I I wanna know in this 6 years of, like, stealth mode Chaz you called it. I wanna know some practicals.
I wanna know a good decision that you've made, and you'd kinda mentioned a few minutes ago the word sacrifice. Maybe that's part of this good decision that you've made. Really 6 years of researching and developing has probably been, like, a huge sacrifice for you, but what's been a practically good decision that you've made inside of that stealth mode that's led you to now where you're launching that first staple food, and I'm sure there's gonna be many, many more to come.
Well, I think in in our case, that would be the realization quite shortly into our journey. Chaz we had to understand the science, and we had to really dig deep into the science. I think when we started this, which was all about democratizing healthy baking because, as I say, industrial bread is the world's kind of favorite ultra processed food, you know, and by definition, that is not healthy for people. We assume the answers would be fairly simple.
Straightforward was about the quality of ingredients, the amount of fermentation, the, you know, various different things around ingredients and process. But we realized that actually there was far more science involved in this and a lot that wasn't known. So her specific decision we took with her, how can we access all of that science? We don't even know where to start because none of us are scientists.
So what we did is we looked at the government schemes for funding innovation, and it wasn't easy. I mean, it was impenetrable to start with. So we started applying for, well, initially for 1, government grant to fund, not just fund, but also kind of give us the credibility to be working with the scientific community. Once we made that decision and got into that role, that changed everything because firstly, we've now had 6 consecutive grant wins.
Which is actually unprecedented in a small food company in the UK. So if we've just won our sick, you know, and along with a little bit of private investment, So we're 1,000,000 of pounds into this. We've had a huge amount of governments brought. Yeah. But what that did, the reason why that was such a good decision was because it gave us direct access with all these different scientific communities with a lot of credibility as well.
You know, the government was paying then to do this work for us. And therefore, they had to do it well and properly. They were gonna be judged by independent people from the government, whether they're delivered, and that changed everything for us.
I know that's not available to everybody, but there will be a lot of people in the same position as us, especially if they're trying to move something forward as fundamental as we are, for whom that route might be more more easily available than they realize. Yeah. Leo, thank you for all that. You dropped so many good things on us. I wanna try to dissect this a little bit.
Number 1, you said you were not scientists, but, yeah, you wanted to, like, jump into this whole thing about something that it's not that you didn't know about it. It's just that you had justice and this emotional connection to You didn't necessarily know the how, but you started to connect with the who. Love that point. I I wanna just hit that home for the listener. The second thing that you said was The funding piece is absolutely available, and so I wanna encourage the listener right now.
There are government grants, city grants, municipality grants in your area, in your County in your city, in your state, even federal, in the United States, I'm sure even in the UK, way more than you think is available, Go look. Go apply. It's, quote, unquote, free money. There are programs out there that that sure can help your business.
The last thing I wanna kinda point out there is that your ability to just persist through having this idea, but not being scientists, not having money, But having this really big vision, what connected that for you? Like, why did you push so hard in that? It's entrepreneurship. As you know, So, I mean, one of the other key lessons in on entrepreneurship, of course, is about pivoting.
You have to be ready for When everything changes your horizon or your opportunities or some knowledge or some funding or, you know, sort of opportunistic moment, you have to see it. You have to be ready and open minded to think, is that gonna take us in a bigger, better direction? Is there something we can do? So it's about just, I suppose, having a creative mindset and the ability then to have faith Chaz you you're gonna go for something even if it doesn't appear clear.
I mean, the best definition of entrepreneurship I've ever heard, I think, goes something like this is that you embark on some without any regard to the resources you have at hand. So you just dive in and see what happens. Now many people can't do Chaz. And, nor should they because if if they could, it's so much of what we rely on in life. Wouldn't be there. Everybody be an entrepreneur and would be in a big mess, wouldn't we? Yeah. So I think it's that is the, I don't know, the ability.
Well, let's call it the ability to pivot. Yeah. No. I think you give a great opportunity for us to just think about our own journey and just to determine Number 1, are we willing to commit? That's what I just like the overall commitment to persevering through all that, but inside of those things Chaz getting the funding or working with the community, I love the point about gaining authority, being on a podcast and gaining authority, getting funding Chaz get you authority.
Yeah. Getting interviewed at a local newspaper. Like, there's a lot of things as entrepreneurs that we can do to game authority with the maybe either the networks or people or even our customers that can help. Would you agree with that? Anything to say there? Absolutely. It's a whole other dimension to all of this, which is about if you wanna call it. PR, but, you know, gaining authority.
If there's one insight, I would want to pass on about that because I think all too many people ignore trade media as being particularly valuable. They assume that you wanna be in the nationals, you know, everything to do with consumer and so forth. Whereas that the trade media that everybody in the trade breeds or consumes in one way or another is so valuable right, in the early days of building your story and your credibility. And you have to remember something, but That's right.
When a national journalist Googles you to find out a bit more about you, and they see that you've been written about, but comprehensively by, you know, the trade authority. It's just a tick. You know? Yeah. And I find almost nobody I know works with their trade media on a regular basis and builds relationships to the editors and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. That's huge. I appreciate that little tidbit. I wanna know of a bad decision.
Something that you guys have done in this stealth mode that's didn't work out. It was not your best hour. Maybe you pivoted away from it, or maybe it caused problems. What was that? This may or may not answer the question. I think we assumed Chaz if we came up with a brilliant product that answered all sorts of problems, we would just take it to a manufacturer and co develop and that would become a product. What we discovered was that Chaz was a mistake.
No. None of the manufacturers are interested in solving the problems. The only people who are are the retailers. We didn't anticipate that we would have to do the last mile of the journey ourselves Right. Chaz has involved probably set us back 2 years Chaz we've been able to make the product and everything for a long time, but we couldn't find anybody to actually get interested in it because we were presented by the industry patronized, worse than that, actually. I mean, it was it was ruthless.
How we got treated. So in the end, we had to go and get the retailers on board who were fantastic, and then they worked back to the manufacturers. So I'm not sure that quite answers your question, but my point is you think that you're not gonna have to do that last mile because you've set everything up. But be prepared for it. You will have to do that last mile and be ready for it. Hey, Charles Wolf here.
As many of you know, I have been on an absolute mission to help entrepreneurs from all across the country in many different industries, level up their game and grow their business, and intentionally connect with other entrepreneurs. We do that obviously through the podcast, but we also have a peer to peer mastermind group specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners.
We are bringing some of the best and most successful entrepreneurs and minds together in a regular and super intentional way to not only grow our network, but to be able to leverage.
And at a certain point in business, success becomes about leverage, leveraging time, leveraging resources, leveraging key relationships, This is exactly what we're doing inside of the peer to peer mastermind group called Gathering the Kings, specifically for 7 to 9 figure business owners, So if that's you, if you're ready to level up your 7 to 9 figure business even to the next level and get around other big hitters just like you, I want you to
go to gathering the king's dot com, flood a short application, and, it'll come to an application, call with me and I wanna chat with you, see if it might be a good fit. Talk soon. Yeah. Really, the concept that you're talking about is, you know, maybe what here in America we call massive action. And massive action meaning, like, it's just gonna take 10 x, a 100 x more than you think initially.
So you're always without necessarily knowing exactly what's a plan for, you're always planning for a whole lot more. And then if it doesn't take it, cool, and so you didn't necessarily know you're gonna have to do that, but you were ready to take those steps when they came, even though it took you longer, you persevered through it because you probably had a bigger concept of. It's just gonna take a whole lot more than we probably even understand to get this to market. Would you agree with that?
Would you add anything? No. No. I think you nailed it. They have Chaz. It's Okay. Exactly that. Well, the there you go. So it's gonna take a whole lot more than you realize, listener which we know as business owners. Like, right? Isn't our day to day? Everything harder? Not that it has to be harder, but there's just always things that you said a couple minutes ago. There's those things that come in our way. That we have to overcome or get around or go through, go under whatever it might be.
And so I think that that that pivot for you and that bad decision isn't necessarily like detrimental, We we didn't just stop trying to come up with a product. We just had to now we make it ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. So It would be great if we can just to explain about how our product is different because I think how that connects to the problem in society and Ultra Process Foods is is possibly quite important. I love that. That's what's driving us.
So, yes, of course, we wanna take a healthy bread to market, but it's much, much bigger than that. I think the problem we're solving is I think we all know the basic problems with the ultra processed foods, but almost certainly the root source of the modern illness of metabolic syndrome, which the funny effects come from America. The term diabetes. So it's a combination of, obviously, obesity and diabetes. I think it was coined by Harvard's Robert Lustig. I don't know if you know him.
But he's big on the whole pan of sugar thing. And it's now actually uses a medical term. It's already good because it's not pejorative. It's not offending anybody to just talk about diabetes. But It's so show economic cost is already running in a trillions. And in the US, I think it's several $1,000,000,000,000 The health care cost for poor diet related illness. And, you know, we've talked about blighting the lives of, you know, of everybody.
Yeah. And the fundamental problem in everybody trying to fix it is that you have the same term. You have a nutrition profiling model in America, which is about fat sugar salt, All of those same metrics that we have in the UK. And we keep trying to make people reduce sugar, reduce fat, juice salt, do all of Chaz. But all that has done is push the, food industry into making foods even more ultra processed.
So, you know, the classic is when you replace sugar and a soda with, you know, sugar substitute. And so forth, and the consequence of that are now coming, you know, in essence of just launched a kit Chaz breakfast cereal. I mean, they've been taken apart in the media here in the UK for it, and and they'll keep our goals Chaz now got a you know, green light, chilled, dessert. All of these things are just making the problem Wolfe. So that was what we faced when we came to setting the business up.
And, you know, what is wrong with all of that? Why isn't it working? So what we've done as a business is to step outside that and think none of that's workings, her calories, all those macro nutrient things are not working, then helping anybody, and everybody's confused by it. So we started from human biology. He said, let's ignore everything and just start from human biology at cellular level.
And work out what we need to do, how we need to construct foods around natural ingredients from human biology to the supermarket shelf, not from a marketing department or from a new product development department or a grandmother's recipe, or anything like Chaz. It's from human biology. And so that's what we've been studying for 6 years is how we can harness human biology. So we have software and hardware. The software is our digestive system.
The hardware is our, you know, is our body, you know, we have a pharmaceutical factory, a chemical factory in our body, beyond anything that any human being can imagine. I've got microbiome, our digestive system, but in particular, I've got microbiome. It makes incredibly complex chemicals Chaz the body Chaz spent 200 1000000 years of mammalian evolution evolving to need and want, and then your immune system is like a pharmacy.
And so the job you have to do is to put fill the pharmacy's shelves with the right chemicals so that when something happens to your body, it can sort you out So simple as that. Yeah. And the food we're eating today is not getting that chemical factory to work. It's making practically nothing. That's any good. And it's not hard to give it the right stuff. And that reformulation around things that are affordable as well, ingredients, and things like Chaz.
Is what we've been doing is what we've done in Superlife. So it's packed, yeah, full of special fibers soluble fibers, not, you know, and fiscuits and fermentable ones, bioactive compounds that have been targeted, fermented, to amplify their benefits, and it's utterly transforming for an ultra processed food. You know, in the end, it's not been that hard.
So the same Yeah. High speed machines Chaz churn out industrial bread are the same machines that are making super life now without to overcome all sorts of technical challenges and problems, but we've done it. I'm sure. And now as I said, we're moving on to pasta, breakfast cereal, but working with the yogurt, all sorts of stuff. I love that. Thank you for the explanation there. I think just for Natalie, is this your business, and we can watch your mind solving problems.
That's what I love about gathering the Kings. It started as a mastermind group for the podcast. And so inside of our group, I love, even as the facilitator throwing up situations or seeing different people, feat, and construct different problems. Everything that you just did, I loved. I I would just keep feeding you questions if we had time. To see how your mind works with all of this because Chaz entrepreneurs, this is how we become successful.
We just continually solve one problem after the other, and you just gave us a whole road of that, but you you you dwindled it all the way down to the basis of our immune system, and our body, which I just love everything that you just described. In addition to that, as entrepreneurs, I'm just a huge fan of if I put in good stuff in my body, than than my body and my mind as an entrepreneur Chaz operate at a higher level.
And so I just think everything that you've shared with us, not only just your problem solving entrepreneur ability, But then actually what you do as a business is helping people like me and you and the listener operate at a maximum lever. I'm always trying to maximize every area of my life. And house is one of those, and we can't operate at the very best. I can't be the king I'm designed to be if I'm filling my stuff with no pharmaceuticals. Right? Yeah. Yeah. No. Honestly, it's not difficult.
The only thing that really staggers us is how little this is known about in the big food companies. Right. You know? And by the way, our our business model is to work from within the industry, not from without it. So, you know, we're about partnerships with the big players, and we gotta feed 10,000,000,000 people in the not too distant future. It's too late to go back to lunch boxes and a lot, you know, growing our own vegetables and making our own bread. Too late for that.
We have to have the food industry working for us and to be providing us, you know, the nutrition. Yep. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. And that's where we've got to go. But their DNA is that when you challenge them over their science, They are so offended about the fact that they say we have the best scientists in the Wolfe, and they do for making food fluffy longer lasting, yellow, or whatever. But frankly, almost none of them have a clue about human biology.
So I'm completely untrained in science, but I guarantee you I could run rings around practically any food industry scientist on human biology. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think that it's it's really good for for the listener to be paying attention here because, again, I'm correlating these two things that you're doing. This is the actual, like, health, and they need to be paying attention to what you're doing as a consumer.
But then number 2 as an entrepreneur, everything that you're doing as far as solving problems, it's not necessarily trying to overcome your competition or a big player. It's all about partnership and collaboration. This is actually a huge point in business. I've had multiple people here on my show that have the same businesses that I'd I even had a remodel. 1 of my portfolio companies is a remodeling company in Kansas City.
I had another remodeler on my show from Kansas City, and I was giving him airtime and promotion, and I was telling consumers to go to his websites. It's like, look, it's about collaboration. It's about abundance. And it's not necessarily like you said kicking those manufacturers out. It's like, you know, no. I need them. I need this guy to do well. When he does well, then I do well. That's, like, an abundance mindset. What would you speak to that layer here before we move on?
So because we're a purpose driven business, it's even more important that everybody shares everything within that community. Because the more we help other people understand what we understand, then the more likely we are to get momentum behind our our visions. Right? And ultimately the achievement. We're contemplating that we will open source our all of our technology, all of our platform technologies.
And reveal our whole food systems model around alternative nutrition and with all the platform technologies. And, you know, if if the moment is right, we will open source that to try and accelerate this because it's more important that we solve the problem, but it is that we're the only people who own a solution.
So all of that sharing, and I think Within that, Chaz also is a really important lesson in entrepreneurship, which is that whatever you fear is going to happen almost certainly never does. And it's such a thing that holds you back. So being generous to a competitor, sharing information with people who you think are a competition, revealing things outside an NDA because they won't sign an NDA.
You know, in all my years of being entrepreneur, 99 point nine times out of a 100, nothing's ever gone wrong. The thing you fear that would otherwise hold you back. And whereas Chaz honestly, that collaboration and everything generally leads on to unexpected benefits further down the line. Yeah. I agree with you, and it's so hard to quantify that because the fear in that moment is so overwhelming a lot of times because you don't know what you don't know, but I could agree with you.
There's actually been things that have gone wrong for me, but then Eventually, they work themselves out how they're supposed to. And so even if the listener is thinking right now, you know, like, oh, I got that time, you know, where I shared information and it bit me, Yeah. I bet you if you follow the story long enough, it probably worked itself out. Are you were you gonna agree with that? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I funny if I Listening to one of your all podcasts, her previous contributor.
They said it was a phrase of their mothers, that Chaz they grew up with. And I grew up with that same phrase too, but I knew it to come from Zig Ziegler, who's an American motivationalist, the probably know from bets, right, from the sixties or seventies. And it was Chaz Yep. That his phrase is really simple. You can have whatever you want in life. If you help enough other people get what they want. And in a way, that's about graciousness. That's about holding your nerve.
It sums up so much about what you have to be, to be an entrepreneur. And you never know what the outcome's gonna be, but if you don't take that step, the outcome will be nothing. That's right. Okay. I wanna switch to our speed route here, Leo. I wanna know inside of this incredibly large big rock that you're moving called alternate nutrition. What's the number one KPI in your business? If you can only take 1, what would that one KPI be Chaz we positively affect to 1,000,000,000 lives by 2028.
Unicorn, maybe. Right? It's a big KPI. That's probably too big. Is that too big a KPI? Well, it mean, the one I know Chaz you were gonna share, right? That that's that's boring, isn't it? It's predictable. But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Right now is less about how many loaves of bread are being sold on a shell. It's more about the relationships we're building.
With retailers and manufacturers within the UK outside the UK, getting a distribution network set up for our blend, so that we can get it to market anywhere in the Wolfe, consistently have 1 one global partner on that. We're working on that at the moment. We've got an advanced stage of that. So that's not a KPI, but those are things that are kind of more important than unit sales right now. Yeah. I love Chaz. And I I think that really that's always our north star.
Like, what's gonna move the needle? What's moving the needle now and that and that that top KPI might change? Okay. Next thing down here is what book or business resource? Maybe even a podcast event? What what what can you share with us that you've gone through or read? That would be helpful. Didn't know this was coming. Maybe I should have read the notes. I well, my biggest tool business tool that I use at the moment is audible. Yeah. And I just I cannot read anymore.
You know, I read scientific papers. I read blog posts all of Chaz. And there is no more that I could physically read. I have to listen. And so Yeah. My subscription to Audible, and I just download you know, something like Henry Dimbalby's ravenous, actually, and I just read Chris Van Talican's Ultra Process People, both of them I listened to. I didn't read. Right. And They're both very, very good books, but they are obviously around food, nutrition, and health.
They're not around entrepreneurship at all because They've both done a really good job in identifying the problem and bringing it home to everybody, but they don't have solutions. They're very fatalistic, and they can't see how we can get out of this mess, but we can. However, a brilliant source material for us That's awesome. Yeah. No. I appreciate that. The audible, little plug there is huge. I I do the same thing. I'm listening to audible almost every single day.
I do try to still read because of the functionality of the brain, but like you said, sometimes there's just literally not another minute to read, but I can get, you know, listening during the gym or as I'm driving or in between different things that I'm doing. So I that's a great way. Yeah. I've got a question for you about what's what a lot of people call balance. I I think the word balance is is ridiculous and disgusting. And I'll tell you what. Is because I'm obsessed.
And I think that you're obsessed also. You've described how you've been obsessed in your relationship and against nutrition and even in your businesses. Tell me how you and even Melissa have gone after life and business at the same time. Relationships, family, business, Like, how have you been obsessed with all of it all at the same time? I think at first, it was quite tricky.
We used to set a load of rules about when we could and couldn't talk about business, and we'd have time that we couldn't we've given up on that. It's just part of life. So like I say, is that we schedule what we do, around something that's useful for us as well as a business very often, and we've just come to accept that. We just live with that now. And therefore, look, I'm with you.
Chaz I think if you embark on this journey of entrepreneurship and you throw yourself into it, then you forego what other people might call balance. But you know what? It's great fun. It's innovating. It's just it it keeps you going. It's just wonderful to be part of something. And you know what? It's attractive to other people. People wanna come and be part of your energy when you get it right. And That's right. And it's really good for your kids as well.
To see you so focused on something driving for something. I mean, as as an example setter, I can't think that there could be anything better, so long, as you keep your spirits up. You know, there are times you have to hide disappointments and things that you don't share them or at that moment in time because it would kill a moment. So you've you've gotta manage all of that very well, but look overall. Sure. Yeah. I mean, balance. What balance? Come on. Yeah. Exactly. Just real quick here.
I wanna stay on this topic just I'm coming off of the family mastermind cruise. And the the reason why we even set this cruise up, and we'll just do this in a much bigger way in the future, this one's kind of like our first run at we had an incredible time is because life as an entrepreneur really is just life. Like, it's us, our spouse, sometimes a spouse is involved in the business, sometimes they're not, and we're going. We have kids. We have a business or maybe multiple endeavors.
We've got this focus. We've got this obsession. We've got this marriage. We've got these kids. We've got maybe other relationships and family, and it's like, all this, like, you know, managing or what a lot of people are trying to achieve balance. And it's like, man, that that moment of balance, even if it were to exist, it would only be about 30 seconds, and then we get to miss the rest of the journey. And so why not go on a cruise where we get family vacation, good business networking?
We did some marriage sessions and some parenting sessions. All in one, which you said earlier, you like, I chose my holiday destinations based on who I could meet or a relationship that I could further or, you know, like, This is just how we do life as entrepreneurs. And if we embrace that and we walk forward in it, then it can actually become really fun.
The energy that we have, the passion that we have about the business, gets just transferred over to doing life and marriage with our family and the people that we want the way we love, just doing it all together. Like and that's what I'm hearing you say.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other way of phrasing that is that and actually it touches on, I think, a quality that entrepreneurs need is that everything is a paradox You can argue that everything is good and everything is bad and everything is right. Everything is wrong. If you want to, and some people can't cope with the duality of all of that. And others can. So balance is a perfect example of that. I mean, it's fantastic and awful at the same time.
Somewhere in the middle is good enough, you know. And, yeah, and as I say, Hey. J juggling these paradoxes at every level is quite an important part of it. Love that. I got one last question here for you, Leo. I wanna know If you had the opportunity to whisper in the younger Leo's ear, what would you tell him? Probably to be more comfortable to understand about becoming more comfortable in myself from an earlier age.
You know, if I'm honest, I guess I became the real me, the person I am after I had a breakdown. Wow. When I look at that now, like, you know, I'm honest, emotionally, and Everything like that. I wanna say breakdown. I probably mean my daughter's death, actually. Yeah. That's one thing. And I think if I'd been brought up And if my mother had been whispering my ear all the time about, some are finding the right way to tell me to be more comfortable in myself. Because I perceived I wasn't.
I think I could have done a lot more good in my life than, you know, having a go now but I think I could have achieved an awful lot more in terms of, you know, not for myself, but, you know, I believe that the secret of life is to leave this planet leaving behind more than you've taken from it. Simple as that. And there's no limit to how much more you can leave behind if you get it right. That's right. I think I would have I would be leaving behind more.
Yeah. Your connection to leaving behind more to being your true authentic cell. You know, the listener doesn't know this, but before we hit the record button, Leo and I were going back and forth just a little bit of prep a few minutes before the show like I always do. And Leo said, I hear you. You want the authentic. You're really into the authentic. And I said, well, number 1, I think that most people, whether they realize it or no, that's what they're is Leo's real story, Chaz's real story.
John, whoever John is, real story, because as humans, we have those 2 recognitions of moments like the one where we're born and then the other one where we recognize that it's the beginning of our real life. For you, that was the death of your daughter or for the many of us listening. It's our own moment where we recognize, okay. Now I'd be good. Right?
Even though I've been alive, now I have permission to not worry about what other people think or to be my true self or to press into my passion or my desires, whatever those things kinda culminate Chaz. Just really appreciate your permission to the younger Leo, but really to the listener today. To be able to go and do that. I wanna give the opportunity for you to connect with the listener and the listener to connect with you.
Number 1, how can I know we in the US, we can't buy her yet, but how can we be watching you so that way we can buy not only breaded, but other amazing ultimate nutrition products from you, but then How can we connect with you as an entrepreneur and and and grow help you grow the mission? Well, thank you. I think because we've just come out of stealth mode and only just entering scale up, It is quite hard for people to find out information about us and because there isn't a lot of backlog.
And, there's not a lot of product to buy. Is just available in the UK. That will change. And so one thing is that, you know, as soon as our product comes to the US, then we'd like you to to run after it Chaz it down, find it, buy it, review it, love it. Yeah. But I think along the way, for anybody listening, I would really urge people to try and understand and dig deep about nutrition and their diets.
And so for there are so many things you can do that can start the journey or can accelerate the journey, gateway products, ideas, things just just educating yourself so that, you know, that when we do arrive in America, everybody's ready for it. Yeah. Well, we've got a huge listener base in the UK as well. And so are there certain stores that they can find the Superlofen? Yeah. So presently, it's only available. We've done an exclusive with Marks and Spencer.
You know, they're a large retailer here in the UK. And so, yeah, you'll find it in the majority of boxer Spencer stores and on Ocado, which is our big on online store in the UK as well. So it will it will come to other stores, and we're working on other SKUs so that there will be other super bakery products soon in the marketplace as well.
And look, Mark's dispenser have been fantastic in terms of their support for us and their recognition of our vision And to help us bring the products to market, it's been been brilliant, hasn't either they've been brilliant as a partner, so nothing but respect for them. I love that. Wolfe, if you're listening here today, I can't wait. I I know my wife, you know, threw me today.
She's not even here listening right now, but I guarantee you she's gonna be one of the first ones in the US to buy the super low probably hitting the other product because, we've already gone down this rabbit trail. We're already trying to change things in our own household, but having trouble. So I'm thankful for people like you who have a vision like you do and a passion to persist through 6 years of just stealth mode and just all kinds of roadblocks, I'm sure.
Thank you for for leading the charge on that. Blessings upon you, Melissa, your entire team, your entire family. Thank you so much for being here, Leo. We appreciate it. Well, thank you very much. Chaz been great doing this, you know, and talking to you and I love your enthusiasm and the way you do this kind of stuff. So this has been great. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you for listening to Gathering the Kings today.
I hope that you were able to pull out a few nuggets to go apply into your business right away. More importantly, though, I hope that you're realizing that it takes more to be successful than just being by yourself doing it all on your own, carrying the weight all by yourself.
What I have realized not only in my own journey from multiple businesses and multiple different industries and now interviewing over 2 or 300 other very successful 789 figure business owners is that It's tough to do it alone. And so gathering the Kings exists to bring together successful entrepreneurs. In fact, we are putting together 1 1000 kings, specifically who are grateful, but not done.
We're intentionally assembling kings who fight tooth and nail for their business, family, and communities, and here's what we believe Chaz in the pursuit of excellence in those areas, that it ignites within us the responsibility to govern power and forge a lasting legacy. So if that relates and and resonates with you, and you know that you need people around you, sharp, qualified other very successful business owners. I want you to go to gathering the king's dot com.
Want you to take a look at what we're doing and see if it makes sense for you to be part of our pursuit to 1000 kings. Talk soon.