The Journey to Hence - Part 1
From initially entertaining the idea leaving my family business whilst on holiday in 2017, through the rollercoaster that is starting a new business.
I feel, rightly or wrongly, it is part of the process to share my experiences along this path, and my goals for the company as we progress.
So, in the midst of hopefully educational and generally informative blogging will be bouts of personal diarising, honesty and, unfortunately, vulnerability. But I do promise there will be no sales or marketing spiel in this aspect of our relationship. If you’re like me, you get enough of that from almost every other aspect of life through a screen.
Inception
As a brief background, I, Luke Backhouse, founder of Hence, creator of the nutritional super stacks, was an electrician and solar panel installer for 10 years up until April 2018. Prior to that I tried, pretty poorly, to become a pilot in the RAF as a teenager. Strangely enough, watching back-to-back Frasier episodes in the mornings, going for a 20 minute run in the afternoon and getting fairly average A-level results didn’t get me over the line to becoming the pilot my 17-year-old-self dreamed of. Instead, it got me scratching around for job/careers with few prospects and left me with no interest in further education.
My dad has worked for himself as an electrician since before I was born, and although I’m not sure if he wanted or needed an apprentice, when I needed a job, a career, he made space for me. In true apathetic teenage fashion I took what was the easy, sensible option for me – but I like to hope, for both of us.
We progressed over the years and added Solar PV installations to our armoury, followed by ventilation, some clever heating systems and finally electric vehicle charging points. I enjoyed the work and the lifestyle. I think everyone should work with their hands in some capacity for a period of their life. It gave me confidence and physical strength. The teamwork involved equipped me with an ability to communicate with anyone and everyone.
Looking back, I must have had an itch to do other things from an earlier age than 30 because at age 22/23 I learnt to trade the financial markets. Foreign exchange to be precise, and like 95% of the people that trade their own money, at first I lost a lot of it from accidental incompetence before I gained a real knowledge of it. I guess you could call that training costs!
I was happy with this life of “tradey” by day and trader by night (well, evening) for best part of 9 years. I didn’t even entertain the idea of doing anything different. Working in a small family business, you don’t tend to think of life outside it. In theory, at some point the rightful passage would be to take it over from my father until I retired gradually like my parents.
Then one day, literally, it felt like switch flicked in my mind. What about life outside the business? What about if I didn’t do this? What if I did something else? What else? When the answer to that last question didn’t matter as much as the first, I think I knew deep down there was something out there. My trading had grown and turned into a profitable enterprise, so I had some support in place even if I didn’t have much else. I was drifting on this dream for a while but I needed to think, to decide conclusively, for the sake of everyone around me. Was I going to make a change?
I decided, having not told anyone, the day after I got married.
Lucy and I married in Greece surrounded by family and a few friends. Before we flew home I had made my decision and it was time to share it with the world.
A problem shared
Telling people how you truly feel about something that defines you was nerve wracking. I had butterflies in my stomach everywhere. Telling my family was tough, I knew they would be disappointed. Telling friends was different, I had no idea what they would think of me, throwing away a decent, established business. Telling customers was tricky, timing it right and making sure they didn’t feel abandoned, something which was at the forefront of my mind.
One of my biggest takeaways from this early process of change was learning that so much of my expectations (or barriers) were just in my mind. I expected people to think I was a drop-out, or just odd in some way. My misconceptions of what people would think were more paralysing than I realised – they had been barriers to action for a long time. Once I had decided I was going to change my life (cocooned in holiday idealism - lying poolside in the sunshine) the first feeling I had was regret, regret that I hadn’t allowed myself to consider this idea sooner. The reality though was that I had realised quite quickly. I’m only 30. Firstly, regret is BS and secondly, I could really only decide when I was ready to, no one and nothing could have brought me to this conclusion sooner or more surely than myself.
Once I’d got it off my chest to actually articulate “the plan” out loud, it quickly became obvious that there was no plan, which was stupid. Or at least it felt stupid. I was walking out of a successful business that I was getting increasingly more out of to do....what? Trade foreign exchange? In Gloucestershire? With a small account and 90% of the day free? I was so consumed with the cathartic process of the revolution that I’d forgotten to work out what I was revolving towards!
Almost by fate, around this time I started meditation.
[A short interlude on meditation…
Meditation is a game changer. I urge anyone and everyone to try it. Even if just to tell me I’m wrong and it’s “utter BS!” Because I think before you do, you will love it! It provides a time of calm and reflection for me that I don’t otherwise get. The voices inside my head stop (just me?) and the calm reason comes through. That calm reason for me was - to stop worrying. The answer to what do with my time will show itself, and if it doesn’t in the time before I become unemployed (retired, I told people) then it will when it’s ready.
- end of interlude]
Rife
Like the plague, ideas came flooding in to my mind, burdening my thoughts, they quickly became almost unwelcome. I had so many things I wanted to fix. So many pains to solve and many things in world I wanted to do the right way. Most, naturally, were almost laugh-out-loud implausible. As an example (an idea I actually felt confident enough to share with a mentor) I thought about starting a charitable hedge fund where investors and traders put their spare money and the profits go to charity. The idea itself, depending on your experiences and preconceptions, isn’t a bad one. But I hadn’t even Googled it. Actually it’s illegal, or so frowned upon it might as well be.
[Learn from your parents interlude…
I was told by my parents, and I think most people know it deep down: whatever you do, make sure it’s honourable. Make sure you can stand in front of everything you have done and say to anyone who questions you “I believe in this. It’s right for this reason…” and obviously don’t kid yourself. The sharp end of this is if you work in sales. If what you’re doing isn’t honourable - get the hell out! It may be you chatting BS or it may be the product. Either way, don’t do it, it will trouble you forever if there’s a decent human in you.
- end of interlude]
Back to my rush of ideas…I needed to tighten my parameters in the search. I needed to ensure my skills were going to be utilised and the things I enjoy would be closely in tow. One of my many pains was fitness and health. I think this is widely shared by anyone who cares about their body and mind continuing to serve them through life. There you go – already a big market before we even know what we’re talking about.
My problem solver.
Anyone who has any interest in their personal wellbeing has an issue with some part of the fitness industry. Even if they haven’t really thought about it yet, even if the issue stems from some form of jealousy or self-loathing. They still have a gripe. So many unlikeable folk, so much bad advice, and the potential to be ripped-off with ineffective products.
I honestly believe that if people were given the correct basic information from a young age, massive parts of the fitness industry, and the food industry too, would collapse, within a generation.
It took me 8+ years to understand this simple rule in healthy living: If you eat more than you use, you gain fat. If you eat less than you use, you lose fat.
At any one time, there are 1000s of people shouting this nugget of wisdom, and they have done for years. But I, and many others, didn’t learn that basic principle from school. I got Pythagoras and trigonometry but not this. For me and many other “festively plump” people, it was simply because I wanted to eat. But then, for years I also wanted to look good. I was willing to put in the effort in the gym, but was also interested in all the quick-fixes and enhancement offered by the industry, without doing the research to understand how to effectively train and fuel the body.
The lesson here is to really learn about anything you want to live by. Check your facts. Don’t just think you know. You don’t. I was one of those people. Everything has a system. Even sleeping. Read, listen, Google, YouTube… whatever. Just learn, and from a real expert, not from some idiot who shouts at a iPhone and posts it. In this day and age there’s really no excuse, there’s information everywhere. You just need to understand which information is the real-deal, and which is the aforementioned bad advice, from the unlikeable folk, who are potentially trying to rip you off with ineffective products.
Once I had bothered to properly learn about my body’s engine, everything changed. I lost 2 stone over about 6 months. Here’s how (broadly, or I’d have very little left to blog about after this post):
With the correct basic knowledge for health and fitness (more on this later – as above) I understood that the next step had to be supplementation. Don’t get me wrong, I had been supplementing for years… ‘mass gainer’ this, ‘BCAAs’ that. Even once, when I felt flush, some silly vitamin-based testosterone booster. I was never sure what really worked.
So in my new research I had to throw out all the marketing-jargon I’d been pumped with for all these years and try to solve the puzzle of what works with real scientific facts, from reputable sources. The basic principle was everywhere - put the right amount and the right sort of fuel into an engine it runs better, it revs better and it has a higher top end. But this research took longer than succumbing to the quick-fixes promised by marketing gimmicks. It took me from my basic “macros” level of nutritional knowledge to “micro”. Literally.
The answers were painfully simple. MOST of these supplements do...nothing. Like actually nothing. Not a bit. Nothing!
So – what would work? In my next post I’ll explore some of the findings of my research and eventually create a full nutritional plan for customers of Hence and readers of this blog.
My rules for nutrition are here and soon a nutritional plan will appear on the site but for now that’s all I want to ramble about.