Episode 400: From Business to Beckham: Wild Adventures and Life-Changing Lessons with Gwilym Pugh
Embracing risk and stepping out of one’s comfort zone can lead to unforeseen opportunities and personal growth.
In this episode, Adam Stott dives into the extraordinary career path of Gwilym Pugh, whose multifaceted journey offers a testament to resilience, adaptability, and self-discovery. From launching a mortgage business right after school to making it one of the fastest-growing companies in Wales, Gwilym shares how unexpected events like the credit crunch forced him to pivot and evolve.
This episode expertly encapsulates themes of overcoming challenges, with Gwilym emphasizing the importance of learning through setbacks and continually pushing beyond one’s comfort zone.
Show Highlights:
- Embrace discomfort and lean into challenges, as these moments often cultivate the most significant personal and professional growth.
- Authenticity is vital on social media; convey who you truly are to build a genuinely engaged audience.
- Transition effectively by aligning personal transformation with career evolution, showcasing Gwilym’s venture from banking to modeling.
- Recognize and seize moments of opportunity by staying open to change and being adaptable to new environments and scenarios.
- Employ a purpose-driven approach to business, ensuring that ventures not only drive personal success but also contribute to a larger positive impact.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
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Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
[00:00:00] Gwilym Pugh: We were actually in our first year. We’re the fourth fastest growing company in Wales. We are turning over 200, 000 a month within about six months of trading. When I put myself out of my comfort zone, that is when the magic happens. So you’ve got an anaconda on your arm and it’s squeezing up. What do you do?
[00:00:19] You just did nothing. And it’s literally curling up around my arm and it starts, I feel it starting to squeeze. What was David Beckham like? He did have a body double for
[00:00:27] Adam Stott: Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of business growth secrets. I have a fantastic guest with me today and I’m super excited to dig into this very varied business journey and business story that this gentleman has been through. I’m welcoming to the podcast today. William Q, who has been a model and he’s modeled with famous names such as David Beckham.
[00:00:52] He’s had his own insurance business, which is where he started out. It’s also where he’s at now in terms of a large insurance presence. He has been a Successful content creator on Instagram, amassing hundreds of thousands of followers and so much more. There’s also a weight loss journey in it. And he is an eco adventurer loves adventuring in the outdoors.
[00:01:15] We’ve got all these different very topics and I can’t wait to get under the hood. Of what’s been an amazing career. So welcome grill. How you doing, my friend?
[00:01:24] Gwilym Pugh: Doing good. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:25] Adam Stott: No, pleasure. Pleasure. And I’m really looking forward to our chat today. And as I just said, on the introduction, you’ve done all these different things, had all these different experiences, and I’m really looking forward to finding out the business growth secrets that you’ve learned along the way from your journey.
[00:01:42] But when you started out becoming an entrepreneur, going out into entrepreneurship, where did all this start from? Tell us a bit about you and where did your journey begin?
[00:01:53] Gwilym Pugh: So my journey in business started straight from school. I didn’t go to university. I dropped out of A levels. And I was just doing a call center job at British gas.
[00:02:03] I met a guy who owned a mortgage company randomly in the sauna of the as you do. And we developed a friendship, he offered me a job and that’s how I got into the financial markets. I worked for them for around about a year and then I sat up. My splintered off and set up a subsidiary of that company and that was my first business when I was setting it up when I was 20 years old trading when we were 21 and that was a mortgage company just a few years after setting up the credit crunch happened so that was my first big lesson in business was.
[00:02:39] Black Swan events and how to deal with it, or rather how not to deal with it, because I had no idea what was going on at the time. And then that then facilitated my entry into the insurance market.
[00:02:51] Adam Stott: Yes. So we did. I love the start of that journey being that you were in a call center. Right. And I always find that when you meet successful entrepreneurs, people that have been successful, usually they’ve got an ability to you.
[00:03:08] Push forward and break through resistance. And actually I’ve recommended in the past when I’ve had, obviously we trained thousands of business owners and clients. And I’ve often said to ones that have never sold, you should go and do three months in a call center, right? Because you’d be getting rejected 150 times a day and you’d be developing a thicker skin.
[00:03:26] What was that like for a grounding from you starting out in a call center?
[00:03:30] Gwilym Pugh: It’s something that. I completely agree with you. It’s something that everybody should do, but it’s also something I would never wish on anyone at the same time. It’s cruel and unusual punishment, you know, under the cosh of your line manager who’s timing your rap time after every call it’s it’s relentless, it’s brutal, but it arms you with skills that you can’t decide to learn how to withstand that kind of rejection, that kind of intensity of workflow, there’s no.
[00:03:58] Book or video you can read or watch that can teach you that you got to do it, but it’s horrific
[00:04:05] Adam Stott: and I think that’s really interesting what you said. There’s no book or there’s no YouTube because a lot of people, you know, spend a lot of time reading books, a lot of time watching YouTube videos, but when it comes to sales, which eventually essentially we’re talking about.
[00:04:18] You can’t read that in a book. You got to go and do it, right?
[00:04:20] Gwilym Pugh: You got to do it. You got to fail. And you got to keep doing it. You got to keep failing. And then you get the odd win here and there. And you’ve really got to capitalize on those wins when you get them. But as you know, with sales, 99. 99 percent of your pitches.
[00:04:36] Don’t work, but it’s a 0. 01 percent to do work that carry value through after that.
[00:04:43] Adam Stott: Yeah. Everything you do. Hey everyone. Hope you’re enjoying the podcast. We’ve got a free training that I’m doing right now online from the comfort of your own home called stand out brand. What this does is it shows business owners how to get noticed on social media, stand out.
[00:05:00] Get more leads and get more sales. So if you want to make more money in your business, head over to Adam stop. com forward slash SOB. That’s Adam stop. com forward slash SOB and join us on the free three day workshop, stand out brand. So as you got into your mortgage business you had that chance encounter in, in the sauna.
[00:05:22] I mean, very interesting place. How did that come about? I mean, were you just somebody that naturally started talking to people? Were you interested in business? Were you asking questions? What happened with that?
[00:05:34] Gwilym Pugh: That’s an interesting question because I’ve kind of gone through many phases in life.
[00:05:37] I’d say, generally speaking, I’m relatively introverted. I’m not that much of a extrovert or outspoken person, but I’ve always been very good with logic and numbers. And I’m interested, always interested in, Other people scenarios, what are they doing? Why are they doing it? Efficiencies optimization. So all of these things are going on in my head at the same time.
[00:05:59] And obviously numbers, logic and finance, they kind of go hand in hand. So yeah, I think he told me what he was doing. I was interested. How did you get there? You know, what were the steps that you took to get there? And then that just led to a friendship and
[00:06:17] Adam Stott: turned into, to your first business.
[00:06:19] So when you start running this first business and you mentioned the credit crunch, I too started my first business in 2008, which funnily enough was in financial services as well. I started a finance brokerage, brokering asset finance, actually is the first business ever. And, you know, six months within me starting, everybody was pulling out the market and there was no longer any asset finance available.
[00:06:41] And I was in a complete pickle having to pivot and having to change. So it seems similar to, to where you were at. But did you have an initial sort of wave, an initial little win there where you’re doing some business, where you’re feeling some progression and seeing some growth? What happened to start with?
[00:06:57] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, we were actually in our first year, we’re the fourth fastest growing company in Wales. We are turning over a 200, 000 a month within about six months of trading. It was a massive vertical trajectory. And then. Rug pulled. So, Lehman brothers who were the first casualty of the credit crisis, they were providing 70 percent of our income.
[00:07:22] And I remember vividly on a Tuesday night getting the phone call to say Lehman brothers had pulled out. And that was actually 2007 before the rest of the impact. And you know, I was 21 years old, 21, 22 years old. I didn’t really know any different at the time. So I just hung on tooth and nail and yeah, hung on through 2007, 2008, 2009, just as the rest of the market was just dropping off people coming in to fill the gap and then they drop off and so on, but I didn’t really, I didn’t have any life experience.
[00:07:52] I didn’t have any perspective. So all I knew was to, That actually resulted in myself and my business partner selling our share of that business for nothing to avoid liquidation basically. And that provided the foundations to move into life insurance, which we decided to get into because the market’s not, it’s risk priced.
[00:08:14] The whole nature of insurance is risk rather than being speculating on markets like the asset finance and mortgage business was. So that’s kind of. How that worked out.
[00:08:25] Adam Stott: And it’s interesting, right? I mean, how did you feel when you started hitting your 200k months in the beginning? Did you feel, I thought I knew
[00:08:32] Gwilym Pugh: everything I was, I don’t know if you’ve seen the big short, but yeah, so there’s like a cameo of a couple of really cocky mortgage brokers.
[00:08:42] That was basically me in my early twenties. I thought I knew everything. I thought I was a boss. You know, I drove a big Range Rover with a number plate, big And it’s kind of cringy looking back, but
[00:08:56] Adam Stott: that’s all I knew. And the reason I asked that question is because sometimes when you get that fast success right at the beginning, you’ve got that massive amount of success and you don’t have that much context and it comes so fast.
[00:09:09] It really can affect someone’s ego and it can affect the way they do things. But it sounds like you learn. A really good lesson there. And obviously you got out of it in a good place. So what happens next? You move over, you come out of that business. You encounter those challenges.
[00:09:24] One thing I will ask you before we move too fast is when you encountered those challenges, did you? And you’re about to lose the life insurance business. You’ve gone from 200, 000 pound a month. You’re seeing the trajectory go down. How are you feeling at that stage? I mean, you’re a, as you said in your own words, a logical guy, but emotionally, how has that affecting you when it looked like, you know, Big wheel.
[00:09:48] Yeah. Losing the business. What? How did that affect you emotionally?
[00:09:51] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, so that was a mortgage company. There’s I say that because there’s another story with the first life insurance company as well. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, right? And it’s kind of is always really difficult to put yourself back in that mindset at that particular time.
[00:10:04] There’s an element of what I call kind of productive stress where you’re in an emergency mode. And Through those periods I think if I look back at I don’t give myself time to really reflect on it because I’m in action
[00:10:20] Adam Stott: like
[00:10:20] Gwilym Pugh: what can I do to get out the other side of this because nothing last forever right so you know there is going to be another side of it whatever way that might go just hold on.
[00:10:32] Don’t let it affect things outside of that working environment, because I think that’s a big thing. I’ve been lucky to compartmentalize things pretty well, but I think that’s when failures or even black swan events can really start to affect people’s lives is when that. Starts to trickle into other aspects of your life.
[00:10:53] It affects your relationships, your friendships. I’ve, yeah, I’ve always kept things focused.
[00:11:01] Adam Stott: So you managed to compound and I like what you say about the productive stress, because a lot of people don’t go into that mode. A lot of people go into. Procrastination stress. So there’s stress, so they don’t do anything, but I’m definitely more of a productive stress person as well.
[00:11:20] When my back’s up against the wall, I tend to come out fighting. And where a lot of people actually don’t know is they end up shrinking. Why do you think it is that you lean into that productive stress?
[00:11:31] Gwilym Pugh: I think I was going back to the call center analogy. There’s lots of little failures and getting that.
[00:11:36] Thick skin for want of a better term, building that resilience through failures that kind of are inconsequential, you know, you try, you fail, you try, you fail. It doesn’t really matter if they’re important or not. But then when you come to something that does really matter. You’ve got that experience.
[00:11:55] You got that frame of reference of how am I going to deal with this, right? I got to keep going.
[00:11:58] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. So, so then you move forward you get into life insurance. And obviously as I was reading about where you’re at and in your life, you had also a big weight loss journey. How did that factor in?
[00:12:10] Did you, was it, was the productive stress any cause of that? Do you feel?
[00:12:15] Gwilym Pugh: That was, so we skipped a couple of bits. I actually played basketball for Wales when I was a teenager. Yeah. And then I had knee injuries and that was immediately before I started working in finance. So the first life insurance company, I went back to work for the shareholders who had bought out the mortgage company, again, a decision of necessity, really, that was then growing at an aggressive rate.
[00:12:41] And. Me running the numbers and building the database system, I was uncomfortable with how that was running, so I actually decided to leave that organization and set up with my old business partner from the ground up, just the two of us in my spare bedroom on a couple computers, couple phones and a list of numbers, really going back to the very basic and that life insurance company when we, the Ditch that was again at two 250, 000 a month.
[00:13:08] We had 90 employees call center employees. It was a big aggressive sales operation. And from what I knew about the business, it wasn’t being ran in a conscientious way and in a sustainable way. So yeah, we left. That resulted in us setting up my last company called I’m Insured, which was bootstrapped.
[00:13:28] We never took any external investment in, just me and my business partner in my spare bedroom, which led to me being incredibly sedentary, just sitting down all day. Injuries resulting from the old basketball career, going through a cycle of training, injury, training, injury, Business failing, sat in my spare bedroom in my pants on a headset, going through a list of numbers again, like back to square one.
[00:13:57] Obviously, I wasn’t in a good headspace during then, so that led to a lot of comfort eating takeaways, like six times, seven times a week barely moving. Meanwhile, I was getting to that age where a lot of my friends, I grew up in Cardiff in Wales, which is, you know, it’s a pretty, So okay, so I city, but a lot of my friends had started leaving or settling down.
[00:14:16] So my social circle was retracting. I was retracting into that home office and yeah, I accrued a load of weight. I ended up close to 21 stone with a 47 inch waist. Yeah, I was it was pretty rough and you know, I’m 6’4 so it doesn’t look horrendously bad, but it felt it.
[00:14:40] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. So all of those things accumulated in that.
[00:14:45] When did you know it was a time to, to make a change and how long did it take to go from. Where you were to there actually first, like how long did that period of time take you to accumulate and get to that 21 stone just a couple of years.
[00:14:59] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, I think the first half of my twenties was kind of up and down because I was always fighting these injuries.
[00:15:04] But then I was in okay shape when I was working for the mortgage company got into training, got a bit bigger, but yeah, I’d say a couple of years is pretty, it was pretty quick. Yeah.
[00:15:16] Adam Stott: Really snuck up on you a little bit.
[00:15:18] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. Yeah, exactly how these things often do.
[00:15:22] Adam Stott: Yeah. And what made you decide to make a change in that?
[00:15:25] You know, what was there a moment where it got so bad where you just thought I’ve got to change things?
[00:15:30] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, that’s a funny one. There’s two reasons. The one, the less funny one is I actually did a life insurance application for myself. Right. And. The premium the monthly premium was rated by a hundred percent, meaning it was double the price, which meant I was double the risk of dying during the policy term.
[00:15:53] And that is financial data. You know, it’s not a doctor’s opinion. That’s not a friend. That’s not a family member telling you what they think about your health. That is raw data telling me that statistically I have twice the chance of dying before the age of 50 as a healthy person.
[00:16:09] Adam Stott: Yeah.
[00:16:10] Gwilym Pugh: So that was a big wake up call.
[00:16:12] And then. I was just chatting with a friend one day who’s brutally honest and we’re talking about relationships. I’ve been single for a while. He’s like, look, you’re either going to have to lower your standards or you’re going to have to lower your standards because this isn’t happening and then
[00:16:29] Adam Stott: lower your standards
[00:16:30] Gwilym Pugh: or raise your standards.
[00:16:31] Right? Well, this is it. And then my brain was thinking, no, I don’t know if I can do that. What can I do? What can I control? Me, I can control my health, my, my life. And that was a big kick up the ass. And it was a, two of those things were pretty much around about the same time. And I thought something’s got to give, what can I do?
[00:16:52] I can’t feed back into that training and injury cycle. So I started studying nutrition. I followed dietary advice. The question is always, What diet did you do? All of them, they all work. They all don’t work. It’s the one you stick to that generally works provided there’s a level of health underneath it that I’m walking and just started walking loads because it’s the lowest impact.
[00:17:19] And what I learned afterwards is a lot about the lymphatic system and how that impacts your general health. And that doesn’t have a heart to bump it. That only moves when you’re moving. So yeah, you, I always say you can, it’s, You’ll struggle to undo 23 hours of sitting down with one hour in the gym. But if you can pepper kind of six hours of general easy movement through the day, you’ll be healthy.
[00:17:44] Adam Stott: Yeah, it’s interesting. On the Apple watch, it’s like, stand up, get moving, right? You know, to get you going. What would you say to somebody that’s watching that perhaps has packed on a few pounds or perhaps knows that they, you know, should get themselves moving again? What was it, what did it do for you to shed?
[00:18:01] Those pounds, I mean, he’s six and a half stone. What did he actually do? How did you feel afterwards? And what impact do you think that had on your life?
[00:18:09] Gwilym Pugh: That’s a long story. And the impact that’s had on my life, I can’t even put a value on that. It’s absolutely invaluable. And the fact of the matter is where I was at, couldn’t continue it.
[00:18:21] That wasn’t going to happen. The advice I would give someone is just to start doing something that you can do. And take the small win, it’s all about, in the same way with the call center analogy, we’re taking small failures, taking small wins and walking, if you can’t walk a lot, just move somehow, reduce the unhealthy things by a little bit, find what works for you and find some kind of consistency.
[00:18:53] Adam Stott: Yeah, I think that’s right as well. I think it’s much more palatable to start to layer things in that you enjoy, you know, and start to do that because then you’re going to obviously a lot more likely to stay consistent, which I think is really good advice. So. You know, this is really interesting because you said your friend was almost telling you, look, come on, you got to have to lower your standards and then you end up being a model, which is a bit of a strange turn.
[00:19:17] Right? So you end up working as a model for diesel, I believe, and other places like that. And also, you know, David Beckham somewhere in there, you end up hanging out of him and stuff like that. So, so how did that, how did we go from losing six and a half stones to modeling for some of the world’s biggest companies?
[00:19:35] What happened next?
[00:19:36] Gwilym Pugh: There’s a combination of being a really good timing and being opportunistic, which I’d like to take credit for it all. But there was some really fortuitous timing in there. So about halfway through the weight loss thing, part of I was getting more confident, you know, that was just giving me a little bit of energy, both physical and social energy.
[00:19:54] One of my old employees. For one of my previous companies was a musician and we ended up hanging out and he’s like, yeah, no, we should have a jam. Sometimes just play some music. We ended up starting a band and that got me then out in front of people. And that started giving me those small wins from a social perspective, which was kind of unwinding those, the, like the mental health issues that I was having.
[00:20:20] And it was a psychedelic folk band. And I decided to grow a beard because I was in a folk band. And finally it was socially acceptable, or rather I had a reason to have a big ginger beard where previously it would have been just been like, what are you doing? So I did that and around about that time, and this is a lucky timing, social media, Instagram was just getting started.
[00:20:47] There was, I looked at social media as a, an avenue to potentially promote the band. And get a presence online for the band. So I started posting more, then all of a sudden out of nowhere, beards became a thing and like 2014, 2015. And I picked up the attention of a couple of photographers who wanted to shoot me for their projects.
[00:21:11] One about redheads, one about beards, you know, the perfect person for those yeah, for those categories. And when I was offered those opportunities, it was the most, Uncomfortable challenging kind of opportunity to be given because every ounce of me wanted to say no and sit in my comfort zone but i had known that the best things that had happened to me thus far had been the things which I hadn’t expected the times when I’d been uncomfortable.
[00:21:45] So I kind of gave me a bit of confidence to lean into that discomfort. And that’s when I’d say the vicious circle started to unwind and go the opposite direction.
[00:21:54] Adam Stott: So you
[00:21:54] Gwilym Pugh: start saying yes, start doing the uncomfortable things, ignore how it made me feel in the moment and just go through it.
[00:22:03] And actually lean on other people’s confidence, lean on the expertise of other people. And this is. It’s an interesting perspective, like fear and nerves, because if you think about how you feel when you’re nervous or how you feel when you’re fearful. You what you’re basically telling yourself is you know everything about the scenario and you’re right which is inherently wrong so if a photographer is telling me I look good doesn’t matter how I feel that’s irrelevant I’ve got no experience in photography or as a model or as a photographer so I need to completely shut my fearful brain off because.
[00:22:40] Being fearful is actually being egotistical thinking I know better than the professional so I kind of use that mindset to lean on the expertise of hindsight afterwards I think it’s this is kind of what I’ve figured out from looking back on these scenarios in the moment. Gut feeling,
[00:23:03] Adam Stott: just
[00:23:03] Gwilym Pugh: gut feeling, just do it, kind of,
[00:23:05] Adam Stott: yeah.
[00:23:06] That mentality, I’m going to give it a go. I’m
[00:23:08] Gwilym Pugh: going to give it a go, I’ve got to, something has got to give it, it was that reference point from being at rock bottom where I’m like, I’ve got to do something, anything different from what I’m doing at the moment. I’m at reference point. I
[00:23:21] Adam Stott: said to our clients all the time, you know, the people got a room full of people at the moment next door.
[00:23:26] And I said, it’s more time. Everything you’ve done got you what you got. That’s what you haven’t done. That’s going to get you saying different. Let’s start doing something different to get something different, you know, which is really interesting. So how did it take off? So you gave it a go, you gave it a shot, and then it goes on to become really successful for you.
[00:23:42] Right? So how did that happen? Yeah,
[00:23:44] Gwilym Pugh: it’s like the vicious circle turning into a virtuous cycle. You say yes, something good happens. Makes me more likely to say yes again now I just start saying yes to everything and then meanwhile the life insurance company that was running was doing okay I got to the point where.
[00:24:00] It was at a level where I could work remotely, which obviously wasn’t a huge thing back in 2014 or so. And I decided to finally move out of Cardiff, move to London, mostly just for a change of scenery, for a change of scenario to get out of, you know, that kind of the confines of that life and then it really just kicked off and that’s a bit which is kind of fortuitous timing because social media was kicking off at that point there were no algorithms it was a free for all there are about a dozen other male influences we now call them we didn’t call them that back then globally that was a I was the only guy with a.
[00:24:38] Ginger beard back. So that’s the thing with the modeling career is the clients either wanted someone who looked like me or they didn’t. So it was kind of easy. I never felt, Oh, why didn’t I get that job? I’m not good looking enough. I’m not good enough for it. See that they wanted a big beard. Guy with a ginger beard or they didn’t it turns out they did turns out they did.
[00:25:02] Yeah, exactly. And I had a, I had an amazing career traveling the world. My main agency was in Germany. So we got all the Northern European clients that had car commercials, whiskey commercials with David Beckham,
[00:25:14] Adam Stott: a load of
[00:25:15] Gwilym Pugh: clothing, Hey club. Yeah. The Hey club and house 99, his grooming brand done every hair product under the sun, pretty much L’Oreal TV commercials.
[00:25:24] Yeah. Yeah, these are all one of my first social media clients and I did some activations for them as well.
[00:25:31] Adam Stott: Yeah, cool. Yeah, that’s pretty bad. What would they, what was David Beckham like? Good guy. You enjoyed?
[00:25:37] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, really nice.
[00:25:38] Adam Stott: Yeah. Just
[00:25:39] Gwilym Pugh: super, super chill. Although he did have a body double for scenes where he was literally sat right next to what we were filming.
[00:25:47] And then he had a body double just doing the filming. Oh, really? Just any time where his face wasn’t straight to
[00:25:53] Adam Stott: me.
[00:25:53] Gwilym Pugh: Why was that? Because he can. Pretty much, right? Yes. But yeah, super nice guy, just really chill, chatted about his family, motorbikes, travel. Just really normal to be honest.
[00:26:07] Adam Stott: Did you learn anything from him when you worked with him?
[00:26:09] Or was there any lesson that you thought, you know what or something that you know, we say that success leaves clues. And was there anything that you looked at when you were working with David Beckham, you thought, you know what, I can learn that from him or something I could adopt?
[00:26:23] Gwilym Pugh: Only how I felt around him.
[00:26:26] And I can’t say for what he was, he’s like outside of that scenario, but just be nice. Be easy to work with. I don’t know if having a body double would be considered being easy, but it seemed like a well oiled machine, and there was no stress around any of it. It was just super chill, be friendly, be chatty when you want to be chatty.
[00:26:48] Or not.
[00:26:48] Adam Stott: Yeah, absolutely. That’s pretty cool. So you do all the modelling work? That all happens. Obviously you’re building a big big following on social media in the meantime as well. And where do you transition to after that period? What sort of comes next?
[00:27:03] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, so that’s a whole going through various different layers of success for want of a better term.
[00:27:11] I was at that point the story of my weight loss and the career went viral globally, people looking at this before and after and putting this after picture of me kind of on a pedestal of being the role model, the people The person that people want to be, and it just, it didn’t feel, it felt like something wasn’t quite there because for me, you’re never finished, right?
[00:27:36] It’s never done. So for people to be asking me, how can I get into modeling? How can I be like that? That, that didn’t really feel amazing for me. So I started seeking more. Kind of more of a rounded experience, which then led me to transition my socials to me creating my own content. And that was a business decision as well, because I saw that social media was exploding.
[00:28:07] I could continue to share my modeling stuff, but I hadn’t created that. So what I thought is, okay, if a client. A potential creative client is looking at my social media page, everything on my page needs to be something that I’ve created so they know that they can get something of the same quality.
[00:28:24] Whereas if I just share. Photographers or stylists images, you know, that’s not something that I can recreate in independence. So that led to me curating my content a lot more, which led to me seeking more context in a way of travel, you know, regular influencer jobs, promoting clothing or a product, but rather than just shoot the product, I take it into a a scenario or an environment in a, in more of a editorial fashion than.
[00:28:57] Advertising a product.
[00:28:59] Adam Stott: So a lot of business owners spend a massive amount of time creating content on social media. And as we’ve spoken about, you transitioned your audience and done a really great job of that. You know, how do you approach. Creating social media content. What is your attitude towards that and your mindset towards actually how do you create good content?
[00:29:20] What are some of the content and the things that you’ve done? Because we’ve got all these different parts of contents that you create. So I’d love to hear a bit more about that.
[00:29:27] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. So if you scroll back through my profile, you’ll kind of see it change over the months and years. And for me, it’s really about posting what I’m interested in posting what I’m doing.
[00:29:39] And. Being a projection of who do I want to be and how do I want to be seen? And that’s led me through just posting everyday stuff in the early days of social media through to modeling. And then I identified content creation as a really good business opportunity. So I stopped sharing my modeling stuff and I’d only share content that I created.
[00:30:02] And then that led to the more adventure travel stuff, which is some pretty funny stories and. Pivotal stories in, in that they’ve resulted in what I’m doing now and that, yeah, led me to environmental science and so on. So I’m constantly evolving and I’m constantly moving through these spaces.
[00:30:23] Adam Stott: And how did the, when you say environmental science, what kind of things, what does that actually look like?
[00:30:28] What types of things were you putting out there and how was it received?
[00:30:32] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, so I would, I was seeking more. Experiences that led me to some really amazing experiences with wildlife and I would share those and I remember there was one experience with a herd of about 30 elephants, which was really my first experience of the sentience of another animal all the way through to having, I guess, life or death.
[00:30:58] Situations with one with a lion, which was using our vehicle as cover when it was hunting, nudging my foot and me having to be completely still silent and not move and just doing what I’m told rather than what my gut is telling me to do so. So what was your gut telling you to do so? It’s really hard to put yourself back in that situation, but I was just like, don’t move.
[00:31:28] I’m, it felt like I was holding my breath for minutes and I was just waiting for the guide who was looking in the wing mirror. Basically my legs were hanging out the side of this vehicle and I could feel like a nudging on The back of my foot and I was just waiting for that guy to tell me it was safe to move, but I also, I didn’t, it was like a life or death moment, but I didn’t really fear because, like I said earlier, I put my trust in what the guide was saying.
[00:31:55] And he was saying, if you don’t move, you’re absolutely fine. So everything in my body was screaming out in fear, but I was overriding that and just, you know, Telling myself, do what you’re told, do what you’re told, do what you’re told, and that’s
[00:32:10] Adam Stott: yeah. And you’ve had a lot of experiences like this with wildlife.
[00:32:14] Are there any other sort of like, moments that you’ve had, putting yourself in those scenarios where there was a, you know, another moment like that was, you said, elephants, lion, anything else that really, You know, shook you up in these adventuring moments.
[00:32:29] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. We went on a expedition to a place called the floating forest in Peru, which is an area just outside a town called Puerto Maldonado, and it’s a risk of development, but it’s also rumored to be an Anaconda breeding ground.
[00:32:44] So as you do, we waited until it got pitch black and we went into the floating forest. And if you think back to when you’re a kid, you’d go to birthday parties where you’d be running on the floats in the swimming pool. It’s basically like that in pitch black. And there’s potentially hundreds, thousands of anacondas.
[00:33:04] around, not to mention the spiders and other animals. So what were
[00:33:07] Adam Stott: you doing that for?
[00:33:09] Gwilym Pugh: To to identify, well, mostly for fun, but to identify that there are anacondas, which are at risk of extinction in this area, which is to give them proof. To add to the argument not to develop in this area. So there was like a real meaningful mission to it, but primarily it was for fun and for exploration.
[00:33:30] And there was a point where we found one and we needed to see how big it was to report that back. So we got it out of the water. And it’s literally curling up around my arm and it starts, I feel it starting to squeeze. And again, the guides is telling me what’s happening is I don’t worry. It’s just thinks your arm is a branch.
[00:33:49] It’s just holding on, holding its way. And it exactly that same situation with the lion. I was every answer. My body was. Screaming, but I was having to override that and saying, I don’t know better, you know, better.
[00:34:03] Adam Stott: So you’ve got an anaconda on
[00:34:05] Gwilym Pugh: your arm
[00:34:06] Adam Stott: and it’s squeezing up. What do you do? You
[00:34:08] Gwilym Pugh: just did nothing.
[00:34:09] Just yeah, just do nothing and rely on the situation which was that we had enough people to uncoil it should it Need to be done and to trust the guide that they know that’s the case. How
[00:34:22] Adam Stott: big
[00:34:22] Gwilym Pugh: was
[00:34:23] Adam Stott: it?
[00:34:23] Gwilym Pugh: 16 foot. 16 foot. And what part of it’s on your arm? Around about the middle there. There is a picture on Instagram.
[00:34:31] I got a reel up on
[00:34:32] Adam Stott: there as well. Yeah. Yeah. That’s where we got to. We were talking about social media content. So how did that perform? Having an anaconda on your arm? That did better than most. That got you some good. That did better than most. Yeah. That’s taking it to the extreme, right?
[00:34:46] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. I wish I could do, I wish I could do more of that.
[00:34:49] Yeah. And I would like to make more space for those kind of experiences in life because when you put yourself out of your comfort zone, when I put myself out of my comfort zone, that is when the magic happens. And these are memories that, you know, gonna tell my grandkids and they’ll tell the grandkids as well.
[00:35:07] And the beauty of social media is, and this is why it’s so important to create content that’s true to you, is there’s always a record of it. We got a record of that, a reference point for these conversations in generations to come.
[00:35:21] Adam Stott: And we have a lot of of clients that are very focused on more success with social media.
[00:35:28] Very focused. There’ll be a lot of people that listen to this podcast. So, you know, our main listeners for the podcast are on Apple. You know, on Spotify, usual ones. And then we have some watch YouTube videos as well. What would you say? To someone, because you mentioned curation there, which I think we definitely could dive a bit into, what would you say to a business owner that is struggling with their social, doesn’t really know what to do?
[00:35:54] How would you be in that? You’ve had a lot of success with it. What are the sort of guidance that you would potentially tell them to do in order to get themselves out there more? You talk about telling your own story, these different aspects. I think that’d be good if there was a tip or two for them around that.
[00:36:07] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. There’s one. Meaningful question that you got to ask yourself, which is who do I want to be or how do I want to be perceived and really dig into that. And I don’t think you can spend too much time thinking about that because that is what your social media should be. It should be a reflection of you and not what you think that other people want to see for that snapshot of time that we’re currently in, because.
[00:36:33] It’s moving quickly platforms move quickly algorithms move quickly the only thing that’s consistent through all of these different phases is who you are what you want to do and what legacy do you want to leave what digital legacy do you want to leave behind and what are your objectives as well like there’s no I always say and this is something I try and labor with my clients is you could tap a million people on the shoulder.
[00:37:03] But you’re better off impacting a handful of people.
[00:37:07] Adam Stott: Absolutely. I love the perception, you know, and that is what you said about how you want to be perceived. And I like the fact that you’re trying to reach specific, a small group rather than a huge group. I think that’s where a lot of people go wrong.
[00:37:18] They want to reach everyone. They want to please everyone. It’s not possible. Got to bring it in. They got to go an inch wide and a mile deep rather than a mile wide and an inch deep. And it seems like you’ve done this really well. And it’s interesting because you built it in one area. And then you transition that into our following over to a new area, which takes a bit of courage because you could have lost half the people, right?
[00:37:40] Gwilym Pugh: I’ve lost a lot of followers over the time, but like I said, that doesn’t sometimes bothers me a little bit, you know, I’m human. But in the grand scheme of things is why do I have a following? What am I doing using it for? Why do I care about it? And really trying to hone in on those questions rather than just focus on follower growth or follower going down.
[00:38:02] But there’s so much noise in. The tech space of providing social media metrics. What really matters is what is the actual ROI on these metrics and why are you doing it? Like if you just want a million followers, but why, what are you going to do with those million followers? And a lot of people
[00:38:21] Adam Stott: focus on that and actually sometimes get somewhere, but they make no money from it.
[00:38:25] Exactly.
[00:38:25] Gwilym Pugh: They’ve invested a lot of time and not made any money, right? And their identity hinges on those numbers. Yeah, that’s the key thing. And if your identity hinges on those numbers, you’re playing in someone else’s court. You’re playing on an app that you have no control over, which is a really vulnerable place to be in.
[00:38:42] Yeah, because you can have the rug pulled from you again. And if your identity is based on those numbers.
[00:38:47] Adam Stott: Yeah. Well, they can take your life off you. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So in terms of where you, you transitioned to, so you’ve done the modeling, I know you’re now, you’ve moved back into your insurance.
[00:39:01] Is that correct? Yeah. You know, from this this journey of building businesses that weight loss Being a model hanging out at david beckham and now back in the insurance business. So you come sort of full circle.
[00:39:13] Gwilym Pugh: Yes.
[00:39:14] Adam Stott: Tell us a little bit about that.
[00:39:15] Gwilym Pugh: So that all came from the travel and the scenarios which I got in through social media.
[00:39:22] So I started traveling the world more. I identified. Adventure travel as a sector which i was interested in going into primarily because it was one that i thought i probably couldn’t do so i thought this is interesting let’s dabble in this and it took the lens off me again so it’s more about the scenario that the.
[00:39:42] The landscape the wildlife or whatever so i led to a number of really. Pivotal moments in the natural world, which, you know, I didn’t really have an interest in the environment or the outdoors growing up. I was very much staunch capitalist, business focused never, yeah, I just didn’t even have that perspective.
[00:40:01] But then from those experiences I had. That then changed my perspective. I saw more context, more meaning rather than just cool mountain, bro. I wanted to know why is it cool? What is changing? What is the life? What is the wildlife doing? So then I went to university in 2019, studied environmental science, got a degree, graduated last year with a first in environmental science, and after that, there was really.
[00:40:36] A lot of self reflection on what am I doing? What is the impact that I’m having? I carry on making social media content. I could carry on making environmental films. In the meantime, I’ve made impact productions for BBC Earth, Sky Nature. I’d sat on stage at Sky Nature premieres and Q and A’s. I talked at COP26 in Glasgow about the environment and physical health.
[00:40:58] Adam Stott: How did that go? How, you know, and how important has that been for you speaking? You know, do you enjoy that?
[00:41:03] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, massively. It’s not my comfort zone at all, but, and this is the thing I love about podcasts as well, that longer form content, you get to add the context behind your messaging and. You get to communicate something in a really meaningful way and speaking on stage or speaking even on a small panel people Get the undertones they read between the lines.
[00:41:25] You can see your body language You can hear the inflection of your voice all of this stuff, which is cut off from social media So I really like that.
[00:41:32] Adam Stott: Absolutely. And how many people at the COP 26 when you were up on stage?
[00:41:36] Gwilym Pugh: I was I say about a hundred hundred and twenty Also, it was like a small side stage, but as a funny story with that off on a tangent, I was there representing Vivo Barefoot, who I’m an ambassador of, because they have a big focus on our connection with nature.
[00:41:53] Five minutes before the talk, it was a panel talk. I just thought I was going to talk about my experiences. Galahad, the the founder of Evo, he’s like, I want to get you, I want you to get the audience on their feet, get them moving, put them through a movement routine. Galahad, I don’t do this.
[00:42:09] What am I going to do? So I had about three minutes to think of like, how am I going to do this? How am I going to approach this? And thankfully it went well. And again, just another example of the uncomfortable situation rather than running scared from it. Lent into it, did it. And. Yeah, it was awesome. We had the whole crowd on their feet, taking them through a movement routine that I made up on the spot.
[00:42:32] Somehow completely blagged it. It was great. It felt great.
[00:42:36] Adam Stott: And it takes a lot of confidence to do that. Right. And it’s you know, you know, for sure. But like you said you build that over time. And what’s next for you? So where, what’s the plan moving forward? What’s next in terms of your business?
[00:42:48] I understand the insurance business that you’ve got. As we mentioned, he’s quite specialized.
[00:42:53] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. So I actually, I exited the old life insurance business earlier this year. So that’s done and that’s sealed off now. And my new venture planet protection is integrating environmental responsibility in insurance and giving transparency to the insurance industry, generally speaking, which is quite ambitious because.
[00:43:16] It’s probably one of the most opaque markets that exists. It’s also one of the biggest global markets that exists. So we have the opportunity to. Align insurance products with people’s values where that opportunity has never been given to anyone previously, you know, you got insurers investing in weapons and fossil fuel expansion and other really sketchy businesses that the policyholders who are the customers have no idea.
[00:43:46] And. It’s completely so you basically got people funding things that completely contradict their values and for me that doesn’t sit well with me morally when people should have the data to be able to make a decision that supports their values.
[00:44:06] Adam Stott: We
[00:44:06] Gwilym Pugh: shouldn’t gatekeep that. So we’re developing lines of transparency.
[00:44:10] So people are aware of what they’re contributing to. And not only that’s the big campaigning side. And we’re working with campaigners for that. We’re providing a solution. So, okay, well, if you don’t agree with this. Then we have this option for you,
[00:44:26] Adam Stott: giving them different options. So how’s that been going and how do you see it being?
[00:44:31] It’s a big task. And, you know, if you have much pushback, where do you know, how’s that business developing?
[00:44:36] Gwilym Pugh: We’ve been going for a year now. So we incorporated just under a year ago, but I had the idea towards the end of last year, we’re currently going through pre seed. Funding at the moment, it’s going good.
[00:44:48] It’s going really good. Getting a lot of traction, a lot of engagement because of my kind of unique Venn diagram of experience of insurance. Environmental science and then public media that gives me access into a lot of circles that the insurance industry or financial services industry doesn’t have, and quite frankly, doesn’t respect or want to have, so I’m engaging with a lot of, really interesting people that are really interested in what we’re doing. We got a waiting list of hundreds of businesses waiting to take our products. The moment we have them set up we want to spot on stage to pitch at web summit, which is the world’s largest tech. Expo. Yeah, we’ve been selected amongst a hundred companies to pitch on stage in a contest for that.
[00:45:34] So that’s really encouraging. I think all the media experience probably helps with that. Yeah.
[00:45:41] Yeah it’s just exciting and I feel energized. I feel I’m working longer. I’m working harder than I’ve worked. It’s not
[00:45:48] Adam Stott: pretty,
[00:45:49] Gwilym Pugh: it’s purpose driven and it’s, yeah, there’s a reason why I’m doing it.
[00:45:54] It’s more than just doing this to. Achieve something for myself. I feel like there is something bigger. I’m involved in something bigger.
[00:46:02] Adam Stott: Brilliant. It sounds awesome. And, you know, anywhere that people can participate, look at that, go and see it, you know, or where’s best for people to kind of connect with you on these types of things?
[00:46:13] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah, absolutely. So you can always connect with me directly on my Instagram. Our website is planetprotection. co. uk or find me on LinkedIn. We do have an inquiry form. It’s very new, the web pages, and we’re building out all the tech surrounding it, but we’d love to hear from anyone.
[00:46:28] Adam Stott: Yeah, and you’ll be tagged in the description of the podcast, but you want to just give them the spelling of your name just in case.
[00:46:35] Yeah.
[00:46:35] Gwilym Pugh: Yeah. It’s should I give it to the camera or? Yeah, go
[00:46:38] Adam Stott: for it. Yeah.
[00:46:39] Gwilym Pugh: It is G W I L Y M C. P U G H. Fabulous. It’s my middle initial in there.
[00:46:49] Adam Stott: Yes. And one, you know, final question, which we ask everyone that comes on, on, on the podcast. I’ve really enjoyed our chat and I think it’s some awesome business growth secrets all the way through our conversation today.
[00:47:01] But what business growth secrets would you give to somebody that’s listening or watching? How, what would say one to, to three? Big secrets that you’ve learned from your business career to help an entrepreneur that’s listening. What knowledge would you pass on?
[00:47:17] Gwilym Pugh: There’s two which are interlinked together, which is perspective.
[00:47:21] Get a worldly, a global perspective. And when I say global, not just, Geographical a global perspective on life generally speak to people outside of your demographic speak to people outside your socioeconomic class because you got to know what’s going on in the world you got to feel that and then it’s finding why are you doing what are you doing who is it impacting you know it’s all well and good being successful as an individual but that doesn’t really last long and like we said earlier no one really cares so what impact are you having on People community the planet whatever your interest is but i think perspective is key because so many people are so blinkered in what they’re doing they miss all the magic happening outside of that
[00:48:08] Adam Stott: yeah i have quite a unique answer actually.
[00:48:11] Cause I don’t think I’ve had somebody answering that way, but it definitely is a really good answer because a lot of people, you know, do go to their mom, their dad, their brother, a sister, their uncle, their nan for advice. And if they’ve not run businesses before, you know, the perspective that again is a very limited perspective where if you, as you say, if you go and you know, you seek out different opinions and you get that consensus, it can really help you to drive the business.
[00:48:35] So I love those business growth secrets. Look Gil, I think it’s been brilliant. I’ve really enjoyed having you on the podcast. Go and check out Gil’s Instagram go and follow him on there, which is in the description. Big thank you for coming on. And thanks to everyone for watching another episode of Business Growth Secrets.
[00:48:52] If you have enjoyed this please do go and take a moment to share the episode with somebody else that could get some major value. Or drop us a message or a view that tells us what you enjoyed about today’s episode. And we look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Hi everybody, Adam here, and I hope you love today’s episode.
[00:49:11] I hope you thought it was fabulous. And if you did, I’d like to ask you a small favor. Could you jump over and go and give the podcast a review? Of course, I’ll be super grateful if that is a five star review. We’re putting our all into this podcast for you, delivering you the content, giving you the secrets.
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