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Peer Effect
Best way to scale? Your peers have the answers.
This is the podcast for scaleup founders looking for insightful, actionable wisdom from some of the best operators around. Each week we’ll explore one secret that other founders and experts are using right now and how to implement it.
It’s practical wisdom to build the company AND life you want. Hosted by renowned founder coach and advisor James Johnson.
You’ve survived to £1m, now let’s scale to £10m+.
Peer Effect
Transforming Personal Triumphs into Tech Innovation, with Varun Bhanot
Varun Bhanot, co-founder & CEO of Magic AI, turned his personal health transformation into a groundbreaking venture, creating the world's first AI personal trainer. This episode dives into how personal experiences shape innovative enterprises and the unexpected journeys of startup growth.
From shedding 30% of his body fat in just four months to pioneering tech-driven fitness, Varun's story is a testament to innovation driven by raw passion and relentless drive. His innovative approach has earned him the title of Tech Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards and recognition on Fast Company's annual list of the world's most innovative companies for 2024.
In This Episode, We Explore:
- The inception of Magic AI from Varun's personal health journey.
- The role of resilience and adaptability in overcoming business hurdles.
- Strategic insights on managing a startup's growing pains and achieving scalability with a lean team.
Learn more about Varun Bhanot's journey and Magic AI at magic.fit or follow him on LinkedIn for ongoing updates and insights.
More from James:
Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com
Imagine transforming your life by shedding 30% of your body fat, then turning that personal victory into a revolutionary tech startup. That's exactly what Varon Bandock did after realizing the transformative power of personalized coaching. Today, he's the co-founder and CEO of Magic AI, the world's first AI personal trainer aimed at making high-quality fitness coaching accessible and affordable to everyone. This innovative approach is earned in the title of Tech Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards and recognition on Fast Company's annual list of the world's most innovative companies for 2024. If it's your first time tuning in, you're listening to Peer Effect, the podcast that fuels you with new ideas and inspiration through interviews with founders and experts who've made it happen. I'm your host, james Johnson, and I coach Series A Plus founders to take back control so that they can take their business further and live a great life.
Speaker 2:So I was quite overweight in my 20s, ate too many kebabs, drank too much whiskey, had no real dietary discipline, never set foot in the gym before, never lifted a dumbbell. Found it far too intimidating. I actually got my measurements done and realized I was actually technically clinically obese for my height and age. And, um, remember being told that and thinking, oh, my god, you know, I should probably make a big change now, otherwise it's only going to go in one direction as I go into my 30s. So, having never lifted a dumbbell, never been inside a gym before, I ended up hiring a personal trainer uh, here in london and over the course of four months, ended up losing about 30 of my body fat uh, 30 odd kilos.
Speaker 2:Went through this crazy transformation which I never thought I would be that sort of person to do, even did like a photo shoot and all these things, and it was very, very, uh, life-changing.
Speaker 2:To be honest with you, right, uh, looked great, felt great, was really healthy.
Speaker 2:It dawned on me that if we could automate this same experience for people, that one-to-one, hyper personalized training and coaching experience, but deliver it to people sort of on demand, in a way that scales to millions of people at once but, critically, doesn't cost 50, 100, 150 pounds an hour, which is what it costs in in major cities we could potentially change people's lives and really drive change for people, and that was really the seed of the idea that led us to start building the sort of magic ai mirror that we believe is the world's first ai personal trainer that enables people to get that one-to-one hyper personalized training and solves that problem for people.
Speaker 2:And that's that's really what's got us to this stage now. And what stage is that so? Um, we now have a community of over 2 000 customers. We've raised a couple of million in venture capital. I have a team now. It's more than just me sitting in my parents sort of back basement knocking together a prototype which have a team. Now is more than just me sitting in my parents' basement knocking together a prototype which have a team and an office an incredible team.
Speaker 2:I should add, who have really managed to scale this thing in really just a matter of months rather than years. But, critically, we have this incredible AI data set that can track and monitor form across more than 400 different exercises, which we believe is the most advanced framework of its kind A bit like the chat GPT, but of exercise that can monitor and guide people.
Speaker 1:That is super cool. I was about to call you the Sam Altman of exercise, but so this has been quite a cool journey. What is sort of a unique insight that you would share, that you've learned on your journey so far?
Speaker 2:Get comfortable with uncertainty. That's the first thing. I think the first time something went wrong in the business, it was when we were hiring for one role and then we couldn't fill it and then we found someone and then they ended up dropping out and it was a really critical hire, senior hire I think our first senior hire as well and I thought, you know, it's everything's crumbling down on us right now. We, we had this great thing secured and everything was going to go smooth after it and it just didn't happen and I think I, you know, I thought, oh my god, this is going to be catastrophic for the business. Fortunately, we managed to find someone else and work through it and finally managed to hire someone.
Speaker 2:Bring them on board but then you know the month after something else went wrong with our, with our tech stack. We had a huge roadblock which meant that we may not be able to bring the product to market a couple months after that. We had a huge roadblock which meant that we may not be able to bring the product to market a couple months after that. We had a huge logistics and supply chain problem where we couldn't get our products over here from the manufacturer because of geopolitical issues and that was when I realized this is just going to be the way it's going to be forever.
Speaker 2:Basically like there's. It's never as catastrophic and as bad as you think it's going to be there's always going to be another one coming which may end up being even worse. So I realized um, actually you've just got to get really comfortable with the uncertainty of what might happen and you just have to stay calm and sort of breathe through it and work through it and figure out, figure out. You know, in a calculated, methodical way, how to get through it. So that was what I really learned, I think, in my first year building this.
Speaker 1:How do you?
Speaker 2:feel you've got comfortable with uncertainty. Yeah, good question. I think the first thing is understanding that there's always going to be some solution. You just need to maybe go to sleep and think about it the next morning and not pace up and down in my office until I can't get any sleep and just stress and stress, and stress.
Speaker 2:So I think the first thing is just trying to get comfortable with the idea that there must be a solution out there. Just have to find out what it is and have the patience to to figure it out. The second thing I would say is having a strong co-founder, strong team around you, or even just, you know, family support, who they may not be able to help you strategically, but if they can help you at least with the emotional support and having a you know a shoulder and a crutch to lean on.
Speaker 2:I think that's so, so important, because it's a commercial challenge building a business but it's just as much a mental challenge and I think when you have that support network around you of some sort, that can be, you know, valuable.
Speaker 1:Particularly. You've got alongside fundraising, you've got logistics, because you're shipping products. You've got tech challenges. There's the customer side. It's a product designed to simplify the lives of its users, but it's almost designed to complicate your life as a founder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah for sure. I think the simpler and more easy it feels to use, the harder the technology it was behind the scenes to build it right. It takes a lot of complexity to make something feel simple and I think I've heard that from founders of Apple and other sort of hardware software type companies.
Speaker 2:So that's really interesting. So, yeah, you're absolutely right, and I think one of the difficulties as well, particularly with fundraising, is you've got a full-time job to fundraise, but then you've got a full-time job to fundraise, but then you've got the full-time job of actually ensuring the business is still running, growing, showing good results.
Speaker 1:so really really difficult challenge, that's for sure okay, and for the second part then, in terms of the what's what's an external insight that you've gained over the last few years, like who's influenced you and why?
Speaker 2:I think it was talking to other founders particularly who are at a similar stage. I think they've had a particularly interesting impact on my outlook on what we're building. I think a particular insight was around happiness and thinking about happiness a lot, because I think a lot of founders think that I will be happy when I achieve this. So a lot of people said I will be happy when I start my startup because it'll be really great. And they start this startup and then they realize they're still not happy. They're like, oh, I'll be unhappy when I can raise some funding or get these x customers or you know, grow to this, this level, and then they might achieve that and then like, oh no, but I'm not happy now. Now I need to, you know, improve on that, I need to deliver these results, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 2:So what I've realized is that I don't think happiness is going to be pegged to any external factor, and this is something I learned speaking to, you know, a lot of other founders in a similar position. I think, ultimately, happiness is going to be defined by what you make of it and, ultimately, how you view your own circumstances, and I think that's so true because we're always constantly wanting more and more and more and wanting to achieve more and more. So I think that's. That was something interesting, which is ultimately, you know, the happiness has to come from within and how you think about your circumstances, rather than often what they actually are.
Speaker 1:I think how you describe happiness can have quite a big impact. They say are you satisfied? I think that is a very scary word for founders. It implies like lack of ambition. It implies like you're settling and it seems to trigger quite a negative response. And it seems to trigger quite a negative response.
Speaker 1:Whereas this idea of gratitude. I think you can still be grateful on the journey without feeling like you've reached destination. I think a lot of the same things are contained within those two words, but I just think that people connect to the word gratitude and they feel less threatened by it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I learned the importance of gratitude. I started writing a gratitude journal. I'd never done that before. Most mornings, you know five things I'm grateful for, five things that I want to manifest or want to make happen in the world, and I think it really helps when you wake up and you kind of think about okay, no matter how bad things are going, there are actually things that have gone right.
Speaker 1:And there are other things that are more important in in in my life as well I think I was listening to podcasts the other day which which said how Will Smith said that he preferred being poor to rich Because when he was poor and depressed, now he's rich and depressed. At least, when he was poor and depressed he had hope that when he was rich he wouldn't be.
Speaker 2:Right, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1:A lot of coaches talk about deep work. It starts with you, this idea of perception as reality.
Speaker 2:If you feel like life is not good, life is not good. You feel like life is good, life is good. It just shows that, um, you know, it's how you, how you personally, define your situation and your circumstances, and that's what's ultimately going to give you happiness and fulfillment, um, because it's not going to come from any of these external things.
Speaker 1:So that makes sense so your happiness isn't tied to like a 10 million round or 5 million customers or I mean, it's hard to actually, you know, say that it won't and, um, it's hard to actually think that.
Speaker 2:But I, I remember when we closed our last raise and I thought I'd be happy then and all these things, but all I realized is I inherited a whole bunch of new problems that didn't exist previously, and suddenly I was stressed again and suddenly I was having to push towards the next milestone and and it all just becomes relative and you never really kind of stop and think, oh, I'm really happy about all this and this is all really really great. Um, so, yeah, you're right, I think I.
Speaker 2:I know that when, when you close another round or whatever, you probably just have a new set of things to focus on, which then become your main worry or main stress.
Speaker 1:How do you then take that moment to like be happy on the journey? So one is like gratitude journals, but is there any other way that you create that space to be happy?
Speaker 2:I'm still figuring it out. To be honest, I think spending time with people that mean more to you than the business, I think that's got to be the number one. So yeah, I became a dad for the first time seven, almost eight months ago and there's a huge amount of joy I get from spending time with my little baby and my wife. And you know it's just spending 10, 15, half an hour with you. You forget all about those troubles and how it kind of puts into perspective how important, um you know, other things are in the world, right, um so I would definitely recommend that, leaning on that, that network I think it was.
Speaker 1:A small child like you suddenly realize that everything's important until you don't have health, and then only your health is important.
Speaker 2:That's what's something you're confronted with with a baby all the time yeah, I've actually thought about that a lot where, um, I think, I think there's a quote which which is people that are healthy, they want a million things, but people who don't have their health only want one thing um and so one of the things I've always grown for is just having really really great health, keeping yourself in great shape.
Speaker 2:Great, uh, great exercise routines so, so important, um, part of what part of what our mission is as well. Really, I know there's there's been studies done into this specifically, which is, you know, if you do certain exercise, it releases endorphins, and endorphins obviously have an effect on your mental health and keeping calm and even if you're, you know, not a customer of us even just getting out and doing a walk, doing a run, just has incredible benefits on your mental health. I think it, at the minimum, just getting out into the sun at the moment and just getting a bit of sun on your face in the morning. I think there's studies that if, in the first hour or two of waking up, if you can get, you know, 10 minutes of sun on your face in the morning, I think there's studies that if, in the first hour or two of waking up, if you can get, you know, 10 minutes of sun on your face, it has a positive overall effect on you.
Speaker 1:And then in terms of a practical hack or tip that you would share with people that helps you make things happen, what would it be?
Speaker 2:So there's two that I would say. The first is making sure you prioritize your sleep. So I initially thought that I had to get as much done in the day as possible, which is still slightly the case, in the sense you know, the start working, it's the minute I stop working, it's very much intense. But I think I didn't really put the value of getting that minimum seven hours of sleep in. So now I I deliberately prioritize if it's, you know, 9 pm and I've run out of steam, then I'm gonna go to bed and I'll just wake up early the next morning and start again. Start from there.
Speaker 2:Um, so stop forcing yourself just to wake up. You know, stay up late and then wake up early and and the rest of it, because it does catch up with you and also impacts the quality of what you're doing as well. And, um, the second practical hack I would say is just segmenting time, so just being very, very careful about how you use your time when you're, because when you're starting a business and and scaling it, there's multiple competing priorities within the business, multiple things to work on, and then you've also got your personal life and how to balance all the things around your family and friends and wife and kids and etc. So for me I had to start getting really ruthless with saying no and and I think just the power of saying no is really important.
Speaker 2:You know, going to this event or this networking thing, or having to jump on this meeting which may not yield any results. So just getting really, really ruthless with it, because it can swallow up your life, right, and you can find yourself just not not having any life and it's all just work. And so just being really ruthless with your time, and I think just the power of saying no, which is something I've started to learn more about over the last sort of few months as well, Was that something that you found difficult before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think as a new entrepreneur with a new startup, you sort of think you need to take every opportunity that sort of comes your way and um and I do think there's some some of that somewhat can be accurate.
Speaker 2:Uh, but I think before I never really was very nuanced, I never really used to think about should I do this rather than that, should I prioritize this rather than that? Um, I used to just sort of say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and I will go to all the you know five events in a week. Every day of the week, I'll go to all of them because you just never know who you might meet and what opportunities might pop up. And now I'm just like, look, if it's meant to be, it will happen. And I'm not going to just keep saying yes to everything. You kind of have to just prioritize yourself and prioritize your, your the things that are important at this particular moment. Yourself, and prioritize your, your the things that are important at this particular moment so I would, I would say that as well, and so it's not like.
Speaker 1:The segmenting of time is quite like a work life segmentation. Is that right? Was that even within work?
Speaker 2:yeah, no, you're right, that's it. Well segmenting, obviously, your work. So making sure you you're getting the most key critical things done, um, in in the quickest amount of time. But, uh, the other one is just making sure you're getting the most key critical things done in the quickest amount of time, but the other one is just making sure you're freeing up your evenings, you know, or your weekends, when you can, for, you know, for family time, for friends time.
Speaker 2:So, whether that be doing something like putting in your diary and your calendar, you know, seven till nine or six to eight every day, that's it. I'm blocking that out for this and that's going to be the case case and no one will book in time for those, those, those hours. Or on the weekend, you know, I commit every weekend to spending time with x and y, and so I think, being ruthless about that and really to the point where you're literally putting it into your calendar as well, alongside all of your work meetings, it's just so, so important because I think a lot of people feel like they spend all like just kind of like do more mentality, I should spend all the time I can on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you noticed? Do you think that, having stepped away from that mentality like segmenting, creating time for yourself, do you think that's impacted your output positively or negatively?
Speaker 2:oh, positively for sure, because I I know that there's not going to be things that are going to just pop up and and suddenly I'm going to be running around the place like a headless chicken. I've got everything lined up in the right way. You know, my priorities are all set. There shouldn't be any misunderstandings. So things like that is where it really really comes in handy.
Speaker 1:It's one of the three rules I took from the said. It's like shift from like do more to do less but achieve more, and I think a lot of that comes from like planning segmentation. Yeah, yeah, just yeah yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:I think, as a founder, you you have to try and focus on the things that are going to yield the highest leverage. So when I have meetings or I write Slack messages or emails, I'm always thinking about what is the one or two things I can do each day that would result in like the biggest sort of outsized impact for the rest of the team, for the company, for our commercial goals, you know, and I think that's really the best way to think about it that's really the best way to think about it.
Speaker 1:But it feels like quite a shift from service initial thing, like lots of stuff happening to you, to this idea of really being in control of your day, in control of your diary yeah and just focusing on the things that you believe will truly add the most value. For sure, for sure.
Speaker 2:That's the best way to 100% best way to think about it, right, because you're like the captain of the ship, right, and it's up to you to steer things in the right direction, and the rest of the team will perhaps do a lot of the heavy lifting or they'll perhaps be the ones pushing things forward after that point. So really important to just set the right direction and just think about where yeah, where those highest leverage things are going to come from. Um, one of the things I learned particularly actually about this in in a startup environment is higher, like for the first five, six employees. You've got to hire people who are complete self-starters but also real a players, or I call them killers, like people who are just. They come in and they absolutely just kill.
Speaker 2:What they're doing each and every day. They they're running the numbers, they're looking at that, they're jumping into other things, they're jumping onto calls, doing email, so they really don't need encouragement or whatever. You just have to do the initial steer and kind of look at it from the top line strategy where do you want to go, what do you want to achieve? But they come in and just execute. They just completely know how to, how to really dominate and execute something and in the long run it just saves so much stress, maybe a little bit more expensive those type of people but in the long run it's far less stress.
Speaker 2:You get to where you want to quicker, and if you get to where you want to quicker, and probably it will end up being more cost effective actually.
Speaker 1:So, uh, it's something to weigh up, that's for sure how would you identify that sort of characteristic during the process?
Speaker 2:we started introducing tests, uh, into the interview process. So what we do is we say in fact, this is, I think, pretty much stage one or two, which is record a video explaining this particular concept, or go on our website, tell us the top five ways you'd increase our conversion rate and where we're doing really badly at the moment. And we know they don't have access to all of the data, so it so then we know the ones who can really be imaginative and really pull things out from very limited uh, a very limited data source.
Speaker 2:They really must be onto something, must really know their craft and it also saves you having to jump on an interview where every single person, one by one, so um, definitely, testing um has been really, really interesting for us. And just jumping on and making people kind of, I guess, put their money where their mouth is because people are very good at writing a cv and a cover letter and you know that type of thing but um, putting them in the arena, that's where you really start to see what results they're able to produce and sometimes even for tech people, if they come in.
Speaker 2:We often sometimes have asked them to come in for like half a day or one day. We'll pay them. You know we'll pay them for a day or whatever to do a certain task, because it's often better just to pay that one day and then figure out at that point you know they may not be the right fit then actually go through and you hire them and you bring them on board and and then you go through the all that bureaucracy and then suddenly you realize you know three months, in two months, in that they're not the right ones and then it's a lot harder to make a change.
Speaker 1:I think it's quite nice, because I do like you're asking people to show what they can do, but also you're acknowledging that it might be their time, in which case pay them for it. So it's kind of you. Some of the bigger companies go oh what, if you want to work here, you'll do whatever it takes. Therefore, we're going to take up a day, two days of your time with interviews, and then we might not even hire you, which feels quite indulgent and exploitative in some ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think it's important to pay them for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1:And would you use that language internally? So let's say this sort of killer concept Is that something that you would use during appraisals? Is that something that you would sort of label with? Is that a Interesting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I would say so. I think you know, when you have limited funds and you have to get to a certain revenue or certain milestone, you really want killers in your team, people who come in and and they can really execute and know what they know, know what they're doing really really well and does that change?
Speaker 1:so you said, like the first five hires need to be implying that maybe it doesn't, isn't so important after the first five, or does it remain important, no matter the size?
Speaker 2:I think it remains even more important for the first 10, 20. For sure, right, 10, first 15, 20. But I think there will come a point where not everyone can be on that scale. Right, you know, if you're a company of 100 or 1,000 people, I think it's unrealistic that you're going to have the very best in the industry and all 1,000 will be the very best, because then they're probably not the very best. If there's a thousand of them, I think I would say the first 20 will be absolute killers. First 15.
Speaker 2:I also have a particular thesis around. Obviously it depends business to business, what and what you specifically do, but I think you can build a very successful, large, multi-million, even billion dollar business by actually just having a team of 20. That's my theory. I know instagram was sold to facebook for a billion dollars and they only had 15 employees at the time, and so that means that 15 employees were capable of producing a billion dollars worth of value for that for that company, and it really made me think, I think. I believe we can get to a huge scale and I don't believe we need to hire hundreds of people to do it. I hope we can do it in 20. So I've got this feeling about this and I see what we've done with five people and I think if we had a little bit more, I think we could do exponentially more. But it certainly doesn't need to be hundreds and hundreds of people.
Speaker 2:I think, above all, you know whatever business you choose or whatever idea you come up with, I think there's a lot of people out there who come up with sort of ideas just because they sound like ideas that can make money, and that may be true.
Speaker 2:It may be a great idea that can make really good money. But I think sometimes people forget that they have to come up with something that they also truly love and perhaps they're solving a problem that they also personally had. And those are actually the best business ideas the ones where you are solving your own problem that you personally had yourself, because it's going to be a long road ahead. It's going to be stressful road ahead, as we as we spoke about, and on those dark moments, those evenings where you're missing out on things, those weekends where you're missing engagements and having to reprioritize because you're working, you're really going to think to yourself about whether is this really what you want to be spending your time doing, for you know making those sacrifices for. So, whatever it is you choose, make sure it's something you love, it's a mission that you really truly, deeply feel aligned with and you can follow through on for many, many years to come, and I think that's the that's the key thing that some people may not think deeply about, but it's so important.
Speaker 1:Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Peer Effect. Farron's journey reminds us that true innovation often comes from personal experience and that the best businesses solve real problems. As we heard, embracing challenges with a calm, methodical approach and leaning on your support network can not only help navigate the stormy seas of startup life, but also enhance personal well-being. Join us every week for insightful episodes featuring founders and experts who are making it happen. Until next time, cheers.
