Like for most people, 2020 was a crazy year for us.
We had to completely restructure one of our core businesses, Vitalife Health, so that it could continue to supply healthy food, drink and supplements to people across the Country and beyond.
It involved a brief period of having to resort to single-handedly fulfilling orders in-house for a few weeks (I’m talking 8-12 pallet loads per day, for 1 person to unload, sort, pick, pack, and despatch), whilst we established a new fulfilment partnership that was robust enough to deal with peaks and troughs in demand, and meet the demands of social distancing and safe business practice.
That one person was me, and it was exhausting.
I have a newfound insight and appreciation for the order pickers/packers in our fulfilment warehouses – they are the reason why people have still been able to have access to essentials throughout this time. I take my hat off to warehouse workers across the Country, they have coped tremendously well with the upsurge that online retail has seen.
Meanwhile, my Wife Grace did a wonderful job taking care of both of our young children at home whilst I was out of the house from the early hours to late at night (I’m not sure which task was the most tiring – probably Grace’s!).
All this, alongside the usual demands of operating and growing Love Health Hate Waste, Vitalife Vend (the most negatively-affected business of the Group during this time), and Vitalife Threads. Plus keeping momentum in the projects we have bubbling under the surface, like Wightpass, and launching our brand new ecommerce project Mailpranx.
It’s been a hectic 12 months – which will hopefully explain the complete lack of posts here.
But I’m back! And I’m back with big news.
We’ve just launched our KD Publishing exclusive book release of my course ‘Fast Track Entrepreneur: Build an Online Business in 4 Weeks’, which you can download for Kindle devices here.
The paperback will also launch in the next 24 hours.
Both versions of the book feature updated content from the original course material, which I’m hoping to feed-back as an update to the course itself very soon.
But furthermore, I have another KD Publishing exclusive book scheduled for release on the 15th February 2021 (coincidentally, in-line with the proposed end of the UK lockdown, and also my Birthday!).
The book is titled ‘Angel Number 0202’, and rather than explain the concept, here’s an exclusive sneak-peak to the introductory sections of the book – the preface and ‘about the author’ sections:
About the Author
I’m not a fan of third-party-written author introductions.
They’re either written by the actual author anyway, pretending to be a third-person as though it makes them seem more important, or they are written by someone else, but all the information has to be provided by the author anyway, so they might aswell have written it themselves!
So this is a first-person ‘about the author’.
I’m Gavin. Hi.
I’m a British entrepreneur.
I haven’t taken a single face-to-face business meeting in over 7 years. I rarely accept phone calls. I mostly communicate via email only. I work from home in the Isle of Wight with my Wife Grace and two children, Betsey, 6, and Ralph, 2. I haven’t worn a suit since I got married. I spend life mostly in my shorts and t-shirt, and my office is the sofa.
I feel like I’m in an AA meeting, but for entrepreneurial dossers.
I could have worded that differently to sound a whole lot more professional, but I want to be honest. This is how I conduct my life and my business.
Whilst wearing those shorts and t-shirt, laying on the sofa (occasionally getting stomped and sat-on by our 2-year-old Ralph), I’ve also somehow managed to:
- Simultaneously build 3 multi-million pound turnover businesses
- Build an e-commerce retail offering of over 35,000 lines
- Serve hundreds of thousands of consumers through our online businesses
- Save over £8m of healthy food and drink from unnecessarily going to landfill, instead making it available to people at up to 90% off RRP to make healthy and dietary-specific food more accessible for all
- Launch online business courses that have now helped over 12,000 students across the World to start their own businesses
- Start 17 businesses across the same number of years, many of which still operate today
- Spend a lot of time gazing out of the window over our spectacular view of the English Channel
And, more importantly, I’ve never been happier.
I spend more time than ever with my beautiful wife Grace, and our two amazing children (I homeschooled our eldest during the last lockdown), I eat well, I exercise 4 times a week (from home, of course) and have never been in better shape, I love what I do, and we live in a beautiful place where we can enjoy the outdoors and countless beaches right on our doorstep.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’ve lived in a ‘lockdown’ fashion voluntarily for the past 7+ years, and we wouldn’t change it for the World.
I understand this lifestyle might not be perfect for everyone – I don’t prescribe it in any way.
But it definitely works for us.
It has its challenges, no doubt. But the freedom and enjoyment that our lifestyle brings is incredible. It allows us to focus ruthlessly on our outputs when it comes to business, rather than the timescale or environment in which we produce those outputs, and the rest is our time – to spend with each other and our kids, to exercise, to enjoy amazing food, to go out and explore, to travel (when not in lockdown!), and to make the most of life.
I hope this book brings you value, enjoyment, and something to take-away to apply to your own lifestyle and situation, and to achieve even more happiness and success.
Enjoy 🙂
Preface
I’m a glass half-full kind of guy.
I guess I’ve honed this approach from my experiences over the last 18 years as an entrepreneur – starting my first business at 16 years-old in the middle of the 2008 financial crisis marked the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, so I needed to see opportunities in the midst of disruption right from the start.
If you’re an entrepreneur yourself, or if you’ve encountered your fair share of challenges in life, you’ll understand the art of (nay, the necessity of) being positive and treating what others would regard to be problems as opportunities or (exciting?) challenges to be overcome.
So I guess you could say I had a head start when it came to adapting to the Global pandemic in 2020.
But in all honesty, nobody was prepared. Myself included.
We’ve all had to adapt quickly and settle into what is now regarded as ‘the new normal’.
Working from home. Limited opportunities to travel. Restrictions on spending time with extended family and friends. Wearing masks in public places. Keeping our distance from one another. You know the drill.
By the time you’re reading this, things may have started to transition back to the old ways of working – thanks to vaccines being approved and some level of immunity being achieved.
But if you think this scenario will never occur again – think again.
The threat of destruction and disruption from Pandemics will probably always exist.
At least until we develop some form of advanced virus detection and antibody production system that surpasses the effectiveness and efficiency of our own human capabilities, and can recognise and defeat new viruses proactively, on-demand.
For the Elon Musk’s and other pioneering super-geniuses of the World, this is the opportunity that the Pandemic has brought to-light.
But for us regular folk, we can take so much from the disruption and changes that have been introduced, and use this to shape a better future for ourselves.
A future with more freedom, more time, more health, more energy, and more happiness than ever before.
To do this, we need to understand how we can engineer each element of the disruption brought about in 2020, to our advantage – and what changes you want to keep in-place long after the Pandemic is over, because they suit you and your lifestyle better than the old way did.
This is what I want to teach you in this book.
Let’s flip 2020, and turn it into your Angel Number 0202 – you’ll wonder why you ever lived the way you did before the Pandemic began.
If you like the sound of it and want to read more, head over to Amazon where you can pre-order the book ready for its release on the 15th Feb.
I’m also hoping to become more regular with posting here again now that things with the businesses have settled a little, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, I hope everyone is keeping safe and well, and that you’re finding some positives in the ‘new normal’ way of living.