Latest / The Curve / Hundreds of millions in the bank. Still took 18 years to turn a profit.

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Hundreds of millions in the bank. Still took 18 years to turn a profit. · The Curve

0:02
In today's episode, we will be reflecting on the legacy of the late feminist icon, Gloria Steinem.
0:09
We'll be looking specifically at how much changed for women over the course of her lifetime.
0:15
We are going to be talking about Victoria Beckham.
0:17
So she has had a business for 18 years.
0:20
It's finally made a profit, started in fashion, pivoted to beauty.
0:25
What can we learn about this business?
0:28
And do we think it's objectively successful?
0:30
And last, we'll be asking an important question.
0:33
How much does it cost to try and live forever?
0:36
Tech billionaire Brian Johnson is currently spending $2 million per year to try and reverse his biological aging.
0:44
He has recently been joined by girlfriend Kate Tollo, who's about to embark on her own 100-day protocol.
0:50
What do we know about this 100-day protocol?
0:53
And what does it say about the burgeoning, biohacking, and longevity space?
0:56
Welcome to The Curve Weekly, where we read the finance news so that you don't have to.
1:00
I'm Sophie Hallwright, ex-television and radio producer, who is very sick and tired of not understanding the economy, how to build wealth, how to read the FT, so we started this podcast.
1:10
And my name is Emily Boynton.
1:11
I am a writer, newly published author, and broadcaster, focused on engendering conversation around the topics we're typically taught not to discuss.
1:19
First, we've got a quick word from today's sponsor.
1:23
Strong returns in one year.
1:25
I mean, you could say luck.
1:27
But strong returns over 10 years, that's a track record.
1:31
Find out more about Generate's 10-year track record and see their disclosures in the show notes.
1:37
Remember, though, track record does not guarantee future returns.
1:41
I'm just going to get this out of the way because I feel like I have a confession slash...
1:46
I did a naughty thing yesterday.
1:48
You spent all your money.
1:49
I spent all my money.
1:50
Every penny you have.
1:51
I spent all of it and more.
1:54
So I had...
1:54
Wait, all of it?
1:55
Well... All your savings, all your fuck me you funds.
1:59
You spent everything.
2:00
No, I didn't spend everything.
2:01
So I had £364 in my clothing allowance.
2:06
Okay.
2:06
Oh, wow.
2:06
Quite good.
2:07
How much did you give yourself a year?
2:08
For clothing?
2:09
Yeah.
2:09
£100 a month.
2:10
Okay, that's not that much.
2:11
It's not a lot.
2:12
In London, you can't buy new clothes.
2:14
I basically haven't bought anything all summer.
2:15
Yeah.
2:16
I've got my Greek holiday coming up, and I had a total meltdown.
2:19
I was like, I'm sick and tired of all my bloody clothes.
2:22
You know, I was packing, and I just thought, I want to look cute and feel good.
2:25
And then I thought, God, the holiday pile on.
2:28
Once you've booked flights, accommodation, and a whole new wardrobe, it's a very expensive exercise.
2:33
But I think the reason I feel guilty is because I spent it all at Sun.
2:38
And I know that that's naughty.
2:40
That show.
2:41
Zara, to me, it's hit or miss.
2:42
You can get some amazing pieces that will last you a hell of a long time.
2:46
And then you can get some pieces which will honestly disintegrate after their first wear.
2:50
If you invest in some great pieces that you will wear over and over again, I think worth it.
2:55
I'm really happy with what I bought.
2:57
I did a full try on last night, expecting half of it to need to be sent back.
3:00
And you love it all.
3:01
And I love it all.
3:02
It's almost worse when that happens.
3:03
I know.
3:03
Because you think you're like, actually, I'm probably, I spent $350, but I'm actually going to get $300 back.
3:08
So I'm basically in a positive, and then actually you love it all, and you're like, it's all got to stay.
3:13
One of my best friends is staying from New Zealand at the moment, and I came downstairs, and I was like, I've got some awful news.
3:19
Really, I've got awful news, everyone.
3:20
And they're like, what?
3:21
And I was like, what?
3:22
I love my entire Zara.
3:24
I look so good.
3:25
I look so good in it.
3:26
But I think the way I'm justifying it, I'm going to New Zealand for summer.
3:29
I'll re-wear all those outfits.
3:31
Oh, no, you've got an extended summer.
3:33
Yes.
3:33
Which I'm quite jealous about.
3:34
So, Soph, I think to begin today's conversation, we should talk about Gloria Steinem, who has just passed away.
3:40
We're losing all the greats at the moment, are we not?
3:43
The real, like, feminist, wonderful greats.
3:45
So, Gloria Steinem died last week at the age of 92.
3:49
So, she lived a long, colorful life.
3:51
And she is just kind of the most iconic, well-known feminist activist.
3:56
There's a lot I want to say about Gloria.
3:57
I have like imbibed a lot of obituaries and gone back and listened to some interviews that she did.
4:02
I think she was, for me, such an inspiration.
4:04
But what was your feeling when you found out that she died?
4:08
So I have a friend that worked on a documentary that she was interviewed for many years ago.
4:14
And I remember seeing the cut before it went public.
4:17
It was in a Netflix documentary.
4:19
Oh my gosh.
4:20
And embarrassingly, that was the first time I'd really like listened to her.
4:23
I guess I don't feel super connected to her because I don't know a huge amount about her work.
4:27
And I really want to because I know she was such an icon.
4:30
There's been so much that's evolved since when she first started the feminist crusade to when she died.
4:37
And I would love to learn more about who she was and what she did.
4:41
Go back into the Gloria archives.
4:43
Kind of, because also when she was born, it was a completely different world to now.
4:49
And she partly helped shape it.
4:51
And that's what's so incredible.
4:52
Obviously, we stand on the shoulders of so many feminist giants, but she was really...
4:57
amongst some of greatest so Gloria Steinem was a journalist working in New York I just listened to Elizabeth Day's interview with her on how to fail and she reflected on how like these were days in which sexism was just so normalized in the workplace so editors would basically just only commission her to do like does the vacuum work truly but that was completely normal in those times
5:19
But the world has changed so much since then.
5:21
So much?
5:22
The New Yorker published her final essay a few days ago in kind of commemoration of her life and acknowledging her death.
5:29
And I just wanted to read a few lines from that article and then look at a few of the kind of major things that have changed throughout her lifetime.
5:37
So she says, as I write this, the world seems in a tailspin.
5:41
Many feel that all the progress we've made is being reversed.
5:44
When you're lucky enough to have lived a long life, as I have done, your role as an older person is to remind us how far we have come.
5:51
In my own life, women were invisibilized in public and even by language itself.
5:56
I remember times when thoughtful male journalists would look at a room full of women and report, there's no one here!
6:01
Or when I and other women had an idea, the only way we could express it was by having the man next to us state it.
6:07
So I love that in the first instance essay she's writing, it's my job as a woman who has seen many decades past to remind you all that however depressing things can look right now, and she mentions Trump a lot in an interview I listened to with Elizabeth Day, a lot has changed and the world has moved on, you know, incredibly.
6:25
I just did a quick search just for a kind of basic rudimentary list of things that have changed since the kind of 60s, 70s.
6:32
And I mean, the list is long.
6:33
It's, you know, access to birth control, legalized abortions.
6:36
I mean, in the UK, obviously, in the US, we've seen a reversal of Roe versus Wade, but they did have a chunk of time in which they were made accessible.
6:44
You've had anti-discrimination laws like the Equal Pay Act.
6:48
both in the US and the UK, which has meant that women couldn't be discriminated against.
6:52
Although there's some issues there.
6:53
Nonetheless, it's a powerful law.
6:56
Financial independence.
6:57
I mean, there are so many things that have fundamentally changed women's lives.
7:01
And in context, this podcast, finances.
7:05
She was...
7:06
40 years old in 1974 and that's when we were finally able to sign for credit or get a mortgage without having a man there.
7:14
She's probably just really proud to be honest to see how far women in general have come.
7:20
Her final essay basically saying
7:21
Don't feel sad.
7:23
Be proud.
7:24
And I think it's a really good point you make there because I think sometimes it's really easy, particularly when we are so hyper aware of everything happening around the world at all times because we have access to 24-hour news.
7:36
We have, you know, we're all currently on social media.
7:38
We're on our phones the whole time.
7:39
So we are always chronically aware of...
7:42
of everything that's happening, all the worst things that are happening around the world because that's what the news cycle focus on.
7:46
It's easy to lose sight of the progress that's being made and the good things because you're just trapped in this kind of quite negative news cycle.
7:52
And also the granular changes that are happening day to day, week to week rather than zooming out across a 5, 10, 15, 20, 40 year period.
8:00
Totally.
8:01
This has often come up in the events that I host around, you know, we're going through such a frustrating time now.
8:06
We've got the Andrew Tate kind of manosphere, you know, online misogyny is growing.
8:11
You know, what gives us hope that things are changing?
8:14
And someone on the panel just said, people like Andrew Tate, the Manosphere, the fact that you have such a violent pushback against women and women's rights and feminism only shows the strength of that movement because there would be nothing to push back against.
8:29
There would be no need to try and push women back if we hadn't made such tremendous strides forward.
8:35
Reading this essay, that really was the kind of essence of what she was saying.
8:38
Yes, things might be bad now.
8:40
And yes, there are definitely, the work continues.
8:42
And until, you know, women all around the world are free, none of us are free.
8:45
The movement should still be galvanized by how much has changed.
8:49
I really feel quite emotional actually hearing you talk about it because sometimes it's easy to feel a bit like trodden down with everything that's happening.
8:57
And you can lose hope quite easily, I think.
9:00
The reminder of how hard women like Gloria have worked is...
9:04
to create an environment where we have so much more opportunity than she did 50 years ago, we've got a job to do.
9:12
And lucky for us, her memoir actually publishes at the end of this month.
9:16
I can't wait to read that.
9:17
Me too.
9:18
It's called An Unexpected Life.
9:19
There's so many amazing people doing really important things in the world.
9:23
You can't keep up with every single one.
9:25
But when icons like Dolly Parton or Gloria Steinem die, it gives us a chance to reflect and look at their work and have pride for the things that they've done and also feel motivated to do the same for the next generation.
9:39
Yeah.
9:39
So Gloria writes the end of this New Yorker piece, the final essay that she wrote.
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Thanks to women who gathered to tell the truth at the kitchen table or village well, who acted in local elections or at the United Nations, feminism or any other word for human equality is widely recognized as a precondition of democracy
9:57
economic development spirituality and peace so treat every woman as a full human being an equal human being whether that means encouraging your mother to do what she's always dreamed of doing or not expecting your girlfriend to cook you dinner only with actions from each of us will we see equality as a true fact of life doesn't that make you want to cry what a beautiful woman she was an amazing orator
10:25
I must say, Victoria Beckham, I kind of didn't connect the fact that she has beauty and fashion sides of the business, which sounds incredibly stupid because I get targeted with so many eyeliner ads.
10:39
Anyway, her business has finally become profitable after 18 years.
10:44
18 years is a pretty long time for a company not to be profitable.
10:47
It's not like a kind of Uber or a kind of, you know, where they're building the technology that they realize it's like a big upfront cost.
10:53
Yes.
10:54
This is a fashion label and then recently a beauty business.
10:57
Yes.
10:58
18 years is a pretty long time.
11:00
It's so funny because when we first were looking at the story –
11:03
I really think there's a lot of learnings from a business perspective.
11:07
Runway is the most important part of a business, right?
11:09
So runway is the amount of money you have in the bank to fund your growth to be able to get you to a certain point.
11:15
And a lot of the tech companies, we speak a lot on this podcast about...
11:19
The fact that they're loss making and that makes sense when it's that's in the plan that's in the model.
11:24
You know, a lot of businesses are loss making until they're not.
11:28
And some of them are the most valuable companies in the world.
11:31
But a fashion or beauty brand to be loss making for that amount of time is pretty enormous.
11:37
Is it really unusual?
11:39
Yeah, I mean, like sort of two to three years is generally a runway.
11:43
It makes sense, right?
11:43
Because you can only, most people can only fund a business for a certain period of time.
11:48
Yeah.
11:49
And so basically what happened was her business made an operating profit in 2025 of 7.3 million pounds.
11:56
which sounds like a lot.
11:57
In New Zealand, that's around 16 million.
11:59
Australian, it's about 14 million.
12:01
But she made 18 years of losses.
12:05
So she was in the red that whole time.
12:07
The interesting thing is, and particularly over the last sort of five, six years, she's had growing revenue.
12:12
So it wasn't as though...
12:14
They weren't making increased sales or growing their customer base.
12:18
They were doing good things.
12:19
It was just that what she was spending was insane.
12:22
There was a time where the business was in such a dire state that David Beckham had to publicly lift them out of where they were.
12:30
So he had to pour his own money into the business.
12:33
So the business at one point was like...
12:35
tens of millions in debt, which, as you say, for some companies, isn't that scary.
12:42
It's like a big tech company because we know that the upfront cost is so high to build the technology.
12:46
But when you're talking about fashion or you're talking about a beauty business, you would expect those upfront costs, I'm sure are still high, but not for such an extended period of time.
12:55
Yeah.
12:56
With like fashion and beauty as well, you're creating certain amounts of units for your demand, right?
13:00
So like the idea really should be that you're not overproducing heaps of products that aren't then going to – you kind of scale as your customer base grows.
13:08
Totally.
13:08
Totally demand supply.
13:09
Yeah.
13:09
If you look at something like Amazon, it took them almost a decade to turn a profit.
13:13
That's a long time.
13:14
But Amazon is a marketplace.
13:15
Yes.
13:16
But it's like the fact that it took them nearly 10 years.
13:18
They were a huge, valuable business.
13:20
Tesla, it was 17 years before they made a profit.
13:23
So it is really easy to say 18 years and think that's outrageous.
13:28
It's nearly two decades of spending money.
13:30
It's that those companies...
13:31
A VC backed.
13:32
Exactly.
13:33
And so for anyone who doesn't know, VC backed is basically venture capital where they do like moonshot businesses.
13:39
So it is things like Amazon, Tesla, Uber, where it's very unlikely they're going to get to profitability.
13:47
The amount of businesses we hear about that are VC backed are like a tiny fraction of the ones that they've invested in because so many of them just like burn out.
13:55
They run out of runway and they don't go anywhere.
13:56
But that's the point.
13:57
You just like spend so much on growth and you grow fast and fast and fast.
14:00
And then when you get to profitability, if you get there, you're one of the biggest businesses in the world.
14:05
And that's what VC like.
14:06
That's what they're banking on.
14:07
They're banking on essentially one of their investments of like what, 2030 being a unicorn business.
14:11
Yeah, exactly.
14:12
And unicorn being like over a billion.
14:14
Yeah.
14:14
So yeah, this is a very different type of business.
14:16
And Vic and I were talking about the story and like what actually would be helpful learning for the Curve audience.
14:22
Because I think the difference between profit and revenue can get confusing for people.
14:27
And actually, if we look at the business model and what they were doing, it is impressive what they've done.
14:31
Do you think it is impressive?
14:32
Yeah, see, this is, I knew that you were going to hit me up about this.
14:35
And you actually think it's impressive.
14:37
She is a celebrity with access to loads and loads of money.
14:39
Anyone running a business, it's really hard to run a business.
14:42
But she does have the leg up of having access to, like, a lot of capital.
14:47
Endless media attention.
14:49
So she does not need to be hustling for any sort of media coverage.
14:53
She can just get it.
14:54
For me, I don't know, 18 years to get to profitability when you have everything going for you.
15:00
And also, she could have had business advice from anyone and everyone.
15:04
Like, she is the most well-connected person.
15:06
So I'm just curious as to how she didn't get...
15:10
people better than her in earlier on in the business to rectify the financial issues that were occurring so early on.
15:19
I think you bring up perhaps the most important point of all of this.
15:23
She had the gift of time to figure out what she wanted to do and how she was going to make money.
15:29
She didn't have pressure of VC investors saying we need return, you must be profitable, grow, grow, grow.
15:36
I am.
15:37
feel like people might hate me for saying this.
15:42
But if you don't have the pressure of what are your targets?
15:46
Are you hitting your targets?
15:48
I wonder, and I suspect having the gift of time and backing, if there just wasn't really an urgency to get to profitability.
15:57
Because for what?
15:58
She doesn't really need the money.
16:01
Did it start as a vanity project to create this brand that is cool, that is a pivot from music and from being a spice girl that gave her a different identity?
16:10
But the pressure wasn't necessarily for it to be hugely successful in terms of financial success because they accumulated a total of $66 million in debt.
16:22
That's how much their losses were.
16:24
I mean, that's an insane amount of money.
16:27
The turning point for the business was in 2017 when she sold 30% of the company.
16:32
to a private equity firm.
16:34
So like we spoke about, it's not VC.
16:36
It's slightly different, but essentially they had people coming in and looking at the business with a fine tooth comb, being like, how are you making money?
16:41
What does this look like?
16:42
And to be fair, they obviously saw value in the business and her as a brand and the potential of what it could be.
16:47
I mean, brand Beckham carries a lot of weight.
16:50
I mean, I would have invested.
16:51
Yeah.
16:52
And so private equity came in and they start looking at everything and they say, you know,
16:56
what are your targets?
16:56
Where are you going?
16:57
What are you spending on?
16:58
My favorite example of what she was spending money on was 52,000 pounds a year on office plants.
17:04
They were flying chairs from one side of the world to the other, like office chairs.
17:08
This is a weird analogy, but let's say you joined finances with your partner.
17:11
All of a sudden they see everything that you're spending.
17:13
It then becomes a joint decision on where your money goes.
17:16
So similarly, if you have investors in a business, they are really interested in what you're spending money on, not just what's coming in, but what you're
17:23
Well, some of it's their money.
17:24
Exactly.
17:24
They definitely have a keen interest.
17:26
There's holes in my money bucket.
17:27
Yeah.
17:28
Where is it going?
17:28
I really feel like this was sort of the start of the up where people were looking at her spending and reining it in.
17:34
We saw them kind of change the business because they launched the beauty arm of the business two years later in 2019.
17:38
Yeah.
17:39
I think this is really interesting because she obviously didn't really have product market fit until that point.
17:45
the clothes were selling and it's not as though the business wasn't growing from the fashion side but really it was yeah in 2019 when she started selling beauty products two-thirds of the entire business revenue was from all of the makeup that she was selling it sort of says for a long time she was just selling making losses selling making losses and like
18:04
creating these beautiful collections, but that wasn't really where the money is.
18:08
For example, like some of the other fashion brands where they have lots of different verticals underneath them.
18:13
So like Louis Vuitton, Moet Hennessy, they have like so many different brands.
18:18
Some of them are loss making, some of them are not.
18:21
And there's really a couple of brands that prop up the entire portfolio.
18:25
So like within Victoria Beckham's company, the beauty arm is like the most financially viable.
18:31
They're huge.
18:31
Yeah, there's a massive amount of brands.
18:32
There's so many brands underneath them.
18:34
But some of them are not successful.
18:36
Some of them are like the money makers.
18:38
And I think this is just a really good example.
18:40
Yeah, like the fashion side wasn't really making a huge amount of money.
18:44
But now, yeah, they sell like one of their eyeliners every 30 seconds.
18:50
It's £32.
18:51
And yeah, there's people that like… It's like you being targeted.
18:54
Exactly.
18:54
It's all the targeted ads.
18:55
They're about to buy, don't you?
18:56
But also I think Victoria Beckham's had a big change in terms of how she kind of publicized the brand because she started doing these makeup tutorials, didn't she?
19:03
Where she started getting more, kind of creating a little bit more of a like connection with her social audience.
19:09
And she's always been notoriously very private, like would just get photographed, always looking very steely, wouldn't smile in pictures.
19:16
And it feels like the last few years she's opened up a lot more, has been doing more on social media.
19:19
And I think probably it got to the point where people were saying, you know, like, yeah, like look at, look at the business success that these creators have when they lean into their personalities.
19:29
Exactly.
19:30
Yeah.
19:30
So yeah, she obviously had someone in the marketing department say like start sharing more and, and even her Netflix doco like in 2025 when that came out, obviously there was a huge surge in sales.
19:40
And I think she probably started to see the business success of opening up personally and
19:45
And so she's done it more and more.
19:46
She's still the creative director of the business and she has two women CEOs that she appointed in 2025.
19:52
In terms of what we like to talk about and businesses we like to talk about, the fact that it's female run, that she's got a lot of women in there working in the business, I quite like.
20:00
And I know she had probably 15 years of almost having money to fund the business to figure out where and how she's going to make money and
20:09
It's a long time figuring it out.
20:11
I know.
20:12
And that is the thing, right?
20:13
Like most businesses go out of business because they run out of time and money.
20:17
She had that in infinity.
20:18
Definitely.
20:18
Although she did say in the documentary, there's so much privilege associated with Victoria Beckham.
20:22
But she said also the pressure of building publicly and the scrutiny that came with being someone in the public eye, building a business that also is quite well known that it wasn't making money, that it was like in financial...
20:34
I think that would be kind of embarrassing.
20:35
It would be embarrassing.
20:36
And also you do have the media's eye on you, watching and kind of waiting for you to fail.
20:40
And that in itself becomes a press story, which then also creates a lack of trust in the business and it becomes kind of self-repeating cycle.
20:47
I guess whether or not we think...
20:50
she is successful in inverted commas, what we can learn from the business, how it ran, and actually the difference between profit and revenue.
21:01
Because this business had a lot of revenue for a long time, but because they were spending so much, it wasn't profit.
21:08
That's ultimately the story here.
21:10
If we were only focusing as a business, as the curve, for example, on revenue, and it didn't matter how much
21:17
because we were backed by whether it's a really wealthy husband or by VC or that you, you have money to just like go hard or go home.
21:27
That is, that is the approach.
21:28
So she kind of had go hard or go home, but without needing to get a return on the investment.
21:34
And,
21:35
And that's really unusual.
21:37
She was almost running the business like it was VC backed or like it was backed by private equity before it was backed by private equity.
21:43
For example, if we were to look at the curve business, when we have money in the bank,
21:48
our runway, for example, that's almost like our business emergency fund.
21:53
That is like the money we have should something go wrong, should, I don't know, a sponsor pull out or should a product not work.
21:59
Massive businesses that are more tech companies, like Vic last week spoke about one of the investments she made in the fund.
22:06
And the reason that she invested in it was AMD is because it had so much money on the balance sheet.
22:11
It had a huge emergency fund to be able to spend on growth.
22:15
It's like 10 billion or something, which is a huge amount of money, right?
22:18
Just sitting in the back.
22:19
Yeah, but she was sort of saying, you know, it depends on the business model.
22:22
If the business has huge expenses or huge growth, you're obviously going to see a much bigger emergency fund in terms of like cash or runway.
22:29
But that then means they can invest in growth.
22:31
That type of business needs and you want to see a decent amount of money that it can then go spend on growth.
22:36
The curve, we focus on EBITDA.
22:38
So it's the idea of after our business.
22:42
revenues come in, what actually is operating profit?
22:45
Are we net positive or net negative?
22:48
And what this business was for 18 years was net negative.
22:52
It's the fine balance between you don't want to not have enough to be able to fuel growth and initiatives financially
22:57
But you also don't want to just have this huge amount of money sitting there not doing anything because the return on that investment could be way higher if it was invested elsewhere.
23:06
The learning for me, and maybe this is going to sound really obvious for a lot of people, but I really didn't understand the different ways that businesses can make money and plan things.
23:15
And how much the financial plan needs to match up with what is that business trying to achieve?
23:21
So like for us, we are going for, are we able to be making any kind of money after we've paid our expenses?
23:28
For us, we're like pretty close on that.
23:30
We almost spend what we make.
23:31
So we're not like a hugely profitable business, but we're not like going into the red, which would mean our runway is just like slowly getting less and less and less.
23:39
She went less and less and less, compounding to get to 66 million of losses before that started turning around.
23:47
And so, you know, you're talking, Emma, about wanting to start a new business.
23:51
You will have your business plan, which is, do I want to be profitable or am I going for like fast growth?
23:58
Am I wanting to be as big as possible and go for almost like market share?
24:03
Or am I going for a sustainable growth approach?
24:06
And I think what's really interesting about what,
24:09
Yeah, what Victoria Beckham has done is it's almost like she's running a business, kind of like we are, but she doesn't have that fear of running out of money or she hasn't had it because she's been bailed out by her husband.
24:20
There's a part of me that just feels like, you know, if I was a Spice Girl and I'd made all this money, I'm kind of like, you obviously worked very hard throughout that time.
24:29
If she wants to spend 18 years running a business that's loss making and she's learning along the way about business...
24:34
Also, it's not as if she doesn't have a lot of other stuff going on.
24:36
I mean, Bran Beckham does continue to thrive, although they're in constant antagonistic dispute.
24:42
I, like, really would love to be a fly on the wall in that house for a period of time just to see, like, what they talk about.
24:49
Yeah, just, like, how much of it is a facade and all for showing how much of it is actually they just love each other and they're a really cute family.
24:55
It would be like tight-lipped.
24:57
I think their brand is phenomenal.
25:00
They have built a very good brand image.
25:02
Coming up after the break, 49-year-old tech millionaire and biohacker is spending so many millions of dollars on trying to live as long as humanly possible.
25:13
This is really fascinating.
25:14
We're going to look at the business model.
25:16
And if it's a
25:17
play for helping science and longevity in the broader context, or if this is quite a selfish endeavor to be really, really, really old.
25:25
But before that, we'll do a quick word from today's sponsor.
25:28
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25:33
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26:01
And thanks to Generate for supporting this episode.
26:04
To book a no-cost KiwiSaver chat with the Generate advisor, check out the link and Generate's disclosures in the show notes.
26:11
Now, I really wanted to bring up a piece that just took my interest the other day.
26:17
It centers around a question, which, you know, we might be considering ourselves as we near our mid-30s.
26:23
How much does it cost to try and live forever?
26:25
So last week, 29-year-old tech multimillionaire and biohacker Brian Johnson did an interview at The Times alongside his girlfriend, Kate Tollow.
26:32
Yeah.
26:33
discussing their now joint attempt at defying death.
26:36
Now, listeners might recognise Brian Johnson's name because he's been in the press quite a lot over the past couple of years.
26:43
He is the guy seeking to defy death, trying to reverse his biological age by spending roughly two million per year on a variety of biohacking, longevity,
26:57
protocol so he's named this protocol blueprint and he launched in 2021 and he's since generated a lot of press i mean understandably there's a lot of interest in this endeavor first and foremost but also his personal story but the plot has thickened with the introduction of his girlfriend kate tollo who's joining him on this seemingly kind of absurd ambitious
27:19
attempt to defy age and live forever.
27:22
The brand he's creating is huge.
27:24
I mean, he's creating a very good marketing funnel for some of us.
27:27
I was going to say, he's doing a very good job in making a huge song and dance about this and creating a distribution list for whatever products they launch.
27:36
Well, listen, he is a very successful businessman.
27:38
He is not going into this blindly.
27:40
He sold his previous company for a cool $800 million.
27:46
It was a company called Braintree, which is a mobile payment platform, and it sold to PayPal in 2013.
27:51
Imagine selling to PayPal.
27:53
He was one of those entrepreneurs who had quite a few businesses before that.
27:57
None of them worked.
27:58
A lot of his businesses before this failed.
28:00
I love that you're bringing that up again because I do think every time we talk about these sales of these big billionaires, we should talk about the fact that they tried and failed, tried and failed quite a lot before they had a big buy.
28:09
Toby, we only hear about success stories.
28:12
You know, social media is a highlight reel of everyone's successes.
28:15
Someone gets media attention when either they succeed on a grand scale or...
28:19
Or they fail at a catastrophic level, which then creates kind of fear around failure in all of us.
28:24
Totally.
28:24
Because we see just people kind of hung up to dry.
28:26
What we don't see is the many small failures that often characterize entrepreneurs' careers.
28:32
And, you know, he says in the documentary that he failed many times prior to setting up this business.
28:37
But this, the latest business, Braintree, was incredibly successful.
28:41
His life is a fascinating one.
28:42
So he grew up in the Mormon church and was like very...
28:47
obviously very religious, kind of goes without saying, had a wife married and she was also in the Mormon church.
28:53
They had three children together.
28:54
The church was a real like center point to their life together.
28:57
He was kind of overweight.
28:59
He talks about this in the documentary.
29:00
He was kind of eating and I think drinking quite a lot.
29:03
It's that classic tech entrepreneur story, Silicon Valley story of like being obsessed with this business.
29:08
And he says it, he was like, that was kind of what was expected.
29:11
And you were lauded publicly for all the sacrifices that you made in service of your business.
29:16
I do think that conversation is starting to change now, especially as there's so many billionaires that are obsessed with longevity.
29:23
We all know stress is the number one thing that brings on so many health conditions.
29:29
And also, founders and CEOs are the biggest asset to their business.
29:32
So if they start to fall apart, so does the business.
29:36
I do think it takes really hitting rock bottom as a business owner before you actually take your health seriously.
29:42
I imagine he had some pretty serious health implications at that time that probably
29:46
probably propelled him into this obsession around wanting to be healthy.
29:50
He says now he suffered from severe chronic depression and suicidal ideation in kind of the height of these outwardly successful business endeavors.
29:58
His latest business, Braintree, after the failed business before that,
30:01
was wildly successful, but behind closed doors.
30:04
He was so unhealthy.
30:05
He was also in his own kind of inner turmoil around his religion.
30:09
He was questioning the ideology of the Mormon church.
30:13
He eventually got a divorce from his wife and two out of three of his children...
30:18
have very minimal contact with him now because of his decision to leave Mormonism.
30:22
One of them has since also left the Mormon church and joined him.
30:26
And they had these kind of his last, I think it was like the latter half of his final school semester he actually spent living with Brian Johnson.
30:34
And they have this really, actually very beautiful connection, which the documentary delved into.
30:39
It was interestingly humanizing for Brian Johnson, who I think is a figure who has taken on this
30:44
kind of bizarre, like, I don't want to say bogeyman, but he's got such, it's really hard to understand why and how someone can be so obsessed with their health as to abide by such a strict protocol.
30:56
Is it the idea that he's blueprinted what he thinks is going to extend his life so there's all these different rules and parts of his day that he follows quite meticulously?
31:06
And is that where the name came from, probably?
31:07
project blueprint?
31:08
It's like the blueprint to live forever.
31:10
Yes, exactly.
31:10
It's creating a blueprint for how we can optimize our health.
31:13
I think he has a team of about 30 healthcare professionals who are daily monitoring him, monitoring his blood, and then they're constantly tweaking his day-to-day protocol to optimize it.
31:24
It involves...
31:25
I'm like, I'm scared because this is the thing, right?
31:28
I would love to live for a long time, but at what cost?
31:31
At what cost?
31:32
And also, I mean, obviously I don't have $2 million to spend on my yearly blueprint, but you also have to ask, and we'll get to what the list is, but you have to ask it.
31:41
is this living like are you living if this is what your life looks like tell me tell me what the full day so the blueprint protocol is intense and involves daily blood urine and stool tests a doctrinal sleep routine mris plasma transfers scalp stimulants dexascans and light therapy not to mention measuring his nighttime erections because he is obsessed with his penile health
32:03
fasting from 11.30am onwards.
32:09
He said the saddest part of his day is his final bite at 11.30am, which I thought, God, it doesn't need to be this way.
32:15
You don't need to.
32:16
You don't need to, and hearing to a straight 8.30pm bedtime every night.
32:20
And he doesn't even share a bit with his girlfriend.
32:22
Absolutely not.
32:24
Because that disturbs the sleep.
32:26
Their relationship is a really interesting one because she was his chief marketing officer at Blueprint.
32:31
Can we just say that she did semi-stalk him for a period of time before they were in a relationship?
32:37
This article, she says she sent so many messages.
32:40
You're like...
32:41
Hi, let's get a coffee.
32:42
And then applied for a job at his company.
32:44
And that's how they met and then developed feelings for it.
32:46
I mean, she really committed to the we are right for each other and here we are.
32:50
Well, no, not in a romantic sense.
32:51
So she didn't pursue him romantically when she got in touch initially.
32:55
She became really enamored with his ideas around human AI merging.
32:58
So she said so few people at the time were talking about the kind of the ways in which humans can combine with AI as opposed to peddling the very Armageddon AI will destroy us narrative.
33:08
So in 2016, she began messaging him, as you said, across multiple social media platforms.
33:11
She wanted to get his attention.
33:13
Commitment.
33:13
Exactly.
33:14
And it also credit to her.
33:15
Totally.
33:15
I mean, and then it ends up with her dream job.
33:17
And I guess now her dream guy, because they are together.
33:21
So the premise of this piece was basically introducing Kate Tollow
33:24
her new endeavour to become the most scientifically tested woman on the planet.
33:30
So she's basically following Brian in his footsteps to become a science experiment.
33:35
Because what he has done over the past couple of years is make himself into a guinea pig where he is trialling all these different protocols which are documented in the blueprint but also they go beyond the blueprint.
33:46
There's experimenting with loads of different things with this team of medical professionals to see how you can essentially...
33:51
reverse one's biological age.
33:53
His goal is to live to 150 years old.
33:55
So she has now stepped forward and said, I want to do something similar.
33:59
She's doing 100 days.
34:00
So he's got a 100 day period of becoming the most tested woman on the planet.
34:05
But it's really kind of following in his blueprint, his protocol.
34:09
When I first heard about this, especially when she talks about the importance of researching the female body and the insights and how under research works,
34:17
yeah, women's medicine is across the board.
34:19
I thought, amazing.
34:21
This is so cool that she's doing that.
34:23
And then it was really interesting because you have kind of a different mentality about it, right?
34:28
Yeah, so she says in the piece, she's now studied how to become the most measured woman in history in an attempt to understand the understudied and underfunded frontier of female health.
34:37
To that end, she's embarked on a 100-day routine that will measure 14.8 million data points across her menstrual cycle.
34:44
Yeah.
34:45
So when I read that, I was immediately interested because I thought, yes, this is speaking my language.
34:51
The female body has been so under-researched.
34:54
We have such a chronic lack of funding committed to understanding the specificities of the female body, particularly female sexuality, menstruation, you know, hence why I think one to ten women have endometriosis, but it takes something about seven years for women to get a diagnosis because we have such a chronic lack of research in this space.
35:11
So that initially made me think it's actually kind of amazing.
35:13
You know, anything...
35:14
that seeks to expand our understanding of women's bodies, I think is inherently a good thing.
35:20
But where this pushes up against an inherent tension is that they are singular data points.
35:25
They're not funding big studies that would actually contribute in a really meaningful way to science.
35:30
Because it's almost like they're spending $2 million a year on him and all of these tests.
35:35
But is that a totally selfish endeavour to live to 150 rather than actually to move medicine and longevity and the entire space forward?
35:43
One of the scientists interviewed made a point that really stuck with me.
35:46
He's like, this is great for attention.
35:49
It's not that great for science.
35:51
And I thought that was a really pertinent point that kind of stayed with me because I thought he's documented everything.
35:56
He has started a YouTube channel.
35:58
He constantly tweets on X.
36:01
He is putting everything on Instagram.
36:02
He's a master following of millions of people, which is like the one on one in the creative playbook.
36:07
Bring your audience with you and then sell them.
36:09
Yeah.
36:10
The solution that you have found in this journey that you've brought them on.
36:13
Build publicly and then sell.
36:15
Yeah.
36:16
And lo and behold, Blueprint is a platform that now sells a variety of products.
36:22
It's so classic, isn't it?
36:23
It's the billionaire turned I want to live forever.
36:25
It definitely is giving the world needs more of me for longer.
36:29
And so I am going to try and control... Like you're a musky.
36:32
Yeah, I'm going to control the one thing that is uncontrollable, really.
36:36
But also at the end of the day, it's good business.
36:38
Particularly now when we know the global biohacking market is growing exponentially.
36:43
How do you feel about the growth in this industry?
36:46
I keep referencing the documentary because it's so front of mind.
36:49
But he talks in that about...
36:51
part of this process really involved him getting out of his head and back into his body so he's like i need to turn off my thinking brain because our thinking brain is constantly being subject to so many like marketing campaigns and and essentially propaganda and really ask what does my body need so he's like wouldn't it be amazing if rather than eating according to what you felt like aka what advert you just saw what sugar craving you had you ate in accordance to what your organs actually needed also live in a society in which you know we're measured by our productivity our
37:21
Everything is about output.
37:50
That excites me.
37:51
But I think the obsessiveness nature of it doesn't.
37:53
I think because I'm an obsessive person, I'm definitely similar to you in that I don't really do things by halves.
38:03
I'm looking at getting an aura ring.
38:05
And that's exactly feeding into that, right?
38:07
I've seen so much marketing now.
38:09
I thought I would never get one.
38:11
I was like, I don't need to be obsessed with things like that.
38:13
I'm going to go too far, et cetera, et cetera.
38:15
Now I'm quite excited about the idea of knowing all of my little levels and looking at it.
38:20
I totally resonate with that.
38:21
There's a lot of wearable technology that is exploiting this newfound interest in health optimization.
38:32
without really educating people about what these data points mean to us.
38:36
But we've become obsessed with sleep scores.
38:38
Like we know we need to sleep longer.
38:40
We need more quality sleep.
38:40
What's the point in having data every night that says you had a shit night's sleep and then you're going to have a shit day because you're going to be obsessing over the fact you had a bad sleep score.
38:48
To me, I'm like that.
38:49
I don't want that.
38:50
I know I need to get eight hours sleep.
38:52
We're being sold the data rather than like the process of improving.
38:55
Like, I think like what do you do with the data?
38:57
Like I had an Apple Watch for ages and I was like, you know, at it.
39:00
And I just thought, what am I doing?
39:01
First of all, it was an eyesore.
39:02
But second of all, it's so ugly.
39:05
And it just photographed terribly.
39:06
It was giving me a full sense of control.
39:08
So as much as I think there's a lot of exciting research and innovation potentially coming out of this space, which by the way is growing now.
39:14
At a CAGR of 16.8%.
39:16
So that is the kind of global biohacking market.
39:18
It is a fast-growing industry.
39:20
I mean, there's so many businesses popping up.
39:23
And I guess it is because it's leaning into the idea that no one wants to die.
39:26
Everyone wants to live as long as they can, as healthy as they can.
39:29
But what I would love to know is this business, Blueprint, how much is it worth?
39:33
Because I read somewhere that they opened the floodgates to their ginormous distribution list and maybe took one or two people in to get access to the same Blueprint.
39:44
So early this year, Brian Johnson posted on X that he was launching the Immortals program, an alluring title in and of itself.
39:52
Do you want to live wherever?
39:53
And it announced it basically be open to three people, each of whom would be allowed to pay $1 million for access to his own longevity protocols.
40:02
And what was the waitlist for that?
40:03
How many people wanted?
40:05
So 1,500 people plus applied within the first 30 hours of the announcement.
40:10
which again goes to show he has built a really avid audience who are willing to purchase what he puts out.
40:19
You can go onto the Blueprint website and you can purchase oil, supplements, all the things that he is kind of swearing by.
40:27
And also he is showcasing to his audience like this is what's working for me, this is what I'm loving.
40:31
If you've got a cool $1 million floating around, you can go and do his exact protocol.
40:36
which includes a dedicated concierge team of medical professionals, the type of which he's been working with, extensive testing, millions of biological data points, continuous tracking, best skin and hair protocols, and access to the best therapies in the market.
40:49
Do you know if he'd let 1,500 people in to do that, and they'd each paid a million, that would have been $1.5 billion in opening sales?
40:59
Genius business model.
41:00
Genius business model.
41:01
He's created...
41:02
so much demand for what he's doing because he's done that thing.
41:07
He's showcased his own transformation in situ.
41:10
In a world where I've become quite untrusting, I would say, of marketing and I still fall victim to buying many things that I haven't properly researched, I've been doing it.
41:20
I can't help but feel like this is a genius, genius long-term marketing plan.
41:26
And it's kind of interesting when we spoke about Victoria Beckham earlier and having that long runway, like they have runway.
41:31
So they can extend out the sort of pre-sales launch for a really long time, build up that distribution, build up the amount of people that are like rearing to go and spend all this money because the business is funded kind of indefinitely by its founders.
41:47
And what we can all learn from this is learn in public.
41:50
If you're looking to build a new business and you're not 100% sure on what you want to build yet, you don't know exactly what problem you want to solve.
41:57
It can be really worth like going through that process of self-exploration learning publicly as a way of getting kind of in-situ data from your audience.
42:09
If you're
42:10
If there's something that you are interested in and you deeply want to research and get better at and you can do it publicly, then if you do ever productize or monetize that, just like Alex Hill did with her, you know, she had so much acne and now she's launched a skincare brand.
42:24
You create the like perfect...
42:26
like marketing tool yes but also consumer feedback loop whereby you're always able to iterate your businesses according to your customers in real time and once in what exactly which is sort of what he's done it'll be interesting to see how this business now grows if you think he's spending two million a year on testing himself and also like he has transformed how he looks fundamentally so it is he looks good i live and you go back a little bit just before i do think he looks better i think he looks quite looks sweet he looks very
42:52
odd.
42:53
But he didn't look great before.
42:55
He was like very, he was like very overweight.
42:57
He looked very unhealthy.
42:58
He looked like an unhealthy tech fan.
43:00
He's the first to say it.
43:01
I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, but he said he was very unhealthy, ate poorly, drank everything.
43:06
I do think he does look like very odd, but nonetheless quite alluringly healthy now.
43:11
A little reptilian.
43:12
Yes, yes.
43:13
That's what it is.
43:14
It's the skin.
43:14
I can't pinpoint it.
43:16
It's an odd.
43:16
It's a look.
43:17
It's not a look that I would personally seek to gravitate to.
43:20
He's also only taken off five years, apparently, from his, like... For that much time and energy, you are worth it.
43:26
Not worth it.
43:26
I would, like, take those five years off my life and let me...
43:29
Give me a croissant.
43:30
Yeah.
43:30
Truly.
43:31
Oh, gosh, yeah.
43:32
I bet he goes, touches.
43:33
No way.
43:34
I want to share a bed with my boyfriend.
43:35
I want to do all the things that bring me way more joy than getting blood taken on my arm every single day.
43:40
Truly.
43:41
For five years, didn't seem right there.
43:42
I'm sure that number will increase as his protocol continues.
43:46
Anyway, I thought it was a fascinating story.
43:47
So interesting.
43:48
It says a lot about a growing industry, a burgeoning industry, and also one man's business ventures to kind of be the product that he's then selling to people, which I think there's a kind of interesting playbook there.
44:02
Definitely.
44:03
And total aside, if anyone does have an aura ring and really likes it, would you please let me know?
44:08
I want to know if this is worth it.
44:10
Is this a good investment?
44:11
It's like £500, and then you have to pay a subscription.
44:14
This is what I would do.
44:15
Look at the data it gives you and think about how you will use that data.
44:19
Are you going to change your habits and lifestyle according to the data points you get?
44:24
I would go backwards and reverse engineer what you want that data to show you and how you want to use that data.
44:32
And if you can't find action points and lifestyle changes that you need that data in order to create, it's a waste of money.
44:39
I think that's a really good point.
44:41
That was absolutely genius.
44:43
Thank you so much.
44:44
May have saved me 500 pounds.
44:47
But if you are listening and you do happen to love it, please let me know.
44:50
We have an episode coming out on Friday with the amazing Maddy Stephanas.
44:55
And she has created a million dollar business from her bedroom.
44:59
She's selling these amazing film cameras that she just ordered one.
45:01
They're so cool.
45:02
And she talks all about how she started a side hustle literally from her bedroom floor.
45:06
And I actually do think off the back of this conversation, looking at these business types and models, if you are in a job that you potentially don't like, or you are looking for inspiration around what idea or how could you monetize something and what type of business do you want to build?
45:21
It was a really inspiring chat.
45:23
She's 26 or something crazy and has this incredibly successful business.
45:26
Yeah.
45:26
So that's coming out on Friday.
45:28
Have a great week, everyone.
45:29
Have an amazing week, everyone.
45:31
I hope that you are all feeling healthy and well and that you plan to live forever.
45:38
Thank you so much for listening to The Curve Weekly.
45:40
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45:45
And feel free to leave a comment to let us know what you thought about this episode because we would love your feedback.
45:49
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45:53
But until then, listen to Erasing the Curve.
45:55
These are our in-depth podcast episodes where we chat about all things money.
45:58
We're also around all week on socials if you're hungry for more Curve content and all the links are in this podcast show notes.
46:04
We hope you have a great week and we'll catch you for the next episode of the Curve Weekly on Monday.
46:16
Okay, quickly, the Curve was created to empower and educate you about investing, but we are not financial advisors.
46:22
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46:31
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46:36
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46:40
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46:41
You got this.
46:42
Yeah, we know you got this.