Win Without Crushing Your Soul | Behind The Growth

He started as a professional poker player. Then built a bootstrapped software company in the northeast of England. Then raised £8M before a single product existed and built Skin + Me into a business with over a million customers and well over £60M in revenue. In Episode 7 of Behind the Growth, host Laura Donadio sits down with James Mishreki, founder and chairman of Skin + Me, Hair + Me, and his latest venture S3 Sensitivity Science, the man quietly building a portfolio of consumer health brands on one founding principle: build it, hand it over, do it again. James is level headed, precise and completely unbothered by the fact that most people think founders should run their own companies. He figured out early that founding and running are two different jobs and that knowing which one you're good at is the whole game. He also talks about spending £60k on a brand name only to throw it in the bin, why you can never get internal validation from external achievement, and why as he turns 40, he wants maximum two paragraphs of his obituary to be about work. In this episode: \* Poker to founder - the one thing he still takes from two years at the table \* Raising £8M pre-product and why conviction is what investors actually buy \* Why he bootstrapped his first company and why he'd never do it again \* "You can never get internal validation from external achievement" - the advice that hit him at 19 \* Founding without running - what that actually looks like day to day \* How he finds and hires a CEO, and why it's the hardest part of the whole playbook \* Spending £60k on a brand called Gleam. Throwing it in the bin. Doing it again with Life Supplies. \* Buying back time - the chef, the PA, and why writing off £10 is a skill \* "I felt most out of my depth when I raised £8M and had to hire 20 people in a month" \* Two obituary paragraphs maximum. Why he's heading into his 40s differently. Follow James Mishreki: @mishreki
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