[Chris Reynolds]: Today Entrepreneur House listeners, we are privileged to have a very special guest called Rus Hughes on our show.
[Chris Reynolds]: Let me tell you why we are so very fortunate to have him with us.
[Chris Reynolds]: Rus is a systems architect and been working online since 2002 and an entrepreneur since 2012.
[Chris Reynolds]: His background is in development and systems administration.
[Chris Reynolds]: During his career, he has worked with small startups and large enterprises to develop, scale, and maintain various styles of web, data, and telecoms applications used by schools, hospitals, banks, and governments.
[Chris Reynolds]: Since 2014, he's also been selling physical products on Amazon.
[Chris Reynolds]: Recently, he's intertwined his love for systems and Amazon knowledge to create Amazooka, a SaaS to help Amazon sellers understand their customers more and sell more products.
[Chris Reynolds]: Here's what I love about Rus.
[Chris Reynolds]: He is humble, unassuming, and incredibly generous.
[Chris Reynolds]: I've seen Rus in action and I can tell you point blank that he is more concerned with creating products that add value and truly helping people than he is about making money.
[Chris Reynolds]: He has a high level of integrity, works hard when he needs to, and delegates as much as he needs as well.
[Chris Reynolds]: He's a master analyzer and can take one look at what you're doing with your business, give you some quick advice that can catapult your sales and skyrocket your conversion rates.
[Chris Reynolds]: He has an incredible track record of working online, including creating six-figure businesses in less than a year.
[Chris Reynolds]: Rus has one of the most incredible and exciting stories of anyone that has stayed at the Entrepreneur House, and he's going to share with us today.
[Chris Reynolds]: Without further ado, I'd like to welcome my good friend, Rus Hughes, to the show.
[Rus Hughes]: Hey, Chris.
[Rus Hughes]: Thank you very much.
[Rus Hughes]: Thanks.
[Rus Hughes]: That's a fantastic intro.
[Chris Reynolds]: Thanks for coming on the show, Rus.
[Chris Reynolds]: So let's talk about where it all started, man.
[Chris Reynolds]: Tell the listeners where you come from and how you became the entrepreneur that you are today.
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, I guess the very beginning, the very, very beginning would have been 2002, I guess, when I was at university.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: extremely poor with no money like absolutely everyone else at university and then I discovered these pyramid schemes where if you complete an offer online and then you get five friends to then complete the same offer with your referral code
[Rus Hughes]: You can get a free Amazon voucher.
[Rus Hughes]: And then you can buy stuff, really unnecessary things like televisions.
[Rus Hughes]: So I ran around, like you've probably seen loads of people do on Facebook, kind of spamming my link and stuff to all my mates at university trying to get them to do it.
[Rus Hughes]: And they all said no.
[Rus Hughes]: And then it's like, well...
[Rus Hughes]: I'll build a website, I'll build a website promoting these offers.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, and then I'll drive Google pay-per-click traffic to all these websites using the keyword free.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, and then, yeah, that turned into a kind of Amazon voucher fountain basically.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: For every $10 I put into keywords, I'd print out a $100 Amazon voucher, which was a good ROI.
[Rus Hughes]: And that was my very first introduction to internet marketing, even though I didn't really know what it was or what I was doing.
[Rus Hughes]: That was the very beginning.
[Rus Hughes]: I also still needed a job because you can't eat Amazon TVs to survive.
[Rus Hughes]: So the next thing was through word of mouth, through a friend, I landed a PHP development role working for a trucking company, building out a website for them.
[Rus Hughes]: And this was such a long time ago.
[Rus Hughes]: the idea of becoming a digital nomad really wasn't in my vocabulary.
[Rus Hughes]: So rather than cutting code for people in Bali or Chiang Mai or sunny Phuket, I worked out of rainy Portsmouth in a terraced block of flats for a remote client, which was cool.
[Rus Hughes]: It was a good lesson in time management and stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: The number of days where I woke up at 7 in the morning, didn't even get dressed and just worked through my dressing gown until 10 in the evening.
[Rus Hughes]: It was a big lesson in how to create quotes and specs properly to actually accurately estimate how much time stuff would take.
[Rus Hughes]: Right.
[Rus Hughes]: And I was still extremely young and naive, so it was good to be dropped straight in it from that kind of point of view.
[Rus Hughes]: Mm-hmm.
[Chris Reynolds]: So how did that make you feel, Rus, when you started doing some internet marketing online and you were producing televisions and other probably useless goods from Amazon that you could order with your vouchers?
[Rus Hughes]: My favorite was a Nintendo DS, but it was good.
[Rus Hughes]: And then I kept seeing...
[Rus Hughes]: or, you know, you see the marketing stories of, I think it was the rich jerk.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, it's a prominent one and it's like, well, how can I do that?
[Rus Hughes]: But, um, you know, I still, it wasn't really, it wasn't a fantastic income.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, so, you know, it wasn't enough to like really put down or any, or any of these courses.
[Rus Hughes]: So I then spent a very long time kind of
[Rus Hughes]: Doing nothing, I suppose.
[Rus Hughes]: I was registering exact domain websites, but I had a nine-to-five job, so I was doing all of this entrepreneurial stuff weekends and evenings.
[Rus Hughes]: And for anyone that...
[Rus Hughes]: does work a nine to five job, you know, it's extremely difficult to plow energy into a side project, especially if it's something that's actually not very interesting.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, they don't really care about, and also you don't really know about.
[Rus Hughes]: So, um, I was kind of really badly building these websites for these keywords.
[Rus Hughes]: I knew what I was doing, but I just didn't have passion or focus.
[Rus Hughes]: So it just wasn't happening.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: And then I discovered the wonderful world of outsourcing.
[Rus Hughes]: And where'd you go from there?
[Rus Hughes]: Well, that was it.
[Rus Hughes]: Five or six years of trying to create something new in my spare time.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, overnight changed when I just decided to put a couple of grand on a credit card and take a risk.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, hired a few VAs to bang out articles.
[Rus Hughes]: So I built the websites myself, um, still, but then hired a few VAs to write articles, build backlinks, et cetera, et cetera, normal kind of like SEO kind of stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, and then I remember specifically one, it was a Wednesday, uh,
[Rus Hughes]: It was half past seven in the evening, and I got my first sale, which was something like $27 for me.
[Rus Hughes]: And yeah, that was the kind of start of the actual serious internet marketing taking off, which was nice.
[Chris Reynolds]: Around what year was this?
[Rus Hughes]: This would have probably been 2011, 2012.
[Rus Hughes]: So about four years ago.
[Chris Reynolds]: Very cool.
[Chris Reynolds]: So it was a very big plateau whilst everything I tried failed.
[Chris Reynolds]: That happens a lot with entrepreneurs though.
[Chris Reynolds]: People start out and they almost have kind of like a beginner's luck, I guess you could say.
[Chris Reynolds]: Right.
[Chris Reynolds]: And things, you get really excited and then things slow down a bit and you're like, okay, how can I keep this going?
[Chris Reynolds]: Why isn't it not going?
[Chris Reynolds]: Actually weeds out a lot of people that probably weren't born to be an entrepreneur or just didn't have the tolerance to keep it up.
[Chris Reynolds]: Right.
[Chris Reynolds]: And a lot of people have to take another job or work a quote unquote real job while they're building the business.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Exactly.
[Rus Hughes]: It was good as well because if I had had instant success straight out of university, I wouldn't have developed the skill set that I've got at the moment.
[Rus Hughes]: Right.
[Rus Hughes]: Quite likely.
[Rus Hughes]: Whereas, you know, I spent that time working kind of with startups, delivering products.
[Rus Hughes]: And, you know, I spent kind of 10 years learning a lot from some really clever people.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Which is definitely paying off now.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah, absolutely.
[Chris Reynolds]: This reminds me of something.
[Chris Reynolds]: I've been watching documentaries about Muhammad Ali since he passed away recently.
[Chris Reynolds]: And one thing that they said that really made him truly the greatest boxer is that when he fought George Foreman, I believe for the first time he lost.
[Chris Reynolds]: No, no, no, George lost.
[Chris Reynolds]: And it was George's first loss.
[Chris Reynolds]: And he had been the heavyweight champion and Muhammad was coming in to take it back.
[Chris Reynolds]: And George suffered such an ego blow from his loss.
[Chris Reynolds]: Now, Muhammad went on to, I think, lose other fights and had lost more before.
[Chris Reynolds]: And that's what separated him from the other fighters is that Ali would lose a match and instantly get momentum to go back and win it again, even if it was the same person.
[Chris Reynolds]: And when George Foreman lost his first battle against Ali, he hit a massive, massive blow.
[Chris Reynolds]: blow to the ego and didn't know what to do it shook his world up and this happens with entrepreneurs all the time happened to myself yeah you know you start your first business you get some good traction and success maybe the first year and your two hits and you're like oh the newness wore off and people are buying anymore like what's going on and that that's what separates i think why nine nine out of ten businesses fail
[Chris Reynolds]: That's what separates the men from the boys.
[Chris Reynolds]: These entrepreneurs just keep plugging away, even if it takes 10 years.
[Chris Reynolds]: And just go at it.
[Chris Reynolds]: It's almost something inherent in us.
[Chris Reynolds]: We have to keep that momentum going to become an entrepreneur.
[Rus Hughes]: Exactly.
[Rus Hughes]: I describe it as falling forwards.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: You're not always in control.
[Rus Hughes]: It's not always good, but you've just got to keep picking yourself up, pivoting if necessary, and carry on going.
[Rus Hughes]: Absolutely.
[Chris Reynolds]: So when did you actually leave working for other people, Rus?
[Rus Hughes]: Well, when I still had a real job when my side project, my kind of SEO stuff was taking off.
[Rus Hughes]: So this would have been
[Rus Hughes]: Kind of 2013.
[Rus Hughes]: So I'm always one for reinvestment.
[Rus Hughes]: So I started reinvesting that money into physical products on Amazon.
[Rus Hughes]: So 2013, 14, I...
[Rus Hughes]: had my seo stuff that i started previously was um selling physicals on amazon and was working my day job at the same time um which was quite a lot to handle yeah and i think this i started to feel ill it was kind of kind of strange um
[Rus Hughes]: I was just kind of tired all the time, always hungry, kind of sleepy.
[Rus Hughes]: I'd wake up at like...
[Rus Hughes]: I had a really understanding boss, which was very lucky.
[Rus Hughes]: But, you know, I'd wake up at like half 10, 11 in the morning and, you know, I'm supposed to be at work.
[Rus Hughes]: So, yeah, that kind of drove everyone insane because I didn't like it.
[Rus Hughes]: So I remember...
[Rus Hughes]: It was September 2013.
[Rus Hughes]: Mm-hmm.
[Rus Hughes]: I just read Johnny FD's book.
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, I forget what it's called now.
[Rus Hughes]: Johnny FD book.
[Rus Hughes]: Sorry, I'm just going to Google this.
[Rus Hughes]: No problem.
[Rus Hughes]: 12 weeks.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: So it was around...
[Rus Hughes]: late august september 2013 uh i was kind of googling um my tire retreats fat camps that kind of thing weight loss uh i was i was trying to find like a place to go because i'd ballooned i'd gone from like 70 kilograms to like 90 oh wow uh
[Rus Hughes]: so i was like you know this isn't cool like i've been to the doctors you know they they couldn't find anything wrong with me i put it all this way i wasn't functioning i couldn't actually do my job um so i started googling fat camp and then i found johnny fd's um 12 weeks in thailand okay uh the
[Rus Hughes]: the guidebook to travel cheap, learn Mai Tai whilst living the four hour work week.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, so I blitzed through that.
[Rus Hughes]: I was sat at work.
[Rus Hughes]: I bought it through the Kindle and then I just sat at work for the entire day, just reading this book.
[Rus Hughes]: So I was so fed up and it was like, it seems like a really good idea.
[Rus Hughes]: I can just kind of quit my job, go to Thailand, live in Tiger Mai Thailand, practicing Mai Tai, train really hard.
[Rus Hughes]: And then, you know, see what happens.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: Go back to England when I've lost all the weight and get back to working again or whatever.
[Rus Hughes]: Just see what happens.
[Rus Hughes]: Take a risk.
[Rus Hughes]: So I handed in my notice and then the next day I asked for it back.
[Rus Hughes]: I didn't have the courage to pull the trigger.
[Rus Hughes]: I looked at my bank account and it
[Rus Hughes]: I could afford a year in Thailand, but there wasn't that much wiggle room for making a mistake or anything.
[Rus Hughes]: So they were kind enough to give him my job back, which is cool.
[Rus Hughes]: Then a few months later in March...
[Chris Reynolds]: They must have really liked you there, Rus, because you didn't show up on time.
[Chris Reynolds]: You quit, and then the next day they decided to hire you back.
[Rus Hughes]: I did save their business and then deliver them a platform that made half a million dollars in profit a day that's why the boss owed me a little bit um so in I was still getting sicker so I was still like putting on weight I was still turning up late the doctors didn't know what was going on I had like some MRI scans and stuff done it was all rubbish um
[Rus Hughes]: And then March, I got absolutely smashed, absolutely smashed.
[Rus Hughes]: And at 2 in the morning, I went to BA.com and booked flights.
[Rus Hughes]: Nice.
[Rus Hughes]: And I went to TigerMaitai.com and put down a deposit on the first three months.
[Rus Hughes]: Nice.
[Rus Hughes]: And then I wake up the next day with the most blinding hangover I've ever had.
[Rus Hughes]: But I'd spent money and committed to a plan.
[Rus Hughes]: Nice.
[Rus Hughes]: So for whatever reason, I decided 1st of September.
[Rus Hughes]: So this would have been like March.
[Rus Hughes]: So I decided 1st of September is going to be the day.
[Rus Hughes]: So I'm just going to sort everything out.
[Rus Hughes]: And then that was it, yeah, because 1st of September was when I booked the flight for.
[Rus Hughes]: So I just had, what, six, however many months it was to then sort everything out.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, I carried on working, uh, carried on getting sicker, carried on getting fatter, uh, actually kind of started drinking a lot to deal with it.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, just cause the, you know, I was seeing specialists and stuff, private clinics, all kinds of things.
[Rus Hughes]: It was hilarious.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, didn't have a clue what was wrong with me.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, so, you know, then I started downsizing, donating all my books to charity or my clothes to charity, you know, getting rid of everything.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: With a guise to just literally me, one bag, and Phuket and see what happens.
[Rus Hughes]: August rolled rounds.
[Rus Hughes]: So at this point, the SEO stuff's going well.
[Rus Hughes]: The Amazon stuff's going well.
[Rus Hughes]: I'm feeling comfortable.
[Rus Hughes]: Finally pull the trigger and give my boss another letter of resignation.
[Rus Hughes]: I actually gave him a bottle of whiskey to go with it to apologize.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: And then, yeah, that was it.
[Rus Hughes]: Finished emptying the flat.
[Rus Hughes]: Put a few bits and pieces in my parents' loft.
[Rus Hughes]: And then 1st of September, they drove me to Heathrow.
[Rus Hughes]: And I went to Phuket.
[Rus Hughes]: And how long were you in Asia?
[Rus Hughes]: I spent...
[Rus Hughes]: Eight months training in Phuket whilst working on the various businesses.
[Rus Hughes]: And because I didn't really know what I was doing and had no plan, I just started developing some Amazon software using all of the tools and experience that I'd been using in my final project for my previous project.
[Rus Hughes]: uh, employer.
[Rus Hughes]: So I just took everything I learned there, uh, and injected it into this new system.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, new platform called Amazuka.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, and then, so I left England to train on the 1st of September, 2014.
[Rus Hughes]: And then April, 2015, um, I fell really sick in Phuket.
[Rus Hughes]: Like I was hungry all the time.
[Rus Hughes]: I was losing a lot of weight and I was in bed asleep all the time.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh,
[Chris Reynolds]: And then it turned out I've got diabetes, which is good to find out.
[Chris Reynolds]: You didn't find out until April 2015?
[Chris Reynolds]: No.
[Chris Reynolds]: So I'd had it for like maybe two years.
[Chris Reynolds]: Wow.
[Rus Hughes]: And I'd seen a good dozen doctors, I guess.
[Rus Hughes]: Wow.
[Rus Hughes]: And then, yeah, the guys in, I went to the International Bangkok or whatever it was in Phuket, and they just took a blood test.
[Rus Hughes]: And it was like,
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: Type 2 diabetic.
[Rus Hughes]: So that was kind of cool because that explained why I'd been feeling ill all the time.
[Rus Hughes]: Right.
[Rus Hughes]: And then, you know, I didn't really know what to do.
[Rus Hughes]: It was like, well, okay, this is quite a big thing.
[Rus Hughes]: I should probably get a second opinion.
[Rus Hughes]: So...
[Rus Hughes]: I went online and found the entrepreneur house.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: And were you planning to, were you looking for a second opinion, Rus, and then dive into that second opinion?
[Chris Reynolds]: Did you go back to Europe, um, because of that or did you just meet another doctor in Asia?
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, um,
[Rus Hughes]: My original plan was to kind of go around the world clockwise, but I figured, as this is quite a big thing, it's not that I don't distrust Thai doctors.
[Rus Hughes]: Now, actually, I've had a lot of experiences with them, and they're definitely some of the best in the world.
[Rus Hughes]: But I just wanted a more kind of like close-to-home Western doctor to talk to.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Go ahead.
[Rus Hughes]: Just to kind of – it's quite a big thing, diabetes.
[Chris Reynolds]: So was it the entrepreneur house that brought you back to Europe or seeking that second decision or a combination of both?
[Rus Hughes]: It was the entrepreneur house.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: So I wanted – I guess the term is a safe space.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I wanted to go somewhere where there'd be people there that I'd know –
[Rus Hughes]: I was on the same wavelength with, you know, we were doing the same things.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, like a community where, you know, I could kind of fit in, uh, and deal with this basically.
[Rus Hughes]: Right.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, I didn't want to just, you know, I could have flown back to England and gone home, but I didn't really want to do that.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, and you know, I could have just flown to a random European city by myself and then dealt with it by myself, but I didn't really want to do that.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: I was looking for, I guess, some kind of camaraderie, I guess.
[Rus Hughes]: Not too much support, but just people who I'd be around for a solid length of time.
[Rus Hughes]: I wanted to deal with it by myself, but...
[Rus Hughes]: Having people around to talk to is always useful.
[Chris Reynolds]: I think that's a really smart and courageous decision because I think the natural thing to do when your health fails you and you're basically alone in Asia, had some friends, but more or less they're out there by yourself.
[Chris Reynolds]: I think the natural thing to do would be to go back home, right?
[Chris Reynolds]: To be in an environment around family, which could be amazing.
[Chris Reynolds]: But your logic was surround yourself with like-minded people that you know would support you, but not necessarily something you could still work through on your own.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, basically.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: There, there was some, some great people in, um, Phuket, like, uh, Vic, Vic Dorfman.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, yeah, definitely got to name check that guy.
[Rus Hughes]: Cause you know, these guys were there when I was being diagnosed.
[Rus Hughes]: Um,
[Rus Hughes]: and kind of really help me out.
[Rus Hughes]: But one of the, you know, there's not really anything anyone can do to kind of help.
[Rus Hughes]: So I just wanted a place where I could, you know, visit the doctors by myself, get checked out, work out what to do, and then kind of engage.
[Rus Hughes]: And during the eight months I spent in Phuket, I spent a lot of time doing personal development, reading a lot of business books and things.
[Rus Hughes]: And, you know, I'd managed to grow, you know,
[Rus Hughes]: both of my businesses, the SEO and the Amazon stuff, um, quite massively in that period due to being able to focus on them.
[Rus Hughes]: So, you know, I wanted a place like that where I could, you know, meet entrepreneurs, um, focus on my business, uh, and grow it and, and be around people that, you know, were positive and kind of going in that personal development direction.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, and,
[Chris Reynolds]: So what was it like for you, Rus, when you landed in Barcelona and met the other people from the house?
[Rus Hughes]: Well, it was absolutely awesome.
[Rus Hughes]: I'd made a lot of changes in Barcelona.
[Rus Hughes]: So when things got going and kind of the entrepreneur-like house experience actually kicked off and the masterminds kicked, it was just absolutely amazing.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I've spent my entire life working on IT projects in teams of people, you know, all doing development and delivery and all the other stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: And I must have met 30 to 40 people.
[Rus Hughes]: Okay, all of the businesses were kind of online-based, so there was a technical element to them.
[Rus Hughes]: the technical element was the tools to create the businesses, not, not the businesses themselves.
[Rus Hughes]: So, um, you know, there were, I'll say Freddie from iChess doing absolutely amazing things with digital chess products.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, uh, there are people doing, um, I'll say e-learning courses, teaching photography, uh, Neha doing, um,
[Rus Hughes]: What was it?
[Rus Hughes]: Mentoring and tutoring children and kids through college and stuff in America.
[Rus Hughes]: These things are all polar opposites to all the stuff I've done myself personally and all absolutely amazing.
[Rus Hughes]: So to kind of just suddenly land...
[Rus Hughes]: amongst all these people doing all these absolutely amazing things, it was kind of like a big kind of privilege.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, I wasn't sure if, uh, what was the word?
[Rus Hughes]: Imposter syndrome.
[Rus Hughes]: Uh, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't sure if they'd noticed that, um,
[Rus Hughes]: I wasn't on their level.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, but everyone was absolutely, you know, just, it was incredible.
[Rus Hughes]: It was just like seeing what everyone was doing, uh, being immersed as that they shared, not just like what their businesses were about, but the problems they were facing.
[Rus Hughes]: That takes a massive amount of, you know, character to kind of say, you know, something's up.
[Rus Hughes]: We don't really know what it is, um, to do that.
[Rus Hughes]: It was like, it was just awesome.
[Rus Hughes]: And then the success stories, you know, coming out after the four months as well as people had put in all the hard work and stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: Like, you know, Freddie's doing amazingly.
[Rus Hughes]: People had won clients and stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: My stuff was going well.
[Rus Hughes]: Justin was doing phenomenally.
[Rus Hughes]: It was like, wow.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: So you felt like you were in a good enough environment to start to change your diet and work on your health.
[Chris Reynolds]: And can you share a bit about that?
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, for sure.
[Rus Hughes]: So I knew that, you know, not going to get into an argument, but in my opinion, as much as genes play a factor kind of for me,
[Rus Hughes]: My diabetes is definitely a result of lifestyle choices that I've made in the past, dealing with things.
[Rus Hughes]: So I just decided to completely clean up.
[Rus Hughes]: So I decided to completely clean up and stop drinking one year, two months and 23 days ago.
[Chris Reynolds]: I've got an app for that.
[Rus Hughes]: And, you know, I cleaned up my diet as well.
[Rus Hughes]: Stopped eating breads or carbs.
[Rus Hughes]: I went completely keto.
[Rus Hughes]: So I changed my diet, which actually meant
[Rus Hughes]: I could get off my diabetes medication and just use diet and exercise.
[Rus Hughes]: I was already hard on the exercise in Phuket, but I carried it on walking a lot in Barcelona and going to the gym and stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: So I just used, I guess, the support of everyone to completely change my lifestyle and what I was doing and create
[Rus Hughes]: not just temporary change, but lasting change.
[Rus Hughes]: Like, you know, I'm now one, I'm 14 months, almost 15 months sober.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, whilst I necessarily have called myself an alcoholic, uh, you know, that, that's, that's stuck.
[Rus Hughes]: Um, and all of the other changes have kind of stuck as well.
[Rus Hughes]: Like I can do absolutely anything I want with, with my life and my day to day.
[Rus Hughes]: And, um,
[Rus Hughes]: You know, in Asia, there's a lot of room for error when you have opportunities like that.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: But I've stuck to the transformation that I made in Barcelona because I was there for four months.
[Rus Hughes]: By then, all the habits are quite entrenched and things are still going really well.
[Rus Hughes]: I'm still in the gym four or five times a week.
[Rus Hughes]: My diet is still completely on point.
[Rus Hughes]: My weight is absolutely fine.
[Rus Hughes]: I have checkups with my doctors every three months and my diabetes is completely under control.
[Rus Hughes]: You can't really put a price on that, can you?
[Chris Reynolds]: No, and I have to say congratulations on that, Rus.
[Chris Reynolds]: I saw you when you first came into the house and then when you left and I saw the transformation.
[Chris Reynolds]: It was absolutely incredible to see you go through that and I think anybody in the house that saw that agrees.
[Chris Reynolds]: And it's really cool to see where you are now maintaining that and having the discipline to control that and control your diabetes.
[Chris Reynolds]: So kudos to you, man.
[Chris Reynolds]: Excellent work.
[Rus Hughes]: Thank you very much.
[Rus Hughes]: I probably wouldn't have been able to do that without you guys.
[Rus Hughes]: So yeah, thank you.
[Rus Hughes]: You're welcome.
[Chris Reynolds]: So while you were doing this, maintaining your health and in the house, you continued to build Amazuka, right?
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: So I started Amazuka before I left the UK, although it wasn't really a product.
[Rus Hughes]: It was just some personal graphing tools.
[Rus Hughes]: Then I started on it when I was in Phuket.
[Rus Hughes]: I had so much free time in Phuket because I wasn't really working, just training.
[Rus Hughes]: I was able to put five or six hours into it every day.
[Rus Hughes]: And then, yeah, when I was kind of in the entrepreneur house with you guys, some VCs caught wind of it.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: And wanted to invest.
[Rus Hughes]: How did that feel for you?
[Rus Hughes]: How did that what, sorry?
[Rus Hughes]: How did that feel for you?
[Rus Hughes]: It was kind of, it was a shock, but also mind-blowing.
[Rus Hughes]: It's nice to be believed in.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: considering it's actually it's a brilliant example of you know talking about falling forwards um because it was a kind of personal passion project and not like a business project yeah um i made lots of kind of business mistakes which kind of have also turned into many success stories um kind of further down the line but
[Rus Hughes]: It's interesting to see everything I did wrong from a business point of view, yet at the same time everything I did right from a kind of software engineering point of view.
[Rus Hughes]: But no, it was crazy.
[Rus Hughes]: So they got a hold of me on Skype, kind of put forwards a proposal.
[Rus Hughes]: It was a very good one.
[Rus Hughes]: So then that took me to Bangkok in October and
[Rus Hughes]: which then in turn took me to Shenzhen, China in June this year.
[Rus Hughes]: I think it was June, maybe a bit earlier.
[Rus Hughes]: And now it's also taken me to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh.
[Rus Hughes]: Excellent.
[Rus Hughes]: Considering I'd build it as a case study to show my next employer when I got back to the UK, now it's got investment.
[Rus Hughes]: I'm being paid to work on it.
[Rus Hughes]: I'm managing a remote team of a dozen people working on it.
[Rus Hughes]: It's much bigger than I expected and extremely exciting.
[Chris Reynolds]: Where do you think Amazuka will be in the next five years?
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, I can't say too much, but we're in the process of... We're basically about to change the entire of the Amazon landscape.
[Rus Hughes]: It's very exciting right now.
[Rus Hughes]: I'm definitely not the smartest person in the room.
[Rus Hughes]: There are some amazing people out here, and we've got something...
[Rus Hughes]: mind-blowingly special planned from both a SaaS provider point of view, but also a kind of Amazon seller point of view.
[Rus Hughes]: It's, yeah, it's something no one's done before.
[Rus Hughes]: Wow.
[Rus Hughes]: So it's going to be cool.
[Rus Hughes]: That's amazing.
[Chris Reynolds]: So you're doing well.
[Chris Reynolds]: You're in Vietnam now, correct?
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: And Mazooka's doing well and you're happy.
[Chris Reynolds]: You don't have to go back to a real job.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: It's an amazing entrepreneur.
[Chris Reynolds]: Your health is under control.
[Chris Reynolds]: Your story is amazing, by the way.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: Oh, you're part of it.
[Chris Reynolds]: Well, half of it.
[Chris Reynolds]: Well, I just provided the tool.
[Chris Reynolds]: You use the tool, but okay, Rus, this is that.
[Chris Reynolds]: That's great.
[Chris Reynolds]: So we're going to kind of wrap up everything and we're going to go through a little lightning round of questions that Rus does not know what they are.
[Chris Reynolds]: And so we'll catch him off guard a little bit.
[Chris Reynolds]: So are you ready?
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Yes.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Chris Reynolds]: Ready?
[Chris Reynolds]: What is the most astounding fact you can share about yourself?
[Chris Reynolds]: Oh, the most astounding facts.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I've done the Native American suspension ritual where I've had my back pierced by hooks and then been suspended off the ground.
[Chris Reynolds]: Whoa.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Chris Reynolds]: Where did you do that at?
[Chris Reynolds]: Norfolk, England, the very home of Native Americans.
[Chris Reynolds]: So those that don't know, Rus has a bit of a background in a carnival, is that correct?
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, I used to be a performer, kind of doing circus shows and festivals and things.
[Rus Hughes]: Basically something completely asymmetrical to my normal nine to five day job as a kind of creative, energetic outlet.
[Rus Hughes]: Incredible.
[Rus Hughes]: So I did that for three years, kind of traveling around England performing in front of crowds.
[Rus Hughes]: That was absolutely amazing.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I've seen a show online of you, one of your fire shows, and it is actually pretty amazing.
[Chris Reynolds]: The coordination that you guys have between acts and performances was phenomenal.
[Rus Hughes]: Go ahead.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, the kids that have...
[Rus Hughes]: more time than me to invest into like honing their skills uh it's just mind-blowing what those guys can do wow okay what keeps you motivated Rus um fear of failure possibly um a bit of ambition like i guess there's two parts motivation to go to the gym and then motivation to go to work um
[Rus Hughes]: So the gym motivation, I guess diabetes is a tiny motivator.
[Rus Hughes]: But also the way I want to see myself, I guess, is a person that does these things.
[Rus Hughes]: I guess everyone to a certain extent has a vision of who they are and what they look like in their minds.
[Rus Hughes]: And if I want to live up to the person's
[Rus Hughes]: who I think I want to be and think I can be, then I've got to kind of actually start acting like that person.
[Rus Hughes]: That's the biggest motivator.
[Rus Hughes]: Who do I actually want to be as a person?
[Chris Reynolds]: Very nice.
[Chris Reynolds]: Next question.
[Chris Reynolds]: What is one or two things that you see in business today as a pattern that are common mistakes?
[Rus Hughes]: Mistakes?
[Rus Hughes]: Not testing out the market before you put your product or project plan together.
[Rus Hughes]: That's the biggest one.
[Rus Hughes]: Too many people trying to find a market for their product after the fact, I think.
[Rus Hughes]: Great point.
[Rus Hughes]: The whole fail fast thing is very important there.
[Rus Hughes]: Also,
[Rus Hughes]: Doing too much yourself badly.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah, I suffer from that sometimes.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Like, I've done it myself, you know.
[Rus Hughes]: My time is free.
[Rus Hughes]: Something is better than nothing.
[Rus Hughes]: Yada, yada, yada.
[Rus Hughes]: You know, actually, if you...
[Rus Hughes]: If you really believe in something, really believe in it, and you're trying to put something together that's going to be with you for the next two, three, or four years, getting someone to do it properly now...
[Rus Hughes]: even though you can't necessarily justify the price, is the better way of doing it rather than, you know, hoping to make some money that you can then reinvest.
[Rus Hughes]: It's like sometimes you've actually, you know, if you really believe in it, you've just got to take that risk.
[Rus Hughes]: Beautiful.
[Chris Reynolds]: I love the way you put that.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay, next question.
[Chris Reynolds]: Favorite book?
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, probably any Terry Pratchett book, Moving Pictures.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay.
[Rus Hughes]: I think that's, for some reason, that's the one that stuck with me because it scared the crap out of me as a child.
[Rus Hughes]: What are you reading right now?
[Rus Hughes]: So right now I'm reading Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail.
[Rus Hughes]: And yeah, I really recommend it.
[Rus Hughes]: It's part of a kind of unofficial trilogy, I guess.
[Rus Hughes]: There's a sequel or two sequels called Bold and another one's called Abundance.
[Rus Hughes]: I've heard of those, yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, those two are by a guy called Peter Diamandis, which is why it's an unofficial trilogy.
[Rus Hughes]: But it's kind of – they all reference the same things and they're by the same publishing house.
[Rus Hughes]: And I definitely, definitely recommend –
[Rus Hughes]: reading all three and reading them in order.
[Rus Hughes]: So exponential organizations is the first one, so I'm doing it backwards.
[Rus Hughes]: But expo organizations is about people like Uber and Airbnb who have created massive organizations by leveraging other people.
[Rus Hughes]: So obviously Uber has its army of taxi drivers that kind of contract in and out when they want.
[Rus Hughes]: Airbnb is the biggest hotel network in the world and doesn't have a single property.
[Rus Hughes]: So that's what that book's about.
[Rus Hughes]: It's absolutely incredible.
[Rus Hughes]: Abundance is about how technology is changing the world and making it more accessible.
[Rus Hughes]: more of an abundant place so basically how how the abundance mindset is solving a lot of problems so that's things like vertical farming solving you know hunger and you know solar power solving energy needs and then bold is bold is more entrepreneurial so
[Rus Hughes]: You know, we've covered organizational structures and how to grow big.
[Rus Hughes]: Then there's, you know, the big world problems and bold is then how you can solve those problems.
[Rus Hughes]: So it discusses a few things you might already know about, like, you know, using Upwork and 99designs and how to leverage Upwork.
[Rus Hughes]: all of these things to get solutions done.
[Rus Hughes]: But it also gets into discussing things like the X price.
[Rus Hughes]: Obviously, I'm not a billionaire, but on their level, they can put a price fund down for a million dollars and then have nine teams.
[Rus Hughes]: spent $2 million each trying to solve the problem for this $1 million prize.
[Rus Hughes]: That's a really good way of creating something that affects change cheaply, comparatively.
[Rus Hughes]: So all three books kind of like work together to kind of put forward the idea of a really prosperous future where anyone can make a difference if you actually have that one good idea.
[Chris Reynolds]: I love that.
[Chris Reynolds]: I'm going to put that on my reading list right now.
[Chris Reynolds]: Okay, my friend Rus, I want to give you a big thank you for coming on to the show.
[Chris Reynolds]: Thank you for coming to the Entrepreneur House in Barcelona.
[Chris Reynolds]: And before we sign off today, can you tell the listeners where they can get a hold of you at?
[Rus Hughes]: I've got a blog www.ruspow.com so yeah there's a contact form there so if you're doing anything you might need my help on give me a shout and I'd love to have a look and again Rus definitely another big thank you for coming on to the show and coming to the house and thanks for becoming a friend man
[Chris Reynolds]: You're one of my favorite people.
[Chris Reynolds]: Actually, I have a list of top 14 people that I respect and admire that are friends of mine.
[Chris Reynolds]: that I want to become more like.
[Chris Reynolds]: And you're on that list.
[Chris Reynolds]: Thanks for everything.
[Chris Reynolds]: Just keep it up.
[Chris Reynolds]: Just keep it up.
[Chris Reynolds]: That's all.
[Chris Reynolds]: And hopefully I get to see you in Asia soon, buddy.
[Rus Hughes]: Awesome.
[Rus Hughes]: You are fantastic.
[Rus Hughes]: It's been fantastic.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I can't say thank you enough.
[Rus Hughes]: Basically it's impossible to.
[Chris Reynolds]: We'll say a big farewell from the Entrepreneur House show.
[Chris Reynolds]: Cheers.
[Chris Reynolds]: The Entrepreneur House is a business accelerator for location-independent entrepreneurs.
[Chris Reynolds]: Imagine spending one month with other successful entrepreneurs building business in the world's most exotic locations.
[Chris Reynolds]: Day-to-day you interact with other driven and smart business people.
[Chris Reynolds]: Spending an extended period of time around them alters your business and your mentality about business.
[Chris Reynolds]: Goals are set, business grows, new partnerships develop, greater profit margins are achieved, the productivity skyrockets for those staying in the Entrepreneur House, and you get to have an incredible adventure while doing it.
[Chris Reynolds]: For those of you that are interested, be sure to contact us through the entrepreneurhouse.com website.
[Chris Reynolds]: For now, saludos from somewhere in the world.
[Rus Hughes]: are you still doing any um no uh well it's been interesting actually because when because i spent the last year kind of doing this keto diet
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I've always had like, I've been able to lift weights and stuff.
[Rus Hughes]: And obviously, you know, I've been able to like walk for miles and miles.
[Chris Reynolds]: Right.
[Rus Hughes]: But not really any high intensity training.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: But now I've swapped over to this medication in the last few weeks.
[Rus Hughes]: It's like my energy levels have got back.
[Rus Hughes]: I can eat carbs again.
[Rus Hughes]: So mulling over, putting some kind of Mai Tai cardio back in.
[Rus Hughes]: To my life.
[Chris Reynolds]: Still working on those abs.
[Chris Reynolds]: I started doing BJJ.
[Rus Hughes]: Oh, awesome.
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah, I love it.
[Chris Reynolds]: I absolutely love it.
[Chris Reynolds]: I was in Rio.
[Chris Reynolds]: We were walking by this gym, this academy.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I was like, you know, it was my last week in Rio.
[Chris Reynolds]: I'd been there two and a half, three months.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I was like, you know, I always thought it'd be cool to try some BJJ.
[Chris Reynolds]: You know, I have some friends that did it.
[Chris Reynolds]: I knew Vic did it.
[Chris Reynolds]: Another guy, James Farrar, does it.
[Chris Reynolds]: He beat the shits out of me for like an hour.
[Chris Reynolds]: Did he?
[Chris Reynolds]: So she was like, go do it.
[Chris Reynolds]: She goes, yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: She goes, I did it when I was a kid.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I was like, really?
[Chris Reynolds]: And she's like, yeah, they'll probably give you a free class.
[Chris Reynolds]: And so I went, and when I got there, this guy, his last name was Staunch.
[Chris Reynolds]: I think it was like Miguel Staunch.
[Chris Reynolds]: And he was a red belt.
[Chris Reynolds]: And do you know the belts, like how they rank?
[Chris Reynolds]: A little bit, but I get confused.
[Chris Reynolds]: I can't remember where red fits into the picture anyway.
[Rus Hughes]: That's like super high, isn't it?
[Chris Reynolds]: Yeah, it's beyond black, yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: And it's only when a person like dedicates their entire life to teaching BJJ, and it's got to be like practicing it for 40 years.
[Chris Reynolds]: and he was like 65 and just the most humble and cool dude and he was like come on like let's wrestle like let's grapple or whatever spoke barely any english and my portuguese sucked and so we we talked back and forth but he'd show me some moves and he's like come on choke me harder and i was like all right and it felt bad you know i had this old man choking him up
[Chris Reynolds]: And he showed me another move.
[Rus Hughes]: Harder, harder.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I went for a couple classes and a guy came in and spoke English.
[Chris Reynolds]: He goes, how did you find this academy?
[Chris Reynolds]: I said, well, I live two blocks from here.
[Chris Reynolds]: I walk by it every day.
[Chris Reynolds]: I just decided to show up.
[Chris Reynolds]: And he goes, man, you couldn't have found a better teacher.
[Chris Reynolds]: This guy trained with Helio Gracie, the founder of BJJ.
[Chris Reynolds]: And I was like, shut up.
[Chris Reynolds]: And he goes, yeah.
[Chris Reynolds]: He goes, this is one of the best places I think you can find in Rio.
[Chris Reynolds]: Oh, that's amazing.
[Chris Reynolds]: And so, yeah, I came back to Barcelona and found a place that –
[Chris Reynolds]: Does Muay Thai and BJJ and self-defense and just kind of fell in love with it.
[Chris Reynolds]: So I'll be doing it while I'm in Asia.
[Chris Reynolds]: I'll be doing it for a while now.
[Chris Reynolds]: I really enjoy it.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, that's awesome.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah, we saw the big UFC fight last week, McGregor versus Diaz.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: And that kind of rekindled my interest in martial arts.
[Rus Hughes]: Yeah.
[Rus Hughes]: I've got to get back on that bandwagon now.
[Rus Hughes]: There's absolutely no excuses.