This episode was recorded when Huel was four years old and doing £14 million in revenue.

You are listening to it knowing what it eventually became.

Julian Hearn started Huel with a simple goal: find 1,000 people willing to pay £45 a month for a nutritionally complete food. Half a million pounds a year. A lifestyle business he could run three days a week.

When they hit £750,000 in year one, he knew that plan was gone.

In this Bite-Sized episode of Screw It Just DO It, Julian talks about the early Huel story: the initial product order of £5,000 of stock, the PR that arrived in the first month without asking for it, the customers who started defending the brand online before Julian even had a team, and why he never wrote a proper business plan for any of it.

He also talks about hiring, culture, direct-to-consumer, and why the biggest risk in any product business is manufacturing — not the market.

Key Takeaways

- Why Huel started as a lifestyle business and when Julian realised it was not going to be one

- The 1,000 fans model and why it is the right way to start anything

- Why execution beats business plans, and what Julian did instead

- How building direct-to-consumer gave Huel a weapon that retail-first competitors never had

🎧 This episode is powered by WorldFirst, specialists in international business payments. If your business pays overseas suppliers or receives payments from abroad, those transaction fees can quickly add up. As a Screw It Just DO It listener, you can get 50 international transactions completely fee free for 60 days.

👉 Create a free account and claim the offer at worldfirst.com/screwit

🎧 Don't miss a moment of entrepreneurial insight. Subscribe to Screw It Just DO It wherever you get your podcasts.

🎟️ Join us at the Festival of Entrepreneurs, November 3-4 at NEC Birmingham

👉 www.festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk