Elliot Moss
Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
A bright and breezy start to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss here on Jazz FM, bringing you the pioneers of the business world together with the musicians shaping Jazz, Soul and Blues. My guest today is Ben Towers, Co-Founder of Tahora, the workplace connectivity platform promoting mental wellbeing. Aged 11, Ben was building websites for family and friends and two years later, he turned his hobby into a business. Yes, that’s right, at 13 years old. Towers Design, initial working as a sole trader from his bedroom but growing the company into a full service marketing agency with a team of 26 freelancers, delivered large-scale youth engagement campaigns with brands including Pot Noodle, Mazars and Amazon. After exiting Towers Design, agreeing a multimillion pound merger, when he was just 18, Ben moved into angel investing, whilst also working for the UK Government and Royal Family on entrepreneurship programmes but it was the poor mental health of some friends and family while also noticing the lack of community in many workplaces that gave Ben a new idea, Tahora launched in 2020 with his Co-Founder, Mike Rose, aims to bring together likeminded colleagues and communities to create a culture of wellbeing and belonging.
Ben Towers is my Business Shaper today, the man who started making money and setting up businesses aged 11 months by the sound of it, I mean it seems like you were doing it just out of the womb. It’s nice to meet you by the way.
Ben Towers
Good to meet you too. Yeah, I just love technology and love like just tinkering around and having fun and I think that’s what started the business is just wanting to, wanting to have a go.
Elliot Moss
But I mean 11 years old, going back to it, it wasn’t 11 months was it, Ben, that would have been difficult. Loads of kids, you know, I’ve got kids, they do something and they want to sell a bit of lemonade or, and they go down the local common and they do that or they get some stuff out the bedroom and they sell it and all that and it’s kind of a fad and they think that was fun and exciting and then they carry on with life. You didn’t. This became the thing. How did you feel aged 11? What did it make you feel like that you said you know what, this is what I’m going to do versus I’m a kid doing the thing that most kids try?
Ben Towers
I’d say when I was 11; I didn’t know that was what I wanted to do. I actually just came about I’d say just loving technology. I was that kid at school who took apart the printer and got excluded for it because I had this thing in pieces across the table. For me it was always fascinating to know how did technology work. Why? I don’t necessarily know because neither of my parents were necessarily in technology to start that but I just always wanted to learn about it and then it was actually when I was sort of Year 5/Year 6 in my primary school and just sort of thought how does the school website work? I remember chatting to the IT teacher and just sort of saying to her I just, I want to learn how that works and how it functions and then just over time basically on You Tube just learnt how to build websites so, it was a much more like a curiosity thing at that point and then the way it became a company was when one of mum’s best friends is an author and she just said look, do you mind building me a website and from her perspective it meant she could get a cheap site and give her friend’s son an opportunity to have a go. For me, I was like oh I’d love to just give this a go and it literally was me sitting in my bedroom on You Tube watching how to build a contact form and then I would then just follow it along step by step and then do it. And that I’d say then formed the foundation of my knowledge and as you know people would ask more questions, I’d then Google how to do that or how to do this and eventually got to the point where I was able to build, you know, largescale sites for clients and that was the point in which I’d say I realised this could be a company. I’d say for me at that age, the word company or business is all you know about is what you see on TV or what you see like and it’s a very warped realisation of what actually business is so, that also made me think I’m not an entrepreneur, I haven’t got a massive office with a reception and a fax machine and a big desk and all that sort of thing, I didn’t have any of that and actually was the realisation that you can just start a company in your bedroom, like a good example, going back to the You Tube example is that You Tubers just from their bedroom making content and they’re running a business, you know, they’re being paid for that and I think I just didn’t realise that that could be a thing for me just making money in my bedroom and once I realised that I could then start the company, I then had the whole hassle of like registering as self-employed and the legalities of it which my mum was sort of quite over the top on to make sure I was safe but yeah, it was basically just went on from there.
Elliot Moss
But the legality is funny, as a quick aside, you had to become an apprentice in your own business to formally tick the box of you were in education of some sort but you were also an employee of your company.
Ben Towers
Yes, so there was a few sort of legalities that I had to face along the way. One of them is just the sheer corporation of a company. So you can be a shareholder from memory, I think it’s about from literally the day you are born, like it can be from any age. Director I am pretty sure is like 16 and then a business bank account you have to be 18. So then there’s like all these like conflicts in ages and so on and so for me, I was then like okay how do I structure this and work so I had to work with like my account and lawyers to then say okay how do we bring this together and long story short, they said to stay as a self-employed you are a minor so you actually have a protection being a minor and that sense so I carried on like that and then when I hit 16, I did my GCSE exams, at this point I was doing some quite big website projects and had freelancers working for me, I was outsourcing that because I was like I haven’t got enough hours in the day to do it all myself and then I was in like I need to go full-time in this company, I need to be able to grow this, it was my passion, I was loving it and then legally you have to be in education until you are 18 and so I just wanted to leave school at 16, after my GCSEs and then just get going. My mum was obviously saying ‘no, no, no you are sticking to the law, you are obviously you are going to stay in education’. I went to my school, tried to negotiate like reduced A-levels so I said look, I will do one or two instead of like the four that they make you do and then even then I thought actually, that’s not quite going to give me the freedom that I want. So I went to a few colleges and I managed to find a college that would let me do an apprenticeship in my own company so, technically I was in education, I was an apprentice but I was also in the company because the whole point of an apprenticeship is you are working in the company and that was my company.
Elliot Moss
It’s like you do… what I love already Ben is that you just basically said I’m going to make this up, we’re going to get round the system and I am going to run a business
Just getting to the work your way round the system when you were 16, you are an apprentice, you are in an education institution, you’ve done all that clever stuff, demonstrating your amazing entrepreneurial skills, Ben, of solving problems and then you build this business, then it gets a bit more serious than your mum’s friend doing a website, you start to really develop some traction and then it leads to this multimillion pounder merger. You’re 18 years old at the time, are you kind of going, because you said to me, you know, ‘it’s not like it is in the movies’ but that’s quite filmic, you’re a young man merging your business, how did that feel?
Ben Towers
I think throughout the process it was amazing, I was like wow isn’t this so cool, every day was sort of something new, you know meeting even the lawyers and the accountants, talking about that sort of topic was completely new for me and like my close family so, that was more like wow this is fun. Where I think it hit me more was my last day when I knew that tomorrow I’m not coming back to this office. Six months after doing that merger and I left, I was then like wow okay, what do I do tomorrow? This is, this not what I thought it was going to be though I think from starting the company, even when I was 11 or even just at some point doing the websites at that point, my whole, in a sense, childhood that you can remember where you are doing things by yourself, I had this company or doing websites or doing the marketing campaigns so, to then at 18 be like and that’s now stopped, it’s the end of a massive chapter and so I remember walking out being like okay so I haven’t got my pass to get back in the office, I haven’t got my work laptop, all these little things that you just overthink that for me were quite big things because that was my childhood. So, that for me was the moment of like okay this decision was quite a big decision, much bigger than I thought it was at the time, sort of riding the waves and enjoying it…
Elliot Moss
Did you take it… just a quick on that, did you take the decision on your own? I mean, again, you know, if I was doing that and I was a 35 year old or whatever, I’d be like, I’d ask friends, I’d ask my advisors, you are 18, is the principle exactly the same?
Ben Towers
Yes so I’ve always had people around me, you could call them mentors on reflexion. In reality, I didn’t call them that at the time, they were just people I just met over the years who I loved. I mean, a great example of someone who, she’s been there for me and still there right now, is someone called Alison and she’s a sales expert, been doing it for years and actually got an MBE and so on and I met her when I was about 14 years old at these Entrepreneur Awards and I was in like a suit, too big for me, unable to drink at this sort of after awards networking, she came over and just said you’re the same age as my son, what do you do? And that, just bonded over that and now she’s almost like my business mum, like I’ll go to her with problems, I’ll sort of vent and tell her about things that are annoying me and she’ll keep perspective on that. You know, I never saw her as like a mentor in that sense but when it came to these big decisions, she was like someone, I’ll call her up and just get her view on it and just having those people around you, I think was so important for me. Another good example of someone was, used to be finance director at Apple, I met him literally on LinkedIn, turned out he retired and moved close to me where I was living in Kent and I just reached out to me and said look, can we just have a coffee. I had a coffee with him and then we started to meet up more regularly and he would just walk me through financials, you know, how to read them, what to look for because you’re not taught that at school, not the sort of thing you’d necessarily learn on like Google or YouTube either so it’s something that I had to have somebody just to almost hold my hand and go that number means this, that’s good or bad, think about how you can look at it in this way.
Elliot Moss
Wow. I mean talk about an old head on young shoulders, it’s my Business Shaper today, it’s Ben Towers, he’s telling us about all the things we should be doing, whatever age you are at, in terms of making sure you get good advice and get good mentors around you. Lots more coming up from Ben later here on Jazz Shapers. Right now though, we’re going to hear a clip from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions. They can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Victoria Piggott talks about ESG, which stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and what the resulting long-term benefit is for businesses putting purpose before profit.
You can delight in all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and indeed you can hear this very programme again if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or if you have got a smart speaker, just ask it to play Jazz Shapers and you should be rewarded with a taster of our recent shows. But back to today’s guest, it’s Ben Towers, Co-Founder of Tahora, the workplace app aimed at creating happier, more connected employees. I really should ask you about Tahora. Tahora, as I understand it, is a Maori word which means together. The Tahi bit?
Ben Towers
Yeah, Tahi.
Elliot Moss
Tahi, and then Ora, which means good health.
Ben Towers
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Which I love. I feel weirdly connected to the Maori community, for no good reason other than I read The Bone People by Keri Hulme back in 1985. Anyway, if you haven’t read it, go and read it, it’s a good book. Tell me how this came about then, Ben?
Ben Towers
Yes, so after leaving Towers Design, I was then doing a lot of speaking at events, doing work with the Government, the Royal Family, really looking at this next generation, entrepreneurial skills, lot of consultancy, actually went and started consulting at GlaxoSmithKline as a comms director there and my whole focus on that was the internal comms when it came to their mergers with Pfizer and all the sort of links to that, the people changes that were going on.
Elliot Moss
And how did you get into that? Just as an aside.
Ben Towers
That I, really randomly I spoke at a conference for them, met one of the business leaders there and she sort of said to me, look, can I have your number, I’m about to go into a new role, can’t tell you what it is right now but I’d love to connect. Maybe two months later, I got a call from her and met up with her and she was like I’m doing this big change programme, do you want to sort of help consult on that? Was looking at initially was at the future organisation, how do you encourage innovation and you know compete and get young talent when you’ve got other consumer healthcare giants who are probably more attractive to a certain extent, reach younger people.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Ben Towers
So that was my role than and then over time as projects changed, moved into this communications role and whilst I was doing that, that was my first like corporate job in my life in the sense of you know, I had tens of thousands of colleagues, I was going to this large scale office in west London and I got to see this new side of the world that I had never experienced until that point, it was a very much a small startup or a company with like one or two floor maximum office. So that I think I learnt a lot but whilst I was there, I also felt disconnected, I didn’t feel like knew my colleagues on a personal level, like so, I love table tennis, for me personally, I didn’t feel like I knew other people who also loved that in the company or knew people who also were interested in the same sort of topics and that always got me thinking. Alongside all of that, I actually have my best friend and someone in my family going through some really bad mental health challenges and that really touched me and made me go you know what, whatever I do next, I have to find a way to address this or look at this in a fresh perspective. Also knowing I am not a doctor so can’t necessarily help in situations that, you know, unfortunately they were in but what I can do is look at what I can help in and that’s community and connection, it’s what the World Health Organisation described as one of the leading causes and amplifiers of mental health challenges, but it’s also something for others sitting in the corporate world as being just not there. People go to their job, they do the 9 to 5, they leave and they don’t really feel like they’re a part of something great or feel like they really know their colleagues on a persona level. So that then, how we started Tahora.
Elliot Moss
And just before we go into that and we’re going to get into it a bit more, how many people did you have at Towers Design before you merged?
Ben Towers
26.
Elliot Moss
26 people, okay and how many have you got now in the Tahora, in the Tahora business?
Ben Towers
We’ve got 11 full-time at the moment and then a few other sort of supporting contractors as well beside that.
Elliot Moss
And funded and growing and obviously going to be scaling pretty fast. What was it like being the boss? I assume most of these people were older than you? In the first business, I was going to say.
Ben Towers
Yes. I’ve only ever… yeah, the first company I’ve only ever employed one person younger than me at that company and I think there’s that weird dynamic to a certain extent and I had to always be aware of that, that for you know adult to know their boss is in their teenage years, that’s quite scary and that’s, it’s a trust, you know, when you work for a company there’s a, this trust level that they’re going to pay my wages, they’re going to treat me well, they’re going to look after me and I think naturally there’s that fear of…
Elliot Moss
He’s just a kid.
Ben Towers
Yeah, exactly. Does he know what he’s doing? Can he do that? Will I even get my holiday or will I even get my salary at the end of the month? And so I had to just prove people wrong over time and really make sure that I was on top of all of that.
Elliot Moss
Were you conscious of that though in the sense of that… because the way you just described it is a really excellent insight into well obviously if he or she is 25 or 30, they’re going to be going are all those things stable? And if you were conscious of it, which I think you obviously are, how do you address it? Is it just simply delivering? Is that all it is?
Ben Towers
I’d say it’s delivering and it’s also having great people around you who can back you up in the sense of… so, I had an amazing guy called Roger who I used to work with and we always said we were like Club 18-60, so when I was 18, he was 60 and he was then like this other guy who was there to support and to chat with people if they had any questions and in job interviews, he’d be the first person to do the interview, not me, so it almost became that first point of going, look if you work for Towers Design, just be clear that you are not working like your typical company, there is this strange dynamic but that’s also exciting because it meant for me it may look like a marketing campaign, I’d go, well why do we have to do it like that, I know we always do it like that but do we have to? If a client wants this then let’s do that and so I think that was also the exciting part and a positive that people enjoyed and that’s why they maybe were attracted to the company, then he was also there as the sort of counter side of it, to sometimes say to me, look Ben, I think you mucked up there or should have done this or just be careful about that and to have someone in your corner just who’s got the experience just to keep an eye on things, was I’d say was definitely needed.
Elliot Moss
But you’ve just, I mean I’ve just had a flashback to watching Tom Hanks in Big, where there’s suddenly this kid is given the… you know, literally the keys to the toy company and there I am thinking, actually Ben all you were doing was being yourself which is well, hold on a minute, I’ve got nothing encumbering me, stopping me thinking about the world differently because I’m just thinking about the world through my own eyes which is I’m 17, I’m 16 or whatever it is and why would you do it like that, that doesn’t make any sense to me. So actually, you were just being yourself.
Ben Towers
Yeah. And I’d say there was like minimal baggage. For me, I could take risks as well because I was living at home so it wasn’t like I had a family, I had you know a mortgage or anything like that that the, my expenditure, so I could you know try things out and see if they work and not worry as much around implications for myself so, I think also allowed me a lot more freedom and gave me a lot more chance to give things a go. When we started to employ then it started to get a bit harder because then you are like, actually you know what, it’s not just myself I’m impacting here but like still to a certain extent, I could look at things and just say why? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with Ben Towers, the message is absolutely loud and clear. Have a mindset that says take away the worries because actually to not take a risk, is a risk in itself. Final chat coming up with him as I said, plus some great music from Snarky Puppy, that’s all coming up in just a moment here on Jazz FM.
Ben Towers is my Business Shaper and he’s been talking about being unencumbered by knowing stuff because in a way when you are 17, you only know what you know and it isn’t as much as a 50 year old and that’s a good thing because it is important to be fresh and do stuff. Tahora, this business you set up. You are funded? You’ve got angels that have invested in this platform. The insight being be connected to your community, you are going to, you know, addresses the issue around feeling lonely, it addresses the issue around feeling like you belong. Belonging, for you Ben, in this strange place that you are in, you’re a Co-Founder of your second, well a second business but you set up your first one, you’re young, you’re recognised on the circuit as a speaker, Government like you, the Royal Family want to ask you, Kate did stuff with you, how do you keep your feet on the ground and how do you focus on the task at hand with Tahora?
Ben Towers
For keeping my feet on the ground, I’d say it’s about having friends who to be blunt, don’t care about business and it just means that I can go and see them, we can go for a dinner or just go and do something like a holiday or whatever it is and never have to think about business, we just think about life, I think that’s so important to have that separation and then, you know, for Tahora, it’s about just really knuckling down to the mission you know on about belonging, it’s that realisation that you know what, there are hundreds of thousands of people, if not more, in the UK alone who are going to work and just feel like they are a number, don’t feel like they actually truly know their colleagues and that for me makes you realise, you know what, we can get lost in you know the fund raising numbers or the success of the clients we are working with but in reality, one more person who feels like they know their colleagues and can go on a rock climbing adventure with five of their colleagues or go and… into the office on Tuesday and suddenly see who else is in and connect at lunch or after work for drinks, that for me is almost, key I think focus to go that’s the important part.
Elliot Moss
You said something earlier about your childhood and in reality your childhood has been a working childhood, it’s like I was lucky enough in a different place, to interview Jodie Foster, the famous actress, and she was a child prodigy from the age of 4 or 5, her whole childhood was work. I think she didn’t resent that but she definitely felt it. Do you think you’ve missed out on anything or do you have the opposite feeling about your whole growing up period?
Ben Towers
I’d say I’ve missed out on like the lazy days with things like finishing school and just going to the cinema and not doing much and so on but at the same time, I think I’m at a stage now where I’ve been taught just some… doing it myself, just to work and work hard and so I think my capacity for workload and delivering things is probably much higher because I’ve just from a young age, just been doing that and been used to it. So, I think that’s a positive. After leaving Towers Design, I then had to have this realisation, not Ben, you have to have holidays, you have to actually spend time for yourself, so I went travelling for a little bit, I went to like Thailand and India and did some time just over there, no work laptop which was like the first time from like this really young age where I did that and then I think following that, I’m still trying to keep those principles of going you do need to have some time for yourself but I also realise that… I almost see it as like a training programme, I was you know for those like 9/10 years I would just say it was just to really focus on growing something.
Elliot Moss
And the other you said about you know I have no, I was just 17, I just had ideas, why don’t we just try it like that. In a way, that, you know, we talk in business often about remaining the child and being childlike in terms of having ideas and being fresh. How are you doing that as a person who has done so much already, you know, how can you retain the best of being a young person without being encumbered by all the serious responsibility now you’ve got of fund raising and all the other things that you’ve said because I want you to remain the kid, I mean though, don’t you, I imagine?
Ben Towers
Yeah, I actually use location as a way of segmenting that. So, for me, if I want to, you know say there was a big business problem, you know, right I need to just look at a new way of tackling that, I will go and actually, like, the gym I’m at I’ll go and sit by the pool in like a seat and just bring my notebook down and just think and that I’ve got, I haven’t got my laptop, haven’t got an office environment, I’m literally you know, by a pool, I can hear the water hitting, I’m just sitting there and just thinking and that is my place to then look at a problem and address it in a new way because I’ve got no distraction, no looking at employees thinking there’s a problem or can we solve that or can we do this? When I’m in the office I maybe struggle a bit more because then you’ve got the reality of the situation, you’ve got your investors, you’ve got things going on, you’ve got a company to run, you’ve clients calling so, almost removing myself with a clear task of going I’m going to go downstairs to achieve this goal and then come back, that’s how I maintain that.
Elliot Moss
Wow. You have super-duper levels of clarity Ben Towers, it’s been really good talking to you. Thank you. Continue to do well, I’m sure you will. Just before I let you disappear to go solve another problem on a beach, if you are lucky, if you can find one, let me know if you do. What’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Ben Towers
Yeah, so it’s New York State of Mind by Tony Bennett and two reasons, one is because you know for him personally, it’s really inspiring, you know he had Alzheimer’s and still was performing and you know there was a lot of question, you know, can he still perform given the state of his Alzheimer’s at that time so, I think it’s just, as a business leader, there’s loads of things that could be going on personally but you still have to stand out and perform, you still have to go out and you know run the company, employees still expecting some sort of normality to a certain point of view so that I think is, was inspiring. The other thing that’s just the general message of the song is all around the hustle and bustle of the city and that for me I think going back to this idea of location and segmentation of that, this idea that you know when you are in a certain location, you are hustling and bustling, you are doing a lot of the work and getting things done and then you can remove yourself from that to relax and for me that’s been such a key part of my life, you know moving to London from Kent really focussed me to go, I’m now here to grow something and really put my foot on the accelerator and then when I go out of London it’s my time to go and now it’s time just to, just to you know regenerate and just focus on me.
Elliot Moss
Tony Bennett there with New York State of Mind, the song choice of my fabulous Business Shaper, Ben Towers. I loved his phrase ‘Club 18-60’. How to convince people joining a business where you’re the youngest boss they’ve ever met, bring in someone who’s 60, that starts the thing going. Life versus business, make sure you have a space for both. The fact that Ben at such a young age figured that out is phenomenally impressive and finally, that little sweet point about location segmentation, solve problems out of the office rather than it and rather than being surrounded by all the stuff that goes on in a day-to-day basis. Absolutely brilliant. That’s it from me and Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds of more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to Mishcon.com/JazzShapers.