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.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to the brand new season of Jazz Shapers here in 2025 with me Elliot Moss, it is brilliant to be back. Jazz Shapers is where I bring you the pioneers, the risk takers, the problems solvers, shaping the business world together of course with the phenomenal musicians shaping the worlds of jazz, soul and blues. My guest today, kicking of the season in fine health is Mr Scott Harrison, Founder of the fitness programme The Six Pack Revolution. An entrepreneur since his 20s, it was while running his double glazing company in 2015 that Scott saw the need for change. Picking up his kids from school, Scott noticed he and the other parents looked bloated, tired and unhealthy and he made a New Year’s Resolution to achieve a six pack in 90 days with 36 Facebook friends asking to join the challenge. The success, Scott lost 2 stone and six inches from his waist, drove 19 of those friends to similarly impressive results and overcame his long-term bulimia and it lead to requests for more programmes. The Six Pack Revolution was born. Scott sold his double glazing company and gained personal trainer and psychology qualifications as his initial experiment evolved quickly into a structured online coaching programme, now 75 days rather than 90. Focussed on balanced nutrition, mental wellbeing and supportive community interaction. They’ve now reached 10s of thousands of participants in 90 countries with Scott also creating his own brand of protein smoothies and penning two cookbooks in his sleep by the looks of things and two children’s books and it’s brilliant to have you here.
Scott Harrison
Thank you for having me.
Elliot Moss
Absolute pleasure. You’re so healthy and you look happy. The eyes say to me that Scott is a relaxed man who at peace with his inner self. Is that true?
Scott Harrison
Well I have my moments like everybody of course and just having Christmas and New Year, probably not as healthy as I will be in about three, four weeks’ time but at the ripe old age of 51, I’m doing alright.
Elliot Moss
You look very well.
Scott Harrison
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
Do you think this is what you were born to do Scott?
Scott Harrison
Yes. Yeah I look at all the stuff that’s gone on in my life, the good, the bad and the indifferent and I feel like it was all to bring me to this place where I can sit on this platform and you know, really help as many people as I possibly can across the world and it’s, it’s very rewarding.
Elliot Moss
Is that the thing? Is it the help?
Scott Harrison
Yeah. Especially now I’ve been in this industry for a long time, a saturated industry as well if you think about it and to be able to find this unique place that I’ve found in this world of fitness, nutrition and mind set has shown me that there’s a lot of people in trouble out there that really need to work on living instead of just existing and I’ve found a way to do that quite effectively in a very short time and I’m proud of it.
Elliot Moss
Just give me the, the pitch if I was, if I came up to you and said, ‘hello Scott, what is The Six Pack Revolution when it’s at home?’ What would you say if you only had 10 seconds?
Scott Harrison
It’s an online fitness, nutrition and personal development programme that changes your relationship with food, with drink and with yourself.
Elliot Moss
And just taking those one by one, food and drink and yourself. For you, where have your journey’s started as it relates to food because I mentioned bulimia. I know as a kid there were some issues. Drink, I know you have your own relationship with alcohol and want to talk about and everything else. Just give me a little sense of where you think all that began and how it’s all eventually come together?
Scott Harrison
Well let’s go way back with the bulimia first of all. That kind of started in school. I was quite badly bullied in school and to the point of where I was urinated on and um, that’s quite a dark place to, to be there.
Elliot Moss
How old were you Scott?
Scott Harrison
About 13. 12, 13 and I wore glasses. Before that, in primary school about the age of 7 I got glasses which showed a weakness back in way back, 40 odd years now.
Elliot Moss
Late 70s. You’re, you’re younger than me.
Scott Harrison
Yeah, 80, 81’ish about there was when I got my glasses and I think it portrayed a weakness you know, for, for kids to pick on you know, they’ll chose anything these days or then, even back then it’s the same and also because my dad was a bully I think I was, I’d been programmed because I’ve spoke to psychologists and stuff now. I was pro… when you’re from the age of 0 to 5 is when you’re mostly programmed so when my dad was quite a bully to my mum and, and myself, I was too small to… there’s three reactions; fight, flight or freeze so I couldn’t fight, I’m a couple of years old, 2, 3, 4 years old. I couldn’t flight, run because I can’t leave the house I’m a baby so the only option I and my brain was to freeze and apparently that’s when I was programme wired so that’s when it happened to me later I would freeze and I wouldn’t do anything about it. And then that stuck with me forever and around that age was when I started making myself sick and apparently that is a control thing, something that I could control and so on and that stayed with me for over 30 years you know, I would go into all you can eat buffet or even on holiday, I’d eat, be sick, eat, be sick. My wife would know because I’d come out with eyes watering but it’s an awkward conversation to have. She’d sometimes have the conversation with me and sometimes not and um, yeah it was a, it was a 30 odd years of that and also from that bullying I would have this recurring dream where I would be crouched down in a bush at the end of this lad’s road with a hammer and as he would come out and walk past me I still didn’t get out of the bush so I was still weak in the dream as well. And then he came up on my Facebook feed once as someone you may know and my heart went up through my throat like I was 13 again and I just looked at him with his family and I thought, crikey like you know, he’s probably never give me a second thought and from what I’ve achieved since then, I mean I’ve, I’ve got my black belt karate instructor, I’ve boxed at the York Hall, I won fight of the night at the York Hall. I sit there and think like, would I want to bring him into the ring and see how good he is now and I don’t even think I’d do that.
Elliot Moss
No. It strikes me that a lot of what goes on in The Six Pack Revolution is about change, it’s about people’s relationship with change, it’s about taking all the stuff that has – quote unquote – happened to them and that they feel and going ‘do I want that, do I want to do something else, do I want to feel something else’. You were talking very openly about the bullying and about the fact that you have, you created a physically strong persona – you talked about you went through the martial arts thing and all that – when did the change happen mentally for you where you said hold on a minute I was bullied, I’ve obviously been controlling my food and bulimia is a part of that, I don’t want to do that anymore. When was that Scott and how did you get to that point of going, thanks very much I’m going to manage this differently?
Scott Harrison
Well the bulimia only stopped when I started The Six Pack Revolution because when I started to nourish my body and my focus was on that rather than anything else and your mind is a part of that body too right. So when you eat, everyone’s always puts it to their body as in their abs or their heart and lungs or their legs or strength but they forget about the mind and the reason that most people are riddled with anxiety and struggle with even having a balanced state of mind is because they don’t eat properly and that’s why we can’t handle stress and anxiety and pressure and grief and if we eat properly we balance our body, we balance our hormones, we balance our chemical, we build a machine that works at its optimum and when I started to do that, I didn’t feel the urge to purge anymore. I slept better, I loved what I saw in the mirror, I loved myself so the saying, you are what you eat, there is no truer phrase.
Elliot Moss
Mm but on top of that and maybe one thing leads to the other, when people are suffering with anxiety or I suffer from a period of depression or a period of stress whatever you want to call it. Food is one thing but there must be processes and tools which again you had to learn that have enabled you to also navigate those times of, of high tension?
Scott Harrison
Well exercise of course is one of the most amazing antidepressants on the planet and it’s free and everyone should really be exercising into their 90s and beyond, every single week you know and that’s for your mind but also for your joints, your muscle tone, your posture. It’s a massive investment in your future you know, every time you switch sitting down scrolling through Facebook for, even if it’s just a walk or a workout, you’re adding to your pension pot of life and when you build all these together, the mind follows, the body follows, the confidence comes, the health comes, the vitality comes, the strength comes, the empowerment comes and you just really do change overnight and then if you can then now have this balanced state of mind you can look at what you’ve done in your life, you can look at the obstacles that you’ve faced and no one gets away with a life without obstacles and you can see how it’s moulded you and if you use them for good and you look at life from the correct perspective then you can even enjoy the altered course as they come.
Elliot Moss
And those obstacles and I think I’ve read this about you, you kind of see them as your friends because they have created the next version of Scott, the next version of the person. Going from one business to another obviously people often listen and they go, ‘well how did that person do that’. Of course it didn’t start with this business, your experience of having other businesses, of, of taking risk that’s all contributed to this. Just tell me about a couple of obstacles which you go without those obstacles Elliot, I would not be where I am now?
Scott Harrison
Well I was a trader in the City for 9 years in the 90’s, the good old days and um, so I was regularly taking risks all the time like every second sometimes so I think I grew my confidence in risk taking way back, way back then in my younger years actually and I’ve never been afraid to do that ever since. I’m very, um invest in myself, I’m a believer in the quickest way to fail is to not even try you know and again using all the things that I’ve been up against and I’ve overcome for a positive rather than allowing it to dictate my fate negatively is really the thing that’s I think created this man who can now look at everything objectively. Look it’s good walking along the beach and playing with the kids, it’s good sitting in a Jacuzzi drinking champagne, it’s fun we should do it as often as we can but we learn nothing, we just sit still. You only learn when things need to be overcome and the harder the fight, the more euphoric the win. If we use my boxing analogy when I, I still box now. If I was to go into the ring and hit one punch and he’s out and everyone’s screaming my name, Scottie, Scottie and I’m up on the ring and I’m loving every minute of it or I go in and we fight like a dog for two rounds and he knocks me down, I get back up just the bell goes in time to give me time to recover and we come out again and then all of a sudden half way through I break my wrist, and I’m now fighting with one arm and I catch him and he gets knocked out in the eighth and I’ve… which was the best fight me out of the two? It totally wasn’t the first one right. That other one will live with me forever. The first one I’ll forget about.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
And if you apply that every area of your life you know, marriages and friendships and hobbies and work and business, yeah the obstacles are there to strengthen you, not weaken you.
Elliot Moss
You don’t want an easy life I know it. Stay with me for much more from my guest, Scott Harrison in a couple of minutes, much more wisdom as well.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers as you well know on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop the words ‘Jazz’ and ‘Shapers’ into your favourite podcast platform. My guest today is Scott Harrison, Founder of the fitness programme The Six Pack Revolution which has attracted a lot of attention from famous people Scott.
Scott Harrison
It has.
Elliot Moss
That’s useful to you I imagine?
Scott Harrison
Oh yeah well very useful to me, it’s allowed me to organically grown the programme and as you said before, we have tens of thousands of participants every year now in 90 countries, it’s gone across the whole world, even to Zambia can you believe. I was sitting there and thought how did we get someone from Zambia and yeah so Ryland, Sarah Cox, Peter Andre, Carol Vordeman, Alex Scott um, Sarah Davis from Dragon’s Den who’s lovely, she’s helped me a lot in business actually.
Elliot Moss
Has she?
Scott Harrison
I asked… I ring, she answers every time, I just ring up and she calls me ‘boss’ because she’s done the programme a few times, she calls me boss which is quite funny and half the cast of In The Line of Duty and Coronation Street…
Elliot Moss
Oh really.
Scott Harrison
…and Towie.
Elliot Moss
And what are they all buying into you know, there are as you said, it’s a very crowded market of get fit, change your life and all that. What would you say the one or two reasons why The Six Pack Revolution is actually making a difference and why are so many people buying into it?
Scott Harrison
Because we feed and nourish you to fat loss, we don’t starve and malnourish you to it. And that’s a big difference. I do not focus on calories which freaks a lot of people out because all you’ll see on social media is calories in, calories out, that’s all that matters. Get your calories down and you’re going to lose fat but they are forgetting that is a gazilli fraction – that’s my own word by the way…
Elliot Moss
I’ll trade you.
Scott Harrison
… - how the human body works. That’s the tiniest bit.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
The body needs a certain amount of things to thrive and if you feed the body how it should be fed which is a balanced plate of food, balanced throughout the day with plenty of hydration, you build a machine that works its optimum. When it works at its optimum it burns fuel efficiently which is fat but it also maintains and builds muscle, your hair, your skin, the whites of your eyes, your teeth and your nails all become more radiant, the anxiety disappears, the sleep comes, the strength comes – I keep saying the same words but…
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
…um and people when they see someone who’s done The Six Pack Revolution, they go, oh my God what have you done and not just the visual transformation, they can feel them and that’s the difference and that is why I think that it’s spread like coronavirus across the world because you can’t, if you see someone who’s done Six Pack and you knew them before, you immediately become infected with it.
Elliot Moss
And the mental side again, we talked about that earlier and this, a lot of your own life has been about these obstacles, not all mental but a lot of them. What are the two or three things that you are able to share around these tools that you’ve referenced? What would help me if I wake up or I am waking up really early, I’m waking up at 4.00 in the morning and it’s happening again, and again, and again because I am catastrophizing about stuff at work theoretically of course Scott.
Scott Harrison
Okay. So what, the biggest mistake people make is that they constantly focus on what they don’t want. They give all their energy to what they don’t want and that might be focussing on weighing themselves every day, it might be focussing on oh what’s going to happen when I get to work, like you just said but what is that? You’re focussing on the future, it don’t even exist right, the future does not exist, it’s only your imagination. So if you are going to imagine your future surely you would imagine the best future for yourself would you not?
Elliot Moss
I try to.
Scott Harrison
But we don’t right. We constantly focus on, oh what if the worse thing in the world’s going to happen to me. How many times has the things that have happened to you turned out to be the best things that happened to you when you thought they were going to be the worst things that happened to you? Yeah, so your fear of what’s coming – when you was a kid all you had was this great like, I’m going to be this, I’m going to do that – there was none of this real fear. When did that change?
Elliot Moss
So let me ask you a question. You, you’ve done fantastically, you’re, you’re are now moving forwards really well, the business is growing, well known people are buying into it, I am sure there are many more steps to scale this business up and all that. What happens when you wake up and you feel the fear? What happens when you start to doubt yourself? Because you’re human…
Scott Harrison
I am.
Elliot Moss
…and that must happen.
Scott Harrison
It does.
Elliot Moss
What’s the one thing you say to yourself in those moments? I am sure it’s a process but just briefly?
Scott Harrison
I actually say this out loud and I preach this to my participants and if I’m on stage doing a talk or a motivational speech or something, I actually say this, this is not, I’m not just saying it, I say it out loud and I actually step to one side and look at myself as if I left myself on the left and I say, ‘Scottie, forwards or backwards?’ And then I step back to the left and I turn round to Scottie on the right and I say, ‘Well forwards of course’. So now I’m laughing at myself because of what I’ve done so straight away I’ve lifted, I’ve shared the, the problem with my two of me and I go, ‘Well if we carry on with this mentality are we going to move forwards’ and I go back to the other side and go, ‘No’, ‘So we’ve got to stop now then right?’. ‘Right’. I literally have that conversation. I’ve even got out of the car before when I’m thinking in the car like that and sat on my bonnet and had a chat to myself on my bonnet, I’ve done that and it makes me laugh as well which is great, laughter’s one of the best things about it.
Elliot Moss
Let’s hope no one is watching you do it when you’re on your own in the car.
Scott Harrison
I’ve actually done it.
Elliot Moss
I would tell them, he’s not mad. It’s Scott Harrison and he’s my Business Shaper today and he’s the Founder of The Six Pack Revolution.
Scott Harrison
But look, how many of the things right in your life have you, that you’ve worried about, tossed and turned about, you haven’t eat properly, you haven’t slept properly…
Elliot Moss
Doesn’t happen.
Scott Harrison
…you’ve got butterflies in your tummy.
Elliot Moss
Doesn’t happen.
Scott Harrison
How many of those have come true to the extent that you were worrying when they happened?
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
And all of your listeners should be saying, zero. And it’s not that bad things don’t happen but we amplify them in our mind and create monsters that are bigger than they need to be so what I try and do is trivialise everything, even death. Just, I try and trivialise everything because then if it’s smaller I can get over it.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Scott Harrison
And we always get it wrong because we know that we get it wrong if we keep worrying about something that doesn’t exist. It’s true.
Elliot Moss
The business itself now as it’s grown, what have you learnt from a business point of view in the last few years because suddenly things are taking off, what have been the levers of growth for you do you think? What’s working? Apart from the actual thing itself?
Scott Harrison
Ever since I left school I’ve always over delivered so it has been very natural for me to carry on doing that so when you over deliver I think you grow quicker and I think that’s really helped. So it’s really great and value programme - I’m going to say that obviously – but for the price of less than half a Costa coffee a day to deliver a nutrition plan that works, an exciting fitness plan that works, exciting mind set training that’s life changing and support that’s live all day, every day; you ask a question, it’s answered in minutes.
Elliot Moss
And how do you manage that by the way? Is that, is that humans or is that…
Scott Harrison
It’s human, it’s all human.
Elliot Moss
Okay right.
Scott Harrison
And every single person that works on The Six Pack Revolution comes from the programme, comes from being a participant, the accountant, the website, everything, the admin, the coaches. I’ve got like over 180 people that work for me.
Elliot Moss
So in, in the parlance and the mission lead people make a major difference Part 1 to the growth. What about technology? Is that important and the way that you harness it to grow this thing globally?
Scott Harrison
You won’t believe how well we’ve done with, with such, such little infrastructure if you like because I have no office, apart from my own office at home which is just like anyone’s home office. I have no building, I have no overheads, I have, everything’s online and everyone that works for Six Pack works from their PC or their phone. It’s, I, I can run this business on the beach if I wanted to.
Elliot Moss
And if you wanted to get to every single human in the UK. If the NHS was to turn round today and say, ‘Scott we’ve got a plan, we need to stop spending all the money on fixing problems, we need to get ahead of it and we need to have healthy humans in the UK’. Would you be able to just do that or would that take huge amounts of investment in terms of delivering that to millions of people?
Scott Harrison
Yeah, to millions that would be hard. To, to, if you think about it because we are live humans all day, every day to flip that the next day would be very difficult. It, it would have to grow in stages, like it has now. I mean I can treble maybe quadruple where I am right this minute today, I could try, I could do that um, I’ve got that infrastructure but it would need some re, some re-working…
Elliot Moss
Yeah. Rewiring.
Scott Harrison
…to do something like millions overnight um, it would be a nice problem to have but I would have to maybe change the structure of it a little bit.
Elliot Moss
But an exciting problem?
Scott Harrison
But we’ve just brought in our new App which is going to take a lot of pressure off us so that’s being B-tested right this minute in our January wave. We took a few groups out so by March we should be everyone’s on the App then and we do a lot less work so therefore that’s much easier to grow then as well. So it’s all in there but we’re growing at the speed, a speed that’s really fast anyway.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with Scott Harrison and we’ve got some music from Emma Jean Thackray, that’s in just a moment don’t go anywhere.
Scott Harrison is my Business Shaper. Before I met you I thought wow this is going to be a tough guy, I mean physically because you know, you, you ask people to do things with their, with their body and you get them to be disciplined and all that and of course there is that, I mean I look at you and you are a healthy guy, I would… but obviously there is a sense of and you talk about it a lot, it’s you know, the eight round fight not the two round fight. It’s the obstacles that you know, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Scott Harrison
Yes.
Elliot Moss
It’s that, it’s that kind of stuff. Do you think of yourself as a tough person or is it quite the opposite?
Scott Harrison
Cor that’s a good question. I, I feel like I’m tough for other people. I feel like for myself sometimes, it depends what you mean by tough. So I think it’s been, it’s very strange, over my life when someone’s kind of attacked me whether that’s verbally or whatever way, I feel like I struggle with it but if someone attacked you, my new friend, I’d deal with that for you. It’s a real strange um…
Elliot Moss
What’s that about Scott?
Scott Harrison
I have no idea, it’s probably back to that bullying thing.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
Where if it is aimed at me, I freeze a little bit.
Elliot Moss
The reason I asked the question is because I am kind of going, he wants people to love themselves, that’s what he wants.
Scott Harrison
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
That’s the help but actually, there’s a bit of doubt in Scott’s head still about whether he really loves himself. And I know that sounds a little bit heavy.
Scott Harrison
Some wouldn’t, some would not agree with you but you are probably right.
Elliot Moss
I don’t mean, I don’t mean… look at my body, I, you know, because I’ve already said before you know…
Scott Harrison
No you’re right, you’ve spotted it I think yeah. There is something there that I, I constantly probably look for validation a lot.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Scott Harrison
And, and I fight for it well and I get it because I go for it and I, I, I help everybody I possibly can you know and I get beautiful messages from people you know, saying to me, I had a, I had a card sent to me, I mean who writes cards anymore and the lady said, ‘Scott I don’t know how to thank you for giving my children their mummy back’.
Elliot Moss
Mm.
Scott Harrison
And when you get stuff like that.
Elliot Moss
That’s a big deal.
Scott Harrison
Yeah and that, that made me lift.
Elliot Moss
But are you, but are you kind to yourself Scott?
Scott Harrison
Yes I am better at it now. I, I do try my best to look back and realise how well I’ve done and, and but I still feel like I constantly want to push for more but not more as in like constant finance more like that type of…
Elliot Moss
No.
Scott Harrison
…but more enrichment and, and it’s probably if I sit down and think about it, I think you’re right what I think you’re asking me behind the, behind the eyes there is that you know, sometimes it’s enough and I don’t need to constantly push for more, I need to… otherwise I’m going to miss it.
Elliot Moss
When is enough enough?
Scott Harrison
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
As someone once said to me.
Scott Harrison
Yeah. Everything Jimmy Carr said, ‘I’ve got something more than you’ve got’ and you went, ‘what’s that?’ He went ‘It’s enough, I’ve got enough’.
Elliot Moss
And I think, I think that yeah because I think the thirst for learning, the thirst for helping, the thirst for grafting, you’re obviously a grafter.
Scott Harrison
Mm mm.
Elliot Moss
None of this, people I meet, I am very privileged, I don’t meet anyone who isn’t going… isn’t prepare to put in the hours, it’s all that but yeah it feels like there’s one little question which may be many people are built like this… you need to say, what have I got, I know when enough is enough.
Scott Harrison
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Listen, don’t stop doing stuff, it just occurred to me I think in there is that, it’s the only one thing, it’s you…
Scott Harrison
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…and I think you know, you’re a special guy and you’ve created something really brilliant.
Scott Harrison
Thank you very much.
Elliot Moss
Thank you so much for spending time with me…
Scott Harrison
Thank you for having me.
Elliot Moss
…just before I let you disappear, to go and do more amazing things, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Scott Harrison
So my song choice is Bettye Swann, Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye. Let’s go back to business, behind every good man there’s an amazing woman and my wife I am very privileged that we’ve been together 18 years and it still feels like year 1. I still get excited to drive through the gates to the house to see her every time I leave the house and that song, well you all listen to it and you’ll, you’ll see how cool it is.
Elliot Moss
Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye from Bettye Swann, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Scott Harrison. He talked about his obstacles and the way that they had strengthened him in his journey through life. He talked about the confidence he built in taking risks, absolutely critical to being an entrepreneur. And two really good bits of advice, ‘don’t focus on what you don’t want’, think about that and finally, ‘the future does not exist’, in other words don’t worry about what might happen it almost definitely won’t, focus on the day. 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 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.