Dan Murray-Serter
How To Build A Successful Company Centred On Compassion
Dan Murray-Serter is an entrepreneur, number 1 podcaster, public speaker and co-founder of Heights. Heights is a seven-figure braincare company centred on compassion. In its first year of full trading, it hit an annual recurring revenue of £2.4 million and it has 10,000 active customers. Its core belief is “a healthier brain leads to a better life”.
Join us for this rare and personal interview to learn about the character behind this successful company. Watch the full interview here.
What was the most significant belief shift that helped you build a company centred on compassion?
Failing was very helpful. It helped us improve our attitude and not believe our nonsense when we failed!
“When you are young and growing rapidly, it’s easy to neglect essential aspects of your personal growth like getting a coach or being around people who challenge you.”
You get a lifetime's worth of lessons delivered when you have a catastrophic failure. We spent time post-morteming, worked with psychologists and assessed our characters. Self-awareness was key.
As a result, I question whether or not I’m right. Does this sit with my values? Is this time well spent? Now I am more comfortable pausing and saying no to things that do not align with my values.
I love how you speak about your mistakes so openly. Dan, if you and Joel, your co-founder, were going to create a fragrance that depicted your characters, what would the ingredients be (character traits)?
Curiosity and compassion would go into the magical potion you are referring to! Joel represents deep thought and focus. It would probably be more along the lines of experimentation in my case. I would say I was more at the end of the spectrum of curiosity!
You openly share your interest in spirituality. What would you say to the entrepreneurs who fear judgement for putting spiritual interests out there?
“The problem is not what you have, it’s what you want.”
If you haven’t solved the problem of wanting, it’s tricky. I’ve been reading Dr Seuss recently about the idea of ‘biggering and biggering’.
I used to work in fashion and didn’t like it. Once you are on a spiritual path, nature and the environment are intertwined in you. I’m an angel investor and I invest in circular fashion, but where I struggled in the fashion industry is that a lot of it is fast fashion.
Whenever I feel guilty for being on the spiritual path and growing a business, I look at my inspiration Eckhart Tolle who is spiritual but has a thriving business.
“It is possible to grow your business and be spiritual.”
I’ve seen how important kindness is to you in your e-mails. What was a memorable act of kindness you received as a child?
My parents were extremely kind, considerate and generous. It was around me every single day. There is not one specific memory simply because it was part of my upbringing.
“I was raised on kindness. Being kind without expecting anything in return.”
You are highly skilled at connecting. On the ‘Secret Leaders’ podcast you’ve had some of the biggest names in leadership and you’ve built an excellent team at Heights. What were the mistakes you made in the early days when connecting with the right people?
Through my experiences, I’ve learnt not to force my will or intention on others. I understand that relationships take time. You do not have to go in for the ask immediately. If you want to be a master at connecting, give it one to two months of general curiosity and genuine interest.
“The goal in life is not to be interesting, it’s to be interested.” ‒ Peter Drucker
As long as you are authentically interested, people can sense that energy. The best way is to not want anything out of them. That mantra has compounded over years for me. Everyone wants to know the hack of how I got the guests for ‘Secret Leaders’. The first series was full of outstanding entrepreneurs, but I had already been building those relationships for five years. I never planned to create a podcast, so when I asked those guests, they said yes. The point is, I was a friend to these people.
Invest over time and take bets on people. It’s classic human nature to want to speak with the big stars. Let’s take Steven Bartlett as an example. I receive many introduction requests for Steven. I know Steven because I was his first ever customer at Social Chain. I’ve known him for nine years and I gave him business when no one else was. I built relationships with people I was interested in over time without wanting anything.
I found looking for people who share similar values helpful. How do you say no to people compassionately? How do you prioritise?
It’s excellent to understand your values, but reviewing your priorities each quarter is really important. At the moment, personal branding is a lower priority and my calendar reflects that. This is why it was so difficult to schedule this interview! It’s much easier to say no when I am aware of my priorities. I don’t need to think deeply about each opportunity as I already know how it will align with my current focus.
Right now, priority one is mental health, so I’m prioritising space in my calendar to think deeply, focus at work and spend time with family. This means I am saying no to all external things other than work and family. That will not always be the case. It’s temporary. Whilst it is, I avoid overcommitting and I keep my word.
I spoke to Steven about this. You risk sounding rude because you don’t respond to WhatsApp, DMs and e-mails. However, I’ve learnt to accept that. I know when responding is my priority, I keep my word.
You are somebody, Dan, who champions your team. How did you recruit people who were more skilled than you at driving the business forward?
Your job as a founder is to be a generalist. I’ve done all the jobs at Heights averagely. It’s not difficult to find someone with more skills than you. What is really hard is finding people aligned with your company's values and that you trust. Even if you find the right people, you have to interview, hire, onboard and manage people to a healthy point. Finding them is not the challenge, nurturing them is.
My last company failed. We had a lot of skilful people on big salaries. Once the company started to fail, the culture went off a cliff. Why? Because we didn’t focus on values.
What’s hard is asking the right questions to see how they respond to experiences in their life related to the value you are testing. You know it’s right when you feel motivated to work with these people every day.
Were there any cliffhanger moments at Heights?
We launched on January 6th 2020. We were meant to raise money in March. I caught COVID and I was extremely ill on a ventilator. I was out cold in February. My business partner Joel was out on his own ‒ there were no employees. In March, I flew out to LA to meet with investors. I had to come home two days later because of COVID. We had to bootstrap, hire and do everything slower. After one year of writing a newsletter and preparing for launch. That was a good cliffhanger moment. It certainly did not go to plan.
It was an absolute pleasure to learn from Dan ‒ the overall message I felt from him was to not rush, lean into failure and be willing to play the long game. In true compassionate change-maker fashion, through going deeper in his personal growth he has made a difference to others.
Read more about Dan’s story here and learn about a braincare company centred on compassion here.
With compassion,
Dr Nilesh Satguru
