Meet Ruari Fairbairns, founder of One Year No Beer

Originally from a small island off the West coast of Scotland, in my younger years, I was no stranger to a pint or two. After moving down to London and starting a career as an oil broker, I quickly fell into the ‘work hard, play hard’ style of living. After meeting my wife, and having a child, my old ways started to wear thin and create friction in my relationships as well as cause me a few health problems. Reluctant to blame alcohol for any of these issues, I took an anger management programme where I quickly learned that coffee and alcohol are the two biggest instigators of anger. After reading this, I decided to drop them for the length of the programme (90 days) and that is when everything changed.

What inspired you to launch One Year No Beer and what is the end goal?

Happier, healthier and fitter for being 90 days alcohol and caffeine free, I realised that no one was championing the benefits of abstaining from alcohol - but instead, all of the focus was on how bad drinking was for. That is when I decided to set up One Year No Beer, a toolkit for surviving modern society alcohol-free. The support platform has since recruited over 70,000 members worldwide. I believe that having a community is crucial to making a positive lifestyle change and I now spend my life, constantly finding new and exciting ways to provide this support

How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?

OYNB is not an abstinence programme; it is not about eliminating alcohol entirely. It’s about breaking down old habits and building new ones and creating a positive mindset that lets the individual take back control and make clear-sighted decisions when it comes to booze.

Our solution is to connect the human race over peer support. We build technology that facilitates that connection through behaviour change. If you think about what a journey might look like for someone – they have perhaps got an issue where they feel a symptom (anxiety, depression, weight loss, insomnia) and they are searching for a solution and on that search, they get introduced to habit change. Are you drinking too much? Here is a solution to help you with this. Are any of these things affecting you? Well, follow this programme and, when you follow the programme, you get introduced to a community of people who are living how you want to live, and this is when the behaviour changes forever. The community are the life blood of everything that we do.

Keeping an eye on the numbers in any business is important. How do you ensure that you’re always up to date? 

Absolutely - The Leadership team run through the business KPI's daily, weekly and more in depth monthly. These range from happiness scores, to survey results, to coaching, product squad updates etc. We have regular calls and update meetings and they update me on all of these figures so that I always have the full overview of the business and can make decisions that are informed by these numbers.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur? 

I can't wait to write my book – I’m going to call it the 1001 Things Not to Do in Business. These things have cost me an absolute fortune, after all this is my 6th start-up! The biggest lesson that I have learnt since being in business is: Surround yourself with good people who compliment your weaknesses - for me there are so many, so I need a big team!!! Jokes aside, we can’t all be good at everything so build a team that complements you and you’ll go far!

With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why? 

As I mentioned before, our solution is to connect the human race over peer support. We build technology that facilitates connection through behaviour change. If you think about what a journey might look like for someone and they are searching for a solution and on that search,  they get introduced to habit change. We don’t want to stop there, we want to keep innovating which is why we have just launched a £1M funding round on Seedrs. This funding will be used to further develop the technology infrastructure of the business, allowing them to scale their lifestyle support system which facilitates sustained behavioural changes, through the power of community and connection.

What are your thoughts on failure?

Failure is critical to success and I celebrate it every day.  Celebrate it with your kids, laugh, then learn then get back on the horse.

Do you have a morning routine or ritual to get your day started on the right foot? 

Every morning, I take some time out and focus it towards looking at the areas of my life and identifying the lowest point so I can recognise where I can focus. For example if I haven’t seen friends for 2 months, not even on a zoom call, then I am low on social area and I really need to make some effort to pick that up and focus on it. Nothing will ever be in perfect balance because there will always be so many factors in your life pulling against each other, so my best advice is to stop searching for a perfect work life balance, just keep readjusting.

How do you believe the evolution of tech will affect your industry over the next 10 years?

We will revolutionise our industry with technology. This is exactly what we intend to do, to use the latest in technology to bring cutting edge behaviour change across multiple verticals and into all geographies. We are also particularly excited about what VR will do for trauma and changing behaviour long term as well as AI and coaching interventions - watch this space!

What’s the most important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves? 

Entrepreneurs should constantly be asking themselves and pushing themselves to consider how they can think bigger!

Personally I think we can help solve unemployment - when I tell my team that, they look at me like I've gone mad. But I like to think big. When Elon Musk announced that we might not colonise Mars in his lifetime - that's when Big Vision is matched with Operational Reality - something all entrepreneurs have to face (briefly) before getting back out there and staying in the vision.