And honestly, I still think that's why it worked.

My background has nothing to do with advertising. For years I worked in sporting goods, managing large retail accounts. JD Sports, Frasers Group. My world was product, commercial relationships, understanding how brands got in front of the right people in the right places.

Media and screens? Not my world at all.

So when VYZR came about it didn't start with a strategy deck or a market report. It started in a gym.

Scott had been working in the independent gym space through his design and build company for a while. He'd noticed brands wanting access to these facilities and their audiences but no real way of doing it. When he brought the idea to me it landed straight away.

I'd been a member at David Lloyd in Chorley for a while. They'd just gone through a refurb, new look, real investment. And right by the treadmills there was this huge wall. Prominent. Unavoidable. A huge empty wall with one lonely screen that just screamed of something that could have been utilised so much better.

About two weeks before I'd been in London and walked past a full LED wrapped space on Tottenham Court Road. One of those installations you genuinely can't walk past without stopping. The brand owned that environment completely. It felt immersive.

Standing in that gym those two things just collided.

When I spoke to Scott about it the word that kept coming up was immersive. That's what really clicked for both of us. Not just putting a screen somewhere. Actually giving brands a proper canvas in an environment they deserved to be in. Gyms are one of the most captive, motivated, high attention environments out there. People are there three, four, five times a week. Present in a way they're not anywhere else.

And then there's the independent gym specifically. Nobody was looking at that segment. That's where the proper, authentic, committed communities are. Not the transactional consumer popping into PureGym every now and then. Real people, real habits, real loyalty.

The big OOH networks weren't interested in that. They wanted shopping centres and transport hubs. The independent gym was being completely ignored.

That felt like a gap worth building something in.

By the end of that conversation Scott was going to look into the tech and I was going to build the deck to start seeking investment. That's where our skills sit. And that was basically that.

Eighteen months in we know things about this market we simply couldn't have known at the start. The DOOH industry has its own language and its own way of doing things and we've had to earn our place in it. We're still earning it.

But the belief hasn't wavered once. Not even close.

Sometimes the people with no business doing something are exactly the right people to do it.

This is the first in a series where we'll be sharing the story behind VYZR. The decisions, the lessons, where we're going. If you're a gym owner, a brand, or just someone who finds the build interesting, follow along.

We Had No Business Starting a Media Company