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Bootstrap Your Life

How to Turn £500 into £350 Million

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Bootstrap Your Life

By: Oliver Cookson
Narrated by: Gavin Osborn
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About this listen

Short-listed, Business Book Awards, Start Up Scale Up category, 2022

An inspiring rags-to-riches guide to achieving success in life and business by the founder of Myprotein®.

How did a working-class 23-year-old, who left school with almost no qualifications, launch a business with just a £500 overdraft and turn it into more than £350 million? In Bootstrap Your Life, Oliver Cookson shares how he was able to build Europe's number one online brand using nothing more than his own limited resources and the right mindset.

Self-sufficient and self-taught, Oliver always had an eye for opportunities and pursued them obsessively. His breakthrough came when he combined his passion for health and fitness with his skills as a web developer. By embracing a disruptive, agile approach to business, offering unparalleled choice and identifying trends ahead of the competition, Oliver was able to grow Myprotein® rapidly into a top international, award-winning brand.

In Bootstrap Your Life, Oliver doesn't just share his journey but uses simple language to break down every aspect of his thinking, providing a thorough step-by-step guide on how to think like an entrepreneur. His approach to marketing, innovation, strategy, leadership and other key elements are explained in great detail using memorable analogies that anyone can relate to.

Oliver explains how bootstrapping his life catapulted him from an ordinary life in the suburbs of Greater Manchester to being included in the Sunday Times Rich List with a personal net worth of more than a third of a billion pounds. His message is clear: bootstrap your life!

©2021 Oliver Cookson (P)2021 Hachette Audio UK
Biographies & Memoirs Entrepreneurship Motivation & Self-Improvement Business Career Inspiring
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Critic reviews


Oliver shares plenty of business war stories, insights and personal anecdotes on how he bootstrapped an amazing business into something that changed his and his customers' lives forever. I love how he highlights the skills he developed along the way and continued to maintain a sense of curiosity throughout the ups and downs of business life. A must-read for all entrepreneurs. (Ash Ali, bestselling author of The Unfair Advantage)

What listeners say about Bootstrap Your Life

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Stunning

Stunning book …. great and insightful! Loved every minute!
Thank you for writing Oliver! 100% recommend

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Good memoir

He talks a lot about his experience starting my protein
A lot of key advice and takeaways
Good reference point for entrepreneurs

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Excellent Book.

Very inspiring book. Opened up my mind to a lot of things. Great book for entrepreneurs. Thanks Oliver

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Inspiring story with so many lessons!

Oliver's story is truly inspiring. He is proof that with the right dedication and work ethic you can achieve epic things. Lots of lessons and takeaways for me in my own business. Bootstrapping is the way forward!

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Really interesting read!

Great insight into Olivers journey in life and business.
A must read for anyone with a start up or thinking or starting a new business.
Some great tips and lessons to learn. Also fascinating to hear about the sale of the business process.
Overall a great real life rags to riches story , which can only make you smile and be happy to see someone's success from their hard work and determination.
Also great to hear meditation and mindfulness plays a part in his life. 🙏


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inspiring but the narrator is a bit annoying

Inspiring story and not full of lies like most self made stories.
The narrator mispronounces certain words and it really takes you out of the story. Eg. he pronounces shamen 'shayyyymen', beta 'beeeeta' and tolle 'toller' like why??? so annoying.

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One of the best I have listened to

Having listened to Oliver Cookson’s podcast, Bootstrap Your Life, I was waiting for this book to be released for a while. It is a fantastic story and a must read/listen for any aspiring entrepreneur. It is full of practical advice backed up by real world recollections from his time building My Protein. I am 1 year in to running an online food business and took so much from this book I am about to listen to it again.

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Great read - 5 stars

Excellent to hear the journey. Nice that a lot of detail is shared rather than skimmed.

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Boring Self-Inflated Dirge

This is the sort of Audible book that makes me think about cancelling my subscription. There’s very limited useful information in here. I’ll summarise to save you the credit and time. The author has some kind of inbuilt superpower for business that he knew he had since he was 8 years old. He got a U in IT but ended up being a tech genius by quitting college and learning everything himself and working for someone else. He worked 16 hour days for 8 years on an idea he had down the gym to make protein bars cheaper than the competition. He bought his first couple of sacks of protein powder for a few hundred quid, made the bars himself and repeatedly doubled up purchases of more sacks on the profits he made. He worked out how to do SEO and passed out referral cards to all the body builder guys he saw. 8 years later his company was massive and he sold it for millions. My advice - save yourself the ego loaded “look at me” story and listen to something more interesting and useful.

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1 person found this helpful