Tom Gozney founded Gozney just over a decade ago with the company quickly becoming a market leader in its field.
With offices around the world in countries such as the UK and the US, Gozney is a product design brand that makes pizza ovens for consumer and commercial settings, and has evolved and grown rapidly from its humble roots.
“It started through making a pizza in my house in the conventional oven, it was a little bit soggy and rubbish, so I went on a quest to build a pizza oven in my garden,” explained Tom.
When Tom set-up Gozney he was at a crossroads in his life. He had just come out of rehabilitation in South Africa after spending the best part of a year inside due to alcoholism and drug addiction.
“I came out and I was reintroduced to society, trying to figure out who I was, where I fit,” he described.
Reflecting on who was at the time of launching Gozney and leaving rehab, Tom said: “My persona prior to that was the messhead in the corner. I was the guy who was the life and soul of the party, and it was my persona to be this sort of wild guy.”
In search of who he is, his personality and his interests, Tom invested a lot of time into cooking for his friends and family and it wasn’t long before his interest developed into something bigger.
“What happened from then was pretty incredible, the series of events that took place. It just completely changed my life, the way I socialised, it removed levels of vulnerability from my life, it gave me purpose and made me feel at home,” explained Tom.
Upon leaving rehabilitation, Tom was still in a vulnerable state and lacked a proper education after being kicked out of multiple schools and being unable to obtain GCSEs due to his behaviour and dyslexia, something that Tom admitted to struggling with thorough-out his youth and adult life.
“I was highly dyslexic going through school, so I just didn’t achieve. I had no GCSE’s, I got thrown out of all the schools I went to because I was naughty,” Tom described.
However, despite these challenges, Gozney helped Tom find out who he was, what he was good at, and what he wanted to achieve, by acting as canvass for him to work across a variety of different disciplines.
“When I started building the business it was this grassroots self-taught marketing, self-taught brand, product design, all of this stuff. It was the best education I could have ever asked for, jumping in at the deep-end,” he reflected.
ADDICTION, REHABILITATION AND COMING CLEAN
The evolution of Gozney and the transformation its experienced over the last decade isn’t just a reflection of the brand’s success but also Tom’s journey with conquering addiction and discovering who he is as a person.
Looking back at his life growing up, Tom stressed that he was privileged and came from a loving and supportive family, pinpointing his addiction to his school life where he struggled with dyslexia and was lightly bullied.
“I didn’t really know where I fit. I didn’t really fit in with kids in school, I wasn’t doing well, so I started to misbehave and what I found kids responded to me and I became popular because of it. I was the naughty kid,” revealed Tom.
Left unchallenged, Tom carried this behaviour into his teenage years when he discovered and started using drugs, providing him with escapism cancelling the noise and stresses of the outside world.
“All of sudden drugs were an everyday thing for us. If we were partying we’d take drugs, if we were sad we would take drugs, if I got into an argument with my parents I’d take drugs, and all of a sudden I became an all-time drug addict.”
Tom’s worsening alcoholism and drug use was routinely getting him trouble with the police, forcing him to address and control his problem, only for Tom to find out this was easier said than done.
“When I was trying to stop, my using just got 10x worse, so much to the point where I went downhill. I suppose that was the beginning of significant suffering from a mental health perspective,
