0:00

Daniel Priestley is the ultimate money-making

0:02

machine . He's a serial entrepreneur who's built

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multiple multi-million pound businesses

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from scratch , and today you're going to learn all

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the secrets behind scaling your business , mastering

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demand generation and using personal

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branding to dominate your industry All

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this from the man who's mentored over three and

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a half thousand businesses to success

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. So , whether you're just starting out or

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you're already trading and you're looking to take things to that

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next level , daniel's proven strategies

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are going to help you with rethinking how to grow smarter

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, faster and bigger .

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Today we've got a guest I've been looking

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forward to for a long time . We've got

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author , entrepreneur and all-around

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great guy , daniel Priestley , in the

0:38

studio . Thanks for being here , dan . Thanks for having me on

0:40

. Thanks for having me on . I was telling you before we

0:42

started I've been very much looking forward to this and

0:45

there's I'd say you're

0:47

probably both very different , but there's two people I can listen

0:49

to for hours on end , which is you , and

0:52

I know it's probably Celine Dion . Well

0:55

, not quite as beautiful as Celine , but

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I know it's pretty cliched in this space as well . But I love

1:00

listening to Alex Hormoz as well , I think , and

1:02

you're kind of similar

1:04

but different insofar as um

1:06

it's you know , very , very direct

1:09

, simple , easy to understand stuff . Obviously , you

1:11

know the Americans are always different I was about to say the Brits

1:13

, but you're not . You're not . Uh , I think you're as

1:15

British , uh , but uh , you know , the Americans

1:17

always have their Americanisms , don't they ? But I do find

1:20

Alex very , very chilled and you can listen to for

1:22

hours on end , whereas Grant Card Cardone love Grant

1:24

as well , but very much aggressive and in your face

1:26

and you've got to take him in small doses

1:28

. But I just find Alex so clever

1:31

and simple at breaking stuff down , and

1:33

I think the same of you as well .

1:35

So that's my complimentary introduction . I

1:37

think if you've been in business a while and

1:40

you've been on the front line of

1:42

bootstrapping businesses and growing businesses

1:44

and all that sort of stuff , you tend to notice the

1:46

same sort of things that work and don't work . So

1:48

you can get two guys like myself and Alex on the

1:50

opposite sides of the world noticing

1:53

exactly the same stuff . It's universally

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true . It's the way humans

1:57

behave everywhere

1:59

. So I think

2:01

in some cases he's just noticed the

2:03

same stuff , I've noticed the same stuff and

2:06

yeah , and , I guess , for the

2:08

people who don't know , just to set the scene

2:10

a bit .

2:11

I mean , who are you , where

2:13

did you come from ? And

2:15

, I guess , how did you get

2:17

so clever ? Learn what you've learned to

2:21

be able to you know , break down

2:23

and and understand all these concepts that

2:25

business owners need to know I've been an entrepreneur

2:27

for about 22 years .

2:29

I started my first company at 21 and

2:32

that was in australia and it was a very fast

2:34

growth company . So it went from zero to a

2:36

million in its first year and then it went to 10

2:38

million in year three , um

2:40

, you know . So we went

2:42

brisbane , sydney , melbourne and we kind of expanded

2:44

really quickly and I ended

2:47

up expanding into the UK and launching

2:49

a London office in like 17

2:51

years ago . But since then

2:53

I've also done a series of acquisitions

2:55

, so I've bought a bunch of businesses , I've

2:58

sold some businesses , I've done several startups so I've launched

3:00

technology companies . Recently I've had I've done several startups so

3:02

I've launched technology companies . Recently I've

3:05

got two software businesses . I currently run

3:07

a group of eight companies and

3:10

my way of processing my journey

3:12

is writing . I really kind of like enjoy

3:15

slowing my mind down and kind of either

3:18

blogging or tweeting sometimes

3:20

or just writing articles . And

3:23

about 10 years ago I started writing books and

3:26

I've written six books on entrepreneurship

3:29

. So it's kind of like been my way of processing

3:31

my entrepreneurial journey . Um

3:34

, so I guess that's that's it lots of businesses

3:36

buying and selling , starting and scaling

3:39

and uh and writing .

3:40

So , going back to that first business you set up , which I think

3:42

you said was a million and three million and

3:45

ten , million yeah , in terms of turnover

3:47

. I mean , did you know what you were doing back

3:49

then ? I ?

3:50

did a bit . Uh , I had worked for two

3:52

years for this guy called john and I was just

3:54

super lucky that , uh

3:57

, I was employee number three for john and

3:59

he had no business name , no

4:01

bank account , no offices any of that sort

4:03

of stuff . So we rock up up at his house and

4:06

we're starting a business and he's got this big

4:08

thing out on the table which

4:10

is the yearly planner , and we're basically

4:13

putting our first campaigns in and we're going to try

4:15

and do this by this date and this is what we're going to do Literally

4:18

, this is what we'll do on Wednesday and this is what we'll do the

4:20

following Thursday and kind of map out the

4:22

whole year . And

4:24

that business took off . So that

4:27

business went zero to six million in two years

4:29

and we went from no employees

4:31

to 60 employees in about two years . So

4:34

it's pretty like it's a little

4:36

bit monkey see , monkey do . And

4:42

it was the ability to kind of go through a startup journey without risking anything myself and

4:44

to have that experience of being under a mentor's

4:46

wing every single day . I mean , we

4:48

were working crazy hours , you know , 60

4:50

hours a week , being a direct report

4:53

to an entrepreneur , and then

4:55

that kind of gave me . You know what

4:57

I needed to know . Um two

4:59

years in , I had a conversation with john about can

5:01

I get shares in his company ? And he said , no , uh

5:04

. So I went off and started my own and you

5:06

know , I copied what I'd learnt and started

5:08

a fast growth company .

5:10

I was going to ask you that actually because I'd seen in a couple

5:12

of the other podcasts you'd done . You know you tell the story

5:14

where you asked John for some equity

5:16

. I mean knowing what

5:18

you know now about running businesses and

5:20

building teams and , I guess

5:23

, maintaining loyalty . Do

5:25

you think you made a mistake ?

5:26

not , giving you that equity ? Um

5:28

, well , certainly not the way I pitched it . Uh

5:31

, so we were loading boxes into the car and

5:33

I was telling him that I wanted equity in the

5:35

company . So anything that's a big decision

5:37

like you know , equity or something like that . If I

5:39

had the maturity , I would have put together a slide deck

5:42

and I would have explained what I'll do for that equity

5:44

. I wouldn't have felt entitled to it . I would

5:46

have said you know , this is what

5:48

you know , this is what I intend to develop

5:50

for you . And you know , here's the extra

5:52

side of the business . Is there a way that you can structure

5:54

it that would work for you , work for me ? So

5:56

there's lots of ways . I could have approached it much better . Given

5:59

the way that I approached it , I

6:01

think he would have been crazy to say yes , it

6:03

was a ridiculous , immature , entitled

6:07

way of going about asking for

6:09

equity in a business .

6:10

Well , I guess it was the best

6:13

mistake he ever made for you . Hey , matt

6:15

, here Just interrupting myself quickly to say

6:17

thank you for listening to no Bollocks . But did

6:19

you also know I've got another podcast , stripping Off with

6:21

Matt Haycox Very different . No Bollocks is the quick daily business tactics that you need

6:23

, but Stripping Off with Matt Haycox Very different no bollocks , it's the quick

6:25

daily business tactics that you need , but Stripping

6:28

Off , we go deep , deep , deep with

6:30

a CEO , with a celebrity , with

6:32

an athlete , with just an international inspiring

6:34

character . We find out what makes them tick , we

6:37

find out how they got to where they got to and we find

6:39

out how you can learn and benefit from them too

6:41

. So jump on over to Spotify , itunes

6:44

, youtube , wherever you listen to your content , and

6:46

I'll see you on a future episode . So

6:48

I first heard your name in the context

6:50

of this Key Person of Influence book

6:53

a few years ago . I

6:55

forget why , and I'm glad

6:57

you brought this fresh copy , because my copy is very

6:59

well read , very well travelled and probably doesn't

7:01

even say Key Person of Influence on it anymore . But

7:05

I mean , I traveled and probably doesn't even say key person of influence

7:07

on it anymore . Um , but I mean , I'm I'm a massive advocate for personal

7:09

branding . Uh , you know , I I mean I've been , let's say , working on building

7:11

mine over the last few years . But one of the things I always talk

7:13

about with personal branding is that for

7:16

all the people who say , oh , I don't want to do that thing , I'm not

7:18

into personal branding , I would say you would

7:20

, you will have one anyway . You know , we , we

7:22

have a brand , whether we like it or not . You know

7:25

whether that's a CEO of a business , whether

7:27

it's the receptionist . You know , to

7:29

me that personal brand is just your character

7:32

traits . You know what you know and as in how people

7:34

see you . Now , whether or not you

7:36

want to be seen in the way people see you and whether

7:38

or not you've amplified it enough , I

7:45

guess , is a different question . But we all hear about , people , talk about personal brand , personal

7:47

brand all the time now . But for me , your book , and particularly your methodology , came

7:49

out long before the words personal , personal

7:51

branding even really existed , certainly

7:54

long before it's been bashed all around the internet

7:56

. And how

7:58

did you , I guess , come

8:00

to know and understand

8:02

all the things that you've written about in the book

8:04

? Come to know and understand all

8:06

the things that you've written about in the book ? And and am I right in saying that it was very much

8:08

? Well , I know it was very much before anyone was talking about it now

8:11

, but I mean , did people understand branding at all

8:13

back then ? Or were you really the first person to put

8:15

I wrote the book in ?

8:15

2009 and the book came out

8:17

in 2010 , so it's really early , like

8:20

no one was talking about it at the

8:22

time . Um , not in a serious

8:24

way and not in a structured way . The

8:27

thing that I noticed was so I

8:29

believe , that US presidential elections

8:31

tell us the big trends that are coming In

8:34

the same way that Formula One tells you

8:36

kind of the technology that's coming in cars

8:38

. Us presidential elections

8:40

tell you the technology that's coming in marketing

8:42

. So in the 1930s

8:45

, franklin Roosevelt started this thing

8:47

called the fireside chat , which was a radio conversation

8:50

, and then national radio overtook print

8:52

. And then in 1963

8:56

, jfk had a televised debate with

8:59

Nixon , and that

9:01

signified television as

9:03

the big technology . And

9:06

then fast forward to 2008, . We've

9:08

got Obama Everywhere , which was a social media

9:10

campaign , and it won him the election . His engagement

9:13

on social media was the thing that

9:15

gave him an edge in 2008 . And

9:18

for me , that signified that the

9:20

big thing that's happening is this social

9:22

media revolution , that it's no longer a

9:24

toy , it's not something that kids do . It's

9:26

actually a proper , serious way to win a presidential

9:28

election . So I was really

9:31

deeply up to my elbows in trying

9:33

to understand how does this work

9:35

? How did he do it , how did he use

9:37

it ? How could ? What could we learn from it

9:39

? Um , so I started kind

9:41

of delivering little mini talks and workshops

9:44

about it and started to unpack it in

9:46

some slides and wrote some blogs and

9:48

articles about it . Basically said you've got

9:50

to position yourself as a key person of influence . You've got

9:52

to build your reach . This is going to be more important than

9:54

your company brand , more important than your product

9:56

brands . Basically , the opening

9:58

line of the book is something like in

10:00

every industry , there are key people of influence

10:03

. Their names come up in conversation . They

10:05

can get more things done , they

10:07

can launch products , they can raise

10:09

money , they have , have

10:11

more fun . You know you need

10:13

to become one of these key people of influence . So I was

10:15

really kind of gunning for this idea that you should push

10:18

, push a personal brand as as

10:20

one of the key strategies for your marketing and

10:23

, but prior to learning about

10:25

it and studying it from then did you see yourself

10:28

as a key person , did you have

10:30

a brand ?

10:31

and I guess some of those traits anyway

10:33

.

10:33

Not massively . I was in event marketing

10:36

and promotions business . So the

10:38

business that I grew was an agency that

10:40

specialized in running events and we

10:42

would launch new products and services

10:44

into new markets . It was nearly

10:46

impossible to do that without a personal brand

10:48

at the front . So this is my experience of seeing

10:51

personal brands . We

10:53

used to partner with maybe a software company and

10:55

say , okay , who's the best person to capture

10:57

everyone's attention so that they'll

10:59

show up and see the launch ? Or we'd do

11:02

something in like financial services and we'd try

11:04

and find the right speaker for everyone

11:06

three , four , five hundred people to show up , uh

11:09

, so that we could launch , you know , this new

11:11

financial services brand . So I'd

11:14

been doing this for 10 years and I knew exactly

11:16

what what worked . I knew the

11:18

type of person that would work on a stage . I

11:20

knew the type of person that could attract

11:23

an audience , make sales , you

11:25

know , create a buzz . So I was

11:27

behind the scenes picking these people and

11:30

I had a checklist as to what I was going to pick and

11:33

I used the checklist as the formula for

11:36

for the book .

11:37

I remember seeing it for the first time in action

11:39

or first time I saw it anyway probably

11:41

around just before you wrote the book

11:43

, actually about 2008, . 2009,

11:46

. Jordan Belfort

11:49

had just written the book . The movie hadn't

11:51

happened , but he'd just written the book . And

11:53

the book was out and I remember my mate

11:55

saying to me oh look , you won't believe it Jordan

11:57

Belfort's coming to talk in Leeds . I'm thinking what the

11:59

hell is he ? He was coming to the Metropole Hotel

12:01

, which he was coming to , the Metropole Hotel , which was this small

12:03

little hotel with a tiny function . I'm thinking what the hell is he

12:05

doing there ? So he said it's a free talk , let's

12:07

sign up . So we signed up to this free talk . Obviously

12:10

, we found out afterwards that he was effectively

12:12

being put on by some Liverpudlian

12:15

property developer and in

12:17

the run-up to the talk , we'd be getting email after email

12:19

of quite ironic at the time

12:21

that Jordan Belfort was recommending

12:23

these various investments . But you know , please buy

12:26

this Liverpool property for , you

12:28

know , 20% below market value , but it's

12:31

, you know , the concept is great , you know

12:33

, drags us all in . We sit there , listen

12:35

to Jordan's speech and then , when he jumps off stage

12:37

, we get pounced on by by salesmen

12:40

to buy all these various property developments the

12:43

old bait and switch . So

12:50

, in terms of key person of influence , one of the things I wanted to ask you about is what I see almost

12:52

as the opposite of key person of influence , because people

12:56

look at branding and influencers

13:00

as that key person of influence . It's like , oh , this person on

13:02

Instagram , they've got this massive following , they're

13:04

a key person of influence . It's like , oh , this person on Instagram , they've got this massive following

13:07

. You know that they're a key person of influence . But to me , 99% of these people , let's say

13:09

, they've got influence because they've walked off a tv

13:11

show and people know who they are , but

13:14

then they don't have any of the other , then

13:16

any of the other traits , the skill sets . You know

13:18

the depth to a

13:20

business or anything behind it , and for me , that

13:22

you know the absolute lost opportunity

13:24

and you know most of these people will never

13:27

actually do it because I guess they've got the uh

13:29

arrogance for want of a better word

13:31

of thinking , thinking that they've already got to the end of the game

13:33

because they've got the celebrity , but they

13:35

have , but they haven't got all the substance behind it . Um

13:38

, I don't , I know what I'm saying . I'm sure

13:40

you can probably translate .

13:42

I think it's the difference between being an influencer

13:44

and being a key person of influence . So an influencer

13:46

has got a big profile . They've got , you know , a hundred

13:48

thousand followers , a million followers , tens of millions

13:51

of followers , but they don't have all the other

13:53

things you know . And a lot of the time now we

13:55

see influencers who are just good looking people and they're

13:57

just you know . They've got great bodies and

13:59

they've got great , you know , looks and

14:02

they've built up hundreds of thousands of followers

14:04

just by , you know , being good-looking on Instagram

14:06

. But it doesn't translate into much , you

14:08

know . It doesn't translate into having a business

14:10

or having actual , real influence

14:12

. In many cases , a lot of these people

14:15

can't actually sell product

14:17

or sell anything into the marketplace , not

14:20

of anything you know sizable with

14:22

substance anymore . So

14:24

it's it's important that we see the distinction

14:26

between a key person of influence and an

14:29

influencer . An influencer

14:31

can become a key person of influence . They can start with

14:33

that profile and build it out and strengthen

14:36

it and actually build something from it . But

14:38

also you can start with something else . You can start with

14:40

a business or a product and build out your influence

14:42

. Tim

14:46

Cook of Apple has become a key person of influence because he's had to , he's

14:48

had to follow in steve jobs's footsteps

14:50

. Um ryan reynolds

14:53

has started as a hollywood actor with a huge

14:55

profile and he's become a key person of influence because

14:57

look at his business empire and the way that he

14:59

mobilizes resources around . You

15:01

know the businesses that he's got . He's on

15:03

his on track to be a billionaire . So

15:07

what we're really talking about is not someone

15:09

who's an influencer . We're not talking about you

15:11

know , photographing your breakfast

15:13

and your gym routine and your abs and all that

15:15

sort of stuff . We're talking about , you know , being

15:17

a business person who leads with their personal brand

15:19

, who builds a relationship with people using digital

15:22

assets , who uses

15:24

their brand to attract talented people around them

15:26

, who uses their brand to have joint

15:28

ventures and partnerships . So

15:31

we're talking a lot more like a Richard Branson

15:33

, or we're talking more like a Tim Cook , or

15:35

we're talking like I mean , realistically

15:38

, pick any major business these days , ceo

15:40

has a brand If they're a fast growth

15:43

business , that's how it is .

15:44

And obviously you talk about the CEO having a brand , and I assume

15:46

this book was written with the audience

15:49

being CEOs and entrepreneurs , but

15:51

do you think it could be and should be applicable

15:54

to all people within a business ? I

15:56

mean , should everyone try and become

15:59

a key person in their own little

16:01

world ? And I guess just a bit more context . I mean , we talk

16:03

about look in my businesses

16:05

. We often do like LinkedIn training , and

16:08

I always get a lot of pushback

16:10

from most people and I'm always saying to them listen

16:12

, you know , this is not just for me , this

16:15

is more for you , you know one day you're going

16:17

to want to leave me . You know , one day you're

16:19

going to want to achieve something different , and the

16:21

best way for you to be able to do that is

16:24

to have some kind of brand . You don't need to be a business

16:26

owner . You can be anyone in a

16:28

business and have some kind of profile

16:30

.

16:31

Yeah , it's good to capture a little bit

16:33

of the brand equity . I

16:37

don't necessarily think everyone needs to have a brand . I'll give you

16:39

a great example . My co-founder

16:41

in ScoreApp is a guy called Steve . Steve

16:47

is a brilliant technology developer and he's really good

16:49

at developing technology platforms , recruiting

16:51

talented tech tech people . He's

16:53

really great at managing

16:56

them and getting them to be

16:58

, you know , super creative and he's good at fixing

17:00

any errors that happen . If

17:03

he's distracted with lots and lots of inquiries

17:05

and lots and lots of people who want him to

17:07

be , you know , on a podcast , he's

17:10

not going to be able to do the thing that he does really , really well

17:12

, which is behind the scenes . His perfect year is

17:14

he meets 10 new people and they're all developers

17:16

. But there's

17:19

a reason that he and I are in business together

17:21

because we're playing a team sport . I don't have to worry team sport . I

17:23

don't have to worry about the tech . He

17:25

doesn't have to worry about the podcasts . So

17:28

we go really really well together , but we own

17:30

a company together . So the value

17:32

of what he does and the value of what I do ends

17:35

up in the value of the business . Now

17:37

, a lot of people you know

17:39

a lot of people . They're

17:42

not in that situation . So if you're

17:44

in business with someone who's got a whopping big

17:46

brand , happy days you've .

17:48

You've found that person , but provided you own

17:50

equity in the company one of the things I

17:53

heard you say , uh , the other day on a podcast

17:55

was well , I wrote it down it's a key personal

17:57

influence that shouldn't be running their business

17:59

, and I actually recently

18:01

heard heard someone else saying that you know a a good

18:04

CEO doesn't do any work , which

18:07

I presume the two things are probably heading

18:09

in the same direction . If you are a true

18:12

key person of influence , is that ultimately

18:14

where you will get to that

18:16

all the kind of day-to-day tasks are

18:18

delegated and your job is there

18:20

as a promoter , a connector , a figurehead

18:23

?

18:23

Yeah , I think the value proposition of a great CEO

18:26

is someone who can bring in great , talented

18:28

people , create alignment

18:30

within the team , promote

18:33

the business , open doors , create demand

18:35

. For whatever it is that you do , you know the hardest

18:37

thing in business is demand . Every business

18:39

is a relationship between demand

18:41

and supply . So if you

18:43

think about a

18:45

business that should be very , very profitable but

18:48

isn't very profitable is an airline , because

18:50

everyone in an airline thinks about how planes

18:52

take off and land on time and it's

18:54

all about supply side . It's about safety and capital

18:57

allocation and

18:59

all of the things that go into the supply of running

19:02

airplanes . You

19:04

take a business that is focused

19:06

on the demand generation . Take

19:08

Rolex , for example . They're

19:11

very , very focused on how to make sure Rolex

19:13

is the number one brand . They have all

19:15

the top athletes and all the top sports events

19:18

and all that that they work with , and

19:20

they're very focused on the demand creation

19:22

. Now , if you take any business , the

19:25

demand side is way harder than the

19:27

supply side For a long time in the industrial

19:30

age . If you could build it , people would buy

19:32

it . If you could create

19:34

a pair of scissors , you could smelt

19:36

the steel somehow , pin

19:38

them together and sharpen them and all that stuff . Whatever

19:40

you do to make scissors , if you could make a pair

19:42

of scissors , people would buy the pairs of

19:44

scissors . That wasn't the problem . The

19:47

hard thing was making it . Fast forward

19:49

to today . You go on Amazon and you type in the word scissors

19:51

. You're going to see 150 different versions

19:53

of scissors . You're going to have clothing

19:56

scissors and craft scissors and kid

19:58

scissors and colorful scissors and giant scissors

20:00

. You know little tiny ones that fit in the

20:02

purse , right ? You're going to get

20:04

that like thousands and thousands . The hard

20:07

thing is not making something . The hard thing is selling

20:09

stuff . So the CEO or the

20:11

founder or the entrepreneur has to be on the demand

20:13

side . Now , this is the biggest

20:15

error that all entrepreneurs are making . All

20:17

entrepreneurs get into something that they love the idea

20:19

of doing the work . They go oh , you

20:21

know , I want to be a coach . Why ? Because I like

20:24

the idea of coaching people . Okay , that's great

20:26

. How are you going to win coaching clients ? You

20:28

know , oh , I want to run health retreats

20:31

. Why ? Because I love the idea of running a health retreat . Okay

20:33

, but how are you going to fill the health retreat ? So

20:41

it's the demand generation side that's hard . That's what stops

20:43

people . That's what makes businesses fail . It's

20:49

almost never the case that a business is flooded with demand . Everyone

20:51

wants to buy from that business and the business goes bankrupt . It's always the

20:53

case that they're very good at the supply of what they do

20:55

and they can't sell it .

20:57

And in today's world , where there

20:59

pretty much isn't any new products , everything's

21:02

already been done , how

21:05

does someone create that demand ? How

21:07

do they create distribution ?

21:09

It's personal brand , it is having

21:11

a relationship with the marketplace . There

21:14

are certain things like for me me personally if I

21:16

launch a piece of software , which

21:18

I've launched a piece of software just a couple

21:21

of weeks ago , there's

21:23

a few thousand people who will show

21:25

up to a launch event just to see

21:27

what what's dan launching . If

21:29

someone who doesn't have a personal brand launches

21:31

the exact same product , very

21:33

few people will show up and and and talk

21:36

about it .

21:36

And if someone with a bigger brand than me launched the same product

21:38

, they'd get a better result again and

21:40

short of telling that that business

21:42

, that new business , that they need to have a figurehead

21:45

with a personal brand , what you know what , what

21:47

kind of unbranded uh

21:49

methods of lead generation are out

21:51

there now that that work in a in a cost

21:53

of cost effective manner . They're the ones

21:56

that don't rely on that . So so

21:58

so , for a business that hasn't hasn't got a

22:00

figurehead , who's got a personal brand , who can , who

22:02

can drag some people in on day one ? You know

22:04

what ? What works in today , in today's

22:06

oversaturated market ?

22:08

there's not a lot you know you

22:11

can take . You can take most marketing

22:13

campaigns and if you strip it away

22:15

of the personal brand , at the moment the

22:17

the cost per lead goes up exponentially

22:20

. So if I put , when I say personal

22:22

brand , we don't even need

22:24

someone who is well known , we need

22:26

someone who is the founder who talks to camera

22:28

. All right , if you let I

22:30

run a lot of facebook ads and instagram

22:33

ads and all that sort of stuff . We spend , I

22:35

know , about 100 grand a month on different ads across

22:38

the different businesses . So I know exactly

22:40

that if you have a company branded ad

22:42

or the

22:45

founder's face on the ad , like

22:47

you can halve the cost of the ad . The cost

22:49

per click just drops . If you have

22:51

a founder who's talking to

22:53

camera and doing one of those little shorts and you

22:55

boost that , you're going to get leads

22:57

for four or five pounds , versus

23:00

if you have a company branded thing , you're

23:02

going to get leads for 15 pounds . You know

23:04

like it's going to be three times as much .

23:07

And I've been reading a lot lately on Facebook

23:09

ads or , you know , google ads et cetera

23:11

, that unless you've got

23:13

more back end sales , unless

23:15

you've got lifetime value of that customer , that

23:17

it's almost impossible to

23:19

get profitable on the front end . I mean , is

23:22

that something you'd agree with ?

23:23

Oh , totally . Businesses

23:25

are an ecosystem and anything

23:28

that's overly simplified doesn't work now . So

23:31

you know , you could take any product and

23:33

you can say you know , we run ads for

23:35

it , we generate leads for it , it , and

23:37

then we sell that product . That won't be profitable

23:39

. You have to have an entire ecosystem

23:42

. So if you take someone like Gordon Ramsay , he's

23:45

got books , tv shows

23:47

, restaurants , all

23:50

actual products that you can buy on the

23:52

shelves , so he's got an ecosystem

23:54

of products and services . So anywhere he's generating

23:56

leads , uh , he's making , uh , he's

23:59

making money . You know , for me I've got eight different

24:01

companies . Some are software , some are services and

24:03

agencies , some is education and training

24:05

. Um , you know , it's all

24:07

of it working together as one nice

24:09

ecosystem that makes the whole thing work do

24:12

.

24:12

Those eight businesses all feed each other

24:14

as well . They all have some kind of relationship .

24:16

Yeah exactly At the heart of all of it is

24:18

this idea that we develop entrepreneurs who stand out

24:20

, scale up and make positive impact , and

24:22

pretty much everything relates to that theme and

24:26

it all just works nicely

24:29

together In a small business . I

24:31

just talk about four products . I basically say

24:33

you need a gift , something you can give away for free . You

24:35

need a product for prospects , which is a

24:37

first product that people can buy

24:40

cheaply , easily , quickly , just

24:42

to test you . You need your core

24:44

product or service and then you need your

24:46

what we call product for clients , which is

24:48

the ongoing journey . So it's those

24:50

four products in an ecosystem . So when

24:53

I've bought businesses , I often buy businesses

24:55

that have a core product that's strong but

24:57

they're quite weak in the other areas

24:59

. I get the founder to write a book and that gives

25:02

me a gift or a product for prospects . We

25:04

create an introduction workshop . That gives

25:06

me a gift or a product for prospects . We create

25:08

an online video masterclass . We

25:10

put that on YouTube , we

25:12

get a series of really nice podcasts

25:15

out and then we create a continuity

25:17

subscription product on the back end . So

25:19

we'll basically build out the four products . I've

25:22

bought several businesses where I've bought them , when they're

25:24

doing about a half a million of revenue by

25:27

the end of year one of owning it . We can

25:29

be at 1.5 to2 just

25:31

by building out the product ecosystem .

25:33

And are you normally buying them and then wanting to retain

25:36

the existing owner as that figurehead to

25:38

help build him out into a key person of

25:40

influence ?

25:41

We can or we can , we

25:44

can . If they want to leave , that's fine too . We've had a couple

25:46

where we've bought businesses

25:48

where the founder has gone off to do something else

25:50

, but I've also bought businesses where we've

25:52

actually bought the business and kept the founder

25:54

and they're you and

25:56

they're loving being part of the group and

25:59

if you've replaced a founder with somebody

26:01

else , are you bringing that person in to

26:03

be a visible figurehead ?

26:05

I mean , you don't spread yourself thinner

26:07

and thinner by making yourself the figurehead of these businesses

26:09

.

26:10

So , depending on the business , some of

26:12

the businesses are just genuinely

26:15

downstream from what we do anyway . So it's

26:17

not super important because because

26:19

we we do have a figure ahead upstream and

26:22

then there's just a like an unbelievable

26:24

flow of business that's just coming

26:26

down . So , for example , there are certain businesses

26:28

that only need a dozen clients a year and they're

26:30

making millions . You know , average value of

26:33

a client is 80 to 120 000 like

26:35

tech businesses , it services and that sort

26:37

of stuff . Um , so with those

26:39

businesses , you know it's totally fine

26:41

to just have a team who operate

26:44

that business really , really well and if

26:46

they're downstream from what we do and we can find

26:48

those clients , we can find those clients for them . Um

26:51

, but then there are other businesses that I've got , like

26:54

rethink press , where lucy and joe run

26:56

rethink press , lucy mccara joe yeah

26:58

, joe's brilliant lucy mccara is extremely well

27:00

known as as the expert at book

27:03

writing , um , so they've stayed

27:05

on , uh , they've joined the group

27:07

and they've stayed on as the figurehead

27:09

role and and lucy does an

27:11

amazing job of that and does that

27:13

so using that business as an example ?

27:15

does that bring its own customers in there ? Because I

27:17

would have imagined that it's almost um , just

27:19

gets like gifted all its customers who come

27:22

in . So people come in and read key personal influence

27:24

or join your kpi program and it says

27:26

I need a book immediately .

27:27

Go to rethink yeah , that's exactly how

27:29

it happens . We get thousands of people coming in and

27:32

and they go off to rethink and publish their

27:34

books and write their books . And we just created some software

27:36

called BookMagicai which helps

27:38

people write their book using AI and then

27:40

go and get a rethink press deal . Yeah

27:44

, as I said , the hardest part of every business

27:46

is getting customers . It's

27:48

such a noisy world right now . Everyone's

27:50

in competition with everyone else in the world . Everyone

27:53

got handed a megaphone called social media

27:55

, so customers are overwhelmed , they're

27:57

confused . They need , you know , they need support

28:00

. Um , they , you know , they . They

28:02

don't know where to look , um , they're constantly

28:04

hearing conflicting messages . So

28:06

you know , that is the hard

28:08

part about business .

28:09

If we , if we can master that , we can pretty

28:11

much , you know , run

28:14

any business that makes sense I mean , you say it's such

28:16

a noisy world right now , but

28:18

presumably it will only get

28:20

noisier and noisier and noisier , or do

28:22

you think there'll be any parts of noise that

28:24

could disappear ?

28:26

no , no , it's going to get way worse because of ai

28:28

. Ai generates a

28:31

plethora of content . Now

28:33

someone who's noisy has a megaphone

28:35

called social media and they have

28:37

an automated noise machine strapped onto

28:39

the back of it called AI , and

28:42

it's just the AI plus . The social media

28:44

is going to flood the market with

28:46

. You know , and I'm not even talking

28:48

about like AI , that

28:51

is just automating a message

28:53

. But even you take someone

28:55

who's a good , you know , speaker

28:57

or influencer , just the ai writing

28:59

them scripts , you know , just having

29:01

that script writing done

29:04

faster . If you take a youtuber , if

29:06

they can get more ideas faster

29:08

, you know , get them executed

29:10

quicker . And if they can edit

29:13

the videos and publish the videos and improve

29:15

the videos and do all the thumbnails faster

29:17

, you know we're just speeding

29:20

up . What's happening at the moment is

29:22

, you know , you've got to . It's

29:25

a bit frustrating . You know you're kind of like

29:27

playing devil's advocate for the person who hasn't

29:29

even started To a degree it's already too

29:31

late for them . They're already too far

29:33

behind . They'll never catch up . They're

29:41

in real trouble and they need to join the team of someone who's got a brand . They need to go and be a direct

29:43

report for an entrepreneur who's got traction , they need to roll their company into a group

29:45

of companies , they need to do something to jump onto a moving bandwagon

29:48

fast . And then you've got people

29:50

who could go either way . They're

29:52

either going to get dragged into running their business and

29:54

fall behind , or they're going to say I've got to embrace this

29:56

AI stuff , I've got to embrace this personal

29:59

brand stuff , I've got to build myself a brand

30:01

and build a moat , and they could go that way as

30:03

well . And then you've got people who already have

30:05

a bit of a brand , like yourself , and

30:08

now you can turn it right up . You've got the tools

30:10

, the technology to go from

30:12

talking to thousands of people to tens of thousands

30:15

, to hundreds of thousands , to millions . And

30:24

you can do that . If you get it right , you can do it all . In a year or two . We go from talking to a small

30:26

circle of people to talking to quite a large circle of people .

30:28

Well , you've bought businesses and you've started businesses

30:30

. Do you have a preference ? Or for

30:32

someone out there who hasn't done either yet , would

30:36

you advocate down one particular path ?

30:38

Yeah , I really enjoy buying businesses . Buying

30:41

a business is great because you

30:44

know it's about the same amount of effort to go from

30:46

zero to half a million , to half

30:48

a million to two million , whatever energy

30:50

and effort went into getting that business to

30:52

the first half a million worth of sales . Apply

30:55

that same energy and effort again and you'll be at 2

30:57

million . So you know

30:59

, and then take a 2 million pound business and apply

31:01

that energy and effort , you'll be at 10 million . The

31:04

other thing too is I love having

31:07

fresh eyes on a business , because when you're

31:09

in a business and you've been doing it every day for

31:14

years it's like being too close to

31:16

you know , know , well , it's like you've

31:18

got a really nice watch , but how long have you had

31:20

it ? A year or so , a year or

31:22

so , I bet . When you first had it you looked at it

31:24

like 50 times a day and then

31:27

now you don't even think about it . You just put , put

31:29

it on in the morning and you know you've just gotten too

31:31

close to it . It's the same with the business . When

31:33

you've been in a business for years , you

31:35

wake up and you just don't get

31:37

all that excited by what the business

31:39

does . You know someone writes

31:42

you an email and says , you know that business really helped

31:44

me and you go , oh , that's nice . But we get those emails

31:46

and you know you've also

31:48

got one where people complain a little bit oh

31:50

, I didn't get this , oh , okay , I've got to

31:52

fix that . So you kind of get caught up in the noise

31:54

of the business . Now when I come

31:56

in and I've got fresh eyes , I see the business

31:58

and go , wow , this has got incredible

32:00

intellectual property . We could tell more stories

32:03

. We've got so many excited , happy customers

32:05

, we should get them talking . We

32:07

should capture their video case studies and put them

32:10

out . So

32:12

you know , a lot of the time businesses are

32:14

sitting on hidden intellectual property . The

32:17

the Rethink Press business has essentially

32:19

spun out the thinking

32:21

behind the bookmagicai business

32:24

. The

32:26

SoTechnology that I bought . We

32:29

spun out ScoreApp , which has now

32:31

got 6,000 customers in 150 countries

32:34

and one scale up of the year . So

32:36

every business has got intellectual property that could

32:38

become software , media or technology intellectual

32:41

property , all of that sort of stuff . Um

32:43

, ultimately , what I love doing now

32:45

is building tech .

32:47

Tech companies are , you know , software is where

32:49

it's at , software ai enabled

32:51

, sas products um , because

32:54

you can build it once and sell it over and over

32:56

and over again yeah , you can build something pretty

32:58

powerful for a couple of hundred

33:01

grand .

33:01

Now I know people

33:03

hear a couple hundred . A lot of people like , oh well , where

33:05

would I get a couple hundred grand ? Well , there's plenty of investors out

33:07

there . Um , you know

33:09

, if you've got something sensible , uh

33:12

, you can spin out some technology

33:14

for a couple hundred grand . Maybe you

33:16

know expensive tech at the moment $500,000

33:19

, $600,000 . And

33:21

then it's like having a house

33:23

that you can rent but it has unlimited

33:25

bedrooms . So

33:28

that's the power of software . If I buy

33:30

a five-bedroom house and I want to rent out each

33:32

bedroom once I get to five , that's

33:34

it . I can't rent anymore . If you came to me and

33:36

said , hey , I want to sign up 10 000 customers

33:38

, uh , to score app , I'd say , okay

33:40

, here's the usernames and passwords , let's sign

33:42

them up . Um , you know , we

33:44

literally have an automated system that just sign

33:47

them up . So it's like this house with an infinite

33:49

number of of bedrooms

33:51

and for roughly the same cost as

33:53

what it costs to build a house , you build software

33:55

and that software

33:57

can scale globally . Uh

33:59

, and a house , you know , a house might

34:01

be worth I don't know a couple of million

34:04

. The software company can be worth tens of millions

34:06

. And what is scorecard

34:08

the app ? So , 2015

34:11

, I wrote this quiz called the

34:13

key person of influence scorecard and I

34:15

said answer these 40 questions to see if

34:17

you need a personal brand or to test how big your

34:20

personal brand could be . And

34:22

um , and I launched the key person of influence

34:24

scorecard and this thing

34:26

just took off 90 000 people filled it

34:28

in . We made 20 million worth of sales off the back

34:30

end . Um , and it was such

34:33

a simple system . People would fill in the scorecard

34:35

online , they'd get their pdf

34:37

result and then they'd book a

34:39

time to talk to one of our sales people and

34:41

our sales people would say hey , it looks like you need some

34:43

work on your pitching . And

34:45

they go yeah , I do , can you help me with that ? And

34:48

it was like it's such a easy , seamless

34:50

thing . It's like if you go to a doctor and they

34:52

give you an x-ray and they say , oh , it looks like your arm's

34:54

got a fracture . Oh , can you help

34:56

me with that , right , can we fix it ? So

34:59

this was such a successful

35:01

campaign that we did it three more times . I did

35:03

the oversubscribed scorecard , I did

35:05

the 24 assets scorecard . Each time

35:07

we did it , people just loved it and I was like this

35:09

is brilliant , this is such a great marketing

35:12

campaign . Then some people started to

35:14

notice what I was doing . I said can

35:16

you build me one of those scorecards ? So

35:18

we built a dozen of these and

35:21

they cost about 10 to 15 grand each . And

35:23

in the process of building you know

35:25

a dozen of these scorecards , we

35:28

basically boiled it down to a blueprint

35:30

as to how to do it really , really well . And

35:32

then we said , hey , we can turn that into a software platform

35:35

. So in 2020 , launched software platform

35:37

took us nine . 2020 , launched a software platform

35:39

Took us nine months to sign up our first 200 customers

35:41

. We now sign up 8,500

35:45

customers a month on every four minutes , five

35:47

minutes .

35:50

The customer and it's B2B , the customer being a business who wants to create a scorecard ?

35:52

Yeah , so a scorecard campaign

35:54

is a quiz or an assessment

35:56

that people can set up

35:58

for their own business . They can use AI . So

36:01

it used to be that you had to do a lot of brainstorming

36:03

. Now you just ask the AI . It'll tell you what concept

36:05

, it'll tell you who .

36:06

This is all plugged into the it's all plugged in .

36:08

Yeah , it takes you six minutes . We could literally

36:10

build you a scorecard for your podcast right now

36:12

and six minutes later you'd have a full scorecard

36:15

and people would be able

36:17

to take the , the stripping

36:19

off scorecard , and

36:22

, and they could . They could do that we

36:24

. We also use the technology now to launch waiting

36:27

list campaigns . We do it for employing

36:30

people . So we actually have are you ready to

36:32

join our team scorecards . We

36:34

have scorecards

36:37

for booking a strategy session . We're

36:39

about to launch some scorecards for real estate

36:41

, you know , uh , so essentially

36:43

, are you suitable , you know ? Are you ready to move

36:45

to dubai ? Um , are you , you

36:47

know , are you suitable to to to uh

36:50

buy a dubai villa , those kind

36:52

of things , uh , expressions of interest

36:54

and inquiries , all of that . So it

36:56

essentially sits on top of this . Software uses

36:58

ai to build it and

37:01

, yeah , they're incredibly powerful campaigns

37:03

. Most landing pages get four or five

37:05

percent conversion . Uh , traffic

37:07

to filled in form . We

37:09

get like 35 to 45 percent . People

37:12

love these assessments and what

37:14

?

37:14

what's the motivating factor for people

37:16

?

37:17

it's personalized , so

37:19

when you fill in a scorecard , you're going to learn

37:21

something about yourself . It's immediate

37:24

, it's fast .

37:25

So I really I'm going to feel like it's

37:27

something about me .

37:28

I'm not just going to feel like it's a

37:30

sales tactic from the person who's giving

37:32

it to me . Have you got a hobby at the moment ?

37:35

Paddle tennis .

37:36

Great . So if there was like a , are

37:38

you ready to improve your paddle tennis scorecard

37:40

? Answer 12 questions to find out if

37:42

you could improve your paddle tennis game , you

37:45

go , oh , okay , cool , and it's going to

37:47

ask you a series of questions and at the end it's

37:49

going to say here's three ways to improve your paddle

37:51

tennis game . And

37:53

because you're loving this paddle tennis thing , you're

37:56

happy to fill in a scorecard or an assessment to see if there's

37:58

a way to improve . And

38:01

away you go . So people love it because

38:03

it's immediate , it's fast , it's based on their own

38:05

needs's , hyper personalized . It gives them personal

38:08

feedback . The results change based

38:10

on how you fill in the scorecard . So

38:12

, might you know ? You might say are you

38:14

a beginner , intermediate , advanced

38:16

? Oh , you're advanced . So you know

38:18

, here's your advanced strategies , your advanced tips

38:21

, uh , and you're

38:23

getting stuff that's purely and simply based

38:25

on who you are and what you do and

38:27

going back to one of the problems we were talking about earlier

38:29

, in that every business needs

38:32

to be able to generate demand .

38:36

Once you've created the card , do

38:38

you teach people how to actually

38:40

get people to land on it in the first

38:42

place ?

38:42

Yeah , so it's in the book Scorecard Marketing

38:44

. There's nine good ways in there , and then we've

38:46

got another document that's 29 different ways

38:48

to launch your scorecard . The platform

38:51

itself uses AI to generate daily

38:53

posts for LinkedIn and

38:55

all the social media X and Facebook

38:58

. It's got things like

39:00

QR code generators

39:02

, so if you give talks , you can just use

39:04

them up there . It gives you ideas

39:07

on custom-built email campaigns that you can

39:09

run to your existing list . It gives you ideas for ads that you could campaigns that you can run to your existing list . Gives

39:11

you ideas for ads that you could run .

39:13

if you want to run some ads , uh , yeah

39:15

, so all of that , I'm struggling

39:17

to concentrate on the next questions now because I'm

39:19

already running off of my mind thinking about what's cool

39:22

for what ? I can , uh , I can use on a couple of my

39:24

businesses I mean it's , it's

39:27

like turning on a tap

39:29

.

39:29

Know , because if you're getting 10 times the response

39:31

, or five to 10 times the response of

39:33

any other marketing campaign , you know for

39:35

the same energy and effort you get four or five

39:37

times more leads . And

39:40

then you can also score the leads . You can see

39:42

, based on the responses , whether it's a

39:44

good lead or a bad lead . You know because if

39:47

I ask most salespeople people , would you rather

39:49

100 unqualified leads name

39:51

, email , phone number or 20

39:54

highly qualified leads that are filled in an application

39:56

form and you can see exactly that they're

39:59

the right type of person ?

40:00

most sales people are like I want the qualified

40:02

leads , because the unqualified leads are

40:04

a total pain I mean we're talking

40:06

about sas businesses and obviously

40:09

unlimited growth on these technology companies

40:11

as part of your business model . Do

40:13

you also have a kind of a consultancy

40:15

slash done for you type thing as well , or do

40:18

you try and push everything on ?

40:20

So ScoreApp is its own tech company and

40:23

the AI makes it phenomenally easy

40:25

. But , with that said

40:27

, we still have people who go . Please just do

40:29

it for me . So we do have a done

40:31

for you division , um

40:33

, and we're about to . In

40:35

fact , by the time this podcast goes live , we've got

40:38

um a what's called a , an

40:40

agency directory . So we've actually selected

40:42

30 agencies that are affordable

40:44

, um , and they can build

40:46

for you . These are people we've seen them build

40:49

stuff starting at like 500

40:51

, 600 pounds , you know , going

40:53

through to 5,000 , 6,000 pounds per build . So

40:56

if you're a bigger corporate kind of company

40:58

, you might want to spend six , seven grand on

41:00

a campaign built for you , and if you're

41:02

a small business , you might want a person

41:04

who works from home who knows how to build these

41:06

, for 500 , 600

41:08

quid . So

41:12

we've actually got a good you know 30 different options . We might take

41:14

that up to some more , but we've basically

41:16

got a directory of people

41:19

so you'll be able to just click and pick

41:21

someone from the directory , but it's very easy

41:23

to do it yourself . We've got 80 templates . You just

41:25

drop your name and logo onto

41:28

the template , you put your photo in there

41:30

and away you go like it's

41:33

one of these things that if you were to try and explain

41:35

instagram to someone who'd never seen it , and

41:37

all they'd ever seen was a end result

41:39

of someone's instagram you go oh that's

41:41

so hard . How would you do it ? How would you upload

41:43

it ? If you've used instagram , you go . It's pretty

41:45

easy , actually same as setting up a scorecard

41:47

campaign . I'm gonna be on it tonight yeah

41:50

, if you can if you can , if you can

41:52

run your own linkedin profile , you can run your own

41:54

scorecard , build your own scorecard , but you

41:56

can get someone else to do it if you want let's

41:58

talk about people .

42:00

Um , you've got eight businesses , you've started

42:02

them , you've you've bought them . I mean the

42:04

the bane of my life , as I talked about

42:07

for 20 years , is recruitment

42:09

and retention . You know , I mean I've

42:11

been through hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of

42:13

staff to get , you know well

42:20

, probably a core of four or five that I might shed a tear if they left . And you know another

42:22

couple of handfuls of modest ones , and

42:25

you know as much as I

42:27

like to complain that 90% of the world are morons

42:29

, I

42:35

do also blame myself for not being good enough at being able to recruit

42:37

the 10% of the world that

42:40

aren't morons .

42:41

Talk to me . What am I doing wrong ? Well , the first thing is I'm passionate about this topic

42:43

because I don't think business is something you can do without

42:45

a team . You need a team of people . You

42:47

know people say , oh , you know productivity

42:49

hacks , how do you stay productive ? It's like

42:51

I just have , you know , 100 people working

42:53

. Um , you know , if you've got 100 people

42:55

who work seven hours a day , that's 700

42:58

hours a day . You know

43:00

, going into the development of a business . So

43:02

building a team is everything and , um

43:04

, I've you know . The other question

43:06

I get a lot is like oh , you know , how did you get started

43:09

with no one on your team ? When you're just starting out , I said

43:11

I've never had no one on my team started every

43:13

single business I've started with a team . Um

43:15

, if I'm going to play a game of football , I'm not going to run

43:18

onto the pitch and then try and

43:20

recruit people after the game starts . I'm

43:22

going to run onto the pitch with a team of you

43:24

know people . If it's five a side , I'm going to run on with five

43:26

people because

43:28

, well , I'm going to run on with four people . But

43:30

you get the idea right . I

43:33

think businesses , you

43:35

know it really is a team sport and

43:38

it's about bringing people onto that team as

43:40

soon as you possibly can . If you didn't do it from day one

43:42

, do it ASAP . What

43:45

people make as a big mistake

43:47

is when they're a small business . They're trying

43:49

to look for people who are talented and good and amazing

43:52

people . You're not going to get them . They

43:54

already have jobs at Microsoft and Google and

43:57

better , more interesting places than

43:59

you can offer . Especially , I

44:02

think your background was more

44:04

nighttime businesses Leisure , yeah , yeah

44:06

. So there's

44:09

not that many people who want to work a night time job

44:11

. So you're not going to get , you

44:13

know , you're not going to get someone quit their job at

44:16

microsoft to come and work in the evening

44:18

at your job . Um , so the

44:21

you know the thing is you need to learn how to

44:23

work with young people

44:25

who don't have experience but they're passionate . You need

44:27

to learn how to work with someone who needs a lot

44:29

of flexibility . You need to work with the neighbor's

44:32

teenage kid who wants to do a

44:34

little bit of work experience . Um

44:36

, you have to . As an entrepreneur , you

44:38

have to be able to rope in whoever you've got available

44:40

and see if you can put them to work . Um

44:43

, and sometimes it lasts and sometimes it doesn't

44:45

, and that is just par for the course . That is just . There is no white , you know knight in shining armor

44:47

who's going to ride on in and fix everything doesn't . And that is just par for the course . That

44:49

is just .

44:49

There is no white , you know , knight in shining armor who's going to ride

44:51

on in and fix everything doesn't exist for

44:54

small businesses but that is at

44:56

the beginning of the journey , presumably , as

44:58

, as time goes on and you're more established

45:00

, you've got more money , more exciting

45:02

, you can be a bit more yes , but I

45:04

don't obsess over it .

45:05

And the reason I don't obsess over it is when I was a teenager

45:08

I worked at mcdonald's and a

45:10

group of 16 17 year old kids

45:12

ran a 2 million dollar

45:15

a year restaurant back in the 90s so

45:17

it's probably 4 million , 5 million now and

45:19

today's money . We used to run

45:21

a multi-million dollar restaurant . The

45:23

oldest person was the store manager , who was 23

45:26

or 24 . Most of the

45:28

stuff was on the shoulders of 15

45:30

16 year olds . Right , we couldn't

45:32

even tidy our bedroom , but we could run yeah

45:35

, we could run a mcdonald's um . When I

45:37

got out of that , I did nightclub party um

45:39

, nightclub party promotions and I worked

45:41

around bars and and all of that sort of

45:43

stuff . The manager

45:46

of any nightclub is about 32 33

45:49

that's the general manager of a nightclub

45:51

. All the bar staff are in their 20s

45:53

, all the you know everyone's in their 20s

45:55

and we're running a multi , multi

45:57

million dollar business . That business needs

45:59

marketing , it needs um service

46:02

, it needs cleaning , it needs security

46:04

. Uh , you've got all

46:06

sorts of dramas happening , you've got all sorts of things

46:08

going wrong and somehow we solve all of those problems

46:11

. So I , because of my background

46:13

, I just don't really believe

46:15

that you need some phenomenal

46:17

. You know albert einstein

46:20

, iq , cindy crawford good looks , I

46:22

don't think you need any of that stuff to

46:24

run a successful business . There are people

46:26

within a mile of here . There are people

46:28

running coffee shops and restaurants profitably

46:31

, and they're not those types of people

46:33

but I guess that's using the mcdonald's

46:35

example .

46:36

I mean that's testament to the , to

46:38

the skill of someone in the mcdonald's food

46:40

chain .

46:41

They built ?

46:41

yeah , who builds the systems ? So

46:44

, so the 15 year olds can run it yes

46:46

, and that's your job as the entrepreneur

46:49

isn't it and also , you don't have 75

46:51

000 restaurants you've got .

46:53

You know , you've got a business that you're starting with

46:55

, so you're still pretty hands-on with them . I'll also

46:57

say this I've hired some corporate people

46:59

. I have actually had phenomenally

47:02

talented quote-unquote people join my

47:04

team . They can wreck your business

47:06

. If you want to talk about someone who

47:08

has the power to absolutely do damage . It's

47:11

someone whose previous job , you know

47:13

, was a big , big corporate . They come

47:15

in and they go . Oh , you know I dialed two and no

47:17

one showed up from IT to set my laptop up

47:19

. You know , they come

47:21

in and they go . Oh , I've got three suggestions

47:23

we need to hire this person for 150

47:25

grand a year and we need to bring in this consulting firm

47:28

for 150 grand a year and we need to

47:30

put in this health and safety

47:32

policy that I noticed is missing , that

47:34

no one ever needs .

47:37

You know the stuff they come up with I mean

47:39

I've I've been been there too many times but

47:41

I I have , uh and had

47:43

an econ business

47:45

luxury fashion econ business which had always

47:47

been run as a as a

47:49

very kind of hands-on entrepreneurial

47:51

business for for many years . I bought

47:54

it with the with the view to get you know , to

47:56

scale it up , went and took on a couple

47:58

of key hires who you

48:00

know that they were going to be . I guess

48:02

the the tipping back points on these , you know

48:04

ex harrods excel bridges , you know , like

48:06

very , very senior , knowledgeable people

48:09

, I mean all the all

48:11

. the day one job was was how much cost can

48:13

we pile on this and how

48:15

little making any turnover

48:17

difference ? Making a profit was not even

48:19

on the radar , it was just how can we add all

48:22

these people and jack up the overheads

48:24

as much as possible ?

48:25

Because they think about supply side . They don't think about

48:27

demand side . They're set

48:29

in their ways . They've

48:31

always been protected

48:33

by the shield of the big brand , all

48:35

of that sort of stuff . So I'm

48:38

very wary of people who are skilled

48:41

and talented and experienced . There's

48:44

this interesting thing that

48:47

the founding fathers of the USA interesting

48:52

thing that the you know the founding fathers

48:54

of the usa yeah , hamilton , and you

48:56

know all of the um tom , uh , thomas jefferson and

48:58

all of these guys at

49:00

the time they founded the usa , the declaration

49:03

of independence and all of that . The

49:05

founding fathers were , I think , 21

49:07

to 34 . They were

49:10

all in their 20s and early 30s and they

49:12

founded the USA . Like , there's

49:15

a lot to be said for not knowing how things work

49:17

. There's a lot to be said for rolling up your sleeves

49:20

and kicking the door off the hinges , and

49:23

that's the type of people , the people I love to bring onto

49:25

my team . They're

49:27

just go-getters . They

49:30

don't know what they don't know , know , but they're willing to figure it out . You know those sorts of

49:32

people I've always done well with . I've always done

49:34

well with young , hungry

49:36

, excited .

49:38

You know fun people on my teams and I've

49:40

always , uh , had

49:42

to work really hard to make the experience

49:44

people , not blow the thing up I had a

49:46

zoom call last night with a young

49:48

guy that I just I didn't know he

49:50

was a young guy until I'd gone on the zoom call . It's about the

49:53

third time this has happened to me lately . So I mean

49:55

, you know , I I have a newsletter that runs on

49:57

beehive and uh , so I wanted

49:59

some expertise on that and

50:01

booked a few consult calls with a guy . Comes

50:03

on the call , the guy's like 16 years old , um

50:06

, and does something else I've forgotten . And yesterday

50:08

I was looking at some viral twitter threads

50:10

and uh ended up on this account which said

50:12

if you want me to write viral twitter threads for you

50:14

, you know , um , book a consult call

50:17

. So I looked at the one that works fantastic , the

50:19

virality was unbelievable . Book a call with this

50:21

guy . His little face pops

50:23

on literally another another 17 , 18

50:25

year old chinese guy . Like you guys are getting younger

50:27

and younger and younger , or

50:29

us guys are getting older and older

50:31

, but yes , I

50:33

mean there is that , I guess , but I

50:36

just find it . I mean , for me there's

50:38

kind of two takeaways . One , that

50:41

I'm so impressed with

50:43

the hunger of some of these younger people

50:45

, the technologies they're embracing

50:48

, to be able to do what they do . I mean

50:50

17 , 18 years old . I've paid him 750

50:53

dollars to do you know , to do a job that he'll deliver

50:55

on tomorrow yeah , you know . I don't know how many of those

50:57

he's doing , but you know if he does the job

50:59

earning himself some nice money . He

51:01

was telling me about a 13 year old

51:03

. He was working within uh , he was part of a ghostwriting

51:06

agency before working with a 13 year

51:08

old who's now on her own doing 30 to

51:12

50 000 a month , um , awesome , and I mean that's . You

51:14

know , I guess the opportunities out there for

51:17

people you know , with ai and just I

51:19

guess , with social and the global distribution

51:21

, is unbelievable . The flip side is it's

51:23

so easy as an older person to discount

51:26

anyone younger , particularly materially younger

51:28

, and and and it's it's

51:30

. It's so stupid ultimately that the

51:32

opportunity you're going to miss out on by

51:34

having the arrogance to think you know he's younger than my

51:36

eldest daughter , what the fuck

51:38

can he do for me when these are the people

51:41

that will ultimately change your business ?

51:42

Absolutely , and I mean that business that John started

51:44

, that I was 19 years old

51:46

. I worked my guts out for those two

51:49

years and made a lot of profit for John

51:51

. I have a way of scaling

51:53

teams similar

51:55

to the British military . So I actually learned

51:57

my team scaling strategy from the British military

52:00

Not that I was in the military , so you're out there fighting

52:02

for us . No , I just looked

52:04

at how they did it , because the British military has had

52:06

400 years of unbroken

52:09

service . So

52:12

they've figured everything out . So they start

52:14

everything with a two-person scout team . So

52:16

two people . So the smallest team is

52:18

a two-person scout team . Two people go looking

52:20

at things . Then they have a four-person fire

52:22

team which is an immediate short-term concern , and

52:25

then they have an eight-person section which is the building

52:27

block uh , block unit

52:30

within the military . So eight people on

52:32

a section , Corporal , Lance Corporal and six

52:34

grunts , as they say . Then

52:37

they have a 30-person platoon and

52:39

then 150 people in the company . So

52:41

they actually have a way

52:43

of scaling up teams . I've found this

52:45

absolutely works with business . So

52:48

when we have an idea , two-person

52:50

scout team gets assigned to it . One person

52:52

is figuring out can we sell it , One person's asking

52:54

can we build it Right . Two

52:56

simple questions Can we sell it ? Can we deliver it ? Four-person

53:00

fire team is running a launch campaign . Eight-person

53:03

section is running a seven-figure revenue

53:05

with a six-figure profit and a platoon

53:07

runs a eight-figure revenue with a six-figure profit and a platoon runs a eight-figure

53:09

revenue with a seven-figure profit and

53:12

basically we just go boom

53:14

boom , boom boom . So all of my businesses

53:16

are in a state of being either a

53:18

two , four , eight or 30 and

53:21

we just move them along and how do you

53:24

find those people and do you move them

53:26

around as well ?

53:26

So the two people that start

53:28

off looking at the supply and demand side

53:30

once that business is going , I mean

53:32

, do they stay there forever or do you flip

53:35

them into another project ?

53:36

Nine times out of ten , a two-person

53:39

scout team is actually already on

53:41

another team anyway . So they're already part

53:43

of a section or a platoon somewhere

53:45

else in the business and this is their side

53:47

project . So we assign this as a side

53:49

project to to free up some time

53:51

for them to go and look into something and

53:54

they can either then join the team that starts

53:56

that opportunity or , you know , scaling

53:58

that opportunity , or go back to where they were . Um

54:01

, but yeah , I mean , how , how

54:03

do I find people is ? I'm just always

54:05

on the lookout for great people . Um

54:07

, you know , ev , everyone I meet is a potential

54:10

person to come and join the team .

54:13

How often do you incentivize

54:15

people with equity , and when

54:17

is the right time for you to do it ?

54:19

Do you know ? I've found that equity is

54:21

something that only if people really

54:23

want equity bad enough to

54:29

sacrifice income or take some

54:32

sort of a sacrifice for equity , otherwise it almost

54:34

is meaningless . 90%

54:36

of all the people I've ever worked with have

54:38

seen no real value in equity .

54:40

Because that equity never sells , never materializes

54:43

, yeah they can't take it to the shops .

54:46

You can't go down to Selfridges and

54:48

buy something with equity , so you can't use

54:50

it to Selfridges and and buy something with equity uh , so you can't get use it as a deposit

54:52

for a house . So the vast majority

54:54

of people just don't see much value in it . I've

54:56

found that most of the people on my team they want quarterly

54:59

cash bonuses . They're excited about

55:01

quarterly cash bonuses . Um

55:03

, they're excited about annual bonuses

55:05

. Uh , they're excited about , uh

55:07

, perks . You know like we're going to take

55:09

the whole team , you know , on a trip or something

55:12

like that . Um , most

55:15

people like the idea of just earning more cash

55:17

they can . Then , if they want to buy equity , they can buy equity

55:19

in any shares you know in the world , um

55:22

, yeah , so equity for me

55:24

is about , you know the when

55:27

we launch , launch a new business like

55:29

especially a software business , I

55:31

will raise money from experienced

55:34

angel investors who understand

55:36

software and who validate the valuation

55:38

, who validate the business plan with their involvement

55:41

, and they're there to open up doors , but

55:43

they're not working inside the business . There

55:46

is occasionally a senior executive

55:48

hire that we want to bring in and

55:50

their normal rate might be 140,000

55:53

a year and we might say that we'll do

55:55

50 grand worth of equity if

55:57

we can get you cheaper , because we need

55:59

the cash at the moment , and

56:03

if they're loving what

56:05

we do and they're the right type of person , they might take

56:07

that deal I noticed you were talking on your podcast

56:10

the other day about that .

56:11

You're a fan of seis and you know like to chip

56:14

it up into 20 . Lots of 12 and a half k do

56:17

you have ? Do you have um like an existing

56:19

investor base that you repeat on very

56:22

on various projects , or do you

56:24

use your key person of influence status

56:26

to go out raising your investment ?

56:28

both . I've got , um , I've

56:30

got a group of probably 40 investors who

56:32

are all successful entrepreneurs , post

56:34

exit , loads of money , loads of experience

56:37

, and I tend to they

56:39

tend to snap up anything I'm doing as quick as

56:41

I quick as I can , but what I tend

56:44

to do is just to hurry

56:46

things along . When I launch something , I

56:48

will put on an investor zoom call

56:50

and say I'm launching a new project

56:53

. If you're interested , I already know who's

56:55

going to invest , but I like to stack like

56:57

80 , 90 , 100 people on that call so

57:00

that everyone feels , feels the

57:03

, the feeling of of oh my goodness

57:05

, lots of people are interested in this . And then

57:07

I'll say fill in an application

57:09

for shares and tell me how

57:11

much you're willing to invest . And most

57:13

people put something like twenty to fifty thousand

57:16

. But then I cut everyone back to

57:18

twelve and a half thousand and I say I'm

57:20

gonna take on these selected twenty at

57:23

twelve and a half thousand each , which is the SEIS

57:25

round . And what's interesting

57:27

is most people are trying to get more

57:30

money out of investors and

57:33

most people who try and raise money for a business

57:35

they think they're gonna get one angel who puts in quarter

57:37

of a million . That never happens . Most

57:40

angels want to put in maybe 20

57:43

, 30 , 40 thousand and they want

57:45

to be in with some other angels . I

57:47

want as many . I want more angels

57:49

because they're all . Each individual angel is

57:51

someone who can open a door and someone who can help

57:53

in other ways . So I'm looking for like 20

57:56

30 angel investors , ideally , um

57:59

, but but the the thing that

58:01

most angel investors find strange

58:04

about when I launch a project is

58:06

that I cut them down in how much

58:08

they can put in . So they've said

58:10

to me they're willing to put in 25 , 35

58:12

, 45 , and I'm saying you can

58:14

put in 12 , 12 and a half , and

58:18

they're like oh , okay , I wanted to put in

58:20

more than that .

58:21

Does that ever close any doors for you where people go ? Oh , I can't

58:23

be bothered putting in a smaller amount .

58:24

No , people fight . Are you kidding ? People fight

58:26

to get . They don't want to miss out .

58:28

They're just annoyed that I won't take more money well

58:32

, listen , I'm conscious of time and I could talk

58:34

for you for hours and hours and hours and hours , uh

58:36

. But if I've just got one thing , one

58:38

thing to pick before we have to wrap up , I

58:41

want to talk to you a bit about education , which

58:43

is something that has fallen more

58:45

, more on my radar lately . I've got two

58:48

kids . I've got one who's about to be 18 and getting

58:50

shipped off to uni in September , and

58:52

I've got one who's now 13 months

58:54

old . And you know , on

58:56

my elder daughter , she actually goes to the same school

58:59

I used to go to , which caused her a few problems

59:01

when the teachers recognised her

59:03

. But she , you know , during her

59:06

let's say , teenage years , there was quite

59:08

a lot of skills , whether

59:10

that's through books or other courses I wanted

59:12

to try and push her into as a teenager

59:14

. She was never really interested . Her mom

59:17

never really helped me in pushing

59:19

them onto her either , so I kind of had to stand

59:22

back and let her do whatever she's wanted to do , which

59:24

, fortunately , she's gone down a

59:27

very good path and I'm very proud . But I feel

59:29

I've got my new one now that I can

59:31

use as my guinea pig and

59:34

in my head . Still , I want to homeschool her

59:36

because I want to give her the

59:38

curriculum that I want to give her , which you

59:40

know . To be clear , I haven't particularly decided what that

59:42

is yet . I just know there's roots

59:44

that I feel that she could be better sent

59:46

down . I mean , obviously , you know you're a

59:49

, you know you're you're a guy with kids . You're

59:51

a guy who's ? educated , old and young

59:53

. You know what , what's , what's your views on the educational

59:55

system , how it could be better

59:57

fixed , and you know , for somebody in my position

1:00:00

, you know what do you think of the three , four , five key

1:00:02

skills and topics .

1:00:03

You should be starting on the youngsters can

1:00:06

I give you a long answer to this lock

1:00:09

?

1:00:09

the door the next one's not coming

1:00:11

in .

1:00:11

So so to zoom out like three , four

1:00:13

hundred years , right ? So imagine we're looking at the last

1:00:15

three , four hundred years , you had the agricultural

1:00:18

age , and in the agricultural age we didn't

1:00:20

need very much skilled labor , you just needed

1:00:22

people , and they had to go out and plant seeds

1:00:24

and pick fruit . Didn't matter

1:00:26

if you're einstein , didn't matter

1:00:28

if you're george clooney , you just go out and pick

1:00:31

, pick the fruit , right , but we didn't need much

1:00:33

skilled labor . In the industrial age

1:00:35

we found a use for capital

1:00:37

and we found a useful skilled labor

1:00:39

, but we didn't have much of either . So we had to have new

1:00:42

systems called capitalism systems

1:00:44

. We had to have new systems called labor

1:00:46

creation systems . The schooling system

1:00:48

was responsible for producing this new

1:00:50

asset that we needed called labor , and

1:00:52

the whole job of the schooling system was to create component

1:00:55

labor for factories . That

1:00:57

was the original idea . Reading

1:00:59

, writing , arithmetic was what a

1:01:02

typical factory owner needed in

1:01:04

order for them to be able to put someone to use . And

1:01:07

then we kind of like , we had blue

1:01:09

color factories . We then needed a lot of white color

1:01:11

factory work where we had uh

1:01:13

, you know , people like lawyers and accountants and

1:01:15

auditors , and you know all those kind of people

1:01:17

. So we had to have quite sophisticated

1:01:19

systems . Right up until , say

1:01:22

, the year 2005

1:01:24

, 2010 . If you did any

1:01:26

form of education , there was a job

1:01:28

waiting for you . Um , and

1:01:30

if you just kept going with education

1:01:33

, there was a better job waiting for you . And

1:01:35

it was so ridiculous

1:01:37

that if you studied history , geography

1:01:40

, archaeology , any nonsense

1:01:42

you could walk out and get a job , you

1:01:44

know , in an agency . Or

1:01:47

you could get a job you know all

1:01:49

these like banking jobs . They were stacked with

1:01:51

people who studied geography and history

1:01:53

and all this kind of like this stuff that had nothing to

1:01:55

do with banking , but they're like oh well , you've been through

1:01:57

the educational system , you know you can come

1:01:59

in and work at WPP in an agency

1:02:02

. You know you can . You might

1:02:04

have studied rocket science and we'll get

1:02:06

you doing something over here . That's mathematical

1:02:09

, because you know it's all the same . What's

1:02:11

happened , uh , since digital

1:02:14

, especially now that we've got ai , is

1:02:17

that we don't need very much capital anymore

1:02:19

. Right , a tiny amount of capital can

1:02:21

build a global business . We also don't

1:02:23

need much labor . A 25

1:02:25

person , 30 person team can

1:02:27

be serving 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10,000

1:02:30

customers globally . I know 10 people

1:02:32

who work in YouTube channels and

1:02:34

they have 100 million views a month . So

1:02:36

this is unheard of in the industrial age

1:02:38

. We don't need much skilled labor , we don't need much

1:02:41

capital . So , if

1:02:43

we go , the four factors of production

1:02:45

land , labor , capital , enterprise agricultural

1:02:47

age was the land , was the most important

1:02:50

, industrial age was capital and

1:02:52

labor , and now we're moving to a

1:02:54

world that is enterprise . So the

1:02:56

only skill that really gets paid

1:02:58

at the moment is the ability to take something

1:03:00

to market . It's the ability to recognize

1:03:03

opportunity and mobilize opportunity

1:03:05

. So it's the what you'd call the enterprise

1:03:08

skill . The schooling system is not at all set

1:03:10

up to teach enterprise . It doesn't . It

1:03:12

punishes you for all the things that enterprise does

1:03:15

. So , for example , if you're disruptive

1:03:17

, you're labeled a disruptor , and that's

1:03:19

a very bad thing . As soon as you're an entrepreneur

1:03:22

, being a disruptor is a very , very good thing . If

1:03:24

you get the smart kid to do your maths homework

1:03:26

, that's a bad thing . If you're an entrepreneur , that's

1:03:28

called having a cfo . Right

1:03:30

, it's completely different worlds

1:03:33

. So this

1:03:35

we have to just start by recognizing the

1:03:38

entire purpose of the schooling system , going

1:03:40

back to 18th . The year 1806

1:03:42

was essentially to

1:03:44

create factory workers , and the world just

1:03:46

doesn't need factory workers anymore

1:03:48

. It's not going

1:03:50

to be a . There's no social contract

1:03:52

for someone who comes through that system anymore like

1:03:54

there was . So , provided

1:03:57

you know that there's no social contract , you can

1:03:59

make decisions based on the idea that there's no social

1:04:01

contract Send them to school or homeschool

1:04:03

them . It doesn't really matter

1:04:05

If you have to follow the government curriculum , it's all based

1:04:07

on factory work . Uh , the

1:04:10

benefit of sending them to school

1:04:13

is that they connect with people , they make friends

1:04:15

. But when they come home and say , oh you

1:04:17

know , I failed my geography

1:04:19

exam , uh

1:04:21

, you can say , well , that's all right , chat , gpt

1:04:23

will write that in the future . Anyway , you don't need to

1:04:25

worry too much . Is it more important

1:04:28

that you made friends ? More important that you

1:04:30

settled that dispute between two friends that you

1:04:32

had ? More important that you organized a sporting match

1:04:34

and got people to come and play right

1:04:36

? So there's those skills that

1:04:38

are happening around a school environment

1:04:41

. So I wouldn't necessarily throw out

1:04:43

the school environment completely , because

1:04:45

I know a lot of people are doing that . There's

1:04:47

a lot to be said for the musicals that they're

1:04:49

putting on and the way that you've got to work

1:04:51

together to organise it . There's a lot to be said for the sport

1:04:54

games that happen , sporting games . A

1:04:56

lot to be said for the

1:04:58

interpersonal relationships that they have to

1:05:00

figure out in schooling

1:05:03

system . But that's the important stuff . It's

1:05:05

no longer all the stuff that computers

1:05:07

can do for us , anything

1:05:11

that's skills-based , like

1:05:13

even computer programming complete waste of

1:05:15

time . Being a computer

1:05:17

programmer A

1:05:19

computer programmer is someone who translates

1:05:22

an idea or a

1:05:24

vision into code , and ChatGPT

1:05:27

can now translate an idea into code , and

1:05:30

there's plenty of people who started computer programming and

1:05:32

all that sort of stuff . So , like all

1:05:34

of the things that you would think , if it's , if it's

1:05:36

at all , a set of skills , it's not really

1:05:38

of any use . There's

1:05:41

going to be a plenty of those people . We

1:05:43

need , uh well , with the exception of plumbing

1:05:45

, electricity , blue collar skills

1:05:47

. We're going to have a shortage of people who know how to fix things

1:05:50

and put a roof , a roof on on

1:05:52

a house , um , you

1:05:54

know . So the only skills that I personally rate are

1:05:56

blue collar skills that I think will not

1:05:58

go away for a long time . But , um

1:06:01

, but yeah , no , it's the , it's the other

1:06:03

side of things , it's the , it's the enterprise

1:06:05

skills that are the valuable skills

1:06:07

now well , if I don't teach you to fix

1:06:09

a toilet , I'll teach .

1:06:10

I'll teach you marketing and ai and she'll

1:06:13

be she'll be well on the way . Listen , dan , it's

1:06:15

been an absolute pleasure having you here . I really hope we

1:06:17

can do . I was going to say around two , but we did it . We

1:06:19

did around one many moons ago during

1:06:21

during the covid days . But , listen , thanks a lot

1:06:23

for finding the time . I know you're here in dubai

1:06:25

and , uh , hopefully I'll , uh , I'll see you again sometime

1:06:28

in the future Before you do go . I know

1:06:30

, obviously , as a key person of influence , people will already

1:06:32

know who you are , but for those that

1:06:34

don't just give yourself a little shout out for where they can

1:06:36

come and find you ?

1:06:37

Yeah , so all the books are on Amazon . I'm

1:06:39

very active on LinkedIn at the moment , so

1:06:41

if anyone wants to add me on LinkedIn , that's where I post

1:06:44

quite regularly and I post a weekly video

1:06:46

on youtube as well . You

1:06:48

can check out dentglobal or scoreappcom

1:06:50

or bookmagicai if

1:06:53

you want to have a look at some of the businesses . Perfect

1:06:55

, thanks a lot again .