Transcript for:
Business and Entrepreneurship: In-Depth with Timothy Armour

it's not so much how good you are it's how good other people think you are Timothy armor the man that sold his business for tens Millions before the age of 28 from humble beginnings living in a council estate he took the World by storm and he's now here to help others do the same I thought I basically had like the Midas touch I just thought it was just like a piece of piss basically it's almost as if I woke up one day and said oh my God I need to acquire skills I also don't think everyone should aim to be an entrepreneur we didn't know what else we do you can get anything you want if you enable other people to get what they want it was basically either go to Ghana to live with your nan or go to foster care a lot more people are walking around like distracted zombies if you've got that money spend it on whatever you want in the first week I took out 400 Grand in the second week I took out 400 Grand in the third week I took out 200 Grand I was like this is 1 million in cash and I'm looking at it welcome to the podcast bro great to have you here thank you guys thank you guys should be fun so I've heard you say before that you've always strived to be different so what do you think of those tick tocks that are like oh do you want to start a business or you need to start a business of some kind and persuading people out there nine to five jobs I think there are some you know I'm good friends with a few of uh those people where I think what they're showing is that um that there is a path for them to make more money than they currently are which is very different from basically like screw your job right now you basically need to have a completely different life so I don't think anyone can be an entrepreneur but do you think anyone can learn how to make money and I think those are two different things do you mean like for a side hustle for a side hustle working in a job where you are a salesperson or you're a marketing person where you get paid according to your results um because the way that I kind of see this whole uh journey of wealth is that you focus on having great skills ideally skills that help people make money and then you then apply those skills into a vehicle with enough leverage which is considered a business so do I think anyone can be an entrepreneur uh no I also don't think everyone should aim to be an entrepreneur I've seen so many people where I'm like you should not be running a business you just don't have the like emotional temperament and by you doing this you are hurting yourself and you are hurting your friends and your family and it's completely fine not to do it but there are a ton of people who may be their hairdressers and they're not making as much money as they'd like to be well if you went a freelancer hairdresser if you productize your service in a completely different way you can have the exact same input of time but have higher output so I think those uh sort of tick tocks and content which show that actually there's a completely different path slightly different part to get outsized results those are good but I really don't like those ones which are very much like you know if your job if you're Knight to five I'm like dude like this is so stupid if everyone became an entrepreneur who is going to work for them you know and also you're not an entrepreneur just because you're in business are you I think an entrepreneur and a businessman can be completely different completely different and I always say an entrepreneur will better share on the deal he's going into whereas a businessman will be a bit more calculated and and all the rest of it so I think there's a big difference between the two 100 I agree how would you define that difference is it similar to what Dad said or do you see it a different one I also think that an entrepreneur obsesses more about the machine they've built rather than the business person who I think is is quite in the detail so for example if you it actually took me quite a while for me to say okay I am an entrepreneur and I really internalized that after we sold my last company then I was like oh okay two times in a row I have built something and I've sold it and I built a machine which has then been able to be passed on to someone and that machine is just going to keep ruining growing and I think that's a very defining part of an entrepreneur when you have a lot of people who start services and like they need to be involved every single day I go you're not an entrepreneur you're just a very well paid employee and that's completely fine so an entrepreneur has that exit in mind because they're building the company so they don't have to be in it basically so not so much an exit in mind they're just building a machine which means they don't have to be in it so the more the person of influence of the business the driving force yeah and that machine can be an exit that machine can be passed on to kids that machine could go on the stock market but like they're building the machine rather than them actually doing the work and them actually needing to be present every single time so tell me about that childhood then where where did it all sort of start and go and come back yeah yeah I mean you know born here I was born in Hackney but before I was even six months old I basically went back to Ghana um what were the reasons for that the reasons we're actually using choose yeah yeah yeah but I mean in hindsight I actually think that was one of the best things that happened to me the reason why it was actually kind of um a bit of a weird reason it was because um my parents never really quite got on and so it was basically either go to Ghana to live with your nan or go to foster care yeah and so there was um there was this sense of well we don't want him to go to foster care and he's got a grandma in Ghana who can basically take care of him and so stay there for 10 years came back here and then really got immersed in the whole world of like Business Online media stuffing system different in Ghana to over here so I think the schooling system in Ghana is not necessarily better but it's faster so one of the things that I said a lot is like so I came to Ghana sorry I came to England when I was in year six I had learned every single thing back in Ghana in year four and so what that meant was when they asked me certain questions I would just know the answers to them and I think that gave me the further illusion that I was more intelligent than other people and it's so interesting how if you look at a lot of stuff in business it's probably even the same where you're not necessarily like better than the next person from scratch but if you believe you are better than the next person you start to act like you're better than the next person yeah and then you just become better than the next person and so that was how the schooling system there we just learned things earlier because we learned things earlier it was just like oh well this is really easy for me and then you start to like act like you're the smart person and then opportunities come because they see you as the smart one and then it just snowballs from them how did your parents or your grandma Define that age 10 was the right time to come back because if your parents still didn't get on your being 10 is still quite young they had sorted out not getting on so I think I then um I then went to live with my dad and so they had like figured out some kind of solution and I think the whole idea was a man or a young boy should grow up with a dad um because you know they've seen some stat out there which said when men don't grow up with that they end up in prisons and etc etc and so uh you know they didn't want me to end up in prison so there you go was he a good role model for you then and you went to live with him interesting question I think living with my dad was a very interesting experience for two reasons the first one was I came to realize how hard people should be working and then the second reason was I came to realize that I could not live my life working for someone else so he worked extremely hard for the Southern Care Services fun story actually about that because I would always see letters or stuff addressed to him for like Southern Home Care for pretty much like the first four years of my life I thought he dealt in property so I thought he was like a property man like he owned buildings and stuff but it still didn't make sense because I was like this guy owned buildings but we live in a fourth floor counselor state what's going on and then the second thing was actually seeing him work like do overtime Etc and then still not quite truly making ends meet I thought there's like something here that I'm missing it's not about the effort and it's not about the work that you do it's almost about the vehicle that you work in yeah and so that was when I had this resolve basically to say right I am going to figure out how to build companies build things that actually I can leverage and make more money and the early you can see that the better and a lot of people never see that do they they yeah they'll say that I work really really hard yeah and I don't earn enough and they can't see that crossover Point yeah and I think there's also something to be said about the importance of skills I think probably around 15 because I started a venture at 14 and then I think at 15 it's almost as if I woke up one day and said oh my God I need to acquire skills and then parlay those skills into something that will then make more money what did you start at 14 so I started a Tutoring company at 14. that was like my first ever um Venture that I ever did and it was a bet with a friend of mine where we where he bet me and said um uh I bet you wouldn't make 500 pounds before you turned 18 right like very stupid absolute stupid bit the reason why was because we thought 500 pounds was a lot of money then right yeah um and I basically uh went online I figured out and I searched how to make money online this was was it 14 years ago when you search how to make money online I wasn't on there then there you go right yeah yeah people like you guys were not there to share actual gospel um it was just a bunch of waste men basically um Shilling their courses that's it there you go and um but Tony Robbins was around back then yeah you know and like um and uh and something that I did see was this whole idea of like work with what you know and so I then focused I then realized oh I'm actually pretty good at maths so then my next thing was to cheat to people maths and um what then happened was people who wanted help in physics and chemistry and all of that stuff started to come to me and I basically was like okay I'm all that good at that but I can find other people who are that good at it and then I then connected with other students which was a very easy play it was like go to the teachers ask them and say hey who got the best grade in the last test you did they say James all right James do you want to make some money they didn't ask like why do you want to know no no no no because also like in my school I had built a bit of a reputation as to like I don't know how to explain it but obviously the small one but also the kind of positively vague one so he'd ask a bunch of random questions you wouldn't quite know where they're going but he'll figure something out right so I built that sort of rep and so that was the um that was the first thing and my whole model was charge people 15 pound an hour I'm the middleman connecting people I take five pound and the people keep uh 10 pounds so you made well over your 500 pounds yeah did it in a year I should think at least oh like way less um so what did he have to pay you a tenner for winning the bet if it was such a stupid bet because there was no downside for him yeah like it was just I bet you you wouldn't make 18 pounds almost like a dad yeah all right yeah exactly so so um was so silly but it gave you the try yeah and I'm incredibly grateful for having that especially at a young age because it made me incredibly um it made me build up enough evidence that I was someone who can make money yeah right and I think that's probably the biggest thing for a lot of young people now is they just don't have enough evidence that they can be different to the way that they currently are and so they just end up just doing the same thing for years and years and years and then in five ten years they wake up and they're like oh [ __ ] I also think they want to make too much too quickly as well that they think well that's impossible yeah whereas you looked at it and went yeah go on then we can do that bang you've done it and that was the the thing that sparked that for you yeah it starts small then you just kind of get bigger and bigger and bigger yeah learn learn your trade exactly exactly you mentioned that making money is all about skills what would you say are the the highest value skills that people could be focusing on now to make more money and also what would you say that your skill stack is so that people can learn from you so I actually think that every time I've done a significant business I've basically stacked skills so when I started my first of a you know the kind of businessy thing at 14 which is the like Tutoring company the skills that I learned was being able to sell pretty you know pretty low price products right being able to convince strangers to basically work for me within six weeks that Tutoring company had got up to 65 people right so I had instantly learned about sales branding positioning then I parlay that into the next company I started at 17 entrepreneur Express there I took my sales I was selling you know relatively low price stuff and the way that we grew entrepreneur Express which was basically like an online business publication we grew it by identifying really big Facebook pages and Facebook accounts and driving traffic from those to the website so then I learned a bit about copyright and how to find the right videos that can then convert and then at that point because the way we made money was by plugging into ad networks I had to then sell ad networks and I had to say hey these are our stats blah blah so suddenly I take in a low price thing that I learned from my previous business and then I'd applied it to something which was you know slightly bigger and then I'd learn things like copywriting and more stuff around positioning when that company got sold I learned how to do a transaction of course at 17 you know so and how much did that sell for that second business that was just like uh 110 Grand right but that's 100 yeah but yeah exactly right exactly but I but I learned that that whole process took 11 months right from starting the business to scale the business and then it being bought by um by a larger Media Group so you had the obviously the education thing at school yeah um did you sell that as a guy no no no no no that was just more like oh I never had to make money yeah right okay so that was your lessons that was my lesson on sales marketing all of that good stuff and that ran for the three years or so dude well the two gym is up until you're 17. no no dude like that ran for like a year maybe like start to cut you out exactly exactly yeah so there's a story right yeah so so um so the way that tutoring thing ended was pretty funny it was every week I'd see myself getting cuts and commissions and then what would then happen is one week it's like oh this is going down what's going on and the reason is very simple when you're in like a tutoring business and you've matched the tutor to the 2T there's no real reason for them to have you back and so what's happened was they were just going directly to the people so then the next skill that I learned was oh I should understand how to build Tech I should understand how to build something where I can own every part of the infrastructure so every single time there was like a new skill being learned and then after entrepreneur Express I then parlayed that into fan bites where it was basically all right I know sales I know marketing I know uh position I know brand I'm not going to apply to a different vehicle and the fan bite vehicle is when all right in like five and a half years you basically take a company from an idea tens of millions in revenue and then you sell the company for tens of millions so it's just like stack stack stack stack Stacks or sales marketing branding position the copywriting those five things I just parlayed them from like a smaller boat to then a bigger boat to them bigger than a ship so tell us what fan bite did what the original concept let me stick with the the um newspaper yeah yeah I don't want to jump the gun too much because one thing I love about the the newspaper story is how you were but Ali Abdul said it was um three different doors and you went yeah yeah yeah yeah door basically and oh yeah we went to meet Richard Branson didn't you yeah yeah yeah yeah both of them so you can tell that story yeah so um there was a there was an event called uh business growth Summit or something and I saw that Richard Branson James Khan and Alan sugar were talking and I really wanted to basically get an interview specifically with Richard Branson at that time he was you know kind of my hero um not anymore but uh we've had a dinner cooked by Richard he's actually cooked me spaghetti bolognese no no island or somewhere else no no that would have been very very nice I thought about the extra very to the nice thing yeah yeah uh actually his house in Oxford okay well there you go very nice yeah um and I was gonna I was like okay how do I get through to this I saw all the other PR people you know the bbcs of the world the Reuters of the world and I'm like you know how do we get through them how do I get through that um and so my hack and I've always thought about this um you can get anything you want if you enable other people to get what they want right so I then email the conference organizer Vishal and I say hey I would basically come the day before the conference and I would lay out all the chairs for you and all I ask is that you get me a backstage pass that's it right and within about 15 minutes he replied he was like you've got spunk bro yes I'm done right and so literally the day before I actually missed school because the event was on a Thursday I think and on Wednesday I just laid out with the chairs I went super early and I just laid out the chairs and I was so happy I was so happy just like laying out all the chairs because I thought Yep this is it and then the next day true to form um I was backstage did the interview uh with him you know very generic questions because part of me was like crap this is Richard Branson like this is so cool yeah yeah um turned that into the uh featured article on the site that drove a ton of traffic you know all of that sort of stuff is just like clear evidence of uh trying to figure out as you mentioned the third door rather than just uh you know rather than just taking what people are saying going yeah okay that sounds good how can someone use the principles there to bring value to entrepreneurs in the space now because we get so many messages saying I'll work for free but now we're thinking well that's more trouble than it's worth that's effort right yeah I'll do anything you want yeah yeah if you don't know what we want then it's more hassle foreign mentality yeah now it's just overused yeah so someone that you asked me recently about how I've been able to build a pretty solid Network in terms of you know uh I've been fortunate enough to to you know whether they're centimeters billionaires like that's a network I've built and I've used a very simple principle the first thing is that I study them for like two three weeks so I look at their social medias I look at the stuff that they put out because I'm trying to identify um what specifically they're doing or what's any problem that they that they have is and then the second part of the whole thing is when I reach out to them I've already done a bit of work already for them yeah so I remember this when I was a running fan base was like if I see some people and they're running Ecom companies right what I might then do is say hey blah blah I'm blah blah here are some like influencer strategies that you could use for x and that's the first thing that I've done for them so instantly there is this feeling of well hey this person knows what he's talking about and B this person has already done some work for me anyway yeah and so at the very least they would um respond to that and now obviously it's significantly easier because I have the exit and blah blah blah but at the beginning it was very much study to see what their problems may be and then already do a bit of work for them because at the very least you'll get a apply you get an opener and then off the back of that you can then forward some kind of relationship that's exactly what you did I think I would say that editors have done that for us as well in the past sort of yeah I took the liberty of re-editing this video for you what do you think yeah and you know they might not have even got a response but it's putting that work in that gets you the response yeah and look the thing is I think it's significantly easier to get further in life now than it was say 10 years ago yeah significantly and I'd add to that 30 years ago and 30 years ago you know you were stuck in a job you were asked what you want to be and that's what you're going to be and that's the rest of your days yeah and you know that's totally changed now in fact most people I think tend to have a job maybe eight to ten years and swap anyway and that certainly wasn't the case when I was uh when I was at school it was easier to buy a house so it depends how you quantify getting ahead yeah yeah so when I say again ahead I think generally there is less competition now for the things that you want than previously the reason why is I think a lot more people are walking around like distracted zombies yeah scrolling yeah like people say did you work really hard at Fan bites to build a company and sell it and stuff I say yeah but also I don't think I worked insanely hard I think that most of my competition were just not that good hmm like they just didn't understand things like how to Market yourself how to position yourself how to deliver results for clients just like simple things like that everything was very let's wait and see let's hope and see and I often say this to a lot of entrepreneurs you know I've probably invested now in about 25 companies and a question that I always ask them is um if you had to rank your competition between one and ten where would you rank them and any time that they rang the competition where it's like really super smart people Etc I go oh that's going to be sticky like picking industry where actually your competition is not that great because then you can absolutely wipe the floor with them so before we move on with the whole fan bite scene can you explain what the business model was yeah yeah so we started off so fan might was a very interesting business because it went through so many different iterations so in so in 2016 I actually started a company called bansi and banzi was basically a site which we had basically copied from the US straightforward and we had looked at this company called prizio and prizio was his company and in fact pressure was sold but there's another company in the space called omaze you've probably heard of amazing we basically looked at a maze and I was like yo we're doing this for the UK right so you could win these experiences with celebrities you know get Justin Bieber to come in whatever play for you in your kitchen you know those sort of experiences so I started on 2016 and I got a co-founder Ambrose um that idea miserably flopped miserably um there are so many reasons why it flopped it flopped because we weren't really solving a real tangible problem and also we were just really naive I know I've I've told this story before where we'd email you know info adele.com to be on the platform and he'd be annoying that she didn't reply like just so like you were gonna get a reply what was the financial burden of that failure to you nothing we're in school so me and Ambrose were in University so I started family as my second year of University so did you meet him at University uh I met him at like a leadership event thing so he went to Imperial and I went to Warwick um and how did you know he was the right co-founder I didn't um you're just gonna try it out and see if it works yeah you know one of the things that I've come to almost um internalized by business now is that it's not so much what you work on is who you work with like even now when I look at maybe starting a next company I'm now spending way more time thinking about the who that I do it with rather than the what which is kind of funny because when I was younger in the game and I'd listened to successful people talk about business and they say what's your secret and they'll always say you know it's about the people I used to hate that answer because the most generic thing ever but now you know it's yeah now I know it's true so no so we had no real financial burden because we were in school and it didn't really matter to us and you learned massive lessons yeah anyway yeah about great making sure that we sold things the market wants yeah because um there are so many people who are basically like building things at the market that doesn't actually want yeah so many it's it's um it is scary the number of pitches I get where I say okay who has this problem and they say some very generic thing that convinces themselves yeah and I think the general Hallmark of any business is ideally it's like unavoidable so as in the consumer basically has this problem and it's like an unavoidable problem urgent so by that that means they're kind of losing money right or they need it so they can make more money and then it's also underserved in some way but the number of people I just see doing crappy businesses the more amazing thing is how many of them get funding yeah well you know with those rubbishes not anymore me they're free money uh free money period is over now it seems to be doesn't it I mean it's such a burn culture wasn't it yeah yeah you know it's like I've got a business yeah it's not making any money it's burning money yeah but we're gonna get no you're not yeah yeah yeah yeah and I think to some degree the business we started before fan bites I.E banzi that was on course to be that sort of business which didn't really solve anything and then literally um I then discovered basically the rise of influences and I saw people like KSI and Zoella and all those guys massive audiences influencing people that I knew so people in my family were buying products because of them I thought oh that's interesting and then for me the final thing was that I saw influences in the same category as TV radio PR where they all start off as something which was uh by itself and then over time it then ended up being Consolidated and so I had a plan you know I started this at 21. I had a plan which was basically that by the time I'm 30 I basically want to become Fu rich and for that to happen I would need to basically have a business which before 30 can be sold and the way that happens is you need to pick a business where there's going to be some consolidation on the road and so that was then the thing that formed the Genesis of fan bites where I thought oh okay that's interesting let's do some stuff in this influence industry so it's kind of like we pivoted and pivoted and pivoted um this is a piece of advice I guess I give to a lot of young people as well which is why did you not quit though like when the first business didn't work why did you do that pivot so I think one of the reasons was because we didn't know what else we'd do right um and also because we were young there was pretty much no risk to just trying again and again and again and did you have virtually no money as well well obviously from the previous company I'd made a decent bit of money yeah um I spent a fair amount of air kind of squandered a fair bit but um but I have to do that though yeah you know yeah if you go through it go through it a little bit exactly you're gonna go through the whole lot you'll never learn exactly what did you squander on uh spread bit really yeah yeah I spent 40 Grand on spread Britain all my life and the reason why was very stupid it was because I had made that amount of money at that time in such a short period of time yeah I thought I basically had like the Midas touch I thought like this one yeah right yeah I'm actually surprised that I didn't spend more yeah but I just thought it was just like a piece of piss basically and so that's the same as people that have made this money in crypto they think they've got the cheat code to business or you haven't you you've been very lucky yeah you've not actually learned any lessons yeah to be honest you might do because he sold his business for a rumored 40 million dollars hey hey yeah but that's different you've built a business to do that you've learned a lot of lessons along the way and I always think it's about those lessons and that knowledge that you gain yeah which means you can replicate it again yeah yeah not the same thing something completely different but it's all lessons yeah all Network everything's gonna go towards that next business so was it just spread betting that's that's always gone did it on just that and just and just crap like no expensive designer clothes no I'm not I'm not in fact I'll tell you a story when we saw the company mentally it took me so long to just understand and be like oh my God like Tim you have money now right so I struggled I really really struggled so there's two things that I basically did which are kind of wild um the first one was that I forced myself to take this like really fancy trip to Bali so it was like first class fight Emirates fancy of solitaires the whole thing costs 30 grand right and I was like okay but just on your own no me and my partner yeah um uh should you look back at that and say that was waste no that wasn't that was incredible there you go that was incredible but I was incredibly scared to do it um and then the second thing was and I've told this story actually recently um the second thing was actually pretty wild so I I obviously you know once we saw the company I had my numbers on the Google Sheets and it just did not feel real to me and I thought you know what I'm gonna try and make this very real so I basically called my bank and I went through all the security checks and and in the first week I took out 400 Grand in the second week 400 Grand in the second week I took out 400 Grand in the third week I took out 200 Grand and I was like just so you got yeah I was like this is one million in cash and I'm looking at it and I've got how many of these more of these and I was like this is it I was like wow and just that mental shift to go like this is real this is real this is real this is not a drill right um that was something I really really struggled with what is the process like of getting a million pound out in cash oh you just go through a lot of Security checks and also like if you deal with certain private Banks like taking a million dollar cash it's not that much so you just walking around with it like no no no oh Uber's bro like like because they're so much safer in an armored truck no no no like that is another thing I internalized would you just dial up Uber money no no no no um uh but yeah so that was something that I struggled with anyway yeah so there's a story of fan bites and we built it and we just hit the market at the right time then like we hit the market at the right time the skill was there and we took the company from like me and my co-founder to 75 people um and then last year in May we just went through a process of um selling the company which is incredibly exciting and you've sold it in its entirety yeah like an old cash deal done um and so that was a crazy experience um and as I said and I think you said this very well which is like um people almost see you know they go oh you know Timo started this first coming out 14 okay fine 17 so that 110 Grand fan bites 21 sort of tens of Millions and they think like those were the only three things that I did but then there's like 13 other things I did which absolutely flopped right of course um and I'd like to tell so many young entrepreneurs it's like your first idea would probably flop your second idea will probably flop less your third idea will flop less than the second one and then like your fifth idea is like oh yeah this really works now and sometimes the worst thing that can happen is the first idea actually works yeah because you think everything will there you think you're the hero yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and you can't then replicate that yeah it becomes quite an issue as well but also like setting a low bar for what success looks like I actually think you know so many people now on Instagram will talk about on Instagram whatever we'll talk about you know like set big goals set big goals and there's some truth in that but also I actually think if you're doing your first company I think you should set kind of logos you should not aim for this to be the one that retires you and your math stuff just aim for all right this is gonna be my 10K a month business my Stepping Stones exactly exactly and life is easier that way what if an entrepreneur runs out of money and they can't continue and start the next business the next business afterwards what should they do so I'm a huge advocate for for um working for someone in a field that you actually care about there were so many things in fan bites where I thought oh crap I just do not know what I don't know and if I had worked with someone else if I worked for someone else in a similar field who had been through the same challenges life would have been way easier so I think if you know someone's run out of cash or something like that like a free Mentor in a way yeah like where you get paid for it and you get paid for it I generally I'm not a fan of this kind of you know I'm a I love this phrase history doesn't repeat yourself but it Rhymes because I think it likes everything most of the things that we're trying to do has been done by someone else exactly you can't reinvent the wheel okay am I a little bit more rounder you can change yourself make that ax will spin a little bit Freer but realistically it's been done yeah yeah and I almost and I encourage a lot more people to basically go learn on someone else's dime because there is no shame in that because once you do that and you figure out how they were able to solve those things then you can apply as well obviously you're still very young and you've made a lot of money do you ever feel like you're judged um for having this much money when you're young and maybe people think it's come from nefarious means so do you know what's really funny two days ago I was on LBC they asked me to do some interview and the guy said oh actually I was looking at your bio and my immediate thought was you were a nepo baby right and I was like what the heck does that even mean and basically it's you know someone who's benefited from nepotism where you know their parents have given them the money right so actually that's the one that I get along um and and I've never actually said this before but a big reason why that's also the case is because [ __ ] it will say it all right um a big reason why that's also the case is because I'm a young black guy who doesn't sound like a black guy right who went to who got a scholarship to a boarding school and so it's like this doesn't tick all the boxes that I think it should tick and so therefore his parents must have been some kind of you know Hot Shots you basically um gave him money so I think that's where the Judgment actually comes from the other thing about the judgment is I'm also not a flashy person and so sometimes people are like do you really have money bro like that's what we get all the time you said before wealth is what's unseen yes yes you know flashy and showing up exactly you don't need to show it off yeah being truly wealthy you but it is such a funny thing how I think um a lot of young people try and get into business and make money so that they can show other people they've made money yeah and it's like well that's just so dumb isn't it of course it is yeah you're just trying to please people you don't like aren't you and what's the point in that yeah people who's one person you need to please and be proud of and that's yourself so have respect for yourself so you're not participating in these like in the club oh this guy spent a thousand on bottles I've got to spend more you know they start going up against each other that's not you at all no I don't actually it's so stupid I mean look like you know work work as hard as you can to see how good you can be right that's what I tell so many of my friends like work as hard as you can to see how good you can be because I promise you I promise you and I genuinely thought this I genuinely thought this like you know when people are like oh you know money doesn't make you happy I know about crap I was like man that's cap like let me make money and then I'll tell you right and I do think it has made me happier but I don't think it made me happy because of your options exactly yeah and it gave you Freedom exactly and with those things you can have more happiness but if you were pretty miserable without money you're going to be pretty miserable just with a load of money you know yeah it doesn't make you happy yeah and I think also people how to explain this in the best way so once you've made a bit of money and let's say it's the crypto or property or selling a company I actually think there's like four stages of emotions that you go through and I went through the exact same uh stages in the last 12 months the first stage is for me when the when the deal was done and the funds landed I was like oh my God I was just so excited you just load it up like yeah so what I did was I actually ended up getting a new bank account purposefully so I could see the number go from zero to not zero right um and then when it dropped I said oh my God this is insane like my life has changed and I just kept saying oh my God oh my God in fact there is a voice note on my phone it's a 13 minute voicemail of me just saying oh my God oh my God oh my God all right like it's happened um and I think there's even a part in there where I like cry and then and then I start shouting it's like it's like this so that's the first feeling of like oh my God oh my God the second feeling is when you realize that like your life has changed but the external world has not changed so I remember the day afterwards I went into Sainsbury's and I was like where's the choir bro like where's the Applause where's the hype and because your word has changed but like the external world hasn't changed in any way and then the third thing is where you then almost need to normalize your new wealth meter this is why I was saying the thing like the trip to Bali right because at first I would say oh my God this is quite expensive and then I was like wait no it's not because if you took out 30 grand from this actually it doesn't make too much of a difference and I had to like internalize that and then the fourth one is when you go right I should now not care about losing money and I should care about growing money because when you first make a bit of money your entire thing is I need to not lose this and then after a while you then go oh okay it's not going to go anywhere if I don't mess it up so now I should care more about growing it so those four stages become more about preserving what you've got versus trying to get more of it that when's that because I know certainly at your age dad you want to preserve it yeah I do yeah well I want to grow it as well but I mean I've got about five years of really wanting to push the growth because why not um then I'll be 60 and then I want to start preserving it um I mean I am in sort of a preserved mode to a certain degree because obviously real estate's a good way of preserving money isn't it and once it's all paid off that's great we approach certain things differently yeah 30 years exactly yeah yeah so I'm sure you'll you'll reach that stage funny thing you said about Sainsbury's I thought you're actually going to say what I suffer from I still go into Sainsbury's and I look for a decent meal deal and I I'm looking okay oh that's a good sandwich that's good that's good yeah that's what I'll have and I and I even when I'm checking out I'm thinking what difference does it make I just have whatever I want yeah that's funny that's great what are you are you trying to get the the most expensive drink well not necessarily but you you look at you think oh that sandwich is a nice one oh I'm not gonna have that because that's not in the meal deal that is you down I know I really would have liked that particular sandwich and you say you're not about preserving money well a little bit so how does that make you feel because you know there are certain people out there certainly people that I know who aren't necessarily within the right to have an opinion because they they haven't done anything and have you know no reason to speak to Mark like that but they would say that that's sad like if you've got that money spend it on whatever you want you know live your life so what would you say about that I think he quite enjoys it though it makes me chuckle but what would yeah what would your opinion be on that because I can sort of see where they're coming from you know yeah you've got that much but I'll go to a Hospitality thing and pay whatever that is and not give it a second thought yeah you know but it's just in certain circumstances you still have that well that's what you do yeah I mean I generally don't try and subscribe to people telling me how to live my life and there are things as you said like to a Hospitality thing there are things I will spend excessive amount on and then there are things and I just go ah I can't bother what difference is it right yeah yeah exactly and you know generally if you're gonna Live Your Life by what other people think you should live your life you can live a very sad life um uh but yeah I think everyone should have their their kind of a uh positive Vice that's the one I mean I don't I wouldn't ever live my life like every day was the last yeah but I will live my life like it's the last yeah yeah because it is yeah yeah and that money I have I want it to last me I want to enjoy it every year I want every year to get better and better yeah yeah yeah and that's the way I've always been yeah about um two weeks ago I just came back from the um Serengeti and that was a crazy experience and I remember one of the days someone came to us and said there was this like hot air balloon thing where you can have you know like a hot air balloon above the Serengeti and for like the first five ten minutes I was like I don't know because you know for each person it was like a grand or something I don't know I don't know then I was like dude it's just Serengeti and you're gonna have a hot air balloon above it do it right and then I did it but but you know there are certain things we have in the end it was 100 worth it yeah it was 100 worth but some things aren't you know something's on like going up the burgeon dad had a massive argument about going up the Burj Khalifa it just pissed me off to be honest yeah we were in this apartment looking out and the Burj Khalifa was here and we we were looking I think that'd be nice to go up to the top so we sort of sorted out to go to the top of it and it was like 30 or something but it's not originally and it's not the top and I I looked it I went it's not the top I don't want to pay 30 to go up to a viewing platform that's not the top if you can pay to go to the top yeah I said well we go to the top now say well I'm not paying what it's costing to go up to the top top because I want to go there with my wife and I bring my wife to Dubai I don't want to go and pre-see it it's not worth it for me so I'm not going well we just had an argument about value dad didn't yeah because yeah the way I saw it it was like 80 quid yeah as in to go to the top and you get it you get a bit of cake you get a tea you know we could have even shot some content for Instagram you know with Mark if we'd have discussed that at first it's 80 quid let's just do it you know like if I can do it then you can definitely do it you know he's like no if it was the 30 quid one to go to I'd do it but I'm not doing the 80 and I'm just thinking oh my God I can't believe this but if I if you don't want to do something enough then the value of what it is is passed now if I went there with my wife I'd pay the two times eighty quiz yeah go and do it because the value is enhanced because I'm sharing that experience with my wife there you go yeah his wife is more important than you yeah I understand that but it's just I think that and I agree yeah it is what it is his opinion is absolutely fine but he wouldn't go if I didn't go so 80 quid is 80 quid and it's like we're here let's just go it's 80 quid it's funny who cares you know like there wasn't other things to do yeah you know so it was a choice as well whether to do X or do y and you know I'd rather have done the other thing because it was quite a long discussion yeah so bringing it back to uh business yeah let's talk about like some business topics business breakdowns stuff that can help people tactically yeah so if someone was looking to start a business now what kind of Industries would you be looking at as potential growth areas and how maybe how are you expanding your money as well and where you're investing it and being perfect timing would be nice I mean obviously like um social chain possibly is a similar story to yours a perfect timing as well isn't it riding that wave of um yeah so I think um what industry so I think less about Industries and I think more about business problems right and generally I'm in favor of a couple of things um things that Target other businesses because they have more money and generally you want to Target people with more money than and they have more problems and they have more problems something that helped them make more money or save cost those to me are quite important for example if I look at the fan Bite story our Revenue went like this like this like this and then it just went like that that inflection point there was when basically we changed the cell to be a lot more about how if you spend x amount with us you make X back so at the beginning we're very much about you know views and engagements and all of that and then suddenly it was like well this is how the work that we're doing here can drive you more traffic directly to your sites do you think you had to go through that period in time to build the case studies yeah then yeah yeah and we had to go through enough knows or I'll think about it right when people hit you with that that's basically do you hate or think about it I mean how do you come back to that because my staff in my other businesses when someone says I think about it you should say well how can I help you with that decision that you're thinking about but they won't come back with that they won't get to the nitty-gritty and I'd rather have a no if it's a no yeah I have a no it's not for me that's fine great way of them getting away from it yeah I'll think yeah but that's just a very simple human thing which is nobody likes to be told no so I think about it leave some kind of Hope in the air right and so you know that's that's that's a human tendency the reason why it's easy for say UI to just say well you know tell me how I can help you no yes it's because you know Frankly Speaking we have more at the table like we own the company and we're completely fine with someone saying no because we're like okay let's get to the yeses for them it's just more like okay I spoke to this person all right yeah you said he's thinking about it yeah yeah right and then what's even worse is that if the person doesn't if the person says no you see it as a reflection on yourself and you don't want to then go tell your boss no but actually if you tell your boss he's thinking about it you're pushing the can down the road this is some and I hate pushing count can down the road yeah I know I took my business stuff but just on that it's why for example I passionately hate the idea of just performance plans right I passionately hate them if someone is underperforming if someone is not doing a good job and you both know the person that's not doing a good job have the conversation and let them go don't come on this kind of strange oh let's put you on a one month performance plan because generally I've seen in business like people don't radically change from what they've used to be it's not like oh suddenly they're monitoring me I'm not going to change my entire thing my mental I think gave me the best bit of advice on it ever years and years ago he says the moment to sack someone is the moment you think about you need to do it yeah yeah yeah don't drag it out He he'll be happier somewhere else he might not be happier at that moment in time but he's obviously not suited or she's not suited to the position they're in yeah because you're already considering it yeah so don't consider it do it how about like bonus incentives instead of uh like a performance plan where you're monitoring them if they do a certain amount of numbers and they get a bonus on their original salary yeah I mean bonus I'm trying to think at Fan bites every single person had a bonus incentive not just sales people like every single person and that was pretty that was interesting because when we run the numbers at the beginning it was like oh that's going to be a lot you know paying out millions and bonuses but then you go well for the right people for the good people that's actually a very entrepreneurial culture that they love by the way if you're paying the bonuses and you're probably bringing in more money more money anyway yes yeah exactly um but going to your question yeah so I think targeting um businesses targeting something that helps them make more money and then generally doing something that can be repeatable so perhaps your actual process is repeatable and then for me the final one is something that's recurrent I think I have come to really appreciate the value of having a recurring Revenue business this is the reason why you know early on five six seven probably even 10 years ago like social media marketing agencies were all the thing because it's like the hell businesses if done right they help you make more money um you can get retainers which means it's uh recurring and then and then you can make it repeatable by having a really good operational process so how much was retainer base versus um yeah um so what was super interesting is we had a lot of repeat Revenue I.E customers buying a lot from us but we actually didn't have that many retainers which was super interesting because um we were in an industry in an influencer industry well I keep saying we famite was in an influence I always say wait I know it's weird isn't it because it's formed so much of your of your identity um found by to us in an industry where over time it began to be a bit more uh competitive which meant that like a brand will come to you use you and then perhaps like go sample someone else realize that they were crap and come back to you right or maybe it's an iman's agency yeah Iman gaji have you heard of him did he do any influence of things yeah he had um his influencer marketing agent oh well there you go I think that's where he made his original amount of money wasn't it well there you go right so so you basically had like a group of people in fact my friend um founded um lad Bible right and um obviously they've done very well and he was talking about how at the beginning it was like they'd get a branded a brand go and try other people and then they just come back to them and they was like well just stay with that's from the jump if we'd done a good enough job but yeah those are like generally the four things that I look at and I advise people to look at them and the business model rather than like the business industry because if you have that model you can do it in dentists you can do it in chiropractors you can do it like anywhere but it's more about the model rather than the industry if you focus on almost those four things as to what makes a good business especially if you are a young person I think focusing on what makes a good business is far more important far more important than what industry should I go in how important is software and technology so one of the things we did at Fan bites was we had two main bits of software we had our platform which basically Brands could use to run their actual influencer campaigns so off the team of 75 I want to say six of them were just like focused on the platform then we also had a second bit which was like influencer identification software so we could really Niche down to who was the right person for a brand because of those two bits of software when the time came and went through a process of selling the company we actually got valued on a revenue multiple rather than a profit multiple and that was something I decided from the beginning of the business because I saw how generally these sort of businesses were valued generally they were valued as a multiple of net profit rather than multiple Revenue unless they had technology and software and then that's when you were able to change that um that is also I guess a general piece of advice that I give to a lot of entrepreneurs and younger entrepreneurs it's like if you're starting your business it is very important perhaps you know spend 10 of your mental time to think about how does this business get valued because there are a lot of people who are building companies which a aren't particularly valuable or they're being valued by a completely wrong metrics and so they're optimizing for the wrong things and with us when I when I saw that you know typically they are valued as profit I just went how do we change that equation all right let's introduce a lot more Tech into it which means that we can then describe the service like a tech enabled company rather than just a marketing agency and did you put your business up for sale no with a price or you got offered yeah so um how deep do you want us to go into like the mechanics of something a little bit deep because I think um you know there's only so many people that exit well like you have and I think there's some valuable lessons in how that's done yeah cool okay so [Music] um all right let's roll so generally there are like two things right your business can either be bought or sold right so anyone can sell their business if they find just one buyer for it and they're kind of done with their business when your business is bought I.E people are coming to you that's the time that you can really get top dollar so in our case so we saw the company in May 2022. in October 2021 within about six weeks we'd been I'd been emailed by three different companies who were interested nice and when I saw that I went okay interesting yeah just very very quickly why do you think that it was then that so many of them reached out all at one time specifically sure um there are two reasons number one is Market consolidation so do you remember earlier I said that the thing with say the influence industry is that it starts off independent and then suddenly there's some consolidation so how it happens is everyone's kind of running influencer companies and then suddenly like the big agencies like wppo all those guys they say we want to bring everything in-house and that happens every single time so it was roughly the time for consolidation the other thing and this is going to get a bit like more technical so in 2020 2021 and we were making a joke about the uh crypto guys but basically there was an abundance of money yeah abundance of money especially from private Equity people they were just Deals Deals Deals Deals Deals that's also when you saw so many VCS raising their first ever round and it's like 500 million so what the heck right so because the PE guys were funding a lot of deals that therefore meant that these companies were able to have a lot more money to then be able to spend to buy other companies whereas now completely different right anyway so yeah so we had those three companies in six weeks so actually if you sold the business now would it go for far less than it went not far less not far less definitely but it's harder to sell and probably a bit less yes it'd be probably less competition right so then you couldn't bounce them off each other in the same way so it's more about um yeah yeah so it's more also about when a business is buying you it's like when a business is buying another business a big part of the reason or a big thing that they may be using generally if the business is not incredibly um profitable is they're using a lot of debt from the bank and at the moment with like interest rates where they are now to service that debt is getting more and more expensive yeah and so as a consequence of that people are more uh conservative with their stuff um so yeah so three companies six weeks and then it told me right this is now time like it's consolidation period I didn't like any of the companies right really uh no no that's interesting none of them um uh which is also a very interesting story which is because you shouldn't be emotionally yes it wasn't something you really cared about who it went to so when I first started the company I was like yo whoever pays me the big bucks and then when you build a culture when you know the people when a lot of them are your friends you go actually we need to ensure this actually finds the best next stage and the best home so I didn't like any of the companies and then what I then did in November we appointed a bank and so generally if you have a deal size of more than 10 million you generally want to appoint an m a bank and all they do is buy and sell companies every single day um and so we appointed a bank the bank then ran a process and the way that it works is like they will speak to companies on your behalf they spoke to six companies uh four of them put in bids um four or five of them put in bids and then we then spoke to a bunch of them decided who really like who really think it makes sense Etc who would be a good next home for them um and then we signed with brain Labs the company that bought us then went through due diligence and then yeah basically by April the deal was done so the offers I made yeah uh whatever it was um you 40 million dollars well whatever it was you saw the figure and you did you at that point go yep or did you negotiate up or how did it go so I think that most of the companies so three of the companies all generally had the same type of range really that's yeah very interesting yeah because it most most smaller businesses that range oh I could be fifty percent yeah yeah and I think look I think a big part of that was credited to our bank and the work that we also did to kind of like really paint that story of of of um of growth um so I think we saw that and we thought yeah that seems about Fair um because you weren't they weren't greedy right the other thing that's very important to understand about deals is I could buy your company for 100 million right but then sorry but then like 70 of it is in shares and then the other 30 million is to be paid out over five years yeah and maybe that one is paid out if you hit some certain targets so then even though the headline price could be a hundred million yeah actually on day one it could be like three million yeah and that's something so many people don't understand about a lot of transactions in business one of the things that really I guess uh pill two hours and to idea was it was a very straightforward deal there was no kind of like wishy washy like if you do this you do this like that to me was a very important part of it and I also felt that uh the company that bought fan buys brain Labs actually made a lot of sense because you know they were founder on they were 900 people but still found a run they still had that kind of DNA of pace and performance and so that's like the whole process basically of like how you buy or how a business gets bought basically selling a business can take a long time but it seems like your deal went through relatively quickly yeah like seven months is that because of the way that you built it yeah so I think there are a couple of things that really helped us number one is I think that just over time the business was quite a well-oiled machine so as something someone could basically take and then input it was actually pretty straightforward um we had also built a good management team and so because of that it was very easy for them uh to to say right you know this team is competent and then I think a big part of it is also the market timings right um we had a very competitive process so it forced people to be able to kind of move and go here and go there and go there because I just couldn't imagine that having to wait for so long like just knowing that I'm gonna get this money but it might take two years like it'd just be horrible did you um tell your employees that you were selling the business or yeah um so we had to tell them on the day that or the pr and stuff about it came out but a few of them had figured it out uh because annoyally no not annoyingly but funnily um we had public calendars and so they could just see like me Ambrose and Mitch my two co-founders like like we keep meeting his brain ass people what's going on right um that was saying to have booked a massive holidays there's massive Ibiza yeah um yeah so so so that was it so when you sold the business if you feel like you you lost your purpose what was the next step from there I don't feel like I lost my purpose but I think I had the wrong expectations of what would happen afterwards I think I felt that I would then be able to do nothing and then I had to internalize that I was 27. that's a long time to be doing nothing you know and it's a lot of effort to do nothing I'm 55 and I couldn't contemplate doing nothing it's really difficult and so I then surrounded myself with other people who were you know building companies I did a bunch of investing I just kind of got immersed and stuff which is something very interesting which is like when people think about making money and having money they kind of go oh the end goal is so I don't do anything the end goal is retirement and party every day and because you can do that and it is extremely exhausting and yes extremely boring yeah and once you internalize that actually you're going to want to do it again then you take a bit more of a long-term view on business business or whatever business that you're running at that point is just an interesting stepping stone to go do other things and I've spoken to so many Founders who are friends right now I'm not going to say his name but it's a company a lot of people use um so this come well not so it was last valued at 4 billion right he sold a bunch of shares and you know did very well and the last time I met him he was like severely depressed really so what are you doing bro like my first thing I said was go look at your bank account right um but it's amazing how much a smile those zeros yeah and and then afterwards I realized oh the reason why I feel so down is because you didn't have an expectation of what you were going to do afterwards so you felt like this is it and now is it and the fact that his product is seen everywhere and he goes to coffee shops and he sees people using this product he goes to other things and sees people use products and he's like oh okay well that's it so it's very important that you think about business as a as a stepping stone and a long journey rather than just this is it I'm done now on that note are you worried that you've peaked and that you'll never be able to outdo the last business your friend in that situation seeing his product everywhere yeah how can I ever replicate something yeah yeah yeah I think um I don't think I've Peak because I think there's way more skills that I haven't learned you know I think I'm you know pretty good at a number of things but I've also never been in a company where um revenues have been 100 million and that demands are completely new set of skills that Demands a completely new set of people management and Ops and really at that level you're doing also a lot of like Financial engineering is how to buy companies with debt and all that stuff do you think you'll have those bunch of skills or do you think you'll build another business from the ground up to a 40 million because a lot of entrepreneurs are in a bracket should we say a zero to ten yeah yeah a quarter of a million yeah yeah you know it's not called me like you know a quarter of a billion yeah quarter of a billion so do you feel you can make that leap to the 100 million business or the so to answer that question I think it's much more about who I'm going to work with next I think it's always that um I think with brute force and effort if someone decides to be an entrepreneur I think with Brute Force they can like Brute Force and just effort their way to a three to five million business um I think when you're thinking about a hundred million in that stuff you need to work with people who understand how that game works more yeah and then layer your skills on that so actually so much of my time is actually spent interacting partnering engaging with people who are playing on that level two weeks ago last week last week I was at a dinner and I remember the food came and were eaten and then I just looked around and I was like I am the poorest person here and that's completely fine I was like that yeah I was like yes because she's figured out something I don't know and he's figured out something he's gonna learn something again that's so good and it's like that's going to be so good and you know that sort of lowering your ego and saying hey I can learn so much I think that's another kind of plague that young people are going through right now where they feel they need to be the smartest or the richest in the room they just need to get a seat at a table where they're the poorest and uh level up to yeah and then move up the tables and so on and that gives you a false sense of confidence anyway if you are the best in the room because it's always going to be another room and if you think that it's like when you go to primary school and it's like I remember when I was a kid at primary school I was um quite fast at running and I was the fastest Sprinter in the school and I thought oh yeah I'm going to go to secondary school and then in all the uniforms I'd be so good it was so slow yeah you know there's that false like that small town mindset this is like when I went to um sixth form and I I mentioned earlier that I got a scholarship to this um sixth form and before I went there I was the smartest person then I went to sixth form and I was like yo yeah you guys are geniuses yeah and exactly that so you have to expose yourself always to you know two three levels above you to see what life looks like I had to use the running analogy because I've never been the smartest but oh there you go that's what works for me yeah how important is uh building your personal brand to your strategy moving forward because obviously that's a way to connect with more people so I think um yeah so when I was building fambites I did Lean a lot into personal brand and but the reason why was because I realized that the marker was pretty competitive and so because people buy from people right how do we ensure that we stand out right and so I use that as a competitive advantage Now personal brand I see it very much as being able to get into deals that are super interesting being able to get into opportunities that are super interesting I mean some of the opportunity like some of the deals I've done in the last 12 months I'm like this should not be real you know um and that only comes as a consequence of uh people seeing you often and people saying okay this guy knows what he's talking about but here's the big thing because I had a young entrepreneur hit me up and he just got it all wrong he was starting his company and he was then asking me so like how do I build a personal brand bumper and I said oh okay how many customers do you have none how much revenue have none okay um have you spoken to any people yet uh no just think about being my personal brand I'll say Okay build a company first and then build your personal brand right like build your company first and then talk about the stuff that you've actually done rather than people who just build personal brand to build personal Brands how about like influencers like KSI Logan Paul they went down the personal brand route maybe not talking about business but they built their personality yeah yeah the businesses afterwards yeah so I think it depends if your end goal or if your goal is to become an entrepreneur or an influencer so I identify as an entrepreneur right and the personal brand and the audience and all of that stuff is cool as distribution to bring deal flow and it's just you know cool to have an audience whereas you know people like KSI I was with my friend recently Patricia bright she's got like whatever three four million on YouTube or something like that like her goal was to be like a Creator and then now she's parlayed into being an incredibly success full property person but her first goal was being an influencer so if your end goal is to be an entrepreneur I go like start the business first and then talk about what you've done however if your thing is I want to be an influencer but go ahead but I think those two are very different it reminds me of that um Davey Fogerty guy who built the Udi or whatever it is he's getting pretty big on social media YouTube channel but he built the business first yeah and is now grown talked about the business and then because he talked about the business people go he knows how to build econ Brands therefore I'm a listener so what do you think about the entrepreneur Tick-Tock kids that make videos about how to make money or how to invest but they've never done anything and they're only 19. they taught from experiences all right but if they try to tell you what's up I'm seeing millions of followers copying a mark Tilbury video word for word and they oh really yeah so funny well that's funny um I mean even sharing the journey is all right but yeah I mean even show him the journey is all right doing that stuff's all right but you just need to have enough things to talk about right again like it's completely fine if you're in go or if you're starting goal is I want to be an influencer like that's completely fine like absolutely no knocking that but if it's I want people to think I am an entrepreneur and I'm gonna do it through content so well just be the entrepreneur and then talk about it afterwards anyway yeah obviously you've worked for lots of Major Brands like Nike I think and Samsung and so on which I can understand how the Dynamics of that work but you've also worked for government as well which that's funny how does that work so um as in how we go to government yeah how you got the the jobs because I think you help them with social media yeah yeah a lot a lot man's got the Matrix in his back pocket um we actually I'm trying to think so during Fanboys we worked with the government quite a lot of time actually right loads of time actually the first ever time was to help them promote the new minimum wage and that actually came from them emailing us which is kind of crazy do you think it's a scam when you get it like there's no way they're gonna just email me no no no um because we promoted and we did a lot of content around how unsexy Brands can reach a gen Z audience and so obviously somebody actually saw that and thought well we are obviously an unsexy brand yeah um and we need these people which is a big cheat sheet actually in business like when the company was sold about 95 of our Revenue was inbound so companies came to us and we're talking like Samsung McDonald's delivery the government all of those they came into us the reason why was because we really focused on being thought leaders in the space by putting out content by putting out white papers and guides and all that stuff people go oh wow they're actually quite good and then they came into us which is a big I guess business tip and it's something I didn't appreciate until probably year three of the entire thing which was it's not so much how good you are it's how good other people think you are and you can influence how good other people think you are by just showing up a lot in their faces right so if people constantly see you they go well this person is doing something right they must be big and so this was actually on a very tactical um uh uh help to your audience for example when we were trying to get into say the fashion Market what we would do is we would figure out all right these hundred Brands how do we make sure that for the next hundred days we are basically just in their faces all the time whether it's content on LinkedIn contour and Instagram content on Facebook their emails their guys their newsletters so by the by the end of the hundred days they're like Jesus Christ fan bites are the ogs like somebody might say everyone everyone is using fan bikes and then that then drives them to come over to us so if you're building some kind of a company like how do I get through to to my customers how do I get them to come to me that's a very tactical way you can do it sounds very interesting is there anything that you think that your audience would really want to know about you said like 18 to 30 meals businesses Etc I mean the biggest problem that that we have I think with the people that watch yeah and the comments that we get is they don't feel they can get there you know you know there is one million 10 million or whatever happens to be I mean we all know a million is not going to be enough anyway but even that seems too far it's almost like your analogy when you said the BET was to get to 500 pounds like wow You'll never get to 500 yeah it's seeing these things as being they under see what they can do in a in a in sort of like uh 10 years but they overestimate what they think they can do in a year so that's that's the problem and I I find it quite hard to get that across that you know this is Stepping Stones you know if you want a million you haven't got to earn a hundred thousand this year 100 000 next year that's not how it works exponential yeah it's the exponential growth and starting that do you think that can be because I completely agree with you on that part of me thinks that I don't think seeing a video on YouTube is going to change your mind I think by the time you're 18 you need something which is like a shocking thing like for me I've had a few like shocking moments where I go wow like when my dad died when I was 21 I was like okay now it's [ __ ] game time you know um obviously I'm hoping that you know everybody does I mean I did a shock thing I was gonna say yeah Kai he wasn't into her business at all and didn't really know what you wanted to do in life but then you stumbled across some videos on YouTube and it did completely that's interesting okay but the things that you mentioned though I that you know your dad dying and stuff I probably went through that a lot earlier I mean I never knew my dad my mum died when I was six so I'd already been through this stuff and I knew that there was no way for me unless I made a way I already knew this yeah but that's interesting you know it wasn't like a specific sort of shocking moment it was more so just like I've been watching YouTube I feel like I know a lot this is what I want to get into and like [ __ ] so I need to make it what was the YouTube video anything from you know I was watching Graham Stefan um Mark Tilbury I was watching things about e-commerce so what I actually did that's cool was through the pandemic I started a gaming accessory business selling low-cost items on Ebay turned over a quarter of a million really high margin probably made just short of 100 Grand that's cool then these guys needed an assistant I knew that my business wasn't sustainable so I came on board as an assistant and then worked my way up clutch yeah well I guess you do you have actually you know changed your life through just seen a video or seen a bunch of videos maybe and that could have been the spot that could have been this yeah that could have been the sparked I mean there's always moments I mean you've spoken about moments haven't you as well so there's always moments that change the way first of all you think well not always there should be a way that makes you change the way you think about money but I I think though the the key point is is that you say something needs to happen and for me these things had already happened you know so it's like if it's like oh well I've got my mum and dad and we've got a five bed house and I know that I'm gonna go to UNI and stuff he's like okay cool I don't care but when it's like no I'm literally making 200 pounds a week I literally can't even afford to afford to put fuel in my car what am I actually gonna do about this oh yeah that YouTube video made me think about something I could do yeah so let me try it what have I got to lose because YouTube gave you a way to surround yourself with these people that yeah yeah and make more money than yourself so then you felt inspired to be part of that group like you're saying yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and what was your I guess uh Tipping Point or both of you I would say probably mine was when I got injured and I couldn't swim anymore I used to swim competitively yeah I was used to training um 4 am in the morning and then to school and then afterwards you know two hours in the pool again so I knew like hard work from that and it taught me a lot of lessons and then when I got injured I'm thinking like what am I going to do and then I transitioned into videography running myself interesting videography business working with um business coaches and then we ended up starting this whole thing together so we had a scholarship for swimming and actually had to go to the Headmaster to request his scholarship be changed to um your media then I helped the school with their media so he ultimately he offered to put the chairs out in a way by doing the schools media that continued your scholarship yeah I suppose I built my skill stack and then combined it with dads and we started yeah the podcast what was your Tipping Point is probably my friend Dave monk I mean he was an older friend I was in a in a club environment as a youngster and um he would always have a little bit of money always have the nice car always have the nice radio control models you know everything he had was just that level better than everyone else and he took the time well I I obviously listened I was a bit of a sponge and he would give me Snippets and I would come back with a with a question about it so he knew he wasn't wasting his time um so it'd be forever feeding me bits of information I think that this is gold and then I had a second moment where I was a carpenter and Joyner for a while so I did an apprenticeship and I was fitting a staircase in this guy's house and I asked him what he did because he didn't seem to do anything and he had absolutely loads of money he said well I make I make money work for me oh yeah yeah and that was third moment as well didn't you when um the the boss well the um not the boss the foreman you said when you were doing carpentry said you're going to be making wooden beans well that was a more of a stage where I was gonna say that's it but that's an interview moment yeah it really was without saying that because I'm not that way minded but I didn't say it yeah but we know what it means but you know it was literally right that's it I'm out of here you know you can't be trusted with my skill set yeah basically yeah I'm going that's stupid yeah because that um second one I think I heard on pod and um yeah everyone kind of needs I don't know that kind of I've had it moment you know I've had it like I've had it being being basic I've had it be an average I've had it being this I think I think like every single really successful entrepreneur that I know has basically have I've had a moment sometimes it's like when they're running their business and they see their competitor has just absolutely done something crazy and then they just go I've had it like that guy's no better than me it's no smarter than me like I'm gonna destroy him and then that kind of emotion and that kind of feeling just catapults them to go I can be better and then they just absolutely and I think some people do look at other people and think they're better than me I I've always looked at other people to take car racing for example we've all got the same car we all got the same tires we've got the same engine why is he faster you know better than me I I'm gonna go that fast used to obsess over it absolutely because I'm I'm as good I'm better than him yeah yeah and I think most entrepreneurs will put themselves up there yeah and then prove it yeah yeah yeah whereas others will go oh yeah well you can't beat him he must be cheating or he must be doing this yeah he must it must be doing that yeah because I can't yeah do you think entrepreneurs have an innate ability or they think they're just better than everyone else anyway or does that develop from that moment I've actually always said that one thing that helped me is that I always ever since I can remember had a superiority complex I've always thought that um that to me though doesn't come from like an ego perspective it's more well I think I have the capacity to be better than anybody this is the reason why I said in our field we absolutely wiped the floor with so many people it's because I just thought you guys just want to you know go to brunch and have the meetings and do all that stuff but I'm here like building marketing funnels that will attract a ton of people I put you in front of a Facebook thing I say run a Facebook ad to attract clients or do this to a track person or we have a speaking engagement we have to do they'll be like you know um pleasure to be here um um but then I'd come in first line is a grip first line is a hook you go wow this person is amazing so I think that superiority complex actually that's kick-start things and then you build enough evidence to say right okay more and more and more and more I am better than you right are you super confident like that like if you've got to go into a room like you say and give that hook or try and land someone or come on this podcast today is it no problem is there any sort of doubt or lack of confidence within yourself you have to build yourself up in any way or is it just nothing I think that the last time I ever felt any degree of a lack of confidence was probably when I just didn't understand the game enough so when you know you can speak fluently on the topics that you're going to be speaking about then you've got nothing to worry about and also when you have evidence of people who are no different to you doing it you know um I think we were introduced by Dan Priestley yeah and you know Dan's a good friend of mine and I listened to his thing I was like that was so good and also because I know Dan the stuff he says I'm like this is so good and he and I back and forth um on them as well and so because of that I'm like oh well yeah this is this is like gonna be straightforward right going on podcasts because I've done so many podcasts in the past it's straightforward so you have to almost like understand the game which is why I'm a huge kind of advocate for books as well I'm a huge advocate for reading books because I'm saying reading yeah so so away you know yeah I mean we just put a video out um the faulty business books that I've read and can take a snippet out of out of each one yeah I only read 40 books here's what will make you rich yeah and you get you get all these three million you get all these little comments in there like you never read all those books why because you wouldn't yeah I mean 40 books in 56 years it's not that crazy 56 years what I was reading in the womb come on whatever but no seriously it's not that many books it's just not and that's a lifetime of knowledge you've got for 10 15 pounds Berlin fantastic it's like what I say about three months of training I could be anyone I just think if you understand the game and you do the the research like you can't go in blind but if you do all of that stuff then you should stand a better chance if you have the deep focus to do it 100 preparation time now for your famous question when is enough enough so I think enough is enough when you're doing it from a position of abundance rather than scarcity that's when enough is enough because you would always want to do more things the switch is when you're doing it because you are interested and want to do it and there's so many options for you to do it rather than if I don't do this I am going to feel bad in my opinion that's when enough is enough thank you that's a beautiful one another podcast and I must admit I do like the way you consider your answers as well you've got the perfect amount of delay and consideration oh good thank you very much it's been very good if you guys enjoyed it make sure to smash that thumbs up button for the YouTube algorithm and we will see you next Wednesday with a brand new podcast so it's goodbye for me and it's goodbye from these guys see you later bye brilliant very good enjoy