Transcript

00:00 I've built multiple 10 million dollar plus companies. I don't know how to do anything. I don't have any web development skills. I don't have video editing skills. I don't have design skills. I don't have any skills I can write all right. I can write books and I can speak but that's it. I'm an organizing Force. I'm the guy who just organizes it what you're about to hear is a round two interview between me and the incredible Daniel Priestly. Now Daniel is actually one of the most popular episodes that we have ever had of the podcast and the first episode that we did which was around a year ago still continues to get thousands and thousands of views every single day. In this episode we talk specifically about how to go from 0 to 10K a month as an entrepreneur and then we talk a bit about how to go from 10K to 100K a month and then we talk a little bit about how to go from 100K a month to a million dollars. A month as an entrepreneur 10 grand is not a lot to certain people if you've already got a half a million pound business a half a million dollar business 10 Grands okay yeah. We can do that and we're going to be talking about a bunch of Frameworks that you can learn and apply to whatever stage of the business career you're at we're going to talk about the four different types of products including the Eiffel Tower metaphor and throughout the episode we Riff on a bunch of different business ideas and we apply the principles to these ideas kind of in real time so you can see how they apply in a real world context. Anyone who can run a pub can run your business. A pub has drunk people and people like hooking up and having relationships. A pub is like got razor thin margins. You just do not need to be running your business. That's not what you're good at as a key person of influence. You should be out there doing the thing that only you can do oh by the way if you have a couple of minutes I would love it.If you could possibly fill in a little survey. We are surveying the audience people who watch or listen to this podcast and trying to figure out what are the things you Vibe with what are the things you don't who are the sorts of guests that you'd like to see more of and what sort of topics should we continue covering on the Deep Life podcast. So if you've got a couple of minutes it would mean a lot. There's a link in the video description or in the show notes would love it if you could help us out and help us make the podcast better for you guys so yeah check it out Daniel welcome back to the podcast it's good to be back. This is sick like you are one of the high most viewed episodes of all time and if we sort of excluded the people who are already like like super celebrities. You are the most viewed episode of all time I'm totally stoked about this. This is incredible what do you think landed so much with people from the previous time you came on on the podcast. I think we just went through a journey and we hit a whole bunch of bases. I'm hoping we can deliver as much value today as well yeah um and also here's the other thing I think everyone's interested in becoming an entrepreneur um. The world has changed so much in the last 10 20 years and the rules that many people grew up with have changed the schooling system is preparing people for a world that doesn't really exist for you know as far as many people see. There's a lot of people who are dissatisfied with the game of work because it doesn't pay enough um and the conditions aren't good enough and it doesn't feel like it's giving you enough freedom and flexibility and you know something that's going to be exciting and interesting and engaging and a lot of people are turning to entrepreneurship and they want to know how to do it nice so we're going to be talking about how to do it. In this episode. We're going to go over the entrepreneur Journey from zero to 10K a month 10 to 100K a month and then 100K to 1 million a month. No pressure and we'll split up. The other podcast into these three chunks and we'll try and just sort of Blitz through as many of the Frameworks and ways and the philosophies and the ways of thinking about it as we can love it. So that people can at least know what the roadmap looks like. And then they can fill in the gaps with specific implementation based on other reading and other resources and things like that. Here's the thing I want to say up front um. A lot of people think that entrepreneurship is a really unpredictable Road. They think that it's uh you know dangerous and risky and all of those sorts of things. I've got an analogy that I think is worth saying right up front um so as you know I've got three. Little kids a four-year-old a five-year-old and an eight-year-old. So we do lots and lots of Lego so imagine you. You start with this Lego box and you look at the front of the box and on the front of the box is the picture of what it should look like at the end and then you tip the Legos on the carpet. It's a big mess and you go how do I get from that mess to that box and then there's a little set of instructions that says do this then. This then this and it breaks it down just step by step by step and then you don't have to really think if you just simply do the steps very rapidly. It starts looking like the front of the box. Now entrepreneurship is actually very similar to that there are a series of steps and you go step by step by step by step and then it starts looking like the front of the Box pretty quickly so that's what I want to cover. Today. I want to like basically try and demystify it. A little bit I want to take all the kind of weird risky kind of misconceptions out of Entrepreneurship okay. But surely this is too good to be true. I've heard that like you know entrepreneurship is like you know 99 of startups fail or whatever that number is. I know so many people who've bought a course on day trading trying to make money online and like they're they've just failed and seems like the only people getting ritual. For this are the people selling the courses yeah. So what's what's going on there okay so great great uh first frame. The first thing I'd say is entrepreneurship and trading are very very different right. So trading is a zero-sum game you're buying and selling equities or you're buying and selling a financial instrument and these are zero-sum games there's winners and losers and there's nothing in between or there's brokers in between. But you can't value add you can't buy some shares or some currencies and value add those you have to basically trade those and try and get in and get out at the right time. The reality is because it's a winner and loser sport something like trading um. You are not going to beat the winners right so the people who are the best in the world. It would be as silly for for me to go into the NBA and say that I'm going to try and score a few points against the professional basketballers. I could try for 10 years. I wouldn't score eight point not one um because they're professionals. They're they're built for it and they're like paid crazy amounts of money. So that's who you're up against when you're in the trading space.So entrepreneurship is not trading that that is definitely not the case um. When we go into the world of Entrepreneurship. You can value ad and you can do all of those sorts of things. Why is it that um. It's not uh more predictable for most people well for starters. Entrepreneurship. You're figuring out what the market wants and most Market needs already met there's already businesses there's millions of businesses yeah. So most Market needs are already met um and people. It's like yeah. I already have a company that makes great um cupcakes. I don't need another Cupcake Company um. So the thing is is that we're trying to go through a process of discovery to find something that is an unmet need something that the marketplace wants but doesn't actually have access to and that is hard right. So. It's not that it's easy. But there are a series of steps that allow you to de-risk it and to Dey mystify it and to not over commit. Not you know take yourself into a position of of being throwing money at something that's not going to work okay that makes sense um before we get into the I guess. The entrepreneurial Journey um you know you've written a book called how to raise entrepreneurial kids and you have some thoughts about the school system and kind of how how we got here. I wonder if you can just sort of Riff on that for a moment like why is entrepreneurship so alien to the way that most of us were educated yeah. So entrepreneurship feels very counter to The Way We Were educated because the education system was created in the Industrial Age when they had to create something called component labor component. Labor was creating um nicely machined parts that fit into somebody else's organization someone else's machine if you think about the world. Prior to the digital Revolution you had local economies and you basically graduated school and had to fit into a local economy. So some kids were going to grow up and become local police officers and some were going to become local doctors and nurses and some are going to become local teachers and some are going to be butchers. Bakers and Candlestick makers so all the things that were in that local environment and you essentially had to graduate school and then fit into a business that was already up and running and established in the local environment. So the model for schooling was to create component labor people who fit nicely into other people's businesses where we're at right now is very different. So the world that we live in right now is teams that are geographically spaced out um business opportunities that could be incredibly narrow and Niche but a mile deep customer base. That's all over the world um and you can in that environment you can actually be very different. You can be highly creative. You can be Innovative. You can be um exclusive. You can be specialized uh all of those sorts of things. So it's a very different environment in the digital age. The next thing that I would say that's different is that when you're an entrepreneur you're looking at a problem that exists and you're trying to come up with a solution that fits that problem. When you've come out of a school system. You're developing a skill set and you're trying to find an employer that needs those skills so nice slightly different yeah. So when when we think about like um a Porsche 911 Porsche 911 they don't say what are we good at and they go okay. We're really good at making the chassis of the car but we don't do tires and we don't do stereo systems. So we're just going to sell the thing that we're good at. They say what does the customer want well. The customer wants to be able to drive the car straight off the dealership and feel great about their purchase and to do that they need tires and they need a stereo system in the car. So what Porsche does is. They ask what does the customer actually want what's the experience they're looking for and how do we bring together everything that's required for that to happen so they say okay. Let's get Pirelli tires on there and let's get a Bose stereo system in there and let's get two and a half thousand suppliers and let's pull them bring them all together.So what businesses do is. They find a solution to what the customer wants what employees do and especially when you've come out of school is. They have skills and they try and Market the skills to an employer. So these are slightly different. They sound similar but they're they're quite different and that's why entrepreneurship feels a little bit different when you move from employment into entrepreneurship nice and how do you define entrepreneurship. So entrepreneurship is a couple of things number. One you are trying to do something that commercially is successful. You want to make money right so let's not beat around the bush entrepreneur. A big part of Entrepreneurship is you want to make money you're doing something for commercial success. It's it's not a charity um you're trying to make a profit. The next thing is you're taking a risk. So entrepreneurship has an element of risk um and normally. It's even. It's a risk for the entrepreneur. You're in some way risking your time without a certain outcome or you're risking money or you're risking someone else's money um. You're you're doing all of those sorts of things um and the next thing you're doing is you're organizing the resources beyond your own control right so you're starting with limited resources and then you're expanding your sphere of influence over resources. So when we think about those three things if you weren't really taking a risk you'd just be a leader or an asset manager um. If you weren't trying to make money you might be a change maker. You might be a positive force in the world but you're not an entrepreneur right. So it has to combine all of those elements and when you say uh what was that thing you said sort of organizing resources. So if you had all the resources right. Let's say you're a trust fund kid. You've got millions and millions of pounds already that your dollars that you're starting with and you've got all these people and it's it's all there. You're essentially you're a leader you're leading the money or your asset. Managing. An entrepreneur is normally someone who's accessing resources beyond their control so they have to enroll other people to join their team. They have to enroll investors to put money in. They have to enroll customers to buy something that isn't really proven so you're kind of influencing people outside of your current sphere and how would you define entrepreneur versus solopreneur. You know a thing that's become popular recently on Twitter and like one person businesses and things like that yeah. So you're still commercial you're. You're still taking a risk you're not really organizing a lot of human labor. You're not organizing um people outside of your control. I'm not a big fan of solopreneur and the reason for that is because if you're a quote-unquote solopreneur you're basically if you go on holiday. The whole business goes on holiday and you can imagine what it would be like. If Microsoft said everybody's on holiday. This month we're all going away at the same time. Right Microsoft would shut down and it would like the stock price would crash so if you're a solopreneur and everyone goes away all at once uh which is you um. Then that's a very precarious position and the truth is you never really switch off as a solopreneur. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to like create something and sell something and deal with customers and all this sort of stuff all on your own and the truth is as soon as it starts showing sign of working why wouldn't you have a salesperson. Why wouldn't you have an assistant. Why wouldn't you have someone who's you know customer service role. Why wouldn't you start bringing together a few people to make this thing actually a proper business and to also specialize your own time on the most high value thing that you do. I mean people famously say oh. I don't want to manage people well. I think managing people is when you go past in some cases six or seven people. Sometimes you can manage up to like 12 um but certainly once you go past 12. You are into management teams and all that sort of stuff and it's it gets hairier and more complex. Let's just call it 10 people so under 10 people. You normally find that you're a self-organizing team think about it like a dinner party. If you have six or seven people around for a dinner party. It really does self-organize people just like get their own drinks and they like bring things to the table and everything kind of works and it's kind of a flowing conversation. If you go over 10 11 12 people. 13 people. Now it's kind of like you've you're organizing people and you really the stress comes on and it's like guys. It's time to sit down to the table over here now and who's got the drinks and who's doing this have we got enough food so suddenly. It's like a it's a much more complex production to bring that many people together so there's something magical that happens which is a self-organizing little team. Certainly three four five six seven eight people eight people you're definitely a self-organizing little team.There's not a lot of managing people um in in that okay. Nice cool so um apologies for taking us on a little bit of attention down that route. But I know that people you know are interested in the whole sort of situation um so 0 to 10K a month that's like our first step of the process um and so I wonder if you know this is something. We tried on a previous podcast if we can sort of pretend to be coaching me as a beginner to entrepreneurship I don't really know anything about entrepreneurship but I like the idea sure I've maybe listened to you on. Deep dive without and I'm like oh this down in Priestly. Guys knows what he's talking about I would like to engage his Services as a coach I know you don't really do one-on-one coaching anymore but like how how would we approach that conversation if I were say working a full-time job as a junior doctor two years out of med school and I want to start a business but like I don't. I don't really know what's next so I love a good framework and my framework for this would be chaos chaos stands for concept audience offer sales. So concept is we need to come up with something that is a good idea. A good concept when people say Ali what on Earth are you doing why are you quitting your job to do this thing. They're going to say what are you. What is it you're going to do what are you going to start. So. The first thing is you've got to have a good answer to that so you've got to have a concept so let's talk about concept um and I want to do this nice and quick but do it justice yeah. So the first thing that I want to do with the concept is I want to know do you want a lifestyle business or a performance business right. What are we building what does that mean so lifestyle business is going to be are we keeping it small so that you can have fun. Freedom and flexibility is that the purpose do you want to just travel and work and um and have a little. You know gang of people that are you know. Rebels and misfits and we keep it small and deliberately. The whole purpose is fun. Freedom flexibility and especially we don't want debt or investors right so that would be a lifestyle business. Lifestyle Boutique and um the second thing would be a performance business which is we're building something to sell it. We want to become big and valuable. We want to be 50 million 100 million plus in valuation. We want 50 employees. We're happy to take on investors. We want investors. We want debt. We want to build something that's going to be valuable so the first thing I'd want to know is do you want a lifestyle business or do you want a performance business. I think of it like a property developer with a block of land do you want to put your dream home on the block of land or do you want to build a 10-story building and sell it um like a property development. Okay I want to make if I could make 3K a month that and that that will allow me to quit my job and then I'll be happy. So it sounds like a lifestyle the beginnings of a lifestyle Boutique right so and this is not a bad place to start normally. A performance. Business is something that you would do um if you've got really good guidance and and you know you might have it might be your second time through so um that would be the first thing. The next thing I'm looking at is what we call omv. Orange origin story mission and vision. So what is your background and we need to do something that lines up with your background. There's no point where we don't have any passions or any you know like when you talked about trading before I see people. They watch some trading videos online and then they're like oh. I'm going to be a Trader why well because so and so said that I could end up with a helicopter okay amazing um and it's like what about your background says trading. Nothing you know you've never done. You're not analytical you're not you don't have any of the kind of background that a trading firm would want to see in a Trader that they hire none of that's. There. You've just seen something you think money. So there's no origin story. Whereas let's look at you you became a you know amazing YouTuber but your background was teaching people. You were um helping you know Cambridge you were talking to people about how to um. You had one of your first businesses teaching people how to you know study for exams so there is actually a background. There you also were passionate about media and you were doing stuff in the media space. So you had a bit of origin story that was leading up to this so what would that look like for someone who maybe like I've spoken to a lot of people who would say oh. But I don't have anything I'm passionate about like I'm studying insert generic degree at Insurgent Eric University and in the evenings I go home and watch Netflix and scroll social media and hang out with my friends like uh what in in that context how how do we approach talking to that person about this origin story.If I had time with that person I would discover that around age 10 there were moments where there were the early moments of empowerment now I've worked with enough entrepreneurs to discover the that always around age 10 to 13. There was a moment where you discovered that you were actually independently powerful separate to your parents um and you have a moment of like wow okay you know what I'm not just a dumb kid. I've actually there's something going on here. So you might have stood up to a bully. You might have um taken ownership of something. You might have you know put together a little play something like that. So there's always clues in that um and psychologically. One thing I've found about entrepreneurs is that they're at a very deep level. They're trying to get back to that feeling that feeling of empowerment and it started early so let me ask you the question around age 10 to 13. Do you remember a particular early memory where it was like I had a moment of empowerment. I had a moment that feels like wow I'm I'm on my own and I'm actually a powerful individual yeah. It was when I started to learn to code coding yeah and when I started making websites and the The Joy um I'm kind of getting emotional for like even just talking about it just the joy of creating something without my mom's permission and like just making the thing and then started like advertising my services on a freelancer website back back in the day so there's some elements here of Technology and there's some elements of putting stuff out to the world like you're actually creating something and putting it out to the world um and there's elements of like no permission right now if we go and fast forward to YouTube. It's a no permission platform you're creating something for the world and you're putting it out there in the world. So there's all these kind of Echoes of that early memory um so what happens is that this ingrains in this pretty early and everyone's got one right. So we all have a moment. Sometimes. It's a negative experience so sometimes um like a silly example. The origin story for Batman is he's a victim of crime. His parents are killed and he realizes that he is on his own right. He has to figure it out real fast on his own that he's now a 10 year old kid who's orphaned right so. That's his origin story and he has to wake up one day and say I'm gonna work with this situation that I'm in right so that is his moment of empowerment. I know it's a fictional story but it resonates and it's a story that stood the test of time. But it's a good origin story example that everyone relates to so. Sometimes it's negative as in like something bad happens and you have to just face it yeah and in many cases it's very positive. I had one I was 10 years old um and I hosted my own garage sale. So um. We had some stuff in the house that was damaged. We had a little kitchen fire and it damaged some stuff and I decided to clean it and sell it and one of the things was a microwave and this guy comes up to me at the garage sale and he says um how much for the microwave and I say twenty dollars. He says can I talk to your dad. I say oh okay I must have done something wrong. So I go and get Dad and dad comes out and he says um what what's the problem and he says well. Your. Son says the microwave's 20 but will you take fifteen dollars and dad looks at him and he says well. It's his business you'll have to negotiate with him hmm and I just in that moment just went whoa. It's my business you'll have to negotiate with me. So here's this adult and he looks at me like embarrassed yeah and he says oh uh can I give you 15 and I'm like no. It's 20. So in that moment I'm feeling incredibly like empowered and I heard this word called business and it's my business and I started an entrepreneurial venture. I took something that was a negative which was a little house fire or something got damaged I cleaned it. I fixed it. I sold it. I made money. I ended up with a green bicycle and Sega Master System so for me. This was like whoa you can take bad situations and through this thing called business you can make it into good things um so that was my moment of empowerment and it's no surprise that I ended up as a serial entrepreneur and so we're saying that the concept for your business should ideally be linked to some sort of origin story when you try and do things purely to make money right money is a part of it. Right money is a big part of it when you try and do things purely to make money it never works. It just doesn't work um everyone who makes money whether it's Warren Buffett or some amazing hedge fund manager my goodness. It runs deep in their veins there's something about it. They're not just they're not just trying to make money they're trying to get back to a certain feeling nice. There's something in there that's uh that needs to be unpacked so what would you say for someone who's listening to this and thinking damn you know 10 to 13. I don't really have anything I was just like hanging out with my friends. TBH. You might be an NPC. Uh look honestly if you're really that stuck yeah. Entrepreneurship is an advanced strategy you need to go and work for an entrepreneur. You need to go and do six months with this company. Six months with this company you need to go fishing around um. This is not like entrepreneurship is not some. Ticket To Riches. Entrepreneurship is a really good ticket to be stressed all the time to sit up late thinking about your business to get really freaked out about where the customers like stuff or not um. You know entrepreneurship is is an advanced move. It's something that you should do but you should actually be an entrepreneur begrudgingly. You should go. There's this thing that has to happen in the world. No one's doing it. I'm gonna do it right but it's not you know. It's a bumpy road that ends smooth. It's not a smooth Road. It's not for everyone. It's not for everyone um and there are six million businesses already in the UK. There's 30 million plus in the in the USA go join one go and join a team stop trying to get a job at Goldman Sachs where you're going to be shoved in a corner and you're not going to know how that business runs or what you know who makes the decisions or where things come from go work with a team of eight people find out how they make the sales get to know how they generate leads get to know you know what do you do when a customer is upset about you right how do you handle a customer complaint go and work in a small business start working side by side with entrepreneurs and if you can work for an entrepreneur for six months to two years and you go actually I could do this and I've got an idea. That's that's the thing so I'm not going to try and tell someone if you're struggling with this just keep pushing through maybe you're. Just not ready.

25:09 This episode is very kindly brought to you by heal I've been using hula. I've been a pain customer of huel since 2017 since my fifth year of medical school. When I first discovered it and basically what it is if you haven't heard of. It is that it is a meal in a shake. It got the perfect balance of carbs and fiber and proteins and fat and it contains 26 different vitamins and minerals. All you do is add water or milk to the powder. Usually I use water you can shake it up or you can blend it. I prefer to blend and then it becomes a fantastic option if you're like me and you're kind of busy and so you don't really have time for breakfast or lunch. My favorite version is the heel black edition. It's absolutely sick 400 calories 40 grams of protein for 400 calories. I'm trying to get hinge and it's actually pretty hard to find something that has such a high protein content for such a low calorie trade-off and so I really like using the heel black edition to start my mornings off it's vegan. It's gluten-free. It's lactose free. The Black Edition is available in nine flavors. My favorite is salted caramel and I wouldn't recommend having every single meal heal because that gets a bit annoying after a while but it's absolutely fantastic. It's like one of the meals of the day especially if you're busy and you're gonna kind of default to something unhealthy. Otherwise. It's also very affordable so it actually works out to one pound 68 per meal for a 400 calorie meal which is just incredible value and actually way cheaper than other generic protein shakes on the market and it saves a bunch of time because it's so quick and easy to make and so it's particularly exciting that they're sponsoring the podcast and actually we have the founder of huel Julian Hearn who was on the very first season of the podcast. That was a sick episode that got so many rave reviews as well. Anyway if you're interested in trying out huel then head over to huel.com forward. Slash Deep dive and if you use that URL a it really helps me out but B you also get a free t-shirt and also a free Shaker that comes with your order so go to heal.com forward slash. Deep dive that'll also be linked down in the video description or the show notes and thank you so much heal for sponsoring this episode. This episode is very kindly brought to you by trading212.Now people ask me all the time for advice about investing because I've made a bunch of videos about it on the YouTube channel and my advice for most people is generally invest in Broad stock market index funds which is exactly what you can do completely for free with trading 212. It's a great app that lets you trade stocks and funds and ETFs and foreign exchange. If you really want to and one of the great things about the app is that that if you're new to the world of investing you can actually invest with fake money. You don't have to put real money in. They've got a practice mode where you invest fake money and then it actually tracks what the market is doing in real time. So you can see had I invested 100 pounds into this thing. What would my return have been X weeks or X months further down the line. Once you've got some comfort with that. Then it's super easy to deposit money into your trading tube into account you can use. Apple pay like I do initially or you can use a direct bank transfer and then once the money is in your trading 212 account. Then you can invest it in basically whatever you want now. If you're based in the UK. You might be familiar with the concept of an Isa which is an individual savings account which is basically a tax-free wrapper that you can put money in. You can put 20 000 pounds in every year up to twenty thousand pounds and it resets every April and then all that money can grow and it's completely tax-free for the rest of your life and if you want to sign up for an iso. You can sign up for one completely for free also on trading 212. So if you haven't yet filled up your eyes allowance or at least put some money into your Isa for this year that might be a good step forward also very excitingly. There's a new feature that they've added to the app which is a daily interest on your uninvested cash. These interest rates may go up or down over time as the economic environment changes but the cool thing is that you get paid out every single day if you're into that sort of thing. The app also lets you Auto invest which is a great thing because then you can automatically invest a percentage of your paycheck into the thing every month and so if you haven't yet started with investing and you want to give it a go then you can download the app on the App Store and if you use the coupon code La Ali it will give you a totally free share worth up to 100 pounds. It's available on iPhone and Android and you can check it out by typing in trading two one two into your respective App Store so thank you so much trading212 for sponsoring this episode okay.So let's say my my origin story was age 10 to 13. I made I made a few quid uh playing guitar busking on the street and people give me money and then I recorded a CD of cover songs and I sold it for five pounds here and there and age 13 to 16. I was playing gigs in local bars and stuff and making a few quid. There is that the a potential origin for a potentially entrepreneurial Journey. It's certainly An Origin story. There are there are literal elements to that there are also just emotional elements to that story so there's performing in front of people being the star of the show. There's creating a physical product and being out there selling it so there's those elements that that can also play a role. It doesn't literally have to be that you have to be a musician but it could be that you want to work in that space what we're trying to do and we're really early on right. So we're just having a look at basically we're just having a look at origin mission and vision. So origin is what's your background. Vision is what would you love to see happen in the future. What do you. What do you know what do you see happening like um lifestyle or performance business. You know do you see yourself selling. This business do you see like what what is the exciting element. What do you want to do for the world. So all that's in the vision. Okay and Mission is what is the most high value thing that you can do right now so mission is um like in World War II. Uh the vision was to defeat the fascists and the mission was to storm the beaches. So you can see that there's a big Vision. This is the end result that we're looking for and today today. This is what has to be done or this is the thing that is most important so in business. A vision is where do we want to get to and a mission is what is our high value thing so for me. My mission is develop entrepreneurs who Stand Out scale up and make positive impacts in the world and if I wake up and do that mission then there's a pretty good chance.I'm delivering high value hmm right so that we start with we start with those basics. Let's make it more practical right. It's all philosophical at this point so practically you then want to ideate you want to come up with 10. Concepts um you want to look at what problems can you solve um and who's willing to pay the most for those problems. So it's really important that we combine those other other elements. A lot of people are very hung up on passion but there's two other elements of a good concept and that is that you're solving a problem in the world and that people are paying for that problem okay. So here's the unfortunate truth when it comes to any problem in the world. There are people who throw their time at the problem in order to solve it and there are people who've got loads of money and they want to throw money at the problem to solve it. And if you want to run a great business. You need to talk to people who've got money to throw at the problem so yeah. This is the issue I often find with students in that the only Market they know is students and students famously do not enjoy throwing money at a problem. They throw a time at problems yeah and then they're like oh why why is my business struggling yeah. It's like because you're trying to appeal to students yeah exactly exactly. You're trying to get Market. Uh you you're trying to appeal to a market that loves to spend time on stuff. They're not. They got no money to throw at it right um whereas if you simply had three clients who were multi-millionaires and you were solving some sort of problem for them. Uh you know you'd make loads of money hmm. How does one go about finding ideas. Is it a case of you lock yourself in a room with you and your buddies and you're like think of some business ideas or what's the you come up with 10 ideas and you pick the best three okay yep and you go and then you test them and you test them as fast and as cheap as you possibly can so you're looking for an idea where you push. The door and people respond. Push the door and it opens you're not you're not trying like I hate how people think entrepreneurship's really hard. It is really hard but it's hard the good types of businesses are hard because there's too much to do and not enough time so like that the hard problem that you want to have is.There's too many people who want this and I can't keep up with them. Um. You know I've got 40 people to call back today and I don't have time to call back all 40 people. That's the problem you want. That's a good kind of hard. Yes you don't want to have a problem that's like oh. This is like no one's interested yeah the bat. So I remember when I was um in my third year of uni. I was the president of the Pakistan society and we had a ball um like a charity ball every year and it was such an absolute nightmare trying to sell tickets for this ball because we were selling 35 pound tickets to students who did not have any money who 35 pounds a lot. It was a lot of money I was really like oh like it felt so like hard because it's like there was no demand for this and it was like having to message Facebook message people that knew other universities to be like guys you're gonna love this event. It's really fun and like in the back of my mind I knew that like it's a lot of money these guys don't have money. It's it's not gonna be that good objectively but like having to be a sort of snake or salesman. In that context um I hope no one from the packs of days is listening to this. But I really felt like I was a snake oil salesman and that gave me a real sense of uh when I came to trying to sell that whereas when we open the door for our YouTuber Academy suddenly oh crap we've got more more demand than we even know what to do with yeah. One of the one of the great questions is like does this product deliver someone a return like what's the return on investment for them and if there's if there's like a ten to one. If you can think about a ten to one return. It normally is going to be a good. People are going to pay for it yeah. So um YouTuber Academy clearly is worth ten to one all right if I start a YouTube channel um and it succeeds I'm going to earn money. I've got sponsorship opportunities. I'm going to build a personal brand. It's going to create digital assets that last forever. There's all these positives that could easily be defined as a ten to one ratio.So whatever I spend there's a great return and it's nice and clear that there's a there's a nice return. So um a lot of good products you can actually explain how it Returns what what is the return on this product and there's a there's a quite a clear imbalance hmm. Okay so coming back to our idea thing generating 10 ideas so what does an idea look like at this stage. Is it like a A3 business plan or is it like a tweet or like what makes a business idea a concept so yeah. It's probably a page of notes about the idea in the in the early stages. So we're going to talk about what's the product going to look like who might it be for um those sorts of things but then pretty quickly we want to test it. So. I've got three ways that I like to test ideas I like to run an intro event which is purely and simply just an introduction to blank um. I like to run a quiz which is um uh are you ready to blank answer 10 questions and find out on score app so um and I like to do a WhatsApp group. So yeah WhatsApp group is like um so WhatsApp group is like um. For example if I was going to do the Pakistan ball I would say we're thinking about doing a um a Pakistan ball. All the tickets will be released in this WhatsApp. Group would you like to join the free WhatsApp group and get early access to tickets. So. It's like just purely and simply if I can get people to join the WhatsApp group. Yep I'll give you a real life example. A friend of mine Max he wanted to create a product for what's called a family office. A family office is a very high net worth family who employs people to manage their money full-time all right yeah exactly. It's a yeah the people who've got so much money. They need to have a full-time money manager. So um he wanted to put together a group of people who do that who are family office managers and what he did is. He started a WhatsApp group and he basically said I'm putting together a WhatsApp group for people whose families um Family office managers hundreds of millions and um and it's a place for you to talk to other people who run family offices. So you put together a WhatsApp group and immediately he got about 19 people joined and that was the beginning of a very successful business. How did he know these 19 people he reached out to them yeah message them on Linked. In I'm launching a family office group. I've got this company who've already agreed to come and join would you would you like access to my um my my group um and people sure because here's the thing it's like well. I can always leave like it's a WhatsApp group so who cares. But it's a really good first test hmm um. I know someone who did a clinic a fertility clinic and they created a pop-up WhatsApp group um five days to better fertility awareness um and it was basically a five-day pop-up group. Uh joined the group and it's basically looking at research and um uh what's called Miner and macro markers or something like that and it basically helps people to have five days to better fertility understanding and fertility awareness and I think four or five hundred people joined it so yeah so quizzes WhatsApp groups and events okay Zoom events. Free events online things so let's say my business idea was I want to I I really enjoy making Burgers I want to make one of those Burger Vans and go into Cambridge town center and sell my Burgers okay for starters. Please don't do food oh okay. It's one of those Capital intensive hard to scale businesses um. It's normally a recipe to lose money um for Burger. Not good well look if you want to use it as an example. We can use it as an example but I would almost instantly rule it out because it's Capital intent okay. I'm gonna throw some more examples at you and perishable you're dealing with a perishable product um allergies. Uh food safety requirements and also it doesn't really scale like if you want to serve twice as many people you need twice as much employees in stock and floor space and everything has to be twice as much okay so like software. If I build software and I want to serve 10 times. As many people. I just onboard them yeah. They have a username and a password. If I want to have a thousand times. More people I just have a username and a password and they just get access to the software. So um you know that is a very different business to a burger okay business. Idea. I want to make the ultimate productivity app notion and things and todoist like they're Evernote. They're all a bit like uh. They don't have they're not quite right. Yep. I think me as a 26 year old Junior doctor um with a vague background of coding. You know what I want to build the best productivity app in the world. So don't do a productivity app um because there's a J curve you're gonna have to raise a bunch of money. It's going to be a performance business. But you're gonna have to raise a bunch of money you'll lose money before you make money anyway. You can. Here's how you start it yeah. You would start by doing a first up. You would do a little event and it would be an introduction to productivity hacks and it would be 30 people on a zoom call yeah and you would present four or five productivity hacks and see if you can get 30 people um and that's that's test number. One test number. Two is are you ready to be more productive take the scorecard um answer 10 questions and find out if you could be improving your productivity right so a three minute a three minute productivity assessment. How's your personal productivity answer the score app scorecard boom. Uh now what happens then is if you can get 150 people to fill that in that's a good sign doesn't cost you much to set that up so now you're actually getting validation and then the third test is productivity. Hacks WhatsApp group I'm going to be doing a lot of research into productivity. Um improvements would you like to join the productivity work um. WhatsApp group every day there'll be a productivity idea and there'll be other people sharing their ideas and you can share your ideas as well. Well that sounds pretty good to be honest. Those three things cost you nothing yeah right. A zoom account is free or almost free yeah. A WhatsApp group is free um and a score app account. You can have a free 30-day trial and then it's like 29 pounds a month. So we haven't spent 100 pounds yet yeah and we've hopefully tested the idea to see whether people are engaging. We're going to reach out to people on Instagram. We're going to reach out to people on Linked. In we're gonna um you know drop in on like some communities that we're already part of we're going to tell some people that we already know. We're going to kind of reach out to friends and friends of friends and just see if they want to engage with this thing okay.

40:43 Two things uh first one you mentioned J curve uh for people who may not have gotten halfway through our previous episode uh what is a Jayco business and why would you advise against doing that the J stands for the shape of the cash flow. So it stands for losing money losing money losing money all not losing so much not losing so much oh we're making money. We're making money. We're making a lot of money right. So that's the J so. There are certain businesses that are sales businesses that are not J curves and then there are businesses that are volume businesses that are typically J curves okay sales versus volume. So if it's a sales business. It's normally making a sale of over a thousand pounds or over a thousand dollars at a time um. So for example if I pick up the phone and talk to you and say um uh Ali I do Studio setups and um we actually come in and we do all the microphones and we do all the setup and we actually set you up a whole podcast studio and Video Production Studio and we have a studio Management Service and it's seven thousand dollars to to to do all of this stuff for you. You say yes you sign an agreement. Yes I want that and then I go away and actually bring all the stuff and I get all the things that I promised you and I can literally take that agreement and then go off and and uh get the microphones and all that stuff that I need after you've signed so I'm making a sale and then I'm fulfilling the sale and each sale is more than a thousand dollars so many more than a thousand dollars because the time and effort that it takes to make a sale um and then the time and effort to look. After a client. It needs to be over a thousand dollars oh okay because this is where I definitely would have gone wrong back in the day when I was trying to build businesses in school and at University I could not have even remotely imagined paying a thousand pounds for anything yeah except maybe like a Macbook and I would have gone for the student discount MacBook Air Base version for 800 quid so as to not have to pay the thousand pounds and therefore all of my business ideas were around like okay if I could do this thing for a tenor. This thing 50 Quid. This thing for 100 quid this thing for 120 like I'm sort of stuck in that price pricing Zone well here's the thing if you were to go get a job as a doctor you'd be selling a package called a year of employment for forty thousand pounds yeah right so you were selling something for forty thousand pounds. But it was a it was I have one client the NHS and I allocate my entire stock my time uh to this one client. So if you were to um have uh 20 clients who you do some sort of Health intervention with and they all pay two grand each well. Now you've got 40 Grand but it's split between 20 clients um so ideally when we want to do a non-j curve business. We've got to be selling something that's meaty we've got to be normally selling B2B as in business to business. So we're normally making some sort of a sale and it's typically a solution sale. We're packaging up product. Services outcomes and we're we're selling that to a business that wants all those things they're going to sign up for it. They're going to sign a little agreement and then you're going to go ahead and do all of that. And it's going to add up to at least a thousand and mind you. This could go all the way up to tens of thousands or Millions um so you could actually you know sell lots of stuff so those are sales businesses. I'll give you some examples. A financial planner normally sells Financial Planning and then delivers it an accountant normally sells an accounting package. An accounts management bookkeepers sell a Year's worth of bookkeeping as a rolling contract. Business coaches might sell a business coaching package or a life coaching package um so all of those would be examples of businesses where you're not in a J curve you're selling something up front and then you're you know you know how much you're going to earn and yeah. The sale comes first interesting and then the other type is volume businesses. Yeah J curve businesses. This is where you have to invest a lot of money into something that you're going to sell little bits at a time so for example yeah like a productivity app. So if the productivity app is six pounds a month yeah you're going to have to build like let's be real. If you're going to build an app at the very basic. It's going to be 20 or 30 grand yeah yeah like super basic and there's people I know who built apps yeah so most software projects end up being hundreds of thousands to Millions especially if they take off but granted I do see people who start little businesses software businesses and them and a couple of people they work on it and they build something for a few thousand right so fair enough. But you're building something. That's few thousand and then you're trying to sell it for like six bucks a month and you need you know well you need like a thousand people paying six dollars a month and you've got six thousand a month and if there's two of you working on it. That's only three grand a month you might as well have jobs. So yeah you've got to get a lot of people and the reality of getting thousands of people to sign up to this. Is it's probably a six or seven person team um to manage thousands of people signing up. So you're perpetually in this kind of J curve where you're trying to get enough people to subscribe to this thing or pay for this thing and it's even by the way it's even worse if it's not subscription. If it's not recurring Revenue. Like I see people saying oh I'm gonna sell cupcakes. It's a one-off sale of 15 for a few for a thing of cup cupcakes yeah and it's not repeat business. It's not on auto renew um so somehow you have to make hundreds of sales every month just to Simply keep your kitchen cooking okay. So this is a big I think I think this is a big firmware update for me as well because I've never really thought of it in this way and therefore I suspect people listening to this haven't thought of it.In this way. Game for like ages now but like still when I think of a business what I imagine is a productivity app or a cupcake store or a laundromat or a restaurant or a coffee shop or a I enjoy making Burgers let me go and set up a food van and 100 of these things that come to my mind. When I think business are volume based jco businesses where I'm selling a low ticket item and trying to sell lots of it whereas when the things you were describing Financial Planning and like that that guy it wouldn't wouldn't even cross my mind. Those are businesses much better businesses yeah yeah much better businesses like if you have a five thousand dollar package and you can make four sign ups per week. That's a million dollars a year and all you have to do is make four signups a week so to make four sign ups a week you might only need to talk to 20. Um and a million dollars a year pays for quite a few stuff. So let's say you've got this five thousand dollar package and you have a sales person and you've got a little ads budget and the goal is we talk to 20 people per week and we make out of 20 presentations. We make four sales great. You've just made 20 grand a week times 50 weeks of the year. You've got a million dollars. I've I've started having similar conversations with you know there's there are very various people. I know now either sort of former team members of mine or people who used to be in in interns here in our team who have gone away and they're like all right cool. I wanna I wanna make it as a freelancer and I'm like all right cool. What's what's the goal like oh man if I could make 2K a month. I'd be I'd be. I'd be absolutely like that. I'd be flying and I'm like all right cool and they'll start off selling that time like offering YouTube video editing as a service for like a hundred dollars per video. It's like cool I need to do 20 videos a month to get my 2k. I don't like hang on hang on hang on hang. On like imagine. You were able to charge 2K a month for something. How many clients do you need to make a 2K just the one just one client. It's a way easier to deal with one client imagine. You want to go 10K a month. Five clients five clients a two camera that gets you to 10K a month. How would that feel and also Imagine you didn't sell them you imagine. You sold them your team yeah so that it's scalable so you just run around you know signing up the clients and then you've got an amazing team yeah. Yeah I think the whole High ticket low volume thing you know. One of our friends was over yesterday and he was he's trying to make like 5K a month and was selling his product for forty dollars well. That's a lot of sales. That's a lot of sales yeah and I was like that's a J curve that's a joke exactly. It's a Jayco business and he was kind of happy because he was like yeah. I'm getting Excel every few days through my Twitter and this kind of stuff and I was like okay. You know imagine. I mean he's doing higher ticket consulting stuff which is which which takes up his time. But I was challenging him like what if you could sell a 300 product how many sales are 300 100 product would you need to be financially free as it were yeah from me right and he was like just if I could get 10 sales a month yeah and he's like oh my god wow here's the other thing too. It's unfortunate.But a very small number of people have a lot of money and they are massively underserved in most cases so you if you look at if you look at um wealth. The top 10 of people over 55 have three quarters of the economy in wealth. So it's a very small percentage of older people who have all the wealth basically like three quarters of it. 65 is the top ten percent of baby boomers. So it's all in locked in that cookie jar so you need to go to that cookie jar if if you want to go and do something that involves like proper money um and then if you want to go to income the top. One percent of income earners earn 163 000 in the UK 163 000 pounds plus per uh per year and then once you get in there. The average earnings of a top one percenter is 360 000 a year so they're on about a grand a day 360 days a year um. So you don't need many of those people and they've got no time and everything that they do is benchmarked against what they do to create that income. So like let's say they're a surgeon anytime. They're not being a surgeon like mowing their lawns or you know dropping kids at school or any of that sort of stuff. They're losing money because they can be earning a lot of money in the thing that they're earning a lot of money at so if you can figure out how do I sell to people who've got that kind of money. That's helpful um so a really good idea is to just start. By thinking who has the highest return. On investment is a Ferrari. An expensive car depends who's asking good depends who's looking at it sure so to an average income earning person. A Ferrari is a very expensive car to a billionaire. It's just a toy. It's no big deal to an influencer who makes their money influencing young men and that's their like it's just their marketing budget right. It's just part of marketing um to someone who owns a luxury car company that rents the Ferrari out. It's capex. It's just a capital expense. So a Ferrari it may or may not be an expensive car depending on who's buying it so when you say what's expensive. It really only comes down to who's buying it if I said setting up. A home podcasting studio is that expensive for 10 grand well if I'm selling it to a kid yes. If I'm selling it to a famous YouTuber who can easily like Leverage it. Then it's probably not so. It's actually really down to who's buying so you've got to get good at figuring out who has the most to get to most to gain from what you can do.By the way we're still at the really beginning I love doing it. But we're yeah. We'll we we've got a long way. Together yeah. We might have to do part three of the podcast um. Okay hang on so would it be fair to say that the non-jco businesses the ones that we that make for better business. Ideas for a beginner tend to be service businesses and the Jacob tends to be product businesses yeah so the real J curve has set up costs big setup costs. Restaurants have big setup costs software big setup costs um courses not so much but you're in competition with everyone else. Who's got a course um so you've got to have a big brand to to make sure that it gets cut through um. Yeah. I mean I had a set of cost of three years of building a YouTube channel before we made any money from courses. That was the J yeah so um yeah. So there's those I mean if you're selling something like these that you need a whole professional kitchen um. So this this would involve a commercial kitchen contract. They probably wouldn't even take you on as a client without a minimum. Three four hundred grand worth of commitment orders so you know anything. That is a physical product is probably a J curve business um anything that you've got to. Do an initial order of tens of thousands and then try and move that yep um. They're all J curves. This episode is very kindly sponsored by Shopify. Shopify is great. Shopify is an easy to use all-in-one Commerce platform that literally anyone can use to start and grow and scale a business from zero to like multi-billion dollars in Revenue. Shopify lets you sell basically anything online or in person or across social media and they power millions of businesses in over 175 countries. We've been using Shopify for the last several years a to sell our physical digital product planners in the essentially product line and we're using Shopify to build a tech brand that we're working on the behind the scenes and the website and stuff. As we speak again everything powered by Shopify and it's great it just makes the whole system. So easy it plugs into the Fulfillment options. It plugs into sort of the delivery options. It's just like so handy to have Shopify as this all-in-one platform to manage literally all aspects of our Commerce business. So if you're considering starting or growing your. Commerce business then head over to shopify.com forward slash deep dive and that URL will let you sign up for a totally free trial so you can try Shopify out and see if it Vibes with you so thank you so much Shopify for sponsoring this episode. So we're trying to think narrowing narrowing the focus down. I want to come up with a business I area that I can charge more than a thousand pounds or a thousand dollars for ideally where the person I'm targeting has a lot of money yeah for a thousand bucks is not a lot of money and where probably it's some kind of service that I will do for them yep.It's something that they are frustrated. They you know it's it takes up their time and their times more valuable or whoever's looking. After them isn't doing a reliable job um ah okay so that really Narrows things down because what I was thinking oh you know I used to play guitar back in my youth. I was like okay. Can I start a business as a guitar teacher. Uh yes you can but it's not going to be a massive you're not going to sell that for you know you might sell some courses you could yeah. These are not the kind of businesses I get excited about you know these are this is a hobby hobby businesses. Do you want to talk about Hobbies or proper businesses. I think let's go proper businesses so proper businesses. We want to get to 10 000 a month. We want here's what here's what my rule would be five sales of two grand is it is it feasible that we can do five sales or two grand. So if we're gonna do guitar lessons and we're not um. It would have to be that we're signing up people for a commitment of 200. A month times 12 months and we're doing like family guitar lessons and we come around and we we have a guitar teacher who comes into your house and does the thing and it's 200 a month. And it's a minimum 12 month commitment okay fine. Uh now we're in two grand packages. Can we make five sales of that per month then delivering on that well. Then yeah we need guitar teachers not very scalable we could be. I don't know how many guitar teachers are out there yeah all right but maybe um so but that would be the only way that it would meet my criteria. I have to see that I can make a good 10 grand a month there has to be a clear model. A back of a nap can spreadsheet that just says yeah if we make this many sales. It's sensible that we could get to 10 grand a month pretty quickly with like one or two people. Like me and me and a friend we could get to 10 grand a month yeah damn okay and it's good to be damn. It's good to go oh that rules a bunch of stuff out yes. It does that rules out like 99.9 of what I would consider a bit quick business idea fantastic fantastic because it's not going to lead anywhere yeah yeah because remember you started this. We want to get to hundreds a month hundreds of thousands. A month I mean yeah absolutely millions of months. We said we were going to get two in this podcast oh my gosh okay fine so concept concept. We're in the chaos model okay. Then we're doing audience right concept audience. So we said um we said the WhatsApp group and the event and the quiz uh. The next thing is offer so the offer is constructing an offer that is a couple of grand and um. The fourth thing is sales so we kind of covered it. So it's concept audience offer sales um. The offer is where we present people with either a slide deck or a brochure um or sometimes a web page. But I really love to present it physically to people.I love to be sitting eyeball to eyeball when I present this because I want to see how they actually react oh wait. So you're saying I have to actually talk to people and sell them this thing yes nah come on that's not that's not my idea of what a business is. I thought I'd just sit in my bedroom and make something and then suddenly become a you become a millionaire. You eventually do uh but the the yeah when you're starting business. You want to get close enough to lick their face you want to be right up close to your customers. You want to see exactly how they interact isn't that such an old-school way of like thinking about business surely the world has changed. Surely. I can just like make an app or something yeah um. The best the best tech entrepreneurs. I know they love to get hand hands hand really hand on with a client with a with a potential client. So in the early days we're talking about going in stages and stage one. We just want to see how does the person react when I tell people. This is what we've created for you would you like to sign up and they go. Hmm.

58:15 Does it come in Blue. Uh yeah we can make it in blue. Oh could I get it in extra large yeah. We could do it in extra. Large. I need it to be spaced out over six payments can we do six payments yeah. We can do six payments okay cool yeah. I will sign up if it's blue and extra large and six payments fantastic um. So that's what we need to do and they won't do that online. They won't actually they won't drop you an email and say well if it was this and this isn't is then I would have done it. They'll just go no not for me. So you have to be. You have to do at least 30 sales meetings to get any um data whatsoever. You know you know um because you did statistics and and science um statistical analysis. You need 30 samples uh as like a the basics of statistical significance. Um 150 is like at next level up so. I'm a big fan that you don't judge your product or service until you've sat down with 30 customers and see how 30 people respond damn okay. I'm Feeling by my big bird right. Now even though I've done this business thing business thing for a while. But like yeah I just never thought yeah so like when I launch Score app. I literally sat down with people like lots of people. I booked out a boardroom and I just had appointment after appointment after appointment. After appointment I spent an hour with each person sitting down and saying we're going to create a scorecard. Here's what we need to do here's how we do it. This is the this is the kind of process and the framework what what would it be and I wanted to see how they would interact with it. And we would also get on the phone and say hey we're launching these scorecards um. They're two grand each would you like to buy one oh well. What does it do how does it work well. Here's what it does. And here's how it works and we can build these and in the early days I actually sold them at two grand a pop um because I wanted to just see if people would pay a couple of grand for them um and and I had my team building them on WordPress. So we were sitting down with customers after customers after customers and we refined it and refined it like a blacksmith sharpening and sharpening and sharpening we were sharpening our pitch and we were sharpening our sales process and we're sharpening what the product looked like and we're just going to right so okay. I did not judge until I had 30 30 pages of notes after every single one to one take lots of notes. What did they like what did they not like what did they see a value. What did they not see a value. What did they get what did they not get so like all of that nice. What did they want to do with it. What were they excited you know what outcomes were.They excited by so all of that okay nice okay so let's say I'm gonna make up a random offer. So let's say I lose my everything on my YouTube channel. I get canceled overnight. But I still have the skills. I'm keeping in mind that my business ideas have to be something. I can solve for ideally 2K ideally five sales. A month I might be thinking either web design agency type situation potentially. But I've kind of been outside of that market for a while or I'd be thinking uh video content. Just quickly yeah you've been outside of that market do you know someone who's credible web development do you know someone who's a web developer yeah yeah sell them hmm yeah that could work actually in my head was defaulting to oh. I guess I'd have to do it myself. I need to learn quite a lot of stuff. No you don't you can find someone who's good at web development and you can just go running around selling two grand packages for them to build oh okay that could work too. There. You go there's 10 grand a month what if I was like uh hey I know how to use a camera. I know how to do video editing. Uh therefore if I do personal brand video content for startup. Founders who I know have money or yeah business owners like you who I know have money and I could be like Dan you have books. You want to be on all the con to social platforms. I'll show up to your house once every month and we'll film a bunch of stuff. I'll just ask you the questions. I'll chop it up content for Instagram Facebook Linked. In etc. Etc. Sign me up yeah of course so that's that's a great example yeah and um and you just sign me up and you might say it's initially two grand and see if you like it. Then. It's two grand a month after that yeah um. Now you might say uh by the way I've got a whole team. I've got an amazing team of people. Uh I've actually found um. I've got lead uh content uh creators here in the UK. I've also got an international team so that we can do um an initial style guide and some signature content and we can also do Brute Force content you know through our team in the Philippines and then we've got a team in Ghana and actually we send all the raw footage to them and they create lots of videos and we then put that on Tick Tock and all that sort of stuff we see where it sticks and bring it all together. I'm like whoa that sounds really great so yeah that would be you like I'm really big on the idea of the entrepreneur's job is to be the organizing force not to do the work so like you keep getting into like oh. I know how to edit videos. It's like it's like that's doing the work. You you're not being an entrepreneur. You're being in a video editor. So the the entrepreneur's job is to be the organizing Force. You're the organizer. I don't know how to do anything like just just on that I I've built multiple 10 million dollar plus companies. I don't know how to do anything like as in I don't have any web development skills. I don't have video editing skills. I don't have design skills. I don't have any skills like I can write all right I can write books but and I can speak but that's it. I'm an organizing Force. I'm the guy who just organizes it. I bring together talented people and I say hey you're good at video. Editing you should join my team as a video editor and you're good at designing you should be a part of our team. So all I'm good at is enrolling people in stuff. So the sort of person who enjoys organizing people who enjoyed like organizing University societies back in the University days and like organ bringing people together and like keeping people. Entrepreneur's job is to be the organizing Force. It's not to do the work damn still keep on thinking. It's like yeah. You know what skill do. I have what what skill can. I offer that's the schooling system that's the school system yeah your component labor you're like which component do I fit in. It's like none you're not in the business you're the entrepreneur you're building.The business your job is to get really clear about what the customer is trying to achieve yeah and then be the organizing Force to fill that for them um and bring together all the people that you might need in order to do that. So that's your first 10 grand concept audience offer sales. That's all you have to do. It's cheap to do you can do it with Microsoft Word. You can do it with Apple Pages and Keynotes okay before we go into the next stage. Let's talk about sales so sales sales is scary. Sales is a dirty word. I don't want to be a Salesman. Huh I feel that like emotional response to the even the word sales uh how how do we how do how do I approach sales for my web design agency or for my assuming I'm not doing the work. I'm just going out there. Almost everyone's had a positive experience with a salesperson and a negative experience with a salesperson but that could be true for any profession. I've had negative experiences with bookkeepers. I've had negative experiences with lawyers. I've had negative experience with doctors fairly um. There are good doctors and bad doctors. There's people who've got amazing bedside Manner and people who are really not um that great. So when it comes to sales the word that everyone says about a good salesperson is professional. They were professional. They they approached it professionally so what does professional mean. It means that they ask great questions. They give you guided advice. They are not pushy but they also do give guidance um. They've done their homework. They've done their research. They've got great product knowledge. They listen they understand they're trying to get on your side to figure out what it is you actually genuinely need and they're making sensible recommendations. So all of those things are professionalism. So sales is a science and it's a very valuable skill that you can use in any profession. It doesn't matter what you are or what you do a sales. Skill is a powerful skill because sales is listening understanding and then creating a good argument for the right solution and being able to marry up. This is what you this is what you're trying to achieve. This is what I think you need and here's why right so you're creating a path of least resistance. Here's the mental model you should have with sales.There is the current reality that the person has that is their current situation. There is their desired reality. That's what they want and then there's the obstacles and criteria that are in the way right. These are all the things that stop them from getting what they want and then there's you who says this is the path of least resistance. Here's what you need to do you need to go and do this this. This this and this and that is going to get you from your current reality to your desired reality and it's a lot like being a doctor. So if you're a doctor you're actually. It's so similar to sales when you see someone who's not happy with their current reality. You ask them ask them a lot of questions. What's going on all right. You ask them a load of questions yeah and then you might say the first thing I want to do is a diagnosis. I want to do some sort of assessment yeah right so then you do an assessment and then you say okay. So I think I've got a treatment plan which is just a path of least resistance or a solution. Oh okay. What do I have to do well you're gonna have to do some antibiotics but you have to take these every day for seven days okay. What else do you need to well you need to do this thing with this thing okay great what else do you meant to do well you have to stop doing this okay great. So that's the treatment plan and essentially you are recommending a treatment plan. So in there you've you're talking to them. You're asking a lot of questions. You're doing an assessment you're figuring out.Where are they now whether they want to be what's in the way what's stopping them and then you're advising them about a treatment plan and that's sales that is sales that's great sales. I guess when I think of sales. I think the combative adversarial relationship that I go into a used car dealership where thinking they're going to try and get me to spend. 10K have you actually ever had that uh like have you actually ever had a used car. Salesman do that to you no I haven't but I've I just imagine. I've been yeah I've been imagining and expecting it like and I've been to these dealerships with my mom and she approaches it with that kind of if you went and bought your. Apple stuff yeah and the Apple Genius came up and asked you like what are you going to use it for and you know what like what do you do and all that sort of stuff. Here's what I recommend yeah was it a positive or A negative experience experience yeah right do you know they do 40 minutes of sales training every day. What 40 minutes a day 40 minutes a day oh well. It's like Peloton. They have a central sales trainer who does video uploads to the iPads. They do 40 minutes of sales training every day oh well. They do a combination of product knowledge and they do uh. Rapport building objection handling and they actually make suggestions as to things you can buy right now today. That's part of their process. They want you to walk out of the store with something but it's positive. They're professional right. They're not pushy. They are making recommendations. They're trying to solve your problem if you go in there and say I'm a professional speaker and I like to give talks they're going to go okay so you use a lot of keynote yeah. Okay did you know that this thing here this is like a touch bar and it actually shows you your slides as you're going through and you can see your slides when you're speaking and you can jump to slides from slide. It's like oh that I would use that all the time yeah. That's that's a really good thing that you might want to use. I want that great let's back it let's box it up okay so they're doing 40 minutes of sales training a day right and it's a positive experience. Everyone likes Geniuses yeah but they're sales people okay so it sounds like to go from zero to 10K. All we need to do is come up with some kind of concept that we can charge ideally 2K4 yep and find a way to land five clients a month through a sales process through sales process. I will say one more thing about sales you need to learn how to do laps leads appointments presentations sales so you just keep a little spreadsheet who are your leads who are the people that might buy can you book an appointment to speak with them. Right actually get their their commitment to just focus yeah. Can you present them with a solution can you actually do a presentation or an actual conversation um and then can you ask them whether they would like to go ahead or not and those are the four steps lead appointment presentation sales so great sales people do a rhythm of weekly laps. They do leads appointments presentation sales and they just have a a good good. Salesperson has a dashboard digital or physical and they just have a set of leads appointments presentations and sales so laps laps lap slaps laps and entrepreneurs need to do that as well when they're launching something and I suspect ninety percent of people. Listening to this were previously like oh I want to be an entrepreneur. It sounds easy and now they're like you know it's horrible.You've turned me off. You know what the day job sounds. Pretty sounds pretty compelling let me be honest with you. The other. Day I was on the train I bumped into a friend of mine who works in a big job big big corporate and he's sitting on the train reading fiction reading a fiction book and I'm looking at this and I'm going wow like if I've got spare time. I am not reading a fiction book. I'm like trying to you know do some self-improvement or I'm trying to read a book about business but just the Casual ex. You know the Casual relaxed I'm reading a fiction book and I'm like that must be what it like that's what it must feel like to have a job like to have certainty that that level of certainty. It's lovely what a delight for your kids would you feel a bit disappointed if they got a real job and not if they not if they loved it. No not at all um provided they're you know they're enjoying it. They're adding value um like entrepreneurship is as I say it's something you do reluctantly you do it because you spot something in the world that you want to bring to life. You want to do this thing and it's like you go in eyes wide open but look I will say this the the upside with entrepreneurs while uh one entrepreneurship is wild if you get it right. Like so 10 000 a month is where you kind of like 10 000. A month is where you're on par with a basic job because you're gonna have a few overheads so you know if you take a basic job and you say okay four or five grand a month like NHS uh doctor is there would they be on about five grand a month yeah four or five okay so you know depending on what level but yeah yeah so essentially that 10 grand a month of sales minus an assistant minus. Some cost of doing business is going to leave you with about four or five grand a month um so if you can do that you're on par with a job but you've got extra work extra stress. And if you stop the whole thing stops so you're you're kind of like just benchmarking. You know those games where there's like a a shadow person and you're trying to keep up with that shadow person. So at 10 grand a month you're you're kind of like neck and neck with your employed shadow person at that at that stage nice um any final tips or Red Resources for the 0 to 10K a month bracket before we move Beyond 10K a month uh final tips or resources so concept audience offers sales um yeah.

01:13:04 I would just say just take it stay curious be embrace. The critics when someone says they don't like it just ask why um you know if someone says oh I like no I'm not at all interested in that oh. That's really that's really curious. I'm so surprised because I imagined you would be interested in this so just don't take anything personally. You're a scientist conducting experiments and it's like whoa that worked well that didn't work but don't be emotionally invested in it. You have to start the pro the process has to begin with curiosity of this probably won't work let's see if it does uh you know a bunch of this. I think I've got a bunch of this right but I've probably got a bunch. Wrong got it and then final thing on this front. Like this sort of thing and I I I still have residual bits of this myself sort of emotional feelings about money and about how like selling something is kind of evil or bad or you're a bad person for like and and I I still got these residual narratives in my mind and in my heart and I know rationally that like yeah I imagine. A lot of people are having capitalism and money is the most pure and Brilliant transaction. It's the most incredible system. The the marginal utility of a cup of coffee for a coffee shop owner is really low. They don't want that cup of coffee right. The marginal utility of the coffee for the person who doesn't have a cup of coffee is high and the marginal utility of their two pounds. 50 or the three dollars is low. So everyone wins isn't that incredible like think about that just for a moment. The coffee shop owner is so happy that you gave them three dollars for the coffee. You're so happy that they have this coffee shop and that they were just willing to give you this delicious coffee and for three dollars and you're like I didn't want the three dollars I didn't care there's. My three dollars yay hot cup of coffee fantastic and and then they're like Yay I got three dollars. I didn't need that extra cup of coffee. So this is the beauty of business that you essentially have two people who are super happy. Super stoked so this is what every transaction involves. Every single transaction that happens in the economy is two people who felt that they want two people felt that they walked away going that is so great I I paid for something that I was I'm getting a great deal and the person who sold it is like yay. I made a sale I love it. This is capitalism and it's so amazing it's the most incredible system. It sounds so obvious when you put it like that but even hearing you say that like has sort of triggered some kind of surprise. In me. I was like oh yeah. I've just never considered that I just sort of like float around thinking.Oh people just buy and sell stuff and but if I'm selling something that's bad and if someone's buying from me then like oh like I better make sure like I'm like not selling them snake oil and the palpitations start yeah so yeah. Of course. There's a couple of things snake oil doesn't work and that's the problem with it yeah right so like for example trading courses. They don't work you're not going to beat the Traders uh you're not going to beat the professionals so it is snake or because it doesn't work um if you sold a trading course to a professional Trader to make them go from good to great um then. It wouldn't be snake oil um if you sell a Ferrari to someone who can afford a Ferrari. If someone sells their company for 100 million dollars and they've always wanted a Ferrari and it's their childhood dream to have a Ferrari and they've got loads of money and for them. It's just a great thing and they've always wanted it yeah. That's that's not a thing if if I pressured someone into getting a Ferrari and they couldn't really afford it and I signed them up to a payment plan that they couldn't really afford. That's a horrible thing. It's actually not the product. That is the problem it's picking who you're going to sell to making sure that they actually feel good about it. You know you want to and anything can be missiled. Anything can be really well sold to the right people and if you're worried about it then you're the type of person who's only going to sell to the right people anyway. The only people who who are bad in the economy are the ones who don't care yeah so by virtue of the fact that you're worried about. This means you're one of the good actors hmm. At this point. Our hypothetical business is doing 10K a month. What does our team look like at this point and then how do we go to 100K a month you're right because that seems like bloody hell and millionaire yeah. Exactly uh you're either two to four people. At this point. So 10 grand a month is normally a two person three or four people um so two to four people typically um you normally would have a salesperson. You would have someone who's like customer service or fulfillment. Maybe you've got a bookkeeper or an administrator or an assistant. So when I started I arrived in 2006 2007 into London. First thing I did is I had an executive assistant um and a salesperson and a event manager because we were running events so fulfillment.So I literally week two had three people on the team. How did you find these people uh how did I find them I or how would one find people these days literally. I'm launching a business and I'm looking for some people who can help um does anyone know anyone who's looking for something um yeah. It's asking friends and family and stuff just asking around most people know someone who's looking for you're looking for Rebels and misfits you're looking for the wrong people. Not the right people what do you mean like the neighbor's kid or some you you know you go to McDonald's and you see this like like happy cheerful person who's like wiping down tables and they're like in a good mood and they're like wiping the tables down and you go awesome like what a positive attitude like you're awesome um or you might you know just um. Someone might try and knock on your door and say hey we're in the neighborhood and we're you know cleaning cars. Hey actually. Why don't you come and work with me yeah um so you're looking for the wrong people not the right people. There's no good people who are gonna quit their job at Microsoft and join your random startup yeah um. Uni students mum moms who uh who like have little kids in there in daycare and they've got a few hours or dads um. You could have uh someone who's got a disability and just doesn't fit within a corporate environment needs. Flexibility people who've got a really thick accent and they always get judged because their accent's like too thick hard to understand. But they're actually really smart and great um so someone who's got ba bo like really bad body odor. They really smell Rebels and misfits okay. I'm actually serious by the way they're they're amazing people. I hired this one guy once when I was launching a business back in like early days and he was a very very spotty uh 19 year old and he did have really bad. Bo um he was he was stinky and he was amazing he was absolutely awesome like so great damn okay um how why do you think he didn't have a job because he was smelling's body yeah. So he was a rebel and a misfit yeah uh okay. Uh remote versus in person. I don't care I care about team Vibes so team. Vibes is like do. We have a Monday morning meeting.Do we natter right nattering is likely we like can't stop talking um so if you look at my slack Channel today everyone's nattering oh hey we just did this. We just did that oh by the way did you hear that this happened oh we just had this problem come in. We solved it like this um like giffy's flying around what type of thing you know voice note hey. I just had an idea oh yeah what if we did it like this hey what if we like created like a corporate version that does this thing right so that's nattering and it's the excitement that's happening there's chemistry form yeah. So you can have that remotely as well. You can have that remotely of course yeah. Yeah. I mean as uh score app doesn't have actually offices. We have quarterly meetings uh where we get the whole team together and we have um Zoom calls where we get everyone together. And we have slack channels and WhatsApp groups and like nuttering and all that sort of stuff we go out to dinners together to build chemistry. But uh we are a multi-million pound business and we don't have offices and never have hmm and would you sort of freelance a part-time full-time. What's the whatever fits the business so long as they're passionate as long as they're like in it. They're in on it. They're in on the joke yeah. They get it where hey we're doing this thing you know and how do you pitch them the job like who's who's going to be like hell. Yeah. I want to sell financial planning services for 2K a pop like well um normally. It's someone who for them. It's a step up in the early days you're getting Rebels and misfits. So. It's a step up for them. It's like wow really you want me to quit my job at Starbucks and come and work with you that would be amazing um you know oh. I'm a pub manager and I'm getting like no money and and I have to work right through till one o'clock in the morning and you want me to work just normal hours that would be amazing okay yeah and like how are you assessing for certain skills or like. Is it mostly Vibes or like what's what's your philosophy. Here they can breathe in the early days genuinely. I'm just looking for anyone I can rope in okay right. Now mind you. I'm now an experienced entrepreneur with a lot behind me so I can rope in some pretty good people yeah um. So my the standard you might see me roping in pretty amazing talented incredible people. But I've built up to that but in the early days it's literally anyone I can rope in can I rope in the neighbors. Neighbor's kid like as in teenager um no lick those stabs. Uh send out that thing um. Uh. No I'm talking about can. I like you know the the neighbor's kid's 17 years old and doesn't have a job. Can.I get them to do stuff on weekends um like I'm just trying to rope some people in in the early days cool right so 10K a month 10K to 100. At this point surely we've got to stay high level plus but like what's the what's the philosophy here the philosophy is you must establish yourself as key person of influence people have to fall in love with you as a personal brand so you've got to be this key person of influence. You need a team normally you're building up to about eight people at this stage and you have to have a front person. So this is because that's what gets cut through that's what gets you from 10 grand a month to 100 Grand. A month having cut through so the issue is is that from 10 grand to 100 Grand a month you can't really do one-to-one sales. You have to start engaging groups now you could engage group through ads you could engage groups through Affiliates or referrals or running events or um. Uh one-to-many presentations on podcasts or something like that but you've got to start going to groups to do groups. You need a front person um so if we think about like um if we think about a consulting firm that takes off it's because the head consultant is freaking amazing right in some way um. So this is where you are standing out as key person of influence so if we look at Richard Branson millions of followers. Virgin only has like quarter of a million followers quarter of a million to 400 000 depending on which platform Branson is like orders of magnitude more followed than virgin. He's been directing us to Virgin for decades we don't care we like Branson Cristiano Ronaldo 500 million followers on Instagram. Every single football club combined less than 200 million. Now these are 100 year old institutions and one player has double the the follow account um if we I was just in Dubai. They're like a big billboard saying we're opening a restaurant and it's going to be Gordon Ramsay and um Heston Blumenthal and it's like all these like super chefs. Now they're not talking about the building. They're not talking about the food. They're not talking about the fit out. They're talking about their person. The key person of influence you're gonna book this restaurant because Gordon Ramsay um so. This is how humans work. We we we buy into people. People love people uh and here's a thought experiment if you had this little business and um well actually a great thought experiment. If you with your millions of followers joined any business what would happen it would blow up yeah yeah. I guess provided was sensible yeah like you know like take like take a yoga studio. If you said I'm now the face of the yoga studio and I'm going to direct everyone to that yoga studio yeah right well. It would probably double in size very rapidly um if you uh like a clothing little clothing apparel brand that was just a business just a just a like a thing boom. It would blow up how much you do that I should stop buying from like Lulu like they don't need me yeah yeah well. You should do a deal with them. They should at least be sending you boxes of clothes really yes. I mean I buy 50 Quid t-shirts every few every few weeks well anyone who anyone who's at Lulu get in touch yeah. Let me know anyone who's a gym shark right so yeah. So this is the personal brand experiment like you could take any restaurant on the street. If Jamie Oliver suddenly said that's my restaurant it would double in size straight away.So uh what happens is that the key person of influence and by the way if you go back to the origin story of most really well-known Brands. They have a key person of influence Ferrari like it's Mr Ferrari and he he drove it for the first 50 years based on his personal brand. Um Fender Stratocaster guitars Mr Fender was the guy driving that um for those years now they've they end up as faceless Brands but not at the beginning yeah. Right so Disney drove Disney Walt Disney drove Disney and he was like Mr Walt Disney and he was the personal brand Steve Jobs carried Apple yeah. He competed with IBM. He competed with everyone and everyone knew who he was um. Bill Gates did the same for Microsoft so these personal Brands. That's what people want so you have to establish yourself as a key person of influence. So what does that mean number one you're the one on stage pitching. You're. The one uh doing group work. You're the one making differentiation for the for the business number. Two is publishing you've got to publish content videos uh articles podcasts. Uh blogs uh social media content so you've got to publish stuff. Uh perfect scenario is a book um putting a book out is a really good key person of influence move and giving away a thousand copies of the book. Away per year is a really great strategy for a key person of influence not thing not something you do at the beginning because it's too soon something you do once you're growing once you're already going but now you're a now you're a six to seven figure business. You start giving away a thousand copies of the book and that will actually scale you into all sorts of platforms um so yeah so that happens products. This is where the key person of influence expands the product range so you need to go from a product to several products hmm yeah yeah um there's four by the way there's four types four types of products. There's gifts things you give away for free product for prospects things that are designed to start the relationship core offerings which is the main thing you do and product for clients which is the ongoing Journey um. So those are the four types of products that you need to build and keep your key person of influence will build out the product ecosystem. So if we think of our YouTuber Academy I'm obviously the key person of influence behind this YouTube channel um a bit of a Jayco business and that it took like two years to pretty going but then in year three when we launched our YouTube course boom. We suddenly did like exactly 1.2 million Revenue that year which is 100k. A month yep um and now our offerings are free is YouTube videos yeah how to grow YouTube channel product for Prospect is our one dollar course yep perfect scorecard yep um. The core offering is our thousand dollar course yep and that product for clients is a 5K a year service. Yeah I would call that actually the same core offering so the thousand dollar is an entry level. It's kind of like um a BMW. You you've got a three series for or two series for entry and then you've got a you know X5 or a seven series. But then the product for clients would be the ongoing Journey after you've taken this so for example um if you had a productivity app right or if you had an ongoing support service um. It's normally a subscription so think Peloton bike then Peloton monthly subscription yeah um think iPhone and then O2 selling you the minutes or Vodafone telling you the minutes um. So the the core product tends to be like a transformation. It's like something changed and then the product for clients is like maintenance or Improvement. Uh I buy a BMW and then I get servicing. I get Finance I get insurance that's the product for clients so if we think of our web design Agency for example yeah and so to go from where we're at 10K a month by doing five clients at 2K pop life is good and then me as the web designer as well as the as the entrepreneur behind the web design agency. Yes yes I need to become a key person of influence yeah so in the web design world. So now you're standing up on stages and you're saying hey look. We are specialists in working with dentists and we sponsor all the dental. Practices and we're on all the dental podcasts and we do web strategy for dentists. Okay all right to do like just like web strategy for doctors. Because previous origin story I used to be a doctor decided. Web design was my thing there you go okay. So we do online personal branding and web strategy for doctors and uh where you speak at conferences you on podcasts. You become a guest. You you get out there and you evangelize this idea that every doctor needs a digital presence of digital footprint you put out a book called doctor digital um a digital doctor and suddenly you give away a thousand copies of digital doctor and everyone's like. Oh that's a great strategy. Why didn't. I think of that I needed as a doctor. I should have a personal brand that's what I need to have so now they're like yeah. That's great Ali I love that I love the book that you you did right yeah and and that differentiates me from every other web design agency in the World everyone's coming to you for the web design. So you have a package maybe. It's five grand because doctors can afford four or five grand and then maybe the next thing is hosting or um uh content management maintenance and that is 150 a month so you spend five grand to get a digital footprint digital presence and then 150 200 a month to maintain that or grow that or scale that over time and now you build out your little team and now it's five grand plus. The recurring revenue is starting to stack up you're now making 10 sales a month 20 sales a month. So you do say four sales a week 16 sales times five grand. So now it's 80 grand a month. That's 12 months that's a million okay so let's say. I'm doing my 5K web design packages. At that point the Temptation would be you know what we're really good at doing web design for doctors. Why don't we also do web design for dentists. You start targeting the dentist you could pivot yeah. You could expand into an into an additional market.

01:32:03 So this is just campaigning. You're just you're now campaigning for bigger markets. So this is exactly what Nike did with its shoes um day one. They were Blue Ribbon shoes and they only did track and Fields and they um they had a key person of influence called Bill. Bowerman Bill. Bowman was the co-founder of Nike so the effectively um Phil Knight was the CEO Bill. Bauman was the Visionary who wrote a book uh that sold a million copies called jogging and he kicked off the jogging Revolution and he was the co-founder of Nike and basically you read the book called jogging and then you went to the Blue Ribbon choose website. Oh no. They didn't have a website. What am I talking about you then heard about Blue Ribbon shoes and you bought the Blue Ribbon shoes yeah. They probably had mail order in the book yeah and um and they actually turned up to all these track and field events and they did all of that now when they wanted to grow the business. They said hey what else could we do we could do basketball who could who's like capturing people's attention in basketball we need a key person of influence for that Michael Jordan so they said let's sign this guy up um and then they said tennis oh. There. This guy called Andre Agassi. Let's sign him up so they basically campaigned for different verticals and each vertical's got a key person of influence a face.What's the balance okay so let's make a concrete with our YouTuber Academy for example um. What's the balance between let me stay in my lane and just keep on making more products for my existing Market of people wanting to start a YouTube channel versus you know what I'm kind of known for productivity. Let me start a productivity app so people are willing to go on a journey with you provide it. It's okay to have a product ecosystem. So I wanna I want you to think about yourself. I know this will sound strange imagine you're like the Eiffel Tower okay. But how does the Eiffel Tower make money actually the real money's made in all the things around the Eiffel Tower so when people go to hotels restaurants cafes museums galleries. That's all stuff that's around the Eiffel Tower so people are attracted to the Eiffel Tower. But there's all the things around the Eiffel Tower that make all the money the I like. Very few people go to Paris and drop all their money on like a trip up to the Eiffel Tower and back that's like yeah 15 credits. No they like to be around it. They like to see it. They don't you know they don't actually expect to spend all that much money on it yeah. But this is what a personal brand should be like a key person of influence should be the Eiffel Tower and they should have a product ecosystem around them. Me personally uh so I've got the books out and I give talks and I'm on a podcast. But I actually have a publishing company called rethink press. I've got a um Awards business and a PR business called August. I've got a business that does Capital fundraising um right. I've got a an accelerator business called Dent um. So. There's all these businesses that I've got. I've got software business called score app and these are all the things that are you know kind of selling. Each one has its own product ecosystem. All these products you know they they if I'm out there. Talking people are going hey what do you what do you do um. Let's get involved in. It does every business have some kind of key person of influence.No most businesses don't which is why they don't take off. It's only a very narrow set of businesses that take off there's millions of there's actually millions of businesses in the UK yeah and there's tens of thousands that are really profitable so like the local laundromat does not have a key person of influence behind it. No local coffee shop probably doesn't unless it's a James Hoffman's coffee shop because he's like the most famous coffee guy in the world from his YouTube channel and now he's really rich yeah. His products are really good yeah and he's building a Roastery. He's got his coffee brand. He's got his gear. He's got his totally okay yeah. He's a keeper in the coffee and everything's booming around him yeah yeah ah okay. So Mr Who's The Boss versus water stock company tech companies. Mr who's the boss could have a dozen products and they could all boom and uh you know. He's got 15 million followers so literally that is millions that is thousands of businesses that could do millions of dollars like you're talking a massive Empire um. If if he wants to uh because like you know think about this. A Center Court at Wimbledon holds 16 000 people quite a lot you've got four and a half million 16 000 is a rounding error yeah. You know like the the this is such a big following that you could have multiple businesses like you only need a few thousand Club customers to do a minion. A seven figure business um so if you're a key person of influence for many millions of people you can have multiple keeper you can have multiple businesses. I mean I only have tens of thousands of followers and I've got multiple seven-figure businesses okay so you could play much bigger what Mr Beast he's like turned down a billion dollars hmm. He's like I'm gonna be much bigger than that. He know he he he's figuring it out. But he knows that he has the capacity to build a multi-billion Dollar Empire off the back of the Mr Beast Brown. Hmm okay so my web design agency. I'm a come and key person of influence yep am I oh. But because I'm doing web design for doctors. I'm not bothering going to the web design conferences. I'm going to the doctor. No you're going to the customers you're going to the market and you're speaking in front of them and you're and you discover that there's a little podcast. They're all listening to so. You become a guest on there and talk about digital strategy for doctors. But I'm not I'm not speaking and plugging my product well. You're the you're the Eiffel Tower. So you're basically saying hey I wrote the book called um Dr digital and um I'm a big believer in digital products for doctors or digital brands for doctors or personal brands for doctors yeah and you're talking about this and then they're saying oh like how do we get this done you say well. I actually have an agency you can get in touch with my agency manager who who's gonna talk to you about that um. Okay yeah go talk to Eric Eric is gonna have a chat with you and you can have this great chat and Eric will tell you what to do next okay nice so think about it a bit. Like this you know in American football. The quarterback throws the ball to the other players and then they score the goals but the quarterback is like the star of the show even though they're not actually scoring the goals.So the key person of influence has a team and they're out there speaking. They're out there engaging with the marketplace being a key person of influence. They're seeing opportunities and they go take that one team have that one team have that one team right so they're just throwing the opportunities like a combine. Harvester and all of these opportunities are going into the businesses yeah and then the businesses are thriving as a result. How does the key person of influence have time to run all these businesses. If they're going out. Doing all this I think don't run the businesses. The key person of influence has someone who runs the businesses so here's something you should keep in mind um have you ever been in a Starbucks. Yes Starbucks is a multi-million dollar business. It's typically run by someone who's 24 years old right as in the individual Starbucks shop yeah yeah okay and they're on like they're on like 35 Grand a year really yeah. They're on like three grand a month oh wow so it's not that hard to find someone who can run your business so running a business. It's not Microsoft. You're not you're not running Google yeah. You don't need a chief operating officer yeah. You just need someone who's like able to run a bank branch or a call center or a McDonald's or a like. Here's the thing anyone. Anyone who can run a pub can run your business yeah because a pub has drunk people and people like hooking up and having relationships. A pub is like got razor thin margins. You just do not need to be running your business. That's not what you're good at as a key person of influence. You should be out there doing the thing that only you can do and that is stirring up the beehive getting people interested getting people excited building a Marketplace uh connecting with your customers. The the actual running of the business should be done by someone who can run a business and anyone anyone who can run a pub can run your business.So I'm running I'm running the business myself from zero to 10K and then at that point. I'm like right I need to be spending my time doing more interesting things like as you're at 100 Grand a month uh you're now definitely you definitely want to have a like a manager um and when I say I'm out like I just don't want to overstate like a manager can be an executive assistant who pretty much runs the business. A manager can be just a a general manager who'd like ex person who did HR. What does what what are the the skills needed to run a business like what what does it involve uh so here's here's what I like to think of um Monday morning meeting getting the whole team together. Everyone's got a job to do everyone declares their three things to six things that they're going to do for the week as in the most important things not micromanaging. But what are the three to six big things you're going to do for the week um and then um on Friday. We talk about what did we get done. What didn't we get done. We keep a dashboard so we have a dashboard of like did we make sales did. We were there any customer complaints do we need to solve any problems um so those kind of things happen and then essentially a general manager is like doing all the little problem solving along the way so for example loading up payments and then the payments go out and collections or there's a customer who didn't pay and they needed. An email saying you need to pay um so that's a bit of financial control um. Later on. You might have a financial controller who just does that general manager can do that scheduling hiring if we need to hire. Someone new if someone wants to go on holiday who's going to cover for them like all that stuff hmm yeah. That's basically what Angus does yeah yeah and you're and and most importantly they know that their job is to keep you out on the front line yeah. You have to be out there whenever we're at a conference. The whole team is happy oh yeah no big time totally yeah because if I I don't you didn't do a lot of how long did you how long were you. A doctor like two years do you different because there's not an owner but like was there ever a big boss. Is there a big like Hospital general manager or a hospital. It was like the hospital CEO but like the doctors don't really interact with the management structure of the organization yeah. They're the technical technicians is there anyone like who's like represents like the big scary regional manager or someone who point is is that normally that's not your best day at work. When that person's buzzing around um I I had an experience for me personally where I like I worked at McDonald's as a teenager yeah and when the big boss was in town and when the big boss was in the store we all froze and we didn't work very well um and I also worked around uh some people who were very well known um and when they were around everyone froze.No one worked really well yeah so less is more when you hit a certain point. You're far better off just being out there. Being this you know being the key person of influence doing deals raising profile doing Partnerships finding opportunities. All the all of that stuff um being in contact in connection with your customers in your Marketplace. Uh pitching publishing product creation writing a book yeah um all of that doing a podcast that is like your high value. Superstar stuff and then the team you just need to check in with them. Like me personally I kind of check in with my teams. Now every like 90 days I keep an eye on the dashboard. Like genuinely there was a business I just sold for quite a lot of money like Millions um. I owned it for about four or five years and um I probably spoke to the managing director six times in that whole time. Oh yeah yeah like and and never visited like didn't go on site. I own I own several businesses that I've never been to like genuinely. I've never been there um as in they have an officer. I've never been how the hell does that work oh. I bought the business and we met we met at a we met down the road here at this local place down the road and yeah. We did a deal and I let them get on with it. Why would you buy that business uh because I can grow it and how can you grow it by virtue of by being a key person because you're the Eiffel Tower yeah. So you can be the combine officer throwing opportunity. That way. It's your opportunity to say away. But I don't need to know provided. I know the person who's running that business can handle the opportunities yeah and can run the business. I don't need to know what happens beyond that point right. I can see it on. The I can see it on the dashboards. I can see the p l and the balance sheet yeah um I can see the weekly meetings are happening. We can do quarterly. I can attend a quarterly alignment session if I want to yeah um but so long as I have trust in my team. I don't need to be. There very often um. I just need to be out and about trying to trying to drum up opportunity because this idea of like you know you you own. Multiple businesses feels like a stressful place to be. It's really not okay. It's actually really not um in fact. I think it's easier to own multiple businesses than uh having um having just one because if you've got one you obsess over it. And if you've got multiple businesses you only deal with the stuff that needs to be yeah. I obsess over my one business yeah. So if you if you actually have multiple businesses yeah. Then the team you you only have when you have multiple businesses. You only have one opportunity which is to hire great people and let them get on with it yeah because if you're if you're working on several different businesses at once. The other thing too is don't forget a bigger business is multiple businesses like so when you think about when you think about Google it sounds like one thing from the outside. But it's like loads of things. Amazon is like loads of things. I mean there's like there's hundreds of businesses in Amazon there's the Film Production business like doing Amazon Prime. There's like the AWS business. Uh there's different regions and territories um. There's like there's in-house product team. There's an external engagement team. There's like the B2B thing there's the fresh delivery grocery services. So they're all product teams. So this is a multiple multiple businesses that are within a business a much bigger business. So when I when I earn multiple businesses it's just essentially it's just a group a group of companies and yeah like each team is its own team. It's almost like if you if you had multiple properties and the rent is coming in you're just keeping an eye on the thing on the numbers making sure nothing seriously is going wrong pretty much and then you don't need to worry about it too much yeah and if you only have one business you'll solve every Problem by throwing your own time at it yeah and you'll be ending up like doing things that are not your main thing that you do and if you have multiple businesses you're like okay. I mean the cool thing is when you get multiple businesses is you can actually say it would be easier for me to buy another business than fix this one. So you guys guys sort it out like sort out sort out the issue because uh and then are you not worried that that if something goes wrong that it will reflect badly on your brand um yeah to a degree I am worried about that yep. I do want to make sure that the businesses succeed for that reason yep. That's definitely a consideration. So I would you know that and that's probably my primary worry like reputation management. If if a business didn't succeed. I want to make sure that they do succeed for that reason yeah. Hmm sounds pretty fun. It is fun well. It has its moments if if multiple things go wrong at the same time you can have a stressful couple of weeks yeah. I feel like this is not where I I want to be right now. But I can imagine at some at some point. I'll be like you know what I want to be more of a coach to businesses and like just own multiple businesses. When you have multiple businesses. You are a coach to your own business that that is very much what you do you're the brand and you're the coach um. Here's what very much could happen for you you've got such a big brand. You could have multiple businesses that you are an equity stakeholder in and you play the key person of influence role. So like literally look. At this table. You could contact this drinks company and say hey I'll be the key person of influence with this in exchange for some equity and shares in the business. Hey we'll um help promote these in exchange for some Equity shares in the business so you could have a portfolio of businesses that you become a shareholder in um and that you evangelize those businesses you open up opportunities while you're roaming around having. Adventures you're saying. Hey. I just met someone in Dubai who's looking for a kombucha drinks company um to uh to to launch in the region um. Let me let me connect you both right so you could actually very easily because you you've got such a great brand. Going you could actually have multiple businesses like next month and if anyone would like that please contact me as Ali's agent um okay.

01:48:59 That's so we talked about zero to 10K we've talked about sort of ten to a hundred at what point does the team grow to an unmanageable level and like what what 12 people 12. 13 13 people so 12 is manageable 13's not thirteen thirteen how do. You level that number like that it's the last subtle I'll be specific yeah. There's there's always uh you know there's always this issue that with somehow magically 12 up to 12 people can just hold together. Everyone can just be having one conversation. The 13th person splits it in two or three teams. Suddenly you've got the sales team and you've got the Ops Team and you've got the finance team. The 13th person just goes breaks it all into into three teams so up until 12. You're just one team where just one family. It's the original crew um and then the 13th person is ruining things for everyone uh. Then it doesn't get good again until you're about 40 people plus um. So when you're about 40 people you've got what's called an executive team. An executive team is a CEO chief executive officer CEO chief operations officer CFO Finance CMO marketing and CTO technology so you've got those as your typical five roles for running a bigger business. On top of that you'll have a non-executive board member non-executive director board member and you'll probably have a coach right who's kind of getting or a chairperson. All right so that'll be your almost seven people um who are running the business right so because that's such a big heavy weighty team you need like 35 40 people all performing with great assets and great technology and great intellectual property and all of that stuff to to Warrant that team. So the reason that you should stop at about 12 is because once you go past 12 you need leaders and managers in debt and investment and this and that and there's J curves are unescapable and like all these all like you now into a grown-up proper business yeah um and then it's not going to be viable until you get about 40 50 people ah okay yeah. We're at 15 including me yeah so you're with a bunch of Freelancers that are like some semi-full-times for me. A part-time out of curiosity have you noticed that the team's starting to fracture off into like sub teams yeah yeah. So it probably happened around the 13th person. So like some people have got their little gang over here and then yeah we've got like our money team.We've got our con YouTube YouTube plus two editors team yeah and I bet they have their own little meetings yeah. They do yeah yeah. So you're just on the verge. Now it'll be masked in your organization because you're very profitable. You've got a huge IP and media going on. I've seen your videos where you disclose how much revenues and profits you do so you've got buffer. Most businesses don't have that kind of buffer. You're leveraging media out of this world. But if you are slightly less Revenue it would actually start to be noticeable that wait a second. The overheads are high and the profits going down and the teams aren't coordinating themselves very well and this team is running off on this direction and this one's running East and this one's running west yeah yeah. We have we have to do in-person full week-long meetings. Every six weeks to stay connected stay connected and aligned and do you remember back in like eight nine ten people where it just self-organized like it just like we didn't have to do any of this stuff and everyone like we had a problem. So what did we do. We ordered Chinese food and everyone came sat around a table and we solved the problem. By the time we finished dinner yeah ish I remember it was like that at three people when we were in person but then when we went to six and it became remote and different time zones and I didn't know anything about running business. So it's just like yeah so even at about six or seven. I bet there were times where you just got on a zoom call. Everyone jumped on the zoom before and our lady solved the problem and everyone was like aware of it. Yeah and I bet it's really hard to do that now yeah. It's really hard to do that now yeah so you've just entered this like too big to be small too small to be big. We call this crossing the desert. It's like you're just in this like really frustrating time where you're not a big business. You're not a small business um so realistically you can probably get away with it. Uh because you know you've got lots of ipita uh media to leverage um for most people. The smart decision would be us to pull it back to 12 people um and just recognize that we're gonna grow the assets. We're going to grow the media. We're going to keep doing what we're really great at. We're. Gonna say no to some stuff but. But ultimately we're a 12 person business or you go you know what we're going to build a massive business. We're gonna get five major YouTubers each with millions of followers. We're going to create a YouTube cluster uh a constellation of YouTube stars and we're going to have a management executive management team and we're going to bring together a whole bunch of um. Uh products and all of the YouTubers are going to pick the products that they want to represent yeah and we're going to like build up build out these businesses and it's gonna be like 40 50 person team who hit the phones and create opportunities and the YouTubers create the media cloud cover and then we've got the sales team yeah. I cannot imagine anything worse than that. I'm totally excited by it right so I would have I would have my like executive team and our sales team and our marketing team and we would basically say all right. We've now got a collective 20 million followers on on socials and now we're like we've got a dozen products and we're going to have our product teams and our sales teams and we're gonna really kind of coordinate this thing into a like. A 10 to 100 million dollar business yeah screw that that's not that's not the one yeah because it is. It's grown up right. It's it's it and it's board it's boards. It's private Equity backing yeah. It's outside it's outside influence. It's outside companies that have to buy in and stay bought in that's the problem. The problem is is like right. Now you can say no to stuff. If you want to say no to stuff. Once you get to a certain size you have investors you have um debt. You have.Partners joint venture. Partners so you've got all these outside influences and you have to manage expectations and if you screw that up they just leave yeah and then you then you've got 50 people overheads and and you your business starts to spiral down so yeah you're you you have to basically be up for that ah. So if I'm not up for that keep it small and manageable uh. You mentioned assets. What what do you mean by assets so um a business. Ultimately you know you talk a lot about productivity. So productivity often is thought about the way humans behave. But actually a huge amount of productivity is actually the underlying assets so okay like a tractor yeah like a tractor like like a attractor as an asset that yeah so boost your productivity yeah so if I've got a um if I've got a big Lumberjack who's got a little ax and I've got a 17 year old with a chainsaw who cuts down the tree faster yeah. Right so um assets are the modern day assets are digital assets. They're either intellectual property Media or um software typically and they are things that make everything run really really well now as a thought experiment. If I had two real estate sales people and both of them like optimize their diary and they're like working super hard and they're like get up and do their cold. Plunge in the morning and like you know they've got like their gadgets and all of that sort of stuff. They have a stand-up walking desk each right. All of that stuff is super optimized yeah but one of them's working in Mayfair and one of them is working in Blackpool. Okay yeah do you get what I mean yeah so who's more productive. It's going to look like the Mayfair sales. Person sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate each each year and the Blackpool sales person is lucky to make a couple of Million worth of sales each year um because ultimately the underlying assets are very vastly different um. So this is the same with any business. The assets of the business really do most of the work it's mostly the product. The productivity of the business is mostly media intellectual property and software um media ipn software yeah okay. Nice yeah. There's other assets too but those are the big ones these days data. They're intangibles and this is the thing most people don't even know what they are now um. Here's a thought experiment um a consulting firm is going along for 15 years and then the top consultant writes a best-selling book. It becomes the top of the business charts and they start speaking on four major conferences per year what happens to the consulting firm right. So it was the book and the cons like the book and the thing restaurant going along for 15 years wins a Michelin star yeah bang Bang Yeah right yeah. So it's an intangible new asset that has just been awarded um. So. These are these are the actual like the really big productivity boosters are assets. It's the underlying assets IP media and Tech okay so we have a problem right now because our 5K a year offering is quite heavy on customer support because it's like a 12 months of worth of customer support yeah and we are finding that like if we wanted to add more clients to that we would have to increase capacity and the way we increase. Capacity is broadly by where we're attempting to do it by hiring a bunch of Freelancers who are not technically part of the core team that are part of like the wider team and we're trying really hard on your advice.To avoid this desert territory where it's like yeah uh we're creeping into but it sounds like if I were to take this model yeah. This model seriously I'd be thinking intellectual property is a method of doing things. Normally it looks like a poster or um. It could be data it could be um a step-by-step. A recipe yeah media is we record the videos on how to do it and software is they just punch in the things and then the AI does it and the software does it and it all gets done and then if you can't solve it with IP. Media and Tech you have to solve it with people yeah okay. So a thousand dollar product which is a purely video course is a media plus IP asset yep and that's great we can sell unlimited copies of that and literally make 100 million off the back of that based on mind without having to hire. Any more people very scalable yeah. For every X number of people we add to our accelerator package which is a 5K offering. We have to add more people whether it's a freelancer or someone on the team. There's different ways you could structure it. So you could have a reservoir of coaches yeah um who are all signed up and vetted yeah and then you have a software system that um they pay. People pay the five grand and it includes a certain number of credits and then the software um when they're ready for a coaching session one-to-one they select their coach. They allocate the credit and then they get like automatically matched and yeah that just works that would then be scalable. You might then say well how do is there enough coaches uh available. Probably I mean there's probably lots of people who have a ten thousand to if you if you knew that the person who's coaching you at least had 10 000 subscribers yeah great yeah. There's probably plenty of people who have gotten to ten thousand and making coach people who are under 10 000. They only have to be a few steps ahead yeah um and if they're using your IP media yeah method. So that would be there you could create an opportunity which is to sign up as a YouTuber coach um. So you actually become a certified licensed coach but you have to have more than 10 000 subscribers in order to be qualified uh certified and then that way they've. They've already got that background and then they train up in your methodology your IP and then you just matchmake so that would be another way to solve them. Yeah I've been feeling a bit like about this because when I'm people yeah yeah whenever whenever I have to work for money or hire for money. I'm like oh. There's there's got to be a better way of like building an asset that makes money while I sleep kind of thing yep. Like this 5K product does not make money while I sleep the 1K product does and that's like really nice even though the 5K product is like five times much. It's like oh we really should have a high priced offering and yeah or maybe it's 10 grand yeah yeah. True Supply demand yeah and also uh maybe and depending on who it is 10. Grand is not a lot 10 grand is not a lot to certain people yeah you know if you've already got a half a million pound business a half a million dollar business 10 grand okay yeah. We can do that all right maybe can we do it in two payments yeah sure great fine done so um. Also you can have one person on your team who's responsible for training and who's that's their whole job is making sure that each of those clients gets a trainer so that you your core teams still is 12 but one person's job is to manage these 30 people yeah yeah that's currently sort of the model we have where that one person is managing our like six other people yeah but recognize that the real value is the IP media and Tech yeah. The people are always very. It's very hard to make money off people um you essentially you've got to Arbitrage people and it's hard to Arbitrage people so what I mean by that is you've got to pay them less than you charge them out yeah so that is hard because eventually people kind of figure out what they're worth and they go and do that so yeah. It's the the real. The real upside is actually IP media and Tech in most businesses nice. So how does one philosophically get from 100K to 1 million. A month. We're not yet. We're we're somewhere in between that threshold yeah. So this is where you go into this bigger business. You've now got an executive team and you've got teams of teams. So it'll be hard to do that with our team of 12 13. Yeah you're not you are an edge case and the reason you're in. Edge. Case is millions of followers right so that that puts you in a in a distinguished category that yes you possibly could with 12 people get to a million a month for most businesses. The well-worn path is that you would have about 40 or 50 people at that stage.So you would have teams of teams you'd either have functions territories products or markets so functions is like sales. Ops you know Finance uh markets is like um entrepreneurs uh government corporate education right um territories Germany France Spain um and then products would be iPad iPhone so you basically end up breaking your company into products. Territories functions or markets and you have teams of teams so for example. Let's say you had a city-based model that could do two million um per City with whatever it is you do. You open up five cities yeah. Now you you know you've got 10 million um. Let's say you have a two million a year product. You can you kind of hit a ceiling with that product you launch the second third fourth product um. So now you have web development for dentists. Web development for uh doctors web development for physiotherapists. Web development for chiropractors so now you like so he's now breaking into yeah yeah. One thing that like that continues to surprise me is that it seems like regardless of the business model. These numbers still sort of hold true like. It's not you know. It's not that hard to go to 10K a month uh. And it's it's easy enough to chart the part the path there and then the process 200k a month is also like and it seems like like each of these different thresholds. There's like new things that need to happen regardless of whether you have a coffee shop or whether you have an app or whether you have a YouTube channel whether you have like a Consulting business yes almost yes. There are businesses that are easier to scale yeah so for example score. App is an incredibly easy business to scale yeah because we have hit a threshold where the technology is amazing. It's plugged in with AI and it does incredible things everyone who sees it has a jaw dropping experience. They're like wow when you saw it before and you're like that's cool um. We're now at a position where we just need to go into new markets and territories. So we essentially just open up channels. If you wanted to onboard 10 000 new clients tomorrow we could do it you know we just need usernames and passwords for them. All that's not true for coffee shops yeah um so. Unfortunately you know we talked about the burger the Burger Bar so you now need to have lots of. Unfortunately there are businesses that scale exponentially and the costs stay relatively small. The costs don't scale exponentially yep and then there are businesses that scale and the cost scale with the scale yeah and that is like every few years there's someone who goes into Child Care Centers and they like there's some there's always some entrepreneur who goes into Child Care Centers and then goes bust and it happens repeatedly again and again and again and again. I've seen it like four times in my career. Someone who like gets 80 Child Care Centers and then goes bust um and why because it's highly regulated. Uh. It's it's every three children needs. A carer or four children needs a carer and you need a certain amount of space per child. So there's all these regulations so there is no economy of scale if you want to have 80 Child Care Centers. The costs associated are almost 80 times what one is. So. It's impossible to get ahead software. On the other hand. You spend half a million building software and then it scales. And you have 10 000 clients 50 000 clients. But it's not good as a first business because of the Jacob. It's a hard business just get off the ground okay. It's a hard first business. Here. It's a bit of a bit of a black belt move but worth it in the end. If you can get if you can end up in software Media or in Tech. Those are the you know those are the big big kind of scalable ones yeah like we're sort of in the process of building a project and also Finance Finance scales so um doing an investment firm or yeah raising a raising. A 10 million fund is not that much harder than raising 100 million dollar fund and raising a billion dollar fund is not that much harder than raising 100 million dollar fund um.So you know there are private Equity firms that have 12 people that have a billion dollars worth of assets under management you know so Finance scales software scales IP scales media scales um so in a perfect world. There are things that there there are things that scale much better than than others okay. So if you were me and we've got this team 15 people. We don't really want to go much more than that and you're quite fairly familiar with our essentially the only product we sell is. This YouTuber themed one and I've got my productivity themed book coming out six months from now what would you be thinking what sort of chess moves would you be thinking in this. In this board uh I would be going with the ventures model so the ventures model would be that you have a portfolio approach so you have a YouTuber Academy for income and that pays everyone's bills um and that's great and it's like a good uh p l model profit and loss model. But then the real upside scalability is the partnership. So you do Partnerships with Ventures so for example you find a company that's currently doing 20 million and you apply your brand and your contacts and your connections and then they go up to 100 million and then you you know you exit so an influence for Equity model would be amazing um a um. You know you're you're extremely well connected you've got millions of followers. They trust your judgment so it depends upon you having good judgment. You have to be really looking at 30 opportunities before you pick one ah okay all right so that's your job to pick who you partner with yeah. You need to be really protective of your audience and say hey look I'm not going to send you a product if it's no good like if if I recommend this drink then trust me. It's a great drink or if I recommend this app it's a great app um. So this would be the private Equity portfolio approach yep where you put a. Value on your you put a value on that partnership. Let's say you value that partnership at half a million and you say okay. Our goal is to do three of those deals per year um and we end up with a portfolio of equity um you know over the coming four or five years. We end up with a portfolio of 30 companies and as they mature and exit you know that's another deal done and now you you end up. If you want to advance that you could actually have people who would invest alongside you. So you raise a deal by deal Finance or investment team so you have your high net worth investors who come in and you you have a half a million worth of influence and half a million worth of capital and now you take a good really substantial chunk with your investors. You charge your investors a 220 ride along so two percent of their money plus 20 of their upside um so for them to ride along with you you do something like that anyway.

02:10:36 That's all that kind of stuff. That's where I would take it. I thought I told my Marathon well I I guess. It's just because I explained it fast yeah. I mean so I was speaking to um uh cycle Bloom who you might be familiar with um. He came out. He came over for dinner and a podcast episode of like last month and he's running this model and he's also buying up businesses and taking Equity shares and stuff. And it's his background in Investment Banking and private Equity. It's just a no-brainer. He's like yeah of course. I'm going to buy that business and get an operator to run it and like you know just get them to report dashboards to me and I'm like bloody hell that sounds sounds like a lot of work. But if someone comes time with him but yeah we're working on it. We have an agency that's launching yeah. There you go. I think yep um but if someone comes to me and says oh you know I really want to make an online course and it's really hard and I'm like it's easy just like because it's because I've done that yeah. Exactly everything's easy. After you've done it yeah um for me having multiple business. I remember what it was like having one business and I I had this friend Jeremy Jeremy Harbor who's amazing um and he wrote a great book called go do deals uh. Jeremy had multiple businesses. He had 13 companies at that time and he had like a jet and you know like houses around the world and all this sort of stuff. I just how is it. How is it. You have multiple companies and he's like honestly. It's easier than having one. I'm like that makes no sense and now. I'm that dude so yeah yeah. You would be the same I I imagine after you've done a few deals and you're like actually this totally. I'm I'm an investor in this company uh you know and here's how it works and here's the dashboards. I'm. I'm copied in on quarterly updates awesome um. And I bet you like do three or four of these and you're like we could do 30. Of these. It would be super scalable hmm and the whole Investments alongside if you you would really only need one billionaire friend right. You've probably got a billionaire friend and you would just need that one person to say yeah. I'll like allocate you know 10 million worth of capital towards these deals on a deal by deal and I'm happy with the 2 and 20 deal so because that's the standard deal um so yeah yeah. I'll ride along yeah great and and it's it's you'd it'd be hard to structure it the first time and then it would be easy to replicate yeah dab. That's one that's one Avenue. That's that's one Avenue you could go go down interesting okay so yeah we got there we actually got there to Millions a month yeah yeah like because you would actually have millions a month flying through the businesses like um and if you wanted to you could also build up to Millions a month but you don't want to um.So you consciously choose to stop but if you had a portfolio you'd be up to Millions a month so we actually went. We went through the Journey yeah and the Journey's not going anywhere really. I mean right now we'll just keep well. Oh. No you know we'll just keep building our assets building the assets is fun yeah. Writing books is Fun making courses is Fun making courses that require ongoing customer support is less fun right now because we haven't figured out a way to scale that in a way that doesn't add more people to our team but certainly making courses and then having them on autopilot making passive income. While I sleep is really fun and keep doing that and then yeah we've slowly started dabbling with the whole academic yeah yeah. Let me let me just sell you on the equity thing one last thing yeah. When a business sells it normally sells for multiples of like years worth of profit or years worth of Revenue right so if it's possible yeah to build a course that does Millions yep then theoretically. It's possible to partner with a business that does Millions yeah and then when that business sells it sells for like a a very low value exit might be seven years or eight years worth of profit in one transaction and if it's a software company it's probably going to sell for seven to ten times the revenue. So if you could build a 2 million a year. SAS business you might sell that for like you know 10 to 14 15 million. Uh maybe 20 million so like these things scale up a lot faster than courses that's true um if you look on the right blink and blinker to courses because that's what I know if you look up the rich list. There's not a lot of course creators no. But there's a lot of people who buy and sell companies yeah so yeah keep your keep an open mind to it yeah you've got plenty of time up your sleeve yeah. Maybe that's the next the next game buying selling companies we'll see. That's what uh Cody Sanchez are trying to support. I was trying to sell me on as well. She's done like 26 different companies yeah. She's she's doing that and and she yeah. I mean it's worth watching and seeing how and Alex hermosi's doing that oh yeah yeah um. What do you think about that whole journey and does it actually start sounding predictable because at the beginning it's like hey like is this actually predictable. Like does it sound like it's a predictable set of steps because I'm so close to it to me yeah. It's it's it's weird because it like this YouTube thing that I've built I feel isn't or isn't a real business or it's. It doesn't have the same characteristics that one of the like I've never had I've literally never in my life done.A sales call yeah. What do you think of real businesses uh like well. I don't know. It's someone that does a real thing uh. You do a real thing no but uh. But I guess given that I've never done a sales call in my life to me. The idea of a sales call feels like oh that feels hard you're doing the key person of influence role. You're creating the opportunity. Someone's doing it yourself that that keep us influence role feels really easy. I'm just like yeah. Someone someone's doing the sales calls yeah so what you're doing is creating the space for those sales calls to happen yeah um. It's look if you go to KPMG. There's someone called a partner and the partner opens up big relationships and then passes them down to the analysts and all that sort of stuff. And it's the same. It's the same deal yeah. You know the Goldman Sachs guy. He's out there like signing up the company that wants to float and then passing it to the team to like pin it down yeah um and do do. The thing you are the key person of influence who creates a wake of opportunity and you've got a team who know how to monetize that opportunity. That's the relationship that's the real business so you're you're doing the right thing. This is this is this is working yeah. It's working um and you you do have you've got a team yeah. You've got a company you've got like. We pay tax you pay taxes. I look at our management accounts every month you generate media intellectual property technology yeah um yeah. Like all of these things are proper business things hey but I think I think breaking it down like this definitely does make it seem more predictable. It also makes it feel like oh okay like like you know that that realization had at the start was that was like ah. It's not as it's not like an easy thing of just like oh just just learn to code and build a software in your pajamas in your bedroom and suddenly you're making 10K yeah. It's hard the whole thing is hard yeah but that's but like the payback is huge yeah like millions millions and millions. You you sell a cut if you sell a company. You earn what most people in their entire career yeah in one hit so like if you take someone who's on 50 Grand times 40 years. What's that two million yeah so yeah yeah and they they pay tax like that's a career and you don't have to sell it. Like a a 2 million exit is not a big exit yeah um. So the entrepreneurship game has upside but the downside is stress. The downside is complexity hmm. The downside is you see someone reading fiction and you think wow I wish I could read that you know you have bigger carrots and bigger sticks as an entrepreneur hmm. You know what I mean like like everything that motivates humans is carrot and stick yeah and the sticks are bigger and the carrots are bigger so you know. That's the that's the path and it typically is that rough roads and smooth and smooth roads and rough so people who have a really nice. Easy Life typically struggle towards the end um and people who put in the grit at the beginning typically get a breakthrough and then upside scalability so you know you've got to pick pick which hard you want. Why don't you just read fiction you've got enough money um because of the carrots and the sticks at the moment. I've got a software business yeah and the upside is 100 million plus and I can't stop thinking about building a great company. I'm really excited about what we do um. It's a huge opportunity as a business. But it's also a fun business.We we we're building quizzes right and we're using Ai and we're doing data and we've got this amazing team in in um Ukraine who if it wasn't for us they would be enrolled in the Army and they'd be on the front line and like you know it's amazing that we have this camaraderie with that team and we have like the hopes and dreams of our like team and and like it's a game worth playing yeah. So if I was a professional athlete yeah look. Maybe I would maybe Roger Federer reads fiction to get his mind off tennis as a deliberate strategy because he needs to rest his head but like most of the time it's like how am I going to play better tennis yeah. You know um so when you become a an entrepreneur. You just you know you. There's always something to do there's always like a problem to solve or an opportunity. There's a new channel to open there's a new territory to explore yeah um so your life becomes fiction and yeah yeah. It's not about having enough money like this whole idea like the whole idea of having enough. Money is something that you think would be like if you don't have a lot of money. You really do think that it's about the money yeah and very rapidly you realize like it's just a game and once you're good at the game. You want to play the game yeah so like why doesn't Roger Federer why did Roger Federer quit tennis because of his knees. It's not because he had enough money like he he had sore knees um and he was devastated he was disappointed you know that he couldn't keep playing like why does Lewis Hamilton keep racing a car because he's a race car driver. That's what he is. That's what he does like. He's got a jet and he's got hundreds and hundreds of millions um but he's a race car driver. He would like hate not being a race car driver so um you should interview him. He'd be a great interview. He'd be a great interview um so like for for an entrepreneur. Why do you keep running businesses because you're an entrepreneur. That's who you are that's your identity and you know it's like. It's the game you into hmm. You've got enough money why don't you stop doing YouTube videos and teaching people stuff yeah because I'd be depressed if I wasn't exactly because it's not about the money are you enjoying it yeah. It's like a fun game worth playing but at the same time I do still want to make more money yeah well. That's because it's the scoreboard yeah. It's the score but it's how you get the validation that you're creating value in the world because like if you were just giving it away you don't know that it's creating value like what's really creating value like obviously you give a lot away. You give a ton of videos where I do as well. I give books away and all sorts of stuff but the value of like the products it's like is the product any good people are paying for it yeah um like it's crushing when I see someone cancel their subscription yeah and I'm like oh. What did we do wrong yeah like I want to rig up the I I really do want to ring up the ring them up and say what happened yeah why did and I actually do sometimes people cancel their subscription and they're like I did not get enough leads and I will go and have a look at what they created and I will like message them and say you could have tried this headline and you could have done this um because I want to play the game come on. Uh final thing I wanted to ask you about um.This is a bit of a personal challenge right now or personal struggle struggle challenge something I'm thinking about. At some point I want to you know get married and have some kids and stuff uh. But the I like I know that one of my core values is freedom. Autonomy. Independence I love kind of the the fact that I can if I want to just travel anywhere in the world and go to whatever conference and just hang out with some YouTuber friends in Austin at the drop of a hat and I know that getting married and have kids and having kids. I suspect would be some sort of trade-off between freedom and uh commitment and investment and like building something together and stuff and everyone. I know who is married and has kids says that it's great. It gives you lots of long-lasting fulfillment but it surely must come at the price of some sort of Freedom totally. So what's that life is a series of trade-offs and you can't get around that um. So you're a doctor. You know that really everything in biology comes down to uh survive and reproduce right. So why are we wired for anything it's survival and reproduction. Those those are that's basically it right. Humans are survive and reproduce creatures um in fact not just humans. Everything a rabbit is a rabbit because it's really good at surviving and reproducing yeah so um everything in your psychology everything in your hard wiring everything in your nervous system. Everything feels good if it helps you survive and reproduce so eating a really good nutritious meal with lots of fat and you know like I said a juicy steak or something like that. It hits on a bunch of ding ding ding ding ding that's good for survival um when you notice a good looking person walking past and you're like oh right that's your survive and reproduce system. So there's something that is so deeply ingrained and fulfilling about having kids that it's just like if you're completely not spiritual but you're just like like. This is an entire section of your nervous system that you haven't explored yet your entire life. Up until this point has been survival yeah right so you're just running around surviving yeah and there's this whole other room in the house right imagine. You discovered the house has got like a whole. Other wink yeah and the whole of the wing is the reproduce ring wing right and it's like there's so much of your entire nervous system that is wired for this is the greatest reason to live. This is the best thing if you're a spiritual person you really feel like you're passing the light on you're passing on the torch of life you're actually passing forward your legacy uh. If you're an atheist you might say hey. My DNA goes right back to mitochondrial all right. Like my I go right back to single-celled organisms and like there is a unbroken chain and I'm gonna not break that chain I'm gonna pass the life forth and it feels incredibly good um.So there is this part of you that wants to reproduce and it feels great to reproduce it like in the same way eating does or any of that sort of stuff. So I wouldn't miss out on that um and getting on a plane is also cool. But it's not like biologically hardwired to feel that great yeah great. Now with that said life moves in chapters. There's a chapter called single totally unencumbered and then there's a chapter called this couple who travel together and we're like a great sexy couple and we're gorgeous and traveling and Free as a couple. And we're we're loving being a couple and then there's like the couple with young kids chapter. And then there's the couple with teenagers and the teenagers are off doing their own thing and then there's the couple with you know kids who have left so. There's. These chapters that you go through and people who cling to the last chapter. They're miserable hmm yeah. I hate to say it like it's horrible to say. But there are people who just never move out of the chapter uh you know I've got friends who who are still stuck in the high school chapter like I literally have friends in there who are in the high schools chapter. Like people I went to high school with and when I get together they they're still talking about stuff that happened 25 years ago in high school. It's like dude that really was a long time ago. It was five years 25 years ago. It's like who cares what happened um so you want to move through life in chapters. You want to say hey have. I really enjoyed this chapter am I ready for the next chapter. In this book right am I ready for the next adventure um so you know you're you're you know you're still in your 20s. You can still enjoy this chapter for a few more years um but it comes to an end and the next chapter is great nice thank you. I think that's a good place to end this um any final pieces of uh advice or recommended resources for anyone who's gotten to this point in the podcast. So if you've enjoyed this stuff the books that I've written are all about the entrepreneur Journey. So there's the key personal influence book there's entrepreneur. Revolution um there's over subscribed there's how to raise entrepreneurial kids um there's scorecard marketing which is all about like setting up your own lead generation campaigns. So I've written a whole body of work um pick. One of those books have a read um would be great get in touch get in touch with my team or myself and um and connect um because I really feel. We're spinning around this sun and we're on a little wet. Rock and we're sharing this journey and this experience together and you know to me. That's not lost to me like. It's a fun amazing experience to be sharing this time and this space with you know with with everyone and I I love going on the entrepreneur Journey with everyone else. Nice thank you so much cheers all right. So that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening all the links and resources that we mentioned in the podcast are going to be linked down in the video description or in the show notes depending on where you're watching or listening to this. If you're listening to this on a podcast platform then do please leave us a review on the iTunes Store. It really helps other people discover the podcast or if you're watching this in full HD or 4k on YouTube. Then you can leave a comment down below and ask any questions or any insights or any thoughts about the episode that would be awesome and if you enjoyed this episode you might like to check out this episode here as well which links in with some of the stuff that we talked about in the episode so thanks for watching uh do hit the Subscribe button if you aren't already and I'll see you next time bye.