Transcript:

Thanks for joining Ben’s Business Podcast and everyone to introduce from what I know about John F. Kettley is he’s an investor in businesses, a mentor and a turnaround growth and scale and exit specialist.
John, I found out about you through my dad who’s actually in my office today.
Me and my dad spend a lot of time together. We’re both entrepreneurs, so I was growing up, born as an entrepreneur basically and he is in the harbor club Jeremy Harbors Club and I’ve learned a lot about you through my dad and I’ve also read your book.
To build a business that builds wealth and the subtitle of it how to stop struggling and start thriving so we can talk about your book as well, especially because I have a book club business book club specifically.
So would you like to give yourself more of an introduction who who is John Kettley.
Well, it means much like your good self was born into a family of entrepreneurs very, very fortunate.
It sounds more grandiose than it probably than it actually had various uncles one one had a carpentry business one had a butchers China butchers shops and so on.
It’s a business owners, but not in the grand scale. So, of course, I kind of grew up with my, we’re painted doing this and my uncle sound doing that my uncle lays doing something else so kind of from a fairly early age I knew I was never going to do the PA why you think it just didn’t really come into focus and as we’ll probably go into a little bit later.
So, the couple of badges that they give to the kids these days once called the selection and the others ADD so my attention span as a youngster it’s not much better today and I’m well into the back end of the 50s was short.
The best part of the last four decades I start building cell companies that’s that’s essentially what I do was fortunate kind of took a first of a number of retirements back in06
fell into turning companies around after the last recession of 19 and mentoring businesses and then taking stakes in various businesses with business owners who want to build to an exit.
That’s me in a nutshell. Yeah, okay, very interesting. Just to jump back to a point you said about, did you ever have a job or did you go straight into business?
I left school at 15. It’s the whole academia and getting jobs wasn’t wasn’t really on the cards at all.
And I’ll be honest back in the 70s it wasn’t as perhaps as crucial as it is today to have qualifications and stuff like that you could literally jump into something and then jump into something else is just how it was back in the 70s.
Okay, that’s the 1970s for all the millennials.
And did you did you find business came naturally to you or did you have to develop skills and experience before things start?
I was very fortunate because I was being I suppose you call it hustling from from a kid because I was very fortunate to keep my fan of attention under control and use it to keep me in line.
My parents very luckily bought me a dirt bike when I was 10.
So by the time I got into my early teens we were very much racing every Sunday through most of the year.
So really the only thing that existed to me was going scrambling they called it then mode across they call it now on a Sunday.
So not being from a particularly wealthy family by any means it was a case of paper rounds washing cars doing lots of different things just to raise the money to make it work on a Sunday.
So hence it was kind of embedded from that young age.
I remember my dad’s always called himself unemployable and probably got that label as well as a personality type almost sometimes and when you’re born into that.
I think like I had my brother and my sister and I always found entrepreneurship and what my dad almost forced us sometimes to watch like investor video tapes and I always found it a bit more interesting.
It’s definitely comes from your interest as well and who you are.
So I wanted to ask you and it’s quite a big question but you in your book you talk a lot about vision and purpose and being driven by that as a forefront picture versus just someone else’s plan like you should do this versus you want to do that from an intrinsic motivation.
What is your ultimate goal like your bigger goal for everything that you do today and what you’ve done.
Well that that really changes with time.
As a teenager all I wanted to do was be a professional model cross-riser.
And then the next part was I wanted to become a multi-millionaire and then the next part was to work in different parts of the world and the next part it changes.
And I think the one thing that I’ve learned over the years is never ever start and build a business that’s that’s a really really risky and bad thing to do.
It’s much better to work out what it is that you want as an end result and then just reverse engineer that so for me personally starting a business normally begins with starting something that other people haven’t seen.
When all the crowd is looking to the left you’re far better to move to the right and look at what’s going on.
An example of that is I come from a town called Stevenage.
Stevenage was one of the five new towns after World War II where all the Londoners kind of moved out to.
And when they built Stevenage they built a cycle track next to every main road around the town so there’s miles and miles and miles of cycle tracks.
So you’re also allowed to use a mo pad up to 50 CC on these cycle tracks that are by every main road.
So one of the ventures that we did was was a motorcycle store and it was it was because at the time petrol was becoming very, very expensive and the traffic in the town was a nightmare every morning and every evening in the two main industrial estates that surrounded Stevenage.
This is interesting people are really watching where they’re among the years and it’s gridlocking those in those areas.
I think a lot of people would have a scooter as a second vehicle rather than a car as a second vehicle and with that scooter what they’ll be able to do is avoid all of the traffic.
And because they’re a scooter they’re allowed on the cycle tracks and hence avoid in the traffic to they do 70 80 miles to the gallon.
And they’re super cheap to rent so that’s why we opened up the scooter stores so we would do a deal and go to so for example I went to some less bakeries which employed lots and lots of people in the bakeries there went to the personnel department and said.
I’m going to do a deal for all of your employees if you like to put this on the board that if they come into the shop and say that they work for some less bakeries will give them a discount and will do an unbelievable deal for 99 pounds down 99 a month will give them a crash helmet order proof gloves a brand new Yamaha scooter and take them through their CBT to get their license to be able to move.
So that’s how we got that particular store up and running in Yamaha came to us probably only about five months after we started and said how the hell are you guys selling so many units we were the the the biggest retailer of scoters in the country from zero to five months and it was because we had a very structure plan to fill a hole that no one else was looking at.
So that’s what I mean by when you’re starting a business you’re looking for a hole to fill that others aren’t doing to I knew that I like start in businesses I like building businesses but soon as their operational the ADD kicks in and I’m out so I knew who was going to buy the business off of us so that’s what we were working to build build build build sell so that’s really the kind of the mode that we’ve been working with.
For the best part of four decades is starting a business knowing we’re going to sell it so if you think about the people that start businesses there are really only two types of people type number one is someone who’s building a lifestyle business and type two is someone who’s building a business to sell at a certain point in time now most small businesses are started by someone with a dream
and they want to build a lifestyle business and unfortunately that’s why they tend to crash and burn and in fact as we all know 70% of businesses failing the first five years.
50% of all businesses that start failing the first two years and it’s because they’re starting the business not by a reverse engineering it but they’re focused on the logo and the website and getting everything nice and that’s lovely until you get four or five months in and then the honeymoon’s over you’ve opened the business and it’s off and running and then you realize potentially I think that
that their sales and marketing strategies are not getting enough people to walk through the door and because they’re not walking through the door there’s not money going in the till to use that metaphor.
Yeah so a couple of things there on the question of your purpose changes which makes me feel better actually because I’m always like this is my purpose actually no this is my purpose five years later so it’s good to hear that is.
Absolutely and then what does also happen on that one bed to Segway back to the original question is I don’t know anybody in 40 years have been in business who’s ever achieved their goal and what I mean by that is think of it as a setting sale from the UK to the Americas and do you know you’re going to America and then about halfway across the ocean all of a sudden someone on the boat asks you
so where in America are we going now for most people America is success in this little story they want to be a success and then you say so what does success look like how will you know when you’ve won and that’s the point that stops 90% of people in their tracks and they go
because they haven’t viscerally worked out what the winning post looks like so that’s why in terms of your direction it moves with the sands of time because what’s important to you when you’re 18 is not at 21 which is not 31 which is not at 41 it changes so
often what happens along the way is you say a different shiny star and you decide to pivot and head off towards that shiny star as it were.
Yeah I’ve definitely noticed that now I’m 33 I’ve been through maybe two two or three of those phases and it’s it’s quite a challenge actually at that end of the 10 year cycle or whatever the cycle is
you you then don’t think the thing that you were gone for as motivating so your priority is change 100% yeah and that’s a natural human thing and I think the thing to do is to is to notice that it’s changed and not this is what unfortunately an awful lot of people do is they’ll keep rolling in the direction that they originally set out to and some people get very fixated said I will not move on until I’ve achieved that a first goal and sometimes that will take a little bit more time.
So if you want to make them an attorney to do that and for others it really motivates them which kind of brings you back to motivation so again motivation is is is about knowing where you’re going so if you want viscerally clear about that it takes all day to get nowhere.
It’s really really true and I think yeah we do need to just tap into our awareness like there’s all these books that have read and coaches and mentors and and these things help because when you come across like in your book the exercises and you as you really pointed out and brought up to my attention as well that people really don’t like to work smart
and they don’t mind reading the book they don’t mind doing doing doing but it’s when it comes back to actually sitting down and doing that personal development and business development time which is working on the business instead of in it that people people find it hard to come out of their habit of just doing.
And even myself like when you pointed that out I noticed myself going oh I want to I want to get on with all these little tasks that are in front of me and then I’ll come round to your challenges or your exercises each chapter so it’s very true and I think the people who take the time out to do those chapters at the end of the books versus the people who don’t will be more successful because they’re working smarter.
100% I mean it’s interesting every year I invest in a fairly substantial learning of some descriptions so over the years you know that’s been Tony Robbins brand of a charge in around some Vince Lombardi zigzigler a number of things because you know knowledge is power but knowledge is power only if it’s if it’s actions and implemented and it’s interesting if I go back to the Tony Robbins investment which was.
20 years ago in fact I tell you how old it was you send off and you got a box with CDs in it and you would listen to the CDs and there was 20 on CDs or whatever it was in the training program that Tony Robbins was doing and literally in the pre frame the very first CD.
Tony Robbins says to you the you know the the viewer or the listener it says that through research that they’ve done less than 70% of people get past CD three less in fact and I’ve got that wrong less than 30% over 70% don’t get past CD three yeah yeah.
And that’s very true because I’ve been to different things and I’ve seen different people that do what they call shelf development they go all these darn courses to learn there to learn that what have you and then you’ll see another course somewhere else they’re not implemented it they’ve not got any further with it they become course junkies they just yeah yeah and the camaraderie and the rare rather you get on some of these two and three day courses yeah no it’s really important that you.
When these exercises come up and you’re challenged you almost motivated to take action you should follow that and actually go and do something about it rather than like I got caught on that period as well like I read a lot of books and became very knowledgeable and and had lots of broad information and I felt myself anchored at a certain stage because I was really knowledgeable had lots of information that wasn’t you know.
So exercising that information almost and ironing it out and it just got like an anchor and I felt like I was actually lost in information rather than book do then then read the next book when you need it like just like someone calls it just in time learning so you’re reading the book when it’s the right time and not just picking up a book to like you’re saying shelf development just having the books there and knowing that you’ve gone through the book.
And just take it take off the book I’ve I’ve most of the time never done that I’ve always been quite good at listening to five minutes of a book and there’s a good action there that I can take in the plight I’ve always had businesses to apply it to so that really helps as well so yeah totally agree with that excellent excellent and yeah so you said a few other things there as well about
What did you say you’ve got dyslexia and ADHD yeah but I don’t really technically yes but I think I tell you a very quick story about in the mid 80s and opportunity come to go out to West Germany to sell to the US military on the vases jeeps and Harleys and I thought that looks like that would be an adventure you know it was
And you know there was a commission only and all the rest of it is as near as I come to a job per se is doing commission only things which I’ve done many over the years and but it was predicated by this two week course and I’m on the plane over to Frankfurt and I’m time myself up in knots because I’m thinking I can’t do the classroom thing I just I won’t be able to get past the classroom thing so that was the first mistake was over the first
I was talking myself into something that I wasn’t able to do as opposed to talking myself into something now I’m going to take on board the learnings I’m going to use this and I wasn’t thinking that way I was thinking in correct like anyway
Of course it was run by an amazing guy Tom Kavanaugh except for an 11 pilot shot down over Vietnam spent a couple of years in up to his neck immortal in a bit the maze prison walk ampie out of the camp and went through some interesting stuff that he shared with us over the couple of weeks well it was the first day and it’s on the first day and I’m sitting in the chair and there’s about 20 other people that was in this boardroom
I think it’s going to be tough it’s going to be tough so in walks Tom and he didn’t say a thing got the attention of everyone in the room pressed a button and on the screen and this amazing sound system in this boardroom was the opening sequence of top gun
and I guess this is interesting and so he had all of our attention straight away and then through the process of the next couple of weeks what Tom was teaching was the psychology of communication he was teaching how people are wired up late in later years I had a study in NLP and of course a lot of what he was teaching was a military version of NLP how to read people
so from their iPads tell which of their two senses are their primaries over there over the other three how when people talk how to get into rapport very, very quickly by using words that they use talking to them in their language to speak up when people want you to speak up to speak fast when people really want you to speak the order to slow it down.
So using intonation cadence and all of these other things to get rapport and then from rapport to really be able to find out very quickly but very elegantly what that person really, really wants because then if you’re in business sales
if you can find out what your customer or potential customer really, really wants in minutes it really massively increases your ability to earn because it massively increases your ability to sell more of the products and services that you sell so it was at that point as I say two two weeks in with Tom Cavanaugh and he’s teaching you how people process information how they do this and how they do that
And so the question was asked many, many times so if if I’m talking to someone is a fast processor or slow processor which is the best you said there is no best if people process the world around them very quickly then that’s how they do that or very slowly
And then someone would ask and say well what if is it better to be visual or is it better to be your auditory he said it doesn’t matter how you’re wired up is how you are wired up so if you’re dyslexic it was really only kind of coming onto the map in the mid eight is if you’re dyslexic or you’ve got ADD ADD is just another word for you’ve got a very fast processor
And so what you’ll find is a lot of race car drivers have a very fast processor they can process information so much quicker it’s not about reaction times it’s about the speed at which you can process information so you tend to find that fast processes are people that do very, very well in the entrepreneurial space not always because a very good friend of mine is an unbelievably slow processor drives me insane
Because we’re opposite ends of the tantrum but she is a phenomenal business woman I really have the most respect for her because okay she she processes it slowly but she’ll go click click click click click click and then she’ll know exactly what to do there’s no provocation in it so again if you’re dyslexic or your ADHD or any other other badges that people you know I have a degree of neurodivergence I can think of and process five different subjects are two
three times and if I only have one subject to focus on at a time I start blowing a few fuses I have to have a number of things going on so I spent last Friday night in the A&E with my mum bless we took her into hospital and if you’re sitting in an emergency room every minute feels like 20 minutes when you’ve got a fast processor so that kind of like 14 16 hours was like weeks to me
so I had to get different things that were going on in the brain so it’s not good it’s not bad but it’s really really handy if you can look in the mirror and get comfortable with who’s looking back so if you as any of these badges that they hand out to kids at school
and this is the problem they hand them out to the kids at school and that’s their excuse not to achieve whereas to me that’s you know most dyslexic I’ve got a higher IQ than normal most ADHD I’ve got a higher IQ you just got a feed that so they’re coming at this in the schools largely the wrong way I’m not going to suck myself into a black hole people saying John what are you saying but I think it’s an advantage and I think
everybody needs to look at what their advantage is and then when it comes to their career and business and what they do in becoming a success you have to start the marker I mean you’ve read the book then it’s really a personal business development book
and there’s a heavy emphasis as you know in the first chapters around the personal it then goes on to the business making money’s easy and I say that not glibly because
I know so many people find it difficult but the reason they find it difficult is because they haven’t worked out the personal part first as in what is winning to you the person in the mirror yeah not anyone else not what you should be would you want you as a leading to earlier I should have done this by now or I should have done that’s just shooting all over yourself that’s that’s a negative is far better to say you know what I’ve made a few mistakes along the way and that’s okay I’m strong
up and more learning for them but now I need to be able to look in that mirror and say this is who I am you’re good at X you’re good at why you’re good at Z and not what most people do what most people do guys you know you’re not very good at this you’re not
very good at that so you need to avoid this you need to avoid that and they’re actually taking themselves on a negative trial you’re never going to make money at that you’re never
going to succeed if you’re taking down the negative trial and that’s why you see with most entrepreneurs that have reached a degree and even a high degree of success they all talk about the mind behind success and it is the mind behind success is that it’s the difference that makes a quantum difference one degree of moving yourself into the positive over the negative makes a thousand degrees of the difference
yeah and the reason I asked you obviously about dyslexia and things is just interesting. I’m dyslexic and it made school a wee bit difficult for me and until I found my feet and probably pretty much got out of school and then that’s when I started to thrive in life.
and like you say I’m on track and agree with what you’ve been saying there about and I think about what you’re saying I think about self awareness just knowing who you are and like you’re saying loving yourself or who you are and thriving from your own aspects that are good not what other people are good at and owning that so then when you get like you’re saying almost bored when it gets into the operation side of the business that’s when you sort of
delegated to the rest of the people who can who do well on that so that makes a lot of sense to me and how how I’m approaching life and how fast process or that really stick to that stuck with me as well that I can totally relate sitting in that um waiting room and it being a long uh a long wait.
yeah absolutely again I think it really just comes back to that principle thing that you must know yourself you must know who you are.
positives negatives take the negatives and leave them no one’s interested in them everyone else is going to point them out to you.
it’s really just down with positives well look i’m pretty good at x and i’m pretty good at y okay so how do I leverage that and be very conscious of language so if if so for example with language i mean this is the kid that left at 15 i’m still a bit crap with spelling and grammar but i’m reasonably articulate because i’ve read a bit and i’ve traveled the world a little bit but if you look at and this is why i really picked up on psychology and linguistics so if you.
you say look how are you going to get from where you are to where you want to be that pretty much locks everybody’s brain up whereas if you say so what are you going to do to move from where you are to where you want to be how is a stationary word and what is a motion word so if you keep asking people how are you going to do this and how are you going to do that you’ll get no feedback from them you know you talk to a potential customer and say well look how will you know.
that this is the right product or service for you or how are you thinking you’re going to get nothing whereas it is how it whereas if you use the what word it’s a motion word that’s what gets people to to make decisions.
okay that’s yeah it’s really interesting i’ve not come across that before and so.
i picked up a lot of good tips about sales and marketing in your book and.
off the top of your head like what would you say is the best advice you can give in sales or in marketing I particularly liked.
some of the information you shared about prospecting and closing market and talking about sort of the usp but yeah what would be your best advice to say.
a medium size or even a startup business owner because there is a quite a lot of startup business owners who are in my audience.
yes so to the start up guys because that there’s there’s different answers depending on who’s are asking the question and where they are on their journey and how they see the world so I think if we start with the with sales and then we’ll go to market.
okay so if you ask most people have you done any sales training most will say no and then you’ll ask because I’ve asked this question of thousands of people over the last kind of 15 or years.
and say so what why have you not invested in in learning how to sell well I don’t want to be salesy okay.
how’s that working out well so that’s what you’ll get as an answer is well you know now here’s the thing.
everyone’s if you ask someone to describe a sales person what they’ll generally describe is what we think a car salesman insurance salesman double glazing salesman that’s what they’ll describe as a sales person.
and it’s a very it’s a quantum difference in the UK to the US in the US a professional salesperson is on a pedestal is right he she or they right up there because to be a professional salesperson is actually about being a professional communicator.
you see the art of sales is in never been seen to be selling because the second that someone detects that you’re selling to them they switch off and they leave think about the last time you went to buy a product that was fairly substantial in price it might have been you know a suit for a wedding it might have been a new setting or a car or.
some home improvement the second you detected that person was selling you you can’t run away didn’t you.
everybody does its human nature we’ve been programmed by the media for the last 30 years not to make decisions and if someone’s trying to sell to you to run away so they do so professional sales people don’t look like one.
don’t sound like one the art of selling is a conversation between two people at the end of which one just buys from the other and that my friends is the trick it’s to have a conversation that is eloquently eloquently easy that just helps the other person to buy what it is that they want.
so that’s a learned skill you’re not born a sales person you’re you’re born a baby you learn these things these skills so I think and actually i’m going to put my hands up here i’d say that most of the sales courses that i’ve been on over the years i’ve been nineteen seventies nineteen eighties they’re not really teaching so i’ll contradict and to a degree but.
there are some really really good sales trainings down there where you can learn about how to detect how to read body language how to to get somebody to be really, really comfortable to tell you what is they really, really want as opposed to the smoke screen stuff that they tell you.
in the in the early parts of a conversation so my advice will be learn how to become an excellent communicator number one number two.
would be to research what your three customer avatars.
really are who they really are so the people that really want to buy what you sell why what’s the three things they most desire about the product or the service that you prefer.
i don’t what’s the three things in their life that they really don’t want so if you’ve got the three desires and the three pains in their life and then you can merge.
those pains and desires that the carrot and the stick into the offering when it comes to marketing the offer resonates so we want to do that for each of the client avatars that we have.
so your core potential customer and that customer that’s kind of two degrees to the left and the customer that’s two degrees to the right.
and i don’t really care what it is that you’re selling everybody’s got the same principles in hand i mean over the years we’ve had CCTV access control.
we’ve had a deli cafe restaurant there are all number of things that we’ve done over the years and the Lord doesn’t change people buy from people.
then they buy from the company and the last thing they actually buy into is the product or the service so these you’ll read in variations in books since the beginning of time.
yeah really good advice and i’ve studied a lot on sales i believe i’m a good salesperson and got out of that idea about sales being a a yucky thing like a sleazy sales sale car salesperson like it’s it is the complete opposite of that is being.
is really understanding people to a deep understanding who you’re actually selling to and being.
communicating and listening and then communicating in with their actual motives.
100% i mean if you take the car salesman the kitchen salesman the double glazing sales got.
or you know my little female.
do you think that when that car salesperson goes into work on a saturday morning knowing that.
they’re going to speak to 10 20 30 people that day they’re going to get husbands on their own they’re going to get wives on their own they’re going to get husbands and wives are going to get single people they’re going to get a whole mix of people it’s going to stream through their door on an average Saturday.
and every single one of them is going to walk in there thinking i’m not going to let that car salesman get me.
yeah like all of them so if you’re the car salesperson the male or the female right every single person that talks to you is going to have their barriers up at the ceiling and i’m like.
so if you think about it if that’s the case then those characters have to be phenomenal professionals to be able to drop all those barriers yeah the double glazing guy those hard cause salespeople that we think of salespeople none of them look like salespeople well no i think they wouldn’t wait.
yeah.
and yeah i think that really covers marketing as well what one of the questions I asked so i have a selfish personal question or what a specific thing that’s a couple of deals that are happening right now for me.
I have a company and a competitor that i’ve offered to grow their business and be a 20% shareholder again i am really winging this and learning as a go on how to structure these deals but essentially i would be a shareholder 20% i would earn 20% of the dividends and.
it be paid as well as a consultant in a market i have a market in agency so i would be growing their business with what i know how to grow their business through digital marketing and through my understanding of.
growing a business through the systems through the people and that that would be my approach to growing this business i’ve done that for myself and other clients so.
i’m my question to you is i know that you do mergers mergent and acquisitions.
m and a and.
I was just wondering what would how would you come in as a business consultant in a situation like that and how would the structure be.
Okay.
very much the same lines as as.
as anything in business whether you’re again selling.
beta b beta say you’re.
you know beta government beta g it’s it’s it’s always around the person always end so if so i’ve been in the mergers and acquisition space now for a number of years.
i’m up until about 10 years ago mergers and acquisitions was really the place where the big corporates lived it what it didn’t really exist in the sm a smaller medium enterprise arena so.
this kind of loops us back to a business owners.
Whether they’re a startup or there had the business for 40 odd years.
What they are is very very good at what they do you know they’re brilliant bakers of cakes or they’re brilliant fixes of motorcycles or they’re brilliant manufacturers of disc brakes whatever that may be okay.
But what most aren’t very good at selling a company.
It’s a very very different thing so if you’re buying companies or selling companies it’s a very different set of dynamics.
People are more precious about their business than they are about their children I know it’s a big statement but it’s true they are more precious about their business than their relatives and everyone around them.
Which means that by and large, especially if you’re working as someone who’s had a business for 10 20 odd years and they’ve gone through blood sweat and tears have been awake at night how are we going to make payroll how are we going to pay HMRC they’ve gone through all the toils and don’t forget there’s only one person in the United Kingdom that is allowed to earn less than minimum wage.
Business owners.
Business owners are allowed to earn nothing everybody else has to get at least minimum wage.
And if you talk to a vast majority of business owners they kind of just make ends meet and I’m talking about millions of these across the United Kingdom and what tends to happen is that they will not go and get help until the last minute.
They want so they don’t search for a business coach they don’t search for someone to come in and help them they won’t do that until the very last minute and at the last minute what they tend to do is they’ll ask people around them and say look kid this coach you know only one that and that’s how they find business coaches business mentors or M&A people like us.
So what do we bring to the table we bring clarity knowledge connections and experience that’s what we bring to the table so when we’re sitting down with a business owner the very first thing that we need to do is we need to understand them as a person the business and then back to them as a person so that’s the sequence and going back to and say look what is it that you really really want.
And most of them will say they want to know so our job is to help them to gain clarity about what it is that they really really want.
So some of them just to to be able to sleep at night some of them it’s I want to sell this business in the next three years and I want to walk away with a million pounds.
Cool what does it turn over at the moment well it turns over 500 K okay and what are you what are you a bit dark okay what’s a bit dark well it’s net profit before tax okay we make about a hundred grand okay so you make a hundred grand a year and you want a million pounds for this so that’s going to take some whoever buys your business 10 years to be money back before they earn a nickel.
Would you do that would you work for 10 years for no money would you know they won’t either so it’s having a conversation where you’re you’re detailing out what or rather you’re learning you’re qualifying in the early stages what it is that they really really want.
Once you know what the driver is what the motivational point is that now you can begin how you mean it’s okay fire so if that’s what you want the next thing that we need to do is find out the gap the gap between what they want and where they are today so this is why I don’t really care if they say they want 10 million for it no problem at all we can we can get you 10 million for that business.
It’s going to take us about 15 years to do it really well yeah because it’s worth like 200 grand so it’s about balance in expectations every business owner wants once once 12 pound for a 10 pound note every business owner because of the blood sweat and tears they put into it they’re not looking at it through the lens of the fire so in your in your particular case does the guy that you want to do that.
You’re talking to does does he she or they want to build this business as a lifestyle business or do they want to build it to an exit.
I’m actually unsure about that I would lean towards a lifestyle business okay what lifestyle do they want.
You get by maybe show up to some meetings sales meetings and that’s about it eventually.
What lifestyle do they want.
Lifestyle.
So if they’re building a lifestyle business what lifestyle do they want.
So for some they will say to you I want to be able to go out at five o’clock on a Friday evening and not think about it till Monday.
Yeah because they’re working 24 7 365 that’s what their life’s been yeah okay we can make that happen what we’re going to have to do is put in the processes and the strategies to make the business much more efficient work better so that you can sleep at night and it makes more money.
Another character is going to say well actually Ben I want to build a business that gives me a hundred thousand pounds a year I spend three days a week in it.
And I can go on holiday for six weeks come back and it still works and works effortlessly without me that’s what I mean by what lifestyle do they want.
Because I can’t reverse engineer nebulous.
I have to get clarity about what that business owner really wants because only then can start putting a deal together.
Up until that point and this is where I think a lot of them and I guys go wrong is I go well I could do this for them and I could do that no no stop all that stop all that.
So it’s about not making assumptions on this the seller they they will tell you what they were looking for.
Do you know what you’ve just hit on my number one subject that I I teach you in every trainings that that we do.
It’s about how we process information everything else and that is we have not as a species developed the ability to read minds.
We haven’t done it.
So if we think they think it means that we don’t know.
If we think about a certain customer I think they want to buy this.
Well, why do you think that?
Have you asked them?
Or I think they want to have you asked them.
We must know there are things we must know we can’t think because then we’re mind reading.
Yeah, definitely don’t make assumptions.
100% yeah.
Yeah, so just understand what they they really want from the lifestyle like you say just like what we should do for ourselves when we are planning our own life.
Absolutely.
And that probably answers the other question about like when to exit at what stage do you decide to exit.
Again, that is.
Ask 10 people get 10 answers.
Yeah, yeah.
Question.
So for me, I normally pick a number.
So okay, I’m going to build this over three years and I’m going to walk away with two million one million.
Where ever that might be.
Yeah.
For other people, it could be I’m working until I’m 45.
I want to retire at 45.
For another person, it’ll be I want to do another 10 years of this and then I’m out.
And when you ask them why 10 years and I go, well, that’s what I want to do.

And what are you going to walk away with in 10 years time?
See, they’re not clear.
It’s nebulous.
So I think for each person, there must be a reason.
So I was talking to someone on a couple of weeks ago and they really didn’t know what they wanted.
So when I.
So I’ve got a certain way with people that I kind of take when I little journey.
Anyway, I know that particular little journey.
Well, it came down to this guy wasn’t motivated by business.
What he really, really wanted was him and his girlfriend wanted to go around the world in a camper van.
That’s what they wanted.
And he wanted to have enough money to do it without worrying about money.
Okay.
So what camper van do you want to use?
How much will it cost to get that ready?
Okay.
What do you want to have as a comfortable number to spend each and every week?
Right, triple that.
Triple that number.
Okay.
Double the price of the camper.
And triple the amount you think you need on the week, but on a weekly basis.
And double the term that you think is going to take you to go around the world.
That’s the number.
You said, okay, said right.
Now we know what we’re what we’re up against.
When do you want to do this by?
So I want to do this by time on 34.
So why 34 not 35?
You said because my girlfriend would be 30 and I want to do it for 30.
Okay.
That’s a good enough reason.
I can run without.
So let’s do this then.
And we put a plan together.
Yeah, and that’s a good question on top of that is.
Like what questions in this could apply to sales to market research to negotiation.
What questions are good questions to ask people to learn about them and understand them so that you don’t have to mind read.
Depends on the scenario.
So say for example.
Someone’s coming in to buy a car.
I’m going to ask them.
So tell me how long have you had the car that you have now?
I’ve had it for four years.
Oh, really?
And what made you buy that car?
Well.
I really, I really only bought it because it was the right price at the time and we needed the car.
Oh, okay.
So it wasn’t the car of choice.
No.
If you had had a choice, what would you have bought?
What am I asking?
I’m asking about their motivations is what I’m asking.
Yeah, I’m asking what what the drivers are.
And so in we kind of loop it back to sales again in.
So the questions are always think of it as temper I have a temporal conversation.
So I have questions from the past that bring me out today.
Then I leap over today into the future.
And then I ask about what it looks like sounds like feels like to them a year or five years from now,
depending on what it is that we’re putting together for them today.
Yeah.
So we’re talking with.
I was in.
In Orlando last November and I take conference.
And we talked to a business owner who wants to sell the business for five million.
And he wants to do it within the three in the next three years.
So I said to him, why three years?
I said, in fact, let’s go back in time.
But why did you start the business?
Because I need to understand you need to understand.
We need to understand as as sellers of a service or a product.
The psychology of the person that we’re talking to.
What makes them tick and we do that via the temporal conversation.
And this is why I’m saying to you, there’s a whole lot more to selling.
It’s understanding how people connect dots, what speed they connect with dots, what’s important to them.
Not what we think.
Based on what is important to us, because that may mean nothing to them.
Yeah, it’s like marketing.
I’ve studied a lot of marketing and advertising and sales market and advertising, whatever it is, even negotiation.
It all comes down to the negotiation, the, the, the human mind and how we tick.
I remember in a book, David Ogovie about advertising.
He talked about a really, really good advertiser. Can’t remember his name.
But he described the guy as a philosopher, not as an advertiser, because he was so clued up as a philosopher or a psychologist would be about human behavior.
That’s what made him a good advertiser.
So that sort of ties in with what you’re, you’re talking about here.
So do you think negotiation is quite similar to sales in that, in that way?
It’s a fusion.
They are the same thing.
Yeah, because I think there’s one thing I picked up on reading your book and getting to know you through your book that you have a really broad and deep understanding of business, sales, marketing, negotiation, all of the aspects of business.
Again, I’ve studied so it takes one to notice one and notice that one’s even further on.
And yeah, that’s one thing I picked up about you that you were using like words like prefraining, which is a word that I’ve not really got in my lingo on a day to day and just all these different understandings of the maybe the three aspects of negotiation, sales and marketing.
No, well, it’s up on as you say it’s, you know, I’m a novice at this.
I’m really just scratching the surface, but I’m endeavoring to become better at it.
And I think that if you’ve got that first for learning and you don’t have an ego about, oh, look at me, I’ve done X or I’ve done why people don’t like that, they don’t like that.
You know, and I think the funny thing is, is as you get older, you become a more humble person.
I mean, at 22, I was your typical know it all pain in the ass kid at 22.
I look back at it and it’s embarrassing, but that’s okay.
We can all look back at 22 and be embarrassed. I mean, the funny thing is when you look at fashion today, I look at people with, you know, whatever they’re wearing.
You wait 10 years and that photograph is going to come out of what you like today and you’re going to win because I am about what the fashions were in the 70s and the 80s and even the 90s and so on.
So we’re all learning.
Yeah, yeah.
And if you like, I’m looking for some like five short answers for the next few questions, because I try and keep these calls to a minimum maximum of an hour.
So do you take time off?
Yes.
Let me add another question to that.
How often do you take time off?
Okay, so what I tend to do my, what my process is when the, when the light starts coming down to like four o’clock.
I’m back up to like kind of five, six, sometimes seven days a week, right the way through till about now.
As soon as that light lifts again, I don’t do Mondays, I don’t do Fridays and I don’t do Wednesday afternoons.
So Wednesday afternoon is to ride a dirt bike Friday is just because I don’t why would you work Friday, don’t really do that Mondays, don’t really do Mondays, I haven’t really done Mondays for 20 years.
That’s not to say that I don’t do stuff on the Monday, I just don’t tell the world I did too much on the Monday or a Friday.
Only in recent years, this was a mistake I made over the last X number of decades, not, not having enough quality time, but having said that my passion was business, I like business, I like eat, sleep, drink, think, you know, my wife kind of looks at me and says, you know, that’s like the other wife is business because I, you know, I’m passionate about it.
I love the hustle, I love spotting what other people haven’t seen. So to me, that’s a bit like another characters, you know, playmaking.
So yes, I take time out much more so now I take a month here and a month there and so on.
Right, okay, so you have two waves.
Right.
Okay.
What would be a routine, I remember reading your book, you talked about before you have that second coffee, do some prospect and so what would be a routine for you at the routine.
Yeah, again, that shifts.
So for me, on a personal level, as soon as I wake up in the morning, I’ll go through a sequence of gratitude in my mind.
That last probably about 10 minutes.
And then from the sequence of gratitude, I then go to another three questions and, okay, so what will make today outstanding.
What’s the one thing that if I achieve it will make me smile most.
Who do I need to release today?
Release out of my life, let that be business or personal as the case may be.
And then, and then it’s the case of, you know, you go through your other routines and what have you.
And then I do not look at emails till 11 o’clock, it’s against the law, because emails is a box of other people’s desires.
Yeah, it’s like a to do list that other people want you to do.
And biggest mistake that you or you’ve seen others make.
The biggest mistake I made was, was continuing to do something that I didn’t want to do.
The biggest mistake I see other people make is not stopping to calibrate where they are in their life, business life, but life.
So stop and get off the bus.
The next thing you know, years follow.
So the same force for in the glass, so down quick that it goes from Tuesday to the following Thursday, then it’s a month later, then it’s a year later.
People set fire to much time and it’s because they don’t stop to look in the mirror and say to the guy in the mirror or the woman in the mirror.
Are you still on course?
Are you doing what you want to do?
I’m really in charge of your own life.
So the big questions.
And any final messages that you’d like to share?
I think probably the one that I’ve been repeating all the way through is you must know who you are.
If you are not 100% happy with where you are in your life, work out what will make you 100% happy.
Now I took the positive angle on that.
If you’re not happy now, what would make you happy?
What is winning to you?
I mean, when I say what is winning, 99 out of 100 people say, I don’t know what you mean by winning.
Well, let me explain what winning is to me.
I don’t have an alarm clock.
I haven’t had one for 20 plus years.
I wake up when I wake up.
I only do what I want to do.
I don’t work with idiots.
I do not work with people that I don’t want to work with.
I only work with people that I do want to work with.
So I walked my own tune.
I do what I want, when I want how I want with who I want.
That’s winning.
Did you hear me mention money?
No.
There you go.
Yeah.
And for people on how, where are you most active on social media?
Where can people find you and follow you and get advice?
I don’t do a great deal.
LinkedIn is where you’re seeing posts.
Different things.
and also
a really nice Community Avenue student.
And I don’t really know what you’re saying.
That’s what I wanted.
On Joe on carefully.
Because there is another Johnaley.
And he tells the weather.
Yeah, yeah.
That was.
I was looking at your SEO beforehand and seeing your competition
with a famous weatherman.
You know, I think that’s what I wanted to do.
I wanted to do that.
I really enjoyed it.
I find that I’m going to have to go back and do the exercises.
Because sometimes I was caught driving and pulling over.
And sometimes not being able to pull over and do the exercise.
When you ask you a question, Ben, if I may.
Yeah, go ahead.
Having gone through the book.
What’s the one thing that leaked out at you?
Hmm.
I think one of the reasons I was drawn towards you to come and interview
and I think the fact you’re making your main message at the end
there is a very linked with that that you’re not just about business
and you believe in the idea of success is personal.
And it has to be through you.
Not from your dad.
Not from your mum.
Not from other people society.
It has to be your.
Your vision.
Your purpose.
Or it won’t be success.
You won’t be happy.
So that was a big message.
I got just the personalization of your book.
Good.
Good.
That I’m really, really, really pleased about that.
Because it kind of comes back to the great metaphor is that.
If you’re on the plane.
And it’s, you know, it’s on fire or whatever.
You’ve got to put your oxygen mask on first.
You don’t put your oxygen mask on first.
You run the risk of you might only save one of the four family members on the plane.
Put your oxygen mask on first.
You survive.
You get to look after the other people.
And this is a thing.
Only when you are happy in yourself and when you’re achieving.
Can you then start looking out after other people.
And this goes with the kind of the tiny Robbins thing is that you go through various phases in your life.
And you will eventually I don’t care who you are eventually get to a point where you’re on the throne of your life looking back across it and you think him.
Did I really put as much in as I could have did I look after all the people that I should have looked.
And a thousand tears have been said by a thousand tears have been shed over things that were never said.
That’s why it’s important to be comfortable in your own game first, because if you’re an unhappy person, you’re never going to make the people around you happy.
Yeah, and that is in business.
Yeah.
Thank you for joining John.
I really enjoyed this pleasure.
I hope everyone got value and if you have any questions, leave it in the comments and hopefully we can get round to answering them later.
Thank you.

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– Life By Design

– Is entrepreneurship for everyone?

– Being a public speaker as an introvert

– Karma Credits

– The purpose of life

– How to scale your business

– The Wealth Hierarchy

– Dan’s morning and daily routine

– Work ethic is a weakness

Join my community of like-minded business owners: Ben’s Business Book Club

Transcript:

Okay, so welcome to Ben’s Business Podcast, Dan.
Thanks for joining.
Thank you for having me, Ben.
Yeah, Dan is a serial entrepreneur.
I think you’ve got 20 businesses.
So if I’m maybe you’ve got more by now,
your best sell and author of the new book, Karma Credits,
and you retired at age 35.
I’ve done a quick introduction of you,
but I learned about you through Chef,
who’s on your board in the property entrepreneur training
that you do, and Veer Haria, the brothers.
And it was actually Veer who encouraged me
to do this interview with you.
He says that I would like to hear what you say.
So I went and read your books and everything.
That’s how this ended up happening.
So would you like to do a quick introduction of yourself?
Yeah, absolutely.
So anyone who I’ve not had the pleasure to meet previously,
my name is Daniel Hill.
I’ve been in business for 20 years this year.
And built small and medium-sized businesses
went into property in 2012.
I’ve started systemized, scaled, bought and sold
about 45 different companies.
And they range from small startups,
a couple of employees, low costs, high margins,
up to national, international,
multi-million pound organizations.
So wherever your audience are on this spectrum,
hopefully I can give them as much value
as possible as to where they are.
I focus now mainly on angel investing
and on the property side of things, property development.
So taking larger buildings and developing them
into blocks of flats.
OK.
And do you have like a bigger vision of like 20 years,
like a life sort of vision?
I know that’s quite a deep first question,
but do you have like a sort of next steps?
Because I know that you got to a sort of checkpoint of your life.
And do you have like something that you’re looking at in 20 years?
So it’s a really good question.
I think I’m definitely at the end of a cycle.
So whether you believe in things like five-year plans
or more sort of like spiritual woo-woo stuff,
like seven-year cycles,
I’m definitely feel like I’m at the end of a cycle.
And I’m now in like the spring of the next stage of my life.
And I would say, probably not.
I don’t have these like grandiose,
I don’t want to be a billionaire or at the least at the minute.
I don’t want to be a billionaire.
I don’t want to be like, I don’t want to own 10,000 properties.
I don’t have any of those big goals.
I think the only things that I want is,
I want to be fit and healthy.
I want to be like the best shape I can be.
And I like really enjoy my life.
That’s quite a key focus of mine.
And then secondly, have kids.
I don’t have kids at the minute.
Okay, so that’s the only thing that’s in there.
I was, and go to the Grand Canyon.
There are the only things that are actually on my list of like,
my bucket list, if you like.
Cool.
Yeah, I’ve got three kids.
So that’s a new challenge in itself.
How old were you in your first?
About 29, I think it was.
Yeah, some 36 now, and I’m thinking,
I should probably grow up at some point in starting to say,
yeah, I think I probably need to get on with it.
Any words of advice?
You sound like you’re at well positioned for having children.
I think I would have maybe if like worked on my businesses,
maybe first and done the same, same order as you.
So I think you’re well positioned
because then it can be a bit camera,
rather than being in the growth phase,
well, having three children.
I just like packed on more stress.
So, yeah.
I haven’t trained enough.
I think like people, my friends either went and had fat,
like went to the uni or left school and had families.
And their kids allow like, seven, eight, nine, 10.
And now they’re sort of starting their careers, if you like.
Or some of us, like me, went and did all the business stuff.
You know, major money, set yourself up.
And then you’ve got to sort of go back and be, you know,
go back and have kids.
So you can’t have your cake and eat it.
I’m sure there’s no right or wrong way to do it.
Yeah, exactly.
Like we all have our own sort of plans and that we follow.
So we’ll show 20-year plan.
My 20-year plan to be retired financially free
and in what my version of what that is.
And to be doing more speaking, more of this,
this is my passion, like discussing ideas
and even moving in towards like a political area.
Slightly different from original,
the like original political way that things are done.
So it’s sort of to change the way that rules and laws are set.
So it’s sort of to break the rules and reset things.
So yeah, that’s a bigger goal.
Yeah, good for you.
A lot of sound at that.
I do sometimes get frustrated with politics and economics
and stuff like that.
And I think, do you know what?
I’d love to just grab it by the, whatever’s in and give it a shake.
But yeah, equally, you appreciate that.
The, the, the, the room, like if it was that easy,
someone would have cracked it by now.
I’m sure behind the scenes, it’s an absolutely nightmare.
So yeah.
So you’re staying in my own thing for a bit.
Yeah, it’s a long term thing.
Also, that’s not an easy, an easy one.
Um, so you’ve got this phrase.
You use a leaf bay design.
Could you explain what that is to people?
So life by design is, I suppose my focus is,
uh, I sort of work with people who want to make more money,
because who doesn’t want to make more money?
But ideally, the, have fun doing it or even for fun.
Like once you’ve made your money and it’s covered,
it doesn’t mean you have to stop being entrepreneur.
And equally on that journey to get there, it’s hard work.
It’s, you know, it’s a huge trade off.
But it doesn’t have to be like really painful.
And also like, there’s loads of phases of being an entrepreneur
and being an investor and wealth creation.
And the whole thing of life by design is that,
if you think about your life, well, you know, your book club, you know,
book, a book, a good book has loads of like,
really engaging chapters.
And every page of every chapter is, is a head, is a page turner.
And every chapter is completely different to the last.
And it’s, and it’s got you absolutely, absolutely gripped.
But that life by design is the concept of having that for your life.
So what we do is we say that you have, I have a life by design,
which means you designed it yourself and you live in it,
or a life by default, which is basically by the job you have,
where you live, the family, you grow up in.
And what we do is we have a 12 month cycle that we use
for our businesses and our lives.
And the life by design element is that through by the beginning,
a lot of people have new years resolutions,
we have your, what we call the year of.
Okay, so for this year, this is my year of,
and the year of car pay DM.
So it’s basically every year, you have a title,
and then you have other objectives in it.
And it’s basically you’ve designed your life,
you then go and live your life like that.
And some years are amazing.
I mean, all years are game changing.
But some of them are amazing.
And you think I’m going to keep this forever,
like maybe it’s giving up smoking,
giving up drinking, giving up,
or start your fitness journey, whatever it is.
And you think I’m going to keep those things.
Equally, you’re like last year, I sent me retired
and I went down to do like a 12 hour work week.
And my year was the year of 12 hour work week.
And it was a really high value.
I actually did a podcast episode a couple of weeks ago.
People go to the official property entrepreneur podcast.
I did one called the year of,
where I talked about my year of last year,
which was 12 hour work week.
And then this year, which is my year of car pay DM.
And last year was a really hard year.
A tough year didn’t really, I learned a lot about myself,
but didn’t really enjoy it.
So it was one of those years that you put to bed
and you take the lessons and learnings.
And now without a doubt, I’m having one of my best years
on record this year.
So a lot of what is on is being deliberate
about what you do with your life,
rather than doing it by default.
Yeah, okay, yeah.
And rather than finding someone else that you can model
around, it’s actually your own version
of what’s success as well.
100%.
It’s life by design or life by comparison.
If you think it’s all about
Ferrari’s helicopters, six packs on Instagram,
it’s like, are those people really enjoying their lives?
Yeah, I mean, maybe they are, maybe they’re not.
But it’s like, it’s what’s important.
We’re all so different.
And there’s things that are important to us
and it’s understanding what they are
and getting more of them.
Yeah, yeah, I agree.
So it’s just like taking a step further
from like vision end to actually making a plan
for that vision.
Exactly, it’s like a business plan.
If you understand the value you get
from doing a business plan,
it’s like doing that for your life.
Yeah.
And it’s so exciting.
I literally love it.
I’ve been doing it for probably about 10 years.
I’ve been teaching it for 10 years.
So I’ve probably been doing it for, yeah, a lot longer.
Yeah, well, I’ve definitely been influenced
by what you’ve been teaching all the people,
like Shiv and Veer,
because I’ve seen them live really good lives as well.
And they link a lot of it back to what you teach.
So it’s definitely having an impact on people.
Yeah, I mean, I’ve done a how long you’ve known Shiv for,
but I’ve known him since the beginning of his journey.
And if you compare who he is now and where he is now,
compared to when he started, it’s like,
if you do actually put these things into practice,
it doesn’t just change your life.
Like it actually creates your life.
And it’s like people like Shiv and Veer
are both absolutely run with it.
Veer, the other day, he’s got all this stuff saved on his phone.
Shiv’s literally living in like Valencia this year
because his live body’s on is,
make the most of it before perhaps start for a family
or something.
It’s very tangible results you get from it.
Yeah, definitely.
And it’s brushed off on me as well,
just being friends with both of them.
Good man.
So what would you say your year off is for this year?
Like if you’d think first to say to you,
this year is all about, what is it for you?
Consistency?
Okay.
So similar to something we’ll probably touch on
about like a cash flow business,
I’m building a, I’m basically making a profit business
a cash flow business.
So it’s a question I have for you later about that.
But if I can make, actually, just jump to that question
and making it, making a business
that’s not got like direct debits or stand orders
coming into my business every month,
but just like making that month, like month on month,
the same, hitting the same sales target.
You think that’s the right way to do it?
Or does it just need to be predictable
or does it need to be actual stand in orders coming into the bank?
Say, is this sort of,
there’s basically for those who have not heard this model before,
one of the models we took, we teach is the wealth hierarchy,
which means it’s free, free levels, cash flow, profit and asset.
Really, cash flow is like your day job.
And the aim of the game is,
strip down your outgones as much as you can.
So if you can survive on 20 grand, survive on 20 grand,
go out and work every day to make that 20 grand.
That’s the heavy lifting hard work.
And then with the other five hours a week,
20 hours a week, three days a week
that you’ve basically bought back by not spending the money,
you use that time to do profit deals or profit companies.
And what are you looking for really?
If you want to become really wealthy
and have genuine financial independence,
it’s not created through, there’s not many,
there’s always exceptions to the rule,
but it’s not really created through cash flow.
So cash flow is, cash flow businesses pay the salaries,
it comes in every month,
something like a letting agency or a HMO portfolio
or a subscription-based business,
anything that comes in every month.
And as long as you go to work and do a good job,
it pays the bills.
You basically just want to do that pay the bills.
Real wealth is created when you stop going from the P&L,
which is cash flow to the balance sheet,
which is all about net wealth.
And whilst you might have to go to work three days a week,
48 weeks of the year to make your 20 grand
or your 50 grand a year to pay your salary.
When you start doing profit stuff,
which might be like flipping a business or flipping a property,
you might have six months or 12 months
where you don’t make a penny,
but when that deal lands,
and you’ve not had to pay the mortgage with it,
it’s 50 grand or it’s 100 grand or it’s half a million pounds,
and that increases your net wealth,
because it’s a big large capital event.
Yeah, large capital events.
I’ll see if I can change the view here.
Yeah, so that’s the higher arcade
that you’re talking about there, is that right?
Exactly.
Were you saying you’ve got your businesses,
basically a fit like a profit business,
you’re trying to make it a cash flow?
I’ll make a couple of thousand or 500.
It’s not predictable what I’ll make on each lead that comes in,
but I’ve got a sales target that I hit every month.
So I’m hitting that quite consistently.
The last three months consistently,
and that’s why this is the year of consistency,
so that instead of letting it fall short below the target,
I’m going to hit that target every month this year,
so that I can predict my income.
Cool, yeah, and that’s probably that business sounds
like somewhere between a cash flow and a profit business,
because if you’re making new sales every month,
and that pays for the cash flow, and it is consistent,
it’s probably bashing that square peg
into that round hole and making it work.
Yeah, really, it’s like whatever you’re doing,
if you could add a repeat, let’s say for example,
I think you said you do house clearances, do you?
Yeah, yeah.
So like the minute you probably rely on every month
on getting 20 new clients, which is sort of profit,
but if you could get this mail may not be a thing
in the industry, but as to illustrate,
if you could get contracts with probate lawyers
or auction houses or insolvency practitioners,
rather than then pay you a grander house,
they pay you 500 pounder house,
but they sign a contract for 12 months,
and they pay for six a month every month for 12 months.
Yeah, it sort of smooths that out
and gives it that consistency.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, that makes sense.
So that means there are commercial contracts with people.
Yeah, it’s just the idea is that it comes in without fail.
Like, if a business is a profit business,
it’s basically feast or famine.
So like a development company,
if you’re building houses and selling them,
in a two year cycle, you might have one quarter
where you make a million pound profit,
but for the other five quarters,
you’ve not made a penny,
so you’re racking up debt,
you know, you’re living off the overdraft,
and then yeah, the money you make pays off that debt,
and then the rest of it goes towards the next 12 months.
To say that my office door knocking.
Yeah, go get it.
Sorry about that.
That wasn’t planned.
Yes, fine, man, I’m worried about that.
Yeah, so it’s basically just trying to remove
the feast and famine.
If a business is feast and famine,
it’s not, it’s high stress,
whereas cash flow businesses should be low stress,
high consistency.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense
and I’ve had that sort of second hand from Shiv as well
about finding ways to make that sort of,
basically stand an order comment.
So at the start of the month,
your sales targets halfway there already,
they are already full.
Exactly, yeah.
It’s like a portfolio.
If you had a hundred houses,
you might have 20 leave every month
that you’ve got to get let again,
but the other idea of paying the overheads,
paying the mortgage,
is that sort of thing really?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And I’ve watched a couple of interviews
before this one just to prepare,
and you talked about being in other industries
before getting into property.
What were those industries and like what was,
how did you make your first 50 to 100 key?
Yeah, so I actually started in property as a kid.
So like at 15, well, at 14,
I started my first business,
so I had a mobile disco company.
Okay.
Do not weddings,
birthdays, school discos, whatever you want.
You know, if it’s music to be played
and lights to turn on, I did that.
And then simultaneous to that,
I went to work on the buildings.
I was like a laborer, a roofer, a dry line,
just all the really heavy lifting jobs,
but really well paid.
So I did that.
Then I went to uni,
and then I started,
while I was at university,
I started, I had an events company
where we used to take students to Amsterdam,
every quarter and did that for about four years.
Then we got a five-year ban from P&O fairies.
So we had to cancel that business.
And I then had like a sort of,
not necessarily manufacturing,
but like customised clothing company.
We then turned that into a retail company,
and we had a few shops around,
around the not on a university campuses,
ran that for a few years,
and then came into property in 2012.
Probably the first like,
like 50 or 100 Kay would have been,
when we were talking about cash flow and profit,
when we took over the university,
the first 100 Kay year that we had,
I was probably,
that would have been like 2009.
So I was,
what’s that, 13 years ago, I’m 36,
so I’d have been 23.
So just, it was my first year at uni,
and we did our first 100,000 pound year.
And that was a combination of cash flow
from running a number of shops, right?
And then, profit,
we basically took on these contracts
that ran once a year.
It was basically,
think about a university selling clothes.
They sell them all year,
all day every year.
That’s your cash flow.
Whereas once a year,
there’s big graduation ceremony.
Yeah.
And the graduation ceremony,
you’d sell bears, hoodies, t-shirts,
mugs, pens, whatever.
But you only sell it once a year,
so you wouldn’t want to pay people’s salary with that money.
Yeah.
So we made sure the cash flow business paid for all our salaries.
But then once a year at less star,
not in a month,
third,
clip,
ports of wherever these uni’s were that we had contracts,
we would roll up with 20 grand, 50 grand,
who have a merchandise.
Right.
So they’re at four times what it cost us,
pay the uni a commission,
and we would literally,
I mean, back in the day,
cash was still a thing.
I would literally be downstairs in the,
in the Gents toilet in a cubicle,
counting out like 5, 10, 15 grand in notes.
Yeah.
It like once or twice a day,
because it was literally like absolutely bonkers.
Right.
That was my first sort of like non-property activity
that actually made good money
without getting in trouble really.
Right.
Okay.
Did there,
was there any point when you had multiple businesses at that theme
where I was,
did you go from one of those industries to the next?
Yeah, some, I mean,
I’ve sort of,
I’ve sold businesses along the way
or I’ve delegated them,
so they run by the people.
So post this goes,
which is 40 in 20s,
22 years old this year.
That was my first ever business.
It’s still going today.
Okay.
So like a friend of mine runs it,
it’s still going,
but I don’t have any interest at it,
like any ownership of that.
And then I’ve always got,
I think put other minute,
I don’t know how many companies are owned at the minute,
but I’m actively involved in like maybe one or two,
maybe a proper entrepreneur,
which are training company
and are portfolio builder,
which is our development company.
Yeah.
Those two businesses are sort of like actively involved
and all the other ones are mainly like non-exec.
So we own,
we just build an apportfolio private schools at the moment.
So I’ve started buying private schools.
I don’t,
apart from paying for them.
I don’t have any day-to-day operation on them.
And you know,
when I had the clothing business,
I had maybe two or three businesses.
And then nowadays I probably have like,
including the ones I’m like angel investor in
and I’m non-exec for probably,
I don’t know, maybe somewhere between 20 and 30,
probably more, probably like 20, 25 maybe,
something like that.
Okay.
So yeah,
as long as you’ve got the people running them,
they’re running fame themselves.
Yeah, as long as you know what you’re getting in for,
like if I’m a non-exec,
I know that I’m doing a board meeting once a month.
And that’s it.
Whereas if I’m starting a new company,
well, I don’t intend to do that anymore,
but if I was starting a company,
it’s you’ve got to appreciate that.
If you can only really have one or two companies
you’re running,
you can’t have 30,
I mean, even Elon Musk’s only got maybe four
that he’s actively involved in.
The rest, you know,
he’s sort of an advisor on investor or non-exec.
Yeah.
Okay.
And has there ever been a time
when you’ve struggled to earn income over,
you’ve always just been like a high achiever
and found business easy?
So it’s really good question.
I would say there’s definitely been periods
where I suppose there’s definitely definition
of making money as if it’s like surviving
and paying the mortgage.
Like never, I’ve never, never missed payroll once.
I’ve never, not paid my mortgage.
I’ve never had that level,
I’ve never had that issue.
Yeah.
If it’s making money as in like having a company
that consistently makes tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of hands a year,
yeah, absolutely.
I’ve had companies that have never,
probably never ever made a size of a matter of profit.
I’ve got other companies that will make
quarter of a million pound profit in a month
and they don’t have any employees.
It’s like that sort of comes with experience
and wisdom and like connection.
There’s in the like Ruru sort of world,
the like spirituality world where people talk about souls
and like how old your soul is.
And normally a young soul finds everything
really challenging and really hard.
And like doing anything like paying the bills
can be quite difficult.
Whereas an old soul is always surrounded by abundance.
Like it doesn’t matter what way you find yourself.
You’ve normally got a couple of quid in the bank.
People want to help you out.
An opportunity presents itself.
And I’d say definitely my life has been more like that.
I definitely wouldn’t say it’s been easy.
But I think that’s part of it.
It’s like I’ll do anything.
Like I’d empty the bins.
If the world ended tomorrow and the only job
that was going was empty in the bins,
I’d be the best bin empty.
I’d be the quickest.
I’d clean it for you as well.
I’d get a few mates to come to it with me.
Like I don’t really care what the work is.
I just like working, I think.
And I’ve done some crap jobs, like really crap jobs.
But I’ve never struggled to make money.
Yeah, yeah.
That’s interesting.
Yeah, it’s just like that follows on to the question,
do you think that anyone can do what you’ve done up to now?
Like you think it’s in everyone
or do you think there’s certain people
that they’re not built for it?
Even following your strategies that you teach.
So one of the more sort of mantras
is success and failure, very predictable.
And it’s like, genuinely, I can see in binary terms,
black and white, if a business or an individual
is gonna be successful based on what the plan is
and what they’re doing.
Yeah.
So it’s like it’s highly predictable.
It’s not like there’s a secret source.
However, there’s so many things that you need to align
in order for it to work.
Like a gyroscope, in order for it to be balanced
and it to work effectively.
There’s so many things.
I’ve been doing this 20 years this year
and I still struggle with things like energy levels,
motivation, risk and reward balance.
I can understand why some people are better suited
to being employees, so go to work.
Have your own challenges in your job,
but that’s the cap of it.
When you start to go up to the higher levels,
you really do need to have an appetite for risk
and appreciation for risk.
A mindset that can handle it.
I’m the very, I think it’s probably come with maturity,
but I’m a very stoic person.
Like the worst thing can happen.
And I’m still, I wouldn’t say I don’t care.
It’s like the whole thing of like care, but don’t worry.
I’m like very laissez-faire with it.
Like the world will be ending
and everyone around just fall into pieces.
And I’m just like, okay, cool.
So we’ve lost 100 grand on that or whatever.
Okay, right, so what’s the plan?
Where are we going?
I think it’s like, I think it would be unfair
to say anyone can do it.
I would say it’s for somebody who wants to do it.
Like really, not just says, yeah, I want to go and,
you know, build a 10 million pound portfolio.
For somebody who really wants to do it
and has got the raw burning desire,
I think it’s absolutely possible.
There’s no secret formula.
Well, there is a secret formula.
It is the blueprint that we teach.
If you follow that blueprint,
whether you want to make your first million
or scale up and be an empire builder,
or lose weight, whatever, the blueprint is there.
But the execution comes down to the person.
It’s like, how well can you execute?
And you’ll know people.
You’ll have friends or family who,
when they say they’re going to do something,
you know that the outcomes are inevitable.
They’re going to go and do it.
They’re going to win the medal.
They’re going to do that.
Also, you’ll know other people who say,
I’m going to give up smoking.
I’m going to do a diet.
I’m going to start my own business this year.
When you see them a month later, a year later,
a decade later.
And they’ve still got to fagging them out.
They’re still doing the job they hate.
It’s like, you used shivers in the example.
He’s probably someone who came to you,
but you had that burning desire that some people maybe,
it’s their wee bit further away
from taking the actions that Shiver would have taken.
Yeah, and when you break it down,
and understand about things like profile and certain profiles
are more likely to make it than others.
So Shiver’s a tempo, and he’s exceptionally good at executing.
But as long as you tell him the plan
and tell him what to do and when to do it,
and you’re there to answer the questions,
he’ll come back with it done,
done better than most of the other people,
and he just consistently executes.
And that over a period of weeks, months,
and now, I don’t know how long,
Shiver’s been on property entrepreneur,
but it must be five or six years.
You do that over five or six years,
and it turns into living in Valencia,
making X amount of hundreds of thousands a year.
It’s like success and failure, very predictable.
And he’s a very good example of someone
that is exceptional at executing.
Yeah, that’s as genius as to execute, yeah.
Exactly, it’s like tempo.
Yeah.
And you’re a steel, is that right?
I’m a creative mechanic.
Okay, the top you’ve got dynamone,
and at the side you’ve got steel.
I’m not halfway between the two.
It’s very creative, I also can sort of put things into place.
Yeah, right.
Okay, yeah, because I think like with your titles
and things on the podcast,
they can see that creator side and you as well
that you come up with these phrases.
Yeah, definitely, it’s very, yeah.
As I’m getting older, it’s definitely dampening,
but that is my sort of,
is the creative thing, dynamic problem solving, really.
Pulling things out of nowhere,
I could do that all day long.
And if you’re leaning to like the more sort of steel
introverted side,
I guess that you had to work on the right hand side,
which is the blaze,
which is like extroverted and being a public speaker.
So like, how did you find that?
Like, was that any trouble for you
to become more like outwardly?
Or was that the same?
It was horrendous, right?
Yeah.
So I’ve genuinely,
and I don’t know how publicly I’ve said this before,
but I’ve genuinely,
didn’t really have,
there’s always periods,
but in the main,
property entrepreneurs has always been
a very demanding company for me.
Right.
Because I don’t like the line like,
like I’m quite happy being in the back office,
creating all the staff,
doing all the strategy,
the idea of being like, I’m introverted,
so I get my energy being on my own.
Like, I’m literally home alone this week,
and I’m in my element,
I’m doing my own thing,
you know, et cetera,
was if I’m at an event for three days,
and everyone wants to talk to you
and you’re on stage and you’re performing,
it takes a lot of…
Yeah.
Introverted, nextroverted basically means work,
to be in with people,
give you energy or take it.
And for me,
I get my energy being on my own,
whereas someone like Adam or Josh
who hosts property entrepreneur.
Right.
They would get their energy from being with other people.
So that, for me,
it was very unnatural.
Right.
Again, a lot of the things,
but how much success do you want and how quick do you want it?
Yeah.
When I realized that having a profile
was part of raising your rate,
if you want to go up to that,
if you want to get your hourly rate
into the thousands or tens of thousands,
you’ve got to have over a network or a profile.
And as soon as I realize,
if I’m going to do this,
I really need to be a known name in the industry.
I basically signed up to 25,
speak at 25 events for a year,
for every year, for five years.
And I hated it.
I was nervous.
I was bright red.
I was sweating.
But after about four or five years,
I started to get quite good at it.
And then obviously,
I wouldn’t say,
I wouldn’t say I’m a good public speaker.
I’d say I’m a very credible person
who knows how to do things
so people like listening.
But I’ve not really enjoyed it
until the last couple of years.
Now, or probably last year,
now I actually enjoy it.
But no, it was really hard to get really hard to get there.
Yeah, yeah.
I’ve been on that.
I went through toast masters and everything.
And I totally,
I was interested to know what would be like
on a maybe steel crater angle as well.
I think I’m probably the same as you.
I’m a mechanic and creator.
Cool.
It’s the best one.
Yeah, it is.
Yeah, it actually is
because you can create things out of nowhere
and you can execute.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
You just need someone like Chef to execute things.
So that we do, we start something really well.
Someone ought to shift, keep it going.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, it’s the ability to have an idea
and then actually make it reality, which is great.
Probably covered that.
So yeah, just want to talk about the book now.
Excellent.
Kind of going through it for the second time.
And I create my own table of contents on books.
So sorry for writing on your book, but.
That’s cool.
Glad you spent some time on that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I like to prepare for the interviews.
So yeah, it was really good.
Very aligned with like everything.
I’m very much in the spiritual dimension
as well as the physical.
And I like the idea of you’ve got this knowledge
as like a property millionaire.
You could have wrote a book about that,
but you decided to sort of take that angle,
which is obviously more from your heart,
from your soul, from your like purpose.
So I like the fact that you took that angle.
And it’s a type of book that I would write probably as well.
Like it’s a type of, whenever I get asked to speak or anything,
I always end up leaning towards that sort of more mindset stuff
rather than just like teach people how to make money only.
Cool.
Yeah, so I liked that.
There’s a good sign.
By guy called, you know, Wayne Dyer.
Yeah, I’ve come across a few of his talks.
Yeah.
So he, I mean, he did an amazing book called Change,
Change, Thoughts, Change Your Life.
And it’s, it is game-changing book.
But he has the same, which says, don’t die
with your music and society.
Yeah.
And when I heard that, I was like,
and people have been asking me to write a book for a decade.
And when I heard that, I thought, do you know what?
In case something happens to me,
I need to get a book out of the door.
And I even, I had the publishing deal sorted.
I had the plan sorted to do it all for a business book.
And in the last minute, I thought, do you know what?
I don’t actually want to write that book.
I want to write karma credits.
Because if I die tomorrow, that will be left.
And even, you know, hopefully it will get some good reach.
And it would genuinely change people’s lives.
Well, you read that book and put into practice, you know,
say success and failure, very predictable.
If you read that book and put it into practice,
it is physically impossible for it not to change your life.
So it’s like, it’s whether people actually do it or not.
There’s the secret.
It’s spiritually impossible.
Yeah, it literally is.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I’m totally aligned with all that stuff.
And I didn’t really expect that.
So that was quite a good surprise.
So, yeah, do you want to talk about, like, the idea of what was it?
So I was reading some of it.
And I was like, I agree with a lot of it.
But as a business owner, and I agree also with, um,
I and Rand’s philosophy of objectivism.
And I think that leads, like, that comes from capitalism as well.
And you, you said something in the book that you said,
neither am I a socialist or a charity.
I run the commercially driven enterprises that delivers,
uh, that delivers, uh, net financial gains.
So, like, you mentioned a couple of times as well that you’re,
you are a capitalist, um, but you lean into words,
obviously, uh, coming from a given value,
prospect, like, coming from that given value, um,
and then, like, I, I quote from I and Rand that, like,
it’s almost like, you know, when you, you hear a philosophy,
I’m very open book.
I’ll listen to, like, two sides.
And I’ll, I’ll then be like torn on, like, what I now believe.
So I’m, that’s why I read all these books,
because I’m, I’m constantly, I’m, I’m, I’m staying humble to keep learning
and, and changing my beliefs.
Um, in, in the, I am Rand’s book, in Atlas shrugged,
I think it was, she talked about a philosophy of objectivism.
And it’s to fulfill your own happiness as a moral purpose of life,
uh, with, um, productive achievement.
And I know that you’ve done the productive achievement,
and you’ve filled your own cup up first.
So it’s really just like that idea is like, what,
this is obviously a philosophy you embody throughout.
Well, you, well, you are a capitalist, but yeah, just wondered, like,
what your thoughts were on that, like, sort of another look.
Is that against what you’re saying or is it with it as well?
With the one that you referenced or, yes,
would you see that that’s a different philosophy or it’s, uh, it’s our philosophy,
but you’ve just added caramel credits on top of that.
I think, I’m not familiar with it.
So the interpretation of it is,
my concept of caramel credits, which is something that I’ve practiced all the way through my journey.
But I can even think back to when I was 13, 14,
or even when I had my first job when I was about nine,
just the way that I go about things is, is in, uh,
what people might think is like a selfless approach in that I’m always going above and beyond.
I’ll always try and help others. Yeah.
And I’ll always play the long game.
I’ll always leave a bit on the table for everyone else, like, I’m playing the long game,
but it’s, it’s not necessarily like a selfless charitable act.
Yes.
It’s like, it’s fulfilling.
Cause it makes me happy. Right.
So like some of the stories in the book are talking about the taxi that drove into the back of me.
Yeah, like granny, it brought drones to the back of my brand new Mercedes.
The guy got out and was just like basically an emotional wreck and said that his mum had been in hospital.
And I, I just, I said, don’t worry about the car.
I give him, he told me some guy jumped in.
So I give him 20 quid.
And it was like, I did that because to me, it felt like the right thing to do.
I don’t care about not, I don’t care about my car.
In the moment, it wasn’t relevant, like rather than look at my objective of being like, you’ve hit my car.
I’m not, you know, I’m going to have a go at you and you’re already in an emotional state.
I was more like, I’m fine.
He’s upset.
Let’s see what’s up with them and play the long game and my philosophy is,
if you do that enough and make sure that it is a win, win, win for everyone,
they don’t always get it right.
Well, I’ve got consistent track record of getting it wrong every now and again,
but the older you get, the wiser you get, the less you, less mistakes you make.
Yeah.
Mine is more about looking at what everyone wants,
putting it all in the mix, including me and making it win for everyone.
And the outcome is that over a period of months, years and now decades,
everything, sit, touch word, everything seems to play quite favorably into my favor.
Because of that.
And yeah, that’s my sort of logic.
I agree.
Yeah, I agree.
You reap what you saw.
Like if you just keep sawing every day, then it always comes back.
Do you listen to Jim Rowan at all?
Yes, yeah.
So this is Jim Rowan yesterday.
I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it was basically like,
if you turn up and plant the seed, the universal, do the rest.
Like you want to grow an oak tree.
You want to have this estate and money and whatever wealth.
So you’ve got to turn up and plant the seed, like the earth and the universe
and the planet will grow the tree, but you’ve got to turn up and plant the seed.
Yes.
That’s sort of logic of like, yeah, you’ve got to step up first.
Yeah.
Yeah, I like, I totally agree with your philosophy in the book.
And all I’m saying is that I think it was maybe things that you were reminded me
about karma and about, say, you reap what you saw.
And I think it was my own sort of, I guess,
fallen back into like maybe the wrong direction.
And this book was a good reminder and refresh that the world is abundant.
And you can’t give too much.
Yeah.
And also the, and right in the book, it’s something I’ve practiced intentionally for years,
but in writing the book, it even made me take it to the next level,
reminding me the things that I need today.
Yeah.
And it’s like the ultimate, which if I do another version at some point,
I’ll add it as the last chapter is the ultimate self-actualisation with this is
when you start to walk down the street and people you’ve never met start to say hello to you
before you say hello to them.
And like things just happen around you.
People smile at you for no reason.
Yeah.
That’s when you, you, you’ve genuinely encompassed this like positive,
yeah, aura where people just feel comfortable around you.
They feel warm around you.
They feel connected.
And I can’t even explain how it works.
But yeah, in most places now, I walk around supermarkets.
And I’m probably the only person with a smile on my face looking at people in the eye.
And before I’ve even said hello, they’re smiling.
They’re saying hello to me.
And it’s like, that’s the aim of the game.
And it just makes the world around you so much more engaging and rewarding,
rather than intimidating and challenging.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, rather than acting from fear.
And yeah, so do you think it’s easier to practise that
before you filled your own cup up?
It’s probably not easier, but I know after I mean, sorry, after.
And I suppose it’s been way coming from because if it’s a strategic move
and you understand that you read what you say, I would say you’re probably more
motivated to do it early on in your journey, because you want the outcome.
Yeah, talking there about you can’t do it for the law of reciprocity.
But when the reality is, when you know that there is a law of reciprocity,
there is a subconscious logic to that.
But equally, it’s harder to do it.
It’s harder to play the long game and take the hit on the chin at the beginning
of your journey, because it’s more expensive.
Yeah.
You know, if you’re faced with a deal that’s going to lose you 20 grand
and all you’ve got is 50 grand, you’ve got to be a real, you know,
you’ve got to take the real moral hike, you’ve got to be a real man or woman
of credit to decide to do it then.
Yeah.
Doing it now, where, you know, you’ve got the other end of your journey,
where you’ve got loads of money and actually it doesn’t matter.
Maybe logically, it’s easier.
But I would say it’s never once, because I’d believe in it so much.
Yeah.
I would never, I would never break the law.
I like this.
I learned it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I know that if I’ve done something wrong and it needs paying for,
even if I’ve got to sell my house, I would do it because I know that.
Yeah.
Both I’ll be rewarded if I do it, but also I’ll be penalised if I don’t.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the people, the people that make the decisions to focus on transactions
or after rather than relationships, you look at where they are over.
I know some of them from my childhood, or from, from my younger days,
who would just focus on me, me, me, take, take, take.
And I look at where they are after 10 years and where perhaps other people
who’ve not done that are after 10 years.
Yeah.
And the distance is like unrecognizable.
So it’s like, yes, it’s a significant contribution, but it is a long game.
And it was a good, I liked what you said about the,
the person in their mansion ends up in a small box coffin anyway.
It doesn’t matter how big your house is.
We will get buried in a small coffin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so yeah, that was more that the,
the, the challenges that were going through my head as I was reading this,
they were just things I wanted to bring up because it’s probably what other people
so that start reading this book, start to get challenged by when you’re,
you’re sort of moving them back towards that away from fear and towards abundance.
Yeah, I’ll say the biggest challenge as well is all of this stuff feels so awkward.
If you go to like Japan or Thailand, you’ll notice that people are like this anyway,
because they believe in spirituality and like they’re just not,
the culture’s different in England or like European countries.
It’s very strange to do the sort of stuff I’m talking about in this.
So it is like breaking the seal and just trust in the process anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I’ve definitely found myself changing and doing sort of forcing myself to be,
um, more given, for example, what, the simple things like walking through a door,
charging through the door myself versus being conscious of when I’m walking through that door and going,
actually, I’ll just let this person through so that I get a karma credit.
Exactly.
Yeah, it makes you feel good, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
And I think it’s as well as that the book actually teaches you how to be more conscious
and you’re just your day-to-day deal.
And as you said, and that the people are just existing and just sort of like they’ve got their heads down.
And this book has actually helped me like lift my head up and see what I’m doing as well and how I’m playing a part in the world.
And it’s embarrassing.
I’ve done some podcast episodes around self-awareness.
If you want to see how bad it is, you just tune in next time you’re at the airport,
like nobody has any self-awareness that we’re walking into each other.
They’re like, it’s, I mean, it’s, it’s exhausting to see.
But I mean, I’ve noticed where you’ve done a car, you’ve done something yet.
It got a karma credit and then got a return or a benefit from it.
Well, where you’ve done something and it, apart from holding the door that’s magey feel, feel good or it’s changed the, the direction of something.
Yeah, I’ve not seen a direct impact, but that’s, that’s basically part of the playing the long game.
There’s not an example I can give you right now, but yeah, I get, I agree with it and I know that it works.
And so moving on, I’ve got a couple of other questions.
I know we’ve only got a few, few minutes left, so these are quick fire questions that I wanted to ask you.
So what’s the best like for your first hire?
Should you hire?
So what, yeah, first question is, what’s the best first hire?
And then the second question is a freelancer or an employee?
Cool.
So there’s only three types of workload in the business.
You’ve got drive in the business.
You’ve got deliver in the business and you’ve got the detail in the business.
You don’t want to go from one to two.
You want to go from one to three.
And it’s like looking at where are you, most entrepreneurs are the driver of the business.
You don’t want to bring in someone to deliver it that’s to take over the day to day front end customer facing.
And then detail is get somebody into do your books, you add them in book in your hotels, you know, paperwork, that sort of thing.
And then as far as like PA why it like paid or freelance, it all just comes down to like how you fund it.
So if you’re organically growing, probably just get a PA or an admin assistant on a pat hourly pay as you go.
Because if it’s your first business, you’re probably quite nervous about recruitment and you know, you’ve only just started making enough money for yourself.
The idea of now giving that money to somebody else is quite daunting.
But once you get used to it, like it becomes addictive and you realize that when you see your team as an investment, not an expense.
Things will scale up real quickly.
During that period, there’ll probably be more like employees in the early days.
Pay as you go hourly rate, especially nowadays, VAs, PAs, EAs, anything like that.
Just to get your confidence up and keep you fixed cost low is probably a savvy way to go.
Yeah.
Okay.
So what is the recommended first hire if it was like a freelancer?
Well, I’m on the big advocate of PAs, like a minimum wage is probably something like 10 pound an hour now.
Any job, there’s so many jobs that can be done for less than 10 pound an hour.
As soon as your hourly rate is more than 10 pound an hour, you should have a PA, an army of VAs and just get rid of that highly functional stuff.
There’s a good podcast episode on the property entrepreneur podcast called the task triangle.
Yeah.
Once you listen to that and you understand how that works, and one of our board members rebuilt their whole business based on it.
And it’s understanding that your input to a task should be the top. That’s it.
The rest of the triangles should be done by the people, but listen to the podcast that explain it.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And any recommended places to hire?
A lot of freelancers.
Either indeed, although that’s more of a traditional employed role or people per hour.
Right.
Elance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
That sort of plays really.
And then you get some you get some online platforms that recruit people for you.
I probably for those roles, I probably wouldn’t use a company that I would use an individual.
Right.
Okay.
And it was just jumping back to that higher hierarchy of like the cash flow profit and then assets.
You talked about a holding company and one of your podcasts.
And so like I have a thing called a financial freedom fund.
So I would be better to put my income up into a holding company.
So like the holding company would be like the financial freedom fund.
So that we would be used to buy the assets.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So basically.
The logic is you want to work for 10 years, 20 years, make your money.
And then you want to get to a point where you’re financially independent where.
The money is called living off the steam.
Again, there’s another podcast episode that I recorded called living off the steam.
So go and listen to that.
The concept is you invest all your money in these assets and then they’ll return six or eight percent a year.
And you want to live off the six or eight percent a year that comes off your assets.
So basically you have all your noisy, you know, your clearance company and your noisy stuff going on.
And then the 28th of each month you pay your money up to the financial fortress, which is basically a holding company at the top.
And then what you do is use the funds in there to buy low risk, low return assets.
And the aim of the game is not to complete the game.
People think they’re going to run a company for 20 years, 30 years, and then sell it for 10 million quid.
The aim of the game is not complete in the game.
And the aim of the game is staying in the game.
Basically the 28th of every month, your salaries paid, your overheads are paid.
But then one transaction from every company goes up to your financial fortress.
And it might be 80 quid a month or it might be 20 grand a month.
The aim of the game is that every month you can stay in business.
You’re moving some of that hard earned cash up to the financial fortress.
Yeah.
Because if it was a phone bill or a Netflix bill or a maintenance bill, you’d pay it.
So why not pay yourself for management charge.
Yeah.
For running the company and then you build your financial fortress up there.
Yeah.
They’ll say pay yourself first.
So what’s the next steps when you have that in place?
Like when you have the cash flow coming in.
Do you go and buy, for example, a property to flip with your own cash or do you use other people’s money?
Well, you’re building this cash flow business.
So there’s 10 layers to it.
Again, all of this stuff is free.
You can literally go to the podcast.
This is an episode called 10 Layers of Wealth.
Yeah.
And what you do is you start off at that beginning when you’re making your cash flow, paying the bills.
And then you work your way up step or step through the layers.
Yeah.
And yeah, that’s that that is what you would do.
And it depends what you want to get to is what’s called a 60 second strategy.
And it means that in 60 seconds you can explain to me what your wealth creation strategy is.
Like I could explain mine to you in 60 seconds.
And that would tell you exactly what you’re doing all day.
It’s the only game in town, basically, although you’re going to work.
And you know, whether you’re running, you know, you’re running your book club and running the clearance company.
And you’ve got all these other interests.
Yeah.
That’s just the day job.
The reason you’re doing all of that is because of the 60 second strategy.
And that’s the only game in town, really.
All the rest of it.
It’s just the fun that comes with it.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
And what would be the, I know we talked about a hiring a PA.
What would be some other steps on scaling a business?
At first one would be don’t build businesses that don’t make money.
So some crazy like 90% of small businesses don’t make profit.
And what you want to look for is the needle and the haystack.
So a lot of the businesses I own and the businesses I’ve always had.
The rule of a niche or their crest of a wave.
And it’s like you want to have a niche business, which is a premium price point highly lucrative.
Or crest of the wave business like AI at the minute or crypto last year.
Where it doesn’t really matter what you do as long as you’re on the wave and you can hold on to the board, you’re going to make money.
Whereas lots of people are running around running business.
People are running around building businesses that just fundamentally will never ever make money.
And that’s, you know, that’s not.
Yeah, that would be the biggest thing is, is understand how to do what’s called a business model builds your business model.
And see is this thing actually ever going to make any money.
That would be the biggest tip.
And then there’s probably loads of other ones.
That’s the biggest thought don’t push something that’s never really going to bring in enough demand or income.
Yeah, you can, when I get pitched businesses to invest in or whatever.
I can tell within 30 minutes of working on them whether in five years they’re going to make money or not.
Don’t waste five years figuring out if it’s going to make money.
Yeah, figure that out before you start.
Yeah.
And what would the, what is a like a typical D for you like routine.
Do you have a typical D.
So yeah, definitely a big fan of structure.
And I know I tend to change my structure like maybe every quarter or every six months.
At the minute, it’s like I get up early.
I’m going to bed about between eight and nine p.m.
And I wake up between four and five a.m.
And I have like two hours then to have my breakfast journal, do some creative stuff.
And I go to the gym, train the gym four times a week, seven to eight.
Walk the dogs eight till nine.
Have a second breakfast about nine and then start doing some high value work about nine, ten.
And from about mid day, start to do more functional things.
One into what’s at messages.
Anything that’s on my to do list.
And then I’ll go through walking the afternoon about two, three o’clock.
Just give me a second wind.
And then on either sort of round the day off.
Normally I’ll round the doubt back three, four o’clock sometimes.
At the minute, I’m sort of loving it.
So I’m doing a few more hours.
But yeah, I’ll probably aim to finish like latest like five o’clock.
Yeah.
And then the evening just chill out.
Literally very normal play the piano, read a book.
Watch suits on Netflix.
Just do normal stuff, chill out, go to bed, then do it again.
Yeah.
And there’s always been like that structured and that order was more busy at the beginning of building all these businesses.
Well, there’s a podcast called beast mode.
An episode that I’ve recorded on the official problems from our podcast called beast mode.
And when I’m doing beast mode, I’ll literally lock out every second of my calendar from five a.m. to six p.m.
And it’s literally like ultimate product of a.
I don’t tend to do that anymore, but when I was in my sort of growth phase.
Yeah, I would work.
I mean, back in the day, I’d work seven days a week.
I’m a university, I party with my friends on a Friday night, go out club until four in the morning.
And I’ll be back in the office at half eight nine in the morning of a stinking hangover.
Right.
Doing anything I could just to get stuff off the desk.
So yeah, I try not to work as hard.
I would say I probably am a workaholic in a bad way.
Like I’m addicted to work.
So I try.
I now try to work less.
A lot of the objective thing you said about I enjoy work.
It makes me feel purposeful like.
I don’t need anything wrong with work.
If you love it.
If you have if you’re happy, yeah.
Exactly.
Like a nice meal.
If you love it, eat it.
But don’t stuff your face because it’ll make you sick.
Yeah.
And you said that work ethic is your weakness.
That was sort of what you’re explaining there.
And.
Like you know,
putting it on work ethic.
Probably my self, my sort of appetite control or self control is more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, sorry.
I had a more thing from another podcast I listened to that you said work ethic is your weakness.
And it’s because you’ve worked up to this point where you’re at today.
Because now it’s about working smarter.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry.
No, you’re absolutely right.
Yeah.
If it feels like hard work for me now and actually doing the wrong thing,
that should be my team doing it.
I should be like cutting deals, raising finance, doing strategic problem solving,
not turning up and doing a 12 hour heavy lifting session.
So yes, sorry, you’re absolutely right.
Yeah.
I need to stop that sort of stuff.
And do you have been,
is there anything you’ve done wrong or regret in your journey?
I think there’s always like relationships that have not gone the way you want them to do,
like personally and professionally.
But I wouldn’t say regret them.
I had a conversation with a friend who I don’t think really appreciated what I was saying.
I think they thought like I was saying it’s in I don’t care.
It’s more like there’s a good quote which says,
I don’t lose either win or I learn.
And I don’t look at anything in my life.
Like even like personal relationships, professional relationships,
they’re all now in the main come good.
I don’t regret them.
Obviously if I could go back and change them without anything else changing,
I probably would.
But I just feel like it’s part of life.
I feel like life’s about learning.
It’s about wisdom.
You can’t have wisdom without you can’t make it up.
You know, you can’t have you can’t have wisdom without.
Those things that don’t work really say.
I don’t think so.
Not really.
I mean, even losing money.
I don’t regret it.
It’s just like.
I’m not I’m not attached to the outcome quite often.
I don’t really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No real regrets.
Yeah.
Not not not in a work capacity.
No, no regrets.
Yeah.
Yeah, don’t usually I don’t use the word regret often.
But it’s it’s always quite a good question to trigger any lessons
that you’ve learned on your journey that people can share.
Because I’m not a big believer in regret either because it’s not
something worth holding.
Yeah, I think I think the whole relationship is over transactions
over a relationship.
It’s normally ended badly.
And like that’s a piece of wisdom where if it’s a relationship
worth maintaining.
At all costs.
It goes top of the pile.
Not the bottom.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I think we.
That’s.
I’ve asked you plenty of questions.
I really appreciate your time and for sharing all your wisdom
with us.
How can we find you?
I know you’ve mentioned the pod.
The official property entrepreneur.
You know,
you know,
you know,
you’ve mentioned the pod.
The official property entrepreneur podcast.
Yeah.
So Instagram.
Property entrepreneur under school.
And I post a video is on there.
Facebook is Dan Hill.
And the podcast, honestly,
it’s like for anyone who’s listening to this,
it’s into business.
Or wealth creation and wants to know the simple way to achieve
complex things like financial fortress,
making your millions, stuff like that.
Just give the podcast a spin.
And my attitude is,
I’ll give it away for free.
I’ll give all the podcasts,
all the episode,
all the blueprints away for free,
just because I want people to use them.
And we don’t struggle to sell our training courses.
So I’d say just go and.
You’ve listened to them.
They’re not sales pitches.
They’re basically like.
We can.
They’re lessons that we teach.
I think just,
just Hoover mark.
Find ones that work.
And put them into practice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I highly recommend both your book and the podcast.
Everyone watching as well.
Thanks again.
Dan.
Lovely.
Good to see you, Ben.
Thank you for having me on.
See you.

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– Jim retired by age 38 through Buy-to-let property investing.

– Became a property expert through experience. He’s been buying & selling property for 20+ years.

In this interview we discuss:

– How to retire by age 38

– What’s going on in the property market right now?

– Numbers & doing the maths is vital in property investing.

– Time-management tip: Put in your offer, first, before you even view the property.

– Make sure you do your research on someone before you listen to their advice & “drink the Kool-Aid”.

Transcript:

Hi everyone, I’m Ben from Ben’s Business Podcast and today I’m interviewing Jim Parker from the owner of property 5 properties in the state agent and let an agent.
So a brief introduction from myself about Jim is he’s retired at 38 years old. He’s got three offices.
Sixth virtual offices as well. More virtual offices and all the rest of it, but ideally just three offices that’s what you don’t need.
Three offices around 5th and these are state agents and letting agents. He’s being an accountant. I think you still are in the accountant today.
I’m an accountant. I’ve been in manufacturing as well before. Before that I used to be a financial controller, financial director and industry.
With some local companies here, probably the most prominent is ESA Manthosh, which is up at Metroson, which maybe is no longer because it was taken over by Half-Lock and something that was happened in between.
So ESA Manthosh, tell us so. Follow Bob and Leven. You’ve got output diagnostics and quite a lot of this. I was with him as well at some point in time.
So I’ve been involved in a lot of the local companies as well.
One thing that I’ve seen watching you on social media and having discussions through social media, this is the first thing we’ve met in person as well, is your video content, your skill of publicity and marketing is really impressive.
Coming from a marketing background and seeing that, it’s really impressive and you’re seeing five properties all over the place.
Also, Jim has over 20 years experience buying and selling properties so we can pick your brain about what’s going on in the property market right now and what’s a good investment.
I’m a property investor and I have a network of property investors, so that’s an audience that will be watching as well as business owners.
That’s my introduction of Jim so far. Would you like to tell us who Jim Parker is as well for getting a library on that?
I do what I do and I’m just like, somebody wants to describe me when I went for a psychometric test. This is when you do for personnel.
When I was looking at a psychometric test, you’re a bit of an open booker and I went, yeah, I’m actually…
I’ll sometimes, for one, a bit of a phrase, blurt it out and sometimes it kind of offend people but it’s authentic, it’s me and that’s just how I do.
I’ll attract the right people to me. I mean, we’re going with the laws of attraction all the time but I’ll attract the right people to me but I know I don’t want to be everything to everyone because then you’ll be nothing to nobody if that makes sense.
So I like this pin my colours to the mask. This is where I am with things. You’re coming along with me for the right, great stuff, if you know, I’m still enjoying myself.
So the first question I have was, what kind of, what is the goal and purpose of everything that you’ve been doing after an hour?
It’s a big question but it’s good to hear what’s the motivation and what’s your life purpose, what are you going for and all of this that you’re doing?
That’s a huge question.
Yes, start off.
Jesus, that’s one piece. I’ll try and bring it down. Your life purpose changes over a period of time.
When I first started, probably when I started to have some sort of sense of what my purpose should be, it was probably in my early 20s.
Up to my 20s, I had no idea what I was doing, I had no duration, I had nothing.
But it was from early 20s when I got introduced to people who were far more successful than me.
And they said, you need to get involved in things like reading books, listening to tapes, that’s an old thing, tapes, new podcasts.
Attending functions and having a mentor and up like, we’d actually got it.
So these four wheels on a car, at least the same, if you don’t have one of these, then you’re basically on a tricycle.
And if you don’t have one of these, you’re on a bike and then if you don’t, you’re on a unicycle and if you don’t have any of that, you’ve had it.
So you’re better to have the four wheels on the car running all at the same time.
So in the pursuit of this over all the years, I’ve constantly pursued that thought process of what I want to achieve.
And I’ll be honest, you know, for me, I think now it’s about legacy.
It’s more, it’s more for my children now and for the wider community is what I want to achieve.
I’ve achieved the things I want to achieve really.
You know, I don’t prescribe, for me personally, somebody else might want that.
It’s like things like, I don’t want fast cars, I don’t want fancy cars, anything like that.
I don’t want a big massive house, I used to want things like that.
But you get, you get, I think you get older as you go on and you’re supposed to be quite young.
But as you go on, when you get older, you begin to realise that’s no important animal.
It tends to be, it tends to be about the surrounding people around you and your community.
And the people you work with as well.
And that’s what drives me forward now.
That’s the most important thing to me.
Yeah.
I would say.
And how did you manage, you’ve said on your bio profile that you managed to retire at 30A?
Which is quite young for most people.
And 30A?
Yeah.
That’s a long story.
And vice on how others can do the same, just as quick or even quicker now with more experience.
You can’t do it quicker because there’s a lot more information out there.
And when I first started, in proper investment when I first started, it was like in the world waste.
Yeah.
And there was no creating strategies from everyone, no one even got involved in proper investment.
By till it is a mortgage or a package or a warrant that never existed, there was no such term at that time.
And it was only, that was only to come five years later after I first started.
And so all my business was done, not with normal mainstream lenders, it was done through banks.
It was all corporate lending.
And I had to convince the banks.
So I took a lot of knows and a lot of rejection.
Because most bank managers when you approach them with this idea about starting a business, about getting involved in proper investment,
just used to laugh and say, like, computer says no.
Is that sort of way to things?
Yeah.
So that’s how first got started.
But it took me about two to four years to actually get to that stage.
And that was all the linen process that happened before.
The books, the tapes, howling, function, the mentors, the, the, the, the, the, where the audio wasn’t stuff like that as well.
It took me about four years to get to that stage, even to commit to buying my first property.
Right.
Because I never had that mindset.
I wasn’t of that.
It’s a classic example.
Here it is.
Here’s where I was right now.
This is what had happened to me and successive, previous generations before.
And it’s like when you’re in a, it’s like, it’s like the fleas in the jar.
We know a flea can jump three feet, 36 inches.
But you put a flea in a jar and put a lid on it.
It starts to jump to his head.
And it’s only five inches at a time because that’s the length of the jar.
You put a six inch or 12 inch or whatever jar and put a lid on.
But the flea keeps hitting his head.
And repeating the time, the flea then begins to lament itself there.
That it’s just going to, it’s going to miss the top of the jar.
And if it misses the top of the jar, what will happen is it then doesn’t bump his head.
So then goes, this is easier.
I’m just going to keep jumping five inches.
But then mummy and daddy be able to flee her baby flea.
Baby flea’s bottom, but we all know baby flea can jump three out of six inches.
But baby flea doesn’t know that.
Baby flea sees mummy and daddy flea jump five inches.
And that’s all he ever knows.
So baby flea thinks it can only jump five inches.
And that’s where my thinking was.
I just saw everybody else around me only doing a certain amount.
And only being able to aspire to a certain level.
Therefore, I had no idea there was anything above that.
And that’s where I was mentally.
So it took me four years to actually make that commitment over a period of time to get and say,
okay, I’ll buy my first property.
But I tell you what, once I’ve proved a model.
Yeah.
I just read it on buying and buying and buying.
It was like one round of an ukulele board.
And I just started buying and buying because it was easier.
And it was easier, baby.
I got all the backers.
I got all the backers behind me, the banks.
I got all the banks convinced them.
I convinced certain managers.
I went through all this.
If it works well, would you give my corporate facility a funding?
And then they went, yeah, that’s fine.
So they gave my facility and that’s when I started buying.
It took me probably from the start, the started buying to the, to the, to the, when I retired at 38.
It probably took me actually just eight years.
Right.
Which in anybody’s mind was pretty quick.
Yeah.
But for me, of course, it was a long time.
Yeah.
I was working, wasn’t it?
So you see the foundation you said about the car fuels.
Yeah.
How long did it take to move from the, the first mindset, the average mindset, let’s call it, to a new mindset
where you hit 30 and went, went for that after that.
It was a lot of conditioning.
Yeah.
It was a huge amount of conditioning.
It was a huge amount of torment and huge amount of anxiety.
Almost swings and, you know, up and down in terms of my moods and stuff like that.
It was very, very difficult.
And because I was trying to bleak that program.
Right.
And it was, it was actually, because you know, you know yourself.
And if you’ve always, if you always think how you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.
It will never change for you.
Yeah.
So if you want to change outside of that, you have to think out further advanced in that in order to get better of what you do.
And to be more progressive of what you do, hence the reason why I had to adopt that mindset.
Yeah.
So it was challenging at the beginning.
I mean, you know, those times I actually sat in the corner and just locked in back and forward.
Right.
I’ve never told that story before.
But just sat there and walked forward like I was a crazy person.
Yeah.
Because I just couldn’t take the anxiety.
Right.
And what was causing anxiety?
Is that thing?
Because I was doing something I’d never done before.
Right.
I was having to speak to people.
I was having to phone people.
I mean, now it’s natural.
You just phone people.
Yeah.
So this is the deal.
This is what we’re doing in all of this.
Yeah.
But in the beginning I had never done anything like that.
Right.
What drove me the dream?
Yeah.
When the dream’s big enough to find us don’t come, we all know that and it’s a great cliche.
But what happens is it’s what drives you to do something more.
I mean, I’ll give you an example of this.
If you’ve got a bonding building and your phone’s left in the bonding building, very few people would run in for your phone.
Because the dream and the goal was not big enough to do that.
Fair enough, if you’ve got your car in the building, some people might go, I’m running it in for my car.
If you’ve got your kids in the building, you’ll be in there like a flash.
Yes.
So what’s changed in that?
Yes.
Exactly.
So you can either be in this situation, you can either be pulled by your dreams or you can be pushed by your circumstances.
And for me, it was more pushed by my circumstances because I wanted to be successful at something.
I wanted to excel at something.
I didn’t know what that was, but I had the faith that was going to be forward by the conditioning and the hunt from the books and tapes.
And I’m running the mentors.
That’s what drove me forward to try and achieve what I want to achieve.
It’s a journey, it’s not a destination, though, that’s the thing.
And it will always be a progression for me.
I have never arrived yet.
I will never arrive.
And I will continue and I have complete faith at bigger things to come.
That’s the sort of mindset.
And then I’ve always given myself a goal.
I’ve always been in my own ear before I retired.
I deserve everything I get.
Because I never took a pension.
I deliberately didn’t do that.
Because I thought, I’ve no made a million by the time I retired, 65.
That’s the old thing about the Vikings.
You start peering on the shore.
And when they were going to fight someone.
And what I was, there are a thousand Vikings who would turn up long ships.
And then there would be about 10,000 people fighting them on the shore.
And what the captains of the Viking boats did was they said, burn the boats.
And they were, what?
And they were, burn the boats.
And they said, but there’s only 10,000 of them.
Well, you’re either going to win or you’re going to die trying.
And basically that’s the mindset I had.
And I’ve always had that sort of mindset.
And it’s always for them and it’s always steep limit.
And I try to teach other people that as well.
Yeah, commitment.
It’s all enough for me.
You’re either going to succeed or you’re no.
Yeah.
There’s no.
And it comes back to saying it’s like, well, lift your arm.
Mm-hmm.
Lift your arm right now.
So they did try.
They did it.
Yeah, yeah.
So you’re either doing it.
You’re doing it.
You’re just trying to lift your arm.
Just like lift your arm.
Yeah.
Okay, that’s it.
Done.
Yeah.
And I see that there’s live viewers.
If you have any questions, we can answer them at the end of the book.
Time hopefully.
Yeah.
But yeah, I like that.
And I have the same mindset when I’m just to…
I know it’s that, anyway.
commitment.
Yeah.
There’s all or nothing.
And I think that leads to better results rather than have her approach to something where you can go back on the book.
Yeah.
So you kind of answered the next question I had.
Ask it again.
Just in case.
Okay.
There’ll be other things probably to add on to that.
Okay.
So you mentioned about the part about getting involved in Bitalette before Bitalette as a phrase.
It’s kind of existence.
Yeah.
Okay.
What year was that then?
What year and then?
I think that was 1993 or later about.
Okay.
So you’re talking about 93, 95.
Yeah.
If I was if I was guessing.
That’s the end of it where I got involved in Bitalette.
Right.
Bitalette Morgan has never appeared to be able to do two thousands of things.
All right.
And when I was involved in Bitalette when Bitalette first got begun.
There was no legislation.
There was nothing.
Yeah.
There was the housing act in 1988 fair enough.
And that’s finding that was in place.
But there was no legislation really for anybody to follow.
So it was like, well, what you meant to be doing.
I was just putting your own thing on how you would set up a tendency of what you would do.
You had sure you should tendency agreements.
But there wasn’t really cast iron.
And there didn’t give anybody any real protection.
On both sides for the tenant and for the landlord.
Right.
And it was never really enforced.
And there was never really any legislation in place or what it is today.
Right.
So I remember that.
And that’s why I always say it was like the Wild West sometimes.
Right.
And what was the benefit and what was the cons of that as well?
I think there’s always been a benefit.
Right.
I think I think I know a lot of landlords, property investors, poor and ectubious.
But I actually wholly believe in the legislation process.
And I think the legislation process is the way forward because some of the landlords will just not agree with it.
Right.
And they will be knowing the customs because of that.
But a lot of landlords, what a would say is a lot of landlords don’t know what they don’t know.
And it’s unfortunate because most landlords are, when a cottage industry, whether we like it or not,
I mean, you know, you get a landlord, so you’d say, over a professional life.
But no really.
When a cottage industry really, because most landlords of private and property investors have one or two properties.
They don’t have huge amount of properties.
And the one or two properties are only really for them to ask the possible have a top of income for within a tire.
Some to help them out now when they’re going along with what they’re doing.
And then also maybe they’re a bit of capital to have a side because they don’t have no, they never plan for a pension.
Right.
I mean, when I was, you know, when I was young and nowhere to pension, what?
Of course, a pension.
Quite a year really.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe my dad always said it to me, but he never said it really.
You got it.
Right.
But I say to every single person now, you should be starting pensions for your children right now.
You can do private pensions for your children right now.
You don’t need to wait till 18 when they’re working.
You can ask the do private pensions for them.
Now, we’re a small amount.
And the government will top it up with the tax up to the basic rate of tax.
And they’ve done after your children the compounded effect of that is actually astronomical.
Yeah.
It’s huge over the years.
And earlier they started.
Yeah.
And your children will never need to be in a position where they’ll never need to, they’ll never need to have to work till the day.
Yeah.
Because this effectively was going to happen.
This country, the whole world, has not got enough money to look after people who are living in longer now.
Yeah.
And so we’ll have to put aside for ourselves.
And we have to put aside for successive generations as well.
And for me personally, I think it’s my duty to do that for my family and for everybody who comes after that.
I don’t mean put all the burden on yourself.
I just mean I think it’s I should hope.
I should do that.
Yeah.
And just not leave them if anything for themselves.
Yeah.
After all, I’m the one who made them.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
So I just feel you’re going to do that.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you’ve been involved in property for over 20 years, maybe more now.
So you’ve been buying and selling properties for over 20 years.
What’s the best advice or observation in less than that you can share to property investors today?
Yes.
Property investors.
Best advice is property investment and its heart is really just a numbers game.
If the numbers work every single time, then it makes absolute sense.
Now, that doesn’t negate the fact that you’re dealing with people and that is important.
But the core principle of the investment is numbers.
That’s what it comes.
That’s what it is.
Once you get the numbers right, then you can move on from there.
And if you get the numbers right, then you’ll have money to continually to reinvest to make sure the person of the tenant is in your properties after adequate.
So after someone asked the cast to give me the day for saying I increased the rents by £5 a month.
And I’m like, that’s 60, quite a year.
But if you’ve got 10 properties, that could be 600 a year.
But then if somebody’s boiler goes down in a couple of years, then at least you’ve got £200, put aside to replace that boiler.
If you’re not doing things like that, then you’re leading yourself open to the fact that some landlords, and we’ve seen it, I’ve seen it before,
where they’ve no got enough money to ask that provide for the tenant.
And then it puts them in a vulnerable situation.
And you’ve got a duty of care.
That’s the whole point.
So that’s why that’s the best advice I can give to people is to charge the right amount, make sure the numbers are right.
But you make sure the numbers are right in order to make sure they are covered for things like that.
As soon as somebody says, as long as I can just cover the mortgage, I’m like, you shouldn’t be a proper investment.
Because you’ll never have anyone need to put back into work after the tenant that anything goes wrong.
So do you think the fact you did accountancy for so long before you got into property really contributed to…
It did, but I’m wired from numbers.
I’m wired like that.
I mean, I’ve never gotten well at school, and I was asked to leave and all the rest of it.
But I knew I excelled in school, that I risked my taking on mathematics.
So numbers was always my thing.
And then when later on, when I had this period of transition between leaving school to start in college,
when I had that period of transition, I kind of lost that thing.
And then when I got to college, it was like, whoa, this was a whole different ballgame.
It was a different mindset at that point.
And I started to excel again in areas like statistical analysis and business studies and accountancy.
And then went on from there.
So I definitely did a good amount.
You’ve got to know your numbers.
If you don’t know your numbers, how do you know where you’re going?
That’s almost just like a shit leaving the poor.
And then saying, I tell you what, we’re going to try and get to Africa.
And we’ll just see how we get on.
But we’re not going to actually, we’re not going to work out how we’re going to get there.
We’re just going to try for the best.
We think it’s maybe north, and we’ll just keep pulling along that way.
Well, if you want to degree off in that calculation, you’re going to end up at the, maybe in the top of Africa,
rather than the bottom of Africa.
And just because you want to degree off.
But that, see how the compounding effect comes.
Exactly.
Just with that small amount, that small difference will lead you in a totally different track.
That’s like most things all happen in people’s lives.
They don’t plan drifting in the wrong direction.
Honestly, people spend more time planning the next holiday than it is the financial future.
And people, some people just like kick it into the long grass and think,
I’ll just no think about everything.
Because I don’t want to bear the thought about it.
Because I know it’s going to be frightening.
But if you come to that conclusion, we’ve got something to work with in order to help you move forward.
So you know where you are.
If you know where you are, you know where you’re going.
If you don’t know where you are right now, you certainly don’t know where you’re going next.
Yes, brilliant fix.
That’s very good advice.
Because after myself, sort of not being exactly on the point where I should be,
until you actually look at the bank account, like the accounts, the numbers.
When you take your eye off the numbers, that’s when you just end up off track.
I do everything.
Yeah.
And it’s no further looking at the money.
It’s just looking at the numbers.
Yeah.
So you know where you are.
I know of the cash flows, right?
I know the profit.
Yeah.
You don’t look at the other way.
I mean, you could have loads of profit, but you could have no cash.
Yeah.
And I’ve seen a lot of business go to bust, huge amounts of profit, but they’ve got no cash.
Yeah.
Because I always say there’s a, there’s a role, because I used to be in,
I can’t say about credit control.
So I used to collect money from all the bank companies, like Amy and your construction
that were, when I was a man, for construction.
And I used to, they were saying that I put it in a frame and I put it on the wall.
There is no profit until the money’s in the bank.
I agree with that.
I’d say a similar idea that sales not made until the money’s in the bank as well.
That’s it.
And I’m not sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
On that as well, I think an important point.
For anyone who hasn’t got the gift of numbers, what would you recommend to them?
Basic courses.
Yeah.
I mean, business gateway of course is for nothing.
You know, just maybe an afternoon session.
And they’ll do it or they’ll run it for like 30 pounds or something like that.
Yeah.
Just to understand your basic numbers, if you understand your profit and loss account,
and you understand the balance sheet, that’s the two core fundamentals.
So the profit and loss account is a snapshot of how well you’ve done for the year.
The balance sheet is a snapshot of where you are at that point in time in the year.
And that’s where these two statements are.
The cash flow statement is a classic example as well.
Cash flow statement goes along like that.
The cash flow statement shows how healthy your ability to keep going is as well and where your money goes.
Because as I said, you can be very profitable growing your cash.
Yeah.
Because all your money is either tied up and stocked.
Because you ball the stock with the money.
All for it’s all tied up ready to be paid still by the people you’ve done work for.
You’ve actually given them credit.
Yeah.
So all your money could be tied up in that as well.
Yeah.
So cash is king.
Yeah.
No.
Sorry.
Cash is trash.
Cash flow is king.
Yeah.
Exactly.
The better people you have in your hand, isn’t it worth anything?
It’s a promise that you know.
But cash flow is what is the life part of the heavy business.
Yeah.
Profitable as well.
Yeah.
It’s been in profit and knowing that it goes as well as it then goes.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
As I say, I keep it an eye on the most of the time.
I’ve got two part-time people that work in their accounts division as well.
And they help me, I mean, Elaine’s, Elaine, my bookkeeper has helped me since the very beginning.
Since I first started and bought a loan, she just helped me all the time.
So she’s worked with me for all these years.
Yeah.
And my daughter Tony, she’s an accountant as well.
And she helps me part-time as well as doing her own thing.
Yeah.
And you say you have a look at the numbers every day.
What numbers do you look at?
Just key in the case for me to make sure everything’s right.
And say, let’s see if I’m going to run out of money.
Right.
It’s like, I know that it’s never going to happen.
Yeah.
But you just have, I don’t know, you just have that sort of thing.
And it’s like, oh, I could run out of money.
But that’s never going to happen.
That’s impossible.
Right.
For where I’m right now, it’s like, no, that will never ever happen.
Yeah.
You know, you’ve ever had a poster syndrome.
Oh, yeah.
It’s like, how many of them are here?
And people might find out that I’m possibly no successful
or whatever it is.
Right.
But I’m, in their mind, I am.
But for me, it’s just me.
It’s just what I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it’s just what I do.
It’s just what I do day to day.
Right.
Everybody keeps saying, I’ve got a lot of people saying, God,
you can sell sand to the harems.
You can sell snow to the Eskimos.
And I’m like, I just do what I do.
It’s just me.
Yeah.
It’s just natural.
And that’s when it comes back to one of the rules that I have
is just be authentic.
Yeah.
Be you.
And you’ll attract the people that work with you.
Because the last thing you want to do is be someone else.
And then you’ll attract the people that are like that.
But you want to align with them because you don’t believe
so we completely different.
And therefore, you won’t actually be able to work with them
because of that reason.
And so don’t be someone else.
Be you.
And attract the people to you.
Yeah.
And that helps you with sales, you think.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
I’m not going to win them all.
I’ve never planned to win them all anyway.
I just want to work with the people I want to work with.
The people I want to win me and the people I think, like me.
Yeah.
Yeah, it makes sense because then you attract the wrong person
if you’re not being yourself.
If you were looking to invest in a property, viewing it
for the first time, what do you look for when you’re walking
through the property?
I don’t look at them anymore.
I don’t look at them anymore.
I actually get rich at the going.
So if I’m going to riches my lens director,
or I’ll get Kim’s or one of our lens agents as well,
I don’t really go to property anymore.
It’s very rare, but I’ll always make an offer on a property
before I go to see it.
I have no desire to go and view a property only for them
to say there’s no enough when I offer.
Okay.
That’s a waste of my time.
So in order to meet me time efficient, what I’ve learned
is I’m making an offer based on my numbers.
If they’re in it that value, then I’ll go and view it.
Yeah.
And then if it’s poor, I expect it, then that’s fine.
We’ve got a deal.
What are you doing?
You’re doing the numbers.
You make the offer.
And then once the deal is going ahead, you go and view it.
Yeah.
You’ve got 100 properties you’re looking at, right?
Yeah.
I’m busy.
Probably about 95 of them will actually not work for you
when you’re scrolling through them.
So when you’re scrolling through, five of them might work for you.
You make five offers.
And you see where it is.
Some people, most people have come back saying,
no, that’s, we’re not in it.
Some people actually go, that’s brilliant.
But we’re up for it.
I’ve got a wheat bar.
I always try.
I always try it there.
I always try it there.
It’s just me.
So you’ll be in it the right number.
But you’ll not get the, you’ll not always get them all.
So you’ll look at 100.
You’ll never get two.
Yeah.
If you’re looking.
Yeah.
Is that a ratio that you’ve got?
I never want to.
But I know.
I know it really thought around.
That’s kind of where you are.
You’re not going to, you’re not going to get everything all the time.
But when I’m saying look at 100, I’m not saying you go around and look at 100 properties.
Yeah.
I’m saying you just go through the internet and you’re just scrolling all the way.
Yeah.
And it’s like, I know my numbers.
I know what I want and where I am.
So I can look at a property straight away and go, I know what I should be paying for.
Yeah.
And often, you know, I’m quite happy, most occasions, if the numbers weren’t out.
I would just pay 100 for it.
I’ll pay over 100 for it.
Okay.
If the numbers work, I’ll pay that.
Okay.
It’s like, just numbers work.
What you bought a bit.
Yes.
Long term investment you’re doing.
You’re not doing, I’ll make a quick bet.
You’re doing, this is a long term investment.
My numbers work entirely at that level.
So why would I not pay them the right price for their property?
And then we’ll put them both.
It’s a win-win situation.
When you say long term, are you talking about the capital gains?
As well as the cash flow.
I’m talking about everything.
Yeah.
I’ve got, I’ve got, this will be passed on to my family.
This will be passed on to my children.
Yeah.
I’ve got no intention.
This is never for me.
I know it’s not, but this is never really for me.
It’s, it gives me the comfort that I can do what I want to do when I want to do.
I can start working tomorrow, sit on a beach for the rest of my life and still have money.
And my wealth will still go up as a result.
But it’s the comfort of that.
Yeah.
So I’ll continue to work all the time because I just love the comfort that I can actually get away from that.
The one thing I couldn’t stand in my job.
I love my job and I love my manufacturing.
But the one thing it was too much for me was I had to be there all the time every time.
And I had no, I had no, I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do.
I was restricted.
And I did do that in the beginning.
I did do a lot of stuff outside hours.
I used to come home straight away, put more of those on and just go out to work on my problems.
And I used to do that weekends as well.
And everybody used to put a laugh at me going,
there’s Jim, the cleaner, Walton pastor, the cleaner and stuff,
all the rest of it.
Well, they’re all having their barbecues at the bar garden.
But they’re still staying in the same house that they’ve got.
And I’m an entirely different house than financial and free.
Yeah.
The fundamental difference.
I paid a price area.
Yeah.
This is a weak key for you.
You’re either going to pay the price for success now.
Yeah.
Or you’re going to pay it later.
Yeah.
The invoice for regret later on is a lot bigger.
Yeah.
And I certainly didn’t want to pay that.
And I don’t want my family to pay either.
Yeah.
Because your kids will end up paying it as well.
Yeah.
Because you’ll have nothing to pass on to them.
Yeah.
And you’ll not have taught them anything.
Mm-hmm.
The great thing I’ve done what I’ve done for me, personally, what I think,
is my children have actually seen me doing that.
And that’s like the jar.
That’s like living in the jar.
So they’ve seen me.
I’ve gone.
I have no jar.
Yeah.
I know I can reach any height I ever want to reach.
Yeah.
I’m convinced of that more in mind.
And they actually know that as well.
And they know they can do that as well.
Yeah.
Plus you have the time to spend with that as well.
Yeah.
A lot of people actually used to say me, you’ve sacrificed all that time.
You’ve never seen your children.
Well, that’s not the case.
Because I always made sure I was there for things like sports days.
Yeah.
The children always turned up.
I always took time off.
I had great bosses.
Yeah.
So I actually used to trade time with me.
I used to trade holidays for times.
So I said to them, I’ll tell you what I’ll do.
Can I just go to my kids sports day?
It’s only going to be two hours.
And then what I’ll do.
And then can I go and view this house?
It’s only going to be two hours.
And then I just saved up all these two hours I was doing.
Yeah.
And then I said, I’ll just trade that for a day’s holiday.
Yeah.
So I used that over it.
And they were great that way.
But I taught them to invest as well.
Yeah.
So what I did was I taught them to invest as well.
And then there’s a particular agreement for me.
Huge flicks about what I wanted to do.
So they’ll allow me out.
And then I just said, there you go.
So I never got enough of them.
I just got a lot of leeway from them.
So I taught them how to do what I did.
Right.
They made up fair amount of money as well.
Some of them are just sold out and went away eventually
when 2006 came.
The height of the market.
And it was booming.
Yeah.
Properly places were huge.
And they were core.
I kind of need to sell.
But for me personally, I did sell some.
But then I wouldn’t be able to leave them.
And you win the children, the tree that bears the fruit.
Yeah.
And so that’s why I still got what I’ve got.
Right.
Because it’s literally an asset class.
It actually goes up and value.
And pays you to wait.
Well, it goes up and value.
Yeah.
What other asset class does that?
Doesn’t the gold doesn’t do that?
Yeah.
The silver doesn’t do that.
Crypto doesn’t do that either.
Crypto dropped like a stone.
Yeah.
I recently had those on MMA fighter apparently.
It was 40 million.
It was all these money.
It made that easier.
Yeah.
And they made me fighting or whatever that is.
It seemed a lot to me.
I was 40 million.
It was in tears that had one camera and everything.
Yeah.
And I’m fighting cheese.
I mean, it’s gambling.
Yeah.
You know, people like Bill Gates and I sit there
and ask them the crypto and they say to them,
you know, what do you think of you?
And they don’t know.
I just like something that produces something.
Something that’s there that’s cast down.
And they actually will actually produce something.
And will actually make money.
Yeah.
And it’s in the art of fair.
The art of fair, the consistency.
The art of fair, the consistency rather than the volatility.
Yeah.
But a lot of people, you know, I would imagine a lot of people
and what would have tried to meet a crypto
is the thrill of the investment.
But if you’re going to invest in crypto, be prepared to lose it all.
Yeah.
That’s what you do.
Just if you’re going to, it’s like a casino.
Because you’re basically hedging everything on somebody else’s
perception that it’s worth more to them.
Because it’s just software.
That’s that.
Yeah.
That’s, there’s nothing.
There’s nothing tangible about it.
Yeah.
It’s just based on what some of the other things is worth to them.
And in this point in time, it’s probably worth a lot less
than what it was.
It’s like one to go.
Yeah.
No, there is merit, obviously, the internet and blockchain
and things.
There is potential there.
And I’ve seen it within internet myself.
I was quite early, not early, but my dad was an early doctor
within internet marketing.
And I got, that’s what, that’s where I make my passive income
from, not, not so much from property.
More, more from the internet.
Yeah.
And so there is like, I can see Bitcoin as one of these areas
I’ve not tapped into enough to, to know enough about,
to talk about it.
But it’s good to have a finger in something.
But like you say, not everything.
Yeah.
Like, I mean, in the, in the finger.
Crypto, NFT, blockchain, all the rest of it.
There will be something that finds its way.
But as everything like that, when it’s first, almost pioneering,
there’s other, there’s people that blaze the trail for this.
But that, there, the trail blaze has usually cost them,
had cost them a fortune to do it.
And a lot of casualties will happen.
It’s like in Yomibba, where 100 and only one model succeed.
Yeah.
And it’s actually finding out what that one is.
It’s what everybody’s trying to do.
Yeah.
And they’re taking, they’re taking massive risks.
Yeah.
Because we don’t really know enough about it.
And it’s quite in time.
Where is the point in time?
With properties, historically going up.
It’s cast iron.
Yeah.
Well, it’s always got a good bet.
Yeah.
It’s always got, you know what?
It always go up.
Because the banks have to sell your mortgage.
And the need for the mortgage to go up and on the,
do that in a population.
And, at least, and even though it’s declining,
more and more people have begun to live separately anyway.
Yeah.
And, and, and bitterly, more and more people need to have one investment
and another setting income stream.
And that, you can’t, the kind of, because the remember,
there’s people out there that can’t afford even the buy house anyway.
Yeah.
And it’s not can’t afford to buy a house because they’re out
with their price range.
It’s because they don’t have any money.
They don’t earn anything.
Yeah.
And, and the, the, the government in the 1980s sold
of 69% of all the housing stock.
For social housing.
69% of all the housing stock in Britain was disappeared almost
within two or three years.
Yeah.
And because they’ve decided to sell it all to the people.
Right.
And that’s fantastic.
And that was a great idea at that time.
But they forgot to stick to continue about new stock.
Yeah.
And this is the, this is the, this is all coming home at Roos now.
Yeah.
And they’re trying to point the finger at private landlords saying,
it’s beautiful.
It’s like, you’ve got all these houses.
Well, we’ve not, we’ve got less houses now than we did,
maybe, maybe two or three years ago.
I mean, in the 1950s, private landlords were sitting by houses
talking around about, or landlords were sitting by houses talking around about
going to about 55% in the 1950s.
Now private landlords are going to go 18% from the UK housing market.
In terms of where we are going and where the housing market is going.
I call this simply for the, for the courier.
It’s not out yet.
And I told them.
But there’s not going to be any crash.
Yeah.
And the housing market.
Okay.
You know, that was…
Is that, I wouldn’t know the article from the courier.
No, I would come out, I would come out probably in the next couple of weeks.
I don’t know if I got a call about the housing market.
I would say, I would do a quarter of that day.
So that would ask me to contribute towards it.
But the lobby across the lobby are plateaued.
Basically because industries are still at a record low compared to 20 years ago.
I’ve been looking at the data today a bit off.
I mean, and then the average interest rate 20 years ago was 7.5%.
average interest rate now is within 1.5%.
In terms of that.
So it’s completely different.
Yeah.
More required as well.
So average house price to average average earnings.
In 5 anyway.
It’s about 6 or 7 times.
Right.
And that’s quite normal.
Yeah.
In the UK it’s about 11 times.
Yeah.
But in 5 is about 6 or 7 times.
Right.
Because it’s about 30,000 average salary.
It’s about 180,000 average.
Price to buy a house.
Yeah.
And basically there’s one job, obviously more.
But that’s the average.
And so that’s about 6 times.
Yeah.
So that’s normal for…
So 5 is quite a resilient market.
Yeah.
5 is actually quite undervalued still.
I would say comparison to the rest of the UK.
And in 5 as there’s a good proposition for anybody coming to live here.
Yeah.
And what’s exacerbated the situation is the fact that lockdowns now proved beyond the shadow of it.
You can ask them what remotely?
Yeah.
Why would you want to live in Glasgow then?
In mainstream, mixed and say.
Yeah.
450,000 for a two-bedroom flat.
Who could you buy for 450,000 in 5?
Yeah.
That was…
You know, you could buy a big blob in like 5 bedrooms.
Yeah.
Basically by the sea.
Yeah.
You could buy someone by the sea.
I mean, they sell them at that level by the sea in East Newk.
So when you look at all that and you think, well, why are you going to be staying there if I could work remotely?
Or even, I could even afford to take the pressure of myself by having such a large mortgage.
Because I can buy the same thing here for almost a fraction of the price.
Yeah.
And then still work remotely.
Yeah.
And still have this lifestyle.
Yeah.
So, you know, that’s probably why 5 is a lot more competitive.
Yeah.
Well, it’s…
Where I live here, you see the train stations at the back of the house.
Perfect.
It’s straight to Edinburgh, straight to London.
Yeah.
And it makes so much sense.
So you could pop in the office like once every week.
Yeah.
Have you really wanted to?
Yeah.
And it’s the same as well.
You know, the infrastructure improvements are going in a league mouth.
I mean, they’re putting the new train station in there for 2024.
That’s about 100 million investment going in there.
And all the infrastructure itself.
And so again, that’s going to bring that up.
So, you know, more and more people are beginning to realize it’s like, well, I can just commute.
Yeah.
If I’m going to go in there, then I can just work remotely.
Yeah.
And more so.
And because of the crisis with petrol.
Yeah.
And fueling.
Yeah.
A lot of employers, and I would say, could you just work from home.
Yeah.
And now I’ll save you the money.
I’ll have the travel everyday.
So that’ll take all the pressure off.
Yeah.
So that’s another thing that’s possibly coming as well.
Yeah.
As we go further into the so-called energy crisis.
Yeah.
And of course, the news, by the way.
It’s like any morning, it’s doom and gloom every single time.
Yeah.
Just pedal that every single day.
Before and after.
And convince people.
Lockdown.
Yeah, convince people.
And if there’s no that, it’ll be something else next.
Yeah.
There’ll be something else next.
There’ll be something else next.
Because negative news always happens.
Yeah.
Just tune out from it.
Meet the list of podcasts.
List of things.
Things business podcasts.
They’re wealth creation podcasts.
Well creation show.
We do a 1230.
We’re actually going to be the top 10 tips this Monday.
Yeah.
For success.
So we’re going to be covering the top 10 tips for success.
I actually brought some of them up a book here.
Okay.
But we’ll not talk about that then.
Yeah, yeah.
We’ve got five minutes for you.
No, no, you’re fine.
Right.
Okay.
We’ll talk about that on Monday.
I’ll be honest with you.
Yeah.
So we’ll talk about that on Monday.
We’ll talk 10 tips for success.
Yeah, yeah.
In my opinion.
But my opinion is really driven by all everybody else that’s come before me.
I’ve no made this up.
Yes, it’s all.
I mean, you’ve got a huge book library there.
Yeah.
And I was looking at my book library as well.
Yeah, they are there.
And I’ve literally got a lot of these books as well and read a lot of them as well.
Yeah.
There’s a huge amount.
And I’ll read Tony Robbins’ Money is a fantastic book.
Money, money.
Yeah, really good.
And then you’ve got also the Bible of wealth creation which is thinking grow rich.
Yeah.
I mean, what are great principles?
Think.
And grow rich.
But that doesn’t mean to say it’s rich in money.
That just means to say it’s rich in success.
And round about you.
And everything you’re involved in.
Yeah.
You’ll be rich in your career.
You’ll be rich in your family itself.
You’ll be rich in your social circle, your interaction with people in your community as well.
That’s what thinking grow rich is all about.
Yeah.
It’s not all about money all the time.
Mind you, money’s right up there who oxygen.
Yeah.
Obviously, need it.
I.
You need it to survive.
You need it forever.
And then anybody who says that says that.
You know, you know, I’m kidding themselves.
What’s the living crisis?
And what is the first thing everybody talks about?
Money.
Yeah.
And the lack of it.
More than anything.
Yeah.
And I say, we shouldn’t be focusing on the lack of money.
We should be working out how to attract that money to us.
Yeah.
That money is already there in the circulation.
The money is already there.
Yeah.
Somebody else has got it or it’s somewhere else or it’s in the circulation.
What you’re trying to do, what you want to be trying to do is try to attract that money towards you.
So you can earn that money.
Yeah.
And you should be more successful and more prosperous as a result.
And therefore help you and your community as well.
Yeah.
And like, thinking about, thinking is about the main, the main things.
Yeah.
It’s just what’s going on in that main that actually does the attraction of the world.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I would agree.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that’s a really good point as well.
And what should, what would you say apart from thinking, Gorech, what’s your favorite thing?
Oh.
It’s been the most impactful.
The Virgin Way.
The Virgin Way.
The Virgin Way.
The Virgin Way, the Virgin Way, the Virgin Way of Ritz of Brans is a fantastic book.
It’s really a masterclass in customer service and how you usually gafter people.
Because I, your one or is it, I know their one.
No, the Virgin Way by the Virgin Way of Ritz of Brans.
Yeah.
It’s got quite a few people.
Oh, I’ve read them all.
Oh, right.
Oh, right.
Okay.
Or every single bookie writes, I’ve read them.
Screw it.
Yeah, let’s do it.
So, the Virgin Way came later on and I actually got every single person I come with to read it.
Right.
We all actually had a book club at that time.
So, we formed a book club.
We’re all reading the Virgin Way and the Virgin Way.
And we went on to think of a great Ritz and we went on to feel the fear of me doing anyway.
And we went on to another book and we’re honestly concentrated on all these different things
to help us work through all these different mindsets, to understand ourselves and actually be
more, more, more forward thinking and also more, I would say, more confident of what we
do.
So, because, you know, we’re all, we’re all born, right?
But, so what determines us, what determines our future?
Yeah.
Because we’re all born, that’s it.
We’ve got, you know, most people have two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, all
the rest of it.
So, what determines how we end up?
It is our background to degree, but it’s also up here.
Yeah.
And if you master the six inches you’ve got up here between your ears, then you’re made.
Yeah.
It’ll be you forever.
Yeah.
But the key is to make sure you pass on to other people.
So, that’s what it is.
So, my next project is MCR Pathways.
So, I’m working with MCR Pathways and they work with children in care.
Okay.
And they argue a mentor for a child in care.
So, what will happen is I’ll visit them once a week for an hour.
I’ll sit down with them and have a wee discussion with them and see where they are, no
like this.
Yeah, yeah.
But just listen to them.
And what MCR Pathways has proved with children in care is there are about 35% if they don’t
have a mentor.
The 35% if they don’t have a mentor, they’ll be unlikely to actually go into anything else.
So, in other words, 65% of the times they’ll fall by the wayside.
They’ll be in jail or something like that.
They’ll fall in a crime.
And when you say children in care, what do you mean in care?
Well, in care they’ve had to, the states had to look after them.
Right.
They’ve got social worker and all the rest of it.
So, that’s children in care.
Yeah, okay.
So, children in care, 35% if they’re left just with no mentor.
If they have a mentor throughout the years to help and guide them, what happens is that
was from 35% to about 80%.
Yeah.
I heard something similar about person’s vocabulary as well.
They end up in, someone improves their vocabulary versus someone who doesn’t have a good vocabulary.
It was a start that showed that people with the lack of vocabulary ended up in jail or in trouble.
It’s the same idea.
Well, that is possible in the case.
One of the things that I also advocate every single time is read books.
Yeah.
Read books.
It’s not necessarily, it’s not necessarily, it helps you with diction, it helps you with notes, it helps you with grammar.
It also helps you articulate to other people and communicate with other people.
It also teaches, there’s a lot of books out there.
I just read books that give you a valuable life lesson.
Yeah.
Jordan Peterson is one of reading just now, the 12 rules.
And it’s about chaos and how it all comes about and how to change it all.
But I’m in trade now because this guy’s got my attention.
And it’s like, okay, so where does that come from?
So I’m learning from people, I might not take it all on board.
But I will take some good things out of there about what potentially I could do or what I wouldn’t do as a result.
And that’s why I read books like that.
There’s lessons to be learned in everybody, whether it’s good or bad.
And you know yourself, what aligns with you, therefore, you know what you should do, what you shouldn’t do.
Yeah.
As a result of that book.
So you could read one of the worst books in the world, which I could see lately.
Oh yeah.
I’m going to like them now, Jordan.
Don’t mention it.
I don’t like them now.
I used to have a lot of respect for them, but I don’t anymore.
But there’s a lot of lessons you could learn out of that.
Because of what he’s done and what he’s achieved.
Yeah.
So you could learn both sides of that.
And again, it comes back to what you’re aligned with.
Yeah.
That’s it.
And reading for me is about like, you can read someone’s life story.
A evil person or an unsuccessful person versus a successful, what would you call it?
St.
Yeah.
And you can get a lesson just as powerful from the evil person learning from their mistake as well.

I would agree.
I would agree.
History is a great opportunity to learn from.
Yeah.
And we could see that now because now people who thought were highly successful and put them in pedestals.
And now, like, where am I?
This has changed now because I’m now thinking differently.
And everybody’s thinking differently now.
Maybe they want these people who thought the way in the first place based on what circumstances are now.
But at that time, the circumstances were completely different.
Yeah.
And that’s why that happened.
But now, it’s not appropriate to be like that anymore.
And they afford to learn a lesson about what it’s not.
We shouldn’t be now.
Yeah.
Whereas some people are actually still thinking, well, we should maybe just stick with that.
And probably cutens one of them.
Right.
We should maybe just stick with that idea.
And it’s like, that’s the, no, that’s no other idea to do.
Yeah.
But who might I tell him?
If he’s watching, don’t do it.
Let’s see if there’s any questions that come up.
Any questions?
Just post them in the comments.
It hurts the air thing at the moment.
Yeah, it’s fine.
If there’s anything more catch up later on, we’ll move on to the questions.
Yeah.
Just catch them up for the air.
But that’s not, you know, that’s, I think that’s what I see.
Do you want to run off with something?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um…
Like, it’s a mistake.
I know it’s that.
Ah, yeah.
Yeah.
I’m just thinking about time.
Yeah.
Well, what about biggest mistake and biggest struggles?
Like, what would you say they were?
Every mistake I’ve made is for a reason.
And it has brought me to where I am.
Yeah.
And I don’t think I’ve ever made a mistake.
Because I think it was meant to be.
Yeah.
Because I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
Yeah.
And it’s learned by it.
And it’s asked the alignment to progress on.
Yeah.
The…
Yeah, absolutely.
I’ll learn by it.
My…
The things, the struggle for me, again, comes back to psychological.
But everybody will go through that.
Because we’re not all that same way of thinking.
And we’re not all that mindset.
Yeah.
As I said before, and I’ll finish off with this, is, if you want to be successful
like someone else, you have to think like them.
And you have to get into their mind.
You have to think how they think in order to be there.
Or you would be there already.
Yeah.
So that’s how it would say about learning from other people.
And, you know, I used to be very cynical about this.
I used to say that, you know, how to make a million about you.
Write a book.
Can you sell it to everybody and you make a million?
You’ve maybe no million in here before you start.
But then you just make up and the book.
You sell it and something.
And then you have a million in here.
And I used to be quite cynical about that.
But I do check out people’s backgrounds first before I go to learn from them.
And probably that’s one of the, that’s one of the biggest lessons of, one of the biggest mistakes
and one of the struggles I’ve had in my lesson at home is probably to actually,
actually look at someone else and check them out before I actually believe them.
Yeah.
Or before I actually, I call it drink their cool aid.
Yeah.
Before you drink their cool aid, make sure they’re the right person.
Yeah.
Make sure they are who they are and what they’re walking the top of the top.
Yeah.
And you align with them more importantly, that’s where I was.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course I have you on the Monday.
Yes.
I sure do.
There you go.
Yeah.
Come back in straight away.
Go.
Okay.
Thank you very much guys.
Cheers.

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Transcript:

Hi, this is Ben Ling. Welcome to Ben’s Business Podcast. This show runs every Wednesday at 2pm GMT live on Facebook.
The focus of the podcast is to grow your business and your mind. Occasionally I’ll bring on a guest who’s at the top of their game in terms of business or in other areas of their life.
And I’ll ask some difficult questions to help you and I really understand and dissect how they did it and how we can do it too.
I’ve got Tim Gray here. He’s followed Tim on Instagram for probably the last two years and as I was getting into optimizing my own health.
Tim is the founder of the Health Optimization Summit and is at handle on Instagram is Tim Biohacker. He’s built up a quick and impressive amount of followers through his daily biohacking tips and it’s been educated that way for a long time.
So I reached out to Tim to ask him a couple of questions and then to bring him on to Ben’s Business Podcast. So welcome Tim.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, you’re welcome.
So I think the first thing would just be for you to give yourself an introduction.
What we can, what my audience could learn from you. We’re obviously my audience is business owners. We read business books, but we’re very curious people as well. We read into all aspects of life and health wealth and happiness.
So with that in mind, obviously, we’re I’m interested in health and bringing that to the business audience as well because business owners can be very entrepreneurial people can be very busy and not focused a lot on their health.
So kind of with that dynamic knowing that these people like me are building businesses, maybe multiple businesses. I’ve got three children trying to like fit up fit the health optimization and biohacking and as well.
So if you want to go ahead and give yourself an introduction.
Well, I mean, first of all, I guess I would hate to say that I’m, I’ve been an entrepreneur for now 20 years, pretty much.
I’m now 43 and I started my first company at 23.
So I’d say I’m an entrepreneur and have built several seven figure companies, actually.
First of all, if you notice my mouth is blue, it’s because I’ve got some methylene blue in from true descriptions. It’s kind of a smart drug methylene methylene blue is one of the first ever.
Pharmaceuticals ever made and it’s very good for oxygenation and mental clarity as well as various other things, but anyway, so that’s why.
Yeah, so I was a busy, very busy business guy entrepreneur for many years and really put my business head of everything, my relationships, my social life, you know, I remember sitting at my desk and once more time and thinking there’s nowhere else on the planet, I’d rather be in the name front of my computer in my in my offices.
And that really just, you know, sit with where my mindset was until it was too late, really.
And I went from 23 until 32, something like that.
I completely neglecting my body, working really hard, you know, 16, 18 hour days, not drinking enough water, having too much coffee, not eating proper food, if anything.
Yeah, and until the point where, you know, I was getting up, going to work, running one company, finishing the day with one company and then moving on to the next and then doing that through to the moment I’ve stopped food in my mouth and then jumped into bed.
So, you know, it’s basically just too much and the thing is, I mean, I’d looked at smart drugs or not smart drugs, more new tropics that you find and get boots to chemist or, you know, any of these traditional retail places that.
Like, ginkgo and.
There is other crap that doesn’t really do a great deal on its own.
Um, trying to improve my boost moment or performance, but I didn’t really realize that.
You know, as a business person, you prioritize.
Most important thing at that moment, and that can be an urgency or it can be a long term thing, and if you focus on the agencies too much, you don’t.
And, um, if you’re always focusing on your business in the short term, but not focusing on your health from the long term, your performance will decline, you will become far less effective.
And yet it creeps up on you, so I was operating at probably about 65 to 70% for many years, thinking that I was super, you know, performing really well and I was making loads of money.
It was awesome, but I didn’t realize how suboptimal I was until I actually got ill.
And, you know, if you don’t pick a day to relax, your body will pick it for you.
And, you know, that’s what happened. I went traveling to Bali for three weeks and on the way back.
I got into the country went to the office the next morning and had a kidney stone stuck in my.
And, you know, I was in the hospital for three days, and I had got issues multiple tolerances, frequent urination, all these things.
So the point is is that I didn’t prioritize my health until it slapped me around the face and it took me 10 years almost to to reverse those things.
So I think the most, um, successful and success doesn’t necessarily mean richest, but it can be.
The most successful people I know, prioritize their health and their business, not one or the other.
And, in fact, the super successful people prioritize their family, family time, they lock away family time with no exceptions.
They prioritize their business and no distractions and they prioritize their health with no exceptions.
Um, like my friend up to Dominic Nickschwitz, you know, he’s like the role model for that.
So anyway, the point is, as I got really ill, I figured out a load of cool things and here we are 10 years later.
I talk about the things that I’ve done on my journey that have optimized my health and performance.
And now, you know, I can get significantly more done in four hours in each day than I could do in 16 hours previously.
And now I run multiple companies, I tried to focus as much as I can by having heads in each company.
But I find it super effective, which means I can travel six to nine months of the year and still work from my laptop without ever doing it.
Yeah, that’s amazing.
So, just a quick question is, what, what, what, what are you eating today and why, like that’s always been an interesting question to ask sort of people are into health and coaching.
But at the moment, I’m just carnival.
Just just for a test for a couple of weeks, I mean, I’ve done vegan before, I’ve done vegetarian, I’ve done full keto, data, keto, I’ve done carnival, low oxalo, low histamine, all these different diets each one of what works for me.
I’m just doing a reset at the moment, so I’m carnival at the moment.
So carnival doesn’t mean just me, it means almost just me with exceptions.
Like I basically had a breakfast, a little bit of coffee with collagen and MCT and butter, and a little bit of vanilla and some Himalayan salt blended.
So that really gets me fired up because I’m predominantly fat based in my diet.
I drive on it.
I had chicken breast.
And I’ve had king prawns as well.
Typically, I would have chicken breast with maybe some tarragon and some ginger and a little bit of maple syrup added and then just shallow fried in butter.
That’s what I generally have by now also have aminos, especially from the brand I brought out.
So essential and branch chain amino acids and creatin and touring and magnesium all in one stack.
With a carnival diet or just you’re saying about eating chicken on its own.
You have them fiber in the diet as well or is this more just like you’re saying a reset with just having.
It’s just a reset.
There’s some studies around how fiber is beneficial and the more people have fiber, the less chance of having cancer in the digestive system.
In fact, you know, if you’re, if you’re actually eating clean and healthy and exercising, the fiber becomes almost irrelevant.
This is a reset for me.
It’s not something I intend to do on going.
And typically I do eat some plants.
But I just find that because of my digestive health issues with the amount of antibiotics that doctors threw at me because they didn’t know what was going on.
I’ve just joined my gut flora.
So I’m working on the floor at the moment again.
Is that repairable?
Yeah, yeah.
Then that’s what you’ve been doing over the last 10 years is repairing that.
Well, I did repair it.
And what not, but it’s always about constant refinement and optimization for me.
So I don’t just want to optimize when I get sick.
I want to prevent getting sick.
I’m doing a store test every six to 12 months, looking at what bacteria, your deficiency in and what you need to supplement with.
How you adjust your diet accordingly is, you know, it’s key to healthy health span and lifespan.
Yeah.
Yeah, seeing on your stories today that your students are, I don’t know if it says your own brand, but there’s lots of different tests that people can take to self.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say self diagnosed definitely not.
I would say, I would say check self quantify.
Yeah.
Looking at what might be off.
I mean, all of these tests, unfortunately, traditional doctors don’t do or don’t know to do because they haven’t been trained and preventative.
They’ve been trained in, you know, servicing fixing the car when it breaks down opposed to servicing it before it goes wrong.
So, you know, I’ve got a genetic test, which I’ve done many before actually, but this is a new one that links in with all the.
The digestive health product, the hormones, the traditional blood tests and organic acids, so you’re you’re into check to see what you’re excreting bacteria and use whites.
So, really, the omnos system and I’m not affiliate and I don’t get commission for any of this, but I just don’t really think it’s a good system for having multiple tests that the data then goes into one platform and then it can tell you what to look out for.
Give a practitioner that you’re working with access to it as well so that they can see, you know, what your results are and how they cross correlate opposed to just his blood test.
Okay, you’re out of range on potassium.
Let’s supplement with potassium instead as it’s looking at the bigger picture. It’s looking in genetics, but might be influencing that.
So that’s why the tests I’m doing right now.
Omnos are actually going to be exhibiting at my summit in May as well.
I’ve got a really good range of tests.
And yeah, the right.
Good, really good new tests coming out as well.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, that’s something I’ve not invested into yet, but I can see the benefit of obviously it’s kind of like with financial literacy and having an understanding of your health.
It’s important to look after your own bank account and the same as your it’s important to look after your own rather than delegating your health to a doctor or someone else being your own physician.
So taking these tests like it’s kind of a way of doing that.
Well, I mean, how many companies have you run or been in where they’ve done a SWAT analysis or risk analysis.
But how many times does it talk about employees and their health very rarely, but they do sometimes about the CEO or the founder or the, you know, whoever may be in charge, you know, doing a risk analysis on the CEO getting you.
I mean, it has a detrimental effect of the company in the long term, often in short time as well.
And, you know, how often do you look at the PNL and the forecasts to know how the direction of the company’s going on, how it’s profitable, it’s going to be.
Why wouldn’t you do that with your health?
Yeah.
That’s not even your body.
I mean, that, you know, if every company ever goes wrong and everything falls apart, the one thing that you’re left with is your body.
Yeah.
I wouldn’t you put that ahead of everything else because if you do, then obviously everything else can thrive.
But what’s the saying?
A man with his health has many wishes. A man without his health only has one, you know, don’t do it too late.
So, you know, in terms of, for instance, gut health.
You know, we all go poo every day.
And we all eat food, some of it, not necessarily the best nutrition.
But what you are eating, you want to know that you’re actually getting the nutrients from it.
So why wouldn’t you test your gut bacteria to see if it is actually getting the nutrition from your food?
Because that’s a long-term health.
Or if you’re tired or you get tired after certain foods or tired at the end of the day, you just fall in bed.
You know, why wouldn’t you check your hormones to see that the hormones are balanced?
And if there’s something that needs adjusting, because it might just need one supplement or one lifestyle change for you to thrive.
Yeah.
You actually need to get out of bed that extra hour earlier and actually have your brain switched on.
So you can have meetings in our hour, hour earlier, which you know compound effect.
It has a significant impact over the space of a year.
Yeah.
You know, it’s just underrated in the business world and I think it’s crazy.
Although people like Jack Dorsey, obviously do cold plunges and it’s known to be a higher hacker.
Elon Musk shared out a post a few weeks ago saying, you know, like about sunlight and nature and, you know, having time off from devices and things like that.
And the importance of it.
So, you know, a lot of the big names are talking about it and it’s becoming more and more mainstream.
Obviously, the typical entrepreneur is too busy sweeping it under the rug and focusing on making money opposed to.
Health so they can make better money.
Yeah.
Yeah, that doesn’t make sense because then it catches up with you and then you’re.
You’ve not got the energy to put into your business and it’s, yeah, backfires.
So I’m 100% in agreement with that.
And.
And it’s kind of like leading on from the question about my own lunch.
So my typical lunch would be like a salad with a chicken like a turkey.
I’m going to go all of oil.
Tomatoes, blueberries.
So like I think I’m eating quite healthy based on what I’ve learned, but.
I think one of the challenges is.
Find an organic meat for me and in typical supermarkets like I went to asda.
And I couldn’t find any ready to eat organic meats.
I was wondering on that, do you have any suggestions on where you can buy decent grass fed beef and organic meat?
I know you talk about that a lot.
Well.
Yes.
I like to set myself up for success, not for failure.
And I like to put things in place.
If you book atomic habits, then you know, it’s about removing the things that you trip over and putting things that you should be tripping over in front of you.
So for me, you know, convenience of popping to the supermarket is just convenience.
You know, for instance, you might have your favorite butcher in the over the other side of London.
And it would take you an hour and a half to get there.
Or you could just have sandwiches at the end of the street with crappy food.
And that’s convenience, you know, pay more for the crappy food nearby than the good stuff further away.
I like to set it up so that I’m actually scheduled with these things.
So I either get it to a bit.
For instance, I use Piper’s farm.
Well, the time or Abel and Col also.
They’re both very good.
Now, Piper’s farm organic, sustainable farming.
It’s a really, really great stuff.
And I order, you know, kind of like two kilos of chicken breast in Tarragon, which is my favorite, actually.
And beef stir fry or, you know, a joint or in beef joint that is.
And I’m not smoking.
Yeah, so I like to order things in and I’ve got two freezes so that I’m always good to go.
Obviously that if there is a convenience thing, such as I’ve run out for whatever reason, I’ve been traveling and I want something that’s not frozen.
And then, you know, I just pop up the road to mocks and Spencer and I won’t stress if I eat something non organic.
You know, once or twice a week is, again, it’s compound theory will come, you know, the more you do it, the more it adds up.
And it’s best not have it as the rule, but have it as the exception and not stress about it too much because.
Yes, dressing about not having organic too much creates increased cortisol, which actually slows down or damages your immune systems.
So, you know, what’s worse, have eating organic eating non organic or stressing about the food you’re eating.
Piper’s farm, actually, I’ve got a code and I’m not an affiliate.
I don’t do affiliate deals, but the code is tin by hacker gets 15% off.
Okay.
Yeah, so just order online, dude, get it delivered once a week or once a four night.
And it’s actually cheaper than go into mocks and expensive or two scopes or any of that crap.
Right. Okay.
And what was the other one, a paper’s farm, organic.
Yeah, an able and call.
How did you spell that?
A B L E and call.
Okay, yeah, that’s, that’s really helpful because that and your example, your excerpt from.
Atomic habits is a really good example because I think that’s actually what I’m doing wrong is setting myself up for failure in rushing to as done and looking for organic not finding it.
Needing to eat because of a practice and an intermittent fasting and things.
So I do get to that point where I’m pretty hungry.
When I’ve fasted for quite a long time.
So I mean, and like kind of looking for food and a and a rush rather than like being prepared.
So it’s about being prepared.
Never, yeah, never buy food when you’re hungry.
Yeah, biggest mistake.
Yeah.
Yeah, always.
Yeah.
So.
Water, that’s the other thing that I’ve seen you talking about quite a lot.
Glass bottle water, is that the only way spring.
Glass spring water, no.
Glass bottle glass water is is better for you in my opinion.
Just because of the amount of micro plastics.
Like drinking out of this, this is, this is a, I normally don’t take it over the tap.
So by plastic bottle water.
I did have a metal one but had a, again, a plastic straw.
Is that, is that bad for you on the long term?
In my opinion, yes, I would, I would avoid plastic it.
If you can, anything is is when you buy one use bottles like glass bottles.
They’re, they’re actually cleaned with detergent before the water goes in.
So there’s either the detergents from cleaning the glass or the micro plastics or chemicals from plastic bottles.
So I actually have reverse osmosis filtered water.
And I use the aquatry.
Which is reverse osmosis and it takes all the impurities out.
It’s a spring clove Celtic sea salt in to give the minerals back into it.
Also the structure of water is significantly better if you have it in the glass bottle than in plastic.
And yeah, I have a, like a soda stream type thing over here.
So I soda stream it and remineralize it after being reverse osmosis.
I mean, we’re, we’re a huge percentage of our bodies are water.
It determines how well we detoxify and how our energy is transported.
Why would we drink the crap quality tap water that’s full of chemicals?
And even if people say, oh no, it’s not bad for you drinking tap water.
It is, it really is.
There’s plenty of studies and surveys and things around.
It always comes up as a debate when I talk about drinking like spring spring water that we can buy in glass bottle water.
And that, that always comes back at me is that tap water in Scotland is good.
But there’s that debate where it’s, I’ve heard your site.
It’s not it’s a product.
I mean, regardless of what people say, it might be better.
It might be better in Scotland.
But it doesn’t look good.
Yeah.
You know, I would say why would you risk it for the sake of a couple of hundred pounds on a water filter?
Why would you, why would you risk it?
I wouldn’t.
I don’t.
And it’s about minimizing risk everywhere.
You can just, just as same as you would do with your company.
You want to minimize risk.
Yeah.
Sometimes they calculated risk and that’s fine.
But calculated risk.
I mean, you don’t need to just buy a water filter.
And if you can’t afford to spend two or three hundred pounds on a reverse osmosis filter.
Then you should be really not putting your life into the company if it’s still not making money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So what is that filter just to fully understand because if I don’t understand, maybe other people don’t reverse osmosis water.
So it’s a process of filtering and purifying water, not just filtering.
Okay.
Then go through a specific membrane, which actually makes all the impurities out.
Yeah, it’s actually the best in my opinion.
There are other water filters and alkaline water and all these things.
But I don’t think any of that’s necessary.
I think really reverse osmosis is the gold standard.
As long as you re-minorize it in a pinch of Celtic sea salt, which gives you 78 to 82 trace elements minerals back into your water, which is what water is supposed to have because it’s supposed to come through streams through rocks and be naturally mineralized.
Of course, a foot of chemicals and toxins.
And again, if you’re not drinking, you know, they say you should have eight glasses of water a day.
Well, it really depends on your size and it depends on the quality of the water.
And it depends on the amount of minerals in the water and how much you’re peeing and.
Very other factors, but I mean, I drink at least one and a half waters a day, which is filtered purified mineralized.
At least.
And if it’s mineralized correctly, you’re only need to go pee five or six times in a day, but if you’re actually drinking low mineral water.
It’s not got enough minerals in it.
You’re end up peeing a lot more because your body actually, because you need some minerals to maintain or should have say retain water.
And when you’re dehydrated, you’re actually peeing out more water.
And you drink more water to get more minerals, but it’s although mineral water, you’re just drinking more water and not getting more minerals that your body’s craving.
And then you start adding in things like potassium, magnesium, and some of the other key minerals.
Then you’re just going to be peeing more and more and more and drinking more and more and more, which is the vicious cycle people get into.
And then as soon as you’re dehydrated by five percent, your performance mental performance can decline by up to 30%.
So, you know, it’s a it’s a big win for not a lot of money, especially if you’re running a company.
Yeah, okay. That makes a lot of sense.
And just in case I missed something, where do I do?
I don’t put tap water into this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tap water into the reverse osmosis machine and it comes out purified.
I mean, actually, I’ve got a thing on my Instagram on the IGTV tab of where they put Coca-Cola into the reverse osmosis machine and watch it come out as pure clean water.
So, wow.
Yeah, that’s so very, very good.
Okay. And now just moving on to you talked about the size of people and how people need different things.
I’ve read why we sleep and studied a bit about sleep, learned quite a lot from you as well.
I’ve got myself an order or a ring instead of a marriage ring. I got an order ring.
Just to make it a practical ring instead of a ring.
And my sleep score last night, for example, and probably quite on average, it isn’t actually that good is about 71.
So, just to give people context, an order ring tracks your sleep, your heart variability monitor.
So, it’s a bit further advanced than just a fit bit.
It tracks your readiness score, your heart variability.
And what that does is it combines your exercise from the previous day and your sleep and gives you a readiness score for how ready you are to perform in sports the next day.
But the date about the sleep is really useful on this ring and allows us to see what a sleep score is out of 100.
So, I got a 70, I think it is above 78. It’s a good, it’s good.
If it’s below 78, it says it’s okay. And then it gets lower and lower. It’s very bad.
So, yeah, that’s that’s how ordering tell us it’s good or bad. But obviously, you may beg the differ.
And it depends on your baseline. I mean, sleep should be the number one investment for anyone.
If you’re not investing in your health, you’re not investing in anything. It’s just ridiculous.
We sleep to reverse the damage that we’ve done to our body during the day and for our body to detoxify, which determines how we operate the next day.
You only have to go out for drinking drinking one night and have three hours sleep to know how badly can ruin you the next day.
And, you know, how you can’t even work or think straight.
And the problem is is when it’s 10% reduced, we don’t notice it.
So, my sleep scores are generally 88 to 95, maybe 96 on a good day.
And my readiness score is usually 85 to 95 for something around that.
That’s because if I don’t have sleep scores and readiness scores like that, then, you know, it’s just wasted time.
And I think for the sake of an hour, extra hour of preparing for sleep.
That pays off significantly for my day and how much I achieve.
So, obviously, the sleep score you’ve got sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep, light sleep, heart rate, resting heart rate, heart rate variability, respiratory rate, body temperature.
And obviously the readiness score works out from from all of these things.
But most people think I’m just going to go to bed early and I’ll have a better sleep score.
It’s not just about how you set yourself up through the day.
The moment you wake up from the from the moment you wake up determines how good our sleep is at the end of the day.
So, for instance, if you wake up, pick up your phone and have fake blue light in your eyes instead of full spectrum light with the infrared into your eyes before anything else in a dark room or whatever.
You know, that will reset your circadian rhythm and the light actually affects our hormones significantly.
So, you know, have fresh light, clean light into your eyes, not fake junk light.
Obviously, fresh air sleeping with your room with the window open and making sure that your oxygen levels are high and your carbon dioxide levels are low.
If there’s two of you sleeping in a room, sharing room carbon dioxide levels to be high, you’re not going to be repairing properly your brain fog would be higher the next day.
So, you know, right now with a baby.
Yeah, I mean, you should definitely have a window open or have some sort of ventilation going in there. It’s actually crazy. I mean, I’ve been carrying around the device and grab it.
So, it’s an air quality monitor. So, it checks the CO2 levels, carbon dioxide and the oxygen levels and gives it a score of 1 to 10.
When traveling on the plane, it’s usually 2 out of 10. So, it’s horrendous, super hot, carbon dioxide, super low oxygen. No wonder we’ll get hangovers or jet lagged from it.
Norwegian air rolled out cleaner technology by Boeing on their jets, which was the first airline to have it rolled out.
And what that does is it pulls in air from outside the plane and puts it in the plane and says recirculating the cabinet.
Okay, so the difference is when I was speaking to the air hostess about it. This is the last time I actually got from the state’s pre-COVID.
She is like, well, we don’t really get jet lagged as a result of the clean air.
And so, even clinics I go to in London, I go around with air quality monitor just for fun to test and, you know, their live stream.
And so, again, that’s another health performance. I mean, it’s the basics we need for our body, sleep, oxygen, water.
And most of us don’t even think about these things like when was the last time you got the window open in your office, anyone listening to this or anyone that he had purified the water and says crappy stuff.
We’re actually respected your sleep.
You know, professional footballers actually have a sleep chamber. And that is a room with fresh air, cool temperature, no light, no sounds, no nothing. It’s a sleep chamber.
We have a room for fun and a room for sleep. And that’s because they obviously want to perform at their best.
Yeah, yeah.
Entrepreneurs, you know, who often have, you know, 50, 100 jobs.
You know, people working for them and lots of livelihoods on the line don’t necessarily respect this thing in their performance athlete.
So, yeah, and this also tells you humidity sound level and various other things, but it’s really interesting carrying it around the world and measuring the different context of how we were bad it is.
And so I like, if I start yawning, for instance, I’ll be like, oh, it’s going to be bad. So obviously look on the app.
Right.
And, and the air quality is very poor. And so I open up the window, get fresh air through.
And obviously, mental clarity comes back even better and, and I stop yawning.
Yes.
I mean, here it’s a six out of 10.
I’ve got the windows closed at the moment for the noise because I live in central London. I don’t be too nice.
Yeah, yeah.
And maybe I roomed up because that’s probably a problem a lot of people have.
And when they’re in bed, a train make will pass or a car make will pass. How do you get a room that was up?
I mean, to be honest, the trainer or car going past from time to time shouldn’t really affect our sleep that much.
And if, and if that sort of noise does affect people too much, then it’s often because they’re in fight or flight stage.
They’re too highly and they’re not relaxed enough.
And so they’re probably quite stressed in life, you know, people that are quite edgy and like, oh God, what’s that?
Or jump, you know, people that jump very easily, often because they’re, you know, they’re actually quite stressed.
But it’s not until they start relaxing, be stressing and meditating actually that they don’t become, become quite so respondent or they become more chilled out.
So they sleep better as a result because their body is not worried about a threat attacking them in the night.
So, I mean, obviously there’s caveats for that. If it’s super noisy and main road that’s going past with people who’ve eaten the horns or revving the engines to things.
Yeah, of course, but I mean, there are ways of getting ventilation into the house to make sure that there is coming in.
But I think, you know, while the amount of fresh air may be difficult to open up the window, also the carbon dioxide levels are important.
And you’re seeing here at 6669 for carbon dioxide levels, which is fine.
But when you start getting to 800 or 1000 something like that, it’s when you start getting brain fog 1200, 1500, it’s, you know, headache or migraine time.
Yeah.
People that wake with a with brain fog or feeling crap, you know, it’s really worth testing that.
And that’s called the Althos 8L TOS get out of us.
Okay.
200 pounds.
But it’s bloody awesome. I carry it everywhere with me. And they’re going to be at my summit, actually, in May.
Yeah. Okay.
The sleep thing. I bought six hours, 17 minutes sleep last night. I know that that’s not enough.
You naughty boy.
You better.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I just know when they’re enough in my opinion, regardless. But I mean, once you’re just out of interest,
let’s just have a look at your percentage REM and deep sleep.
What are they?
Oh, yeah, my brain.
That’s the, that’s one of the key ones I’m trying to increase.
For that last night’s sleep, I only got 31 minutes, eight percent.
Yeah, it counts horrendous. Yeah.
Yeah.
So total sleep six hours, 17 efficiency, 91% restfulness, pay attention.
It’s about half REM sleep below half eight percent deep sleep.
25% light latency.
10 minutes timing optimal.
Yeah. Okay. So that’s eight percent REM sleep.
Did you say in how much deep sleep?
Whenever 33.
What percentage is that 25?
25. Okay. So I mean, 20 and 20 is about average, roughly 20% REM and the rest remaining light.
I mean, my REM sleep last night was 30. The night before was 41.
I mean, my sleep time is actually, you know, last night, seven hours, 25.
The night before seven hour, 57, night before seven hours, 27.
I mean, my average is seven hours, 41 minutes, actually, these days.
And, you know, I mean, typically, you know, well above 90 most days.
So look at the next one, 88 and 90 last night as well.
But that’s just because I sent myself up.
And, you know, to succeed, not to fail.

Right. Friends, my dinner was 5 p.m. last night.
And then I was in for 10 and 30.
Yeah.
Because I have, I have studied like why we sleep, I have read sleep smarter.
I understand I have the knowledge, but I’m not doing it.
I’m not doing it fully.
And maybe that is like I have been.
And like you, the mistake you made in the past is,
prioritising business in some instances over sleep, which I know is a crazy,
bad idea.
So getting in late, probably.
Yeah, I was making all the mistakes last night, got in late.
Didn’t use my blue light blocking glasses when I was on my phone.
I, it, it, because I got in late, I didn’t have dinner.
So just, I guess it really actually, my, I had right now is just the preparation of each day.
And one of the things I’ve struggled, I think this is like anyone who’s at this stage,
I’m at who has the knowledge to understand the philosophy and not,
not actually being able to get the sleep score up to 90 from 70.
And get more hours sleep and eat healthier on a consistent basis.
That’s, that’s the hard part.
I think being consistent, when I’m learning all this, like I’ve studied some of Dave Asprey’s stuff as well,
becoming super human and things like that.
It seems some, some of the stuff, he’s, he’s like a radical and I think,
you almost have to become really obsessive around this stuff to really nail it in this world that we live in.
And also, if you’re, I’m talking about from my perspective as a, as an entrepreneur,
with a lot of ambitions and three children under age of four.
And that, that’s challenging to get it all right.
And so my, I guess like, I’m not asking a question, just kind of expressing that to see if you pick up anything you could maybe help with,
because I’m trying to get to that 90 on sleep, I’m trying to like hit the healthy eating,
get that I get, I’m good at, I’ve gotten doing a marathon, I’m, I’m very fit.
But I think I’m failing on the sort of the health optimization of nutrition and sleep.
So finding a way to keep it all and consistent over time, I think I’ve fall short sometimes.
I’m just about priorities.
And I don’t, I don’t have kids or a wife, I don’t need to prioritize anything over myself.
And no,
yeah, I’m not in the position to be able to answer from a place of knowledge other than what I’ve seen from colleagues or friends, such as my friend, Dr. Don, an interest.
Three kids, three kids, one of them, two, one of them, six, one of them, seven.
And, you know, he gets up at 4.35 o’clock, he does his workout, he gives the kids breakfast and takes him to school.
And he goes into his clinic and does surgeries three days a week.
Yeah.
And he works through to the end of the day and comes home and he’s a dad and a speaker and a surgeon.
And, you know, and skateboards at the weekend and all these things, he squeezes everything in, but he’s.
Okay, he’s, he’s, he’s a school.
Yeah, that person’s gia food inside the school.
Defend it with chilis, Mrs.
mal name has back to back, Mrs Malone, that’s kind of the age of half a year.
Oh, he did a really good job in three days, it’s just, it don’t even need kids or families.
So, I wanted to do better time 1, in this Um,
this program.
It’s family time.
And so the weekend, I mean, he’s strict with it.
And the same with the other guys that I know that are very successful too.
And opposed to always letting exceptions ruin their day.
And, you know, like, for instance, Dom’s even got a spare bedroom set up so that if he has got surgeries the next day.
And the kids come in obviously to wake him up during the night as they do.
You know, he has his room where they understand that there’s no disturb him.
So, you know, it’s about setting yourself up to succeed, not to fail.
Yeah.
So, you know, but I’m not one to talk about marriage and kids specifically,
because I’m being such a selfish dude.
Always focused on me and now I’m just starting to think about reproducing in the coming years.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, that’s, that’s really, it’s helpful to give you to hear these examples of other people you observe.
And the other thing is.
And maybe it’s me being a people pleaser.
It’s finding that balance of being like, I guess it’s like when I listen to things like what you post, Dave Asperer’s information about health is fitting in.
For me, like, being a human in, like, for example, you go to your grandson’s house and she makes you dinner.
And you’re looking at how much rapeseed oil is in it and whether you want to drink.
There’s cream in the potatoes and things like that where if there’s a balance of being sort of human times as well or being coming across as ignorant in the form of social aspect.
Have you ever had that problem or is that just me?
Yeah.
I used to, I used to, like, for instance, Mum would make gravy with corn flour on it.
And I just said, Mum, I’d love to have it, but I can’t.
She’s got corn flour.
It’s a no go for me.
And she said, okay, sorry to me.
We’re having again.
Done.
Yeah.
And, you know, and, you know, people don’t want you to have stuff that you don’t want to have.
You know, and then there’s also a point of sometimes you’ve got to let go and have the exceptions I said earlier on about the organic.
The thing is, if you’re always people pleasing, you’re not going to look after yourself.
This is just, you know, just, just, it’s absolutely horrendous hot dog that’s made up probably from 50 people.
We’ve got crappy glue in it.
Okay, Grant.
Yeah, I’ll have it just for you.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it’s about no offense.
Manning up and going, I ain’t having that.
And not people pleasing.
It’s about putting your own oxygen mask on first.
But there’s also the point of not being a douche and saying, now, Grant, I’m not going to eat that shit.
Yeah.
I mean, to be honest, it’s just about being being, you know, direct, but fair.
You know, I said, thank mum, but I’m not going to have it. It’s got corn flour and you know, you know, I don’t have that.
Okay, never happened again.
So it’s just priorities.
Do you want to plead other people more than you want to have your own health?
You know, I’ve been sort of rules around it.
And I have, I have got people to understand that I’m not, I’m different from like what they want to eat and that’s.
I ended up, ended up for a long time eating my own meals.
When like, because me and my wife have like, I’m studying all this stuff.
And she’s not as interested.
So it’s, it’s a dynamic where I’m eating.
I don’t want meals sometimes or a lot of the time.
I mean, this comes to setting itself up. I mean, for me, I’m lucky enough to be able to choose a partner that is into biohacking.
Yeah, yeah.
The poster having one that isn’t, but also you can grow together.
And somewhat important to you should become important to her and vice versa.
Yeah, yeah.
And, you know, that’s also a love language.
So I think there’s an element of that and teaching people why it’s important to you.
I think Daddy can’t provide if he’s not well and he gets sick when he eats XYZ.
Can we please?
You know, your wife would like to please you, I think so.
I think there’s an element of that and that comes down to communication.
Yeah.
And steadily ground.
So, so there is, there is that as well.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think it’s a real problem.
I thought I would address that and bring that up here because I think other people struggle with that as well.
Yeah.
My friends is when I stop drinking and I do drink to probably two, three times a year.
And if I do it’s gin and tonic or gin and sparkly and water or negroni because it’s got lots of bitters in it.
But it’s very rare and it’s like going out for drinking with people.
I can still have fun without people like that’s boring if you don’t drink.
No, no, no, I can just give you my state accordingly.
And it’s like to start with it is quite hard saying no.
And you know, if you’ve got the cake in front of you, it’s quite hard not to eat it.
But then eventually it’s like naturally I’m proud of being stronger than these guys that just haven’t.
And then feel crap for it.
So it’s an element of where, you know, don’t put the bread on the table if you don’t want to eat it.
And if a waitress puts the bread on the table, tell her to take it away immediately before he starts snacking because it’s very easy.
It’s very, very rewarding.
Yeah.
Food to eat.
Same with alcohol and things like that.
It’s just a matter of standing you around and.
Yeah.
You know, for me, I’m very lucky because I had a gun to my head almost.
It’s like Tim, your body’s falling apart.
You’ve been really not.
And if you eat, you know, XYZ chocolate cake or whatever, you will be ill.
Yeah.
You’ll have to wake up with a migraine and you won’t be able to operate for a couple of days.
It’s that bad.
So I had.
Are you affected that badly when you eat things like that?
I used to be.
I used to be.
Okay.
But the point is is that I had that binary.
Do it or don’t.
It wasn’t.
You know, I was.
Okay.
You know, with that understanding that this is who you feel.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I got.
I got used to the extreme and now it’s easy.
And some people say, oh, this drink doesn’t taste too good.
So I went to an event a couple of weeks ago and they said, ah, that drink is a bit too green juice and horrible.
So I do know what I’ve done a month long, Greece.
Green juice.
Diet, which is just vegetables.
No fruit or anything.
It’s a walk in the park for me.
Because I’m so extreme.
The extreme.
Yeah.
Is he.
This is saying with, you know, cutting everything out with zero tolerance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that’s why I relate with you and the people like they’ve asked because I do do things in like I don’t like to do things and half measures.
I like to do it properly and.
And just like I think the more I listen to people like you and anyone that talks about biohacking or health optimization.
And the more I listen to that, the more I start to agree with the like the idea that look after your health.
It’s everything.
So it really helps.
I understand we’re running low on time.
But yeah, it helps.
To.
It’s almost a reminder.
And it’s like I’m not fully embraced it because I keep falling back into old habits where I’ll maybe eat some bread.
And even though I know it’s not that good, but it tastes nice.
And I’m still growing out of old ways.
And I’ve got a lot of tools back into that.
And going out to restaurants as well as another part of that idea of what I mean when I’m like balancing that exception.
I like to go out for dinner, but I find it where I stay quite difficult to find anywhere that’s that’s healthy.
I mean, do your research beforehand.
That’s it.
I mean, like yesterday I went to a place called Meet People in Angel.
And it’s all grass feds.
Lovely meat.
Right.
So amazing.
And my memory of stuff.
I took with it.
Wow, it’s amazing.
It’s grass feds.
I know.
And it’s up specifically or you know, various other things.
It’s about having your set list of things and being prepared.
And then it becomes very easy.
Yeah.
I mean, obviously I don’t have a family to feed as well.
So I don’t have to worry about grass feds.
I mean, like, if I have a feeding box it stays beasts times four
it’s usually me and a friend or me and a colleague.
But.
But.
It’s slightly different.
At the same time it’s about checking yourself up to succeed not to fail.
I feel like most of these things.
You can do that.
Yeah.
I mean, the other thing you dislike you say with the bread.
I have a zero tolerance for it.
Zero.

I like.
Actually, I would let it creep in.

sometimes I have it.
Sometimes this week.
Yeah.
Oh, I’m like, I do not do it.
That’s it.
It’s gone.
So yesterday when we went out for dinner they brought bread and butter
to the table.
So I’ll keep the butter.
I hate that.
And she looked at me rather strange.
But it’s good.
And take the bread away immediately.
Please.
Okay.
So I have a zero tolerance for.
Yeah.
Unless you have this approach, you know.
It’s like, it’s like saying I’m not a cheater.
Well, most of the time, you know, if you get an opportunity,
you know, if you might take it.
You say, I never cheat.
This is who I am.
I’m never going to.
It’s an identity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think this is where people fall off.
It’s like people that are going to the gym every single day at six
a.m. until seven thirty every single day no matter what.
It’s because they know that when they don’t do it for a day or two,
then they fall off the wagon and they don’t end up going.
So they need to be extreme.
I mean, there is an element where it becomes stupid when you’re like,
actually, you’re naked.
You haven’t slept well.
You’ve been drinking the night before and you still go into the gym.
That’s just stupid.
Yeah.
Yeah.
When it’s to have that rule and only have a very rare exception.
Is key to winning.
And that’s it.
I’ll have to succeed not to fail.
Okay.
Quick final question.
Around your, your following.
And how, how did you, how did you build up?
Um,
How did you build up to a hundred and what was it?
112,000 followers on Instagram and what, what, what do you.
What, what was the early stage of success in that?
It’s just been consistent.
You know, a trip of water can damage concrete.
Uh, a hose pipe for a minute can’t.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s just constant posting of.
Yeah.
I’m telling that I.
Have often be post.
Every single day.
Sometimes I used to do it twice a day at one point,
because the more you post, the more you seem to grow.
Um,
consistently one post a day is good for me.
Yeah.
Well, research topics and popular topics and making sure
that the wording and the imagery is done.
It’s just been consistent.
Yeah.
And also always giving actionable takeaways opposed to,
you know, giving advice without any actionable takeaways,
which is, I think it’s a lot of people do.
It’s like, if you do this, you will get this.
Um,
and that tends to work very well.
So yeah, that’s why it’s grown.
Yeah.
I’m growing pretty much 10% month from month to the moment.
Yeah.
Okay.
That’s brilliant.
Okay. Well, I think that’s as run out of time.
So that’s a lot for answering all these questions.
And from other people, so let’s try to get through of them.
No worries, no worries at all.
Thanks.
Thanks a lot for that.
That’s been really helpful for me.
And I hope that it’s been helpful for everyone watching and listening.
Yeah.
And if anyone wants to follow it and keep up to date with my content,
it’s Tim Bihacca on Instagram.
And the Health Optimization Summit is happening May 28th and 29th in London.
And the website is HealthOptimizationSummit.com.

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“When You Do More Than You’re Paid to Do, You Will Eventually Be Paid More For What You Do.” – Zig Ziglar

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In this video I share my key takeaways I got from the Super Genius Life 4 day workshop by Ryan Pinnick held in Kensington, London.

This workshop was about tapping into our genius, our true greatness that lies within us while neutralising our ego which is all the thoughts, feelings and belief systems that hold us back in life and in our careers.

What is Genius?

Genius is our unique and creative abilities we’re all born with but only use on one off occasions.

Genius is our inner-child, our intuition (the whispers) uninfluenced by knowledge and rational thinking and this workshop showed us the tools to clear the clouds of the ego and tap into it more often.

Takeaway #1: Tension

We need tension in our life’s to tap into our genius.

When you’re back is against the wall, your mind gets creative because we have to ask our genius for answers to our situations that’s how we sometimes amaze ourselves in times of tension, fear and stress.

Takeaway #2: Visioning

I’ve done some visioning and goal setting exercises in the past but nothing like this.

Ryan Pinnick mentioned we should read and mediate on our future visions such as our 6 month, 1 year, 3 year, 5 year and 10 year goals, every day and we should also do a visioning and goal setting exercise every quarter to add or refine our visions.

This was more intense and regular than I have been doing visioning at present but I’ll certainly be adapting this technique to etch my positive future visions into my sub-conscious mind even more so that my mind is focused on the right thoughts then creates the right boldly actions towards the vision.

One of the exercises was to do a deep meditation which took about 20mins then, in our calm, cloud-free state we tapped into our genius and wrote down everything that came to mind from our visions for 30 full minutes where I ended up with a lot more goals than I’ve ever written down before, with 6 A4 sheets full of paper with my goals on them.

I hope you enjoy the video. If you enjoyed any specific lesson, please like, share and leave a comment below about what you learned.

If you found this video helpful, please leave a comment, LIKE and subscribe. For more digital marketing tips and advice, visit: http://onlinemarketingconsultant.co.uk

In this episode of Ben’s Business Podcast I shared the importance of collecting and telling stories of transformation to display on your website / marketing.

These videos will be proof of real people talking about your product or service to give prospects the confidence that you have the authority and ability to help them.

Social proof such as video testimonials is also a great way to promote your business without bragging so much that you step into the role of the hero rather than the guide.

Also covered in this video:

1) The Challenge Of Getting Good Testimonials:
– Why text testimonials can’t ever build the same amount of trust that video testimonials can.
– Unless guided, our customers don’t know what to talk about and end up not telling a story of transformation and about the specific results.
– Not all your customers can articulate or communicate like a world class marketer or salesman to help sell your products.
– The last challenge is that most of our customers are too busy to take time out and give us a testimonial.

2) Asking The Right Questions:
– I share some of the key questions we should be asking to get the best response for a testimonial video.
– Do a Q and A interview with happy customers using this list of thought out questions.

3) Using these stories of Transformation To Sell For You:
– Adding video link in a sales email with quotations.
– Embed at least 3 of these video testimonials on your website.
– Include these video testimonials on your sales presentations.

If you found this video helpful, please leave a comment, LIKE and subscribe. For more digital marketing tips and advice, visit: http://onlinemarketingconsultant.co.uk

In Ben’s Business Podcast episode #36 I do a mini book review and share one of my key takeaways from the New York Times Best Selling business book “Building a Story Brand” by Donald Miller.

The key takeaway was focusing on the importance of having an obvious Call To Action (CTA) on your website.

Covering:
1) What is a call to action?
– Asking someone to take an action.
– Direct Vs Transitional calls to action.

2) Stop Hiding your Buy Now Button
– Noise on your site kills sales.
– Call to action buttons need to stand out.
– “People don’t read websites, they scan them”

3) Repetition of your Call To Actions 7x
– A person has read or hear something several times before they process information.

If you found this video helpful, please leave a comment, LIKE and subscribe. For more digital marketing tips and advice, visit: http://onlinemarketingconsultant.co.uk

Learn how to grow the volume and quality of you network with interview based podcasts and Facebook Live interviews.

In this episode we cover:

– The benefits of starting your own podcast.

– Building deeper meaningful relationships online with interview based podcasts and Facebook Live.

– Why having a community of like-minded people is needed as an entrepreneur.

– How to surround yourself with people who pull you up.

In this one I, Ben Laing, was actually being interviewed by Patrick Long a videographer and entrepreneur on his live interview show “MR FATZ TV”.

If you found this video helpful, please leave a comment, LIKE and subscribe. For more digital marketing tips and advice, visit: http://onlinemarketingconsultant.co.uk

In this episode of Ben’s Business Podcast I interviewed Dillon Mysliwiec on the topic of re-wiring your mind for success.

Topics covered:

– The lessons in this turn-around story of Dillon’s
– Breaking down the mindset and psychology behind losing so much weight, getting out of debt and progressing his lift in such a big way.
– The Ego and it’s uses
– Sub-conscious
– Auto-suggestion (from Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill).
– Habits
– Books, books, book
– and much more

I knew Dillon from being on a very similar personal development journey via books. We both stuck up the books we were reading on Instagram each week probably found each other through a #businessbook hashtag.

I found Dillon’s story so fascinating because it really sounds a lot like my own. Dillon hated having a boss and actually decided to do something about it. He started restructuring his life by studying, reading, taking courses and he eventually got paid-off at his job just at the time he was ready to take the leap into entrepreneurship and his first venture which is an digital marketing service.

If you found this video helpful, please leave a comment, LIKE and subscribe. For more digital marketing tips and advice, visit: http://onlinemarketingconsultant.co.uk