Latest / The Property Entrepreneurs Podcast with Alasdair Cunningham / I Built a £500k Business That Was Just a Rope Round My Neck

Transcript

I Built a £500k Business That Was Just a Rope Round My Neck · The Property Entrepreneurs Podcast with Alasdair Cunningham

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Prophet Product Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Bob and I am with 625 photos on the 700 reviews I can show you the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're looking to build a frog business, we'll be coming to you every single day at 7am with strategies, insights, and techniques at work today.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you're following us, we're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's crack on it and let's build your business.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the Probably Entrepreneurs Podcast with Alistair Cunningham and welcome to the inaugural number one show.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to basically talk to you and I want to make this whole podcast every single day.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do is I want to be coming to you every single day for around 10 minutes, and I want to be that daily entrepreneurial advice, entrepreneurial motivation, entrepreneurial drive that you need to kick yourself out of bed to get on with business and actually know that you're not alone in this world because you know property and entrepreneurship is a diff difficult space.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's not something that we should take lightly.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: What you're trying to do is you're trying to achieve something that probably nobody else in your circle, especially your immediate family or your close circle, have done.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's really important to have an outlet where you can get, you know, just 10 minutes of real life talk from a real life entrepreneur in the real world.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And before we get into this, for those that don't know me, my name is Alastair Cunningham.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've closed on over 625 property deals to date.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what do I mean by that?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's what I mean: I mean I've worked with property deals all across the UK and investors from all across the world, and I've monetized nearly 625 property deals.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that means I've either bought them, I've either flipped them, I've either joint ventured with them, or I've sold them leads to other investors and I've just received a sourcing or a finder's fee for being involved in that transaction.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I've done over 625 property deals.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I can back that up by proof, by bank statements.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm probably one of the few people in the UK that can actually do that and confirm that.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people make that claim, but they can't actually back it up.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to share bank statements with anybody that wishes to come and see me at one of my events.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, entrepreneurship in property is very different to investing in property.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I got started was, you know, I used to fix buses and coaches for a living.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so my backstory is I left school, went to work, was told by my parents to, you know, get a trade.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you get a trade, you'll have a job for life.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Having a job for life is great, but it does mean you've got a job for life, you're exchanging your time for money.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I decided I didn't necessarily want to do that.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to build a business because to me, a business meant you could live life on your terms, create freedom, have success, dictate what happens on your day and not have it dictated to you by a boss, by a um, you know, a customer or by just somebody else that takes control.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: So originally I started out by learning how to be a bus and coach mechanic.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I got a job, modern apprenticeship, at a company in Luton called CMARX Coaches, and I worked there from 1997 to around 2002, on and off, various different companies, okay.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Around the early 2000s was when I started getting itchy feet.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is I was starting to feel the pain of being on shift.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, working various different shifts, uh 5 a.m.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: till 2 p.m., 2 p.m.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: till 11 p.m., 8 till 9, all that sort of stuff.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, working shifts throughout the day, uh on call throughout the weekends, realizing that actually, look, don't get me wrong, I loved my job, I really did.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But it was very demanding, long hours.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was always working, I didn't have a life, and I started to realize that there's got to be more to life than this.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And there's got to be more than going to a desk every day, there's got to be more than going to a workshop every day, there's got to be more than getting in your van every day and going to fix plumbing pipes every single day.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, there's got to be more to that.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: My income shouldn't be dictated to me by somebody else, and it shouldn't be dictated to me by how many hours I work in a week.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I was slowly starting to come to that realization, and that's what led me into starting my first business.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, 2004, I decided enough's enough.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: I need to start my own business.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I I quit the bus and coach industry as an employee, and I started in the bus and coach industry as a boss, and I thought I'd fucking made it.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna lie, I'm not gonna sit here and say I didn't.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was 23 to 24 years old, and I thought I was winning at life.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Completely dominating, you know, 23, 24 year old founder of an entrepreneur, uh, founder entrepreneur of a bus and coach business.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And how wrong was I?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is I went into it completely blind.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: I went into it with no real plan, no skill set of sales and marketing or running a business.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was a grease monkey, I was a bus and coach mechanic, and me suddenly running a business was a bit of a nightmare, I'm not gonna lie.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, sales were slow, marketing was shit.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was relying on word of mouth, and even that was, you know, not great.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so long story short, is uh I run that business for uh a number of years um before I started to actually see any real success.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, what do I mean by real success?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I remember the first time I hit six figures.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's six figures in sales.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It took me about two years to get to six figures, you know, turning over 10 grand a month on average, roughly, obviously.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that's sales, that's not profit.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And in the early days, I I really prioritized turnover as opposed to profit.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've got to understand, back in the early days when I started my bus and coach business, I didn't have any systems, I didn't have any processes, I didn't have anything like that in place.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was literally winging it on a day-to-day basis.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what happens in the early days of business.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So as you start to build out your business, you're gonna realize that you're gonna have to wear lots of hats, you're gonna realise that things break constantly, and you're always sticking sticky plasters over systems and processes that are just thrown together, okay?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's normal.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Get used to it, lean into it, and accept it.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can you improve it?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, but you got to fuck it up before you can improve it, if that makes sense.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, fast forward a few years, I'd built that business up to doing an uh an annual turnover of around£500,000.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I eventually realized that look, I've got a machine here which is, you know, it's making 40 to 50k a month, but it's a fucking rope around my neck, expenses were ridiculously high, the cash flow was atrocious.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had staff members working for me, I had creeping debt, I had all sorts going on, and fundamentally I was still a bus mechanic.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't built any systems, I hadn't built any processes, I just had high expenses, a mediocre turnover, and the profit margin was leaving me with around£3,000 a month.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: The reality was I would make more if I was employed by stagecoach buses on a nine to five shift working 40 hours a week with no responsibility other than I've got to be at work on time.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the realization really hit.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It really hit me like Alistair, you've you've not built a business, you you've built a rope around your neck, you've built a a job, you've built something that actually is not scalable, is not systemized, there's no automations in place, there's no real marketing effort because I'd I'd built it on the back of you know, working with about two customers.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I I was making some big money from two people, and my business wasn't a business.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you why.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I actually lost a contract because the company, one of my big companies that I was working with, they were, I would say, 75% of my income.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: They had various different audits happening and they realized that they're spending a lot of money with me, and it would be cheaper for them to actually rent their own workshop and employ two or three mechanics.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what they did.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I still did a little bit of work for them, but not not loads.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up losing that customer and then losing 75% of my income.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when the realization hit.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a business, Alistair.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're you're you're winging it.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're you know, you're doing what most small business owners do.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You think because your your name's above the door, that you've made it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, that that wasn't the case.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd built a job that was solely dependent on me that I had responsibilities always small corporate, and if I didn't show up, I didn't get paid.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: If the bills didn't get paid, guess who's liable?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Me.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I had HMRC chasing me, I'd had Vatman chasing me, I had my suppliers chasing me, my customers weren't paying me, and it was a whole heap of problems and a whole heap of stress.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I I made the decision to um to offload that business and to sell uh the assets.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I had uh uh an employee at the time working for me, and he'd just gone through a divorce, and he he asked me if he could uh take over the business, and I said yeah.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we agreed uh a number.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and really all he was buying was the small customer base that I still had, the assets for the business.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we had like commercial vehicle lifting equipment, we had vehicles, we had a number of things going on.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I exited from that business and I I didn't make a lot of money, not at all.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I made a little bit of money that that made the decision you know, a tough decision, but uh, I think a wise decision.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I used that money to move on to venture number two.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, this podcast is gonna be every single day, it's gonna be stories, it's gonna be motivation, drive, how-to, it's gonna be whatever you need, whatever you are looking for right now to help you realize that number one, you're not alone.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, you are gonna fuck up, you are gonna make mistakes, you are gonna, you know, worry, stress, and have anxiety about your business and about you know what's what needs to happen in the business to keep it going.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And there'll there'll be days, trust me, when you're like, I've had enough of this fucking shit, you know, I'm gonna go and get a job.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I highly encourage you, don't do that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Save this podcast, watch it on repeat or listen to it on repeat, and you know, lean in to the support that I'm gonna give you through this podcast and to any other of our channels.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: And before you go today, what I want you to do is I want you to go into my Instagram, it's Alistair underscore Cunningham.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want you to uh I want you to follow it and I want you to go and comment on some of the videos and just tell me what you're struggling with right now and what you need help with.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to, you know, follow me and subscribe to me on YouTube.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Again, just put my name at Alistair Cunningham.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want you to go to my Facebook page, you know, comment, like and share.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to go onto my main website and you can get all sorts of access to free resources to help you grow your business.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, episode number one done.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's move on to episode number two and make sure you're liking this, make sure you're saving it, make sure you're downloading it, make sure you're turning on your notifications every single day at 7am, because that's when the new episodes are going to be on live.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Every day, seven days a week.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am not stopping every single day.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Property Entrepreneurs podcast with Alistair Cunningham in your inbox every single day, 7 pm, 7am, 7am.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, guys, see you tomorrow.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for today, folks.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to the Property Entrepreneurs podcast.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hope you got massive value from today's show.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Share it with a friend, make sure you're liking it, make sure you're following it so you get the notifications the next time the show comes out at 7am tomorrow morning.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Also, jump over onto Instagram and Facebook, drop us a comment, let us know what you thought of today's show.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Head over to Alistairum.com for the main website to get free resources, free training, and keep up to date with what's going on in our world.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, property is all about building systems.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Create a system, created success.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see tomorrow morning, 7 a.m.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: nice to shop.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now go out and make your business a success.