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Transcript

Jamie Roberts: The Money Taboo That Holds You Back · The BEYOND Podcast

• 0:00
  Unknown: What does success look like for you?
• 0:01
  Why are you doing this? And very few say because I want
• 0:05
  to make money. Why do some people make money
• 0:16
  while others play it safe and miss out?
• 0:19
  Jamie Roberts has spent a decade betting on people deciding who's
• 0:24
  worth backing. So if you are better like who's
• 0:28
  on that conveyor belt to constantly churn out that better
• 0:33
  way of working you've. Got to be careful about numbers
• 0:36
  not dictating our world. Yeah, I was going to.
• 0:38
  That's my next question for you. I do like nice stuff.
• 0:41
  It's probably the most important training course you can you can
• 0:45
  receive. He'll show you how investors
• 0:47
  really think, when to risk it, when to walk, and most
• 0:52
  importantly, how to back yourself.
• 0:55
  And I promise you, the number is always either
• 0:57
  5102030405060708090A-100. It's always very round ballpark.
• 1:06
  Yeah, yeah. People who have stuff going on
• 1:08
  outside of work. I'm significantly more stable.
• 1:11
  And I'm really flattered, honoured and delighted that
• 1:15
  you've seen this as a valuable session as well to come here to
• 1:18
  give you time. It's definitely been valuable
• 1:20
  for me. I know people are going to
• 1:21
  definitely find it interesting. So yeah.
• 1:23
  Thank you for having me. I was thinking of how to
• 1:30
  introduce you, and I think the best way for people to
• 1:33
  understand what you do is to go back to The Apprentice when all
• 1:38
  those cannon fodder, I'm going to call them cannon fodder
• 1:42
  candidates, all naive and optimistic.
• 1:45
  We're trying to get an investment for their business
• 1:49
  and the whole show of all those seasons is about them coming in
• 1:53
  and they present their business plans and then they get put
• 1:55
  through a series of tasks. And then he whistles out, you
• 1:59
  know who's good, who isn't every week.
• 2:01
  And then you left at the end with the one that gets £250,000
• 2:06
  for their business. 50% of the business goes to Lord Sugar, 50%
• 2:10
  stays. Let's talk about it.
• 2:14
  But basically it's, it's a fight for that investment.
• 2:18
  And, and the hope is, of course, that OK, by associating yourself
• 2:22
  then with Lord Sugar, you get all these other benefits, which
• 2:25
  turned out not always to be the case because sometimes when they
• 2:28
  hear I'm Lord Sugar's business partner, it's like, yeah.
• 2:30
  And but that's a different story.
• 2:32
  But basically, you're the Lord Sugar times 50 plus businesses.
• 2:39
  You do this all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:42
  But basically, you decide who gets the money.
• 2:45
  That is your role. Am I correct in in later terms.
• 2:48
  OK. So how would you describe
• 2:49
  yourself, you know, in more sort of the polished way?
• 2:52
  Yeah. So I, so I'm the manager,
• 2:55
  partner and chairman of investment committee for WI FM
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  Equity Partners. So we see about 1500
• 3:02
  opportunities a year for businesses and entrepreneurs
• 3:04
  looking for funding and we invest in about 1% of them.
• 3:10
  We do, it's about 1% and it's been 1%.
• 3:12
  I've been at WI FM for for 12 years and, and the person who
• 3:15
  trained me to do how I trained me to do what I do, Paul David,
• 3:19
  they and the two Davids one pool, they always just say to me
• 3:22
  we only ever convert 1 in 100 and the number's been one in 100
• 3:25
  since sort of private investing began in the UK.
• 3:28
  And I was pretty sceptical. And actually, I look back over
• 3:31
  the 12 years I've been at Wyfem and it is one in 100, it's still
• 3:34
  one in 100. So mean.
• 3:36
  So it's, it's really interesting because there's A, and I'm sure
• 3:39
  we'll talk about this, but it's not.
• 3:41
  So as a fund manager, we make our money by investing in
• 3:45
  businesses. So we are absolutely, if I could
• 3:47
  change that 1% to 2%, YFM would be twice as big.
• 3:52
  You'll need fewer people because we spend so much time looking at
• 3:55
  businesses and working with businesses that we then decide
• 3:58
  not to win, to invest in. So we, we actively want to do
• 4:02
  more. The reason we don't do more is
• 4:04
  either because the business isn't, isn't quite ready for
• 4:07
  the, for the investment. It's not quite what we do or we
• 4:11
  just can't agree commercial terms to invest in the business.
• 4:15
  So the selection criteria for I, I'm for entrepreneurs, I imagine
• 4:18
  they feel massively frustrated by people like me because they
• 4:21
  sit here and think you're only investing one in 100.
• 4:23
  That's mean the words you used. It's why don't you invest in
• 4:27
  more? And it's because we're investing
• 4:28
  other people's money. So we go out and raise funds
• 4:31
  from our investors and we tell them this is our our process for
• 4:35
  making investments and working with the companies and
• 4:37
  delivering value. So we have to go through this
• 4:39
  journey to decide which ones we think are going to work, not
• 4:42
  work, which are right for us, which fall within our criteria.
• 4:44
  OK. So just to be clear, it it looks
• 4:47
  like your default is basically no.
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  Someone walks through the door, very excited.
• 4:51
  It's no. Yeah, so, so it's a great that I
• 4:54
  can see that we, the way one of my colleagues talks about it is
• 4:58
  our job is finding 9999% of the time we're finding reasons to
• 5:02
  politely say it's not you, it's us politely declining because
• 5:08
  you work really hard to get people to come and talk about
• 5:09
  their businesses and you don't want to be rude.
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  So you try and give constructive feedback, but ultimately you are
• 5:14
  saying it's it's not for us and nobody really wants to hear
• 5:17
  that. The other 1% of the time we're
• 5:18
  saying we desperately want to invest in your business, please
• 5:21
  choose us. Please choose us.
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  Please choose us because there's lots of people like us.
• 5:25
  OK, but that's extremely right. And basically it hardly ever
• 5:27
  happened and and the default is no.
• 5:30
  So how do you make that decision?
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  Within seconds sometimes? I mean, how quickly?
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  So we do, we do quite a lot of work on conscious bias,
• 5:40
  unconscious bias. We try and avoid the making a
• 5:43
  snap judgement when somebody walks in the room, when somebody
• 5:47
  starts talking to us. You can, you can quite easily.
• 5:50
  If somebody feels like us, that's really easy to warm to
• 5:53
  them as they will naturally like people who look, sound and feel
• 5:57
  like us. But the reality is people who
• 5:59
  look, sound and feel like me as an investor probably aren't the
• 6:03
  right people to be running a business because they're running
• 6:06
  a trading business, operating business.
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  I'm running an investment business.
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  So we do work quite hard with the teams to, to get past that
• 6:13
  first try not to make a decision in the first half an hour of the
• 6:16
  meeting. It worked really hard.
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  We've got a, there's a process you go through which is to tell
• 6:21
  us your story, like get to the end of the story before you
• 6:23
  start making the, before you start making the decision in
• 6:26
  your head. I think the reality is sometimes
• 6:29
  people walk in the room and you will, you will go.
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  Actually, I just can't, not when they first walk in, but within a
• 6:35
  few minutes you can sit there and go.
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  Actually, this is going to feel quite difficult for us.
• 6:40
  OK, so if you are going to take someone's seriously, someone's
• 6:45
  business seriously, what's the first sign indication that they
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  will give you to make you think, which is obviously the one out
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  of 100? Yeah, so, So what?
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  So for me, I like to be quite prepared going into a meeting.
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  So whilst we, it sounds like we see a lot, so we see 1500
• 7:04
  opportunities a year. I've got 65 people that work
• 7:07
  within YFM. So if you let's say 38 weeks, 36
• 7:10
  weeks of the year, 46 weeks of the year that everybody works 40
• 7:13
  hours a week, the 65 people, they're not looking at a huge
• 7:17
  volume of, of opportunities. It's a big number as a firm, but
• 7:21
  individually it's not. So we quite like to people who
• 7:24
  share the information in advance so we can read it, think about
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  it. That's a, that's a tick for us
• 7:29
  because we want to go to the meeting and form.
• 7:31
  Yeah, because they're proud of what they're doing.
• 7:34
  Scratch our heads a bit with people who say, let let me talk
• 7:37
  to you about the business on the phone.
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  Cool was happy to do that and then I'll get in the room and
• 7:41
  I'll present it to you and then I'm a bit of a why wouldn't you
• 7:44
  send us just a bit more information in advance so I
• 7:47
  could do some proper thinking. So that's that's one thing I
• 7:50
  that's probably a personal bugbear I sort of thing I'm now
• 7:53
  going to turn up to that meeting.
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  I'm not going to be able to be that well informed.
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  It's a bit of a blind meeting. Of course, I think any yeah,
• 8:00
  preparation professionally, you want to be as prepared as you
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  can be so that you know what you're doing.
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  You put the information beforehand and then the meetings
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  was more meaningful because you're talking about critical
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  details and you know a deeper level instead of the surfacey,
• 8:14
  sort of almost fluffy gimmicky. And never forget.
• 8:17
  So we're selling to the company as well.
• 8:19
  So whilst we only invest in one in 100 that we see we have to
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  start work and meet like as soon as something comes through the
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  door, we're working quite hard to win it, even if we're going
• 8:28
  to decide we don't want to do it.
• 8:29
  Because if you don't, if you're not positive and upbeat at the
• 8:33
  beginning, it's quite hard for us to win them back.
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  So we go into everything absolutely with the mindset of
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  we want to win this opportunity. Because if we don't, if we, if
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  we sit there asking lots of difficult questions and being
• 8:45
  all aloof like people think investors are, they're not going
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  to warm to us as people. They're not going to want to
• 8:51
  take our money. Yeah.
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  So you go in there thinking, motivated to win this
• 8:56
  opportunity, but at the same time you know that only one in
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  100 are worth it and you know all the reasons why you wouldn't
• 9:02
  invest. And you've got them all too well
• 9:04
  in your mind, and you're trying not to be too negative.
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  So it's really interesting thing that because one in 100 work for
• 9:11
  us, it doesn't mean the 99 others won't work for somebody
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  else, but it's just the the bit of the journey that we do with
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  our two main strategies. It just means that quite a lot
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  of them don't fit with that. And and back to the how we how
• 9:25
  we present when we meet people the first time.
• 9:27
  If we look at the TV shows that people that people say to me,
• 9:32
  oh, what do you do? And when I sort of say, oh, what
• 9:34
  I did, I mean, I tend to sort of say, oh, I work for a bank or
• 9:37
  something because it's just easier than trying to explain it
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  or yeah. And then if you go a bit deeper
• 9:42
  and you explain it, people will automatically say, oh, like
• 9:44
  Dragons den or like The Apprentice apprentice.
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  Yeah. And I sort of go, yeah, yeah,
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  kind of. But if we behaved in that way to
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  companies coming into us, we wouldn't exist.
• 9:56
  No, because they bring they bring something different
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  through the process, right? They bring something different
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  to what we bring. They bring a profile and a
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  stuff, whereas we're sitting say actually we're professional
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  investors, we want to work with you on the journey.
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  That on average is sort of five to seven years.
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  So we're going on a long journey with them.
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  If we behaved in a obtuse way to them at the beginning, why would
• 10:16
  they want to? Why would they choose us?
• 10:19
  Yeah, true. I think Lord Sugar's really
• 10:21
  lucky, isn't he? He can get away with his.
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  Yeah, he they have platforms, they're very successful, they're
• 10:27
  very good. But yeah, I think the you don't
• 10:31
  go just go on those shows for the for the investment, the like
• 10:34
  people go, you've done it. People go on those shows because
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  there's it's a big platform that's profile I get to, I get
• 10:39
  to push my product. Do you think Dragons Den really
• 10:42
  is an 8 minute advert on prime time BBC television?
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  I mean, it's an awesome, it's an awesome opportunity for
• 10:47
  entrepreneurs to go and talk about their business.
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  It is. You definitely get the platform
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  to showcase yourself. You're still with, you know,
• 10:55
  many have continued with their businesses and many have gone
• 10:57
  very much into immediate direction and forgotten
• 10:59
  completely about that business plan that they once put on their
• 11:02
  table. But it's great for us.
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  So if I think when I was growing up, so I'm 43, so I grew up in,
• 11:08
  I was born in 1982. You had Luke Johnson of Pizza
• 11:11
  Express frame fame, did a little bit on TV about going into
• 11:15
  businesses, like walking the floor.
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  There was a chapter for him whose name I can't remember.
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  Then we had Wall Street film in the 80s, but that's like that
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  was like the the end of sort of business on TV.
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  So for now, whilst it sooner people didn't think about us
• 11:30
  like Dragon's Den because we're not quite behaviourally like
• 11:33
  that or or like The Apprentice, it's still better.
• 11:36
  People think business and entrepreneurship is much cooler
• 11:40
  today than it was when I was growing up and that is because
• 11:43
  of the TV shows. Now we succeed.
• 11:45
  We we celebrate more entrepreneurialism and business
• 11:49
  success than we ever have before.
• 11:51
  We do, we do. But like with The Apprentice,
• 11:54
  you'll get many that are very upbeat about their businesses,
• 11:58
  very confident, you know, and then you can see that as
• 12:03
  enthusiasm, but you can also see it as arrogance very often.
• 12:06
  And like not my businesses, you know.
• 12:07
  How much of that do you see and how do you sort of draw the the
• 12:10
  distinction between genuine confidence that you think, yeah,
• 12:13
  that that's a person with Becky and they know they really
• 12:15
  believe versus. Yeah, it, it's hard, isn't it?
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  If you think starting a business and you're doing this with the
• 12:20
  podcast, right, to start something from fresh, it's
• 12:23
  really hard. So you do have to have an
• 12:26
  element of self belief because lots of people will knock you
• 12:29
  down. So when I meet founders or or
• 12:32
  people running businesses, my starting point is this person is
• 12:37
  is probably a bit different to most people because they're
• 12:40
  taking so much risk to do what they're doing.
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  So you sort of have to forgive them for sometimes behaving
• 12:46
  forgive. Them I love.
• 12:47
  It, but you can't judge them. I think sometimes you sort of
• 12:50
  go, you do get founders who can come across.
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  If you met them in the pub and they talked about their business
• 12:57
  in that way in the pub, I'd probably sort of turn the other
• 12:59
  way and talk to somebody else. But actually, I do want people
• 13:02
  to come in and be really proud of what they've done and be
• 13:05
  quite, this is going to look great.
• 13:08
  The ones who come in and tell us that they've developed the next
• 13:12
  Google, Facebook, you know, whatever, it's great.
• 13:15
  But the chance, you know, that's such an infinite, infinite, like
• 13:18
  really small chance that they've done that.
• 13:20
  I struggle with that. But the, the people who come in
• 13:23
  and say, look, this is what I've got.
• 13:24
  This is what I've done. This is how I've done it.
• 13:26
  This is why it's going to be awesome over the next five
• 13:29
  years. I I love that.
• 13:30
  Yeah, I suppose as a, as a business owner as well, you've
• 13:32
  got to be careful who you're speaking to.
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  So if you're speaking to, you know, your mum in law or the
• 13:37
  next one AB, you're not going to go.
• 13:38
  This is why my business is going to really do well in five years
• 13:41
  and start going to numbers because they'll be like.
• 13:44
  You're. Crazy basically.
• 13:47
  So yeah, I suppose. But but to an investor, you
• 13:49
  really have to go into that. So when you look at personality
• 13:54
  drive and then you look at hard numbers and then you look at the
• 13:58
  actual concept, whether that concept has legs.
• 14:03
  But you were saying you have to understand the concept because
• 14:05
  it might be different industries that maybe you're not that
• 14:07
  familiar with in sectors. But but let's say out of those
• 14:10
  three sort of idea, whether it's feasible numbers and person,
• 14:15
  what do you think would take the most weight people?
• 14:19
  Oh, right. It's always, always, always
• 14:21
  people. So I would back, I would say
• 14:24
  we've done but it's why phones been investing for 43.
• 14:27
  It's been around for a long time and if we look back, we've we've
• 14:30
  done really well with great people with not great products
• 14:35
  and difficult markets. If you don't have great people
• 14:42
  or if you have people that just can't execute, it doesn't matter
• 14:44
  how great the product is or how great the market is, it's going
• 14:48
  to be really hard if they can't execute.
• 14:50
  So we don't run businesses. We back people to run their
• 14:53
  businesses. So we don't have nobody at
• 14:55
  Wi-Fi, Amazon operator, we we set on boards, we're strategic.
• 14:59
  We help with strategic direction, but we're not in
• 15:01
  there everyday running the business.
• 15:03
  So we've got to back them to run their business and.
• 15:06
  Deliver them OK, that, that's super interesting.
• 15:08
  You know, as a, a marketer, you know, I, I will see a lot of
• 15:12
  businesses and I'll, I have to understand how they work, how
• 15:16
  they run. I have to understand where they
• 15:17
  get their sales. You know what, what's their main
• 15:20
  source and across various industries.
• 15:24
  And you can sort of, you start to get an idea quite quickly
• 15:27
  whether some of their plans, you know, they want to launch
• 15:29
  something, you know, you kind of have an idea.
• 15:32
  And then, but you, you do get to see businesses from that
• 15:37
  financial angle. And sometimes the business owner
• 15:40
  as well. There might be, this is maybe
• 15:42
  for younger businesses, for newer businesses, they will come
• 15:46
  to you with an idea, but when it's too much like, oh, look at
• 15:50
  this idea can, can you basically make all of it happen?
• 15:54
  And then there's not the sort of strategic analysis, intelligence
• 15:59
  and drive that is definitely a worry to.
• 16:02
  Yeah, that's hard. Can you just do it?
• 16:04
  Yeah. So it comes back to that.
• 16:05
  We invest in one in 100 because some of them, some of the
• 16:08
  businesses we meet want more from us than we can give them.
• 16:11
  Yeah. So if we meet a business and we
• 16:13
  go think the team's really great, think the market's really
• 16:15
  great, think the product's really great, but they need
• 16:17
  somebody who's going to get really heavily involved, open
• 16:21
  doors, help them to help them with the next tech development
• 16:25
  and and do something more. We sort of say, well, that's not
• 16:28
  us. We can't do we really can't do
• 16:29
  that. We don't want you to take our
• 16:30
  money. It's.
• 16:31
  The open doors thing, so the, the most common thing for the
• 16:34
  younger ones, the raw ones, they come in and go look, I've got
• 16:37
  this really good idea. I've got this website.
• 16:38
  That's right. Can you just go and open doors?
• 16:41
  Go get me some sales please. Yeah, that we get that a lot.
• 16:45
  You get that a lot. What does the net one look like?
• 16:47
  One of the questions we get is can we sell to the other WI FM
• 16:51
  portfolio companies? So we've got 56 portfolio
• 16:54
  companies and they will, not all of them, but most businesses we
• 16:57
  meet will say, oh, we'd love the opportunity to go and pitch to
• 17:00
  your portfolio companies to which I say, yeah, that's
• 17:02
  brilliant. But if we invest in you, do you
• 17:04
  want to hear from the other 55 trying to sell their products to
• 17:08
  you because because they don't. So we'll absolutely be helpful.
• 17:13
  If so, often portfolio company will come to us and say we've
• 17:18
  we've got this, we're targeting this company or or this person
• 17:21
  we want to sell to and we can see that on LinkedIn.
• 17:25
  You're connected to them or you're a second connection.
• 17:28
  What's that? Is there anything there that you
• 17:30
  can help us with? And absolutely, if we can help,
• 17:32
  of course we will and we're well networked.
• 17:34
  So we can do that. We will help provide.
• 17:39
  So a lot of our companies want to go into the US.
• 17:41
  We've got quite a lot of experience of backing businesses
• 17:43
  going to the US. So if somebody says we want to
• 17:45
  move in, we want to open up in the US.
• 17:47
  What can you do to help us? We sort of say, look, here are
• 17:49
  the 10 great non execs we know or advisors who will join your
• 17:53
  board or come into the business as a consultant and they'll help
• 17:56
  you look around corners. But it's not me, it's not it's
• 17:58
  not our team, it's not Y FM S who can do that.
• 18:01
  But we there's not many sectors. We don't know somebody that can
• 18:05
  go in and help, but as an operator rather than investor.
• 18:08
  And I do encourage people to think really hard about what
• 18:10
  they want. So do they want an investor
• 18:13
  who's there to put money into the business and help as much as
• 18:15
  they can or do they want to recruit an operator?
• 18:18
  So when somebody says to me can you open doors, I said, well, I
• 18:21
  can give you the money to recruit a sales director or a
• 18:24
  marketing director, but I can't go and do can't be selling for
• 18:27
  you. But sometimes it's, look, here's
• 18:30
  the idea. Can you just run my business for
• 18:33
  me and so tell me what to do at every stage and you know, yeah,
• 18:38
  that that's a tricky 1. Yeah, it's the can you bring,
• 18:42
  you probably get this more than we do, but can you bring your
• 18:45
  profile to my business? At which point you end up sort
• 18:48
  of saying, well, I, I, I assume I can give you, if I give you my
• 18:51
  profile, then I'm, I'm sort of investing quite a lot in your
• 18:54
  business because if your business doesn't do great, that
• 18:56
  impacts my, that impacts my profile.
• 18:58
  It's. A Co branding thing, Yeah.
• 19:00
  So I suppose you deal with risk. That is the emotion that you
• 19:06
  deal with all the time. And you probably define risk
• 19:10
  differently to the average person because you're exposed to
• 19:13
  it all the time. So how do you think about risk?
• 19:16
  Yeah. So risk reward, right.
• 19:20
  I believe risk reward is 100% balanced in a in a normal
• 19:24
  market. So sometimes credit crunch,
• 19:27
  everybody was overpricing risk and worrying about risk too
• 19:29
  much. And sort of post COVID when
• 19:32
  money was sort of free, people were under pricing risk.
• 19:34
  But if you look back over time, there is no reward without risk.
• 19:39
  So when we see, and that's not just for investors, that's for
• 19:42
  founders. We see people who have these
• 19:43
  massive exits and have done really, really well and people
• 19:46
  talk about the overnight success.
• 19:48
  That's ignoring the 10 years of risk they took to get to the
• 19:51
  overnight success. And I, so I for us it's all we
• 19:55
  try and quantify which is really difficult.
• 19:59
  How are we going to feel if this business gets sold for £500
• 20:04
  million in five years time? How much, what sort of return
• 20:09
  are we making on our money and how are we going to feel?
• 20:12
  So if we make, if the Business Today he's got a million or two
• 20:15
  of revenue and ten members of staff and it's going to and we
• 20:19
  think we sell it for 500 million and we make 10 times our money.
• 20:23
  Does that feel good for the risks we've taken?
• 20:26
  Because you could have got to visualize what's the business
• 20:28
  got to look like to sell for 500 million?
• 20:31
  What's going to happen from here to here?
• 20:33
  And if all that happens and we make 10 times the money, are we
• 20:35
  happy with that? Or are we saying that's not
• 20:38
  quite enough? And we try and think about it a
• 20:40
  bit like that rather than what's the day what, what are we
• 20:44
  investing on day one? It's more about when this goes
• 20:46
  really well, are we going to make enough money at the other
• 20:49
  end? So you can be nice.
• 20:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's a a red flag that will
• 20:56
  torch a deal pretty much straight away?
• 20:59
  Lying. Lying.
• 21:01
  Oh, that's a strong word, isn't it?
• 21:03
  Deliberately misrepresenting. Well, that is again, like The
• 21:06
  Apprentice candidates ACV, where it's like they there was one,
• 21:09
  which is really funny. I actually rewatched it the
• 21:11
  other day because I was doing some research for something and
• 21:14
  one of the candidates didn't know the differences between,
• 21:16
  you know, gross profit and all this just basic terms, didn't
• 21:20
  understand. And then basically gave the
• 21:23
  wrong impression of how much money the business was making
• 21:27
  and a lack of knowledge. And all of it sort of came
• 21:29
  together in one awful encounter with Claude Litner, I think it
• 21:33
  was of. A test.
• 21:34
  I've seen that, yeah. Horrific.
• 21:35
  And he ended up with me because he that's his part of it, isn't
• 21:38
  it? Is to play that I'm the suit.
• 21:40
  You think Alan Sugar's bad cop? I'm.
• 21:42
  Actually. Claude Litner But so, so that's
• 21:45
  interesting because for us as investors, it comes back to this
• 21:47
  different style. I don't expect founders to know
• 21:52
  all of that stuff because they're not, they're not
• 21:55
  accountants, they're not investors, they're not bankers.
• 21:58
  They're running their business. So they've got no sales,
• 22:00
  marketing, tech, HR, they're doing everything.
• 22:04
  So they're in everything. So I, we never, we don't, we
• 22:07
  take a different approach. That's if we ask a question,
• 22:09
  they don't and the answer we're like, well, that's, that's cool.
• 22:12
  Of course you're a small business, you've got loads of
• 22:13
  people. It'd be great if you could come
• 22:14
  back to us with that. And if you don't know how to get
• 22:16
  that, then we can help you do that.
• 22:19
  And actually, if you've if you're on, if it's a numbers
• 22:23
  numbery question, then you're probably using one of half a
• 22:26
  dozen software tools. We've got people at Wife M that
• 22:29
  we can just just give them login access to your stuff and they
• 22:32
  can go in and do all that work and you don't have to.
• 22:35
  Yeah, they can answer those questions.
• 22:36
  It does get complicated. It does, and we talk so we don't
• 22:39
  judge. We don't.
• 22:40
  We don't consider not knowing something a red flag, somebody
• 22:45
  who deliberately misrepresents. So if they say I've got 50
• 22:49
  customers and I'm generating this much revenue and then we
• 22:53
  get into exclusivity and then when we start doing the work you
• 22:55
  realise they've got 15 customers, but 45 or 35 have
• 23:01
  said they really want to buy it. Yeah.
• 23:04
  All that that's quite difficult because it's I think about
• 23:07
  investing is it's like getting married.
• 23:10
  So I've been with my wife. It's like getting married.
• 23:12
  It's like getting married. No, I do.
• 23:13
  I do. I absolutely think it's like you
• 23:15
  married. Somebody said I was, I was at an
• 23:17
  event earlier this week and somebody said the average Angel.
• 23:22
  So Angel investing in the UK is really early stage investing.
• 23:25
  The average Angel investment in the UK is longer than the
• 23:28
  average marriage in America. I don't know if that fact's
• 23:31
  true, but I'm definitely going to take it as my own.
• 23:34
  So you meet, we meet a new, we meet a new opportunity.
• 23:38
  We're going to get to know them really well.
• 23:40
  And then at some point we're going to decide actually, this
• 23:42
  is we want to go on this journey together.
• 23:45
  And then we're going to invest some money in their business and
• 23:47
  they're going to give us some shares and then we're going to
• 23:48
  build the value together. And then at the end of it,
• 23:50
  hopefully there's some great event.
• 23:53
  If somebody behaves, and if we behave in a way that's
• 23:56
  unpleasant or they behave in a way that makes us nervous before
• 23:59
  we've transacted or got married, we sort of know what's gonna
• 24:03
  happen on the other side. Yeah.
• 24:05
  So we do think about it as a we're building a relationship,
• 24:09
  marriage and whatever you show, however we all behave now is a
• 24:11
  really good example to how we're gonna what.
• 24:13
  Happens if you get married and you want the divorce.
• 24:16
  It's tough. So it happens.
• 24:17
  It's really, yeah, it's tough. It's really tough.
• 24:20
  And ultimately you end up trying to say.
• 24:22
  The documentation includes lots of stuff to try and.
• 24:25
  Yeah, legal things and this protection in place, but it's
• 24:28
  going to be. Protection for everybody.
• 24:30
  Like every divorce, it's going to be yeah.
• 24:31
  It's going to be, it's not going to be helpful in creating value,
• 24:36
  but we've got lots of examples where the management team has
• 24:39
  said we don't want to do this anymore.
• 24:40
  It's really tiring running a business.
• 24:42
  So sometimes teams will say to us is we've been at this for
• 24:46
  five years now, we want to, to either want to stop work now,
• 24:50
  want to keep our equity, let's go and recruit our successors,
• 24:53
  brilliant. Let's go and do that together.
• 24:54
  So you can, if you're open, like all things, you get through the
• 24:58
  bumps in the road just by being open.
• 25:00
  The the ones that are difficult is if people aren't open.
• 25:05
  OK, what if they're a little bit too open and they're like too
• 25:08
  optimistic and they're overstretching their their their
• 25:10
  ambitions and that do you see that quite quickly?
• 25:12
  Do you spot that you know they're trying to stretch out
• 25:15
  what they they close plan and I. Think that's cool as long as
• 25:18
  it's fundable. Yeah.
• 25:19
  So we, so we get nervous about blind optimism, but people
• 25:23
  coming to us test and learn. We we think we really like the
• 25:26
  test and learn philosophy. So yeah.
• 25:28
  So I want to go into the US so somebody got a business in the
• 25:31
  UK turning over 20 million makes a couple of million profit.
• 25:34
  I want to go and open up in the US.
• 25:36
  If the plan is I want to open an office in, I don't know,
• 25:41
  Washington. And here's a really good reason
• 25:43
  why I'm Washington. I'm going to recruit 3 people.
• 25:45
  I don't really know what I'm going to do after I've recruited
• 25:47
  the three people, but I'm going to try that.
• 25:49
  That's really cool. That's, that's ambition.
• 25:51
  We'll try it. We're going to get some stuff
• 25:53
  wrong. We're going to get some stuff
• 25:54
  right. And if the more right we get,
• 25:57
  we'll recruit more people, we might open another office.
• 25:59
  The ones that the ones that would be nervous, orange flag I
• 26:05
  guess are the ones who say I've got 20 million of revenue in the
• 26:08
  UK and 100 people. I want 5 million investment
• 26:11
  because I'm going to go and recruit 300 people in the US
• 26:13
  that open 30. OK, yeah, I get it.
• 26:16
  Yeah, that's extreme. Yeah.
• 26:17
  And it doesn't, it doesn't mean they can't do it.
• 26:20
  It's just executionally quite tough.
• 26:22
  Yeah, maybe step your toes. Yeah, you'd be surprised how
• 26:26
  many times we see business plans and we say to people, right, so
• 26:29
  by the end of this year, you're going to have an extra 20 staff.
• 26:32
  So that means you've got to recruit 2 people a month on
• 26:35
  average. How many people do you have to
• 26:37
  meet to recruit to? And most people will know off
• 26:40
  the top of the head, you know, in their sector probably got to
• 26:43
  meet 5 to recruit to, right? So you've got to be interviewing
• 26:46
  10 people a month, every month for the next 12 months you can
• 26:49
  see and you start to play it back.
• 26:51
  Actually, maths can be useful. Yeah, yeah, it can be useful
• 26:55
  when you break it down like that.
• 26:57
  OK. So what's 1 type of risk that
• 27:01
  people should actually take more often, you know, business
• 27:04
  owners? It's quite, quite a general
• 27:06
  question, I guess, but you know. I think in the UKI think in the
• 27:11
  US there's people are more and this is going to come straight
• 27:14
  back at me, right, Because investors are exactly the same.
• 27:16
  I'm not sure we take enough risk in the UK generally.
• 27:20
  I don't think, I don't think we, when people say why doesn't the
• 27:24
  UK build asset companies like they did in the US, part of that
• 27:28
  is because the US is bigger. So it's multiple times bigger.
• 27:31
  So of course their, their exits are going to be multiple times
• 27:34
  bigger than ours. I think there is a, it's sort of
• 27:38
  quite British, isn't it, to not be out there.
• 27:42
  You'd be surprised how many one of the questions we asked really
• 27:45
  early first meeting is what does success look like for the
• 27:47
  founder? So what does success look like
• 27:49
  for you? Why are you doing this?
• 27:51
  And very few say because I want to make money.
• 27:54
  Yeah, Oh my gosh, this is such a.
• 27:56
  You've just hit something that, you know, this is definitely
• 27:59
  being on my mind and I, I interview a lot of people as
• 28:02
  part of this podcast and I, I get a lot of insights as well
• 28:05
  into, into, you know, with business owners and things like
• 28:07
  that. And there is, there is a thing
• 28:11
  about the UK being a little bit like that sort of humble.
• 28:16
  It's not nice to show off. Put that down.
• 28:19
  Don't be so, you know, out there, don't do the personal
• 28:23
  brand. Just, you know, that's not very
• 28:25
  English. Just maybe just calm down.
• 28:27
  You're putting yourself out there.
• 28:29
  Whereas, you know, I grew up in South Africa and actually that
• 28:33
  was a very entrepreneurial country.
• 28:34
  It was building sizzling sort of like the UAE.
• 28:36
  Now there's like an entrepreneurial, you know, like
• 28:40
  flame almost when you're going to the country, you almost feel
• 28:42
  it. It's like a sizzle in the
• 28:43
  streets. You can feel that business
• 28:46
  energy. And in America you feel the
• 28:48
  energy as well. And in the UK there is that.
• 28:51
  And The thing is we're, we also don't want to be too mean about
• 28:56
  the British, the way Brits run their businesses, because they
• 28:58
  are such grafters. And, you know, we get down and
• 29:00
  we don't talk a lot. We work, we get things done.
• 29:03
  We're very, you know, we move through stuff.
• 29:06
  But yes, we probably don't put ourselves on a stage enough.
• 29:10
  We probably don't ask for enough money.
• 29:12
  That includes from our clients. And we're not openly well open
• 29:17
  about money because it's rude to.
• 29:19
  Be in the British culture, we talk about it.
• 29:22
  We have phrases in the UK, don't we have old money, New money.
• 29:25
  It's really weird, isn't it? Like what?
• 29:26
  What does that? I don't know what that means.
• 29:27
  What does new money mean? Old, old money?
• 29:30
  We don't we the absolute bugbear for me that we will take a
• 29:37
  positive and the media, let's blame the media, right, because
• 29:40
  that's easy. The media make positives,
• 29:44
  negatives. And I was talking to a
• 29:45
  journalist from abroad sheet a couple of months ago and I said,
• 29:48
  why did you represent this successor?
• 29:52
  So when Dark Trace got sold, instead of the headline being
• 29:56
  Dark Trace gets sold for many billions of pounds to the US,
• 30:00
  the US investor is going to keep Dark Trace based in the UK
• 30:03
  female founder success story. We don't have enough of those.
• 30:05
  Like why aren't we making this like a really big thing?
• 30:08
  Why was the headline another UK business sells out too soon?
• 30:14
  And and the the journalist said to me, great question Jamie.
• 30:17
  So what happens is we print the the journalist and this lady had
• 30:21
  written the the article. So I had written the article.
• 30:24
  I submit it to the online editor and the online editor has
• 30:28
  control of to what the hook is on the website.
• 30:31
  And that article was online and had got very little click
• 30:35
  through rate by because it's mid morning.
• 30:39
  As soon as the the online editor changed that headline to British
• 30:42
  success story sells out, another British success story sells out
• 30:45
  too soon. The click rate was 40 times
• 30:48
  faster. So we blame the media, but of
• 30:50
  course, now the media just presents back to us what what
• 30:53
  we're conditioned to like. So I do, I think that
• 30:57
  Britishness is, is a bit self. We don't we we're always looking
• 31:02
  to knock. I think there's a habit if we
• 31:03
  knock people down rather than I think other countries are better
• 31:07
  at celebrating their success, celebrating their heroes
• 31:10
  continually. Whereas we I think as a as a
• 31:14
  culture can be a bit too quick to to point and poke.
• 31:18
  I've got someone actually coming on that that will, you know,
• 31:20
  guess that will talk about that, you know, the cultural shift and
• 31:24
  the mindset of of Brits and whether we celebrate wealthy
• 31:29
  people in this country, people that have achieved things or
• 31:31
  whether we go, oh, you're you're posh tough or you're yeah,
• 31:35
  you're rich. So you wouldn't, you know,
• 31:36
  you're not one of us. It's like, yeah, it is such a
• 31:41
  topic. You stop being allowed an
• 31:43
  opinion. So I'm lucky enough to know
• 31:45
  people who've done very well through through work, through
• 31:48
  network, and it's like they stop being allowed an opinion.
• 31:53
  It's because it becomes that it's all right for you.
• 31:56
  Yeah, it's all right for you. Yeah.
• 31:57
  And I do. I do worry that they, we should
• 32:01
  want those people to talk more. We should want those people to
• 32:04
  be out about more and being listened to and and dare I say
• 32:08
  being more involved around the country.
• 32:10
  But we sort of go the other way and say, well, you, you, what do
• 32:13
  you know? No, no.
• 32:14
  So, so This is why I love this podcast so much.
• 32:17
  And I love the fact that I can host the podcast because there's
• 32:21
  no room for that negative talk in this space.
• 32:24
  I just think that that all has to change.
• 32:26
  Let's get, you know, if we want to grow the economy of this
• 32:29
  country, we want to do well. We want to be positive.
• 32:31
  We want to have really good lives, you know, make it, you
• 32:35
  know, just enjoy our country, build wealth, engineer our lives
• 32:39
  so that they amazing. Then we need to start being
• 32:42
  positive. We need to start really, you
• 32:44
  know, rewarding ambition and hard work.
• 32:48
  And it doesn't matter where you know your your beginnings, the
• 32:52
  IT matters what work you've done, what skills you've brought
• 32:56
  in, how much heart you've put into it.
• 32:58
  That's what matters. And everything else is
• 33:01
  irrelevant really. I agree and it and actually we
• 33:05
  can all poke at the dangerous if we talk about politics, but it's
• 33:08
  very easy to blame the government and meet yourself.
• 33:10
  But actually the UK has the best tax advantages for individuals
• 33:14
  to invest in early stage businesses in the world.
• 33:17
  So SEISEIS venture capital trusts, R&D, tax credits,
• 33:21
  Innovate UK, all the regional venture growth funds, there is
• 33:24
  so much say government money, it's our money, isn't it?
• 33:28
  The government are giving back, but the, the government have all
• 33:31
  of these schemes out there to encourage people to invest in
• 33:35
  businesses that are growing. So we're really good at that.
• 33:37
  I think we're awesome at that bit.
• 33:39
  The bit that gets a business from start up to 20 million of
• 33:44
  revenue, the UK can't, there's nowhere else you'd be better off
• 33:48
  to do that financially. And and that's before you get to
• 33:50
  the legislative. The UK is a great place legally
• 33:53
  to build a business because the the courts and the law is so
• 33:57
  fair. But once you get to that 20
• 34:00
  million revenue, all of that support starts to disappear
• 34:05
  because we just don't have the same.
• 34:07
  It's like, that's enough success now.
• 34:09
  You shouldn't need help from the the government tax advantage
• 34:12
  schemes for people to invest in your business because you're big
• 34:15
  now. Because actually I sort of go,
• 34:16
  God, they need that. Well, that's what if they said
• 34:19
  you could keep accessing that money from that investor base
• 34:23
  until you're very big, That's how we'd end up with very big
• 34:26
  business. Oh yeah.
• 34:28
  I mean, that's just such practical, excellent advice that
• 34:31
  you can be giving to the government.
• 34:33
  They need to listen. They need to listen to people
• 34:35
  that know about these things and get proper advice.
• 34:37
  Sometimes you think, but where did you who, who advised you?
• 34:41
  Did anyone in the entrepreneurial world literally
• 34:44
  advise you? Have you had the conversation
• 34:45
  with business people or not? So it's, and it, so I, I talk to
• 34:51
  a local MPA tiny bit through somebody else I know.
• 34:54
  So I've been introduced to him and he, he genuinely Labour MP,
• 34:58
  he genuinely wants to learn and understand and you know, but
• 35:02
  he's coming from a really low base.
• 35:05
  So he's trying to learn. But he also, it's only, it's a
• 35:08
  four year term or something. Like how much, how much can you
• 35:10
  expect them to learn and be ready given everything else
• 35:13
  they've got to do? But yeah, I mean, that'd be my
• 35:15
  absolute message. We, we're really great at the
• 35:18
  early stage, but if we could just grow that a bit higher,
• 35:21
  start saying actually we support these businesses for much
• 35:23
  longer. OK, So the businesses that you
• 35:26
  do support, what separates like a nice business, you know,
• 35:29
  you're yeah, you're good. You know you've got some
• 35:31
  potential or whatever from one that you know like OK, you are
• 35:33
  really a business that can scale up massively in the next 5
• 35:37
  years. We've kind of touched on this
• 35:41
  but but. Just so market, I mean you
• 35:43
  ultimately come the amount of times that I so you get two
• 35:48
  types of opportunities. One is there's a massive market
• 35:52
  and our product is better or as good as and we're going to
• 35:57
  execute it really well and that's exciting.
• 36:00
  It's hard, isn't it's not impossible, but it's just a bit
• 36:02
  harder because you've got lots of people already supplying the
• 36:07
  solution. And if your product is X percent
• 36:11
  better, it's great. But you've got to convince
• 36:13
  somebody to go through the heartache of changing a piece of
• 36:16
  software that's really difficult so you can sit in front of it.
• 36:20
  If I've got a software product that's better than your software
• 36:22
  product and you're more established and I go to your
• 36:25
  customers and say please swap to mine because it's better.
• 36:29
  It's a big change. Just change, isn't it?
• 36:30
  Everyone's busy. Why would I?
• 36:31
  How much better is better? So if you're going into a market
• 36:34
  that's already well served, you've got to, it's got to be
• 36:37
  materially better, but they can still do really, really well.
• 36:41
  You just got to execute really, really well.
• 36:43
  So it comes back to the people being top notch.
• 36:46
  The other part of the other side of that is people who say there
• 36:50
  is a big market coming. There is a market here that's
• 36:53
  currently small, but it's absolutely exploding.
• 36:56
  So it's from a risk. Risk for us probably the risk is
• 37:02
  a bit higher because the market might stop growing.
• 37:05
  And if the market doesn't grow, you've got no chance.
• 37:07
  But the upside is bigger because there's what we call white
• 37:10
  space. There's more white space to go
• 37:12
  for because you're going to, you're going to somebody and
• 37:14
  saying you're currently doing something in a way that's not
• 37:17
  great. My solution makes that 100 times
• 37:20
  easier. Yeah.
• 37:22
  So we try and mix the 2, the portfolio.
• 37:24
  We don't do this too actively, but we try and create a mix of
• 37:27
  portfolios, the two different types that we're going after.
• 37:31
  Yeah. There's this so much in business
• 37:32
  and there's so many different angles to approach it from.
• 37:36
  But yes, if you've got that the better product, the better
• 37:40
  software, are you also able to communicate it easily to say
• 37:46
  that it's is there a road map to that?
• 37:48
  That's pretty obvious and then and proven as well that it
• 37:52
  translates, you know into a sale that customers are moving to us
• 37:58
  because we better. But I also love that whole
• 38:00
  execution thing that you were talking about.
• 38:05
  So if you are better like who's on that conveyor belt to
• 38:09
  constantly churn out that better way of working, you know, and
• 38:16
  how feasible is unscalable and and.
• 38:18
  What does the, what does the plan look like?
• 38:19
  So the, so if we're investing in a Business Today with a million
• 38:22
  of revenue, maybe there's 10 or 20 people in that business, but
• 38:26
  the founders probably still do, all the founder or founders are
• 38:29
  still doing a bit of everything. Well, that business is doing 30
• 38:33
  million of revenue. It's going to need team heads,
• 38:36
  it's going to, it's going to be management layers, it's going to
• 38:38
  well, who are you, who are you bringing?
• 38:39
  Who are you bringing through to do that?
• 38:41
  So we talk a lot about people planning organizational design
• 38:45
  when this business, we, I know we started this by saying we
• 38:48
  could be negative and start from no.
• 38:50
  But when we're saying that when this is when we go into an
• 38:53
  investment, one of the things we look at is in five years time
• 38:56
  when we're delivering 50 million of revenue, what's the plus the
• 39:00
  organogram. So how are we bridging from the
• 39:02
  organogram we've got today to the organogram in five years
• 39:04
  time? Because we've probably got to
• 39:06
  start bringing those people through now because they're
• 39:09
  going to need developing for Year 5 or they're going to need
• 39:11
  hiring. And that is a I'm not sure
• 39:14
  people think about that bit enough when they come to talk.
• 39:16
  Yeah. And they also don't think about
• 39:19
  when they do hire these people, OK.
• 39:21
  So we're looking at CVS, we're looking at whether people can do
• 39:23
  the job. You're bringing them in, you're
• 39:24
  growing, but then also you're thinking about culture or you're
• 39:27
  thinking about, of course, you'll get a feeling for a
• 39:30
  person in the interview. Hopefully there's a few
• 39:33
  interviews, but, but, but once they are on board, there's also
• 39:38
  there's, you know, I find I think we spoke about this even
• 39:41
  earlier that there has to be some process where well, as a,
• 39:44
  as a founder, you want the people working with you.
• 39:47
  You never want to lose touch with the way they working, you
• 39:51
  know, with your company culture, like with the absolute core
• 39:54
  fundamental behaviour traits that anyone in this business
• 39:57
  should have, you know, honesty and, you know, putting the
• 40:00
  client first, like actually doing it and not saying that
• 40:03
  they're doing it. And, and, and there should be a
• 40:06
  process to on board that and then to just touch in with that
• 40:10
  and ensure that you're not losing as the business grows,
• 40:14
  that you're getting in people that actually they're not right
• 40:16
  and they're starting to tank the business from within because
• 40:18
  cracks form. They'll communicate really badly
• 40:20
  with a client, or even worse, they won't communicate with a
• 40:22
  client. And they'll just sort of do
• 40:24
  their work and the client has no clue what's so all of that.
• 40:27
  There's so much throughout that growth that you then also have
• 40:31
  to think about and not lose sight of.
• 40:33
  Otherwise, you'll end up with something that you never
• 40:36
  intended. So real, real example for us is
• 40:39
  the, so when you were in that growth hacking phase, sort of
• 40:42
  pre us investing 10 to 20 people, probably it's not always
• 40:47
  the case now, but probably in one office or in one region and
• 40:52
  they will get together a couple of times a week.
• 40:55
  Building a culture is hard, but not too hard because you're all
• 41:00
  together. We're all in this together.
• 41:01
  We're going to take over the world.
• 41:03
  There's not a lot of HR processing and stuff.
• 41:06
  You do everything you need to do, but you're not worrying too
• 41:08
  much about layers. That is one type of
• 41:10
  organization. When you're 100 people, you've
• 41:14
  suddenly got different departments.
• 41:15
  You're probably not, you're probably not in the same
• 41:17
  building. Hopefully you are, but you might
• 41:19
  be on different floors, you might be on different teams and
• 41:21
  stuff. So one of the things we've seen,
• 41:23
  it was an investment I made a long time ago was and it went
• 41:26
  really well, really quickly. Brilliant.
• 41:27
  That's what a great investment. Aren't I smart?
• 41:30
  And then what we found was the the sales team was on boarding
• 41:35
  clients and clients were saying, oh, I'd love it if you had this
• 41:38
  functionality. Sales team were going, oh,
• 41:40
  brilliant. We'll put that in the, we'll put
• 41:42
  that in the tech stack because the tech team were somewhere,
• 41:45
  they were in a different part of the country.
• 41:46
  So what was happening, the sales team to get the sale, we'll just
• 41:49
  say, yeah, we'll do that. And then the tech stack was like
• 41:51
  this. And then customers were saying,
• 41:53
  I've, you know, 6-9 months in and I brought your product
• 41:56
  because you were going to change this.
• 41:57
  And the sales guys are then saying, yeah, sorry, the tech
• 41:59
  guys haven't done it. The tech guys are saying, but
• 42:01
  that was never in our road map. So why have you promised that
• 42:04
  one feature to that one customer?
• 42:06
  And it was, and it was fine. We had about a year where we had
• 42:09
  to tidy stuff up and get everything right.
• 42:11
  And we've exited that investment and it was great for everybody.
• 42:13
  But there was a even, we do this all the time, and even we just
• 42:17
  missed that moment where that business had scaled so quickly
• 42:20
  and had become desperate. And it was nobody's fault.
• 42:23
  Everyone was just really busy. And what we found was the new
• 42:26
  salespeople weren't quite brought into the culture of all
• 42:29
  together. The salespeople were brought
• 42:31
  into their target, their quota. I'm going to hit my quota.
• 42:34
  So they hit their quota and they're doing a great job and
• 42:37
  they're being celebrated. Tech team who were doing
• 42:39
  everything they'd agreed to do in the year were then being
• 42:42
  moaned up because churn was high, because customers were
• 42:44
  leaving, because they weren't getting the product they'd been
• 42:46
  sold. Yeah, interesting, Interesting.
• 42:50
  When I started, I joined a consulting company in my career,
• 42:54
  early days and an American one and the culture there, you know,
• 42:58
  the Accenture guys, all those big consulting companies, they
• 43:00
  bring consultants and contractors.
• 43:02
  But basically when you come into the tech IT stuff, you come in
• 43:06
  there, everyone gets a consulting skills one O 1
• 43:11
  course. It's a three day course and you
• 43:15
  get a communications course because they will not let you go
• 43:18
  near the client without that training, even though you're
• 43:20
  doing, you know, technical things when you're sitting
• 43:22
  behind the computer and doing your business analysts, let's
• 43:24
  say, they will not let you go near them until you've passed
• 43:28
  these things. And it's really cool because
• 43:30
  they'll teach you just they'll give examples of things that can
• 43:32
  happen, real life scenarios and they'll teach you in a, in a
• 43:35
  setting, you know, they'll set something up and they'll teach
• 43:38
  you how to behave and that it's fantastic because you would be
• 43:41
  surprised, you know, even now how to how to, what's the
• 43:44
  correct way to appear on a zoom? And it's quite rude when you
• 43:47
  have your camera off. But just little things, you
• 43:48
  know, little things that make so much difference to just bring.
• 43:51
  But yes, we're we're going into the so I.
• 43:53
  We. Meet here. 1012, we have 12
• 43:56
  investment managers if you like. So they're sort of people
• 43:58
  joining the the investing, most of them just joining the
• 44:01
  investment world for the first time.
• 44:03
  Most of them are accountants, unfortunately.
• 44:05
  Mostly been through a bit. Yeah.
• 44:07
  I'm not an accountant. You've got to be careful about
• 44:09
  numbers not dictating our world. Yeah, I was going on.
• 44:12
  That's my next question for you. My next question for you.
• 44:14
  Actually, we'll be fine when we bring people in is we do end up
• 44:17
  talking to them a lot about sort of two ears, one mouth.
• 44:20
  So like you've, you know, used them in that ratio.
• 44:22
  So you should be listening more than you're speaking always if
• 44:26
  you're are you listening to speak or listening to hear.
• 44:29
  So too often people are listening because they're
• 44:32
  waiting for a gap, because they want to show how smart they are.
• 44:34
  Actually just really engage with the pert Show your listening.
• 44:36
  Like just really engage. Not a creepy stairway.
• 44:39
  Just show you or actually do stuff that shows your shows your
• 44:43
  listening. I don't know where those skills
• 44:45
  are meant to be taught, but I don't.
• 44:47
  I suspect you were probably quite lucky to go through that
• 44:50
  sort of on boarding process early in your career.
• 44:53
  They really teach you, they really teach you.
• 44:55
  It's a fantastic training, fantastic literally how to speak
• 44:59
  to the client, you know, on how to stand, what to do with your
• 45:02
  hands, how to present, how to everything, what what to say,
• 45:05
  what not to say. What happens in a crisis, You
• 45:07
  know, something goes wrong. What do you do?
• 45:09
  Who do you, who do you not blame?
• 45:13
  All that kind of thing. And you think it's actually
• 45:15
  quite basic, but it's also not, because so many people get it
• 45:18
  wrong. Yeah, it's basically when you
• 45:19
  know it, like that's the that's the thing that there's one chap
• 45:23
  who works for us now and he's like you, you talk about all
• 45:25
  this stuff, Jamie, like it's really easy.
• 45:28
  But then I can't, I'm not an account addict really.
• 45:30
  I'm not great with, I'm OK, I'm good with numbers, but I'm not
• 45:32
  great with numbers. And I'll say to the the people
• 45:35
  in the team who are just great on Excel and can do all this
• 45:37
  stuff, I'll be like, oh, wow, I can't believe you can do that
• 45:40
  thing with you've built this thing and this Excel is getting
• 45:42
  all very exciting. I can't believe you can do that.
• 45:45
  And because that's a hard, tangible skill, I'm comfortable
• 45:49
  in saying that to them and teach me how to do that.
• 45:52
  Whereas when it's a softer skill, like engaging with
• 45:54
  people, people who haven't been taught it find it a bit harder
• 45:57
  to say, please can you just teach me how to engage with
• 46:00
  people in the way you engage with people?
• 46:02
  It's probably the most important training course you can, you can
• 46:06
  receive, I mean, if you're client facing, you know, because
• 46:09
  maybe the developers who will never, ever see the client
• 46:11
  really don't need it. But anyone in the business who's
• 46:14
  talking to a client, they need to know how to to run a meeting,
• 46:19
  all of that, how to behave, how to, what to say, what not to
• 46:21
  say, how to present information, everything.
• 46:24
  And there's just a huge kaleidoscope of things.
• 46:26
  If you change the word client to stakeholder and suddenly the IT
• 46:30
  guys and girls do need to know how to talk to people.
• 46:33
  Because in that example I gave earlier, if the the tech team
• 46:38
  had a maybe they did. This might go farther.
• 46:40
  It is, but if the tech team were more comfortable in
• 46:43
  communicating with the sales team, maybe the sales team would
• 46:45
  have realized sooner what they were, what they were getting
• 46:48
  wrong. So I do, we talk a lot about
• 46:51
  everybody's your customer. So if you need somebody in turn,
• 46:53
  the wife owns 65 people, so it's not massive, but we've offices
• 46:57
  all around the UK, so there is a bit of distance sometimes.
• 47:00
  You need to be talking to everybody.
• 47:02
  If you need somebody to do something for you, let's rely on
• 47:05
  the fact they want to do it for you rather than they should do
• 47:08
  it for you. That comes down to building a
• 47:10
  good relationship, talking to them, listening, all that stuff
• 47:12
  that you would use for your customers, but let's use it
• 47:15
  internally as well. Yeah, gosh, I could run away
• 47:18
  with about 400 other statements. I need to stick to the script
• 47:23
  because we're we're moving around a little bit.
• 47:26
  OK. So what is the the main
• 47:28
  differentiator for you from a lifestyle business and a
• 47:31
  business that's got the potential to be a proper
• 47:35
  business, not a lifestyle business basically?
• 47:37
  Yeah, lifestyle's a great, a great bucket, but it's really
• 47:44
  changed, hasn't it since COVID. So lifestyle before would be
• 47:48
  considered, I would say when I started my career in the city,
• 47:52
  lifestyle would have been considered lazy.
• 47:55
  Whereas now we have people who don't work very hard, We have
• 47:59
  lifestyle, we have work life balances, this whole bucket of
• 48:03
  stuff. And we also have the 24/7 on,
• 48:05
  which is terrible because we've all got our phones in our
• 48:08
  pockets all the time. So for me, lifestyle, if I meet
• 48:11
  founders who talk about their children, their families, going
• 48:16
  on holiday, picking the kids up from school, going to sports
• 48:19
  days, their hobbies, that's awesome because I need people to
• 48:22
  have something outside of work. People who have stuff going on
• 48:25
  outside of work are significantly more stable than
• 48:28
  people. Who stable?
• 48:29
  I like that word, absolutely. Significantly more stable than
• 48:32
  people who are working 150 hours a week.
• 48:35
  They're on it. You know, all the tech bro stuff
• 48:37
  that we get out of the US that that worries me so for.
• 48:41
  So I don't want people that do that.
• 48:42
  I don't want people coming in looking shattered and wired and
• 48:46
  chugging cans of Red Bull. You'd be surprised how many
• 48:47
  times that happens. But I, I also look for people
• 48:51
  who there is language that people will use around.
• 48:55
  So what does success look like for you if people start talking
• 48:58
  at 35 about wanting to retire in two or three years time and
• 49:02
  sitting on the beach. And I don't mind that as an
• 49:04
  aspiration, but I just want to check in that they're not
• 49:06
  already. Can I ask you a question about
• 49:09
  that? If the if you know you say that,
• 49:11
  do you expect someone to answer in monetary terms or can they
• 49:14
  answer with an ambition? So I, I want, I like people to
• 49:20
  talk about the ambition. So what does success look like?
• 49:22
  I want to build a good people say to me at WAFEN like, what
• 49:25
  does success look like? I've been there for 12 years.
• 49:28
  I became manager partner six months ago.
• 49:30
  So what does success look like for me now because I've been
• 49:33
  working my way up to the top job, if you like.
• 49:36
  What does success look like for me now?
• 49:37
  I want to build a great business that I'm really proud of and I
• 49:40
  love seeing all the, the people joining our business, not
• 49:43
  perhaps not knowing private equity and then smashing it,
• 49:45
  doing really well. That's the thing I'm most proud
• 49:47
  of. We took everybody away a couple
• 49:49
  of weeks ago. I love the fact we're in some
• 49:51
  decent restaurant and it's expensive and everyone's
• 49:53
  enjoying it. I get a lot of satisfaction from
• 49:55
  that. But I do also like providing
• 49:57
  security for my family. And I do like, I do like nice
• 50:01
  stuff. I do like, I like going on
• 50:04
  holiday with my children and I like my children doing things
• 50:07
  that I didn't do when I was growing up.
• 50:09
  So, and they're the sort of answers I really like.
• 50:13
  And at at some point, yeah, hopefully I've got a long time
• 50:16
  working. At some point I won't be
• 50:18
  working, somebody else will be running WI FM and I'll look at
• 50:20
  it from afar and be really proud that I was part of that journey.
• 50:24
  And hopefully some people will think I've done a good job.
• 50:27
  I like that chat from founders, the the founders who don't
• 50:30
  really have an answer to it. They're the ones where I go.
• 50:33
  Isn't that weird? Because you did set this up for
• 50:35
  a reason. You are going through this pain
• 50:38
  every day for a reason. So what is it?
• 50:41
  What is it? Yeah.
• 50:42
  Yeah, that would, it's odd that they wouldn't say it or maybe
• 50:45
  they're afraid that if they monetize it, it sets an
• 50:48
  expectation then they I, I don't, I don't.
• 50:50
  And there's also a fascinating, A fascinating fact that if you
• 50:53
  say to somebody what does success look like?
• 50:55
  And they talk it through and say, is making money success?
• 50:58
  And they'll always say, yeah, actually, I do want to make some
• 51:00
  money. And I promise you, the number is
• 51:02
  always either 51020304050, 60708090, a hundred.
• 51:08
  It's always very round ballpark, round ballpark numbers.
• 51:12
  Yeah, yeah. That'll do me, yeah.
• 51:15
  OK. So in terms of the founders that
• 51:18
  you connect with, that you feel have potential, what is the
• 51:21
  trait that many of them share? They're oh, I was going to say
• 51:28
  they're all a bit bonkers. That's a.
• 51:29
  Terrible thing, yeah, but mad? Yeah, they you.
• 51:31
  Said you want them to be stable. I do so.
• 51:33
  That, that, that's. Something we can we can throw in
• 51:36
  at it. I do what what's the common
• 51:39
  trait is there's a burning desire in them.
• 51:44
  There's something in them that makes puts them apart from most
• 51:48
  people. There is a thing that their
• 51:50
  passion, they show a passion. There's a thing in it when
• 51:53
  they're talking about it that they light up, they're
• 51:55
  absolutely like they're telling you their story and they're
• 51:58
  lighting up about it and they the the ones who are super
• 52:01
  polished. That's great, right?
• 52:02
  And a lot of founders of salespeople, marketers and
• 52:05
  stuff, so they can be super polished, but they will they
• 52:07
  will over talk. They'll the amount of times you
• 52:10
  you hear in a first meeting, God, sorry, I've gone a Segway
• 52:12
  there. Love it.
• 52:14
  I want you to go in a Segway. I want you to I want you to sort
• 52:17
  of drift off and dream and talk about things.
• 52:19
  They say, Oh God, no, sorry. Let me take you back to the
• 52:21
  point, because what that's showing me is your, your, your
• 52:24
  mouth or whatever your brain and your mouth have got so excited.
• 52:27
  You've got out of sync of what you prepared.
• 52:29
  I want to see that sort of excitement in.
• 52:32
  But at what point does that become a delusion as well?
• 52:36
  Actually there was a TikTok going around the other day which
• 52:38
  was about most really successful people are actually quite
• 52:44
  delusional or have been delusional about the success.
• 52:48
  I mean, I'd it delusional is quite a negative term, but yeah,
• 52:51
  where's the line between that and then tipping over to that
• 52:56
  it's slightly too much. I know so well you take it to
• 52:59
  it's absolute extremes. The lady in the US who started
• 53:03
  that blood testing business. Oh yes, yes, yes, she's got
• 53:06
  prison, right. And, and lots of people lost
• 53:08
  lots of money. It's a terrible story.
• 53:09
  But at what point do you go from faking it till you make it to
• 53:13
  fraud? And I don't know the, you know,
• 53:16
  I've read the book and it's, it's fascinating and it's
• 53:18
  presented in a way that presents her terribly and she's gone to
• 53:20
  prison and stuff. So let's assume she was on the
• 53:22
  bad end of it. But actually when you're a
• 53:24
  founder, you do have to sit there and go, I'm going to do
• 53:27
  this thing. I'm going to build this thing.
• 53:29
  I haven't got it yet, but I'm going to build this thing.
• 53:31
  So you do have to have some. I don't know what the word is.
• 53:35
  Chutzpah. Is that the word?
• 53:36
  I don't know. Like something about you that
• 53:38
  says actually, I'm going to present this, but there's levels
• 53:42
  of believe, isn't it? So you think about Elon Musk who
• 53:45
  says I'm going to go and conquer Mars and everyone goes, what an
• 53:50
  idiot. But then now he's got Stalink.
• 53:53
  He's got he's right. He puts more rockets in space
• 53:55
  than anybody else as well. He's yeah, he's a long way on
• 53:58
  that journey. So he's not.
• 54:00
  So I wouldn't meet a founder and say you're delusional.
• 54:04
  I'd meet a founder and say we're not you're we're not the right
• 54:07
  investor for you wanting to go and put colonize Mars.
• 54:11
  We're not that journey. If you were to come to us and
• 54:14
  say I think space travel is going to get space is going to
• 54:19
  become more and more interesting.
• 54:20
  So I'm developing this product that makes it easier for
• 54:25
  satellites to be smaller because you can put more satellites on a
• 54:27
  rocket and more rockets are going to go up.
• 54:29
  And I've made, I've got 15 customers already and we turn
• 54:32
  over £1,000,000 and I think we can probably get this to being
• 54:36
  200 customers and 300 million of revenue, but I'm going to need a
• 54:40
  lot of money to do it. That's where I sort of think
• 54:43
  about actually on the spectrum of ambition.
• 54:45
  That's what feels like AY? FM on on the road map.
• 54:48
  Yeah, that's a Y FM ambition versus the I want to go and
• 54:52
  colonize Mars. That's a USVC vision.
• 54:58
  Yeah, for somebody that's not me.
• 55:00
  OK. But how much do you expect them
• 55:03
  to know? Let's say they've got that big
• 55:05
  vision. How much do you expect them to
• 55:07
  know how to get there? Is is that a an expectation or
• 55:11
  you're happy to figure it out with them?
• 55:12
  That's a difficult one because they must have some idea.
• 55:15
  So most founders are first time founders.
• 55:18
  So the amount of times I meet people who say, well, I've never
• 55:21
  done this before. I remember everybody's never
• 55:23
  done anything for the first time they do it.
• 55:25
  So I think we we really like, I was before I came in this
• 55:30
  morning, I was talking to to somebody on the portfolio side
• 55:32
  who sits on the the company's boards and he's talking about
• 55:35
  one of his businesses that are looking to make an acquisition.
• 55:37
  And I was like, yeah. And one of the comforts for me
• 55:40
  is they're really engaged in finding people to help them.
• 55:43
  So I love a founder who talks about mentors and coaches.
• 55:46
  And yeah, I've just changed my mentor because the last mentor I
• 55:49
  had I've outgrown and they're apologetic for outgrowing them.
• 55:53
  But actually they were great for this part of my journey.
• 55:55
  Now I've got. To find the one for.
• 55:56
  My next part, I love that. I love people who go looking for
• 55:59
  the help and believe they don't know everything.
• 56:01
  They're really festival. Yes, I love that.
• 56:04
  I love that very much for so many reasons.
• 56:06
  Some of them I'm I'm not even allowed to say.
• 56:07
  But yeah, I love that Michael Phelps.
• 56:10
  I also love athletes. I adore super athlete mentality
• 56:15
  and they do have these visions of like, I am, I am going to.
• 56:19
  It's not I might. It is.
• 56:21
  I am going to be the best in the world, Michael Phelps.
• 56:24
  I am going to win 8 Olympic gold medals come on, that's unreal
• 56:30
  don't do that It's a bit unrealistic or very unrealistic.
• 56:33
  Don't do it. And he did and it's like, and
• 56:36
  and that those medals come in very careful planning,
• 56:40
  orchestration, determination and died all those millions of
• 56:44
  little steps. But actually with an athlete
• 56:48
  and, and, and also speaking to much bigger and Better Business
• 56:52
  owners than I am, they they make it, they simplify the whole mess
• 56:57
  that business can be. And it is the little steps of
• 57:00
  execution. And it's like, right here's the
• 57:02
  stages, here's the work that has to be done.
• 57:06
  Here's how you do it. Like here's the people that you
• 57:07
  need. And then you just go 123 and
• 57:11
  it's actually not that bad when you sort of demystify how you
• 57:16
  get this 8 Olympic medal, gold medals, but actually how many
• 57:19
  hours should you be swimming, What massages do you need?
• 57:23
  What's your nutrition, actrolytes, all that stuff, Your
• 57:26
  team? So it's marginal gains, isn't
• 57:28
  it? So we marginal gains that is.
• 57:30
  Now that's a phrase that has been in whoever the guy who took
• 57:34
  over the cycling team, I can't remember, but he the guy who?
• 57:37
  Yeah, yeah, I know. He marginal gains and business.
• 57:41
  I'm not massively into sports and stuff, but so I run and I
• 57:44
  like Formula One, but that's about the beginning end of it.
• 57:48
  But I I listen to a lot of stuff from sports people because I'm
• 57:51
  not really that interested in which football game they won or
• 57:54
  didn't win. That's not my thing.
• 57:55
  But I'm interested in how they got there.
• 57:57
  I love that story. Natural, natural talent is a
• 58:01
  natural talent is a way to be controversial here.
• 58:04
  Natural talent is used by people to justify whether they haven't
• 58:08
  done something someone else has done is my view.
• 58:11
  So they will say, well, you're just naturally gifted at that,
• 58:14
  aren't you? Maybe I was naturally gifted at
• 58:17
  it. But, you know, I've worked
• 58:18
  really hard. So it's, we think about super
• 58:21
  sports people and the sacrifices they make to get there.
• 58:25
  They just make sacrifices that that most people sit there and
• 58:28
  go, I just can't believe, I can't envisage myself ever doing
• 58:32
  that. So I'm going to tell myself,
• 58:34
  yeah, but they've got natural talent, haven't they?
• 58:36
  It's not that, you know, I just, you know, have a more balanced
• 58:38
  life. I'd sooner watch some Netflix
• 58:39
  and go to the gym. So we use natural.
• 58:42
  I think natural talent is a, it's sort of very lazy way of
• 58:46
  saying I don't want it as much as as that person wants it.
• 58:50
  Yeah. And then also if you're speaking
• 58:52
  to someone and then you if if you're the person that's sort of
• 58:55
  putting the idea down or whatever, like why, why are you
• 58:58
  putting that down? Of course, don't feed delusions.
• 59:00
  So if someone does have a tendency to get a bit, you know,
• 59:03
  that way, then you can gently bring them in.
• 59:05
  But I think when someone has that entrepreneurial spirit,
• 59:08
  it's nice to encourage them to anyone listening, I think it's
• 59:11
  nice to. So I have some friends of mine
• 59:14
  who, so people will talk about me as being a toxic optimist.
• 59:17
  So we have a WhatsApp group between some friends and the,
• 59:20
  and the, the WhatsApp group is called toxic optimism because I,
• 59:23
  I sort of do believe you can do anything if you really want it
• 59:27
  enough and you're prepared to make enough sacrifices.
• 59:30
  There's probably not a lot you you can't achieve, but what you
• 59:33
  do need is smart people around you professionally and in your
• 59:36
  personal life who just rein that back a bit, test it a bit as So
• 59:41
  my wife Sarah and I've been together since university.
• 59:44
  Sarah's like Mike. Yeah, we both talked about.
• 59:47
  We met the January of our first year at university.
• 59:49
  It's adorable. It's definitely not.
• 59:50
  We talk about the fact that it ruined our university
• 59:52
  experience. No, it's love.
• 59:54
  It's so good. I.
• 59:55
  Love that, but Sarah's that challenge.
• 59:57
  So I'll be like, I'll go home and I'll be like, right, we're
• 59:59
  going to go and. Let's go and take the let's go
• 1:00:01
  and buy that wreck of a house and do it up because won't that
• 1:00:04
  be really fun? And Sarah would say hi, that
• 1:00:06
  would be really fun. But have you thought about the
• 1:00:07
  fact that we have no time? So we is that really what we
• 1:00:11
  want to do? So for me it's you can do
• 1:00:13
  anything as long as you've got smart people around you just
• 1:00:15
  pull in that break a bit really just testing the hypothesis of
• 1:00:18
  can you? Check in with with more, maybe
• 1:00:22
  even some more stable people just to make sure that you're.
• 1:00:24
  Sarah is definitely the stable person the the two of.
• 1:00:27
  Us, yeah, exactly. But but careful who you're
• 1:00:29
  listening to. So it's a trusted, the trusted
• 1:00:32
  voice versus maybe the maybe the slightly, you know the ones.
• 1:00:35
  It's really easy to poke other people, isn't it?
• 1:00:36
  While you're doing that, I, I lot of people, a lot of people
• 1:00:41
  don't want other people to be successful because it makes them
• 1:00:43
  reflect on of their life. So I, when I meet starters, we
• 1:00:48
  don't need to start up investing.
• 1:00:50
  But when I meet ups, when I meet start up founders, I'm always
• 1:00:53
  really honest. And I'll say that here's here's
• 1:00:55
  why I hit that's great. That's not great.
• 1:00:57
  I want to be really honest with you because loads of people will
• 1:00:59
  either just be really positive. Your mum will tell you it's
• 1:01:01
  brilliant. All your mates will tell you
• 1:01:03
  it's brilliant because they don't want to hurt you.
• 1:01:05
  And other people will poke you because they're a bit jealous
• 1:01:08
  that you're doing a thing that they're not.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah. So you've really got to bring in
• 1:01:12
  some some. Trusted advisors, Mentors.
• 1:01:14
  Yeah, it's key, Yeah. And even if if you are a
• 1:01:18
  business owner speaking to people like yourself as well,
• 1:01:20
  getting sort of just can you maybe take a look at this?
• 1:01:23
  Is this something that can grow not poke, you know, but but like
• 1:01:28
  properly look into it and then that will give you information
• 1:01:30
  is power totally. So we so we have a full time
• 1:01:33
  person at what I think called Christina.
• 1:01:35
  Christina's full time role is managing our network of people.
• 1:01:39
  So when something new comes in, the the chances of us having
• 1:01:43
  invested in that exact space before are pretty slim.
• 1:01:46
  So when something new comes in, we review it, we think about it
• 1:01:49
  and then we hit our network to understand it.
• 1:01:51
  So we are then reaching out to lots of smart people that we
• 1:01:55
  know, people we don't know but we think look smart and saying,
• 1:01:57
  can we just chat with you about this opportunity we've got
• 1:02:00
  because we think it's interesting and we think you'll
• 1:02:02
  really help us understand it. Yeah, definitely information
• 1:02:06
  that is power. OK, we're going to slightly move
• 1:02:09
  into a different direction just about money.
• 1:02:12
  Let's talk about money because you think about money, I'm sure
• 1:02:15
  very differently. So how do you think about money?
• 1:02:18
  Do you have a good relationship with money?
• 1:02:20
  Do you are you are you careful about what you spend?
• 1:02:23
  Very or are you a spender or? So I, so I grew up in a council
• 1:02:27
  state. So I, so my, my mum and dad had,
• 1:02:30
  had varied what I would think of normal working, working lives.
• 1:02:34
  There wasn't a lot of money knocking around.
• 1:02:35
  There was, yeah, there was challenges.
• 1:02:38
  I was growing up in the 80s, I grew up in a steel town so that
• 1:02:41
  my parents weren't involved in the steelworks, but the, the
• 1:02:43
  town was decimated when the steelworks got closed.
• 1:02:45
  So there was a lot of poverty. I don't know if it is poverty
• 1:02:49
  versus today, but there was a lot of poverty.
• 1:02:51
  So I, I've, my parents did a great job of making sure we had
• 1:02:55
  what we needed and we had some of what we wanted.
• 1:02:59
  And there was a, there was a good balance in, you know, I
• 1:03:02
  look back now and think, actually, it's right to not
• 1:03:04
  spoil your kids. But I've lived that way.
• 1:03:07
  And now I'm lucky enough that I get paid loads more than more
• 1:03:12
  than probably I should and more than more than we need.
• 1:03:16
  That gives loads of choices. So I have loads.
• 1:03:18
  We have choices. Yeah.
• 1:03:20
  Yeah, I like it and I'm not. And it's funny, isn't it,
• 1:03:22
  Because back to what I was saying earlier.
• 1:03:23
  So I'm a bit embarrassed saying that.
• 1:03:25
  So we do very. Well, you've, you've really, you
• 1:03:28
  know, you've worked your way to what you've.
• 1:03:29
  We've, we've taken loads of risks.
• 1:03:32
  I've taken risks, Sarah's taken risks.
• 1:03:34
  We moved. We, I was born in Corby, Sarah
• 1:03:37
  was born in the Northwest. We moved down to London.
• 1:03:39
  We knew nobody. We hated it for God knows how
• 1:03:41
  many years. We didn't know anybody.
• 1:03:42
  We couldn't really get into it and now it's paying off.
• 1:03:45
  So that's great. In answer your question, the
• 1:03:48
  relationship with money is. Is it good?
• 1:03:52
  Is money good do? You have a good relationship
• 1:03:54
  with money. Probably not.
• 1:03:59
  Why? Because I because I, because I
• 1:04:04
  believe I can always make more. So I don't wait, I don't waste.
• 1:04:07
  I'm so I'm Penny. So I drives me mad when the kids
• 1:04:10
  leave the lights on in the house.
• 1:04:12
  I walk around, I'm turning lights off all the time.
• 1:04:14
  You're watching the pennies. Yeah.
• 1:04:16
  Am I? Yeah, I don't.
• 1:04:18
  Know well you must be if you're. Switching the lights.
• 1:04:19
  I'm aware of the cost of stuff. So like when I got coffee before
• 1:04:23
  I came in here and I was like, oh, is that really how much that
• 1:04:25
  is? And then I was and I was hungry
• 1:04:27
  and I had some rice cakes. Oh, they look good, but they're
• 1:04:30
  2 lbs. And like in my head I'm actually
• 1:04:31
  questioning do I want them enough for for 2 lbs, which is
• 1:04:37
  and I got them and then I had one that was very nice to eat.
• 1:04:39
  But so stuff like that I can get a bit caught up on.
• 1:04:43
  But then when it comes to experiences and doing fun things
• 1:04:49
  with the children, with my family, with, with Sarah, with
• 1:04:54
  friends, I don't, I sort of put, I would say I don't care, but
• 1:04:59
  I'm quite like, actually, if it's going to make it 10%
• 1:05:00
  better, let's spend a lot of money to do it because I'm such.
• 1:05:04
  A money person, you're such a money person because basically
• 1:05:06
  yes, that you're because the value, you see it in value
• 1:05:10
  terms. So the value of the experience
• 1:05:12
  of the holiday with your family with a time you will never get
• 1:05:15
  back is valuable enough that you can justify the the spend, which
• 1:05:20
  is way over what you would anyone would consider, let's
• 1:05:23
  say. But it's in the value of that
• 1:05:26
  for that the trade you're thinking about the trade.
• 1:05:28
  All the time, absolutely. So I'll spend a lot of money on
• 1:05:32
  holidays and we stay in in nice hotels because, well, that's a,
• 1:05:35
  you know, I'm a bit of actually if we're away, I want to stay
• 1:05:37
  something really nice. I'm also the guy that walks to
• 1:05:39
  the shop to buy 12 cans of Pepsi Max because in the shop down the
• 1:05:45
  road, I'd say what I mean I we were in Dubai earlier this year
• 1:05:49
  and I'd walk about 20 minutes to the shop to buy 12 cans of Pepsi
• 1:05:52
  Max because they were a pound each in the shop and they were
• 1:05:55
  £9 at swimming pool. I just couldn't bring myself.
• 1:05:59
  Yeah. So you also, the relationship
• 1:06:01
  with money is 1, where you're constantly thinking about value.
• 1:06:05
  And that's why you're doing the job that you're doing today,
• 1:06:06
  because you're constantly in value analyzing all the time.
• 1:06:10
  I can see that even though you're speaking to me, you're
• 1:06:11
  thinking it's value. You're always looking at that.
• 1:06:15
  And my and and I don't treat it. I I'm not I'm getting better but
• 1:06:20
  I can get it wrong with my friends and family because I.
• 1:06:23
  Because you're too emotional. You're letting.
• 1:06:25
  Emotions behaving like that with because I can be a bit like,
• 1:06:27
  well, I'll get dinner because it's not.
• 1:06:30
  It's just fine. It doesn't that the cost of this
• 1:06:32
  dinner isn't material. And I've really enjoyed spending
• 1:06:35
  time with everybody. Nobody wants that.
• 1:06:37
  Everybody wants to pay their own way, don't they?
• 1:06:38
  So I've got that wrong in the past.
• 1:06:41
  All right, so what's your experience?
• 1:06:43
  Is the biggest mistake that ambitious people make?
• 1:06:46
  Can you can you answer that question, even something you've
• 1:06:48
  seen? I think people feel like they've
• 1:06:51
  got to present themselves in a way that's fit.
• 1:06:54
  I think people do, do and say what they think society wants
• 1:06:58
  from them. So I work really, really hard.
• 1:07:01
  Really hard. I think about work all the time.
• 1:07:04
  It impacts our family life. I have to work quite hard to not
• 1:07:07
  be on my phone all the time. I get to a Saturday and I'll get
• 1:07:09
  up and go. Actually, do you know what?
• 1:07:10
  I just do a bit of work doesn't need doing.
• 1:07:12
  It's just because I'm super lucky.
• 1:07:14
  I love what I'm doing. I love what I love the people I
• 1:07:16
  do it with so I can. It's a real Gray line for me
• 1:07:21
  between home and work because I'm lucky enough that I love.
• 1:07:25
  I love it. Yeah, For me, working on a
• 1:07:28
  Saturday, I'm not the working bit, doesn't bother me.
• 1:07:31
  Working on a Saturday, not spending time with my family
• 1:07:34
  bothers me. I don't go to bed on a Sunday
• 1:07:36
  night worrying about going to work on a Monday.
• 1:07:39
  Dare I say sometimes I go to bed on a Sunday night really excited
• 1:07:42
  because I'm going to work on the Monday.
• 1:07:44
  So I don't think people present that enough because the current
• 1:07:49
  sort of thing is to be, you know?
• 1:07:52
  Perfect, Yeah. Yeah, everyone wants to present
• 1:07:56
  this. I I achieve what I achieve by I
• 1:08:00
  do it within set working hours. I'm there for every school, I'm
• 1:08:04
  there for pickups, I'm there for drop UPS.
• 1:08:06
  I work from home. I do this, I do that, I do the
• 1:08:07
  other. It's just impossible.
• 1:08:09
  Nobody can do that. We're just going to blow
• 1:08:10
  ourselves up by pretending that you can't have it all.
• 1:08:14
  You just can't. And that is, I think my wife
• 1:08:17
  suffers from that more than I do as, as a male, because nobody
• 1:08:21
  said to me, are you going to go back to work after Josh is born?
• 1:08:23
  Nobody once ever said that you're going back to work once
• 1:08:26
  Josh is born. The first child, our first
• 1:08:28
  point, you know, but Sarah, people said, Sarah, are you
• 1:08:31
  going back to work? Like, why didn't they say that
• 1:08:34
  to me? Just all that stuff.
• 1:08:36
  And I, I think people can get a bit caught up in the, I've got
• 1:08:40
  to present myself in a certain way.
• 1:08:42
  And I, the one thing I can't do is just say, do you know what?
• 1:08:44
  I love what I do and I work really hard.
• 1:08:46
  I work too many hours. I'm probably too stressed.
• 1:08:49
  I'm overweight. I don't exercise enough.
• 1:08:50
  We sort of think we've got to do the I do yoga at 5:00, I have my
• 1:08:54
  green tea, I do meditation, I do my journals, CBD.
• 1:08:58
  Oils, whatever. And I just, I don't get it.
• 1:09:00
  I don't get why I I think successful people should be
• 1:09:05
  proud that they're successful because they work, really.
• 1:09:07
  Hard. I mean, I've got someone coming
• 1:09:08
  on later as well and we're going to talk about anxiety in in
• 1:09:11
  great detail. But I think what one of the
• 1:09:14
  themes is about this perfectionist culture and these,
• 1:09:18
  you know, we, we do demand things of ourselves and
• 1:09:20
  apparently one in five people suffer from this kind of, it's a
• 1:09:23
  form of anxiety, which is like perfectionism and putting these
• 1:09:26
  things on. Then you always like playing up
• 1:09:28
  to this role and it gets very stressful because you can't
• 1:09:31
  maintain that, that level. You know, I mean, when it comes
• 1:09:34
  to me personally, I, you know, with The Apprentice and
• 1:09:37
  everything and I walked out for, you know, my own reasons and
• 1:09:41
  things. I yeah, I think that there's
• 1:09:43
  some things that are going to come out.
• 1:09:46
  You know, you can't, you have to be yourself.
• 1:09:49
  You can't live a life of being something you're not.
• 1:09:52
  You are going to, you know, like it's just the way it is.
• 1:09:56
  I think weakness is, is really telling people.
• 1:09:59
  So our chairman Dave, he's to be our managing partner.
• 1:10:03
  He, I, I communicate about all my weaknesses loads.
• 1:10:06
  So I did my so my. That's some.
• 1:10:08
  Bray but. But because I'm not, I think
• 1:10:10
  this will be odd for people, but I'm not perfect.
• 1:10:13
  So my full year review, our year ends March, we do my full year
• 1:10:16
  review in April. So I've just been my managing
• 1:10:18
  partner and I sit down with our head of investor relations and
• 1:10:22
  CFO. So the three of us run the
• 1:10:23
  business together. One of us has to be the managing
• 1:10:25
  partner. So that's me, but really the
• 1:10:26
  three of us are. Yeah, we do work together.
• 1:10:28
  Yeah, so I said to the guys, why don't we do our reviews
• 1:10:31
  together? So rather than me doing yours,
• 1:10:33
  Eamonn as head of our and yours Marcus, the CFO, why don't we do
• 1:10:37
  it together? And what I'd really like us to
• 1:10:38
  do is go and get feedback on everybody.
• 1:10:40
  So they went and got, I got feedback on Eamonn, Marcus got
• 1:10:43
  feedback on, I can't remember. But anyway, they got a load of
• 1:10:47
  feedback from me and we said what we'll do is we'll type it
• 1:10:49
  into Word documents. So you don't know who's can't
• 1:10:51
  tie back to it. Let's just give each other
• 1:10:53
  feedback. So great.
• 1:10:54
  So they gave me this three page, they talked me through this
• 1:10:57
  three page Word document. That's quite hard.
• 1:11:00
  And I'm sort of sat there going, that hurts, but it hurts because
• 1:11:03
  a lot. Yeah, it did because it was
• 1:11:05
  true. And it was people saying, well,
• 1:11:07
  actually Jamie did this, which made me feel like this.
• 1:11:09
  And oh, God, I don't. I really, I really want to know
• 1:11:12
  who that is because I want to go and tell them I'm sorry for how
• 1:11:14
  I made them feel. And of course you can't.
• 1:11:15
  That's not fair. So I had it and then I was like,
• 1:11:17
  can I have the document take the names out?
• 1:11:19
  So they gave me the document and then I sent it around the
• 1:11:21
  business a week later and just went look, here's here's the
• 1:11:25
  feedback on me. Here's how that made me feel and
• 1:11:28
  here's why. Here are the things I'm doing to
• 1:11:30
  course correct. And here's some stuff in that
• 1:11:32
  that I'm that's just probably me and I hope it's not me and I'll
• 1:11:36
  I'll promise I'll try. But brave, really brave.
• 1:11:38
  But it but isn't that interesting works.
• 1:11:40
  That's what everyone said, but how was that brave?
• 1:11:42
  I'm saying. It is brave.
• 1:11:43
  A load of people that I really like and I'm really fond of
• 1:11:46
  everybody at wife M Here's here's you.
• 1:11:49
  You know this about me already. Here's me telling you that I now
• 1:11:52
  know too. Like, is that brave?
• 1:11:55
  I think it is brave. You've got to, you've got to
• 1:11:57
  handle it. You've got to be able to handle
• 1:12:00
  it. So hearing criticism of yourself
• 1:12:03
  is difficult. So you have to handle it.
• 1:12:05
  And then how do you handle it? You know, are you going to, are
• 1:12:08
  you the sort of person that's able to make the change?
• 1:12:11
  Yeah. You know how flexible are you?
• 1:12:13
  So I had a great, I had a great mentor.
• 1:12:16
  Don't sorry. I had a great mentor years and
• 1:12:17
  years ago I called son Palmer. That's when I worked for the
• 1:12:20
  bank and he he was sort of like my he was great or two above me,
• 1:12:23
  but in the same business but in a different team.
• 1:12:26
  And he I got some really bad feedback one year end.
• 1:12:29
  I was awesome back then and thought I was awesome.
• 1:12:32
  I thought I was better than I was back then.
• 1:12:34
  And he was. Yeah.
• 1:12:35
  And I had a bad year end review and I I reacted pretty badly
• 1:12:40
  visibly in the office and he just grabbed me and took me to a
• 1:12:43
  great room. He said this is going to define
• 1:12:45
  your career, how you react to how you react.
• 1:12:47
  No one's you you're feeling hurt and attacked.
• 1:12:50
  They haven't given you that feedback to hurt and attack you.
• 1:12:52
  They've given you that feedback because that's real how you
• 1:12:54
  choose to accept. So you could say there, you
• 1:12:57
  could say everybody else is wrong and that's OK because you
• 1:13:00
  you can believe that and that could be your truth or you can
• 1:13:03
  go away and reflect. So he's like, I want you to
• 1:13:05
  leave the office, just go for a walk, come back.
• 1:13:08
  You can't come back for two hours and then come back in two
• 1:13:10
  hours once you've calmed down and just walked the entire two
• 1:13:13
  hours. And of course, by the time I'd
• 1:13:14
  come back and reflected on it, I was actually, yeah, that
• 1:13:17
  feedback is I agree with all of it, but.
• 1:13:19
  You can't be quite accurate, you.
• 1:13:21
  Can't tell people they don't feel the way they feel.
• 1:13:23
  So it yeah, it is real. It's absolute gold.
• 1:13:26
  I mean, I, I do love it. I think it's gold.
• 1:13:28
  But yeah, it's how you what you do with that.
• 1:13:31
  Yeah, you need to be pretty arrogant, right?
• 1:13:32
  It's back to the founders. Back to the founders we meet.
• 1:13:35
  You sort of go for me, people. I will extrude this confidence,
• 1:13:39
  but for me that confidence is I'm really happy and comfortable
• 1:13:42
  in who I am and I know I'm not perfect.
• 1:13:45
  So isn't it the most generous thing in the world when someone
• 1:13:48
  takes the risk to tell the managing partner, here are the
• 1:13:51
  things you're not good at? I'm like, wow, they've done the
• 1:13:54
  risky thing. I should be grateful to.
• 1:13:56
  Receive I I get it and I think it is it is a it is like a
• 1:14:00
  little gift because I yeah, I would love to know.
• 1:14:03
  I do sometimes think, you know, I do these podcasts and
• 1:14:05
  everything and then I and I have my business, you know, running
• 1:14:09
  the marketing company. And then I think, how do I, I
• 1:14:11
  said opposite you. How do you then take me?
• 1:14:14
  How am I coming across? I would love to know all of it.
• 1:14:17
  Let's just talk about, can you fill out this question about
• 1:14:19
  exactly how I've come across how No, no, no.
• 1:14:22
  But even if we did, but it's. Just so interesting.
• 1:14:24
  Even if we did it, we'd still be nice because we haven't built
• 1:14:27
  until you can trust somebody because.
• 1:14:29
  And by trust I don't mean because I think you're going to
• 1:14:31
  attack me if I say something you don't like.
• 1:14:34
  I want to trust that if I gave you that feedback, you'd be OK.
• 1:14:36
  Dealing with it. Because nobody wants to.
• 1:14:38
  Hurt. I think it's incredibly
• 1:14:39
  important, especially when you're starting off and
• 1:14:41
  everything and you're learning or in a new industry or in a new
• 1:14:43
  market or in a new role, whatever it might be.
• 1:14:46
  And if someone gives you feedback and you know that
• 1:14:48
  you've done something wrong, like you'll know, you will know.
• 1:14:52
  I, I do take it really seriously, you know, like I, I
• 1:14:55
  take it, I'm going to admit I will take it personally, but
• 1:14:58
  it's good because if I take it personally, I will personally
• 1:15:01
  work so hard to change it because it stings so bad that I,
• 1:15:07
  that I, I like it. Like, I like modifying myself
• 1:15:10
  from the sting. That the sort of the the passion
• 1:15:12
  of the sting of it, the stronger it is, the more that I know
• 1:15:15
  myself as well that that person is so completely right.
• 1:15:18
  I've got to change this particular thing and that's the
• 1:15:21
  way to improve. And it's almost like can
• 1:15:23
  everyone just give you that sort of feedback to would be so much
• 1:15:27
  better when. We're putting in a would.
• 1:15:29
  Be so much better. A tool in the it'd be live in a
• 1:15:33
  couple of weeks for 360° feedback by software.
• 1:15:36
  So actually everybody gets to just fill it in, but the only
• 1:15:39
  person who sees it as the individual and if they choose to
• 1:15:42
  share that with their line manager or their mentor, that's
• 1:15:44
  awesome. There's no need to.
• 1:15:46
  It's just a tool for those who want and not everybody has to
• 1:15:49
  use it. If you want to use it because
• 1:15:50
  you'd value the the feedback, then use it, but it's for you.
• 1:15:53
  Nobody else can see it. Nobody knows you've used it.
• 1:15:55
  You asked the people that you want for the feedback and then
• 1:15:59
  they can provide it to you in a super cool.
• 1:16:01
  They type stuff in it and it gets jumbled up so that you
• 1:16:03
  can't work out language and stuff.
• 1:16:05
  So it is true anonymized feedback.
• 1:16:08
  And I'm, if there's 65 people in my FM today, I probably could
• 1:16:12
  tell you the 30 that I know will absolutely get that out on the
• 1:16:15
  first day because they want the, they've got the hunger for the,
• 1:16:19
  for the learning and for the improvement.
• 1:16:22
  Well, again, it comes back to the way that you view value.
• 1:16:26
  And I'm going to say value, not money.
• 1:16:28
  It's the way that you view value and I'm really flattered,
• 1:16:32
  honoured and delighted that you've seen this as a valuable
• 1:16:36
  session as well, to come here to give your time.
• 1:16:38
  It's definitely been valuable for me.
• 1:16:39
  I know people are going to definitely find it interesting.
• 1:16:41
  So yeah. Thank you for having me.
• 1:16:43
  It's been incredible. Thanks for coming on.
• 1:16:45
  Thank you. Thank you.