30 Years of Business Knowledge in 2hrs 26mins — Transcript

I am good at only one thing: business. For the last 30 years, I built 19 companies and invested in 78 startups. People ask me every day to be their mentor and to help them, and they've even offered me £10,000 to help them just for one day in business. I don't want to charge people for help. I want to give you the knowledge for free, and today I'm going to give you everything you need to start a business, to grow a business, to maintain a business, and to sell a business. But if you can't stay on this video for 5 minutes without clicking off, I've got some news for you: you're probably not going to make it. I'm now going to list all the things I'm going to go through in the next 45 minutes to change your mindset, give you the tools you need to be successful, and hopefully create new pathways in your brain that give you the chance to be successful. The very thing that the education system does not want you to be is free: working for yourself, controlling your own destiny. So today we're going to cover how to start a business with no money, how to win and the secret to it all in business, how to lose, important, how to do a mind map, which is much better than a business plan, much more liquid, how to find purpose, very important to motivate you to get up in the morning, to motivate your team to get up in the morning, and to motivate customers to want to work with you, how to find a co-founder, something that I personally believe is like having a relationship partnership; it can change everything if you have the right co-founder and can give you that accountability that we all need, how to sell. Everybody can sell. There's no such thing as people that are good at selling and people that aren't good at selling. They're just people that haven't been taught the system of selling. Everyone can sell. Everyone must learn to sell. It is the key to unlocking freedom. How to market your business, how to PR yourself and your business, how to get an investor, and I'll go through many different ways around that subject. You can get an investor. How to get sponsors, often an untapped secret source to making a business grow without needing an investor, so we'll get into that. How to build a company brand, because I honestly think value comes from building a brand, not a business, and we'll go into what a brand is and how to build one. How to build a personal brand, which in this day and age without doubt is vital. You can't really build a company today without having a personal brand, and I'll get into personal brand on a public stage and personal brand within your industry. How to hire, how to grow, how to build, how to go global, which is easier than it sounds and probably very important so you're not stuck in one market and leaving yourself vulnerable. How to get a mentor. There is a way to do it and nearly nobody does it. And how to avoid big mistakes but accept luck into your life, make luck happen in your life. And finally, how equity works and how to sell your business. At the end of this video, you will know everything that's taken me 35 years to know. You will be changed if you watch this video, and I promise you at the end of it, it will cost you nothing and you'll never regret it. How to start. Now, most people tell you to start a business when you have an idea. That's not where a business starts. A business starts with a feeling, an instinct that perhaps you need to make a change, and then applying yourself to learning what is the best way to build something that you love. Now, everybody tells me that starting a business is filling a market gap or finding a niche. That is not true. One of my most successful early companies was a company called Fluid. This company turned into one of the biggest agencies in Asia, which I sold to PricewaterhouseCoopers for more money than I ever needed. And when I launched that company, there were 500 other businesses doing almost exactly the same. So how did I manage to win? I didn't have an original idea like everybody tells you you've got to have to start a business. You don't start with an original idea. You start with what you like doing. Now, I love helping businesses and people succeed. I love marketing. I can spend all day long studying and understanding marketing. Every time someone launches a new business, I want to understand how they made it successful. I'm obsessed. I enjoy it. It's my hobby. There is no work-life balance. There is only syncing up your life with your business. And so I believe the first step in starting a business is following your passions. Now, everybody tells you that that's not the way to start a business because often your passions initially don't necessarily generate revenue. But that's because you haven't applied a business mindset to what you love. So I loved marketing, and I started a creative agency called Fluid that helped people come up with marketing ideas to make their business successful. Now, there were many companies doing it, but not many of these people doing it loved it like I did. So I evolved my marketing abilities, pushed the boundaries of what was possible, used new technologies like, at the time, email marketing and direct marketing that no one else was doing because I was obsessed with what is the latest thing. And for you, the way you do it is you've got to write down what you like doing and you've got to write down what you don't like doing. What you love doing, you've got to get really good at, and what you don't like doing, you've got to outsource and not do it. The school system has taught you the wrong thing, that if you're not good at something, you need to spend more time getting better at it. That is a lie. You've got to spend more time getting good at the thing you love to do, get obsessed by it, and that's actually where a business idea begins. Because once you have figured out what you like doing, the next step is the idea. Now again, people will tell you that you need to come up with an original idea. That's not true. The second thing is when it comes to an idea, you can actually combine forces with other people. So back to my example, when I launched Fluid, I loved marketing, and I met someone who could take my marketing ideas and turn them into graphic illustrations and brilliant presentations and abilities to help that company in a visual way understand my ideas. So I teamed up with her and created a 50/50 business partnership. I'll come on to equity later in the video. That was literally the springboard to one of the most successful companies in Asia in this space. So the key is not coming up with an original idea and trying to do it all on your own. The key is coming up with something you love linked to what you do, and perhaps if there's a gap within your ability to execute on what you love, find a partner. So, for example, if you love writing, then write a book, and maybe you need to find a partner that can publish that book or find a company that will publish that book or get someone to help you like an agent, find someone that will publish that book. And that's where it really begins in the idea phase. It's got to link to your passion, and I'll come on to purpose later, but it's key. You won't be able to follow through and probably won't be successful if you're not willing to do the thing that you're doing more often and all the time compared to other people. So you figured out what you love doing, and now you have an idea. Now, the idea itself can evolve. From my point of view, when I started what I'm doing today, which is a platform to help you for free, the first thing I did was, in fact, a podcast. So the step after idea is step one: execution. And execution involves what is the first thing you can do to make your business idea come to life. And for me, in my example, it was a podcast. But for you, it might be a blog. It might be a LinkedIn post. It might be setting up a social media handle and starting to post up your photography. Whatever the first step execution is, do not make it too hard for yourself. In my case, sitting down, interviewing people I found interesting, recording it, and putting it up would serve the purpose of giving people mentorship.

£10,000 to help them just for one day in business I don't want to charge people for help I want to give you the knowledge for free and today I'm going to give you everything you need to start a business to grow a business to

maintain a business and to sell a business but if you can't stay on this video for 5 minutes without clicking on off I've got some news for you you're probably not going to make it I'm now going to list all the things I'm going

to go through in the next 45 minutes to change your mindset give you the tools you need to be successful and hopefully create new Pathways in your brain that give you the chance to be successful the very thing that the education system

does not want you to be is free working for yourself controlling your own Des So today we're going to cover how to start a business with no money how to win and the secret to it all in business how to

lose important how to do a mind map which is much better than a business plan much more liquid how to find purpose very important to motivate you to get up in the morning to motivate your team to get up in the morning and

to motivate customers to want to work with you how to find a co-founder something that I personally believe is like having a relationship partnership it can change everything if you have the right co-founder and can give you that

accountability that we all need how to sell everybody can sell there's no such thing as people that are good at selling and people that aren't good at selling they're just people that haven't been taught the system of selling everyone

can sell everyone must learn to sell it is the key to unlocking Freedom how to Market your business how to PR yourself and your business how to get an investor and I'll go through many different ways around that subject you can get an

investor how to get sponsors often an untapped secret source to making a business grow without needing an investor so we'll get into that how to build a company brand because I honestly think value comes from building a brand

not a business and we'll go into what a brand is and how to build one how to build personal brand which in this day and age without doubt is vital you can't really build a company today without having a personal brand and I'll get

into personal brand on a public stage and personal brand within your industry how to hire how to grow how to build how to go Global which is easier than it sounds and probably very important so you're not stuck in one market and

leaving yourself vulnerable how to get a mentor there is a way to do it and nearly Nobody Does it and how to avoid big mistakes but accept luck into your life make luck happen in your life and finally how eity works and how to sell

your business at the end of this video you will know everything that's taken me 35 years to know you will be changed if you watch this video and I promise you at the end of it it will cost you

nothing and you'll never regret it how to start now most people tell you to start a business when you have an idea that's not where a business starts a business starts with a feeling an instinct that perhaps you need to make a

change and then applying yourself to learning what is the best way to build something that you love now everybody tells me that starting a business is filling a market Gap or finding a niche that is not true one of my most

successful early companies was a company called fluid this company turned into one of the biggest agencies in Asia which I sold a price waterhous Cooper for more money than I ever need and when I launched that company there was 500

other businesses doing almost exactly the same so how did I manage to win I didn't have an original idea like everybody tells you you've got to have to start a business you don't start with an original idea you start with

what you like doing now I love helping businesses and people succeed I love marketing I can spend all day long studying and understanding marketing every time someone launches a new business I want to understand how they made it

successful I'm obsessed I enjoy it it's my hobby there is no work life balance there is only syncing up your life with your business and so I believe the first step in starting a business is following your passions now everybody tells you

that that's not the way to start a business because often your passions initially don't necessarily generate Revenue but that's because you haven't applied a business mindset to what you love so I loved marketing and I started a creative agency called fluid that

helped people come up with marketing ideas to make their business successful now there were many companies doing it but not many of these people doing it loved it like I did so I evolved my marketing abilities pushed the

boundaries of what was possible used new technologies like at the time Emil marketing and direct marketing that no one else was doing because I was obsessed what is the latest thing and for you the way you do it is youve got

to write down what you like doing and got to write down what you don't like doing what you love doing you've got to get really good at and what you don't like doing you've got to Outsource and not do it the school system has taught

you the wrong thing that if you're not good at something you need to spend more time getting better at it that is a lie you've got to spend more time getting good at the thing you love to do get

obsessed by it and that's actually where a business idea begins because once you have figured out what you like doing the next step is the idea now again people will tell you that you need to come up with an original

idea that's not true the second thing is when it comes to an idea you can actually combine forces with other people so back to my example when I launched fluid I loved marketing and I met someone who could take my marketing

ideas and turn them into graphic illustrations and Brilliant presentations and abilities to help that company in a visual way understand my ideas idea so I teamed up with her and created a 50/50 business partner I'll come on to equity later in the video

that was literally the springboard to one of the most successful companies in Asia in this space so the key is not coming up with an original idea and trying to do it all on your own the key is coming up with something you love

linked to what you do and perhaps if there's a gap within your ability to execute on what you love find a partner so for example if you love writing then write a book and maybe you need to find

a partner that can that book or find a company that will publish that book or get someone to help you like an agent find someone that will publish that book and that's where it really begins in the idea phase it's got to link to your

passion and I'll come on to purpose later but it's key you won't be able to follow through and probably won't be successful if you're not willing to do the thing that you're doing more often and all the time compared to other

people so you figured out what you love doing and now you have an idea now the idea itself can evolve from my point of view when I started what I'm doing today which is a platform to help you for free

the first thing I did was in fact a podcast so the step after idea is step one execution and execution involves what is the first thing you can do to make your business idea come to life and for me in my example it was a

podcast but for you it might be a Blog it might be a LinkedIn post it might be setting up a social media handle and starting to post up your photography whatever the first step execution is do not make it too hard for yourself in my

case sitting down interviewing people I found interesting recording it and putting it up would serve the purpose of giving people mentorship in a podcast for free which was my first step in my mission in my recent business so all I

really did was get a microphone sit down and record conversations now if you go back and look at those very early podcasts execution was not brilliant the guests were good the execution was not great I had a rubbish microphone I had a

rubbish camera and I slowly improved and step one is come up with a simple execution plan step two in starting a business is consider where the revenue is going to come from now some people say you need this within

the idea phase and yes you can put it within the idea phase but sometimes Revenue doesn't actually make itself clear to you start so an example if you're a photographer and you think you're going to make your money charging

by the hour for your photography skills you're probably limiting yourself right so you're probably better off initially taking pictures of things you love and putting them up online and seeing if people would buy them seeing if people would license the pictures experimenting

with Revenue models and seeing what sticks sure maybe people will book you by the hour but why would you start off with a revenue model that limits yourself so I think when building a business the thing to really think about

is not necessarily Revenue but experimenting with different ways to make money from the thing that you are doing so again when I launched fluid most companies charge by the hour for their marketing consultancy service we didn't we charged by the outcome of what

we did so if we helped a company be successful sell more product we took a percentage of those sales now that was not part of most companies business models because most people start with an idea and then they do a revenue model

and then they start famous quote is everyone's got a plan till they get punched in their face and the truth is when you launch a business you just want to keep yourself nimble like a boxer you want to see what is going to be the best

punch combination for you to make your business work and finally when starting a business step three is you've got to make sure your purpose is strong now you've made sure that you enjoy what you do and that's great because that's going

to help you get up in the morning but actually I believe new businesses today need to think about what they're going to do to make a difference in the world how are you going to make sure that people want to work with you how are you

going to make sure that what you're doing isn't just for profit because if it's just for profit everybody that works for you is going to want more money everybody that's working with you is going to want to pay you less but if

you have a purpose bigger than yourself and identify that purpose and install it in your business I promise you you won't be managing people anymore one of the biggest stresses of building a company you won't have to manage people because

you only have to manage purpose now I'm going to go into more depth how this all works but a lot of what I've talked about here already has cost you no money you haven't had to spend any money now

even if your idea is to launch an app that cost a million pounds to develop start off with a service business start off with a revenue based model that can get you there so an example is Airbnb when they launched they actually sold

serial boxes at conventions it was enough to be similar to Airbnb because some were the first accommodation Airbnb ever sold what at conventions people go to see Obama speak go and see different politicians speak at these conventions and they would rent out rooms on& later

but initially they sold serial boxes Obama reels at this event at these events to get to know their customers connect to their customers have a conversation with their customers and make money and that is the money they use to initially get the business

going so I will come on to other steps later now in the video about raising money and other ways to do this but if you do these first few things your business is up and running it's cost you

no money and I promise you because it will have purpose because you like it and because there's a revenue model behind it you will do it it will happen so how to win in business let's say you've already got a company you're not

winning and you want to win or you want to know the secret formula to winning and having built nearly 19 companies I'm on my 19th business now how to win in business is actually very simple now I mentioned earlier having purpose and you

personally being passionate about it that's definitely going to give you an edge because most people are not loving what they're doing so if you are you're already winning but there is a secret formula to winning and that starts with

a couple of things number one delayed gratification spelled completely wrong get what I mean though right delay gratification is the number one reason that businesses win you don't rush to charge customers for example you let them help you succeed so the first

customer I ever got in my agency fluid I actually did the work for free now a lot of people say don't do the work for free I don't agree I built up a relationship with that customer overd delivered when

it was free and that meant once they were happy not only did they use me forever for the 16 years that I ran that company they also recommended me to everybody they felt like they were part of my early Journey getting your

customers on side is another element of winning but realizing that if you delay getting gratification you will make more money and there's so many examples of this if you look at big businesses they spent years making no money and then

when they had the system all in place huge databases for example then they can monetize and people don't wait long enough the other thing you can do is have a very strict moral cod with in your business a culture culture will eat

strategy for breakfast every single time you've got to make sure that your culture in the company is client Centric a good example of this is Amazon I'm just saying that they do actually focus on their customers as a culture and I

think that a lot of people are too busy for example thinking about how they can get money out of their customer and not thinking how they can bring value and if you want to win bring value you want

loyalty bring value value you want them to follow you promote you share you on their stories care about you talk about you when you're not in the room then show them some love it sounds simple but people don't do it because they're too

busy not waiting for the payoff and too busy not installing a culture of patience a culture of caring about your customer and then the final thing is luck now luck is not a subjective thing luck I have discovered

is hackable and you can hack luck three ways first be persistent and what I mentioned earlier about purpose and loving what you do will help you be persistent you have to outlast other people when I launched my company fluid

in Hong Kong I had so many competitors but slowly but surely they all shut down went bankrupt they didn't care like I did and I think that whole luck thing is about persistence that's number one number two in hacking luck is know your

destination what what is success for you what will make you happy what do you want big company small company and by the way a big company is much easier to run than a small company aim for a big

company is my recommendation but that's my opinion it might not work for you so I suggest you to find success for yourself today success for me is having the time to take my son to school and be able to pick him up is having time to do

the exercise I want to do that's how I define success so I never sell hours and we'll come to that in a little little bit why you should never sell hours but luck is hackable you have to be

persistent you have to know your destination and finally you have to learn to take risk be careful with sayings out there trying to trick you into options that are not true so the worst one is the harder you work the

luckier you get that is not true that is a lie a lie designed to make you work hard if it was true every nurse in this country would be a millionaire it is not true that working hard equals success

what equals success is taking risk you have to learn to take risk lean into fear learn to love fear embrace it and then you can take more risk and the more risk you take the luckier you get learn

to build culture into your businesses about the long term and learn to hack luck you will win the secret to it all is learning to accept that you could lose everything and it doesn't matter you've got to be willing to risk it all

take a chance and go for it do not rush do not see this as anything but a marathon it's not a Sprint enjoy the journey don't rush no one can beat you if you do it so delay gratification is

key Brands like Facebook and Instagram although I'm not a fan necessarily of these platforms they personify this concept they did build massive massive user bases but they didn't monetized them at the beginning they waited they just kept building value in their

platforms for the users and more people kept signing up and they didn't actually monetize for a very long time I think Facebook was near 10 years before it started making money and although I'm not suggesting you wait 10 years and

those companies have different investment structures which we'll talk about a bit later it is important to understand how important this is to building a successful long-term business do not think about making money straight up build a brand not a business and

those businesses like Facebook and Instagram they waited a decade before they started monetizing and as soon as as they started monetizing Facebook in particular it started to decline as a brand less people liked it too many ads on the screen too many annoying buttons

that didn't have any relevance to them because they were suddenly trying to make their client happy The Advertiser and no longer focused on the user in the same way so be careful but that is how you build massive economic modes people

like Google similar at the beginning no Revenue YouTube at the beginning no Revenue focus on building something that has value for people delayed gratification is one of the secet weapons in building a sustainable large and successful business that you love

next up how to lose it might sound like a strange title but it's the number one thing I've noticed that people don't learn to do that doesn't allow them to be successful this all stems back probably to school where you were told

that success was getting an a it's not success is actually accepting failure learning to bounce back from failure embracing failure having learnings from the businesses that I have been in involved in that have failed have allowed me to be successful I guarantee

you if I hadn't lost a million pounds on doming comic book business I wouldn't be rich or successful today I needed to learn how to fail I needed to accept losing it's key and so how do you build

the stamina and the ability to lose the first thing you realize number one don't let things own you if you let things own you you are controlled by the very thing that's meant to bring you pleasure you have to

learn to lose those things and not care about those things the second thing to lose you need to let your short-term ego go now ego is actually a very powerful motivator and there are different types of ego the ego I'm

talking about here is driving around in the right car to give an image to people that don't care about you that you are successful do not worry about this learn to enjoy looking like you're a loser let people underestimate you it is so

powerful to be underestimated by your competition even by your customers because if they think you can't deliver and you do then brilliant do not worry about losing learn to be a d student love to fail that's why 80% of a

students end up working for D students because a students are scared to lose they don't want to lose they always want to get an A they always want to be seen as the smartest person in the room don't

worry about it learn to lose learn to embrace getting a d getting a D in business means take your time don't let someone else decide whether or not your success or not do not let anybody else tell you how to do

things and ironically power up your ego in a different way an internal ego that tells you you're not a loser you know where you're going no matter what people judge you based on the car that you're driving or where you're living or what

you do with your day don't let them decide that you're a loser let them think what whatever they want learn to love losing learn to embrace failure I promise you if you think that the worst is if you try something and you lose

everything it doesn't matter you can go again you will succeed I guarantee it next up I want to teach you something practical how to do a mind map so many people teach you in business to do a business plan forget that there is

no use for a business plan what you want to do is map out where your business could go how it could go and understand the different directions in which to take your business and I'm going to go through how to do a mind map next now I

have never seen anyone teach anybody how to do a mind map and the reason I think that no one teaches this is because there's no template to sell you there's no product to sell you around a business plan has a million ways to make money

out of you and none of it works these business plan things actually kill companies I've seen people who have massive business plans stick to it and die a my map however will cost you nothing to do and actually leaves you

Nimble and free to explore where the business can go and it's so simple it starts in the Middle with your hobby whatever that is what you love to do second part of a mind map is the business I can't spell but don't judge

me for that luckily I know I'm doing a business what is the business so what is your hobby what do you love to do and ideally it now links to the business now with the business and I'm going to use

my company as an example hopefully it translates into what maybe your idea is but in my business which is what we call free Humanity the name probably gives it away what we want to do we want people to be

free to do what they love So within free Humanity this is what I did when I first started the business four years ago I looked at different ways that I can make the business work so off here I wrote

podcast right actually as I mentioned earlier this is one of the first things I actually did so from a podcast what comes off it well I build a network right I'm now doing a mind map of something I actually have already

done to illustrate how mind Map works when you're building out a business of value so one of the benefits of doing a podcast was a network in my case I managed to interview over 200 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs

which are now part of my life and help me with what I'm doing help you on help bank.com that was one of my I and it was on my my map Network the second thing was Brands I realized if I did a podcast I

could probably make revenue from Brands now with a my map you can get bigger and bigger and bigger with my maps there's no there's no stopping how big a my map can get just like your brain is infinite

in its ability to think mind map is also infinite and when I wrote the original mind map out for my business I thought Brands and then I started listing them so in my case GoDaddy uh tide banking Adobe these were brands that I felt were

a fit with what I wanted to do give people the ability to start their own business be free do what they love so I listed out all the brands that I could work with I also listed in my original

mind map and I didn't do it at the beginning but it ended up becoming part of what I did was an app and an app that would focus on free help for people now at the time I didn't have the name

that I now have which is help bank.com but I knew that I needed to build a scalable way of giving people knowledge now what I didn't know back then that I know now quick bit of insight is that

app is overused as a word it's actually not an app that you need to build at the beginning for most platforms you need to build a web-based platform why well if you build an app you have to go in the

app store or in the Google Play Store you get restricted by one of those two locations so people that have a Samsung phone access the Apple Store to download your app why would you when you launch something restrict people from getting

access to it plus if it's web based people can just log in straight from a web browser any web browser that aside I realized in my early days I needed to do an app and from that I would do free

help and from that I would be able to connect the network that I built in the podcast to the free help the people that I had interviewed in the podcast the knowledge that I was capturing in their case I could connect now that Network

being built via the podcast to the help on the platform this is how it's actually played out the next thing I I spent time thinking about was team and on a my map I thought about who I actually need now because I knew I was

going to do a podcast I knew that I needed an editor but I also know my weaknesses so I know I need an accountant someone that's going to take care of the admin these are things that I don't enjoy

doing so I I know what to do but I also realized with the network that I build through the podcast that I could have Partners so it's not just employees but Partners I could link to the team again

working with the people that I'd spoken to on the podcast I could connect them people that were going to work on the app I could connect them although they're not necessarily on my payroll they are people that perhaps are

connected to my mission want to help people and they can become part of my extended team now within the team structure I can also start thinking about things like if I have an editor maybe that editor hires editors or I

hire editors but you can start breaking down what you actually need within your team right now as a mind map you start in my opinion with what your hobbies are what you enjoy doing you're then building a business around it and then

you're thinking about different things that this business is going to need now one of the things that I uh spent a lot of time thinking about that I haven't yet done but will be coming soon in my platform was what else I could do that

would scale the business give it what it needed resource-wise without necessarily me being involved in it and at that time back four years ago the word was merchandising so I wrote down merchandising now I think it's actually evolved now it's beyond merchandising

but um from that I wrote down of course what everyone was doing four years ago t-shirts and caps that sort of stuff right stuff that you know maybe the word free Humanity would look pretty cool on and I thought about in those days uh

things like like sweets and products that perhaps we could launch and I wrote down basically any way merchandise wise we could make money now what's interesting is I'm about to launch a sweet brand called bus's it's taken four years to get to this part of

the my map but it was on there it was always on there and ironically when I was building team if anyone said to me when I was interviewing them they had some experience with sweet business I made a know and kept them as someone

maybe could help us in the future same with merchandising anytime I spoke to anybody that was perhaps looking at starting a t-shirt brand or working on Building Product I'd see if perhaps they want it to work be in the future because

once you know in your mindmap one of the things that's going to come up in the future you can look out as you're building other things for the very thing that's going to help make that happen so this is a my map is is literally mapping

out all the different things and different ways that your business can go it's fun it's simple there's no template you can download and pay someone for you don't need it and the beautiful thing about a mind map is you're not fixed you

can start adding Bubbles and adding things as things evolve as people and the world change you can start adding things and adding connecting the different dots between parts of your business something a 20page document will never let you do because it's too

linear so that's a mind map I hope it's a useful practical tool for you going forward how to find purpose now this word purpose might sound woooo they don't teach you it at school in my opinion for a reason because if you

understand purpose you're very unlikely to work for someone else purpose is a very personal thing you can find other people with purpose you can find your tribe you can be free but finding purpose is not an easy thing and it's

not something you've been given any of the tools in which to make happen so what is the first step in finding purpose and it's a very obvious step that people do not to you think about it now the problem is if you say you're

thinking about purpose people might laugh at you other people try to throw silly jokes out there like 49 and they'll throw you off or purpose will get so complicated in your head because you've not really thought about it

before you'll give up and go back to your old ways you need to think about purpose what is your purpose we used to live in tribes of 5,000 and we used to work on a method called give without

take not give and take we used to help each other because it would make our tribe better not because we'd make money from it you ask me for help I will give it to you for free the world will be a

better place I get better at giving you that help for free I'd become an expert at giving that help for free eventually when I'm not in the room people will talk about me and what I do because I

become so good at helping people but I think today that doesn't fit The Narrative of working at a call center and piing up the phone and doing what you're told in a factory that Henry Ford created so when the school system was

developed the word purpose wasn't included in any of it they asked the wrong question of you what are you going to do when you grow up is what schools say that's not the right question what you should be asked is what problem are

you going to solve so the second step in thinking about and finding hopefully purpose is what problem matters to you now at first nothing might spring to mind if something has jumped into your mind then great in a minute I'm going to

explain how you action that but if it hasn't jumped into your mind start thinking about what problems have actually affected you big or small now it can be really simple like the banks aren't open early enough for you or the

swimming pool you wanted to go to doesn't let you swim the time you want it might sound silly but you start thinking about problems that bother you and your brain wakes up the entrepreneur muscle in your brain that helps you

figure out how to solve that problem now it might be that the bank's not opening on time isn't a problem you're going to solve but if your brain starts thinking about that problem and how it can solve it you might begin to understand how to

find purpose the third thing you can do is start breaking down how to make your life and that purpose match now matching what you do in your day and your actual purpose is often easier than you think I've met hundreds and hundreds

of people who tell me what their dream is and it turns out that their dream is often just 3% % difference from their existing life you know between chimpanzees and humans only 3% difference in the DNA and often for

example I met someone that wants to do their own catering business they're working in someone else's catering business they're just missing this video in their life to figure out how to turn what they feel is their purpose to make

cakes for someone and make them smile and own that business into that business they're just missing knowledge they're also not realizing that actually their purpose is nearly there in fact I would argue that the system sometimes wants you to feel like you're getting a enough

satisfaction that you don't need to make a change so in other words if you are working for someone else baking cakes even if they're not using the ingredients you would use or they don't care about the customer the same way

that you do at least you are baking but you got to break free from this thinking you've got to realize that if you're going to do your purpose you have to learn what I said earlier take risk but

most importantly to truly know yourself I once interviewed a billionaire on my podcast and I asked him how did you build your intuition and he said to me I used to go on asked my mom or my dad a

question when I was young and they both used to say to me you know the answer you know it never gave him the answers so he had to go away and figure out the answers for himself and that in itself

is the point I'm trying to make here you have a purpose yes I can help you get there but you need to ask yourself what is that purpose how are you going to make it happen how you going to get

there and you do it by thinking about it asking yourself not what you're going to do when you grow up but what problem you want to solve and then matching your life to that problem the final thing I'll say you don't have to do this thing

on your own let's say you care about climate change and I would just say we don't need to save the planet we need to save humans when the humans are gone the planet will be fine but let's just say

you care about saving the planet you can go and work with other people doing something in this space the only thing I would say to you is make sure you ask for Equity wherever you work I'll come to that a bit later how you do that and

why you should do that but that can be still a way for you to have the life you want you can find your purpose and then go work with someone that's actually doing it so in my organization behind

the camera right now there a whole group of people talented people that care about the same thing as me so they can go off and help help people in their own way like they want to or we can come

together as a team and solve the problem together that people don't have the knowledge they need to do what they love what I have noticed is that once you find your purpose and this is what you need to be careful of is that you don't

think that it's such a big purpose like solving the world's problems that you don't do it you can team up with other people to do it and I will tell you 1 + 1 equal 11 remember that once you know your

purpose you can seek out people and communities and old days tribes to help you go and fix this problem with other people but if you don't know what that purpose is you won't do this and you will get stuck working on someone else's

purpose someone else's Destiny and I promise you it's harder to work for someone else than work for yourself despite what you have been told how to find a co-founder now if you're someone that likes to work alone you can p skip

this bit but I would say to you before you do make sure you understand the power of a co-founder sometimes we get caught in our own ignorance bubble we think we know what we know but you don't know what you don't know so be cautious

before you skip this section you're absolutely sure that a co-founder cannot bring you value I will tell you first out why a co-founder bring you value it's a bit like if you get a gym membership you probably don't go to the

gym but if you have a buddy who goes to the gym every morning you often have accountability and you go for me that's one of the number one reasons I love having a co-founder now there is a counterargument to having a co-founder

you'll hear from many people which is well why would you give up 50% of your company to have a co-founder I personally would rather have 50% of a business I enjoy that's successful than 100% of a nightmare and a failure and I

honestly think think with all my heart that if you get a co-founder your life is better how do you get a co-founder and what should you look out for is something I'm now going to cover but I want to to say you have to think

carefully about the equity structure and later in this video I'm going to talk about equity and it's going to be important it's going to connect back to this but for now I'm just going to talk in this bit about how to get a

co-founder now the first step is to identify what I said earlier which is what do you love to do and what do you hate to do be honest be clear hate and love right hate and love now once you've identified what you

hate to do and what you love to do you can identify what is the perfect co-founder because you want someone that has the opposite skill to you but and this is very important when looking for a co-founder I'm going to

put it as number two has the same moral code this process of finding a co-founder is pretty much the process of probably finding a partner in life you're going to spend a lot of time with this person this person is going to

become literally your business life partner and if you do it right it is for life like I have in business done businesses with people and even when I've sold that company I've done another business with them if you get it right

it is a lifelong partnership and so you want to make sure you're honest and clear about what you hate doing and what you love doing so that the person comes in and works of you one doesn't question you Crossover with you lets you run your

area and gives you respect equally you have the same with what they do you write down exactly in detail what this person looks like and I would go as far as to say you write down what how tall they are what

they look like how they speak their background where they're from everything you can possibly think of just as if you're picking a partner in life what what is it you're looking for write down every detail the reason I say the more

detailed you are with it the more likely you are to manifest it you aren't going to be looking out for something unless you make it very clear what you're looking for I mean it's the red car Theory right if I suddenly tell you the

words red car you're probably going to see a lot of red cars but if I don't mention red cars you probably haven't seen one at all today you have to list out what you want so you've identified what you love doing and what you don't

love doing you've identified your own moral code and a moral code I'm can go into it a little bit more it's quite a complicated thing but there is one quick hack on this I can give you whenever I'm

trying to find out whether or not someone's good I don't care about money I care about reputation so I don't want to accidentally end up working with someone that all they really care about is money and I have this test to check I

will say to them what if from this day until you're 70 so let's say you're 30 now in the next 40 years you'll have the most amazing life three houses one in New York one in Hong Kong one in London

anywhere you go people will love you private jets everything you need for the next 40 years that's your life and in 40 years time however there is a catch you'll get to 70 and then everyone will find out that you're a financial fraud

that you tricked people to get here and that your life generally will be very different people will look at you differently maybe then you'll die and maybe it doesn't matter but that's your life do you want to take the deal I'm

surprised how many people say yes I would say 50/50 people say yes they take that deal they'll have 40 Years of a good life for a bad reputation at the end be careful what people like like that is what happens in my brain right

because that is the murof story that is what murof did his son's committed suicide his name is in the dirt no one ever wants to hear that name again in their life and a lot of people were hurt

so I use open questions and philosophy to figure out whether or not it's someone I want to work with and you should do it too because you don't want to be in partnership with someone that doesn't care in the same way that you

care I'm not here to judge what is right and what is wrong I'm here to tell you how you can check that what's right for you aligns in your business in your culture of your business and more importantly in your day-to-day personal

life so you've identified what you love and what you don't love you've checked the mobile code in every way you can or the person you want you've Drawn Lines in the sand what you're not willing to do and you know what this person looks

like the final thing is post it now post it is very simple you start telling people you're looking for this person you post it on LinkedIn you post it everywhere you ask people you make it clear this is what you're looking for

you look out for it in cafes when you're out having dinner when you're at the supermarket you look out for this person because they're out there you just have to have your eyes wide open of course you can go on help bank.com and ask

people if they know someone like this you can use the tools around you to get what you need but ultimately you've now set yourself up with every chance of finding a co-founder now you're going to have to sort out the equity structure

and get that right I'm going to come to that in a minute but that is how you find a co-founder and in my opinion it's one of the most powerful things you can do to ensure success in your business

next up how to sell now anybody can sell it's a system it's a philosophy and anyone can do it I don't care your background you can be an introvert you can still sell and understand the systems of selling and if you are

presently selling I promise you you are missing a few tricks I'm going to try and help you with now first up how to sell it's not what you have been taught it is not here's my product this is how

much it is and this is what it does the first thing in sales that you need to learn and the number one thing I learned through the hard way of doing it is sell the sizzle not the [Music]

steak so what does that mean well let's pick one of the best products ever sold Apple products Steve Jobs used to always set up events where he'd invite 3,500 people into a room all the right Tech reporters all the right people and he

would then present to them the sizzle he would not say here's a phone with an Intel processor that has this and has that he would talk about how this product was for the game changers for those that wanted to do things

differently for the creative types he was very specific about what the sizzle is he didn't sell the steak now in that process of selling there's a couple of other lessons that Steve Job teaches us of course he doesn't sell to Millions

through social media he picks a community 3,500 people in a room he sells to them he connects to them he talks to them and they go and talk to the rest of the world getting someone on your side selling for you is one of the

most powerful ways to sell the number one salesperson in my last company was my accountant why cuz I gave her the tools to sell I told her what we did and how we did it I showed her the sizzle

through the numbers we helped clients be more successful we helped businesses starve off Bank bankruptcy we made sure companies did well and she was proud of that she would sell the sizzle she'd sit with her other CFO friends at lunch and

she'd say we saved a company from going bankrupt we made one company an extra million pounds a month they didn't expect she would tell people the outcome she wouldn't say oh I work for fluid and we have marketing ideas that's not

exciting she talked about the results she talked about the philosophy the sizzle the second element of learning to sell is understand the process of selling so many people don't so many people start on what I call the third

step and you need to do two steps first before you ever start implementing the third step in sales so the first step in any sales is understand your customer now it sounds so obvious and I'm shocked how many people don't do it I often get

emails that say dear John or they say dear Simon I really love what you're doing X and they haven't actually research what I'm really doing however when someone sends me something and understands what I'm doing it's clear on

how they can bring value to me I sit up and I listen and that is the number one thing that people don't do in the first step of sales enough research they do not spend enough time understanding if

the person they're talking to actually needs them they spend way too much time selling to people that don't actually need what they got to sell don't waste your time with people that don't need what you've got focus on the people that

do need what you've got first step is do they need you get to know them the second step in this three-step process to get any sales done is understand the person you're working with in the context of do

you like them this element of sales is so powerful if you can have a a real connection with a person you're selling to a genuine connection not a fake connection it is something that will help you get through all sorts of

difficult times in that relationship you need to like each other you need to genuinely like each other and if you meet someone who needs what you need but they don't like you and you don't like them one the sale probably won't go

ahead but even worse the sale might go ahead then you'll be working with someone that doesn't like you and you don't like them if they're rude they're abrupt you go out for dinner they're rude to the waiter if it doesn't appeal

to you drop them do not work with these people it might be hard you might want the revenue but I promise you you will not build a business that will last if you sell to the wrong people so first

step do they need you do you need them Second Step do they like you do you like them if you do these two things well the final step and let's call it the deal it will happen because are they

like you and they need you they will work with you to make a deal happen I have done enormous deals every single time in my career I've done the first two steps right it's no problem in fact I have said how much I would like for

say example a contract and that client's come back to me and given me even more told me the budget giv me insight into how to make sure we get the work so it's so important not just go in there cold

with what you've got to sell but go in there understanding the person and making sure it lasts if you follow these three steps I promise you you'll get every single sale done now there's one more final thing I want to tell tell you

about sales you've got to think long term there was a study done by Harvard they analyzed the best sales people in the world and the top 50 salese in the world would on average approach someone to get a deal done five times they would

send them an email for example and then a few weeks later they'd send them a follow-up email and then maybe they'd send them a brocher or contact them through social media they would basically contact maximum of five times

before they would actually consider that lead dead and that was their mistake and we're talking about the leading sales people but the top 1% of sales people which it turns out I am one of these people I didn't know it at the time I

now know it looking at the research the top 1% of salespeople do something very different when I started fluid I wrote down all 50 companies I wanted to work with in the building of this business and there were big names on there and

from day one I built a system to reach out to them by hooker by Crook in some way every single month for example at Christmas I would wish them a merry Christmas send them a card Chinese New Year I'd send them something when I

learned something about their industry that I thought could be useful to them bit of research I would send it to them I would always make sure every single month I made contact with them in some way not to sell necessarily but to build

a relationship to get to know what their needs were in some cases I got those clients quite quick but in the majority of the businesses it took me for example 9 years to get some of those companies on board every single month for n years

I would approach those companies and that's the secret to it it's a long game you have to apply yourself build a system in sales that lasts it cannot be one email they don't reply or they one email and they say no you've got to keep

staying in contact with them building things like email lists are still very powerful it know it's not as cool these days as being popular on Tik Tok but I promise you having an email list where you can contact that person regularly

keep an update of what you're doing keep up todate what they're doing will ensure a sale at some point in the future as long as you're politely persistent I promise you you follow these rules in sales your life will change I will add

in sales people don't bring their personality into the mix enough you've got to be yourself be honest be authentic in sales it's not about selling someone a car that doesn't work that is that is how people are projecting what sales looks like sales

is about selling someone a car they actually need I have seen in my own life when I've gone to buy a car the best Sal salespeople tell me you don't want this car you want that car in another

showroom where they don't get the commission I've actually had that happen and when I saw that happen I hired that person because that person is thinking longterm they're not trying to sell me a car to make the commission they're

building a relationship with me and that is what you need to do to be successful in sales next up how to Market this is a deep subject but I'm going to try and give you all the knowledge I've gained

in decades of building some of the most complicated marketing structures there is now marketing is one of the most important pieces in making a business work and I when I think about this subject it's so complicated I honestly

think because I know everything about this subject it's like rocket science I will start off perhaps by teaching you that in marketing 50% of what you spend will probably be be wasted so if you've got a million views but the wrong views

it's wasted so marketing is about really experimenting now I mentioned earlier when I'm talking about sales sell the sizzle not the steak of course that applies in marketing too but marketing is actually about connecting with people over time the biggest example is

branding if you get The Branding right people will resonate you're probably a victim of this you would rather buy an Apple than an of a brand right you've become a victim of good marketing and when for example the iPod launched

product people all thought the product did the selling it was such a good product that's why it did so well no when they launched the iPod they spent more money marketing that product than any company had ever spent on marketing

a product ever marketing is not one thing marketing is a complex structure combining PR brand messaging product Market fit if you don't know product Market fit I can cover this later but basically you've got to make sure that the people you're talking to

will resonate to the product that you're selling or the service that you're selling Marketing in my opinion is actually number one thing it's understanding who your customer is now often in business build you'll see businesses focus on niches to start

with now it doesn't have to stay in that Niche but it's a great place to start so Facebook for example it started off in universities and by connecting people in universities of course now it became connected everybody all over the world

but they understood their customer they knew what that customer was looking for and in the early days of Facebook they put a feature on there called single or or available I can't remember the exact terminology but they they

basically created a feature that let you know if that person was in a relationship or not and that was designed to help the University students understand the Dynamics between their fellow University students and so they knew their Market audience and they then

marketed that feature people would then go around saying did you see Sarah she's suddenly single and that would be the marketing for their product they built a tool in the platform that became what people spoke about that created the

marketing for you and in my opinion that's the Holy Grail of marketing and this brings me on to point two I call this the staircase philosophy so the best way to me the best way for me to teach you this is to

tell you what I have recently done so weirdly a few months ago a staircase came up for sale in London it's the first time a staircase had ever been for sale in London it's ridiculous and I heard it on the news that this staircase

was for sale and I told my brain in instantly we going to buy it now I didn't have an exact plan of what I was going to do with the staircase but what I knew was that staircase symbolized

something for my business which was step by step you can get anywhere you want but also I knew I could news Jack that staircase was a sensation people didn't know why someone was selling a staircase and 2 days after hearing it on the news

I owned it I spent £26,000 buying it at auction and then we did a couple of clever things that hopefully symbolize how marketing works first up as soon as we bought the staircase the news channels that had reported it was for

sale jumped on us I knew they would and they wanted to know why we had bought a staircase and that gave us an opportunity to get on the front page of the New York Times on the front page of

the BBC in every single newspaper around the world millions of us worth of coverage for our platform because we bought a staircase it doesn't seem relevant but doing these Wild Things these crazy things can actually make a huge difference one of the things that I

always loved in marketing was when flash mobs were a thing and what happened was suddenly You' get a whole shopping mall people would start dancing and everyone would wonder what it was right that is brilliant marketing now it might not

sell your product exactly in that exact moment but over time it allows you to have a reach and expansion and uniqueness to you that will help you stand out because that's what it's about it's about standing out so by buying the

staircase we then evolved it we got all this PR millions of dollars worth of free PR for a staircase then we put a doorbell at the bottom of that staircase and we said if you've got a dream press

a button we'll then upload your dream to our 4 million following and get you free exposure well that was what the Press needed to do a follow-up story on it once you bought the staircase what did you do with it that they wrote All about

that but also we built a whole new way of helping people on the back of staircase that was for sale I knew it symbolized helping people step by step and then the final step in marketing we all need Partners marketing isn't about

promoting something on your own we don't want to get a partner like ring doorbell or Amazon who own ring doorbell on board to sponsor the doorbell to sponsor the staircase to help us reach even more people and then suddenly they pay for

our marketing and so marketing isn't a standalone thing marketing isn't a a non-living organ GC product you have to see it as living you have to see it as evolving and you have to see it as something that you do that pushes the

envelope now marketing is connected to sales if you have a sales team in a way when they ring someone up how they speak to someone how they treat someone that is also marketing that's brand marketing however that person receives your phone

call receives your your in interaction with them will affect your brand and that is marketing Nike for example how do they do marketing well they endorse the very best athletes in the world of course in some cases they make shoes

with those very successful athletes they're aligning themselves up with these people that are incredibly successful what does Apple do Apple links to creative people so therefore everybody wants to have some sort of creativity in their life Beauty in their

life so they buy a product they think is for the creative people right IBM notebook was a better product but people didn't want that I didn't symbolize something cool and sexy and creativity so I think marketing is about again some

like similar to sales selling the sizzle but it's also about understanding who your customer is how to reach that Niche and then how to work with that Niche to expand into the wider world if you want to scale it's the staircase method

what's your staircase what's going to make you stand out how can you evolve that thing that makes you stand out and go even further number three is systems when you're doing marketing it is such an overwhelming thing there's so

many different ways you can do it you can do email marketing you can do social media you can do PR you can do branding you can do events I mean the list never ends so how do you decide which one to do well first

of all whatever you do you've got to build a system to do it so if it is email marketing then you have a good data collection system you have a good data management system and then you have a good way of pushing out the the

content to that database and whatever one of these things you do if you do all of them or you do one of them do them well do not do all of them and Order of them badly I see so many people with on

their website Twitter and Facebook and Instagram links and then you li click through to them and they're dead you're better off doing one well now I think marketing is something where you should spread your bet you want to do many

different ways what I call entrances into your business you want to do many of them as many of them as you can but do not over stretch yourself it's better to do one platform on social media really well than try and spread yourself

th but if you set up a system for doing your social media there is a chance you could do all of them well with the same amount of resources doing one of them well so for example on my social media I

have one core video and then we edit it inapp for each of the channels so we don't have to record separate videos for each of the channels but we do inapp edit them so they're actually tailored to that particular platform's nuances be

it their font or their image so you can actually set up a system to do all of these marketing things but the key of course is not only just systems but making sure you pick what works for you

now when it comes to marketing one of the big mistakes I see people get taught is marketing is about having the staircase only it's not about having the staircase only it is about applying what you like to do as a founder or maybe

what your team likes to do into your marketing strategy as an example if you don't like talking on camera that's not your thing as long as you're not hiding away from learning something new and you genuinely don't like to do it but for

example you love to write then doing an email marketing strategy is probably right for you posting on LinkedIn is probably the correct platform for you sure you'll hear people talking about how good Tik Tok is and how Ben much

benefit they' got from it but it doesn't work for you it's not sustainable for you it's not something you're going to enjoy and marketing is something fun this is something I want you to take away no one talks about it but marketing

is meant to be fun I took my son to buy that staircase we had a laugh once we got the staircase we had a laugh cleaning it up we had a laugh putting a blimp on top of it we had a laugh

putting a doorbell on the front of it we enjoyed the whole bloody thing and if you don't enjoy it what's the point marketing is about enjoying it that's why I see brands do well I give you an example face uh Starbucks Marketing in

the early days was two things first they would take good Lo locations sometimes quite close to each other so instead of getting a billboard advertising Starbucks they'd open up another Starbucks and even if it was loss making as long as it wasn't more expensive in

its loss than a billboard they were better off having a store then people could have the experience they never did any Billboards it's changed now and I would argue it's not as good a brand anymore but they opened up locations

that was one of their marketing strategies the second thing that they did that was really clever is they looked after their staff which sounds really obvious doesn't it but they did they talk about their staff as partners the Baristas are Partners in some

respects the internal training manual talked about their Baristas as the customer and and and it worked in the early days of Starbucks to say what you like about them today but in the early days of Starbucks when I used to walk in

there a barista would know my name they'd know what drink I wanted and they were just working for Starbucks but they cared because they were looked after they were given medical care for example they were given full-time Medical Care

even if they need even if they were part-time staff they were given insurance and looked after and they were given days off if they didn't feel very well they were looked after and I and and I think that this is also part of

marketing it might not sound it but if your people don't represent you then good luck making everything else represent you because those people will create all the things that represent you so do include fun into your business do

look at the nuances of your business and figure out what is going to be your staircase and ultimately apply your marketing love to something that's sustainable that's going to be enjoyable that's going to be able to actually deliver the very thing

that you want to deliver which I think should always be the promise of a better future for your customers next up how to PR your business now some of these things are interconnected and sales and marketing all connect to how to get PR

but I'm going to give you some hacks and some insights in how PR works and it is quite a complicated subject but but it's something if you get right can be a game changer for your business now first up

I'll say getting PR has to be very targeted I know plenty of people that have got PR for the money they've raised in their company and it will go out to platforms like Tech crunch it will make them feel good but it had no impact on

their business other than to make them feel good which is fine I guess but I do think PR should be more strategic I'd rather spend time reaching the press and actually getting a tangible result and not just playing to Eco so recently for

example I was featured on the BBC news they talked about what we were doing at the doorbell where people could pitch their dreams and this led to hundreds of people finding out about it going to our staircase pitching their dream and

helping them make their dream happen now that in my opinion is targeted marketing equally I have done recently an article in a Business Journal that got zero reaction now I was proud to be in the Business Journal and I don't want to say

which one it is so I don't insult them but ultimately it actually led to no value as far as what I want to do which is help people do what they love and make sure people know there's a service

out there for free to help them do what they love so PR is very important to be targeted and so I'll write that down first now targeting can also be subjective because a bit like marketing itself and sales of course sometimes you

do need to cast The Net wide and get as much coverage as you can but if you do start to Target your actual needs it's much easier to get PR I give you example if for example you want to let people

know that you are now selling cherries on the side of the street the best thing to do is get some PR in the local area that you live now as much as it might be nice to so You' started a Cherry Farm

selling cherries on the side of the street to make that farm work probably could get you in a mainstream News Channel it won't necessarily lead to sales in the location in which you sell those cherries so targeting and

understanding exactly who you're trying to reach is actually the key and it's more likely that if you are selling cherries in East Sussex the East Sussex times will cover you it's more relevant more chances of actually getting the pr

than say for example the BBC covering it because it's not necessarily going to be that interesting you could tend spend a lot of time and money reaching those people and then not cover you the second thing I'll teach you about PR is

journalists are lazy so if you understand this and understand if you provide everything for them then they don't need to do any work more likely to get the Press coverage so what I always do is I actually write the

press release like it's the actual story you want written with a good headline that makes them happy that they're not selling you that's journalists don't want to write and sell you they want to write something that's interesting for

the reader so making a good subject line that's good for the reader making the story good for the reader I do all the work for the journalist and then things like photos I take high resolution photos and I send them with a press clip

to make sure they've got everything they need all they have to do is say yes to the story and then put their own touch on it job done they're human beings they want to go out for lunch if they can so

if you can make it possible for them to go out for lunch and do their job then you will win in PR too many people are lazy they send press releases that are generic and they don't tailor it to the

journalist they're writing to so the other thing you need to do is research that journalist back to the targeting you need to understand what that journalist writes about what that journalist is interested in and almost write in their style if you want that

particular journalist right about you the third thing on PR I'll tell you is there is a lot of companies out there that will tell you they can get you PR please be careful now as much as it might be nice to just pay someone to do

this I have discovered doing the pr yourself especially if you're a small business can pay huge dividends why because you can make a relationship direct with a journalist and how do you find these journalistic contacts that's what the pr companies tell you they've

got you can go for a newspaper and find them you can Google them you'll find them quite quick one big hack I'll give you is Twitter in particular is really good to get hold of journalists if you start following the journalists that you

want to write about you and you start engaging on their posts I would say that's one of the best ways to start building up a relationship with a journalist most people will reply to comment or read a comment that you've

made on one of their posts and weirdly enough often journalists don't have big followings and they don't actually have a lot of comments so you can start making a relationship start commenting on something if they post something about global warming and you you've got

a product that's helping reduce global warming then you will get noticed if you start commenting on a story they've done about it start being part of their thinking when it comes to I need someone to help me write this story I need

someone to give me a quote to make the story better start becoming part of that journalist life and it starts with just following them on Twitter or replying to one of their comments engaging on one of the stories they've already written even

online things like Daily Mail the journalist will read the comment on their own story so engage engage is the number one thing I can tell you when it comes to getting PR from journalists and finally I have been involved in many

conversations where I know brands have not worked with someone because they saw on someone's social media that they posted something obscene or rude or stupid remember that you as a business owner will always be the number one PR

engine whatever you post up be conscious be careful think about your brand think about the image that you're projecting and I I can't tell you enough how important this is because if you do the first few things I've just mentioned you

connect with the Press you know who you're targeting and you're not lazy you help them do it if a journalist sees that you are out of control or inappropriate they will not risk their job to write about you so learn to be

disciplined learn to be the brand PR starts with one person having respect for you so make sure you're dis disciplined don't be lazy yourself next up one of my favorite subjects one of the questions I get asked the most how

to get an investor learning how to get an investor can dramatically change the trajectory of your business equally though just before I go into how to get an investor I want you to think carefully about whether or not you need

an investor now I have invested in 78 companies you can go on my website simon.com and look at some of the companies I've invested in I have seen it all and sometimes if you get the wrong investor or get an investor for

the wrong reasons you you will have a new boss and your life will become a nightmare it will be easy at the beginning when you get the money and will get harder over time if you do it wrong I will try to teach you how to not

get it wrong but equally please ask yourself is there another way to make the business work and I'm going to touch on other ways that you could make it work even if you don't get an investor within this how to get an investor chat

now there are quite a few different ways to get an investor depending on the stage of your business and how much you're trying to raise if you're trying to raise money in the early days of a business I would say to you the more

traction you have in your business the easier it is to get an investor now that does not mean to say if you just have an idea you can't get an investor you definitely can there's just less people that will fund it so just like the sales

stuff I taught you earlier it's probably better to make sure that you actually know who you're targeting when you're getting an investor what is the profile of the person you want so if you're going after someone that perhaps will

fund a business that has no traction it's just an idea then remember those people's profile they they probably want quite a lot of equity they probably want some involvement in the business to make sure it works they probably want some

sector relevance industry relevance to your business so they can add value because no investor I don't care who they are just want to feel like money everybody wants to feel like they're bringing some sort of value in fact I

would argue you shouldn't invest in a business unless you can bring value you've got to make the value the thing that gives you the edge to make that investment work otherwise you might just invest in the stock market if you can't

bring value you might as well invest in the stock market and I don't think you make money from the stock market Market middle class people make moneyy from the stock market you make money like waren Buffett makes money you own a piece of a

company you can influence you can help make sure it's successful so do your research but these are the types of profiles that are often the best family and friends now I know family and friends can be difficult for a lot of

people a lot of people don't have family and friends with money and I totally understand that and I'll come to other methods but I just want to touch on this first because family and friends the reason it's such a good thing to do is

because they know you you don't have to convince someone of your personality your profile your dedication they will know all of that they'll know the true you most of the time that could be really powerful and speeding up the

process of getting the money you need now of course we all know it can get messy if you take money off family and friends and you don't pay them back so tell them the truth they could lose all

their money that's all you need to do you tell them they could lose all their money in the wish to get investment we sometimes go down the road of overselling it it and that's totally normal but please be careful with this

especially with family and friends if you tell them you invest in my business it could all go wrong you can lose everything then after that it's up to them but you make it clear don't oversell it that it's a guaranteed win

it cannot be a guarantee where nothing ever is unless you've watched all of this video of course there's a high chance but you know what I mean please please be careful but I have seen it work and often family and friends can

also help you which in the early days of any business if that's the stage you're at then getting help is probably more valuable than money but I've seen it work so do give it serious consideration and of course friend of a friend can

also be the way to raise money if you don't have someone in your family that's rich maybe you've got a friend who has a family that's rich learn to leverage the network because your friend recommending you to someone who's rich will be

powerful and doesn't mean it'll also save you time in the VC World which I'll talk about in a minute getting a recommendation is the only way to get investment they don't take applications online despite what their websites say

I've seen it they don't they take it from recommendation so start really networking the second thing I'll say and I've never seen anyone else talk about this when it comes to getting an investor and that is consider the people

you want to work with you in your company as potential investors so sometimes when you're profiling the people you want in your business you will look at it and say right well I can't afford the best so I'll get this

person right which is fine I understand that but the smart people think differently the smart people think who are the best and let's say I'm building right now a competitor to LinkedIn help bank.com so I think who's number two at LinkedIn I

want them to come and join me they're never going to be number one at LinkedIn not for a long time but maybe they want the chance to build their own LinkedIn and come and join me now the great thing

about the number two at LinkedIn definitely got some money in the bank right some money to invest in the business so I can and I've done this many times so this isn't just a theory but look at your

team look at your team members as potential investors in the platform I'm running today help.com the people that are involved in this business have invested in this business Callum who's buying the camera right now has put his own money into this business and he's

got Equity because of it and he's taken a lower salary initially so there's all sorts of benefits to actually doing it this way you can get your cost down you can get the best inclass involved in the business and you can bring money in to

help make the company work and it's much better to have money from people that are actually working in the business Than People externally who are asking you for a report of when they're going to get their money back the third thing

you can do and of course this is more traditional but it is very complex so I try to explain how to go about getting this type of person in your business but it's an angel investor now you might

have heard the term many times you probably watched rubbish shows like Dragon's Den and thought that getting an investor is the dragon or the angel sits there with all the money and you are desperately trying to get that money off

them by making them see your vision that is the wrong way to get an angel investor the best way to get an angel investor on board once you've identified them and done the research to find out who they are you've been very clear

about what you're going to give them if they invest all of that is common sense right I don't need to teach you that right now of course you need to know how much you're going to give them and why

and I'll get into equity in a little bit later in the video so you could try to work that bit out but once you've established who you want as an investor and what you're willing to give them the

way to get an investor is completely the opposite to what you think you think getting an investor is hi I've got a business this is this business would you like to invest no the best way to get an

angel investor is not ask for money the best way to get an angel investor is ask for help because you've identified the right investor they want to feel value if they can't bring value they don't want to invest and often if you do it

right it's not like Dragon's Den I've invested in 78 businesses I always feel honored and unlucky when I get to invest in a successful business they do not treat me like a dragon they do not treat me with awe they treat me with respect

but they also identify why they've approached me how I can bring value and make me feel special and ultimately I then feel lucky to be involved in that business if they do that right if you ask me for advice you're more likely to

get money out of me than you straight up ask him ask me for money now I'm not saying don't build ask into the process of course when you do a picture angel investor you should definitely put in there you're looking for money but the

best way to put it is we're looking for money from the right people make it a little harder for people to get involved in your business that's how you get an angel investor you create fomo right fomo you probably heard it but in case

you haven't it's probably one of the most powerful things fear of missing out you make people understand and you do it sincerely that if they don't invest they're missing out that is the key to getting an angel investor now of course

treat an angel investor with respect if you can prepare a correct and appropriate amount of equity they're going to get make it clear why explain your long-term investment plans how they're going to dilute because Angel Investors often get diluted so if you're

offering them 5% it might sound like a lot but if you get another investor and another investor as the things go as things go down the line that person could end up with 1% of the company or half a percent of the company and

remember most Angel Investors will be involved in the business so make sure you actually need them to help you don't just pretend that they need you you need them because once you get them on board as an investor you also it will go pair

shaped so it's not just about convincing the person to get on board it's also convincing yourself that the right person to have with you on this journey in the long term make sure you do that now the fourth way of getting an

investor more traditional VC's Venture capitalists now these types of profiles often a little bit further down the line in your business model than just a startup or an idea most of the time nearly all VCS although things have changed a little

bit when there was a lot of money in the market but most VCS will genuinely want a business that's proven that needs Capital to scale so the way to get a VC on board a couple of ways first you

identify have they got money now what happens with a lot of VCS is they're raising funds and they're deploying funds and then they're raising funds again and they won't necessarily tell you they'll take a meeting with you they might meet you and understand your

business but they won't necessarily have the funds and they'll tell you what we joke in the VC world is you're too too tall for radio so you go for a job interview radio station they reject you in that job and the interview rejection

reason is you were too short for radio in other words it's they don't tell you why but you can find out if they're raising you can Google them to find this out don't waste time approaching VCS are raising money they

won't deploy the capital they will waste your time the other thing you can do and I think it's very important is see who they've invested in before and there's a good chance if they've invested in a similar business to yours

it's one of two things that it's either bad news or good news for you if it's good uh then they will invest in many different companies so for example there was an investment company that invested in all the uh Uber type businesses as a

they invested in Uber they invested in lift they invested in all of them they hedged their bet that one of them was going to win they want to be a part of all of them to make sure that they

didn't lose other VCS will only invest in one company in that categ category so just make sure you understand that but if it's bad news and they only invest in one company in that category then you can go to the competitor of that VC and

create a rivalry between the VC firms I've seen it play out many times you make them feel like well they've invested in Uber but I'm Lyft and I think we're going to beat Uber would you like to invest in us and it's Primal but

it works so think about again have they got money don't waste time selling to people that don't have that see the investor come companies they've invested in before understand that and then three try to get connected to a previous

company that that VC has invested in it's much more powerful for you to get introduced by one of the other portfolio companies of that VC then you personally approaching that VC so try to make connections and it's also good due

diligence by the way if you speak to the company that got investment from that VC you can find out whether that VC was decent or not because some of these VCS are awful so you can do your due

diligence at the same time hopefully make a relationship with a Founder that can introduce you to the VC when the time is right now the fifth way again I've never seen this way explained to people before and it's not traditional

but I have done it many many times and that is work with your brand partner or client to fund your growth so I had an office in Hong Kong and a client wanted us to open up in the Middle East and I

was a bit reluctant which is why I think I found out about this hack cuz I originally said we don't want to open up there I think they just wanted us open up there and then service them and they

didn't want to spend any money doing it but because we said no and they really wanted to work with us there they offered to pay us to open up there so this is a hack I learn and I will use it

many many many more times after this that sometimes your client who wants your service or the brand that's sponsoring you will pay for your expansion sometimes it's easier for them to do that than go out and build it

sales for example or work with a new partner that doesn't understand their philosophy so your existing clients can be your investor and it can be really powerful if you do it right too because that client then feels invested in your

success they're not going to make you go for a tender every year they're not going to chop and change you as a client or partner or or supplier because they want you to succeed because they own equity in you now of course you have to

do this carefully so for example if one of your clients is a bank and they invest in you it can get very messy suddenly on the legal side equally if you are working with a particular provider let's say in my case I work

with lots of different online service providers but I partner with GoDaddy but if GoDaddy invested in my business it means all the other online suppliers probably wouldn't work with me which would not help the people I'm trying to

help which is people starting businesses so I think it's quite important to make sure you get the right client or the right brand to invest in you but it can be huge money and brands do have investment divisions Google Ventures

Google it ironic they invest in businesses they invested in a coffee shop called Blue Bottle a coffee shop so it's possible to get Google to invest in your business but you have to understand again the motives go back to my sales

point I made in the video earlier in the video if you want to understand how to sell to these brands use that sales system again but ultimately it's a way to raise money now there's one final way I want to quickly flush out with you to

raise money to make your business work now it kind of touched on what I said at the beginning of this part of the video and that is make sure you need an investor sometimes when people are asking me for money I will ask them what

they're using the money for and most of the time not always but quite often it's to get more sales to grow the product to make sure more people can buy the product and so on but when I dig in it's

not money from me that they need they just need a better sales system so often when it comes to raising money you'll find that if you can actually go look at your business and you might say to yourself well I need the money to buy

the product well you can do crowdfunding for example you can find me methods of selling your product ahead of time through platforms like Indiegogo and and platforms that will pre-sell your product to get you the revenue you need

in advance and you're not giving away any Equity when you do that you can pre-sell your product on certain crowdfunding sites before it's made and then you can go and use the money you got from that pre-order to go and make

it and that is often a much better way than raising money from an investor of course crowdfunding is quite big across the board now you can can raise money crowdfunding you can do equity crowdfunding and there's plenty of sites

that do that I'll put some links Down Below in the video if you want to check out who they are but ultimately you want to figure out whether or not you really need the money from a customer pre-

buying it or from an investor who's going to help bring value or from a community that's going to support you in the future you can do crowdfunding where you sell your product you can do crowdfunding where you sell Equity you

can do crowdfunding where ultimately it's just a loan you can do crowdfunding where people will just support you like Gund me crowdfunding is definitely one of the ways I think today you should leverage before going to the more

traditional routs of say a VC or an angel of course family and friends so crowdfunding is powerful and don't overlook it I'm going to put the links to all the different types of crowdfunding sites down below go check

them out and let me know if you have any questions in this subject because it is a complicated one I will do a video in the future about how to launch a proper crowdfunding site but that's not now how

to get a sponsor this is something I get asked all the time I'm going to give you the code I'm going to give you the cheat code I guess on how to do it and I want to first of all say if any sponsors are

listening to this um I have applied this technique on you so forgive me the first is understanding why sponsorship deals happen we can get into what sponsorship deals structures are and that's quite complex in itself but I want to give you

the tool today to get a sponsor on board and the way to understand a sponsor there's two things that makes a sponsor come on board one is value return right what they invest in sponsoring you they get back in some

form right be that in views or be that in sales they get value back ideally trackable value so billboard companies which I think are a joke um really in what they value-wise give back to a brand sell because they show how many

people walk past that billboard how many people are looking at that billboard each day and Brands love that stuff so proper Roi on their investment the second way and this one's a bit more tricky but very powerful if you get it

right is the emotional sale right so you see this quite a lot in like local football clubs in England big Brands sometimes are sponsoring small local football clubs why because the CEO plays football there or the CEO grew up there

playing football basically the emotional sale now I have used both of these to get deals and both of them can actually work together they're not mutually exclusive frankly sometimes the emotional sale with the value return is probably the Holy Grail if you can make

it personal for the brand and the people running the brand don't overlook them if you're going to make it emotional for the person who runs the brand alongside bring proper value most of the time you can get a brand deal now where people

fall over is not structuring value for a sponsor or and this is probably the third thing I highlight that's important to get a sponsorship deal you've not understood the brand now I have made this mistake many times I launched a

business called coaster ads and it was brilliant marketing you I took all the bars in Hong Kong and I put ads on coasters I took out the carlsburg coasters and the hiney coasters and I put in coasters with ads on them and it

was brilliant because you put your drink down on that coaster you up and down look at it for an hour at least as you're putting the drink on it and picking up it was brilliant retention brilliant engagement people saw the ads

every time they're brilliant but I tried to sell that service that coaster ad service to a jewelry business and of course they laughed at me in fact I lost them as a client on the agency side because they thought I didn't understand

their brand I was so sure that that jewelry brand would get traction which they would have done but I didn't remember what their brand philosophy was and they're high-end they're fashionable they don't want a beer sat on top of

them I made a mistake I didn't understand the brand and this is where you need to get really really clear what is the brand value and so in that case in the jewelry case they want to sponsor you know 007

movies with James Bond's girlfriend wearing the jewelry and looking sexy you know they want to be involved in things that are not linked to beer that are not linked to somebody drunk putting their beer down on their brand now now I did

eventually sell coaster ads out to airlines that wanted to promote going from Hong Kong to Singapore and so on and so forth so I eventually did really well with that brand but initially I learned an important lesson understand

the brand understand what their values are understand how they traditionally advertise so visa for example Visa advertise at the Olympics they not only sponsor the Olympics then they spend a lot of money promoting the fact that they're at the Olympics too many people

go to visa and ask for sponsorship without understanding the probably the biggest activation that Visa ever do is the Olympics so you're better off going and selling some value linked to the Olympics as opposed to saying please sponsor my event because they're saying

we sponsored the Olympics we sponsored the biggest event in the world now you want us to sponsor your event brand values and understanding what that brand wants is key but I mentioned it briefly a second ago but I want to highlight it

is important don't forget the people in these brands research who they are understand what their motives are some of the brands that sponsor me today GoDaddy and Tai banking the people that run those Brands care as much about entrepreneurs as the

brands themselves so when they see that me and my team are helping people genuinely helping people have a better life not only do the people buy in to becoming a sponsor for us the brand alignment is there and it happens right

now this does TY into the emotional cell somewhat because for example one of the people I work with GoDaddy had a small business she knew how hard it was to make that business work so when she sees what we're doing alongside what GoDaddy

does this isn't a sponsored video by the way but I'm just highlighting the example so you learn ultimately these people make a difference in that brand that brand is made up of people so as long as those people don't get fired for

sponsoring something that has no relevance to their brand you can actually end up having Champions inside these companies for you to help you get the sponsorship and I've had that many many times now the fifth way to get a

brand to sponsor you that no one talks about I don't know why maybe it's some sort of Industry dirty secret but it's a very very powerful way of getting a brand sponsor on board is work with someone that's already working with one

of these Brands an agent is often one way to describe it but there are two types of typical agents that Brands work with there is a media buying company this is a company that will go out and buy all the ad space for that brand

they're paid by the brand to go and get the best deals possible and buy up ad space you can talk to these media buyers and often it can be better to talk to them than go direct to the brand because

the brand is too busy with its day-to-day to deal with you as a media owner they would prefer to deal with the media buyer one contact and then that Med media buy will deal with everybody that wants to sell media so recently

someone came to me and said they've got a fleet of Vans and they want to get Brands to advertise on their Vans and they tried going direct to Brands and brand said no gave them a contact on a

media buyer the media buyer said great and they bought all the event it's much quicker the media buyer has a relationship with the brands and often they hold the money the brands already allocated the money to the media buyer

so stop trying to sell to the brand sell to the media buyer the other way to do it is via the agencies so I used to own an agency is one of the reasons I know this subject so so well but a brand will

have a company that will come up with a campaign idea for them now often when you're coming up with a campaign for a brand you're also looking at how the campaign will be applied in the real world so it might go on taxis it might

go on a bus it might go on a coaster so you can actually tap into these agencies examples without showing any preference there's people like MC sari Ogie Leo berett these agencies already have the relationship with the company and if you

get in there with your idea or your product they can often insert it or even come up with a campaign to sell it into the brand for you now uh I personally prefer to deal with Brands direct many

times but do not neglect media buyers are your friends and agencies can be your friends and it can be a much quicker sale to get them on board as a sponsor one of the best hacks to get a

brand as a sponsor is to be per personally really vested in that brand so for example we recently as you know I mentioned it earlier put a doorbell on the bottom of our staircase that people could press that doorbell pitch their

dream and we would help them we decided the best product for us to do that the most economical product that worked on the internet was Ring doorbell owned by Amazon now we didn't ask ring to sponsor us we didn't ask Amazon to sponsor us it

was just the best product we believed in the product and suited what we were trying to do so we in sold it and we marketed it and of course guess who's seen it ring and Amazon so now who are

we now working with Amazon now of course what I'm talking about here is just using the brand in your life and therefore it being a natural fit for the brand to work with you when I wear whoop out on the street it's natural I'm

wearing it because I like the product and then whoop will see me with millions of views on my videos wearing a whoop and they will contact me so I think that just leaning in to a brand relationship and not initially thinking about the

money back to some of the points I was making some of the other areas earlier delayed gratification in sponsorship can also be very powerful just work with brands that you love will always be easier than forcing a brand into your

ecosystem but also just doing stuff with that brand as part of your day-to-day business life can lead to sponsorship how to build a brand now this subject is complex and exciting if you get it right A lot of the things I've talked about

earlier like sales and marketing will happen naturally but it is complex now there's lots of videos out there about what is a brand so I'm not going to bore you with that it's obvious it's ultimately a statement about what you

are doing you want people to look at it and know I love the images I've seen many you can take away the logo you can take away everything and you still know it's that brand it's not about the

actual logo the design branding is about the purpose of the business the essence of what you're doing Nike is about supporting athletes apple is about supporting creativity ultimately when you're coming to figure out your own brand I would start with your personal

brand because it's a really good way of figuring out how to build a brand why you know you right if you're honest about yourself you can make a brand Persona and you start with writing down your values what do you care about

what are your non-negotiables what would you say no to what would you say yes to understanding your personality understanding what it is you want to do that's what your brand is about that's who you are now you will

already have a personal brand and anyone that doesn't want a personal brand I'm sorry you're going to have one no matter what people will talk about you when you're not in the room you need to embrace personal branding and by

understanding how others perceive you it can literally change the trajectory of your life now I have some real gripes with personal brand and it's not very scalable only in certain exceptions around people like Kardashians and so on can you actually scale a personal brand

as someone that's built a personal brand as someone that's got 4 million followers that spent four years building a personal brand here in the UK I can tell you it is sometimes a pain in the ass I am responsible now no matter what

to do videos like this and post up stuff even when I'm tired like now I'm actually tired and I still have to do this video because if I don't do it it probably won't take it seriously I could

give this knowledge to my colleague and give it to you and you probably wouldn't listen so you need to hear it from someone that's been there and done it like me and I understand that and I actually do love doing these videos and

helping you but I'm just trying to highlight the personal brand side is dangerous if that's all you build you have to take personal brand seriously you have to identify what your personal brand is and by the way I know people

that have made their personal brand not being on social media their personal brand is they don't get back to you in email that's actually sometimes what makes them unique that's their personal brand I don't reply to DMs I want to

make videos like this that bring you value I want to do lives that means I interact in a real world with real people I have my rules I have my values I'm dyslexic so I don't like reading DMS

but having those rules and having that discipline will ultimately help you define what people say about you instead of people saying it without you having defined it but brand values of your own can teach you how you need to do exactly

the same for your company name so let's take my brand help bank right help bank has a lot of the traits that I personally value honesty openness authenticity value these are all words in my personal brand Persona that have

translated into my company Persona however help bank's long-term future also involves helping people with Finance Finance is not a word I use on my personal brand and also supporting people to get the funding they need is something I have personally done many

many times but as an organization as a platform it's going to be a much more serious thing for help bank so when The Branding was designed we said it has to look a little bit more serious than the

Simon squid brand because ultimately we'll be funding people people's dreams at scale and people need to trust if we tell them we're going to fund their dreams it's actually going to happen so the help Bank branding is a combination

of the Simon squid branding and our competitors potentially in the future we want to make it look serious it has some element of fun but ultimately it has its own brand Persona and all you need to do initially to get the brand right is

write down all the different brand values now I want to teach you about how companies apply brand at scale and there's a few different ways it generally plays out so let's take a brand like Canon and Canon run a brand

method which we call reference right and reference is when they leverage someone else's brand to make their brand look good so Canon for example work with a photographer called Peter McKinnon who is a brilliant photographer I'm a big

fan of his and by by sponsoring him by supporting him they don't need that person as a CEO and their company like like apple have done they have it external Nike also do this I mentioned earlier Nike will sponsor top performing

athletes with nice personalities that have values and that therefore becomes part of the night brand so they use this reference model to make their own brand look good now apple as I mentioned earlier they use a different method I

call this the leadership method and the leadership method is basically where you have a person in the company that represents the brand values now in help bank I am that person probably in your business you are if you're a small

business owner the person that is the leadership value brand ambassador for your company you're probably the one that ask to go on stage and talk about your business you're the one in sales meetings whatever your business model is

you're probably the one representing the brand of course your staff will represent the brand your office environment will represent the brand like I said earlier the days when you go out have a party and post on your social

media will represent your brand but when it comes to making your brand values clear you do it by these two methods you either have a reference model which means you sponsor certain people that represent your brand value or you have a

Leadership Model which is you personally in the company leading the charge to make sure people understand your brand and I think when it comes to Brand building there are are some risks in both of these models now in the

reference model if a celebrity that's supporting your brand does something bad that can affect your brand now this happens a lot and they often get fired quick I think one of the most famous cases Kanye West who of course got

dropped by Adidas and and then lawsuits Galore but what I'm saying is though what's good about the reference model is you don't have to spend four years building up social media presence like me I've spent every single day four

years doing a post building up a community you can just leverage all of that hard work and your brand can have the halo effect of working with me but the downside is what if I do something bad then your brand is at risk so you

need to have mechanisms in place to make sure you're protected as a brand but that's how you scale brand and of course the Leadership Model also has its weaknesses we all saw this a little bit with Steve Jobs when Steve Jobs left

apple apple had a real problem for a long time they put so much of their brand value in the Steve Jobs brand that when he left the magic left was often what people said right so you have to

make sure that you as a leader it's sustainable for you to be that leader and Lead that brand effort and or there's a good transition model in place and again when Steve Jobs went back to Apple he did have a strong transition

model with Tim Cook now Tim Cook's an interesting one because he's not Steve Jobs of course but he is Mr Data he's someone you trust with your data right they've picked him in part because he looks trustworthy he talks in a very

trustworthy and transparent way and in Apple's process of building a brand today that is more important to them than a Maverick leader telling you about a brilliant product in fact the Apple iPhone hasn't changed much since Steve Job died but the point I'm trying to

make here is if you want a brand to be successful you've got to pick one of these two strategies now you can do both of course but you probably double the risk of having some problem in your business and whichever path you choose

make sure you think it through right to the end have the ability to cut that influencer out of your business if anything goes wrong and equally if you're running the Leadership Model make sure that that leader has a transition

plan because at some point we're all going to die now hopefully we're all going to live forever with Elon must help I'm sure that's true but I will tell you now the final thing really important in brand learn to say

no if you don't say no to the wrong relationships the wrong brand Partnerships the wrong clients your brand will get damaged I have had this experience myself I spent 10 years building up a brand it had a fantastic reputation and then I

got a bad client that didn't understand how the world worked and made my brand with their big mouth and their lies and this can be hugely damaging we all have probably heard the saying you can spend 30 years building a reputation it

only takes 5 seconds for it to go to I tell you from experience that saying no to things is powerful if you have an inkling spider senses that someone isn't good or a brand isn't good don't match with your malls do not take

their money say no your brand is the most valuable asset you will ever ever build my company got sold for a lot of money in the end because I had a good brand image I had a good brand value

they told me they bought the brand not the business build a brand not a business and I promise you that brand will live forever next up how to hire how to grow and how to build these three things are interl and if you get this

formula right your business business can take off and forever give you the income you need be a brand you love and ultimately not be a management nightmare that a lot of people have when they build a business so first of all how to

hire I always tell people if your business has a purpose and the people you hire believe in that purpose you will never have to manage anybody you will be managing purpose not people one of the big things people complain to me about is managing

people and often when I look at their business to see why because they have not installed a purpose in their business that resonates with the people that they have hired Sometimes some businesses later install a purpose but then that purpose just becomes a slogan

on the wall because the people they hired in the early days weren't hired around purpose you have to have this at the center of ill and when you hire someone always check that they genuinely care about that purpose some people will

play you lip service to get the job so there is a few hacks that you can do to make sure that person really cares first of all go check out their social media go see what that person really cares

about you will see it if they care about the planet if you see them driving around in some gas-guzzling car they probably don't care about the environment so actually doing your research on your hires being careful about the people you bring into your

purpose matters check their history check for references I don't know why people don't do this people don't ask for references anymore I don't know why now I know in England it's illegal to give someone a bad reference but if you ask right I don't want people

to have a bad employee in their life if I had that bad employee in mine it's important that we share these things to help that employee get better if they had a bad reference they'd act better they'd do a better job now

ultimately I think when hiring people the key is give them Equity now I'm going to talk more about Equity a little bit later in the video it always comes up but if you give your team equity they are aligned with your

success now any owner of any business knows that the real value in a company is not its turnover it's in its brand and if over 10 years an employee helps make that brand grow but are only taking an income they're never getting their

true value you have to own equity in the business that you are working in now there's many different ways to do it so if you're working for someone today of course you can go ask for equity in that

company you've got nothing to lose they'll probably laugh they might say no I promise you respect you more especially if they're a Founder the second thing is you can build a business where you work with that company but you

own equity in it so you can start your own company but have equity in that company and then work for that person now the point I'm telling you here is that give your employees respect if you want to keep people and you want them to

be motivated have this conversation openly talk about this subject you should be saying they should have Equity now it might not be possible to give people Equity straight away it might not be something you feel comfortable with doing straight away but I promise you

your turnover will be less your stress will be less your company will be stronger if that person in your company has equity and most people don't have the guts to do it and they W then spend years stressing they can't find anyone

or that they can't find anyone that actually cares it's because they don't own what you own give them a piece of the business and you'll have loyalty of course it comes with its risks but in my opinion High turnover High management

high stress is a bigger risk than any Equity problem you could have if someone leaves for example and ironically most of the time why would people leave if they have equity in fact I had a case recently someone who worked with me for

four years I gave them equity in the business and then they left but because I treated them with respect and because I treated them well and we had a good relationship when they left they let me buy that Equity back at a very low rate

they were very reasonable they did not hold me blackmail now of course if you've hired the right person under purpose and you've given them Equity most good people will not hold you over it to get that Equity back you can be

reasonable but if you've done the right thing in the beginning by giving people Equity it's so easy now the third thing I'll tell you and this really links to how you grow your business you can't grow a business without people I would

say that today with AI and all this technology you'll be able to grow a business with less people but you won't be able to grow a business with no people so you need to grow a business through growing its culture you need to

make sure that this business has values I had a business called fluid this business went on to become one of the most successful creative agencies in Asia that I sold to price water house Cooper for more money than

I'll ever need and one of the things I did in the early days of that business which was a big mistake is I built a business to make money now that might not sound like a mistake but what

happened first year I hired people there were knew it was exciting second year people started to leave why did they leave because the values of the the business were wrong I changed the values in that business we went from a business

that was designed to make money to a business that would protect the staff from Bad clients I had a creative agency often designers were treated badly do this by tomorrow at 12 I need it instead of understanding that creativity is a

process so we switched our whole model instead of working for clients we worked for the creative people and help them manage clients that transformed our business and helped help us grow by thinking about things differently instead of traditionally you will grow

your business and by looking after your people it's cheesy I know you can grow much easier now when you grow assuming you follow my advice and you grow your business this is the important thing you need to identify what is your

destination what are you actually growing for now I have a lot of people recently approached me and say please invest in my business arm and I want to grow it my first question is why what is it you're trying to do by growing your

business what's the real reason you're growing your business is it ego do you really want to work more or is it want to make the business bigger so you can bring in management so you can not have to work so hard so you're working hard

now to grow it that's fine I think you need a reason to grow it now I want to grow the biggest platform in the world that helps people for free learn business so I want it to be big I know

my destination I want to help 10 million people for free start a business they love and never feel alone doing it so I know my destination and therefore I'm growing both from a higher point of view from a culture point of view in that

direction but I have had points in my life and the early days of fluid where actually I wanted to work three days a week doing cool stuff with Brands and two days a week going to the beach with

my girlfriend having fun and so I didn't grow the business too much at the beginning I actually had a different ambition and there's nothing wrong with that and if you want to grow your business brilliant follow this formula

have purpose bring people in that have value and own value in the business and you will grow if you look after them and your customer base the final thing I'll talk about when it comes to really building a business and making a

business successful first of all take risk make sure that you build MVPs minimum viable products try things out if you really want to build a company you can't stay stagnant no company today is around when they stay stagnant think

about Blockbusters or any of these businesses that just sat on their technology like Kodak and didn't do anything with it you can't sit still Kodak invented the digital camera you can't sit still you have to put these things into the market Kodak didn't want

to put their film uh cam digital camera into the market because it would have meant film was gone and film was their Core Business you've got to disrupt yourself if you really want to build a business that's going to last if you

really want to build a successful company I'm going to use a dirty word a word that I personally hate but has saved me you need to build systems you need to move from what is often in the early days of a business what I call a

generalist mindset where everybody can do everything to a specialist mindset you need you need to allow people to be specialists in certain areas now when I was younger I'm a generalist I can do kind of everything I can clean the

toilets in the company toilets when they're dirty I can help people get their car loaded up and get to the site to do the pitch I can do the pitch I could do everything but I became a specialist in marketing and I think as

you grow a business you have to take away the generalist people and build out specialist people people that do a particular thing well to help the business grow and that involves Building Systems that allow people to do that in

your hiring process in your growing process and in your mindset even you as a Founder potentially you have to make sure that you learn a skill set otherwise you become redundant which by the way is fine I have often got myself

replaced in a company that I have built I think that's actually pretty smart unless you can become a specialist it's probably the best thing for the company too there's likely to be a CEO out there that's better than you when you're at

scale I found that to be the case many times I replace myself at fluid 11 years in by someone who is a better CEO than me so hopefully if you know your purpose and you give purpose to the people you

hire you have Equity both for your team and for the wider growth of the business you know your values and you apply them you know your destination and you apply this very important point of systems and removing generalism you will have a business that

is easy to hire people that will scale and will build into something that lives without you now let's talk about how to fire someone now I have fired hundreds of people in my career and I'm going to teach you how to fire someone and also

when you're likely to be getting fired so one of the things I hate to do is fire someone it's a very necessary skill if you want to survive in business I've often built up large companies that needed to get small again quick for

various reasons you have to learn to fire people it is not nice but one of the most difficult things about firing people is understanding when to do it now I think when it comes to actually firing people structurally like for

example doing it legally sending the appropriate warnings doing the proper paperwork all of this stuff you can get off a lawyer I'm not going to waste your time telling you the law in your country wherever you are it will be different

anyway I'm going to talk more about the actual Act and also what's involved in making the decision as to whether or not someone should be fired I learned long ago A system that I call the seven and eight rule it's very simple and obvious

when I first start explaining it now if someone's in your company and they are really good like you love them they love you they're obviously a nine and 10 you want to keep them and you want them to

stay and they want to stay most of the time those people are 9 and 10 T because they're enjoying it now of course like I said earlier make sure you give these people Equity make sure you look after

these people over time but you know you want to keep them and they want to stay it's a Nob brainet it's cool then you have what I call the ones and twos these are people who are at their job

they know their at their job you know their at their job and most of the time they either quit or you fire them it's a no-brainer everyone feels it they don't turn up on time they don't care about the purpose of the company

whatever it is it's obvious that relationship comes to an end naturally the really difficult thing for any employer and for that matter any employee is if you are a 7 and8 which means you're almost good enough you're almost able to do the job and sometimes

as an employer you're desperately hoping they become good enough you're waiting for them to become a nine and 10 and some days they are but then they SLI back to a six some days they're a seven and there's various reasons why people

are seven and eight and often it's not because they're crap at their job it's because they're in the wrong job with the wrong team doing the wrong thing I have often seen a seven and eight and actually move them to a different

department or a different role and they become nines and tens but that's not always the case and sometimes the hardest people to fire are the seven and eights so how do you do it well I think first of all you put proper structure in

place to identify what is success for that employee you want to understand how they work what's going on in their lives instead of walking into the room and saying you haven't performed you walk into the room and you say how can I help

you perform there's things that you can do as a leader to check whether or not that person can get better at their job and if there's anything you can do to support them but in the end learn the seven and eight rule and I

have seen this I have kept seven and eights in my companies in the past and the nines and tens leave if someone can surf get away with it and not do their job and no repercussions then why would

a 9 and 10 stay why would a 9 and 10 stay a 9 and 10 if they can get lazy and not work as hard or cut corners and not get fired then you're going to have a problem nine and 10 will not stay in

your business and you'll have a company full of seven and eights and seven and eights are hard to manage take up nearly all of the conversation any HR conversation you have to learn to grow a pair of balls and fire these people and

you know what when you do this has happened to me many times they're grateful because those seven and eights if you fire them can often go on to find a job they like where they are a nine and 10 and are appreciated it's your

responsibility to fire seven and eights so how can you identify if someone is a seven and8 well the rule I have is how many times a day are you talking about them if they come up too much in any

conversation amongst your team members event your customers more than once or twice in a week you probably got a problem second thing is you often are running a system in your brain where you are fearful of not finding a replacement so

you don't want to fire them because they're better than nobody and I've done this myself many times a seven and eight is at least a pair of hands helping you when you're building a business sometimes that's a relief and the idea

of having to find someone new is painful so you need to get strong you need to realize and maybe even line up your next hire before you fire now I promise you that employee and I would be the same is

also looking for another job so maybe what you can do is help them find that other job I have done this many times I've gone to someone who's a seven and eight and said you're not happy I don't

think you're not completely doing the job the way you should I've helped you get an interview at this other company it has actually built relationships with people that weren't happy in the company but are now my friends outside of work

you can help that person even though it might be frustrating that there person's in your company and not performing the best thing you can do is work out a solution for them and for you and you can build a great relationship with that

person even though that it's perhaps not a great relationship in the company right now by helping them move on so following the rule identify seven and eights be honest with yourself do not have fear that you cannot replace them

and find a N9 and 10 you will help that seven and eight find a new job and always be honest with seven and eight how you're feeling it will be better for you and for them and there is a chance

and it's happened a few times in my career or that person becomes a nine and 10 and it can often be when you give them Equity let's talk about how to go Global now why is going global one of my

main points it's because a lot of people don't realize that they can go Global a lot of people don't realize that they'll probably remove a lot of the risk in their business if they do Go Global why well if you're in more than one market

and the market you're in is in trouble you spread your risk I've had this happen to me many times in my early career with fluid we were just in Hong Kong and it was risky Hong Kong had a

lot of ups and downs and when we had the downs I was subject completely to that down I had no counterbalance with a business potentially in another market doing well and going global it turns out is not difficult anymore often people

don't realize there are a few steps to allow your business to go Global when you didn't think it was even possible so what are those steps first identify whether there's an opportunity for your product or your service in another

market so research and even if you don't want to open up that second office or or sell that product in that market once you understand what markets where this could work are there's a couple of opportunities for you now I could

reverse back to raising money if you're able to say to someone that you can open up your product in other markets with their investment it can make an investor happy that's just one example it can make an investor actually go ahead and

invest in you equally like I mentioned earlier as well well if a brand wants to sponsor you to open up another office this can be a way for you to grow your business and you reduce your risk under

the dime of a brand partnership research is key at this stage find out where your product could be sold even if you don't want to do the work to do it second you can basically set up models like

franchising so if you don't want to set up that business in another Market you can set up a brand franchising Arrangement so someone else will open it up and someone else will do the work but you can make money by doing nothing I

hate passive income I don't think that exists but this is the closest thing to it in my opinion someone else running your brand in another Market under a license so I think that franchising is a real opportunity and it's a it's a bit

of a misunderstood word franchising because a lot of people kind of think of like Subway or um McDonald's but franchising can apply to a service business and many many companies are built on Partnerships under a franchise structure the other thing that's really

important about going global is making sure your business can stand the test of time and if you have a business that is thinking globally ironically you're more likely to survive in the long term you'll learn an important lesson which

is it's easier to run a big company than a small company far too many entrepreneurs and me included at points in my career have made my business too small that I am the only one that can run it I can't afford Senior Management

I can't afford to get help I can't afford to actually stop working for a week I'm telling you now by thinking Global you give yourself a chance to grow a big business and it's easier than having a small business despite what

you've been told by other people get a big business if you can now it does link back to what your mission in life is maybe you don't want a big business but do not decide to not have a big business

because you think it's easier to have a small business it's not small is not easier I have run big businesses and I have run small businesses and I had an easier life once I've made the business big so do not trap your yourself in any

Market do not subject yourself to any Market that could disrupt your business and make sure you always give yourself the chance to be free of your very own business not trapping you how to get a mentor this is the single biggest

question I ever get asked and it's so simple to answer no one seems to listen to me but I'm going to try anyway if you want a mentor in your business I totally understand why that sounds cool but the

reality is people have built businesses around this concept that you need a mentor and they've sold you it as the solution it isn't what you actually need is not a mentor what you need in reality is someone who can answer the questions

that you have and perhaps even give you the answers to questions you didn't know to ask and this can all be done without a mentor in fact I would argue if you got me as your Mentor it would be pretty

annoying cuz Mentor will tell you their experience but it might not be relevant to your life this video today in a way is all the knowledge I have anyway so of course you can still have me as your

Mentor but what you're really saying if you're honest about it is you're looking for a coach you're looking for someone to keep you accountable and you can actually break down what that means into what you really need if you want someone

to work with you in your business and keep you accountable get a co-founder if you want someone to help you with sales hire a salesperson if you know the question you want to ask then ask it now I say all that I still want to deliver

on a promise to help you get a mentor and this is how you get a mentor number one you research what matters what matters to that person someone reached out to me yesterday asking me be to be their

Mentor for a property development business they want to run do you not know who I am I hate the property industry and everything it stands for I think property should be a basic human right and the present balet system has

screwed the world up I don't want to help someone do that now they were very nice and very polite I won't name who they are but I'm telling you right now do your research before you ask someone for help of course I'm not going to

reply to that fact I did reply saying no but I'm saying that most people won't reply you don't want to ask someone to be your mentor and have not done the research on them the second thing is don't just say please be my mentor now

there are plenty of people that don't take my view that you don't need a mentor and do want a mentor and they will Mentor you some will charge and some won't I'll get on to that in a minute but when you ask someone to

Mentor you remember it's a bit like saying would you like to get married you need to Define what it means so Define what you mean when you say will you be my mentor tell people what that means for you I

would like 10 minutes of your time once a week and perhaps consider if you do start defining what it is what sort of questions you're going to ask and often if you ask a question you will get a

mentor if you ask for a mentor you'll get no reply at all because no one can commit to an open-ended question especially from a stranger asking for mentorship you need to Define it in an Ideal World I suggest you ask a question

first that's actually why I built help bank.com so you can go and write a question to 100 5,000 potential mentors now if after all this you're still set on getting a mentor another way to get a mentor is change the word mentor to

advisor and when you're looking to build a company for example and maybe you want to mentor to help you build a company look for someone that has specific knowledge that you're after and ask them to join your Advisory Board now advisory

boards a little bit more glamorous for most people a mentor isn't something you see on many people's LinkedIn profile but advisor to this company and advisor to that company often is so reframe it as advisory now if you've got a business

with purpose and you followed the other things I've said in this long video today you'll know how important things like process and systems and structure and goal will lead you to decide what type of advisor you need and it's much

easier to get an advisor than it is a mentor and much easier to structure what the relationship is like if they're for example one of your border advisers they'd probably have equity in your business so you're no longer asking

someone to hang out with you and give you a bit of advice and motivate you you're asking someone to give you specific knowledge around something they love and believe in and it's much much easier the next thing you can do to help

yourself get a mentor is connect to the people that they are connected to so referrals are the best way to get help many times someone I know for a long time that's helped me out has asked me to Mentor someone to help them out and I

have done it without question and so that referral a bit like in sales and the other things I've mentioned today referrals are so powerful try to get someone to refer you to the mentor that you want it's also much easier for

someone to say yes when they've got some reference point of someone that knows you now be careful don't go become friends with someone just to get them to refer you it'll be transparent and actually hurt you so do it genuinely but

if you can get a referral for the mentor that you need it's very powerful now the final way to get a mentor if that's what you want the best way is to give value to the person you want as a mentor some

of the people I've helped in my past have helped me first I didn't ask them to so for example someone redesigned a website for me and made my website better of course after someone's gone and made all that effort to support me

and help me I'm going to give them time and I think that time in the early days allows us to work together to define the questions they're asking and Define the things that that person actually needs and so go and give value to the person

that you want as your Mentor don't just ask them for something try to bring them something and it will make a huge difference and I think that that's one of the things that people never do they just want to extract value and this goes

back to my personal philosophy in life it's not give and take it's give without take if you follow give without take when trying to get a mentor if you follow give without take when trying to get Mentor I'm pretty sure you'll get

that Mentor but don't expect anything don't expect that person to become your Mentor give them value give them respect clearly you respect them you want them to be your Mentor make the effort and over time it will come back to you even

if it isn't in that person becoming your Mentor how Equity works this is such an important subject if you don't get the equity structure right in your business you will fail I have been involved in many many businesses that didn't do this

right and collapsed not because they they weren't good businesses but because they didn't know how the structure of equity works now just before I get into the detail of how to structure your Equity structure in the future correctly

I will make sure that you understand one important Point most people don't want to drop below 50% equity in the company because they think it means they lose control that's not true you are able to control your company under the operational agreement

now in each country us Britain different Market Market you have different terminology for this but you control your company by the shareholder agreement you don't control your company by the amount of equity that you hold so if for example you have a 50/50 Equity

split with someone you are actually potentially in joint control as far as Equity is concerned but you can still allocate one person to make all the decisions and have actual control so do make sure that you understand that

Equity ownership does not equal control right it does not equal control keep an eye on this mindset because you often make big mistakes around Equity ownership thinking it means you lose control if you drop below 50% and that

is not true the second thing to keep in mind with Equity is understanding where you're going with the business everything I've already discussed in this video is interl but if you don't know where you're going you don't know

how much Equity you need to get there too many people sell a large chunk of equity at the early stages of their business only to realize later in their business they don't have enough equity to get to the Finish Line if your model

is like tech company model and you intend to raise a lot of money you have to be very cautious with the equity in the early days now there are all sorts of graphs and information on the internet that will explain to you this

point but I'm highlighting it to you so you can go and research it it's a very deep subject but do not sell too much Equity at the beginning having said that the best thing you can ever do is sell

no equity at all I know it's cool to raise money I know it but it's cooler to run a business where you don't raise money a bootstrap business in my opinion is healthier you can retain 100% control and 100% own Equity it's always probably

going to be better now there's a lot of exceptions to that suggestion and one of them I would say is make sure you don't make this one big mistake I see a lot of people make I have seen people start

businesses and when they start businesses with a partner they do 52% 48% and often for no other reason then the person who came up with the idea believes that they deserve 2% more this has happened time and time again it's a

huge mistake I've seen arguments ensue two years later between those two people because they didn't just do it 50/50 do not assume again control 52% means anything if anything it's detrimental so if you have a co-founder my instant recommendation my instant

recommendation is you do 50/50 do not belittle the other partner by giving them less they will instantly psychologically think they will do 48% of the work you will do 52% of the work it does not bode well in the long term

now there is a danger with 50/50 that danger is decision lock if you're making one decision and your partner's making the other and you haven't put a shareholder agreement in place to decide who has the deciding vote you have a

problem so the way around this is often to have a third party help you make big decisions someone you both trust ideally but you create a 50/50 ownership structure with a board of advisers for example and this allows you to make

decisions especially difficult decisions without mjor argument and avoid conflict with your partner now the best way to avoid conflict and avoid even needing to turn to your board of advisor is to be very clear about where you're both going

and I'm using at the moment in this Equity example a 50/50 partnership it could equally be a 1/3 13d 1/3 or 1/4 1/4 1/4 I'm just using this as an example that you all know where you're going I have seen problems in the

business for example where someone is building the business the money's coming in one person wants to take the money out and put it in their pocket as profit the other person wants to put it back into the business to help it grow one

person wants to stay in one market the UK another person wants to expand to the US you need to try and work out all of this stuff ideally before you even start the company within your mind map that I

taught you earlier you figure out where you're going and why and therefore you avoid conflict when it comes to Major decision making later again I have seen companies fall apart because one person wanted to take the money out and one

person didn't and literally the business collapses because the two don't agree don't get along the business fails Equity ownership under this system I'm now teaching you is not about control as I've mentioned but it is about understanding what the equity is there

to do now depending on your structure if you're a charity this won't matter so much but if you're a limited company that's looking to raise money please make sure your cap table has the right people on it I have seen many people not

get investment because they gave 2% to the wrong person that the other investors don't want associated with Equity ownership will tarnish your rep ation understand how Equity is structured it's showing who is involved in the company so you need to make sure

that you align your brand I talked about branding earlier to the equity ownership and whoever owns that company whoever owns a part of your company will affect the brand image so make sure that you're aligning your brand values with your

Equity ownership now there is a lot of talk by me and anyone that actually knows what they're doing in business about giving Equity to your staff I really believe in this now there's a couple of ways to do

it I honestly think if you want to build a business that scales you have to give Equity to your people but there's two types of equity structure there's what we call share options which technically isn't actually Equity it's a percentage

in the future of the company but it can often be in what are framed as earn outs or there straight up Equity now there is a hybrid in this model and I don't want to get too technical now because I'm

actually not a lawyer but I want you to understand the difference most of the time people are buying stocks and shares in the stock market they have share options which means that yes they'll get given shares but those shares have no

class level so they have no decision making power so you can own shares in the company in the stock market but have no influence over that business or no control but that is one way to incentivize people you give them share

options my preferred method and everyone on my team had this actual physical equity in the company not share options via the stock market listing but real life equity in the company so the company was sold today they would get

paid out whereas often with share options it's some link to the stock market listing or in some cases if it's already listed to you sing the shares on the stock market but if the company decided to take the company off the

stock market wherever that price was you'd have to sell out again there's some legal obligations around this it has to be more than 70% of the shareholders agree but the point is I have owned shares in the stock market of

a company that I believed in and then the owners of that company actual Equity owners of that company decided to take the company off the stock market I had no choice but to sell my shares that company Dlisted became worth a billion

dollars and I could have owned it but I wasn't allowed because I only owned the share option side the stock market side not actual physical equity in the actual company and I think it's important if you're even thinking investing in a

company to understand the difference of course if you're going to work in a company understand the difference and if you're building a company and you don't understand the difference you're going to have a major problem in the future

now this subject of share ownership understanding the different classes please spend time understanding the different classes go Google how it works go Google share options go Google stock market shares go Google Equity ownership this stuff is complex it's going to be too I'm not

legal IO to go through all with you now but this structure of share ownership can literally make or break a company I would also finally say to you depending on what your end goal is is how you should reverse engineer your share

Equity ownership if you are looking to IPO your business then you want to make sure that the IPO process is fully understood of course but your stock is reversed backwards so when you start the business and you're looking to list it

one day you need to know that when you're starting the business ideally because if you don't structure it early on to eventually get listed it probably won't now I learned this the hard way with a few businesses that I was

involved in the share structure was so complicated we couldn't get all the shareholders to agree to even do an IPO some shareholders wanted to keep it private other shareholders wanted to do an IPO and it gets so messy because they

didn't know where they were going in the early days so learn to structure what I call reverse engineering know what your end goal is and reverse the share Equity structure from day one under that premise now there's one final thing I'll

teach you about Equity sometimes it's hard to determine the value of your company to sell Equity so one thing you should look into and perhaps use is products like a safe now platforms like y combinator one of famous accelerators

out there that help businesses grow use a safe to help determine a business and its long-term potential for value there's many different ways to structure a safe but the beautiful thing about that model and go and Google it is you

don't need to determine the value of your business now someone can invest in your business on a discount of the value in the future now again there's many different ways to structure that concept but the concept of safe I have found to

be very useful especially in the early days of building a business to take away the conversation about what is your business worth and move towards invest in this business and this is what we're going to do it's much much easier to get

an investor for example frankly it's much easier to incentivize your employees with it you're not determining a value on the stock share now so it doesn't cause tax implications as well I really think it's useful and not many

people know about it so I hope this overview in equity gives you a good understanding of how it works I am going to do a whole video on this much more detailed I'm going to get some lawyers involved too to show you the different

agreements and how it works but if you go do a little bit of Googling you'll get most of the information you need that I haven't provided here and if you have any questions without Equity feel free to drop them in the comments how to

sell your business how to exit a company I have done it a few times in my life there's loads of different ways to do it I'm going to share with you how to exit your business ultimately selling a

company is often a dream of a lot of entrepreneurs I have done it a few times I've done it a few different ways and I've got some interesting insights to share with you and one of the things I'll start off by saying if you really

want to sell your company the best way to sell your company is not want to sell it at all the most amount of money I ever got for a company was because I didn't want to sell it that's the

strongest place to negotiate from so the number one thing I want to tell you in an ironic twist when coming to sell your company the best thing you can do is build a business you love and selling it will accident and selling it will

accidentally happen this has happened over and over again history always repeats itself mark ber was offered a billion dollars by Yahoo to sell his company and he said no so now it's worth a trillion and I think there's something

really powerful in this process it's kind of sales like I was teaching you earlier it's kind of sales you don't want to sell it means you can get the most for it it's a very hard thing to actually be truly not interested in

selling it if is actually your goal but it will ensure you get the maximum value out of a business if you do it this way the other way to think about selling your business and the way I've sold my

last company is I partnered up with a company that could buy my business so fluid partnered up with price Waterhouse Cooper and we worked on a project together and in that process of working on a project together PWC realized that

they should just buy us now at the time when it was first mentioned I didn't want to sell great negotiating First Step but in the end I did sell it and I'll tell you all about that process in

a minute but I I'm trying to highlight that another way to sell your business is partnership work with the company that is likely to want to buy your business build the relationship up and you'll be surprised how that can

lead to an exit again don't lean into it wanting an exit lean into it wanting to build a partnership that works for both parties but it can be a great way to sell your business the Third Way is to

work with agents that actually sell businesses and there are a few I'm not going to recommend any because this isn't a sponsored video by them but you can Google them there are many companies that do it sometimes it can be quite

useful to get one of these companies to do it because of course if you're busy trying to sell your business you're not busy growing your business but I honestly feel like that these days these agents there's a lot of them and they

all have their own different agendas so just make sure you do your due diligence ask the previous company that they work with what they were like make sure that the legal structure is very clear because you don't want to get cons by

these companies when you come to the exit actual fee the fourth way to sell your business is more a merger so your competitor is a way to exit and it might seem odd you probably spent 10 years hating your competitor I spent most of

my early career making friends with my competitor I originally thought I was going to sell fluid to Ogie I made a lot of friends at ogave I used to sit next to them at the awards dinner on purpose

to connect to them I did projects with them I thought they were going to be the exit but they weren't and so I think merges however are very common and two businesses coming together is the easiest that do the same thing is often

the easiest way to sell a business and I will however caveat it with most of the time you don't get the most value so I sold my company fluid to PWC PWC are an accounts business they're not a creative

agency so they saw more value in US than if I'd merged with ogy that think they can do what we do so sometimes selling to a non-competitor is more valuable but if you want an easy sell merges often the way it works and

it's not always true that you don't get the true total value I've just from experience learned that sometimes selling outside the industry like I did with fluid to PWC can lead to more money than selling to someone in the industry

like olgy but that doesn't mean it's always true and finally if you want to sell your business one of the things that you can also think about is allowing the management in your company to buy it so I have also done this I let

the leadership team at Nest buy that business and there's many different ways to structure a buyout over time percentage of profit but in the end it can be a really good way allowing you to sell your business without that business

getting hurt and by also giving the people that worked in the company a chance to really step up and own what they've been building with you I personally really was happy to sell Nest to my team and I think it's a really

powerful way of building an exit strategy for yourself while at the same time giving the people that run it the love and success that they deserve so they're the main ways now I will add that when it comes to selling a business

the the key thing like anything at the beginning when you're building the business never ever pitch to an investor or yourself that you're building a company to sell it and in fact I would argue if you're building a company to

sell it and I've seen this many times be careful you might end up getting stuck with a business you don't love do not build a business to sell it do not Pitch to investors that you're going to sell

it build a business you love investors want to invest in that build a business you never want to sell people want to buy a business like that that's the key to being successful in business in my opinion do not build something you don't

love do not build something that doesn't have purpose if you got value from this video i' really appreciate it by you asking a comment down below or even telling me what I've missed out in this video that you want in the future so I

can make it for you and don't forget we're following people's dreams every single week on this channel if you want to hear what happens to the people we help hit that alarm button so you get the latest update as soon as the upload

button is hit good luck everybody goodbye I'm going to eat chicken now see you