35 Years Of No BS Business Advice In 22 Minutes

over my 35- year career I become one of the best at only one thing business my most recent startup help Bank was valued over $50 million us within 12 months and I've made more money than I'll ever need today I'm going to pack 35 years of my no BS business advice into this one video to give you the foundations you need to build a business and get rich number one there is a strong correlation between success and not starting with money you think you need lots of money to make a business work in fact you

think you need some money not even a lot of money to start a business and you're wrong you're completely wrong let's take a business that's raised lots of money we work now we work raised in total around $30 billion how could they fail when they made $30 billion just someone giving them money not even having to earn it yeah let's look at a business like Airbnb that actually started with no money now I think the problem is that people when they get money and I've seen this I've invested in 79 startups so I've seen it

when people get money their imagination goes out the window they don't need to think too hard about for example how to Market their business they just start spending money they start hiring people their hiring process also isn't very Vigilant their business model isn't really thought about they don't think about how to make money they think about how to spend it especially when you get VCS involved VCS want you to spend fast successful entrepreneurs have even accidentally written about this and created this culture people like Reed Hoffman have written about Blitz scaling has gone and caused

you the mindset that you need lots of money to grow and of course you want the headlines you think the pr of raising millions or even having hundreds of thousands of pounds to spend is going to give you the exposure you need wrong again when you're really starting a business you need to have imagination so what did Airbnb do they made serial boxes called Obama reals this is back when Obama was running for president that's when they launched long time ago I know and they sold those serial boxes at convention and they learn about what

their customers think by selling them at these conventions they asked them why are you staying in this hotel how much is it costing you are you happy to be paying the price for this convention cost that you're here they understood what their customers problems were while they made money with the serial boxes the other thing you don't realize is that having no money at all is actually a competitive Advantage because you've got nothing to lose you have the mindset you have nothing to lose whereas the people that have money the middle class people they're a

little weaker they're scared to lose what they have whereas you can fight because you've got nothing you know what it's like to fight and it will make you inventive it will make you win because you cannot lose whereas these people just want it whereas you want it but also you need it and they don't need it as much as you so it will make you fight more number two if you don't pay you don't pay attention the truth is if you don't pay you don't pay attention is a lie pedal by people selling courses the

real truth is it's pain that makes you pay attention so how do you have pain is more important than you pay and you get pain by a couple of ways one telling your mind if you don't do the thing you say you're going to do someone dies most of us are triggered by making sure the world is a better place despite what the media tell us and what we're told by the news everybody out there isn't out to get you a lot of people want to see someone else succeed they want someone else to live

by their actions that's what drives people to go to war for countries even if they don't believe in that war they want to save lives not kill people so you need to cause yourself pain and you need to tell yourself if you don't do what you're going to do today then someone's life isn't as good plus you have to say to yourself what pain have I had in my life what problem have I had and it might be really silly this could be a really silly thing let's say you tried to park today in a

parking space in a supermarket and you couldn't find a parking space that could be your pain it sounds silly but you now need to solve that problem because it annoyed you my wife for example started learning something called Kinesiology when she found out that her mom had cancer and when her mom went to the doctors the doctors all told her she only had a short period to live they said there was no nothing she could do that was it my wife was so frustrated by this diagnosis that there was nothing that she could do that

my wife learned a discipline that basically helped her reframe her mind and heal herself and I know through seeing that experience of my wife pushing herself through the pain to learn something new she gave up her very lucrative graphic design career to learn kinology because she knew that she could help her mom and she'd felt this personal pain of her mom being told she didn't have long to live this pain point will help you push through pain and you need it if you're going to pay attention and make the difficult things happen number three before

you can seriously pursue your dream you need to confront any fear of failing that you might be feeling you don't want to fail right I know you don't want to fail then you're hear sayings like well don't worry about failure you know like push through and here's the truth about failing you definitely want want to be scared to fail I'll highlight something really important fear is an asset it's a superpower given to us to make us perform better imagine a lion is coming running towards you fear is what will keep you alive it makes you

run faster think differently it makes you think outside the box and that is what you need to do you need to feel fear you need to know you could fail you need to feel it to bring it alive if you're not feeling fear you're not alive and fear will power your risk muscle because it's the risk muscle in your brain you need to train because it's not about the harder you work the luckier you get it's about the more risk you take and you can only take risk if you learn to leverage fear you can

only leverage fear if you look for it number four do what you're good at and Outsource the rest most of the people in school will have told you hey you're not good at this certain subject you're only getting D's you should double down on it that is complete bollocks everything the school teaches you you should do the opposite what you actually need to do is be really good at one thing so me by accident I found out I was quite good at sales turns out I'm also pretty good on camera I'm good at explaining things

to people in a way that people understand but I'm absolutely awful at biology do not ask me anything about geography and where the places are in the world that matter I don't know anything about that but I do know about how to sell and how to present information to people so I've doubled down on that my whole life and it's paying off as one of the biggest YouTubers in the world now giving you knowledge but the rest of the knowledge that you don't have the key is Outsource it to the people that have become specialists

in those things so for example if you don't like accounts hire an accountant Outsource everything you're not good at do not try to do the things you don't enjoy now you could probably do them but they'll take your energy better to give it to people that are naturally good at these things so you can focus on getting super good at the thing you like number five you need to stop selling time and start buying it everybody around you in your early years is selling time probably your parents definitely your teacher everybody is doing 40-hour contracts

and telling you about their hourly rate every News Channel tells you about the minimum wage this gets you thinking by the hour and it's a mistake you need to start to learn to buy time how do you do that first of all never sell an hour sell an outcome make sure whatever you do in the future is about the the results that you achieve so even your employer who definitely won't like this video no one who employs people likes me sharing this knowledge but try to position yourself as the outcome of what you did as

opposed to the time you spent on it one of my favorite stories is of a guy who's called by the Royal Marines in to fix a submarine he went there for 15 minutes banged around the submarine and fixed it left and sent him an invoice for $300,000 they complained later said how come so much money for 15 minutes and he said it only took me 15 minutes to fix it cuz it took me 20 years to figure out where to go instantly in 15 minutes to fix it for you so that's the point you have

to learn to sell outcomes most of the richest people in this world will also buy time they'll hire people there's four types of Leverage which I probably haven't got time to go into in depth now but the first is you hire people they spend time on something and you could earn money from it the second is capital you leverage Capital to buy you time very successful people get private jets for example the third is technology use technology to buy you time and save you time and fourth I think is influence social media reach if you

can promote something at scale like I now can you can save time having to build a business buy time don't sell time oh my god I've got some great news guys thanks to you and your support of this Channel and what we do this book just became the number one book on the Sunday Times bestseller list number one because you bought it and you supported our mission to fund people's dreams and help people do what they love you can now go review it on Amazon if you enjoyed the book go review it the links down

below it will make a hell of a difference thank you so much for supporting what we're doing let's get back to the video number six you should own a piece of the value You're Building 96% of people are working for someone else and all they're taking is a salary and if you're smart and followed my previous point maybe you're taking value in the outcomes that you produce now the really smart people own Equity where they work you don't want to work somewhere unless you have upside in what you're working on yes a percent of the

business I'm not talking about stocks and shares I'm talking about a value in the product that you're building take a piece of the brand value there were people at Facebook that worked there 10 years they made that business a trillion dollars and then they were fired and they had nothing and that's a mistake you've got to make sure whatever you're working on isn't just about your time and isn't just about the profit you're making each year but actually a percentage of the amount the company is worth I've made all my money from when I've sold

my businesses and I owned equity in the businesses that I sold and that's why I spent much of my career buying equity in businesses I don't buy stocks and shares I think they're a scam I can't control their outcome but if I work on something and I own a part of that business I'm working on I can control the outcome and that's where the real value is so learn to own Equity where you're building value number seven one of my pet peeves is when people ask me to sign an NDA a non-disclosure agreement they ask

me not to share the idea the only value I've got is the ability to share your idea with tens of millions of people why would you ask someone who's got that skill not to share the idea now the big theory is or those that don't know better is that if they share the idea with me maybe I'll steal it now that's the biggest load of BS I've ever seen not that I won't steal an idea which I haven't done my whole career I'm more interested in investing in other people's ideas and helping them but people

most likely haven't got time to steal your stupid idea because ideas are actually worthless only those that have had one idea think it has any value anyone that's actually executed an idea knows the real value is an execution the value of a business isn't how you do it and I don't think you realize this when you're talking about how you better not share the idea there other day I had 50,000 people on one of my lives and someone said they had a business idea but were scared to share it I said to them the truth

50,000 people on that live there'll be 50,000 people that can help you there might be one person who's got the time and is interested in doing your idea one and if that one person competes with you well good you need competition it Spurs you on but it's very unlikely I've actually rang up my competition I had an idea called coaster ads ads on coaster I rang up my competition which was carlsburg and Heineken and I said to them I'm going to put ads on these coasters and I'm going to remove your coasters would you like

to do an advert on it they did nothing about it they can't do anything about it they're too busy the companies that you think are going to compete with you are too busy doing their own and people you think are going to copy you ironically could help you they could buy your product it's it's first to Market that matters not the first to get an NDA signed number eight I'm going to tell you the blunt truth you cannot build a company part-time this is on page 148 of my book what's your dream and I've gone

into this in depth in this book but I'm going to give you the basics right now this whole belief that side hustle is enough is hurting a lot of people now you can certainly start a business as a side Hustle but I built 19 companies I consider myself one of the best business people in the world and I couldn't do it I couldn't do it part-time especially if you got a kid you got all this other stuff going on there's no way you can do it part-time now the key to understanding why parttime is a

little bit of a trick is knowing when to no longer make it part-time my opinion is get your cost down so you can have six months Runway get your cost down is as important as having savings for 6 months give yourself if you haven't got the ability to save and haven't got six months the ability to get one customer that pays all your costs so what I did before cash flow wise is I had a client I told them my idea they loved it I charged him a 50% invoice which is the total cost of

me running the whole operation for 3 months in that particular example and then once I finished the work two months later I charged them the other 50% which was my profit so if you can learn to manage cash flow get your cost down and have a little bit of a runway on your savings you don't want to build a business part time because let's say you go and ask someone for money and if you want them to invest in you and you can't even for time commit to the business yourself you're going to fail break

this belief that a side hustle can last forever make sure you set a Line in the Sand and start full time as soon as you can number nine looking after your best and most long-standing customers is one of the best ways to grow your business every single day people ask me how can I get more customers how can I be better at social media how can I make my videos go viral like your videos the problem is people are getting distracted but the simple fundamental truth you only need three customers to build a business and

people don't realize this you have to look after your existing customers so what I did when I built my agency fluid out of Hong Kong that became one of the biggest creative agencies in the world is I simply looked after my first three customers I really made sure that they were happy even one of them I put on an advertising billboard campaign saying what they said about us so I promoted them after we did a good job for them so in other words this kind of thinking of looking after your customers goes all the way

through to even how you eventually do promote your business that marketing of that customer saying how great I was was better than me saying how great I was and you'll get more customers if your existing customers are happy don't go chasing for new customers just make sure your present ones are happy number 10 your business is not going to grow unless you really look after your people and I know when you hear that you're thinking I look after my people I look no you don't unless you're giving them Equity you don't if you want them

to work as hard as you they need to have skin in the game and you don't want to give up Equity most people think 100% of something is good it's a mistake I'd rather have 10% of a successful business and 100% of a business I'm finding it hard to after the people I'm find it hard to keep the people I'm finding it hard to run the business you want to give Equity to your people now there's many different ways to do it you can do share option systems of course you can do vested equity which

means overtime people get the money as they perform but it's a big big mistake to Own 100% of the business we put modok owned 12% of news cor I think Mark zuberg owns 22% of Facebook you know you don't necessarily need all the equity the best way for you to get rich is to help everybody around you get rich that's how most successful people get rich even Jeff bezo recently saying that he didn't even ask for more Equity he wanted his team to have more Equity that's smart that's why he's one of the richest people

in the world and you need to learn this lesson if you want to get rich Point 11 train people trust people tear yourself away I love this quote that says if I invest in my people and they leave how do I justify it well what's worse you don't train them and they stay if you don't trust your people you you cannot grow the most important thing I've seen in my own personal Journey To Success was when I realized I was not the best person to run fluid I brought someone else in to run it when

it grown to a certain size where I was no longer the leader that company needed so I brought someone in that knew what a 200 people company looked like when someone knew what it looked like to run a p&l that size I wasn't that person and I didn't enjoy it so the biggest bottleneck in your business today will probably be you you thinking you're the best to do this that and the other the best thing you can ever do if you want to sell your business if you want to grow your business is bring someone

else in to run it trust them and tear yourself away learn not to be the most important person in your business will be the most liberating freeing thing you ever do for yourself and your company Point 12 having a business partner is one of the best ways to broaden your mind and challenge your assumptions all of the businesses out the 19 that I have built that have been successful 10 of them failed and they failed because they did it on my own the 19 that succeeded I had a co-founder and in many cases more than

one you win if you are in teams again School teaches you to sit down and do that exam on your own that to win is about your grade it's bollocks you've been tricked the way to win is in teams and the best way is co-founder if you haven't got any money to start a business find a co-founder who has who has the opposite skill to you or if you're raising money to hire people don't give the money later to investors who didn't work in the business give Equity to the people you hired have co-founders who

come in and work maybe for a little while for free it's the biggest hack that no one seems to tell anybody that winning is 1+ 1 equal 11 you win in teams you win by having a co-founder number 13 A good rule in life in business is the faster you rise the quicker you fall you think about all the people you've seen in the last few years that suddenly got big on social media and now have fallen off and you don't want anything to do with them this is true in business too my first company

fluid took me 15 years to make successful and step by step I built that business up to a point where one of the biggest accounts companies in the world PWC wanted to buy it and they wouldn't have bought it if it was a one-year sensation because one year up means that something is unique in that one year that made you rise quickly and it's dangerous often you don't put systems in place you don't have brand guidelines in place you don't know how to say no to certain things or yes in the right way you do

not want to rise quickly and this is the mistake a lot of people are making today they want to be big quick no I'm big on social media today I've been making two videos pretty much every day for the Last 5 Years so now I'm big on social media I can handle it more I can handle the workload I can handle the delivery in a way that actually is consistent because I've been doing it every day for 5 years I got good if this had blown up when I first started a year ago this channel

would have died just as quick because I wasn't ready for it I wasn't trained you need to build up yourone muscles in the particular thing you're working on so don't rush it take it slow enjoy the journey enjoy the process and build it slow number 14 as your business grows you may need to change the kind of employees that you hire now one of the hardest things about being an entrepreneur is having to fire people I hate it I've had to do it quite a lot in my career and I've never ever ever enjoyed it

even today got to fire someone tomorrow I don't want to do it but the problem is as you build a business quite often you start with generalists and then as the business grows you need Specialists so even myself when I start a company I'm really a generalist I can do kind of everything luckily for me and luckily for my career I've become really good at marketing so this is probably a two-way bit of advice one is if you're working somewhere today and you're a generalist you better learn to become a specialist at something be really

good at one particular thing so that you can fight off the competition that will come for your generalist job and of course at the same time if you are actually hiring people you're going to start hiring people that are particularly good at a certain thing as the business grows and can afford it so you have to probably let go of generalists it's only Founders as generalists that end up staying in the business but ironically even they get replaced if you're growing the business correctly if you look at all the successful companies around like Google brought

in a CEO Jim shark founder brought in a CEO often even if you are the founder you end up replacing yourself because you're smart and you know that you need to change the kind of employees you hire as you grow your business number 15 the importance of community is something totally overlooked today that gives small business an advantage over big ones recently my book what's your dream launched the same week the Pope the first ever sitting Pope launched a book our book was more popular than the popes we were number one on the Sunday 's

Best Seller list I think they were number four the pope was number four the point I'm trying to make here is that it's not just having a community it's also how you engage with that community so of course today if you want to beat Google the way to do it would be your community gets a part of the revenue that that search engine operates so your community then would use that search engine and not use Google Community has the ability to transform a business if you can focus on bringing value to that Community not using

the community I see a lot of people doing that a lot of brands do that they'll have like I I know I was going to name a brand I probably get into trouble if I name it there's a brand I know that kept sending me an email and they kept asking me to fill out these survey days so they've got my email address and they're just using me they just want me to give them information they have never sent me an email saying here's £1,000 to help you with your business at the moment Simon or

here's a bit of advice we think might support your your business and make it stronger Community is about what value you can bring to other people and if you do it you can beat all the big companies cuz none of them can do it right you can win if you do it this is a new format for us guys if you like it I can make more let me know in the comments thanks for listening we'll have to have some chicken now check out our new membership subscription for exclusive content and much more Link in

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