I’ve Made Millions With An Agency… Here’s How You Can Too

if I wanted to get rich again as soon as possible I'd start an agency I launched an agency with no money which later I sold for more money than I'll ever need to price waterhous Cooper one of the biggest accounts companies in the world today I'm going to teach you the 10 steps anyone can take to start an agency with no money and easily make $2,000 a month for those of you that have even more ambition you can even learn how to sell for millions of dollars just like I did building this agency fluid took

me 15 years to figure out but if I'd known what I'm about to teach you today I gu guarantee would only taken me a few years these are the topics we're going to cover today picking your Niche finding a partner how to start with no money how to get customers marketing hacks I love how to build a team the secret to selling and the second secret to selling no one wants you to know how to build a brand and how to ensure you sell your company for as much money as you want now let's get

started so let start with pick your Niche now you might have heard people talk about niches I think you probably know I'm going to assume you know what a niche is is right it's basically a specialized area I think actually you'll be surprised how many companies started off in niches nearly every successful big company today started off in Niche space Apple originally was trying to appeal to creatives who cared about what the actual device looked like the image was it's for The Crazy Ones they did ad all against IBM showing that they weren't IBM they

were Apple they picked a niche and then once that Niche everybody bought it everyone wanted to be like designers and creative and be cool so the other people bought it right that work in the niche so picking your Niche is really important in the agency world there's loads of different ways so for example and this isn't why I did but this is something you could do you can look at for example social media that is actually a niche servicing social media let's say you went even more Niche and you said I'm only servicing people on

Instagram then you can go even nicher than that and say I'm only going on social media on Instagram for influencers that are doing good things in the world and then you can say and then women I'm only helping women who are doing good on Instagram in social media now that might sound like well why would I cut off other client options for myself the reason Niche is so powerful is because you know exactly who you're targeting and I'm going to get into targeting a little bit bit later with marketing and so on but like it

really helps you understand who your client is and more importantly they will see you as the specialist for their particular needs their particular Niche you understand them better if you pick a niche so that's why at the beginning it's so important what did I do at fluid I looked at the Market back in those days this is going to sound crazy the niche was doing digital we were the only company that were doing creative ideas creative execution but thinking first in the digital format this is back in 2001 when most people had stopped even thinking

about digital the Doom had just collapsed everyone thought digital was a scam they were telling me the internet was a scam back then kind of is kind of isn't right like everything out there but the point I'm making is I picked the digital Niche back in those days and that meant every brand including my competition used my company to help them because they saw me as the expert in digital and they didn't want to do digital they didn't want to build digital up they thought it was a small Market idiots right but they thought it

was a small market and they didn't want to be there so we owned it my company fluid in Hong Kong became the number one digital agency in that Market within 12 months because we own the niche we can say we're the number one in some because we own the niche and then later we at the whole Market because once we knew digital and we were the best at it and these other companies didn't want to do digital everybody wanted digital so everyone came to us and then they'd ask us to do Billboards and print ads

and social media marketing and all these other things that came later we got it all because we started in a niche so pick your Niche and the one way to define niche to help you think about your Niche number one what do you like to do and not enough people ask this of themselves if you really like Instagram but you're not a big fan of Tik Tok then focus on Instagram if you really love making coffee then focus on coffee shops you know going to work with them side by side whatever it is you know

try to link it to something you just enjoy doing it sounds mad but like you can make a lot of money doing what you love despite what your education told you that you shouldn't be frivolous and have fun and you can't make money if you do pick some you love the second thing to really think about when you're think about Niche is like what matters to you what problem do you want to solve in the world if you want to stop the oceans getting polluted for example then try to make your Niche with businesses are

solving a problem that matters to you you know what problem do you want to solve is also can can be very personal and then finally I reckon people should pick niches that are fun fun for you okay now for some people traveling isn't Fun believe it or not I actually met someone yesterday who said they don't like traveling so probably focusing in on the traveling Niche probably isn't for them they're scared of flying and they they get anxious and they don't enjoy it so but like thinking about something that's going to be really fun for

you something you enjoy doing and solving a problem you care about if you own that Niche your life your personal life will be really really good and that allow you to carry on going which half the time is the reason businesses succeed is because they follow through you follow through so that's picking your Niche next up is find a partner okay finding a partner now I know for a lot of you out there uh you're probably searching for love right now right how do you do it you kind of know what you like you know

what you don't like you know yourself a bit hopefully then it makes it easier if you know yourself to pick a partner one of the things I would say to people is that I'd rather own 5% of a really successful business than 100% of a failure and so percentage of ownership doesn't really matter if you have a really successful business it doesn't matter if you have less of a percent my business fluid that I built into this massive company I did 50/50 with Helen griffi best decision I ever made because if I done it on

my own it probably wouldn't have been a fraction as successful I'd like to think if she did it without me it wouldn't have been as as successful probably not she probably would have been okay but the point I'm getting to is that your partner in life is probably actually your actual partner in life who you end end up being with whether you marry them or not whoever you're with will dramatically affect your life it will really make a difference and it's the same in business it's no different if you can find the right people around

you it will blow your business up so how do you find a partner maybe this is a question you're going to ask yourself number one list your moral code okay and this this might sound hard but like list things that you're not willing to do so for example in fluid Helen at the time she taught me important lessons she didn't want to work with tobacco companies right I don't want to work with tobacco compan compies either but back then I I was a little bit more like I just I want to make money I want

to make money I want to make money tobacco companies were paying a lot of money to help Market their products right equivalent today is probably Vape companies right they're evil these people so list the companies you're not willing to work for list the people you're not willing to work for you know like for me I've never work with property people people that sell property I I hate that business you list out you know your kind of moral codes what what you're not willing to to to to do then list out your what we call personality

traits right so now I I'm an extrovert I do like time on my own too but I'm I'm an extrovert and and I actually work quite well with introverts because if you have two extroverts then we both want to be in front of the camera we both want to be on social media we you might have a little bit of butting heads now I've seen it work with people both want to be on social media but I think it's it's much healthier if you actually have very different interests so list your personality traits things that

you like to do and then maybe you want the opposite with the same mobile code as you but the opposite in your you know personal traits so if you're really bad at accounts and numbers you probably want someone that's really good on accounts and numbers if you're really bad on paperwork like I am you want someone that's really organized and Bru but then you might want to find someone who doesn't like to be in front of the camera like I like to be so you get what I mean like you got you got to make

sure your personality trait piece is really clear and then finally there's a high chance you're going to spend the next 10 years with this person um if you follow all my advice for the rest of the video you might build this business up in two years but you don't want to build a business to sell it so you want to build a business that you enjoy so I I think the kind of fun test again I'm going to use this word fun much more in business going forward you've got to include the word fun in

your business much more when you meet this person is it fun have you got the same sense of humor are you going to be able to joke with each other without you know getting into trouble uh joking you know can can you relax around them because you want to have that feeling and i' go one step further finally on the partner and it's meet their connections right so if you like them they're fun they got the same mobile code as you meet their partner meet their family because there's a chance you'll be spending Sunday lunch

with them there's a high chance you'll be spending evenings with them and their family you need to see if their family are on their side and you need to see if their family is a match with your family I know it sounds crazy and going too deep but you want the perfect partnership do this the final thing I'll tell you very quickly is with the partner you pick make sure your aim is the same for whatever business you're starting so for me and Helen when we partnered up 50/50 we both just wanted to build a

brand we were proud of we both wanted to work in a company that we liked we wanted to create an environment where people enjoyed the work now there will be people that just care about making money nothing wrong with that I'm not going to judge that part but I will say that you just want to make sure you're aligned with the end goal so the end goal for you and the end goal for them is the same what do you both really want and and and check it be honest with each other because if one

person wants to be a global company and you just want to be a local company it's probably going to end up in a in a in a sad State because one person want to take the profit and open up another office the other person want to take a profit and put it in their pocket so you got to really think what is your goals together if you can so that's partners next up is how to start a business with no money cuz you might have heard all this partner stuff and you might be thinking great

you might know your Niche but you might not have any money right so how can you start a business with no money I know a lot of you will have no money and I would say to you that there's a couple of reasons you've probably got no money one is your cost are too high you're just spending money you shouldn't be at weekends and so on because if you haven't got 200 quid in your bank to do your first bit of promotion or something then there's something seriously wrong with your life so I can't fix

that for you you have to fix it for you okay so the first thing I to say if you want to start a business with own money is get your cost down right uh and when you're young you can live really cheap and yes I I I was kicked out of home at 15 so I didn't have this luxury but living at home in your parents spare room do it put up with a pain don't rush off to University or any of that don't waste money and time just to get out of the house right

leverage that while you can getting your cost down to zero right that's that to start a business with zero you kind of want to get your cost cost to as little as possible that's one way to do it the other way to do it is to do stuff that you don't want to do to make money to do the stuff you do want to do so for example I started a gardening company I don't like gardening I didn't want to be a gardener but it was quick money and I didn't need the equipment I used

the equipment or the person in the house I didn't need the equipment I used the equipment in the house I could start a gardening company today by knocking on a door using the gardening equipment or the person who owns a house and saying I'll take care of that Garden 200 quid yes or no and they say yes I got people to say yes so I was able to start that business instantly with no money now it's not the business that you maybe want to do when we're talking about in this video but it can get

you 200 quid this weekend by taking care of someone's Garden I can get you 200 quid this weekend by cleaning some windows or cleaning a car it's not glamorous but it will get you the money you need to start with zero and actually with the agency business the really exciting thing so first of all like make simple dumb money okay make simple Dum money I should probably get it done on a t-shirt make simple Dum money don't overthink it it's not your future people will judge you while you're doing it later they'll be envious of

you when you've got a really successful agency just get some money in the bank right and then finally payment methods are not deliberately taught at school so you don't understand how this works you don't need money to start a business you don't you don't listen to me your subconscious is going to tell you this isn't true it is true you don't need money I'll give you an example the first client I ever got at fluid they basically told me what they needed done and I had no computers I had no no team no nothing they

told me what their problem was and then I told them verbally the solution they said that's great we'd like you to do it and I said sure and I worked out my cost to do the work that was needed I wrote down the amount that was going to cost me I added 100% to that and then I said to them the cost so so for example the cost to do the work for me to actually action work was $1,000 and I said to them I will charge you $2,000 to do the work and I want

a 50% deposit now they say yes this is normal business you're not taught this at school but it's absolutely normal if someone says you want they want you to do something you want to deposit you want to buy a car from Elon you got to put a deposit down you want to buy anything you got to put a deposit down or buy it right there and then deposit 50% it's normal accept it as normal some clients will still say no to this I'm not paying a deposit I haven't seen the work yet then don't do

it find clients will pay you 50% deposit you don't want those sorts of clients anyway they're not willing to trust you and give you 50% deposit then don't work with them once you got $1,000 and you have all the money you can't go bankrupt you have all the money to do the work executing on everything that included at the time buying a computer and hiring someone to do the work I knew that was my cost and they paid it to me straight away once the work was done 2 weeks later I gave them the project

delivered they paid me the other 2,000 within 10 days I did 10 days payment method I made £1,000 it cost me nothing done right learn this payment system be strong with clients be confident with clients if they don't feel your confidence they won't give you the 50% and if they won't give you the 50% you can't start a business with zero default back to cleaning cars and washing windows but you don't need money to start a business get it out of your head that you do so learn the accounts method I've just taught you and

remember to be confident okay be confident and it might mean that you might need to say no to some that's it some people that don't get it they're not real business people if they're not willing to give you 50% right so them learn this method you can start a business with zero next up how to get customers now I'm going to actually say how to get a customer let's take out the s for the minute right no s right no s you just need one customer One customer if you can get one customer and and

and again I think back to my early days I had no money I did the 50% rule to get one customer right so that's one way you get them to pay you but I would have probably done that first project for free because once you have one customer the Holy Grail to getting more customers is having a customer that recommends you right having a referral program now uh referral program when you first hear it you might think oh this is very complicated I got to set up special links with discounts and all no it's so

simple that first customer that I got I did a really good job I delivered and then I said said to them please will you give me 10 other customers that you know might need my service or even better can you recommend me to 10 people you know what they did they recommended me to 30 people they sent 30 emails out the next day saying I've just been working with Simon and his team they did a great job I thought you might like their service too here's their information and people don't ask now there are um

what I'm going to call Advanced reference referral systems Advanced referral systems are I call this step two in in the referral Pro step one is just ask people you don't need to give them any incentive other than just to do the right thing a lot of people want to help you you'll be you'll be so surprised just just ask okay and then give them a template so I just asked someone the other day to refer me someone really famous actually and they said sure Simon I'll refer you send me an email I can just forward

on to the person you want me to forward it on to right I want them to forward it on to Elon Musk so I wrote the email so they could just forward it on to Elon Musk okay I made it easy for them to refer me okay so I think you use the uh Advanced referral system when it comes to like trying to set incentivize people Beyond just asking people so for example you might say um and I I helped someone start uh an education box business and and and in this space there's about 45

influencers that all talk about education we did a program where we offered them 10% of every order that they sent through to the company we gave them a special link okay and there's loads of sites that will help you do this referral sites there's there's Millions on WE we'll put one example down in the comments below but you can just use the existing software that's out there it doesn't have to cost you any money and you set up a special referral link for someone to refer you and if they refer you and you make money

and they make money then you both make money it doesn't cost you any money in marketing because you're actually only paying them when they bring you a lead right that's Advanced witheral and then finally build a brand not a business the easiest way to get customers is via brand okay so build a brand not a business and you know to build a brand very quickly I've done a whole long video about how to build a brand but very simple terms it's like what's your story why are you here why are you doing this you know

have a reason to be here this actually links back to Niche by the way you know if you build a brand in a niche and you do a good job that's your story so think about your brand story that is how you get customers because people were saying I work with Simon at fluid wow fluid's amazing have you been to their office it's so much fun and you know what they did this extra stuff for me that wasn't expecting and I just I just think they're great that type of thing right you you really want

people to love your brand and that's how you get customers when people love your brand it doesn't matter how small you are as a company still think brand that will help you scale next up is marketing hacks now when I first say marketing to you your brain could probably explode thinking about all the things you could be doing and there are a lot of things I always love the David olgy quote someone quite famous in the ad agency business who said 50% of what he spends on Advertising is wasted he just doesn't know what 50%

and the truth is it is like that so I do events in my present business and it cost a lot of money to do events that's that's marketing and what's the instant return well often years later these people become clients or Partners so there's marketing that's kind of long-term Investments perhaps things like events you know inviting people for lunch and having connections with people and then there's the more direct marketing which I guess you could argue things like email marketing social media I'm going to give you a few hacks now of of marketing that I've

done in the past that have really blown up for me that I think you guys could learn from so the first one I'm going to talk about is when promoting your business don't promote you promote your customers so one of the things I did that that really blew up my business is I won a client at Wall Street Journal um and he was a great client and really supportive of what we did we did a brilliant job for him and the Wall Street Journal and I did an ad campaign and I got the Billboards for

free I went around Hong Kong I found empty spaces on walls outside restaurants and I asked them if I could put a billboard up there I told them for the first few months it'll be advertising for me eventually I'll put ads in there and they can share their revenue with me so they let me put a board up all over town I did about 20 of them and then I put the advert up of the person from The Wall Street Journal Olivia his name was I put him on an advert so him saying how great

we were up on billboards all around Hong Kong so what this did I promoted my client not me the client was blown away like I made him famous and what was really interesting it not only increased what I said earlier the referal program he just was always talking about me he even mentioned me at his wedding you know he invited me to his wedding and then he mentioned me in his wedding speech right that I put him on a billboard okay and he not only promoted me to everybody the second effect was all other clients

that saw that were like wow fluid isn't just a client relationship they're promoting me personally and remember how personal business is you know people always say business isn't personal it's personal it is personal and if you take it personally and treat people with respect and help them you will be Blown Away about how that will change your life and those people that I ended up putting about 20 different people over the years on billboards they became close close friends and clients and you know I'm building their personal Brands while all at the same time promoting

my business that's one marketing hack the second marketing hack is community this is such an undervalued Marketing System that people I I I think it's the how you can beat big companies if you think about big Banks and institutions for example they can't communicate with their customers in an easy way anymore without getting into trouble with gdpr but more importantly their customers can't talk to their customers cuz they're so scared community and harnessing it is literally one of the most exciting marketing hacks of 2025 I I I would start a business today totally focused on

community if I was you and if you've done a niche like I said earlier if you followed my advice in Niche Community should be really easy so the power of community is let's say on help bank right help bank is a platform we built to help people help people there's 195,000 people registered on that platform and the idea is that 195,000 people could all potentially promote your business today and that costs nothing once you build it up once or you built it up initially that Community can keep on supporting you and you of course must

support that Community the most important thing with a community is that you understand you all have the same purpose for being there you don't have to have the same personality you don't have to have the same beliefs and everything it's just certain things you believe in so why is everyone at a help bank for example well they're there because they believe that everyone deserves a chance to live their dream and that they've got knowledge to share they want to give and vice versa they want to get some help and they can't afford necessarily to pay

for help or they don't want to because it's not always the best thing right so Community is about having shared values so if you can create even 10 people in a community even 10 friends and you all promise to promote each other's businesses that's the beginnings of a community and if you get it right those 10 friends of yours might have a few thousand followers on their Instagram and if they all post for you today that could promote your business for nothing and so like Community marketing is I I'm going to do a whole video

just on that I think it's just so exciting and such a big opportunity and it doesn't have to be hundreds of thousands of people like I now have in my community hundreds of thousands of people but you don't need it I started with five people you know there's five people I first started with are still part of that community and very very active like and I've helped them and they've helped the community it's it's such an exciting way to build a business too and it's a marketing hack that not many people talk about I think

it's really a big opportunity the third marketing hack again this is an old one but still really relevant email marketing now uh there's a lot of rules now with gdpr in England and other uh email marketing uh systems that govern how you collect data and how you use data but I think in the beginning of a business you're much more free for example if you've got I don't know 200 people in your University that you know if you email them one by one if you make the effort you're going to avoid all these silly rules

that stop early stage businesses growing cuz you're not mass mailing people email people one at a time and ask them to promote your business ask them if they buy your product ask them how much they pay ask them if they're willing to promote if you pay them get to know that 200 people in your University make that part of your community and you can do it through emailing emailing is free and weirdly it's really weird like you email even the most famous to people they respond to email it it's really kind of amazing I I

just emailed Mark cubin the other day he's actually reading his own email right once you found the email he's actually reading it like I think I think this is such a old way but still so underrated and it's cheap and once you've got someone's email like I've got 11 million people following me online I'd give it all up for 1 million email addresses instead like it it's so much more powerful to have an email and so marketing wise focus on building an email list okay and number four I've got to mention in this day and

age social media now I know as soon as I say it's like oh my God he's giving social media tip as a marketing hack like people still aren't really realizing what's happening in social media like we got 350 million views on our content across Tik Tok Instagram and YouTube shorts in the last 30 days like it's mindblowing it's the new TV and so I don't care what your business is you can come up with a social media viral hack right if you were um going to start a cleaning business we help these two twins that

have just started a cleaning business so we advise them to go into the street and start cleaning stuff that no one else will clean they've blown up on social media they're they're cleaning London Bridge and they're cleaning that no one else wants to clean they're making money from their social media they're getting brand sponsorship it's a wild wild west out there right now we don't need these TV companies or Billboards or any of it we don't need any of it you can just get straight out there right now with your phone and create viable content

it's easier than you think and it's all about effort and it's all about testing and triing things right and take it from someone that's done that right I'm not just saying you should go build viable content go watch my content it's about having a hook at the beginning that's exciting a little bit of value could be humor it can be it can be education some value and then an end that kind of goes who people are interested right like use it don't be lazy and think oh everyone's on social media now no no you're wrong

companies are losing out on social media because they're doing it which means you can replace them if you do it well give it some give it some real effort that's the key and you've got to be consistent post generally every day and do something that has a good hook and do something that's fun get out there social media it's still it's still a hack I'm going to put been in here that people haven't completely utilized so there's some marketing hacks for you I've actually done a whole video on marketing I've gone very deep on this

subject so maybe after this video go watch that but hopefully this will help you get going at least right how to build a team probably the most important part building any business despite what everyone thinks with AI and how AI is going to replace everybody everyone right now is telling me about how AI is going to be uh the most the next billion dollar company is for people in AI probably true but frankly Instagram was 11 people with no Ai and still became a billion dollar company but still people I think teams in general have

more than just I need people to do the work it also creates a sense of community your First Community in your business is probably your team and I feel like team is such an undervalued thing now stage one of your business is probably like I said earlier a co-founder right someone so I won't go over that again but having someone that is with you that has the opposite skill to you same moral code that's definitely in my opinion step one in your team not everybody needs a co-founder I personally really like it and I think

it can also be doesn't have to be a co-founder if youve got the money and you don't need to make them a co-founder necessarily you can just make sure they've got a skill set that you need right so normally I was hire an accountant or PA when I first start any business that's the first team member I need to complement my skills right I'm very badly organized so I need someone that helps me organize that so so you got to list what you're bad at and get that key skill in day one that's going to

give you what you need so you don't fall over right so if you're bad at accounts get someone in that's going to help you be organized of everything the next thing on the team to think about when you start a company my opinion is you can hire a lot of generalists these are people that can do everything and generalists um and this is why I quite like interns when I first start a company having someone that is willing to do everything they're willing to go and get the cup of tea for someone they're willing to

sit down and go through a spreadsheet and figure out you know what the data says about what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong they're willing to go Source stuff in China for you if you need it Whatever It Is they're willing to do it right and generalists are really important at the beginning but you still want to give some structure to your team you want to make sure that everyone is clearly what we call okay eyes right they're clearly listing what they're going to check what they're going to do and how they're going

to do it so each week the way I do it is on a Monday we say what we're going to achieve for the week and on the Friday we check in to see if it was achieved right so we're doing two posts a day did that happen uh what happened with the product we're trying to Source you know whatever it is like we we have a Monday check-in and a Friday conclusion don't manage people manage person purpose and this is the thing I really want to make sure I get across purpose so once you've got

your skills list listed here of what you actually need and you got your generalists in okay I'm going to talk about moving away from generalist in a minute but generalist at the beginning people that are willing to do anything the very important thing when building a team is including your purpose okay so the way I do it is I I'm very clear what I want to achieve right I I want to fix the education system I want to help people do what they love I want people to not be stuck in jobs they don't love

I want people to realize they can do anything and I want people that care about that same problem I want people who who really believe that people should be free to do what they love and not trapped by what they don't know okay so free knowledge to people to do what they love now when I'm bringing people in they can have the skill but if they don't care about that as much as I do it's not going to work so I want people to care about that as much as I do and you can check

if people do various ways if you're hiring someone to help you you know fix something in the world's wrong with the planet and then you see that they're driving a Hummer probably not true that they really care about that problem right so you got to make sure that the purpose you have is clear list it out be super clear by the way this will help you get up in the morning too if you're very clear about the purpose it will make you go and do it because if you don't do it someone dies if you

don't do it the planet suffers right you need this too but you need to make sure the people you hire in your team have this exact same thing now I will just quickly highlight the mistake I made in the past I have hired people that are available you don't really want people that are just available what you actually want is people that are perfect for the job so I have done this made this mistake someone says oh Johnny friend of mine he's available do you want to hire him I'm like okay no that's a mistake

that I have made in the past what you want to make very clear as you especially when you scale the business is who do you actually want to work in the business so when I was building fluid I was 10 years into building that company and I realized I wanted to have someone come in as CEO and run it and the first time I brought someone in I made a mistake it was someone I knew they weren't the best in the business I like them and I trusted them very important two pieces but they weren't

the best in the business so when I brought them in that of course meant they weren't best in the company even though I thought I could change them and I could train them I was wrong so I did it again I hired a new CEO and this time I went to the most successful company in Asia and I found the number two and I hired them okay so look for the best you know it it's harder it might take you a little bit of time you may might have some strain where you don't have the

full team that you need you will be thanking me lately later if you if you are very patient around this it's so important to look for the best the final thing I'll say on team and this is getting a bit more advanced now but as you build up the company you want to move away from generalists to Specialists so this a little bit ties into what I just said about having the best but you want people that are really good at the thing that you need them for so when I first started out building the

company I'm building today I brought in someone called Talia she was amazing she worked with me for 4 years many of you might know her and she was really good at a lot of things but as we grew the company we needed people that were very good at editing people that were very good at social media and so I started hiring people that were very good in particular things and that's how you grow a company you move from generalist to Specialists I'm a generalist myself I become now a specialist in marketing so what can happen

with the generalists is as they're doing lots of different things they might say well I really like doing the YouTube videos but I hate cleaning the toilets right so then you get a cleaner in that doesn't mind doing that right they find that therapeutic or that's what they want to do the point I'm getting to is that you want to make sure that you really understand the people that are generalists now as they develop and help them become specialist in something so I'm now a specialist in my own company I am the marketing guy in

my own company right I would hire me I'm I'm good at marketing I am probably one of the best you can put me in that role but maybe 20 years ago I wasn't the best so I would probably hire someone in to do that role you see what I mean like even replacing yourself as a Founder okay so that's team that's how you build a team that's how you think about team and don't forget to give your team Equity it might you don't have to do it straight away but give people a path to ownership

give people a piece of the business because they're never going to work as hard as you do unless they have the same purpose as you loving what they're doing and they get the upside that you get so give people equity in your business over time hey I hope you're enjoying today's podcast I wanted to ask a quick favor I've just written a book guys it's taken me 35 years to get all this knowledge and I put it all in here it will help you remove any subconscious bias you have for stopping you from starting your

dream the key this book that I want you to learn is if you want your dream to happen you've got to make other people's dreams happen first the link is down in the description it would mean a lot to me if you bought it or the proceeds from this book I'm giving away to fun dreams so please buy if you can thanks now let's get back to the podcast next up the secret to selling now the first thing I'm going to tell you about selling is it's not a dirty word if you hear this and

you think oh selling don't really like selling oh selling you're completely mad and if you think you can't sell you're completely wrong and you've been brainwashed now no one really wants you to learn to sell you know why cuz you're free forever once you learn to sell once you learn to sell you don't need anybody like every single person in my team could today go start their own business because they've got a skill and they can sell and it is literally like you know walking into a restaurant and saying hey I can take care of

your social media for you if you want it's it's that simple right selling is not what you've been told this kind of like use car salesman you want to buy this car that doesn't work no that's not how sales really is that's a lie right sales is literally you bonding with someone else and then buying into your vision and buying into your product and you working for them to make sure that they're happy so that they continue to use you and they recommend you to other people like it's a beautiful thing sales and there is

a simple structure to selling I'm going to quickly tell you if you want to sell something to someone you know the whole idea like um it's a Wolf of Wall Street you know sell me this book sell me this book okay and then wolf for wsh sell me this pen and everyone misses what that that whole thing is actually about what it is is like don't sell to people that don't need a pen don't sell to people that have already got the book if you've already got the book why would I sell it to you

again or you don't need the book you're not looking to start a business you don't need the book so don't sell to people that don't need it the golden rule is this there's three steps to selling and it's very important you do it in this order number one does the person you're selling to need what you're selling do your research don't bother selling to people that don't need it it's very demoralizing and you might have a conclusion that people don't want your product because you're selling to people something they don't need so determine whether people

need you the second thing is build a relationship do people like you that's why today if you look on social media all the social media platforms that are really popular are people not companies people want to buy from people it's always the same it's been the same for thousands of years it's about you and me connecting before you buy something from me like my book you have to know me you have to like me you have to want to support my course you want to know what I'm going to do with the money you want

to know these things right so like being transparent in sales is the key not setting you don't need to people being transparent about the ingredients in your food or the weakness and strength of the product that you're selling right bake a relationship with someone so that they like you and they trust you because the third step which is where most people start in sales which is the price in the product this is the product this is the price most people start there it's a big mistake don't start there that's the end because if someone likes

you and they need you they will find a way to pay for your product they will find a way to make the deal work I've actually had this where I have a relationship with someone and they need my service where I've gone to them with a proposal of a million pounds of how much I was going to charge them and they said Simon charge me 1.7 million you've undercharged in this because I built the relationship with them they trust me and they need me they need me to be successful they need me as a business

to do well so they'll pay me more and this is never taught to anybody because the school system doesn't want you to learn to sell because they want you to go get a job right it's just that blunt so if you're an introvert you can sell you can use email marketing the other techniques I've talked about earlier if you're introvert you can not show your F on camera and do point of view type videos if you're an extrovert of course you can go on camera like me and there's all sorts of other options right but

you can sell tell your subconscious you can sell and don't think it's a dirty word it's it should be the word for freedom I think the word should be relabeled sales equals Freedom learn to sell I've actually done a whole very long video on this uh but I've given you the basics here if you want to know more there is another video you can watch at the end of this one but there is one final thing I want to make sure I share with you and this is what I call the second secret to selling

now it does depend on your business but the best thing you can ever do is create case studies so case study ultimately equals social proof right it proves that you are good at what you do or that your product has done what you promised via normally the client that you serviced part of this is testimonials okay like reviews online and stuff like that but most of the time it's you packaging up what you did for that client so it could be a product let's say you um you you sold a match tea product and someone

drunk it and it helped them sleep better you want to get the tracking information and their testimonial and put together proof that this drink that they drunk actually helped them do the thing you said it would do because in in marketing we will say sell the sizzle not the steak right don't sell the steak everyone selling steak sell the outcome of the product sell the sizzle right what was the result of using your product that meant people's lives were better okay whatever that whatever that might have meant so creating a case study is like the

secret secret weapon in sales the reason I sold my company and I'll get into this a bit later is partly because we had case studies that would take years and years for someone else to make that's one of the reasons they bought the company because we had this proof we we started something and then one year later we done it and then we did a case study to prove how good it was we didn't need to sell anymore I I didn't I'm a salesp person I didn't need to sell anymore I just send people the

case study and then they read the data the comments the information to say whoa you had this effect that's it I'd like to buy your product where do I sign right create case studies it's so not talked about and it is literally one of the most amazing hacks you'll ever create for your business and it will create value for your business which I'll talk about in a minute when we get onto how to sell a company right case studies learn how it works hopefully this helps next up how to build a brand now I did

talk a little bit about this earlier but you know what I'm it's such an important subject I I think that so many people don't understand even though you see your Nike and apple all these billion dollar companies have a brand I think people don't understand what a brand is so at fluid I'm going to quickly run through the framework of how we built one of the most successful brands in Asia okay the number one thing was we had purpose now I'm going to tie this all together maybe the triangle is the best way purpose at

the top okay and when I first started the company by the way when I first started the agency I had the purpose wrong so the original purpose of the business was to create impactful marketing and branding campaigns that help brands do great things right so in my mind you know people like the Wall Street Journal were my client okay uh and I wanted to make them happy but problem with that is that well first of all every other agency was doing the same thing the second is that I noticed after about year two people started

to leave the company and when I asked them why they were like well we're just trying to help Brands make money you know like who cares about that you know like I I I do care about it because it pays my bills but equally like it's not that exciting is it so I like okay what would excite you they told me two things that I now build into every business number one quality of life and what that basically meant was I was working with a lot of designers and they felt like Brands just wanted to

squeeze as much out of them to make money um which is by the way the problem I have with anyone that sells time you shouldn't sell time you should buy time but they they weren't really feeling valued so the brand would say I want it done tomorrow at 12 but like okay well it's a process creativity is a process so um you know can we do it at five you know and and the brands like okay I guess but even doing it at five for the creatives was stressful right you're not allowed to enjoy the

process because you got to get done by five so quality of life was one thing and then the other side of it was personal goals so the second thing I learned is that people were leaving because we weren't necessarily ticking the boxes for their personal goals what what what did the people in the company actually want and and so we basically completely changed the purpose of the company we switched it from the brands are our purpose to the team is our purpose so our whole and i' I've built this into every business i' I've I've

run since it's like okay we want people to have a quality of life okay so what does quality of life mean for some people that's like they want to have Awards they want to win stuff they want to prove that they're the best in the business so part of it was winning Awards right being recognized for being good at their work um and then uh for others it was literally being able to have time off when they want so we we basically gave people unlimited holidays you can have a holiday whenever you want you don't

even fill out a holiday form and and so we we created this whole kind of like feeling of it wasn't about executing based on what the clients want we completely switched our purpose to being like how can we look after our creatives so they enjoyed working there and you know what that did that meant we had the best creatives in the world working with us and you know what that means all the brands wanted to work with us anyway because we had the best creatives right so it's like kind of purpose is so important when

building a brand because we then won awards in Asia for culture of the year or best company to work at which also meant people were proud right personal gains they were like well I'm working for the company that you know was just creative agency of the year and uh was given these awards for doing these good things for for people making things happen for the people in the company right so people felt like they were also part of something more important than just helping a brand like everybody else was they were actually building culture around

respecting creativity respecting creatives giving creatives the space to do good work not by 5:00 like the brands wanted but by when it was ready and so Brands by default would end up working with us anyway although they weren't happy that it wasn't done by five they wanted it done by us because we were the best right so building brand sometimes comes inward first like your culture inside your company and I was going to write culture here is the last thing you know like what do you really want to achieve now most businesses will tell you

they want to make a load of money and there's nothing wrong with making money like I said earlier I want people to make money I want people to build businesses that make money I think charity model is broken I think you should build a business that makes money but the culture of the business should always be about how you actually making a difference to not only your team but hopefully the people you serve and you stand for something right your brand means something that means you're going to say no to certain things okay if you

look at any brand out there that's actually successful this goes all the way back to what I said to you at the beginning about owning a niche if you actually understand who you're servicing you'll know who to say no to so I remember uh Steve Jobs saying on one video once that everyone told him that he shouldn't be charging so much for his phone it's not competitive but his Niche was creative people who cared about how the product looked okay so he said no to having a cheaper phone okay and that was the right thing

to to say and the right thing to do because he knew his Niche he knew his culture he knew what his product was trying to achieve and he was able to say no when everybody in the market told him a phone with no keyboard at that price good luck getting business clients you know he just knew what they were trying to do he knew his brand and I think that's that's why I really think people need to spend more time on this than you think especially in the agency space you've really got to understand your

brand if your brand isn't strong your brand isn't good why would another brand work with you your brand is going to directly reflect them if they hire you they're going to look at your branding and say well why would I work with this company what do you stand for what do you care about work on brand and follow this framework have purpose at the top think about quality of life for your people the personal gains of your people like giving them Equity right don't forget to give them equity and then culture what are you actually

here trying to do don't think about the money always that will you up think about how you can build a brand that has value Beyond money and then you can charge anything brand is the product that drives up price Nike shoes are $10 made in China how can they charge $250 for these shoes right because they have a brand they stand for something it means something when you wear it people know the story that's what you need to build in your business any agency that's successful has a brand think about it you probably know them

ogy has a brand it means something over was all about copywriting it was all about the art of the word you got to know what your brand stands for what makes you unque unique and build it into your philosophy finally how to sell your business for a fuckload of money is one of my favorite subjects and I'm going to touch on this in a way you didn't expect exit sounds like the dream right sell your business I'm going to tell you how to sell your business but before I do I'm going to tell you to

not want to sell your business if you want to get a lot of money for your company or you really want to get value out any sales process don't want to sell it right build a business you love I have seen it too many times where people have come to me for investment I invest in business right and they say Simon please invest in us and I say okay sure what's the plan we're going to build it up over 3 years and then Uber are going to buy it I'm like okay what if Uber don't

buy it like uh well no they're going to buy it they're going to buy it probably not then what oh well I don't we'll get someone else to run it I don't know we'll see they're not building it because they love it and I never invest in those sorts of businesses okay because if you love it you're going to get even more money for it if you look at the biggest valuation in businesses have come when people didn't want to sell it in stagram the guys didn't want to sell it they were actually talking to

venture capitalist businesses a few weeks up to the sale to Facebook and they weren't going to sell it to Facebook that's how they got a billion dollars for a company with 11 people in it okay not wanting to sell it is the key to selling it because even for me when I sold fluid I didn't need to sell it I wasn't actually running it every day and I had lots of free time I was working on other projects investing in businesses and I was making money from The Business Without Even working it and I deserved

it cuz I buil it up for 10 years my point is we got the most amount of money because I didn't need to sell it now there is a method and I'll talk about it in a minute about how you can proactively go and sell a company and there is something in that but being in love with your business even if you get to a point let's say I was CEO of fluid right I was no longer enjoying the day-to-day so I brought a CEO in to run it I became chairman which was great I

just went out and played golf with people I smoothed with clients I used to just chill out thinking about the future strategizing I I moved out of the role of CEO which is very heavily operational and I moved into a role I quite enjoyed okay a chairman role and what I'm getting to is that to sell a business try to be in love with it the second thing if you want to exit a business and it might sound like I'm repeating myself a little bit here but it's team when people buy a business they're actually

most of the time buying an operational service now there are cases where maybe for example you can buy a laundr and you don't need someone running it necessarily you can just buy it and take it over and and install someone to go and open up the door and turn on the machines fine but if you're building an agency business like we're talking about here you really really need to have key people involved in the business that are often part of the reason the company gets bought when my company was bought it was literally the management

team that were partly buying now they could have hired all these people okay and the day they bought my company they increased the salary of Everybody by 20% roughly right so it's like they could afford to pay these people more than I was paying them because they're a massive company but they couldn't hire them easily because they didn't have the culture that we had built up back to what I was saying earlier right but team is crucial if you don't have the right team in place I even did one other clever thing that I didn't

realize at the time but now I look back and realize is I had someone else running the company at that point right I hired a CEO so when I sold the company I wasn't tied into a four-year lockin where I had to work for that company in an earnout I I got the money the day day one they bought the company and I was out free to do whatever I wanted so bringing someone in to run the company alongside bringing people in that would love running the company is key to selling a company the third

thing I'll tell you basically is Partnerships the person likely to buy your company is someone that's already benefiting from working with your company so we actually partnered up with PWC on a project and that project did so well and it worked out so good that they said this is pretty interesting we should probably buy your company so partnering up with your potential acquirers is pretty interesting and I always tell people 1 plus 1 equal 11 and it's so true in Partnerships so PWC had Fortune 500 clients and we had a creative service that all those

clients could buy so by partnering up with them and they have huge credibility we could easily get new clients too right so from their point of view they at that time were not necessarily known for their creative prowess or know they are now but they they could work with us and we would with case studies and all the other proof of service that we had go to clients and say look we're working with fluid here's a case study of what they did uh and we're going to bring in out financial and brain power and consultancy

power and help uh and to between PWC and fluid we can do anything for you the client right and I think that that really created an incredible upsell opportunity for PWC and for us to enter a whole new client base that we perhaps weren't necessarily servicing so Partnerships are really big I don't really like this full thing I'm going to tell you but I see it working for people so I think I should mention it which is you can package up your company and there are companies out there that will help you sell it now

my personal suggestion on this is if you if you really want to sell the first thing to do is what I've already mentioned bring someone else in to run the business now if you maybe you lose 50% of your revenue or your personal income but you're not running anymore so you can go do something else it's kind of interesting to do this because by the way it will help you sell it bring someone to run it but if you want to sell the company I would be really cautious about going to existing competitors and I'd

think about how someone outside the industry could benefit from buying your business so again in my industry and the agen of business we're talking about now the leading brands are wpp olave V these big institutes Liam berett these big Brands they actually did try to buy my company many times but the amount they were offering was very low because they know how to do it all whereas PWC at the time were just learning how to expand into this creative space and so they paid a premium for my business because they they also were buying the

learning that we had they didn't have that necessarily right so I think selling to people outside your industry and not your competitors is something to think about but you can package it up and sell it but I would just be very cautious that you don't end up doing massive earn outs for years or spending years giving all your competition or your Insight in Secrets by selling to your competition try to think outside your industry when selling a company but that is one way you can do it you can package it up and do it that

way I just think you're better off loving it building a great team and having partners and it will probably sell itself I hope you enjoyed today's video I'm off to have some chicking now take care guys