Fortune Favours the Brave

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0:37sean welcome on to behind the title it is it's amazing to have you here finally finally finally got you on um so for those that don't know who you are um or your background it would be great if you could start with a bit of an introduction but then importantly tell the audience why it was important for you to come onto the podcast today? Okay so a bit of introduction I'm Sean Simons I'm the founder of a business called Compton which is effectively a commercial estate agency we buy and sell and rent office space in a particular part of London the eastern city fringes so they're kind of the cool area I've spent 26 years of my career doing that my business Compton is a bit of a disruptor in its sector we kind of have looked at the market as quite a traditional format and we've effectively tried to mix it up using social media and different ways of marketing to promote our clients product to market a lot of the people we deal with are from your sector so we deal with a lot of the creative industries there's a huge focus on technology-based businesses we move on average between 200 and 250 businesses per year so we've got quite good insight to trends the modern day workplace um understanding what's important when people are moving from a staff retention or employment perspective um so yeah that's what i do in terms of coming on here by the way so for the viewers benefit you and i are old friends we We are.

2:11We have virtually grown up together. Since you started this podcast, I have been begging you to come on. And I never beg anyone to come on, but I've been desperate to come on because I think the mission that you're on is a brilliant one. I think your narrative is you kind of, if your videos can help one person, then you've kind of done your job. And I feel that my journey has been somewhat unique. and I would like to believe that my story today will be able to hope more than one but if it helps one then mission accomplished. Love it and you know there was good reason listeners for pacing out when Sean was going to come on save the best till last and all that but no in all seriousness you know we initially started the podcast to get people in from the industry and now we're starting to look at people in adjacent spaces, mainly because I think that when people can hear it from people in the industry and they're from the industry, they can identify a lot easier.

3:11But obviously, given a lot of the work that you do with creative and tech businesses that are very closely aligned, it felt timely. So you're not worried that I'm just too outspoken and I'm going to embarrass you in front of your incredible audience? No, I think actually I'm welcoming that today and I'm going to push on that. Let's go. um let's kind of start off you've you talk about compton but actually you've built a couple of businesses um which you have uh subsequently exited one of them uh you also launched those businesses in very difficult times um so i guess as as part of that um was there a moment where on the outside everything was I guess looking rosy to the you know the plain Joe blogs but actually inside and I know that you you don't fall you don't crumble easily but inside you are really struggling good question good place to start so for context I left school at 16 and went straight into the big wide world I was always going to do that I was never really that good at school I failed my GCSEs.

4:24The school I was at wouldn't let me take A-levels at the school I was at and I decided to go straight into the big wide world. I was the kind of the kid in the playground at school selling mobile phones trying to make five pound here ten pound now. I kind of always had this hustler mentality and wanting to make money. So I started my career at 16. I worked for other people for 10-11 years. The first business I set up was in the middle of the global financial crisis so 2008 2000 well the crisis started in 2008 we launched our business in the beginning of 2010 in what we would consider the eye of the storm um to be honest with you looking back it was the most ridiculous thing to do ever so we myself and my two business partners we left our jobs we had no money like literally no money i bought a house at the time i couldn't afford I was pawning my jewellery on Hatton Garden to pay for my mortgage my mortgage at the time was also being paid on my credit card which you could do then you can't do today and we just thought it would be a great idea for three 27 year olds who have never really been or run a business or got any qualifications in business to go and borrow at the time we borrowed£120 ,000 from two clients and we've won£60 ,000 from two clients and we were just like we're going to give it a go now it's interesting hindsight's obviously an incredible thing now looking back it sounds really stupid but actually when you're in that moment and you think about what you've got to lose I didn't actually have that much to lose at the time so I was 27 I didn't really have much savings I'd kind of I had this house that I bought I had a massive mortgage I couldn't really afford to buy anyway and it's actually interesting so at the time it was like it felt it didn't feel risky at the time and actually even looking back on it whilst it looked risky risk is something i've always been quite comfortable with as a human being so on paper it looked crazy i mean the second launch is actually even wilder to most of you and we'll come on to that but i think for the first launch that we did never did it feel overly scary um it didn't feel because i don't think i had too much to lose so for that one the answer is no now fast forward so we ran that business for five years we then sold that business we worked for the company that bought us for five years and then we launched again in 2021 so the first launch was in the global financial crisis the second was in the middle of a pandemic now this was scary because not only during the pandemic the the the product that I trade in was actually under existential threat people thought the office was actually going to be a redundant kind of use class so I'm setting up an office agency in the middle of a lockdown and a pandemic where no one's working from an office on top of that we did a deal with the company that bought us to let us effectively take back our business so we took 15 members of staff we took on a seven-figure liability for the business in terms of property costs and other commitments so we've launched in april 2021 no everyone's working from home we've now got 15 members of staff we've got a sort of seven a seven-figure liability to run the business and we've now gone into something where there's actually no guarantee it's going to be a success and and I think that was a point where I was scared because I think this is a the difference between I guess 27 year old Sean and 37 year old Sean at 37 I had a lot to lose I've got a wife I've got two kids I've got a house I've got lots of other people in my family that depend on me and all of a sudden I'm chewing off I'm taking a business which at the time was loss making because of where we were so that was frightening but listen I've got loads of sayings and I'm going to say them all throughout this podcast but I am a true believer that fortune favours the brave and in certain decisions in life that I've made you have to be brave um and that was one of those times where I had to be brave I think I know the answer to this question were there moments where you just thought fuck it like just knock it on the head just it wasn't either happening quick enough or the risk was becoming you know it was outweighing what the possible reward could be in the short term no no it's just not in my dna um well i say that so when i was 27 i had no regard for risk i was prepared to lose my house that i just bought i was prepared to start from scratch and at 27 I think it's much easier to make that decision at 37 it's much harder so when my me and my two partners set the business up we basically said to ourselves we're going to give it a year so we're going to we're going to take over this business which is loss making dealing in a market which no one wants no one's having offices anymore I was working from home we're going to put a year's worth of money into it and a year's worth of money for a business is is quite a lot um also we're not being paid so we've got to pay ourselves um but the idea was a year now thankfully it took us about eight weeks to turn the whole thing around and we'll start to come back to the office and it was all great again but as i said i i was i was more cautious at 37 than i was at 27 you talked about family there and you know for those that won't know i do know um you you've got a wonderful family you've got two kids um Jess and Jack you've got a miracle child um and you know that was a pretty tough time uh in terms of Jack's entering into this world maybe just explain a bit a bit more about that so another saying for you so I'll lead you into this so what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is if I was ever going to get a tattoo I don't have a tattoo that's what I would have written it's gonna be really easy for it to index this podcast with these phrases and sayings now there you go love it so if i was going to get a tattoo it would be what doesn't kill you makes you stronger so the here's the story jack was uh one of three events that happened all in quick succession so the day i launched my business my first business at 27 like giving you the context of borrowing money and all the rest of it my dad um who was my best mate like we had a you knew my dad he was larger than a character um my dad got um diagnosed with three forms of cancer whether it was the day or the week we launched the business it was that week um but the backstory to that also was he was also getting divorced um his business was gone went into administration his house was being repossessed and then all of a sudden he's an inpatient at uch for nine months tackling three types of cancer with about 10 chance of survival 10 to 15 chance of survival so all of a sudden i've launched this new business i've also bought this house i couldn't afford i'm also engaged i'm getting married at the end of the year and now i've become the sole carer along with my brother for my dad who was in hospital um so that was kind of that was the first scenario um anyway cut a long story short my dad thankfully um went into remission um he was released from hospital a week before my wedding um and he obviously came to my wedding and it was great and he made a full recovery which was incredible fast forward uh about 18 months ish um my son was born um and my son was born very very prematurely so um he was born four months premature he's born at 24 weeks he weighed one pound nine ounces he was given a um 10 chance of survival and i think a three percent chance of a life without a mental or physical disability and bear in mind i'm kind of two years into my business now i've had the first drama with my dad all of a sudden I've got this premature baby that I can't touch for five weeks he ended up being in hospital for five and a half months so I'd go to work every day my wife would go to the hospital I then meet her at the hospital at five o 'clock we'd set the hospital till 10 11 o 'clock every day for five and a half months so that was number two big drama by the way he's absolutely fine now as you know he's 13 um going larger than larger than life character life character um and then three months after I brought my son home my dad died in like completely unbelievably tragic circumstances um and then there was a there was a court case there was all sorts of things going on so within the five years I ran my first business I had my dad getting done or my dad getting cancer with all the things he had going on his personal life I had a premature son and then I had a dad who died under these crazy circumstances and you know what so i'm a very positive guy right i am a glass half full rather than glass half empty just in everything i do it's kind of my my nature and the way i kind of processed what or what i went through was my dad's cancer mentally prepared me for my son's prematurity my son's prematurity prepared me for what happened with my dad now i know that's a really um some may say irresponsible way of looking at things but had the situation with my dad happened before the other two scenarios I don't think I would have been able to have navigated my my dad dying in the way that I navigated it and I did navigate it really really well but I'd kind of become tuned in to kind of how to deal with trauma so at the time I actually never felt like i was sinking don't be wrong there there were moments where i would cry or i would show emotion because it was overwhelming but at not one point was like i can't handle this um but do you know what it's interesting like people always say to me how did you deal with that um and people always ask me that when they haven't suffered trauma themselves the mental the mental kind of processing of human beings is unbelievable like you do not really know what you're capable of dealing with until you have to deal with it and quite frankly what you do you you sink or swim right and as far as i'm concerned sinking is not an option so for me listen as i said it's traumatic it's chaotic but as i said before kind of what doesn't kill you makes you stronger there's an episode that we did the very first episode with hamish nicklin which talks about fight or fly i I can't recall the exact words that he goes into, but he talks about the chemical reactions that we go through in those situations.

15:20It's a fascinating episode.

15:25It sounds like during that period that there was not only a lot going on mentally, but just a lot going on just generally. you obviously didn't get a chance you know to to say goodbye to your dad was there shit that you wish you'd said to him so the biggest regret i have with my or not being able to see my dad before he before he died was actually not being able to just be like fuck you i told you because my dad for basically my whole adult life gave me so much aggravation for the school fees he paid for my education and he was like you i've wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on your education you've got no gcses blah blah blah and then obviously i went and sold my business and was really really successful and all i wanted to do was be firstly fuck you i did it and i also wanted to buy him his dream car so the two things he wanted he always wanted a maserati don't know why it's ugly but anyway so my my whole plan was when i eventually am successful i'm gonna say fuck you obviously in a really lovely way and by the way here's the keys to your favorite car thank you for the education you gave me so i never got to do that um but again and again i'm not saying this for effect but i said i'm really positive and if my wife listens to this podcast which she probably won't but if she does she'll hate me for saying this but i can't allow what's happened in my past to to dictate what my future looks like in a negative way it has to be positive so now I'm a very stressed out guy like I run six different businesses what I do is really intense it's very high pressure I've got a busy social life I'm like chaotic but I embrace everything I don't let problems get in the way anymore and and why my wife will kill me is because I feel like I've used my past traumas to create this this version of myself that is somewhat unbeatable now that isn't always the case there are chinks in the armor things can impact me and affect me but most the time I'm always looking for a positive so for me I've taken trauma and rather than let it define me in a negative way I've I've worked incredibly hard to ensure that I define it for positivity only and that's kind of where I am today and have you have you kind of sought external help uh to do that or so it's interesting therapy is something that i never really liked um or something that i didn't really believe in um and it's interesting so so again my wife sees a therapist she's seen a therapist for about 16 years every week um and that's cool and she can do what she does but for me i think therapy is a very useful tool and i and i'm using i'm using at the moment whether it's a some form of business coach um or it's therapy and i don't see i used to see it as a sign of weakness i actually now see it as a position of strength so for me to be able to talk to someone who is unrelated who hasn't got skin in the game or a bias because they know me or they're part of my family or they're part of my business it's a very good sounding board sometimes i kind of go i suffer occasionally from anxiety i can talk about how that impacts me at times but for me to be able to go and communicate with someone it's just kind of like i can breathe again like even just by just talking to someone without even getting anything back just the words come out of my mouth help me but i think the difference for me is it's not a constant i can't do it constantly for me it's kind of i might do five sessions over the course of a few months then i might not go back for a year two years and if i feel i need to do it again i'll go and do it again i mean i've learned in my recovery the way that i keep my sobriety is by giving away what was freely given to me is by talking with other fellows part of that experience is behind the title it's me creating an environment creating the conditions for other people to come and share their story to help you know that be passed on to many others and you you butchered it at the beginning but my phrase is if it helps one then job done right because that's what I believe like you know am I looking for global fame from this podcast no am I looking for anything other than one an outlet for me to help anyone else that is literally it and it's I think it's it's really important that we are I think we are in an era and perhaps as you said it there I do want to unpick that little thread around anxiety we are in an era where i do think it's more considered people do want to feel seen feel recognized no they're not by themselves but you and i have a responsibility so i post a lot on linkedin right um i do the usual thing i'll talk about the deals we're doing and the success we're having but once a week or so i like to put something out which is kind of more mental focused because joe at full at early 40s I feel that we are uniquely placed in the world right now we are we're no longer the young ones where we haven't got the experience and we're not kind of too old where we're kind of at the end of our career and I feel that when you take our age our experience and the platforms we now have to kind of support people help people I think it's a really unique position so I again I sometimes put linkedin posts out when i'm thinking something that's either impacting me or that could help someone else and as i'm like you if i can help one person and the amount of dms i get from people being like you know what i needed to see that today so it's i feel that as i said i feel that in 2026 the world we live in the social platforms we have the the it's very easy for us to help people um and life is not just about kind of making money and having all these mad successes it's got to be more than that and again my linkedin journey has very much helped me kind of not only kind of enter the kind of more mentoring world um but also kind of help me help people out really um it's all about anxiety don't you no i was actually going to shift the gear i was going to come back to it you can come back to it um i want to talk about the business um and because it is i think it's impressive uh and people can look up and find you know your story uh one with hatton real estate your previous company which sold to colliers a massive multinational corporation and now compton um you know if you don't know they're in farringdon they've got an amazing coffee shop downstairs it really epitomizes to me how business should be done it's not just about office and sitting there and keyboard warrior it's actually about creating the environment fostering you know connections and community so it's incredible and and what i love is you know how you focus on talent attraction right and not only with that talent attraction but talent retention because in most corporations it is heavily graded it's focused on have they you know are they meeting expectations exceeding expectations are they under expectations and I'd love to just unpack that a little bit more because I feel like the success of your businesses has come down to the way that you've attracted talent, nurtured and then retained them.

23:00So maybe you can unpack that a little bit more. Okay, so it's a great question. So we are all about culture. We actually don't refer to our team as a team. We always refer to it as the Compton family. If you look at anything I ever say on LinkedIn, it's always about the family. Now, this goes back right back to our original business. And this all started from our own experience. So bear in mind, I was a 16-year-old school leaver, no GCSEs, no qualifications, and someone gave me a chance. And that always kind of sat with me because there were a few interviews I went to, where you've got no qualifications, I kind of have this conversation with you.

23:41So the rule we have at Compton is, we've got six different businesses. Each business has a head of it. but typically speaking when it comes to recruitment we never really recruit above someone else so there are different titles as you'd expect and we have a kind of a bottom-up policy so what we like to do is rather than kind of let people kind of have glass glass ceilings and and stoppages to their growth we always go bottom-up and we don't care how old they are it doesn't age is not a number if you're good enough you're old enough so what does that mean so essentially so if we've got a junior yeah so we've got a junior a junior negotiator i think we call them i don't know what we call them now we call them a an advisor so it's advisor senior advisor associate director director if a associate director left we would not go and appoint another associate director we will go and get another advisor then someone in the advisor in the advisor role would move up So senior advisor, someone in the senior advisor would move up.

24:49So you're effectively promoting for potential rather than being in the role. Correct. I don't care about grades. So we employ, currently we employ 32 people. I think over the last five years, we've probably had 50 odd members of staff. I genuinely, this is the truth, I don't think I've read one CV. I'm not interested. Like for what I do, and I'm sure it translates into a lot of what you do, but property is very much a people business, right? It's about relationships. it's about um it's about hard work it's not really about grades like i've got i'm i'm probably immensely dyslexic probably got load of age hd put me in any form of exam setting i'm cooked right but i'm really good with people i'm really good at sales i'm really good at bd i'm really good at understanding and be able to read a room that is not what a cv is going to tell you so for us it's always about the person and again why we've managed to retain staff so well and very i mean we've sacked a few people and a few people have left but i don't think we've ever lost and this is in both my businesses we have never lost a member of staff to a competitor ever they may have kind of pivoted to something else in the industry they may have gone on to the client side or they may have gone into tech but we've never really lost a member of staff to a direct competitor and i think that says quite a lot um it's a great place to work we we don't give people targets necessarily um we give people a lot of freedom um we work hard we play hard but the most important thing and again it's a decision that us and me and my two partners have made without sounding like an arrogant asshole i could have probably stopped growing this business three years ago and had a really lovely business, earned good money, lifestyle, all great.

26:44One of the main reasons, well, there's a few reasons, but one of the main reasons why we've continued to grow it is in order for the people who are working for us, we want to make sure that we can give them the ultimate potential because I want everyone to be as successful as possible. And if I stop growing the business, they're capped. If I keep growing the business, it should be uncapped. and that's really important it i mean it's fascinating i talk about it being in a global organization we have some amazing opportunities um and i don't i don't believe there are glass ceilings um i actually believe you can smash through them to an extent anywhere but actually observing from the outside how you've built that culture and i think almost i say this quite a lot created the conditions for people to thrive um because it's not just about you and your two co-founders you know what i've what i've learned is that i'm only as good as the people below me so if i create the conditions for them to thrive yeah i can do as many deals and i could strike you know commercial opportunities that they may not have seen but i'm i'm absolutely you know nothing with that in fact we i talk about it quite a lot when when i'm working on pitch actually it's not a thanks to the pitch team it's a thanks to everyone else that's picked up the slack well joe what on that so the most important lesson in business that i learned probably too late but i got it soon enough for it not to be a problem was the art of delegating right and i was i was always that guy there's no working on that one yeah but never so you're quite similar i know you're a very different industry but your industry is quite similar you don't own product what you trade your the commodity that you trade is time that's it right you don't you don't buy stock you don't sell stock you're not buying wholesale you're not retail it's it's time so if you can't trust other people within your organization to free up more time for you then you're not going to be able to progress it's just not possible so for me i delegate all the time now because what i'm doing it's a double benefit not only am i delegating to more junior members see technically senior senior quality work which helps them progress their career quicker but also frees up my time so i can use my creative brain to think about okay new opportunities new angles new ideas so there's a double win you're you're helping the people that work for you but then you're also being able to create more opportunity for yourself so time is so precious you've been very vocal uh online uh around the change that we've seen uh in how people engage in the workplace nowadays delicately put very delicate i'm waiting for you to unpack it um but i do think the world has changed and i know that you support a lot of that but i i also think and what i respect is that you stand in your place with a very firm position on the concept of working together in one environment um and seeing the benefit of working from home but the flip to that being that the culture has to go back the other way so i don't know go as controversial as you want here okay i'm deeply misunderstood right so the context for the people viewing i've become somewhat of like the poster boy for not working from home this all started in your industry in my industry and bear in mind it's obviously a hot topic in commercial property offices especially which is what i specialize in so during lockdown i added a photo to linkedin selfie with the hashtag not working from home and it's just gone bonkers ever since i'm kind of known as that guy i literally get on the train sometimes i'm like you're the not working from home guy i'm like yeah that's me so but i'm deeply misunderstood now i get hate from so many people single mums think i'm after them not in a romantic way but i'm after them because they they need to work from home um people who enjoy it and kind of are doing really well and they won't think i'm a madman um everyone thinks the world has changed i mean i just call bullshit quite frankly but i am misunderstood so let me explain to you my reasons why my core principles are as follows i believe that working from home is really bad for business culture now find me someone who can argue that like you can't build a culture within business we've spoken about how important culture is and by the way it's not just important in a small business like ours culture is really important in any business you talk to any ceo any founder they all talk about culture so culture is important you can't build culture if you're not working together in a team i don't believe it's possible point one point two if you are trying to progress your career how do you possibly do that when you're not surrounded by senior people and you're seeing how people are doing things that are in a more senior position to you so for career progression if you're you know even if you're our age right like you need to be around people who are inspiring you and kind of creating ideas you're bouncing off you can't do that working from home i think it's terrible for society generally um i feel that the loneliness people working from home that lack of camaraderie so on and so forth um like i feel that we talk about mental health in particular amongst men as well it's men and women but it's a problem like loads of people get in contact with me again through linkedin but i'm so glad you said that i have to work from home three days a week and i'm literally miserable and and that's the point and this is where i'm misunderstood so working from home as a principal and as a concept has been around forever okay I've got kids um if there's a if there's a I don't know a school play at three o 'clock on a Friday afternoon do you know what I might think Joe I'm not going to the office today I've always done that my issue was in the wake of COVID it was the mandating it was we are gonna work from the office two to three times a week and then you are mandated to be in the office then but then you're mandated to be at home and I just think it's bullshit for the reasons I said I said it's terrible for business terrible for business culture terrible for career progression and just bad for society generally and bad for the economy as well so i never have an issue working from home if you're a single mom and you've got school drop-offs no problem but there's never been a problem the problem is around the mandating and but you know what again i know you follow my linkedin i make a habit of posting every time a big corporate reverses it so amazon reverse their meta reversed they've all reversed it because it was never gonna work so what do you say what do you say to the uh i don't want to bracket here what do you say to the people that whether they're parents whether they're older whether they're younger there is a group of people that actively advocate and suggest that going back into the office is actually killing culture it's forcing people to behave in a certain way and actually the productivity you get with people choosing when and what they do is far greater than just mandating things i think is rubbish i think listen in our industry you try and get hold of someone on a friday who's working from home you can't get hold of them they're walking the dog they're doing pilates at nine o 'clock instead of seven o 'clock they've gone to the pub at three o 'clock five today six thirty thank you very much um but the but the point i'm making is it listen i can't categorize everyone because we've got mates who work from home and they are hugely successful and you know what if you're from home that's fine like you have a home office you want to not have a central no problem but when you're talking about i think general businesses not one man bands or small or small things but you're talking about a business and you're trying to have a culture and trying to be successful i don't understand what what what was in existence pre-covid has really changed postcode sure and there are times where i'll say joe well i've got no meetings on today this was pre-covid I've got no meetings on today.

35:39I've got to write four reports today. Do you know what I could do with just sitting at my kitchen table with peace and quiet and get it all done? That's fine. But that's always existed. My issue was the mandate. It was like forcing people to work from home. And it's just bullshit. I agree. I mean, we talked about in our business a couple of years ago, we had a, we talked about working modes. Are you back five days? We're back four days. uh so when are they going to crumble and make it five days again i couldn't tell you um but i but what i would say is that we we've always believed in uh a mentality of um heads up i.e um you know i need to be in the office sorry uh we call it heads up heads down heads together right so heads up being flexible kind of working can be in the office can be in the coffee shop can be at my client's you know office and ultimately i'm kind of doing what i need to be doing in that day wherever i need to do it you've got heads down which is as you said sitting at a table at home because i need to get stuff done and heads together which is when you're in the office and i think more often than not certainly we believe in our business that you know heads together is hugely powerful um we also support uh making sure that our clients see us uh and we can foster and grow those relationships and and of course if people want more flexibility um then i think it's down to them to work with their line managers and find the times you can start earlier you can finish earlier you can start later finish later and and as always i think any business you can make formal flexible working requests if you have medical needs um and so i don't believe in a one size fits all I believe that um you know it's got to be right for that individual but I personally I don't disagree with you um but it also sorry but it also comes down to what you want from your life now I'm a very entrepreneurial I'm a very ambitious person now for me if I want to make sure that I am fulfilling my potential and striving for greatness another one of my sayings and doing the best I possibly can out of my career, I don't believe it serves me well working from home.

38:02No, I don't disagree. And I feel that, listen, if you've got someone who is very happy to go through life kind of just being super kind of average or below par, and there are plenty of, that's the way the world goes around, everyone's kind of different. If everyone was to say it would be a disaster, that's fine. But if you want to fulfill your potential and you've got this kind of ambition, this hunger, whether you're a business owner or you're an individual working in business, I just don't see how working from home as a concept serves you or your career well. yeah no i agree i mean you you've deliberately built a culture at compton um and i saw you post something the other day about uh every year you do a jolly and um i never knew this but you've actually created i'd almost call them like scout badges for uh for the different um i guess uh events excursions get getaways get togethers um how how have you built that and and was it always deliberate versus we tried one thing it didn't work or actually we set out to do what we do every year um it's kind of grown like tentacles in a major way these things started as we do a few nights out like team building stuff and it's kind of morphed into something a bit bigger so every year we do a couple of trips so in a couple of weeks we're doing a three-night extravaganza in Mallorca um last year we did a ski trip we then we rented an island in the um Essex estuary for our Christmas party we do kind of push the boundaries but do you know what's funny these things cost a lot of money um and they take a lot of time to organize especially when your team is is getting bigger but culture isn't something that just happens right you can't oh i want to have a good culture it doesn't just happen you've got to kind of do things to make it happen um and part of that is the the team trips it's funny you know when we were on our last ski trip and when you take 30 people skiing it's not a cheap outing right it's it's incredibly expensive but i remember turning around to elliot one of my partners at the time and we were looking we were at pray and you've got everyone having the time of their lives they've got their arms around each other everyone's singing everyone's dancing like it's proper like family unit i looked and like look at this every single penny we have spent is justified by just looking at this setting but what's also amazing is whenever we come back from these trips it feels like everyone's even tighter and as i said even though we work in a very dog eat dog industry and it's kind of like it's all about fees and it's about deals and it's like hustle hustle hustle what we've created is an environment where everyone's kind of got each other's backs so when people go on holiday like people are delighted to cover other people and help them out we've got a whatsapp group which is like 400 messages a day can you help me do this can you help me do that that's been created through i think a people having the understanding that we're on this mission where everyone's going to grow together two um we kind of give people a lot of freedom um we're not like i you've got to be in at this time out at that time we give people that freedom um and three we all have fun um i think a lot of businesses lose sight of that whenever i i always whenever i see people on LinkedIn post about their Christmas party.

41:40It's like 12 people around the table with the silly little Christmas hats on and pulling the crackers. I'm like, what a missed opportunity. What a missed opportunity. People don't do it because they don't want to spend the money, but spending money on your staff and on your culture, you're not spending money. It's an investment. Do you think if you took that away, that would change the culture of your business now? Yeah, massively. Massively. Do you think people would leave? I'm not sure people stay for it. It's like the cherry on top. I like to think it was the cherry on top. Do you think having that, though, accelerates growth in your business?

42:17So do you think it would slow down if you took it away? I think it would take some of our special sauce away. I mean, it's really difficult. But in our industry, it's really difficult to understand ROI. Again, we don't have product. It's not like we're selling something and you do a marketing campaign. You know that that marketing campaign produced that amount of output. I just know, I know that we are, and I say this from a position of pride rather than arrogance, but we are either the top or the second top-performing niche practice across the whole of London in what we do. And I don't believe we would have known to have achieved that without the culture we've created.

42:57I reckon this is going to be a hard-awyer on this one, like at least six or seven to one of your time. I reckon you're going to unlock loads of business. On this? so i'll take that attribution my side that's fine you can come on commission structure uh i love it um okay we're gonna kind of bring it a bit bit into a wind down um obviously you you shared you started your business um just you know in the eye of the storm um of the credit crunch uh your dad unfortunately got cancer you had your son jack who was four months premature who came at four months premature your dad was sadly and you know very unfortunately violently taken from you um when you look back at those moments do you think that's what created the anxiety or do you think you had anxiety from a kid from when you were young this is really funny actually so um as a kid i had loads of tics i don't know if you remember growing up i used to do weird shit like i used to like blink really hard or i used to shrug my shoulders um i used to do all this weird stuff like i used to like do this coughing thing as and that was probably my teens um and it kind of just disappeared over the course of time i then got really bad ocd like really bad um to give you an extent of how bad it got if i was driving along the road and someone cut me up slam my hand on the horn fuck you look whatever it was screaming at them i'd drive up next to them i'll see this poor little old lady who i was just screaming at i'd feel really bad about it so i'd bite my tongue and it got i bite my tongue 28 times it got so bad my ocd that every time i thought a negative thoughts, I bit my tongue 28 times, 28 times over.

44:56And I can't even work out how many times that is biting my tongue. So I sit there, biting my tongue 20 times, counting how many times it was. Relentlessly. And do you know what? When my dad died, that cured me. 560, I think. We were both terrible at maths, but somewhere in that region, but every time you think a bad thing, I was biting my tongue 20 times. Now, I used to do weird shit, also like you know like the volume on the tv certain routes i'd walk certain routes i'd drive certain ways i'd eat my food it was like intense ocd i never had it never looked at never treated but it was something that i always did when my dad died in the circumstance he did i was like fuck this done what's that like if something as bad as that can happen like i'm done and it cured me genuinely cured me in terms of anxiety this has only really been it's probably in the last three or four years and and it's interesting i've never known it as anxiety but i've actually worked it out so you know when you breathe you imagine you're breathing and that last 10 percent of breath you can't you know like when you catch your breath i can breathe it's not like i'm struggling to breathe but last little inch of your lung i couldn't catch it and i've worked out it's anxiety it happens to me when I'm at a point of like mad stress mad mad mad stress um and again like all these little things that I've been kind of working out about myself it's only really been when I've got older and when I've started to talk to people so when I talk to my business coach I'm this man he's like you're anxious I'm like what am I gonna be anxious about he's like well you look look at your life Sean I'm like you're probably right have you do you think you've been able to kind of process and manage and deal with a lot of that grief um or or do you think you still hold on to some of that as so i don't think i'm holding on to grief like as i said i i really and that isn't me trying to be the big man because i'm so past trying to be the big man like it's just i am who i am but i can talk about my dad i can talk about my son i can talk about and by the way it's trauma trauma trauma big success and we haven't we didn't go into that but success having a lot of success at a young age also kind of can fuck with you a bit as well so for me no i think i have dealt with the trauma um i think it will always live inside me in some capacity but as i said to you before and if i can give it's it's really easy for me to say this to to to you and to the viewers but as i said i've tried to use my trauma as a function for good rather than a function of bad and for people going through trauma and who have got trauma it may feel like the world is coming to an end when they're in that moment but when you do get through it i do believe there is a way that you can convert that trauma into something that is a really positive influence in how you lead your life.

47:57Lovely segue, because the one question I've got is, you know, we talk about it as the mirror moment. Like, was there a single piece of kind of feedback, failure, experience, or realisation that changed how you saw yourself forever? Because you just said it there, right? You know, once you get through it. So what was that point for you? It's been gradual. I don't think there was like a moment. Wasn't like an aha? No. but I don't think I don't think that I'm sure it happens for some people it definitely wasn't my journey I think where as I said I'm 42 now a lot of the whole traumatic process for me happened between the ages of 27 and 32 and I don't reckon I reckon it was kind of when I was kind of 37-ish 36, 37 where I was actually I'd been able to process everything properly do you know what's funny just the last anecdote i i called my mum about three months ago i called her said mom i just want to apologize she's like my what you're apologizing for i was like i want to apologize for being a dick when i was 13 years old so i've now got a 13 year old right and he can be a bit of a dick right and you know when you're younger your parents turn around to you when you're my age you're gonna know so and at 13 you're like what are you talking about i know everything at 13 so i think the point i'm trying to make is it wasn't a aha moment i just think in life generally as you get older you get wiser and and as i said i think when you get to your kind of late 30s early 40s you start to really understand a who you are be the things you've been through and you can kind of shape yourself in in that way but it's been gradual wasn't a haha so as we as we bring it to a bit of a close um we ask everyone to share their permission slip and it's permission for you know others to think feel say or do you've obviously been through an incredible amount of adversity you have been resilient during that time and i think clearly built a level of confidence that allows you to probably separate yourselves from the pack so what would your permission slip be for people that are listening um i've said a few of these throughout this but i do think you need to be brave in life i think if you want to be if you want to have success in life i think bravery is a really important component um as i said setting up businesses in in times of crises takes bravery and i think the word bravery isn't used enough in business not only just as a business owner but as a as a member of staff or working for someone you have to be brave um and i think that that for me is something that i think we i remind people all the time bravery is something that is not spoken about enough love it love it love it um i two years two years we've waited now have i have i let you down you haven't let me down and you never were going to let me down i know you've been very worried about getting me on but and you already gave me on about my work from home nonsense my word from home nonsense is absolutely legitimate no i i think there is uh i think there is definitely merit in the argument and i think you absolutely shared today the different perspectives which i think is hugely which is i think it's hugely you know helpful for people to have that context um but no i i think that your journey is one as i said of kind of uh i guess building through crisis leading you know through incredible adversity and every single time you've chosen to just carry on and swim and get to the end of that pool and it's phenomenal life is short right you you get one chance at it and you know what like make the most of it yolo love it on that note we'll finish sean thank you so much for coming on.

52:00Hopefully this will drive an ROI for you. And if it helps one job done. Thanks. See you later. How'd you feel? I thought it was good.

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