Life Update: Hitting £1M A Year, Becoming A Dad & Selling My Business

0:00Callum:It is time for the mid-year update. I was catching up with my team for a half-year retreat a couple of weeks ago in Bath in the UK and I had a couple of thoughts. One was like, oh my god, we're halfway through the year already, where has it gone? And the second thought was like, wow, this has been actually probably one of the most challenging years of my life and there have been a lot of really cool things that have happened. I've been to 10 Downing Street. I have shot podcasts on private jets, had a lot of wins in terms of revenue and new hires and team and in my personal life. But it's also been very challenging.

0:46Callum:I love when founders do these kind of like more real transparent updates on everything. And so, yeah, that's what I'm going to do today. It's the mid-year update. I'm gonna have a little look at business, personal stuff, wealth, health, happiness and yeah on the kind of journey have found this kind of stuff really helpful content so I try to do the same and hopefully it helps you. Starting with personal life probably the biggest thing that happened is yeah my wife's pregnant which is amazing news and yeah just amazing news super excited we're actually due tomorrow which is crazy but yeah it's been it's been really tough actually it's been like a challenging pregnancy and I would say for like the first time in my life there's been something more important than me in it it's been tough at times and certainly it's been hard to like plan certainly kind of my plans for the year at various moments and in various weeks are just thrown off kilter because we've had you know a last minute appointment come up or need to go get something checked or you know a scare or something but that's been challenging to say the least and just been quite disruptive we've got through it all so far which is the most important thing and it's given me a kind of newfound appreciation i guess for like when people do have stuff going on in their personal lives it's really hard for them to like focus and keep momentum and so i have a lot more empathy for that kind of thing going on in other people's lives and within my own team as well i'm excited for the baby which is almost due but yeah it's been a tough eight months because of that so if you don't know i run a podcast agency called 7x content and we create podcasts and video first youtube first shows with brands and creators and yeah we had like a really strong year last year we just hit kind of 1 million annual recurring revenue and the first half of this year's been really strong we've actually beaten that and then and growing the kind of monthly recurring revenue above 100k a month which has been amazing i always think back to like first few clients and charging them you know 500 pounds a month or a thousand pounds a month for social assets or podcast assets and strategy and that kind of thing i guess the kind of big goal for the year has been to work more with with big brands we did some work with red bull last year and yeah i love that philosophy of like building out media channels for your brand and owning media and content and and having in-house experts and ambassadors at the centre of the content and building a brand around that.

3:37Callum:So, yeah, we've been looking to partner with more brands like that. And we partnered with one in the UK called Voy and we launched a men's health show called Man Alive. And that's been a top 10 health show in the UK. Since we launched it, we've hit number one a couple of times. We've made some big health podcasts and we've had some great guests from like Hollywood actors to big kind of rugby players like Johnny Wilkinson, Joe Marla and some great like health experts and doctors and stuff. So super excited about where that's going and looking to work with more brands who are kind of ambitious to do that kind of stuff.

4:13on the creator side we have deepened our relationship with ramit sefi who's a netflix

4:19Callum:host and podcast creator in the u.s and that show we're kind of consistently charting in the top 10 in the u.s charts and yeah i'm really proud of what we're doing there just consistently growing it on youtube spotify social it's kind of one of those shows where i just think it's like he deserves like a permanent spot on amazon or netflix and yeah the way that media is going i can kind of see that happening we also worked with darman who's big us creator on the launch of of his show and yeah that was an awesome collaboration we also worked with marina mcgiltko who's better known as silicon valley girl on her podcast and we created yeah one of her biggest most successful episodes to date with Mo Gaudat and yeah she's crushing it in the kind of AI and future workspace so super super excited by all the stuff we're doing there and yeah the business is going really well but that's kind of like some of the highlight stuff probably the the biggest highlight of the quarter was getting invited to 10 Downing Street with another of our clients called the socially distant sports bath they got invited to an evening to celebrate Welsh culture and to thank them for their contribution to it so we went along with a couple of our hosts ellis and steph it's 10 downing street and yeah it's rare that like i actually get to enjoy and have a moment to enjoy kind of yeah the work and reflect on it but like that was a big one just had like an amazing afternoon took the whole afternoon out and evening out and just enjoyed it met loads of crazy people like Premier League footballers, rugby players, singers, politicians and actually had a really long conversation with the Prime Minister's wife and got introduced to his children and their cats and stuff so yeah it was I had some very surreal conversations and the whole night was just totally surreal walking around 10 Downing Street and like taking it all in and yeah pretty wild so very very grateful for that experience let's get into the failures and there's always lots of failures and mistakes so i hired two marketing leads and yeah neither of them really worked out i think both times i hired on potential rather than like proven experience and i'm a sucker for this because i just love like seeing that like raw potential in people but yeah I think both times we probably didn't quite validate their soft skills and it was more that stuff that let them down and yeah they just didn't work out I think biggest lesson there is just that people who have more experience like five ten years have ultimately just been trained by other people and so you don't have to do that training and maybe I didn't quite have the patience to do the the training with those people another big mistake we made on the hiring side was a producer in the usa who we heard who literally just went a wall and it was the only time we hadn't got references for someone just because we wanted to move quickly and get them get them over the line and get them started and i think yeah anytime you're like rushing stuff and you don't do your normal process it is a recipe for disaster you think you can get away with it but just won't say like yeah always stick to the process and always get the references before you know letting someone join your organization and then learning the hard way so that was painful third one we had three resignations and they were all a little bit different the first one was kind of someone who'd been with with me and the team for a long time and it was a big blow they just got an offer which was like ridiculously good and we couldn't yeah couldn't match or get close to so kind of fair enough and I think these things happen and you've just got to kind of wish them all the best and say there's always a space for you in future you've invested a lot in that person and you've got a really good relationship and you trust them and that's worth a lot worth a lot that was a big blow at the start of the year and did take a little while for me to get over and then two others who i think more so in their cases they'd probably reached the limit of their potential with us and it's really interesting how as you grow as a business and your clients evolve to get bigger and better and your service gets bigger and better some people thrive in that and they grow with you as a company in a business in an organization situation and other people they don't they can't quite make the jumps and i think in both of those cases they probably knew that and had then started being open to being offered offered stuff and yeah in both cases we we decided you know we wouldn't match the offer it seemed like a good opportunity for them but yeah i think it was probably the right time for those those people to move on i actually think my biggest failure in the first half of the year has just been my pace of personal development.

9:27Callum:I think I've realized where there's been gaps and I've not gone quick enough to fill gaps. I did some reflection on that I wasn't doing that. And I engaged a COO coach. And I've started reading the book Traction, which I've almost finished. And having the COO coach who's worked in organizations, you know, a few steps ahead of me has just been a massive help in just thinking about how to operationalize the business so it doesn't depend on on me we've made some steps fairly recently but already like I can see how my week is like completely opened up to focus on where it needs to focus and things are handed off to people you know simple stuff like having a finance bookkeeping and financial planning and analysis team like just owning all of that side of the business you know i'd been like dragging my feet on handing over some of these things and i was still doing things which just made no sense at all investing in yourself is always worth it and i've got i've got coaches in various areas of my life but i do think yeah every time you're trying to learn something or unlock a next level like just having someone who's already done it like a couple of steps ahead and you tell you what to do or give you advice is really helpful okay so time for the wealth section so yeah i'm always a bit nervous about sharing too much here and yeah i love as i said earlier i love when like founders share numbers transparently because it helped me get started and it kind of makes it you realize what's possible and the different steps and stuff like that i think what i can say is that yeah the business is doing kind of 1 million and you're recurring revenue our operating margin is about 33 percent we've had a strong start to the year kind of growing above that up to the 100k a month mark so really strong year and definitely i think i've realized that if you get the right clients you know that that is fundamental to it all and the kind of service game is essentially selling the same service just the people for whom it's more valuable and as you unlock bigger businesses you know they pay higher fees because you create more value for them and they also just have bigger budgets this is a big opportunity like they've got the budget to capitalize on them because they're strong businesses with yeah strong budgets and strong performance and as as companies and big ambitions and big goals obviously if you're doing that with smaller companies they just have smaller pots to play with they just don't have that that same ability to invest and spend we've definitely kind of evolved and we're just always trying to think bigger and better and i think the other side to it is just yeah like expanding into those accounts and looking for opportunities to improve performance and then presenting them and then just advising the client on what you think is best for them and where there are opportunities for them to get good higher ROI or capitalize on something.

12:35Callum:Being closer to your clients, I think sometimes it's very easy to get stuck in the mindset of like, they've hired us for this service, that's what they've asked us to do. But the more you can develop that relationship with them, understand their goals and their priorities, and then look strategically with them at where the opportunities are or things that can help them get to that next level or unlock that next goal, that's just a really powerful place to be because it means you're totally aligned with them and they'll they'll do more with you yeah in terms of big stuff that happened here i had like second serious acquisition conversation around someone buying 7x which is quite interesting and yeah it sparked a bunch of conversations with entrepreneurs in my network and i actually realized particularly how powerful this podcast has been in building my network i can text people and i've got relationships with people who have sold companies for tens of millions people who yeah just are great people to ask for advice on this kind of thing so i think it can be best kind of summed up by the a few bits of advice i got so the first one was that someone said to me you know above one million a year everything gets easier the business becomes more stable growth becomes easier and valuations move from maybe 5x of your annual profits to like 7x of your annual profits and you should just keep going which was good good advice and i think probably holds true because like you're more established in the marketplace and so everything should be easier and you've got your team and all the rest of it and your reputation the second thing someone said to me which was really interesting was yeah never sell just keep building and that landed really hard he basically said why would you sell what you'll want to do in a month is start it again and hire all of the same people and yeah that struck a real chord because I've spent kind of four years yeah building a team I love working with and clients I love working with and total freedom do it on my own terms.

14:52Callum:I thought that was really powerful. Someone said to me who is an accountant, there's a real tax pool to selling. So in the UK is like very hard to take earnings out of a business without punishing tax implications. But when selling the first million out is at 10 % tax rate because of the entrepreneur's relief. And that's quite meaningful. Yeah, I'll kind of come monitor that a bit later because that's frustration from this first six months of the year but i thought it was a good point and i can see kind of yeah obviously why that's attractive i actually was playing football with a friend who said this one to me which also was very true careful you don't crash the car during this process it took probably two months between us kind of flirting on email and then actually getting down to having conversations in person and talking about numbers and stuff like that and getting to a serious serious offer i think for those two months like my head was totally in the conversation and not not in the business very distracted you know asking people for advice sharing some some information and assessing if it was a fair offer or not or and an interesting offer an exciting offer i think certainly in the short term at least it It wasn't meaningful enough to me, certainly in the short term, to make it exciting enough.

16:17It would have meant going on the journey with, going on another journey with the acquirer. And I did really like them. And I was quite, quite up for that. Maybe not the right kind of level of offer to make it exciting enough at this stage for me. But like anything, like it's a really good exercise. Understand what they're looking for. And I've got some really strong insights there to keep building with, which I think would just make it a stronger business because they can highlight what's valuable to them, what's not valuable to them. And you can kind of buy some of those gaps on the stuff that's not so valuable and do more of the more valuable stuff.

16:56In the UK, the incentives are so bad for entrepreneurs and founders, given the amount of risk you take on and the amount of time and energy that you invest in growing a business. So yeah, I think once you're taking meaningful money out of business, like say you want to take more than 100K a year personally out of the business, the tax rate just gets absolutely brutal because you're already being taxed on the company profits and then you're taking money out after that. So you've got your 25 % corporation tax already and then you get taxed personally on then the money that you take as salary and dividends.

17:41And above 100K, it really gets kind of crazy. So you're getting that second tax at a really high level. I don't know the exact percents, but it is bad. And you lose any other benefits you might get as well above that when you start taking money out above that rate. I personally would take out more money as income and salary if it was at a fairer rate. but the system really kind of incentivizes you to cap what you take it does this weird thing of like capping your ambition definitely i i would say just because it's not easy right that said like i'm at a genuinely great level of income i'm very grateful to be where i'm at and i don't stress about the food shop or restaurant prices and i think that's extremely underrated so yeah very grateful to be where i'm at kind of four years into this health and fitness so i would say this has been like a mixed bag i stopped seeing my pt i used to be pt twice a week the gym environment was just like no longer what i needed it was kind of quite noisy and grimy and grungy bodybuilding gym and i just wanted a more chilled out space probably and more flexibility because yeah i just couldn't plan my weeks anymore with kind of unexpected appointments and stuff the trade-off has been kind of less consistency and i'm kind of relying on myself to go three times a week off my own back things that have been consistent like football once a week I still do that a great release and I love that and then sauna and cold plunge plunge about once a week which is huge for like self-reflection mental health bit of time for me each week Sunday mornings I tend to go to the gym and just have like an hour of me time over the summer I've been doing park run as well instead of football on Saturdays and I love that I feel like that's a great way to start your weekend and a real energizer so yeah just anytime I can get more kind of energizers into my week or like quiet times into my week with no screens or anything I'm trying to do that I'd probably love in the second half of the year to get a bit more surfing in I really feel like I need a yoga or flexibility thing each week because my flexibility is not good and I'd like to do some more swimming probably I love being in the water but just not really be able to work that into my week i feel pretty healthy and my diet pretty good yeah i'd love to maybe get my weeks to have like those appointments in each week in the same way i have with my football just to make it easier and to have accountability for each of those things okay so the podcast that you're listening

20:10Callum:to create a play but what has this done to me well or done for me yeah it's been i would say it's been inconsistent i think we've done kind of one yeah one or two episodes a month and that's because it tends to be using kind of spare resource from my agency and i'm always saying i'm gonna give it the full resource it needs but never quite get around to that i do think actually in the second half this year like it will get a lot more consistent i'm now open to doing remote recordings I wasn't previously, but I think I need to because I think that will unlock the consistency and just guests in the US and Canada and places like that is much easier to record with them.

20:54Callum:I would say like the highlights of the episodes and what I got from them. I think the Josh Sanders episode, the LinkedIn playbook that he's built with Chris Donnelly. They've grown like a 10 million plus business off the back of a LinkedIn page. I learned a lot about what works well on LinkedIn from that. James Smith, the new tonic episode. I think biggest things I learned there was a, this is an exceptional product. The branding on it, in particular, the eye is just genius. And I think it just shows the power of exceptional brand design. I think this product will do really well because of that.

21:29And obviously I work a little bit with Red Bull, but yeah, I would say like this is a worthy, a worthy entrant to that, that marketplace. And I think it will really cut through in the same way that like I'm a big fan of Perfect Ted and what the guys have done there and I think all of these products own slightly different parts of that energy drink market and they're all they all do a great job of their brand there's other stuff I've seen in this space where they don't really nail the branding I think the biggest thing from James though is it's just he's built his whole career off of off of social media and his whole business off of social media by being unashamedly himself and you either love him or You hate him.

22:05And it's that conviction in just being himself unapologetically that really helps him cut through. And also the fact that he doesn't really rely on sponsors. He doesn't do sponsorships other than his own products. And I think that gives him real credibility in the marketplace. Episode of Rachel Harris. Rachel is just incredible. Protecting that time for personal development every single day because her brain is responsible for a whole business and the business will always be limited by her. Like that hit me really deeply. and the way that she operates off of weekly dashboards, scorecards, KPIs.

22:40She was just so operationally dialed in. So she gets sent these reports each week and then she knows where she needs to focus as the marketing engine for the business because she knows this product is up or down. Therefore, I should focus on marketing it. She was just brilliant. Also, kind of, yeah, that classic like one channel works really well. Instagram it spends her 400k a month in leads so just like do more of that and I think a lot of business owners and marketers and experts they feel guilty around spending all day on an Instagram reel you know as a creator as an entrepreneur like should I really be doing that but that is the highest leverage thing you can do and if one Instagram reel is going to generate 400 ,000 pounds in leads like of course that's the only thing you should do whether or not your team you know your team need to get over themselves that you spend all day at home making an instagram real and they think it's a fun thing to do or like not real work like it's actually the work and i think yeah content can sometimes feel very silly it's writing an email can that really be work or like you know email newsletter or recording a podcast yes it is extremely valuable work Another episode that did really well was Sedge Bestwick.

24:00So great marketer, great entrepreneur, obviously worked with Red Bull, Nike, ASOS. And I think, yeah, it was a really good one for just what are the best brands doing right now? And also what are their cultures like? I would say the other ones worth your time are Timo Amu, kind of council estate, 28 million exit. Very practical. if you're feeling lost about your purpose Simon Alexander Ong Michael Corcoran latest on brand and content and social Tom Lewis how dire of a CEO AAB test everything again very good operator and Lara Acosta again another LinkedIn playbook I implemented one thing she told me around LinkedIn SEO and the next week I got a global media company DM me they literally found me by searching for me or searching for a term that I had updated in my SEO on LinkedIn and yeah next week I had you know meeting at meeting in London with their global team so yeah the podcast unbelievable in terms of the knowledge it gives me and then the relationships it gives me and the community of people who listen and email me or comment and stuff like that and actually last week i recorded an episode with a billionaire and they had followed the podcast or their team followed the podcast and so when he had a book coming out they emailed me and said do you want to catch up and could we get this client of ours on the podcast it's just amazing the opportunities that it creates in terms of reach and relationships and stuff so once paternity's out of the way i expect a bit more consistency and please hold me accountable on that and yeah i just love i love doing it i could happily do it for you know the

25:53Callum:next 10 20 years for the rest of the year kind of what what are my priorities i think one of the bigger things is like home environment we've been in our current home kind of five six years now so yeah i want to kind of get somewhere more inspiring i'd love to have a sauna and cold plunge at home and I'd love to spend the winters somewhere sunnier because I find the UK in the winter really tough. I would like to just get a bit more consistency in my health, weekly health routine and have like the weekly appointments so it just happens and get more consistent with content both on a marketing side for business and with this podcast.

26:36Big thing around just yeah taking my clients and my team to the next level and most importantly I guess yeah having a healthy happy baby this week and then yeah I thought I'd call out a few things I'm currently reading listening to and watching so book is traction just like highly recommend if anyone's running a business or a team I think it's a brilliant book my favorite podcast at the moment is my first million great podcast i just love the vibe that sean and sam the hosts have and i actually prefer a lot of their their episodes where it's just the two of them not the guests and then in terms of like youtube i watch a couple of weekly vlogs ollie march on and george heaton and i think they're very relaxed easy watches you're watching kind of business owners week to week which is is helpful because it feels like you're learning a little bit as well so yeah hope you've had a good

27:31Callum:first half of the year if it's been challenging like i'm rooting for you keep going i've definitely had some tough moments where i've yeah really hit a low and yeah it's it's been really yeah challenging but feeling pretty good right now and yeah excited for the the rest of the year so yeah let me know in the comments if you enjoyed this app and if you've got any questions as i say i'm I can record a little bit easier remotely now. So I'll probably try and do some more kind of Q &A questions. Hope's all good with you as ever. Subscribe if you want more and yeah, speak soon. Cheers.