FOUNDER #10. ‘Ideas Fest’ Owner Bringing Entrepreneurs Together - Frankie James

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1:26I'm the founder of Ideas Forums. Ideas Fest has been described Glastonbury for Business. Started off as an awards programme, would get two, three hundred applications a year, grown to something in its peak year, got five and a half thousand applications a year. Five and a half thousand? I stood on that balcony and I looked down. I actually found myself getting quite choked up at the view. Tell me how much it was to hire the venue in 2021. It's a couple of hundred grand by the time you've got the food and the drink. How much risk was that? A lot of risk, a lot of money. We've got a really good track record for picking up amazing entrepreneurs before they go on to become household names.

2:03Did you have to pay Stephen Bartlett to be there that year? Can't remember. Roughly. I think sponsorship at that point was... Hey people, I'm Dodge, host of The Founder Show. I've been an entrepreneur all my life, and over the last three decades I've founded five businesses in the world of media, festivals, sport, tech, live events, and I've been lucky enough to have sold two of them. I promise this isn't your normal, boring, fluffy business podcast. This is real and raw with a lot of emotion. I'll delve deep into the guests' minds on the risks and rollercoaster journey of being an entrepreneur.

2:34I hope you enjoy. This is an absolute delight to have you down here. Thanks for making the effort all the way from Cardiff. All the way, yeah. Another country. Is it? International travel. Quality. Who is Frankie James and what has been your biggest business success so far? Okay, so I love the fact that you called me Frankie because I've had a bit of a, I guess, an identity crisis or whatever over the last year. So I've kind of reverted to a name that I kind of wish I'd gone with when I was younger. But I don't know, I didn't feel like I had the confidence to pull off Frankie. So I'm going for it now, approaching 40.

3:11You said what's the biggest... Who is Frankie James? Who am I? Gosh, I'm going to answer that professionally and then you'll probably try and dig more into that. I'm the founder of Ideas Forums, which nobody has ever heard of. But we run a few events in the events and communities in the founder space that hopefully quite a few people have heard of. So the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, UK Startup Awards, UK Fast Growth Index and Ideas Fest. That's amazing. Let's just slow that down because you span through that very quickly. let's start off with you're the owner of ideas fest tell me about ideas fest so um ideas fest has been described uh you know it's not it's not something i came up with as a glastonbury for business and i've clung on to that for dear life uh in terms of my marketing but i think it's probably the best way of summing it up because it's a very unique festival for business owners um with by no means the scale of glastonbury uh i think this year we'll have about 4 ,000 founders but essentially if you've never been before it's a business conference in a field in a festival setting with all the good stuff that you'd want from a festival around the edge the fun bits.

4:23Anyone listening out there it's truly amazing by the way I went and spoke last year and I was wowed yeah and it takes it takes a lot for me to be wowed when it comes to festivals and music and events and etc etc but I thought you put on a fantastic show. Thank you really good and And this year is definitely going to be better. We've learned what we're doing. You know, it's a steep learning curve going from, we do events in hotels, you know, in the Grove in the house where we get 1500 entrepreneurs. And I'm not going to do a disservice to my team and say that that's easy because it's not, but we know what we're doing.

4:56When you take that and you put it in a field, it comes with all sorts of challenges. And obviously I'm talking to someone that would know better than anyone else. But yeah, we learn every year and I'm so happy that we launched it. And I don't think we would have launched it if the pandemic hadn't happened. So I guess in a weird way, I'm grateful that we went through that period of time. Never waste a good crisis. Absolutely. You have to look at it that way. So tell me, I want to roll back a bit further there. Tell me about the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. You created that in what year? 2012.

5:33um so I actually created it with my dad so um I uh long story short I wasn't particularly academic and um that'll probably come out later in this chat I'd imagine because it's the irony of um my business partner I'm life partner now is very academic but I wasn't I didn't know what I was going to do with my life um I left school was supposed to be the first in my family to go to university and instead of going to university I disappointed everyone and I took a job doing door-to-door sales in the South Wales valleys on 100 % commission and the relevance to this story is that after three two years of doing that I realized I was in a massive pyramid scheme and that it wasn't where I was going to spend the you know my future career so I was very fortunate that my dad was in business and offered me a job and he had an online publication for entrepreneurs and I was the young person with no experience but we're talking about 2007-2008 and social media was just coming in so it was sort of give the young person the social media so I would do the Twitter and I would write some articles and stuff and then my dad's background was in events so he and I launched the Great British Entrepreneur Awards to go back into that event space.

6:58And I think that the timing was just right because the Olympics were in town. So everything GB was very of the moment. Entrepreneurs were the new rock stars in government. Everyone was celebrating entrepreneurship and it felt like the first time that they were being given such a platform and such recognition. So those two things, coupled with my dad having event experience, we launched this thing which has grown into a bit of a beast because it started off as an awards program would get two three hundred applications a year and it's grown to something in its peak year got five and a half thousand applications a year and a half thousand you're joking yeah I mean that just that means there's a lot of work a lot of work to do and has been called the Grammys of Entrepreneurship.

7:49And it was Steve Bartlett that gave us that little soundbite. Again, managed to get it on camera, have used it in everything. But we've got a really good track record for picking up amazing entrepreneurs before they go on to become household names. And I think that has kind of really helped with the growth and with the community and with the buy-in that we can get from these founders that go on to be amazingly successful because we know them before everybody wants a piece of them, essentially. Yeah, yeah. I love the name. Great British Entrepreneur Awards. What a wonderful name that is. How strong is that?

8:27It does what it says on the tin. Absolutely. Fantastic. So tell me the business model then. So you started in 2012. I would imagine you didn't think you would be where you are today with, again, you kindly invited me to your black tie event up at the Grosvenor Hotel. Is it the Grosvenor up in Mayfair? Yeah. I was blown away again you're talking what a thousand plus 50 uh just shy of I think it's 1500 capacity and we're slightly less than that because we've got a massive stage so it's about 1400 people all in black tie I mean three four course meals awards on stage and it's all from your idea you and your dad yeah but the reason that we're in that hotel is another pandemic sort of reason you know we used to go around the UK and do so I'm Welsh as you mentioned at the beginning we had this feeling that why does everything have to happen in London so a few years prior to the event that you came to we actually used to go all around the UK and do 10 events in 10 cities and of course you know you don't get those numbers at those regional events so each event was maybe somewhere between 200 and 350 people yeah and it was when the pandemic hit um like every event organizer we did uh an award ceremony online uh and it was really good like we invested so much in it we didn't just open up a zoom call and get people to log in we had a full studio we had green screen we had um you know amazing uh shots where we had music artists recording stuff it was it was incredible like we really threw everything into it and tried to make it special for those people that were celebrating at home i mean we even sent out um all the winners they had a a trophy that arrived at their doorstep the next day that was sponsored by lego and it was a lego trophy that they had to build themselves um so we just tried to innovate and be a little bit different um but when the pandemic hit sorry so we did that digital event and then uh the next year when events were legal again and were allowed we're talking 21 or 22 20 21 so we were digital 2020 and then 2021 we had a decision to make and that decision was do we go all around the UK and do events again and bear in mind we were still in and out of lockdowns at that point and living in Wales you know I was very aware the fact that our restrictions would be very different sometimes to what my family were going through and my friends who were living elsewhere so we made a decision essentially it was go hard or go home for all the eggs in one basket and we knew that people had a real appetite for something special so we thought well what happens if we bring all of the events together so if you imagine it's kind of like doing 10 award ceremonies in one evening so it's a lot to get through um and it worked and I think for me I stood on that balcony and I looked down and I actually found myself getting quite choked up at the the view of what 1500 just shy of 1500 people looked like and so i never think we could have gone back i thought it was a one-year plan um but it's it works how much risk was that significant significant risk tell me how much it was to hire the venue in 2021 uh it's a couple hundred grand by the time you've got the food and the drink your minute usually they make you uh commit to a minimum which is about 800 okay um and then uh obviously you pay more um you know as as the ticket sales come in but you've got to sign up to commit to 800 people turning up and that's quite scary yeah i mean i'll tell you the one thing it's quite i like to think and i'm really really confident in this that we are very much the good guys in in award space and I will never ever speak ill of any other organization and there's loads of absolutely fabulous awards but there's also a lot of cynicism around awards and there's a lot of people that do it really badly and they see it as a cash grab you know we'll get a load of applications we'll sell people a table and then we won't do anything else um we really really invest in our community I forgot where I'm going with this no this is good this is good you're investing in your community what you're saying is that the people who the people who are coming to yours there's different when you go to awards ceremony sometimes as an entrepreneur they invite you the award ceremony for your business like balmer sevens or something like that with a little dangly carrot you could win this award so but as long as you buy two tables yeah so i know you don't you don't go down that route absolutely okay um so so the refreshing by the way yeah i think that we without knowing it the all the actions that we've taken have set us up to survive the long term um and at the time we didn't necessarily know that that's what we were doing we just cared about this community and we cared about the entrepreneurs and um so a lot of risk a lot of money a lot of organization goes into putting on one of those events i think what people the misconception people have often is that they're paying you know just for the chicken dinner essentially and they don't realise that that screen that they're looking at costs 50 grand to put in and then you've got the house and you've got the trophies and in the Grosvenor you also have to pay to take the chandelier down.

13:42Do you? Yep and you have to take it down because... Like Rodney and Delboy in the old... Yeah you live... To the left to the left. You have to take the chandelier down because if you don't you get a bad obstruction from your AV from the best place where the AV should stay. How much to take it down? It's a few grand. yeah and the funny thing is even if it's up the night before you still have to sorry even if it's down the night before and you're in the next morning at 6am they still charge you well they put it back up so they can take it down again my god painful yeah painful yeah so i mean yeah you are i think you started asking is it a risk yeah it's it's a big old risk but when you talked about you know pay to play um we're so anti that you know obviously it would make for a really rubbish awards event if none of the winners or finalists came so of course we want people to come but it's about um it's not just about whether you get the trophy or not it's that community you know you have i have i know people that have met their next investor mentor even just a friend at our awards and we have been in a position before and i'm not going to name names but where a famous entrepreneur um who's tv famous um called us or his team called us and one of his business interests was up for an award and basically told us that if we told him or if they won he would come and if they didn't he wouldn't now he hadn't won but we also were not going to you know good for you not yeah so it's decisions like that that i think people can see over time and also having the podcast to tell people this is what went on yeah do you know i mean to say guys this is what we but we said no we're not going to get involved in that yeah you're either going to come well you're not you're not going to try to bribe us so you're a face to be there yeah exactly we've had winners that aren't there you know we we understand that life gets in the way we understand that some businesses you know cash flows up and down and it might be it is a big commitment to go to an event at the Grosvenor.

15:47But you're not just paying to go out for dinner with the chance of winning an award. You know, there is so much more to getting involved in the communities we're building. And what we absolutely 100 % find is that every year there's maybe 50 or so people that come through our program who absolutely use that community. And they really get stuck in and they make the most of it. and they, you know, they get the best out of it. So I try and encourage people and maybe me saying it rather than writing is a good way to go. When you think about it, they're going in a room of 1500 like-minded people. Everyone you're looking around is going, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur.

16:28It's not like marketing, sales, accountants, none of that. Entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneur, like founder, founder, founder, founder, like unreal. Yeah, yeah. Unreal. There's a feeling in that room, like 100%. Tell me where you were when you in 2021, Frankie, when you were like, we need to go for this. Was it you sat with your dad? He's like, right, we need to go for this. Why don't we go all in London and go to some one of the nicest hotels in London in this most expensive part of London and take the risk and pay 200 G's up front to make sure we've locked it in. That could have gone horribly wrong.

17:03What month was it in 2021? November. So it's November. So we've all been given the green light in what, July, August? Yeah, but I guess there was, I mean, look, at that point, who knew if we would be locked down again, you know? Where were we at that point? We knew, the pandemic had probably made it more apparent than any other year, that we had built something that people valued and cared about. So I think that we were, and we'd had really great applications that year. So I think that we, you know. Knew you onto something. Yeah, we knew we were onto something. People were like, not desperate, but like, I want to be involved.

17:41I want community. I want to be back chatting to people. I want to start getting my business back up and running again. Yeah, 100%. Okay. We were missing that so much. And that's why, for me, we decided we had to do digital stuff during the pandemic because there was no other way to make money. But our sponsors and people that wanted to get involved in our community, they still needed to meet entrepreneurs. So we kind of went, right, well, this is going to get us through. I didn't get rid of any team. during COVID. We put a couple on furlough. But yeah, we... How big was your team at that time?

18:16How many full-time staff on the books? Seven. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, it wasn't pretty. No, no, no. At all. I was the same. There's a lot of tears and a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of not paying myself. But yeah, I feel like... I don't think there was another way that I would have wanted to deal with it. You know, I feel like maybe someone really commercially savvy would tell me that there was a better way. I don't think there was. Yeah. I don't think there was. I think what you did was unbelievable. We were exactly the same. We were seven full-time staff for the festival. In 2020, it got cancelled, postponed, and then cancelled.

18:562021 in May, it got postponed. We had it in August bank holiday. But we didn't know until seven weeks before. Yeah. Until the government said, do you put your festival on? We had to find a thousand staff to work the festival. Bar staff, toilet, showers, security, police. No one had been working for two years. I was on Facebook going, anyone want to work behind the bars? We had to get fined 1 ,000 people. It was crazy. So I understand what you're going through. But we did exactly the same. We stuck with the team. I did not want to lose that team, our team, the people who have got to where we are today.

19:25And it sounds like you did exactly the same. Ish. None of them work for me now. But that's live. Yeah, that's live. They've all gone on to new challenges and stuff. And actually, I think that the world has changed, you know, since the pandemic. And, you know, the team I'm working with now, they knock it out of the park every single day. So, yeah, but I don't think I'd have done anything different. I'm always led by my heart and try and do the right thing by people. How much does it work out per person at that event? How much do you charge per person to come to the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in London in November?

20:05So if they book it at Early Bird, it's about 240 quid. Yep. And as they leave it? 300. Okay. Yeah. And the margins are tiny. Tiny. What net percent are you working off? God, now you're asking me the questions that my co-founder deals with. Slim. Slim. Yeah, slim. Because like I said, you've got the trophies, you've got the security, you've got the after party, you've got, you know. How much all into break even at that event? Quarter of a mil? Yeah, around that. 250 grand, okay. Yeah, around that. Okay. Yeah, margins will be tight. Yeah, but the way we've seen our business is that our events are not how we make the money.

20:54Historically, we've made money through working with partners, and I call them partners rather than sponsors, sort of interchangeable. Yes, they pay us to get involved in what we're doing. but we want to put them in front of our community in an authentic way. We don't want to work with partners where we just go, yeah, let's spam everybody with a load of emails because that won't work either. So we want to create touch points at the right time for the founder that are useful to them and then work better for the partner. So we're quite selective about who we work with. But the point of what I was saying is that our events, you know it's it yeah we run them because they are physical human touch points in our community and that's what we all need yeah yeah um but it's not where we make money it's you know it's um yeah yeah yeah definitely so so for example a sponsor coming on board will that sponsor be for the whole year will that sponsor be for the great british entrepreneur awards um it sort of depends uh because in reality everything that we do is bespoke you know we can put together all of these shiny brochures and say yeah this is gold silver bronze but in reality and actually what i prefer doing is working out something that's totally bespoke for that partner um so that could be that they want more brand recognition or maybe they do want uh lead generation or maybe they want some social media stuff you know or maybe they want big shiny event to to to go to so it depends from partner to partner really um but that said um that's has been our bread and butter for a long long time and look we'll we'll never ever say no to working with the right partners but increasingly we're starting to think about the value that we bring to people in between those kind of big flagship moments okay and what a community would look like that is what i think where we're quite unique is that our community would be right across the uk it would be industry agnostic it would be self-selecting ambitious entrepreneurs because we meet them through our awards and what we tend to find and i don't know if it's just that you know once we've attracted a few of them more of them come there's a big generosity in that community so i mean we represent 100 well 100 000 founders are in our community at the moment 100 000 yeah right yeah But at the moment, our community is email, you know, is an email newsletter.

23:25So we are looking at how we formalize that. And we've been asking people over the last year, what would they value from the opportunity to connect that will live on, you know, phone on app, but then will come to life at events. A bit like the dinner that I invited you to earlier this year. That was fantastic as well. Thank you. That was really nice. What was it, about 30 of us having dinner? Was it more than that? It was 100. Was it 100, was it? Yeah. I must have 30 just around my visit. Okay. yeah we took over the whole restaurant so i think maybe just a couple shy of a hundred and so if you remember what i think where you were sat then there was the um there was a sort of a platform that went long table oh okay i didn't get to see around there but everyone was lovely lovely people again but that is i hate the word network i never i never network it's not my thing yeah go and chat what do you do hello mate nice to meet you what do you oh lovely what do all of a sudden it's just this nice chilled out vibe that people like oh i'll get you on linkedin tomorrow yeah or i'll get you on insta or wherever it may be really really powerful what what made you do those smaller events like that so we've done them for quite a long time for clients so usually a client will say to us look this is the type of person we want to meet and we will put on a dinner for them and people got a lot of value from them but uh obviously there was a criteria around who we could invite and you know so say let's say it was a a client that could help e-commerce brands and it's only e-commerce brands at that table and we'd post something and then people in other industries would say oh how do we get involved in okay so we decided that yes we'll carry on doing the sponsor dinners because you know they they pay our bills yeah um and they're really great but we'll also let's put on some that are wider for the whole community because what i love um is that you can have you know an e-commerce founder sat next to a fintech founder sat next to a law firm owner and actually you know there's so many commonalities synergy yeah so much synergy and you know just things that that people can help each other with so um so yeah so we we put a wait list open up and you know i sort of have religiously followed daniel priestly's kind of rule book of if you're going to launch something put a wait list up and see what happens and uh we had two and a half thousand people sign up to it inside of like a month um not that event it was ideal ideas tables as a concept um and we and at the point of us doing that we ask people what cities they're in what they're most interested in you know a few things about their business that help us when we're coming to put to the table plan and stuff together but you know we know people want it and I think that in terms of like membership opportunities um there's a lot that's you know hard to get into if you know or expensive to get into where there's high barriers there's a lot going on you know in individual regions but the thing is you know like I said I'm from Cardiff I don't do much networking in Cardiff because I feel like I know most people in my local ecosystem if I go to something in London or in Manchester I meet new people and that's kind of what networking i want to do more of um so yeah we just think that there's a space that sort of operates between the really high level expensive stuff that outprices a load of people and the low level stuff where people end up signing up you know their their sales people essentially to infiltrate the network and sell and sell there to create a founder only space um and at the moment it lives through physical events in a newsletter but there will be platforms So what did you do with Daniel Priestley then?

26:57Because Daniel's been on the podcast, but he owns a company called Score App. Did you use Score App? Yeah, I love it. You love it. Just for the listener out there, tell them your experience on Score App and why it was successful for you. So, gosh, I can't even remember when. I reckon I was probably one of the very, very early users. And Daniel had been talking about wait lists and how actually if you can… It's basically a quiz. Yeah, it's quiz funnel marketing, basically. You can basically do 10 questions, 20 questions, 30 questions to get as much information out of people, not just name, email, mobile, but actually ask them questions to build up a picture in your head that when they press submit, you go, oh, okay, well, we can put that person into that category or whatever.

27:40Absolutely. So we can, you know, for example, for our events, you know, are you raising investment at the moment? What's the thing that is keeping you awake at night? And what's your proudest achievement? You can see how you can really easily match that up. but the great thing I love about it as well and I don't always use this functionality but you can deliver someone a personalised report at the other end so if they've told you that they're having trouble with A, B and C well the report can be programmed to give them a solution for A, B and C at the other end it's so powerful it's pretty simple it's really simple but it's tackled you up well, isn't it?

28:14yeah and to be fair I mean when Dan talks about something I tend to listen because he knows what he's talking about and yeah I'm a huge fan of score after the product. What do you do when you what do you look for when you hire in the next person?

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29:01Search is doing its thing. So why do your marketing results look the same as six months ago? That's because you're fishing in the same pond as everyone else. Podcast listeners are a different audience entirely. More engaged, harder to reach through traditional channels, and ready to act when someone they trust makes a recommendation. We're Acast, and we put them right in front of you. Browse thousands of the world's leading podcasts, book host reads or run your own ads, and track every conversion in real time. Same skills you already have, brand new results. Acast. Acast.com slash advertise. guys oh um that's a really good question it funnily enough our team has ended up as a bit of a family business um but without really sort of us intending for it to be so uh most of the people in our office are either related to me or related to dylan or connected to dylan or a friend of so you know we hired someone uh a few weeks ago and we actually we're based in cardiff we hired someone in north wales so it's four and a half hours away from us and it was because we didn't we didn't necessarily have the role that we saw him fitting into immediately but we just knew that he was really great yeah and for me it's about finding those people and you know even if even if you can't see that place for them immediately i don't want them to go somewhere else because they could be a superstar and an asset and and grow with us because we I want my team to grow with us I want there to be a time where I go on holiday and I don't even feel like I have to look at my phone you know and I want them to get reap the rewards of that as well from a career from financial from feeling feeling fulfilled yeah how do you deal with people that you want to grow with you but say the finite finances aren't there and at the end of the year they're like hello have I got a pay rise or I got anything for this do you find that hard to deal with um we haven't dealt with it recently um I think that we you know look there are places that pay more than us um but we are based in Cardiff right so we're not competing with London salaries I think we do pay our staff well but also we're very happy to put on sort of constant before they watch this and call me out on it they know that there's the intention that we want to put in very regular sort of catch-ups to you know it might not be the a massive pay rise that comes but just incremental small so they can see that they're on the right path and they can see how that they how they can grow um and it's something that has been on my to-do list to like really formalize in our organization because i think that you know you don't have to it you don't But our team as well, I think that it's trying to work out what motivates them, what keeps them happy and what fulfills them.

32:03And so it's not always monetary. I agree. You know, for example, in two weeks time, we are taking all of our team to a festival in South Wales called Greenman because they all wanted to go. And I know that there was chatter with them about, well, we can't all go because we can't afford to all take the time off at the same time. I mean, it's a Thursday, Friday, back on the Monday morning. And then three days to recover. Yeah, yeah. But we hit some milestones. So we said, we're going to take you all and they all get the extra time off as annual leave, like not out of their annual leave allowance.

32:39So that's a way that we can reward them. They then hit another milestone. So we've booked them all hotel bell tent so they don't have to camp because they've given me some camping horror stories they've had, you know, where they're like floating away or what have you. so um you know they get porcelain toilets and they get real bedding that they don't have to lug from their car duvets all of that yeah and charges really excited about it and i've heard good things about green man festival it's epic i've heard it's really good yeah i love it um i went first time maybe four or five years ago but my partner had been going for a few years before and i love music and um so i don't know why if i'd been living under a rock or i don't know why I had not been before I met Dylan.

33:19But it's just, it's brilliant. For me, it's a really nice size. I think it's about 25 ,000 people. Is that a day? I don't think they do day passes. No, but is that 25 a day or? 25 in total, but everyone books a weekend pass. Okay, lovely. And I've seen bands that, you know, the magic of it is it's not about headliner. It was one year for me when an artist I'm obsessed with played. but other than that, self-esteem. It's very female empowerment music, Dodge. But you'd love it. Thank you. You'd love it. She actually, she wrote the song that the BBC and I are using over the Lionesses' winning montage.

34:04You might have heard it. I've heard it. Yeah, you know. But generally speaking, you don't know who people are and you just kind of follow the vibe. I really like that. Same. I go to many festivals. I don't care who's playing. Yeah. I just want to be out having a party, meeting new people, having a laugh, going into the woods, having a party in there. And what's your biggest fear regarding Ideas Fest? Rain. No, no, it's not. That's not my biggest fear. I think, well, year one, when we did it, we de-risked it a bit by piggybacking on the infrastructure of another festival. So I told you that before.

34:47I went to that one. Where was that again? Wickham. Okay. Wickham Festival. So basically, remind me again, they set up the infrastructure. Yeah. Did you take it the day before or afterwards? Two days before. So you took it two days before. Okay. Yeah. So we subletted their infrastructure basically. You just took a small part of it? Yeah, we took most of the festival, but we didn't fill most. You know, we had the floor space, essentially. Okay, so they said you can have it, but then that was year one for you to go, right, we need to get the numbers. How was that for you? How much did that festival cost you in year one?

35:18Well, year one was significantly lower than obviously now. We've now made the decision to do it on our own. Do you remember roughly how much to sublet that festival? uh sub 100 okay um by the time you you know you add on all the extras and stuff yeah um i think it was it was about 70 to sublet it but then you know it never is what the startup price ends up being by the time you add everything else goes on top yeah all the bits um you know the high-vis jackets you know just all all the stuff um but um you know that again was a real risk um people didn't know what we were trying to build or you know do they turn up in their wellies or do they wear their suit it was that sort of thing and i think we it was a good opportunity to show them it was a good it was a good springboard and i say you know we we spent still for for us at that point a hell of a lot of money um but it was significantly cheaper than giving it a go on our own yeah yeah music festivals take seven years to break even by the way okay melvin melvin ben who owns latitude reading leeds that is probably the one of the biggest festival promoters out there for many many years he'd come down to borne the sevens and he said don't change a thing because sport and music yeah they don't change a thing so i didn't go for headliners or anything like that um and he said to me it takes seven years for music festival just to break even I can imagine.

36:48Yeah. Imagine seven years to break even, all that risk. I know how much risk. We're coming into year 19 now, still independently owned. Yeah. I don't know how much risk goes on into that over the years. But for you to go into year one and drop 100 and you, God knows what you would have lost that year, but you'd have learned a lot. We learned a lot. So the reason that we decided to do it in our own sight after year one. So what year was that one in Wickham? 22. 22. Yeah. I came to that. And where was Wickham? Hampshire. It was in, it's not Wickham as in Wickham Wanderers. No. W-Y-C-K-H-A-M or something like that.

37:26W-H-I? Yeah. I remember how it was spent. It spoke differently, wasn't it? Yeah. So they've got their own festival. You said, well, in year one, it was 2022. Yeah. And you said, right, we're going to pay 70 grand all in for a hundred and more and more that adds up there. Yeah. How many people did you get that year? Can you remember roughly? Yeah. That year was about 1400. Okay. Yeah. so uh it get you know it it worked because um we had the photos we had the videos before that obviously it was literally just it was a guess yeah and and it was before it was before ai so we couldn't even like just generate stuff and my canva and photoshop skills aren't that good so it was literally just kind of words and talking to people about it and fair play to you for giving that a go thank you especially for someone who didn't know about festivals i remember chatting to you before and i was like are you sure you want to go and rent this and pay that that we're did you have to pay Stephen Bartlett to be there that year so we sponsored his tour I suppose like so basically he do you remember at the time he was doing um the diary of a CEO yes so we were sponsors of the tour so um in uh we got sponsorship of that and it included a speaking slot and we got lots of benefits around so he's telling us how much did you pay uh roughly I can't remember you know that i know i know you know roughly roughly uh i think speak i think sponsorship at that point was about 15 for the tour we weren't a headline sponsor yeah yeah fair play i tell you the the thing about he added good value as well so much value because even do you know what was interesting he spoke very very well in stage he speaks very well in stage anyway but when he come out and there was a queue of people wanting photos with him and asking the question that footage was worth the money weight in gold because it allowed you to use that promotion for next year yeah the queue and do you know what it it i really took my hat off because it was the end of the festival and i remember sitting in the bar it was the first time i think i'd gone ah it's done and then he come out didn't he came out and the queue was so so long and you know what it's like when you've come off stage you've come off doing something you kind of just want to decompress and i wouldn't have thought any less of him if he'd just gone i'm done i'm gonna head off he stayed i reckon about two or three hours and spoke to everyone and it was it was amazing to see it was um it was really really special and so many people comment on that and i think it's but that that's sort of what we're trying to create with ideas fest as a whole and maybe bringing people closer to top entrepreneurs yeah like um the speakers don't hang out in green rooms you know they're in the field and we don't have a VIP area at our Ideas Fest and that's purposeful.

40:06You know, all the speakers that we get involved, they get so much energy off being around the earlier stage businesses and the next household name. Why would they want to just go and sit in their little bubble away from it all? So for us, you know, that's part of the magic of Ideas Fest. Absolutely. So then year two, you went from Wickham to where? Nowhere. I should a year off in 2023 did you would have followed you here was the what was the thought process behind that it would have killed me okay um so we planned to do it yeah um and we launched and we sold some tickets and we booked some speakers and for me and I don't know whether you found the same but post-covid was a lot harder for us than covid um that sort of year and a half once we kind of were in this new normal that I think I think because your guard goes up when you're in COVID right we were in this fight mode like how are we going to survive um and after the pandemic uh everything just seemed harder like I said we our team left um you know uh nobody really knew what they were going to be spending money or committing to anymore you know people were everybody else was had had a challenging few years with their business and obviously our audience of business owners primarily so everything was really tough and all the indicators were showing that we were going to do an okay festival but it was going to be it was going to take 110 percent of like my everything to put into it and I didn't have it um if I'm honest uh so I phoned up a few people and I just kind of you know you know when you when someone asks you how you are and you go yeah I'm fine and like your voice goes up and and I think some I can't remember who and I know exactly who it was uh Jo Dalton who um is an amazing supporter of our community she said you're not fine are you and I basically think I kind of let it all go and she said why don't you phone this person that person that person there were people that were speaking or booked to speak and ask them what they think and they were all people who you know were super successful entrepreneurs and friends and they all unanimously said don't do it it's going to kill you good um what's going to happen if you pull it you'll get some people that will be upset and angry with you but just be honest about it um and actually i think 95 of the people said stick in with my ticket and we'll have it for next year we offered them two years or three years i can't remember what we did but we wanted to look after people that supported us i think you made a good move yeah in 23 going from a subletting a festival to go into 23 that would have been really dangerous because what happened afterwards everyone in the festival world 26 sorry 16 2016 17 18 19 everyone was doing this 2020 lost it lucky festivals were allowed to put it on 21 and then when it got back to normality 22 23 it went back down to the numbers of 2017 yeah got back down to reality so every festival owner around the country felt that yeah well i I think it would have killed me, potentially killed the business, you know, if I tried to go through.

43:17I was so scared about sending that email, though. It literally kept me awake at night. But I do remember, I think, when I made the decision, been flirting with it for about four or five days, and like, you know, can I do this? You know, can I not? Made the decision. I remember coming downstairs to my partner, and I just cried. And I think it was like literally that weight had been lifted off my shoulders. and it was out there then you know I told people how do you deal with pressure not very well no very well but not very well probably for my actual mental health yeah I think I just take it and take it and take it and I'm not very good at letting things out or saying no or saying no yeah yeah my sister got me a book actually that is you know the art of saying no I I haven't read it yet.

44:11It's the perfect book for me because I want to get the balance right though. You know, I want to say yes to amazing opportunities, but sometimes you have to think at what cost, you know, is it my physical health? Is it mental health? Is it, you know, is it just, am I going just for FOMO when actually what is the value exchange there? Who have you got as a mentor to actually bounce off and stuff like this? I don't have one mentor. Obviously, my partner, Dylan, came into the business a couple of years ago and we could not be more different on almost everything. So we're able to kind of challenge the other one and make sure that neither of us just gets carried away with our sort of one track of thinking.

45:01what I feel like I'm really lucky to have is probably hundreds of mentors that I can pick up the phone to or send a whatsapp to about just a small issue you know an issue in isolation that's the best it's amazing I've never had a mentor but you've got lots of people you can go ask him that question what are your thoughts on that please did you get all this information coming back yeah and people are so kind and generous with it they really are um and you know I like to think that I I do and will do more of the same you know if there's somebody who's got a challenge that I can help with and time allowing I will tell me some of the big speakers you've had at your events uh so you mentioned Steve Bartlett um we had Simon Scribd that year as well actually and I think um Simon will probably correct me if I'm wrong but it well it was certainly before Simon's social profile was as big as it is um and we got him interviewing John Caldwell actually so it's a sort of a double whammy there and John Caldwell is the fans are phones for you and he's now um you know obviously he's had great successes but philanthropy is where he spends his time and invests his you know his whole self so he's got two charities Caldwell Children and Caldwell Youth and so we've worked with with them to support and to raise awareness and funds for the charity and John comes to our events and speaks he's a billionaire Yeah.

46:26Yeah. There's not many of them about, is there? It's not. We've had a few there. Yeah, it is. They play. We have this amazing speaker, a guy that runs a festival, rugby festival in Bournemouth, Dodge Woodall. Oh, well, yeah. Apparently, he's a good speaker, that one. He was great, yeah. We've had and got Michael Acton-Smith, who's the founder of Calm. Oh, lovely. Michael is just, his story is amazing. Is it? And he's so generous and also apparently throws a very good festival after parties so I've heard. We've got the founder of Yo Sushi, Simon Woodruff. Lovely. He's actually flying. He's a character, isn't he?

47:02Yeah. We've got Rory Sutherland booked this year. We've got the founders of Child's Farm, Joanna Jensen, Coffee Nation.

47:13Honestly, the team have knocked it out of the park. That's amazing. That's powerful, isn't it? Yeah. How do you approach these people? We're lucky that we know most of them through the awards. So they might have won an award or they might have judged an award or we get a lot of approaches, you know, speakers. We got about 3000 applications this year. To speak? To speak. Yeah. Yeah. We actually launched another small stage today. It's kind of like a big ideas stage. So we're putting in a small stage where people can come up and do sort of 10, 15 minute sessions where they're not pitching their product, but they're talking about something that they're passionate about.

47:55So sort of TEDx style talks. And we had about 100 people apply this morning. So I could, I don't know, maybe it's speakers fest is a thing. Because, yeah, we could be in danger of having more speakers than we've got attendees if we took everyone. So just going back to the business model, their sponsors, what sort of sponsors have come on board over the years? Banks, telcos, legal firms, accountancy firms. Give me some names on banks. We work with Alica Bank for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. They have been absolutely amazing. Funny story there, actually. The guy, Conrad. What was the banker called?

48:33Alica. Alica, okay. Yeah. And do you remember the orange hats that were at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards? No. No, okay. I need to do more work on their branding at the event then. But Conrad Ford, who is his chief strategy and innovation officer, something like that. His background, he was an entrepreneur and actually had won an award with the Great British Entrepreneur Awards with his entrepreneur hat on. and he still pulls me up and says that he won the regional and he didn't win the national and at the only way then when he when he left that business and he was now working at Alica who were growing like a rocket ship and such an exciting partner to be working with um he said he said on stage that uh he didn't get on stage um as a finalist or a winner so he had to pay an extortionist amount of money to to be able to do it but um where's he from uh where's he from yeah Is he, where is he from?

49:33Is he Wales? Ireland? England? London, I believe. Yeah, lives in London, I think. But no, they're great because I have worked with banks in the past and naturally things take a real long time. With Alica, you can see from their marketing team how the business is just fast moving. It's a fast growth, entrepreneurial spirited business. and it's with just rather than a stuffy bank yeah amazing yeah tell me um the business model behind the great british entrepreneur awards you're saying how many applicants do you get you said you had 50 000 no no sorry 5 000 applicants yeah you said yeah 5 000 applicants coming in what do you do do you say how do you put them into categories and then what do you say like yes you've been you're going to be in the top five or how does it work for them to go yes we are going to come down hopefully we may win this award which will great we've raised our profile hugely yeah so to be honest with you um yes it's great to be able to say we had over 5 000 applications one year um for us now we care less about that and it's more about the quality um because it's an awful lot more admin to do if you get 5 000 applications so the way the awards work is we have a team who help us with shortlisting, and that's internal and external.

50:57And we will go through... The USP of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards is it's not all about the biggest businesses winning. It's about the story of the entrepreneur. So naturally, when you're looking at application forms, you can see some people are not putting their story across, and maybe it's a one - or two-line entry versus someone that's really poured their heart and soul into it, and that story and that passion really comes through. So they shortlist on criteria of are these the best stories and incredible businesses to fit in that region in that category. And then at that point that creates what our shortlist is.

51:33So some people will enter and will not get through to the shortlist. But there's quite a substantial number of businesses that get through to the shortlist. Because if you remember what I said before is essentially we're running 10 events. So you've got say 12 categories. I think it's actually more than that. I think it's about 15 categories. 10 regions and around about six shortlisted per category per region so even to get to that stage those businesses have beaten off a lot of competition to get there and then we have a judging panel of about 120 130 judges and they could be some of our partners but actually the the biggest um type of judge that we've got in terms of numbers is um previous winners um and many of those people that have gone on to become household names so if you look at alan barrett as a perfect example you know when alan and juliette won great british entrepreneur of the year in 20 i want to say 2017 that's my guess might have been a couple years later but they were quite some way around the amazing exit that they've had since.

52:44So they're kind enough to come and speak at our events and judge and do all of that. So we've got an amazing judging panel. We've got, yeah, about 120, 130. Fantastic. Al Barrett. Funny story, right? I invited him down on the podcast. He's like, right, all right, Dodge. And his Brummie accent is he flew down. Yeah, I was going to say. He flew down to Bournemouth Airport here. Come in. we're filming off 30 minutes and my producer was sort of didn't want to interrupt and he's sort of like waving in the background i was like what's up and he went i just needed to double check these cameras one of the cameras one of the cameras blew too hot it blew this was like two years ago something like that and we're like we went out and they checked it with the creative team and they were like we can't show this because this can't go on youtube we can't do it and me and i said we can't go for another 40 minutes of that so he jumped back on his plane he took a video he took a video of him flying off going all right dodge that cost me five thousand pound in petrol and he drove he flew back to Birmingham oh god do you know what he is he's a good guy he's a nice lad I I adore him and Al always gets back to me if ever I've got anything that I ask him he'll get back really quickly really kindly like you know it's not just like a platitude and I said that to him actually I asked him something a couple of weeks ago and he came back with a you know a significant voice note he'd actually thought about it and was trying to help me yeah and um i actually went back to him and i said one of the things that i love about you is how kind you are and how i don't think um success and and sort of wealth has changed him yeah which is a nice nice gift to have yeah 100 to give people time is a beautiful gift yeah the show who's the king of giving people time is harry redknapp yeah he chats to everyone and anyone anyone he gives people time across the road to sign autograph he'll have a chat but what we'll walk past the cafe and say everyone's harry yeah he'll have photos on where he's having dinner in a restaurant he'll have photos with his fat like why is it with his family yeah surely it would take it's told wouldn't it when you're trying to eat your dinner with your own family and people want to say first but he says yes to everything i couldn't think of anything i'd want less to be famous to honest yeah but yeah my point is he gives his time which is amazing which is unbelievable yeah roll on 2024 roll in 2025 yeah 2025 i was walking down the street and you're walking towards me i don't know where we were and you went dodge i went oh yeah and i didn't know and it wasn't you i didn't know it was you i was like oh my god what you're doing you look amazing what you'd gone through you'd gone through a point where you were under a serious amount of pressure something had to change yeah i mean obviously i'm half the woman i was uh you look fantastic by the way thank you you look really feel better than i have in a long long time yeah so uh yeah basically um i think that it sort of started in the pandemic and you never notice when you're putting on a pound you know and then suddenly you put on four or five pounds over a month and you still don't really notice but your jeans are a little bit tighter and then you go oh you know the sizing's all out and you go up a size what have you I'd done that probably for three or four years and I used to really enjoy sports you know I've um I'm not I'm not a sporty person but I like a challenge so I played netball and I love the camaraderie of that I'd done cycling challenges from San Francisco to LA and Cardiff to Paris and all of that I just dropped in favor of working so I would come home pour myself a glass of wine sit on my laptop until 1am probably get five and a half hours sleep and then get up and do the same thing again and i wasn't eating really badly i was eating the wrong things at the wrong time and i was definitely drinking too much um but uh that was because i was at events all the time people are free pouring and before you know it you've done a bottle of wine so it all crept on and i you know i i was aware that it was happening but i was in denial I don't think I'd stepped on a scales for a long, long time.

56:48And then Ideas Fest 2024 rolled around. And I saw a photo, I was actually interviewing Alan and Juliet Barrett. And I saw a photo and I thought, oh, Fran, you've done it again. Because I'd said the year before that I, sorry, the 2022, I said, I'm going to sort myself out for the next time. And I didn't. so I thought I'm getting closer to 40 I've got to do something about this um and I've I haven't stopped drinking but I'm nearly there you know it's it's a glass of wine every month as opposed to three or four a night which is quite a change yeah yeah um my dog is the best walk dog in Cardiff yeah I'm just trying to be healthier um Joe Dalton who I mentioned earlier took me to um you know a place where you go and the hyperbaric chamber and the creotherapy all of that stuff which i didn't even know what it was to be honest with you so i've just started generally taking care of myself a lot more and yeah i'm better for it the business is better for it my relationships are better for it so yeah i feel happier good you look a million dollars thank you really good thank you where what is the next move for you you've got ideas first coming up in september yes yep we the business is is so interesting at the moment so um uh we took on investment about a year ago did i tell you this story you introduced me to a guy who backed you for ideas first i don't know was he welsh yeah he's actually he's he's an investor in the whole business okay um what's his name uh nick richard um but i think that the story is amazing of of how we met him and it kind of leads on to where we're going next so you asked me earlier about the dinners that we host and we were doing one with um ubs wealth management yeah and we had i think so about 16 17 entrepreneurs for dinner in cardiff and we were around a long long table dylan was hosting at one end who's my partner i was at the other end so you know you only sort of speak to the two or three people around you at that point um I was quite hard to forget because I bright pink hair and I used to wear a big sparkly headband and so if someone had met me that and then the reason I did it was if someone met me I could say the next day oh I that was me and they generally remember rather than being the blonde guy yeah yeah um so I met this guy and I didn't say more than two words to him in fact I think I said congratulations to him because when he came in, he talked about how he had just sold his business.

59:28And I think it was 280 million, something like that. Sold for 280? Yeah. Very successful guy. Yeah. In energy. Serious. Yeah. And 48 hours later, I was jumping on a train back from London. Bear in mind, we've met in Cardiff a couple of days before. And I think it's out of principle, really. I never go in first class on the train, especially now. I don't think first class is kind of worth it, you know, unless you're going in early in the morning and you can make the money back in coffees. But I got to the platform and I realized the train was condensed and it was like six carriages, not 12. So I thought, right, I'm going to go in first class, pay whatever the upgrade is, because otherwise I'm not going to get any work done on this train.

1:00:10Sit down, who sits in the seat opposite me? But Nick. And we have a lovely chat. He didn't realize at the time that Dylan and I were partners because he knew Dylan better than he knew me. we got chatting we just really got on he uh we had a conversation it was quite honest and vulnerable in quite a public setting you know so there was a lot of kind of speaking hushed breath when he was asking me you know how is everything really going by the time we got from well by the time we got to bristol he'd made me an offer to come into the business and it couldn't have come at a better time really so we had investors that um they wanted to leave and also i i was quite happy for them to leave um but we would have needed to bring in some money to allow that transaction um so obviously the beauty with nick is that he could go out and make an investment in something that's gonna 20x that return on investment but he's involved with us because he absolutely loves it he's been recognized through our programs like the uk fast growth index he can see the power of what happens when we put amazing people together and when we give incredible entrepreneurs a platform yeah so he just really gets us um so he came on board uh about a year ago um i love working with him he's it's so refreshing i can i can pick up the phone to him or send him a text and he'll facetime me wherever he is and just honest talk through everything um but you asked where where we're going and so nick has led us on a really interesting journey so nick is from north wales um not far from where my partner dylan's from and uh about nine eight nine months ago um he came to us with the proposition for buying this building that was in conway and it's the old council offices and it is so impressive it is it looks like a big manor house on top of the hill on a beautiful estuary where you can see all the water and everything and it is huge um and he said you know i'd like to put a bid in for this but we need to do something really special and i feel like if we can combine his experience and resources with our experience our community we can do something really special so um we're still quite early stages because a transaction like that takes a while to go through and then it's architects looking at it etc etc but the idea is is that we will create a place for ideas to turn into things.

1:02:38So if there are young people with an entrepreneurial itch to scratch and they just need some help and whether that could be a desk, a bit of money and wraparound support that we can give in spades because we know so many people and that's what it's going to be. A home for innovation, entrepreneurship and it's really exciting. I'm really excited. But not where I thought I'd be. Message shout out to Nick, by the way. If you're listening, fair play to him. Yeah. So he didn't have to go and do that. No, not at all. No, he could, like you say, he could earn 10x his money, 5x his money, 20x his money.

1:03:10But he backs entrepreneurship and he backs founders and he backs startups. It's lovely to hear. He loves it. And he fell in love with Ideas Fest when he came that year because I think that he hadn't really bothered immersing himself in entrepreneurial communities. He went to loads of business events, but never really sort of that entrepreneur circle. And when he came to Ideas Fest, he just loved it. and we loved having him there. Frankie, are you happy? This is the one question I knew you were going to ask me and I think my answer is I'm not unhappy. I am happy, but I know that there's a lot I want to do and a lot I want to achieve and there's an impatience in me that I'm not there fast enough or I'm not there quick enough or other people are doing it faster or better or what have you.

1:04:06So I am happy. I'm happy in my relationship. I'm happy with my team. I've got my most amazing friends. I've got incredible family. I love what we do. I love it. I'm happier in myself physically. So I am. But I also, there's so much more that I want. Yeah. But the key to that is just be aggressively patient. Yeah. And that's hard. And I use that all the time of being aggressively patient. But there's a difference between being aggressively patient, knowing that business takes time and it takes time to get to where you want to be, but also show urgency. Yeah. You know, if you can balance those two, that urgency of bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, but knowing it's going to take time.

1:04:49Yeah. But I think you're a wonderful soul. Oh, thank you very much. Like you're an inspiration. And I think you've inspired a lot, a lot of people around the UK to do what you've achieved in such a short space of time, creating a festival purely for entrepreneurs in a field where there's music, where there's entrepreneurs chatting to each other, where people can come and talk to you and ask you questions about entrepreneurship or whatever it may be. It just connects everyone in the field. You're not like in the back, like the speakers are at the back and then people are waiting to see them speak and they hide at the back.

1:05:19Everyone, we're all just mingling. Yeah. truly an amazing event and what you've created with that event at the london uh hotel yeah in mayfair the most expensive part of the world yeah again 1500 people in there that's that's a tough ass so massive respect to you frank and i really appreciate you making the effort coming down today no thank you thank you so much for having me this wasn't as scary as i thought it was gonna be no just two people having a wiki chat yeah yeah absolutely you're a star thanks cheers frankie nice one take care hi guys i really hope you enjoyed that as much as i did Can you do us a favor and leave us a review as it massively helps us grow the show?

1:05:55Cheers, guys.

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